Well, here we are, about 4 days in to Steph's new life as a non-smoker. It hasn't been easy for her or the rest of the family, but we are definitely making strides. I'm quite proud of Steph for making this move so she'll be around longer for her family to enjoy :)

So, if you happen to see her in the next few weeks and it's "different", or you don't hear from her in a while, or you talk to her and it's a bit strange - take heart, you're probably not the reason. It takes a bit of time to settle into these things, and she's got a lot on her plate this time of year what with holidays, finals, and her "music television". (Don't worry if you don't get that last remark - you need to be a fan of Family Guy).

In other news, I found out Maya has a boyfriend at PMO (Parent's Morning Out). Steph and I made a joint trip to pick up the kids on Tuesday with the intent on going out to lunch afterwards (which, by the way, was a complete bust as apparently the PMO people gave the kids each a pound of sugar for lunch). Turns out Maya and this little boy were playing, and the boy's mother was there to pick him up so as the PMO people were brining out Devin, Maya and this boy, they made the remark that Maya and this boy are "special friends". I'm going to have to look out for this one. We got their school pictures back, and Maya is sitting next to this boy. Uh oh. Big time trouble already. Oh, and Maya is getting four new teeth, so she'll have a complete set in the front :)

Oh and we've been testing some new foods. Everybody likes peanut butter and meatloaf, although Maya doesn't care much for the bits of onion in the meatloaf. Come to think of it, I've noticed that she doesn't like "foods within her foods", like little tiny blueberries in her blueberry yogurt, and bits of onion in the meatlof. Separately, she likes them just fine. And she doesn't care very much for freeze-dried peas, whereas Devin can get enough of them or freeze-dried corn. I wonder if he would make a good astronaut :)

I'm going to let the cat out of the ol' bag here...we've already decorated for Christmas. And the kids love the tree. And they know who Santa is.... just FYI.

I'm going to be posting November's kids pix on my Picasa Web Album - so you can either subscribe to the album's RSS feed or keep reading here and I'll let you know when I've put new pictures up.

By the way, there are new pictures and a movie up. :)

Without a lot of explanation... just enjoy my clicky-clicky handiwork and follow one or more of these links. You'll be rewarded with... well, something. Fans of The Office will enjoy.

Improve Your Photos 60 Seconds at a Time

I happened on this nifty little website which will give you a... well, it's not really short, but it's a bullet list of important tips to help you improve your photos, without all the usual phototechnical speak about f-stops and aperatures and shutter speeds. Well, actually they do mention ISO and shutter speed, but it's not overly technical.

Enjoy it!

This isn't exactly the easiest thing to accomplish if you're not using Firefox. So, get Firefox. Download the Download Helper add-on. That's it. Once you have this installed, you'll have an icon on your toolbar.

Navigate to a web page that has YouTube videos on it, then click the drop-down and you'll see a list of the YouTube vids on that page and you can download them to your computer.

Now that you've got the FLV file saved to your computer, you'll need something to play it. It's doesn't get any better than VLC. Download, install and you're on your way.

If you're using IE, then you'll need a separate program to download the files. Look here for a good list to get started. You can also try SaveYouTube.com, but I have found that it doesn't work all the time.

I have to believe that the Star Wars Pepper Mill is surely not officially licensed from Lucasfilm. I mean, c'mon, where's the Death Star salt shaker? Darth Vader meat tenderizer? Obi-Wan Kenobi napkin rings? Light Saber hot pot? And of course the Sand People chopsticks! People, stop the insanity!

I am chock-full of good ideas.

We played a little of the Viva! album by Ottmar Liebert & Luna Negra, and Devin seemed to really enjoy it.

Company policy says that we aren't supposed to take vacation November - January unless we work additional billable hours to cover our vacation time. So basically they don't want us to affect the earnings for the quarter. We are also not allowed to roll over more than 5 vacation days, and I have quite a few stacked up.

So I put in for my vacation, which I won't be working extra to cover because that's how I roll, and I am now off every Friday until the end of the year. And two weeks at Christmas. And a week at Thanksgiving. Yeah, you heard that right.

I'll be enjoying that. :)

I finally got smart and decided to post some reference material for myself, seeing as tagging works like a charm in the ol' tag cloud. So off we go...

1. Prepare the AVI file. And by prepare, I mean make it available. And by make it available, I mean don't have it deleted. And by don't have it deleted, I mean have it edited to your satisfaction.
2. Login to your YouTube account. I use my Google account, so Blogger & YouTube are all in sync.
3. Upload the video. You'll have to make it public in order to share it, but I disable comments, ratings and responses since I don't really care about that. Keep in mind that it will be public.
4. Wait. AVI file's aren't smallish, and chances are unless you're uploading this from work, you'll have a poky 384kbps or less upload speed. So grab a spot of tea.
5. Once the upload is finished, YouTube presents you with a nice bit of HTML that you can copy and paste into your post! Voila!
6. I should note that it does take a bit for YouTube to process the video, so if you immediately post with your embedded object, you won't be able to access the movie. Instead of seeing the preview of the movie, you'll see a generic camera image, and after pressing play you'll get a message indicating that the video is no longer available. Just sit tight. Depending on the size of the movie, it may take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour to prepare. In my recent exercise, I noticed that a 33MB file took around 5 minutes to process.
   

I figured out that I was smart enough to do a complete image backup of my Vista-based PC before I reverted to XP. And luckily, I imaged the PC to an external hard drive. And luckily, Vista's image backup utility creates VHD files - which are used by Microsoft Virtual Server. And more luckily, one can download Microsoft Virtual Server (for free) which includes the vhdmount utility.

The upshot of all this is that I was able to get back all my previous genealogy work!

Well, I've been here. Lots of stuff going on in the household the past few weeks. Karyn had surgery and convalesced here. Then, Steph's Mom and Grandmother came for a week. While they were here, the kids decided to get ear infections. And, on top of that, Steph had to prepare for her mid-term exam (which was today).

Me, meanwhile... well, I haven't been doing a whole heckuvalot. I've started brewing my next batch of beer, since the RooBroo Honey Pale Ale is almost gone. Next up is a Belgian-style White beer, but I haven't come up with the name yet. I've also started a couple of other homebrew projects: I'm doing some liqueurs, wines, and breads. I've perfected a Cinnamon-Raisin bread, which I've named "CinnAhhh Man! Raisin Bread". I haven't quite figured out what liqueur flavor(s) I'm going to do just yet. I'm thinking maybe a pear or peach.

In other news, I've also started doing my geneaology research again, after a disappointing discovery that all the work I've done since last February is somehow "gone". I think I accidentally wiped it when I uninstalled Vista and went back to XP (did I mentioned that I did that? If I didn't: I went Vista, but the video drivers for my particular graphics card weren't up to speed on Vista for gaming, so I went back to XP. Otherwise, I kinda like Vista). Anyway, I think what happened was I installed Vista, and then decided to uninstall, which basically was a wipe and install. But I actually had a separate hard drive that I used for that process, so I'm hoping that it's sitting on that drive - I just have to reinstall Vista and "restore" the image from the drive. Here's hoping that's where my scanned images are!

Since the weather has started to turn to fall (in the mornings, at least), I've been able to take the kids out walking on the Silver Comet Trail. For those of you not in the know, the Comet is a railroad-cum-paved-trail for non-motorized vehicle use. So there are plenty of joggers, walkers, bikers, bladers, dog-walkers, and yes, strollers out there when the weather is good. I imagine there are some folks with hardened cores out there when the weather is bad too :) At any rate, I like to take the kids out Sunday mornings after breakfast for a good 4 mile power walk, which we get done in about an hour, which means we get home just in time for their morning naps. In the above picture, Maya is riding up front as we cross the bridge over Cooper's Lake Road.

In case you're interested, we usually get on the Comet around Fontaine Road, and head west to mile marker 3.2, which is between Concord and Floyd roads, then do a u-turn and head back. Today we went east to the Comet trail hail, which is technically Mavell road - but it wasn't far enough so we continued on the SCT Connector, which is basically a wide concrete sidewalk that runs from Mavell all the way up to South Cobb Drive. It's not nearly as scenic as it runs nearly roadside and serves to connect a bunch of townhomes and communities to the SCT by way of path. So, perhaps next time we'll stick with Fontain and westward, or maybe park up at Mavell and go west from there, since there are restroom facilities too.

When the Heroes series originally started airing on NBC last year, I was really pumped to watch it. I saw the pilot while visiting at my parents' house and immediately set my DVR to grab the shows as they aired. Then, of course, life happens and I turn around 4 months later and have 10 unwatched episodes, staring back at me everytime I look at my playlist. I think when you're that far behind in something, a mental block occurs and you end up saying to yourself, "there's no way I can watch all of these." And there was, in fact, no way. Same thing when you have all 3 DVDs out from Netflix - I can't watch all of these, so I'll mail them back in.

Well, last month I ordered the Heroes Season 1 DVD set on Amazon before it became available, and I received them this week. If that's not something to say, "watch me, or you just lost $40" then I don't know what will. So I sat, or rather stood, this weekend and watched the first 3 episodes. I'm totally hooked.

Coincidentally, this weekend also marked a watershed event in Steph's school career. Well, maybe not watershed, maybe a rain barrel, or perhaps a 5-gallon bucket out back which has rain and mosquito larvae. Anyway, she's completely caught up on her schoolwork (she started a week and a half behind), and felt good as she got out of Dodge for the weekend. She and some girlfriends went to visit a recently-wed friend up in western North Carolina (I think near Franklin or Dillsboro, she couldn't tell me for certain). So they hauled up out of here, leaving me with the youngins for the 3 day fun fest.

It wasn't that bad, once you get used to the routine - just don't plan on getting much done that you can't finish in 1.5 hour sprints. Friday was a bit of a mess since I was sort-of working while tending to the kids. Saturday wasn't too bad, as Karyn came over around 3pm so I could take off to go see Dave Matthews Band and Allman Brothers Band double billing at the Piedmont Park Conservation Benefit. It was a great show and marked the end of a 30+ year hiatus since the last time ABB played Piedmont Park.

Sunday we got up, had breakfast and went out for a 4-mile jog on the Silver Comet Trail. The weather has finally gotten tolerable for outdoor activities in the morning and it's mostly shady along the stretch out here. The kids really enjoyed it up until the last half-mile, which was pushing close to nap time. And speaking of naptime, that's how I managed to get some vaccuuming, laundry and kitchen cleaning done as well as watching Heroes :)

So back to my main point about Heroes. If anything, watching that show should make one think about the everyday heroes in your own life. No, not those heroes on the 5 o'clock local news shows - those folks are heroes of a different sort - military, national guard, firefighters, police, etc. I'm talking about your every-day heroes who don't get a lot of air time: say for instance your stay-at-home mother of twins who keeps it all together at the home while trying to make her own life better by going back to school. Nobody really mentions those heroes very often, but we'd all be a lot better off if we acknowledged the fact that folks like this are what really make the world a better place to live in. So consider it mentioned now, and take note. Who are the heroes in your own life that you need to pause and recognize? And I mean recognize on a day that is not a "holiday" invented by the greeting-card, florist and chocolate-heart manufacturer's lobby.

Why not make it easy and recognize your personal heroes on days ending in "-y"?

I managed to get a couple of quick videos of Devin and Maya in playtime today - including Devin walking!

It's fun stuff:
Video Numero Uno:



Video Numero Dos:

I just realized I haven't posted anything in about two weeks. Sorry about that - things have been quite busy. Steph has been busy at school (she's doing quite well by the way, and working very hard at it).

The kids are doing swimmingly well. Devin has started walking on a more regular basis. It's still not his primary mode of transportation - yet. Maya is just a walking, running ball of energy who doesn't hardly stop to eat. The dogs are hanging in there too. :) I'll post some pictures soon.

As for myself... I'm doing well. Work has been pretty fun, and I haven't had to travel very much at all. And, we've started gigging again! The return of Hard Livin' was back in full effect this past Saturday, and it was a lot of fun. We have another gig on October 6th, and it will be awesome-r.

My cousins Alan and Valerie completed their move down to Atlanta, and we've been hanging out quite a bit. They are a lot of fun and we are happy to have them around. Speaking of, they are currently on vacation in Asia - probably in Tokyo now, and will be running around around in China soon. They'll be staying around with us while they close on their loft when they return. It'll be a busy week.

Last night we took in John Mayer's 2007 summer tour. Openers included some band called Morrison (ok, but whiney britpoprock) and Ben Folds (!!!). John rocked the house a bit, but played most tracks from Continuum, which borders on moody slacker noodling and EZ listening. Anyway, it was a great show. Pic is from my cell phone on 6x binocs. :) Best part of the show? Picking up a Ben Folds T-Shirt that reads as follows:

I <3('d) Ben Folds (before he sucked)

Regular text was in your standard thick Camp style font, parentheticals were silkscreened over in red scrawl text. Quite funny.

I'm back from Miami after a short two day, three night trip. It wasn't so bad - the hotel (Mariott Dadeland) was pretty nice, as you can see from the wall-mounted flat panel plasma TV in the previous post.

Each trip to Miami reminds me why I'm not terribly interested in living there. The people are great, but the roads and traffic are horrible, the weather is crap (ok, really it's similar to Atlanta with a bit less hurricane probability and a tad more rain/humidity), the terrain is too flat to be interesting and the city is generally grimy. There are some bright spots, but they are generally best seen from an airplane as you're heading back home.

On another more somber note, our dear friend Christy is missing in action. She was last seen at the Atlanta airport (ATL). Christy was flying in from Kentucky to be picked up by her uncle and wrap up some things here before her big move to Louisville, but she never made it to her uncle. She was spotted on video cameras in the airport getting off the plane, and she apparently picked up her luggage, but lost her purse which was turned in to Lost & Found. We have no idea where she might have gone - if you have seen her, heard from her, or are her, please let us know. Christy, you're in our prayers.

[UPDATE 8/4/2007] I heard this evening that Christy was loctaed in the Atlanta Airport today. She apparently suffered a nervous breakdown of some sort. She is physically ok and has been checked into a facility.

-A