A few days after Riley was born the doctor confirmed that Riley was tongue-tied. I always thought being “tongue-tied” was a figure of speech, but I discovered it’s an actual affliction. It means that the little “thing” that connects Riley’s tongue to his bottom jaw is too close to the end of his tongue. He isn’t able to stick his tongue out of his mouth. The doctor assured us that he would be fine, as long as being tongue-tied didn’t affect his eating or speech later in life.

So, with every check up we’ve had the first thing I bring up is Rile’s tongue. It freaks me out to know already that he might have problems when he grows up. Riley was 5 days old when they first told us, It was like finding a dent in your new car. For the last 4 months he’s tried so hard to stick his tongue out. I was finally accepting the fact that I couldn’t do anything about it right now and it was best not to worry about it.

Then on Tuesday his tongue came flying out of his mouth without warning. I was stunned. We were laughing and playing like we usually do (He likes it when I say “Hello” and “LOL” to him) when his little tongue jetted just a bit out of his mouth. It’s no Gene Simmons, but it’s a step in a new direction for Riles. He had a look on his face of pride that I’d never seen before. I’ve never been so happy about something so little in my life. All week we’ve laughed and played, sticking our tongues out at each other.

I’ve been laughing for days because of this:

I’m in an organizing mood. When I get like this I typically shift whatever I’m trying to organize around for awhile until I get bored. Take for instance my past attempts at alphabetizing our CD collection. I typically get through M before I just give up and move on to something else.

Today 2 things got my goat today:

1. Categorizing my blog posts - I have over 500 posts on CJ dating back to 1999. The Wordpress software makes it a sinch to assign categories to each blog post. Unfortunately, I have to go through each post and select the appropriate categories. You’ll notice there’s one category named “Imported” that contains an over abundant amount of posts. Its the default category, so any posts not properly organized exists there for the time being. Over time the number diminishes as I find time to walk through each post. I try to do at least 10 posts a day.

2. Organizing my digital files - I have 4 hard drives at home that are full. The problem is, I don’t know what their full with. I had a tendency to make a backup of my “Documents” folder, which may be gigs in size, because I fear losing my most important documents. I’ve done it so frequently though, that now I can’t find anything. Is it in my 20040112 back up or my 20040620 backup? I plan on breaking down my documents into logical types instead of date based. All of this, of course, is backed up as frequently as possible. I’ve already learned that lesson the hard way.

I once read an article regarding self-organizing manila file folders. It’s basically a way for your most important or often used folders to float to the top of the pile. At work I have a wire stand that I keep all my manila project folders in. As I work/reference the folders I always return them to the front of the stand. That way my most used folders are always in front. This also forces the lesser referenced folders to the back. When the stand gets full I remove the files from the back, since they aren’t referenced anymore, and archive them (either in a drawer or in the trash). It’s a simple but effective technique that I couldn’t live without.

In our on-going effort to prepare the house for selling I decided to rid myself of all my gaming consoles except for my Wii. I traded it all in and got a decent chunk of change for everything, enough to buy a new game or two.

With the extra money burning a hole in my pocket I decided to pick up Wii Play. I was a little more than disappointed with it. Wii Play plays more like a game demo than an actual full fledged game. It’s a collection of 9 simple to play games - ping pong, skeet shooting, cow riding, and pool just to name a few. None of the games have any depth to them at all. Single player ping pong requires the player to “volley” the ball back to the computer. That’s it, there is no game. Just volley the ball back as much as possible. While skeet shooting has more of a competition feel than ping pong, it still falls very short of fun. In skeet shooting you are quickly hustled through 5 rounds of shooting. First you shoot at balloons, followed by targets, then clay pigeons, cans, and lastly aliens. It’s funny for a few minutes but quickly loses it’s appeal when you realize that regardless of how lousy you are at shooting, you will always and only go through these 5 rounds.

This brings me to my actual point about the Wii. Nintendo and their developers need to start cashing in on this thing. Demand is still soaring high but there’s a glut of games out there. Of the 15-20 games available very few are worth spending $50. I hope they get their act together otherwise the Wii will end up just like every other console I’ve had.

A few weeks ago I signed up to receive a free FON wifi router. FON’s concept is simple, build a community of users willing to share their bandwidth through an open Wifi connection. The only problem is it requires purchasing a $30 wifi router from FON. Well, that was until they ran a promotion to hand out a few thousand free routers. I filled out a form and didn’t expect much. FON literally asked me for only my name and address.

To my surprise I received a little package this week. Sure enough, I had been sent a little FON wifi router. The router itself is nothing too impressive. It’s small enough to fit in the palm of my hand and has three LED status lights on it. All I needed to do was to plug it in to my existing wired network.

The router uses the OpenWRT firmware originally created to run on Linksys hardware. I thought this was pretty ingenious of FON. By utilizing existing software they are able to provide some pretty slick functionality. The router has a public and private side. The private side can be used for a secure internet connection like any other wifi router. The public side, though, is a proxy into the FON community.

When I first set up the router I was redirected to FON’s website to configure the router to work with the community. I had to choose what type of node I wanted to be. My choices were either 1. be free and then be granted access to other community routers or 2. charge people $3 to connect to my router. Being in a suburb and right next to a Caribou with free internet connectivity I can’t imagine making much money off of it. I choose to be a free node.

So, if you’re ever cruising the streets of Crystal looking for free wifi, check out my drive way. It’s got the best there is to offer…in a driveway.

A chat log:

Chad Angerer: and I have no idea how you can handle 3 dogs + child on a daily basis. We’ve had Lucy and Phoebe for the past two days and it’s like a zoo
Me: we pretty much separate the house into “zones”. only one entity is allowed in each zone at one time.
Me:except those with “zone admin” rights, being courtney and myself of course.

After a week from hell, Riles is on the upswing. By Friday his condition had worsened to the point that the doctor put him on a nebulizer. I didn’t realize it at that time, but kids that go on nebulizers typically have asthma, something struggled with for a good portion of my childhood. At least I know what to expect if he does end up having it.

To add to the hectic home situation, I was working 14 hour days through the entire week and weekend. By all graces Courtney should have shot me. I was little to no help on the home front. But by Friday I had had enough of work and just had to tell them to cool out while I tended to the Commander.

He’s back at it today, now spending his 3rd full day back a daycare. We’re hoping it will help with his sleeping patterns. Right now he’s getting up twice a night, once at 12:30am and again at 4:30am. The 4:30am is just a killer. By the time he’s fed and put back to sleep it’s time for me to get up and get ready for work. So in essence I’m now getting up at 4:30am to go to work.

Chad and Tina joined us for a little impromptu Superbowl party Sunday night. On a whim we invited them over so we didn’t have to watch the game by ourselves. I made the world’s worst Pigs in a Blanket. I wasn’t careful enough with the biscuits. Before I knew it, the pigs were blowing out the blankets and escaping out the end.

Life has been pretty low key lately. We’ve managed to keep all the dogs warm despite the cold weather. Riles is doing well. Court and I are just getting into the swing of being parents. Weird.

Riles attended daycare for the first time last week. He was only there for two days but it was long enough for him to catch a nasty cold. On Saturday he started showing signs of the oncoming sickness. He slept most of the day and looked miserable. It was only a prediction of what was to come.

By Monday Riley was in terrible condition. Courtney had taken him to urgent care Sunday night where they told her it was a virus and Riles would have to tough it out. That didn’t really help much on Monday as he ran a fever and sneezed out of his tear ducts (a sight I didn’t believe until I saw it). Courtney spent most of the night up with him.
Tuesday was my turn at the sick kid. I had worked some very long hours over the weekend and had just finished the project so I volunteered to take the kid on. He was in better shape on Tuesday, the fever had subsided, but he still had snot coming out everywhere. He spent most of the day sleeping. When he was awake he was crabby and refused to eat. By evening he was ornery and still refused to eat. Once again, we were up a good portion of the night with him.

Wednesday is Nana Angerer’s turn. Hopefully she can work her nursing skills on the boy. We’re starting to feel a little helpless and stressed about it. Regardless of what we do Riley will scream. We can’t tell if he’s hungry, tired, uncomfortable, or just pissed.

As I left this morning both Courtney and I were coughing and sneezing. My money’s on us spending a significant amount of time on the couch this weekend.

On my way in from the garage last night after work I was greeted by Syd, our shepherd mix (or as I refer to her the $6,000 dog). She was in our fenced backyard doing the dance and yelps that she always does when I come home.

As I walked in a voice said, “Does she forget about him?”

I turned around, “Huh?”

“Does she forget about him? The dog…She’s been outside for awhile.”

The voice came from a woman I did not know. She was at my neighbor’s house.

I said to her that Syd was probably okay and that Syd liked to be outside.

“I dunno about that…”, she responded.

Irked, I went inside. I told my wife of the conversation, changed into some more relaxed attire, and fed the dogs (Which required letting Sydney into the house).

20 minutes later a rap came on our front door. Surprised, I opened it cautiously and was greeted by Crystal’s finest men in blue. They explained to me that they had gotten a report about a rottweiler being outside. We explained the situation: 1. Yes, our long haired dog was outside for quite some time 2. She likes it out there and 3. She’s not a rottweiler. The cop was quite nice and explained that he was just doing his job. He asked to see Sydney and was promptly greeted by her and the other two dogs. With plush toy in mouth, Syd even tried to convince him to play a bit.

Irked even more, I stewed about it all night. Courtney had a good point, though, that people will do what they think is right, even if there is no problem. The unknown lady felt she had to perform a civic duty and shouldn’t be blamed for it. One look at our dogs will tell you that they are properly cared for.

But what I’m worried about is the odd relation it now puts between us and our neighbor. We’ve never had any problems with her. Now I may think twice before helping her shovel her driveway. Or maybe the next time her ladder falls over I won’t help her down off her roof.  We’ve always been kind and courteous to her and I had hoped that if she, or her friend/relative, had a concern that it could be handled better. I now have this feeling that everyone is watching and judging me. Next time I leave my dog outside will someone call the cops on me? Is someone sitting by their window counting the minutes my dog is outside?

In the end, there’s not much I can do about the whole thing. We did nothing wrong. People are going to do what they do…*sigh*

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