Happy Birthday Dan

In honor of Dan's birthday today, we had some friends over for supper last night. It was a very enjoyable evening, with good food (thanks to me) and fun board games. Okay the board games may have taxed some of our brains a little (he he). Today has been a pretty quite day, so far we went for breakfast this morning, and then Dan went and picked up an outdoor play gym that a co-worker was nice enough to give us. Hannah had great fun until we dragged her inside for nap time. Unfortunately our yard isn't really designed for a play gym, because it is a rather steep hill, so I keep on thinking the poor thing is going to fall over. Oh well, we may have to do some work later this spring to level the yard a little. Well anyways, Happy Birthday Dan.

Eject! Eject! Eject!

So I went skiing at Sunshine Village with some friends from University this weekend...

It was a whole lot of fun and really good exercise for me.

There was a good mix of black, blue and green runs (at least for my taste) and we even did a little bit of glading (Skiing in the bush). We also developed a fun little slingshot maneuver to help Jen along flat spots - Kip and I would let Jen get ahead of us, then as we would go zipping by, she would grab our outstretched poles and get a sudden burst of speed to help her along...

The best wipeout for me had to be when I just about killed my good pal Mike (Kip) Kehler. The picture below was taken from the position where Mike stopped after I nearly ran him over. Jen (the girl in the right hand side of the picture), is holding up one of my skis from where they stopped. I was skiing between the trees on the right (only one is in the picture) looking for good powder and sweet jumps while Kip decided to go around the tree in the picture through the nice big opening visible just behind and above Jen. Apparently Kip saw a flash of my jacket and heard a quick curse as I slammed on the brakes to avoid running him over. Due to the foot of powder I was skiing in, my skis stopped a little too abruptly and ejected me from the bindings. This is where things get a little fuzzy for me. As near as I can remember, I clipped Kip's backpack as I was thrown from my skis. How I wound up face-first with my head uphill from my feet is completely beyond me.

If anybody knows how to do 3D Modeling and is looking for a fun side-project, I would love to see how this would have looked since Jen was too far back to witness the accident and Kip was too busy trying to stay on his own skis.

Me generous?

Apperently I had a generous streak I didn't know about, as in the last 24 hours I have donated to over 25 different charities amounts ranging anywhere from $500 - $1200. I have complained a few times about Visa locking down my card when I have had transactions that vary from my usual pattern, but I was thankful today when they locked my card down after a mere $3000 dollars was charged to it, in a matter of minutes. The remaining transactions remained in limbo waiting approval from me. Of course poor Dan was stranded in Banff with no Visa. So anyways after going through a very lengthy list of purchases to confirm what was mine and what wasn't Visa will be refunding us for the approved transactions, and then investigating how this happened. So now I know why fraud protection is so important on a credit card, and I will never complain when my card gets locked down again.

Update!

I apologize for my lack of posting but it has just been one of those weeks when nothing interesting is really happening. But I figure I will catch everybody up to speed on how Sara and Hannah are doing. First off Sara had her pediatrician appointment on Monday and she weighed 22 lbs and was 27 3/4 inches long. She was perfectly healthy and developing normally. She has been crawling for about a week now. She can go from her back to her stomach to her butt without any help. She does crawl around the room now, but she is still pretty slow about it, although I'm sure it wont be long and she will an expert crawler. She has got two teeth, both just poking out a little bit. I just noticed them yesterday, and was surprised that they had both already come through. Hannah seemed like she was teething forever before she got her first tooth. Where as I barely even noticed that Sara was teething. She had really red cheeks, and she was waking up a few extra times at night but otherwise she has been pretty relaxed. Hannah is learning new words like crazy, and starting to really enjoy more physical activities like running around in circle, and throwing and kicking balls. She loves going out for playdates, and gets excited whenever I mention that were going to visit our friends, or that our friends are coming to our house. Hmm I think that is about it, Maybe something interesting will happen this weekend.

Nap time

Now being hosted in a basement near you:

I have officially delved into the web hosting arena (well, on a small scale anyways).

I have just begun hosting my sister in-law's photography website on a server in my basement!

For those that are interested in the technical details it's not much of a server:

Processor:	Pentium II 333Mhz
Memory:	512MB RAM (Motherboard maximum)
Operating System:	Centos 4.4
Space:	18GB maximum non-redundant storage 2GB mirrored storage
Network	Single Dedicated NIC with a manual failover

For those not in the "know", CentOS is the publicly distributed, freely available repackaged edition of an Enterprise Linux distribution (I don't know if I can actually make the direct reference, so to be safe, I'm leaving it out...)

I have been running multiple OpenBSD boxes crunching SETI work-units for a few years now and have recently become somewhat experienced with setting up Red Hat Enterprise Linux through work so the actual install wasn't too tricky.

The only hurdle that I had to overcome turned out to be an overzealous attempt to max out the memory in the machine. Apparently the motherboard I'm using can recognize more memory that it can reliably use. As a result, whenever I loaded more than 512MB of memory into the machine, the memory read/write performance would tank - and yes, I did run a memory test using the tool provided on the CentOS installation media. This took me three days and a few phone calls to associates to figure out... Thanks Dave!

As a side note, I will be building a second, fail-over server that will be nearly a mirror image of the first (only with less memory and disk space....) so that any hosted sites don't remain down long in the even of a catastrophic hardware failure.

Not too bad for the low low price of $0, if you ask me... Everything is either retired personal or hand-me-down hardware, or discarded equipment from my days at 5D

P.S. Sorry for the crazy linking, but I'm hoping that I can boost the blog's Google rating and thereby improve Angela's new photography website's rating - Anybody that has ideas/suggestions on how else to do that, please leave a comment, Thanks!

Shopping Spree 2

I'm afraid we are off to buy more pedialyte. Hannah started puking again on the way to her dentist appointment. So we're back home and watching cartoons.

busy, busy, and more busy

It has been a busy week for us. On Thursday I hosted a playdate here. And it was lots of fun, started at 9:00 and went until 1:00pm. It was another full house with lots of kids running everywhere. Then Friday afternoon we headed out for a playdate. It was at a house we had been to before, and there is a really big dollhouse in one of the bedrooms upstairs. I had to hold Hannah back so I could get her shoes and jacket off, and then she just made a beeline for this dollhouse. It was rather cute, as usually Hannah makes a beeline for the food. Then Friday evening we headed to Edmonton, Saturday we went to the Mom Pop and Tots show, Hannah got to take a ride on the ponies, and bounce in a bouncy house. She had a great time. Sunday we went to the shriners circus. And then a barbecue before we headed home. But it doesn't end there, on Monday Hannah, Sara and I headed off to the zoo for the morning. I think that pretty much sums up our week. What did you guys do this weekend?

W00t! I talk good English!

Your Language Arts Grade: 100%

Way to go! You know not to trust the MS Grammar Check and you know "no" from "know." Now, go forth and spread the good word (or at least, the proper use of apostrophes).

Are You Gooder at Grammar?
Make a Quiz

(And yes that was on my first try - with no cheating, either...)

Shopping Spree

Items on the receipt from my last shopping trip: Children's Tylenol; Children's Motrin; Infant Motrin; Pedialyte; Pedialyte pops.

Restock The Diaper Bag!

That is the note that I need to stick to our front door, in big bold letters. We decided to go to the Devonian gardens today and walk around a bit, let Hannah play at the playground, and then go to the OSF (Old Spagetti Factory) for supper. Well halfway through playing we realized that Hannah had a stinky bum. But whoops there are no diapers. But we can fix this right we're in a big mall. So we find a shoppers drugmart, and buy some pull-ups, walking out just as they're locking the doors. So now the trick is finding a washroom. Unfortunately there are no washrooms on the floor that we are on so Dan decides to take Hannah up the escalator to the nearest washroom while I wait with Sara, instead of tracking down an elevator.

Of course as they are walking off, and I study the map a little more, I realize that we have to walk right by a washroom on our way through the pedway system. But they are already on the escalator. Shortly after that I realize that Dan has forgotten the diaper bag, and therefor the wipes.

So Dan comes back from the washroom, rather annoyed and with Hannah barely cleaner then when he left. We head for the bathroom that I had located, and here I take over and change Hannah again. But it is now that I realize that, hey, we only have two wipes left. So I sparingly use one wipe, and figure we'll be good for the evening as both girls have already pooped once now.

We went off to the restaurant, and enjoyed our supper. As we're waiting for desert the inevitable happens. Hannah poops, and a really smelly one too. It is at this point that I have to admit to having used the last wipe to clean off Sara's face. But oh wait, we keep wipes in the van, all will be saved. So Dan runs out to the van to grab the wipes and another diaper. He comes back in with the nicest smirk and drops a brick of wipes onto the table.

I pick up the brick of frozen wipes, and head off to the washroom, which is of course down a very long flight of stairs which Hannah insists on walking down herself. We get to the washroom, I bend down to pick up her up to put her on the change table and narrowly miss putting my hand into a gigantic blob of poop, that has popped out the back of her diaper. There is poop everywhere, on her clothes, up her back. I turn my attention to the wipes hoping they will some how have magically melted, but they haven't, and the only thing I seem to be able to do with them is rip off little pieces of dried cold wipes. So I attempt to clean Hannah up with wet paper towel, and wet change table covers, that the OSF has nicely kept stocked in their change table. Needless to say I didn't do a very good job. and so we trudged back to the table with a still smelling Hannah, and me also smelling cause at some point I put my knee into a blob of poop that had fallen out of her diaper.

So that was our day. It was actually quite an enjoyable outing despite my complaining, but I think I might have finally learned my lesson about keeping the wipes and diapers stocked in the diaper bag.

Puppy?

I'm sure every kid does this at some point but it is still cute. We had Macaroni and hotdogs for supper tonight. And you guessed it halfway through supper Hannah asked for more puppies.

We were supposed to go to a restaurant for supper tonight, but when I went outside to warm up the van, I accidentally locked myself out. So supper plans were ruined and I had to throw something together. So we had macaroni and cheesewiz with hotdogs.

In other news I hosted another playdate today. We all had a great time. It was a little bit smaller then normal, with only 4 other moms. I actually found it to be a little more enjoyable with the smaller group 5 adults and 9 kids is a little more manageable then the group I usually have. Hannah and 3 of the other kids spent about 30 minutes just running circles around our house, up the stairs in the kitchen, then they slid down the stairs at the entrance on their bellies and then back up to the kitchen. It was really great to watch Hannah actually playing with the other kids. Usually she just picks a toy and plays with it by herself. She is actually quite anti-social, but I guess that is pretty much normal for her age. Sara had a blast too, I put her in her exersaucer (so she wouldn't get run over) and she sat and watched all the other kids play. When they all came into the kitchen for snacks, she got quite upset. Of course some of the boys were kind enough to show Hannah that she could slide down the main set of stairs on her belly too.

Pay no attention to the monkey behind the other keyboard....

First of all, yes.... I'm still alive....

Secondly, I didn't believe that I could cut through the table... As scientifically minded people, we were simply testing an admittedly weak hypothesis based on Hannah's attempts to cut through our table with a plastic butter knife...

For the record, plastic utensils are no match for a 30 year old pine table...

Take a guess ...

How long do you think Dan tried to cut through our coffee table with a plastic knife. He of course was attempting to prove me wrong after I stated that it couldn't be done as the knife would wear down to nothing first.

Six month shots

Sara had her six month shots today. Yes, I know she is 8 months old. She weighed in at a whopping 21 lbs, and 27 inches. She wasn't even on the charts any more for weight. And she was in the 75th percentile for length. She is definitely my big girl. At this rate it wont be long and she will be heavier then Hannah. She took the shots well although her legs are sore this evening, and she was pretty tired.

Happy valentines day to everybody. Dan surprised me with a dozen roses this afternoon, and we went out for supper. Of course supper can't be too romantic with two kids, but it was fun none the less.

Life has been pretty routine around here lately so I haven't got much to say, we're heading out to a play date tomorrow morning, which is going to be great, seeing how we've been house bound for the last week, thanks to the snow. I will now take a moment to complain about the roads in Calgary. Their idea of snow removal is a joke. I went out last night and got a shot of adrenaline a couple of times, and it was only a 3 km drive. Not once on my trip did I find any gravel, not at any intersections, or on the huge hill that I came down. (You try stopping on a huge hill that is a sheet of ice without the aid of gravel) . Personally I love driving in Calgary, when the roads are nice, it is easily the best city I have ever been in for driving. People behave logically and the roads are fast. But waiting for the Next Chinook doesn't count as snow removal in my mind. But enough of that. Hope everybody had a great valentine, and eat lots of chocolate, it will get your endorphins going.

A penny spent, is a penny spent

We learned an important lesson today, if you go to just check out something that sounds like a good idea, you will probably end up buying it. So with that said check out our new purchase.

This is Funny

Poo warning, do not read if you are offended by poo.

Congratulations

Congratulations are in order for Kelly and Kara Tuftin. If you want to know why, check out their website The Tuftins

Hint

Question

What does a dinosaur, Pokemon, Scooby-doo, the Letter W, Spongebob, Winnie the pooh, and a tiger all have in common?