2005s
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The sweet potato french fries are a must. I love sweet potatoes, and these were just stunning. The chipotle dipping sauce is great as well. I also give the green bean appetizer high marks.
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I had the huevos rancheros, which is only available on Sunday. It was very good, with plenty of kick.
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The deserts were tasty, however if you order the rhubarb tart make sure to get ice cream with it. It’s a big mistake that they don’t serve it by default that way.
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I’m amazed at the engine management. The ECO mode (which cuts runs the 6-cylinder on only 3 to conserve fuel) is pretty amazing. I’ve never felt it turn on and off, and it cycles all the time. You would think this would only turn on when you are cruising down the highway, but it is very active and seems to have no negative for performance that I can perceive.
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We still keep finding more interesting and thoughtful feaures. Just discovered another storage area today. And I found where the Honda designers actually created a spot to hold a pen. They thought of pretty much everything.
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This one is driving me nuts. We bought the touring edition for a number of reasons, but a big one in my book is driver memory. My last two cars have been a BMW and Audi and it’s standard in them that it remembers the driver seat position and other things depending if Key1 or Key2 opens the car. The touring Odyssey has this and I really wanted it. When your wife is almost a foot shorter than you it’s a really nice feature to not mess with your seat all the time. However, the mirrors are not linked to the memory! This is just incredibly stupid to me. So while my seat is positioned correctly when I get in, the mirrors are not.
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Let me touch on XM, which comes standard with the car along with a 3-month trial subscription.
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First off, I don’t get it. I’ve heard from a number of people, and people I would value their input on these topics, that XM and satellite radio in general is great. I’m not seeing it. The programming is just boring. With the exception of unique features like the Comedy channels or listening to CNN Headline News I don’t see the value, and those unique features just aren’t all that compelling.
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XM missed the boat, at least with our family, in a big way when they didn’t get NPR. That’s only on Sirius.
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Can I rant for a bit that XM had the opportunity, creating a completely digital new music distribution method, to do so much but seems to have done so little. For example, the navigation system will show the XM information and it’s a nice touch that you get song and artist as you listen (but really, FM can do this with RDS support). Where is the album art? How about other graphics related to the artist? Or how about just not cutting off the song title after 40 characters? How ridiculously dumb is this.
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Changing tables? Waste of time and money. First of all, changing a baby that is sideways in front of you is stupid. Second, you never take the baby to one of these changing things, you just change them. I insist on Mazie having her feet toward me to change the diaper.
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The crib in the baby’s room? Try the crib in your room. Today we moved the crib up into our room. The family bed is great, but going from that to a crib in her room, in another room, is too much. Crib goes to our room for a few months, then into her room. (Or so we think…)
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Mazie currently doesn’t dig anyone but Mom holding her after around 7pm. Nothing to learn here, just that this stuff happens, it will change in a while.
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Stuff is everywhere, almost, and she’s still not mobile yet! The Intellitainer has taken over the fireplace. And the great thing is, I don’t really care.
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This swing is the most important thing in the world.
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Function over form. Who cares how it looks, it works.
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When the baby is melting down, and you know Mom can make it better, but you really want to try, don’t. The continued meltdown results in frustration for baby, you and Mom. Know when to fold ’em.
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Honda Odyssey. ’nuff said.
Mazie Moves... To Her Bedroom
Newsflash! Mazie has moved to her bedroom! This seems like a pretty giant step to me. I took her crib apart and moved it out of our room into her bedroom on Sunday night. Last night was her first night in there. She was a brave little girl, sleeping all by herself in that big room. It was a little shocking to have our bedroom back. Seems like there is all this room now, but it’s nice for us and I think she was ready as well. She seems to sleep a bit better in her room, it’s a bit more quiet.
She also figured out last night how to kick the music toy in her crib. After a few hours we started hearing music on the baby monitor and it finally dawned on us what she was doing.
I still miss taking naps with her though – she won’t do that, at least not easily, anymore.
Corteo
We went to see Corteo, the traveling Cirque du Soleil production that is getting ready to leave Minneapolis. This marks my seventh Cirque production. I’ve previously seen “O”, Dralion, Alegria, La Nouba, Varekai and Mystere (perhaps not in that order, but close). I enjoyed Corteo greatly, it is hard to not be impressed by any Cirque production, however it didn’t fill me with awe as other productions have. Granted the traveling productions (Dralion, Alegria, Varekai and Corteo) are somewhat handicapped when compared to the permanent installations (“O”, La Nouba and Mystere), but Dralion for example was a stunning performance, on par with “O”. The acts in Corteo were visually great, but the acrobatics and performances lacked the sizzle of other productions.
Corteo is set in the dreamland of an aging clown. It starts with a funeral prosession as the clown envisions the events after his demise. This opening act sets one of the unique things about Corteo, the stage design. The big top is setup with the audience in a circle, which is typical for a Cirque production. However, the stage is a long strip that cuts right through the center of that circle. It starts before it even enters the big top, allowing the acts to run on stage and run off. It gave an interesting perspective as characters didn’t seem to come on and off stage, but instead to simply appear off the edges of the screen, as if you were watching someone walk off-frame in a movie. Also typical for a Cirque production the stage itself, in the middle, was a circle with several rotating rings. This allowed for very cool performances where characters on the outside would rotate around action happening in the middle.
The clowns in Corteo were not as memorable as other Cirque productions. Additionally, this was the first time I’ve ever heard english words used in a Cirque production. Typically Cirque uses no dialog. It was a little shocking to hear someone start saying things, and then to realize it wasn’t French, the only other language I’ve heard in a Cirque production.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Corteo, and if you’ve never been to a Cirque production you will find it stunning. However, it didn’t reach the heights that I really expect of Cirque du Soleil. The acts were good, but there were few that lingered with me. I found the Chandelier act somewhat dull. Probably most notable in my mind was the Teeterboard act which was both fun to watch and comical. I really enjoyed the Giant Clown character in Corteo.
Where Corteo missed in my mind was just putting it all together. It’s a little surprising since it was one of the more literal Cirque production (for example, english words) but I didn’t get a strong sense of connection across the production. The others in our party shared this perspective. Perhaps buying the $10 (crazy!) program would have helped, but I hardly think that should be necessary.
Next on my Cirque-list, for a future visit to Las Vegas, is Ka or Zumanity.
2005 Olson Family Weekend
Last weekend was the 2nd annual Olson Family weekend. This is a fairly new tradition on Tammy’s side of the family where everyone does a mini-vacation together for a weekend once a year. Each year someone different plans it. Tammy is excited for the 3rd one next year already because she is planning it. 🙂 This year started off well by being much warmer than our trip last year up past Duluth.
Corinne did a great job picking this years trip to the Wisconsin Dells, or as those in the know call it, “The Dells”. We stayed at the Wilderness Resort cabins, which were very nice. The Wilderness is a little crazy, it’s a giant resort, waterpark, golf, spa location and I think it has some locals unhappy – but they seem to be doing a very good job. Tammy and I went to Sundara a while ago and loved it, which is also a Wilderness property.
It was a nice weekend with days outside hiking, geocaching and exploring the Dells, and nights goofing around and playing Xbox. I put up a number of pictures from the weekend. It was also Mazie’s first trip to Wisconsin, and she had a nice time hanging out with all her aunts and uncles (grandma and granpda too!).
Mazie's First Concert
On Saturday Mazie went to her first concert, and it was rocking! Our neighbor suggested that we go to see Ralph’s World with their family. Mazie had a great time!
When I first walked into the concert I was a bit surprised. It was loud! Not as loud as a show I would have went to at 1st Avenue, but a far, far cry from a guy with a guitar. Ralph’s World looked like a real band. Dudes in t-shirts and jeans, guitars, bass and drums. The three things that were a tip that this was a kids concert were the hundreds of kids having a blast, the song titles like “We Are Ants”, oh and the predominance of minivans in the parking lot.
I really thought Mazie would be screaming mad due to the volume, but she was digging it. She had a great time but had to cut it short because she got tired out.
If you have kids (you know who you are, see the minivan comment above), you should definitely haul the kids to a Ralph’s World concert. You will have some fun too!
Just Typing
Sometimes I just feel like typing something on this here website. I guess that’s the advantage of being the site operator, author, editor, publisher and everything else.
This has been a busy week. I’ve been completely absorbed with this project at work. We finally got it launched today and I really think it’s one of the, if not the, most amazing thing we’ve done. If you are curious, go to MarketWatch when the market is open (M-F 9:30a to 4:00p ET) and look at news stories, quotes, etc. You’ll see the quotes are streaming at you. We did this ourselves, and it was a massively challenging and fun project. I was literally unable to sleep, waking at 4:00a most days, my mind whirring with ideas. I’ve gotta take some time this weekend and decompress a bit. I put some especially peaceful music on my iPod so when I wake up in the middle of the night I can try to listen to that to help me sleep.
I sort of took today off, even though Mazie and I went into the office for a couple of hours and I was email for a couple more hours at home. We had furnace contractors, roofing contractors and our landscaper over today to discuss projects. I pulled the trigger on the furnace one so that is going forward. I need to decide on the roofing project soon so that I can let the solar guys (we are also looking at solar heat and electric) know what is going on.
We are starting phase 3 of our landscaping project. First phase was the front yard, 2nd was some hardscaping in the back yard, and this final phase is the conversion back to native plantings for the undeveloped area in our backlot. It was completely filled with invasive plants, and we are now getting ready to transform it. It will be perhaps the most challenging and interesting of the projects, but the least visible, at least from the curb as it were.
I’m debating the whole solar thing. I’m not sure what I think about having 4’x6’ black panels sticking up off the top of the house for heat. The solar electric stuff is much less obtrusive, but has a lot higher cost.
We are heading to Wisconsin for a family weekend with Tammy’s side of the family. I expect it to be a blast. May pack up the telescope since we’ll be in darker skies. I feel a little bad that I haven’t given that the time it deserves. I really do have too many hobbies. It’s just that everything is so interesting! 🙂
Rix Bar & Grill
We tried a new restaurant today. It was my mothers birthday a couple of days ago and we went out for lunch. We chose Rix Bar & Grill in north Minneapolis. Rix is fairly new, replacing what I hear was a fairly rundown bar that used to be there.
The restaurant was non-assuming and relaxed. Open kitchen, nice bar area and a medium size dining room. We had a really nice experience and great food, I would recommend others to give it a try.
Update
We’ve been to Rix a couple of times since that initial visit and it continues to be a great, neighborhood stop. Give it a go!
Honda Odyssey Pt. 2
We’ve had the 2006 Honda Odyssey for two weeks now and I thought I would share some of my comments on it. All in all, I really like the vehicle a lot more than I expected I would. There are a couple positives and negatives I would point out though.
Positives
Negatives
I’ve added the rubber floor mats to it so we are ready for winter and I got the cooler bags for the lazy susan (yes, it really has a lazy susan in it!). So, still liking it a lot, just wishing my mirrors would move “automagically” and don’t think we’ll be signing up for XM.
Mazie Mazie Mazie
Little Maze is getting less little by the day it seems. Along with getting bigger she’s really developing a lot more of a personality. She’s got her “I want mom” cry, her “I’m hungry cry”, and her “I want mom” cry. Did I mention that one already? We went through a few days a while back where she decided her dad simply would not do. If I tried to hold her she just threw a fit. She’s gotten a lot better at that too, throwing fits that is. She can get her legs and arms shaking, and just wail. If this gets beyond a certain point there is nothing you can do but give her to mom.
She’s also having a lot more fun cooing and blabbing to herself in the middle of the night. She particularly likes it when her dad tickles her and blows on her belly. She giggles away for a good long time. This ends up being endlessly fun for her dad and fills his heart with big amounts of pride and happiness. If you can make your kid giggle you can do anything.
We have her four month appointment next week. That seems to have arrived quickly. I think Tammy may disagree with that assessment though. That means another round of shots, no fun. We are looking forward to getting an okay to start giving her some food. We acquired a high chair already continuing our pattern of getting baby stuff well ahead of the need for it.
Maze loves her new mini-van. She thinks it’s just great. She particularly likes the navigation system. :-)
Tammy and her sisters threw a surprise birthday party for their mom recently and she did a little photo shoot with Maze and the birthday stuff. Some great pictures, check them out. My friend Dan and his wife Melanie are about to have start this parenthood thing any day now! With these 4 months under my belt I get to give advice to someone like I actually have a clue what’s going on. That’s fun too.
Purple HDMI TiVo
I thought I had dodged this bullet, but this morning when I turned on my HD DirecTV TiVo I got “purple haze”. Although, this was different than I’d seen it before. Usually if I just hit the ratio button on the HR 10-250 it would correct after a couple of times, but this is pervasive. It seems that all true blacks are showing up as purple.
This setup has been working since I got it in January! But today it decides to give up the ghost. I called up DirecTV and after 33 minutes of support discussion, and having the support person tell me “the HDMI port just doesn’t work on these, it’s a known problem, you need to use component video instead” I got them to send me a replacement unit. We’ll see if it solves my problem.
This is a very common problem.
Honda Odyssey
Ever since Mazie arrived we have been learning that taking a car seat in and out of a station wagon is not a terribly comfortable thing to do. We’ve also been planning on getting a new car for Tammy. We started looking at minivans a few weeks ago and today we pulled the trigger!
We bought a 2006 Honda Odyssey. I got completely “shiny pebbled” (shi-ny peb-bled, v. 1. to get obsessed with bright and shiny gadgets and forget all practicality) as we were exploring our minivan options and went all out on the Touring edition with DVD and navigation system. I worked a good deal (thanks Internet!) and got a reasonable price relative to dealer invoice at Richfield Bloomington Honda. Their Internet sales guy was quick with emails, only took a couple of back and forths to get to a good price and we had a deal done. Walked into the store the next day and did the paperwork. We got the silver pearl metallic color, pictured above.
A year ago I would have told you you were crazy if you told me that I would be all hyper about a minivan, but this thing is so cool! It has every gadget, bell & whistle you could ever want. It’s too much to even go through here, and I haven’t figured out what they all are yet. The side and rear doors are all motorized. I’ve vowed to go as long as possible without actually touching one of those. 🙂 It also has a backup camera, all kinds of different sensors and of course twice as many cup holders as passengers. There is even a 110 outlet in the back with AV ports to plug in your camcorder or game system.
On top of the gadgets, it drives very well with some very notable braking power. I also like the “ECO” mode that shuts down three of the six cylinders to get better gas mileage. It has the run flat tires with the mandatory tire pressure sensors. If you get a flat it just lets you know and you need to get to a shop relatively soon.
Can’t wait for a road trip!
Change Game Setback
A friend and I got coffee today and the total came to $4.58.
I gave the person at the register a $10 bill and three pennies.
Expecting that I would then get a $5 bill, a quarter and two dimes.
Instead of the quarter and two dimes she gave me nine nickels! This sets me back in a huge way with the change game.
And you thought doing math on road signs was geeky? Ha!
Trouble Having a Geek Dad
I wonder if when Mazie is older she will think this is a cool picture, or shake her head about her geeky dad. (Get your own Hello World Creeper.)
Dad Tips
I’m no expert on this matter. In fact, I’d say I’m far from it. But clearly I’m doing an adequate, or even above adequate job. Some wisdom to share:
Feel free to add your own!
Mazie 3-month Update
I think both Tammy and I are stunned at the thought that little Mazie is only going to be 3 months old this week. The 14th is the big day! She is very excited, I can tell. We are stunned because it seems like forever since she came into our lives. That should not be read as a good or bad thing, but that the period of time before she arrived seems very, very far away. It’s easy to sit back and think of things that happened, say a year ago, and feel like you are reminiscing about a previous decade! Anyway, time goes on for all of us and I’m sure that these first 3-months have seemed even longer for her.
Mazie continues to grow and amaze us both. Since the last update here, she’s developed a lot. She tracks you as you speak, or walk around. She giggles a lot and at least has convinced me that she likes to play little games with me. Mostly this involves me tickling her belly or cuddling her up and rocking her around. Then she giggles, I feel amazed, and we repeat until she’s had enough of it and gets ready to blow a gasket.
Speaking of blowing gaskets, she has started to do that. The last few nights she’s discovered her full-bore cry. We have started to wonder if babies can just get colic at 3 months!? This is when she’s supposed to be settling into more of a pattern and relaxing. We’ve started to put her to bed earlier, partly as a result of the crying. She’s getting more sleep but it’s not necessarily doing anything about the crying.
Mazie went to visit her great-grandparents last weekend and did great. She went through 10 hours in her car seat each way without too much fussing, and delighted us both by keeping a fairly stable nighttime sleep pattern, however she was way too excited to take any naps during the day which lead to some cranky behavior.
LDAP Coming Soon
I spent a few hours today playing around with LDAP (Lightweight Directory Address Protocol). Why? Well, it frustrates me that my webmail application and Thunderbird don’t share address books. To add insult to injury, if Tammy has an email address of someone I can’t just find it. And, while I’ve moved all email to the IMAP server so I can’t lose anything on a client machine, that proverbial address book still sits there, not backed up, on each computer in the house. It’s a mess.
So, I got a binary distribution of OpenLDAP for Windows and went to town. The installation parts of this whole project went fairly well, but learning the in’s and out’s of LDAP will take some further work. I installed OpenLDAP and it seemed to be working, but how would I know? Turns out there aren’t very good tools for working with LDAP directories. phpLDAPAdmin came to the rescue! (Thank you SourceForge!) I installed this great toolkit and was able to see my LDAP server for all of it’s glory. As an aside, I had to have PHP:LDAP support which I didn’t, so I upgraded to PHP5 with LDAP and all sorts of other goodies and then broke my SquirrelMail 1.4.5 install. Luckily I was saved by the not-really released SquirrelMail 1.4.6cvs tree which works (at least so far) with PHP5.
After all this, I added some LDAP schemas for things like inetOrgPerson and started creating an address book. First thing I tried to do was create a record in Thunderbird. Bzzt! Little known dirty secret, while Thunderbird can read from an LDAP store, it cannot write to one. I even installed the 1.5b1 release and it too cannot write to an LDAP directory. After cursing the people’s email client briefly I found this was also true of the Address Book application in Mac OS X “Tiger”. And while SquirrelMail works with LDAP, it also is read-only.
I’m going to stay the course though and find a web-based address book manager that uses LDAP as the back-end. There are a couple. (Yes, I could use phpLDAPAdmin but it is more for administration than daily use.) Then I will just have my email programs query the LDAP store for information as needed.
I started to think of all the stuff you can do with an LDAP server though – anyone up for a recipe book using LDAP?
The Farm
I come from North Dakota, and like the majority of people that come from North Dakota, I’m only one generation removed from the farm.
My mother grew up on the farm, and my grandparents still live there. All of my aunts and uncles on that side of the family live within 30 miles of the farm. The farm is our family’s center. It is where most things start. My grandparents are the only ones that live at the farm now. But at least once a year at Christmas the population at the farm spikes significantly as dozens of people return to celebrate the holiday.
The farm is in northwest North Dakota. A dozen miles north and you would be in Canada, but the accents remind you that you are not. This is the world of wheat and barley. The land is sectioned in crop lines with the occasional lone oil well dotting the horizon. Trees are planted in rows to keep the wind from stealing the topsoil. Lakes and rivers are very rare. There is a flatness to the land that is as awe inspiring as the jagged peaks of the mountains. To see this land in winter is to witness nature’s stern character, and in summer to see the bounty of the earth.
When I was a kid, I would vacation at the farm during summer break. It was an amazing world. I would play with my cousins for hours in the haystacks while the grown-ups were working in the fields. I learned to drive in a pickup out in the field. We would go into town to sit at the cafe and my grandpa would have coffee and conversation, while I had a malted. It was, at least for a kid, a vibrant community with interesting characters, filled with strong belly laughs.
When I return now, some twenty-five years later, the farm is pretty much the same. That’s good. You want your center to remain consistent. But the world around it and many, many other farms have changed a lot. Just driving the dirt road that goes in front of the farm you see several ghosts of farms that were.
Every year in America a lot of people that still live and work on farms aren’t able to make it anymore. With each generational transition only a few farms remain in the family. The “family farm” is quickly becoming something you will only find in textbooks, working examples of the tradition will simply be gone or relegated to historical attractions.
I realize that times move on. The economy is different. People around the world farm and send their product here. It is a global industry with giant corporations. Those that do farm can do it with more efficiency so there is less need for things as quant and romantic as the family farm. Plus, it’s hard work. The family on a family farm works from dawn till dusk. It is a risky occupation, both financially and physically. This is work done in the open sun, with sweat.
Whenever I return to the farm I savor the time. Personally I savor it because it’s time spent with people I love and respect. My grandpa no longer works the fields, not for lack of will but instead lack of youth. My grandmother is the pillar, the foundation, of everything that happens on the farm.
I savor it as well because I’m watching the last half of a great film. I will return to this area throughout my life, if only to see what has happened. In the twenty-five years I’ve been coming here it’s changed an amazing amount, more than any city I’ve visited. It isn’t a film of prosperity and growth, but instead the opposite. And with the conclusion of the story an entire way of life will be forever lost in this country, and that is something that I think we should stop and take a moment to honor.
Jamie v. Racoons
A few weeks ago we had some sod put down in our backyard. The first two weeks went as they should, I watered it everyday, all was great. I had even started to mow it. Then, the racoons came.
These little buggers figured out they could get in the seams of the sod and roll it around revealing a triumph of worms and grubs. I put everything back in place and hoped they would just move along.
Like racoons would move along. They returned night after night. I tried staking down the grass with tent stakes. I didn’t have enough stakes and they still made it through. I put more in and they decided to just rip the sod in the middle. I called our landscaper and they suggested using “lawn staples”. I got fifty (yes, fifty!) of them and the racoons simply pulled them out.
I decided the cavalry needed to come in so the landscapers came out and replaced some of the sod, since it had been damaged too badly, and laid down a fence that they use with deer on the sod to keep it in place. The next morning I called them to let them know the racoons had been in there again. The battle continues…
Weekend Geekfest
I spent a bit of time this weekend on my home network. I had a “security incident” about 10 days ago that I had to both clean-up and prevent from happening again. No damage of any significance was done. I had setout on segmenting my network and replacing my ZyWall with a full-blown firewall. I did not end up there as it just turned out to be way too much work to get going. Instead I reinstated all my firewalls on every machine and pruned down the ports. I also put in place blocking rules on my LAN to WAN connection to block certain traffic that should never originate from my LAN, like IRC for example. This is a nice step-up, although not as robust as my plans were.
I also reformatted and reinstalled my Linux boxes (victims of said “security incident”) with Fedora Core 4. This time I left SELinux enabled and clamped down the firewall more.
I’ve also been working on reducing my electrical load in the house so I’ve made all the desktops go to sleep with inactivity. I was able to setup all of my backup scripts to use Wake-on LAN functionality to turn on in the middle of the night, do their housework, and then go back to sleep and stop spinning the electric dial so much. Of course my servers still have to stay on all the time, but this cuts in half the number of machines powered on at times.
Four Hours of Frustration
I just spent the last four hours trying to get my new network topology in place. The result of all that time is zilch. I installed pfSense 0.79.4 on the firewall box with four ethernet ports. I tried to setup a WAN, LAN, DMZ and WIRELESS networks but I couldn’t get anything working right. How frustrating. I’ll take another run at it some other time.
Two Weddings in Two Days
This is wedding weekend for us! Tammy’s sister Michelle is getting married tonight and we are both in the wedding. Tammy is a bridesmaid and I’m an usher. Luckily my mother is coming to help with Mazie duty but it’s going to be an interesting adventure timing breastfeeding and other parent duties with all the wedding stuff going on.
Then, tomorrow morning I get on a plane to New York for my friend Greg’s wedding. Tammy and Mazie are staying here. The first Northwest flight out is at 10:20am arriving in La Guardia at 2:00pm. The wedding is at 4:00pm in Central Park. And just to make things exciting the Northwest mechanics are expected to go on strike at the end of the day today. Luckily Greg’s wedding is going to be a relaxed affair so I could get there as late as 3:30pm, but it’s tight!
Whew! Hope this all goes smoothly!