Daley Ponderings

I bought 6 Seagate hard drives from Amazon and Newegg, and both companies sent me drives that already had half their warranty expired. Amazon, after waiting for the customer support guy to handle 5 simultaneous chat sessions, and so was quite slow at responding, did send out a mailing label... (More)

I'd been having these strange contractions for a few days. Not the simple Brackston-Hicks that I have throughout pregnancy that feel tight but do not hurt. Not crampy labor contractions, either. They were very tight and they hurt. They came usually when I was sitting – on the couch or... (More)

1/20 - Jonathan, as usual, singing while he plays and works.  This time it was, "Come, Tom Bombadil, Tom Bombadil.  Come, Tom Bombadil..." 1/22 - When boys have a tea party:  Noah, Faith and I were playing with Faith's tea set.  Noah said he couldn't eat his soup because... (More)

12/23 - Noah: "Tomorrow's tomorrow is Christmas!" Both Jonathan and Noah were sick in the car on the way to New Hampshire.  Blessedly, they both managed to get everything in the bowls and nothing on anyplace else in the car.  By the time we arrived, they were fine and the rest of... (More)

Heather asked me to give her the monthly time logs for invoices today, so I took the opportunity to run my brand new script that shows how I've spent my time over the entire year. I averaged: 13.7 hours a week on directly billable work 7.6 hours a week on maintaining the company, phone... (More)

We bought a "new" minivan last year, and it had the lowest mileage, and highest cost of any car we've owned so far.  It is a 1997 Oldsmobile Silhouette, and it had 107,000 miles on it.  We did a lot of driving (I hit 135,000 today, after a year and a half).  Heather and I both... (More)

Since we're now into the second year of using the woodstove, I thought I would post an update about it. I bought five cords of wood this year, (we bought around four and a half last year, and used around three).  I got around one cord of black locust each year, and that wood is really... (More)

11/6 - Noah and I were making rice krispie treats and Noah was stirring.  He asked for a marshmallow, but I said no, they had to go in the recipe and he could have one of the finished products.  Well, he decided to snitch and got a natural lesson.  I, only a few feet away in the... (More)

Three-fifths of our family has been sick this week and we are all finally feeling better today.  (Thank you to all who prayed for us.)  We only did about half our chores on this day of recovery, but I decided to go ahead and have school.  I'm glad I did! Grandma had sent Noah... (More)

This morning, we drove up to the birth clinic where Jonathan and Noah were born.  Their midwife has retired (she wanted to before Noah was born, but actually did right before Faith was born) and her daughter has taken over the job.  We had met C before, when she was helping out her... (More)

Inspired by an article in Family Fun magazine, I developed a fun motivator for bedtime cleanup that really works.  Before, there would be lots of complaining, dilly-dallying and nagging.  Now the house is clean every night before bed and the job is done quickly!  Here's how it... (More)

8/31 - The boys were making octopuses out of their banana peels. Jonathan called his a "cinctopus".  It had five legs.  His reason, "Because uno, dos, tres..." 9/6 - Faith's second birthday!  When you ask her how old she is, she will answer,... (More)

As I looked at the maps for the third day, we were going to be biking near various battlefields and other tourist-type places to visit, and so in the interest of resting a little, I decided we should drive for a ways and then maybe bike in the afternoon. We drove from Williamsport... (More)

I've wanted to bike to DC for a while, but there never seemed like a good opportunity to do so.  Once we purchased the tandem bike, and started thinking about the possibility of biking all over the country, the Washington trip seemed like a good first step. The trip did get... (More)

We generally try to avoid corn syrup of all kinds (but we only "try", meaning it isn't banned or anything like that). But, when I'm looking for cereal or granola bars or whatever, I check the ingredients and particularly try to gauge if sugar (in whatever form) would be the first... (More)