Junior arrival

We had a checkup this morning. The doctor inserted a tin can and string to Junior and handed us the other tin can. After a short conversation, we learned a few things.

1. The quarters are quite cramped. Momma would say we already knew this, but hey, this is “insider info!”

2. He’s in no hurry to get out. Unlike Kayla, who just couldn’t wait to arrive, Junior is chillin’. Apparently he likes the warmth and moisture, which bodes well for him if we stay in Texas. It could also be that he likes seeing his food arrive in a tube. The string wasn’t very tight so we had to guess at exactly what he was trying to say.

Doc says we’re 50% effaced and 2cm dilated. What does that mean? Not a whole lot. Being half effaced means the cervix is getting ready, but arrival is not imminent. It could be later this week, or next, or even the next…unless we choose to induce.

It could just be that Junior 2.0 likes to be on time and is waiting until Saturday. We shall see.

Texas weather & Junior 2.0

In response to Martha’s “it’s snowing” post, I find it timely to point out that summer is finally over in Texas. The 100° days are behind us and from here through most of December, we’ll have the windows open each day and night, enjoying the cool fall weather.

A neighbor (Barry) and I are getting out and walk/jogging since is has finally cooled off. Our friends and family back in Michigan are getting ready to hole up inside for the winter, and we’re finally emerging from our air conditioned abodes. Texas is not all that different.

Junior 2.0 is due in 8 days. We’ll see if he is anxious to see what all that noise outside his cocoon is.

Kayla Update

Sorry folks, but we just have too much fun playing with Kayla to spend time writing about it. She is too much fun!

At just over 16 months, her personality is really starting to develop. She displays a surprising number of emotions and jabbers incessantly, unless someone else is around, or we are videoconferencing with grandpa and grandma, in which case we can’t get a peep out her. She has 5 pair of shoes now, well on her way to becoming an American woman. Except that she really has a thing for daddy’s tools, and is quite curious to see how things work. When she has decided it’s time for our daily walk, she brings her socks and shoes to us. Once shod, she stands by the door and makes pitiful little sounds until one of us complies.

She has learned most of her face parts by name and is just starting to learn the names of colors. At the top of her reading list is 101 Dalmatians, Goodnight Moon, and her touch and feel bedtime book. Her two favorite objects are the moon and birds. Both are quite thrilling to see in real life and in pictures. Two evenings ago we were walking around our cul-de-sac and had to pause to see the moon. And we paused, and paused, and paused, and paused….

She very much enjoys baths but disdains a wet face. That makes rinsing her hair challenging. Mommy tries the delicate approach. Daddy just dumps handfuls of water over her head. Neither way prevents her from recoiling but one method only lasts for 5 seconds, which is not quite long enough to work up to a cry. Despite the aversions to a wet face, the wading pool Grandpa & Grandma Ruby sent home with us continues to be a big hit. We would toss that pool onto our back porch on 100° days (Aug-Sep). The very instant she could see it, anxious cries of excitement ring out.

We are also learning a lot from her. For instance, we did not know the primary reason why bathrooms have doors. Jen and I have lived in a fairly “open” environment. We never bother closing any doors except the ones that keep the hot Texas air out (or the Michigan mosquitoes). This has changed. It might have had something to do with the toilet paper Kayla loves to unroll, but I doubt it. It was the sinister news I received one night while I was in Atlanta.

While talking on the phone with Jen, she told me that she had forgotten to close the guest bathroom door. With the two of us in the house, one of us always catches that detail. It slipped by unnoticed until Jen heard the sound of the toilet lid closing. Not content to simply play in the conveniently placed pool and drench herself from head to toe, Kayla decided that her stuffed animals would like to play in the mini-pool as well. That door remains closed now at all times.

We have also given Kayla a new nickname, “harm.” We spend a part of each day making sure anything that she could hurt, or might hurt her, is out of “harm’s” way. She is at the point where she knows no limits, but she is very smart. It only takes whacking her head once to dissuade her from doing “that” again.

She has taught us to be fastidious housekeepers. Anything within 12 inches of the edge of a desk is subject to relocation under the Kayla World Organization Plan. We haven’t entirely deduced the logic behind the KWOP but the results are quite predictable. One, or often two, adults walking around the house, checking the trash cans, toy bins, and anywhere else about knee-height for something that was too close to the edge of a desk or counter. Being quite wise, mommy has taken to planting decoys to help distract her.

Bedtime has become somewhat ritualistic. Late in the evening she starts getting tired and silly. Then we play and be silly until she crashes. Tonight I recorded a couple minutes of us being silly.

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If you’ve got the bandwidth, click here to see the Kayla-Go-Round movie.

Backing up a Mac

A friend recently asked a very good question, “What disk tools should be in a persons disk utility collection for backup/recovery of a Mac?” At the top of my list is two applications: SuperDuper! ($28) and Chronosync ($30).

SuperDuper is in a class of utilities used to duplicate the contents of your hard drive. There are other options (Synchronize! Pro X – $99, Carbon Copy Cloner – $5, Retrospect), but none that deliver so much for the money.

I owned Synchronize! Pro years ago but gave up on it during the switch to OS X. CCC was the perfect (and only) tool for duplicating OS X drives for quite a while. I used and recommended it for a few years. It’s so good and cheap that I paid the suggested donation for it several times. It “just works.” However, CCC has grown rather long in the tooth. As new versions of OS X arrived, it has been slow to get updated and even the latest version today does not support all of OS X’s file metadata features.

Say hello to SuperDuper.

Like CCC, SuperDuper will duplicate your drive contents from one drive to another, for free. However, with your paid registration, SuperDuper uses a sync engine that copies just the changes from one drive to the other. It works quite well and you (and I) are much more likely to back up often if only takes a few minutes (versus hours). I have a few bare ATA disks with sticky notes on them, so I know which computer they are for. I hook them up to my WiebeTech ComboDock and back up periodically. It works well.

The other half of my backup equation is keeping my home directory in sync between all of my computers. With two laptops and two desktops, keeping them all “up to date” is no small challenge. I have tried several solutions, including OS X Server 10.4 and portable home directories. However, the easiest to use and most reliable solution is using ChronoSync. I configure it to sync my entire home directory, minus Library, Movies, and Music. The latter two I exclude because they simply won’t fit on laptop hard drives. I only sync a small subset of my Library folder.

I run ChronoSync on an “as needed” basis, like right before I’m leaving the house, or when something is not on the laptop. Then I sync that laptop to my primary desktop system. ChronoSync has very good conflict resolution tools built in to help you sort out which version of a file you want to keep when both have changed since the last sync. It can also archive changed files and other nifty tricks. It is well worth the modest fee. Between those two apps, I can do everything I ever need to with my drives.

Notes:

Retrospect: the software from OS 9 days that I’m so pleased to no longer need. While Retrospect worked quite well, it was never easy to use, and thus I was always needed to help when clients needed to set up new backups, restore from them, or do anything more complex than inserting new backup media. It is not a good solution for end users.

Another good “Backing up a Mac” article.

Putting my money where my mouth is

I was recently sent the following email.

Hello,
Do not erase please! Important email. Most of you know that David Herzog, a born-again, on-fire for God man is coming to speak at the Cadillac High School Auditorium today Friday @ 7, tomorrow Saturday @ 7 and Sunday 10am and 6 at the Revival Center in Cadillac.

I would encourage all to come, bring the lost, this man has lead thousands to Christ and his ministry has personally refreshed my family’s life and the life of our friends. Please don’t miss as Miracles, Signs, and Wonders have accompanied this man’s ministry.
Continue reading “Putting my money where my mouth is”

Development milestones

It is fairly well established that a direct correlation between brain size and intelligence exists. It is commonly held as fact that brain size is directly proportional to skull size. This is apparently why skull measurements are one of three that Kayla gets at each of her checkups (weight, height, and skull size).

Weight: Over the course of her life, Kayla started out on the small side at 6 lbs, putting her in the 10th percentile. Since then she made it over the 50th percentile once, but has since slipped back down to the 25th. In simple terms, she does not weigh much (22lbs). This is not the least bit concerning when we consider that for his entire childhood, her daddy was a wee little runt.

Height: She started in the 25th percentile for height. At four months she was in the 50th percentile and by the eight month, in the 75th. She is holding steady, just above the 75th percentile, a trait that is likely attributable Jen’s side of the family. Height is a rare gene in my family.

Head Circumference: This is where things get interesting. As her mother will attest, the cute little thing had one mighty big head upon arrival. That, in and of itself, is not unusual. Since then, her head size has steadily been outpacing her peers. At four months she was in the 80th percentile and at 6 months she was in the 90s. At nine months her doc read her chart and said, “Well, she’s definitely college material.” This last week he read her charts again and this time he upgraded her, “She is scholarship material!”

After looking carefully at the chart, I saw the basis for his comment. Her head size is literally off the chart, and not just a little bit either. The NCHS charts cover from the 3rd to 97th percentiles and she is far enough past 97 that if there were a 100% line, she’d be dancing on top of it. That means that her head is as big as you are going to find on any child her age.

This has very practical implications on a day to day basis. For example, just try getting a t-shirt for an 18-month over her 15 month old head. It takes a good bit of stretching. When we go up a size, we can get the shirt on but it is far too big for her little body. There will be other concerns that we are already starting to see. She is surprisingly smart. Unfortunately, Amazon does not have a How to Raise a Child That Is Smarter Than You Are book. We can already see that it will become quite the challenge to stay a step ahead of this pint sized dynamo.

Cleaning up our mailbox

There’s nothing like being away from home for most of the summer to make one realize just how much junk mail is arriving. We get at least one credit card offer a day and 3 morgtage protection insurance offers a week on top of local ad mailers (which are at least somewhat relevant). Today I found a Privacy link on the FTC web site that led me over to the OptOutPrescreen web site.

On the OptOutPrescreen site you can tell the “Big 3” credit reporting agencies not to provide your information to credit card and insurance companies that are “prescreening” you to determine if they want to mail you offers. Hopefully I just cleaned up our “postal” mailbox and helped save a few trees.

NOTE: This is different from the Do Not Call registry in that is is per-by-person so in our case, Jen and I must both opt-out.

Parallels Desktop review

I have used Parallels Desktop on my 20″ iMac since well before it was released, including most of the public beta versions. When they offered it for sale, I bought it without hesitation. In short, the software is much better than one would expect for the price.

One thing I must note about Parallels. Do not expect much if your system is RAM starved (ie, you have less than 768MB). Your poor mac will be paging to disk almost constantly and you’ll wonder why your blazing fast computer is so slow. That is because you are beating the tar out of your hard drive. Do yourself a favor. Spare your hard drive (and your precious data) by spending $160 for 2GB of RAM. I did this on my 20″ iMac and my MacBook and both scream.

I use Parallels for running three different operating systems, FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows XP. Since I develop software that runs on the first two, I regularly need access to them both so I am often running one of them in the background. I can code, rsync to the virtual server, test, and continue coding. I open SSH sessions to the virtual server just as if it were a real one. For nearly all intents and purposes, running these operating systems under Parallels is every bit as good as running them on a real server.

In some respects, it is quite a bit better. Since Parallels has come out, the dual 3.0GHz Xeon system that I have tucked away in a rack in our guest bedroom (because the fans are so loud) has not been powered up. In many ways, Parallels is much better than having a real server.

1. It uses far less power, dissipates far less heat, and generates almost no noise pollution which is quite nice in my Texas home.

2. Convenience. My dual Xeon is a server, so switching operating systems meant going into the other room, unplugging the active hotswap hard drive, and plugging in another. With Parallels, simply pause the running one, select another and start it up.

3. Portable. The dual Xeon is anchored to the rack in the closet. My virtual machines can be dropped onto my MacBook drive for portable access. I spent two months away from home this year and that feature was significantly better than dragging along another computer for testing.

4. Easy snapshots. I like to test my software on “virgin” boxes. This means reinstalling the OS quite frequently on a “real” server, or as I do on the Xeon, building a FreeBSD jail to test in. While the SATA disks in the iMac cannot keep pace with the Ultra320 SCSI disks in the server, I can generate a new system with a clean install simply by duplicating a Parallels disk image.

5. Leverages existing computing resources. I already have a really fast desktop, more than fast enough for development work and software testing.

6. More accessible. Because my virtual machines are so much faster (than Virtual PC on a dual G5), I use them much more frequently. Things I would have seldom have taken the time for such as, “I wonder what this looks like in IE for Windows” I check. There is value in that for developers.

7. Stability. My systems never crash. Anything that changes that makes me particularly grumpy. I have had only one crash while running a very early beta of Parallels. I stopped using it until the next beta came out and it’s been steady as a rock every since.

There are a couple downsides to using Parallels. For example, I could not run Virtual PC 2004 for Windows under XP when XP was running under Parallels.

You need enough RAM for Mac OS X (1GB min on Intel systems) and the operating system you will run. For most people, that will be XP which should have 512MB set aside for it.

Parallels is highly recommended.