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.

User Interface

Explain why a Macintosh pull-down menu can be accessed at least five times faster than a typical Windows pull-down menu. For extra credit, suggest at least two reasons why Microsoft made such an apparently stupid decision.

I ran across this question on AskTog and finally know the answer. It’s one of those things I have known for years, but did not understand, “why?” The answer is here: http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html

Salt Lake City – Hot as Hades at the Hilton

We have departed Salt Lake City.

I hereby issue a caution for lodgers in SLC when the temperatures are high (above 90°). Do not expect that because the Hilton is a 4-star rated hotel that they will have adequate air conditioning in the rooms. Silly us, for having such lofty expectations.

We checked in nice and early at about 6pm. The room a little on the warm side (about 75°). I checked the thermostat and it was set for 68° but the A/C wasn’t on. Strange. So I adjusted the thermostat down to 60° and we went out for dinner. We got back around 10 and the room was cooled to about 72°. I was not ideal but it was good enough. We went to sleep.

At 2:30AM Jen and I both awoke sweating and with parched mouths. The room was around 80° and the A/C was not running. We called the front desk who sent up a maintenance man. He checked the thermostat, pulled the little A/C vent off, peered inside, reset the thermostat, and when the little unit began spitting out cool (not cold, cool) air, declared all to be well.

A half hour after he left the room was no cooler than before so I walked down to the front desk and asked for another room. We moved down the hall from room 514 to 517. Upon entering the room I noticed that it too was about 75° in the room and the temp setting on the thermometer was at 68°. Being an engineer with a mimimum of moderate intelligence, I began putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Continue reading “Salt Lake City – Hot as Hades at the Hilton”

Headin’ home – Boise

Yesterday we drove to Portland to say hi to Matt Meehan. Then we drove over to Boise and spent the night at a Red Lion. While a Red Lion is not bad (certainly better than your $23/$39 hotels with big signs), it is not nearly as nice as the DoubleTree Riverside in Boise. We’re off to eat breakfast at a wonderful little diner we found here last time.