Sun and Daphne and I are home now. Sun and I are taking shifts taking care of Daphne, which seems like a great short-term idea, but I would like to see Sun again some day 🙂
An interesting tidbit: Newborns are expected to lose about 10% of their body weight in the first few days after birth. Daphne has actually gained weight already. We think we may just tie a feed bag to her head.
Thanks to everyone who sent their congratulations, kudos and/or well-wishes 🙂 Let chaos commence!
Sun’s hospital stay has been extended so they can make sure she is free of complications. Basically, they think she may either have a stealthy infection or a reaction to a vaccination, both of which can present similarly. To be prudent, they’re treating it as if it’s an infection. So it’ll be a day or two before we’re all back home.
Daphne is doing great, and she already speaks baby talk in nineteen languages.
7 pounds, 1 ounce. Sun is recovering from a short but intense labor. Our lives will never be the same 🙂
I’m home to freshen up, then to get lunch with my parents and go back in to visit my ladies.
We’re going to be inducing labor in the next couple of days. Daphne’s 0th birthday approaches!
My dad and I put the finishing touches on the treadmill desk top, and it is both functional and beautiful. The wood is from dead walnut trees that had to be cut down, so I arranged for a portable sawmill service to turn them into rough boards about an inch thick. I have enough to make several more of these, if anyone’s interested 🙂 The desk surface isn’t 100% flat because I decided not to opt for a $1000 tool that would parallelize the top and bottom of the rough boards, but it’s close enough to flat that I don’t notice it unless I look for it. The surface consists of two solid boards joined with biscuits and then sanded with ever-finer grains of sandpaper with a combination of belt and orbital handheld sanders. Edges were smoothed with sanders, and the cable guides were made with a router. Finally, it was sealed with two coats of varnish to deepen the color and bring out the grain. The mounting method is easier to show than to describe, so take a look at the final thumbnail below for that.
Click the thumbnails below for details.
I have been using Linux primarily since 2000 and exclusively since 2003. In that time, I have found Linux to be a robust and well-supported OS, as long as you stick to compatible hardware. Windows, on the other hand, was always suffering from self-inflicted wounds or fundamental vulnerabilities. I was so much more productive in Linux than I was in Windows that it was really a no-brainer. However, I came to a realization recently: Windows’ many flaws drive the economy.
If it weren’t for Windows, we wouldn’t have so many anti-malware companies vying for your purchase, we wouldn’t have Geek Squad, and large companies wouldn’t have entire divisions dedicated to just keeping Windows from falling apart. In short, Windows is where the money is, because Windows always needs TLC. The same thing is reflected in technology shows and podcasts – the vast majority of questions are about Windows, because Linux users mostly don’t have problems, and the ones they have can be self-diagnosed and fixed. If I were to continue on my path of using Linux and converting others to Linux, I would be chipping away at the enormous Windows service aftermarket, and people would lose their jobs. I don’t want to be a part of that.
So, as of today, I am switching to Windows so that I can learn how to fix its inherent flaws and get a slice of that Windows support pie. I’ll be careful to fix them temporarily, since the real money is in not addressing the underlying problems. After all, if fixing the cause were the goal, people would just have switched to better OSes long ago.
Here are the Magento and VirtualBox Slides from my talk tonight.
I have heard numerous tales of babies intentionally or inadvertently destroying all kinds of technology, from cell phones, to DVD players, to televisions, to speakers, to headphones, and so on. I know that a few of you have technology and kids. What advice can you give me that will let me protect both my imminent daughter and my various tech?
And here it is.
We have a large toaster oven with several rack height settings. I used to thoroughly re-heat things like pizza in 15 minutes on the “bakery” setting, with the rack in the middle. On a lark, I raised the rack height and discovered that I could do the same job in 7 minutes, closer to the top heating element (but further from the bottom). The simple step of moving the rack to be closer to one of the heat sources has saved me more than 50% on my toaster oven electricity usage.
This surely ranks up there with advice such as “put a sweater on to save on your heating bill” and “live in the basement in summer to avoid cooling the house.”
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