Monthly Archives: March 2008

With and Without

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One of Troy’s breakfast foods is oatmeal*, usually with blueberries or peaches mixed in.  On this particular day, it was blueberries.

Here he is taking a bite with blueberries:

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And here he is taking a bite without blueberries:

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With:

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Without:

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And I ran out of Withs, so here’s another Without:

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What did we learn today?  Yes, that’s right – it’s much more fun to feed the baby oatmeal without blueberries.

* I hate oatmeal.  If you ever try to serve it to me, I’ll scoop it up and hurl it at you like the monkey feces it is.  Okay, not really, but honestly, oatmeal sucks.

Snoozers

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Troy isn’t really a cuddle-up-and-sleep type of baby, which makes Kelly kind of sad, so whenever she gets the opportunity, she makes the most of it:

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Changed blogging engines

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Hello Dear Reader,

As you may or may not have noticed, I changed blogging engines last night.  The goal was to simplify things.  I had been using Telligent’s excellent Community Server platform, which consists of not only a blogging engine, but forums, galleries, a file manager, and many other features.  It is quite a large application, and is not really intended for a single-blog user such as myself.

Recently, Telligent released another excellent product called GraffitiCMS, which is what I am now using to run this site.  It is very lightweight and easy to configure.  So far, I am very happy with it.

I have tried to minimize any "page not found" errors, but I’m sure there are posts with broken links, so if you see any of them before I do, please let me know. 

I hope you like the new theme.  Have a great weekend!

Update:  If you’re subscribed to this blog, make sure your feed reader is pointed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/EasilyAmused; if it’s not, you won’t be getting any new feed updates.

Feeding the boy

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I don't know why, but I just had to post this.  This was definitely not on my list of Things To Do Before I Die, but I'm glad I got to do it.  It's not every day that you get to feed your son in an old prison recreation yard.

He likes cake

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We had Troy's first birthday party yesterday at our house.  Other than natural fruits, the birthday cake was his first exposure to sweets.

He wasn't quite sure what to think of it at first:

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But he got the hang of it pretty quickly:

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And he was a seasoned pro after 5 minutes:

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Thanks to everyone who came yesterday!

Oh, and, uh, Troy had a *very* big day today, if you catch my drift (gawd knows we caught his…)

Happy Birthday, Dude

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Exactly one year ago today, your father was very tired.  Like, exhausted.  Could barely stand, I was so drained.  I don't know how I did it, but I dug deep, and I came through in the clutch. 

Oh, and your mom had a bit of a workout that morning, too, but it was small potatoes compared to what I went through.

Anyway, that day changed our lives forever.  You have brought so much joy and laughter into this household that we can hardly believe we ever lived fulfilling lives without you.  Here's to a fabulous first year of getting to know you, and many more to come.

Love you, Boy-boy.

Dad and Mom

The Rock

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When we found out that I'd have a free week of vacation, Kelly and I decided very quickly that we should take advantage of it as best we could, so we booked a room near Fisherman's Wharf.  She'd never been to Alcatraz, so we made visiting The Rock our main purpose.  It is a trip.  They have a guided audio tour, and they did such a good job with the tracks that, at times, it really sounds like you're standing in the middle of an operational prison.  It's kind of neat to let your imagination run wild, picturing what it must have been like to arrive at Alcatraz, knowing that you'd be spending an interminable amount of time in the depths of hell.  I have to tell you, I would NOT want to spend one second there as a prisoner.  The hopelessness, the despair, the desolation… and I was just a tourist!

Perhaps one of the cruelest things about Alcatraz was the view on a day like this past Sunday: clear, blue skies, and one of the greatest cities in the world just over a mile away… and yet, totally inaccessible to those incarcerated on Alcatraz Island:

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I bet many a prisoner sat on the recreation yard steps, peering at the Golden Gate Bridge, absolutely kicking himself for getting stuck in such a horrible predicament.  Then again, probably not, because those guys were all major league assholes.

We took a bunch of pictures, so if you have a spare moment, please go check them out on Flickr.

I’m on vacation

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Have you noticed an uptick in the frequency of my blog posts over the past week?  Well, there's a good reason for that: I am not employed at the moment.  Note: I'm not unemployed; I just don't have any place to be until I start my new job on the 17th.

I originally gave my two weeks notice on February 29th.  Everything went according to plan until March 6th, when Esurance decided to buy out the remainder of my two weeks and sent me home.  It was nothing bad; on the contrary, we parted on very good terms.  Rather, it was a corporate procedure they had to follow for reasons that are far too boring to recount here.

So, thanks, Esurance.  I learned a lot, and I met and worked with many fantastic people.  You will all be missed.

As for the new job, I've accepted a position as a senior software engineer at a company called DirectApps in Roseville.  What's really appealing about them is that they're still a small company, yet there are multiple interesting projects under development at any one time.  Plus, I'll get to work with the latest technology bits, something I haven't done since I worked at a startup back in 2005.  Buh-bye 2003; hello 2008.

It's always a strange feeling to start at a new company, but if you don't step outside of your comfort zone every once in a while, you'll miss out on some golden opportunities.

So what have I been doing with my newfound free time?  On Sunday, we took T-man to San Francisco (more on that in a later post).  Also, the little bastard gave me pinkeye, so I've been dropping sulfuric acid sulfacetamide sodium into my eyeballs 4 times a day.  Don't worry, I'm no longer contagious; these drops are that good.  So, besides visiting SF and fighting the good fight for my peepers, I have been working on two side projects that I am trying to wrap up.  Nerdery FTW!

Peaches! Get your Peaches right here!

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Sactown Royalty is honoring our resident play-by-play man, Grant Napear, by offering t-shirts for sale featuring his likeness.  Except by honoring, I mean mocking.  Mercilessly.  Click for more info on the Peaches T-shirts.

When I saw the "OH BOY!", I almost lost it because I recently saw this video clip (go to the 15 second mark):

I don’t have a beef with Grant, but I do think the shirts are hilarious, so if you need some new threads and you want to support the Sacramento SPCA, please purchase your Peaches shirt today!