Actually took the L home last night, and will be taking it in to work this morning. My immediate boss is in town for a couple days, so went out to dinner with him. That was nice. Finally got to South Branch. Nice place. And since he was coming, had to do some cleanup in the office on Tuesday before the holiday. Much needed and long overdue. Of course, there's still a bunch of other things I still need to take care of. On July Fourth, Tracy was working and had to go in to the office, so I had a nice day with Lucy. We went to the beach for a couple hours in the morning, and even though it was over 100 degrees outside, had Soupbox for lunch. Still want to make it down there sometime for their ice. I think Lucy'd like it too. Over the weekend went to Sola for dinner on Saturday night. I like that place. Sunday we went to the beach in the morning again. Lucy loves the beach. And the water. She's blowing bubbles now, so that's cute. She also seems pretty well adjusted to day care. Not so much with the crying anymore. Oh, got a Biologic Bike Mount for iPhone 4 last week, had it on for a couple of days, maybe even 1 day, and I broke it. I mounted it on my stem, and hit it with my knee when dismounting. Only a little piece broke, but Biologic doesn't sell any replacement parts. So I'd have to buy a whole new one. Instead, I'm going to see if I can fix it. Cut some grooves, might look for some plastic weld, and if not, then some quality epoxy. We'll see. Hopefully I can salvage it. I think I've decided on a Surly Pacer as my next bike. Just need to find a shop to buy it from. And if I go complete or build up.

You know what's cool? Magnets. Ordered up some rare earth magnets from Amazon.com, and finally hung up my cardboard airflow redirector for the A/C up to the upper stairs with them. Much better than painters tape, and completely temporary. Magnets for the win! Also finally used a bit of old bike tube to stop the rattling of my Abus Bordo 6000 folding lock on the Sprint, and finally greased up the cetma rack. So that doesn't creak. Other stuff still does, so still working on that. Gabe and family is in town, so saw them for dim sum and playground on Sunday. Heat broke, so much nicer out. Went to Ohio Street Beach on Saturday morning. Aside from the trash in the water, it's awesome. Shallow enough that Lucy can play a lot in the water, not too busy in the morning. There is the triathlon trainers that take up all the bike rack spaces, but there's plenty of fence available. Also tried out the Oak Street Beach Food & Drink for lunch. Expensive, of course, but the tacos were pretty good. Missed out on Lucy's nape, so went shopping, looking for a beach umbrella, and she got some car sleep in instead. Ended up at The Glen and Ted's Montana Grill for dinner. Sunday walked over to Tapas Gitana for dinner, which was good and nice. Tracy's taking Lucy out to Homer Glen after daycare today, so I'm on my own for tonight. Started up season 5 of Eureka. Good stuff. Sad it's over.

Ordered a new bike the other day. A Surly Pacer. I have a strange feeling that this is the beginning of a descent into biking obsession. Even more so than now. We'll wait and see. Need to find clip less shoes and pedals. And some sort of kit. And water bottles. And yes, it's just the beginning. Maybe a saddle bag. And a new saddle. And now I'm in trouble with Tracy, because I'll have 3 bikes in the garage. And maybe I need to get rid of the Sprint, but I like having a bike I can beat up on the city streets, to commute on, and not have to really worry about. So, I need to find a place to put the new bike, maybe somewhere on the wall, or just hang it up somewhere on the ceiling. I don't know but I'll find a spot for it. And I'll clean out the garage while I'm at it. Maybe find a spot for the BoB stroller. Last night around 6pm Lucy was watching Thomas & Friends, when it stopped. Turns out Comcast had an outage. No internet. No TV. Ok. Eventually comes back maybe an hour later. Then around 8pm, I hear a loud boom, and the power cuts out. I head out on the back deck, and see neighbors doing the same, and notice a couple of the transformers on the utility poles down the alley is all discolored, like they boiled over. Awesome. So with no before bed TV show for Lucy, and no AC, we head up to the roof to hang out in the dimming light of day, and read some books. And, surprisingly, after Tracy gets home from boxing class, Lucy wants to go to bed right around her usual time. And she pretty much sleeps through the night. Tracy and I on the other hand have trouble sleeping without the AC. Even through we were in bed before 10pm, still didn't get that much sleep. They had 3 ComEd trucks working in the alley, and around 2:15am they got the power turned on. And Tracy was smart enough to flip the light switch in Lucy's room so they didn't turn on again. So that was exciting. Funny thing? Our next door neighbor to the north had power. The next building over. Funny. But also got me thinking, about the whole apocalypse, end of the world. What if this had been the beginning of the end. First internet/tv, then power. Next thing would have been cell service, but we still had that and I could still read Twitter and my RSS Feeds. But at what point would it be beyond a simple service outage and something bigger? Anyway, it wasn't, and now back to normal.

My Surly Pacer is ready at Roscoe Village Bikes. Not sure when I'll be able to head over there to pick it up. Not sure when I'll be able to put more hooks in the garage ceiling for a place to hang it up. Probably should do that stuff before picking it up. Also, not sure if I want to walk over and take it home by riding it or ride the Xtracycle over and take it home by hauling it. Hmmm, choices. I'll stick some old pedals on it for now, since I haven't had a chance to go looking for clipless shoes. Started reading the Dragonlance Chronicles again. Forgot how enjoyable those books are. And how easy it is to start and stop with the short episodic chapters, almost like little adventures. I love thinking of it as a D&D campaign, with people actually playing the characters, and really building their stories. It's fun. Lucy's currently all about Cars, the Pixar movie. She loves it. Just got the sequel yesterday, and Cars 2, well, doesn't seem as good. Kind of a let down. Maybe it'll get better with a complete viewing, instead of bits here and there. Mountain Lion gets released tomorrow. As soon as I find out if Parallels is compatible, I'll start reloading my machines. Want to actually use Mac OS X Server for something and try workgroup accounts and stuff. We'll see. Also want to finally get an SSD from Other World Computing for the iMac to replace the non functioning SuperDrive, but might wait until August for that purchase. Thinking about nuke and pave the Mac mini, and might try moving the web serving over one of the old Apple TVs I have. Actually, if I use both, I could have a production and development one. Maybe learn about MySQL replication. Interesting.

Still haven't picked up my Surly Pacer. I'll try and get out there this weekend and pick it up. Looking forward to it. Although I did finally do some fixes to my Sprint and it's running pretty smoothly right now. Moved the toe clips in, seat up angle isn't so high anymore, reattached a pedal, greased the front rack, and now everything's good. Had Lucy for the night yesterday when Tracy was working and they were tie-dying at school today, so went around looking for a plain white t-shirt. Ended up with some Puma shirt from T.J. Maxx. Had to go back after Lucy's bedtime to get the security tag removed, and ended up at Soupbox for some fruit ice. So good. Got my old Apple TVs up and running as webservers. They do run a little hot, and while tempted, I'm not going to buy some cheap SSDs, well, I'm not planning on putting SSDs in. Just need to get my websites running on one, then setup rsync and mysql replication, some backup scripts, and then switch the routing to one of them, and then I can start the Mountain Lion nuke and pave. Did the MacBook Air last night. Since I'll be switching to network accounts, the Air is just a vanilla install, no apps, no service accounts set up. Seems ok.

Nephew! Yup, I've got one. Luke Basa Abando, 5 lbs, 9 oz at 5:09am on 7/29/2012. 4 weeks early but everyone's doing well. Can't wait to meet him. So my brother and sister-in-law had a pretty eventful weekend. Kind puts anything I did to shame. Tried to go look at my Surly Pacer on Friday night on my way home, since Tracy sprained her wrist boxing and actually took the night off, but forgot to check the hours on Roscoe Village Bikes and they closed at 6pm on Friday. Rightfully so, since it was a pretty nice night. I also like that ride up Lincoln. Something very old cityish about it. Lots of retail maybe? Instead got the websites up and running off the old Apple TVs. Yup, this site right now is being served off an Apple TV. Crazy? A little. Now just have to find the time to do a nuke and pave on the Mac mini. Saturday spent the day with Lucy since Tracy went to Indiana for work. Biked down to Green City Market, met up with Amy and Caden, checked out the Farm at the Zoo, got some more soup and some icy fruit at Soupbox. After Tracy got back went to Rachel and Julio's wedding shower. I started feeling ill (like a flu), even though I've started taking 1000 mg of vitamin C as suggested by my Mom, who I think picked it up from my brother. Found out about Luke. My dad came in to the city after dropping my mom at the airport, we had breakfast at Lulu Belle's Pancake House, then hung out for a bit before leaving Lucy with Grandpa while Tracy and I went to see How to Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular. We made plans before we found out the 2nd grandchild was coming early. Show was interesting. Different than the movie. Lots of kids there. Don't think Lucy could have made it through. Still feeling ill, missing out on dinner tonight with the Cases and extended friends, but Tracy's going to represent.

Finally did a nuke and pave on the Mac mini last night. Also finally set up a home server the right way, as far as I can tell, and joined the MacBook Air to it, and now have a portable home directory that will sync to the server occasionally. Next up is to see what happens when I upgrade and join the iMac to it and log in with the same account. Or how it handles syncing of portable home directories when logged in on multiple machines. Hopefully nothing catastrophically bad. But had to create a separate account for the local server since that's running all the time and running server specific apps all the time, like SecuritySpy and iTunes. But so far so good. Of course, ended up staying up way too late working on it. Issue right now is certificate based on enrolling my iPad so I can do stuff like lock/wipe from the server. Definitely going today to Roscoe Village Bikes to check out the Surly Pacer finally. Probably will get plain platform pedals, and thinking of just ordering new seat/handlebar tape so they can do it instead of me. Still fighting some kind of gastrointenstinal illness, but appetite is coming back, which is a good and bad thing, considering. Just found out Hulu Plus is available for the Apple TV, so I reactivated my account so I can check it out. Wonder how close we can be to cutting the cord for cable TV.