Roblog

Amanda said this to me a week ago:

Good night, Sleep tight
Bundle up in dandelion light

I thought it was very poetic.

Well, shortly after the release date for Book 7 in the Harry Potter series was set (July 21, 2007), we quickly sprang into action to reserve our copy. Rather than use amazon.com and suffer the day or two delay for shipping, Donna decided to reserve her copy at the local Borders bookstore. The bookstore is not sure if they'll be open at midnight that evening or not, but even if they are, Donna isn't sure if she'll be among the midnight crowd to get the new book at the earliest possible moment.

I think she should go if they open at midnight. Yeah, we're not spring chickens anymore, but I think it would be fun to be part of that event. Everyone there will be so excited to get their hands on the book, I'm sure it will be a fun place to be. I went to a recent Apple store opening, which happened to coincide with when the rest of the family were in Dallas. It was fun to experience that, even with the 45-minute wait in line (I went mostly to get the free t-shirt).

Regardless of the midnight timing or not, I'm planning on being primary/sole parent that Saturday while Donna reads, and finishes, the book. I'd be very surprised if she takes more than 24 hours to complete it.

By coincidence, I ran into an online analysis of who is represented by the "R.A.B." who left the note at the end of Book 6. I'm sure that analysis is correct. If you're interested, look in Wikipedia for that entry, but be warned - it may spoil some of the book 7 surprises.

Amanda and Elena got to go to a birthday party at Bounce U this past weekend. They love that place, even if Amanda gets upset at times when the slide gets too crowded (she doesn't like to get pressured into going down before she's ready or trampled on at the bottom).

I invented a great game with Elena, though. She sits on the raised "wall" on the edge of an inflatable area (like a moonwalk). I thrust my feet into it next to her, and she goes flying a respectable distance. It's quite a workout for me, and she really loved it.

Donna tried it, too, but I didn't explain it very clearly, and it didn't work as well for her. I was surprised at how unable I was to explain how it works. The first time I tried it with Elena, it worked great, even though I didn't really know what I was doing. I could reproduce it but couldn't explain it.

After thinking about it some more, I think I can finally explain what is happening. It turns out that my first contact with the edge that Elena is sitting on does not propel her up very far - just a little bump up. But I keep my feet on the inflatable part and she comes back down from her small bump up. At this point, I press hard with my feet. This is what launches her up into the air. When I do it, it feels like a slow process, but it feels just like one jump, given that her first small bump up is indeed very small.

What puzzles me about this is how I knew to do it this way the first time. Was it blind luck? Did I just feel for her weight and then push her off? Am I just naturally gifted in the physics of large, inflatable objects? They are invited to another birthday party at Bounce U next week, so I'll get to study my technique some more then.

For a long time, I've thought it would be fun to try my hand at oil painting. The biggest impediment to this is my acknowledged absence of talent for painting or drawing. I never really got into art class back in school, and my idle drawings rarely get beyond doodles. But the vibrant colors in oil paintings have continued to entice me.

Last month, I drew Foxy in various poses as she slept. The small doodles turned out fairly good, in that you can tell they're a dog and they sort of even look like Foxy. It started me thinking that maybe I could develop a talent for drawing, if I worked at it.

But starting this process is still a little daunting. We went to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on Sunday to participate in their weekly childrens' arts and crafts event. That day, it was self-portraits with tempura paint. The girls had fun (even if they didn't do portraits), but I did not try to paint anything. I had a case of performance anxiety. I wasn't about to try to tackle a human face, and I didn't feel inspired about any particular subject. For that matter, I didn't have a feel for the paints and how to use them to produce a particular image.

So I suggested to Donna that I'd like to try painting at home. I can then experiment with the paints and brushes at my own pace. Perhaps I can take a painting class after a while. I think I'd like that.

I have always been pleased with my web host, JaguarPC. They recently implemented a program where they will automatically upgrade your account with additional space to match their current plans. That meant that one day, I noticed I had over 16 GB of free space on my webserver!

So what should I do with all that space? My first thought was to change my photo uploading process so that I upload every picture I take to my webserver. This would mean that I can refer to my entire picture collection regardless of where I am. Donna thought this was a bad idea, and I eventually came around. Not only are there plenty of pictures that show my daughters not fully dressed, but also there are plenty of bad pictures that don't make sense to upload.

So instead I thought of using it as backup file storage. I could create an Applescript process to upload particular files to a secure area on the server. If I run this routinely, I'll have a really easy backup process.

My first attempt at an Automator workflow for this worked! All of a sudden (well, it took 25 minutes for the files to upload), I had backed-up much of Donna's critical files to my webserver. It's pretty crude right now, in that the locations that are backed-up are hard-coded, it does not retain any folder structure, and it just copies everything up each time you run the backup (not just the recently changed files), but I don't know if I'm real concerned about those details for an emergency backup. I'm sure I'll spend some time to tweak the process over the next few weeks.

We got a letter in the mail a few weeks ago advising us that we need to paint our garage door the same color as our house to remain in compliance with our neighborhood's deed restrictions. This is amusing for two reasons:

1. Our garage door is white, and our primary house color is Navajo White
2. The day after we got this letter, our brick planter in our front yard fell apart, causing much more of an eyesore than our too-white garage door

Generally I am fine with having an active deed restriction enforcement policy. I understand the rationale, and I did agree to abide by it when I moved into the neighborhood. But the deed restrictions do not say that the garage must be painted the same color as the house. There is a reference to "house painting that is inconsistent with the color schemes predominant in the neighborhood" being prohibited. It just seems to me that this is not a serious enough issue to warrant a deed restriction violation report.

So, partly to indulge my creative side, and partly to be a rebel and stick it to the man, I am not painting the entire garage door Navajo White. Instead, I'm going to carefully paint the areas between the garage door panels and the interior part of the panels Navajo White. The depressed areas (what I call the "trim") I'll leave unpainted (white).

I've completed the top and bottom rows of the garage door using this method already, and I must say I really like how it's turning out. Donna would prefer I just paint the whole thing Navajo White (it certainly would be faster that way), partly because she thinks this will not be sufficient to ward off a second deed restriction letter. Indeed, as we drive around the neighborhood, I am unable to find a single garage that has more than one color on the door. We'll see what happens.