A slice of my life

Day in and out

2011-07-05T08:46:00.000-07:00

I didn't know how to follow up after the last entry, so I let this sit for way too long. Let me give an update about day to day life with triplets at 21 months. I say day to day, but to be honest my only day long experience with them is on the weekend. On the weekdays I still go to work and see them only about 3 hours total each day. This is plenty for me, but sometimes I feel a little guilty that I don't get as much interaction with them as Sharry or Roberta does. Norma, Sharry's mom, was here for a few months after my dad died to help take care while I was in California and then stayed because she loves spending time with the grandkids.

So, the day to day operations that make up triplet raising: We wake up at around 7 with 1 or more kids talking and yelling in their cribs. Ryan has taken off his clothes during the night only once so far, and Justin does hate clothes and if he can he will remove his pants. Snaps are fairly awesome on clothes to me. But for the most part how we left them is how we'll find them.

So, bouncing energetic kids. Up the stairs they climb, with varying stops along the way to pick up something and examine it. They love to chuck things down the stairs during the day so usually there is plenty to look at. Sometimes Justin points out shoes by the front door and checks with me that we are still calling them "shoes" by yelling loudly "SHOOS". The procession up the stairs is kind of complicated, as we trade off who we're watching after as someone decides that the piece of lint they found is so interesting they need to sit on the stairs and examine it. Sharry and I should bet on who makes it up first. There's definitely strong candidates, but it's usually a nice mix.

While Norma was here, she would greet the kids when they woke up and let Sharry and I sleep a few extra minutes. While she was doing that, the alarm was set to a ridiculous leisurely time of 7:40am. But the real work of changing all the kids from pajamas into clothes and change their diapers from overnight. Sharry and I do it different, bringing the kids up and then changing them up here.

The kids know breakfast as "nanny" since we give them a banana everyday with something else for breakfast. So cries of "nanny nanny" go through the house as I get out a banana and peel it. By the time I've gotten the banana out though, the kids have dispersed through the house and are quite reluctant to actually eat it. Eating in general is hands down the most frustrating time for both Sharry and I. One day they'll eat pancakes like they are ambrosia, and the next day they will throw it on the ground untasted while screaming at the top of their lungs. Since we've always been so worried about them gaining weight we would beg, plead, threaten, cajole, and even make new things if this happened. The doctor just gave us the buy off on the "go hungry then" plan of attack. Starting nowish, we are going to give them their meal and if they eat nothing, then they get nothing to eat. The theory is they will (hopefully quickly) learn that what we make for them is all. No more catering to their whims. They kind of back each other up a bit too. If one doesn't eat and is acting the fool, the others will have a much higher chance of throwing food and yelling too. The wall behind the kids can look like the beginnings of a Jackson Pollock painting after the day is through, in vibrant food color.

Alright, so breakfast is hopefully eaten and now it's all of 8:30 am. Lunch time is 11, and we've got some time to fill. Usually someone has made coffee while the other one feeds the kids, which means that now it's breakfast time for the adults. So, we throw some coffee and cereal into us and ponder what to do with the rest of the morning. The kids are almost certainly clamoring for songs by yelling "ooo WA, ooo WA". This comes from a particular kids song that they seem to love more than any other. Even Ethan, who has an incredibly limited vocabularly knows how to say "ooo WA" awesome.

Sometimes we go on walks in the morning time, but given the weather around here, it's not that common. The kids have just started to learn how to play with each other and things in general without the parents having to drive, but they descend into "Lord of the Flies" mode pretty quick. I am really tempted to get some leashes or something, since the kids really want to walk around rather than being pushed around in a stroller. However, I can't count on them staying nearby and since there are two of us vs. three of them I can't let them loose.

So some kind of diversion for them until lunchtime. Hopefully something I feel is developing to their brain but I cop to letting them veg out in front of TV sometimes. Nick Jr. to the rescue. This post has gone on too long, so I'm going to post and hope to finish the rest of the day out later. This is probably pretty mundane stuff, but I can't remember what the routine was a year ago. Records are nice.

Code breaking and my dad

2011-06-14T07:32:00.000-07:00

When I was about 10 or 11, I read all the time. The library was about a 15 minute walk from my house and I practically lived there in the summer time. They had an Apple IIe which I played with as much as I could get away with and a vast collection of books that let me explore any topic I liked. Kind of like the internet is now, but in card catalog form.

I started reading about ciphers and encryption and how that just set my imagination roaring. I told my dad that I thought it was cool and he decided to play a game with me. He made up a code, encoded a message and gave me the coded message. I wasn't good enough to break the code, which I remember being a simple substitution cipher for reasons I'll get to presently. But it wasn't any trivial alphabet jumble. To make it especially fun (for him or me I'll never know) each letter was represented by a little pictogram. I toyed with it for a little while but got nowhere, especially as he didn't give me any spacing to work with, and I think the theory was a little much for me to grasp.

We let the matter drop for a while, I think at least a few months past before I made an interesting discovery. While I was home after school I was looking at some knick knacks over the fireplace and I saw a scrap of paper tucked into this brass cup we had on display. I took it out of the cup and opened it up to discover what had to be the key to the cipher. As my eyes grew large and I was thinking something along the lines of "Eureka!" my dad came into the living room. With a shout of surprise he stepped forward quickly, grabbed the paper out of my hand and popped it into his mouth. With a victorious grin he swallowed and any hopes of me figuring out what the message said faded. He never told me what he had written down, and a few years later he had even forgotten the whole thing had happened. I think it's really funny sometimes the things that crystalize in your memory that define a person, and they don't even remember it happening.

Remembering My Dad

2011-02-16T16:42:00.000-08:00

I wanted to write down some things I remember about my dad.

When I was younger, I was terrified of roller coasters. My grandpa would take my family to Knott's Berry Farm every year or so, but I think he did it just for the chicken dinner at the end of the day. That, and it was dinner with family and he liked that. Anyways, I would always shy away from the fast and looping rides and stick with more tame things. One time we were there, I was about 9 I would guess, the adults in the group were lining up to go on the Corkscrew. It was a small ride with three loops in it and you were done. My dad volunteered to wait with me while everyone else went on the ride and as they were getting ready to start moving he hunkered down and told me that I should time it. I had a watch that was a prized possession and loved to time things. From start to finish, the ride took 20 seconds flat. He told me that for such a short amount of time I could be brave and I could find out if I liked roller coasters or not. This convinced me for some reason and we walked on to the ride and rode it. I now love roller coasters, and I am happy that my dad convinced me to be brave for 20 seconds that one day.

When I was a kid, I was really picky about my food. I didn't like a lot of different vegetables, and my dad was a big omnivore and liked to cook kind of elaborate things when he did cook. He did encourage me to try different foods but was really pretty cool with me not eating something because I didn't like it. We didn't have a lot growing up, so if you didn't eat what was there you didn't eat (maybe snacking on a apple or something instead) but that was ok. This one time he made breakfast food for dinner, and I don't think we had a lot of stuff in the house because he really was pushing for me to eat this egg and mushroom scramble thing that he had made. He kept saying that I had to at least try it before I could leave the table. I was really miserable, since I hate mushrooms (to this day). I got so worked up and upset that when I finally tried to eat a bite to get out of dinner I threw up onto my plate! He never said anything about it afterwards and I remember him being cool about it. My dad was usually pretty cool under fire (or in this case sickness).

I was thinking about the botched dinner attempt because after I left home my dad really got into cooking in a big way. My brothers are a lot younger than me, so they had a different family dynamic for a few years after I left and my dad often remembered this when asked to recall what our (his kids) childhood was like. When I came back from Germany my dad was all of a sudden (at least to me) whipping up full on Chinese food feasts and crazy elaborate turkey dinners. But to me, although all this food was really good the thing I loved more than anything was the bread he'd make from scratch. I don't remember that happening as a kid, so I don't know when he started doing it, but by the time I started visiting home in the aughts fresh baked bread was one of the best things my dad made. When I took the clan down to tear up the two grandparents' homes, I took a little time out to ask my dad how he made such good bread and he showed me what he did. I hope I don't forget it, and I'm able to replicate it because it was such a good thing that I'd like to give to my kids as they grow up.

As I think of some more things, I'll probably be posting them here.

School of Hard Knocks

2010-09-20T11:50:00.000-07:00

Man, kids learn stuff the really hard way. Right around their first birthday, both Ethan and Justin decided that if they tried really hard they could fall in a controlled way forward and be caught by a caring adult. We call it taking a first step, but it was very unlikely really controlled motion. I can't really imagine the trust that this involves from them, and I often this trust is misplaced. Especially given that the caretakers are almost always outnumbered by children to watch, this means there is the constant *THUD* sound followed by a pause and then wailing and crying over the latest encounter with the floor.

I'm sure every parent sees the same thing and goes throught this same horrible sense that they have to let their kids learn by knocking themselves around but it's so sad a pitiful. I'm glad they have the will (or lack of good sense) to keep trying. Ethan and Justin both have progressed to the point that they can take a few steps and most often don't fall on anything but their butt if they go too far. Ryan's taken a step at most, but seems to be very content with crawling about. He collapses in a heap if you try and get him to walk on his own.

Standing tall! Well, not yet.

2010-08-06T10:22:00.000-07:00

Well, people warned me that once they started to crawl around I wouldn't have a spare moment and they were right. After a couple of weeks of begging Justin to figure it out, he joined his brothers in the mobile class of infants. This was end of June/early July I think and now he's quite speedy. Ethan and Justin both crawl like you would imagine babies do, on all fours in a blur of bounding motion, sometimes falling on their faces. When they do fall, they kind of incorporate that awkward stumble into the gait and kind of treat their face as an extra hand or knee.

Ryan's crawl is a different animal altogether. He never learned how to crawl on all fours an instead drags his body along in a kind of swimming pattern. He's about as fast as his brothers, but I think the crawlers win. I'm not sure Sharry will let me race them, we'll have to see. I think if done right it would either be an internet sensation or get them taken away. Maybe both. The line I should consider as uncrossable is inviting people to bet on them like horses I think.

Within days of learning to actually crawl, each one quickly learned that if they grab hold of something and pull they can stand up. Since we keep them in fairly isolated areas this didn't cause as much of a headache as you would think. Although babies do seem hard-wired to reach for things just on the edge of what they can have. They seem to plow right by the mounds of toys and things we have for them and stand up and reach as far outside the bars of their pen as possible to grab or destroy anything they can get a hold of. I guess it's the exploring nature of the baby, but that has been the most troublesome thing for us so far I think. They can be very quick (Ryan especially) and hone in on things that we've tried to put out of their reach and they work incessantly to get at it. We actually rearranged our entire living room because no matter how hard we tried Ryan would not stop pulling and chewing on the curtains.

Things are falling into a much more regular pattern around the house though. The boys all eat three "meals" a day and have about 4-5 bottles a day. 2 naps and 11ish hours of sleep at night. Sharry and I are both night owls but seem to handle 6-7am wake ups much better than we used to. I think I've resigned myself to never sleeping in again. Our main problem with the weekends when we do get to spend time with the kids is how to fill it. They still can't play with us much and we try to fill the 30-45 minute snatches of time between drinking and eating with crawling around time. We've started this week letting them crawl around the living room a bit (supervised of course) even though we can't stand the thought of what's on the floor.

I'm rambling a bit, so I'll stop. Sharry even now is looking at pictures from when they first came home and sighing about how grown up they are. They were little fragile treasures, but I won't ever forget the work that was put into them. I want to establish for the record what's going on around the house these days so in a few years I can try to remember what it was like having babies in the house. Hopefully, diapers will be a distant memory. Washing bottles, feeding resistant babies sloppy food, and changing diapers are not fun. I thought the days of projectile vomiting was over, but Ethan revived the grand tradition yesterday and I was the lucky one feeding him. So when we are looking back fondly on our little babies and wondering why they had to grow up, we need to remember these times too.

Mobile strike force

2010-06-11T08:10:00.000-07:00

Ethan has learned to actually crawl. A few days ago (monday, for the record) Sharry and I saw him for the first time ditch his little worm like movements and start using his legs and arms to crawl around in a useful manner. Pants seem to really slow him down when he does this, but give him just a onesie and he's good to go. People have told me that I would look back on this new skill as the worst thing my baby ever learned to do. Given his propensity to bite, they might just be right. Coupled with this quick speed, Ethan has taken to really biting things and people just after arriving. I think he kind of uses it like a brake in a way, he comes crawling along and then as he is falling forward (cause he just isn't that good at it) he takes a healthy bite at anything nearby. He's startled both me and Sharry into giving him a little smack when that happens, as he has a lot of teeth and it's quite painful. In fact, he has actually drawn blood on poor Roberta.

Now before you go calling CPS, I do mean little smack, I don't think he even knows that it happened to be honest. I think jerking away from him while he's clamped down on you probably feels worse than the tap we give him. But I think it's instinct to swat at something biting you like a dog. It just surprised us both because we both have talked it over and don't really like the idea of spanking. But we never talked about smacking hands or anything. But now we have to figure out how to correct a baby that barely knows anything, but can really hurt people if we don't stop them. We have doctor visit pretty soon, I guess we can talk with her about how to stop a baby from biting you.

The will to jump

2010-05-15T16:01:00.000-07:00

The kids are a bit over 8 months old now and the fast-paced experience of parenthood still overwhelms me all the time. Crawling is on the horizon and then I think we all will be in a world of hurt. I live in what's called (around here at least) a split level home. To me it's just a 2 story house, but whatever. I guess they want to define where your front door is. Anyways, the stairs and the fact that I have dogs means that no matter how clean I try to keep my house it's still always going to be dangerous to have free run of the house. God only knows what the dogs drag in and around the floor, and all three kids have a penchant for trying to eat the floor. I've definitely caught one of them licking it. We've constructed a play pen of sorts out of free standing fence in the living room and we put them in there when they want to roll around. We also let them play in our room since dogs don't go there and it's fairly clear of dangerous things.

Just because they don't crawl doesn't mean they don't get around. People who already have kids ask me if they are 'scooting', which seems to be the catch-all term for directed movement that isn't crawling. Ethan literally does the movement I last saw in 80's breakdancing videos called 'The Worm'. He gets up on all fours and then throws his body forward, landing on his chest and in one fluid motion then pops back up on all fours and launches himself forward again. It looks a bit jarring, but he seems happy enough. Ryan tends to do a low crawl kind of motion, pulling his lower body along with his freakishly strong arms and sometimes rolls his body along to get somewhere quick. I ain't pretty, but it works.

But the so called scooting isn't what they spend most of their energy doing. They have discovered jumping and love to do it. For christmas, they got a exer-saucer which is basically a sling you put your kid upright in and it rotates freely to give the baby access to various activities involving large chunky plastic bits. So far, my babies only way to really interact with these activities is to bend them and try and shove them in their mouth. It might be where Ryan got his crazy arm strength. Anyways, they took to picking up their feet and kicking down hard while in this thing which didn't look at all good for their knees and feet. So we bought them a bouncing version of the excer-saucer. It's exactly the same, but instead of being solidly mounted into the base, this version is suspended by elastic straps which allow the baby with the slightest of kicks to jump relatively high in the air. The kids all took to this immediately, and it makes a huge racket. To add to the noise factor, the bounching chair has motion activated sound that plays this tikki room sounding song for about 5 minutes if you brush against the thing. The babies love this so much that they never stop jumping. If you try and hold them, they want to jump on your lap as if you are a human version of the bouncing chair.

The upshot of this whole story is that these things are a huge mixed blessing. With 3 babies, you often want a few minutes to yourself and it's awesome when you can just plop them in this thing and they get entertained by it. But it seems to be training them to think that they should incessantly bounce like some kind of real-life tigger. I'm sure they'll grow out of it, but sometimes I have the stupid fear of them giving themselves shaken baby syndrome. But that's just new parent fear, and I must face it down!

A last couple of random observations...

Justin and Ryan have discovered that they are boys with all the equipment that this implies. Bath time can be quite disturbing as they seems quite oblivious to what their grasping mangling hands are yanking and scratching at. The parenting magazines all tell me this is normal, but it doesn't make it right.

A few weeks ago my babies all had some kind of colds for the first time in their short lives. They seemed to be handling it ok and then Ethan started puking anytime he drank more than 3 or 4 ounces (half his usual meal). Being covered in formula puke isn't one of the more fun things in life, but I just thought it was a gross part of parenthood and didn't think about any further ramifications of it. Namely, that my child is a human being that could harbor illness that I haven't had yet. Like a stomach flu that was causing him to have such an upset stomach. A couple days after Ethan started being sick I had my very first case (in concious memory at least) of the stomach flu. I've never been sick like that and now I hold a healthy amount of respect for the disease carrying rugrats that inhabit my house now.

Teeth are for biting

2010-04-21T21:44:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago the babies started getting teeth. I didn't notice much more fussiness like people said would happen. They cried a bit more at night and they had some puffy gums but it wasn't all that bad. What was really crazy was the amount of drooling and spitting that getting teeth evidently involves. They never spit up that much (so far) so the outright spitting on themselves was a bit of a change. Within about two weeks first Ethan, then Ryan, and finally Justin got two bottom teeth in. No top teeth, so that's got to hurt when they bite down.

Anyways, the first hint that they knew what teeth are all about is when Ryan grabbed hold of Grandma Norma's hand and chomped down on a finger. No blood was drawn but a good mark was there for a few hours after. Norma took pictures to document the occasion and was a good sport about the deliberate wounding.

6 months!

2010-02-23T17:32:00.000-08:00

I was reminded today that my babies have been in this world nearly 6 months. This same person and I were talking a while back and discussing how soon personalities would emerge in the little humans now living in my home. I thought I would document my thoughts on my kids here at 6 months and then years from now we can compare against the people they turned out to be.

Ryan - Ryan's main characteristic right now is his passive and happy nature. He easily smiles, rarely cries without a very simple cause and seems very eager to manipulate things with his hands. He's also 15% bigger than his two siblings and has an appetite to match. When we try to give him tummy time he rolls over quickly or does this side slouch thing where he starts to roll over and finds that too much work and stops half way through.

Justin - Justin is a complex little fellow. He isn't growing as fast as his two brothers, eats very slowly a deliberately, and likes to hunch over and clasp his hands together like Montgomery Burns from the Simpsons. I can almost hear the 'Excellent' coming from his mouth when I see him like that. He doesn't roll over very easy and hates being put on his tummy for any real length of time. He seems to reach out to play with things in front of him very cautiously. All in all though he is a well behaved baby and only gets fussy when tired.

Ethan - The smallest of my kids by a few ounces, he is a bundle of energy. From about 10 minutes after waking until he goes down for a nap or to sleep for the night the kid doesn't stop hitting, kicking and yelling at the things in front of him. You can only truly pacify him by walking around with him facing out, which gets a bit tiring after a while. I can see him being a real handful once he develops enough skill to crawl. Currently, he can only inch along like a worm, but he's getting there.

And one last thing to talk about. Until they were about 4 or 5 months old none of the kids really interacted with toys at all, and so we didn't buy any for them. My parents bought them some rattles which I think was their first toys (didn't really play with them for months though). At Christmas, my brother Matt and sister-in-law Lauren got them three little animals that make noise if you fiddle with them. These also were largely ignored until about 1-2 months ago. I mention this because I want to always remember the determined, almost pissed look on my kids faces when they worked up the ability to hit these animals that taunted them. I tried to catch it on the camera, but I failed miserably so you get only a poor description: a sour pout and furrowed brow as Ethan in particular (but they all had this face at some point in time) gave the deer hanging right in his face a good smack or two.

Here's one of the animals in question as I see it:

And here is how the babies see it:

Sleeping

2010-02-05T08:52:00.001-08:00

A lot of people would smartly ask me "Are you getting any sleep?" when I told them I had recently had triplets. I think I always answer the same way, "A bit here and there." But this little exchange cannot truly convey the horrible, awful instincts that babies have concerning sleep, and how my sons deal with sleep in particular. To be honest, I'm no expert about babies and their sleeping. But given the large amount of educated opinion I've gotten from doctors, books, and former mothers about sleep habits of babies I feel like I can make a bit of a generalization on the first point.

For those without experience, I will share my observations with you. Babies sleep a lot, and evidently can't tolerate more than an hour or two of waking before becoming tired enough that they need a nap or a longer bout of sleep we call bedtime. In the beginning of the triplet experience Sharry and I were given some general rules to try to help the babies get the sleep they need to grow, as they started very small and needed to catch up.

Rule #1 was never to wake a sleeping baby. Any sleep time was good time. We've discarded this rule sometimes at night for reasons I will shortly explain.

Rule #2 was that if the baby is showing you that they are tired, you already suck. Babies for no good reason that I can determine fall asleep best before they start rubbing their eyes, get fussier than normal, etc. Books recommend watching carefully for a quiet state staring off into the distance as the magic moment when they will just plop down to sleep.

Being new parents, we tried very hard to follow these rules so we could do right by our children. The very large problem with both these seemingly simple rules is that they aren't for triplets. Or, they are for parents with much more money than I have to throw at the problem.

The triplets get 2 rooms in my house, one for daytime napping and (in the future) playing and a nursery with beds in it downstairs. As you can imagine, a screaming baby tends to keep up any other baby nearby it so we have to try and separate them out for naps and to put them to sleep at night so they can actually get to sleep. Because evidently the way a baby goes to sleep if you miss the magic window of opportunity is by screaming until they exhaust themselves into a stupor. With three babies, it's difficult to keep all under observation and even though I can see this glazed look come onto my child's face at times, it's usually when I'm feeding another one and can't really stop to catch the moment. So we do try to follow the 1-2 hours of wake time rule, but we don't get to do any kind of nap routine or book reading before naps or any of that. We've got to do it assembly line style, and sometimes this doesn't go down so well with babies.

As for the never wake a sleeping baby rule, this recently got tossed when Sharry noted that she woke up every 2 hours to feed a baby the last couple of nights, and this is with me doing half the feedings myself. If you let the baby set their own schedule, they will almost certainly not coincide with their brethren. And while not the worst thing in the world, it's difficult to go to work in a job that mostly involves thinking when you've had what amounts to four 1.5 hour naps during the night. Sharry and I were arguing and yelling at each other, Sharry was scared about work, it was just terrible. We worked out that if one baby woke up yelling for food/changing during the night that both of us would get up and (gently) wake up the other two for the same treatment. The thought process here is that they're going to do it in 30-45 minutes anyways, why not just cut out that fitful 20 minutes of sleep I see them go through before lurching awake yelling about their empty tummy? Now we get much nicer chunks of sleep, but probably about the same amount or a little less. The thing that really irks me is that the doctors and nurses that have set the wise rule now recant completely when Sharry and I tell them what we've determined to do. They say that everyone does what we're doing and that it can't really be done any other way. It makes me doubt some of the other rules that we've been told about.

Anyways, this has been on my mind a lot lately, as Sharry's just about had it with the 2-3 wake up times that we still endure from 11-7 am. I can empathize, but being on leave makes me have to exercise as much brain power as pudding and she doesn't buy it.

The Trauma of Soiling Yourself

2009-12-31T22:54:00.000-08:00

The babies passed the 4 month mark on Christmas. They sleep a bit longer at night between feedings and they actually show signs of being happy when awake during the day. When not starving or sitting in their own waste, they coo and gurgle away contentedly and seem very happy to see either me, Sharry or Norma appear in front of them. But one thing they all have in common is their reluctance to eat or sleep while they pooping. Now, I can somewhat sympathize since I know that if I was pooping in my pants I'd like to be awake and hopefully not eating when it happened. But, given that this is their lot in life I am amazed at how angry they get when anything happens regarding their butt.

I've seen lots of comedies where the baby is delighted to visit some smelly surprise onto the unwitting parents, laughing to punctutate the amusing fact that parents must wipe crap up all the time. But my children seem at best startled and at worst horrified at what is happening to their bowels. They scream, they double up, they grunt and strain. It's horrible to hold a little human being in your hands while they crap themselves in such a noisy and scary fashion. It keeps them up at night, it wakes them up from sleeping, it's all around bad news that I really wasn't prepared for at all.

The cult of documentation

2009-12-12T22:52:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've updated this journal of triplet experiences, but it's because for the last few weeks the work portion of being a father has gotten harder and harder. The effort put in is almost soul crushing, and I really couldn't find much to joke about. But, I really think that I should keep up with it at the very least for posterity's sake.

Halloween was a big flury of activity. On a whim, my brother Brandon and I walked down to the grocery store and got a pumpkin each to carve up, my first jack-o-lantern. Evidently, it was the final straw as I basically had a dibilitating cramp in my lower back that lasted for a couple of weeks. This put a lot of strain on Sharry and Norma to take care of the kids a bit more to make up for my broken status. On the plus side, I really liked the jack-o-lanterns that we got out of the deal and I roasted some pumpkin seeds which turned out as nutty goodness.

Halloween was the first time that I saw Sharry get into a kick about dressing our kids up in special outfits and taking pictures of them for a special occasion. Since then I've gone through the birth announcement photo sessions and just right now the Christmas picture sessions. Our babies have barely started smiling at people for reasons other than filling their pants, but Sharry really wants to get some great family photos. There seems to be a lot of pressure (I'm not sure where it comes from) to document the babies' lives and do all the 'right' things that causes a huge headache for us.

I have yet to see a picture come out of any of these sessions where all the babies are in an acceptable state. And Sharry keeps raising the bar, much to my dismay. In the birth announcement photos, I think only 1 baby stayed awake long enough to get a picture with eyes open. The other two are sleeping. In the halloween photos, I belive they all three cried through the whole process (but at least they were awake!). In the Christmas photos, they all are awake and not crying, but not smiling. This makes Sharry have to settle for something less than what she imagined she could get. There's a bit of tension between us too, since I didn't grow up with holdiay pictures and dont' understand the hooplah.

I find it very bizarre how many pictures are taken and the various costumes they have to dress your kids up a bit like dolls. I'm not sure I like it. But I can say that the babies in the little Santa outfits is probably one of the cutest things I've seen so far.

Judge Judy

2009-11-13T23:58:00.000-08:00

My brother just posted this you tube video of him on Judge Judy, and I wanted to make sure that it was seen by all those not his friends. My brother, if you don't know him by sight, is the plantiff in this case. If you get bored, dont' forget to skip to the end. The bit at the end is awesome.

Week 10: Fear and Loathing

2009-11-06T23:30:00.000-08:00

Time seems to be all running together. All three babies will at some point or another cause a real ruckus and are very hard to calm down. It seems that Ryan's major problems with life are about his stomach, as he has acid reflux causing him all sorts of problems. This gets him some extra medicine and feeding time is a bit more trying as he has to eat and stay sitting after feeding.

A week ago Justin scared the hell out of me, and I ended up calling 911. I had just convinced Sharry and Norma to take a break and get out the house. They left me alone with the kids, but they were all in the crib and the monitor was on. I was letting Justin take some time to yell at the ceiling to see if he was as tired as I thought he was and he'd pass out. I can't take him doing it for more than a few minutes at a time or I feel neglectful, but after a couple minutes he quited down and the monitor fell silent.

After a couple more minutes (I wasn't sure how long, since I was watching TV and not paying full attention) I head an odd noise in the monitor, kinda of rythmic and like coughing. I thought it was strange and headed down to check it out. What I found was Justin with some kind of snot/formula combo coming out of his nose and a deep red color that I didn't like at all. It looked and sounded like he was choking, so I grabbed him up and took to him with the syringe ball thing that you get when you get a baby. I suctioned out his mouth and nose, and he started crying a bit. I thought all might be ok, him limp and breathing fast on the changing table when I saw a red residue in his nose. Had I hurt him trying to get the stuff out of his nose? Had I not heard the choking sound in time?

I called for some paramedics who arrived in about 2 minutes and they said that he looked fine. Evidently the nose is pretty sensitive and even normal suction might have caused the little bit of blood I saw. Nevertheless, I was shaky and was scared as hell as to what would have happened if I had been a little more frustrated with him or a little more engrossed in what Jon Stewart had to say about the wacky antics of Fox News today? I don't like to think about it.

Justin seems to absolutely hate sleeping. He'll doze, fitfully like my dogs do, ready to spring to life in a moment if the need arises. Trying to put him down for a longer nap or heaven forbid get a decent bed time going on seems impossible. Last night he fought for over an hour and a half the very idea that he should sleep at 11 PM. I have the stomach to let him cry a little bit, try and soothe him and calm him down and then try it again, but Sharry balks at letting them test their boundaries and the limits of their caretakers. Given that we have triplets, I figure that they might need to understand that sometimes they aren't going to be catered to right away. I think Sharry actually has some kind of hormonal or other physical reaction to her baby crying that I am missing. All I feel is highly annoyed that for the 40th time in about as many minutes, I am putting a pacifier back in a kid's head.

Soon, we won't be able to just put the baby on the bed, turn for a diaper, and then come back assuming the baby will be right where we left them. Justin and Ryan have both rolled from their bellies to their back and I would assume it's only a little bit of time before they go the other way. They all abhor tummy time, but evidently they need to be placed on their stomach under supervision to allow them to develop the muscles they need to start crawling around. Because Sharry can't take the yelling so much, tummy time is a bit limited unless it's on a leaning back adult. I think we have a picture somewhere of a tummy time session which shows 2 of the 3 babies yelling furiously, and I think Ryan had passed out and was (I suppose) happy enough with his situation.

Last note, we are documenting our kid's life in books with scrapbook pockets in it and questions galore about what life is like now, how did we feel about this or that, and pictures of various crucial moments (first step, first sitting up, etc). These books are going to kick our ass. Given that they ask open ended questions that make you want to try for a little bit of gravity, I don't know how we're going to come up with the deep and meaningful answers that posterity demands. I'm betting we don't even get a 4th of the thing done and we hate ourselves a bit.

Week 8 (and some): The discovery of yelling

2009-10-23T15:21:00.000-07:00

Sometime last week, Justin (leader of the fray currently) discovered that sometimes he just doesn't like anything. He figured out that screaming hysterically really didn't do much bad to him and usually would cause one of the providers to come running. In short, where we used to have a baby that had basic desires easily tested and fulfilled (change, feed, burp, hold a few minutes, done!), Justin would not be subdued.

In response I've taken to doing one of the most heartbreaking things I can imagine doing: ignore him. So far I've timed it and it takes all of 3 minutes for him to scream non-stop until like a turning off a faucet he just quits. I've done this twice now and he doesn't seem any worse for the wear afterwards, just has a glassy eyed look and seems meekly subdued. The second time I did it, Sharry cried after about 60 seconds of the most blood-curdling screaming yet and I had to beg her not to answer the cries. "Give me just 5 minutes, and I'll check on him myself" and she relented. But that might be one of the hardest things she's had to do since the babies come home.

With my parents gone, Norma has resumed her morning time visits to the nursery giving Sharry and I a few hours of rest in the early morning. I can't remember if I've called out what an awesome mom-in-law I have in Norma, but if not, she's simply great. I can't imagine doing this without her, and when she leaves the nanny we will have to hire to replace her will be only a dim shadow of the help she gives.

All the babies can hold their heads up a bit at this point, but Justin in particular can hold his head upright for long periods of time and look around at what's going on with wide eyed wonder. Ethan seems to be getting the fact that to get attention with his more noisy brothers around, he'll have to make some more noise himself. This is not a welcome discovery. Ryan so currently holds the favorite spot for me, as I love the fact that he can sit in his chair and just check out the world without constant attention or swaddling.

Last bit of grim humor: I've taken to calling the swaddle wraps we have (pictured above) a straight jacket. These things are drop dead useful and we need more. Looking at the above picture you might think the baby would be very happy to be in the snug warm wrap, but my children fight being put in it like it's the iron maiden. Once secure, they might fight for a few seconds but are for the most part pacified and the actual pacifier seals the deal. Norma claims that if people could here me talk with my nicknames I might be arrested. She's probably right. I frequent talk about tying and gagging the baby (which is my grim nick name for swaddling the baby fairly tight and making sure the pacifier is in their mouth). That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Week 7: A dim concept of the past

2009-10-14T12:25:00.000-07:00

My parents came visiting a few days ago which brings the people count in my house up to nine. The complexity of caring for the babies has gone right through the roof and people seem almost to fight for the chance to do some baby related work. I had to take some unexpected time off to deal with the extra help that has come in. I'm appreciative of the thought and love my parents, but so many people!

The babies are still thriving strong, but despite demands for pictures and more posts to the blog from friends and family, I have to say that they still are pretty much the same. They eat a little more than they used to a few weeks ago, they are a few ounces heavier, sure. But they still try to tear their eyes from their head as they eat. They still fight the swaddling as it happens yet settle in content (usually) when it's all over. They still yell mightily as the diaper is changed. They still really dig being in a bath, I'm sad that I don't have more time to just let them chill in there.

Other disjointed thoughts about being a parent of triplets:

No matter how cute or useful the triple inline stroller looks, don't bother getting it unless you have a full-on van. We bought a mini-van to tote around these kids and their gear and the triple stroller we bought absolutely will not fit in there unless we pull seats out of the thing. It's a ridiculous monstrosity, and expensive to boot.

I'm incredibly lucky that so far no baby seems to have colic. As it stands now, at most two babies cry needing something at any given point of time. If all three were bawling at once my head might asplode. As it is I only have the vaguest concept of what's been going on in my house. We write down the feedings we do so as to hopefully not cause more projectile vomiting than absolutely necessary.

I can't wait till I arbitrate fights with a cage match. Two kids enter, one kid leaves!

Sorry for the horrible updating of the blog. I'll try and post some pictures at the 2 month mark. They have a doctor's appointment next week, and anything good or bad will be posted.

Week 4: It's on now!

2009-09-25T16:11:00.000-07:00

Last night Ethan came home and now our family is complete. You would think that the difficulty of caring for a third baby isn't much more than the difficulty for caring for the second baby, but you'd be wrong. Last night the chorus of groans and explosive wet sounds coming from the nursery in off hours kept me up all through my shift and Sharry called for help during her's when she saw that a feeding cycle takes 60 to 90 minutes to complete, and they eat every 3 hours or so.

Add on top of the extra time, Ethan has trouble eating and you have to watch him carefully to make sure he breathes. He also is on his own little schedule of eating every 4 hours or so, which isn't in line with his noisy and insistent brothers. Time will tell how this shakes out, but they still don't act like babies. Bonding with the grunting, eye rolling, smelly, fleshy lump that is demanding my sleep time for its amusement is hard. I wish they'd stay awake during the day a little more, they are incredibly active at night (12-6 am).

They all seem to be developing what Norma calls the startle reflex, which means that instead of ignoring their screaming brother or sporatic barking dog, they might start crying in response to it. Justin surpassed his brother Ryan this week in weight (Justin 5 lbs 9 oz, Ryan 5 lbs 7 oz, Ethan 4 lbs 15 oz). We ran the numbers and discovered that we will shortly go through a can of formula a day to keep them feed, which works out to 15 bucks a day in formula. Throw in 8 dollars a day to keep the 3 of them in diapers and this could get to be a very expensive habit...

Free board games.... Madness!

2009-09-17T22:18:00.001-07:00

Someone is coming out with some new games, and I like supporting new publishers. The games look pretty interesting, and they seem to be going all out to sell their stuff. They are even giving away some of their games!

Week 3

2009-09-16T17:05:00.000-07:00

I meant to update once a week, but evidently even that is beyond my capabilities. 3 weeks have gone by, and two (Justin and Ryan) of the three babies are at home. They still aren’t much more interesting to interact with than a plant that makes noise, but still they are mine and I do love them a little bit. Definitely more during the day than at 3 am when they are insisting that it’s time to get attention. The sleep pattern of either baby from midnight to 6 am seems to follow this kind of a schedule:

Get changed/fed. Make strange grunting noises while feeding or yell about the changing as it happens. Require a break in the middle of feeding to be burped. Sometimes fall asleep while eating and don’t finish meal, wasting formula and causing me to wash a bottle for an ounce of food eaten. Pat the baby on the back for a few minutes, try to get the air out him. This process takes about 20-30 minutes.
After eating griping. Even if he looks like the most passed out baby you’ve ever seen, the moment you put him down he will probably start making whiny, gurgling sounds that sound like the death rattle every 30 seconds or so. The effect of these sounds is to make me fear that my baby is choking to death twice a minute, but in reality this seems to be how he consoles himself to being laid in a bed bound up in a blanket. This takes about 30 minutes.
Sleep, or a close approximation to it. After a while, if you are very lucky, the baby will move into a period of what I’m guessing is good sleep. It doesn’t make any crazy noises, and looks pretty calm and relaxed. During the night, this time lasts from 0-60 minutes, depending on diaper condition/how full the baby is.
I’m hungry/wet/dirty griping. After a little while, the baby will realize that he’s probably sitting in his own waste and still bound up in a blanket. He starts pushing on the blanket while making fussy, grunting sounds every 30 seconds or so. This period usually lasts about 20-30 and ends with the baby completely undoing the swaddling job holding it in and wailing about being free.

So if you are lucky, you get an hour of sleep somewhere in there, if you can align the babies’ schedules so that they are done very close to one another. About every 2 ½ to 3 hours the cycle begins anew. The truly wretched thing is that during the day they sleep for much longer periods of time at a go. They seem to be made for the wee hours of the morning.

As for personalities, they have the fundamentals of personality in them. Ryan seems to be easier to calm, more secure in his sleep, and has trouble keeping awake while eating. Justin has long periods of fretful awake time and doesn’t sleep deeply often.

I’ll spare you the bodily function jokes that are common place around the house now. I’ll try and keep this record of thoughts about baby raising and how they are developing.

Week 1: Telling them apart

2009-09-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

I've been a father for a week and a half now. I have been spared many of the normal things that accompany babies entering into your life since they came a bit early, even for triplets. I visit them every day but since they really aren't too mobile yet I usually just hold them or pat them in what I hope is a comforting manner. They seem to like to sleep quite a lot and one of the few things I know about babies is that you really shouldn't wake a sleeping one, unless you like noise.

As it stands right now, I can tell only these things about their personalities:

Justin is a bit fussy. He can be calmed fairly easily, but he is the vocal one of the group. He doesn't like being moved or poked, but I don't know what baby would really. Ryan is the chill one of the group. He doesn't seem to mind much at all, I rarely hear him cry for anything, and even if he's getting actively messed with he tolerates it for quite a while before telling you about it. Ethan is smaller than the others, but is just as active and in some cases is ahead of his brothers in taking a bottle or trying to nurse. I think of him as the fighter of the group, he's starting out with the short straw but he's gained more weight than the others and takes all his formula and seems to want more.

Changing diapers isn't as bad as I thought it would be, except that recently they've started to stink quite a bit when they've got dirty diapers. I'm wondering how long it is before I actually retch or throw up while changing them. I'll be sure to note the day...

SNAP 21

2009-05-13T17:08:00.000-07:00

SNAP stands for Seattle Nearby Adventures in Puzzling and is a day long event similar to a scavenger hunt or Amazing Race on a small scale. You go from place to place in a notable Seattle/East side area and solve puzzles which allow you to move on to the next place/puzzle. Teams are ranked based on the time it took them to go through the event. We placed in the top 25% I think, but we were 3rd for most of the time. We got mired down on the one puzzle we found a bit unfair, as it expected us to read french to solve the puzzle in the end.

I wanted to call out especially that I thought the theming of the puzzles overall and the quality of the puzzles (with the one exception) were amazingly good. I hope that I can still participate in such a quality event next time it comes around. Thanks to the organizers, for putting it together. My 10 bucks admission was well worth it. And my cellphone says I walked 4 miles, so that's ok too.

Puzzlehunt 123

2009-03-05T23:40:00.000-08:00

Did the Microsoft Puzzlehunt 123 this last weekend, and it was pretty hard core. It's shaken my confidence in what I get out of the event, being it's the most endurance based one that I do (36 hours straight is expected) and the puzzles are really tough. There were some gating issues that people are talking about in not happy ways. But there was also a few really nice team puzzles that everyone is raving about.

Off topic, I hate the word literally. That and penultimate get serious abuse and it hurts my head when people misuse it.

Down a third

2008-12-11T10:48:00.001-08:00

I looked at my 401k statement this morning. My accounts are down roughly a third from the start of the year, and I invest conservatively for someone in my age group. Sometimes math can be hard for me to put my head around, so I looked at how long it would take for me to recover this 'lost' value through growth. Assuming I get returns similar to what I got in the years before this stock market crash, it will be 2014 before the losses are recovered (8% gain year over year).

The reason I'm writing this down is because I often get a bit angry, writing my congressman and senators demanding to know what's up with 700 billion dollars of taxpayer money being gifted to people that trashed my savings and ranting to friends about the awful extortion that took place. So I wanted to try to form coherent thought about the issue, and ask that people realize that when I go on and on about this, it's because I see 6 years of my future lost because of the stupidity and greed of wall street. The stories about what was being 'invested' in and what was being traded and sold makes me think that those people are possibly crazy and most likely dangerous.

It's not like I can do anything about it, other than write and make sure I vote for people that vote the same way I would of. But it's not like when I was a kid and putting your money in a bank savings account will actually do anything. Hell, even ING isn't paying interest that's worth a damn. Why should they, when they can just borrow money from the government at 1%? They don't need my money to back their loans. People bemoan American's lack of savings, but what motivation do I have to save anything?

High School Reunion of sorts

2008-10-12T11:54:00.000-07:00

I joined Facebook a while ago, but I can't really remember why. I find their asking for passwords of mine to well known social sites and web email providers intrusive and a little unnerving. But occasionally I get mail from some random girl claiming in a vague way to know me (I suppose she's running an adult website and wants my credit card) so at least there is some minor entertainment to be had as I sift through internet tarts for long lost army buddies or what not.

Anyways, a few weeks ago I got a mail from someone who claimed to know me in high school but that appeared completely unfamiliar to me. Turns out he was in my graduating class, but I really didn't know him. But that got me thinking about what had happened to my former friends from high school and what had happened to them. I drug out my year book, one of the precious few things I have from that time in my life, and started looking for people I knew way back when.

I recently watched a video by a private investigator at defcon (a computer hacker conference) tell me that privacy is dead and if he had a name he could know the most intimate details of your life by just googling your name. Well, his kung fu must be better than mine because I couldn't get anything except random hits on unrelated people. The one person I did find had a very unusual last name and actually was a match. The crazy thing was, it was a dedication site on myspace calling for people to write my former friend in prison. He evidently had been in since 1996 (4 years after we graduated high school). By the time I was enlisting in the army, he life was effectively over.

I haven't been able to do anything but find an arrest announcement from 1996 in the local paper of what happened to my old friend. I find myself thinking about how alike we were; I might have been in his position had things not been tweaked a little causing me to split off from all my former high school friends. I wouldn't have joined the national guard and then the army. I might not have been motivated enough to finish my degree, and working for Microsoft would have been right out. I might have been wherever my friend was when he made his choices that caused him to surrender over a decade of his life to prison. It's a very sobering thought to realize how different life is based on a handful of decisions, and where you could be otherwise.

I think Sharry's getting tired of the introspection though, so I might have to cut it out soon. :)

Like an oven

2008-07-13T11:50:00.000-07:00

Sharry and I arrived in Fresno last night, got a hybrid car for a rental and then stepped out into the baking heat that 10 o'clock in Fresno provides. I have no idea how I lived in this heat before, and I certainly don't know how I used to think nowhere was better than California to live.

I used to splerge quite a bit on air conditioning when I lived here, so maybe that's how I lived through it all. We're staying with Sharry's mom this week and like most older people, she seems to not mind the heat. She keeps the thermostat at around 84, which is at what point Sharry and I might kil each other back in Washington. So, we've invaded this sweet lady's home, turned down her thermostat (still not nearly enough for me) and we sit here lightly prespiring.

I want to tell the people of the central valley: "get out. go somewhere greener. You've paved over everything and now even the parts that aren't on fire feel like they are on fire."

Lament over math?

2008-04-10T13:26:00.001-07:00

My brother Matt became a teacher less than a year ago. Since he was replacing someone abruptly, he got a mix of advanced and remedial classes. He teaches math, and I expected that he would find that teaching high school kids would be hard, as they don't necessarily want to learn. In college, everyone you tutor or talk with about the education you are getting is paying to be there. Well, at least someone is paying. In high school, I'm sure that the kids there could think of many other things to do, and that does not make learning easy on either the teacher or the student.

I saw an interesting paper written about how very sad our mathmatical education process is, and I thought I'd share. I'm probably going to point Matt to it, so I'm also kind of remembering it for later. Thanks metafilter!

http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

Your game is rigged!

2008-02-08T16:09:00.000-08:00

At our work cafeteria, there has been a contest going on for the last few weeks where everytime you buy something from the cafe, they give you a little card with a part you scratch of to see if you won a prize. After a few days of the game starting I had amassed a small collection of cards that won me 50 cents off a cup of coffee, or something as cool as that. I had won (and I use the term loosely) about half the cards I had scratched, and it was all fine. After a week, a co-worker pointed out that:

a) the cards had serial number looking things on the back and
b) if your card ended in 1, you did not win a prize.

Well, that's pretty cool. If I actually could chose my card rather than having it given to me by the checkout person, it might matter. Somehow, this information got to the cafe managers though and soon after all the cards had their serial numbers cut off. That was about 2 weeks ago, and ever since I haven't won a single thing. I imagine that somewhere out there is a Microsoft Cafe worker swiming in all the winning coupons, finding happiness in cheaper lattes and free yogurt cups with purchase of an entree.

Rigged I tell you!

My Xbox is watching me

2008-01-30T14:37:00.000-08:00

http://www.360voice.com/tag/i7dealer

I find it a little disturbing that these people set up a blog for me from the perspective of my Xbox. Now, every day I play it says some random weird thing about my pounding it's buttons or having greasy fingers. Creepy.

Las Vegas took my money!

2007-12-27T16:41:00.000-08:00

The first weekend in December found Sharry, Nick and I in Las Vegas. We planned the trip a few months ago, and had been looking forward to gambling a bit and Sharry had gotten tickets for Blue Man Group. We started rough when it started to snow while we were boarding the plane, and had to get de-iced several times before finally taking off. We flew and landed without incident and checked into the Excalibur. Decent room, but they offer a nice hi-def TV with a normal broadcast signal. The view was pretty cool until you looked at the ground, it had a view on the top of the casino.

Things heard on the trip:

"Are we under attack? Maybe we're being bombed..."
At about 6:05 AM I awoke to hearing popping sounds like gunfire. It was dawn, or near enough such that a little light was coming through the edges around the window. I listened for a few minutes, and decided that it was fireworks but assumed I hadn't been sleeping long and it was still night time. Sharry could see the clock, and would not believe that anyone let off a 20-30 minute long firework show in the morning. She turned over and asked whether a war had started. Evidently, the Las Vegas marathon was starting and the the event was being commemorated with a 30 minute firework show at dawn. We're still not quite sure what the hell is with fireworks in the daytime.

"We just can't win at the place we're staying."
We lost a lot of money at Excalibur and I'm sure we'll get invitations back. The sad part is we specifically took rooms at the Excalibur because last time we went to Las Vegas we hung around there for the cheaper tables and the nicer dealers. We did fairly well there, and practically ignored New York, New York where we were staying then. This time, every time we played in Excalibur we lost, while every trip to Luxor broke even or stepped away up.

"Unless your playing 15 dollar bets, we aren't tracking you"
Players club incentives to play are nice to have. Sharry has a friend that doesn't pay to stay in really nice hotels. Certainly he plays for more money than I or Sharry does, but he didn't use to. Casinos used to give perks to all the players, especially ones that drop a couple hundred bucks an evening. Turns out you can't play 5 dollar hands of blackjack at any time in the strip casinos we went to. We were there from Saturday to Tuesday and saw no tables for 5 dollars. I had problems finding 5 dollar craps. We were still adjusting to the 10 dollar hands when we were told that if you weren't playing 15 dollar hands, they didn't care about your play. This isn't a good thing. We lost bigger than we've ever lost before, and I'm not sure I like gambling for such high stakes. Certainly, cost is relative, but man. They could at least be nicer about it.

Highlights included seeing the Seahawks win on Sunday morning while eating room service (despite assurances from everyone that the game would not be shown on TV, it was) and seeing the Blue Man Group. It was a fun show, but I don't want to know how much our tickets cost.

All in all, we had a good time. I think we'll try for a room in down town next time, or maybe change locations mid-trip next time. I'd like to see new stuff next time around. Maybe more trips and shows and less gambling.

Radical Honesty

2007-09-05T13:24:00.000-07:00

I was looking through metafilter today waiting for the source depot to sync up a branch and found this Esquire article about radical honesty. There's a guy who is promoting completely open communication, no filters.

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/honesty0707?x

I think that honesty from everyone would suck for a little while, but then we would develop some thicker skin and realize that sometimes bad thoughts cross people's minds. It is an interesting article that I thought I would share with anyone that actually reads this blog (which as far as I know is about 2 or 3 people). The language and subject in the article touches on adult subjects, so read it only if you don't get offended easily.

Fireworks, Friends, Family

2007-07-06T11:04:00.000-07:00

Sharry and I hosted another 4th of July BBQ this year, and my brother Matt and his wife Lauren came up to vacation and managed to just get here in time to set off some fireworks. I think this year I bought just too many mortar shells. We only had two working lighters and one was a regular cigarette lighter and you could get burned easily. It took two hours to work our way through all the launching fireworks I got. Here are lessons learned for next year:

1) I discovered that canister shot is superior to regular mortar fireworks. I should get more of these and less of the regular mortars.
2) Bottle rockets are lame.
3) Boxes of aerial displays are nice for an automatic show. I should pick up more of these from the reservation.
4) I'd like to investigate how difficult it would be to set up a electronic ignition system with solar ignitors from model rocket kits. I would like to set off a huge number of fireworks simultaneously.
5) Get the crack lighters so we don't have to worry about the wind.

Once again, I'd like to thank the county of King for containing unincorporated parts of towns where fireworks are legal. Jeers to the city of Kirkland for being so prissy about shooting really dangerous stuff into the sky. I found out how dangerous fireworks could be when my neighbor blew up two mortar tubes when they loaded the mortar shells in upside down.

New photos are up

2007-06-26T10:41:00.001-07:00

I have new photos up, some stretching back to when I was just a youngin trying to make my college money. Snapshots of Bosnia, various parts of Europe and other trips I've taken are here. I will try and identify people and places with tags and captions as time goes by.

http://picasaweb.google.com/dave.heberer

In other news, Sharry and I have really gone to town rearranging our house. Our bedroom is now located in the large basement room that used to be for playing games in. We're painting the upstairs bedroom a blue-gray color that looks much cheerier than it sounds. With 4th of July coming up, we're sure to have a BBQ and fireworks and I hope that everything is settled by then. Currently, any room that isn't lived in is stuffed with extra stuff from the rooms being painted.

Ultimate.... Pain!

2007-06-13T14:35:00.000-07:00

I've decided that I'm just way too lazy, and I'm reminded of this fact anytime I exert myself at all. I can't figure out how in just a few short years I went from a guy who could (grudgingly) carry a 40 pound rucksack 20 miles and feel pretty beat up over the experience to a guy that can't run more than a few hundred yards before I feel strains and pulls in my muscles and joints that make running unsustainable. I guess I'm just getting old; and fat. Comes with lazy I suppose, and also with my job description of sitting and typing for hours on end.

I've tried to keep up with some kind of exercise program, using our elliptical machine once or twice a week, and trying to lift small weights while I wait for the computer to compile my code. But it isn't enough, so I signed up for ultimate frisbee.

Now I knew it was a lot of running around, but since it was a 'hat league' where everyone is just randomly assigned to a team more or less I figured it would be more mellow than the chaos I've seen before. What I didn't understand that the team captains were handlers encouraging us to push it to the limit. Up and down the field I ran, catching and throwing for three hours. It's three days later and I'm still pretty beat up. If I don't lose some weight and train to be better, it's going to be a long summer. I even managed to bruise my hands in several places, it hurts to type!

Fresno in the news

2007-05-16T11:59:00.000-07:00

My hometown is often thought of (fairly, in my opinion) as a hick town, filled with lots of violent crime and unemployment. There aren't a lot of opportunities there, and nothing of import usually goes on.

But today I noticed a story from Fresno making the internet rounds, and last week there was a shooting near Fresno State, which also made national headlines. Fresno's popping up on the radar!

The story I guess is the first transgendered person was named prom queen at a high school in Fresno. Awesome, and quite surprising given it's conservative nature.

Link to Fresno Bee story

Talking meat

2007-05-11T10:30:00.000-07:00

I saw someone quote Aqua Teen Hunger Force (very bizarre show, sometimes funny in short doses) about talking meat, and I was reminded of a very short story I read about why we can't find anyone out in the universe to talk to, even though we've been beaming out messages for years. I thought it was hilarious, and thought I'd share in case you've never read.

http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html

It is completely safe for work.

Useful things

2007-05-06T19:28:00.000-07:00

Sharry and I are painting a room downstairs, a dark rich red color named "Hawaiian Cinder" (it's maroon, in guy terms). While prepping the room, I had to get something to cover up a table which we were putting paint on. What we decided to use was one of the most useful things that we have in the house, a bright orange blanket given to us for free, and that we have complete disregard for.

A few years ago, Sharry and I went to a Microsoft company meeting at the Mariner's baseball field. It was done in November and quite cold, so the company thoughtfully gave use some blankets to wrap up in while listening to how this was the year we were going to ship Vista (although that's not what they were calling it then). Anyways, we got given a couple blankets each, and we gave back one each for the homeless as we were leaving but kept two since we thought they were neat.

Anyways, I think it's quite amusing that the things that are the most useful in my house are the things that I just don't care about. Beat up coffee mugs with chips in them are used to paint with, to drink from, and so on. Blankets that are too ugly to be cherished are actually used for picnics, or to protect the seats from the dogs, or use when we paint. I think the more I value a thing, the less I want to use it and the less useful it really is.

Thought of the day I guess. And the red color in the room rocks. It's really awesome to finally have a dramatic color in the house, and I think Sharry and I really compromised well when we were picking colors. It's nice when things work out.

More wedding photos

2007-04-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

Sharry and I have so many photos of our wedding, but we never managed to show them to people or make copies. I think Sharry has some up on Yahoo, but I thought I'd upload all the photos that are in our "wedding DVD". If you are a family member, and don't have a wedding DVD and you want one, please email or call me.

Here is a link to the photos I've uploaded.

Dave and Sharry's Wedding

Crash

2007-02-28T21:31:00.000-08:00

I got to see this film Saturday evening. Now, I love movies and I've seen lots of them. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie I enjoyed so much. I had a great time with this one. I thought it gave a raw look at how people think and feel when they interact with others. The racial slurs were a little more than I've ever heard in even private company, but I think everyone has thoughts so vile when scared or angry. Some of the scenes seemed a little forced, but from 5 minutes in until the end of the film I was spellbound. You don't want to watch this if easily offended, but along the same lines as American History X, if you want to see the horrible and cyclic nature of racism with a good story to fill in the rant, you need to watch this film. I can't believe it's taken me this long to see this best picture winner.

Urban Legends

2007-02-22T13:20:00.000-08:00

Urban legends and folklore in general have always interested me. I find it very funny that people don't look at their own behavior when considering how foolish "fairy tales" sound to modern people. People are always trying to find justice in life, teach lessons through anecdote, and find meaning to horrible things that can happen. Folklore is definitely an extension of this, and just because we all have computers doesn't mean we stop passing along rumor and gossip as truth and try and apply meaning to it.

Anyways, I'm reading a big giant book of urban legends, Urban Legends: As-Complete-As-One-Could-Be-Guide, and it's pretty poorly written. It reads almost as if someone were talking to you about the topic. The author tends to blend real events with legends that are similar (but seemingly documented after the first instance of the legend being recorded) and then just jumps to a related legend or true story without skipping a beat. It's hard to tell between fact and fiction and the stories all blend together in the mind as you read. However, if you want to hear all kinds of legendary things and don't really care about the understanding of how these things travel and what meaning legends hold in today's life, you might enjoy just reading the copious tales that are stuffed into the book.

All in all, I'm still looking for a book that examines modern folklore and tries to look at why it's popular and what part of our lives it fills. Any suggestions?

Microsoft Puzzlehunt A: Atlantis

2007-02-12T16:54:00.000-08:00

I just got done with Puzzlehunt here at Microsoft. This was the 10th puzzle hunt, and it was the fourth puzzlehunt I've competed in. I am on the team Everyday Heroes, a fairly new team made up of a mostly veterans and some newer puzzlers. We placed 15th out of 75 teams, and me missed finishing by probably a couple hours.

There were some pretty cool things about this latest hunt. There was a metapuzzle which featured some extremely detailed digital photography with a very cool grid overlay. When you got the answer to a puzzle in the category, you would click on the grid on the first letter in the answer to the puzzle. As you clicked the map would zoom in and reveal a second grid. In the second grid you would click on the second letter in the answer and in you zoomed until you revealed a very, very close up photo of the Microsoft campus and if you went there, you would collect a piece of paper (hidden under a bench, or some other obscuring location). This was pretty impressive, and I hope that the photos can be used in another puzzlehunt, as it seems like an excellent piece to incorporate into a hunt.

There were some other notable cool things. I was in on the solving of a puzzle that involved running a long piece of cloth through a PVC pipe construct in the correct way to make the words CODE and SUNK which turned out to be the combination on a letter padlock nearby. Pretty neat puzzle. I also thought the CD with left and right speaker playing completely different song streams was a cool idea, and the puzzle that ended with the answer "Shine on you crazy diamond" was well constructed and pretty neat. Of course, I gave up listening after a little while, so maybe I just think the concept was really cool.

There were a little over 40 puzzles, not counting the metapuzzles (of which there were four). I had a pretty good time, my favorite puzzles being the ones that probably weren't as well received by other teams. I despise trivia and trivia related games and such, and so the puzzles I enjoyed most of all required no "brought" knowledge. I remember a puzzle resembling a letter drop, but instead there were pictures that when described with a word (like "dog" or "hair") got plugged into an equation to make sentences. I liked that puzzle quite a bit. I also liked the puzzle involving finding a chunk of dice faces that could be cut out and assembled into a die, it was really cool. There were several puzzles that were twists on very standard puzzle types, but they just encrypted the puzzle to make it hard (or sucky).

Things we just couldn't seem to get was a standard letter drop puzzle that was encrypted with simple substitution, and I thought it was a pretty difficult puzzle. We also just can't seem to deal with spatial puzzles, and for the third puzzle event I've been in with this team in a row, we just get broken off when given something to assemble, we seem incapable of doing it.

I thought the hunt was a very solid effort, there were lots of puzzles, almost none of which fell on standard encryption techniques. I'm sure this was welcome for the local puzzle community given our last hunt was designed to be a repeating cycle of some well known encryption methods and people's feedback stated they didn't like it.

My only complaint about the hunt was it's almost absolute use of trivia to make the puzzle difficult. You needed to have an amazing array of knowledge about TV, movies, popular music, and just general trivia to get along in a lot of puzzles. I personally hate having to bring trivia to a puzzle event and the way that the information was presented in the last hunt made searching for the knowledge nigh impossible.

Some offenders were:

The puzzle that showed pictures of movies that you had to identify from the still shot. If you couldn't identify the movie, you were pretty screwed. You can't search for information given an image, and this meant we needed like 5 or 6 people to look through to identify one or two of the less popular films. If no one ended up knowing it. Maybe you could guess, cause that's about all your left with.

Or the "puzzle" that was a piece of text where each word in the text was replaced with a number (you = 1, am = 2, etc.) based on where it is used in the text (if 'you' came first, it was numbered 1). There were evidently 50 unique words in the text. If you happened to know that 'Green Eggs and Ham' was created on a dare an editor made to Dr. Seuss that he couldn't write a book with only 50 words in it, then this probably isn't a puzzle to you. If you didn't know that information, well, sucks to be you and it certainly was puzzling.

The last one I'll call out was the one involving some really, really punny riddles that had as answers the names of bands. There were 25 of these riddles and they really were like trying to answer a 6 year old's jokes (What has four wheels and flies? A garbage truck!). My hook into this one was "What happens in table tennis when Pong loses?" My answer was "Ping wins (Penguins). It took me 20 minutes to get the next one, which made us think of band names. Unfortunately for me, that was the only one that really could be answered without thinking about band names. Once you get band name space as the answers to the riddles, you can start to whittle them down. But if you really didn't listen to American pop music? Boned. Completely. Sharry and I had a hell of a time, we took up to 3 to 4 hours doing nothing but stare at the paper and try and answer the riddles. The other part of the puzzle (which we went back and forth between the two sections trying to identify songs and bands) were hypothetical answers to questions posed in songs sung by the band on the other page. The penguins, as it turned out, sang the song "Earth Angel". In Earth Angel, it is asked "Earth angel, earth angel, will you be mine?" One of the statements in the list we had was something like "No, cause if I did I would never get my wings, you should talk to a Mars devil!" Completely frustrating, unable to search the internet for this kind of thing, this puzzle really frustrated me.

So after several years of me stating over and over that I hate puzzles that make me search and search, I've found a category that I hate even more: Puzzles that require knowledge that you'd like to be able to search for, but can't.

I would like to say again, that I thought it was a solid hunt, and it seems that I am in the minority. But trivia puzzles and jokes make me feel like I'm an outsider listen to inside jokes and trying to laugh along while wondering why it's so funny. So I had to rant, but overall I had a very enjoyable time. Thanks to the people that wrote the puzzles I said I enjoyed much, I had a blast with them!

Jacking a lift

2007-01-29T19:14:00.000-08:00

This weekend I went snow tubing for the first time. This place about an hour from my house has a really decent set up of tubing runs that take you down a large hill at a good clip. A 2 hour pass is under 20 bucks, and I got at least 20 runs in so the cost is under a dollar a run. Not shabby. They even had a hoist which would drag you back up the hill after your run down, the lines were understandably long. Who wants to walk up a fairly steep hill for a few minutes just to fling yourself down it again?

I took my little brother Stephen who is almost 12. Like most kids, he has the energy to try and walk up hills without a care about the ascent. The funny thing is though, you walk up the same hill as the people who are being dragged up by the hoist. They weren't always successful in hooking on the first chance they got, so there were gaps in the line of people being towed up the hill. The more adventurous of the people there would run alongside the toe line and hook in to the empty hooks and ride the rest of the way up. Stephen called this "jacking a lift" although I don't know who exactly we were jacking it from. I thought it was a harmless way to bypass the line and the only guilt I should feel is for kind of jumping line, but evidently the establishment frowns on it as well. Stephen and I were told that we couldn't do it anymore, and if anyone saw us, we'd be out. As a little "screw you" to the man, as we were leaving Stephen jacked a lift one last time. Nothing happened, but I asked why he had done it. He told me they couldn't take his pass, so why not? I asked him rhetorically if he should follow the rules only when there were clear bad conseuqences. I myself am not sure of the lesson I was trying to teach...

Snowboarding in earnest

2007-01-23T13:16:00.000-08:00

My brother Matt and his wife Lauren came and visited the first week of January. I had promised my brother that I would take him snowboarding, and the weather was quite agreeable to let us do just that. After an aborted attempt to go on a weekend to Snoqualmie (that place was crammed with people), we borrowed enough gear for everyone to just get a lift ticket and go. Matt took to it very quickly and by the end of the first day was drifting down the green run with ease and trying to learn how to steer. Lauren didn't do as well but kept at it and wouldn't give up, a very admirable trait.

Two days later Matt and I went night riding, my first try at that. Although it was bitter cold, it was very lightly populated and I got as many runs in as I normally get on a busy day. I highly recommend the experience.

Since then I've gone with my little brother Stephen (he's trying to learn still) and I went with my friend Jeff again. All of these times to Snoqualmie. I think I'll try Crystal next, it's a much nicer place and it almost never that crowded.

Thanksgiving feasting

2006-11-30T15:59:00.000-08:00

Another month has flown by...

I spent a week in California, and thanks to shipping Vista I didn't have to spend any vacation doing so. I got to see my family quite a lot more than I normally do, and I saw plenty of my wife's family too.

Vacation time is so involved with eating, everyone wants to visit with all these other childhood friends and family so lunches and dinners together are a must. Other than breakfast, I think I spent every meal eating food at a different restaurant. Gotta be worth some pounds, and I'm swelling enough as it is.

My dad doesn't help that either. Friday night was the non-Thanksgiving thanksgiving dinner. Turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, rolls, all made from scratch. A ton of people were at my parents, including my cousin Michelle and her daughter (1st cousin once removed? second cousin?) Kennedy, Kenny for short. Although she's 2 1/2 years old, I haven't seen Kennedy before and she was a complete charmer. I played with her the whole evening and she was one of the most fantastic kids I've gotten to know.

Anyways, thanks again to Norma for letting us stay with her while visiting. Thanks to my Dad for making incredible feasts, you always go way too far with it! Thanks to my brother Matt for having the time to hang out. And good job Michelle, it looks like you combined your genes in a very successful way. :)

Scary movies

2006-10-30T12:26:00.000-08:00

I recently watched a few movies, two that were billed as "scary" and one that I've been trying to finish watching for many years. One I watched in big screen glory thanks to an acquaintance's monster set up in the basement.

Run Lola Run - This one has been a cult favorite amongst a lot of people. I've rented it twice before and never got that into the film before something happened to make me stop watching and then I'd return it unfinished. After watching, I can recommend the movie to anyone wanting to watch a good action(ish) film. I don't know why the story is told over and over again with a slight variation in the beginning changing the timing of the rest of the events that follow, but I liked it. I was entertained.

The Legend of Hell House - An older film, something recommended as a horror film classic by some website or another. Well, it was a flop. Most of the stuff I see from the 70s is really poor for suspense and horror. Anyone reading this should not bother with this film.

Hostel - I got to watch this at Nate's house, in giant glory on a nice screen with projector. This is a pretty gory slasher film, plenty of TnA to get the teenagers going, and then lots of the old ultraviolence. The premise of the horrible happenings was interesting, but I'd seen something similar to it in a much worse film called 'Bordello of Blood'. This was well done gore, but not very scary. The mood wasn't set very well, or maybe it was the enormous amount of noise coming from the game room? All I can say is, wow, you get to see some stuff in this movie, and most of it you really don't want to see.

And if you are wondering what I would recommend for scary movies, I have a couple you should absolutely see for creepy good scariness (some jumpiness and blood too).

The Ring - Amazing mood setting visuals, the mounting creepiness of the story makes this one of my favorites.

Event Horizon - Haunted house in space. Great film, kept me up after I watched it.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The original, I haven't gotten to see the remake of this film. There are some sheer terrifying moments in this film, where the actors really let the creepy flag fly.

Thoughts about recent reads

2006-10-23T16:05:00.000-07:00

I started looking at the Commandant's Reading List (the U.S. Army recommended reads) and started working my way through it. Several of the books I've read before, but some I haven't and thought it would be interesting to refresh my military mind.
Just finished with "Centuries of Service: The U.S. Army 1775-2004" a pamphlet describing in broad overview the Army's role in certain events . It is highly biased, and I believe ascribes motivations to the Army's commanders in the past that is flat out untrue. The army's role in segregation and female equality is played in a positive light that other readings just don't lend credence to. I do applaud that they state some of the more distasteful things they did head on, particularly with Native American tribes. While stating that they attacked and displaced Native American peoples, they also say that we should take it in the context of historical views.
This last point is very interesting to me, since it is something I really wish people would do when thinking about past events. There are a lot of movies and books that will try and tell a story with a modern view when the truth is that popular thought (that is, what people in general think) in certain cultures in the past can be very disturbing. The idea of slavery, or that women shouldn't be able to vote, or other moral dilemas addressed in the past are completely alien to me. I can't imagine these issues being considered in rational light in this day and age. And so out come historical retellings, where we try to cast our people's previous actions into not such an foreign idea.
Anyways, I don't mean to rant, I also was reading a bit about game theory in a book whose name escapes me, that was pretty cool. Final wall in our front yard is done, just need a little touch up work before the winter kicks our ass.

Summer rolls by...

2006-09-11T12:57:00.000-07:00

I guess I should just get out of the way that I'm happy that the Seahawks won their opening game against the Lions, but I really thought the offensive line was porous like cheesecloth. The defense gave as good as they got and really stuck it to Detroit, but they aren't a great offense, it's not hard to stick it to them. I feel a bit of trouble looming for my city's football future.

We've finished our second tier and are now trying to get rid of the giant boulders we rolled down the slope and let rest near the curb. Posting on Craigslist, we got three responses, but those people haven't responded when Sharry wrote back. This is a bit of a downer. We need to get the last wall up before fall, or the loose dirt will just ooze into the streets when the rains come. Not good.

Norma is in town for a few weeks, and I guess I'm going down (with Sharry) to Fresno for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. We've gone to some parks in the area and I'm always amazed at what incredibly beautiful parks this area has.

Just got finished reading a book called 'Jarhead', which I guess was a movie a while ago. I should rent the movie, the book was quite good. If you ever wanted to know what it was like to be in the military, this book shows a shocking look into the mind of someone thrust into killing and war. Evidently the Marines have many of the same sayings and culture that the Army has, regardless of the rivalry between the branches.

Hundreds of little tiny figures...

2006-08-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

I recently went on a game buying jag, picked up a few games that I've wanted for a long time or saw at a reasonable (very relative concept) price and grabbed them too. Most, but not all, of the games have little troops or aliens or whatever in them cast in plastic for you to paint. Which you can paint, if you have all the stuff and the time. I have stuff, but I don't have the time particularly. Some games have 50 figures in them, others a modest 12 or 18. But the attention to detail in painting little tiny figures just drives me nuts. So, I work at it trying to do a decent job but in the end knowing they're really just not going to look that cool.

Haven't heard from my family in a while, and work is slowing down so I should. My "little" Stephen has moved across town and I haven't heard from his mom in a few days, which kinda sucks. I was going to take him to a movie, something cheap and mellow as my household is drained due to construction projects in the front yard.

I guess I should mention that we finally have started terracing the front yard (which is basically a steep hill we live atop) so that we can plant stuff in an orderly fashion. I hired two guys from the millionar's club (spelling intentional I guess) and they dug their ass off. I was in it too, as was Sharry, but those dudes worked hard. So we got the wall up in a day, a bold feat considering the soil was almost pure hardened clay after the first foot in. We didn't level the first terrace to my liking, and we have run out of places to put dug up dirt, but there you go. Over the last weekend we've prepped for the next level and moved bolders (my body still aches from that, and it's wednesday).

so that's the big news. Hopefully I don't die from construction efforts. Or lose my eyesight painting those damned little figures...

Fourth of July, neighborhood craziness

2006-07-05T11:22:00.000-07:00

So I went a little overboard with fireworks this year. I spent almost 200 dollars on boxes of gunpowder promising to shoot "balls of fire" into the sky and "arial displays with reports", which there certain was a lot of. Also, in the great state of Washington, the types of fireworks allowed by law is remarkable. I spent most of my life in California, and they only let you buy ground flowers and sparklers. This state allows me to buy a mortor tube with 6 rounds for 10 bucks. These launch into the sky with a lound bang and explode into a spray of sparks that make any pyromaniac happy.

Last year, I bought this and that, and got a lucky selection of nice fireworks. The neighbor across the street bought the mightiest mortors you could buy legally, and we worked together to launch 4 or 5 at a time into the sky. This year, the whole street turned out to set off huge displays of mortors, clustered rockets, and other things that go bang. I've never seen so many people walking around our neighborhood, and the fireworks were amazing. My street was crazed with the festivities.

So much so that after midnight when things should be winding down, my wife came down to tell me that kids were running around with roman candles and shooting them at each other and the trees, which seems pretty crazy. I look out the window and see a kid rooting around in our pile of wet, used, fireworks and Sharry gets mad. Out the door, yelling "Where's your parents? What are you doing?"

The wrath of Sharry is certainly something to cower in the face of, and the kid did just that. But from down the street comes a voice saying "I'm the adult here, I'm watching them."

Sharry then asks if they can stop the kids from shooting fire at each other and maybe the trees to. The reply is a hardy "Yes, ma'am!" with a bit of sarcasm.

Sharry yells down the street that they need to be more responsible and then goes to call the cops. I see no more kids running about in our yard. Happily, we left the garage door open by accident all night, but were not theived from (at least as far as we can see).

So, really nice evening spoiled a bit by the ending of adults letting kids behave really, really, stupidly.

Twilight Struggle

2006-05-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

I've recently played a couple of the really hot games that have been recently released.

Twilight Struggle:

A very good card driven game, I especially like the spread of communism or democracy flowing across the board, or cropping up in the middle of the other ideology due to historical events. The game seems to be balanced so that Russia comes out swinging, and then the US gets their turn to make up the damage.

Fury of Dracula:

Very pretty remake of an older game. It struck me as a very advanced form of scotland yard, and I thought that it was very thematic. There's battling with minions, the constant hunt to keep dracula at bay, or better yet hunt his ass down and drive a stake into him.

I like these games, and I'm glad I've got them.

Movies not to see...

2006-04-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

I've been on a DVD rampage the last couple of weekends, and I didn't see anything great. In fact, I saw a couple of things that were so bad that I wanted to warn others (and myself if I ever look through this again for my own recommendations).

Timeline - It was an OK book, not Crichton's best. But considering the last really horrible book I've read from him I guess I should be satisfied with ok. However, the movie was abysmal. It stripped all reference to science (or pseudo-science) that was in the book and turned it into a medieval hack fest. I guess I really shouldn't have been surprised, but I was disheartened still. The movie lacked any believable story that was in the book originally and then added some brawling with fire and swords. Crap.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy - Ok, I wasn't looking for brilliance here, but I at least wanted to be entertained. The only thing I found entertaining in this 2 hour waste of my time was the weatherman's mentally challenged role and how it was played. I can say the only time I laughed out loud was after the news team brawl the conversation afterward about the trident and the weatherguy needing to lay low. It was so surreal that I couldn't help but laugh heartily. The rest of the movie was pretty bad. I couldn't recommend it to anyone.

Shaun of the Dead - Just bad. I expected bad, but campy and fun, and it didn't come through like that at all. I liked the "in" references giving the nod to old Zombie movies, but that's not enough to make a movie.

Such bad films... Really, people should warn others and prevent this kind of time wastage. So I guess I am.

Antike

2006-02-13T16:38:00.000-08:00

I can't imagine random people reading this, let alone people I know, but I should put it on the record that I'm a big freak for board games. I have an account at boardgamegeek.com that sees regular usage, and I own probably a couple hundred games. One that has been seeing a lot of attention lately with my regular gaming group is Antike.

My group is a sub-group of a gathering of people weekly on Friday evenings to play games until the wee hours of the morning. What makes us a sub-group, is that we play more conflict oriented games, some light war games, and we play them often. Our little group has much different tastes than the other regulars, who play strictly Euro-games, usually of the lighter variety. We don't shrink from games with playing times 3 or more hours, and usually the games are pretty good, just long.

Antike breaks this mold with us, being playable in just under 2 hours, if not 90 minutes flat. Turns move quickly, and it hasn't been determined if there is a definite single strategy to play and win. People move in different ways however suits their style, and at least 3 distinct ways of winning have emerged. It's a light civilization game, where no randomness (other than the people you are playing with) can be seen.

If you play boardgames, check out this one. If you like Risk, or Axis and Allies, you should cut your teeth on a really good game!

Stupid Urban Dead

2006-01-31T18:21:00.000-08:00

So I've been looking at this game online called Urban Dead, at http:\\www.urbandead.com, and I'm hooked. The simple-ass free-to-play game is kinda cool, and the huge number of players interacting is very interesting. But I've been reading the wikki they've got, and I'm on the run from various bad peoples, and it's taking a lot more of my time than I thought (I figured a few minutes a day or so). Hopefully it'll peter out, especially since I'm probably going to get games for my birthday.

Which is tomorrow.

Seahawks win!

2006-01-23T15:59:00.000-08:00

I watched the NFC championships with the expectation that the 'Hawks would choke bad. But in the end (or I guess from the beginning!) Carolina choked so bad the QB ended with a passer rating less than 10. Unheard of!

So the hawks go to the superbowl, where we'll see if this long ignored team can show people that they have class. Oddly enough, I know a local that is a adamant Steelers fan, so I have to figure out whether to invite him over for the SB party...

my battle with clutter

2006-01-11T16:18:00.000-08:00

I have some interests which require a lot of space in my home. Trying to organize and keep track of the various things I have seems to take a whole bunch of time. I'm thinking of installing closet organizers in some of the spare rooms so that I can regain some of the empty space I loved so much when Sharry and I first got our home. Plus, Charlie won't eat what he can't get to.

Other than closet organizers to provide more useful storage, I can't seem to think of a practical solution to clutter. I'm not a guy who puts stuff away unless I'm really done with it. I can (and do) read 12 books simultaneously, and re-read books I like many times. We have momentos and stuff from college that doesn't seem like it will ever really be touched. What is a person to do?

argh!

2005-09-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

My blog stopped showing up, maybe cause I never post to it. I'd like to post more things, especially the match game results of the group I'm hoping to play with. Anyways, this is more of a check that this works rather than anything serious.