Took advantage of the day off and the nice weather and dragged the kids to the zoo. Snapped a couple of pictures. Unfortunately, we didn't have a ton of time today as house hunting kind of got in the way.
What do you like to make or order for brunch?
Without a doubt, Eggs Benedict. Though you can keep the English Muffins and even probably the Canadian bacon. I just like the poached eggs and hollandaise sauce.
My mom tried to make fresh hollandaise sauce a few times. It was quite a production if I remember right and I don't recall if she ever got it "right." Then again, anything made with a boatload of egg yokes is going to taste good, even if it doesn't look right. It's sort of like my wife's Fettuccine Alfredo, which is also quite a production, and also tastes good, even if it doesn't always look right.
Mmmm… food. Artery-clogging food.
My wife went out for a evening with other moms, as she does on a regular basis. She ended up finding a couple of interesting houses near her friend that would be a step up from what we're living in now. It would be a bit further south in Gig Harbor, but I don't consider that a bad thing.
This whole road/fence thing in our current house is going to be a problem if we continue to stay where we're at. The fence the land company is putting up right now isn't a fence, but rather a "privacy screen." So while it might keep the headlights out of our windows at night, it will do nothing to actually keep my kids from running into the road, which matters to me a hell of a lot more than headlights shining in our bedroom window. Getting a proper fence put up is proving to be damn near impossible thanks to the lovely CCRs we have to deal with.
In any case, I see some house hunting in our immediate future, especially given we've got a three-day weekend.
One thing I do near the end of a calendar year is figure out how much vacation time I have to take and, well, take it. My employer gives me a ton of vacation days that I have to take--or else I don't get any the following year. I am allowed to bank two weeks, which I do. The problem is: everyone takes Christmas off and I don't want to be one of those people. Also, Christmas is a nice time to work because, well, things are "slow" at that time of year. I can actually get things done. :)
Since Monday is a school holiday for Jaden, it will mean some extra kid time this weekend. Yay, vacation!
At the end of May, I finally got off my duff and recorded a couple of podcasts. I have submitted them to T.W.A.T. Radio,which is best described as a community-host daily hardcore techpodcast. This podcast has covered a lot of different topics, fromhacking payphones to using obscure software on Windows or Linux. Thisis people sharing their tech passions with others.
The firstone I recorded was on Garage Band, which is a Macintosh audio editingprogram. I used it to show off my rather pathetic ability to make musicusing the program. The other was a process using Gabcast and your telephone in order to record your own episode of T.W.A.T. Radio.
I don't know what happened, but after I sent the stuff from them, and confirmed they got it, my stuff never got played. I think I pinged them a couple of times without a response. Between that and their irregular production schedule, I decided I didn't care enough to pursue it.
Meanwhile, for posterity sake, I present both podcasts. I had the source files for the GarageBand demonstration and ended up redoing the ends to take out the references to T.W.A.T. Radio. I found the Gabcast podcast in my gmail account and uploaded it this evening without any editing.
So without futher ado…
PhoneBoy
How much more evidence do we need that marijuana as bad for you as a lot of people think?
Readers of my blog will know that there's a road going in outside my house, which necessitates a fence for our backyard. The primary reason: keeping my kids from bolting to the street. The covenants for the property pretty much restrict us from putting up our own fence without getting approval from a certain committee. We've been going back and forth on this.
Today, we get word from the powers that be that they will be providing a kind of fence between our backyard and the road that will run most of the length of our property. The fence will take the form of "privacy panels" (not sure exactly what that means) every few feet with plants and shrubs between them. The effect will be a fence, but it will look nicer.
Of course, this does nothing to prevent the kids from running around the sides of the fence. We will probably have to change our request to instead ask for "privacy screens" on either side of it to keep the kids contained in the yard. It won't prevent them from running all the way around the house to get to the road, but it will be good enough to prevent any accidents.
This morning I was awoken to the lovely sounds of smoke detectors "chirping." Or was it my wife waking me up telling me they were chirping? Either way, it sucks to have to walk around the house to try and figure out which one(s) were going off, but at least it was about 7am instead of the usual 4am. :) Usually the chirping means they are in need of batteries. After we both walked around the house to try and find the offending units, she got the bright idea to proactively replace the batteries. Problem is, we didn't have enough batteries to do it.
We were able to find the offending units (it was more than one of course). The battery in our bedroom was originally installed by the builder, it looks like. Oops!
Oh well, once I go to Costco again, we'll be swimming in 9 volt batteries (and lots of other crap) and I'll go around and finish replacing all the batteries.
Possible violations of Major League Baseball rights here. Yeah right, like you can barely see anything in these pictures.
Otherwise known as "Safeco Field" where the Seattle Mariners play. Jaden and his friend were going to tonight's Mariners game. I decided it go along (don't worry, his friend's parent was originally going to take him). Not really a baseball fan, but it's nice to hang out at the ball bark, talk, drink beer, and so on. One of those father-son bonding moments.