Roblog

The girls' first week of school ended yesterday. Each day, they have appeared more and more tired afterwards. It's only 3 hours, but it must be very stimulating.

Yesterday, they fell asleep in front of the TV at 5:00 PM and would not wake up. I carried them to bed, and both stayed asleep.

Until 3:00 AM, that is. They both woke up refreshed and invigorated then. Donna took the 3:00 to 5:00 shift, and I took the 5:00 to 7:00 shift this morning. Not the best way to start a Friday, I would say.

I have a lot of transposition typos, and I often type "ti" instead of "it". My email dictionary lists "ti" as a word, so it is not flagged as a misspelling. So what does "ti" mean? If it's the representation of the 7th note in a standard major scale (do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti-do), then I really don't think that should be in the spell-check dictionary. I would wager that there are far more misspellings of "it" as "ti" than there are deliberate and correct uses of "ti".

Most of the time, spell-check dictionaries strive to be as inclusive as possible, but this is a case where a word in the dictionary probably should be excluded.

And while I'm complaining about spell-check, why can't it be smarter and adjust to what I tend to type? It should keep track of what word I change my misspellings to and offer that as the first suggestion the next time I type the same mistake. Perhaps some spell-checking processes already do this, but I've not used them.

On Tuesday, I almost ruined a batch of chicken soup Donna worked on for four days. It's a really wonderful chicken soup recipe that I love. It takes a while to make, and all the chopping required is not fun.

At its final simmering stage, she asked me to turn the burner off when the timer went off. I was with her in the kitchen when she asked me to do this. Apparently, I acknowledged her request, but I had no memory of it. So by the time Donna finished with Amanda (who has been having bedtime issues (screaming and crying after bedtime)), she came back to find much of the broth had boiled away and some of the good stuff was baked onto the bottom of the pan.

I was shaken. I knew she had worked on it all day, and to have my inattention ruin all her work was very distressing. As it turned out, she was able to salvage it by adding some water. After I added a bouillon cube, it tasted pretty much normal (which is delicious).

Looking back, I do recall her saying something to me, but I did not hear what it was. I was too busy being stressed out about Amanda's wailing. Donna went back to try to help Amanda work through it, and I escaped to the computer room to take my mind off Amanda's troubles. When the timer went off, I didn't even hear it since I was back in the office.

So what did I learn? I learned that I have to work harder at making sure I hear and understand what Donna tells me, even if one of my daughters is doing her best to divide my attention. I also learned we need to get Amanda back on a calmer bedtime routine. Last night, she screamed for 45 minutes after we put her to bed, she woke up twice in the middle of the night, and she slept the last half of the night on the couch.

We had our closest brush with a hurricane this past weekend with the sequel to Katrina: Rita. It was looking pretty perilous for a while, but after several discussions, we decided to stay in Houston and ride it out.

I was getting all prepared to document the event: I was downloading satellite imagery to assemble into a movie of the storm's progress; I had the video camera charged and ready to go; I had our digital audio recorder available. I'd made recordings into all of these devices leading up to the Friday night landfall, and then...

...we all went to sleep. The next morning, we saw some strong winds still blowing, but minimal rainfall and just a few downed branches. We still had electricity, cable TV, and our internet connection. Except for all our preparations, missing three days of work because Houston was closed, and a surreal trip to SuperTarget the day before the storm (SuperTarget.mp3, 3.4MB, 7.5 mins), nothing really remarkable happened.

But I think we learned a few things. I learned that the general rule is "run from water, hide from wind." Based on that rule, we handled the approaching storm correctly. I also learned that putting together the plywood window barricades this winter is a must-do project, regardless of our access to a truck to get the plywood here.

Our old printer, HP Photosmart 1215, originated from the days of Mac OS X when printer drivers were just slapped together for the "new" operating system. The printer printed but:

• it would not print if more than one person had logged in since it was last rebooted
• it would not work with my new USB hub (which I at first thought was a problem with the hub)
• it was extremely slow
• it used up an inordinate amount of CPU power to print (you could hear the variable-speed CPU fans rev up when it was printing)

So with all these difficulties, I decided to use some of my bonus to buy a new printer. The one I selected, the Epson Stylus Photo RX700, is more than I would normally pay for a printer, but it happened to have my full wishlist of features and was just released in the US this month:

• Mac-compatible color inkjet printer
• built-in scanner
• built-in card reader
• prints directly to CDs/DVDs