Daley Ponderings

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!

Due to needing to have the well-child visits a year apart and to my previous and current hesitation to use the phone, especially with our doctors' office having this weird new scheduling system, we didn't get to Jonathan's four year checkup until last week. (More)

I try to be an informed voter, but I find it very hard to find information that will help me become informed.  I finally found this link at SmartVoter where you can type in your address and get information on what your ballot will say.  Unfortunately, it does not have the most local information, but it does tell me what district I am in for state things (how confusing to be in different districts for different things...)

Every single election I have voted in previously, there has been some surprise on the ballot that I was not prepared for.  It's even worse with the new computerized voting machines because they complain if you leave a blank spot.  (They let you leave it blank eventually, but I think it even beeps at you.) But I won't vote for something or someone I don't know anything about.

Now to find the info for my local information... 

Jonathan is very often singing or humming now as he works or plays.  He knows the first and last verses of Amazing Grace and parts of the middle verses.  He likes the "What's in the Honeypot" song from his piano lesson CD, as well as the version of "This Old Man" from the same.  He also frequently makes up his own songs, with words from all different sources including his own brain.

He continues to be excited about the baby.  He likes to try to hear him, and he will speak loudly to my belly, "Hey, baby!  I'm your big brother!  Hey, baby!  Can you hear me?  Wake up!"  He also likes to sing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" to the baby. He thinks he felt a movement once.

We've been reading about the ocean and sea creatures and now he wants to be a deep sea diver when he grows up. 

He plays sea diver, Mary and Joseph, mommy and baby animal, and any number of other creative games.  He discovered how to pull the curtains in front of the couch to make a tent/cave and he likes to make other kinds of structures with blankets and couch cushions.

Whenever Daddy opens a bottle of Blenheim ginger ale, Noah takes several sips, too.

Tuesday (4/2) Noah thoroughly inspected the dishwasher handle.  You can tell he's in a family of engineers!

He can say "mommy" now, though not consistently.  He also says "me."  He said "cashew" unprompted once, but we're out of cashews now, so he has not had another opportunity.  He says "nana" unprompted for banana.   He also says diaper, which sounds like "dai-doo" or "ba-boo" or some combination depending on how he's feeling.  His new unprompted signs are help and apple.

I feel that on the talking front, it's like he took a year break and now he's making progress the way he "should have."

He can open doors pretty well, and he knows how to open our fence gate.

He can do the small knob puzzles, though sometimes he still gets frustrated if the piece is completely upside down (turned 180, that is.)  I guess he doesn't feel he should have to turn it that far for it to fit. 

He loves playing whatever Jonathan is playing, copying him precisely.

Speaking of precise, Noah likes for things to go in their places.  When he stirs a soup, he taps the spoon on the side of the pot, and then places it on the spoon rest.  He complains if the spoon rest is not there.  He likes putting away, but since Jonathan doesn't we are still working on cleaning up before moving on to the next thing.

I'm working on a slow night weaing process.  At this point, I don't want to do anything abrupt, and this is what has been working:  letting him nurse when he asks but limiting it to ten minutes, giving him a one minute warning.  Often he would stop and turn over at the warning.  If he does get upset, we help him calm down and he's been doing better at that.  Now I'm down to five minutes with a one minute warning.  He will often ask for more, holding up one finger for "one more minute" (which is very cute!)  If he asks nicely with no complaining, I usually say yes.  I will offer to hold his hand when we're done with nursing but he's still awake, and he usually accepts.  I change his diaper whenever it's wet and sometimes he'll just go back to sleep without nursing once he's dry.  Nights have been so much better recently, and I'm thankful.

It seems to be the idea this year to release the April Fool's day jokes early, perhaps to give them more credibility, or maybe simply to join with the Australians.

I hadn't heard of the spaghetti tree joke before, but that is a pretty good one.  I showed Jonathan and Noah the picture, and they both said that couldn't happen, though Noah thought it was pretty funny.  Wikipedia also mentioned the left-handed whoppers and Taco Bell purchasing (and renaming) the Liberty Bell.

Perhaps Google's reason for releasing their joke early was due to the content of the joke. I thought the comment about it being old news was pretty good.

And famous people have it so rough.

For those of you with more time than I, you can read the top 100 jokes. I think its pretty funny when the TV and radio stations report stuff, and get more calls than for any of their regular news.

After a slightly hectic day yesterday, when I noticed some strange behavior on one of my servers, we released a new version of LifeType.  While I am not impressed that the bug existed in the first place, I think it is pretty neat that a development fixed was released within 4 hours of the bug being discovered, and an official release within 36 hours.  The last time we had a security issue, we released the fix in less than 24 hours, but it is harder on a Sunday.

The security issue itself wasn't all that interesting - we were checking a blacklist in a case-sensitive manner, and so filename.PHP was incorrectly allowed to be uploaded, and filename.php was correctly blocked. (More)

My friend Bonnie has this neat baby ticker on her blog, so I thought I'd look up mine.  Since I'm still getting used to the baby being as old as he is, it was surprising to me to see how big he looks.  I couldn't get the application to imbed in the post, so it's on our sidebar at the bottom under "miscellaneous." (More)

As long as you can turn off the sound, it looks pretty neat! 

(From GeekDad) 

Copying the rest of you cool bloggers, I installed feedjit a while back.  I originally thought it wasn't going to be very useful, since I assumed that all of the international hits were the many search engines that like crawl the blog all day long, or worse, spammers trying to post comments.

But, as I looked into it more, they look to be valid individuals finding the blog via search engines, mostly on the technical posts, particularly on the Test Director post.  Humorously enough, I gave up on Test Director a long time ago - too much work to keep it running for what it gives you.  Perhaps I should erase the post to help people not waste their time on it, as my information is most likely out of date.  It is unfortunate that Mercury doesn't support their own product, and so people have to find places like my blog for technical support.  It probably needs to be open-sourced in order to get better support.

I am sure this will excite many of our normal readers, but I have finally (after four years) switched my laptop to Linux.  Now that I am using it everyday, it is much nicer to be in this environment, instead of having putty windows all over the place.  Perhaps if I had a better window manager for windows, I would have been alright, but anyway...

I have a Sony PCG-V505DC2 for those search engines to help other folks trying to figure out any issues with installing Linux, and Debian specifically.

 (More)

"Oh, why are we not more holy!", he would exclaim with loving insistence.  "Why do we not live in eternity, walk with God all the day long?  Why are we not all-devoted to God, breathing the whole spirit of missionaries?

"Alas, we are too much enthusiasts, looking for the end without faithfully using the means.  Do we rise at four or even five in the morning to be alone with God?  Do we fast once a week, once a month?  Do we even know the obligation or benefit of it?  Do we recommend the five o'clock hour for private prayer, at the close of the day?  Do we observe it?  Do we not find that 'any time' is no time?

"Oh let us stir up the gift of God that is in us.  Let us no more sleep as do others.  Let us take heed to the ministry that we have received in the Lord, that we fulfil it. 'Whatsoever thy findeth to do, do it with thy might.'"

-- John Wesley, as quoted in Hudson Taylor's biography, "In the Early Years".