Saturday night, we went to Jason and Amy’s for a bit of a gathering. It was good, foosball, beer and conversation. The night did end fairly early, which I guess works out, since Sunday Jim and Eric came over to help us get the tub out of the bathroom. Once they had it turned around, Dave came by, and we moved it out to the garage. If anyone wants a pink bathroom set (tub, sink, toilet) let us know - we don’t know what to do with it, and Habitat Re-store doesn’t want it because it’s pink. It’s all in really good shape, but we don’t want a pink bathroom.

Anyway, we managed to get that out, and so now the next step is to get a new tub, and put it in, I guess. Should be an adventure.

Last night, Rhonda, Anne and Laurel came for a visit. Jason, Amy and Mya stopped by too. There were a lot of small children running around, having a great old time. William was a little overwhelmed, I think, but he handled it pretty well. He seems to be ok with being held by other people a lot more now. Amy was holding him a bit on Saturday night, and he was happy, Judy has been looking after him a lot lately (relatively speaking) as Erin had an optometrist thing, and asked Jim and Judy to come by to look after William while she was getting her eyes checked again. Turns out that Jim did a bunch of cleaning while he was at our place, and even made spaghetti sauce for our supper. The house isn’t completely baby-proof yet, but it’s a million times closer now than it was Sunday night.

Hmmmm. Oh yeah, the projector was making a loud whining noise, so we sent it in for repairs. There’s a 5 year warranty on it, so it’s not going to be an expensive repair, but the danger is that I won’t have it to watch the opening of the hockey season ;-) I guess I’ll have to deal with it. We’ve put 500 hours on it so far, which means that the lamp should last us around 4 years. Pretty decent. Most of that time has been spent playing PS2 games, which look awesome when blown up to 183cm (6ft) wide.

I guess a lot more has been happening than I thought, which means that I should sit down and start writing posts a little more often. I mean, Erin’s optometrist thing is probably a post all by itself, and I haven’t even mentioned the fact that William has a tooth now :-)

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Smithers, look a bird has become petrified and lost its way.” - Mr. Burns

Yarrr.

Do any of ye scurvy dogs recall when I told ye that today be Talk Like a Pirate Day?

Well, shiver me timbers, I’ll have ye swabbin’ the deck, and walkin’ the plank if ye forgot.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Yarr, it’s not his fault he’s a sissy. Someone’s been coddling him.” - Captain McAllister

If you’ve been having troubles posting comments, or whatever, it’s because my web server’s hard drive had filled up, and wouldn’t accept any new comments etc. (Oversimplified, but most of you don’t care anyway.) After deleting a huge log file that I didn’t know existed, there’s lots of room again.

Funny how that works

I like optical illusions. I found a link over the weekend to a site with lots of cool optical illusions, so I thought I’d share it. The latest works are particularly cool.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Was president Lincoln okay?” - Ralph

I decided to look for some software to organize the thousands of digital photos that we’ve taken since we got the digital camera. Anyway, I started with the usual suspects, Jasc and their Paintshop Photo Album, and Adobe and their Photoshop Album. Photoshop Album came close to doing what I wanted, but I needed more control. Jasc’s product was far too flaky on my system to consider using it.

After that, I searched online, both via google and by reading Amazon reviews of Photoshop Album (a great way to find alternative products is to read negative reviews - quite often people point you in the right direction.) Anyway, after trying about a billion of them, from CyPics (interface too complicated) to Picasa (too limited,) I finally found what I was looking for.

IMatch does the job. We wound up buying it yesterday, and categorizing a bunch of pictures. I can now find all pictures where Bryan is playing crokinole if I so desire. I may have gone a little overboard on the categories (around 100 at last check) but it makes it so easy to find pictures.

As an example, we had a picture of two people at a birthday party in Calgary. That picture got categorized under each person, as well as under birthday parties, and the location (not just Calgary, but the actual location in Calgary.) This picture can be found so many different ways, it’s not even funny. It was really easy to categorize a whole bunch too. I think I got around 500 done last night, and it wasn’t that much work at all. It helps that Erin had them somewhat organized on the hard drive already. Still, to be able to quickly find all pictures with Steve and Bryan in them at the touch of a button - it’s somewhat amazing. If Lois Lane had her photos indexed like this, she might have noticed that Superman and Clark Kent were never photographed together ;-)

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I hope you enjoyed my one-man pie fight, kids!” - Krusty the Clown

Festivus - the team for the rest of us, will be having an informal practice/get together and throw the frisbee around on Saturday at City Park. Where’s City Park? I’ll tell you. It’s on the corner of King and Duke. Yeah. Er. It’s a block off of spadina, just a couple of blocks south of 33rd St. Take Spadina to Duke, and you’ll see the parks right away. City Park is the one on the south side of the street. If it’s being used, there’s another park right across the street. Anyone who wants to come out and learn a bit about Ultimate, or just throw the frisbee around is more than welcome.

Saturday 2PM, City Park. Be there.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Come on over and strap on the feed bag. We’re going to fire up ol’ Propane Elaine and put the heat to the meat! Nummy-nummy-num!” - Flanders

My Ultimate team has fractured slightly. Some of you know the story already, and some of you don’t. Basically, half the team wanted to be more competitive, and the other half was kind of holding them back. End result is that two new teams have been formed - I’m the founder and captain of the non-serious team, while Al has continued the captaincy of the serious team. Al drafted a sort of team description document, which I parodied when making up my own team manifesto. If anyone wants to see the two documents, let me know, and I’ll send them along. They’re a little too long to be posting here. As a teaser, I’ve been told that my manifesto had people falling out of their chairs laughing, that they laughed till they peed, and that it’s the funniest thing they’ve read in a long time. I suspect some of that was hyperbole.

Anyway, so I’m recruiting people to play Ultimate next year. I’ve got a few people signed up for sure, and quite a few maybes. If anyone out there is in Saskatoon and area, and is interested in trying a new sport in a non-serious way, let me know. We plan to have some fun next year.

And if that doesn’t work out, maybe I’ll start a local chapter of the World Adult Kickball Association. That sounds like it could be fun too.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “You’ve got to listen to me. Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok in an orgy of blood and the kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving.” - Professor Frink