Category Archives: Family

I’ve been “translating” Safe Eyes 3.0 to Australian this week. It’s been a lot of fun learning new things about Xcode, Cocoa and Mac architecture. Our project structure is insanely complicated (projects with dependencies on other projects, projects that package the product of other projects inside them, etc). It’s been a crash course in Xcode and I’ve had a blast. It’s nearly complete now (which is good because it’s going to the Australian government for testing next week).

Today, it was 75 degrees. Between that and the time change, I decided to leave work a few minutes early so that I could get home, get Kayla some dinner (Valerie had a spa to work tonight, but still managed to bake chicken for us), and go to the park with her! We took her purple bike and helmet and she biked around the park for a while. Then, we walked and ran all around for another 30 minutes or so. Then home for bed.

I’ll leave you with a few quotes from this evening with Kayla:

[While biking on her little purple tricycle]
Me: Are you ready to hit the trails?
Kayla: Yes!…What are trails?

[Later while walking back to the car]
Kayla: Where’s God? Oh, maybe at the North Pole with Santa!

Kids are great.

This past weekend, I flew up to NJ for my sister’s birthday.  The fun thing was that she didn’t know I was coming.  Dad picked me up from the airport and brought me home and when I walked in the door Katy just sort of stood there with her mouth hanging open and said, “What?! What?”  LOL  It was fun.

After her Sweet 16/4 year-old/Western-themed birthday party Friday night (which everyone pitched in to help with), it was pretty much just relaxing and taking it easy for the rest of the weekend.  Then, I flew back Monday afternoon/evening.  Kayla was very happy to see me and gave me a “Welcome Home” balloon which has now joined the many other cubicle decorations in my cube here at work.

Two last items of interest:

1. I have reignited my love of my Nintendo DS.  I played a bunch of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and might end up actually beating the game soon and I picked up Puzzle Quest on the cheap.  I am now thoroughly addicted to Puzzle Quest.  It sounds crazy, but it’s Bejeweled mixed with an RPG.
2. My Time Capsule is here!  It shipped on Thursday from Shanghai which is amazing to me.

This was a much busier week than I thought it was going to be when I embarked upon it! The clear evidence of that is that I haven’t posted all week. So, without further ado, here is January 19-25th…in bullet list form.

• Saturday night – InternetSafety.com holiday party. We have a tradition of having it well after the actual holidays it is designed to celebrate. Great time. We had a “Casino Night” and as one of the top 3 winners, I received a Visa Gift Card prize! It also snowed a good bit and the temperature proceeded to drop into the 20s (shut up, Northerners).
• Sunday – Due to the fear of ice, church had been canceled. I hurried out first thing in the AM to pick up a few bags of firewood (since I procrastinated at getting some real stuff delivered and am too lazy to chop the logs we have here). We kept the fire going all day and stayed pretty much in our pajamas. It was one of the best days in recent history just hanging out as a family and having a restful time!
• Monday night – band practice. We still don’t have a name, but I got to try out my new pedal a bit and play my acoustic (since Steven, our acoustic guitar player and leader wasn’t there). I think I did a fair job of leading the practice and even sang a bit.
• Monday night into Tuesday morning – After practice, we had a little impromptu HVAC class. The thermostat in the youth room had been relocated to the uninsulated attic where it was making the electric heat run constantly. Shane found it and cut it off, John and I fished the thermostat wire through the wall (including some contortionism on both our parts), and we reattached it and mounted it inside the room it is meant to control.
• Tuesday – Other than work, I don’t remember what happened. It was a blur. I know I spent a good portion of it building the first “Retail” disc master with the new Mac version of Safe Eyes. It’s an ordeal, but I scripted a lot of it, so it should be easier next time.
• Wednesday – Work. Then Sold Out (youth group) at church. Good worship time (despite the lack of our drummer), good message, good Beef O’ Brady’s afterwards.
• Thursday – Busy day at work. I was “in the zone” and ended up staying until about 7pm coding up some new and fancy disable options for Safe Eyes. I got home and began playing Burnout Paradise. Great multiplayer experience!
• Thursday night into Friday morning – Kayla woke up at about 3am having puked in her bed. Change the bed clothes and an hour later, she was back up sick again. Valerie pulled an all-nighter sleeping on the floor up in Kayla’s room and helped her get to the bathroom the remaining times she was sick. She’s feeling much better now after drinking her Pedialyte and resting all day Friday.
• Friday – More coding at work. It’s good to be straight-coding again for a bit after quite a time managing the Mac project and just general non-programming tasks.

Well, the evening’s entertainment, the Doodlebops (Kayla loves them), is nearing the end, so I should go play with Kayla a bit before it’s off to bed with her and on to more Burnout Paradise for me!

That’s right, you read that correctly. Our lawn burned down.

The other night, Valerie called just after I left work and couldn’t manage to tell me quite what was going on. Finally, I asked her straight up: What are you trying to say? “The yard is on fire,” she said.

Apparently, she had smelled a little smoke, but figured it was someone using their fireplace. About then, two neighborhood kids rang the doorbell and said, “Uhh, did you know your yard is on fire?” No. We didn’t, actually. Thanks, guys.

So, she and the two boys put out the fires (there were now multiple ones spreading across the yard) with the hose. I asked her if she needed to call the fire department, but she said she was pretty sure it was out.

I got home finally, and decided to call the fire department out anyway just to make sure everything was ok. Now, in their defense, I did say that I was pretty sure it was out, but they still just sent one guy in street clothes on the engine. He said, “I would just keep an eye on it every so often tonight.” Thanks. My voluteer firefighter dad was much more helpful and suggested I rake out any thick piles to make sure the fire hadn’t burned down into the brush (since our yard is wooded and covered with leaves in parts).

All I can guess is that one of the many kids that use our yard as a cut-through was smoking and decided just to flick his cigarette butt on the ground. With as dry as it has been here in Georgia and with the fertilizer that was on the grass from just the day before, it doesn’t take much to get a fire going.

It’s sad because I’ve spent a lot of money getting our grass into shape so we can potentially sell the house this year or next. Hopefully, it will come back. It was just a quick surface burn and in some climates they deliberately burn the bermuda grass so it comes back lusher and thicker, but it’s way earlier in the season than when they would normally burn the grass. We’ll see what happens over the next few months.