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.