kahunaburger

For Pia’s birthday I created a birth announcement card. Now that most of those who frequent this web site have received the card, I can also post it here on kahunaburger. If you didn’t receive a card it’s possible that we did not have your address
The link below opens an Adobe Acrobat document (PDF). If you don’t have the Acrobat Reader (which is used to display PDF documents) on your system, you can get it for free from here.

And for those who are interested: The card was laid out in Adobe InDesign CS. I worked on the photos and especially the “torn paper” look on the front of the card, in Adobe Photoshop CS. Final artwork was sent to “Gettype” (see http://www.gettype.com/), where they printed 60 cards on their Indigo Digital Press.

Comments(3)

Beauty does not require my stupid comments. A silent Pia-baby-looking-out-the-window-entry .. (look for the reflection of the cloudy sky in her eyes in the second picture)

Pia staring out the window

Pia staring out the window

Comments(0)

There are rules and recommendations out there on how to conduct business on the web. If you’re a spider, automatically downloading content, analyzing it and using it for YOUR business, you better behave like a good spider. And not like the one from cyveillance.com
(more…)

Comments(2)

As you can tell from some of the entries here, I get a lot of spam in comments to my posts. I am sick of it and want to make sure that I can react quickly when one of those idiots shows up on my site …
(more…)

Comments(0)

Pia is doing fine and we can almost watch her grow. Her cheeks are a lot more solid and we are constantly amazed how much poop she manages to drop into those diapers. “Hallelujah” to the person who invented the Diaper Genie (click the link if you don’t know what I’m talking about). It’s a life-saver (and smell-saver). And on the other hand it’s probably the worst we can do the environment. Besides throwing out a few diapers a day, we are now wrapping them in plastic bags as well. Yes, I feel bad … enough said.

The little pea is very flexible. Almost like a puppet. When she’s calm (means: belly full and diaper empty) you can place her wherever you want and she’ll remain in the position you’ve put her. Here’s a proof (reminds me of a drunk person on a park bench):

A nap on the bench by the window

Since the last remains of the umbilical cord fell off a few days ago, we are allowed to take the baby to the pool. Finally we’ll be able to bathe her and get the week-old dirt out of skin-folds (I’m exaggerating here, of course). A first attempt to have mummy and daughter share a relaxing bath in the tub ended in a disaster with a baby crying louder than ever before and a mother visibly distressed. We never figured out whether the water temperature was too cold or if she really didn’t like to swallow all that water (is history repeating itself? are Frisco’s and Pia’s fate magically linked? look at Wild Rivers for an earlier incident that involves Frisco, water and Candice … frigthening parallels).

Second attempt last night went a lot better. This time we actually used a baby-tub (duh!) and see how much more she likes it?

Don’t know if I like the bath

Pia bath

Several times during the day, Pia enters the absolute comfort zone (as opposed to the comfort zone where we keep her the rest of the day). “Absolute” is achieved by exposing her to two milk-filled containers and this shows just how happy she is when she’s being breast-fed:

Most comfortable time

Did I mention already that the dogs are just fine with the baby? They don’t look jealous and they don’t bark at her or (god forbid) react aggressive. Both of them are very gentle and lick her hands (and face if mommy or daddy don’t pay attention) whenever there’s an opportunity. Max always comes to see what’s we are doing to the child when she’s crying and he seems a tad more gentle with her. Good dogs!

Max resting

Comments(3)

With the arrival of the new daughter we wanted to make sure that our dogs were “contained” and had a larger area where they could run in case we were not able to walk them.

Invisible Fences are quite popular here in New Mexico where people seem to have a lot of property around their houses and want to use those acres for something. We called Critters and Me in Santa Fe and asked for a recommendation. They did not really have a recommendation but happened to have a card of Robert Sellman who is one of the authorized DogWatch dealers for New Mexico.
We called Robert and promptly got an appointment with him where he would survey the area and give us an estimate on how much it would cost us to install the fence. Sure enough, Robert came out a when promised and together we walked the area that was supposed to be fenced in. The quote sounded reasonable and I was delighted to hear that Robert would be able to incorporate some left-over pieces from the previous owner’s invisible fence.
Robert would have been able to install the fence soon after coming out the first time, but then this thing with our daughter happened (see Welcome to the world, Pia!) and we had to postpone installation.

Robert introducing Frisco to the new fence

A week and a half ago they came out to do the hardware installation of the invisible fence. It’s basically a wire that has to form a circle all around the house. The wire gets moved close to the house where you want to restrict the dogs from walking any further. As long as they are inside the safe zone (within the circle) everything is fine. As they get closer to the wire, their special radio receiver collars will pick up the FM signal that is sent through the wire and they will hear some signal from the collar. If they decide to get closer to the wire they will receive some “stimulation” (read: they get zapped) which tells them it’s better to turn around.

Frisco staying away from the fence

The perimeter where the audible alert can be heard is marked with little white flags.

After the installation, Robert came out a few more times to train the dogs. Training involves a procedure where the dogs are walked along the flags and being told that the flags and the area beyond are off-limits (”LEAVE IT!!!”). This is repeated for a few days and also requires that the dogs hear (and feel) what happens when they don’t follow your orders.

The picture below show very nicely how Max refuses to go through the flags although Robert is pulling lightly on his leash:

Max listening to Robert

Even after Robert stopped the training we walked several times with the dogs along the flags and reassured them that everything would be ok as long as they stayed inside the marked area. They are still a bit cautious when they are outside by themselves, but I’m sure this will change over time.

Highly recommended if you are in the same situation as we are. And we can really, really recommend Robert Sellmann. He was excellent from the moment we called him the first time. Give him a call at (505) 994-0214 (or 1 (800) 258-7037) if you’re interested in an invisible fence.

Comments(1)

I can’t believe it: I thought most people would be sick of seeing only Pia on kahunaburger.com, but I get constantly requests for “more! more!”. Thanks for all the nice comments from family members and friends out there. It’s really nice to see that the traffic on kahunaburger has rocketed since Pia was born.

In this posts first installment we have mother and daughter - a classic kiss-on-the-forehead shot right after baby’s belly was filled (a minute later you would have seen a mother trying to remove thrown-up milk from the very same baby face):

Mom and daughter

Mom and daughter

  

Mom and daughter

And, finally, evidence!!! I was looking for something that would uniquely identify Pia as *my* daughter and would link us together: a mole in the same spot; the same kind of wrinkles on the forehead; something along those lines. I’m happy to report that we found a feature on our daughter that links her to me without a doubt: her feet. Those who’ve seen my feet know what I’m talking about (Pam, are you peeing in your pants right now?). It looks like this girl is gonna be a swimmer and she won’t need no fins either …

Pia’s feet

 

Pia’s feet

Comments(3)

What are a wireless network camera, perl, TiVo and our daughter doing together? A geeks attempt to combine his favourite two subjects: technology and the newborn daughter.
(more…)

Comments(2)