kahunaburger

Traffic on SR-512 (near Lakewood) was stopped by a police office to help mother duck and her ducklings make it safe across the highway. He deserves the “purple duck” …

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Kahunaburger still runs FreeBSD version 5.4, which was released in May 2005. I tried a few times to do the update to release 6.0, but always ran into some issues, which are most likely a local problem here.

In the next few weeks, I’m going to do a fresh install of the brand new 7.0 release. This means backing up everything in at least two places, wiping the disk clean, doing a clean install of 7.0 and then trying to bring all sites back up and running again. This probably means a few hours of work with a lot of cursing once I try to restore the major portions of all sites hosted on the same server.

I’ll post another note once I know when the update/upgrade will actually happen - wish me luck!

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Just four days ago we had to announce a broken elbow with the photo of a seriously drugged up kid. Below is the same child at the same location. A permanent cast (pink + purple!) has replaced the temporary one. The tired/sad look has been replaced by her usual camera-face. And on top of that, Hanna Andersson has brought a few new clothes. What a difference a few days make!

elbow in cast

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Note to Pia: if your parents tell you that your actions will ultimately result in pain and broken bones, you will believe us from now on! Sorry you had to learn it the hard way, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. It’s just a broken elbow and it’ll be fine in a few weeks. At least you have a cool cast now where all your friends can draw on.

broken elbow

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Single parent life comes with some challenges. One of those challenges is food. I have no problem feeding myself when I’m alone. I don’t complain if I only eat at 8pm and I usually use whatever I find in the fridge to prepare a meal.

However, things are different when Pia is around. I work until 5pm, then head to town to pick her up and by the time we are back home it’s past 6pm. Given that I try to have her in bed around 8pm, which is normally preceded by a bath or shower, it does not leave a lot of time for extensive dinner preparations. I’m also not organized enough to cook a weeks worth of meals on the weekend. Combine all this and it results in a lot kids-friendly meals (meaning “Macaroni & Cheese”, “Quesadillas”, etc.) with questionable nutritional value.

I decided to give a different route a try. Scanning the Santa Fe Reporter classifieds section I ran across Tanya’s “Everything Edible” ad. Tanya is a personal chef, who specializes in clients just like me. I called her up and we agreed on a first try-out session of her services.

Tanya has a very extensive list of entrees on her site above. For the first session we picked four entrees, because I figured that would take me through a week at least.

She showed up on time one Wednesday morning with a number of bags containing all her cooking gear and ingredients that she planned to use for the four entrees. I think I have a pretty well-equipped kitchen, but in this case I think I could have gotten away with just having a stove and a sink, because Tanya brought everything else that was needed.
A few hours after her arrival, my kitchen was as clean as it was in the morning and the refrigerator was filled with (chef-supplied) containers with all the main- and side-dishes. Tanya provided an itemized list of her expenses and a customized sheet with re-heating instructions.

For more than a week Pia and I ate the dishes that “our chef” had prepared for us. Everything, and I’m serious here, everything was delightful. Nothing was over-cooked or over-spiced, everything was well-balanced and I felt that Pia (and I) got what we were supposed to have. I was so happy with Tanya’s service that I decided to hire her again soon after.

Yes, this is more expensive than going to the store myself and preparing the meals for us. However, if I take the time that it takes to prepare the meals, shop for the ingredients and, most importantly, the time that I’m not spending with my daughter into account, this actually equates to a good deal. Pia does love to help cooking, but she has the attention span of a 4-y/o, which means that no matter what you do, it will be boring after 15 mins. And we still have the weekends where she can help me with stuff in the kitchen.

If you are in the Santa Fe area and you are looking for a personal chef (or somebody who caters a party at your home), please do give Tanya a try. Your taste-buds will love you for it …

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I’ve never been more inspired by any other presidential candidate. It turns out that the rigged ABC debate did not go as planned for the Clinton campaign.

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1. The cracked back is back

I’ve been pretty good lately as far as my lower back is concerned. A few years ago I had periods where it would hurt like crazy for a few days at a time. Most often it was sudden movements, trying to lift too much or over-engaging my back where I should have used my legs. Since last Friday my old friend is back (literally). Without going into details, this time it was the weight of my daughter (which seemed to hit my body at the wrong place and at the wrong time) that caused the problems. Since Friday late afternoon I have the hardest time finding a position that does not cause pain. Every 20-30 mins I have to get up from behind the computer and walk around for a while to make sure that I can get up at all. Sleeping is a problem as well, because the slightest movement causes some pain that results in an interrupted sleep. Damned - I’m getting old.

2. Philips Sonicare

When my brother was here a few weeks ago he saw me getting ready for bed, which, of course, includes brushing my teeth. He looked at me like I was some Neanderthal who grabbed a wooden stick and tried to clean his teeth with it. Yep, I was the traditional brusher, who used a normal toothbrush and muscle power to get those teeth clean. Brother on the other hand was sporting the high-frequency, high-tech, electrical device with iTunes-support and USB-connection (ok, I made up the last two items). Brother also claimed that once I try it, I would not go back.

Shrugged it off at that point: who’s my brother to tell me what to do and what not to do?

Soon after he left, I researched the subject a bit more and indeed decided to give it a try. I ordered one of the Philips Sonicare products online and a few days later the thing arrived. The same evening I tried it for the first time. The first impression, you ask? Incredible, unbelievable, outstanding and whatnot else. I felt like I had brushed my teeth for the first time in years. This thing vibrates, tingles and freaking cleans at the same time. I bet my right hand, actually let’s make that the right leg (just in case), that if you compared the results from a three-minute clean with the electric toothbrush to a three-minute traditional clean/floss, that any dental professional would prefer the electric results over the traditional ones.

And the Philips is actually smart enough to slowly ramp up the power that it delivers to your mouth, otherwise you would be turned off (=hurt) if it operated at full speed out of the box.

As an added benefit, Pia now asks to brush her teeth in the evenings and mornings. I don’t have to tell her, but she wants to do it herself. What more could you ask for?

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I had no idea that Adobe was even working on this: Adobe TV.

Looks like there’s a lot of interesting content up there already. I really enjoyed going through one of the Lightroom tutorials (pictured below).

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My main PC has become a bit sluggish lately. The 2GB of memory it came with, sounded plenty a year ago. Now whenever I check the task manager, the commit charge (how much real memory is used) seems to be around 1.8GB. No wonder that everything seems to be a bit slow these days.

In my lunch break I went over to Best Buy (had to do something in the area anyways) and checked if they had the necessary 4 * 2GB SDRAM DIMMs available. I almost fainted when the guy behind the counter told me that each 2GB module would cost $199.-. That would bring the 8GB memory upgrade to almost $1000.-. I politely declined and left the store.

Soon after I arrived back home, I went to NewEgg and ordered 4 * 2GB Kingston memory sticks for a total of $171.- (including shipping). So the total 8GB of memory was still cheaper than a single stick at Best Buy. How do they get away with that?

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Lara Croft

Pia loves her

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