Lucas and the halibut

Until quite recently, Lucas has been a fairly conservative eater. His tastes are quite diverse but he has lacked the necessary teeth to masticate anything more substantial than noodles. He has recently gained a fully functioning set of grinders and with them, the desire to chew up just about everything. So, did he really like the fresh Halibut as much as we did?  Or was he just enjoying the mechanics of eating it?  Does it really matter?

It’s been a long time since we’ve enjoyed fresh halibut. The darned fish was so fresh it flopped right into my shopping cart. I didn’t have the heart to toss it back. I recalled that even a day’s freshness is significant with halibut so I just had to cook it up tonight. I broiled it nearly nude, with only a few pats of butter and a light sprinkling of salt. The tender moist white flesh flakes apart after 10 minutes and it’s ready to eat. Hmm. Hmm.

a whale of a good time

Instead of more unpacking, Kayla suggested we go boating on Saturday. Grandpa Ricardo obliged and all of the Ruby children, Lucas and I tagged along. As we puttered out into the Sound, the topic of whales came up. Minutes later, I saw what could only be the exhaling of a whale. Nearby was a boat which had just motored nearby.

We continued watching for the whales next exhale. After spotting a second exhale, I calculated the trajectory of the whale, turned the boat into his path, and shut down the engines. A little while later, one, and then another whale surfaced 20 yards off the bow of our boat. The second was extremely cooperative and surfaced high and submerged showing us the classic whale tail view, much to everyone’s delight.

We made it to Seattle

Our migration to Seattle is nearly complete. We left Dallas on Monday afternoon and arrived in Seattle on Thursday evening, as scheduled. Our truck arrived in Kent, WA on Friday morning and was delivered this (Friday) evening. If all goes according to plan, we’ll be moved in with every box emptied and broken down by Sunday evening.

Extra springy

Since we enjoy springtime and it is nearly over in Dallas, we packed up our house into a truck today and drove NW to Amarillo, TX. Tomorrow we’ll drive through Albuquerque, NM and Durango, CO. Then we’ll drive the Colorado Skyway ending in Grand Junction, Colorado for the night. We’ll get to Seattle just in time for spring to arrive.

Taming my savage Savage

I grew up surrounded by a million acres of the Huron-Manistee National Forest. Every fall, thousands of hunters would come “up North” to hunt deer in the outdoor paradise that was my back yard. Hunting was a way of life in the world I knew. If opening day of rifle deer season fell on a weekday, schools cancelled classes and businesses closed their doors. At 12, us lads were eligible for Hunters Safety and were out hunting. Continue reading “Taming my savage Savage”

iPhone Wish #3

Dear Steve Jobs,

I am certain you have seen the YouTube videos and countless photos of children and toddlers demonstrating the ingenious simplicity of your iPhone. My two year old daughter loves getting a hold of my iPhone. She unlocks it, launches the Photo app, clicks and few times, and proudly shows us her favorite picture, “Big Daddy!”

My 1 year old isn’t quite so proficient, but also enjoys the iPhone in his own way. It turns out the iPhone is a fantastic toy for entertaining young children. I’m not normally interested in paying hundreds of dollars for a child toy but I have an idea that would certainly increase the sale of iPhones and the iPod Touch: toy mode.

Yes, that’s right. I’m asking for a way to turn my $400 phone into a child toy. The gist of ‘toy mode’ is to allow either of my babies to push buttons, navigate around, see my photos, read my email, and otherwise play. The catch is that in toy mode, they can’t change anything. No deleting Daddy’s email. No changing the minimum font size. No placing phone calls to my colleagues.

Imagine of how many iPhones you will sell when babies are teething on them and toddlers are dropping ’em in toilets because parents feel ‘safe’ letting them play with it unsupervised. The prospects of, or horror, actually having to use our old Palm or Windows Mobile phones will spur us back to the Apple Store.

Running Windows on a Mac

You have two good options for running Windows on your Intel iMac: Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion. I use and recommend Parallels although lots of people prefer VMware. If you aren’t the adventurous type, just get Parallels. If you are using the same thing I am, there’s a much better chance that I’ll be able to help you.

If you plan to run Windows XP or Vista, make sure you have at least 3 and preferably 4GB of RAM. Any less and you’ll have severe performance problems when your system runs out of memory and starts paging. It won’t be an enjoyable experience.

If you have an older Intel iMac that only supports 2GB of RAM, then forget about either and use Boot Camp which comes with Mac OS X 10.5. Then you can partition your drive and use part of your disk for Windows. The disadvantage is that you’ll have to reboot to use any Windows apps. But that is far better than trying to run Windows without enough RAM.