Went out for brunch today, with Lucy, at Fiddlehead Cafe. That was nice. It was Lucy's second time there. Actually it's the only restaurant she's been to more than once. We like that place, and actually the Lincoln Square area in general. Seems very family friendly.  Work, as usual, has been super busy. Hoping things will quiet down in a couple weeks. Hoping. Don't think we have any more space to hire any more people. Finally got around to moving all services off the old Mac mini to the new one. The AV Rack runs a whole lot cooler now. Which probably will make things last longer, considering overheating is probably what killed the old Mac mini's ethernet. And the Netflix integration on the Apple TV (2nd generation) is really really awesome. Fingers crossed that Hulu comes the same way. But I could see that being doubtful. Been reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Nice read so far. Tempted to watch the movie.

Still going strong at work. More like work is still going strong. Crazy busy. Got a bunch new toys, all Apple stuff, paid for by selling Apple Stock. Got a new Mac mini, and getting it to work with a TV via HDMI? Super easy. We even watched the episode of Cougar Town on Hulu Desktop that the DVR missed recording. Looked great. Super easy. Tempting even to get Mac mini's on the 2 tv's in the house, instead of Apple TVs. Speaking of which, I also got an Apple TV (2nd generation). The Netflix integration is sweet, started watching Party Down, 2nd season. The demotion of your own content is kind of annoying. Airplay is kind of sweet, but not really necessary when all the media is in the house already. Although, it probably would come in handy showing off videos of Lucy babbling. Which she's doing now. Like out of the blue, she started having baby talk conversations. It's really cute. And she's got a really cute voice too. But then again I'm her daddy, so I'm probably biased. We also took her out to dinner with us at Red Lobster on Saturday. And she's a handful. Of course. But I think we did ok, but not something we'll do all the time.

Seriously. I'm hoping at some point work slows down. Hopefully. At some point. When there aren't 15 things to do at the same time. One cool thing? More Macs in the office. And all new toys. So that's cool. Except for all the work it involves. I did update the storytlr software powering lucy.abando.com and prn.eric.abando.com. Didn't know there actually was an active official open source release (on GitHub). Had to roll back to my own Foursquare plug in though that does mini google maps. Hoping I'll get some time to finally do a Mediawiki update for Memex. Daddy day care over the weekend. Actually left the house though, going for walks after her first nap, both times for food. On Saturday for Crisp and on Sunday for beer from Binny's and Paradise Empenadas (different, good, but not as good as Lito's Empenadas). Otherwise, don't remember much from last week. Kind of flew by. I did finally get to watch The Sorcerer's Apprentice (I liked it) and The Last Airbender (I didn't like it). Also randomly watched the pilot to Defying Gravity, which seemed too good for a tv show. Space dramas just feel like movies to me, not TV shows.

The gloss is off the new job. Didn't take long. It's like 1000 miles per hour, with no signs of let up yet. It's crazy. So much to learn, so much to do, go go go. Hope I can keep it up. In other news, snow. Might have to get a new Mac mini too, since the ethernet port keeps dropping off. Ugh. Dropped by the Lincoln Park Apple Store last night after work. Forgot to get an extra charger on Saturday. Ended up buying from Jon, the same guy I got the MacBook Air from on Saturday. Also loving the new Train Tracker website by the CTA. Just that I know how long I'll be waiting. So Verizon announced they'll be getting the iPhone 4 in February. Makes me wonder what AT&T service will be like after that point.

Got a new job. Same company, different job. Instead of a Systems Consultant I'm now an Information Systems Analyst. I changed houses from the Development to the Operations. A lateral move. It's a good thing. I'd say the only bad thing? I no longer work from home. So that only lasted 9 months. But the good thing about working in the office? I can start commuting by bike again. But I've actually got to wear real clothes all the time, and I'm eating out, unless I start packing lunches, which I've tried, but never succeeded at doing long term. And it eats into family time. Since I have a family now. When I was working from home, the lack of commute time meant more at home time. So I'll miss that. So it's been a pretty crazy week, starting to get things organized, work emergencies, last minute changes, fixes, enhancements, attempts at product rollouts. Just crazy. Hoping it quiets down so I can settle in and start plowing through projects. The only other new thing was selling AAPL at what I thought was an all time high on Tuesday, which of course, it kept rising through the week. Oh well. Got enough to buy a new MacBook Air (11-inch Late 2010) since my old MacBook was finally falling apart (molding came off the screen and the letter Q was broken). Now you might think who cares about the Q, but CTRL+Q in Outlook is Mark as Read, which is quite useful. But the MacBook Air, bought on Saturday at the Lincoln Park Apple Store, is absolutely amazing. Really really fast, despite having a lower clock speed than my previous MacBook, but seriously, SSD makes things so amazing. I really can never go back to something slower. Only issue is that Parallels has issues displaying Windows 7 in full screen, something about a non-standard resolution (1366x768), causes the video to go skewed. Instead running in Coherence. Took down my work computer at home and will bring it back in at some point. Moved the iMac over.

Feels like another rush of work at work. Comes in waves I guess. Calm, then storm. One bonus of working in the office: I'm gathering Foursquare mayorships by the handful. Of course, they aren't the most healthy of places to be mayors of, but still, it's something. First day of the new year had daddy day care. Sunday we actually left the house to go to Whole Foods to get meat for dinner, which ended up being carpaccio, tartare, and white chocolate raspberry cheesecake (which ended up not so good). Oh, and throw in a chicken burrito from Taco Burrito Palace in there as well. Last night Lucy decided to cry a lot in bed. Oh, we also had to lower the crib, since Lucy's now sitting and sometimes standing in there. More like a real baby's room now. Definitely harder to get her in there for sleeping. But she seems to like looking out behind the bars. Hope that's not a sign. But back to her crying in bed, I eventually got her after a couple spells, because I was worried about a diaper full of poop, except there wasn't any, and then she didn't want to go back to bed. Eventually just had to let her cry herself to sleep, otherwise, none of us would have gotten any sleep.