Thanksgiving seems like a good time to give an update on our Little Man who isn’t so little anymore. Elijah is now 17 months old. When he’s awake, he’s jabbering almost non-stop. We can’t understand 99% of what he’s saying but that doesn’t deter him. We can pick out a few words like woof, car, quack, daddy, etc. His best one is probably “thank you.” He’s really gotten the hang of this and even says it at the appropriate times. For example, if you take him to the grocery store, he says thank you every time the bagger puts a bag in our cart.
He walks quite fast now and can almost keep up a normal/slow adult pace for brief periods. He stops not because he gets tired, but because there are so many interesting things to see. Every plane that crossed the sky requires him to stop and point. We live in the normal landing pattern for SeaTac so this happens every few minutes.
He still hasn’t slept through the night and only has slept for more than 4 hours straight a couple times in his life. We go through periods where he wakes up between 5 and 5:30. Nighttime has probably been the toughest part of being a parent for me. I’m awesome at sleeping so I don’t know who he inherited this from.
Coming home is a treat for me as Elijah now recognizes the sound of the garage door and usually comes running to the door to great me with a big smile! I love you, Little Man! And I love you too, Tyla. We’re raising an awesome kid!
The Seahawks defense finally looked good for a solid 60 minutes. And look what happened… a victory against a tough opponent! The secondary is back and healthy and it’s a good start to a grueling end to their season. Just making the playoffs is going to take some luck so let’s start with that goal and see where they go.
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I came home the other night and found out that I had a dead hard drive on my main file server. D’oh! That machine carries every one of our photos since we got a digital camera and a ton of the print photos from early in our childhood. It’s irreplaceable!
I’m proud to say that I was part of the first fan-funded television show in history! Many of you know Zane Lamprey from previous shows like Three Sheets and Drinking Made Easy. He travels around the world, learns local drinking customs and has a good time doing it. I previously wrote about his Kickstarter to fund a new TV show. His plan was to put in a bunch of his own money, raise money from fans, and then produce a TV show that he would market to networks. It was an easier sales pitch because their cost to produce the content was $0.
This was the first year of the new NASCAR playoff scheduling system. Every car still races in every race, but towards the end of the season, they start knocking people out of contention for the championship. In the last race, points are reset for the top four drivers and whoever finishes the best, wins.
I picked this up from MattB’s recent Facebook post. It’s a Forbes article entitled “Why Don’t More People Work As Programmers?” It does an excellent job of describing what it takes to be a great programmer. Programming is not something that you can learn by taking a class or two or ten. Give it a read if you’ve got a code monkey in your life. Our profession is a mystery to a lot of people. The article won’t explain the mystery, but it might help you appreciate the complexity of the trade.
I ordered a 
I don’t have room (or money) for full size woodworking equipment in my garage, so instead I buy the smaller versions. But there are lots of different things out there to spend your money on. Which tools do you really need?
More Power!
I have some very generous friends. For the front yard project, Tim and Brent loaned me their tractor, Don loaned me his Chevy 2500 diesel truck, and my neighbor Randy loaned me his dual axle dump trailer. We ran all that equipment very hard on the first Saturday of the front yard project. We moved 50-60 yards of sod and dirt in 14 loads. Each load was at least an hour round trip to a spot where Tim’s friend let us dump it for free (saving us $1500-2000!) The only catch was that getting up to the dump spot required powering straight up an extremely straight driveway towing 5-6 tons. We had to put the truck in 4 low just to make it up the hill, and man, you should have heard that diesel screaming up the hill! It was nothing that the truck couldn’t handle, but it was pretty impressive.
On the final run, Tim stuck his phone out the window to record it. Of course the video doesn’t even come close to doing it justice. The hill looks way steeper in person. Before you watch it, picture that you’re driving $50-60K worth of somebody else’s equipment on somebody else’s property and if you slide back down the hill you’re going straight through somebody else’s house into the river. No pressure.