Monday, September 25, 2006
Deb: Banana on the Cob
I’m not sure what’s happened to put Sadie off of the centers of bananas, but for the last several weeks she’s refused to have anything to do with them. Like just now, she swiped half of the baby’s banana and ate half of the half, because she insisted on eating it corn-on-the-cob style. She left the nasty carcass in the recliner for me, too. The kid’s all heart. LOL! But seriously, I’d love to know wtf the banana-middle-fear is all about…
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Jay: “But I love it!”
That is Sadie’s latest sentence, and perhaps the clearest one she has said so far.
She said it in response to being asked to stop stepping on Deb’s shins (ouch!) and climbing on her. Deb is not just a mom, but also a jungle gym.
Sadie is something else. You’re lucky if she’ll actually say yes or no in answer to a question calling for one or the other, but she bursts out with a completely unexpected, multi-word value judgment.
She also seems intent on learning letters and presumably reading at the same time she learns to talk. It’s fascinating. She frequently pretends to read, or will point at a page and say different letters.
Jay: Question
Do you think that asking on a blog for feedback on how to proceed with a business holds too much danger of coming across as not knowing what I am doing?
Jay: Sigh…
I went to the office Friday night and came home late last night, spending a lot of time working on servers, and having people help with prep and maintenance of workstations. Initially it went fine, but in the end, after from-scratch reinstalls of Windows 2003 Server. Then I ended up in the same place; the servers unable to see each other. One of them is also plugged into the internet and sees that fine. One of them is also plugged into the old network and sees that fine. Each other? Not so much.
Yet it worked at first. I was all ready to move into the Exchange setup phase. Which really means doing a bunch of preparatory stuff I don’t yet grok first, because instead of just being a setup, Exchange 2003 setup asks what kind of setup you mean to do and then gives you a checklist of stuff to do for whichever one you choose. This whole Active Directory thing is so whacky. And newfangled! It’s only been around since Windows 2000 Server, after all.
Anyway, I found evidence that the problem might be a matter of registry permissions. I saved investigating that for today, when the last thing I want to do is go back and continue this. I’m a zombie, and that’s after 3 1/2 mugs of strongish coffee.
Meanwhile, I described the situation to a mailing list I am on of people who Know Things. The reply so far is “you’re doing WHAT?! No, don’t!” Which is probably half accurate assessment, and half not realizing what all the details are and imply. For instance, the trust relationship is temporary. On the other hand, apparently trying to have two domain controllers is a Really Bad Thing. Who knew! Maybe it’s way too NT of me, but I assumed having a backup controller would be a Good Thing.
I think I may have to change the configuration again, and ironically doing so may be easiest if I reinstall. Again. But hey, I’m getting closer each time.
It’s also starting to appear that the new network would come off better with one server to do nothing but be the controller, which I had no reason to expect previously, when I assured them they’d bought everything they’ll need for a while. Well, server-wise anyway.
I tried to get Dell to quote me for Microsoft Office licenses and the guy there refused because I should wait until the new release comes out in November. The one that won’t run on most of the computers we have. So ironically another guy at Dell last week notifies us that there is a rebate program from Microsoft if you buy licenses of the current version, and we should hurry to take advantage of it. Doh. Scary that they can offer a rebate of $125 per unit. That implies the licenses are perhaps double or so the cost I might have expected.
Oh well. Apparently writing this helped wake my brain up. Either that or that final(?) half mug off coffee took me over some threshhold in which caffeine trumps dopamine or seratonin or whatever causes the zombie plague. Barely.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Deb: Finally, I get around to getting the templates more or less right.
So if anything’s acting funny, let me know, ‘eh?
Friday, September 22, 2006
Jay: It Wouldn’t Be Our Blog Without Sadie and Valerie Pictures
Here’s Sadie from today. She leaned forward into the picture, giving it a different look:
From a week or two ago. Valerie loves bagels with cream cheese:
Please let me know if the pictures don’t display for you. They are hosted at elhide.com, rather than at accidentalverbosity.com (which is where blogblivion.com resides), because there is far more space available there. I have hotlink protection turned on, but with AV and BB granted exceptions. Thus it ought to be fine, unless elhide.com’s server just happens to be down when you see this post.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Deb: Seven months.
So Valerie is officially seven months old. To celebrate, she decided to spend a couple of days getting her top front teeth. Either that, or an alien has taken over her body and it’s pissed at being stuck on Earth, so I’m guessing the teeth. Nothing yet. Pray soon.
Anyhow, the ambitious little thing has started standing completely unsupported. We saw her do it the first time about a week ago, and now about every other time you put her down on her feet she’ll just stand there for a minute before she drops down and crawls away. She’s so controlled on her way to the ground! She can push something across the room and walk behind it. She cruises all over the place, around the coffee table and between it and the couch and along anything she can find to hold onto. She climbs over things in her path now, too, and when Sadie takes the cushions off the couch and throws them down in front of it she’ll climb up onto the couch.
She’s finally thinking about growing out of her 3-6 month wardrobe, which is all huge on her except for the length. She’s all arms and legs. I stuff her full of cheese and butter and she just gets taller. Future supermodels of America? I bought her hippie baby yogurt last week, which she loves. She eats suppers with us now, and baby food maybe every other day for a meal. She hates being fed. Pretty much any kind of pasta is her favorite. food. ever. And cheese. OMG, the cheese.
She is without a doubt the oldest seven month old baby I’ve ever met. Having Sadie to keep up with is a great motivator, it seems. I just wish she’d sleep like an older baby, already, before I collapse!
Deb: Some folks eventually cease to amuse me.
I was following yet another argument in a comments section somewhere when it devolved into the following form:
Commenter A: You chose chocolate, I chose vanilla. Can’t we live and let live?
Commenter B: No, because your choice of vanilla impacts the availability of my chocolate and how people look at chocolate, which is grossly unfair because chocolate really is better and people should have to eat it, unlike that nasty vanilla that you’re trying to force on the world by lying about how good it is.
This argument always cracks me up, because it never occurs to B that one would be able to switch the flavors around and it would be every bit as devastating, if the argument had any force outside of B’s perception of persecution. The assumption that A’s actions can negatively impact B’s range of available choices but that B’s actions have no effect on A’s range of available choices is a bad one. And funny if not a little pathetic in practice, because more often than not B is seeking to remove the ability to choose altogether, so long as the prescribed flavor turns out to be chocolate. This usually leads B into wild statements of non-fact, such as the assertion that people who are allergic to chocolate are an urban myth invented by the vanilla lobby because they hate chocolate lovers.
Of course, the whole thing is generally based on the (faulty) premise that there’s a fixed amount of ice cream in the world. And since the ice cream in these scenarios usually comes from the government, there is a perception that this incorrect premise is actually correct. Government is not famous for its nimbleness of response to shifting flavor demands or its unwillingness to try to just eat all the ice cream itself. Non-governmental dairies could easily account for varying flavor preferences, but it never even occurs to B that this is a possibility; hence the I need to steal yours before you can steal mine routine. That strategy actually makes sense when the government controls all the ice cream.
Where it always falls apart, though, is with B’s declaration of the righteousness of chocolate. Because I’m right doesn’t qualify as an argument, no matter how much B wants it to be true. Reality doesn’t give a good goddamn what flavor ice cream your neighbors eat. The entire ice cream dichotomy is a false one, an artificial structure created and reinforced by that part of human nature that just can’t stay out of other people’s business. Good of the tribe and all that, and I’m sure the trait has served us well over the millennia on a species level, but it causes a boatload of trouble in these (supposedly) more civilized times. The ironic bit is that B--the party desperate to force a particular vision of righteousness on the other members of the tribe--is generally also the party who is trying to accomplish something that will work against the welfare of the tribe as a whole.
Well, above and apart from the harm that the use of force inflicts in and of itself, anyway.
It’s not news that absurd premises lead to absurd conclusions, but it’s sad that so many argue utter absurdities and don’t even know they’re doing it because the helplessness is so ingrained that it never even occurs to them that there might be some way to get chocolate that doesn’t involve banning vanilla.
And you all wonder why I’ve gone off political blogs.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Jay: Happy Birthday
To blogger and original Munuvian Pixy Misa.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Deb: Sesame Street Just Ain’t What It Used To Be
But we’ve got YouTube now. So when Sadie insisted on sitting in my lap while I was writing earlier tonight, we watched this:
I admit, I squealed like the girl I am and hollered: I remember this one! Yay! LOL!
Jay: XM or Sirius?
Discuss.
Also, best bets for portable MP3 player and site for small number of not onerously DRM’d MP3 purchases, like the once in a while “I haven’t heard that in years I love that song” kind of thing?
Deb: Use it and lose it.
There’s been a lot of talk at our house about the various ways people want to “fix” health insurance, and the one thing that’s become perfectly clear from all of this is that all of them are designed to bring costs down by keeping people from actually using it. One side wants to tax cheetos until nobody needs it, since we all know thin people don’t go to the doctor. If that fails, they’ll put the government in charge of the whole shebang, so that you’ll die of boredom waiting on hold to get an appointment. That’s cheap.
The other side is anxious to get a “free market,” which so far as I can tell means altering the regulatory structure of the insurance industry in such a way that anyone who might actually use insurance will be priced out of the market. Oh, and fat people, too, natch, because everybody knows that thin people don’t go to the doctor.
So you can understand why I laughed so hard I that started to cry when I got the following from Jay, who had locked his keys in the truck and had to call AAA about a week ago:
As I made sure my keys were not in the truck when I locked and walkedaway from it, I was thinking that I should not be allowed to haveAAA, because I used it, and my using it cost the people who have it but don’t use it money. Heh.
Deb: You know you’ve been blogging too long when…
You see that it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day and your reaction is, again? Already? Didn’t we just have that? Sheesh!
Jay: Happy Birthday
To my nephew Marc, who is 15 today.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Jay: Happy Birthday
To blogger Mrs. Who.
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