Feeling better, Anthony Enjoying his First(?) Pizza
On Sunday we made a short visit to our next-door neighbors, a pleasant retired couple with grandkids ranging from a bit older than Anthony to adult. Fumie and Anthony had plans, so we intended to stop in just to say “hi” and show off Anthony, whom they hadn't seen in two years.
We stayed for about 15 minutes, and left as Anthony started to get a bit fussy.
Five minutes later, as Fumie got Anthony situated in the car for them to go out, we realized why he was getting so fussy: his entire face was breaking out [...]
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Say what nasty things you want about Fry's, and they'll probably be true, but nevertheless I must say that my visit today to the Sunnyvale location was like a kid in a candy store. I hadn't been to an electronics superstore like Fry's in a long time, and there was just so much stuff to enjoy.
My main reason for going was to pick up a cheap router. The old Netopia R9100 that Steve had given me long ago finally seems to have bit the dust and stopped serving DHCP clients. After spending a few days futzing with it, I gave up [...]
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Yesterday, I went to Fry's again to pick up a Big Disk for my server (the one hosting my book's site and this blog). I was happily surprised to find that they had a sale, ending that day, on Seagate 500GB hard drives, with a 5-year warranty, no less. Normally $300, they were on sale for $200. I hadn't even noticed the sale price, and was considering a different brand (I don't have a great feeling about Seagate, but then, I don't have a great feeling about any hard disk manufacture, but have not had any experience yet, good nor bad, with Hitachi, so was considering their 500GB [...]
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Anthony and I were kicking a ball around in the backyard when the sprinklers came on. I ran to get my camera and he ran around.
About to make another pass
Dancing

(the thing on his arm is a Teddy-bear sticker)
Sitting direcly on the sprinkler head
The End
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I finally received the larger, 160GB laptop disk drive I ordered some time ago. I turns out that they were back ordered and that the supply wasn't coming in as quickly as the folks at Trans International thought, so they kindly cut me a deal on a different 160GB drive that they'd just received a shipment of, and as a bonus, they overnighted it to me.
I had some issues with the minixpress 825 firewire drive that I also ordered. It's a new product and they're still having to work out some kinks in the housing design. After a call to the company and some futzing [...]
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Fumie on Lost Lake, with Mt. Hood in the Background
We just got back from a weekend trip to Portland, Oregon. We went for no special reason -- just wanted to give it a try. The trip included a drive out to near Mt. Hood. I took this picture of Fumie while in a rowboat on Lost Lake.
The peak of the mountain is 10 miles (16.2 km) behind her, rising 2,462 meters (one and a half miles) above the lake.
We spent an hour and a half out in the boat, and had a very pleasant time.
The image is geoencoded, [...]
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Coming home from our trip to Portland today I was happy to find a box of books from my publisher, O'Reilly. It seems that they were able to get my book out earlier than expected. (Yikes, I don't have the web site updated yet!)
The timing is good, because I'll be at O'Reilly's booth at LinuxWorld tomorrow for a bit (Tuesday, from 12:30 pm) to sign books, and now I'll be able to do so with the new edition.
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What a fun day I had today.
I first went up to San Francisco for a small O'Reilly event at LinuxWorld, and in doing so I got to meet my book's editor, Andy Oram, in person for the first time in perhaps four years. I was so shocked at how good he looked, having trimmed down from the decidedly chubbier Andy I knew from before, that I almost didn't recognize him.
He has two musically-gifted children (aged 5 and 9 when I last met them, now aged 17 and 21). Although they got their gift from God, it would have never realized [...]
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Anthony is a Giant!

Anthony's 4.5-month-old cousin Josh was here yesterday. My sister Marci came to pick over the stuff in our Cupertino house that we're not bringing back to Japan (which is most of the stuff -- ugh, lots to get rid of).
When looking at the copious pictures I took, I was struck by the perspective of the shot above. It was taken with an 18mm lens, which means that the size of something close to the lens becomes exaggeratedly large. In this shot, Anthony is about two feet closer to the lens than Josh (4 feet away instead of 6 feet), and [...]
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Here are a few more pics from our recent Portland trip.
Takeoff from San Jose
Riding in Style at Portland Airport
Being Silly
Checking Out Another's Ride
Dinner Cruise on the Portland Spirit
Having lined up the butter cubes like piano keys, Anthony proceeds to play them
Mt. Hood, from the Middle of Nowhere
Waiting For a Boat at Lost Lake
Helping Daddy Row
Exploring on the Other Side of the Lake
Throwing Rocks
Anthony Really Enjoyed the Rocks....
....Except When He Fell on his Rear
Ouchy Butt!
Butt Feeling Better, Anthony Plays Under Mommy's Sweet Gaze
Getting Sleepy

I've not had a chance to write lately because we've been working hard preparing the Cupertino house for sale, and preparing for our trip back to Kyoto next Tuesday. Yet, there are many things I'd like to write about, such as Anthony looking through his legs into the toilet while “mid business” and proclaiming “I have a tail!” Or complaining that a simple plastic blank insert for a Decora switchplate (to fill the space where no switch exists) costs almost twice as much as a switch, which is a complex metal and plastic object.
(For that matter, I could complain about moronic web sites like Home Depot's [...]
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I played Ultimate Frisbee with Yahoo! friends last Tuesday and Thursday, and had a great time, despite suffering from being out of shape. I'd brought my camera, and ended up with about 1,200 photos by me and others. I've not even taken a first pass at all of them, but from what I've seen, most are throw-away, but there are a few nice ones.
As I was looking over some from the 2nd day, where only five of us played, I really liked the image below. It turns out that it's the start of a sequence that itself is very nice, I think.