Ah, Naomi and her Dad…it’s taken her no time at all to be up on her Dad’s shoulders just like her brothers. It’s very sweet. Actually, she’s rough-housing already.
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The King Returned—at Midnight
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Last night I went beyond mere fandom, and decided that I would head out to our nearby 24-hour Wal*Mart superstore around midnight to pick up the long-awaited Return of the King DVD. As a bonus, Wal*Mart was giving away a small photoframe magnet for those who picked up the DVD between midnight and 6:00 this morning. Both are pictured above.
While I wouldn’t travel very far to do this, and definitely wouldn’t camp out awaiting such a release, there was a certain thrill to owning the DVD almost before anyone else in my area, especially at only $14-something.
We still await word on what will be in the extended edition, due out in the “Holiday Season†of 2004. I keep checking The Digital Bits Web site, and the official Lord of the Rings Web site, but no news has been released yet.
My First Spam in Hebrew!
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I’m so glad that the Internet allows such rapid intercontinental communication. Imagine a world where one’s inbox would not be regularly populated by the decades-old and now primarily e-mail based Nigerian Money Scam, and the like. Horrible!
Why God Gives Children Mothers
[doug]I don’t think I’m a bad parent, but recent experience has shown me that, without mothers, most children would never live to see their third birthday. Let me explain a couple of incidents that happened with NaNi this week:
Incident 1: I took all the kids, including Naomi (NaNi), Mother’s Day shopping at Wal*Mart Saturday night. The trip actually went pretty well, and the boys’ behavior was not-as-bad-as-usual-while-shopping. On the way out to the car, we started down a small incline, and NaNi’s car seat (with her inside), flipped off of the shopping cart, and she landed face-down (but without a scratch, because she was securely fastened in a 5-point safety harness) on the mulch in an island we were adjacent to.
In the moment afterward, the entire cart flipped over, dumping David, who was riding it, and our merchandise to the ground. No one was harmed, although NaNi cried for about 60 seconds.
Now, I was certain that I had attached NaNi’s seat to the shopping cart—but Nichelle (a Mom), wouldn’t have stopped there: She would have attached the seat, listened for the click of the latch attaching, tried to pull the seat off to verify it was secured, asked 3 people to try the same, and probably avoided the slightest incline when navigating back to the car.
Incident 2: Last night, I was watching the kids while Nichelle went to ladies’ Bible study and then grocery shopping. When Nichelle got home, NaNi spit up, and Nichelle asked me, “How is it that NaNi was eating brown paper?†(Oddly enough, I didn’t get “The Look,†which husbands and children everywhere fear.) Somehow the little weaselette had torn a 1-inch long piece of cardboard off a big box David was playing with, and swallowed it. She did this while being watched by me, and in the presence of both David and Isaac!
You may now go about the process of organizing the lynch mob …
88 Miles Per Hour!
My yaar Mark Sohmer sent me this link. The link went down for a while, but is now back up. I’ve been trying to convince Kevin “Doc Brown†Ilsen to buy this, since he is one of the few people I know who can afford it, and knowing someone who owns one of these is probably the closest I’m ever going to get to owning one, but I don’t think he’s very willing enough to waste money on such an effort.
Construction of a [Lego] Star Destroyer
I have finally started construction on the Lego Star Destroyer (the “Holy Grail†of Lego) set that Nichelle gave me as an anniversary gift this year.
Click on the image for some photo documentation (and fun) of the project. Woo-hoo!
Geeks Rule!
[isaac]Isaac, now almost 9 years old, has taken up the motto, “Geeks rule!” How it happened was like this: One night at supper John called Isaac a geek, which gave me the opportunity to explain that, in our family, geek is a compliment.
[john]I went on to point out to John that most of what he enjoys in life he owes to geekdom:
- The computer you like to use: Invented by geeks.
- The games you like to play? Written by geeks.
- The chat software you can’t live without? Also written by geeks.
- The switching system that lets you talk to your friends on the telephone? Developed by geeks.
- The standard of living we enjoy? Paid for by my own geekdom.
Isaac quickly caught on to the fact that geeks are doing the cool things in the world, and is now proud to be called one. He told me that he now prefers to say negative, instead of no, because it’s more precise.
Geeks rule!
Nada
Nada is now what happens when we turn the key on our 1994 Buick Century Wagon. It’s got about 160,000 miles on it, and has served us extremely reliably, and we aren’t quite ready to say goodbye to it. AAA is coming by later to deliver the car to our new mechanic.
At work on Friday just before leaving a great thing happened! I was modifying our demo application, and we needed to pass a parameter for a specific localization file to the right module. I coded it, cycled the server, and it worked, all in less than 5 minutes. Struts has not always been so easy, but it’s getting easier.
Naomi turned 5 months old this weekend. She is babbling more, and able to roll over now, and wants to get her hands into everything from what we’re eating for dinner to the computer keyboard. With 3 brothers, I predict her first words will be, “Mom, he’s bothering me.â€
This ’n That
Just a few quick bullet items:
- President Bush had some great lines in his speech last night. Here are my two favorites:
- “The other party’s nomination battle is still playing out. The candidates are an interesting group with diverse opinions. They’re for tax cuts and against them. They’re for NAFTA and against NAFTA. They’re for the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act. They’re in favor of liberating Iraq, and opposed to it. And that’s just one senator from Massachusetts.â€
- “They now agree that the world is better off with Saddam out of power. They just didn't support removing Saddam from power. Maybe they were hoping he would lose the next Iraqi election.â€
Computer Problems
Last night Jedi Academy started acting funny. When playing a sound, the sound would start repeating, and the screen would freeze. Usually, after a few seconds, this would correct itself, but a couple of times, the graphics would get distorted (even after exiting the game), and only a reboot would fix them.
As time went by, this got worse and worse. Eventually I ran through several of our games, and all of them that used advanced 3D graphics had the same problem. Some would freeze and stutter often (Dungeon Seige), a few would show the graphics problem right away (Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast; Star Trek Voyager Elite Force), and a few would work for a while (Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy).
In addition to testing, I reinstalled the video drivers, sound drivers, and DirectX. The operating system is behaving just fine, and we're up-to-date on virus definitions and doing nightly scans. The problem seems to occur only with stuff that uses high-end 3D rendering, but isn’t confined merely to openGL, as far as I can tell. The DirectX diagnostics all ran perfectly.
Other than losing the ability to play our favorite games on that machine, this has triggered abnormally high levels of anxiety for me.
I suspect our video card has developed a problem, but am welcome to alternative suggestions.