2006
East Coast Adventure '06 - Day 8
Day 8 of the Great Adventure starts with a relatively lazy morning as we prepare to head to Washington DC for the long weekend. This week has been crazy. I had two evening business events filled with very busy schedules in the day. I mostly just got up at 6 am each day, got showered and left very early to get a head start on the day and came home well after Mazie was asleep. Mazie decided that she should just wave goodbye to me whenever she saw me. 🙁
It rained most of the week as well so it wasn’t a first great week of the Great Adventure for anyone. Tammy and Mazie came into the office on Thursday and we all had lunch together at the company cafeteria. I showed them around the office a bit.
I’m pretty excited to head down to DC. My mom and sister are coming out to spend the weekend with us. I’ll post some updates from DC and try to get some pictures up as well.
Go to day: 3, 4, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37 or East Coast Adventure collection.
East Coast Adventure '06 - Day 4
So the headline from the Great Adventure tonight is that Mazie absolutely hates, and I need to emphasize this, hates, sleeping here. Tammy is in with her right now and Mazie just screams at the top of her lungs whenever she is placed in the crib. We’ve never seen her like this before. She is a very good sleeper and you can usually just put her down and she goes to sleep. Not here.
Last night it took Tammy 90 minutes of absolutely top-notch Mom work to get her to sleep, and it’s not looking any better tonight. She wouldn’t sleep in there for her nap. In fact, she only got a nap because they went to the store and she fell asleep on the way there and proceeded to sleep for 2 hours in her car seat.
I’m sure she’s pretty exhausted from the two long days of driving, and I’m hoping that she will get back on track soon. The time change, however slight for us, also throws her for a loop I’m sure. But boy oh boy do I hope this doesn’t last much longer.
Go to day: 3, 4, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37 or East Coast Adventure collection.
Speed Matters
I’ve got a bunch of little USB flash drives hanging around. It is almost as if they rain from the sky. In fact, if you go to a trade show, they sometimes in fact do! I had a new requirement of a flash drive recently though. I wanted to actually run an application off of it. Up to now I’ve used them like a “cool” floppy disk. But now I wanted to actually put a program on it and run it from an Windows machine I walked up to. The software worked in this mode, but, to my dismay the flash drives I had were horrible at this.
Pathetic performance is documented below on one of my 1G flash cards.
Of course this problem is easily solved with a credit card and a few clicks on Newegg. I ordered the OCZ Rally2 2G accelerated drive, and solved all of my problems.
It is still no hard drive, but, the performance is very acceptable. And to boot, it’s nicely packaged with a metal enclosure and no wasted room.
Jump into 802.11n
While
getting the Internet side of life setup while on the Great Adventure
I made a trip to Best Buy to get a wireless
router. The apartment has broadband (of course), but it terminated to a
single ethernet cable and being tethered to a desk with only one laptop
simply wasn’t acceptable. I’ve got my two laptops here, plus the work
one, and sofa computing is a must.
I really debated at the store. I grabbed a WRT54GS and was going to walk out but I already have a WRT54G at home and it seemed lame to get something with nothing new at all. So, I decided to jump into the world of 802.11n with the WRT300N. On top of it? It has a super cool antennae array on top. ;-)
I also grabbed a 802.11n PCMCIA card for my laptop, WPC300N, and I’m all up and running. Of course, I have no local servers here that can actually test the speed that I now have, but it will come in handy at home since I’ve found even 802.11g to be too slow for mutlimedia content or even RAW digital photos.
The setup was simple on the WRT300N, no complaints. The chassis is the same as the WRT54G with a nicer front facia. It also comes with a clip so that you can side mount it.
I did miss the opportunity though to get a router that would support IPsec and allow me to build a VPN tunnel back to the home network in Minneapolis via the ZyWall. It would have been cool, but there wasn’t a clear option in the price range I was willing to jump into.
Game On: Time to Lose Weight
Over the last couple of years I’ve really let my weight slide. Or should I say, climb. Slide would imply sliding down something, and I’ve definitely not been going down, but instead going up. I won’t even recount reasons for this – whatever – it is what it is. It’s time to reverse the trend and restore sensibility!
I’ve been logging my food now for two weeks. I dropped a little over 3 pounds last week. I’m happy to be logging my food. It provides a structure for me that I find very helpful. I’m going to be away from home for the next 5 weeks and I will be using my food log to keep things in control. I’m shooting for around 2,000 calories a day, plus or minus.
My first goal is to get back below 300, that will happen pretty soon. After that 280. And then to 250. When I got married I was at my lowest point I can ever recall, 210. That’s not a goal, mainly just focusing on 250.
I actually don’t have an option other than lose weight. Next summer my father-in-law has arranged a trip with all the son-in-laws. We are going to Canada fishing for a week. It sounds like a lot of fun, but the final leg of the trip is on a seaplane and each person is limited to 330 lbs of load, including themselves. So, I either drop a decent chunk of weight, or I have to go with no food, gear or clothes. 🙂
I’m going to post updates on the blog here. I know from when I did this the first time (and this had better be the last time!) that it’s good to share your objectives and progress with others.
East Coast Adventure '06 - Day 3
On Friday we embarked on the Thingelstad Family Great East Coast Adventure 2006! What is this amazing event you ask? We are going to be away from home for 5 weeks. The first three will be in New Jersey while I work out of our office here, taking advantage of being in the same office as so many others. The last two weeks will be on vacation in North Carolina. Yeah!
Days 1 and 2 of the adventure were travel days. We left Minneapolis on Friday morning around 9:30a and drove, and drove, and drove. We took breaks for Mazie to get out and run around. We camped in a Starbucks in Rockford, Illinois waiting for a monsoon like rain to pass and providing an opportunity for Mazie to let out some energy, and me to get some back (triple espresso!!!). We also had a great Japanese dinner in Rockford. However, we didn’t take into account that as soon as Mazie saw the food on the grill getting cooked that she would want to eat. Squaking was moderately high. We spent the night just outside of Toledo, OH in a splendid Holiday Inn Express.
We arrived to our great little apartment here in Lawrenceville, NJ last night after another long day of driving through Ohio and Pennsylvania. At one point while driving through Ohio in the morning Tammy looked over at me and said the best line of the whole drive
I’m going to sleep. Try not to do anything stupid.
I appreciated her vote of confidence and continued to motor along while her and Mazie got some rest.
We spent Sunday here in NJ getting the apartment setup and preparing for the week. Stay tuned for more updates from the Great Adventure.
Go to day: 3, 4, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37 or East Coast Adventure collection.
Best Kiss Ever
Mazie is growing up so fast. She’s such an amazing kid. For the last couple of months if I asked she would come over and give me a kiss on the cheek. Well this weekend she decided all on her own she was going to give her dad a kiss! Man was that awesome. I was holding her and she comes around and gives me a smack on the cheek. I’m still beaming!
She’s doing really great. I can tell that she’s trying to learn how to deal with stairs which has her, at times, over-protective dad freaking out. I’m constantly lurching to grab her as she approaches anything resembling a stair. She’s doing a lot better walking along with me – she stays with me well for as long as a block only wandering off a little bit.
She is also starting to talk more and more. She’s figured out “help”. If she gets into a tough spot walking around, or wants something off of a counter, she will ask mom or I for “help”. She’s got “dog” or “cat” down well, including a very convincing “meow”.
She just gets better and better, and being Mazie’s dad is the best job I have. 🙂
Celebrity Spotting: Doug Savant
We are all in Iowa City this weekend to see our friends Lisa & Eric and particularly their new baby girl Rachel. She’s as cute as can be and so tiny! I know Mazie was that tiny, but I have no real recollection of it.
We are staying at the Hotel Vetro, which is an overly hip hotel for Iowa City and while going to the elevator today Tammy saw someone in the hallway she was positive she knew. She stopped the guy while telling me “Isn’t that someone we know?” I looked at it wasn’t, but it was one of the actors from Desperate Housewives, Doug Savant.
I checked online and his wife is from Iowa City so I would guess they were here visiting.
I won the Change Game!
Today when I stopped at Starbucks and got my morning coffee – I won the Change Game!
That’s only the 3rd (maybe 4th) time ever that I’ve won it in over 4 years.
Nintendo DS Lite
Yesterday we were at Best Buy on my occassional visit to wonder around the store and just check stuff out. Tammy finds these trips annoying since I rarely buy anything, and after 5 minutes decide to leave. Yesterday though I decided to check out the gaming aisles and stumbled on the Nintendo DS. I had read about these “brain games” for the DS in Scientific American Mind magazine and was intrigued. They had one of these on the demo unit so we played it, and it was pretty fun. 10 minutes later we walked out of the store with a DS Lite and three games.
I decided that my ban on ever buying a gaming console again (at least until Mazie is old enough to find it fun) was not applicable since this is a portable unit. So far, it’s a lot of fun and the portability makes a great for flights. The initial set of games we got were Brain Age, Big Brain Academy and Super Mario Bros. Now it’s time to start looking up information on hacking the DS! 🙂
Looking for Land
Tammy and I have been talking for a couple years now about getting some land that we could eventually (10+ years) build a house on and maybe live on when Mazie (and any other potential, future kids – settle down Grandma’s, no news here) have moved out, etc. I’ve been thinking that we shouldn’t bother waiting to get the land until then – prices are likely to be higher and we could use it right now as a getaway on weekends.
This Friday we did our first road trip to tour some options and looked at 6 properties in the Red Wing, Zumbrota area of Minnesota and in Wisconsin on the other side of the river. Mazie was with her grandparents so driving 240 miles in the country was actually pretty fun. We are looking at property between 15 and 25 acres. We want something within one to two hours from the Twin Cities. We want something fairly wooded, with a good building site. Electric service is not needed.
It was really good to look at these properties because it helped clarify how we would use the land and what qualities are important for us. There is a lot that we want to do.
First, a small living option is necessary right away. Tammy did a bunch of research and found this great option for us called the miniHome. As soon as you own the land, you need a place to stay on it and the idea of camping every time you visit wasn’t that appealing to either of us.
The miniHome is a near ideal solution for this. It’s rated as a mobile home so it can be brought to a site without any special police escort. It’s designed to be ecologically friendly and self-contained. They have an option that puts solar electric and a wind turbine with it for complete off-grid usage. It has reservoirs for water and waste. In short, this is a one-stop solution to having 350 square feet of comfortable, heated space with all the conveniences you would expect. The only thing lacking is air conditioning, which you could add if you wanted. (Note: it even has an ethernet network!) We would plan on leaving this on the land to be used as a guest option as well.
The other structure that we would need right away would be some sort of utility building. This essentially would be a 2-car garage. This would be where the solar array and wind turbines would come together with a battery bank to store electricity. The utility building would house all of this and also provide storage for a car and other tools. I would probably need an ATV with a trailer that could be parked in there as well.
Obviously we need to identify a good spot for an eventual home. There are a lot of structural issues to consider for this. However, we would add other issues as well since we want it to be efficient and integrated with the location. Correct sun alignment would be important for passive solar heat, for example.
All of these locations would require access by large machinery. Everything else would be fine just being accessible by ATV.
I would want to have a nice, big firepit on the property. Ideally this would allow 10-15 people to enjoy a fire, and include an option for open pit cooking as well. Preferably this would be in an area with a lot of trees.
For the evenings, and since we’d have the dark sky for it, I would want to put up a dome for my telescope with a permanent mount. This would be wonderful and make it so much easier to take in the night sky. This would ideally be in a fairly open area, on the highest point possible to get the best view to the horizon. Electricity is necessary but can be easily provided by a small solar PV module and an isolated battery. I would need to extend the network to it as well, most likely using some sort of wireless option.
It would be a shame to have a bunch of land without a good spot for a garden. Tammy and I are far from green thumbs, but we definitely want this option. And last but not least we want to have a cool walking path that would snake through the land and connect everything up. This would allow for nice, evening strolls or just serve the utility of getting to various places.
We also learned that the approach to the land was important for us. We didn’t like land that was right next to a busy road. We liked it much more when you left the highway, then took a smaller road with may eventually meander to a gravel road for access. Also of importance is what is around you. We really liked one property but didn’t like that there was a big campground a couple of miles down the same road.
There is much more research to do, much to learn about this, and we aren’t in a rush. However, it is pretty exciting to think about the potential!
Brain Games
We got the Nintendo DS because we liked these brain games. We bought both Brain Age and Big Brain Academy. As if you care , here are my comments on the games.
Brain Age
Brain Age is slow to impress, but opens up a lot as you start to play it more and more. The game feels well grounded in research, and in general the puzzles get plenty hard fast enough. The game does a very good job of introducing random elements into it, and even though multiple people don’t play it at the same time, it brings data from other people playing Brain Age into the sessions. For example, when I finished the math quiz today it told me that Tammy did a better job than I did. This resulted in me doing the quiz over and over until I beat her of course. Great encouragement.
One of the really fun things about Brain Age is it’s use of voice recognition. Some of the puzzles require you to speak to identify things and it does a good job of interpreting you. Last, the included Sudoku game is very well done. All in, this is a lot of fun.
Big Brain Academy
Big Brain Academy is more game-like than Brain Age. The characters are almost goofy looking, and the games seem more like parlour tricks than well researched logic tests. However, it is a lot of fun as well. It allows multiple player profiles, but doesn’t tie them together in anyway to create competition. It doesn’t use handwriting recognition or speech. The puzzles do get very difficult and it is certainly taxing, but not as well executed as Brain Age.
The winner is…
Honestly, if you like puzzles, get both. They are different enough that they are both worth having. However, Brain Age is definitely superior in almost all dimensions – even without the Sudoku game.
Wordplay
Last night Mazie’s aunt came over and babysat while Tammy and I went out for a “classic” date – dinner and a movie. We went to Wordplay at the Edina Theater. It was a fun movie all about the world of crossword puzzles. Sound like a topic that doesn’t really deserve a movie? Well, that just means you aren’t aware of the annual crossword puzzle tournament and the ridiculous speed at which some people solve a crossword puzzle (just over 2 minutes!).
The movie was great, and particularly fun for me since I have so many geeky hobbies: rc helicopter? rc cars? telescopes? home network? solar power? Watching Wordplay is like getting a 90 minute pass into this world of crossword puzzles. To an extent, you could envision a movie about one of your geeky hobbies with you in the hotel convention center talking to the guy about how amazing your telescope, helicopter, car is.
Fun, lighthearted movie.
Mill City Farmers Market
Yesterday
morning we went to the Mill City Farmers
Market. It was our first
visit, and only the second weekend that the market has been in
operation. This market is different than the huge Minneapolis farmers
market. It was coordinated by a number of people and led by the founder
of Cafe Brenda. The market combines great
locally grown food, with orgranic practices. There are also people there
with artisan cheeses and locally raised, grass-fed meat.
The space is great and there is even a musician playing resulting in an airy atmosphere that is relaxing and very enjoyable. I highly recommend it to anyone – either to stop by for some bread and cheese for lunch or pickup some food for the week ahead.
Kudos to everyone who made this market a reality.
MacBook
Amongst the celebratory gifts I got for father's day this year was a
pretty surprising toy. I had been commenting to Tammy for a while about
how cool I thought the new Apple MacBook was. She decided that it was
inevitable that I was going to get one and surprised me on father's day
with a nice box containing a black MacBook.
The Path to Here
I was born and raised on the Macintosh platform (after some very early years on TRS-80, TI-99/4A and finally Apple //c). I fondly can remember the release of the first color Mac, multifinder and the advent of System 7. However, when I came to college I discovered Unix and “real” operating systems. I then wandered into the Windows NT world as I moved into the professional or commercial world and never looked back to the Mac. Until…
About a year-and-a-half ago I got an iMac. The main reason I got the iMac was location. It was going in a very public place in our house and I wanted something that looked good. I was open to getting a Mac because of OS X. Apple had finally given up on the horrendous operating systems they had and moved to a Unix based environment. Stability and tools were greatly improved. I’ve been happy with the iMac, but then Apple got really serious.
The announcement a year ago to switch to the Intel chip was huge. The promise of hackable machines that could run Mac OS X but also run Windows and other environments was a siren song. And it’s become real over the last year. This decision, combined with a good, stable OS and some very nice hardware got me to get back in with the Mac crowd in a bigger way with the MacBook.
Initial Impressions
The MacBook is an extremely well constructed and versatile machine. It isn’t as light as my business laptop (Dell D410), but the construction quality runs laps around my other home laptop (Sony VGN-S360. Everything is solid. The keyboard looks like it may be a “chiclet” keyboard, but it’s feel is great. One of my favorite laptop keyboards thus far.
On the software side I’m enjoying Mac OS X. I’ve been using it on the iMac for a while, but mostly that computer just surfs the web and ’looks pretty’. This machine has been getting more industrial use and I’ve optimized it more for myself. I’ve purchased Parallels as well which allows me to run Windows XP (and really almost any x86 operating system) without rebooting. The product is great for a v1.0 and they will close the gaps in the coming updates. I look forward to having one machine with Mac OS X, Windows XP, Windows Vista and whatever else I want on it. Can you say Swiss Army Knife?
Areas of Improvement
There are some things that Apple didn’t get right yet. First, Apple’s insistance on a 1-button mouse is just infuriating. I may give them a break if they didn’t emulate a 2-button mouse themselves by holding down the control key. If your software uses a 2-button mouse concept, put one on the computer!
The MacBook is also extremely hot. Much has been written about this and I’m hopeful that there will be a firmware update to lessen this. I’ve been using CoreDuoTemp to monitor and I’ve seen my CPU hit 90 °C. (Right now just typing it’s at 77 °C.)
It’s a Wrap
I have to take my hat off to Apple. To get me to buy a Mac laptop is a feat. I had all but given up on them and they’ve really risen from the ashes. This is a fun machine.
PAX
Tammy and I decided that we wanted to make sure to raise Mazie understanding the value of charitable giving and in general “doing good” in the world. One of the things we are doing to that end is making a donation to a charity of her choice (or our choice on her behalf until she is old enough) on her birthday. This year we decided to support PAX, an organization that is working to reduce gun violence amongst children and teenagers. I attended an event of theirs a few weeks ago and the numbers were shocking. Eight children or teenagers die everyday as a result of gun violence. Even more shocking is the fact that more houses have guns than Xbox’s.
PAX has two main programs. The first is called “ask.” and is aimed at parents. The simple goal is for parents to ask if there is a gun in the house before their children go to play somewhere. Awareness is key, and many accidents happen while children are playing and some of the parents have no idea a gun was even there. The second is “speak up!” which is a toll-free hotline for students to report gun related concerns in school. The hotline receives over 15 calls a day of reported gun issues in schools, and coordinates with the school administration to respond.
They are an impressive, national organization with low overhead and a passion for working on this issue. Hat’s off to them and all the great work they are doing!
Happy (Delayed) Fathers Day
Being a dad rocks.
That pretty much sums it up. I could just end this comment now and be done. Dad’s that are reading it would understand. In fact, the openness of the statement is ideal as you can consider all that individual greatness of being a dad with your kids.
This year was my 2nd fathers day. It’s fun that Mazie’s birthday is right before fathers day. It makes for a better day as you are already celebrating how awesome it is that your child has grown more and more.
Mazie is so cool. She’s a pro walker now, rarely falling or getting tripped up. She even does pretty well on uneven surfaces with actual shoes on. She’s really verbal. She ranges from her version of dog, banana, gypsie, logan, mom, dad to her tendency to be, as Tammy and I put it, squaky.
She is a strong willed kid. She knows exactly what she wants to eat, in what order, and will clearly communicate it to you. She has started to play games with me. She’ll pretend like she’s going to come to me and turns away at the last minute giggling. Simply put, it’s pretty awesome to watch this little girl growing up.
Being a dad is a pretty great thing. I realize that it’s so much easier than the mom side of the fence. No being pregnant. No delivery. No breastfeeding. Even the things that are shared, this dad gets the easy route on. I change a tenth of the diapers Tammy does. The hardest thing I do is going away on business trips, but I credit that away time with making me truly appreciate the wonder that is my kid.
I love my kid. I love my wife. I love being a dad.
Solar Panels Started
Our solar heat project completed today! Just before 2:00 pm today Innovative Power Systems turned on the collectors and started to bring heat down to the storage tank. I’m monitoring the system and collecting data with Cacti. Below is a graph showing the temperature of the water that is coming back from the panels (this is one of several data points I’m monitoring on the system). The water coming back reached a maximum of 138 degrees and the panels themselves were about 145 degrees.
I’m really excited to have this project done. Not least of which is that it’s been 8 months since we made the decision to do it. I’ve been really surprised (but pleased!) at how many people have asked me about this project so I am going to write-up a thorough post about “My Solar Experience” and post it in the coming days. I’m very encouraged that some of you may consider to start tapping into renewable energy as well.
I have to go check my graphs again. 🙂