August 2004 Archives
Jfer's laptop (Dell Inspiron 8100 from 2001) hard-drive is dying. Lately she's been having the occasional "unrecognized boot device" screen and the computer has been quite sluggish. Running chkdisk found a bunch of corrupted files (mostly IE cache files, but some DLLs, too). The Dell diagnostic CD found errors on the HD, so I'm in the process of replacing it.
Some interesting things I discovered:
- Jfer's iPod has as much disk space as her original laptop drive
- Investing into a backup drive for her a couple of weeks ago is actually paying off!
- Unlike me, Jfer keeps almost all her files in her "My Documents" folder, so transferring them is a breeze.
- You can get a damn good notebook drive for peanuts (the 40Gig 5400RPM Toshiba drive I got can by had for less than $100 online, although I paid more for it at Fry's)
- Replacing a Dell notebook drive is very easy and quite inexpensive (I got the drive caddy on eBay for less than $10, including shipping)
- Reinstalling Windows still takes a lot of time...
Lynn and Kathy hosted our last shower at Lynn's house on Saturday. Lynn always throws great events, and this one wasn't any different. This was the "co-workers and friends" shower as opposed to the Austin "family and friends" or Ft. Worth "family" showers and it had the most people. It's always interesting when people from different areas of your life intersect in one place and time.
We had a great time and came home with a lot of stuff for the baby. We'll need to return some fo it, since we now have several duplicates -- for example we have at least one thermometer for each of the baby's orifice (we'll probably keep the ear thermometer) and we have lots and lots of baby blocks. But we also got practical stuff that we didn't know to register for and that should come in handy.
I hope that our baby thank-you notes will get out a bit faster than our wedding thank-yous.
Good news on the baby preparations. Our Stokke Crib has arrived at my office today. I managed to load it in my car and transport it home without hurting myself. And tonight I got it assembled in maybe half an hour -- while watching the Olympics on TV.
The crib is beautiful. The invoice calls it Teak, the box says Cherry -- in any case it's a lovely stain color. It's a cool scandinavian design but of awesome quality -- unlike, for example, Ikea furniture (which looks pretty cool, too).
I've read online that some people complained about the "tedious assembly", but I can't imagine why. The manual could be a little clearer, but jeez, it's only a dozen screws and all you need is an allan wrench. Of course, I enjoy assembling furniture, toys, etc.
So the crib beat the baby and Homer won't have to share his pillow with the baby. Now if only the rest of it came as easy...
As is our custom, we're woefully behind in our baby preparations. We've done the registry thing, have had one nice family shower and even scored a cool jogging stroller from some friends. Still, the crib we want to get is not available and will only be back in stock "in September". I hope it's early September rather than late...
But I'm not too stressed, yet. I figure that if people all over the world can do it, we'll manage just fine with all the advantages we have -- like a house, and health insurance, and a kick-ass doula.
So some progress has been made. We've engaged the services of Seasha McKay, a doula highly recommended by Elizabeth. Our meetings with her have been a very good experience. Jennifer especially has enjoyed her pre-natal massage.
We've also picked a pediatrician who came recommended from Jfer's OB/GYN and who's office is within minutes of our house.
We finished the first draft of our birth plan and will present it to our doctor on Friday.
And I made a trip to Academy today and got Jfer the birthing ball (65cm exercise ball) that she's been clamoring for.
Jfer got to go to a girls-only party to watch the opening ceremony at the games. So I hung out at home doing some work and the watched the ceremony (sans commercials, thanks to the DVR) with Homer.
I wasn't impressed with the NBC commentators' blather and the pre-show special about the security "during these times". Can't we get a break from it for at least a few hours? It felt like they were hoping for something to happen to improve the ratings or something.
The ceremony itself, though, rocked in a big way. It was a big spectacle but not overblown. I really like the floats representing the different parts of Greek history. I forget how much of "western culture" has been influenced by ancient Greece. And it was pretty neat to recognize all the major parts of their history.
Although it takes forever, the Parade of Nations is one of my favorite parts. I think that's what the Olympics are really about. You see countries that you've never heard of fielding athletes that don't have a snow ball's chance in hell to score a medal -- but it doesn't matter! It's cool and diverse and idealistic. And the greek spectators were kind and generous, even to athletes from Turkey and other countries that may have a beef with.
The lighting of the fire is always fun and it seems that every place tries to come up with something new. Greece decided to go with a big-ass replica of a marijuana joint that bent down to be lit by the torch carrying runner. I'm not sure if that's the best symbol with all the doping scandals going on, but it sure looked cool.
Someone is trying to scam money out of Kerry supporters with a fairly decent phishing scheme. I get tons of phishing emails and usually delete them without giving them a second thought, although sometimes I forward them to the appropriate fraud department.
I guess enough people must be falling for them to make it the spammers' worthwhile. As for me, I'm paranoid enough to look at the HTML source of my bank's emails to make sure it's valid.
I took MailFrontier's Phish IQ Test and scored a 100. I recognized several of their examples from my own spambox.
