Daley Ponderings

So, what happens when you take a Handspring that died one day and wouldn't recover after various testing, and leave it in a box to take apart one day to see if it was anything obvious, but mostly forget about it for a year, and then pick it up and put batteries in it?  It starts working, of course.  I had tried every trick I knew about, hard resetting, leaving the batteries out for a week, taking out the expansion card, etc. without any luck.

So, I don't know what happened, nor how stable it currently is, but we had only made a backup to the local memory disk, and not to our hard drive, so we can at least get stuff off of it now. 

Noah was sick Tuesday, then I got it Thursday morning. We were going to go to a homeschool conference, just for fun this year.  We decided not to go, mostly not to infect our hosts, but we wouldn't have enjoyed the conference at all.  Jonathan got it yesterday, and Jon is feeling unwell in bed today.  At least we weren't sick at the same time, so we could take care of each other.  But another benefit is that nothing was planned for this weekend, so we had time to just hang around sick in bed.

I won't make this too detailed since Jon especially doesn't like this kind of stuff posted for everyone to read (and well, would you want your business customers - or worse, potential customers - reading about what your children are doing on the toilet?)

But I just wanted it on the record that when we unpacked the closets on 5/5 after Sanda's move, we found the little potty and Noah was immediately interested.  He has been successful several times in the last week and very happy with himself, too.  He usually uses the toilet sign to indicate his need.

I had turned down some work the other day, and as I thought about it more, realized that I was ready to hire someone to work for me.  I talked to a dad at church, and he thought it was a good idea, and his son was interested as well.  It turns out that he has less programming experience than I thought, but his dad has been pushing for time that is spent learning basic stuff doesn't have to be paid, so that works out for me... (More)

I added a new link on the sidebar, and wanted folks to see it.  If you use gmail's reader, and are a "friend" of mine (defined by using gtalk/chat/email with me), it will show up in your reader automatically.  For the rest of you, (which is most of you, since I don't use gmail all that much) you can check out the link, or subscribe to that RSS feed, which will contain posts of other people that I don't really have much to comment on (and unlike the rest of the blogging world, don't feel the need to make my own post about it...) but think they are worth reading.

I found a link to this application a while ago, but never took the time to check it out.  Fortunately, it stuck in the back of my mind that there was a handy application, although even handier that I had saved my bookmarks from an old computer, because I couldn't remember the name, and I couldn't find it with a fair bit of google searching.  So, I'll add this post, both to help future searchers, and also to say what a wonderful application it is.  I don't know python, but could figure it out enough to fix a login bug due to SourceForge changing their login page.  Since I found the bug, I assume that means no one else is using it, though the bug does only apply to new users, so maybe there are a bunch of current users. (More)

4/10 - "That makes us laugh to the tip of our lungs!"

4/21 - Kind of like a spoonerism: "Daddy, do you want a bug wrap?"  He meant "back rub."  We all got a laugh out of that one.

4/25 - He woke up in a happy mood this morning, before the rest of us.  He took off his diaper, changed into clothes, and went to the computer room to play quietly with legos until the rest of us got up.  He was especially helpful and obedient, and he said, "It's so fun to be a happy, cheerful boy."  So fun for me, too! 

4/8 - We were reading a non-word book about getting a new baby in the house, and Noah would say "baby" perfectly as he pointed to the baby in each picture.  He now says it often, sometimes referring to himself, sometimes to my tummy, sometimes to a picture of another baby, sometimes randomly. (More)

I just updated Usermin, and so wanted to make sure that my custom modules didn't break.  And in the process, poked around through my webalizer module, which shows the things that people type into search engines to end up at our blog as well as the number of hits for certain pages.  Some of them aren't surprising, but quite a few are interesting to see. (More)

During our vacation in NH in January, we memorized Psalm 1 as a family.  Jonathan loves to recite it, but I was hesitant to get a recording without his awareness.  Here is where Grandma comes in!  She visted with a fun toy on her computer - a headset with microphone.  Jonathan happily recorded his voice on several occasions and here is the mp3 of Psalm 1: Jonathan Psalm 1.mp3.

I had the privilege of installing VMWare 1.0.5 on a brand new 2.6.25 kernel.  I downloaded the 2.6.XX patch for vmware 1.0.4, applied the one change from asm to linux in vcpuset.h.  That had worked for me before when using 1.0.5 on a 2.6.24 kernel, but today I downloaded a 2.6.25 kernel for someone and of course, someone changed something slightly, causing the vmware module (vmnet) to no longer compile.  Fortunately for me, a small bit of hacking fixed it, and now I can go to bed. (More)

It took some amount of work to get Linux up and running on my laptop, but I just got a new computer ($50 from Peter's workplace - let me or him know if you are interested, there might be some more left) and installed Linux in an hour two, including copying all the old data from the old computer.  There aren't any interesting notes for people following in the future, because everything worked, without any technical skills.  Hibernation, sound, UPS, display resolution, hot keys, all just worked.  Pretty nifty.  Linux might actually be getting to the point where non-technical end-users can install it, let alone use it on their desktops.

Tuesday, we all went to the Midwife Center for our first appointment.  Nancy is the midwife with whom I had my last appointment during Isaac's pregnancy.  She said she was surprised to see us, but happy that we did choose the Center.  We had a good conversation about the various issues - what I mean is, she is happy to provide us care, and we are happy to receive care from the midwives at the Center.  One thing to pray about is that she does have to check with her doctor and the district attorney just to double check that there is no conflict of interest for her to provide care for us.  This is a slight concern because she will be called to testify in Judy's trial since she was the last one to examine me before I switched to Judy's care. (More)

[Dictation taken by Mommy.  This is a song, but it was hard enough to get all the words written in time, there was no way she could write the notes as well.]

How the Lord is, is a man.
Well, Lord, will lead me in the paths of righteousness.
Lord God, He's the Spirit of lords.
Well, Lord is a Savior, we have come to earth.
The Lord is a King of kings, how great the Lord is good to us.
How God is so, how to the path of righteousness.
For many years we've sing God's praise,
but when we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ
and Christ the Lord will not only be the God
but all will have to believe in him.
But you shall be the Lord of lords.

Last night I had Jon put his hand on my belly while I was reading to everyone at bedtime.  I figured that was an easy way to wait patiently for a kick, since we'd have a story to listen to.  Sure enough, about five minutes later, he felt one!