… so I guess the only people that can be with the new baby are me, her mom, and her grandmother.  In other words, Jolene and her two coaches.  It’s sad that everyone can’t come, but at the same time… we’re not going to let it interrupt the happiness we feel.

Weeks 32-33

Jolene is doing well, though she has acquired some of the more common issues that a pregnant woman has.  Braxton-Hicks contractions are NO FUN in the middle of a soccer field, behind the CMU Kelly/Shorts Stadium.

We’ve delivered our birth plan to the baby’s doctor.  It’s such a detailed document and contains stuff that… I couldn’t believe was on there.  Jolene doesn’t know, but I scribbled “I want to wear a grass skirt to deliver the baby” on the bottom of it before handing it to the nurse.  What a surprise that will be!

I guess right now the baby is between 4-5 pounds, and is starting to get more normal looking skin colors.  She’s putting on weight, and generally making mom uncomfortable.  Also, she’s losing the wrinkly “alien looking” skin texture.  Which is good, because the alien birth look is so 90’s.

The he-beastie turned 10!

He is now officially a double-digit individual.  He had a birthday party with family all coming over to have lasagna and give him his presents.  I missed half of the entertainment, having class through the beginning of the dinner party.  No pictures here, but he made off quite well.  It almost makes me want to turn 10 again.  It was nice having everyone over all at once, even if our house is so tiny.

Things are going well at college for me – things are getting routine.  Instead of bringing my GPS with me to Mt Pleasant, I’ve started leaving it at home.  I figure the iPhone can handle anything I need to find anyway.

Supply Chain Management: I can now say that I don’t think this is something I’d like to do for a career in the future.  It’s gone past the first chapter introduction information and has moved on to ratios and the like.  Nothing mindblowing, but the way it’s presented is not the way I would think if I were in the situation in the business world.

Python Programming: I’m 40% complete with the classwork, and have been doing it from home mostly.  I plan on hopping in for some assistance on the next chapter though, some of the syntax in this language is a little off.  This is somewhat challenging since I’m basically teaching myself.

Financial Analysis:  Easy so far – still doing annuities and perpetuities and the like.  So far it’s mostly been review.  I had to buy a calculator since my graphing one isn’t what the book is based on.  I’m not really that pleased with the BA-II calculator as it’s kinda janky in the way that it requires input.  Then again, I didn’t want to use the graphing one because it too has a bad input method for uneven cash flows and other finance items.  Stuff like this, but longer since this is a small example: NPV(12,0,{100,200,300,400,500})*1.12^5.  Yeah, I don’t want to do that on a test.

Marketing Management: I’m enjoying this class more than I thought I would.  I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.  I recently received the outline of the final project and started compiling data for my company, Urban Outfitters.  Everything is group-work based in this class so far, it seems.  As a veritable hermit, that’s challenging.

Integrated Business Experience: SAP.  So we’ve started to use the industry leading Enterprise Services product.  I’m actually very excited about this class.  Good experience with this product is very marketable.

Week 30-31

She now weighs about 3 pounds, and is starting to become quite the boxer.  I can now sit back and watch Jolene’s stomach’ jump’ at me.  She’s regularly kicking, both her brother in the head as well as my hand.  The baby is gaining weight still, and this is making Jolene more uncomfortable.  She’s dealing with it well, however.  We also got a new Pack n’ Play (thanks mom and dad!).  It’s got some rather unique features.  Putting it all together felt like I was a soldier putting together an M-16 for the first time – it was harder than some of the content of the classes listed above.  It comes with a vibrating device and a light as well, plus changing table, plus a napping pad.  This is really what we need, given our little area we have.

Beasties 1st Week at School

The other two beasties had a successful first week at school.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever David, I’m off to school…”

I didn’t get to hear much from the kids since I’ve been going to school during the times that they’ve been getting out.  All of the exciting news gets simmered down by the time I hit the house.  I missed both of the orientations because of school too.  Things seem to have gone well though, and adjustments have been successful: Ben for not having his sister at school with him for the very first time, and Maddie for going to a new, more grown up school.

More pictures here…

Overall, everything is going exceedingly good, but also exceedingly busy.

I looked around for a recipe for him, and found one- I won’t post it because it wasn’t good enough that we will ever re-use it… but he was a happy, happy boy.  His sister was away at camp so he had the kitchen and mom all to himself.  This is rare- with Maddie wanting to be a pastry chef… she thinks she’s an expert already and constantly bosses him around.

I was able to sit back in my chair with my camera and let him go to town.  I offered advice if I saw he was about to do something that would kill the muffins (tablespoon instead of teaspoon kind of stuff) and take pictures.

They turned out exactly as they should have- they had cinnamon in them and I think that none of us were fond of that- but they were edible.

And not one picture of the finished product… We were too busy eating them while they were warm!

I missed the Decemberists concert.  The kids and Jolene went alone.   They did get some pictures, and Maddie made sure to record videos of the songs for me on the camera.  That was very sweet of her. I was super sad that I couldn’t make it – I had been looking forward to going for months. The pictures and videos they took of the concert are here.

I did fix my issue with not seeing the concert, though:

The Netbook

It’s tiny, and perfectly sized for 12 year old girl hands.  My hands, on the other hand, had considerable trouble typing on it while using it.  ‘.com’ would turn into ‘.cim’, with my fingers too fat to easily type on the small keyboard.  I’m sure with time I would get used to it.  I don’t think it would be workable for a note-taking device in college, as I’ve seen some people try.

It’s about as powerful as a ‘last generation’ laptop, and has the following:

It has no hard drive – it uses flash memory, like a smaller iPod.  Given all that I expected it to have more than a 4 hour battery life, but I’m not complaining too much.  $249 for this computer at sams club, it’s more than acceptable.

The Cleanup

What wasn’t so acceptable was the amount of garbage on the meager storage that this computer had.  A full Windows XP disc image of drivers, which would be useful if she were replacing components of the computer (not really possible), copies of other drivers, a full mccaffe internet security installation, Microsoft Works, Powerpoint 2007 Viewer, and so on…  Dell could have made my job easier by using a more updated windows installation and less cruft.

4 hours of updates, deinstallation of the assorted crud, and installation of smaller, better programs to handle her homework and entertainment needs, and she should be set to go.  Her first full day of usage is still upcoming – the poor girl had to spend hours looking at it sitting in its box at sams and then at lunch.

The She-Beastie

Of course, with her own computer comes more responsibility.  The first major difference is that previously, we had a computer in her room with which we had to log her in to meter out internet usage.  Being a fixed computer, we also had remote desktop viewing capabilities, so she and her brother knew that we would be able to ’see’ what they were doing despite it being in a different room.

I could install a remote desktop application on the netbook, but we decided against it.  She’s going to need to develop her privacy, after all.  The netbook will sit on moms desk so that it doesn’t get used prior to homework or other obligations, much like the desktop comptuer is now.

She’s been taught fairly well about what to do and what not to do while online.  We’ll see how things go.