I guess I was a little optimistic when I declared that my blog was back up and running. This morning I discovered that my RSS feed wasn’t working (404 error) and with some debugging I found that all my permalinks (links that point directly to a post) were all broken as well.
I think I got the permalinks back up and running. My current wishful thinking is that this will repair the RSS feed, but we’ll see.
We’re back from vacation. I thought that I would blog a lot over Christmas and New Year’s, but it turns out I didn’t use a computer much the past two weeks.
Which of course explains why there haven’t been new posts. And if you’ve come looking you may have seen an error instead of the blog. Something happened with my WordPress install and I had to reinstall WordPress to get things up and running.
I just saw that the site was down, but I think it was down for about a week. I’m not yet sure why.
I’ll take some time tomorrow to figure out why. For now, it’s time for sleep!
Actually it’s much colder than freezing. Yesterday afternoon it was minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. And last night it was minus 18!
When it’s cold you have to suffer through annoying things like your nostrils freezing.
But when it’s this cold lots of things are different. While I was shoveling the snow off the driveway yesterday, as soon as I removed the snow, the residual water froze immediately leaving me with a very slippery driveway.
And all the outdoor light bulbs stopped working.
And we had frost on the inside of the windows.
The strangest was tonight while driving home; it was so cold that the LED display in my car didn’t work properly. The display took a few seconds to update; it was really weird. I wish I could have played with it more, but I had to pay attention to the skating rink of a road.
Crissy’s been hard at work making her jewelry business a reality and has made a ton of progress. So far, she has:
If you are interested in buying something, you can order right now at our Etsy Store. Or you contact either of us to order directly or for custom orders.
I’m also working on getting our own web store up and running. Hopefully it will open soon. Crissy’s whole product line will be available on that site.
And no, this isn’t one of the businesses that I mentioned I was starting in my Birthday resolutions. One of those will hopefully launch in mid-January. Currently we’re working on the setting up the domain, designing the landing pages, filing the corporation paperwork, and opening a business bank account.
It’s all very exciting! :-)
A couple of weeks ago, my parents hosted a pooja at their house. About 10 families came, so there were a good number of kids running around. Half the parents made their kids sit still and participate in the pooja, while the other half left their kids to their own devices.
We learned an important lesson a few years ago about kids left to their own devices during a pooja. At that pooja, while all the adults where partcipating in the services, the kids dismantled the Taj Mahal 3D puzzle I’d spent weeks assembling. And once they finished taking it apart, they proceeded to tear some of the pieces in half.
Anyway…
After that incident, we started to set up a small TV in the adjacent room so the kids can watch movies. I usually tell the kids that they can quietly watch TV, but if they are loud I’ll make them participate in the pooja. That usually scares them straight.
There’s nothing like the fear of having to worship God to set a kid straight. :-P
All our kids movies in my parents house are on VHS and the small TV we use is a 13 inch tube. When the kids saw it this setup, they got really excited! One tiny kid screamed “It’s puny!”, while the other kids started bragging about the TVs they have in their homes and rooms: “We have a 46 inch LCD!” “Oh yeah, we have a 60 inch LCD!” “I have a 52 inch plasma in my room!”
Kids nowadays have 52 inch TVs in their bedroom?
I never felt so old in my life.
Until 15 seconds later.
“Why don’t you start the movie?” asked one kid.
“Oh, the tape needs to rewind,” I replied.
And then there was silence.
I asked them, “Have anyone of you seen video tapes before?” Only one 12 year girl had. She said she found a box of them in her parents’ basement.
“Why does it have to do that?” (“that” == “rewind”), interrupted another kid.
So I started to explain “Well, it’s like… um…” I was at a complete loss, what’s a good analogy to teach kids about the why you need to rewind tapes? Their world is all digital, mine apparently is analog. As I tried to figure out what to say, I got interrupted.
“That’s puny! That’s puny! That’s puny!” yelled the smallest kid pointing at the TV while dancing gleefully. Fortunately Crissy walked in, picked up the screaming little kid and teased him, “Short little boys shouldn’t be calling things puny.”
He laughed and squealed, and finally settled down.
Just then the tape stopped rewinding! I pressed Play. Success!
Except that it was a Disney movie. So there were 30 minutes worth of previews. So now I had to fast forward and you knew what came next: “Why can’t you hit Root Menu?”. Anyway, we eventually got everything working.
On the topic of feeling old, it’s a strange feeling being an adult at a party your parents host. Growing up the screaming kids were my peer group, but now all the adults are my peer group. But given the circumstances of a party at my parents’ house, I still associate myself with the kids and not the adults.
Growing up, the adults are the weird people with jobs, that sit around and talk about politics, the economy, and — oh wait.
As the party was winding down, one of the adults asked their kid, “Did you thank Vijay Uncle for showing you the movie?”
And I thought, who’s this “Vijay Uncle” character? :-P
(Because of the British influence on India, Indian kids don’t say Mr. and Mrs., they say Auntie and Uncle.)
So, I guess it’s official, I’m not a kid anymore.
Today’s my birthday and I thought instead of waiting for New Years Day to set resolutions, I should set some goals today.
I based these on what would increase my happiness the most over the next year:
And one more thing, though it’s not a resolution as much as a guideline: I have a long list of books that I’ve read, but not blogged about. I’m going to try to catch up on these.
Wish me luck. :-)
Last night we got back from a week long trip to Seattle and of the many amusing things that happened while we were there, I thought of one that was definitely worth sharing.
I was staying in the Heathman Hotel (it’s really nice, but pricey) and just walking a few blocks to the old Kirkland office.
Wednesday morning (the day after the election), I was walking to work and on 3 seperate occasions, an African-American would see me and raise his arms and triumphantly shout “Obama!”.
:-)
I finally ditched Coppermine and switched over to Picasa. Since I work very closely with the Picasa team, I figure if I have any problems I know who to ask. :-)
All my shared photos now live here. The sidebar links are updated too.
I also put up some pictures from my family’s recent trip to India.
Enjoy!
I found this article a while ago and thought it was interesting; specifically this line about people graduating with engineering degrees: nowadays “chances are that [they will] be going to work for the likes of Microsoft or Google,” as opposed to a defense contractor.
Hey, that’s me!
When I graduated, my top job offers were from a couple of prestigious R&D firms for the DoD, and from Microsoft. Given the option between building weapons or working for the Evil Empire, I went for the latter. My reasoning was that, despite what you might think of Microsoft, Windows doesn’t kill people.
At least, that’s what Corporate PR told us to say. :-P
I just wrote about everything that that has happened in the past month and thought I’d blah — I mean, blog — about this:
We checked out of the apartment. I’d lived there for just about 6 years. My rough estimate is that I gave Avalon Redmond Place around $68,000 in rent over that time (plus all the money Chris and Andrew gave them while we were roomies). In return they kindly gave me back my entire deposit of $250 (oh, and a place to live).
$68,000 in rent. Wow. It’s scary when you think about it. The obvious observation is, “shouldn’t you have brought a condo/house instead?” With 20/20 hindsight, sure, that would have been the right thing to do, but only because of a Fed-induced housing bubble.
When I first moved to Seattle, I didn’t have plans to stay that long. Specifically, I had to see if I liked my job and the area before committing. Common sense indicates that you should expect to own an house for 5 years before you recoup closing costs and turn the corner on paying mostly interest.
Of course, the housing bubble artificially caused a lot of temporary house value increases; if I’d bought something when I moved there and then sold it when I left, I could have made some decent money. On the other hand, the bubble could have popped earlier and I could have lost all my appreciation. And you also have to keep in mind that rent/buy ratios are way out of whack in the Puget Sound.
But, of course, the move back to the Boulder area was always in the cards and I did end up changing jobs much sooner than I would have guessed when I moved to Seattle, so who knows. :-)
Update (7/30/08): I just realized I calculated the rent total wrong. It should be ~68K over 6 years (corrected above).
