Monthly Archive for July, 2007

dead headphonist

Too many things

Current Mood:Chillin emoticon Chillin

While most things seem to go my way, I’m not the handiest of guys. There’s a number of things that I really want to accomplish, but I get held back by my lack of rudimentary skills that seem to have been easily bestowed upon both my dad and father-in-law. It bugs me.

I suppose it probably has something to do with the fact that they were working on cars and building things during their formative youth. What did I do? I spent much of the time mucking around with computers; which has turned into a mildly comfortable career that affords the kinds of things that our parents generation were able to do for us with their skills in building and fixing things. Maybe I shouldn’t let it bug me so much.

On the hit parade is expanding this house of ours into the few unused spaces we have; something that will give us more room to spread out a bit. I’ve attempted some improvements. I bought a ceiling fan for the bedroom, but the electrical is such that installing poses a definite fire hazard. I have advice that will get this fixed, but it’s going to take going into territory that I’m not familiar with (always a challenge for the accidental handyman). We’ll get there, and if I’m not careful I might learn something. :)

I also have a motorcycle in my garage that I’d like to finish. I found a pretty neat website for some folks who build a lot of custom parts for my bike, so maybe I’ll get to that project soon-ish. I really like the idea that they are capable of doing most of the technical work.  I think I can handle the pretty stuff.  I’m going to try changing all the seals in the motor, but if it doesn’t work out for me, they have a service that will pretty much rebuild your motor with performance parts for $2500.  Since I only have fifty bucks in the bike, I might not feel so bad about that.

It all sounds like loads of fun, but balancing it with work, social obligations, and family time is difficult. One thing that this is teaching me is why sometimes it took a very long time for “nice to have” projects to get finished when I was a kid. I think I have a new-found appreciation for the balancing act that my folks performed while I was coming up.

charmaspice

Special Stickers for Special Times

Well, these stickers really don’t have to be for special times….but they most certainly are pretty special.  Why, you ask are stickers so special…..well to an almost 5 year old they are the decoration on EVERY piece of artwork around our house, they add a little more color to almost every outfit, and they are just fun to have around.  Over at MOO you can create your very own sticker book with 90 of your very own personal stickers for a small price of $9.99 with a flat shipping rate of $2.99.  These stickers are printed on high-quality scratch-proof vinyl, each sticker is 22mm X 22mm, there are 15 tear-out sheets with 6 stickers on each sheet, and you can have all your stickers the same or all 90 of them different.  The clincher is, you can upload your own pictures to use for stickers.  I thought these were pretty cool for a special birthday present, Christmas, or when a good job is done prize.  Also, the more you order….the cheaper they are, so if you wanted to use them for a baby shower (wouldn’t that be cute little ultra sound stickers - wait now I’m getting carried away) or as a give away they wouldn’t be so expensive.  Happy sticker making!

charmaspice

Tackle it Tuesday

Current Mood:Cool emoticon Cool

Over at 5 Minutes for Mom they blog every Tuesday about something in their household they want to tackle and get done to take back their household from all the clutter that can occur with children, and family life in general. So, today I have 2 things I want to tackle before allowing myslelf to dive back into the world of Harry Potter. Drum roll please………I am going to clean the kitchen up and get all the dishes back in their homes rather than a pile on the counter, and I am going to do several loads of laundry in preparation for this weekends trip to Howell for my brothers wedding. If time and motivation (it’s usually the motivation I have a problem with) allows I think I will also try to tackle the floors and all the dog hair on them. I highly doubt the floors will get done, as I am REALLY wanting to get through Harry Potter before the weekend comes. What are you tackling this Tuesday?

charmaspice

Trotting around town

This morning we went to our monthly MOMS Club member meeting. These meetings are great, as they are literally down the road from our house, fill our morning with play time for Clare and some adult chat for me. Today was especially wonderful, as we had a literacy event with KDL - Kent District Library. They do literacy events all the time at the library and with schools in the area, they came to our meeting to do a special one with us. The kids got to make 5 different crafts to bring home with them, all dealing with literacy…..and crafts, you can’t beat already thought up crafts with the materials to do with your kids! First they made a crown, using letter squares to spell out their name….they traced the letters learning how to properly write each of them (for Clare this was a snap as she has been doing this since last fall), cut out the crown, and decorate. Then Clare drew a picture and told me a story for me to write below. It was pretty cute as it involved a girl named Daisy going to her grandma’s house to bake a cake. After that we cut picutes with the words below into syllables so the kids could hear the words broken up into the parts it’s made of. Then we made a matching game with signs she had to glue on squares of cardboard, followed by a word book. She picked out 6 pictures and told me what they were, I wrote the words while she glued the picture on the page. You could easily do some of these at home with magazine pictures to cut out, construction paper, and a glue stick.

Afterwards it was home for lunch, and then off to the YMCA for swim lessons. I started Clare in swim lessons earlier this summer, and she has really blossomed in her ability to swim. She is now psuedo doggy paddling with the use of a noodle to keep her afloat…..and I have a feeling by the end of summer she’ll be swimming on her own without the need to have an instructor hanging onto her. She’s already moved up into the group above her in 4 short weeks. I think we’ll stick with the lessons through the start of school ( I hope we can anyway ). She really likes them, their pretty cheap with our Y membership, and she is gaining at least small amounts of gracefullness from it. She’s pretty clutsy if you know her…..so any help is much appreciated!

charmaspice

Borrowing a Post….with permission of course

Current Mood:Alarmed emoticon Alarmed

I’ve recently entered into the world of reading other womens blogs. It all started with a few of my MOMS Club friends, and now I read about women/moms from all over. It helps bring a little more sanity into my life realizing that I’m not the only one out there going through some of the things that occur in our household. Recently I read a post about a mom diagnosed with breast cancer, and it struch me to the core especially since my Aunt was recently diagnosed with it as well….however this was different, this women didn’t have a lump. Her breast had changed and she found out through several different tests that she had Inflammatory Breast Cancer. It is often misdiagnosed as mastitis because many doctors have never seen it before and consider it rare. “Rare” or not, there are over 100,000 women in the U.S. with this cancer right now; only half will survive five years. Please call your OB/GYN if you experience several of the following symptoms in your breast, or any unusual changes: redness, rapid increase in size of one breast, persistent itching of breast or nipple, thickening of breast tissue, stabbing pain, soreness, swelling under the arm, dimpling or ridging (for example, when you take your bra off, the bra marks stay – for a while), flattening or retracting of the nipple, or a texture that looks or feels like an orange (called peau d’orange). Ask if your GYN is familiar with inflammatory breast cancer, and tell her that you’re concerned and want to come in to rule it out.

Feel free to read Toddler Planet’s blog to learn more. It’s made me think to not take things for granted about my health. So many times I push things aside because I think they are stress related……and I can fix them by not being so stressed. It’s however easier said than done. All of you women out there please repost Toddler Planet’s blog, as the more women we inform the better!

dead headphonist

Bike rides and music

Current Mood:On Ice emoticon On Ice

IMG00109.jpg

Hello all. It’s a beautiful Sunday. We headed out this afternoon for a bike ride around East. Was quite enjoyable and Char picked some seriously righteous hills. My fat butt got a pretty good workout. Clare rode along on the one-wheeled attachment, as usual. Hopefully, one day we’ll get her to switch to a real bike.

At the moment, I’m chillin’ in the kitchen listening to some tunes while Char consumes the latest Harry Potter installment and Clare flutters between us; looking for a playmate.

I picked up The Magic Numbers latest disc, which I have to say is very excellent as well as Honeycut, which I’ve wanted for a good long time. I’ve also been using some download services to satiate my need for new music lately as it’s a little more economical and I’ve been spending a lot of quality time with MP3’s lately anyway. The only complaint I have is that the scope of some of the services is too narrow to really find what I’m looking for. Getting into a situation where I can actually use hi-fi equipment is becoming more and more of a challenge as well.

dead headphonist

Things have changed

Current Mood:Happy emoticon Happy

Hello all. As you may have noticed, we’ve migrated eastowners.com to a new platform (and sort-of-new provider). If you notice anything weird, just leave a comment on this article and we’ll take a look at it. The latest pics from our cameras are up in the gallery and the older stuff will make it there as time permits.

For separate blogs, see the “Categories” section to the right. Blogs are now searchable and RSS-enabled for your feed machines. We’ve integrated the gallery into the blog software to allow for photo-blogging, so look forward to a bit of that.

cyal8r.

charmaspice

Why Women are So Important…

My mom sent this to me in an e-mail, and I thought it was pertinant to where I am in my life. I am privledged enough to have many great women in my life that fill all of the personal “slots” so to say that fill my life with much needed sanity, laughter, and serious moments. It had the usual chain letter thing at the bottom to pass it on to so many women….I don’t believe in any of those things, so I deleted it immediately.

I hope that everyone is having a happy Saturday, I know we are. Coffee, the paper, and a promissed trip to the book store this afternoon will fill our day around here.

THIS SAYS IT ALL:

Time passes,
Life happens.
Distance separates.
Children grow up.
Jobs come and go.
Love waxes and wanes.
Men don’t do what they’re supposed to do .
Hearts break. Parents die.
Colleagues forget favors.
Careers end.
BUT………

Sisters are there, no matter how much time and how many miles are
between you. A girl friend is never farther away than needing her can
reach.

When you have to walk that lonesome valley and you have to walk it by
yourself, the women in your life will be on the valley’s rim, cheering
you on, praying for you, pulling for you, intervening on your behalf,
and waiting with open arms at the valley’s end.

Sometimes, they will even break the rules and walk beside you…Or come in and carry you out.

Girlfriends, daughters, granddaughters, daughters-in-law, sisters,
sisters-in-law, Mothers, Grandmothers, aunties, nieces, cousins, and
extended family, all bless our life!

The world wouldn’t be the same without women, and neither would I.
When we began this adventure called womanhood, we had no idea of the incredible
joys or sorrows that lay ahead. Nor did we know how much we would need each other.

Every day, we need each other still. Pass this on to all the women who help make your life meaningful. I just did. Short and very sweet:

There are more than twenty angels in this world.
Ten are peacefully sleeping on clouds. Nine are playing. And one is
reading her e-mail at this moment.

dead headphonist

Virtual File Systems & FTP

I’m excited. I’ve been trying to tackle the problem of providing a near-online storage solution for an application that stores its data in a very specific data structure and saves it via FTP. Sure… there are plenty of applications out there that will automate this for and leave tidy little pointers on the real file system so your application is none the wiser.

My budget, unfortunately, is not such that I could take that approach.

What I found is an FTP server from a company called Gene6 that provides the ability to create a virtual file system (VFS) out of a merge of several directories. More info here : http://www.g6ftpserver.com/manuals/en/vfs.html .

Next, will come testing of the concept, but this should allow us to move (behind the scenes) data to a less expensive disk media and still have the files accessible by the application in the same “spot” they’ve always been in. This is really cool stuff and I hope it works the way I think it will. Stay tuned…

dead headphonist

Wordpress unleashed!

Welcome to the new eastowners.com! We’ll soon add the photo galleries back and enable full commenting and interaction. We’re pretty excited and there will definitely be more content added as time goes on.