Here's the view from my 7th floor hotel room. Usually the far-off mountains are shrouded in haze. Today is clear.
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So, it's been a year and half since my last trip out here. Not much has changed. I'm out visiting my "favorite" client. I'm not entirely looking forward to the trip, but it's something to do. We drove down to Sanibel for Thanksgiving, and I flew out to Orange County tonight. The flight was uneventful - the highlight was the leg from Atlanta to Orange County. The equipment was a 757 that was updated to have the new TV system that featured a bunch of movies, games, and satellite TV. I watched "Superman Returns" all in all, a good flick. The fellow who plays Superman must've studied Chris Reeve, because he had the mannerisms down pat, right down to the "Goodnight, Lois". Highlights: story line, cinematography. Low points: Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor didn't get enough space in the movie to flex the character. I also tried to watch "Talledaga Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby". I had to turn it off about 20 minutes in - it was crap.

So now I'm in the hotel, watching "Clerks II". It's not nearly as clever as the first. In fact, I'm writing this while watching the movie.

Oh, I should mention that my latest hobby has been genealogy. I'm busily tracing roots for my family and Steph's family. It's kinda fun.

I know that there is more than one reader of this blog that is interested in energy conservation, and being that said readers are spread across various states, this should prove interesting. You've probably purchased Energy Star appliances just because they save money, and not necessarily due to some tax credit you may or may not get. But have you considered converting your home to wood-burning heat? If you live in Alabama, they'll pay for your conversion. That said, meet DSIRE: the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency.

For instance, here in Georgia, we have the option to purchase green energy. It costs a bit more, but it (supposedly) comes from renewable resources (e.g. hydoelectric, solar, geothermal, etc). Of course, here in Cobb County we aren't treated to such, but hey, it takes time to get green out here. There's also another incentive that earns you money. The TVA will buy solar- or wind-power from you. Neato!

So check it out, and get greener, both in the wallet and in the mind.

After another trip down to Sanibel (I dropped Steph, Nugget and Honeybee off with Steph's mom), we visited with Uncle Joey & Aunt Mary. They are train fanatics (it sorta runs in that side of the family with all sorts of relatives working in some form or fashion for the railroad industry). They offered to unload some of their LGB cars onto us, since we run LGB too. Here's what we got:

3 of these LGB passenger cars. They appear to be black in the picture, but it's a very dark green (I think, what do I know? I'm color blind).

A circus flatbed/car thingy:

A BASF tanker car, and an Austrian dining car (very cool!)

A reefer boxcar, and some sort of flatbed + caboose car, which Uncle Joey says is a European flatbed with caboose.

And finally, a newer Euro passenger car that is really neat:

Yeah, I knew it wouldn't come out, but that bumper sticker reads "Dogs Love Eggs". Dogs also love garbage, so what does that tell you?

It has happened. We have achieved it.

It's that one thing that new parents wish for, more than anything else (except perhaps a healthy baby). No, it's not that elite Italian stroller/car-seat combo. It's not the Eddie Bauer edition play gym. It's not even the matching nursery furniture set from the Babies R Us store, that cost you an arm and a leg, and maybe even part of a foot.

Nope. It's none of these. What it is, is kids that sleep through the night. I'm knocking on wood here, but as of this morning, my little Nugget and Honeybee have slept 3 consecutive nights from 9:30pm until around 6. Sure, there's the occasional 5am whine, but they will either self-soothe or we'll pop in to put the pacifiers in.

The secret? Well, honestly I don't know. It's been a combination of things really. Here's our bedtime ritual:

1) Last feeding ends around 9:30(ish). We feed 6 ounces, currently just use formula and no rice cereal.
2) We use a white-noise generator, although we left that in Florida so the last two nights have been sans-audio for the babies.
3) We have room-darkening vinyl roller-type shades on the windows.
4) We keep the room a toasty 72°F, using a ceramic safety heater with a digital temperature setting.
5) We swaddle them (as much as they allow anyway, they're almost too big).
6) We try to give them the pacifiers, if they want them. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
7) The door is closed, ish. Their room is right across from ours, and our door is wide open.

All that, and they are sleeping through the night thus far. Life is pretty good.

Led Zeppelin II, Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti, Allman Brother Eat A Peach, Allman Brothers Live at Fillmore East, and Derek and the Dominoes Layla.

New! Benign Girl toy cell phone!

if you bang your tai, and need a bandqge, use these!

The numero uno Trini breakfast: the hot double. Eat it with your hands, right by the stand, then get another.

This is the view from my 2nd floor room in Trinidad.

Devin is dressed up in a duck costume, but we're saying it's a chicken. (That's because Dev's nickname is Nugget. Get it? Maya is in a honeybee costume. Perhaps you can deduce her nickname?

We think Maya could be teething. I've read that it could start as early as 3 months, so it's not entirely out of the question... there's lots of drooling, fussiness, and generally fist-to-mouth behavior. We'll see...

I'm in Trinidad this week. So let's do the geek-travel check list:

1. Cell Service? Yes. Roaming on Digicell (I found out that Digicell just started here recently, and previous to that time there was a monopoly run by the TTST, which is 51% state-owned). I heard there's a buck-a-minute surcharge, but I don't really care. I'm on business travel! (Note to upper-crust work types that may read this, and you know who you are, you didn't read this).
2. SMS? Yes. Multimedia SMS? No - so no pix via cell phone. I'll have to do it the old-fashioned way (snap-snap, download, upload) to get you some quality Trinidad, digitally.
3. Blackberry? No. So no checking of the work email.
4. Internet Access? Well, you're reading this aren't you? So that's a yes - the Courtyard here has complimentary WiFi, and I also wrangled a complimentary beer from the front desk - I am that good!

Now that's out of the way. I travelled from Fort Myers to Miami on a puddle jumper, which was kinda nice. The trip flies over mostly uninhabited swamp (a/k/a the Everglades), which is pretty neat to see. I had to wait around in Miami for about two hours, and I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I don't much care for Miami, it's traffic, it's airports and the general attitude over there. It's a strange vibe that I just don't get. Perhaps the fact that I got my laptop stolen there might have something to do with that. At any rate, let's just say there's no fear of me pulling up stakes and moving to Miami any time soon, for anything. But don't get me wrong, I know some nice people in Miami, but 5 out of 2 million isn't that great.

Alright, enough on Miami and it's seedy airport (at least the international terminal for American Airlines anyway)...off to Trinidad! And business class at that. I watched Pirates of the Caribbean (and why not?) on the ol' iPod, and read X-Men Ultimates volume one. I think I'm going to get back into reading comics again, now that I have all this free time on my hands :) The flight was uneventful, that is, until landing.

When I travel internationally, I do so as a seasoned traveller - I don't dress up for plane flights since this is not 1960 - so I typically tell the customs people that I'm here for vacationing. And by that, I mean spending big bucks and not taking work away from the indigenous people. That goes for when I'm on business too. But I wimped out this time and told the guy I was here for some business meetings, and then he asked to see my return itinerary. Of course, I'm living in the age of electronics! It's in an email somewhere, I'm sure...I mean, I'm pretty green so I don't print stuff out unless I have to - so no, I didn't have a printed itinerary. Luckily Yvette had one.

So, we got past customs. Y and I are walking down the hall and all the lights in the airport go out for about 5 seconds. And when I say all, I mean all. No emergency lights or anything. So that was a bit of a scare. Y grabbed onto my arm and screamed like a little girl for a bit - but let's face it, she's not that tall, so that's not unexpected. As I was reaching into my pocket for my trusty Treo flashlight (a/k/a screen of backlit-goodness), the lights got power again, and all was good. Or so it seemed. I don't think there's much in the way of backup power around the airport in Port of Spain - or perhaps they just shut things down after 9pm: the lights were mostly out in the bathrooms, taxi stand, and outside the airport. So, overall, the airport experience was only slightly seedy and unnerving. Then comes the taxi ride.

I had to stop by the ATM at the airport - I only had a few USD, and no TTD. I read in my Rough Guide to Trinidad & Tobago that the cab ride from the airport to the hotel should be USD$30, and that's exactly what the driver quoted. That wasn't so bad. The cab was an old BMW 5 series diesel from about 1986, white, with a maroon velour interior, and power windows! I noticed there was no air freshener - no crown-in-the-rear-deck, no evergreen tree rear-view mirror hanger, no nothing. That was not such a big deal, and I found out why later. We loaded the suitcases into the trunk and hopped aboard. The taxi started on the second try, which isn't bad for a 20 year old diesel. Apparently the cabbie was ready for this, because he didn't shut his door until the car started. Oh, and FYI - this is a left-side-driving, right-side-seated country. So we're off like a herd of...something that herds. I whipped out the laptop and GPS to track our progress (not that it mattered because I haven't installed Eartha Explorer on this laptop, so I basically got GPS tracking information and little else. I did manage to see that we drove about 40mph for most of the trip).

Y and I traded tidbits we learned about Trinidad prior to the trip. I noted the leatherback sea turtle nesting grounds on the north side of the island, and the roti sandwich stands. Y informed me that Trinis love them some fried chicken! KFC is the fast-food restaurant of choice on the island - so much so in fact that Trinidad has the highest KFC per capita in the world. I would've thought we could beat that in the southern US, but hey, I've been wrong before...once.

So we're tooling off down Churchill-Roosevelt Parkway, and that's when we are treated to a veritable, no, friggin' cornucopia of nasal delight! Perhaps delight is too strong a word. No, the word I require is more like...yes, that's it: we were treated to a friggin' cornucopia of olfactory overload! It started first with the diesel fumes, and the Jet A fuel from the airport... then we passed a swamp...then a chicken farm...then some sort of chicken processing plant, which we learned was a KFC warehouse/facility (for what, I don't know...chicken nugget fabrication? I don't eat KFC so I have no clue what's on the menu... chicken lips and toes for all I knows). Anyway, then there was a bit of skunk for a bit. Then more diesel, this time from a bus or two and an old truck. And the grand finale: a garbage dump. Literally. Right on the highway. Which got me to thinking: Curacao, for all it's polarity, was actually a pretty nice island. Sure, there were really poor people, and really rich people, but overall the land was nice. Yeah, there are a lot of petroleum processing plants, but that's mainly in Willemstad. I like Curacao.

Thus far, I am not so enamored of Trinidad. Granted, I've seen it from the back of a cab, for 30 minutes, at night, after two plane trips and waiting around and being tired. So I'll hold off on judgment just yet - after all, who knows what lies in store when the sun comes up...

Ack. I'm sitting in the Fort Myers airport ready to head off to Trinidad and I'm updating my blog. Turns out that my fancy pre-departure pix that I snapped of the kids didn't make it to the blog! Drat!

Hopping on to Blogger reveals some errors in publishing. Usually the SMS messages from the Treo happily plop themselves into my blog without error - but now I'm seeing "Unknown Host" problems when I try to republish those MIA messages.

Well, I am happy to report that I will be changing hosting providers to something a little more reliable. ANRHost have done a fine job thus far, but they have been pretty lackluster in terms of domain renewal - in particular, my own domain went into "unrenewed status" without so much as a cursory email to let me know. So, I'm moving all my domains from ANRHost to 1&1 Hosting. It's about the same price, and they are a "real" operation that can be counted on for long hold times, unresponsive support and the usual bureaucracy that comes with a big-time service provider. Well, that and their interface for remote management is far superior, which includes a domain control panel and unlimited MySQL databases (gasp). Ok, well the latter isn't really important at all. But what is important is that people get to see more of me. And by me, I mean my kids - because that's what's really important.

PS. If you've never seen the bottom end of this page, take a moment and scroll on down. Look for the ping map that tracks all of you, my loyal friends and readers, and realize how small this world really is.

PPS. Ok, so I think the posting works now. And my plane is boarding.

I have to admit it - the retro Beatles infant Tee is pretty swank. I mean, can you blame me for wanting to swaddle Maya in a phat Allman Brothers mushroom/tie-dyed Onesie? Devin in a black Led Zep onesie with the Swan Song emblem (you know, Icarus falling from the sky).

I am going to invest in some quality iron-on paper, and will be busting out my silk-screening kit whence I return from abroad.

To capture Devin smiling. With a cell phone that is.

This article is a fantastic story about elephants exacting revenge on humans. It also contains some interesting information about pachydermal social groups. I'll save all the comments and just let you read it and then walk away amazed. And you thought only humans and dolphins were smart!

Devin watches The Band performing on the Last Waltz DVD. I actually had him facing the other way and he craned his l'il baby neck around to see it.

The swell of Robbie Robertson's solo on Up on Cripple Creek grabs Devin's attention. He's seated with his back to the TV.

It's hard to catch her attention with a cameraphone, but when you do the results make you feel warm & fuzzy inside. :)

Just a little trivial knee surgery on a Friday afternoon. Right before tea. This was to address a recurring problem with a meniscus and anterior cruciate ligament. The latter will require reconstruction (perhaps a cadaver's ACL?) and 3 weeks' recovery time so we opted to table that pesky business. I'm actually putting the details about this in here 3 days afterwards - oops.

Yesterday was completely without crutches.
Today we'll take off the bandages and inspect, and perhaps not take any more percoset.

Heh heh. This l'il feller has the buggiest eyes I've ever seen. Well, except for his mom of course. :)

Here's a neat little box made from paper. I know the picture isn't that good, but this is basically a PDF that I got off the internets, printed, cut, folded, taped and voila!

Check these out. I found some nifty PDF files, printed them out, and with some fancy scissor-and-tape work, I have an instant optical illusion!

Pulpy The Purple Paper Dragon


Scully the Slightly Decomposed Paper Zombie

Halloween preparations are underway. I procured some templates from zombiepumpkins.com, and over the weekend the Little menfolk created some pumpkins that are, in a word, phat. Check them out!

That was a few hours' carving, with the cheap tools. Since we left all of these at Dad's house, we will certainly be carving our own for the house. This will be our first Halloween spent at home in 5 years - usually we are on a cruise or trip somewhere. We will be carving some interesting pumpkins this year, for certain, and I'm sure BJ will too.

It was a long trip, but we got back home Saturday night around 1am. Not bad - 12 hours for 650 miles. I am still happy about the van's performance during the trip, save for the roofing nail in a tire, but that was easily fixed with a trip to the local hardware store.

I might've mentioned earlier about the kids' sleeping habits - they did two nights in a row where they slept from about early evening to early morning (roughly 7 hour stretches). We thought we were approaching the clear zone, but I think the 12 hour car ride did that in for a bit by screwing up the twins' sleeping patterns. :/ At any rate, I'm hoping tomorrow's appointment yields good news and perhaps we can start introducing some rice cereal to the ol' evening bottles.

In other news, I've started moving all the picture galleries into a central location that I can control. You'll notice the Photos link over there on the right goes to Valence-Pix, where I have started posting photo albums. I've still to move the kid's photo log over to Valence-Pix, so you will still see the Picasa web link available. In the meantime, you can always ride on over to Valence-Pix to check out the latest photo logs, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

TTFN!

No, not the Hopper from Easy Rider and, more recently, Speed and Waterworld, rather, a Grasshopper. This "little" fellow was on the lanai screen down in Sanibel and measures about 3 inches from head to tail, and about 1¼ inches across the thorax. Quite a colorful character; he didn't mind me getting right up next to him for some macro shots - albeit without a true macro lens. At any rate, still very cool pix. And fishbait.

Here's something neat! While vacationing in Sanibel, we were treated to a floral show provided by the night-blooming cereus. I'm not sure of the genus and official name of this particular variety as there are quite a few. This variety is a creeping cactus which blooms once per year at night [turns out this is not the bloom-once-per-annum variety, which is pretty rare, but it's still a beautiful and fragrant bloom. -Ed]. The blooms close up by morning. Click on the picture for an album of several blooms.

For a part-Lab you'd think Stella would be at home in the water. Alas she is not, but she is quite enamored of the water temp ducky.

Though it's still in beta, GrandCentral might be the Next Big Thing in phone applications -- for some people. The premise is pretty simple. You get a single number which you can then distribute to your contacts. Then, you input your phone numbers where you can be reached (e.g. home, business, cell, etc). When a call comes in to your GrandCentral number, it will ring all of your numbers (and caller ID is preserved) and if you pick up, you'll get to screen the call or pick it up.

There are some nifty features: you can set up different voicemail greetings by caller group (e.g. friends, family, work, other) and you can set ringback tones (what your callers here while your phone rings) by caller group. You can upload any mp3 file to use as your ringback tone too.

The cool part? Voicemails are stored in GrandCentral's servers and you can play them back via your browser. Everything is well-categorized and the user interface is pretty slick (AJAX is all the rage, isn't it?).

For me, I don't think it's that something I'll use too much. I don't change jobs very often (2 jobs in 12 years), and my cell number and home numbers don't change. And, I don't want to have to do a mass emailing or calling to alert all my contacts. So, don't write this number down in ink for your Rolodex (heh - analog contact databases are so retro!) but you can try it out and give me a call on my new GrandCentral number (404) 704-0087.

Well, today's the day - two months ago at 3:43 and 3:44 in the PM we took our daughter and son from being wombmates to being roommates. A lot has changed since then, as you might imagine... if you can't imagine it, then just try to picture worrying about whatever you worry about, and then multiply that by perhaps 4, and then cut back on your sleep by about half, then cut back on your "free time" to about zero, then cut out any extracurricular activities you used to do and introduce yourself to diapers and formula.

So around the Little household, the lawn goes unmowed for most of the month. Weeds are thriving, although the I noticed last week that the shade trees in our backyard started dropping their leaves during a stiff breeze. That means fall is well on its way, and I'll soon have only a few mows left which doesn't bother me in the least. On the outside, aside from the loosely-maintained appearance of the house, things look relatively normal. On the inside... well, the landscape has certainly changed.

You may have noticed that the crib-cam is vacant most of the time - that's because it's technically not a crib-cam, rather, it's a pack-n-play cam, and right now, we aren't packing the kids around in it very much. So, the P&P sites in the living room and is more of a storage compartment for the sundry items used during multiple child care: bibs, binkies, burpies, blankets, bottles, books, etc. (wow, I didn't think I could get that many B items in that list!).

We have also undertooken to move our combi-office from the 3rd bedroom upstairs into the side bonus room downstairs, which suits me just fine. It is closer to my music instruments and will allow me to (finally) get my music studio integrated into the office. At the moment, my office is mostly in boxes stacked up outside the room. It is strange how, when boxed, any room seems to occupy nearly double the original space.

The plan is to change the former office into a playroom to hold kid-oriented items, and then will eventually become a bedroom for one of the kids when they are old enough to want separate rooms. That, and I think Steph just wanted a creative outlet. So, the theme for this room is "Under the Sea", and we're hand-drawing/painting all the art this time - no templates. The backdrop of ocean color is done, complete with a few thermoclines, and we are currently scribing the multitude of creatures onto the now-blue-and-green-and-uhhh-cerulean walls. Steph did most of the larger creatures as she had more free time: we have a whale, dolphin, octopus, sea turtle, seahorse, and some miscellaneous fish. I've been doing more detail work: sunken treasure chest with guardian moray eel, various coral reefs with fans, stag corals, tube sponges and anemones, grasses, kelp, shells, and some schools of fish. Our styles are certainly different enough - Steph is going for a more solid block style reminiscent of a Richard Scarry book, whereas I am doing more of a stylized detailing - my fish don't look like fish, but more like humanized faces on fish bodies. I think I'm also going to do a shark in there somewhere, although I'll have to hide it somewhat because Steph wants everything to be all happy-faced and what not, but I like to put some "real life" in there. In the previous bedroom, which is done in an African Safari style, I was responsible for painting clouds. Yep, that's it, just clouds, so I add a couple of thunderheads and a bit of a vortex on one. Steph was a bit miffed, but I smiled and told her that the kids need to know that the world ain't all smiling animals and puffy clouds. Sometime the animals will take a leg off, and sometimes it rains. So I'm keeping with that theme in the Under the Sea room - I'm going to do a happy, smiling shark with a couple of bones in his teeth. :) We'll see if Steph actually paints that in there...

I just heard Maya making noises in the crib, so I suspect I'll have to wrap this up shortly. We are currently "vacationing" in Florida with Steph's mom. I say vacation because I've been working half the time, and really, there is no vacation with twin infants. But the extra help is nice, and being able to hop out to the beach and enjoy the red tide is great (all kidding aside, the red tide during my one beach trip this year does most assuredly suck and blow). I suspect we'll remain here until sometime in the middle of next week, at which point we'll head back to the ATL and resume all our home activities in preparation for fall.

Oh, and one other tidbit... we came down with the whole family in tow (parents, kids, dogs) and that was truly an enlightening experience. Luckily the van proved its worth with the kids in the middle row, Steph in the back row and dogs interspersed throughout the cabin. We were able to switch drivers every so often, and stop every 3-4 hours for feedings and changings. So the trip was not unbearable, and we did the 600 miles in one whack. It took about 2 hours longer than normal, which is pretty amazing considering all the stops. Back to my tidbit: I had my laptop out with the GPS hooked up to track our progress. Not that the trip is difficult: out from the house, to I-75 south then go 575 miles. Pretty easy navigation-wise, but I was more interested in tracking our arrival time and checking the times we would be passing through various metros to make sure we avoid any rush-hour driving. So, the laptop was out on the front seat and then we stopped to get gas. One of the dogs decided they couldn't wait and hopped up on the seat and managed to remove 5 keys from the keyboard. So, I'm basically pressing rubber nipples whenever I'm typing a 1, 4, j, or pressing enter. The enter key is the worst. But apparently our IT department has an extra keyboard that's just missing an N, so I'm only on the rocks for a little while longer.

I just thought of something... as I'm sitting here trying to get people to understand what it's like with two infants (and believe me - parents of just one have no idea), I just remembered that I have the latest issue of MAKE sitting in my bag. I got it probably two weeks ago and haven't even cracked the cover. That's pretty sad. But cool too. I have two beautiful kids to show for it. :)

P.S. We have nicknames for Devin and Maya. Devin is known is Mr. Man, Nugget (derivatives such as Nuggies, Nuggleboy, Nuggs are ok), and Chunky Monkey. Maya goes by Butterfly or most recently, Honeybee.

Here are two shots of an outdoor shower I installed for Steph's Mom while we're visiting in Florida. Not the best plumbing work ever, but my first job with CPVC. I personally would've opted for the one shower head/hand-held combo, but she wanted both. Women!

Anyway it was pretty fun planning it out and putting it all together. Worst part of the job? Cementing CPVC together - it's altogether nasty stuff.

I've uploaded some more pictures of the Nuggets. Check 'em out here!

Apparently my domain was up for renewal and I didn't know it.... but we're back on track!

As long as I'm here: things are going well; kids are great, work is good.