Roblog

Our Romantic Vacation Getaway is ...

Thu, 08 May 2008 11:57:38 -0600

Donna and I are planning our first vacation by ourselves without our daughters since they were born. We have been away from them overnight before, but that was for a conference Donna was attending, so our days were spent apart. This time, we'll be away for three nights, with no obligations to anyone but ourselves. Donna has some frequent flyer miles with Continental to spend, so we looked to see where in the country we'd like to fly to for this first romantic getaway since the twins were born. We chose Cleveland. The reasons are practical: since our daughters will be staying with their grandparents in Richardson, Texas, we wanted to fly from Dallas, and the only places Continental flies non-stop from Dallas are Houston, Newark, and Cleveland. As we live in Houston and have too many relatives in Newark to make it a getaway, I chose Cleveland. Perhaps not surprisingly, even though we are flying into Cleveland, we are not staying there. Our first night we're staying in Michigan, mostly so that Donna can check-off another state on her list of states she's visited. The next two nights we'll be staying on Kelleys Island, the largest US island in Lake Erie. From all appearances, Kelleys Island (notice the lack of apostrophe) is a laid-back island with not much to do except walk (or bike) around enjoying the trails and small beaches. That sounds just perfect. But I get a kick out of telling people that our romantic trip without the girls will be to Cleveland. The unsaid implication is that it will be romantic not because of the destination, but because of the company.

Vertigo vertiwent?

Tue, 06 May 2008 07:32:13 -0600

Ever since my car accident I've experienced some vertigo of varying degrees. Except for the week after the accident, it has been very mild and only when I moved my head in certain ways. It was so mild, in fact, it never prevented me from doing anything - I continued to play soccer (and broomball) without any ill effects (although I wasn't very good at either to begin with). But since it had lingered for all these months, I scheduled a doctors visit for this week (tomorrow). As luck would have it, though, I recently realized my symptoms have disappeared. I can't say for sure when it was (since they were so mild to begin with, I may have been symptom-free for several days before I noticed), but it seems like it was late last week. So now, I think I'll be canceling my doctor's visit. There's part of me that says I should still go, but it really feels like this is a permanent state, rather than a temporary cessation of symptoms. And if I have no symptoms, there's really nothing for me to say at the doctors office. If the symptoms recur, I can always schedule a new appointment.

Narrating a Slideshow

Mon, 05 May 2008 12:35:50 -0600

It really shouldn't be this hard. I wanted to have my daughters describe some photos, which I would overlay as a narration to a slideshow of those photos. I have a Mac, so that should be easy. Indeed, you can add an audio track directly in iMovie, but you can do that only against an existing video track, and I don't know in advance how long the girls will talk about each photo.

What would be great is to have iPhoto (or iMovie) record the audio narration along with the timings of when I advance to each picture, so this information can be used to generate a slideshow that is synched-up with the narration. Alas, despite much Googling, I was not able to find an easy way to do this.

But being stubborn, I did get it to work, although in a rather laborius fashion:

Collect the photos you want to use in an iPhoto slideshow
Set the slideshow settings to show the title, manual controls, and transitions between slides to 60 seconds (this sets the maximum amount of narration per slide to 1 minute)
Open up a sound recording program (e.g. Audacity) and start recording a new file
Go into iPhoto and start the slideshow
Record your narration, advancing to the next photo as you wish
When finished with the slideshow, stop the audio recording
Edit the audio recording as needed (remove any unecessary silence, technical glicthes, or daughters bickering)
Create a new iMovie project, importing both the pictures you used (from iPhoto) and the audio file with your narration
Manually change the duration of each photo in iMovie to match the narration
Export the iMovie project to iDVD and burn to a DVD

Although this is a lot of steps, it's really only the next-to-last step that annoys me. Since I already used the computer to advance to each slide, it should be able to store and transfer those timings to iMovie.

It's not all bad, though. This long method does allow me to edit the audio to take out the bits I don't want to be there. And having the stream-of-conciousness narration from 2 six-year-olds is pretty neat, regardless of how I had to get there. I especially like the part we recorded before the slideshow starts of them asking me what they're supposed to do (I'll have this playing over a black screen) and the time when we had to stop the slideshow so we could snuggle.

I think it will be one of those things that will be fun to listen to 10 years from now. Assuming old-fashioned DVDs are still playable then.

New iMacs Announced

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:44:16 -0600

Apple announced an upgrade to the iMac line of computers today, without much fanfare. That's typical when the upgrade is generally just a bump up in processor speeds. That's true with this upgrade as well, with no major redesign of the computer. There have been iMac upgrades in the past that have not caught my attention, but our current iMac is showing its age. It's not too early for us to think about getting a new one. The difficulty, as always, is price. We have a major bathroom remodeling project that is about to sap about $13K from our assets, so any other large purchases will be difficult to fit in. When I went to the Apple site to check out the prices, one with all my ideal upgrades is $2200. That's the 24" version with the standard processor (2.8 GHz Intel Core Duo) and hard drive (320GB) but with an upgraded graphics card (2.2x increase in graphics performance) and increased memory (doubled to 4GB). Since I don't do any gaming at home on the iMac, I waffled a little on an upgraded graphics card, but the trend in computers seems to be offloading more and more calculation tasks to the graphics processor. So my thinking is an upgrade to the graphics chip might make a bigger difference in performance in the future than upgrading the CPU. Even if we decide to get a new iMac, it won't be until after the finances for our bathroom remodeling job are setteld and underway. After that, though, if it looks like we can fit it into our budget, an iMac upgrade is probably in our future.

Homemade Marshmallows

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:59:51 -0600

Somehow, I got culinarily ambitious and wanted to try to make some homemade marshmallows for Easter. Not only that, but Donna was going to be away all Easter weekend, so it would just be me and the girls to make them. I found a few recipes online and picked one that sounded fairly easy. I was pleasantly surprised when the experience was fun and the marshmallows turned out nicely. At first, I was a little underwhelmed by the results, since they tasted almost identical to a fresh store-bought marshmallow, but after getting several compliments about them I'm changing my moderate opinion of them and have decided they're fresh and yummy. It sure was a blast making them with my 6-year-old daughters. I'm still looking forward to playing with the recipe a bit by adding food coloring or flavoring. Doesn't a homemade peppermint-infused marshmallow floating in a mug of hot chocolate sound wonderful?

Mimas the bear

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:54:35 -0600

I got a surprise Valentines day present from my wife last month: a bear from Build-a-Bear Workshop. She got one for my car, actually. You see, back when I got my first Saturn, which was the first car I bought myself, I was very excited about it. I thought it would be fun to have a representation of the other 8 planets in my Saturn. I had a Mercury thermometer, a small glass Earth hanging from my mirror, a Mars bar wrapper, and a small Pluto figurine in the back window. When we started dating, Donna helped me get a few others: postcards of Venus de Milo and Neptune. I never did get Uranus or Jupiter (although I thought about spilling some red nail polish to make a great red spot). So for Valentine's Day this year, Donna got me a bear with a solar system t-shirt. It stays in my car as its mascot. It took a few weeks for me to come up with a name, but once I realized it should take on the name of a moon of Saturn, I just had to pick one. Most of the names of Saturn's moons sound feminine. I sort of like the names Tethys and Enceladus, but in the end, I chose Mimas. Naming the bear after a moon of Saturn is particularly appropriate because the bear's pants keep falling down. He really needs some suspenders.

Thumbnail growth

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:16:45 -0600

I have been looking at a unique opportunity to determine how fast my thumbnail grows. When I got in my car wreck last December, the depoying air bag's cover hit my thumbnail, and gave me a small bruise. I suppose it was coincidence that it happened to line up almost exactly with the edge of my lunula. Since then, it has been traveling up my thumbnail, more or less intact. Carefully measuring its position, I can see that it has traveled about 6/16 of an inch since December 11, which is 70 days ago. Some quick calculations indicates that this translates to almost 2 inches (5 centimeters) a year. This is 0.0000000035 mph, in case you were wondering. Searching on the web, I can find growth rates between 0.8 and 1.8 inches per year, so that puts me right on the edge of the upper bounds. If those figures are accurate, perhaps my thumbnail just grows faster than most, or maybe my thumbnail injury did not move along precisely with my thumbnail growth as I'm assuming.

Changes

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:34:36 -0600

I do dislike transitions. They're actually a little invigorating and exciting, but they're generally always painful. I got a call yesterday from a Senior Executive saying that they needed some help on performing the "due diligence" on a new deal (that is potentially quite large) for taking on support of 900+ applications (in this context, "due diligence" is the initial investigation phase to collect and analyze as much data about the potential deal as possible to confirm that the original exchange of information between Accenture and the client does not contradict any assumptions). Getting in on the beginnings of a large deal like this could be a great role for me, since it would likely lead to a long-term role. That combined with the fact that I've not been 100% utilized recently in my current role which ends this summer regardless made me eager to get involved. The problem, as always, is ending my current role. I *really* like the client I'm working with now; it's a striking difference from my previous client which endemically treated contractors as resources to expend, rather than partners to value (although some individuals there were very supportive). I want to not only live up to my professional responsibilities here before I move on, but I also don't want to leave my client manager in a lurch. I try to reassure myself that it wouldn't be so painful if there wasn't mutual regard between myself and my client contacts. If they disliked me, or I disliked them, it would be a much less stressful transition (which is how my last transition was like, now that I think about it). So overall, I'm glad that this transition is somewhat painful. The way these things tend to start, it's very important to get involved swiftly and visibly with the new project, since these are among the first impressions and contacts the client will have with some of the people that may be coming onto the project to stay. That means that if I am to get involved in the new opportunity, it has to be immediately or not at all so someone else who has the time can start. Thankfully, both my current project's Accenture leadership and the client manager are willing to work with me to allow this to happen. It all hinges, of course, on my ability to complete my deliverables by the end of this month. I'm confident I can do that, but it will make for a busy month. Although, frankly, an uncomfortably busy month will be a nice change of pace from the slow drip of activity I've had recently.

No computer

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:19:57 -0600

We had to take the iMac in for service this weekend. It would suddenly turn off (lose all power) anywhere between 5 seconds and 10 minutes after turning it on. These are the same symptoms it had a little over a year ago. So what's going on? Did I get a lemon? Is there something in the way we use it or in the environment that causes the same problem to recur? It turns out it may be a design or manufacturing flaw. The Apple service technician found an entry for this issue in a Repair Extension Program at Apple. This indicates that multiple people have had this issue and that there has been some amount of root cause analysis performed. This means that the repairs should be covered at no cost to me! Yay! But that also means we're without a computer for about a week. Boo! I figured out how to read our email via my ISP's web interface, so at least we won't be totally out of touch. It does mean, though, that I can't extract the 6th birthday photos from my camera just yet (although I can print them out directly from the card from my printer - they'll just be totally unedited). This event also brings home the fact that our computer is nearing the end of its useful life. The new iMacs, while nicer than the one we have, don't seem so astounding that they make me crave an upgrade. Historically speaking, the iMac is upgraded about once a year, so if the repairs to our current iMac allow it to run well for another year, maybe we'll consider getting its replacement for my birthday in 2008.

Whee!

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:24:34 -0600

Santa Claus brought the family a Wii for Christmas. He must have gotten it several months early, since Wiis were hard to come by this holiday season. Donna got me a game to go along with it: Super Mario Galaxy. It has gotten rave reviews from every site I can find, and it's my kind of game (no excessive blood and gore). I was hoping the girls would play with the Wii more than they are. They liked Wii Sports Bowling, and play every so often, but they seem to enjoy helping me play Super Mario Galaxy more (it is a one-player game, but there is collaborative play in which they can assist me while I play). That's OK. I enjoy playing the game, and I suspect they'll use the Wii more as the get older - until it is so woefully outdated that they would be embarassed to be seen using it.

Financially Beneficial Accident

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:41:33 -0600

Never having been in an accident before, I never had to challenge my auto insurance company with a claim. My experience with Allstate was a very positive one, and I definitely have no intention of shopping around for a different insurer. The check they sent me was more than I expected since they gave me a great value assessment on my former car. So my first instinct would be to apply this cash to the down payment of my replacement car and end up with a small monthly payment or short term loan (after all, I had just one year left to pay on the car). But Donna had the good sense to think some more about it. We have to make some bathroom repairs, and we'd have to get a loan to fund that remodeling effort. We hadn't yet shopped around for rates on loans, but here the Saturn dealer was offering 0% financing on new car purchases! Hmmm.... We ended up putting a modest down payment on the new car and financing the rest at 0% for 5 years. So we are now free to apply that cash from the claim to our remodeling effort and finance the remainder. In effect, we are getting a 0% loan for a large portion of our bathroom remodeling. We went to The Great Indoors on Friday and enlisted their services to oversee the remodeling effort. They should be contacting us this week to schedule a project manager to come out and give us an estimate of the labor costs. That is pretty exciting, since it's our first concrete step to actually getting started on the long-overdue bathroom repairs.

Post-Accident Activities

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:19:00 -0600

It's been almost a month since my car wreck, and I'm doing quite well. The physical effects from the crash had an interesting progression: - day 1: sharp pain in my left side when twisting or clenching, minor bruise on inside of left arm - day 2: pain lessening - day 3: sore neck when turning my head; moderately severe vertigo with nausea when I look down or up - day 4: very sore neck, dizziness a little less and no nasuea - day 5: sore neck a little better, dizziness lessened, a big sneeze reaggravated my side - day 10: neck soreness almost totally gone, dizziness very minor Now at day 30, I still have to admit to a sense of very slight dizziness when I look down sometimes, but it is very minor. I fact, I played soccer two nights ago, and took several tumbles, but felt no accident-related effects afterwards and never felt even slightly dizzy. Another unanticipated side effect from the accident is that I discovered more than my dad, wife, and Jeff read my blog. I had responses from one of my former coworkers (who I hadn't talked to in almost a year) and a friend from high school (that I hadn't talked to in over 20 years!) after reading about my wreck. That was surprising and heartwarming. There are other accident-related storied to tell, but I'll leave them for other posts.

Crash, Bang, Boom

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 19:26:02 -0600

Last night I experienced my first major car wreck. I was traveling on US-59 S right around where it goes over Shepherd at about 10:15 PM (I was returning home after a holiday dinner with my work group). Someone going much faster than me clipped the back-left side of my car, which caused me to careen into the concrete wall lining the edge of the road. My car bounced off the wall and ended up in the second lane of traffic with a scrape on my back bumper and a completely crumpled front end. The car who hit me paused for a moment on the other side of the road and then drove off. I can describe all this because of the damage I can see on my car and a witness' account. My memory of the event is far less detailed. I never saw the car (truck, van, scooter?) that hit me, either before, during, or after the collision. I have no idea if I spun, or how many times I spun if I did (it appears I spun at least once based on the damage and where I ended up). I recall a brief flash of seeing my car headlights pointed right at the concrete wall and then my next memory is me sitting in my car with the deflated airbag in front of me and a lens missing from my eyeglasses. I was not quite all together yet when I got out of the car and walked toward the shoulder. Thankfully, a bystander called 911, and two others stopped as well, before the fire engine came. Two tow trucks came, and finally several cop cars. They took down the information they needed, and I tried to stay tuned in while taking stock of my injuries, which amounted to nothing more than a bruised arm and side. I must say that my experience will Allstate has been very good. I called them last night after I got home (at about 12:00 AM), and they took all my information down efficiently. By this morning, my information was in Enterprise Rental Car company's computer system, so I had a practically paid-for car by 11:30 AM (I'm out of pocket $2/day for up to 30 days). By 3:00 PM, a claims adjuster called me and verified all the details of my claim. That call ended with the promise to have someone go out to my car to assess the damage and to send me a $600 check due to my being injured by an uninsured motorist (I guess all hit-and-run incidents get classified this way). By the people's accounts at the scene, my car seems like it will be a total loss. So when Donna returns from her business trip in Tampa, we'll have to go car shopping to see what lucky car gets to replace my 2006 Saturn Ion. You can see for yourself, if you want. I went to clean out my car today and I took the video camera with me to give it a video inspection (MOV, 3.0 MB). I also captured some stills from the video. So I am still in pretty good shape. My left side is still fairly sore, but only when I twist or clench in certain ways. My arm soreness is almost too slight to mention, but I do have some overall aches now, albeit (albethem?) very minor aches.

The Robcast is Live

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 06:43:25 -0600

Over the holiday weekend, I figured out the correct RSS/XML syntax for creating a podcast feed by hand. It turns out it's very picky about the syntax. But now that I've done it, it won't be hard to add new audio files to my podcast feed. If you want to subscribe to the podcast feed in iTunes, use the following link: itpc://www.robreid.com/podcasts/robcast.xml If you want to subscribe to it with something other than iTunes, use this link: http://www.robreid.com/podcasts/robcast.xml I don't know how often I'll add a new podcast to the feed, but it will likely be very sporadically. I'm guessing just a few a year, unless we really do start recording the girls every Monday. The podcast is starting out with three episodes:

Going to SuperTarget before Hurricane Rita (2005)
Buying the final Harry Potter book (2007)
Reactions after the first day of Kindergarten (2007)

First Day of School - Audio

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 07:51:47 -0600

I have edited the audio recording of the girls' first day of school and posted it here: First Day of School at Lovett.mp3 (16.7 MB, 14:36). Donna says she might record the girls every Monday. If so, I might try to close the loop on releasing them as a podcast, but for now it's just a link to an MP3 file.