Cousin Kim's video

My cousin has been working on building a fan base to launch a music career. She posted this video to YouTube. It's nice to see that someone isn't afraid to sing in public.

See it here.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2, rated Arrrrrrrr!

Well, I only caught snippets of it. We just got our DVD player hooked up again, and I was out of the house most of the time that the movie was on, but the bits I did see seemed like swashbuckling good fun.

This one is more intense than the last one. I think that the sound mixers bumped up the loudness on all the loud parts. There was quite a bit of action, and the "villains" weren't quite as cartoony. Anytime your ship is getting attacked by a giant octopus bent on destroying all involved it is going to get intense... especially for three-year-olds. Yes, Nena started it up while I was gone and Lucy and Noor wanted to see it to. Noor calls it "de oh-ther pi-rate mo-vie," in reference to the first one which was simply "pi-rate mo-vie." Lucy and Noor spent most of the time clinging. They kept wanting to watch more, and no one has had any nightmares, yet. This is definitely not one to use to "babysit" the little kids. If you need to load the dishwasher, start a load of laundry, and fine a clean and matched pair of socks, a "Bob the Builder" video is a better choice.

network up and running

Thanks to Ty's recommendation, I now have our local network up and running. Cousin Ty suggested that I get a Netgear wireless-G router. I plugged it into our cable modem, and while the documentation didn't really speak well to Mac users (it would have helped had the html manual actually worked), the quick start sheet included in the box basically made it a case of setting up your computers to obtain their addresses on the network automatically and then turning everything off and then starting the modem first, then a minute later restarting the router (which is now hooked with a crossover cable to the modem and a "regular" cable to a computer), and then a minute or so later turning on the computer. The thing went well, and Netgear's own web-browser based setup page was easy to follow, even without a proper manual.

The router works well with this PC notebook I am using right now, too.

Ty's consulting business and online store can be found at MacAtoZ.com (shameless commercial plug).

Snow day!

Tuesday, the snow hit Portland. I was advised to stay home by my office, so I worked on some things at home, but I did manage to get these photos taken.

The last three are of our house with snow on it.

I took a lunch break walk over to Pier Park nearby where we tried to go sledding. We got a little bit of sledding in before kids got cold, so we walked back.

Later, Nena took Lucy and Noor outside and showed them the finer art of throwing snowballs and building snowmen.

New house, new year

We have moved from our old place one mile to a house near Pier Park in St. Johns. I didn't realize how cramped the four of us were until we basically tripled our square footage.

I will try and get some pics up soon.

The move kicked my bottom. The house deal closed on December 20, and that very same day I got a call not even an hour and a half before my signing appointment saying the the seller needed an additional week to get out. Since I was looking forward to my 11 day overlap I wasn't very happy about this. I ended up zeroing in on December 26 at 5 pm, with a rentback for those additional days. The seller was still in the house until December 27 at noon, and still had stuff in my covered front porch until December 28, and didn't get the last of his stuff off my property until December 29. Meanwhile, I had already arranged to be out of the other place by the end of December 31. I ended up spending New Year's Day cleaning and hauling the last bit of stuff, and made a dump run in the wee hours of January 2. But it is done. Done done done.