i’m sitting now on my stairs next to the front door passing out candy, holding koda back from the kids who are waiting for their candy. some of the kids are clearly afraid of dogs while others are very happy to greet and pet koda. it’s a very exciting day for koda, but a tiring day for me.

so far i think we’ve seen about 50 kids come by, a far cry from the 300 pieces of candy that i bought for them. it’s a shade past 8PM and i think that the trick or treating crowd might be over already.

while waiting for kids to come by, i decided to see if i can smooth out the transition for the rest of dardy’s blog. he had some trouble with his hosting company, so i offered to host his blog on my server.

i love wordpress installs. they are so easy and quick. those guys at wordpress have really figured out how to do it right.

i think i’m going to try to install SNMP and munin/MRTG on the box so that i can have some numbers on what’s going on with the box.

• koda and i took a walk in the rain. he was very scared of the umbrella i was holding, but didn't mind the wet rain. #
• 8#14oz today – kyden has been gaining nearly 2oz a day. #
• segfaults, segfaults, segfaults…all day long. ugh. #
• can somebody who works at #yahoo fantasy sports PLEASE take matt forte off the can't cut list? my K & TEs have more fantasy points than him #
• Kyden's cute when he isn't crying. http://twitpic.com/mdqxh #
• Safeway offers flu shots for $30. no appointment necessary, just walk in, get it, and go. they also give a 10% off grocery purchase w/ shot. #
• come on, niners! it's still early in the game, don't give up! do i dare root for crabtree to make some big plays after all his drama? #

i am so bummed that this show got cancelled. i feel like there are still so many unanswered questions left! there was no wrap up and the series spent so many episodes building up all of the mystery and there’s nothing, nothing resolved!

so our company has been trying to setup a flu shot clinic with a mobile clinic that will come to our offices and administer flu shots. the first scheduled date was rescheduled for a few weeks later. the second scheduled date was just canceled and rescheduled for some time in the future due to lack of flu shots. our company has decided that they will just reimburse anyone who gets a flu shot from anywhere, so i went out to safeway today to get my flu shot.

i had to wait for one other person in front of me, but the entire process took less than 30 minutes. in and out, nice and easy. nothing like the travel clinic i went to where it took nearly an hour and a half to get my TDaP.

so now i’m vaccinated for TDaP and the normal flu shot. the only other shot i’m thinking about getting is the H1N1 flu shot. i hear that this shot might be more expensive than the other ones. i guess we’ll have to see when it finally becomes available.

it is indeed a father’s prerogative to dote on his child. that being said, we took kyden into his follow up doctor’s appointment today to find that he is now a whopping 8lbs 14oz he was born just two and half weeks ago at 7lbs 8oz, so he’s steadily gaining weight.

everything from the pediatrician’s visit checked out and we are happily back at home feeding him, what seems constantly. =P

• Rain is coming down hard & wind is blowing mightily. Good thing I pruned the tree outside yesterday. Wonder if neighbor's tree will fall… #
• Just started a ~100GB time machine backup wirelessly at 1MB/sec. It's gonna be a long night. http://twitpic.com/ll2t6 #
• Lliving for these moments of serenity. http://twitpic.com/lpoo6 #

i have been reluctant to figure out how to get thing time machine backups to work on my NAS because the first time i tried, it didn’t work out, but i tried again tonight and it was actually pretty straightforward once i understood what i needed to do.

the first thing i had to do was enable the network interface en0. on my machine, for some reason, en1 and en2 were enabled for the wireless and ethernet interfaces. i renamed the ethernet (en2) to en0 by following the instructions in this post which tells you to:
1) delete
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist (backup first)
2) edit /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist

then i followed the instructions from appleclinic to set up the time machine share on the NAS.

now, time machine is backing up 47GB of data. it’s taking a long time, but it appears to be working great. once the initial backup is done, the backups will be done wirelessly nightly. nice and convenient. it’s time to setup my desktop to see this NAS time machine share.

it was two weeks ago today that i came home from work like any other day not really thinking that anything would be out of the ordinary.

i came home to find that christi had been having contractions all day long and they were coming in closer and closer. i told her that at this rate she would be having our kid tonight. she refused, wanting the kid to wait until the weekend.

earlier in the day, i had downloaded an iphone app that would time contractions and i immediately launched it and started to measure how far apart the contractions were.

later that night we were heading over to the hospital. dropped off koda at a friend’s place and got admitted to the hospital.

the next day, our son came into our lives. for the next 24 hours more people than i can remember asked what his name is and we replied, “we haven’t picked one yet.”

these past two weeks have been sleep-deprived, dirty diaper-filled, exhausting, but most of all rewarding.

just before kyden was born, i have never really been very interested in holding other people’s babies. in fact, i was very uncomfortable doing it and avoided it whenever possible. there have been only a handful of babies i’ve ever held in my life. but after kyden was born, i was never hesitant, reluctant, or nervous about holding him.

i’ve read about how, for some fathers, there’s some kind of internal switch that just flips after their child is born. sure, life is different now and it does feel like we’ve just started on one huge journey into the unknown, but it’s all rather exciting. have my love for gadgets subsided suddenly? not quite. =P sometimes when i look at him, though, i’m just struck by how amazing it is that we’ve brought a new life into the world.

the kid can cry, though. and let me tell you, it is shocking just how loud this kid’s farts are.

• First pediatrician visit with the baby boy. Kyden looks very comfortable in his ridiculously heavy car seat. http://twitpic.com/kduce #
• Thanks for all the congratulations and well wishes. Christi, Koda, and I are all adjusting to Kyden's schedule. http://twitpic.com/kg0k4 #
• Picked 100% correctly in my pick 'em league. Never have I done that before. Let's see if I can do it again! #
• Went to get a flu shot at work only to find out that the flu shots were rescheduled. #
• Giving mom a break and feeding Kyden now. She fell right to sleep and he fell right asleep after feeding. http://twitpic.com/kq289 #
• ordering a large white out pizza, a large half railroad grade/poultry geist pizza, and a small big wednesday calzone for dinner for three. #
• At the adult immunization clinic. The wait here is kind of long. #
• Trying to get my tdap shot but they are administering these shots verrrrry slowly. #
• got Tdap shot today…arm is a little sore, but otherwise feeling fine. #
• rewired phone/dsl lines, fixed upstairs media center, and updated xbmc on xbox classic. sleep when baby sleeps? not working out so much… #
• received the new HDTV antenna in the mail today and installed it for football tomorrow. ready to watch the niners take on atlanta! #
• Hello, Raiders. I know it is early in the game and there's plenty of time on the clock, but I am sad to say it's already over. #
• as much as i want to blame jamarcus russell for raiders woes, his o-line isn't helping him any. 28-0 2nd qtr w/ 12:37 left? man, that's bad. #

i really thought that i had all the apps that i would need on my iphone, but recently, i have found a few apps that look very promising. most of these are apps that have been around for a while, but i never really understood their usefulness until now.

mobile air mouse – turn your iphone into a remote keyboard/mouse. this is fantastic for presentations, which is the first use that i thought of for this app, but what makes it even better is the keyboard. this transforms my iphone into a remote control for my HTPC. works on macs or PCs. so cool because the tuner for my HDTV can only be controlled via keyboard right now. i had to VNC in and change the channel. such a pain.

xbmc – remote control for XBMC. now that i’ve got my XBMC media center working in the bedroom, this app becomes quite relevant. i can use this app as a remote to control my XBMC. it’s almost as good as the remote i’m actually using, but consolidation of devices makes it worth losing the tactile response from a dedicated remote.

jaadu vnc – i didn’t think that a VNC client on an iphone would be usable, but this client is surprisingly handy. i don’t do a lot of VNC access from the iphone, but this makes it usable when i need to. pretty speedy, it supports tightVNC.

umonitor – iphone app to monitor your utorrent status. very simple interface, but it’s nice to be able to just check at a glance at the state of utorrent.

galcon labs- this risk-like game in space is easy to pick up and very entertaining. i’m surprised that i haven’t heard of it before. there’s also a lux dlx port to iphone which is risk, but i kind of like galcon more.

minigore – i’ve seen this game mentioned several times, but only now have i tried it out. it’s a lot of fun, but i have no idea how people can get such high scores on it.