A Random Pattern

So some of you (well, one of you) accused me of leaving my better half out of the first part of the letter. Ha! You think I just forgot? That special lady gets a whole post to herself – more or less.

So, what’s up with Sara? I’m not going to provide pictures for the moment, but let’s just say she apparently was inspired by my recent hair-coloring efforts.   Now I won’t tell the colors, but I can affirm that there is more than one.  Any guesses?

I’ve got to be quick, ‘cuz I’m supposed to be in bed.  So here’s the rest of the update in speed form, lest I never put it up: Sara has been working her butt off, taking Tessa to all manner of appointments and trying to keep up with both the girls (who are quite a handful right now).  She organized Tessa’s class party since she is the “class Mom” (and indeed, she is one classy Mom).  She baked a ton of cookies for the MOPS group Christmas cookie trade (some of you will reap the benefits from that shortly).  She’s been buying and painting and cleaning and shopping and – did I mention buying? 

In short, she’s been taking care of her family, and sacrificing herself.  There aren’t words for how much I appreciate her, but I’ll try anyways.  Depending on how the lyrics end up, they may or may not get posted here. 

More to come soon – there’s still part three. 

So, first order of business: some fun tidbits from recent family life.

Selah, for a few months now, has been a mimic. When we lock our car, the horn honks if we hit the button twice. Whenever we do this, Selah tries to make the same sound as the car horn. If we hear a dog barking, Selah will try to mimic the dog. It’s been quite amusing.

Apparently this sound-mimicry was a precursor to a language explosion, as she’s been shocking us the last few days with the words she attempts to say right after we say them. This has led to a few close calls, such as Selah learning the word “sheesh” tonight.

Tessa, has become quite a pray-er. The other night at dinner she wanted to pray. Here is a partial list of things she told God she was thankful for:

• standing on the floor
• not spilling my drink
• the very very very pretty sky (incidentally a lot of things have been “very very” lately)
• Jesus
• Christmastime
• CI (her Cochlear Implant)
• People making my CI
• Being very very careful

Today, we couldn’t quite make out most of what she thanked God for, but we think she said “our silly silly family” and “mommy and daddy yelling” (guess we’ve got something to work on . . . ).

Stephen: well, check the picture for updates on me.

You can’t really tell from the picture, but I’ve got highlights in my hair now. It was a (late) anniversary present for Sara, but I don’t think she really cares for it.

Last for best: check out the new web album I just put up. The pictures didn’t come out the greatest ever, but that’s mainly because the girls can’t stay still. Sara’s also posted an update on Tessa’s site.

Peace and Love,

Step

This compilation of japanese advertisements is somewhat mesmerizing. There are some pretty impressive little mechanical tricks pulled off.

Thus starts a series of posts on the wonderful, the intriguing, the time-draining competition known as MDA (My Dream App).  A clever idea by young but accomplished entrepreneur Phillip Ryu, MDA has shaped up to be quite an event. 

For those of you who are American Idol fans, MDA is similar:  everyday people submit ideas for their Dream Application, and the winning ideas get professionally developed.  The judges narrowed down the batch of ideas to 24 contestants.  5 rounds of voting by anyone who goes to the site will ultimately result in 3 winners – and hopefully 3 really excellent new applications for the Mac computer.

The competition holds the semifinal vote tomorrow and Thursday.  If you are at all interested in Mac OS X, you owe it to yourself to stop by and see what the fuss is all about. 

But lucky you, I’m going to make it easy.  Tomorrow morning I’ll review all remaining ideas with a quick summary and plenty of shortcuts links.  I’ve been heavily involved in the forums there, so I plan to put all that otherwise wasted time to use.  I’ll sum up what has transpired so far, so that you, oh lazy (or busy) reader, can quickly learn, vote, and move on.  No, no, you can thank me later.   

See you tomorrow!

Microsoft designs a High School – the jokes practically write themselves. Or would, if it weren’t kid’s lives we’re talking about here.

Seriously, though, I’m glad to see some innovation happen in schools, as the U.S. education system seems to be pretty weak right now.

Work has gotten realllly busy.  I’ll be back blogging this weekend.  Posting may be a little light until then, but rest assured some interesting content is coming up.

Upcoming posts:

• Ubuntu: How-Tos, WordPress and XAMPP setup, and screencast software reviews
• Puzzles: final n.nfshost.com hints, then on to new puzzles.
• WordPress: neat plug-ins, more Rubric theme, how to get help when you need it
• Personal: Pictures, kitchen update, maybe some video
• Other: who knows?

Come back this weekend for great stuff! 

Seth reminds us why we get paid. This guy has quickly become one of my favorite bloggers in my RSS feed, even though the rest of my regular feeds are mostly very tech-heavy. Today he reminds us that the thorn in our side is the reason we get paid to do the job – puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?

If you don’t think you deal with customers, remember that whoever you have to deliver results to is your customer. They may be internal (the manufacturing group, the sales group, the employees if you’re in HR), or they may be external, but either way they’re your customer. If you’ve got a difficult customer, well, that’s why you get paid the big bucks.

After much hard work, I’ve gotten my index page back to valid CSS and (almost) valid XHTML.  This is good, though I’ve still got a lot of errors to fix.

The next step is to finish getting WP up and running on my Ubuntu box, so I’m not hacking on my website and breaking it while you’re trying to read it.  Then I’ll fix some of the issues there, and as soon as I’ve got them working I’ll upload the files and we can all enjoy my nice, new, shiny blog. 

Weird Al Yankovic e-card for his new song and album
The pre-released song is called “Don’t Download This Song”, which, as you know, means you absolutely MUST download it. He’s got a MySpace page too…see, all the cool kids are doing it.

Gotta love well-done viral marketing. Plus fun parody songs. Especially ones that mock the sickness that is the RIAA, MPAA, DRM… ok, I’ll stop for now.