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As you might infer from the photo, I’ve been a little busy of late: I’ve been at home for the past two and a half weeks with my newborn son, Tobin Cormac Gaffikin Cantrill. Tobin was born on September 9th at 8:59am, weighing in at 8 pounds 11.5 ounces. (He’s shown here having his first bath.) Having a baby is a humbling experience for anyone, but it’s especially so when you’ve spent most of your life dealing with complex man-made systems: it boggles the mind that a system so incredibly intricate could ever work at all, let alone so reliably. One is humbled not just for oneself, but for all of humanity. (Or, if you’re me, you just become even more offended by the hubris of strong artificial intelligence: Tobin accomplished more in his first thirty minutes of life than AI has accomplished in 45 years — and he’s certainly a hell of a lot cuter than your average AI lab rat.)
I’ll be returning to work on Monday, October 4th, so look for an update on the world of DTrace sometime next week… |
10 Responses
Congratulations Bryan and welcome Tobin. I remember how I felt when my twins were born and I agree it certainly is humbling as well as being a WOW experience. I’m glad you took the time away to spend with your family.
Welcome Tobin! And congrats Bryan and to your wife. It is indeed tough to explain or really grasp. The first 2-3 weeks are tough physically and emotionally, not to mention all the philosophical debates that go on in your head. It’s especially interesting how years of doubt and fears about being a father just sorta fly out the window without a trace. Welcome to the club Dad. 🙂
Congratulations!
Does Tobin have 30,000+ points of instrumentation too? You’ll be wishing for those when he hits his teen years. 😉
Thanks for the kind words, Alan, Ben and Derek. Ben, you’re absolutely right about how quickly the doubts disappear: there’s nothing quite like having modern-day anxieties trumped by the biological imperative. And Derek, I already wish that I had DTrace for Tobin! The problem is made simpler by the relatively small number of transient failure modes (hungry, cold, wet, tired, gassy, bored, lonely), but there have certainly been moments (like, at 4:30a) when some dynamic instrumentation would have been very helpful! 😉
Congratulations on the birth of your son! He’s a good looking kid.
With a name like that, he’ll do well in life. You can take my word for it. 🙂
Congrats, Bryan. 🙂
Gee, it seems like yesterday I was joking with your wife in Boston about how much the little guy must be kicking inside…Tell your wife that’s the good news, cause he won’t be kicking from the inside anymore…of course the bad news is that most kids will be kicking from the outside for a heck of a lot longer than 9 months!;-)
Congrats to both Mom and Dad! Having gone through both of our child’s deliveries, there is nothing so amazing as childbirth.
Hopefully Mom is recovering well by now, and hopefully it was a smooth delivery…Even though both of our kids were quick, natural births, with my wife taking no drugs whatsoever, I’ve heard my share of women in the delivery room that could have used DTrace to figure out where the fsck that performance problem was in getting their babies out!;-)
Oh, and BTW, his birthday is just a day after mine…(not sure if that’s good or bad for you).
Wow, I missed this blog entry. Congratulations. Cute. Don’t worry about 30K points of instrumentation.
Crying = Hungry | tired | change diapers 🙂
All other points of instrumentation are secondary to crying.
Congratulations! Someone (I think in Japan) tried to make a device to distinguish the Hungry | Tired | change diapers cries, but trial and error works!
to new beginnings! mary