Cutest baby ever, at least to her Dad. 🙂
RC Cars Live!
Some would say that I have too many hobbies. I can’t help it! Ifind most things (particularly things with gear) to be amazingly interesting. It’s just part of my personality. Ever since I was a kid I wanted to figure out how things work, and hobbies are great for exercising that desire.
About 5 years ago (really, 5 years) I got into remote control cars in a big way. I think another guy at the office (can’t remember who to blame offhand!) got one and then a few of us decided we all had to have one as well. We all got the HPI Racing RS4 MT with electric motor. The electric motor made these a lot easier to build and operate than the gas cars. We all got them running and had a few days of fun racing them around, jumping them and of course breaking them.
A subset of us thought this was all fun but wanted to get into the real thing, gas cars! I bought the HPI RTR Nitro RS4 and started to put it together. This all happened in about 2 months. I’m a little obsessive and when I focus on something, it’s all mine.
Then it stopped.
We didn’t get together to race them. One of the guys with a gas car got his working but then we all just kind of forgot this obsession and moved on to other things to assimilate. That was over four years ago. My gas car was only half put together.
One of the things about me and hobbies (err, obsessions) is that I may give them a break, but I rarely just leave them forever. A few weeks ago we were driving out of a grocery store by our house and there was a race track setup where guys were racing their RC cars. I announced to Tammy “I should get my cars going!”. A few shipments from RCHobbies.org later and I got everything going – including finishing and getting my gas car going – 5 years after I bought it! (It is now a discontinued model!)
I finished the gas one this weekend and primed the motor up. I’ve ran a few tanks of gas through it to break in the engine and tuned it up a bit, it’s working great. The electric car needed a new chassis plate so I replaced that and also took an opportunity to finish routing cables on it and re-tensioning the cable.
They are both a lot of fun to drive. I need to tune the gas one further, the steering isn’t quite in alignment and the clutch doesn’t release soon enough. I’ll get to that later, maybe four years from now. 🙂
Mowing the Lawn
This is a rather pointless post but I wanted to share that I think Ihave found the best music for mowing the lawn, ever. Every weekend I have to plod outside and fire up the lawn mower. My iPod is a dear, dear friend during this one hour trek in endless circles around the lawn. I used to listen to a variet of things, but now I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no finer album to mow the lawn with than Chronicles I by Credence Clearwater Revival.
Next time you find yourself sweating behind the lawn mower, give this CD a go, and you’ll be markedly happier.
Go George! Hincapie Wins Stage!
Everyone, really, anybody knows Lance Armstrong and the Tour de France.Not everyone knows one of Lance’s close friends and longtime teammate George Hincapie who took his first Tour de France stage win today on the “Queen’s Stage” (thus named for being the hardest day of the tour).
George got in an early breakaway with a number of riders and he hung on the whole day. With only he and Oscar Pereiro left in the final 2km he was able to take the win.
Lance winning the tour at this point is almost a guarantee. George taking the stage was a complete surprise and a huge win for him. I cheer for Hincapie all spring as he tries to win the big spring classics, and I still hope that he will win Paris-Roubaix before he decides to hang up his wheels. But hat’s off to him on an amazing win today.
For more Tour de France info, check out TdF Blog.
A Walk in the Woods
It feels like a crime to re-read a book, at least for me. My reading list is as long as my arm (actually, about five times longer than my arm). I’ve got stacks of books that I want to read and haven’t cracked the spine of yet. So, when I think of taking time from all those neglected books to re-read a book I’ve already read, I feel bad. It’s like I’m neglecting all those other great texts. However, it couldn’t be helped in this case. I had to re-read A Walk in the Woods.
I read this book the first time a few years ago and just loved it. Bill Bryson is an incredible author and very funny. I highly recommend all of his books, they are extremely enjoyable. Walk in the Woods is exceptional though even for Bryson.
The subject of the book is the Appalachian Trail.
First, for those that don’t kow about this trail, it is a 2,175 mile hiking trail that extends from Georgia to Maine. Every year people attempt to hike it’s length, called “thru hikers”, only a small percentage of those that start make it all the way to Maine.
Walk in the Woods is Bryson’s attempt to hike the trail. His is joined by a very non-hiker friend of his, Katz, and you are treated with laugh-out-loud humor as you trek through the woods with these two.
I would like to hike the AT at some point. It takes about five months to hike completely, starting in early spring in Georgia and ending in fall in Maine. Until then, I’ll just have to join Bryson and Katz on the trail every few years.
Windows Media Player as Infant Education
I learned a new trick tonight while holding Mazie. We were sitting onthe couch and I had my laptop next to me. I was singing to her and keeping her occupied and decided to put on some classical music. Mozart of course. And then it dawned on me that I had a great infant toy in front of me, so I gave it a shot.
I maximized the WMP visualization window and put it in random rotation with Mozart. I then held Mazie on my lap so she could see the screen. I had always figured these visualizations were only interesting to those on illegal substances, but it turns out 1-month old Mazie really dug it. She was watching the spinning graphics and when the screen would suddenly change to something else she would stop sucking my finger for a moment and check it all out. She particularly liked the flutes in the Mozart selections we were listening to.
Forget the Leap Frog – just grab your laptop!
EarthRoamer: Now this is an RV!
Tammy and I have occasionally thought about getting an RV. We like to take long road trips and like to get off the beaten path. Particularly with Tammy’s fear of flying, we tend to drive long distances when it comes to vacations.
The average RV though isn’t really our speed. Then while Tammy was flipping through a magazine she saw the EarthRoamer. This thing is amazing!
Essentially, take a Ford F-450 turbo diesel and turn it into an amazing off-road vehicle with plush surroundings. It’s small, but makes the most out of it’s space. Ecologically sound as well! The EarthRoamer uses solar panels and the truck engine to provide power – no generator on this thing. It also runs on BioDiesel. You can take the EarthRoamer out into, literally, any conditions for well over a week at a time and have no worries. Optional items like satellite TV and sound system bring further comforts.
I sent them an email to see if they’ve ever built Internet access into one. This would be the perfect vehicle to go to Moab or Alaska in. Who knows, maybe in a few years, earthroamer.thingelstad.com will be up and running! (You know I would have to do it!)
Blog Upgrades
Applied a couple of upgrades to the blog this morning. Decent amount of work that will have absolutely zero impact on you the reader. 🙂 I did a decent amount of research on upgrading from my .Text blogging engine to it’s successor, Community Server. CS is now at 1.1 and it’s improving, but it’s got a lot of pork with forums added. While it is certainly feasible for me to migrate, great people out there have written wonderful tools to help make that possible, I’m going to wait a bit longer I think. Perhaps wait for a 2.0 release. In the meantime I’m stuck using my great, but now dead, open-source .Text package. So, time to spiff it up a bit.
First, I removed all the old spam protection I put on my sites with the random character CAPTCHA and all that and went a different route using this ReverseDOS toolkit from angrypets.com. I just installed it this morning so we’ll see how it goes, but it doesn’t put the burden on a person and tries to make life real hard for spammers.
The second big upgrade was to move from FreeTextBox 1.0 (built into .Text) to FreeTextBox 3.0. The main driver behind this was so I could have a nice, rich editing environment with spell checking in Firefox (FTB 1.0 did not support Firefox). This proved to be a bit of a hassle, lots of trial and error, but I now have it working great. Google is the savior here of course since there are about a dozen sites that tell you how to do it but they all seem to be missing one or two steps. You have to feel your way with Jedi-like focus in order to get it working. These are the best references: DanBartels.CS, Dave Burke (2.0 actually, but steps are helpful) and Markyologist (don’t forget the browsercaps!).
Mazie Turns 1-Month
Today is Mazie’s 1-month birthday! It’s an odd stretch of time. It seems in some ways like forever ago that we were in the hospital and brought her home. I look at her now and she’s already grown so much. We have gotten over our regular panics and now just panic every once in a while. We no longer have to track feedings and diapers to make sure all the inputs and outputs are working right.
Other milestones are starting to occur. Tonight, for the first time, I got to watch her all by myself for about an hour while Tammy went grocery shopping. We are teaching her to start taking a bottle, and it’s not a very easy process. We are also trying to get her to accept a pacifier, but that also isn’t going so well. She seems to only want the “real deal”.
We’ve made it out now a number of times but we still feel a lot more comfortable at home. We haven’t taken her on many walks due to the extreme heat. So, we’ve been mostly sticking to the house waiting for 6 weeks to pass when she’ll have more of an immune system.
I put up a collection of photos from the last three weeks as well.
She’s a great kid, amazing, we love her like crazy… and we’re pretty tired. 🙂
Not All Fun and Games
Tomorrow Mazie celebrates becoming three weeks old. She is filled with anticipation of exciting “three-week-old” things like having some milk, making some dirty diapers, maybe even taking an extra nap in the afternoon.
In her first three weeks Mazie continues to be amazing and incredible and beautiful and simply the best, or at least according to yours truly, Dad. She’s learned to exercise her lungs more with some mild wailing. I find that it bothers me less if I consider it exercise. She’s gotta learn how to get all that air in and get it out quick after all! She is still being very nice to us and sleeping relatively well. I’ve acquired a very valuable skill – being able to put her to sleep at night. I just talk about computers, telescopes, Road Sign Math, etc. 🙂 In all seriousness, the nightly routine involves me swaddling her real tight, which she hates at first and cries and pushes against but after a few minutes of rocking she settles down. Then we put the “heartbeat” CD on fairly loud which makes a womb-like sound for an hour. Perhaps not surprisingly this puts all of us to sleep pretty quickly as well.
Tammy is obsessed with her being too hot or too cold, still. She’s also obsessed with cleanliness. We changed her diaper for the first time today outside the house, at Eden Prairie center. There was much care taken to make sure nothing was touched. Germs! Everybody had to wipe off with the baby wipes after leaving. I find it all very funny and cute, but it’s really great too.
Lance and #7 (cont.)
We are now past the 3rd stage of the tour and it’s clear that Discovery (formerly US Postal) has what may be one of the best tour teams ever assembled. It’s also clear that whatever Lance’s motivations are for riding this tour, he’s serious. The first stage saw him take one to three minutes from his rivals. All that in a little over 12 miles! Stunning performance in an individual time trial.
The last two stages have had great sprint finishes. This is definitely gearing up to be a legendary tour. Can’t wait for the high mountains.
Happy Independence Day!
We aren’t doing much exciting for the fourth this year. I really like fireworks but with Mazie being just under three weeks old fireworks don’t sound like a good idea. [Hint: Stillwater has the best fireworks around!] We had a classic 4th of July barbecue in it’s place. Barbecued bison burgers and baked beans. Yum!
Some Independence Day moments of Zen to share…
Lance and #7
It is the eve of the 92nd Tour de France. I love cycling. I think it is the best sport in the world, and the Tour de France is the biggest event in it. A lot of friends have asked me what I think of Lance’s chances in this years tour, and I don’t have a very quick answer. Here is why. Lance is an amazing athlete. One of the best ever. He is a big part of why I’m even a cycling fan! Going to France to see him win his 6th tour and do something that has never been done in cycling was amazing. If I could have staged Lance’s final years in cycling, this is what it would look like.
After winning six consecutive tours Lance decides to turn his attention elsewhere. He focuses his program on the spring classics. His huge popularity draws unprecedented attention in the US to races like Gent-Wevelgen, Paris-Roubaix, Milano - Sanremo and Paris - Nice. After winning a select set of the greatest classics Lance focuses on breaking the hour record. After adding these two great achievements to his dossier he forever puts to bed the complaints and comparisons to Eddy Merckx and decides to hang up the bike.
Instead of doing what I wanted (c’mon!) Lance has decided to pursue another Tour de France victory. Part of me is simply worried that he is going to lose. He’s old for cycling and if anyone can win, he can, but he has a legacy to lose. Additionally, I think it’s just poor etiquette. Lance is a strong believer in the etiquette of the peloton, and how “ugly American” of him to not go for something new after shattering every record. Last is that I really think this is all about money at the end of the day. When the US Postal sponsorship went away they needed a new sponsor and if you remove Lance and the Tour de France the value of the team drops a lot. It’s widely known that his contract with Discovery requires that he ride another tour, it just didn’t say when. I really wonder if he would be riding this year if it weren’t for this financial situation.
I’m going to be shouting for him to win tomorrow and the 22 days after that (it will be hard to compare to the kneeling-on-the-floor agony of watching Hincapie come into the velodrome in Roubaix!). I’ll be on the edge of my seat on every mountain stage and wincing as they rocket down the descents. I really hope we have an amazing tour, and yes, I really hope that Lance wins, it’s just complicated.
Power… Out… Again…
Stunning! Shocking! Our power went out again at 4:04 pm today. It returned, fitfully with a lot of jerking and stopping around 6:30 pm.
I really wish I understood why this happens so frequently for us.
Comment Spam Protection
Just implemented some further spam protection to keep the evil doers at bay. I installed this great add-on that requires entering a validation code before providing feedback. I realize it is a bit of a pain, and sometimes the validation code is hard even for people to read, but it keeps those evil spammers away.
Too Cold! Too Hot!
The people at the hospital were clearly out of their mind when they decided that we could go home with this small, fragile little baby. Seriously! Like we have a clue what we are doing? This should be left to the professionals.
The basic newborn crises have went away. We have plenty of diapers to change now. Mazie is gaining weight like, well, like only I can. Her belly button has revealed itself. Replacing these fears are the more basic issues of her being too hot, too cold, too sleepy, too awake or whatever the concern of the moment is.
This morning she had her first real bath (as opposed to the sponge baths she got before). The bath went well, but when we were done she was freezing cold. You sort of freak out when your baby is shivering. Fast forward to this afternoon. We took a brief trip to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and left after about 10 minutes. Why? Too hot! She had to be baking! We took all her clothes off except her onesie and then the dreaded sun came out! She’s going to get burned! RUN!
We retreated to the safety and air conditioned, sun protected comfort of our home to attempt to venture out another day.
Stopping TrackBack Spam with DotText
I’ve seen a huge increase in trackback spam to my sites lately. It’s now reached hundreds a day. I thought this was one or two hosts so I added a rule to snort to capture trackback spam and found it was coming from nearly all unique IP addresses. I’m guessing this is being propogated via spyware that is sitting on unsuspecting peoples computers. I couldn’t just block this at the router like I do with feedback spam since it was coming from a variety of sources.
I did a quick search after a failed attempt at stopping this with ISAPI URL rewriting because it cannot see POST data. However, a developer in Ireland has solved this problem and been kind enough to share his solution. I just installed it and am waiting to verify everything works well. One concern I have is that his solution is built against DotText 0.95.2004.102 and I’m running 0.95.2004.111. The 111 build was a bug fix build, and the last one that I know of, issued by the author to fix some API issues. So far the Dottext.Framework.dll file seems to work fine intermixed with the other version, but I’m not positive yet.
While typing this I got my first spam alert, check it out
Spam has been detected!!!
Title: black jack
URL: BLAHBLAH
IP Address: 218.244.225.180
Excerpt:Take your time to visit some helpful info in the field of <A href=“URL REMOVED”>vegas casinos</A>
Looks like the detection part is working! Provided I don’t have anything break I’m going to be a much happier blogger.
Mazie, The First Week
A week ago today Mazie introduced herself to us. Since then Tammy and I have shifted from glee to fright many times, sometimes all within a matter of a few minutes. We’ve been worrying about everything. First there was the lack of dirty diapers. My read of the situation was that she was starving to death. Tammy frets constantly about her being warm enough. Then there was the incident with blood around the umbilical stump – I won’t even go there. But it seems that we are getting the hang of it. Yesterday was our first crisis free day.
Mazie on the other hand seems to be doing just fine even with her neurotic parents. She sleeps amazingly well, at times sleeping six hours straight through the night. We hope that isn’t just a phase. She’s co-sleeping with us which makes it a lot easier for everyone and I think keeps her calmer at night. She’s caught up on her dirty diaper quotas, making up for lost time. She’s simply adorable. After she gets her milk she has a tendency to get the hiccups. We ventured outside today on our first walk with the stroller.
Everyone kept telling me that everything will change when you have kids. I knew it would, it’s a huge thing after all. But I feel a need to reiterate it and reflect that yes, everthing did indeed change, for the better.
I also put up some new pictures from Mazie’s first week.
Being Daddy
Mazie turns 4 today, 4 days that is. It’s been an incredible four days. I realize everyone all over the world goes through this process all the time. As a result, it should seem somewhat routine from a global perspective, but on an individual level everything seems profound and amazing and like you are the first person in the world to ever do any of this stuff.
Mazie overall is doing great. She needs to catch up on diapers. There are numbers she’s supposed to be hitting and she’s behind. How do you like that? Four days old and already behind quota. She sleeps really well, usually getting two 4 to 5 hour sessions in per day, along with some shorter naps. She’s a great sucker!
Some thoughts on my new title of “dad”:
- The first thing that comes to mind is that the parts that are easy are easier than I expected they would be, and the parts that are harder are way harder. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but maybe if you’ve been there before you know what I mean. Like changing diapers, is trivial, but calming your kid at 3 a.m. is really hard.
- Those protective father instincts sure kick in. I’m always worrying about her and want to protect her at every turn. Imagine when she starts to walk! I’m going to need a sedative.
- I’ve never been one to be real comfortable with newborns. They seem so fragile. All that disappears in about 2 seconds with your own kid. There just isn’t much better than laying with her on your chest and patting her back.
- The most amazing thing in the world is being able to bring comfort to your baby. When she’s crying for whatever reason, and you pick her up and put her to your chest and she calms down and is happy, that’s amazing. Of course the reciprical is also true, when you cannot provide her that sense of calm, that is pretty much the most horrible thing in the world.
- How can a kid that does not have precise muscle control get her socks off so easily!?
New Addition
It is tradition that a husband get his wife a present after the delivery of a baby. After being in the room and seeing in every little bit of detail all that is involved, a present hardly seems a satisfactory way of saying thank you. We decided to celebrate this event with art rather than the classic gift of jewelry. Art lasts just as long as diamonds. I contacted Amy Lynn Stevenson who we already have one piece from and discussed what I wanted to do. She came up with a wonderful painting that she titled “New Addition”. The dimensions are 5 feet wide by 3 feet tall.
I really love it and Tammy was very happy with it. I can’t wait to some day give it to Mazie to have in her house.