the candy dilemma

for halloween, i went to costco and bought two bags of 150 pieces of candy in anticipation for all of the trick or treaters. it turns out that about 100 pieces were given out on halloween leaving me with about a third of 1 bag and 1 bag completely unopen.

that’s a lot of candy.

i’m not sure what i’m going to do with it all. but i did find that there’s a group of dentists that will buy back your candy and sent to US soldiers serving overseas. pretty cool, idea.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-02

  • OMG! bug in web-based file browser deleted ALL MY TV! #
  • after removing the download rate-limit, it is shocking and very pleasing to see just how fast our DSL is. #
  • need a regular expressions cheat sheet? it's been a while since i've used them, but this was helpful. http://bit.ly/2B9W3 #
  • How many different kinds of dry are there? This dryer says a lot. http://twitpic.com/njb5j #
  • omg, laundry washers look heavy. two guys who came to deliver it are heaving it upstairs for us. they look like they are in agony. #
  • It's probably indicative of how old I am when I get this excited over our new washer and dryer. http://twitpic.com/nm48e #
  • really annoyed that the glider chair that we ordered from @ToysRUs back on 7/25/2009 has still not arrived. kyden is close to a month old! #
  • Kyden, Christi, and I are shopping at the Disney store. http://twitpic.com/nvqbd #

happy halloween

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.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-10-26

  • 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? #

the flu shot fiasco

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.

a father’s prerogative

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

setting up time machine

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.

on being a dad

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.

But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?