Naming your baby anything that rhymes with cryin'.

I call it Brat Wellington.  We had some brats left over from my birthday, and some really good bacon from a few days earlier.  Today I wrapped a brat in the bacon.  Yum!

Once again the day is upon us.  Truly 6:03PM of Monday, August 18, 1980 was a landmark moment in History.  For me, at least.

I guess this is a good to mention that a just few weeks ago I was thinking that I am now old enough to have memories of my parents when they were the same age that I am now.

At Melody's doctor appointment today the doctor set it up to induce in the morning.  So of course the baby decides not to wait that long.

Moved the crib in and put most of the trim up in the nursery yesterday.  Putting the trim back up around the window is a bit trickier than I thought.  I'm gonna work on that tonight, and hopefully move the rest of the furniture in.

The painters tape turned out to be a bit too sticky and pulled paint up from some of the trim.  Combine that with the nail holes I'm gonna need to make to put the window back together and we are going to need to paint the trim as well.  I'm not looking forward to that.  I want the room to be done.  I am going to wait a few weeks to make sure the new paint on the walls has time to fully cure.  We have some better painter's tape for that, too.  The wait will also give me a chance to get some paint up in the bathroom.

Have I ever said how much I hate painting?  And it doesn't help that I'm really not any good at it.

Update: Putting the trim up turned out not to be quite so hard after all.  I also hung the 'curtains' and finished moving in furniture.  I'm still looking for a small table and lamp for the room.  A rug would be nice as well.

The 'curtains' we used are kind of hard to explain, since they aren't traditional curtains at all.  They are small fleece blankets cut to the exact size of the window and stretched tight across it.  They can't be drawn, but in the evenings when the room starts to get dark they kind of light up for a very cool effect.

I painted the second coat yesterday evening, and just finished going around the edge with a small brush today.  Now I'll let it get good and dry and go back in with a razor knife to help take down the painter's tape.  I'll do that on whichever evening this week Alice spends with Grandpa and Grandma -- probably Thursday, since that's Melody's next appointment.

The nursery is no longer white.  In fact, my initial impression is that the first coat went on well enough that even the second will only be a formality.  Initial impressions can be deceiving, but if it works out and if I can apply the second coat during Alice' nap tomorrow, then I might even be able to finish painting this weekend.

After the painting is done, I need to remove all the painter's tape, put the trim back up that I removed to install the new drywall, clean the trim, clean the floor, replace the light switch, and bring in furniture.  Furniture will consist of the crib, changing table, rocking chair, diaper pail, and a night stand of some kind yet to be determined.

This weekend is the city-wide rummage sale.  In preparation for the baby I've been watching rummage sales all summer, looking for baby clothes and other needed items.  It's been sparse pickings;  before today I haven't been able to find more than 3 sales on any weekend, and one weekend had nothing at all.  Today I hit 14 sales in 2 1/2 hours based on only 7 ads.  I have another 19 ads to visit tomorrow.

My specific targets include 3mo to 1yr boys clothes (we have a bunch of 0-3mo now), a diaper pail, a sling, and most of all a nice baby monitor.  If I happen to see a really good bargain I want to pick up a trailer for my bike that Alice can ride in, or a basinet so we can return the one we paid $100 for.  I already found the diaper pail, but I can always use more clothes.  I found one baby monitor, but I didn't buy it because it was too similar to the one we already have that doesn't work very well.  I'm hoping to find a nicer model for cheap.  I also picked up a Chutes and Ladders game for Alice.

In between rummaging expeditions I'm gonna be painting.  I primed the nursery earlier this week, and I hope to get at least two coats of paint on before the weekend is up.  After the first two coats I'll decide whether I need or third or can just finish up with edging.  I might even have time to do one of those this weekend, but I'm not counting on it.

Judging from my server logs, someone's added this site to their rss reader.  Normally that wouldn't be remarkable, but whoever it is has IIS7 on their machine serving the default page to the public.   It's odd to see a home machine configured to expose the web server to the public, and yet have it serving the default page.  I thought about running a more detailed query, but that would be rude, especially since whoever owns that server will likely see this.  You know who you are ;)

It occurred to me on the way home from work today that with prices so high we spend more for gas each month to drive my car than we do on the loan payment. :(

And that's getting 36mpg.

I'm reading Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October again.  For those not familiar with the plot (c'mon: it was a major motion picture, too), Soviet submarine Captain Ramius and his officers attempt to defect to the United States, bringing their extra special ballistic missile sub with them.  Early in the story our hero, Jack Ryan, gets wind of the plot and embarks on a mission to aid Ramius in making it safely across the Atlantic.  Of course the Russians will have none of this and do everything in their power to stop Ramius.

A key plot device throughout the book is that Ryan is operating under the assumption that the best he can hope for is to get Captain Ramius and his officers alive, but that they will have to give the submarine back.  If he's lucky, the US might get to do a "saftey inspection" first.  After all, you can't hold the 100 person crew against their will; they didn't know what was going on and are mostly just conscripts.  And once you let them go home the Soviets will know about the sub and want it back.  At this point it's more expedient politically to return it than not.  Much of the suspense of the story hinges on what an intelligence coup it would be to get the sub without the Soviet Union knowing.

I'm reminded of a line from the movie "Dr Strangelove": Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*!  Nuclear submarines are no different.  They are the kind of weapon you hope never to use: a deterrent, not a real option.  As a deterrent, the more you know of the weapon's capabilities, the more you fear it and the more effective it becomes.

With that in mind, it seems to me that given this scenario the best course for the Soviet Union is to negotiate with the American side to allow Captian Ramius to defect, but take instant possession of the missile sub the moment it docks.  In this way, they would ensure the Americans get to see just enough of the boat to be aware of the threat, without learning any new secrets of the implementation.  They would lose Captain Ramius but they've lost him anyway, and by negotiating with the Americans up front they could create terms by which they are unable to debrief him.

But then there'd be no book ;)

I meant to write about this a while ago, but forgot.  As of 6/30/08, we've been in this hour for a year.

Also:  at long last the bathroom sink is working again, and we have grounded and gfcl protected outlets in the bathroom.  I also have a new (grounded) outlet and drywall up in the nursery.

On the other hand, the wood behind the door hinges for Alice' room has pretty much disintegrated.  I'm not quite sure how I'm going to fix that yet.

Alice loves slides.  Last year someone at church gave us just the plastic slide part to put one in our yard, but we didn't have anything to attach it to.  I finally tracked down a couple pallets, and used one to make a platform for part of it.  I have two other pallets that we'll use to keep stuff off the floor in the part of the basement that occasionally gets wet.

We went to my cousin Kara's graduation party today.  She is co-valedictorian of her class, which is very impressive.  I got to see a lot of family I hadn't seen in a while, and a one family member I had never seen before at all--  another cousin's new baby that was only about 2 weeks old:

Alice had a lot of fun at VBS this week.  Mommy and Daddy had a nice vacation, too, but we're glad Alice is home.  We went to Elkhorn on Friday for the last day to see the closing program.  Here's a picture I took of Alice and Grandpa:

To do this weekened:

• Pay bills
• Clean up nursery
• Mount box for outlet in nursery
  
• Mow lawn

It's not much, but we have things going on both Saturday and Sunday that will limit my free time.

We now have a new floor in the bathroom, and it looks great! Thank you, Dad, for the hard work to make it happen. 

Also, I have a new ring-tone.  I ripped the drum-line sequence from Veggie-Tales: Gideon- Tuba Warrior.

Finally, I have a new (used) video card coming.  ATi Radeon HD 2650 Pro 512MB, with a big heat-sink instead of a fan, so it should run very quiet.  One day when it's no longer sufficient for gaming this will make a great card for a Home Theater PC.

Here are a couple pictures I took with my phone this week:

I had to zoom in close to get a good shot for the first one, so it's not very big:

Melody's Dress Rehearsal

Since starting at SVA they added a Programming Manager.  Essentially, they added a layer of management and my boss is now my boss's boss.  This is actually a good thing, as my original boss was overworked, and wasn't able to manage us properly.  On the one hand it was nice because we had a relatively open schedule, but on the other hand the programming environment was suffering.  Things like our clout with the IT department and the state of our workstations weren't they would be with a more focused manager, so in spite of the extra layer I really think we're better off now. 

I bring this up because over the weekend my original boss' wife had a baby girl.  Also, another member of the system's team is due any time in the next couple of weeks.  So with both of them gone for a little and the team playing short-handed it could be a fun few weeks.

It's normally my job to put Alice to bed, and we have a pretty good routine set up.  Alice gets in bed and I read her a poem from "A Light in the Attic", then sing "Jesus Loves Me" and "Night Night, Alice."  Finally, I sing "God is Listening" before saying a good night prayer.  It's almost always the same prayer, though I will occasionally add something.

Last night after finishing "God is Listening" I paused for a moment to take a breath, and Alice took over.  She's said the prayer with me on occasion, but this time she went solo.  Not only that, but she didn't stick to the script: she was actually praying.  She took nearly a full minute, and was talking in her pseudo-gibberish that's hard to make out.  I caught snippets of "thank you for" and other references to things that she did that day.  She was talking to God, and that's as good a prayer and as a father can hope for.

Melody spent some money she got for Mother's Day on a couple rose bushes and a hydrangea, so I helped her plant those this evening.  We actually got some good use out of one of Alice' toy garden tools, as it was just the right size to help dig out the bottom of the hole for the roses.

I also looked up some information on compost piles, and discovered I have a problem.  Supposedly, one key to a successful compost file is a good mix of 'greens' and 'browns', which means nitrogen-rich items like grass clippings and table scraps vs carbon-rich items like dead leaves or even cardboard.  The web site I found recommended mixing 25 to 1 in favor of browns.  The pile I put together is almost entirely greens. 

I do think the compost pile will work out okay.  I have some dead leaves left over from last fall that I bagged before I knew the city would take them, some cardboard boxes left over from when we moved in, and some tree branches I pruned off the large bush behind the ground.  All that needs to broken down to small pieces manually before I can include it in the pile, but I'll get it in there in time (this is going to be one big pile pretty soon!).  I also get the feeling that green/brown mix just determines whether the compost is more manure-like or more mulch-like, and maybe how much it smells (enough brown items and it won't smell at all).

After more than two weeks, the water has finally receded a little and no longer covers Hwy 14.  It's still dangerously close,though, and they had to bring a pump out to make it happen.  So the water here has been high for nearly 2 continuous months.  Also, the trip to take Pepper to get spayed involved driving on some pretty out of the way back roads, and one of those is flooded pretty bad as well.  At what point does it cease to be 'high' water, and just become the new standard level?  Atlanta: if you're wondering where your water went, I think we've found it.

Our care group met at the Zoo today.  We were pleasantly surprised with how active most of the animals were.  On most of my previous visits most of the animals didn't do much, but today just about everybody was out and about.   The polar bear put on a good show, as did the otter (of course), some deer, a pelican, the flamingos, the prairie dogs, the new giraffes, and a few others.  They were all very active.  However, the new playground area stole the show with Alice.  There are three slides bigger than any she has yet tried.  One was for bigger kids, but she loved the other two.  Melody had her camera along and took most of the pictures, but I did get one with my cell phone:

She should be almost normal, but we have to somehow limit her activity for the next two weeks and make sure she doesn't lick at the incision too much. 

How do you limit activity in a cat?  So far the only idea we have is to move the litter box and food to the empty bedroom, and lock here in there overnight for a little while.

I just dropped Pepper off at the Humane Society to get spayed. 

Here are a couple photos off of my cell phone:

We're working on turning the small bedroom upstairs into a nursery.  Melody has already started making some curtains, and we've talked about paint colors.  My job will be to put new drywall on the two outside walls. 

The funny thing is that this room is one of the few places in the house that already has real drywall.  Unfortunately, it looks like there's no insulation behind it, and it's cracked and damaged in a couple places (namely at the seams and behind the door).  While I have the studs exposed I'm going to run some wiring for some additional outlets.  There's only one outlet in the room right now.  I'm planning to add three more and set it up to I can easily run wire into the hallway to add one more.  With a little luck I'll be able to put it on a new circuit that's actually grounded. 

When the wire is installed I'll add insulation (it should be cheap this time of year) and then start putting up drywall.  There is an old vent pipe in the bathroom that we're thinking about moving so it runs up through the wall, so I'll have to leave that part for the end.  But I expect this will take me long enough that we're able to move the pipe (or at least know if we're moving it at all) before I get to that point.

When that's done we'll need to take down the glass shelves before we paint.  As far as making the room 'finished', we'll also want to re-do the ceiling and put in new carpet at some point in the future, but otherwise the room will be a much nicer place in the very near future.

This story is interesting.  A US soldier in Afghanistan is able to call his parents with his cell phone.  The interesting part isn't that he actually gets service out there.  It's that he calls them with the phone in his pocket by accidentally pushing buttons... in the middle of a fire-fight.  His parents were not home, but their answering machine recorded some rather interesting sounds, reportedly ending the a neighboring soldier yelling, "Incoming RPG!"  That would have to be very disturbing for a parent.

Alice had a doctor visit today.  I wasn't able to be there, but I'm told she is now officially 3' tall.  Also that she's nervous about scales that you have to stand on. 

I am at war.  Already the bodies of enemy are piled high on the wagon.  Even though I estimate there are still five days of battle before the main offensive is complete, as in any war I also need to go on patrol.  And it was on patrol that the first casualty came.  There I encountered an enemy so determined that my weapon (shovel) was damaged removing him from the earth.  I am also running low on ammunition (weed killer), but still I persist.  Anywhere I see the yellow sign of the enemy I go to work uprooting his vile presence.  I will triumph in the end.

I had planned to wait until all the dandelions had been pulled to mow the lawn so that I could use the buds on the dandelions to help me spot them, but I won't be able to do that.  The lawn is getting so dense that it is impeding my efforts, and I think also dulling the shovel (which helped contribute to it's demise).  So now I'm going to quickly go pull up the weeds that already have buds and not worry about the rest until after I've mowed, which probably won't be until Sunday afternoon.

We have two student loans still remaining, both with Sallie Mae.  There's a big one, which is the brunt of my loans plus Melody's consolidated together.  And there's a small one, which is a signature loan I took one lean semester that's separate from the normal student loan program (but still subject to many of the same regulations).  As of this month, the small loan is no more.  The balance was small enough that we put about an extra hundred dollars to it and paid it off.  That's $50/month back in our pockets.  Next up is some credit card debt that we've had almost since we were married.  Hopefully that will go away in the next year as well.

I have declared war on my dandelions this year.  I've been using Melody's gardening shovel to pry them up first, and then spraying some broad-leaf killer on the newly exposed ground to kill the root.  I must have pulled up hundreds of them.  I think our lawn in places is more dandelion than grass.  I think I'll have enough to completely fill the smaller of our garbage bins, though I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them.  The city doesn't take yard waste. 

Unfortunately, the dandelions aren't the only weed in the yard.  I have a couple other varieties that I can't name, as well as some clover.  I don't mind the clover as much but other weeds will need to go.  This year, however, the dandelions will be enough, and I have the blisters to prove it.  When I finish with them (I think I'm about 2/3 done) I'm going to sow some grass seed to help fill in the gaps.  Otherwise I'd have just as many dandelions next year from seeds that drift in from the neighborhood.

Next year I'll attack this other weed we have, and when it's gone I'll also mow very close to the ground and rake the yard, before putting down grass seed as well as some fertilizer.  Then I should an almost brand new yard.  At least,  I hope so.

We went to Menard's yesterday.   They've built a big new store that's almost ready to open, so the old location is having some pretty good sales to reduce stock for the move.  It was a mad house, and they're not even that far into it.  We came away with the sink that we'd been looking at, for $40 less than the regular price and $10 less than the best sale price we'd seen.  I thought about waiting longer, but it was the last one.  Now it's ours, and it's waiting in the garage for a chance to install it.

We also picked up a faucet for nearly 1/2 off and some stain for the porch and deck for 1/4 off.  I think maybe I should have waited a week on the stain: I probably could have gone back and still found some for even less.  In all we spent $160 there- ouch.

The big 5-0!  You're not getting older, you're just...  Oh yeah, you are getting older

Fixed the Shoes link from the video post a few days ago.  I also made a change that I hope will help keep the site running more- it's down whenever I get home in the evening right now and I have no record of what caused the crash.

It snowed this afternoon.  Pretty hard, too, in great large flakes.  For a while it appeared that it may even stick, but in the end the recent warmer weather prevailed and it all melted before I left work.

Unfortunately, snow in the end is just more water, and even more of highway 14 is now covered.  The water threatens the southbound lane now as well, and from both directions.  I think I'll need to find an alternate route before this week is over.

It's raining again.  Actually, it doesn't feel like we've had any more rain this year than in other years.  What we did have a whole lot of snow, and now it's melted and the water really hasn't gone anywhere yet.  There have been near-continuous flood warning in the area for the past month. 

Our house is less than 1/2 mile from a small creek that feeds into the Rock river, and it's in the flood plane for that creek, but I'm not worried.  Several years ago the city started a project to clean up the nearby lake.  They drained the lake and did most of the cleanup, but then funding ran out and the lake has not yet been filled.  So before any serious flooding reaches our home we'd have to get enough water to completely fill that lake bed.  It also helps that floor level is about 4 feet above ground on the main level.

There are two ways all this water does impact me directly, though.

One of the flooded areas comes right next to highway 14, which I take to work every day.  For the past 6 weeks the water has come right up to the edge of the road and for the past 3 weeks it's covered about 5 inches of the 2 foot shoulder.  This morning it was into the north-bound lane about 8 inches, and it's still rising.  I might have an interesting drive home.

The other thing is that even if there's no flooding some of that water has the potential to seep into the basement.  I'd been lucky so far, but last August's record rainfalls proved that our basement is vulnerable.  This morning it finally started leaking.  I'm still not worried-- it's not a large leak and the water flows directly to the drain.  What does concern me is that every time water comes in, the leak is worn just a little wider and will be a little worse the next time.  But this one is small enough we have some time before it becomes serious.

Update: It stopped raining late this morning, so maybe the water on the road can recede some today.
Update2: It started raining again this afternoon.  On the drive home there was lightning everywhere, there were tornado warnings the next county over, and the half the opposite lane was under water.

I got some good news yesterday.  There was a 'Benefits Update Meeting' in the morning, and they announced that they were updating the vacation time for all employees.  Instead of 2 weeks as a base, everyone now starts with three.  Additionally, instead of gaining another week every 5 years you will gain a day every 1 year.  They also added a paid holiday and changed the way time off accrues so you have access to all your vacation right away every year.  The new rules take effect September 1, which will also be used as the annual roll-over date for when vacation time resets.

This means I should get an extra seven days per year vacation if you count the paid holiday, which is pretty neat.  Looking at the spread sheet it's showing that I will actually have an extra 8 days, but I expect that's probably a typo.  One other nice thing about this is that since things reset on September 1st I can take nearly all my vacation right away when the baby comes, because I know I'll have 3 weeks available to me right away after that.

Videos of Alice.  Enjoy :)

Dancing (4.8Mb)
Earmuffs (1.5Mb)
Jesus Loves Me (12.5Mb)
Mommy Shoes (1.9Mb)
Puzzle (21.5Mb)

All are in Windows Media Video format, since that's what I have software to make.  They're served up over our home dsl line, so certain times of day it might take a while to download.

Got the sandals out today for the first time.  I also moved the lawn chairs back to the front porch and hooked up the garden hose.  It's nice to see the weather staying warm.

I contributed my fix for the Project84Grass theme --on which this blog is based-- back to the project.  This constitutes my first real Open Source contribution.  Unfortunately, it's just a style sheet change, not "real code", and it looks like the project is not currently well maintained so the fix may never make it back into production.

We went to a Seder meal at church tonight.  It was fun.  Alice was very well behaved.  I am very sleepy, so I'm not going to write any more right now.

I rented FraggleRock through NetFlix, and Alice is just eating it up

Took yesterday off of work to go to a free Microsoft conference.  Got some free stuff, including a few pens (of course), a lunch box, and a free copy of Vista Ultimate.  So, of course, I spent yesterday evening installing Vista.  So far it's working much better than the buzz would lead you to believe.

I had some issue getting dasBlog to send e-mails with daily log results, comments, etc.  I got it working, but I had to enable Full Trust.  Since I trust myself, I guess that's okay.  I might at some future date try to enable the specific permissions needed for the site so I can go back to medium trust.

There was a glitch in dasBlog that would make articles show up multiple times in the search results.  I google around a bit and found a fix:  find SearchViewBox.ascx and set AutoEventWireUp to false.

Alice is staying with my folks tonight and Melody has chorus practice until late, so I'm home alone this evening.  So far I've used the time well: 

• Cleared the garage enough to put my car in again.
• Put out the trash, including a bunch of debris left over from last week's bath tub project and a few items that had been hidden in the yard for most of the winter. I saved some of the better boards for future use.
• Cleaned the litter box. 
  
• Broke up the old tub a little more to make it easier to put in a trash bin for next week.
  
• Spread just a little gravel back on the driveway that had been pushed into the grass by snowplows over the winter.  Unfortunately, the gravel doesn't rake well or pick up easy with the shovel, so that could turn into a much bigger job spreading it all later.
• Looked at the cleaning out the space in front of the basement window, but that's lined with brick two layers deep, so it will need to wait for some weekend time.
• Started to re-hang the gutter over the back door, but I'll need a bigger ladder.  I was hoping the step-stool would be tall enough, but I need just one more step- maybe another 6 inches.  I'm still planning to not buy a ladder anymore this year.  Instead I'll borrow one for this project.

So what does a guy eat for dinner when he's home alone?  Canned tuna.  It went well with the ramen I had for lunch.  You'd think I was back in college.