November 2003 Archives

Today we are celebrating Thanksgiving with Katy's folks.

I have so much to be thankful for, and I am trying to keep that in mind while today's maelstrom of food, drink, and pageantry swirls about me.

I hope you also get a moment to consider and appreciate the things you are thankful for today. Have a good Thanksgiving.

Wow.

The kids have been gone since Thursday afternoon and I must admit I am beginning to miss them. It has been a really nice break, though. Here's the weekend rundown:

Friday

Friday night I took Katy on A Date. We saw "Love Actually," which was actually quite enjoyable - a good solid date movie with lots of funny stuff. Some serious stuff too, but more funny stuff. Then off to dinner at Twin Palms, which was one of our favorite places back in the pre-kid days. It was all very grown-up, I assure you.

Saturday

Saturday we went to Disneyland. Yes, we went to The Happiest Place without our kids. We swore Katy's folks to secrecy - I can't imagine how mad they would be that we went without them. It was great fun to ride things the kids won't go on - in this case, Haunted Mansion, Indiana Jones, Pirates o' the Caribbean, the Matterhorn, and Star Tours.

More importantly, we were able to take a break to fortify ourselves with Adult Beverages in Downtown Disney. If you ever need such a break I can highly recommend the Hearthstone Lounge at The Grand Californian: Great ambiance, nice comfy chairs, good drinks, very tasty cheesy cracker thingies, and top-notch Disney service made for a very relaxing break and gave us the courage to return to the park.

Sunday

Sunday morning we loafed around and read the paper. I spent the afternoon brewing another batch of beer. Katy wanted me to make a batch of Dean's bock but I don't have the setup to lager, so I decided to make another batch of steam beer. It's looking a little darker than I wanted, but I'll adjust the recipe next time around.

Anyway, I had a pleasant brewing session accompanied by some John Coltrane, a good cigar, and a bottle of beer from my last batch. Very relaxing.

Sunday Night Buzz Kill

After a great weekend I was looking forward to happy hour with Katy. I was in the midst of cleaning up my brewing stuff when the Buzz Kill arrived - I went under the sink to get some scouring powder and found a big puddle of water. Sigh. Plumbing problems.

I spent about an hour cleaning up the mess and fixing the leak. I was lucky that I didn't have to run out to the hardware store, but still - what a pain in the butt.

Even with that, though, it was a really great weekend and a nice break for Katy and I. We're lucky to have her folks around, and even luckier that they are willing to take them for extended trips like that.

I keep forgetting to post this story.

As you may remember, Claire was a Fairy Princess this year for Halloween. Everybody knows that Fairy Princesses are full of goodness and light, that they wear light and gauzy dresses to go with their light and gauzy wings.

It was cold and a bit rainy on Halloween night. Too cold for Fairy Princesses to flit about Unprotected. And so Katy got out matching pants and top for Claire to wear under her costume.

Claire was unhappy about this development. She began to squall and fuss, and suddenly I had a bolt of inspiration. I sat down on the stairs in front of her and delivered a short speech:

"Claire, I know how much you've been looking forward to Halloween and how excited you are about trick-or-treating. You're not going to let a little cold and rain keep you from having fun, are you? You're not going to let that slow you down, right? Come on, let's get this stuff on and go trick-or-treating!"

I'm really not sure where that little bit of psychology came from, but boy did it do the trick. Her frown vanished and she got ready to go - the most sensibly dressed Fairy Princess a cold fall night has ever seen. Tony Robbins, eat your heart out!

Hello everybody. I am an ungrateful wretch.

A couple weeks ago, gesikah at Life With A Geek made a link button to my site.

Here's the button:

I think it's pretty cool that she went to the trouble to make a little graphic for me. But did I thank her here? Did I acknowledge the effort? Did I mention it in my own weblog? Did I link back to her?

Sadly, the answer to those questions is a resounding no. What an ungrateful wretch I am. I will try to do better, though.

There was a thunderstorm moving through Los Angeles today. During one of the breaks we had a nice rainbow east of our building - a strong first arch with a faint second arch.

We snapped some quick pictures with the office camera. The second arch was barely visible, which prompted Mister P to do a little touchup work. He then sent these two pictures with the following caption:

"Single rainbow, courtesy of God. Double rainbow, courtesy of Adobe."

He's one of the funniest guys I know and I'm damn glad I know him.

How was your weekend?

I thought it was going to rain here, so I was looking forward to futzing around on the computer and drinking coffee all weekend. Sadly, it didn't rain, which made for a fairly busy weekend.

Saturday we repainted some peeling wood trim on the front of our house. Katy had considered paying somebody to paint it for us but in the end my legendary value-mindedness won the day. We spent most of the day scraping, sanding, priming, painting, and painting the front trim on the house. It does look an awful lot better.

Yesterday Cameron and I accompanied my father-in-law, Jim, to a model train show that he had heard about. Cameron had a good time checking out the layouts, and had some specific requests for the train set he wants "when he is old enough." (It must include both a tanker car and a crane car. I think I have both in my old HO-gauge stuff.) Jim was looking for some specific track pieces but he didn't find quite what he wanted, so we left without much fanfare after about an hour of browsing.

Let me just say, there's no geek like a model train geek - except maybe old-school morse code ham radio "enthusiasts." (These two groups undoubtedly have a fair amount of overlap.) There were an whole lot of people with tables set up, selling an whole lot of train engines, cars, and track, for what seemed like a whole lot of money to me. I suppose we all have our hobbies.

When we got home I made a nice beef stew for dinner while the family watched Finding Nemo. I like the cooler weather - I get to cook the things I like. Just last weekend I made The Inaugural Pizza of the 2003-2004 Baking Season - a nice sausage, onion, and green pepper deep-dish, with homemade crust!

Okay, all you geniuses out there. I've got a question for you.

I have started trying to catch up on the backlog of video footage I have of the kids. I am experimenting with making Video CD's (aka VCDs) of the finished short "movies" for a couple reasons. First, I figured it was a "lowest common denominator" format for DVD players. Second, I have a CD burner but not a DVD burner. (I suppose that if I had a DVD burner I'd just make DVDs and be done with it, although that might invoke new "+ vs. -" problems.)

Anyway, the other night I was fooling around with different codecs to see which one gave me the best results. I burned about six different tracks to a VCD using Nero Express ver 5.5.9.2, which came bundled with my CD burner.

Today at the office I played the disc back on a Sony DVD player, and the audio was about a second late across the entire VCD. When I play it at home, on my Apex DVD player, it's in sync.

Any ideas on what I can do to make a VCD that will play properly across different players? Or should I abandon hope and just start saving for a DVD burner?

I am an OU fan. The Oklahoma Sooners are putting together another run for the national title, and I'm enjoying watching them play.

One of my neighbors down the street flies a Nebraska Cornhusker flag on game days. I couldn't let this pass without a response, so when we were in Oklahoma I bought a nice 3'x5' OU flag.

OU trounced OSU this weekend, stopping the upset-o-meter at two and closing the smack-talking OSU coach's mouth, which was sweet - but even better, the reviled Huskers lost to Texas! Now that's the good stuff.

We had a good Halloween this year, in spite of the rain. Click on the Cam and the pumpkins below to see some pictures...

This will be a short list. [rimshot]

Seriously, we had a good time in Oklahoma. We took a trip to the Omniplex one day to see a touring Monster Truck exhibit - it turned out that my friend Jeff's company did the exhibit and he arranged some passes for us - thanks Jeff and Anne!

I used to go to the Omniplex as a kid. On one trip my friends and I spent most of the time messing around with the "talking" computer - we spent hours making it say "ah-sss-hollllll-eh" and "sun uf beeee-ch." Ah, good times.

Walking around the place, I recognized many of the science exhibits from my visits 20 years ago - the difference being, they worked back then. The place needs a little TLC to restore it to it's former glory.

That aside, Claire and Cameron both enjoyed the Monster Truck exhibit, although Claire thought the preshow was a bit loud. Otherwise everybody had a good time, and I managed to keep the damages in the "have to walk through it to get out" gift shop to a minimum.

We also spent a day in Duncan with my high school friend Dean and his family. Dean homebrews. Dean has his own keg setup. Dean has lots of clean glasses. I didn't want to leave Dean's house.

On top of the excellent beer, we had a great visit. The younger kids all played well together, and Dean's teenage kids were polite to us old folks. Katy and I marveled at their enormous house and gargantuan back yard. Cameron wanted to know why they didn't have any stairs. He hasn't seen a lot of one-story houses.

We also got in a trip to Sonic, but Braum's will have to wait until next time.