Kiddie Camo

So my wife and I decided to start letting our son sleep through the night. You know, let him cry it out if he woke up - because he's getting to that age where kids need to learn to "self-soothe." (He's four months old...).

Well, the first night we did this my wife also decided to get him out of his sleep positioner. It was a little too much for him, and in the end us. So my wife did a little more research and decided we could let him cry it out, but we'll keep him in the swaddler (as well as the sleep positioner) for present.

That worked decent, but we both realized that since he is a little long for his age (97+ percentile on the height - way to go son!) the swaddler was becoming more and more like a restrictive kilt. I kinda thought he looked a little like a mer-man...

So we decided to finally do away with the swaddler as well as the sleep positioner - hey we figured long as we were changing stuff on him, might as well do a bunch at once! The first night things got a little interesting. My wife had found some pretty cute "sleepers" (as they're called), I think he looks perfectly manly in 'em myself. The ones she chose for that night was yellow with black stripes.

Now our crib is black - and thusly has black "bars" going up the sides (no it doesn't remind me of a jail at all...), and she had happened to have put a yellow cover on the mattress. We had taken off the bumpers because we didn't want him to suffocate himself if he rolled over and stuck his face in 'em.

This being our first child, before we go to bed, my wife is watching him sleep, worrying just a little. She motions me to come in and look at him because he's doing something cute. Well I go in there, and the lights are out like they're supposed to be, with a little night-lite on. Well, it's so stinking dark it took me a minute to find my child in his crib. And when I did find him, I couldn't figure out why it was so stinking hard to make out where his head and rear end were - when I realized he was in Camo! He was wearing a yellow sleeper with black stripes in a crib with yellow sheets and black 'bars' coming up the sides. It was stinkin' hard to make him out!

So kiddie camo...yeah...let me advise all parents out there to put their children in clothes or 'jammies that CLASH with their sleeping arrangement, that way there are no questions about where the bedding ends and the child begins!

Internet phone fun...

Well, here I am scratching my head trying to figure out how I can cut my bills each month. Finances are more than tight as of late... But I had the brainstorm that we could get a single cell phone to share between Terra and I, and then maybe switch to having a home phone with DSL for internet - in switching the three around, we might actually be able to save around $50 a month!

The first disappointment was that Embarq (our local phone and DSL provider) would hand us a bill of approximately $65 a month (some friends who have Embarq let us know about this). I was almost hoping to be able to use AT&T, but they would have to run a cable to our house and all that fun stuff - though the cool part was if it worked we could combine all our internet, home phone and cell phone into one bill.

Then I remembered that voip providers (that would be internet phone service providers) usually charge around $15 to $20 a month. I could keep our present high speed hook-up and add home phone for just a little bit more. Disappointment. Time Warner voip service costs $30 a month - ridiculous!

But then I remembered Vonage - weren't they supposed to be cheaper? I checked 'em out. Yes they were cheaper, but they had all these taxes and extra charges. Could I go cheaper yet? Actually, yes. So now I'm weighing basically three voip providers: vonage, itel, and voip.com.

Yeah, if anyone out there knows anything about these, feel free to let me know!

More iPhone mania

I think i am actually more fascinated with the iPhone's impact on our society than in the actual iPhone (mainly because I'm extremely eager to see and play with the linux/open source equivalent which will come out in the next year or so...).

So I ran across and article on PC World which had all these random, crazy stories related to the iPhone. Check it out here.

And then there is this iPhone bill:



yeah, crazy stuff, huh?!

The Duck-tape Seamstress

Okay, almost. See, at CarQuest you can't wear pants with holes in 'em (go figure). Alas, all mine do have holes because of the various and sundry parts I've had to load and move around. And we can't afford for me to buy new pants every couple of weeks. In addition, neither myself or my wife do patching...

So I've had to go another route: Duck-tape. Yep that's right, duck-tape. I put it on the inside (sticky side facing out), and on the khaki-colored pants I have it almost blends in. Though a little of the sticky stuff got on the wrong side of the tape and sticks to me when I sit down. Luckily, I don't really sit at my job...

And duck-tape actually will stay in place through a wash. In fact, the gooey glue (that's kinda fun, saying "gooey glue" over and over again...alas I digress...) almost begins to bond with the cloth after a few washes.

Almost as good as a real patch...

Life philosophy...hmm...

A friend on facebook posed a "question" about my life's philosophy (actually, she just wanted to get everyone's, but you can't answer with everyone's, only yours...because, well...this rabbit trail just went over a cliff....).

so I wrote in response: Pursue God and everything else falls into perspective (and eventually into place as well); and patience, though a virtue, can be a long time in coming - so learn to live where you are now and let God deal with bringing your tomorrow to where you are today.

not too bad, I think. And, at least at the moment, it seems to describe where I am right now.

New favorite show!

Well, okay, it's not my new all-time favorite show. But last week, while we were at the beach and actually had access to cable channels I discovered this show called Dogfights on the History channel. Of course, when I first told my wife about it, she thought it was about dogs fighting - yeah, not so much.

Actually it's all about airplane dogfights in the different wars. Very fascinating. I've always been fascinated about flying and all that, and they do a really good job of explaining some of the physics involved, as well as comparing the various aircraft. Though the CG recreations are a little cheesey - they're actually not that bad. If you're into that sort of stuff, I highly recommend it!

Gotta love them crabs!!!!

So we went to the beach this past week. Great times. We also went crabbing - and I got this shot:



Note that I wasn't using the zoom function on the camera when I took that!

My wife...jealous?!

Yeah, so I think my wife might be jealous...and I better watch out, because she does read this blog... But yeah, I think she's a little jealous of me - only a little, mind you. You see, the past two years we've used Sprint for our cell phone service (yeah, I'm sorry too...). Being the wise husband I am (knowing how rough I am on phones...) I got the insurance. And I also got my second new phone on yesterday (second, not counting the original phone). Not that it's any different (other than this one is red, just as the first replacement was, because they didn't have the black like what I originally had - which wouldn't be so bad, except she got the red one so we could tell ours apart).

And now, I think she's a little jealous that I'm on my third new phone in two years, and she's still on her first one. Just a little, mind you...

(I love you, honey! ;-)

iPhone vs. Blender

Okay, I ran across this video and just had to share it. This goes out to you, Greg - since you're really the only person I know who has one... ;-)

Transformers Movie

Well, I went out to see the new Transformers Movie this afternoon. Let me say, "Wow!" Yeah, totally loved it and can't wait until my son is old enough to see it - which is probably not going to be until he's about ten or twelve. Yeah, the movie was a total blast, but it was a little violent for younger children, I think. A friend commented to me that there were parts which seemed to be aimed a little more at a younger crowd, but then there were a couple of parts which were not really appropriate for that younger age group.

But, let me just say that the special effects and the action sequences were insane, completely awesomely insane. Loved it, loved it, loved it! The story was pretty darn good as well...and what nerd doesn't enjoy a movie where the less-than-cool guy gets the girl - and a robotic car as well!

So yeah, highly recoomend it. Get ready for a fun, action-filled ride!

interesting google earth pictures...

sorry I haven't been on here lately folks...kinda got overwhelmed with stuff lately. But I did manage to dig up this interesting bunch of pictures of interesting stuff off Google Earth. Check it out, it's rather cool.

Can't wait to see...

Yeah, had to mention this. Less than a month to the transformer movie. If you haven't seen the full trailer, check it out on the website transformersmovie.com.

Freaking awesome.

My Awesome Son...

Okay, I don't want to make everyone sick of me bragging about my son - so that's why I haven't really written much about him. I know he's awesome, but I also know other people sometimes get sick of hearing the awesome stuff he's been doing lately. But I had to share this. So we go in for his checkup this week.

His head size, can't remember the actual number, but it's about average for his weight. His weight...well, it's up to almost 13 and a half pounds, which is about in the 75th percentile. So he's eating healthy, right? But wait, there's more! Yeah, his height. He clocked in at almost 26 and a half inches - for a ten week old?! They recorded that as >97%. What does that mean? Well, my wife found a little chart on the internet which has this pretty little rainbow to display the growth curve. The lowest color being the shorter, slower growing babies, the middle the average growing babies, and the highest color the fastest growing babies. Well, he started in the middle - just average. But then, instead of following the little "rainbow path" like everyone else, he just took off running for the sky - literally. He busted out of the rainbow like a five year old after chocolate.

That's my boy!

Lady in the Water movie...

Well, my wife and I haven't been able to get out to the movies much since the baby came. Okay - not at all. And we really hadn't gone much in the months preceeding it because, as most fathers know, when a woman is in the later stages of pregnancy, the baby pushes against her bladder, making it smaller... need I say more?

Anyways, we were given "Lady in the Water" as a birthday gift (for me!) and we actually got to sit down and watch it (we were only interrupted about 8 times by lil Keaton - I think it only took us 3 hours to watch a 1.5 hour movie... ;-).

But, despite all that, I greatly enjoyed the movie. I think I just enjoy M. Night Shamalayan's perspective and how he writes and stuff. It was a different movie - not quite the same as the Village (which we both loved). But I enjoyed it and highly recommend it! (probably not for elementary aged children...)

Stephen Lawhead's latest...

As some of you know, Stephen R. Lawhead is my favorite author (right behind him are C.S. Lewis, Ted Dekker, Isaac Asimov...and then a few more I won't bore you with). Well, his latest trilogy is covering the Robin Hood myth. The first book, Hood, I got as soon as possible and literally consumed it within two nights (we're talking probably less than five hours total reading time - I was flying!). You can check out my thoughts on it here. But I recently found out the next book in the trilogy is coming out soon. It's called Scarlet and you can check out Lawhead's page on it here or on Amazon.com. Man I can't wait for this!

Been updating muh website...

Well, I've had a chance this week to do a little updating on my website. On my home page you now can see some articles I've come across in my Google Reader browsing. You can also see what I've been blogging about lately from all three of my blogs. These regularly updating lists are also available as RSS feeds or as live pages on the web (here for my blogs and here for the web articles). You can actually get the feeds from these pages in an RSS reader so you can see what I've been up to lately...

On my website, though, I've also added two new book reviews: The Cross of Christ, by John Stott, and Paradise War by Stephen R. Lawhead. I've also changed my links page, dividing it into two categories, Friend Links and Linux Links. The latter of which is mainly composed of good articles and "how-to's" I'm finding as I try to do stuff in Linux. The former, the Friend Links, are basicly links to friend's blogs and websites. If you'd like for your website or blog to be featured there, please let me know - I'd love to add you!

This summer I'm probably going to be posting at least one book review a week, if not more. And I may be updating other parts of the website in different ways as well. Feel free to browse away and please let me know if you catch a link that doesn't work or if you have any problems on the website.

New Will Smith Movie

yeah, just ran across this on quicktime trailers... Looks awesome!

Have I mentioned how I love almost every movie that Will Smith is in? I haven't seen 'em all - but man does he know how to pick 'em...

fun letter

I came across this through a random article in my Google Reader...But it's one I want to share with everyone. You can check it out here.

I've Gone Linux!

Yep, it's true. On Memorial Day (Monday) I installed Ubuntu (a completely free Linux OS) as my primary operating system on my desktop. The primary reason I've switched is that I'm pretty much fed up with Microsoft (though they just came out with a pretty awesome new technology - see articles on right...) and their system requirements. With a minimum of 2 GB of RAM required to run Vista, that makes for a pretty expensive base system - all for a system who's biggest selling point seems to be some really simple eye candy.

Now, when I found out that there were some programs for Linux which could do the same and even better, I perked up. I ended up using Beryl to really make my desktop shine. If you want to see some of it's capabilities, check out this video from youtube which compares what Vista can do and what Beryl can do:

Beryl Vs. Windows



Pretty stinkin' sweet, eh? Yeah, and the best part is, I can run this on my present desktop (512 mb of RAM) without upgrading (Okay, so I splurged on a nice video card a few years ago - but I've read of people running this on pretty old and 'weak' video cards). The best part is - it's all free!

I started a separate blog to chronicle my adventures as I stride forth (ever confidently, because I am Zach) into the Linux realm. Check it out if you're interested for more details on what I've been up to.

Done with the Semester!

Yep, that's right - I finished my spring semester this past week. I was up until midnight on Wednesday studying and taking exams, and then on Thursday I wrote 22 pages worth of stuff (a research paper and two book reports) in less than 12 hours. I finished around 2am...I think that last book report is slightly delirious...

I've got a few projects for the summer I'm going to detail soon, but for now let me give a shout out to my sister and brother-inlaw who just had their first child.