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Riley’s Movin’ on Up

We were put on notice today that Riley will be moving up from the infant daycare room to the toddler daycare room. I realized that while the transition for him might be tough, it may be harder on me.

For the last 12 months I have taken Riley to daycare in the morning. Every day I say good morning to Carol and chit chat about the weather. We discuss what we did for the weekend and she might mention how long Riley’s hair is, in an obvious reference to our lack of parenting. Many mornings Riley runs up to Carol to greet her and begin the morning Cheerios routine. The other morning he came in and hugged her leg. She smiled and commented on how hard it is to see kids like Riles grow up and leave the room.

For most of his time at daycare Riley has been the gentle giant of the room. He’s been a big kid all his life and his classmates have been mostly girls. He stands out in the room. He’s the tallest, biggest kid around. Now, he’ll be in a group of even bigger kids where he is just one of many “big guys”. Riles has never been a violent kid. He’s never bitten anyone but has taken his fair share of being bitten. I worry that the change in classmates will force Riley to act out in ways we aren’t used to.

It’ll be tough for the next few weeks. All of the sudden the $50-a-week savings doesn’t seem worth it. I’d rather Riley continue to stay who he is. But, I know if there’s one thing that is certain it’s that he will grow up.

Tags: daycare, Riley

The Shadow Helper

Over the weekend we noticed yet another obvious change in Riley. He started mimicking our habits. In the past he’s found a rag and started wiping up the floor, a common occurrence in our house with a child and 3 dogs. But this weekend he started doing more complex tasks.

We were watching television last night when Riley picked up a dog bowl and walked to the stairs. He proceeded to bang on the gate until I opened it for him. He crawled downstairs (I carried the dog bowl for him), went into the laundry room, and pointed to the dog food containers. Riley wanted to feed the dogs. The problem was, the dogs had already eaten for the evening. Not wanting to start WWIII, I helped him fill the dog bowl and carry it back upstairs. Once upstairs he poured some of the food into Dottie’s bowl, some on the floor for Joe (Accidentally of course), and gave the rest to Sydney. It was cute and he was quite proud of himself when he finished.

Then this morning as I was shaving Riley carried one of my clean sweaters into the bathroom, pointed to the clothes chute, and threw my sweater down the chute. I bit my tongue on the clean clothes part because he was so happy to be helping.

Next up, I need to teach him to lay tile.

Tags: growing up, Riley

Courtney’s New Phone

Looks like Courtney will be getting an iPhone shortly too.

UPDATE:  Courtney turned down the new phone offer mentioning that we’d be better off replace my lost wedding band before she gets a new phone. Sometimes her logic baffles me.

Tags: Courtney, hacking, iphone

Latest Geek Toy - Philips DVP5982 DVD Player

For years I’ve bought bleeding edge tech devices. In 1998 I bought the first ever MP3 playing CD player, imported all the way from a back alley in China. I bought a 6 gig Archos MP3 player which held a charge for all of 2 hours in 1999. Hell, I even had an Apple Newton 130, bought off a BBS for $480, which I connected a modem to so I could send email from it in 1995.  I’m no stranger to the not-so-perfect technical solution.

Last month our standard DVD player stopped working. It would boot up but would not read a DVD. It would just sit with a “Loading” message flashing. I used the opportunity to upgrade to an upscaling DVD player. I’m not ready to drop any serious money on any next-gen DVD technology. I’m not convinced that it’s worth the money yet. I’ve heard good things about upscaling players, which take a normal DVD and “upscale” the video resolution to that of modern HDTVs.

I ordered up the Philips DVP5982 1080p Upscaling DVD Player  from Amazon for $65. The upscaling works well. It’s a nice player, simple and nice. The video quality of my existing DVDs looks awesome through the player.

But when I got it I noticed it had a USB port on the front. I can plug something into it.  Hmmm…

I read through the manual and discovered the player was aslo capable of playing Divx movies from a USB drive. In the past I’ve tried hundreds of methods to play Divx videos on my TV. I’ve connected my laptop to the TV, transcoded the video to VCD format, streamed them to my Wii, etc…None of them had worked even the slightest bit well. I was skeptical. And if I was skeptical, imagine what Courtney thought.

So I hopped on the internet, found some interesting Divx videos, threw them on my thumb drive, and plugged it in. In an awe inspiring moment the DVD player played the movie. It did more than play it too, it played it well! It just worked! I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had finally found a technology that worked without some cumbersome, poorly implemented, feature set. Thank you Philips.

Last night we sat down to watch a show I had downloaded. Court looked at me and said, “This isn’t going to stop half way through is it?” She knows me too well. I assured her that it wouldn’t…Well, I assured her that I hoped it wouldn’t. To my delight, it played all the way through.

Chalk up a win for me. I’ve found a diamond in the rough. It took me 15 years, but I finally found one.

Tags: Courtney, dvd, geek, nerd, technology

My Life Summary in the Blogosphere

My life is currently being covered in other blogs. Here’s a wrap up of my last few weeks:

We have booked a trip to Cancun.

We attended the local DFL caucus.

We finished up the Sopranos (see the comments).

I deleted my Myspace account.

Courtney and I celebrated our anniversary in January. We made reservations at the Oceanaire.  We were hoping for a romantic, quiet evening with good seafood. We did get good seafood, but that was about it. Our reservations were for 9:00pm which is late for us these days. Well, 9:00pm came and went and we were still not seated. We were seated around 9:45pm. To be honest, we were too tired to really enjoy the food. Oceanaire was swamped with people. It was loud and cramped. But, the food was good. Did I mention that fact yet? Yeah, it was good.

I’ve been asked to demo some web technologies for a MCAD class in April. It sort of popped out of the blue. The ever connected Emily hooked me up with the opportunity. It’s been awhile since I’ve spoken in front of people. When I was a teenager I used to help my parents teach their respective training courses. But this is the first time I’ll be older than my audience so I’m a bit intimidated. At the very least I hope to have fun with it.

Have you seen the Macbook Air commercial? Yeah, I’m a sucker for the tune in it too.  I swear Apple ads are my primary source for new music these days.

Tags: anniversary, apple, cancun, caucus, class, dvds, myspace, restuarants, vacation

Wrath of the Flame Sensor

A few years ago I paid a maintenance guy 75 bucks to come out to my house and tell me that the reason the heat wasn’t running was due to a dirty flame sensor. He took the sensor out of the furnace, whipped it on his pants, and put it back in. The problem was solved.

I came home last night to a house freezing at 55 degrees. Our dogs weren’t very happy with me. From the sounds of the furnace I knew it was the same sensor problem. I cursed.

I had two options: call the guy again to have him come out, give me a dirty look, and wipe the sensor on his pants again or just do it myself. I chose the latter.

First off, the flame sensor is not an easy thing to get to. I had to remove a security faceplate, which by definition, is not something I felt qualified to do. Once the plate was moved I had to locate the little bugger. It’s a tiny stick about 2 inches long and the width of a toothpick. It’s also located behind the pilot light (which was off BTW) in a space that was just large enough to get my hand into.  After all the futzing to find it I took a pencil and used the eraser end to “clean” the sensor. I spent 10 minutes or so erasing what I thought was dirt of the sensor. I honestly couldn’t tell if I was actually removing dirt. It was still black when I gave up and put everything back together.

To my astonishment though, when the furnace fired back up the igniting problem had been solved. The furnace now started up in under 10 seconds. At the worst, the furnace would attempt to start for a minute, finally stop, and fall into failure mode.

So by cleaning off this magic toothpick my house is back to a balmy 70 degrees.

Tags: dogs, flame sensor, furnace, house

The Lottery

I ran some numbers this weekend and came to the actualization that i could live comfortably for the rest of my life on $48 millon. I came to the number by first taking our current income, then multiplying that by some crazy, unattainable amount, then multiplied that by the assumed number of months left in our lives. $48 million was the number I finally arrived at. This poses a substantial challenge for us. It means that the lottery amount we will have to win will be around $100 million. So our first step into attaining our new found fortune plan is to wait for the Powerball to get over $100 million.

Tags: lottery, money

January 30th: International Delete Your Myspace Account Day

The revolution has begun. I can’t say I’ve been an avid user of Myspace, but I’ve had an account since ‘03. I never really found the chic factor of it. Most people who wanted to find me could find me right here (or here, here, or here). One thing I am completely fed up with, though, is the friend spam from Myspace. That’s why I’m choosing to participate on the 30th.

I’m not giving up on social networking, far from it. But I think Facebook and LinkedIn have succeeded where Myspace failed. Both Facebook and LinkedIn provide me value, whereas I wasn’t able to get much out of Myspace. LinkedIn centralizes my professional contacts and helps me organize by resume information. Facebook provides a clean and contemporary interface, serving up fun little games and time wasters that I can share with friends.

Tags: facebook, linkedin, myspace, nerd, social networking

My Mazda Hates Winter

Before I get started you must know that I love my Mazda. Courtney says that I love it because it harkens back to my Honda Civic hatchback from ‘98. She may be right. Ever since day one, though,  the fuel gauge has been broken. You’ll realize that it’s an important point later on.

On with the story.

The Mazda has been prissy in the cold weather. As the temperature has dropped she’s groaned a little bit louder every morning. Saturday morning I decided to tempt fate.  I tried to start ‘er in the -5 degree weather. She fired 4 times before finally moaning to her death. I wasn’t too surprised that the battery had died but I wasn’t really looking forward to jump starting it in the cold.

So instead of fixing it Court and I went to a movie.

Rejuvenated from seeing Cloverfield, I ran outside to jump the car and head off to Sears for a new battery. Luckily the batter charged quickly and within a half hour I was heading down the highway. Half way there, though, the Mazda started lurching and thrusting.  I looked down at my fuel gauge and it was on empty. This is nothing to be surprised about since after driving 50 miles on a new tank of gas the gauge will read empty. I checked the amount of miles on the tank and I was at 289, which in the summer is a safe amount for a tank of gas. But I hadn’t factored in all the idling and engine warming being done for winter.  I drifted off to the side of the road and called Court for some gas.

I sat on the side of the road for about 20 minutes. -5 degrees is cold. Very cold. I didn’t think the car would cool down so fast. By the time Court showed up with gas I was quite chilly. I pumped 2 gallons of gas into the Mazda and started ‘er up…Well, I wanted to start ‘er up. The battery had drained again in the 30 or so minutes it had sat waiting for gas. We jumped it again and I was off to a gas station, then on to Sears.

Luckily I was able to pump gas and start the car again. If I had to jump it a third time I might have just given up and left the car for dead. I waved bye to Courtney (who was following me around just in case) and was FINALLY off to Sears.

I ran into Sears and was helped by a very nice older lady. She asked what I needed and I told her I had a dead car in their parking lot. With regret she looked at me and said, “I’m sorry, but we are full up with others. We close in an hour. We can’t help you.”

I sighed and tried not to go apeshit. I took a deep breath and rolled my eyes. She watched me and said, “Can you get it home?”

“I dunno. But I’ll figure it out…” I let out another sigh.

“Well, let me talk with my manager.” She walked away. 5 minutes later she waved me into the garage. “We’ll help you out, but you’re jumping in line in front of some other people. So please don’t say anything.” I was quite relieved that something had finally gone my way with this car today. I thanked her profusely.

So the Mazda got a top of the line winter battery. She starts like a champ now. Remind me to tell you the story next time about the first snow and how the Mazda’s windshield wipers hate ice.

Tags: battery, cars, mazda, Sears, winter

The Case of the Missing Shoe

Riley happens to have big feet. I don’t know which side of the family he got it from, but his feet are extra wide (which is one step above wide, even). Since it started getting cold out we could no longer just take him around in his socks. We dropped 50 bucks on Stride Rite shoes for him since it seems Stride Rite are the only makers of extra wide shoes for 1 year olds. I wasn’t happy about dropping that kind of dough on kid shoes but after a frustrating day of trying to find something that would fit him, I gave in and he got a fancy pair of shoes.

We’ve considered those shoes gold. We don’t ever want the day to come that we have to replace them. He wears them everywhere we go just so we’re certain to get our money’s worth. On Friday Riles and I went to the mall to do a little holiday shopping. We hiked the mall for 3 hours, had some food, and came home.

While packing Riley up on Saturday for an overnight stay with the grandfolk one of his shoes went missing. I knew the shoe had to have been in the house because I remembered putting him down for a nap right after the mall. I had to remove his shoes before the nap. In fact, we had one of the shoes. He had carried it around and dropped it in the family room. In a hurry, we ran out the door without finding the second shoe. In their place were a set of fancy moon boots straight from Target.

Last night, fed up with missing a $25 shoe Courtney set out on a mission to find it. We tore apart every nook and cranny of the house. Bedrooms, bathrooms, play rooms were all flipped upside down. The shoe was gone and the finality of it all started to sink in. We both muttered curse words and sat down on the couch.

In a light-bulb moment Courtney checked Riley’s ride-on bulldozer. It had a compartment under the seat. To our amazement Riley had put his shoe away in the bulldozer. There it sat, exactly where he thought it should be. With happy sighs we enjoyed the moment and wondered what else he had stashed in other places.

Tags: Riley, shoes, toys