Speed, it’s a wonderful thing

Over the last few months I have been reading Lex a bed time story every night consisting of a chapter from Frank Baum's Land of Oz books.  The first thing Xie said when I told her that I wanted to work through these books with him was "There is more then one?".  It seems that there are quite a few people that think the story begins and ends with "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz".  Obviously this is not the case.

Baum composed a total of 20 books to the series and it was then picked up by other writers after him.  I'm not sure if we will go into the books by other author's (which canonically add another 20 for a total of 40 books), but currently we are at book seven.  Some of the books are great - others it seemed Baum was just "phoning it in".  So when you are starting the next book, you can't be sure of the quality you are getting into.  Though I have a feeling over my life I'll be reading these again.  Lex is still at the stage where he is listening to my voice, but not really paying attention to the story yet.  So when he is I'm expecting to have to go through all of these again.

I got into the Oz books when I was around 9 or 10.  I used to check them out of the Amherst public library and just devour them (hence why I was aware of the series).   I doubt I ever read them in order, I never read any not written by Baum, and I'm positive that I did not read all the books that he wrote.  I loved reading them regardless.

Working through the thought process I take that back - I didn't read any other canonical books by other Authors.   I did have a science fiction-esque book that took place in Oz. It was titled "A Barnstormer in Oz"- my parents bought it for me when I requested to pick it up when I saw it sitting at a Big and Small Lots store.   I got it home and low and behold the story it told.   Well really I can't tell you the story since I don't really remember it, but there was nudity and sex in the book.  This was one of those cases where the child never tells the parents what the book really contained.

My parents bought be Wizard of Oz smut and never realized it.  You can't blame them, it would be the same as if I bought Alexander a Harry Potter spin-off book in a few years and never read it myself.   You would go, oh Harry Potter - go ahead kid knock yourself out.   All and all I don't think it was all that graphic - but it was graphic enough to shock a ten or eleven year old reading it.  Somewhere around the time I went to college the book disappeared from my possession.  It is just as well, it's not one of the book's I plan on reading to Lex anyway.

Most nights we get through a single chapter - some nights he falls asleep quickly so I don't finish the chapter, other nights he is bouncing around and refusing to sleep so we get through two or three chapters.  This is done every weeknight after his bath and before my dinner. He get's top priority, so every night we have the routine down to maximize my time with him.  Get home, feed him, play for a little bit, give him a bath, and then read to him until he is passed out.  All in all, it's not a bad routine.

I'm hoping to do a blog write up on each of the books, ideally I was going to do a write up as I finished each of them.  Doing the math of not a single write up so far, and the fact I am on the seventh book - that doesn't seem to have happened.   This isn't something that is alone related to the Oz books - I've finished a few other books this year that I wanted to do write ups on but haven't yet had a chance.   Life the universe and everything like that.   Hopefully soon these will get written, published, read, and commented on - or more then likely ignored.

Until then I hope you all have a pleasant journey with me as I travel down the yellow brick road one chapter at a time.

I thought you said you were going to wash my mouth out. I figured I would just beat you to the punch.

Is this how daddy does it?

I’ve always been one of those boring guys that kept a standard black background on his computer — especially his work computer. Sure occasionally I would branch out and for a month or so keep a new interesting background — but it was always a temporary thing.

Now that I’m a father, I’m not one of those guys that shoves pictures of his kid in your face (unless of course you are coming to my blog then it’s fair game). I do however keep an image of him on my desktop full time, just to remind me what I’m toiling away at work for anyways.

I don’t have a Lex screensaver — since I’m not around to see my screen anyways — why bother? The image above is my latest desktop image.

I had started a year in review for 2009, I was going to write up a link to all my stories of a personal nature over the last year.  Highlight becoming a father, etc., etc.  It’s now two weeks into the new year and I never got the story completed.   Instead of giving up completely, I decided that the year in review was going to be just like Shermer, Illinois.  On a side note — have you notice that no matter how many times you write out Illinois you need to spell check it?  Anyways if you don’t understand the significance of comparing a year in review to Shermer, I’ll let Jay and Silent Bob’s little scene from Dogma explain it to you.

It was a tightly held secret that before Creeva could play trumpet, french horn, baritone, (and very little saxophone) — that he flirted with being a drummer. Thankfully the danger was averted once he learned to actually read music, thereby disqualifying him from being a drummer entirely.

I’ve been thinking about a series about growing up a geek — but quite a bit of those stories would cross with a retro blog I want to get off the ground ( which if you are interested to help write for let me know). I have a few articles where I should get out my daddy issues, but those have been put to bed. I’m not sure I want to dredge up the past that my father and I have moved on from.

There is alot I could write about — just stunted at the prospect for the moment. I can say be on the look out for something genuine this year.

Great — now to decide what in the next 351 days.…..,

IMG_4162, originally uploaded by Creeva.

If we could all just experience the joy he is showing off in this picture, the world would be a better place.

I hope this is a typo., originally uploaded by Creeva.

Playing with mahalo answers I found this question — what are the chances terrorists are developing nuclear families? Now I’m sure (hoping) they meant facilities, but what if the question is genuine?

Are we concerned that Wars is bring up Wally and the Beaver to be home grown terrorists? When I hear nuclear family I f course think of the 50’s style meaning. Maybe there is something I am still
missing.

IMG_6721, originally uploaded by Creeva.

I finally made it one step closer to my ultimate wordpress theme. There are still a few changes I hope to get a chance to do, but one of the big things is now done — automatic thumbnail generation. Wordpress 2.9x does this, but only for locally uploaded images. I mostly host my images on flickr, so generating a thumbnail from those is/ was important.

Now I get to have my home page with a nice picture montage and it gives me more of a reason to do some photoblogging. Now if only o could get it to generate thumbnails from YouTube clips.…..

IMG_2203, originally uploaded by Creeva.

After wearing her down after two months of dating, 3 months of living with her parents, and 11 months of living in our townhouse together, my wife consented to marry me eleven years ago today.

While it would be naive to say it has been an easy road, it has been a road I would gladly journey down again. Eleven years ago we wandered down to the mayor of vemilion Ohio who needed the marriage ceremony information done up in large print — to fulfill the actual ceremony. We had no friends nor family, but there was the drunk guy from the night before that said he was going to show up — thankfully he didn’t. Both of us who hate winter had to get up early and go through a snow storm to get married. That folks is what you call true love.

To many years in the future and those days that have passed I leave this one message to my wife — I will love you always and forever if you will love me forever and always.

Optimally I would like it to be compatible with mediawiki. It also has to work on an unjailbroken iPhone. While we are asking for features and someone out there is considering this, what would be great is offline editing that syncs when it gets back online.

Other solutions would be an extension for mediawiki that I can throw on a hosted instance that allowed for editing via mobile safari that fixes the issue of no scroll bar in the write window. A last ditch scenario would be a wiki app on the iPhone (there are a couple that allow you to host a server on the iPhone itself) — these are missing one function, the ability to export this data to an external server. I would use something other then mediawiki if I could get this functionality.

Anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Am I just wanting to much? I think it is insane that there seems to be no good wiki editing solutions I can find.

IMG_4198, originally uploaded by Creeva.

Just a picture I managed to capture earlier today.

, originally uploaded by Creeva.

I jus railed a bit against the wordpress app, and the flickr app is another I use quite a bit — ironically for browsing images. I have a flickr pro account, but I use the pixel pipe service to upload images to flickr. I use flickr’s web interface to blog images. Finally other then quick onesy twosy organizational tasks I need an actual computer to organize my images.

Now the organizational problem could be fixed but I see that being one of the largest pains to get working any better then it does. It should be quite a bit faster and easier to upload bulk images, the reason I don’t use the flickr app to upload. There is also no reason I shouldn’t be able to directly blog an image from the app interface.

, originally uploaded by Creeva.

I love my iPhone so don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the best platform for blogging. Microblogging, sure it’s great. Photoblogging, works ok in some scenarios. Busting out a few paragraphs formatted in a certain style — not really.

I was excites when the first Wordpress App was released, an happier when the second one was — until I played with them. On my main blog I like to use an image as the front page lead of the story. When there isn’t a lead image, that means I am writing on the iPhone. Unless of course I log into flickr via the browser and blog an image (like I am doing with this post). There are still some limitations but until I can get all the same editing features in the app that I can via the web interface it is always going to feel cramped.

Sadly I don’t think it has to be. I’ve seen editors on the iPhone that could handle everything the web interface of wordpress offers — so why do I need to know HTML to add a link to a post or an image that us somewhere other then the end? Yes I know how to do this, but I am to lazy to busy that out on the iPhone, nor should have to.

So wordpress app writers — when is the app going to catch up?

IMG_6151, originally uploaded by Creeva.

Lex was ten months old on he first Christmas this year. Everyone told how exciting it would be. Well all those people stretched the truth a bit. As parents we think the whole thing is going to be new and exciting, all because we loves it as kid.

Since Christmas isn’t a leap it means that at most your child is 364 days old, and more then likely has not yet opened a present yet. You hand the child their first Christmas present and expect them to tear into it. I’m sorry to disappoint you, they don’t. You sit there recording the moment and they just tap at the wrapping paper. So opening presents becomes very long and drawn out.

After a visiting a couple grandparents he got a vague idea, but it was no means exciting. Next year however, I’m sure the cyclone of opening gifts will start.

IMG_6128, originally uploaded by Creeva.

Here is a picture of Lex enjoying his first Christmas present. Like it was when I was growing up we are going to let him open one present on christmas eve. While he is just looking curiously at the doll in this picture, it was the most in focus one that came out.

After he was done staring at it, he did haul it all around the room with him. Ironically this is a present that didn’t get wrapped with the rest of them. Xie was talking about it and I didn’t know what she was talking about since I didn’t wrap a stuffed animal. After a couple hours tearing apart the house we found it. From his reaction it was worth every minute searching.

Still at work on christmas eve, originally uploaded by Creeva.

The joys of jobs that do not let you out of work on christmas eve. I just finished my time card and I’m entering the final stretch until I am out of here.

Let the final countdown begin — I’m not back at work until next year.

img376, originally uploaded by Creeva.

This picture was taken in about 1988 judging from the age of my sister, so that would have made me twelve years old. This picture would have been taken in our dining room in the condo we lived at in Elyria. Two Christmas’s after this one we would hang another stocking on the mantle for my second sister when she arrived in the world.

That dog in the photo was named Lacy, and I think she was literally hell spawn. She terrorized all of us kids for years, but you wouldn’t know that since she looks like a sweet little dog — until you look more carefully at the picture. My brother is sitting there on the side watching the dog uneasily, I’m sure he was thinking that either he could dive off the side of the chair or smack the dog with the present he was holding. I’m looking at one of my parents (whoever is not taking the picture, but if you look carefully you can see my hand is around the dog’s neck — I could at least keep her from attacking me or my sister.

And my sister, she is only seven months old in this picture and even she is eyeing the dog, I don’t remember hte dog terrorizing babies — but I’m sure it left an impression.

Last piece of note in this picture — that is my stocking in the middle.