November 2006 Archives

Cool nights and huge houses

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It's beautiful outside tonight--the kind of crisp coldness that I associated with Autumn in Portland when the leaves are changing Summer is gently slipping away. It doesn't get cool like this a whole lot in South Florida, so we're trying to enjoy it as much as we can. I wore a sweater yesterday!

We had dinner with some friends in a huge mansion that one of them is housesitting this week. It was a gigantic house, surrounded on three sides by canals. There is so much money down here, it's hard to describe. Sometimes we drive through the canals, passing by mansion after mansion and yacht after yacht, and I wonder where it all started. Where does all that money come from?

Zoe, it's November

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Fresh ZoeDearest Zoe,

It's November, and in just a few weeks you'll be six months old. It's hard to believe how fast you are growing, how much new stuff you take on every day like a brave little explorer, discovering the animals in your house, new ways to make noise, and new ways to use your hands.

You started eating solid food this month—your mother smooshed up some fresh bananas and fed them to you from the end of her finger. You grabbed her hand and wouldn't let it go so you could absorb every last molecule of goodness.

Amy went out and bought you some organic baby food, two little containers of bananas and two little containers of sweet potatoes. Both were a big hit, though you do tend to spit up a good bit, and the sweet potatoes color everything orange, even after they've spent some time in your adorable belly.

You've been talking a lot, same as ever, but you've added some new sounds to your repertoire: there's a "gggggaaaa," a "duuuh," and I'm pretty sure you've said "mmmmmmmmmmmm" a thousand times.

A friend of ours loaned us her walker because her third and fourth children are just too old and still too young (respectively) to use it, and as a result, you've been inching yourself around the living room for the last two days. I think you love how independent it makes you feel, but there's definitely a moment when you recognize that no adult is holding you, and I think you miss wrapping your arm around my shoulder and chewing on my shirt.

You've been coughing a lot the last few weeks, too, which worried us at first, but the books say that babies who are teething tend to cough up a lot. And while teeth still haven't shown up, you are a living, breathing fountain of drool, which is a good sign that teeth are coming soon.

Fresh ZoeYou are a huge baby—not fat or anything, just tall and healthy. You started wearing some of the clothes that say "12 mos" last month, when you were just five months old. It's a bit disconcerting, since there are many beautiful pieces of clothing in your drawers that you will never be able to wear again, unless you like wearing a onesie as a winter hat.

In the morning when I come to wake you up, I like to bend down over the crib to kiss you on the nose and on the cheeks. You grab my face with your hands and hold me there with our noses almost touching and you say things to me that I still can't understand. I can't wait to ask you what you were thinking about.

You've done your fair share of laughing these last few months, too. The dog is particularly funny. She chases the cats from room to room, and you grin at her and laugh. One day last month we were in the car and you started laughing at your mother. Something about the way she looked at you must have been hilarious, because you laughed for miles, mi querida Zoe.

A few quick comments on comments

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Okay, so here's the bad news: if you've commented anywhere on this site recently and your comments are missing . . . well, they're gone. The problem is, there have been a ton of junk comments (they're comments posted by little scripts written by spammers, designed to post "commercials" in the comments sections of blogs).

I've got a pretty hefty sorting system that keeps the bad stuff out, but sometimes it's too strong, and it keeps everyone else out, too. I haven't been very good about checking through that list to see if anyone real has commented, and it's likely that your comments got lost in the shuffle.

If that happened, don't despair! Just go ahead and comment again, either by doing comments again on older entries, or by starting anew. I promise I'll be better about checking to see who has commented, and I'll approve any comments from any real people.

Again, apologies.

I'm still at the Streaming Media West conference, on a break and preparing to make the trip to Mountain View to visit Lars and Anne. Just now, I'm sitting at a table in the middle of the convention center, very close to the wireless node that is providing Internet access to a pretty sizeable chunk of geeks, nerds, and geeky nerds in suits (the business types).

It's day two, the sessions weren't particularly exciting today, and I'm a bit worn down. So I just threw on my headphones and put on Frou Frou. Amazing! Suddenly everything is much better. Honestly, I could sit here for hours watching streaming media types walk back and forth from session to session without getting bored. That says something about the music, doesn't it? It helps me focus, and it makes everything more beautiful.

And that is beautiful.

I'm spending the week in San Jose, at the Streaming Media West 2006 conference. It's very interesting, and my time here has been productive. We're talking about video deployed through the Internet to multiple devices -- primarily PCs, but also mobile phones, iPods, etc.

Since I have a lot of experience with Flash, and Flash Video is one of the fastest growing formats used to deliver all of this content, my past life touches the edge of "streaming media," but just barely. The world has changed in the last 5 years, and the "bleeding edge" work I was doing way back when with Flying Rhinoceros is old hat now. Drag and drop, and boom you've got a video interface in Flash.

The one bonus is that I get to see Lars and Anne tonight, and I'll get to meet Kira for the first time. Having Zoe around has helped me to appreciate all of the beautiful children my friends are having. I miss my daughter, and seeing Kira and her wonderful parents should help to dull the "where's my daughter" ache a bit.

I thought about going to In-N-Out Burger for lunch today, but they provided a box. Maybe I'll make the trip tomorrow. It's rare that I'm in Cali (or even out West) these days, so I have to take advantage when I can.

Sorry that this is such a boring update. I've been swamped at work, and all of my time at home is focused on my daughter and my wife, or on recovering from work and family commitments.

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This page is an archive of entries from November 2006 listed from newest to oldest.

September 2006 is the previous archive.

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