November 2003 Archives

As we enter this holiday season, it'll be fun to see which toys and gifts our kids like the most. That seems to be the problem, doesn't it? Will your son or daughter like the gift more than the box it came in?

Because this will no doubt happen to us at some point, I wonder how many parents pick out the perfect gift for their kids, only to have them hate it. I bet it happens more than you'd think. Or, what may be worse, the expensive gift that gets played with on December 25th and then recedes into the dark recesses of the closet.

But our kids will love the presents no matter what. :) We'll just have to remember to hide the boxes as soon as they're unwrapped.

Hale & Addison went to the pediatrician today for their 18-month and 1-month check-ups. Here are their stats:

Hale:
27 lbs., 3 1/2 oz. (70th percentile for weight)
33 3/4 inches (85th percentile for height)

Addi (actually 6 weeks old):
10 lbs., 8 1/2 oz. (90th percentile for weight)
21 1/2 inches (60th percentile for height)

As you can see, our babies are growing all-too-quickly. But it feels good to know that they are healthy and developing normally.

We're proud to announce that Miss Addison has finally figured out the difference between day and night! She has slept for over 8 hours straight the past two nights, and I couldn't be more thrilled! (I remember when 13 hours was a decent night's sleep, but those days left with graduation day from Purdue!!) It's amazing how 6:00 a.m. doesn't seem so bad when you haven't also been up at 1:00, 3:00...etc. Yeah for Addi Paige!!!

Today was an interesting day, as I ventured out (ALONE) for the first time with both kids! We made our way to a photo studio called The Picture People to have a photo taken of the kids in Hale's playgroup...five 18-month-olds...Hale, Evan, Jack, Claire and Kylynn!! Add Addison to the mix, and it makes for quite an unruly experience!

Was it successful? Check out the pics and decide for yourself!

Let me be honest -- hosting this website is not terribly expensive for Jill and I. But, there are still some costs involved. So, that's why I don't feel too entirely bad about setting up a way in which we might even out those costs while not really costing anyone any money... Sounds a little fishy, doesn't it? That was my first thought about it -- and hey, the jury is still out -- but I think it will work fairly well. "What will work?" you might ask. The Amazon.com Affiliates program.

Basically, here's how it works. Whenever Jill and I get ready to buy anything from Amazon.com, we first use the "Shop at Amazon" link in the menu area of this site. It identifies us as shoppers who have come from 348North and will credit back to us 15% of any purchase. So right off the bat, we get 15% off any purchase. Sweet!

Also, any of you who are going to shop at Amazon.com (or Toys R Us online, or Target online, etc.) and travel through our site first instead of just typing a-m-a-z-o-n-.-c-o-m into your browser will be helping us out on any purchase that you make. And no, it doesn't add to the price of your order. And no, we can't see what you purchase -- only the total dollar value of everyone that orders using our site as an entry point. So Santa's helpers should rest assured of their confidentiality.

We'll see how this works, and if it gets "fishy" I'll can it right away. Like I said, it isn't a huge amount of money that we pay to run this website, but any little bit that offsets the cost is helpful.

Although my oldest brother Joe will understand these things in much greater detail than I -- he has a double degree in Computer and Electrical Engineering from Purdue -- I am always amazed by how much smaller, quieter, and more energy efficient items we use can be made. Which isn't to say that all of them are made that way, of course.

There was an interview that I stumbled across today between these two microprocessor designers, Dan and Dave -- from the article: Dan Dobberpuhl is responsible for the design of many high-performance microprocessors, including the PDP-11, uVax, Alpha, and StrongARM... [Dave] Ditzel is vice chairman and chief technology officer of Transmeta Corporation, which he cofounded in 1995 to develop a new kind of computer -- one that would learn how to improve its performance and save power as it ran, by using software embedded in the processor itself. The intersting part to me is how much more efficient purpose-focused microprocessors can be:

From A Conversation with Dan Dobberpuhl via queue

DITZEL So I guess -- given the operating system you have today and maybe the PC you have today -- if you're happy with the performance, the real problem for business is you're not buying a new PC or a new operating system.

In some sense one can say that the people who design operating systems and new processors are looking for ways that you won't have sufficient performance with the machine you have today, so that you'll need to buy something new. Is there any way out of this vicious cycle?

DOBBERPUHL I don't know. From an engineering point of view, we'll continue to try to improve the performance-per-watt ratio. It's interesting that a low-power processor can deliver on the order of 1,000 MIPS per watt. And maybe 2,000 for a really good one. It depends upon the absolute performance level.

And the high-performance processors are about an order of magnitude worse than that. They're on the order of 100 MIPS per watt. So there's a huge spread, and that's mostly a function of the same things we were talking about earlier with the Alpha and StrongARM.

It's where you choose the design point -- whether you go with 100 million transistors or 20 million transistors and whether you choose two gigahertz or one gigahertz. These things are all parameters the designer chooses, but then he has to live with the consequences.

It isn't a huge issue to a lot of people, but computers today use a lot of electricity. Yet, average MSWindows computers (and several of the Macintosh models) have 1 to 7 fans on them just to get rid of excess heat -- wasted electricity. Not to mention the noise polution from the fans. That's why I am so pleased with an appliance like a PDA. It does email and web, even solitaire with no fan, no electrical cord -- heck, no moving parts -- and can go on a single charge for days or weeks.

On the other end of the spectrum, a normal PC in most homes can be loud, hot, power-hungry, and yet will not be used for much more than what I just said the PDA will do. The personal asthetics of such things are quickly coming into question -- at least for me.

Obviously, I'm not the only one excited to be a new father -- David Letterman and his girlfriend (oh, Dave...) had a baby earlier this week. So, without any more delay... drumroll... Taped mere hours before Harry was born, the Top Ten list from Monday, November 3rd, 2003.

Top Ten Reasons I'm Excited To Be A Father via cbs.com

10. Instead of "You suck, Dave," I can look forward to "You suck, Dad"
9. All of America will get to watch him grow up on television, just like Cody Gifford!
8. My used hairpieces make cuddly fuzzy pals
7. Only the most cold-hearted state trooper would ticket a guy with an adorable baby
6. Asking mom to watch baby perfect way to keep her away from dog track
5. I stocked up on moist towelettes from the hospital supply room
4. Great new excuse for not hanging out with Regis
3. Anxious to put to use all the practice I've had raising my pet monkey Kenny
2. Two words: Swedish nanny
1. There is now tangible evidence that I have had sex

At the local library last week I picked up a copy of the 1975 book named The Bankers, by Martin Mayer-- a really interesting look at the banking industry in the 60's and 70's. About a hundred pages in, the author physically follows the path of a personal check after it is written -- in this case he writes a check to a local gas station and follows it all the way to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City. It's really quite a process.

While I do use my debit card instead of checks a lot these days, the money travels through the same system. The appeal to me is learning about how these things work, and why I should or should not feel comfortable using one or the other. Also, when I write a check to someone, how does it actually get into their account? How does direct deposit work? Why are banks always solid looking buildings? The author talks about those kind of things, as well as a lot of annecdotal stories about the industry. Good stuff.

So good in fact, that I went looking to see how much a copy of this book would cost me -- there's no way I'm going to get the whole book read before it needs to go back to the library -- only to find out that Mr. Mayer has updated his book (May 1998) and republished it under the similar title: The Bankers: The Next Generation. Probably an intersting contrast from then to now. Santa: I hope you're listening.

Q&A with KJ
A good friend of mine came to me with the following problem, in need of some advice.

situation: I'm a school teacher who works from home quite a bit on documents ranging from small MSWord documents (~30KB) to large MSPowerPoint files (~10MB). Often, I'd like to start on projects at home, work on them a little during my prep period at school, and then have them back home again with me at night. I used to be able to just email the files back and forth, but my school no longer keeps messages on the server for me, so I can't send email to myself from school and expect to see it at home without jumping through some webmail hoops. Also, I've tried reWriteable CDs, but they are a little more hassle than I'd like. Oh yeah, I have an iMac at home and MSWindows at work.

question: Is there an EASY solution to this problem?

answer: Yes. There is. But first, the not-so-easy solutions.

The first thing you could do is to go in and adjust your "leave messages on server" options in your mail client, or just switch from a POP type email connection to an IMAP connection. The problems you might encounter here are: 1) you have no idea what I'm talking about, 2) your attachments might be larger than your school/corporation would allow, or 3) your home dialup internet would take 3 hours to download your presentation. This isn't the best option, obviously.

Another option would be to talk your IT department into setting up WebDAV access and then using it to share your data back and forth. Basically, you'd be able to mount a portion of your network drive at work from home. If you did manage to get this implemented, you'd still have the same speed problems that effect email attachments. So, let's keep looking.

You might purchase a couple of Zip drives -- one for home and one for work. This is a decent solution, but you still have two new pieces of computer equipment to maintain. I've never had any problem with Zip drives, but I've heard of many that have -- the click-of-death is something to look out for apparently. I'll say this solution is a problem due to too many movable parts.

Finally, I LOVE the way Apple addresses this problem, both through their .Mac service (about $100 a year for 100MB, slow on dialup) and their iPod (expensive, and not especially cross platform). In an all-Mac environment, I'd definitely recommend the iPod -- a portable Firewire harddrive with benefits. But we don't have that luxury...

So here's what I recommend: an USB Flash drive. They're pretty cheap, very small, have no moving parts (won't break or wear out quickly), and are cross-platform. For MSWindows 2000 and above they just plug and play. Same goes for the Macintosh platform. Get yours today.

footnote: I should, of course, mention a couple of limitations with this technology. Compared to a regular harddrive, the flash input/output is a little slow. The capacity is lagging too. But compared to a floppy disk or dialup download speeds, I think the technology is a winner.

The model I have (Fujifilm USB DRIVE 128MB) requires a driver for MSWindows 98, found here.

UPDATE: how quickly times change -- I have a 512MB jump drive now (04/05) and it is already out of date!