Monthly Archives: August 2005

2 Months and 11 Days

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That is how old Kylie is as of today. I meant to write this up 11 days ago, but I have just been too busy and too tired when I had the time to do it. Plus 11 days ago we were in Philly for a wedding and I did not have access. So let’s see if I can do a little recap here.

For starters she is doing very well. Like I said, on the day Kylie turned 2 months old we were in Philly for a friends wedding. Earlier that day we visited Benjamin Franklin’s house (or at least where his house was), the Liberty Bell, Congress Hall, and the outside of Independence Hall. Should I ever get around to scanning those pictures, I will post them in the gallery. (NOTE: even though some of the pictures contain Kylie, i.e. her in front of the Liberty Bell, these pictures will most likely be posted under trips.) She was very good in the car for what turned out to be a 9 hour trip each way, only fussing when she started to get hungry.

Last week she had her 2 month check up, and at that time received 5 vaccines in 4 shots. I must say that she took the shots very well, which is good seeing as she goes back in October for 4 more. At the time of her doctors’ visit she weighed 14 pounds and 1 ounce, but I am convinced that she actually weighs more than that now. She has already gotten too big for her bassinet (it says that a baby should only be in it up to 15 pounds) and has moved into her crib.

The cat seems to be more and more accepting of Kylie, as the other day I helped her pet the cat and she did not run away when Kylie touched her. This made me happy because Princess has been slow in adjusting to the presence of Kylie. Recently however, she has gotten better at not always running away when Kylie is around and has even been seen nuzzling Kylie’s feet.

Lately she seems to be showing signs of teething; mainly she will become fussy and start to cry for seemingly no reason. Sometimes letting her suck on a chilled teething ring seems to clam her down, but yesterday even that didn’t work, however placing a very small amount of Baby Orajel on her gums did. She has also become very good at keeping me up in the morning when I get off of work and am in charge of watching her. As such I have not been getting much sleep lately, but that’s ok I will adjust.

Yesterday we finally got around to taking her to have professional pictures taken as well. From we saw of the digital proofs they look to be very good. They will come in sometime around the 21st of September, once they do I am sure I will scan them and place them in the gallery as well.

Patriot Act under attack

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A few days ago Joe had a post over on his site that dealt with police training pest control agency employees to become, esentually, undercover police. In this post Joe brought up the fact that we, then general public, are slowly losing our rights due to things like the Patriot Act.

A “lawsuit was filed against U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut by an unnamed library and the American Civil Liberties Union” on August 9 2005. What many people don’t realize is “that legal changes made under the Patriot Act ‘remove any requirement of individualized suspicion, (and) the FBI may now … demand sensitive information about innocent people.'”

Enacted after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the Patriot Act lets U.S. authorities seek approval from a special court to search personal records of terror suspects from bookstores, businesses, hospitals and libraries, in a provision known as the library clause.

The FBI letter requesting the information, called a National Security Letter, is effectively a gag order because it tells the recipient that the request must be kept secret.

What this means is that the “authoriteis” have the right to demand information about a person ranging from their book reading habits to their finicial standing for pretty much any reason they choose. Nothing more than simply stating that they think a given person is a terror suspect is needed for them to be allowed to dive into their personal records.

I am glad that someone has finally taken action to stand up to the Patriot Act, something that the ACLU calls “unconstitutional on its face.” The results of this trial will have a very large effect on just how our constitutional rights are protected or not.

Moon phases

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I have this tendancy to go out and stare at the Moon and the night sky, I have always been interested in the stars and think they are very beautiful and calming to look at. I find myself looking at the Moon pretty much nightly. I used to know all the phases and what order they went in, I knew when the full and new Moons would be, and I still try to catch every Lunar Eclipse. So when I stumbled upon a module that would display the current Moon phase, I knew i had to incorporate it into the site. So now, off to the right, is a nice little graphic that shows the Moon’s current phase, visually and as a percentage of full.

Down Time

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The site has been down for the last couple of days, not sure anyone even noticed. But anyway, it is back up now (thanks Chris!), and all is well. We are not exactly sure why it went down, but appreantly finishing the upgraded to the 2.6 kernel, that I started months ago, resolved the issue. So the 2.6 kernel is finally in. After bringing in the new kernel, I figured I might as well update some of the backend software as well. So now everything *should* be up to date and running smooth.

WordPress 1.5.2

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Just finished upgrading to the new 1.5.2 version of WordPress. As usual it was clean simple upgrade. Everything appears to be functioning normally. Wouldn’t expect anything less from the WP team though. This upgraded resolved a few bugs and security issues from previous versions. All in all I am still very happy with the software, both the quality and the ease of use.

More useless information

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Those who know me know I tend to be full of useless information. Now I’m not talking information that would come in handy if I were on Jeopardy, I mean completely useless stuff. I don’t know where I aquire this information, i just seem to obtain it along the way. Well, i obtained some more tonight. I found this site of strange things and so I thought I would share it. The list isn’t very long, topping out at 29, but interesting none the less.
Some of my favorites are:

1. A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
14. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.
17. Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to s-l-o-w film down so you could see his moves. That’s the opposite of the norm.
25. Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

This one just gives me a good laugh and a little mental playback from Boondock Saints.

20. The phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

Booze rules

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For all my friends out there who are considerable drinkers, I would like to direct your attention to the 86 rules of boozing. Some of the more interesting (read “important”) include:

5. Buying someone a drink is five times better than a handshake.
28. If you can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to drink in a bar. Go to the liquor store.
30. Never complain about the quality or brand of a free drink.
34. If you bring Old Milwaukee to a party, you must drink at least two cans before you start drinking the imported beer in the fridge.
68. If there is a line for drinks, get your goddamn drink and step the hell away from the bar.
73. If you bring booze to a party, you must drink it or leave it.

The only cure for America, is “More Cow Bell”!

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Walken For President

Well, the banner speaks for itself. Evidently Christopher Walken is going to run for President in 2008! I have yet to find any evidence that this is a joke, so I guess we will just have to wait and see. I can personally think of more than one person who will vote for him simply for the fact that he is who he is. You can read the press release in which he declares his intent to run, along with other information about him on the site.