Happy New Year and all that jazz. Wish I hadn't gone on hiatus with the blogging between August 1999 and July 2001, then I would have had a nice decade of blogging. As it is, I don't remember what I was doing when the decade started. Anyway, went in to work late after having breakfast with Baniella at Nookies Tree. But still got some stuff done. Picked up Potbelly for dinner on the way home. Watched Death Race to pass the time until Tracy got off work, then drove out to the in-laws for the new year. Watched slideshow of Mike's wedding, and saw some photos from Gabe's favorite photographer and I can't wait to get a real camera. Also possibly figured out which hardware/software solution to use for baby monitoring. Excited about the. Probably get it soon and use it to spy on Tracy, just for testing.

Yes, living in the future, the year 2010. I have no idea what my dreams were of this year, back when 2010 was the future, instead of the present. Still no flying cars, personal jet packs, or servant robots (I don't have a roomba). So the new year so far involved lots of sleeping, hanging out at the in-laws, shopping, and reading. I'm currently on Breaking Dawn, after plowing through the first 3 books in the Twilight Series, starting on December 23, 2009. Read 23 books this year, when I started counting in February. Only book I doubled up on was Soon I Will Be Invincible, probably because it was new to my stable. I wonder what the coming year will bring, and if my reading will increase or decrease with the baby. Or if I count Goodnight Moon for myself. Finally fried up the plantain that was brown enough, and Tracy jerked up some chicken and coconut rice for dinner last night. I made a tiny single Oreo cheesecake yesterday as well, which was ok, but I should have found a recipe, instead of just putting Oreos into a regular cheesecake. But, pretty easy to make and bake. All caught up on Dollhouse, and I'm glad it appears to be setting up for a nice wrap up. More like a nice 26 episode miniseries, than just an open ended tv series. Finally watched Tropic Thunder. Good, but not amazing.

My MacBook continues to limp along. I thought the USB ports were going on me, as the Monoprice USB Wireless Lan 802.11N kept disappearing and reappearing like it was getting unplugged and replugged. But a full days rest shut down seems to have fixed that. But still, fingers crossed for a MacBook Pro 13" updated to the Core i5 chip at the end of the month. Also I removed the Apple TV and the Wii from inside the AV cube and put them on top instead. I probably shouldn't have crammed that all inside, it was a little too hot, and I thought the center channel on the AV Receiver was going. Finally ordered up some cooling fans as well for it, so that should help. If anything it'll help the replacements if the current items break down. The DVR is the hottest thing in there, but since it's a rental, I'm not that worried about it. Tracy made some soup last night, and it filled me up without really filling me up. Mostly volume. Did some exercises last night too, just planks and push-ups, but I don't remember the last time I did push-ups, so that's something. Wondering if anything interesting is coming out of CES this year. It starts officially on Thursday. Just noticed that my birthday falls on Ash Wednesday this year. And figured out over the weekend that our daughter will probably be a Taurus.

I guess. Certainly didn't look like 12 inches of snow will be dropping on the city in the next 36 hours. Hard to take a winter storm warning as an advisory when it spans a day and a half. But duly noted. Good thing there's no driving for anyone involved in the household. Just realized that Tracy can't have snow days from work like she used to when the snow was really bad. No shoveling needed when walking down the hall. I did my part to clean out the fridge last night, eating any leftovers I could find. Also watched Push, again, since Tracy was working last night and I'm in the middle of the Avengers Assemble part of Breaking Dawn. Picked up a couple more movies from Redbox. Disappointed I can't get 9 yet. Lots of anticipation for some reason. Maybe it's just the New Year jitters. CES officially starts tomorrow. Supposed Apple event some time at the end of the month. Just waiting for update products and things to get stocked to spend lots of money, all under the guise of the baby. Also, flights to Vegas are expensive.

So since my MacBook continued to have issues with my admittedly cheap Monoprice USB Wireless Lan 802.11N, I decided to try and put my Airport Extreme card back into the laptop. And guess what? It works find again. Go figure. Again, I just need it to last until Apple releases the mobile Core i5's. Any day now since Intel just officially announced them at CES. Looking forward to what Plastic Logic does for a consumer version of the Que. I'm fascinated by the touchscreen behind the actual screen technique. Would love to see what a paperbook sized version would cost and look like. Speaking of books, I finished up Breaking Dawn last night, and in a effort to balance it out, started The Book of Basketball by the Sports Guy. Reading it on my iPhone is pretty annoying because of all the footnotes. Well, annoying because the eReader software and book format probably doesn't handle footnotes the way they could be handled, like as pop-ups.

MacBook is still chugging along. Snowpocalypse wasn't as bad as I was hoping for. I think Tracy's starting the nesting stage of pregnancy, which means I've got some work to do on cleanup, getting rid of some boxes, doing some file organization. Exciting. Got a package yesterday, the Gilmore Girls complete set, more for Tracy than for me, G.I. Joe: Resolute which they don't sell at the iTunes Store so I had to get a physical copy, Wii Fit Plus and a Thermaltake BlackX, which is a SATA USB HD dock. Just means I can use those 2 1TB HD I replaced in the Drobo for actual offsite storage of important things, mainly iTunes Store purchases and photos, important for when the baby comes around. Headed out to Woodstock tomorrow night. Paid last bit of estimated taxes for 2009. I'll never understand that. Especially the part of getting fined for being late on your estimated taxes. Ugh.

So we headed out to Woodstock to see my parents on Saturday, meeting them after the 5pm mass. And who do I see? Mrs. McCoy, my old 8th grade teacher. Very nice to see her. She looked well. Told her some updates. Then, we went to dinner at Woodstock Public House. On the way to the seats, I see someone that looks familiar. I glance over again and I swear it's a table of some old high school classmates. Seriously. So some more, hopefully inconspicuous, glances, I'm certain it's my classmates, Dana Fortin, Megan Byrnes, Leigh Hadick, and Christy Luciano. So I wander over and say hello. Crazy. It's been probably since high school graduation, over 14 years ago, the last time I saw them. Seriously. Small world. Which of course made me think all about high school, all over again. So besides that little foray into the past, did some shopping. Took advantage of the trade in program and upgraded the Sony Portable Reader System PRS-500 to a Pink Reader Pocket Edition PRS-300. Also got to check out the 3D TV showcase in person. Interesting. Sunday went to Benedict's La Strata, then returns and shopping on the way back in to the city. Got me some fleece pants which are nice and warm. Also, I think Tracy has started nesting so we cleaned out the living room of boxes and paperwork finally. Time to start putting together the nursery.

Dropped by the old home yesterday to pick up mail and run the water. I also picked up a couple lamps that I've been meaning to move over. But I stumbled on an old journal with some entries from SBR '04 I think, which made me think of all my other journals, which I think I just went ahead and tossed. Seriously. I didn't even make an effort to digitize them or anything, just threw my past out. Bad for these days when I feel like reminiscing, but I think good overall for general well being. Leftover ribs for dinner. Watched some of Desperate Housewives, How I Met Your Mother, Better Off Ted, Scrubs and the first episode of Undeclared (thanks Gabe!). So many young and promising stars in that pilot episode, including Smallville and Pam Beesly and Daisy. Very cool.

Another doctor's appointment this morning. This was Tracy's blood sugar test day. So I only had a half day, taking the morning off to go with her. We did find the Au Bon Pain at Northwestern Hospital (it's on the second floor). Tracy did get the ok to fly at the end of February, so Vegas here we come. Otherwise, everything was straightforward and normal. Headed out tonight to The Publican to celebrate Akira's birthday. I'm planning on walking over, and also need to drop by a Jewel to return some Redbox movies (Moon (movie) and World's Greatest Dad). Nice to see the sun today. And the weather's warming up, which was also nice.

The Publican is just awesome. Good food. Fresh, wonderfully cooked, so tasty. My mouth waters just writing about it again. The mussels were sublime, the suckling pig wonderful, the country ribs really tasty. Love that place. I think we need to make it either a monthly, or at the least a bi-monthly eating place, maybe try out brunch even. I do have a birthday coming up. Hmmm. I'm not getting a little worried that the GF1 is getting discontinued, but it was only released last September, but noone really has the 20mm kit in stock. Still just waiting for Amazon to get it, really. Also still waiting for Apple to announce new toys. I'm just anxious to help the economy along, that's all. January and February do seem to drag on, at least it's not absolutely freezing, but we do have February ahead of us still. Tracy's working tonight, so got to figure out what to do for dinner.

One of those words that's just fun to say out loud, like an expression of surprise, or like bazinga! Not so good when used with Tracy, because she likes kolaches, which are good, so I had to go out and get some today after all the kolaches shouting. I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but I've started getting and drinking Caramel Macchiatos and I tried my first Cinnamon Dolce Latte from Starbucks today, and I'm liking them. I've definitely handed in my man card for a while. Maybe the super sweet coffee drinks and reading and watching the Twilight series is just preparation for dealing with my future daughter. Maybe I'll even get some baking in this weekend, I want to try a mini cake using those mini springform pans of mine. Also, I don't think I've mentioned that the McRib is back in Chicagoland area McDonald's. Yum. Had one for lunch today. Got a lunch date with Russell tomorrow, headed over to Silver Cloud. Been a while since I've been there. Oh, and a haircut tomorrow too. Besides that, some movie watching, since Tracy's working.

So watched pretty much the entire series of Undeclared over the weekend. That's an amazing show. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Funny and at times a little uncomfortable. The casting director for that show was batting a thousand. Lots of good and funny future faces on that show. Very cool to see. So thanks Gabe. Also finally watched City of Ember. Not bad. I do wonder what the book was like, if there was more to figuring out the puzzle, which I thought there was going to be. I thought it was gonna be a National Treasure but kind of for kids. Not really that at all, and actually, fairly bleak, dystopian future, apocalyptic as well. So yeah, pretty dark when you think about it. Saturday had a nice mandate with Russell. A cheesy sloppy joe and a bloody mary at Silver Cloud was awesome. Good stuff there. Also finally had some frozen apple turnovers, which I found at the grocery store last week. Went to Twist for dinner on Sunday to satisfy Tracy's craving. Did some chores on Sunday too. Got a haircut on Saturday. Started looking into other webhosting solutions.

Well, went ahead and put an order in for a GF1 through Amazon. I saw it was in stock on the Panasonic Website, then saw it come in to Adorama, then 1 day later, no longer in stock at either of those. I assume there's a shipment headed to Amazon and hopefully I'm not too far down the list. I'm really looking forward to having a real camera for once in my life. Should be interesting. Odd to see the sun again. Makes everything much better. Restored my iPhone last night. Seems like the battery's been draining extra fast lately, so I wanted to try the restore, since it supposedly helps. I've already taken off all the media, so it wasn't too lengthy of a process. But after restoring, it's super snappy. Teh Snappy even. But still seems like the battery is draining. Maybe I should start deleting apps I'm not using. Made a mini cake last night. The small springforms work great. Just need to frost them. Kind of feels like one of those easy-bake ovens in terms of size. I wish I had thought of it sooner. Next up I want to make a mini black forest cake.

Just barely. Maybe. My week on call for the data load at work. A little annoying. Otherwise, just watching TV and eating. You know, the usual. I am looking into setting up storytlr on a home machine, and seeing if I can get it working. Kind of a test run on setting up a new webhost. It's not super easy to configure a web host. Put that in the pro column for just going with a webhosting service, instead of rolling my own. Otherwise, setup the second NETGEAR WGR614L Open Source Router finally as a client-bridge. I'm planning on using that for the baby monitoring setup, which the camera is on the way. After that, then getting the software both Mac and iPhone. Yay! Something new to play with. Also frosted that cake I made a couple days ago. Tried a cream cheese frosting, and it's a little too cream cheesy, and not quite frosty enough. Got to go home early and work there, since Tracy forgot her keys when she was running errands today, so just had to meet her after her haircut. Since I was working at home, moved the little breakfast table up against the couch, so I can watch TV without sitting sideways. It's actually a pretty cool spot, if we moved the book cases, or switched out for somehting shorter. Otherwise it's like a hole in the decorating.

I completely understand the poor eating habits associated with stress and/or responsibility. Because of the whole data load supervision for work thing, my lunch schedule has flip flopped. I had recently, last month or so, started having lunch around 11am, whereas before it was like 2pm. But then this week I've been back to the 2pm lunches. Not good. I was starting to like the 11am lunches, with a small snack maybe in the afternoon. Also, I had McDonald's for lunch yesterday, just because it was fast and easy. Because I had to get back to work. It's much nicer when things go smoothly. Battery life on my iPhone actually seems worse now. Just cleaned off a bunch of apps. We'll see if it gets any better. And actually it did, almost immediately. Maybe cutting in half the number of apps that could receive notifications helps, even if most of them were set to not receive any notifications.

Finally got storytlr setup on a test machine. It's pretty sweet. I've actually been trying to use Tumblr to do exactly that, capture all my activity online in a single location, like a lifestream, and FriendFeed does it too, but not nearly as pretty as Tumblr, but Tumblr had a limit of 5 data feeds, while my rolling my own is unlimited. Of course, I had to figure out how to compile php for Mac OS X to get odd things working like pdo_mysql and tidy and mcrypt and I still need to get jpeg and some other stuff working. Of course, I now need to keep track of updates and make sure it's up to date now. Ugh. Maybe I won't start up self hosting. Weekend, except not really, because I'm still watching this data load for work. When it's working fine and completing in time, it's easy peasy, otherwise, annoying. Got to get a plunger that fits the drain on our toilets, since the one we got doesn't. No suction. So we're down to one toilet for now. Played Wii Fit Plus for the first time last night. It's pretty sweet with the groupings. Nice quick and easy exercise routines, prepackaged. Tracy had a request for kolaches again, so wandered over and picked some up from delightful pastries in the Chicago French Market. Ended up getting some tarts too. Supposed to have dinner with Rysa and Jespy this weekend. Otherwise, I need to be around a computer in the afternoon/evenings. Also going to look at baby furniture tomorrow.

Got my baby monitoring system setup, at least temporarily. I can totally spy on Tracy now as she's working at home. It's really really cool. Like seriously, really really cool. And I've only got a single camera setup. Kind of want to invest in more cameras, but then again, it's a very temporary type of system, wireless networking, no hard lines, kind of awkward cable and power and stuff. For the next house. Did some shopping, well, window shopping this weekend. Trying to get ideas for which glider chair, sizes of dressers, decorating schemes and styles, crib styles, and so on and so forth. While at Babies 'R Us up in Niles first ran into Rick Hamada, a co-worker, and then Debbie Jung, an old friend from NU, who I probably haven't seen since graduation, but she is a Facebook friend. So that was cool, and very small worldish. And in the past month, even less, ran into high school friends, now college friends, and now I wonder who I'll run into that I haven't seen for 10 years. Went to dinner with Rysa and Jespy Saturday night at New Reboso, which was fabulous. Oh My God. And now we really have to start moving on the baby prep stuff. 3 months or so left.

Yes, I watched Life Unexpected. And yes, I liked it. I also watched Human Target. Which was fun, but didn't make it on my list. Life Unexpected did. If not the DVR, which it might if Tracy approves, otherwise someday off the iTunes Store. Made hamburgers in the cast iron pan for dinner last night. They were awesome. Just like you'd get from the corner grill. Very tasty. Also first time using a cast iron pan. So weird not washing it after using it. Stopped by the old home yesterday. Maybe I should just forward my mail from the old place instead of walking over to pick it up. Hmmm. Eventually. Started using port forwarding non-standard ports on the Airport Extreme to xenon. I think it helps against the h4ck0rz!1! and script kiddies and stuff.

Do i want one? Hmmm. Thoughts on the Come see our latest creation (January 27, 2010) Apple Event and the iPad device itself. In the half assed method of trying to follow the event via websites or ustream.tv TWiT streams, I didn't see what's so great about it. Watching the iPad video off Apple's website? I'm impressed and now immediately want one. Well, not necessarily immediately. I know what I should do, and that's wait for v2 in a year, but I don't know if I will do that. Maybe I can get an iPad and an iMac instead of a MacBook Pro? And as usually, lots of complaints around the intarwebs, mostly centering on the software side, mostly no multitasking. To that I say eh. Wait and see. Don't really have think about it for at least 2 months and possibly more, by which time I imagine I'll be pretty busy with other things. Finished off The Book of Basketball yesterday and started The Lost Symbol. It's nice to get back to a page turner.

So yeah, I think I want an iPad. Reading all the reactions and analysis gets a little annoying after a while, and I don't want to whine, complain, sound like a fanboy, sound deluded, or under the effect of RDF. My only thought is that it's neither an iPhone or a MacBook. Watched a lot of TV last night, all sitcoms, Tracy made hors d'ouvres for dinner, crab and spinach stuff. I pretty much just ate what I could get my hands on. Weather's freezing, just in time for February. My new camera supposedly should be shipping soon. Would at least give me some new toy to play with. Spying on Tracy with the security camera got old pretty quick, but it is pretty sweet. Working at home seems pretty boring.

Good news is that my new camera shipped out today. Yay! Something new and shiny to play with for a while. Something to make me stop thinking about the iPad. Which is making rethink my whole computer upgrading plans. It's a little annoying. I'm really jonesing for an iPad, and thinking I don't need a MacBook at all, and I've started looking at iMacs, except Tracy says we don't have the space for it. I wish the 21.5" had a vesa adapter, then I'd wall mount it by the breakfast bar. That'd be a perfect place for one, or an iPad. But if the iMac fit and was on a swivel arm, would come in handy for recipes, or playing/picking music, and work on photos. But that's if it fit, and swiveled out of the way. I'll have to try some mockups to see if that works. Headed out to the 'burbs again tomorrow, looking to hit up a Hobby Lobby, Joanne Fabric Store, and a Land of Nod outlet. Tracy's trying to figure out how to organize furniture for the nursery. Sunday she's working, so I'm just trying to figure out which movie to watch, Gamer or Surrogates, or something else entirely. Watched the series finale of Dollhouse, which ended well, I hope. Also finished off The Lost Symbol, which I enjoyed, more so for the ideas presented, than the story itself. Next up is Dealers of Lightning, rather appropriate given the introduction of the iPad this week.

We took another step towards making having a baby: we bought a crib. Finally found one we liked, nice simple lines, a little modern, with a nice drawer underneath, the only issue we discussed for a bit is the color: it's espresso. We had been thinking of going with white furniture, but we're going with the dark, which means the nursery will look like it fits with the rest of the home's furniture. Tracy's had to redo her decorating sheet for color schemes and styles. So that was the big purchase on Saturday. That and fabric for curtains for the nursery. Not sure if it'll end up being cost effective with Tracy making them vs. just buying prefabricated panels. Wait and see I guess. Made burgers in the cast iron pan again for dinner last night. Dropped by the in-laws after shopping on Saturday and picked up a nightstand from Tracy's room and had dinner. Also ended up doing some tech support on an old Windows machine as well. Watched Gamer on Sunday, and put Firefly on in the background. Had to make 2 different grocery store runs on Sunday as well. Hard to believe it's already February.

My first date with Tracy was 5 years ago today at Angelina Ristorante. And now, 5 years later, we're almost 3 years married with a kid on the way. Crazy. Not actually celebrating this year with a dinner at the alma mater. Had spamen for dinner last night, Ramen and Spam, yum. Tracy was working, so just rummaged for dinner. Watched the rest of National Treasure and 3 more episodes of Firefly, specifically Our Mrs. Reynolds, which is really funny with Christina Hendricks. I keep forgetting how good that show is, but every time I start watching the first episode, I start plowing through the rest. So good. So good. And starting to see a little commonality between Firefly and Dollhouse, about loyalty, about morality, about doing what's right. Got a meeting with Jason tomorrow. Really looking forward to getting my camera on Thursday. Started looking into GPS loggers to add location info to the photos. Also have to define workflow/backup strategy for the photos. That should be interesting.

I've added pull-ups to my exercise routine, so it's now planks, push-ups and pull-ups. I got one of those Iron Gym Total Upper Body Workout Bar because you don't have to screw anything into any door frames. Works well. And of course I'm sore after not having done pull-ups in who knows how long. It's a nice quick and easy little workout. Also did some additional foot exercises from PT, since my right foot's been acting up again lately. Annoying. But then again I haven't been keeping up on them. Tracy made chicken adobo for dinner last night, pretty good. She had some strawberries from the other day she wanted dipped in chocolate, so we did that too. Watched Scrubs and Better Off Ted. Had a meeting with Jason this morning, and took the Metra in to work from Roselle. Always interesting to see other suburbs. Also had my McRib for the week. Totally excited to get my new camera tomorrow. I can't wait.

Tracy went shopping yesterday, buying more stuff for the baby's room, and she found a mini chair that's the spitting image of our dining room chairs. It's pretty sweet. I don't think it'll get used for a while, but still, severely cute. Still waiting to hear if my camera got delivered today. I'm so excited. And I bought it sight unseen, never played with it, just went by reviews online, which were all very positive. I seriously can't wait to start taking photos. Real photos. I do still have to figure out the photo workflow. I do want GPS logging at some point. I want to do as little hands-on processing, except when needed. Not to mention there's no Mac support for GF1 RAW files yet. Told Tracy I won't get an iPad until I see one in person. She's also told me that her next computer will be a MacBook or a MacBook Pro, whenever her current machine dies. Which might be a while. Will be nice to eventually get to an all Mac household.

Supposedly the camera got delivered today. Yay! So I'll be busy for a while, taking photos. A lot of photos. Sweet. Always fun to have something new to play with. And it's snowing. Didn't really know that was coming. Actually felt a little warm this morning. Finally got Tracy registered at Prentice. We do still need to find a pediatrician. I think we're doing more baby shower registering this weekend. Putting an order in for a comfy rocker for the nursery, which will eventually make it's way into the living room. It's awesome. Gonna try and make it out to see Chuck tonight, but can't guarantee anything. Might also try and make it out to see Karl tomorrow night at bowling, but once again, can't guarantee anything. Not doing anything for the Super Bowl, but will still probably watch it, I think. I should get around to trying to put up the railing by the bar too. That should be interesting to see. Hopefully I don't screw it up too much.

Yes. Got my camera on Friday, been pretty much playing with it ever since. It's seriously awesome. One little thing I like about manual focusing: it zooms in, kind of like real size on the EVF or LCD screen, so you can get whatever you want in focus. That's sweet. Yes, the EVF isn't a good resolution, yet, I find myself using it a lot. Also like the exposure bracketing, since I'm still starting out and have things to figure out. I also downloaded trials of Aperture and Lightroom, and at some point will figure out which one I want to go with. If Aperture had built in support for GF1 RAW files, I think it'd be a no brainer, but since it doesn't, I figure I should make an informed decision. I brought it with as we went shopping, on the prowl for a dresser, ordered up a glider/recliner, found the newels for the short railing by the bar, and some other odds and ends. Got Gale Street Inn ribs carryout to watch the Super Bowl. Cut some fabric for curtains for the nursery as well. Got another OB appointment tomorrow morning, and go figure, it's gonna snow a lot tonight. And we have to take a rush hour bus tomorrow. Sweet.

So we found out our OB is also expecting. We had an appointment, not even with her, but with another member of the practice, but Dr. Williams was there, and showing. We had no idea. But it turns out she'll be giving birth before Tracy will. That's crazy. Awesome. But crazy. And I stumbled upon the fact that a former Facebook friend is also expecting. I guess I really am of that age, where everyone I know is having, has had, or will have babies. In other news, it's snowing. I ended up walking from the doctor's office to work, because I didn't know if the 157 was still running after the CTA service cuts. But it was. I just didn't know though. It was a nice walk. February's getting to be an expensive month, put another Amazon order in for random stuff, and a possible new camera bag. Oh, and all that talk about Aperture yesterday and Apple goes and releases version 3 this morning. I was hoping for updates to the MacBook Pros, but I might take this instead. Also provides RAW support for Panasonic G1s, which might mean GF1 support is coming sooner rather than later. If so, that would tip me towards Aperture over Lightroom. Still have to start it up though.

Another late night working. I imagine something like Q3. Every third week. At least I'm getting better at figuring stuff out, and making tools to make my job easier. Always helps. Kind of waiting for all the snow to melt. Except that it'll probably stick around for a while. I keep think that it's a spring snow, not a mid February, actual middle of winter snow that'll thaw a little then refreeze and repeat until it's solid ice in many places. Anyway, got more camera stuff, a Luma Loop and a Sony GPS-CS3KA GPS Image Tracker from my Sony Points. Just waiting for the SD card reader to get here so I can pull files off the camera. And then see if Aperture or Lightroom works better for me.

So I tried out my new toy, the Sony GPS-CS3KA GPS Image Tracker. Turned it on when I left the house, didn't get a GPS lock until I got to work. Not so good. But it does get a lock when I point it out my work window. So that's nice. I should pull the GPS log off it to see how my commute home was tonight. I switched back to Chromium this morning, after noticing that it has bookmark sync and extensions support. And then what do I find out? Google released a new beta for Mac with bookmark sync and extension support. Awesome. Just started up Lightroom for the first time. Doesn't seem all that intuitive. Next up, Aperture. Another odd thing, I don't seem to be able to sleep for more than 6 consecutive hours. I just wake up. Kind of annoying now, but I'm sure it's a skill that will come in handy soon enough.

Planning on doing some wood working this weekend. Should be exciting. Otherwise, Tracy's working, so household chores. Getting a haircut tomorrow. Probably cooking dinner for Valentine's Day. Watching some movies. Started transcoding the West Wing for Russell finally. After that gets done I need to go through Gilmore Girls and Sex and the City for Tracy before the baby. Gotta have something to watch in at those odd hours of the morning. Of course, got lots of plans on things to update on the computer, but just not sure if I'll get around to it. Really tempted to get the bike out and go for a spin this weekend. Maybe to Home Depot when I need to get hardware to assemble the railing, all 20" of it.

I actually did do some woodworking, and cut the wood pieces to the tiny 20" railing that needs to go in. Now I just have to cut the iron balusters, and find out and get all the pieces to put it all together. So that's nice. I took the bikes out briefly, just to see if they still worked, and they do. Tempted to try again at some point soon, while it's still cold out. Made my first hollandaise, well, kind of. I think the egg yolks slightly curdled, so not quite perfect. Still tasted amazing. That was my contribution to Valentine's Day dinner of steak, potatoes and asparagus. Oh, that and chocolate dipped strawberries. Tried my hand at tempering the chocolate, but don't really have a good thermometer for it. Otherwise, watched the rest of Firefly including Serenity. So good. Dinner Saturday night at Las Mananitas. Finally got some shoe horns for the front and back doors and a few to bring to work. And did some coding for work as well. So fairly busy weekend. Starting to get more and more camera related stuff. Need to find a place to organize it all.

Stayed late at work tonight, not just because Tracy was out in the 'burbs from shopping and having dinner with her parents, but also because I was actually programming and excited and interested in it. Been a while, and it's not even really that interesting of a project, but it's new and exciting. I definitely need to pick up XCode finally. I have a feeling I could be doing more of this, this developing, again. My parents are back from their month long trip to the Philippines. Glad to hear they had fun and they traveled safe. Finally got an SDHC card reader, and imported photos and currently importing movies right now. I think I need to update my import script to import to folders grouped by create date, instead of import date. Makes more sense that way. Oh, and stopped by the Michigan Ave Apple Store, hoping to see what Aperture would be like on a 13" screen, but of course none of the 13" MacBook Pros had it installed. Makes sense. So I tried it out on the small iMac, and seems kind of nice. But I think I'd be perfectly fine with iPhoto '09 or whenever '10 gets released or whatever. And now I'm back to questing whether to get a MacBook Pro or an Air. And when/if I get to play with an iPad before a new computer purchase, I wonder how that will affect things as well. Also played with a Mighty Mouse for the first time. Those things are weird, and would take a while to get used to.

Another birthday, come and gone. Just another day. Work birthday sushi lunch was good. Ash Wednesday mass after work, phone calls, exercises, and more store bought sushi for dinner. And soon it'll be Thursday, and my Dad's birthday. Got my UV Filters for the camera today, which completes my most recent Amazon order. Nothing left in the pipeline for delivery. Oh, and just noticed that Chrome just updated itself while I'm typing this up. Crazy. Nice though. Now really just waiting for new MacBook Pros to get released. I'm just twiddling my fingers, limping along with my MacBook (Late 2006) model. Any day now, to spend more money. My social experiment for Facebook was rather interesting, as only Chris Wall managed to remember it was my birthday. This year instead of just preventing people from writing on my wall, I had hidden my birthday from everyone so it wouldn't show up in the little upcoming events box. So yeah, Thanks Booter.

Woke up at 2am this morning because one of the three smoke alarms within a 5' radius had a low battery warning. That's awesome. Good that we woke up, bad because I'm tired, and bad because we just noticed how close they are to each other, and yes, one of them isn't a smoke alarm but a carbon monoxide alarm, and the two smoke alarms are technically in different rooms, but still. Work's breezing by because of the actual coding going on. Fun stuff. Finished up The City of Ember and moved on to Angels & Demons. I'm starting to sense a trend in Dan Brown's Robert Langdon novels. Tracy's interested in reading the Percy Jackson books, like The Lightning Thief, and I would be too, except the only way to get a digital version is through Amazon. We can't even buy it from the Sony Bookstore, or Barnes & Nobel, so we can't read it on the reader. And I can't get it through Fictionwise, so I can't read it on eReader on the iPhone. Pretty annoying. I actually want to spend the money, but I can't because of DRM. Kind of goes against the purpose, doesn't it?

No definite plans to spend more money this weekend, but that could change, if we head out to get a dresser. We are planning on hitting up Green City Market for some Zullo's donuts, but other than that, nada. Maybe we can make a Home Depot run so I can get the hardware to put up the railing. Or maybe we can start rearranging furniture for the nursery. Or we can watch some movies, TV shows, and eat some food. I think I need practice making espasol before I get roped into making it for the baby shower. We do have lots of financial tasks on the docket, which is a little annoying, but necessary. I wonder if this is the first year we don't have to pay taxes. Fingers crossed.

Finally found a dresser. We were interested in a Young America All Seasons, seemed like good quality, and went up to FurnitureKidz (a Young America Signature store) up in Kildeer to check it out on Saturday. However, it took us a little while to find it, and of course we did some other shopping, and by the time we showed up they were closing in 15 minutes. So we decided to come back the next day so we could look around more leisurely. We did come back with all sorts of random stuff, almost all on sale or clearance, but all for us. Oh, and ate at a Five Guys for the first time. Not bad, but didn't seem all that better than what we make at home in a cast iron pan. Got milkshakes from Steak 'n Shake and watched The Hangover finally, since we're going to Vegas this week. Sunday we go back up, find out about the extra surcharges for delivery to Chicago and over 3 flights of stairs, and decide to go to somewhere closer, like Lazar's instead. Once there we find other dressers of much nicer construction, so we go with something from Pali instead, which is perfect except it's a little tall for Tracy. We'll see if that ends up being a problem or not. Ends up delivery is even more expensive. But we order anyway, because we were tired and hungry. Driving away Tracy realizes that Cribs to College Bedrooms, where we got our crib from, probably has the dresser as well, so she called today, ordered it from there, canceled the Lazar's order, and now only paying for delivery for the dresser and the crib, and the recliner from Bellini. And I think we're done with baby furniture. At least the big stuff. I also realized I had the same dresser/desk at my parents house probably my entire life. Tracy made lasagna last night, and I got to make the pasta, a little unevenly, but still pretty good I thought. Also been watching Arrested Development again. So good. Headed to The Publican tonight. Yum.

The future is definitely wide open. More like a window opening? Change is afoot. Good stuff though, waiting to see if it happens. In other news, I have jury duty again. I say again, but the last time I had to was 5 years ago, so I guess no need to complain. Not for a couple weeks though. But at the criminal courts this time, so that should be fun. Dropped by the old home again for maintenance reasons, which is where I found my jury summons. Took the 135 there. Been a long time since I took that home. Oh, The Publican was good last night, better company than food, but maybe I'm just having it too often, and need to spread it out a little bit more. Or maybe try a couple new places. I've heard good things about Volo. Also weeded Tracy and I off the Whole Foods blueberry pie a la mode fix. Getting the entire pie is just an overdose. Too much of a good thing.

I get to work from home tomorrow. Which makes it easy for Tracy and I when we leave for the airport. Which is nice. Kind of feels like vacation, except I actually have to work tomorrow. So odd. Maybe something I'll have to get used to though. Got a second network camera, one that actually sees in the dark. So odd. Very cool though. Wondering if I need to setup a camera only server or not. Probably just wait and see how long I can last with what I've got. More leftovers for dinner tonight. Watched an episode of Life Unexpected. Checked in and printed out boarding passes already. Still need to pack. I did find some old fake carabiners for like keys and stuff that might come in handy for camera or diaper bags and stuff. Otherwise, pretty quiet. Lots of stuff going on at work, busy busy busy. Some order to the chaos will be coming in the near future, looking forward to that.

So since Tracy and I don't gamble, yet still go to Vegas with family, we've found something to spend money on instead. Room and Board. Last year we figured out we could try appetizers and cocktails while the family gambled at each casino. This time we tried out the Aria Las Vegas, since it was new. And we loved it. Best sleep Tracy's had in a while. And so good we turned down the free room my parents got at Paris Las Vegas and paid for another night there, because, well, a good night's sleep for a pregnant woman 7 months along is absolutely priceless. Very nice place. Bed most of all. Control4 automation system is nice, the automated drapes is very cool, but the control system itself, well, there's some lag time there. Turned me off wanting to implement it at home. I think home automation is the one place where you really can't skimp, and it shows when you do. Also, the new camera held up pretty well I think. Full battery though the weekend. Only around 300 photos though. Definitely still playing with settings, mostly exposure. Also saw that there was a Raw Camera update for Mac OS X that supports my camera now. So I think it's time to finally upgrade to Snow Leopard and iPhoto '09. I'll try and post photos to Flickr when I get them uploaded to the computer. I still haven't figured out a workflow yet. Great to see my family, parents, Al and Nicole, at the annual Abando Vegas Vacation. Good to see the Basas, then the Argaos. No problems travelling, and keep getting to the airport on Sunday too early with way too much time to kill. And also keep going to Vegas when it rains, and leaving when it gets sunny and warm. Also started using foursquare to track where I went. It beat out Brightkite a couple weeks ago, and go figure, it went down on Saturday night. Today worked from home again, and was surprisingly super productive. I had guessed the opposite.

Working from home all this week. Totally throwing off my schedule. I'm a little surprised that both days I've left the house. That and the productivity increase. Odd. I figured I would go the entire week without going outside, but that's a little much. I feel like I need fresh air right around 5pm. Which probably makes sense since I've been in the same 15 feet area for roughly the whole day (I'm right next to the kitchen). Otherwise, I made dinner last night, since Tracy worked the night. Just a simple beef stir fry. I tried to use my mom's Beef and Broccoli marinade for the meat and might have used a little too much corn starch. Tracy made chili for dinner tonight. Also starting to feel a little under the weather, sore and scratchy throat, slight fever, feels like a cold. Started drinking my OJ and water in copious amounts today. Also made some rice crispie treats for dessert tonight. Still want to make a black forest cake at some point, and I keep buying those pints of heavy whipping cream, and I keep letting them go bad in the fridge. One of these days.

Okay, I cede there is a bad point to working from home: it's hard to separate work from home time. That blended a bit over the last day and night when I had to meet a deadline. But still good. I also think having one big screen instead of two small screens is more productive. It's like single tasking, instead of multitasking. Did some errands today, so again got out of the house. Still feel the cold coming on, not quite full strength, but it's not going away either. I am disappointed tha I haven't been posting my new camera photos to flickr on a timely basis, or even at all. It doesn't bode well for the future baby pictures. Also, my online reading is decreasing rapidly. Crazy. And I even started paring down my Google Reader feed list before I started slacking. Again, crazy.

I'm totally off my routine. Well, probably because it's a brand new routine working from home. Also really busy at work, so that's kind of throwing off the hours a bit too. I did manage to not leave the house today. And I actually felt bad about it. I figure I need to schedule walks. For example, tomorrow morning I'm planning on walking down to Belmont to get Dunkin Donuts. Just a little piece of my former life. But first unhealthy thing I'll have for breakfast all week, which is new for me. The cold I felt coming on is, I guess, here. Just up in the head, got a dry cough. Waiting for all the mucus in my sinus cavity to dislodge. Just a matter of time. Stupid Vegas. With the light streaming in through the windows and doors and where I'm sitting at the dining room table and us without window treatments means I get blinded by the sun after 4:30 or so. For now I'm just taping a giant manila envelope from my x-rays and moving it to match the position of the sun. Lo-tech, but works.

Didn't go for donuts this morning, instead cooked up my favorite Pepperidge Farm Apple Turnovers instead. I also made myself a nice hazelnut latte. Third time this week I made an espresso drink. I'm guessing there's going to be a lot of that going on. Gotta stay awake, and I think it's cheaper than going to Starbucks or Caribou Coffee. So even though I didn't go out this morning, I did kind of go outside on the roof deck. Even piped the music up there. I started listening to music while working today. Kind of nice, and the genius iTunes playlists are pretty swweet, especially since I don't know half the stuff in my library. So after a week of working at home? I like it, but I do need to learn to separate work from home. Otherwise, been pretty productive, eating healthier, less physical activity. Hoping it's permanent. Headed to Prentice tomorrow for a Great Expectations class for expectant parents. It's just one day, but it's the whole day. Maybe some shopping on Sunday. And dinner with the boys at Revolution Brewery since Whitney's in town.

Going in for Jury Duty tomorrow. This time at the Criminal Courts. Should be fun getting out there and back. Kind of a bad time, with all the work that's due, but I am a citizen. Gotta do my part. Friday had a cream cheese and sardines on toast for lunch, being Lent and all, and that was a tasty meal. Ended up doing tuna salad for dinner. Saturday went to an all day class for expectant parents at Prentice. That was interesting and fairly informative. Finally got the Mac Box Set and will go about trying to upgrade computers at home finally. Couldn't wait for the next release of iLife or iWork, and with the GF1 being supported now, but only for Aperture 3 or iPhoto '09, well, had to upgrade. So figure on Apple announcing or releasing updates soon. Checking out was super easy at the Apple Store, and makes me sad for all the people waiting in line at the checkout counter. Went to Bricks Pizza for dinner, and it wasn't as amazing as the last time we went there, which was after the Olympic Fun Run, which probably explains why we loved it the first time. Still pretty good I thought. Sunday made crepes for breakfast, headed out to Old Orchard. Met up with the boys for dinner with Whitney at Revolution Brewery. Good stuff there. And I also need to get back out on the bike. Thanks to Tony for the pie. And good to see the guys, but still a little weird. And as far as I can tell the working from home thing is permanent. Going in to work next Saturday to bring my desktop home and clean out my desk. Very very cool. Finally watched Terminator: Salvation while eating dinner from Taco Burrito Palace #2. Good times.

Jury duty was easy. No cases needed any jurors today, so they even let us out early. Took the 60 Blue Island/26th there and back. Took the 145 down with Tracy on the way to her doctor's appointment, and then took the 8 back up. Super easy. Managed to do a nuke and pave on the MacBook for Snow Leopard and now having issues for Microsoft Messenger which I use for work. Very annoying. I thought all these things would have been taken care of by now, like 6 months later, but I guess not. More annoyed at Microsoft. Haven't even tried iPhoto yet for the GF1 support. Ugh. Back to jury duty, didn't venture out, didn't even really leave my seat even during lunch break, just got some snacks from the vending machines. Got there early enough and got a prime seat near a power outlet. It was just us laptop junkies in the back row. No free wifi, so almost all of the time spent on the iPhone. Now that I've got Snow Leopard on the MacBook, I'm tempted to get a new battery to just make it a new laptop. Tempted. Might last me another year then.

Finally got Messenger for Mac working under Snow Leopard. Had to add X509Anchors in Keychain Access. That's all. Ended up having to pull it off the install discs using Pacifist since I screwed up the one on the hard drive. But just that simple. Very very annoying. Very annoying. Otherwise Snow Leopard seems pretty cool. Still haven't used it for anything non-work related. And I'm totally just getting a new battery, and hoping the MacBook sticks around for another year or so. Works well enough for me, and I'm not planning on doing any serious photo editing. Just using what I get. But with a new battery means I get to carry it around with me, and with the weather turning nice, means I could work from the deck. Sweet. Finally getting tax stuff together and ready to send off to the accountant, as well as some other financial todos. A little easier to do when I was working out of the office, because the post office, the bank, and all that is really close. Now I actually have to bike to get to these things. A perk of working from home? Took a break when Tracy got off work and went for a walk. I'll finish up a couple things later tonight, but nice to have that option. Also don't have to get up crazy early to make a 7am conference call tomorrow. Can just roll out of bed. Over the weekend finally got some butane for the creme brulee torch I think my brother got me. It is the most amazing thing ever. I want to torch everything. Like the cinnamon bagel that I melted butter over for breakfast, or the cheese I melted on my ham sandwich for lunch. Seriously, it's amazing. So thanks for that Al.

Early morning conference call isn't so bad when I'm wearing pajamas. My todo list is gradually getting smaller, but continually postponing items. Tomorrow. Always tomorrow. Maybe I can actually get out during lunch and run some errands tomorrow. Definitely need to. Bonus of working from home: didn't have to worry about taking a day off to be home for furniture delivery. Glider/recliner is super comfortable, and won't get used until the baby comes because there's no TV in the nursery. But I believe the nesting has started, and I'm getting sympathy nesting. Didn't really leave the house today, just to take the trash out. I did wear real pants today though. I've switched back from Chrome to Safari. And can't wait until I pick up my work computer this weekend. Will be nice to have a personal computer again that isn't plugged in all the time.

Parents are in town. Came in last night, dropped off some food, did a little cleaning, and came back today to do some more. It's what the like. Just trying to make them happy. Brought them out for dinner at HB Home Bistro. Had another great brioche bread pudding for dessert. Fabulous. Otherwise, another week working from home in the books. I am planning on heading down to the office to pick up my computer and clean out my desk tomorrow, which I realize isn't the best idea with the St. Patrick's Day parade and the river dying, but I figure if i do it early enough it shouldn't be a problem. I should also make a Home Depot run tomorrow, as I got lots to do at home, as the nesting sets in. Probably not hitting up the Chicago Home & Garden show, even though we remembered this year. Not sure having a pregnant woman waddle through a trade show on the last day of the weekend is a good idea.

Guess it was a possibility, but I think I work more when I work from home. Probably, just trading the commute time from my reading time to more working time. I am absolutely loving the new battery I finally got for the MacBook. It's like I have a brand new computer, with Snow Leopard too! Seriously, I'm good for another year or so. Of course, while I'm knocking on wood, this will mean this computer will flame out sooner rather than later. Didn't go to Home Depot until Sunday, just hung out at home on Saturday, besides making a run downtown to pick up my work computer. I'm now setup on the kitchen table, and had to fold it out to have enough space for all the monitors. And I even want to get an additional cheap video card so I can run a third. Besides that I need to get a USB bluetooth adapter for the headset for Skype. I need to make a run over to MicroCenter to pick that stuff up. Did get some more wire shelves for the closets, and hopefully the stuff needed to put the railing together. Also went back to Paciugo Gelato, which is awesome, but wrecks a little havoc with the GI tract, but the Black Pepper Olive Oil gelato is actually really good. Oh, also checked out some open houses over in Roscoe Village. Figured weather was nice, and with both Tracy and I working from home, we might need more space sooner rather than later. But just looking. Always.

I hate Windows. Tried adding another video card to my work computer so I could rock the triple monitor goodness, but putting it in, then updating video card drivers, causes a blue screen and the RAID to verify. Awesome. Stupid. Why isn't it as easy as dropping a card in, having it show up, and adjusting the settings to extend the desktop to the third monitor? Why isn't it as easy as plugging in a third monitor to the onboard video of the motherboard, except that Dell disables the onboard video when a video card is present? Seriously? Ugh. Ran some errands at lunch which took up taking about twice as long as I should have taken, but got some things done, which is good. Being a good treasurer for the condo association is a good thing. Of course that meant I had to work through the night, but that's only proper. As for food, started scrounging for meals, finding whatever's in the fridge to eat. That only took a couple weeks. Wondering when the Ramen and mac & cheese cravings start to happen. And I still haven't exercised in like 3 weeks. Maybe I should just take a short break from work in the morning and whip out some planks.

Ugh. Really hate Windows. How hard is it to get a PCI video card installed? Apparently super hard. Drivers, driver versions not compatible with this version of operating system, I think drivers getting installed over other drivers because both cards are ATIs? How hard is it, with a Dell Optiplex 755 Mini Tower with a PCIe ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT to work with a PCI ATI Radeon 7000 at the same time to drive 3 monitors? Seriously, I was throwing in like 3 different PCI video cards with a previous work system without any problems, well, except for maybe one blue screen. I've gotten it to the point where it boots up with the PCI video card, but once Windows XP loads the PCIe card takes over and the PCI card shuts down. It's stupid. Stupid and annoying. But would be so sweet if it would ever work. Which I am still hoping for. But very very frustrating. Wouldn't be having this problem on a Mac. Didn't leave the house today. Did go up on the deck, where Tracy was starting to garden. I did manage to put up an additional wire shelf in the closet today. So that was something. Tracy also made corned beef, cabbage and potatoes for dinner, since it's St. Paddy's Day. Yum. Looking forward to corned beef hash some time this week. Maybe we should get some sweet potatoes.

Had an early start to the day, so had an early end too. Worked out well with the nice weather and Tracy working the early shift as well. so we took a walk down to CVS to pick up her prescription. Got more gelato at Paciugo Gelato. They had a flavor called Beer Chill, lime sorbet flavored with Corona. Amazing. The Tiramisu gelato tasted like the different layers of tiramisu. I love that place. I want to try every single flavor they make. Even the Soy and No Sugar Added versions. Also odd? Seeing all the people out and about in the afternoon. So strange. Ended up eating at Rocks Lakeview, Tracy had a sweet potato fries craving. Stopped at a Borders at the southern turnaround point of our afternoon out. There's some strange parenting books out. Also, lots of books on how to raise boys. Only saw a couple on raising daughters. Thought that was funny. I've given up trying to get the PCI Radeon 7000 card working in my work computer for the time being. At some point though, it sure would be nice. It would be nice if something said what the problem is. Maybe the power supply doesn't have enough juice? But it really just seems to be a driver problem. I install the drivers for the PCI card, it looks like it overwrites the drivers for the PCIe Radeon 2400 XT card. And vice versa. Why can't I install both?

I might be working too much. It's really easy when Tracy's on the night shift, to just stay in front of the computer while she is too. Will be even easier when she moves out to the living room as well, and then I'll just say it's keeping her company. But really easy to keep working. But this time it was more like there's something I was striving for, rather than a deadline I needed to meet. So that's good. Otherwise, more random stuff for eating today. Except for breakfast. Made the turnovers again, since it was Friday. Sardines for lunch. And a PB&J. Ramen for dinner. Also made espasol for the baby shower tomorrow out at the Argaos. Wonder what our loot's gonna be like. Hopefully good. Will try and get a good workout for my camera. Will try keeping the aperture not quite so wide open to increase some sharpness. Hopefully. Might rebuild the Mac mini, finally put Snow Leopard on it. That's if we move the computers out to the living room this weekend. Still got to put the railing up. Maybe I'll try that this weekend too.

I'm not expecting another snow until Fall, but it wouldn't surprise me. The snow after the 60 degree day on Saturday is the one I knew was coming, so with that out of the way, I figure we'll be treated to a very windy, brisk spring. Had a baby shower on Saturday at the Argaos. Good to see lots of family friends and family, and much thanks to all the gifts. Got lots of clothes, and lots of cleaning/bathing stuff. Baby's gonna be very very clean. Food was good, and surprised that my espasol was completely eaten. I'm gonna have to make another batch for Tracy and myself. Watched the huge upset in the NCAA tournament, and tried to help my father-in-law with some Mac video stuff. Also took about 200 photos with the camera, not sure how they turned out. Still haven't figured out how I want to organize photos on the computer. I do just need to take the plunge and dive right in. Went out to Shaumburg for lunch on Sunday at Wildfire to see cousin Ron on the way back to the airport. Good to see him. Sad that we're gonna miss out going to Poland for his wedding this August. But figure a transatlantic flight with a 3-month old wouldn't be the smartest thing to do. Also did some shopping, got some supplies. I moved my computer from the dining room table to the breakfast table so Tracy had space to finish up the curtains for the nursery. I no longer had the space to use the Apple Cinema Display, so I'm just back to the 2 work 19" monitors. And continuing to work from home. Put up the shelf in the nursery closet, and need to cut the balusters for the railing using the Dremel.

So I've been given Windows 7 to run under Parallels on my own MacBook for use by work when I go into the office. And it's pretty annoying. I was used to Windows XP. That was an OS that didn't get in my way. It's very much in the background for me right now. Windows 7? Always up in my face. Always. And trying to figure ways to make it go away, well, that's just annoying. Was it the same way with Mac OS X, from 10.5 to 10.6? Not at all. From 10.1 to 10.6? I'd have no idea. But I assume it wouldn't be as awkward as it's been. But slowly starting to figure it out. Which means I'll be able to work from anywhere soon. So I guess I have that going for me. Need to get out to Home Depot to pick up some more cheap paper window shades and some wood dowels to put together the railing. That sounds bad, but it's not what you think. Picked up dinner from Panino's a block away. Not bad. Doctor's appointment tomorrow morning. Watched some TV. My internet consumption and production has drastically decreased, to the point I'm thinking of getting rid of some services that are no longer being used.

Spent lots of time trying to get a working development environment on my MacBook under Parallels and Windows 7. It's been hard going. And some of the issues I've come across have no defined problem, no easy fix. I do Google searches which return forum posts with a few me toos and no actual solutions. That's just annoying. That was the last couple of days. So after spending the day at work dealing with it, I just went ahead and reinstalled Windows, and will start adding software piece by piece. I'm scared though about putting Visual Basic 6, still needed for development, on it. Figure that might screw up a lot of things. Also found that some issues are registry related. Yup, Windows 7 registry related. Doctor's appointment on Wednesday was fine. Again, Tracy and the baby are tracking well. She made a cornish hen for dinner last night, which was great. Tonight I made, sorta, coconut milk chicken adobo, which I didn't even end up eating because I finished off the mac & cheese with ham she made for lunch, since I was in the office, and the rest of the leftover pizza. I got to have sushi for lunch, and I'm looking forward to the pickled herring I picked up at Treasure Island for lunch tomorrow.

I imagine my posting will get even more sporadic after the baby's born. Anyway, Friday worked from home again. Ate the pickled herring. Strange stuff. Tweaked MTU settings for work VPN connections. Helps to one location. Also finally got my Windows 7 install under Parallels on the MacBook in a good spot. When everything's mostly working, it's not a bad OS. Also cleaned out the car cause on Saturday while Tracy was working I brought it over to Simon's Shine Shop to get detailed. You know, pre-baby nesting. Great idea cause the car looks brand new. Took like 5 hours though. I did some work at a Starbucks, wandered through Moosejaw and Barnes & Noble where I played with a Nook. Ugh, the dual screen interface isn't my cup of tea. Went to Twist for dinner and moved to the bar so we could watch the cooks. Always fun to watch. They just stack up pans on the heat. That's just one of those things you'd never think about but totally makes sense. Watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which was light and fun. Enjoyable. Sunday went out shopping, Babies 'R Us for detergent, then looking for a new desk/chair for Tracy. Found one at a Target. Which I put together today. More supplies from Home Depot. First visit to Super H Mart. Fun place. Ended up having to do work at a Barnes & Noble (free WiFi!), and dinner at Corner Bakery to continue working, before realizing we could have just gone home instead. Well, I know now. Monday finally moved Tracy's computers out of the nursery and into the living room on her new desk, and moved the rest of the computer equipment out of there as well. Now it's all in the living room. Tracy's also started decluttering, which I guess is that nesting thing people always talk about. I'm just happy we finally have shades in the living room, even if they are the cheapie paper blinds. Something's better than nothing.

Took an early day today since Tracy had the early shift. Went out to Target and got another Anywhere Desk. So now we have a set of matching desks while we work at home together. It's very nice. Even took the chance to clean up the wires a bit. So at least that little side of the room is nice and neat. Oh, I also got back my Aeron chair. Tracy's in her chair from Arhaus instead. So nice. Took apart the breakfast table, next up is disassembly of the desk in the nursery. All of this is in preparation of delivery of the dresser and crib for the nursery on Friday. And that sentence had a whole bunch of prepositions. Also finally cut the iron balusters to size. Dremel's are awesome. So now I just have to put it together. Closer and closer. Still no luck with bluetooth on Windows XP and the Magic Mouse. Even with an additional USB bluetooth dongle. Of course it was just another Broadcom chipset. So I'm still trying to track down a different bluetooth radio device. No idea if I can. Gotta go in to work tomorrow.

Was in the office today. Not so bad. Missed being home though. Brought back a wired headset, so I could just skip over the whole bluetooth Magic Mouse issue. So I can use the mouse with the scrolling now. It's awesome. Also pretty productive with the MacBook/Parallels/Windows 7 combo. Took the desk apart after dinner from Taco Burrito Palace. Need to patch and paint screw holes in the nursery before the dresser/crib shows up on Friday. And back at home to start April. And the weather. Right, the weather. And road construction. There's something going on on Halsted with those giant slabs of metal covering up a hole in the street, except it's not nice and flat, so makes a nice loud clunking noise when cars drive over it. It's awesome. But at least I don't notice it so much when I'm sleeping. Oh, and a have a dentist appointment tomorrow. Been a long time since my last one.

Yup. But it's fairly broad term. My gums were inflamed, and bled a little after brushing. So I got a nice thorough cleaning from Dr. Anthony Lee at Lee Dental Clinic, my new dentist. I like them because they took X-Rays with a tablet computer and a wired sensor. Very cool. But that made my day a little short. Ended up going to all 3 local grocery stores today to pick stuff up. Made pesto for pasta and chicken. Good stuff. Relatively easy, and nice and messy to make. It was a little warm today. Haven't turned on our A/C yet. Had the doors open and windows to create a nice airflow, and I only noticed when closing that the screen door to the juliet balcony was a quarter open. That's awesome. I was wondering how bugs were getting into the house. Getting help from Russell tomorrow to move the desk and stuff down to the in-laws RAV4 we're going to borrow. Then shipping it all out to them on Saturday, possibly making a detour through Indiana to drop off Tracy's documents for work. I've also decided to take a Wii Fit break from work around 2pm for 15 minutes or so. To try it out. Again.

First off thanks to Russell for helping to move some stuff on Friday. So most of the weekend was spent fixing the nursery. Dropped off cardboard boxes at recycling after assembling the crib on Friday. Saturday breakfast at Nookies Tree, then drove out to the Argaos and dropped off the desk and breakfast table. Had some lunch, stopped by Homegoods and Office Max. More time on the nursery. Sunday made it out to mass for Easter. Shopping at Whole Foods. Setup AV and Networking Equipment in the AV Rack that Rick helped me bring back from the old place. So we're pretty close to having the nursery all set up. Which is good. Oh, and Tracy nixed me putting up the railing, and we're going to see if someone more professional can get it done. I guess the thought of me putting a hole in the nice wood floor pushed her over the edge.

Well, taxes are done. Which is nice. Supposedly getting a refund, which seems surprising, mostly just because we've always, well, I've always paid before. I'm guessing that's what home ownership does for you? Just a really nice surprise. Worked late last night to roll out some new changes. Got another doctor's appointment tomorrow. I'm really excited about going to the Apple Store afterwards to check out the iPad in person. Oh, picked up some crumpets at Treasure Island yesterday, which I had for breakfast. No, I didn't have tea with them. They were good, like a thicker english muffin. Ate leftovers for lunch, and made some chicken soup for dinner. Finally started playing with iPhoto '09 and Faces. Simply amazing. It is like magic. Tracy's face is pretty unique, but I was duped with some of my brother, and Tracy's brothers too, which I guess isn't too surprising. But still, it's amazing. And fun.

Went to the Apple Store on Michigan Ave about 10 minutes after they opened this morning, and it was already packed with people checking out the iPad. In one word, I was whelmed. I wasn't begging Tracy to allow me to walk out with one, but I didn't think it was the worst thing ever. A little disappointed they didn't have a bunch more iPad applications, I was curious about the epicurious app. Didn't really have something to show off to Tracy either, that would have been any sort of killer app. I'm sure it'd be a different thing if I had one to use on the couch instead of the MacBook I'm using now. I did test out typing on the landscape keyboard, and found I could do a pretty decent job touch typing. Apostrophe's are difficult though. Still will get one eventually, but no rush. Setup the Mac mini to be headless again, and enjoyed how simple it is using SwitchResX is to get a 1280x800 resolution on it so remote desktopping in on my MacBook looks nice. Also found out you can disable displays with it, so I installed it on the MacBook and finally disabled the phantom display. I'd forgotten how nice it is to have actual boundaries. Have to go into work tomorrow and Friday. Exciting.

It is useful heading in to the office. Easy to get to the post office, see investment analysts, run errands. And nice to have more choices for food, but I'd still rather be working at home. I did look out the window of the Brown Line on the way home, kind of checking out my old bike route home from work. Also, the Apple Store at North and Clybourn has scaffolding all around it. I'm wondering if it's going to be entirely glass enclosed. That would be sweet. I'm sure it'll stand out in some way, and it'll be nice to look at from the El tracks. Finally got a BLT for lunch today. Had a craving, since Tracy had a craving for a week, which she satisfied over the weekend, but I didn't cause you don't take bacon away from a pregnant woman. Picked up Potbelly's on the way home, and we even ate at the dining table today. Been a while, with all the boxes and organization going on, but enough got done to at least clear off the table. Also finally put those little felt circles on the bottoms of all the chairs, so we don't get the loud rubbing sound when they're moved. Back to the office tomorrow, and not planning on picking up kolaches from delightful pastries. I think Tracy and I need a little break, we might have been overdoing it there for a bit.

Lots of stuff going on today at work, crazy. Didn't even get to work on the other stuff I wanted to work on. But don't think I need to work in the office for a bit, unless needed to. It's nice, but I end up doing other stuff. Also nice to be on the floor and seeing people. Good also to walk to the El and back. Also good to get some reading in again. So Apple announced some stuff about iPhone OS 4.0 yesterday. Bunch of stuff, and the only thing that I might like? The multitasking, specifically Skype in the background. Also maybe the GPS location stuff in the background. Game Center? Eh. iAds? Only as good as the content. Enterprise features? Eh. So I can have 2 Exchange accounts? Who has more than one Exchange account at work? Unless they have multiple jobs. Or I guess administrative assistants. Ok, I can see that. I had to look up the other stuff, cause I wasn't that excited about it. iBooks for iPhone? Expected, not really a surprise. Folders? eh. Doesn't apply to me. Unified inbox? I've got 2, work, and personal, and I like having them separate. Maybe I'll wait until it rolls out to the iPad before getting an iPad. As for the weekend, got a haircut and a dinner party tomorrow, nothing really for Sunday, but Tracy's working, so I'm home bound, probably more cleaning and organizing. I want to find out how to fix a leaking faucet.

So, just about 3 weeks until Tracy's due date. Word. Did a bunch more cleaning and organizing, both as nesting and also because the Russells and Tony and Megan came over for dinner Saturday night. Very nice to have a grown up meal with friends. Also odd because it was a grown up meal with friends, with healthy fare all around, talk of babies, and families, and pot luck and Russell did dishes. And everyone was out by 9:30pm. Felt so very adult. Like playing grown up. Sunday did some work in the bathroom. Stopped Tracy's cold water faucet from leaking. I think it's a cartridge faucet, so can't just take it apart to get to the washer. Just tightened some things up, and no more leaking. Also cleared out the drain in my sink since it was slow. And that's because it was all gunked up with hair and icky stuff. Same thing with the shower drain. Absolutely disgusting. Also started prepping the shower for recaulking. Hopefully it'll look a little nicer. Started exercising again today. Following the official work schedule for break times, a short fifteen minute in the morning and afternoon. I'm gonna be sherpaing lots of stuff when the baby gets here, so I need to build up my strength, and my endurance. Also, went back to Phoebe's Cupcakes over the weekend. Hadn't been there in a while. Still really good, and really sweet. Also tried extending the wireless network into the master bedroom, since moving it to the front of the house has killed reception at the back. Annoying. Need to fix up that extra broken Airport Express to extend the 802.11n network at least back there. Then I could type this up in bed, instead of in the nursery.

So I think Tracy's officially full term, 37 weeks. So baby's fully cooked and it's ok if she pops out at any time. Which is kind of scary. But, the nursery is mostly ready. Am I? Are we? Of course not. We're first time parents. Tracy's doing some reading, I did some additional work around the house today, finally recaulking the shower, and while I had it out, added some to the kitchen sink. So I think next up for me is making some benches and planters for the deck. Oh, and the car seat. Put together the Pack N' Play last night, even without an instruction manual. Had some help from Tracy with it though. Too bad they don't make it in colors that match our house. And Apple finally updated their MacBook Pro line today. And there's no Core i3 or i5 in the 13". Which is sort of what I was waiting for. And so my already taken interim step of Snow Leopard and a new battery for my MacBook was a good step. Just have to hope it keeps running until we eventually move and get enough space to get a giant 27" iMac. Who knows how long it'll be before that happens. So maybe I can sneak an iPad in the budget instead of a new computer

Another Doctor's Appointment today, and things are going well. Favorable was the term the doctor used, right before she got paged and had to leave to deliver a baby. Actually, we showed up 15 minutes early for our appointment, but they were nice and said they were running 45 minutes to an hour late, too many babies being born today. So we left and went for breakfast at our usual place, Au Bon Pain and the Allspice Cafe at Northwestern Hospital. Yum. Ate too much that I skipped lunch. Also took an afternoon break for more gelato at Paciugo Gelato. This time I didn't try any samples, and just got a piccolo, and Tracy tried out the Arancia Frizzante and liked it. Probably heading back tomorrow. Stopped by Jewel on the way home from the doctor's, and then Treasure Island after gelato. Got some more rice cakes, one more savory than Apple Cinnamon, and it's absolutely awful. Disappointing. Of course, not sure what I was expecting. Also, I think I'm wearing Tracy down with the constant asking for an iPad. It's like nagging. Kind of.

Doesn't just apply to me, also applies to my company. Burning the midnight oil on some work that needs to be done. Got up early to work thinking I could take off early, since Tracy had the early shift today, and we could go get more gelato. But nope. And then she's working the night shift tomorrow, and I'll probably have a much quieter night. Guess I need to get used to the mismatched schedules. Had a craving for one of those Italian sausage with peppers Piadina like I had at Paganello so many years ago. So sauteed some onions and peppers, and put the sausage on top, and pressed it in a pita. It was good. Looking forward to another tomorrow for lunch. My parents came in and dropped off some food and the AV Rack shelves I accidentally shipped out to their house. Had leftovers for dinner. And now, back to work after a short break. Oh, did some laundry today. Exciting stuff. Maybe tomorrow I can get to installing the car seat. And the caulking/sealing in the shower looks pretty good. At least for now.

So putting in a car seat? Easy. Not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. Not sure why I thought it would be hard. Got on my bike for the first time in months today. Rode around to do some errands. Not far, and it was pretty cool out, so had to wear my helmet liner, but nice to get out again. I'll try and get out at least once a week on the bike now. Late nights over the weekend from working. But I'm implementing a stricter bedtime for myself, since I need to start banking my sleep now, since it really could be any day now. Which is really really crazy to think about. Hopefully it won't happen in the next three days, since my parents are in Vegas till Wednesday. Been eating leftovers or food my mom brought for the last couple days. Went out Sunday morning though, wanting to go to Adesso for brunch, but they weren't open at 10:30am according to their website, nor at 11am according to the sign in the window, so we ended up at Melrose Restaurant instead. Dinner ended up at Celtic Knot, and got my Irish Breakfast. All the shopping over the weekend was about supplies. Stocking up. It's kind of like preparing for the apocalypse, 2012, or Y2K. Just a bunch of stuff thinking we won't be leaving for a while. Oh, and still working on Tracy about preordering an iPad. At the Apple Store Northbrook on Saturday, installed the Marvel Comics.app and downloaded a free comic, and well, it was awesome. Seriously awesome. I could see myself spending loads of money when I get one. Can't wait. Also would have come in handy when trying to VPN in to do work in the mall. Still haven't put the new shelves in the AV Rack, and won't until Saturday, since I need a day without scheduled DVR recordings, because it needs so much time to repopulate the guide when it gets unplugged. Also finally disassembled the broken Airport Express and just need a new power source to get it working again.

So pseudo officially two weeks left before the due date, which isn't really a hard due date, when in fact a week later is the hard due date. It's all just very inexact. All studies of goo are. Anyway, another doctor's appointment today, and everything checked out fine. Not progressing as much, still still progressing. That's one of the things I never knew, that one could be dilated for weeks. So strange. So not matching up with my long held beliefs. Later appointment today, which meant no breakfast at Au Bon Pain, just picked up lunch from Wow Bao. Good stuff, except for the peanuts in the kung pao, which meant Tracy took a nap after a benadryl. Finally took Russell's advice, and just decided to start using iPhoto for photo management, backups be damned. Of course that now just exposes how slow my machines are, since I've also decided to shoot RAW only. Not good. So now Tracy's giving me the option of an iPad or a new machine. Choices. Tempted to sell more Apple stock since it's doing so well. Seriously. Maybe if it hits $300. Cleaned out the fridge today by eating leftovers for dinner.

Thinking of implementing a little flag on the website to show when we're headed to the hospital. And/or a a code phrase, like "take the chevy to the levy". But still no action yet. And Apple stock today? Closed at $259. Closer to $300 than not. Crazy. Walked down to get Chipotle for dinner after work tonight. Used the iPhone app to place the order. That was nice and easy, especially since I didn't have to remember Tracy's order. As for the choice between a new computer or an iPad, I'm leaning towards an iPad. But now Tracy won't let me get one before the baby is born because I'd be too distracted by the new toy, instead of the baby. Crazy. Also had my first iPad sighting in public, some guy eating dinner by himself at Melrose Restaurant. Somewhat fitting I guess. Just a little surprising that it's taken this long to see one in public. Only a little because I work from home.

Finally started uploading photos from the new camera to Flickr. About time. I tried to just pick the good ones. Oh, and the Flickr integration in iPhoto '09, no good, so I ended up using FlickrExport, and I was pleasantly surprised I got a free license upgrade to the current version. I was actually all ready to pay for it, because it's worth it. A little confusing though, since I have to export to Flickr, and not share to Flickr. So no baby yet. Worked early today like Tracy's schedule, so got to get more gelato from Paciugo Gelato. I'm actually mayor there in Foursquare. Pretty much every week for the past 6 weeks. Staff recognizes us, and we recognize them, and I think the next step is getting to know names. Also, I like this place so much I'm thinking of writing my first iPhone app, so you can keep track of the flavors you've had, tried, your favorites, all that. Had a couple network drop outs the last 2 days. A little worrying. Makes me think of upgrading the cable modem to something a Motorola SB6120 SURFboard Cable Modem. Might as well take advantage of the DOCSIS 3.0 speeds that are available. Also on the lookout for a cheap USB card reader to take apart and use as a voltage regulator on an iPod USB charger to power the broken Airport Express. Maybe I'll make a Micro Center run while Tracy's working on Saturday.

About a week to the estimated due date, and at most 2 weeks to an induction. Crazy. Most likely within the next two weeks I'll be a dad. Crazy. Also, scorecard: Baby - 1, Spicy Food - 0. Went to Veerasway on Friday night, Indian food in West Loop. Not bad. Samosa and bacon apps were good, and the passion tart for desert was delish, but the entrees were just ok. Saturday went out and got a Motorola SB6120 SURFboard Cable Modem at Best Buy. I had no idea they were selling electric bikes and mopeds and stuff there now. Also, the Best Buy on Elston has a nice Apple section. Also picked up a cheapie USB card reader and a digital multimeter and tried the power supply hack for the Airport Express. And failed. Powered up but wouldn't stay powered up. So tossed the broken one and moved the only 802.11n Airport Express to the nursery to extend the network and just changed the home audio system to have a single deck speaker set instead of front and back. But now I get internet in the bedroom again, and that Apple TV is useful again. Tried out Wakamono and it might be our new favorite sushi place since it's close, it's good, and Tracy didn't have a large allergic reaction to anything. Sunday went shopping, picking up plants at Knupper Nursery & Landscaping, Home Depot, more home supplies from Target, lunch at Arby's, then back out for a Jewel run after I redid the AV Rack and added in new shelves. Looks nicer now. Also installed the new cable modem, which worked fine without calling, but then later that night there was an outage which I thought was related to not having called in to get the new modem authorized, but in fact was a local outage. Monday was another day working at home, helped a little with the roof gardening with Tracy, then went over to my parents condo for dinner.

Another doctor's appointment and everything checked out again. Still progressing, not a whole lot, but still some. But no baby yet. Finally got some donuts for breakfast, thanks to my parents. They gave us a whole bunch of food last night, so we really don't have to cook or make any food for at least a couple days. Started using Miso on iPhone to keep track of what I'm watching, if I remember. It's very much like Foursquare, which I use to keep track of where I've been locationwise. Working out better than Daytum. I actually stopped paying for a Plus account, and had to delete a bunch of data to get my account back down to a free level. Next up is some sort of iPhone program to keep track of what I eat and drink. Went out on the deck today to see how the wireless coverage is up there. It's ok. I was hoping putting the Airport Express to get me internet in the master bedroom would have been enough for the back part of the deck with the couch, but no such luck. I think it's ok, but not consistent. It was also freezing outside. Got to do some chores since Tracy's working the night shift tonight.

Born at 1:22am on Thursday, April 29, 2010 at Prentice Women's Hospital. She was 6lbs, 12oz and 19.5" at birth. She's amazing. Cute. Adorable.
Tuesday night, well, early Wednesday morning, Tracy woke me up around 3am telling me her contractions are getting fairly regular, like 10-15 minutes apart. I take note, and go back to bed, thinking I need to get my sleep if she's giving birth soon. But by morning the contractions haven't gotten too much closer together, but still fairly regular, and she calls in a sick day. Couldn't really work in that condition. I however worked from home anyway, since I work from home. Between contractions she managed to stay on her feet, do some gardening, but around 5pm they started getting closer together and much more intense, to the point she was curled up on the couch. We decided to head to the hospital, even though we didn't hit the line of contractions every 5 minutes for an hour, only getting as close as 7 or so. We got to the hospital around 7:30pm Wednesday night, find out she's 5cm, get sent upstairs with an epidural by 9pm, shortly after which we find out she's 7cm and they break her bag of water. 3 hours later she's fully dilated and ready to start pushing. However, Lucy had some dips in her heartrate during some position changes, and likewise they started happening again during active labor, so out came the forceps, and then at 1:22am, Lucy was born. She even started crying as soon as she came out, and all those shows and/or movies with the crying at the moment of birth? All true. Neonatal team was standing by, gave her the once over, just in case, and she's fine, ends up with an 8/9 apgar, and while Tracy's getting patched up, Lucy gets brought over. Eventually I remember I need to let my parents know who drove out from Woodstock after I called around 9pm. They actually ended up going home after meeting Lucy around 3am. The new family gets sent up to recovery, where we hang out for the next three days, since it's also true that since she was born after midnight, we got to stay until Saturday. Tracy and Lucy are doing great, recovering just fine. Lucy was a little cool and had to spend a little time under the heater, but otherwise is great, 10 fingers, 10 toes. I got to stay in the room, they had a little pull out couch thing, and Prentice does rooming in, so we spent a lot of time together. Grandparents came to visit, and Mike and Amy too, and my parents went back to our place to clean on Friday. Thanks for all the kind wishes as the news slowly trickled out. But we're home now, Tracy zonked out and snoring on the couch, Lucy sleeping quietly in her pack n' play bassinet waiting for the 11pm feeding. This is awesome.

Lucy's doing well. She had her 4 day checkup, had an acceptable bilirubin level, weighed in at 6lbs9oz, up 3 from her 6/6 low at the hospital, which puts a lot of Tracy's and my fears to rest because now we know Lucy's getting enough to eat. We were worried about that. But she's good. Everything checks out. We went to Town and Country Pediatrics, right above the REI on Halsted, and didn't have any issues taking Lucy out, except that she pooped a bunch at some point between getting put in the car seat to driving down Halsted. I know, this blog is gonna be nothing but baby stuff like pooping and doctor's appointments. Oh well. That's what happens. Got a BOB Revolution trailer shipped to REI, so wandered over there after our doctor's appointment. And since we had to change her in the car, I just carried her instead of strapping her back into the car seat. All the other brand new parents had their car seats. Kind of funny. Also saw one of our floor mates from the hospital, also there for the first checkup. Small world. In-laws came over later, did the gardening upstairs, brought nilaga for dinner. Lucy had her first tummy time today as well. Hoping we tuckered her out a little so she doesn't go on her crying jag from 12-3am. Anyway, I'm gonna try posting updates on Twitter and photos at Flickr, if you want to keep track of her: Lucy @ Twitter (http://twitter.com/lucyabando) and Lucy @ Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucyabando/). Still working on something to maybe integrate those. We'll see.

Lucy went shopping yesterday. No Leo, not Bloomingdale's or Neiman Marcus, just Babies R' Us. We needed a few supplies, nothing major. And everyone always loves a little baby. But I had no idea you can put a car seat on a shopping cart. We didn't need to use the Graco SnugRider. Next time maybe. Just like all new parents, we're slowly figuring things out. Like how much time it takes to leave the house. And how to dress her for outings. And how to overpack the diaper bag. Also tried the Baby K'tan last night at home. It's a sling type baby carrier, and we're not sure if it works all that well. Maybe it works better when she's bigger. She did look nice an snug in there. I finally changed the wallpaper on my iPhone to image on right. Always makes me smile when I unlock my phone. Besides Flickr, I'm also uploaded to a MobileMe gallery, because those seem to work best with Apple TV. Also seems faster than Flickr on the iPhone.

So, we read too much about care for babies. There's some questions about breastfeeding, and lately we've been having to wake Lucy up for her every 3 hour feedings, because otherwise she would sleep through. So we're used to the 3 hour schedule, and we weren't expecting her to be hungry off schedule. And tonight she was. We changed her multiple times, bounced with her successfully calming her down on the exercise ball, soothed her a little on my chest, and she kept on crying. No rooting. I thought her chewing on her hands was a sign of gas, because after getting burped she no longer put her hands in her mouth. This parenting thing has to get at least a little easier once they can tell you at least a little about what's wrong. Right? And to think we were doing pretty well, at least we thought we were. Now we feel awful. But, still learning. My parents came over today while running errands, dropped off some food, and babysat while Tracy and I got to leave the house. We went over to Nabo's for lunch and down to Paciugo Gelato (no durian yet) and over to Gap as Tracy needs to find some more clothes to wear as she works the maternity weight off. Anyway, we're gonna try and meet with a lactation consultant tomorrow hopefully, as we have some additional questions on breastfeeding.

Except for not sleeping longer than 3 or 4 hours at a time, and changing diapers, it kind of feels like one super long weekend for the first week of Lucy's life. After her early morning feeding around 6am, we sleep in until her later feeding at 9am. Then we hang out, watching her sleep, occasionally playing with her, reading books about baby care, watching TV, watching movies, napping, eating. Kind of like vacation, except we don't really leave the house. But fairly relaxing. It's gonna be hard on a couple different levels to go back to work. Lucy continues to be cute. We're still adjusting to her feeding schedule, which seems to fluctuate a little, anywhere from 1 1/2 hours to 4 sometimes, and hopefully we're getting better at catching the signs for hunger before the crying starts. I need a better platform, but I think I can use the kitchen scale to weigh her. It's also been a week that she's been out in the world. Crazy. Seems like she's growing already, especially when looking at photos from just a few days ago. Started taking a few short videos as well with the GF1 and put an order in for an Eye-Fi Pro X2 last night, so hopefully I can upload photos closer to realtime, instead of in giant bunches.

Typing this on Gabe's iPad. I still want one. 802.11n is awesome. Trying out the range to make sure it works in the master bedroom. And the answer is yes. And typing is almost tough typing. Seriously awesome. I really really want one. Need to get Tracy to play with it so she will want one so I can get one. Or maybe Lucy will want one. Then Tracy can't say no to our daughter. Trying now.

First Mother's Day for Tracy on Sunday. Saw a lot of the Argaos over the weekend, since Baniella was in town. They came out to see Lucy on Friday, I got to play with Gabe's iPad a bunch. And enough nagging and constant asking Tracy to get one worked, as she finally said yes today, so I placed my order this afternoon. Next up is finding a bag (leaning towards a Tom Bihn Small Cafe Bag) and a case (would love a DODOCase). Saturday went out to the Argaos for Ella's 2nd birthday party. Didn't get back until 10pm or so. Sunday went out in the morning for brunch, then back in and my mom brought dinner in for us at our place. Lucy's doing well, although her eating schedule is fluctuating a bit. Right now it's hovering around 2 hours, but could stretch to 4 at times, and shrunk to 1 a couple times, which is confusing when she doesn't root. Hard too when I do all I can at night, except I don't have boobs to feed. Which last night was the one thing she was, hungry. It'll be a little easier when she's also on the bottle, so I don't have to wake Tracy up for a feeding.

I go back to work on Friday. Still think I'm on diaper duty though. Was going to try and go to a stationary store up the street, but weather slightly conspired against that, and Lucy's been a little finicky lately. Tempermental? Gassy for sure. Lots of burping. Lots. I did manage to leave the house and pick up some movies from Redbox. Also got a Eye-Fi Pro X2 in the mail today. Not sure what I was hoping it'd be. I tried it out by letting it send RAW files to the Mac mini, but I think files are too big to do that on a regular basis. And you can't auto send RAW files to online sites. So not sure what I'm going to use it for. Might end up being not that useful. Haven't tried the geotagging feature yet though. Maybe that'll be worth it. I was hoping it would make uploading photos of Lucy quicker, more real-time, but I don't think that's the case unless I start shooting JPEG+RAW, since I don't want to give up RAW. And I got annoyed with uploading JPEGs. Hmmm. Otherwise, I think Tracy and I are getting a little stir crazy. A little outing tomorrow, and the baby's 2 week checkup on Thursday will do us some good. Too bad Lucy's too young to take to Green City Market. It's moreso the chores associated with it, the feeding, the diaper changes. All for a sleeping, albeit very very adorable, baby.

Lucy's been a little bit of a handful the last couple of nights. A bit of a difference from her first week or so. She just doesn't seem to want to go to sleep, with some crying. Food, diaper, any sort of injury, burping. Not sure if there's anything else there we need to be checking. Hopefully she'll make it through tonight without any issues. Russell dropped by on his way in to work today. Nice to see a friend for the first time. It's been all family since the birth. Wandered out of the house today, went up to Noteworthy Notes to order up some announcements, then over to Whole Foods for some random stuff. Gonna try to make jerk chicken tomorrow. Also got Lucy's 2 week pediatrician visit. And also officially added her to my insurance, which means I'm now playing through the nose for health insurance. Seriously, through the nose. Just realized I should have been working on some personal projects during the non diaper changing time of paternity leave. And now with just one day left, well, gonna try and squeeze something in.

7 lbs., 10 oz. That's how much Lucy weighed in at her 2 week doctor's checkup today. That's awesome. A full pound over her birthweight. And the nurse practitioner told use we don't have to wake her up for feedings anymore overnight. Just on demand feeding. For all we know that might be 2-3 hours like we do now, or 4-5 or longer if she feels like sleeping more. Exciting. Always exiting when you get the thumbs up from a medical checkup. Afterwards, we took her for a spin around the Lincoln Park Whole Foods, and got some lunch. Lots of food to choose from there. Then back home. Russell dropped by and dropped off Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. My parents dropped by to bring even more food, and to see Lucy. Thanks to Smith Barney for sending flowers. Got part of my Apple shipment, and worked on getting the AirPort Extreme (Early 2009) integrated into the home network. Lots of network equipment for just a single house, and wish it was wired, instead of trying to hack together network extenders. And back to work tomorrow. Should be interesting. Hopefully I didn't leave things in too bad of shambles.

So even though at the doctor's appointment they said we don't have to wake her up for feeding overnight, Lucy still gets up about every 3 hours for feedings. So can't say anything's really changed on that front. Had my first day back at work on Friday. Not bad. Pretty easy getting back into the swing of things. Fixing some things that I might have broken. But wasn't too hard to get back into the swing of things. Saturday finally got my haircut, but didn't get to show off pictures of Lucy because network was too slow to pull images down from Flickr or MobileMe. So when I got home, I finally set it up to sync photos directly to the iPhone, which means I won't be uploading photos both the Macbook and Mac mini, just the mini from now on. It becomes the live set now. Wandered over to the Nettlehorst School Market and picked up some breakfast pastries. Was surprised and excited that Zullo's has a stand there now. Watched Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and 2012 finally, ordered pizza from Pie Hole. Also on Friday we took Lucy to Paciugo Gelato, and tried the Durian flavor. Not bad. No smell. Also gave Lucy her first tub bath. We're not so good at it, or Lucy just doesn't like the water yet. She still isn't a fan by the Sunday bath either. Sunday we ventured out to Northbrook Court, had some crepes at Magic Pan, Tracy got some postpartum clothes. I got to change Lucy in the changing station in a men's bathroom. It being Northbrook meant the changing station already had a nice cushy pad. It was quite nice. No fold down plastic table there. Also picked up some grommets and grommet pliers to create more flexible attachment systems and string monopod for Luma Loop pod mount. Should be really cool and useful if it works.

Back to the grind. Working away. Got my new Tom Bihn Small Cafe Bag. Can't wait to leave the house to use it. Not quite sure what to put in it besides the camera. The iPad, if I ever get it, will probably hop on in, but then probably dad stuff, baby wipes, diaper, burp cloths, outfits. Sweet stuff. Should come in handy though. I'm excited. Ordered Philly's Best delivery for dinner. Really good stuff. Best onion rings I've had in a while. Didn't leave the house today, except to get mail. Been working on Lucy to turn left, and lay a little bit on her right side of her head, to even things out a bit. We also mounted the car mirror we got from Ate Joy to the Pack n' Play/Bassinet so we can see her from the bed when she's in the bedroom. I imagine the next four weeks while I'm working and Tracy isn't to be rather interesting. She'll probably spend more time out and about once the weather gets nicer, whenever that happens. Also, Lucy's spending more of her time awake, so that's cool. Personally I'm trying to stay away from the baby talk, and more towards complete sentences and big words, scientific topics and logic and reason. Because she's Asian.

Currently have the thermostat set to heat. It's the middle of May. Crazy. Our place is pretty cool, which I think makes changing Lucy a little cool for her. Diapers, wipes, pad all cooler and probably rather uncomfortable. At least that's what I'm blaming all the crying during diaper changes on. In-laws dropped by today to see Lucy, helped watch while Tracy went and got a haircut. I put together some attachment points for the Luma Loop Pod Mount so I can have attachments to bags or carabiners or something. It's pretty cool, and should come in very handy. Still waiting on my iPad to ship. I also have a Sony Dash (from my Sony Points) coming this week. Yay for new toys to play with.

Got my shipment notification for my iPad. Can't wait. It's gonna feel like a long time waiting for it. Might have come in handy today cause I had to go into the office for work. I think coming in to the office will always be interesting with the changes going on. It's now weird to go in, because the commute feels foreign, strange, like I have to double check how to get there, make sure I get off at the right stop. But I snuck in a stop at The Cupcake Counter. So that's always good. Sunny out today, and warm. So heading to the office got me out of the house and into fresh air, well, Chicago fresh air, for at least a little bit today. While I headed downtown, Tracy and Lucy went for a stroll. Also think Lucy's got a little diaper rash, so we're airing out her bottom a bit. Hopefully it gets better. Might explain some of the crying, but not really because she does stop crying. So who knows, that is until she gets to use words to let us know what's wrong.

I think I'm starting to run into the red in terms of my sleep, as in, not getting enough. I think the newborn baby aspect is finally catching up to me. Had to take a nap today. Although, I wonder how much of the lethargy is because Tracy isn't working yet, so it feels a little weird to be working while she's just hanging out. We gave Lucy another bath today, which went much better this time around. Not so much with the crying, and she only pooped a little at the very end. All the airing out, and also the baby powder, seem to help with the diaper rash. Looks much better today. She also had a crying fit because she had a dirty diaper, but it was immediately after we changed her, so it wasn't high on the list of things to check. Whoops. iPad's been delayed in shipping a couple more days, arrived after FedEx pickup, blah blah blah. I started converted and importing eBooks to iTunes. Really looking forward to having one. Started reading forums about the iPad. It won't distract me from Lucy though. Not at all. If anything it'll be a really nice platform to show off photos of Lucy. See, it really is all about the baby.

First full week back at work is over. And well, it was a little rough. Lack of sleep, helping with the baby, wife still on maternity leave. Mostly the lack of sleep. Lucy's not really been sleeping between 9pm to 2am. Not so good. Makes for a tired day. I think Lucy's getting longer and bigger. Looks lean though. She has been more fussy lately. The few books we've looked at don't have any info about the first month or so. Apparently, newborns are too new to follow any sort of logic or reasoning. Used my Sony Points to get a Sony Dash, which arrived today. And trying to set it up reminds me of how awesome Apple is. Like night and day. Not sure what I'll use it for, maybe just leave it in the kitchen to check weather. Maybe look at recipes. Not really good for much. Especially after the iPad shows up at some point, hopefully next week. Headed out to Woodstock on Sunday to show off the baby. Otherwise, try and do a lot of napping tomorrow.

Typing this up on my own iPad. Arrived today 4 days after getting shipped out from China. Always impressive. And no, I didn't neglect my wife and child because of it. In fact, Tracy might have used it more than I did today. And today was one of those days. Up way too early because of Lucy, so I was a little out of it all day. And the continuous checking for the FedEx truck. And the changing of the diapers. I've followed my mom's lead and started changing Lucy by a sink for washing, in our case the sink at the bar, which only ever gets used for watering plants. But I also got to feed Lucy a couple times today. We want to introduce the bottle, in case she has trouble adjusting. And guess what? No problems at all. Actually we wonder if she likes the bottles better because there's less effort involved. Also trying to help Tracy out with the pumping. Still got some work to figure out there.

Totally forgot yesterday was Monday and I needed to recap the weekend. Guess I was a little too distracted by the new iPad. Used it all day today, well, when i wasn't working, or using it for breaks. It's still awesome. Only wishing for some more iPad native apps, like Twitter and Flickr. Anyway, Saturday the family went down to French Market at Nettlehorst, got some Starbucks on the way, and some Zullo's donuts when we got there. Did some cleaning since Jespy] came over for dinner and to see Lucy. Sunday drove out to Woodstock for Lucy's debut. My parents had a bunch of family and friends over, so lots of party food. Also got to take a nap while Lucy got taken care of. That was nice. Need to get the A/C to get fixed in the car. It's not completely broken, but not quite as strong as it should be. Kind of important with a baby and what looks to be a long and hot summer coming up. Working on a website to serve up movies and tv shows from the local server. Nothing really like it, at least that I've found in the app store.

Days kind of blending. Same stuff, different day. Probably why there's been some lack of photos of Lucy, she's not doing anything too exciting these days. Also lack of sleep probably has something to do with it. Yesterday morning she was up and fussy at 5am, so I got up, had her sleep on my chest while i watched Adventureland. So that was cool. Of course, I had to take a nap since i was up so early. Ordered up some Ranalli's for dinner last night. Watched some tv. Continue to use the iPad for pert much everything. I went ahead and bought iTeleport a VNC client, which is totally worth the cost. Works like a charm, and I'm able to connect to the Mac mini to upload photos and stuff. Seriously awesome. Still using the Macbook to do some dev work though. The iPad has been lasting all day, which is cool. Been trying to do some more iBook organization, but actually haven't started reading anything yet.

Lucy's 4 weeks old now. So now we're using wipes, not using the sling in the tub, and just generally treating her more like a baby than a newborn. Or is it like an infant? My very unscientific weighing of her today puts her at 9 lbs, 12 oz.?who knows what she really is. But she's bigger. And she can hold her head up a little, when she's lying on a belly, not so much yet at tummy time. We found a play yard, and set that up today. Otherwise, just working. Headed out to lunch with Russell at Kuma's tomorrow. Been a while since I've been there. Also planning on biking. Also haven't done that in a long while.

Being a Friday, took a long lunch and biked out to Kuma's Corner for lunch with Russell. It was awesome. And now that I work from home, something I could swing more easily than when I was working downtown. Might actually do some work this weekend, off hour work. Nice to get out on the bike on a lovely day. Also School is a nice street, single family homes, tree lined, quiet, very cute homes always blows my mind to see so many people out and about during working hours. Watched some tv, including some NBA. I'm just annoyed by watching the Lakees and the Celtics. I don't know why exactly, but they seem to me to be dirty teams, and that annoys me. Always seems like those teams were getting calls, or that the other teams weren't getting calls. Always seems strange that players hit the floor and no fouls are called, unless it's a certain team. It doesn't make me happy to watch them play, unless they're losing. No real plans for the weekend. Maybe the market tomorrow, parents are coming out on Sunday, nothing planned for Monday. Also annoyed with trying to extend the wireless network to the deck. Basically i'm having issues getting a signal in the couch area. Pretty annoying.

Lucy had her 4 week checkup today. Still growing. Everything's good. So that's nice. Totally forgot that we had an appointment to get the Volvo serviced Saturday morning, so we spent the day out in the 'burbs at the in-laws, borrowed a car to drop off the car at the dealer (the A/C was acting pretty weak). Ended up the Freon was low, so they replaced it, and added a dye, so when we go back in a couple weeks they can try and track down the leak. So we contributed to the hole in the ozone layer. Sunday my parents came in, babysat while Tracy and I had brunch at Minibar and shopped a little at Gap and picked up some Paciugo Gelato and took naps. Monday was pretty lazy, we might have tried to go somewhere if the weather had cooperated, but no luck. Instead, I redid the wireless networking. Don't think I could extend extend an Apple Wireless network. So put the cable modem/main Airport Extreme base station back in the nursery (it's high up on top of a bookshelf), and extended the network to the living room and the master bedroom. Which means I should have much better coverage on the roof. Which means I could work on the roof. We finally caught up on Glee. And plowed though some more DVR, so we don't have much left anymore. I've been going on a slight ecomic book buying spree. It's just so cool to read them on the iPad. Still loving that thing. Haven't had to activate 3G service yet though. Wondering when the first time will be.

I don't know how single parents do it. I had to take care of Lucy today by myself while Tracy had a doctor's appointment. Probably more difficult than it would be in the future, because of the limited supply of breast milk, but still, childcare isn't easy. Did some work late last night/early this morning, adjusted for the doctor's appointment yesterday and babysitting today. I'm playing movies in the background while working, and hard trying to find the talking movies, the ones you don't have to see the action, but can get away with just listening. Kind of on a musical kick though, Singin' in the Rain today and maybe West Side Story tomorrow. Think there's a problem with our air conditioning. So calling someone tomorrow to get it checked out hopefully. Sounds like it's trying to start up, but doesn't have enough umph to keep running.

Totally just lost an entry because the iPad couldn't keep the webpage open in the background because of the memory limitations. Kind of annoying. Anyway, had Greg from Comfortable Heating come out and take a look at the Air Conditioner. No problems, only had to clean out the condenser coils. Ends up it was the company that installed the HVAC for the building. Felt good to get some service done on the house. Like it was smart thing to do. And now that we have a HVAC guy, I'm looking at the ecobee again, and maybe an automatic humidifier. Not so necessary that we're both working from home. Wait and see I guess. Tracy took Lucy on a walk this afternoon to the lake. She also logged on to her work machine to check in her schedule, since she goes back to work in a little over a week. Otherwise, just working. Ordered up a baby monitor with my Sony Points. Something I should have done a long time ago. Whoops.

Had a cryer today. Lucy was just really really fussy. Not sure why. She had a little bit of a rash on the back of her neck. Hopefully that'll go away after the bath tonight. But fed, changed, and wouldn't burp, and still fussy. Hoping we haven't spoiled her already. It's odd though, because she doesn't like sleeping on her back during the day, but then has no problems usually overnight. And she's been sleeping around 5 hours at the longest overnight. Which is nice. Also, the SnuggleMe is like magic. Oh, we ordered diapers from Amazon the other day, and they offered free 2 day shipping, which was nice, because I wanted to try out Amazon Prime, pretty much for baby supplies. And what happens? They decide to give me 3 free months of Amazon Prime to get me addicted to it. Think we should start using it for dry goods, as well as baby supplies. Gotta hit up Knupper's this weekend, need more plants to replace the ones that died on the front balcony. Oh, for work, I'm tempted to upgrade the work computer to Windows 7, because the Windows XP VPN keeps dropping, while the Windows 7 Parallels machine connects and stays connected just fine. Also need to figure out how to keep all my SQL scripts and documents in sync though. I think I'll be working from the laptop for a while.

Got my Apple iPad Case today, a couple days before estimated delivery by FedEx. Always nice. And they actually ran the doorbell, because they needed a signature. Odd. I have gotten pretty used to the naked iPad, so the case only goes on when the iPad goes out. Saturday went out shopping at Knupper's and Home Depot. Much more difficult heading out with a baby. Worried about overheating, worried about feedings. Not so easy. Ended up ordering food from Adesso for dinner, and leftovers on Sunday night. After the outing on Saturday, just stayed in on Sunday and napped on the couch. WWDC 2010 opened this morning, and Apple announced the iPhone 4. Impressive. Wonder when other devices like laptops and iPads get the retina display. Wonder if the gyroscope means a fancy new Apple TV remote. Really like that FaceTime will get pushed as a standard, for other manufacturers to use. Wonder when you'll have FaceTime with an Android user. Happy that iOS 4 is getting pushed out for free. Wonder when the iPad version will get pushed out. Also happy with iBooks eventually making over to the iPhone. Actually, should be in just a couple weeks. Crazy.

Wet and rainy day. Not that I would know, since I was indoors. Didn't leave, didn't step foot out on the deck, didn't taste fresh air once today. Whoops. Know how I switched to using Windows 7 for work because I thought it had a more stable VPN? It does, but it still managed to go down a couple times today. Which makes me think it's my network. Of course, right now, it's a house of cards. Work computer to 802.11b/g access point connected as a wireless client to another 802.11b/g access point which is connected via ethernet to a 802.11n access point extending the network from another 802.11n access point which is plugged into the cable modem. So lots of possible failure points there. Found out my hair stylist will be splitting her hours with the new Robert Jeffrey Wicker Park location, which means I won't be getting my hair cut on Saturdays anymore. Weekdays it is. First time trying out Amazon Prime ordering up some diapers and k-cups for the Keurig. Picked the wrong coffee, possibly, because I went for variety instead of cost. We'll see how it turns out.

Brought Lucy in with us when Tracy went in for her post birth checkup. So, she took her first bus ride. Yay. Brought my iPad with, and could have signed up for a 3G data plan, but decided against it. Not really needed, yet. Speaking of 3G service, I downgraded Tracy and my iPhones to the Data Plus plan. I hover around 180-190MB/month, while Tracy has a paltry 50MB/month. No need to keep paying an extra $30 a month for both of us for data we aren't using, and probably won't use any more of since I work from home. Tried watching Game 6 of the Stanley Cup, but couldn't finish it. Too exciting. Really fast. And the momentum changes were staggering. But I managed to flip back shortly after the Blackhawks won. That was cool. And I know it isn't the home team, but getting booed for winning the championship? Gotta be a bit of a buzzkill. It'd be like getting booed at the birth of Lucy. Related and annoying? The helicopters in Wrigleyville and the whooping on the street. Got our first Amazon Prime order in, roughly a day after it was ordered. That's impressive. And addictive. I could totally get used to this.

Worked really late last night, kind of shifted my hours yesterday. So paid for it today. Yesterday April came and visited, so all the girls went out for the day, to lunch, gelato and some shopping. They were nice and brought me back a hamburger from Nookies Tree. April was also nice enough to run out and get some milk and bread for us. Thanks! Lucy also got her social security number yesterday so now she'll get to start paying taxes and worrying about getting her identity stolen. I actually went and got a haircut this morning, since my stylist will be splitting time between the Boystown and Wicker Park locations. Finally decided to try Wyse PocketCloud RDP for iPad, and it works like a charm. Means I can just use the iPad when I'm out and about and need to monitor the data load for week when I'm on for the week. Very very nice. Decided to just pull the trigger because Jaadu Remote Desktop still isn't iPad friendly. But when it does become iPad friends, I'll switch to it in a heartbeat because of how much I love iTeleport. So almost have no need for the Macbook anymore, except I'm typing this up on it right now. But if I get a bluetooth keyboard to connect to the iPad, well, then, no need for the laptop at all. Headed back out to the burbs tomorrow to see if they can find the freon leak in the car. Also get to do a little shopping. Sunday got a graduation party to go to in E-Town. Oh, got a baby monitor from my Sony Points today, which means Lucy's sleeping in her crib tonight.

Walked Lucy over to Abando Condo II for Gramma Day Care this morning. Definitely looked around many times while working today wondering where the baby was, or that it was really quiet, and wondered where the noise was. But really started missing her when I was uploading photos. But thanks to my mom for providing free day care. But I'm sure we're going to start to feel like we're missing out on all sorts of stuff. Wait and see. Saturday went out to the 'burbs to get the car checked for Freon leaks, which they didn't find. Did some shopping too. Lucy's getting a little bit more fussy so it isn't super easy to take her shopping. She's a bit more aware of her surroundings. Ended up getting Panda Express for dinner. Sunday went to Mydel's graduation party, showed off Lucy some more, then dropped by the Russells to see Sarah and Gavin and Marla. Nice hanging out for an afternoon. And got some Steak n' Shake for dinner. So not the best diet this weekend.

Nice getting the baby back. Not so nice when she's fussy though. Up late last night, or really early this morning, doing the feeding and trying to get her back to sleep. Did mean I was up early enough to see the new Mac mini released. Very fancy looking. Not sure why it'd be tempting, but maybe for photo management, and just have it attached to the back of the TV. Would be nice. A complete luxury though. Got the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit today, and it's awesome. Much nicer checking which photos to keep or delete on the iPad vs. trying to view them through iPhoto through Remote Desktop. Only issue, still have to sync to Mac mini to upload to Flickr, since I'm unhappy with the Flickr.app for the iPhone. They don't even have an iPad version. Almost tempted to create a Flickr uploader app that works with RAW imports on the iPad. Would be nice. Maybe someone else will make it. Have I mentioned that I've been trying to do crosswords on the iPad? Trying to stimulate the old noggin'. Work computing got more interesting. Outsourced Exchange means I just set up Mail.app to connect. Almost means I don't have to use Outlook anymore. Pretty sweet. Also using Synergy+ to use the Macbook trackpad and keyboard to control the work computer. Works pretty well with the work computer local and the Macbook VPN'd. Very useful. Also using Dropbox to keep working files in sync. Of course that also doesn't work through the VPN currently.

Third day of Grandma day care, and it's going well. Apparently Lucy sleeps a lot while she's over there. I dropped her off extra early this morning since I had a meeting, then went with Tracy to pick her up after work. That was nice. Also got more diapers and a couple more hard drives for the Drobo today. Still really odd that things get delivered but they don't bother to ring our door. I know it's probably the neighbors, but still, kind of annoying. Possible news on the old home front, my mom has someone interested in buying 601. Crazy. Would mean I don't have that spare residence anymore, and that I'd actually have to file a change of address. I still get tons of catalogs and stuff at that address. Continuing to love the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit. Took a photo on the iPhone, transferred it to the iPad, uploaded it to Flickr with FlickrStackr, then pulled off the iPad when it got synced to the Mac mini. So roundabout. But it works. I also need to start carrying the camera with me again. Not that I'm missing anything spectacular, but it's kind of a waste if it doesn't get used. Also, I'm suggesting an iPad 3G to my mom for use in computing in the city. She's using her iPhone currently, but if she can do the same stuff on a bigger screen, instead of getting a new laptop or something, she'll be better off. I'll bring by mine tomorrow so she can try it out. I didn't want to do the hand me down of this Macbook to her and then I'd get a new one. I don't think I want anyone else to use this laptop. Too old, fan spins up too easily, probably a slow HD, and only 2GB of RAM, and only a Core Duo.

I missed updating last Thursday and Friday. Been awhile since I've done that. Thursday night I can blame it on taking care of Lucy since Tracy worked that night. Friday I can also blame on taking care of Lucy, even though Tracy was home on her day off, Lucy was still around all day. Anyway, I think I've convinced my mom to get an iPad. She tried it out a little when I picked up Lucy on Thursday. Figur it'd be perfect for her needs. Doesn't need a full fledged computer, just a bigger emailing and photo browsing device. Maybe we can sneak it in there for her birthday somehow. So since Tracy didn't work Friday, she worked Saturday, which meant i was on duty. Theee's been some questions on Tracy's milk production, and since she was working, we decided to try feeding Lucy formula. She took it, which is good, and no vomit or diarrhea, so doesn't look like any adverse reactions to this stuff at a least. But Tracy's managed to produce enough for feedings after that, so the next time she gets formula is possibly sometime tonight, since Tracy has the early shift tomorrow. We're also trying to implement some tips and plans and suggestions from they healthy sleep, healthy baby book. So that's interesting. Hoping it's working. On my first Father's Day had family over for a BBQ. Also figured out an Automator workflow to backup iTunes purchases, so after that finished started the drobo expansion. Hoping it goes well. Tomorrow is iOS 4 release day. Kind of excited. After using my iPad for a couple weeks, the iPhone kind of feels like a toy, with the size and weight differences and the plastic back.

iOS 4 released today. Updated Tracy and my iPhone 3GSs with no problems. Very slick. I do wonder what, if any functionality, Tracy will actually use on it. Best thing for me? Updated iBooks with iPad and iPhone syncing. So now, if I do leave the house with only an iPhone, I can pickup where I left off in reading on the iPad. It's the little things. Can't wait for theiPad to catch up. Also, my Drobo rebuild last night was estimated at 79 hours, but now down to about 40. And then I have to do it again. Awesome. As for baby news, Lucy had a poop at Grandma's daycare; this is news because it's been a couple days. Started to get a little worried, but not too worried, be use she wasn't being too fussy about it. And she was peeing all the time, nice and clear. But it's normal. The developmental changes are gonna be hard to get used to, with things being different day to day, week to week, when I like consistency so much. Lots of leftovers from the party, so got plenty to eat for a while.

Yet another Tuesday. That's all. Accidentally turned off the baby monitor at 5 am this morning without then getting up to check on the baby. Ended up hearing her cries 15 minutes later without it, but definitely strange for me to have just reached over to turn it off. I'll blame it on the sleep deprivation. Still plowing through the leftovers for all the meals, but still went to the grocery store on the way back from dropping Lucy off this morning. Ordered up an iPad for my mom's birthday, but zero chance she'll have it for her actual birthday this Saturday. My mom also made us dinner, so we stayed for that when we went to pick Lucy up this evening. It's a bit warm out, that's for sure. Drobo rebuild down to about 13 hours. Still haven't figured out folder organization under iOS 4 on my iPhone. I don't actually have that many apps, so not sure if I need to use folders at all.

Yet Another Wednesday. Brought Lucy early this morning because of a meeting i thought i had, which ended up being cancelled. And then another meeting of mine ended up getting pushed back repeatedly until it finally made it to tomorrow. We heard some shouting and yelling and loud thumbs from the downstairs neighbors, then I realized they were watching US in the World Cup. I also turned it on in the background, really only catching the exciting parts after we heard the reaction downstairs. That was pretty cool. Continuing with leftovers for all the meals. I did put a fried egg on the bleu cheese burger though. That was good. Also made myself an iced coffee, which was also good. Drobo rebuild completed. Started the next one, with an estimated time of 51 hours. And then of course there was the storm and tornado warnings, which made me think if the oower went out during the rebuild that I'd loose all my data, which is currently around 3 TB of media mostly. Kind of crazy to think about. I wonder how long until i'll have to upgrade again, and maybe at that point hard drives will be up to 3 or 4 TB. Wait and see. Also have enough drives I could get a backup Drobo. Hmmmm.

Got my Apple Wireless Keyboard today. Signed for by someone I don't recognize. But still, they don't bother to ring the doorbell for all the units they're delivering items to? So that means I'm typing this out on my iPad via the keyboard. It's pretty freaking' sweet. Seriously, I'll probably never get another laptop ever again. Just more iPads. Would be nicer if the keyboard was a bit smaller, so that it matched the size of the iPad in landscape. But still, super convenient. My Wish for Apple? To create a Mac mini with an iPad dock that magically turns into a touch screen for the computer. Then you could still sync it up with iTunes and stuff. Got to do the early morning feeding for Lucy last night, and she wouldn't go to bed right away. Eventually just put her in the crib and she feel asleep eventually, not even needing the pacifier. Hopefully we're doing the whole sleep thing properly. Seem to be, except it certainly seems like we're spending less time with her awake than ever. Also, not sure if she's starting to want to hang out with us, so she doesn't want to sleep. She's started to have a fussy hour before bedtime. Need to standardize our soothing methods. Don't want to have to keep using Tracy's milk makers. Made yet another Jewel run after dropping Lucy off this morning, and they still don't have the bread we want. Made myself a ham, egg and cheese english muffin for breakfast though. Pretty sweet. Mom made dinner for us again, which was nice, and we ate there, so we didn't even have to clean up. Which is good because I just finally figured out how to put the plug for the kitchen sink in properly such that you can remove it without pliers. NBA Draft was tonight, and didn't seem too interesting. Lots of trading action, but didn't seem like any action for lottery picks. No real drama at the top.

Friday night met up with a bunch of the boys for dinner since Raz was in town. Always good to see everyone, but still a little strange. Seems like for most of them it gets to be longer and longer between hang outs as get further and further removed from anything ultimate related. It'll be really weird in 2014 when i'll have been away from ultimate longer than I had been playing. And i'm sure that date will come up sooner than I think. Tried to take some photos, but only 4 came out ok, and 2 were of Bjorn. Saturday was our first family trio down to Green City Market. Drove down because we wanted to use the Bob, and i don't feel comfortable taking it on the bus yet (I think it's too big). Got a parking spot right in front of the Old Town location of delightful pastries. Ended up back there for lunch after he market, which was super convenient. Looking forward to when Lucy's old enough to enjoy the market. Tracy finally got to make dinner Saturday night, and got some lamb to satisfy her craving. Sunday was another lazy day, peeked t the Pride parade through the back balcony door while enjoying the air conditioning. Made a couple strawberry rhubarb pies. They're ok. Went to dinner at my parents, they brought food in for my mom's birthday which was on Saturday, but she threw a party for someone else that day.

Went for a run after dropping Lucy off early today. I only went up to Irving Park, but it was really hard and my body is really sore. Crazy. But it actually makes me feel pretty good. I'm hoping i can keep it up, maybe twice a week at least? That'd be good for a start. Lucy pretty much let us know she wanted to go to bed at 9pm tonight. I was getting her swalled, and had put her dowin the crib, and she quieted right down. And we had been playing soft lullaby music on repeat, and we could see on the baby monitor that she was still up, so eventually we turned off the music, and then she stopped tossing and turning and started snoozing, Thata's crazy. Loving the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit. It really is much nicer viewing images in hand rather than on a computer screen. Only wish I could do ratings within the photos app. Sure would be nice. Also would be nice to be able to create and edit albums on the iPad. Maybe someday. Trying to plow through the leftovers in the fridge. Got all the meat from the last BBQ.

For a new project at work I'm playing with Google Visualizations, and loving the Annotated Time Line. It's the same visual chart used for Google Finance, except you get to use your own data. Seriously pretty cool. Very very polished. Tempted to start using it for everything. Also looking at flot, if it turns out that I can't use the Google stuff. Wait and see. Tracy worked the evening shift today so she brought Lucy over this morning. I got to pick her up and take care of her for the evening. Starting to think Lucy can only go to bed when Tracy's around. I spent about an hour trying to get Lucy to go down, and after Tracy got off work, showed up, held Lucy for a little, tried to feed her a little, and then she went right to bed. No troubles at all. Lucy's nowhere near an overnight schedule, at least it seems she isn't. A couple nights ago she slept from like 10pm to 5am. But last night and maybe 2 nights before, she was up at 2:30am for a feeding. Used my lunch break today to run a couple errands. It's still pretty cool being able to run an errand like that on my lunch break. Also, birds seem to hang out on the skylight on the doghouse on the deck. Kind of crazy. First time we heard scratching, sounded like animals inside the house, turns out they're just hanging out on the little stairway doghouse. Odd.

Just realized that I'm on daddy duty for the upcoming entire long weekend. Tracy's working the weekend and the holiday. So that should be interesting. Brought Lucy over to Grandma Daycare early this morning since I had to get back for my early work meeting. Weather seems pretty weird. Cool, at least for the 10-15 minutes I'm outside a day. Odd considering the earlier heat this summer and it's now almost July. Go figure. NBA Free Agency started, and it's kind of crazy because LeBron is available. Crazy. I would have hoped Chicago would go after Bosh hard, because they should have like 2 years ago. Then once they have Bosh in hand, try and work it to get Lebron or Wade. But Bosh first. We'll see if that's what they do. Seems like the smart move. Otherwise, I'd love to see a couple different superteams form. Also would like to see a bunch of 1 year super deals. Guns for hire. And players opting for shorter contracts, instead of longer guaranteed monies. Creates that hype every 2-3 years. Makes things interesting. Makes teams wary, keeps them on their toes.

Feels like a Friday. Tracy's off tomorrow, so that's part of the reason why. Also picked up strawberry cream cheese croissants and chocolate frosted donuts for breakfast from Treasure Island after dropping Lucy off is morning. Feel like that's a Friday thing to do. Otherwise, working away. A little tired since I was on night feeding duty. Lucy took almost a full four ounces. Also, when she gets one of her arms free from the SwaddleMe, I tucked it back in. Seemed to work to keep her sleeping. Had a good meeting at work. Always nice to have one of those. Decided to go ahead and buy Eureka Season Pass for the upcoming fourth season and started picking up the remaining season 3 episodes I didn't have already. Also been buying and reading eComics. Right now using Comics for Kick-Ass and Wanted, Marvel for Runaways, DC for Sandman finally, even though Case raved about it in high school, and IDW for G.I. Joe. Been trying to hold myself back go only new issues once a week. But it's awesome. Wish I could get me some Scott Pilgrim. Think I might be spending a bit too much rough the iTunes Store.

I don't know how single parents do it. I was in charge of Lucy all weekend days while Tracy was working. I don't know how my mom does it. It's really hard. And tiring. Although me staying up late to rewire the AV Rack probably doesn't help any. But Lucy seems to be eating more, and interacting more, when she isn't eating or sleeping or crying about not eating and sleeping. So there's like 30 minutes or so there where she responds to stuff. Very cute. And something I should be getting on video. Tracy's much better at making the baby talk. I, of course, am much more reserved. Should strike a nice balance between the two of us. Saw the Cases this weekend, in town for Lisa's sister's graduation party. They came out on Friday afternoon/night, hang out with Lucy and Tracy who had the day off. Got to grill for the second time this year, and first time bringing out the sofa cushions for the deck. That was nice. And there's still so many spiders up there. It's seriously crazy. Like Arachnophobia the movie crazy. Went to dinner with them and Jespy and Missy and Espy's sister and family for Jespy's combined birthdays. Got to see my first iPhone 4. Couldn't check out FaceTime because no WiFi in the restaurant, and couldn't really browse to any websites to check the Retina Display because signal was bad in the restaurant. Also got to show off my iPad. Tit for tat. Left Lucy with the in-laws. Also saw Eclipse, and the theater wasn't even that packed. The rest of the weekend didn't leave the house. Got a Powerline ethernet adapter, which I'm using instead of Extending the network with the Airport Extreme to the living room. So much more stable. No idea if it's faster, but it never goes down. Tempted to get a couple more to use instead of the network extending I'm doing. Also, VPN to work is much more stable on my work machine, so I'm gonna try going back to that solely for work. Seems pretty solid tonight. Started rewatching Eureka from the beginning.

Really need to restock the pantry. With all the food we've been getting from my mom and others, haven't really needed to go grocery shopping at all, so now we don't even have any processed foods to eat, no dry goods, no canned meats, it's a little depressing. Healthy, but depressing. Wondering if anything's wrong with the wiring going into our condo. Landline's been on the fritz since Monday. Work's ok after resetting at the Network Interface Device, and I hope I'm not disconnecting anyone else's phone service in the building when I do that. But then it was staticky, and dropped out again. Then I could call, but the phone wouldn't ring, but I could pick it up and answer. So odd. And I misread the troubleshooting instructions and didn't bring a phone down to test from the NID. Maybe tomorrow. Otherwise, back to work. Got my mom's iPad today, and I still have to activate it and set it up to give it to her tomorrow.

Lucy's 2 month checkup went great. My mom came with, since Tracy was working, so at was nice. Lucy's a healthy 11 lbs., 3 oz and a nice long 23". So that's awesome. Everything continues to check out great. She even took her vaccines like a champ, 2 shots and one oral dose. Next up is the four month checkup in September. Only other news is that Bryan's in town for the week and crashing at the old place for a few days. Good to see him again. Only stipulation? He has to make us dinner. Including my mom. So that'll be awesome. Also looks like Tracy and I will get to go out Friday night to see Chuck at Piece. That should be rather interesting, and loud. Also supposed to go to Green City Market on Saturday with my parents. Really expecting either someone to recognize them or them to recognize a vendor since there's a few stalls out from our neck of e woods. It'll be amusing, it always is. I'm aware there's some doubling up of tweets on Lucy's website. I'd actually rather have her on a different service, as soon as I find out how to get Storytlr set back up.

Sorry, missed a day because I was too full last night. The only stipulation for Bryan crashing at the old place was that he had to cook us dinner, and that was Thursday night. He showed up around 11:30am, did prep work and cooked and cleaned, and left to run some errands around 3:30pm. Brisket was awesome. 2 hours on the grill, 4 hours to finish in the oven. A very good jicama salad, quite possible y my favorite dish of the night, and a spicy chipotle potato salad. Awesome. I still feel like my family came out ahead in this deal. Also had the Russells over, including Gavin, so that was interesting seeing how little our place is ready for a mobile baby. And of course, lots of baby related discussions going on. Very nice. Really nice. Family night. Friday i had a haircut, and my parents were nice enough to babysit Lucy for the night. So Tracy and I got to go out for a nice dinner at Feast, then over to Piece to see Chuck play. And got to see some old fiends, namely Joe Little and Kate Mazurek. Nice to see them and all the other ultimate related folks. But didn't stay out too late, since Chuck went on late, and the sound setup wasn't all that conducive to actually hearing all the parts of the band. But we ended up leaving at the same time as Chuck's family, about 2 songs in, so that's not that bad. Hitting up Green Ciy Market with my parents, and might try and make an appearance at Sandblast on Saturday. Got to use my iPad as I had inteded, RDP over VPN over 3G on the table at Piece. Super easy, fast and relatively unobtrusive. Random software rave: f.lux. It adjusts the temperature of the display based on time of day. I didn't think it would make that much of a difference. It does.

Saturday slept in, since Lucy was sleeping at Grandma's. Very nice. Can't wait until Lucy can sleep through the night. Hopefully sooner rather than later. Wandered down to Green City Market, but forgot a bottle for the formula we did bring to feed Lucy, so cut our stay short. We also went down pretty late, so it was picked over. Did manage to do some more work via 3G iPad And no one recognized my parents, and we didn't see any vendors from my old county. Disappointing. Stopped by Treasure Island for some foodstuffs, which Tracy didn't use until Sunday night. Managed to finish off most of the leftovers, and threw the rest that was molding out. Been watching a lot of Eureka, and some of the episodes that deal with the daughter of the sheriff, well, starts to hit a little close to home now. Sunday stayed at home, trying to get Lucy back on some semblance of a routine, but not sure if that happened. Monday back to work. Started doing my right foot exercises again since it's been acting up again in the mornings. Firure a week or two of that before I try running again. Been watching my bandwidth usage through the Comcast data usage tool. I'm actually a little worried about July, mostly I'm guessing because of the large iTunes Store purchases lately. Maybe I should hold off on the Mad Men seasonn4 HD pass. Or maybe not.

Just one of those days. Managed to figure out how to transcode movies taken with the GF1 via Handbrake to a format acceptable for iPhoto and thus syncing to the iPad and iPhones. So can finally start posting movies of Lucy too. Also finally tried to get storytlr back up and running locally so I can get Lucy.Abando.com transferred over. Will be nicer. Made a garbage and recycling run, i.e. took the bags down four flights of stairs. Good timing too since the recycling actually got picked up today. Went over to mom's for dinner, and she's making dinner tomorrow night since Tracy's on the night shift, and she also said she's making dinner on Thursday. It's really nice. And when we go over for dinner, we don't even have to do the dishes. Oh, finally got some Keen Coronado Sandals today, in black because the brindle is discontinued, and actually the style is probably discontinued as well since the official Keen site didn't even have them in rock, and sent me elsewhere. But now that I've got them, I wish I had gotten the brindles. My new favorite sandal, even though they really aren't sandals at all, more like holey shoes.

Didn't drop off Lucy this morning, instead got to pick her up and dinner from my mom's. Otherwise another Wednesday. I think I know why they discontinued the Keen Coronado Sandal, it rubs my left pinky toe knuckle raw. Figure I just need to callus up, and have no problems. Kind of hot out today. Played movies in the background while working. Different than when Tracy listens to the radio. Started with Predator, Real Genius, then moved to Running Man because of Arnold, then over to Demolition Man keeping in the theme of distopian futures. And plowing through more Eureka episodes. Made affogato today. Forgot how good plain vanilla ice cream can be. Oh, also got notice that AT&T U-verse is now available for us. Priced it out and cones out roughly equivalent to what we pay now, but probably slower internet service, maybe only upload though. Total Home DVR sounds pretty cool. But waiting and seeing on it for a bit. A little difficult to schedule a service switch since we both work from home.

At some point since I started my Eureka marathon, Tracy got sucked in. She was slightly annoyed that I had started watching an episode without her. Kind of nice that she likes it now though. Slightly worried about my data usage for Comcast. Right now hallway through the month, we're about halfway through our 250 GB allotment. Which seems crazy, but I did get a bunch of HD episodes of Eureka and Mad Men on sale, and theres the $4.99 iTunes Store movie deals. Enough to make me contemplate AT&T U-verse since they supposedly don't have caps. And the crazy thing? All of it is data that I've purchased legally. So I'll be annoyed if they throttle us or something. Apple is having some sort of press conference tomorrow about the iPhone 4. Most people think it's about the antenna and signal issues, I'm actually hoping they pull a John Galt and withdraw from the market. What would we have if not for Apple and the iPhone? Every phone has a physical keyboard of some kind, and still using java applets. And maybe Android is the market leader, instead of appearing to be a follower. Maybe they'll have a lineup of current cell phones on the market and show how to hold all of them wrong. But just have to wait and see. How about FaceTime standard adoption? FaceTime client for Android? Managed to get storytlr up and running again. Need to figure out dns before rolling it out. Dinner at my mom's tonight. And on daddy duty for nighttime feedings last night and tonight, because of Traxy's work schedule. Now gotta update the iPad to 3.2.1 and the iPhone to 4.0.1.

Yay. Weekend. Another day working from home. Brought Lucy over to Grandma's. Totally spaced this morning though. I did the nightly feeding, and Tracy worked early this morning, so when I awoke and didn't see Tracy in bed, and Lucy crying a little in the baby monitor, I was a little out of it. Had another ham, egg & cheese English muffin for breakfast. Leftover lumpia and a meatloaf sandwich for lunch. Took off a little early from work to pick up Lucy and hit up Paciugo Gelato. Feels like it's been a while. Good stuff. Wish I could have lots of it, just go through like 2-3 piccolos, just getting up and getting another after finishing one. Tracy made pork and beans, at least her version of it: pork chops, caramelized onions, and green beans. Switched over DNS for abando.com to DynDNS. Means more control. Which is exciting. And probably need to look into cloud hosting again. Maybe EC2 again? But new lucy.abando.com should be going up shortly. Just have to make it look pretty. Hitting up Green City Market tomorrow, gonna try and go early. Maybe hit up Target too. Tracy works Sunday so I'm on Daddy duty. Thinking of making a Crisp run.

Back to the Green City Market Saturday morning. Didn't get my preferred parking spot in front of delightful pastries, but did get a spot on the magical stretch of Lincoln that is free, as far as we could tell. Went to delightful for breakfast and pastries, and didn't even realize I had left my man bag there when we went to the market until Tracy wanted to take some photos of Lucy. But they had it behind the counter, so no worries. Saw my first up close and personal viewing of aniPad in public; the lady at the next table over had one in an Apple case reading with breakfast. Went to Target afterwards and saw Megan and Tony there, because that's how we roll now. Leftovers for eating mostly. Walked down to Crisp with Lucy on Sunday afternoon to pick up some Seoul Sassy chicken. Yum. Otherwise hung out on daddy duty. Took a nice nap with Lucy on the recliner in her roon. Got storytlr all set up, you can check it out at prn.eric.abando.com, and will be switching lucy.abando.com to it as soon as I make it pretty enough. Also planning on posting some videos to YouTube via Lucy's account. Getting more footage since she's starting to smile, giggle, and laugh, and going and cooing too. Very very cool. Lucy hung out most of today as well on Tracy's day off, so that was nice while I was working.

Apparently time to go back on a diet/exercise/weight loss program. Tracy's getting serious, so time for me to support her in this endeavor. And it's something I should be doing anyway. So here comes some hunger induced irritability, some whining of soreness from exercise, and a decrease in talk about breakfast pastries and trips to Paciugo Gelato. Ugh. Not looking forward to it. I'm in for overnight Lucy feedings for the second night in a row. So after this means bedtime for me. I've been slacking on the Lucy website too, not quite keeping up with the updates or timely photo uploads, I'll blame the photo uploads on the fact that I can't upload RAW from the iPad after using the Apple Camera Connector Kit. of course, maybe I should start shooting RAW+JPEG, if all I'm looking for is speed of sharing, and I'm not even tinkering with the photos right now. I'd just get annoyed with the dupes on import to iPhoto. Oh well, guess I'll give it a shot. Next up for the new Lucy website is handling video. Gotta find an iOS friendly embed, then pick a service. Probably just go with YouTube.

Pointed lucy.abando.com to the storytlr version. I like it because it's actually timeline based on when things happened, like when Flickr photos were taken, not posted. Also going with Youtube for video posts, mostly because I found out how to make it iOS friendly. Which was necessary. I'd rather have gone with Vimeo, but embed didn't work automatically for iPhones and iPads. Next up is actually posting some videos, which requires some work in iMovie to edit some clips. Gonna be interesting to try it out via Remote Desktop. Would be nice if I had a fast and pretty iMac to do photo and video work on. Oh well. Tried out a new method for sleeping for Lucy, which didn't work out at all. Trying to get away from the SwaddleMe, but it just works. Maybe try over the weekend? Mom made dinner again, country ribs. Watched another episode of Eureka, and now I think anything we watch will be new for me.

storytlr isn't updating via launchd on the Mac mini. That's annoying. Having to figure out what the problem is, making sure it's available, worrying about security issues. All annoying. But probably isn't a service out there that'll take care of those things yet allow unfettered accesss to the box. But if there was, I wonder what the pricing would be on it. Took a long lunch today and met up with Russell at Duke of Perth. I like that place, especially the quiet on a Thursday afternoon. Rode my bike down, and in a show of how out of shape I am, my legs are sore because of it. That's just sad. Picked up Lucy after work, stopped by Treasure Island, of which I am the foursquare mayor. Got to do the bedtime routine with Lucy, except she wasn't really into it at all. But she still falls asleep by 9. So we got that going for us. Skipped dinner because of the late and big lunch.

Go figure, I'm actually typing this up on my MacBook. Tracy's been using the iPad, or poop machine as we like to call it, to play games. Current addiction is Harbor Master. Wondering when she'll actually ask for her own. Starting to get so used to f.lux that I'm wishing the iPad had it too. It's super nice. Almost makes me sleeping working on the computers. Friday met up with David Morse for lunch down at Xoco. Good to see him. Brought back some churros for Tracy. Also was really hot out that day. Got some supplies from Amazon, 3 different shipments, 2 of coffee for the Keurig, 1 of stage 2 Born Free nipples. I think it was 2 different UPS trucks and 1 FedEx truck in the morning. All free shipment. And ordered on Wednesday. There was also that giant storm, really loud rain. Figured Green City Market would be muddy, and didn't want to drag Lucy though the rain and mud, so just walked down to Nettlehorst French Market. Weather cooperated, so ventured down Broadway, stopping at Radio Shack, Threadless and World Market before settling in at Wilde for lunch. Yummy Irish Breakfast. Just had leftovers for dinner. Sunday ventured out to the 'burbs for a BBQ at the in-laws. Wanted to do some shopping on the way out except Lucy wasn't very happy about it, so just ran in and got things at Babies 'R Us (Large SwaddleMe), Home Depot (keychain garage door opener), Dominick's (bread for bruschetta), and White Castle (lunch). Also been trying to figure out how to transcode the GF1 videos to a universal format for iPhone and iPad. Hasn't been easy. Very annoying even. I want to keep the home movies in iPhoto, which I think causes the problem, because the same movies imported to iTunes, sync and play no problem, but throw the "movie could not be played" error when synced through iPhoto. I probably should just edit them in iMovie, but it would be nice to have a quick little process to get them on the iOS devices for quick sharing. Finally vacuumed today. Been procrastinating on that for a while, but when we got home last night and Tracy immediately started sneezing and oozing snot, I figured it was time.

So we implemented a back only sleeping policy for Lucy, which mostly applies to Grandma's daycare, but also to ourselves. Apparently something we should have been enforcing all along. Especially hard because of how well she used to sleep on her tummy at Grandma's. Well, after laying down the rule on Monday morning, she really hasn't been sleeping much during the day, instead of the sleeping all the time like before. So besides trying to get her used to sleeping on her back again consistently, we're also starting to sleep train, or at least try to. Which we've been trying, or at least paying some attention to for a month or so. We try and have her last meal as close to bedtime as possible, which we think is currently 9pm. Last night she went down then and didn't wake up until 5am, which led to an actual argument between Tracy and I. Tracy thought I should have put Lucy back down after her feeding as if it was a night feeding, while I thought Lucy was done sleeping for the night, and it was her wake up time. Could go either way, especially since Lucy isn't all that scheduled right now. But Lucy's definitely looks more tired, seems crankier, fussier. Although it also seems like she's growing, longer. She actually feels like she's getting a little leaner. I've also taken to putting socks on her when her feet get cold. And the new SwaddleMe is still a little too big, so it's just as easy to get her arms free at some point in the night. Besides baby stuff, rented Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief and Hot Tub Time Machine from Redbox. First time in a while for that. Worked a lot today too, well into the night. Trying to also be a little better on snacking, and eating healthier. Helps there's no desserts in the house.

Spent pretty much all day thinking it was Thursday. But it wasn't. Didn't have to do nighttime feedings, or even morning feeding, since Tracy had the day off. So I got to sleep in, but because I didn't get to sleep until late, well, kind of wasted that bonus. Whoops. Summer's just flying by, when I realize that July ends this weekend. Crazy. Changed my haircut appointment to Friday instead of Sunday. Returned movies to Redbox. Didn't get a snack or a cookie or anything. I do get to have pastries for breakfast tomorrow. It's our once a week treat. Missing sweets a bit. Oh, installed Flipboard on the iPad today. Even though I don't have it personalized with Facebook and Twitter, it's still one of the coolest things ever. Seriously like living in the future. Magazine from online sources. From multiple online sources. Very slick. Something I'd actually want to pay for. Watched My Boys and Eureka. Both great shows. The flashbacks to NU dorm life? Funny stuff. Matches up with my timeline pretty well. Spot on. Tiny little backpack indeed. Also noticed I got defriended by Meghan on Facebook. That's funny. Amusing. No idea when that happened. Reminds me that I was also defriended by high school Rebecca. Odd that it was also timed with having kids. Weird. Not that I interact on Facebook at all. I just lurk there. That might be why. Oh well.

Falling back into the bad habits of working better at night than during the day. Great for productivity, but don't think I'm supposed to be doing that. Love getting warm blueberry cream cheese croissants from Treasure Island. So good. Best I've had? Possibly. The ones from Specialty's, which I might have to get when I go in to work on Monday, those are more like danishes. Still good, but different. Random observation: I was a slow walker. I meander. Take my time. But after Lucy was born, I tend to be more direct, faster, purpose driven in my walking. It's odd. As far as I can tell having a child was the reason. I wonder why? Speaking of Lucy, she's getting marginally better at napping on her back. Up to 25 minutes even. On pillows in the play pen area. Looking forward to the unofficial weigh-in tomorrow, because she's definitely getting bigger. As for videos of her, I've decided to screw it and just make 2 copies, one for iPhones and one for iPads. Better than spending my time trying to figure out all the different x264 options to send to Handbrake to make it look good. And space is still relatively cheap. Also posted Lucy's first Youtube video. Shows up on her website according to date/time posted, not actual date/time of the video. So I'll have to adjust that after they get imported to Storytlr. Ended up just using iMovie to post it. Might do some editing to post others, but that takes effort. Had an affogato today at home. Good stuff. In-laws came in to scout out where they'll do the substitute daycare when my parents are out of town. Had dinner over there. Of course, didn't take any photos.

Out of the blue, got an email from Case Saturday morning that he was in town. So we made plans and met up with him and his family (Jenny and Sylvia) and their friends they were staying with up at Great Seas Restaurant on Lawrence. Great to see him, catch up a little. Funny to actually see an old friend, can't even remember the last time we saw each other in person, but now we have wives and kids. Crazy. Would have been crazier if we somehow managed to meet up in my parents basement. That would have been a trip. Friday not too exciting, made our weekly trip down to Paciugo Gelato for our fix. I got an affogato, Tracy got her new favorite, black sesame. Good stuff. I spent the weekend watching Lucy since Tracy was working. The verdict on the back only sleeping a week in? Ok. Getting better, sometimes, other times not so much. Saturday she slept for 2 hours in the morning, and maybe a couple 30 minute naps in the afternoon, but Sunday only 30 minute, maybe one 1 hour nap at one point. Trying to do some sleep training, tried the whole 1-2 hours of wakefulness only today, and that worked ok. She's still sleeping through most of the night, only getting up for 1 or at most 2 feedings. 4am seems to be a fairly regular wake up time for her. Been watching Warehouse 13 and Eureka via the Apple TV. Haven't really watched cable TV in a while. Kind of nice. Gets annoying going through commercials when I do. Actually going in to work tomorrow, and then have a baptism class in the evening. Weather's been pretty nice, haven't used our AC in the last couple of days, just opening up front and back doors to get nice airflow through the condo.

For those readers that have always wanted comments, well, you kind of have it. You can comment on prn.eric.abando.com, my storytlr site. I should probably back populate with Daily Doses and Musings. More stuff to talk about. Looking forward to hearing from the 2 of you. Going to work was interesting. They did construction in the office last week, so now it's a bunch of cubicles. Rather interesting cubicles too, not I guess cubes, but like triangular pods, with 2 people to a side. Should get nice and loud in there, with everyone on phones. Nice to see the people that are still around. Even met a couple new people. Didn't get to eat all the food I want to eat when I head down there, just McDonald's for breakfast and a chicken parmesan sandwich from Rivers To Go for lunch. No Cupcake Counter, Dunkin Donuts, or Specialty's. Thinking I might head down again next week to get my fill. Went to the baptism prep class at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Enlightening. Still have to pick a date though. Have to coordinate with the godparents. Class took a little longer than we expected, so we grabbed a quick bite at Chipotle before picking up Lucy from Grandma's and putting her to bed at home. I'm on night duty this week since Tracy's got the early shift.

So Lucy slept through the night last night. Guess who didn't? This guy. She started making some noise like she was going to wake up around 1am. So I sort of waited it out in bed, checking every 5 minutes or so when I thought I heard some movement. Around 1:30am I figured she was gonna get up soon, so might as well prep and give Tracy some peace and quiet, so I turned off the monitor, and went out to the living room to use her laptop to monitor and also to get the bottle ready. 2am, movement, but Lucy never opens her eyes. I'm still expecting her to get up. I finally call it quits at 3am, because even if she did move her arms, or grunt a little, or suck on her fingers, she didn't wake up. Until 7am. And she was all cute and cuddly and quiet when she woke up. No grumpy, cranky, crying for a bottle. Just chill. So weird. Like a completely different baby. Of course she was back to her normal self when I picked her up this evening. It was croissants day, so picked some up from Treasure Island for breakfast, along with a bunch of movies from Redbox. Been reading a bunch of Star Wars comics from a torrent I downloaded a long time ago, using CloudReader on the iPad. Plowed through the Thrawn Trilogy and Dark Empire and Dark Empire II. Found out I need to read Empire End to finish that trilogy. Comics on the iPad are great.

Congrats to Katie Gregory, nee Kelly, on providing the first comment. Made me go in a tweak the theme so it looks better. Speaking of which, Lucy slept through the night again. This time even earlier, from about 8pm to 5:30am. Trending? Of course we're throwing a monkey wrench into it all by taking her to Jason's wedding this weekend in Duluth. We'll see if she adjusts accordingly, or not. If so, she'll be better at taking environmental changes than her daddy. Tried to beat the storm this morning walking her over to Grandma's daycare. But got caught anyway about 3/4ths of the way there. Lucy stayed pretty dry, as the carseat/Bob combo has some pretty good hoods. Almost like a bubble. Went over for dinner as well. Oh, my mom had to go back to Woodstock for some errands, so my dad provided day care today. Did a pretty good job. Watched some Eureka tonight. Trying to do some work at night, but not really getting much done. Too tired. Had another affogato at home today for a snack. That's good stuff. But picking between that or a latte, well, I wanted both but figured that'd be a bad idea. A little too much caffeine.

Stayed up way too late last night, trying to finish up a project for work. First time actually doing ajax stuff. Current javascript libraries make it super easy. It's actually really cool. Could totally see how that simple tech makes the web a real app development arena. JQuery, in case you were wondering. Lucy slept through yet another night. That makes 3 in a row. I keep thinking it's a trick, and she's just lulling into this concept of full nights sleep, and then she'll turn around and say Gotcha, and go to up every 2 hours. I'm just waiting for that shoe to drop. I still get up anyway around 5-5:30, thinking she'll be waking up soon. I need to edit the movies that record her sleeping. It's pretty funny seeing her scoot around over the course of a night. Picked her up a little early today since my parents are jetting off to Poland for cousin Ron's wedding. And my family's getting ready for our first road trip together. Should be interesting trucking Lucy in the car all the way up to Duluth for Jason's wedding this weekend. Hopefully she won't be little miss cranky pants. Hopefully the trip won't screw up with her full nights sleeping trend. Hopefully.

Drove to Duluth on Friday for Jason's wedding on Saturday and back home on Sunday. Drove the whole thing, which actually wasn't bad at all. I even got to listen to NPR, which really is my preferred driving experience. Borrowed my dad's Lexus Hybrid SUVish, which was nice and smooth. And Lucy was a rock star on the way up, through the crazy weekend, but then not so much on the way home. I guess there's only so much she can take. She slept 5 hours before needing to make a first stop on the way up, then only 1 more about an hour out of Duluth. Ended up going straight to the rehearsal dinner at a pretty cool barn setup for those types of occasions. Tracy was a little disappointed that it wasn't an outdoor farm table dining experience. Still good food though. Tracy also matched my outfits to Lucy all weekend long. Photos coming shortly. Also Lucy got to meet her Uncle Alan for the first time at rehearsal. Thought she was going to fall off the sleeping through the night wagon, but even with the 9:30pm-10pm bedtimes, she still managed to sleep until 6:30 and 7:30 in the mornings. Of course her first night back at home, she got up at 1am and then at 6am. Oh well. And she made us stop 4 times on the way home, for feedings and changings. Duluth seems like a nice place, but it was a lot colder than I thought it'd be. Hopefully we dressed warm enough. Wedding was beautiful and Reception was fun, if a little wet from the rain. Great to see the Schanz's, and special thanks to Renee for holding Lucy so Tracy and I could have dinner at the reception. So it was a long weekend, and then Monday morning our internet's on the fritz, so Tracy has to go in to work, and I had to work late since it didn't actually come back up until 11:45 or so. Stupid Comcast. Now I'm looking at getting additional internet service just for our work machines. Trying to figure out if I can keep Comcast is we get AT&T U-Verse as well, or maybe just go cheaper with AT&T DSL.

Been pretty busy, and actually chose sleep over updating the last couple of nights. But I figure it's about time. Been having continued issues with Comcast. Tuesday it was down again, so Tracy had to go in, yet again, but a tech came out around noon, and actually found a problem: loose connection at the house junction and loose and leaky disconnected cable at the pole. After he fixed those, it was solid for the rest of the day and night. Except when I was getting ready for bed, and actually trying to update. There were more issues again, but not with the cable modem not having a signal, rather network issues somewhere upstream. But right before I went to bed, it was back up and running. When I checked in the morning while feeding Lucy, it was back to being unresponsive. And calling in to Comcast heard a message that they're doing network something that should be done by 5am; this was at 6:30am. But looking at their Network Health page and it wasn't displaying any outages. So Tracy went in again, and so did I, which was nice, because we had an all hands meeting and they provided coffee and donuts. So that was cool. And when I got home the AT&T DSL Modem had been delivered, so I set that up. So now we have a backup system, which hopefully is fast enough for us to work remotely, but at least we've finally got something. And it's a fairly low cost. So Today, Thursday, we both get to work from home, as the Comcast connection is nice and stable. But I've been pretty crazy busy with work. Lucy's still not back to sleeping through the night. We've got fruit flies again, so I've set up the trap again. Also got ants again, so put out another trap on Tracy's side of the office, and they've been eating away, so hopefully they'll all be gone by tomorrow. And I'll be in the office tomorrow and Monday. So I guess I get to eat more unhealthy stuff again.

Between Lucy and work, it's been pretty crazy. She's still not back to sleeping through the night, getting up at least once, maybe between 12:30am and 3:30am, maybe 4 or 4:30, but up again by 6:30am. One thing I finally figured out Sunday morning: she only likes feeding when you hold her on the left side of your body. Otherwise, she falls asleep, or cries so much she can't eat. Crazy. Annoying. The AT&T DSL came in handy when it looked like Comcast went down again, and Tracy was working on Sunday, so just switched her over to it. Worked pretty well, wasn't noticeably slower for her, so already worth it. Just have to set it up so we can just plug Comcast vs. AT&T easily. For the office anyway. The ant problem near the office seems to have gone away, guess the trap/bait did it's work. Also, Apple Cider vinegar for the fruit fly trap works like a charm, and haven't seen many of those anymore. Just the odd straggler. Being in the office is interesting. Not too shabby. However, I just got my work at home VPN issues worked out, so I'm missing having those dual screens, instead of the MacBook screen I'm working with now. Had Jespy over for the Air and Water show on Saturday. Ended up getting delivery ribs because we talked about it. After today, should be back at home for a while.

Wow, a whole week passes. So went in to work on Monday. And seems like I've been working a lot this past week, not to mention the previous weekend. And again probably this Sunday anyway. Combined with Lucy not sleeping through the night yet, it's been, well, a weird week. A couple times this week I'd get up for the nightime feeding and be unable to get back to bed, so start working at 4am. Seriously, crazy. I did finally upload photos from Jason & Wendy's wedding in Duluth to Lucy's Flickr finally. And might have talked Tracy into letting me get a new computer, strictly for photos. RAW processing on an underpowered machine over Remote Desktop is painfully slow. To the point that I don't look forward to it at all. FlickrStackr is a pretty good tool for Flickr uploading from the iPad, but then I can't get them over to the iPhone. And I have to use a different interface to get them to MobileMe. Tracy doesn't want another screen in the house, so she doesn't want an iMac, and would rather have me get a MacBook Pro. Since it'd be for photos, I'd only be happy with at least the 15", and I wouldn't want the 17" because it's too big. But I'd rather have a 21" iMac. So I made a cardboard size mockup so we could try and find a spot for it in the house. And we're hitting up an Apple Store this weekend so I can play with both to see if I could live with a bigger laptop instead. I could see how it could be in handy, but then again, that's one of my reasons for getting the iPad. Comcast finally seems pretty stable. We've had the "office" on DSL all week and it's been nice and rock solid, but I've missed my 20/4. Would be hard to give that up when switching to something else. Oh, joined Netflix again. Started Watching instantly, looking forward to watching via the Wii. It's really pretty useful. Oh, also tried setting up an additional Netgear Powerline AV Ethernet Adapter Kit XAVB101 set. But not working all that well on the master bedroom side of the condo. Seriously? I can't wait until I can run Cat 5e or 6 or fiber, just nice fat cable runs to all locations a real house. Been reading Scott Pilgrim, released as an eComic finally. Very cool.

Monday. First day of the week. And already it's pretty rough. Lucy's still not back to sleeping through the night. I'm wondering if she'll ever get back to that one week before we screwed it all up. She's eating more though, so maybe a full belly will keep her down for the night. Fingers crossed. So Saturday went to Oakbrook Center for some shopping, and stopped by the Apple Store to check out iMac and Macbook Pros, and it was crazy busy. I had to go in alone, couldn't bring in Tracy and Lucy in the stroller. Super crazy busy. Finally got Tracy an office chair for work. Put that together Sunday morning. Finally watched Avatar Saturday night. Also got the Netflix Wii Play instantly disc. That is amazing. Streaming video on demand? The future. It's here. Sunday went out to Orland Park for more shopping and to visit the in-laws, since they're leaving to visit Baniella for a while. Walked around the mall with Lucy in the Baby K'tan, which she loved. Much better than a carseat/stroller. She even managed a nap for a bit. That Apple Store was a little quieter, and managed to show Tracy that the 21" iMac wasn't that big, so she agreed, and I ordered it this morning. So hopefully that means quicker posting of videos and photos. On the ride back in yesterday Lucy cried the whole time. I'm guessing she's done with the carseat for a while. We need to give her a break from that.

So the other day, Tracy got invited to play Words with Friends by Lisa. Then I got it. And then I got hooked. And then I lost to Tracy 4 games in a row. Then I found a scrabble cheater website, and then I won the 5th game, and now I won't use the website again. And now I'm playing games against April and Lisa. Not cheating in those games either. And started doing crosswords again. Which is funny because I'm horrible at word games of any kind. So I fully expect to keep losing as long as I'm not cheating. Lucy still not sleeping through the night. Found out you get a return fee for bringing back Oberweis milk bottles back to Treasure Island. Also had a glass of chocolate milk with lunch. Made myself an english muffin ham, egg & cheese breakfast sandwich. Went over to my mom's for dinner (chicken, risotto, asparagus). Watched Eureka, My Boys, and some Netflix Coupling. When I update 2 days in a row, I run out of things to say.

New iMac (Mid 2010) shipped tonight. Yay. Last desktop Mac that was actually used as a desktop and not a server? I think a Cube. Seriously. Laptops ever since. Got my Twelve South Compass iPad Mobile Stand today. Really really useful. Got one for my mom too. More useful around the house than the Apple iPad Case. Tracy had the day off, so she took care of Lucy all day. They went to Green City Market and took a long walk back through the zoo and the parks. Ate leftovers for meals today. Tracy's working this weekend, so I've got Lucy duty all weekend. For work been playing with jQuery, which is pretty freakin' awesome. Seriously. Very very nice and smooth development. Very polished. Was working on it last night, and only wanted to nap on the couch, but ended up sleeping there for the night. Whoops.

So Lucy didn't get up for a feeding last night. I did get up multiple times to put get her pacifier back in her mouth, which seemed to quiet her down and put her back to sleep. Not sure if that was good or bad. Good for no feeding, bad because of the pacifier. Fingers crossed for tonight. I also ended up sleeping in the recliner in her room, and turning off the baby monitor and letting Tracy sleep some since she had Lucy all day. But otherwise, just another Thursday. Breakfast, lunch, dinner at mom's, working from home.

Seriously, work and Lucy are keeping me busy. Seriously busy. Even my internet consumption is decreasing. And that's really something. So my internet production is way off as well. Biggest news? We seriously started sleep training Lucy. Which means extinction. Which works. Saturday night she cried for 54 minutes. But then she pretty much slept through the night. Work up around 10pm and again around 12am, but no getting, just fuss a little, then back to sleeping. Sunday night only 28 minutes of crying, and sleeping through the night until 4am, and a little crying, sleeping, crying, sleeping. She seems pretty happy when we go get her in the morning, so she doesn't hate us. So that's good. Also we're putting her down around 6:30pm, instead of 8pm like before. But of course we did all these changes at the same time, so not sure what's the most effective change. Oh, and she's been getting up around 7am too. So that's plenty of sleep. Not that I took advantage of it at all this weekend. I stayed up working. Fun stuff, but still working. Loving Netflix Watch Instantly via the Wii. Plowing through Coupling and finished off Season 1 of Better Off Ted. Saturday night I stayed in and watched the sleeping baby and made cookies while Tracy went to a April's brother's homecoming party. Oh, I was on daddy daycare all weekend too. Managed to give Lucy a bath all by myself both days. She's turning into quite the splasher. Also made some fresh pasta for dinner on Saturday night. I think before I was using too much water. This time the dough was almost too dry to work with, but a couple times through the rollers and it worked out. Tracy made a nice fresh mushroom/butter/wine sauce. And we managed to eat dinner together.

Maybe I should just rename it to the Weekly Dose. Oh well. So Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Dr. Marc Weissbluth? Amazing. It works. About 1 week into training, Lucy's pretty much sleeping through the night. If she does wake up, she can get herself back to sleep. And today, she had a 2 hour morning nap and a 2.5 hour afternoon nap. Amazing. And since she goes to bed at 6:45pm, Tracy and I actually have dinner, together, at the dining room table even. It's kind of crazy. New iMac (Mid 2010) showed up on Tuesday, kind of worked on getting it set up, and still working thought Aperture. It's impressive, but lots of capabilities, and there's lots to learn. Just trying to figure out how to organize photos in projects, folders, albums, keywords, libraries. Lots to go on. But some great functionality. Probably going to be a while until I figure out a good workflow I'm happy with. Handbrake transcodes fly on it. We're calling it TEAMac. Also loving the built in SD slot. Except right now I'm typing this up on my old MacBook. Just can't use TEAMac on the couch. Had date dinner Friday night at Wakamono at 5pm. Even then we were late getting Lucy back in time for bedtime, so she went down late, and woke up a couple times that night. Routine is good. Saturday slung her up in the Baby K'Tan and went to Green City Market and delightful pastries. Sunday went out to the Argaos to visit and pick up supplies at the Target. And Monday just hung out at home with the sleeping baby. Kind of nice. Lucy's got her 4 month checkup tomorrow, and I have to go into the office Wednesday through Friday. Thinking about biking, but I'm not sure if I want to show up sweaty.

I really need to try harder to update more frequently. Shouldn't be hard, should it? I've been doing it for 10 years. Another week goes by. Lucy's sleeping through the night. So that's been nice. Her four month appointment went well last Tuesday. Everything checked out. Nice and healthy. She cried for the nurse practitioner, and again when she was getting her vaccinations, but that might have been more about the strangers and/or lying down, than the poking and prodding. I was in the office Wednesday-Friday last week, so got to eat bad fast food. McDonald's 2 days in a row. Cupcakes, donuts, candy. Yum. Although, I think I might have actually lost a little weight. Maybe because I did some walking on my commute, longer than down the hall from the bedroom to the living room. Saturday went to the Lakeview Arts Festival. Sunday tried bringing Lucy to church for the first time, by myself, and she lasted 15 minutes in the pew, and another 30 minutes in the back vestibule, before I had to leave. Oh, and it was by myself because Tracy was working. Went out to dinner Sunday night at Rocks Lakeview with Lucy. A little warmer than we thought, but she cried for a bit then took a nap. Otherwise, another week down.

I'll try and get better at the daily updating again starting next week. Big news is Lucy's getting baptized on Sunday. Al and Nicole flew in, separately, today, since they're going to be the godparents. And headed out to Woodstock tomorrow for Joy's wedding shower. So gonna be a little crazy, as usual. Baptism's going to be pretty low key, which I think is pretty cool. Just immediate family that could make it. And my mom's cooking, or has already cooked all the food, and she came over on Wednesday and cleaned/baby sat. On Tuesday Tracy and Lucy had a girls' lunch with Espy, and then my girls stayed out at my in-laws for a bit. The drive back in was rough though, stuck in traffic, around 2 hours to get back, so well past Lucy's bedtime. Worried that going to sleep an hour off the routine would mean her getting up in the middle of the night, but no apparent affect. She's been sleeping through the night no problem. I'm impressed. And she's always so happy to see us when we get her early enough in the morning. I'll try and remember to bring the camera at some point. Otherwise, I've been watching Skins on Netflix Watch Instantly. I saw Better Off Ted Season 2 is now available. And finished off the first book of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I'm loving Netflix, not so much on the Wii, but I can't get a new Apple TV with Netflix built in because I don't have HDMI running through the wall from the AV Cabinet to the TV. Unless I get a HDMI to Component video Receiver or video processor. Put a cheap SSD in the Mac mini to speed things up and/or cool things down. Also tried putting a Compact Flash card instead of a hard drive in one of the Apple TVs, but that's not so easy.

Lucy joined the Catholic Church officially on Sunday. Other than that, pretty busy weekend. Saturday drove out to Woodstock in the morning, had bad coffee from Dunkin Donuts on the way out. Hung out with the Abandos for the day, pawning off Lucy to her, at the time, future godparents, Al and Nicole. Went to Mass, and hung out in the St. Joseph's Center which has a nursery, which is pretty cool. Had Joy's Wedding shower at the house, which, in retrospect, we should have just gone home, since it wasn't an environment conducive to baby sleep. Lucy went to bed at the usual time, but got up at 8:30pm, then again at midnight and fairly often after that. And with all the activity on Saturday and Sunday, not sure if she really got any good naps in. Was really worried about her sleep last night, but she's back on schedule and slept from 7pm to 6am. So Sunday, drove back into the city, gave Lucy a bath, got her dressed up, and we all walked down to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel for the baptism. Quick and easy. Very nice. We had family over afterwards for a little get together, and my mom provided most of the food, with my mother-in-law providing some of Tracy's favorites. We tried getting Lucy to nap a couple times, but she wouldn't go down, so figured she just needed to socialize. And out in Woodstock on Saturday, also did some tech support, updating iPhone's to 4.1, iPad's to 3.2.2, and plugging their Time Capsule back into the system. Also had to do some work in there, since I'm on Nightly Load duty for the week. Yay.

Trying out a new simple exercise routine, 5x5. 5 different exercises, 5 each, for 5 cycles. Trying out push ups, lunges, pull ups, crunches, squats. Simple, fast, and seems to work. Can't do 5x5 pull ups yet. We'll see how long I keep up with this. Make it through the week? Watched some new 2010 Fall stuff on TV. Raising Hope was just weird, especially since we just had a baby. Running Wilde I like. And I'm late to the party, but Leverage is really pretty cool. I'm enjoying that. And glad to have How I Met Your Mother back, but sad that it's not on iTunes yet, and I have to sit through commercials. Got another set of 4 Flor carpet tiles for Tracy's side of the office. Work's continuing to be really busy. I might have too many things on my plate.

Busy busy busy at work. I have been keeping up on the 5x5's. So that's cool. Looking forward to not doing them this weekend. I'm pretty sore as is. Otherwise, Lucy can roll onto her belly after getting placed in the crib on her back. It explains how she's had 2:30 hour naps this week. Haven't really watched any more new shows yet. Had to take care of Lucy last night when Tracy was working, and had to make dinner too. One other random thing is that I've been trying to do dishes right after dinner instead of waiting until right before bedtime. Also trying to get to dishes throughout the day instead of waiting for them to pile up. I'm also totally hooked on watching Skins. Netflix is seriously pretty cool. And I think I found an option for converting HDMI to Component Video (HDFury). So some point down the road, will get a new Apple TV with Netflix Watch Instantly. Going to take care of Lucy tomorrow since Tracy's working.

The Russells invited us out Saturday morning to Lincoln Square Apple Fest. Tracy thought she had to work, and I didn't want to take Lucy out by myself, but ended up she was working on Sunday. So we took Lucy on her first el trip, Brown Line which ended up being an express from Belmont to Western. Good seeing the Russells. And the fest was unlike any other we were used to, like Ribfest, Northalsted Days, Lakeview Arts Fest. Lots of families, kids, strollers, oh the strollers. Didn't actually stay that long, didn't even get any apples, but did get some apple pie. Ended up getting lunch at Fiddlehead Cafe, which was great. Also noticed there was a Paciugo Gelato on the square, and watching all the families made us wonder if Lincoln Square would be a nice place to move to. Hmmmm. Sunday was daddy day care. Also did some work over the weekend. Finally watched Date Night. Funny stuff. Got up extra early today, cause lately when we get Lucy in the morning she's pooped already. So trying to catch that when it happens. Oh, also tried to make a stout cheesecake with some leftover beer. Tried it this morning and it was awful. Still makes be want a good cheesecake though.

Finally uploaded photos of Lucy from the baptism. About time. YuShan dropped by this morning, dropped off some baby gifts (thanks Jess!), and Tony dropped by this evening to drop off the brothers baby gift as well. Picked up Babies and Iron Man 2 from Redbox, and ended up actually watching Babies tonight because Tracy's been waiting for it. I worked, while Tracy had the day off. My mom gave us food for the week on Monday, so been living out of the fridge. I'm rediscovering my music, even buying some new stuff from old artists that I enjoy. No idea when I'm actually going to get around to listening to it. Still craving cheesecake of some kind. Also still managing to keep up with my 5x5s. Maybe because I'm going to San Diego in a week or so for a wedding.

So all the work that I've been doing, I've either had too much or not doing enough. Kind of got a little slap on the wrist, or whatever the opposite of a gold star might be. A note home to the parents? Not sure. Anyway, Lucy woke up crying extra early this morning at 5am, but after a changing went right back to bed for a couple hours, which had me rushing to make an 8am meeting. Crazy. And then I got to put her to bed tonight, because Tracy might be coming down with something. Lucy pretty much has an off switch at 6:30pm. Like instant sleep when you lay her in the crib, before you even get the sleep sack on her. Crazy. Made a Jewel run this morning, picked up some cheesecake instead of making it, and ended up eating it all for late lunch/early dinner, since I worked through normal lunch hours. Nice and healthy. At least I waited till after I did my 5x5. Forgot to mention that Life Unexpected is now off the DVR list. Plowed through Glee (off iTunes Store), Grey's Anatomy, Raising Hope and Running Wilde. It's hard watching DVR'd TV, with the fast forwarding and the missed 30 seconds at the beginning or the end of episodes. Annoying. But we're pretty on top of the DVR at the beginning of this fall season, only 21% full.

Mostly because of work, i'm going to try GTD again. I'm starting with a fresh Omnifocus database, and will reread the book. Besides using that to keep track of my jet actions i'm also going to block out time periods everyday to work offline. I think those two things will help me enormously. Hopefully. Otherwise, Lucy was a bit of a handful tonight. She ended up crying for about an hour before falling asleep, no idea why. So weird considering how well she's done lately. Turned down an Comcast offer of free HBO for 3 months. Realized there's nothing that we could think of that we'd want to watch, and i've got plenty of stuff from Netflix and iTunes Store to watch. Haven't even started on this season of Mad Men yet, or Rubicon past the pilot. Still plowing through Skins when I can. That's pretty entertaining. Going to Joy's wedding on Saturday out in Cary, but coming back in to sleep and going back out for brunch and shopping on Sunday.

So Lucy's not quite ready for socialization yet. We went to my Ate Joy's wedding this weekend, making it to the ceremony on Saturday afternoon as the flower girls were walking down the aisle. Beautiful ceremony. And congrats to my cousin, and new cousin-in-law. Also got to see some other cousins I hadn't seen for a while, but I was busy trying to keep Lucy from crying, loudly. We grabbed some Wendy's after the ceremony because we were starving, then headed over early to the reception at Dunnhill's. Ended up holding Lucy a little too much probably, and that might be why she was cranky, and maybe the lack of naps as well. She actually fell asleep while being carried twice over the weekend, and it's not something that happens, almost ever anymore. Also, she hates getting changed in public bathrooms. Starts bawling as soon as you enter the bathroom. Not so good. We ended up leaving the reception early, right after the entree at 7pm, since Lucy wasn't too happy. Sunday we went back out for the morning after brunch at Port Edward's, where Lucy was a little happier, enough anyway to get some time with the Abando clan through Grandma. Afterwards did some shopping, mostly to get Tracy a dress for the wedding in San Diego on Friday, and a matching tie for me. So trucking a 5 month old, a fidgety/cranky one at that, all weekend is pretty tiring. But she's so cute it's worth it.

Headed to San Diego tomorrow for a wedding on Friday of one of Tracy's Pharmacy School friends. Crashing at the Cases rental house for a couple days. And leaving Lucy with the grandparents. I think they're going to bring her home to Woodstock and show her off some. And hopefully she'll remember us when we get back. And we don't miss out on anything like first words or steps or crawls or anything. Packed up, hope we don't forget anything. Besides that just working. And besides that, yet related to it, purchased some eBooks from the Amazon Kindle Store because they weren't available from the iBookStore, and just bittorrented the ePub versions. Annoying. Wish I could have just bought them for iBook, but no such luck. Also, hard to believe that iBook used to be a computer I used. Haven't implemented GTD yet, still working through the book again. Also got lots of things I do want to read, and sort of trying the polyreading lifestyle. I think I'm just going to get confused. Bringing the iPad with, so hopefully I'll get some updates in on vacation.

So dropped off Lucy Wednesday morning for 5 days at grandma's. Missing her. Flew out of Midway, no problems. Guy next to me used his iPad pretty muh the entire time, watched Star Trek and something else, some document editing, some PDF viewing. Interesting to see real world usage. After napping, Tracy and I tried to watchIron Man 2, but me transcode didn't have any audio, so we started Hot Tub Time Machine instead. Used a headphone splitter and my compass stand to watch. Very cool. Arrived no problems, but the security line for the Southwest gates was super long, all the way past the baggage claim. Also, Dollar car rental is sketchy, located right next to a strip club, and our car smelled like vomit, with some questionable stains on the roof. Baby wipes and air freshener seems to have taken care of it. Found the Cases rental house, stone's throw from the beach, hung out for a bit, then headed over to La Jolla for a couples date. Very cool restaurant, George's, with a great view, and good food and drinks. Slept on a pullout in an office. Thursday went to the San Diego Zoo for the day. Pretty cool. Weather turned for the better so got to see the sunset, and tried to take some photos. Might have caught a couple good ones. Definitely overpacked. Only three more days until we get to see Lucy again.

Back from San Diego. Not really San Diego though. Stayed mostly in La Jolla Shores, then spent the afternoon on Coronado on Saturday. Our hotel for Saturday was the Tower23, pretty fancy, but in a neighborhood that wasn't for us. Too young and drinky. So last Friday, went to Old Town in San Diego, had some good Mexican food, then got back and dressed for the wedding. Turns out I'm related to the groom (Tracy's classmate from pharmacy school), and saw some other relatives from Woodstock there as well. Small world. Very small world. Wedding and reception were fun. Had some traffic issues getting there and a poor directions by me, and getting to an In-and-Out drive through as they closed for the night. Missed it by 2 minutes. Saturday the Cases and grandparents packed up and left, Tracy and I went kayaking (on a tour), finally got some fish tacos. Then headed to our hotel. Walked the boardwalk for a bit, realized it wasn't for us, then drove down to Coronado. That was more our speed. Went on a search for more carpaccio, found 1500 Ocean, but they didn't have any openings that night, and sat at the bar for a couple drinks, and then we realized we could have just eaten in the bar area. But we made reservations at another Italian place, which wasn't that good, and came back for chocolate at Eno. So a pretty good night, except I started feeling under the weather. And then Sunday felt worse, got some room service for breakfast, packed up, then headed home. Made it back too late to pick up Lucy, so I didn't get to see her until I picked her up today. Tracy went over during her lunch to hang out. Just happy she wasn't scared to see us. And 6 days is too long, and she looks a little different, and makes some different sounds. Crazy. And I'm pretty sick, so hoping I don't get her sick.

So the whole family's sick. Good thing is that Lucy looks like she only has a cold, and not this nasty whatever it is that Tracy and I have. At least I hope she's only got a cold. I actually thought I also had pink eye yesterday, but it seemed to have gone away, maybe mucus drainage from the sinus, or something. But I still took the precautions, and haven't actually given Lucy a kiss since before I left for San Diego. Lucy also has been having some issues getting to sleep the last couple of nights. Last night she went to bed as usual around 7pm, but was up and crying 45 minutes later, and then up and crying till 9pm or so. And then tonight, there was just no going to bed at her previous bedtimes, and she didn't go down until 7:40pm. Of course, hard to tell if it's because of the sickness or something else. Another thing about coming back from San Diego? Came back to fall, at least the leaves changing colors and falling. Not so much with the weather at the beginning of the week, but now, starting to feel like fall. Tried getting chicken noodle soup at Whole Foods earlier this week, but they actually didn't have any. Disappointing. I thought it was one of their staples. Got some via my mom from Melrose Diner and she made some for us today. Been drinking chicken broth, and today started just microwaving water in a measuring cup, and breathing the steam and even drinking plain hot water. It helps.

Hopefully this illness if finally tailing off. It's been flattening me. I actually had to take a sick day last Friday. And now the last couple days, my sinuses have been quite painful. Very annoying, and actually kind of new for me. Got a cough too which has actually exiled me to sleeping on the couch, so Tracy can get a good night's sleep. So new nephew Rafi was in town this weekend, along with Gabe, Sania, and Ella, so we headed out to the Argaos on Saturday after picking up a pumpkin for carving at Puckerville Farms. There was also Mike and Amy's Baby Shower that night, which I actually missed a good portion of as I tried to put Lucy to sleep. Again, she doesn't do well when there's a party going on. Sunday, came in for dim sum at Phoenix Restaurant with the Tongs, then back to the Argaos, then out to Holiday Inn Matteson for Rafi's Moon Party. And Monday the Argaos and Tongs came over for a family dinner from Gino's East. Kind of crazy with Ella running around, Lucy hanging out, and Rafi too. Ella also gets Lucy to laugh a lot, which is awesome. I have managed to get my mom sick, and Lucy is kind of sick, and Tracy's sick, but she probably got it from the same source I did (Thanks Lisa!), but hopefully didn't get anyone else sick this weekend. In other news, we've started feeding Lucy solids, if you can call rice cereal solid. Ends up she's loving it. Either that or she loves the spoon. Maybe it's the spoon.

Still sick, but not bad really. Just got all that mucus that I need to get rid of. I probably didn't help much by taking it easy on the liquids earlier this week when I thought I was almost better. Going back to drinking hot water and/or chicken broth and breathing in the steam yesterday worked wonders. So just have to keep it up. Watched Back to the Mac (October 20, 2010) yesterday. New iMovie Trailer maker is impressive. Smaller snippets like that seem better for personal videos. Otherwise, new Macbook Airs. If I needed a laptop, which I don't, and even if my Macbook broke, I don't know if I'd even bother getting a new one, even for when I have to go in to work. But if I did, I'd get a maxed out 11.6" one. The things I wanted: 4GB of RAM and new trackpad, were added. Of course, what would I use it for? Exactly. New Aperture 3.1 update is pretty cool just because it supports multiple Facebook and Flickr accounts. So that's awesome. Just need to get upload Lucy's photos from the last 3 weeks. Headed out for dinner tonight with Russell at Bad Apple. Been a while since our last man date.

Still got a lingering cough. But feel fine. Wondering if it's time to see a doctor. Funny though to read about lots of other people going down with the flu as well, of course assuming that the flu is what I've got. Spent the weekend doing daddy day care while Tracy worked. Got Adesso carry out for dinner Saturday night, and also picked up some Paciugo Gelato to go. Remind me never to get any nut related flavor for fear of peanuts used, even in a flavor like Ginger almond. Otherwise, not much going on. Working, still sleeping on the couch since bohh of us have coughs that could wake the other up. I am headed in to the office tomorrow, so it'd be funny if I managed to bring this illness to even more people in the Chicagoland area. Also looking forward to eating some fast food, maybe some cupcakes, or donuts. Exciting. Thought about riding my bike, which would have made it super easy to drop by the Lincoln Park Apple Store, but considering the weather advisory, i'm wisely deciding against it.

So today I felt a little worse than yesterday, like the sickness was coming back, or maybe it was a new illness, or maybe it's cause I had to go into the office. Feel better now at the end of the day though. So hopefully it was just a one day relapse. Hoping. Finished up the first book in the Mobile Suit Gundam trilogy. Wish they had a movie adaptation of this novelization of the original anime. I think I would like it better than the source material. Got to leave work early due to to the possibility of bad weather, which was nice. Tracy came and picked me up, since she was out in the car already and Lucy had just started to nap when they got close to home. I made her drive up Halsted so I could see the new Apple Store. Looks like a huge waste of space for a single floor building. Figure I'll check it out at some point to pick up iLife '11 and the check out the new MacBook Airs. I used my old MacBook at the office today and the constant fan operation is pretty annoying. Apple Hardware longevity is killing me right now. Just waiting for it to kick the bucket to get a new one, but it just keeps plugging away.

Well, today's Lucy's half birthday. And she's adorable. Had to break out the weather shield for the BOB Revolution this morning, and she was in her Halloween costume as well, in order to stay warm. Must have been warm enough, cause she ended up sleeping on the way over. Get to go in to work next week to help out with System Administration tasks. Excited to do more reading on the El, maybe even ride my bike maybe? And eat out some more. Got Lucy an ExerSaucer a couple weekends ago, so that's been fun for her. Nice for us too, so we don't have to carry her around or hold her as she bounces. She's into the bouncing now. And the peek-a-boo. And she's holding to her sleep schedule, too. Down by 7pm, up by 6-7am. It's been nice. Forgot to mention something else from San Diego besides the plague I caught: I have a scratch on the screen of my iPhone now. About time, since it's been naked since I got it, but still kind of annoying. Also on Thursday went out to lunch with my wife. She was working that night, so we had time to actually go out to Nookies Tree for a sit down lunch together. Surprised we hadn't done it before, since we both work from home. Headed to Green City Market tomorrow, then making waffles on Sunday. Oh, and happy Halloween.

Whole week? And I wasn't even updating the Memex daily entries either. Whoops. Been coming to work again all week, and for the foreseeable future, until we hire a new local sysadmin. Been nice having time to read on the commute, and not healthy but enjoyable eating out for breakfast and lunch. Sad I don't see Tracy as much or even Lucy. No time to feed her in the mornings, as it's get up, change, and out the door for Lucy. Then by the time I get home it's dinner and bed for the babes. But I get the day with her tomorrow, since Tracy's working. So that'll be fun. Still fighting this cold/flu/cough/bacterial/viral plague. Just seems like there's mucus in the sinus. Just not going away. I tried the nasal saline spray, and thought it was doing a good job, but then mucus started coming out the eyes in the mornings. I think gargling might work, so I'll try that some more this weekend. But Tracy's all better, except for an occasional cough. Same thing with Lucy. And my mom's all better too. I seem to be the only one with a compromised immune system. My iPhone 3GS is on the fritz, I'm guessing the drops, and Lucy eating it are probably not doing it any good. Sleep button and ringer switch isn't really working anymore. Just ordered the part to fix it hopefully, since I'm not eligible for upgrade pricing on the iPhone 4 until next February. Might make a good birthday present. I'm just saying.

Wow, seriously, over a week this time. Not good. So what's happened in the last 9 days or so? Working. Baby. Eating. Watching TV. And not as much sleeping as I'd like. Went out the previous weekend to Oakbrook Center, and then this most recent weekend at Orland Square. Managed to touch an 11" Macbook Air twice. And both times loved it. Could really go for one. Also got my parts and toolkit in for fixing up my iPhone. It's got some tiny pieces, and I just don't have the proper tools and/or mindset to actually replace the pieces. I mean to replace the front glass I need a heat gun to melt adhesives, and then I'd need to replace the adhesives, and the ringer switch, well, maybe I could have done that one, but there's all sort of little metal pieces that need to get attached, and I'm not gonna try and do that properly. But, the power button works again. So I did manage to fix something. All it needed was a good cleaning. Lucy's had potatoes, sweet potatoes (which she might have had some sort of allergic reaction to, we're not sure yet), peas, and apples. We've also started putting her on the unfolded dinner table and she's kind of moving around a bit. She sits, then leans over to grab something, cause she grabs everything, and when she returns to sitting she's moved a little bit. Do that enough times and she's across the table. Also nice? She smiles when you smile at her. And she's giving us kisses, or trying to eat our faces, either or. Also, she's a splasher in the tub. Big time. Enough about the baby, I made some pumpkin cheesecakes, which are pretty good, and some brioche french toast for Sunday breakfast, which weren't that good. I need to find a good recipe for a marscapone/cream filling. I think this is the 2nd time I've failed at it. Tried to have a family date with the Russells but the weather didn't cooperate.

Definitely feel like working two jobs at my one job right now. Got lots to do. And always something new. Best thing about working in the office? Getting to eat out. All the breakfast foods, pastries, donuts, muffins, all good stuff. Although with only a couple weeks in, and I'm getting worn out. Might have to start taking it easy. Ended up getting Cosi for lunch today. Got to try out one of those fancy pants futuristic Freestyle Coca-Cola soda fountains. It had a touch screen. And over a 100 different flavors. Pretty cool, but I think too many choices. Also tried out a Milky Way Simply Caramel. Also pretty good. Got through the Escalation volume of Mobile Suit Gundam. Decided to try and finish up Getting Things Done again. With OmniFocus on iPhone, iPad and Mac OS X I've got the tool for it.

Just Mondays and Fridays I guess. Been a busy week. Busy work week. Lots of stuff to do, on top of, instead of, my usual responsibilities. Kind of crazy. Had to work after getting home to get a couple more things done. But still I usually get to see Lucy a wee bit in the morning, and then a wee bit before bedtime. That's all. Good thing I get daddy day care tomorrow when Tracy's working. Get to spend lots of time with the little one. It's pretty nice when I do come home and Lucy's all smiles when she sees me. At least until she turns around and starts looking at something else of interest, like the wall. Starting to get a little tired of the food I get at work. Too many donuts, breakfast pastries. I did get lunch with Tracy at the Chicago French Market on Wednesday, when she was downtown starting the process of getting her name changed. I had a traditional jambon-beurre from LM Cafe and we got some fries from Frietkoten Belgian Fries & Beer with a wonderful blue cheese mayo and a curry ketchup. Fantastique. And seemed healthier, well, except for the fries. But of course on Thursday I picked up a couple of Flirty Cupcakes from the truck since it was parked right out front of work and I had just gone out to get a lunch of Funyuns and Cherry Coke. Good stuff. Strange thing is though it doesn't seem like I'm gaining weight even with the poor eating habits.

Kinda already had Thanksgiving. Lisa and Ryan and Jespy came over Sunday afternoon for food and fun. Tracy and I made our first turkey, and I think it was pretty standard as far as first turkeys go: overcooked, a little dry, a little rubbery. The gravy though was pretty good. We used a Michael Chiarello recipe: rosemary citrus salt rub. Not bad. Probably what made the gravy so good. Oh, and it was Tracy's birthday on Sunday. Besides the Glee albums, she got an IOU for a bike seat for Lucy for next year. Daddy day care was fun on Saturday, except that Lucy doesn't like napping with us. Tried out the new Guiness Black Lager, thinking it would be like Xingu, and got some of that too, and turns out Xingu is better. iOS 4.2 came out and I upgraded my iPhone 3GS and iPad. After the iPhone was upgraded I was hard pressed to figure out what was new. AirPlay doesn't apply since I don't have a new Apple TV, and AirPrint isn't that interesting, I'd rather like to be able to print to PDF directly on the device, and maybe save to iDisk? Or just have an output directory? I'm not sure how that would work. Also had no idea it was supposed to rain, so got soaked on the way home. And now it feels like November. Didn't actually expect this last 60 degree couple of days. Thought we already had our spring day in November. Now bring on the snow.

Thanks to family and friends, especially my mom, for providing day care of Lucy. Very much appreciated. Thanks to God for all the blessings, and gifts, especially Lucy. So yeah, Thanksgiving was yesterday, Lucy's first. Or, our first with Lucy. Tracy worked, so I was on daddy day care. Had to make a Jewel run in the morning cause we were running out of formula, but ended up we had enough to last out the day and grab some from my mom's stockroom when we went over there for Thanksgiving dinner. Currently in the office, and there's a whopping 4 people here. Awesome. Real quiet downtown, except for all the families coming and going from the train stations. Starting to feel like winter. Broke out the scarf and winter coat today. And the leg warmers. Switched RDP clients on the iPad from PocketCloud to Jump Desktop, mostly because of the bluetooth keyboard support. Set it up with the same list of servers on iPad and iPhone. Super easy when using a keyboard. Almost tempting to try using it completely instead of a laptop at work. Stuck on Getting Things Done: The Book. Just hard for me to keep reading non-fiction/self help. Just want a cheatsheet, a clear outline, of how to implement GTD. Oh, wait, I do have a cheatsheet on GTD. Right. That's the whole point of the Memex.

Tempted to stop trying to keep daily entries as well on the Memex. There's definite holes there. prn.eric.abando.com does a pretty good job filling in activities, but doesn't track what I'm eating. Wish there was some web service that did that. Something simple, just allow me to input foods, and have an rss feed or an API that allows me to pull the data out. Be great if there was an iPhone/iPad app to go along with it as well. Oh well. Speaking of iOS devices, with the new 4.2.1 update, I tried turning off Auto Capitalize, Auto Correct with spelling, and lasted a week before turning them all back on. Too used to the assistance I guess. Also, using the iPad a lot more in landscape lately. Finally updated a bunch of photos to Lucy's website. Was about a month since the last photo. My parents are in the Philippines for JP's wedding so Tracy's parents are watching Lucy for half the week, and Tracy and I covering the other two days. Forgot to mention we went to The Publican the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Only had one meat dish, and it was actually probably the one that put us over (I'm not counting the pork rinds as a meat dish). So good though. Yummy. Lucy had her 6 month checkup when she was 7 months old. All good there. Had a day off to watch Lucy on Tuesday, worked from home on Wednesday, first time in a while for that. I miss my chair. And it's winter now.

Trying something different out.  Typing this out in Notes.app on the iPad, instead of in a browser window.  Just trying to write it all down. Over a week between updates this time. Whoops. Last weekend was three straight days of daddy day care.  I took Monday off, and Tracy worked the weekend.  Got a new nephew, Caden, born to Mike and Amy Tuesday night. Didn't get a chance to see them in the hospital but dropped by today with some food and Lucy. Christmas at the Argaos is definitely going to be a full house. Crazy full. Got our first real Christmas tree, a tiny one, only a couple feet tall. Kinda nice to have, but we really don't have much in the way of holiday decorations. Otherwise, still crazy busy at work. Oh, plowed through the first couple of seasons of Blue Mountain State on Netflix. Like Varsity Blues goes to college. Pretty funny. But the first season was way better than the second. 

I stay up too late, end up sleeping on the couch, putting off doing the dishes and washing up for bed until 2am. Sometimes I even end up sleeping there. So strange. I blame it on coming into the office instead of working from home. In Lucy news, she's shrieking. So vocal, but no words. No constants. But happy shrieking, crying. Reaching and rolling, but not yet crawling. And a smile that lights up the room. Melts my heart. Went to the Duke on Sunday night with Russell. Even though I live within walking distance, I only really went with him, and now that he's leaving, not sure when I'll ever go back. Monday had the day off for daddy day care. Then back to work. I gotta admit some of this sysadmin stuff can be fun, making things work, and making things right. Kind of nice. More immediate payback as apposed to projects and long term development. Downloaded a bunch of EA Games apps for iOS since they're on sale for 99¢. Also trying out Google Latitude since they finally released an official iPhone app with background updating. Works, almost, but I occasionally end up in Chinatown, probably because I get the signal from there when I'm up on the 25th floor in the office. Watched a couple episodes of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Firefly, and makes me miss those shows even more. They're just so good. Going to see David Robert King at Goose Island Wrigleyville tonight and maybe at Uncommon Ground on Sunday. And on daddy care care for the weekend.

9pm is the start of my bedtime process. To prevent myself from ending up on the couch, and too tired or too lazy to get to bed. Of course, while I'm in the office, this only leaves me with 2-3 hours of home time and/or downtime. Not a whole lot. For that matter, not a whole lot of time with the girls either. Lucy took a couple crawls last night. I was sitting and reading the new Tagalog first words book, Tracy was sitting nearby, and all of a sudden, Lucy went from there to over here in no time flat. Then she fell over and wonder why her parents were so happy. Of course, after that she went back to belly flopping and army crawling and carpet swimming. She survived yet another weekend of daddy day care. I need to learn how to multitask with the baby. I do nothing but hang out with her when I'm watching her. Saw Bryan King and a bunch more people over the weekend that I hadn't seen in a long time. At dinner Friday night at Rocks Lakeview it felt like 2003. Crazy. Also, Bryan's brother, David Robert King is really good. I enjoyed his set at uncommon ground on Sunday much more than Goose Island Wrigleyville Friday night. I especially liked the protest song tribute song. Almost wanted to start singing along. Hard to believe Christmas is right around the corner.

Bedtime last night? 1:25am. Alarm clock? 6am. Awesome. Just 1 day into it, already falling off the horse. Made a Home Depot run last night after putting Lucy to bed to get lightbulbs for the condo building. Good thing I got the box of dozen contractor special, since I changed 8 bulbs last night. Crazy. 8. Seriously? 8. And since I was out, I dropped by Binny's. I love that place. Passed on getting a bottle of Absinthe, because while it would look cool and make me feel cool for having it, much like the bottle of Chartreuse I have. I did get a nifty looking cucumber liquor and a bottle of creme de cacao, which was the reason I went, because, for some reason, I wanted a Brandy Alexander. Go figure. Finally bought Angry Birds. I'm late to the party there, but glad I finally joined in. That's a fun game. One of the reasons I stayed up late last night.

Like this blog, just a couple days late. So Thursday left work early at 3pm, and even then was the 2nd to last person out the door. Picked up the only Christmas I bought this year, a mini Keurig for my mom, and then home. Friday I had off but Tracy was working so daddy day care in the morning, then over to the grandparents for Christmas Eve. Made it out for mass at 4:30pm, and Lucy, without an afternoon nap, made it through without a peep. My mom took care of her, so maybe that had something to do with it. But ended up a late night for Lucy, didn't get home and in bed until almost 9pm. Saturday went out the Argaos for Christmas day and the usual party. That night, with a 2 1/2 year old, 8 month old, 4 month old, and 2 week old in the house, meant not a lot of sleep for the brothers and sister. Lucy didn't really sleep at all, and we ended up putting her to bed with us to get some rest. Sunday we managed to make it out to the mall for some discounts, but I didn't end up getting anything. Wanted to get a sweazer, a sweatshirt blazer like Gabe had, but they didn't have any at Banana Republic. Back to work this week, and Lucy's back to sleeping like a champ in her own crib. She's also razzing and crawling. So a pretty good Christmas overall.

No year end retrospective, nor year forward prognostications. Merely thanks for a good year. I've been blessed with health, happiness, a wonderful child, wife, family, food in my belly, roof over my head. Life is good. Worked a lot this week. Almost overnight Monday to get something done. Otherwise, it was nice and quiet most of the time. Crumbs opened up, and I feel sorry for The Cupcake Counter down the street. Strange to have 2 cupcake bakeries, in the Loop, pretty much across the street (Franklin) on Madison. But got a mini sampler pack from Crumbs, and I gotta admit, they were good. Actually reminded me of the old Cupcakes place down on Barry, when I got introduced to the whole cupcake craze. Saw brothers-in-law Tuesday night, picked up Del Seoul on the way over to Mike's. Been surprised that Lucy's sleeping as well as she is with her schedule all over the place. Went out to the Argaos today for dinner, but had to come back in since Tracy's working tomorrow. Oh, I've also returned to Redbox. Figured out that Netflix isn't cheaper. I only get about 6 DVDs a month through Netflix, which doesn't quite make up the $1/dvd through Redbox. Watch Instantly could be worth the extra $4, but not sure. Netflix is good for catalog titles, while Redbox is great for new releases. So I'll do both for a while, until I run out of old movies to get from Netflix, which, if I did the math correctly, will be in 2 years with the current size of my queue.