Mostly Harmless

Mostly about my amusement

Category: Family (page 5 of 14)

December 24, 2010

Polish Town run successful!

It’s Christmas Eve and we’re are prepared for the big day. This year we’ve all enjoyed a nice and quiet holiday season. Some years we do the last-minute shopping spree, but not this time. Our good planning worked and we’re all set.

Just to make sure that all is right in the world, we headed to Riverhead and visited the Polish Deli there. On Christmas Day you can never have enough kabanos. We also got ham and lots of kielbasa (I especially like the double smoked variety).

It’s tough to describe what a kick I get out of visiting an authentic Polish deli. It’s like going shopping with my grandparent (on my Dad’s side) all over again. Lily enjoys it because the food is good and they have items you just can’t get in a super market but suddenly I’m 12 years old again and my grandparents are making the rounds for their monthly shopping trip.

Memories like those are especially fond to me around this time of year. At Christmas time we should all enjoy the times we have spent and will spend with our families.

November 14, 2010

Go visit the American Airpower Museum

Yesterday while Lily was out with our daughter shopping and swimming (in that order) I took our son to the American Airpower Museum. On Veteran’s Day the museum dedicated a Sherman tank and I knew he wanted to see it.

You can see the photos I took Saturday as well as other days on my Flickr page.

My family routinely visits this museum. It’s like visiting the Smithsonian but more real and down to earth. Most of the planes on display are operational and others are being repaired. We didn’t get to see the Sherman move (there was a Navy ceremony going on) but we did get to take in the usual sights.

This museum combines history with tangible testimony. The staff are always helpful and can tell you some stories about the displays. If you are in Nassau county, or are on the western part of Suffolk county then do yourself and you kids a favor and stop by. It’s definitely worth it.

October 9, 2010

“Really pushes my buttons”

I’m driving my 8-year-old son to the train station to pick up his mother after work at the train station. He’s telling me about a kid that bothered him in school last year.

Him: Dad, he made me very upset. He really pushes my buttons.

Me: Well, try not to get worked up. If you lose your temper you’ll be in trouble.

Him: Yeah but he really pushes my buttons, you know? He really does push my buttons.

Me: When did you start saying “pushes my buttons”??

Him: I heard you say it today.

I was working from home that day and had to deal with another fine example of social darwinism. Later on while speaking to someone I said that phrase and my son picked it up.

Little kids do not miss a thing. Good thing he didn’t hear the more acerbic comments I sometimes make…

September 28, 2010

That old painful feeling

Ever get that painful headache where you can feel the vein behind your eyeball? You know, the type of headache where you look left or right and it hurts to do that? I get those from time to time, maybe 4 times a year. Last night I got that around 3 AM so knowing what to do I took three Advil and went back to sleep.

It worked too but around 5:30 AM the pain began to creep back. I know how this story ends, so rather than do a 90 minute commute in pain I called my boss and called in sick. At some point this morning I am going to lie down with my eyes open and think “My, what pleasant color the ceiling is” while wondering how nausea got into the equation.

It’s a strange thing to get used to. When the pain subsides I feel a sense of relief. It still hurts but I can feel the decreasing pressure and that’s a small miracle.

Usually it hits me in the office. I have done presentations where I needed to sit down during the talking but have plodded on. I’ve sweated out days where pain-killer got me to the end of the day. By that time, I could get home and the pain subsides enough.

I would not call this a migraine headache because I’ve seen people get those and they are rendered helpless. I can still function just not on all cylinders as indicated by being able to type this. So I’ll eat something, relax, and look forward to taking a not-nap.

July 21, 2010

Cue the vacation music

Lily and I started our vacation Friday night by eating at the Bhatti Indian Grill and enjoying really good spicy food. It was also our wedding anniversary and unlike last year neither of us forgot it. 16 years plus 5 years dating! She’s perfect.

We have very different vacation styles.  She likes to fill up each day with activity to maximize the time we have. You know, go places, do things, etc. I used to joke that vacations with her was like a military campaign and sometimes it was. I always had a great time with her but the pace was a little intimidating.

There is nothing wrong with that kind of planning. But I get deadlines and furious activity on a daily basis at work. NOTE: THIS IS NOT A WORK DIG! But when you work in a certain industry you deal with fire drills all the time. It comes with the job and I’m fine with that.

How do I prefer my vacations? I like to just take it easy and relax. Go places (or not), run around (or not), and accomplish thing you set out to do (or not). My goal for this week is to relax with Lily and the kids.

I would like to accomplish the following things.

  1. Spend quality time with the wife and kids. Quality time? Can’t believe I’m using that phrase, but what that means is “Don’t sweat the small things”. You know, take it easy with family.
  2. Start and maybe complete another Bandai MG model. I’ve got the MG Gouf v2 all lined up (Lily won’t let me order more unless I make my unassembled model stash smaller!)
  3. Take more pictures. I like my amateur photo hobby and really am jonesing for a 24-70mm  f/2.8 Nikon lens.
  4. Do something with my WordPress theme! The latest not-really-a-GPL-argument-just-copyright-infringement has gotten me to examine how my blog looks. If only I had the time to learn CSS, that’s what really sets one site apart from another.

The last item on my list is to have fun and relax. The list is incidental as long as I have a good time. Mostly I’ll just cheerfully go with what the family does.

By the way, my vacation theme music? It would have to be this song.

July 6, 2010

And now an iMac

I have way too many PCs in my house, but a couple of them have been elevated to “must have”. The notebook in the kitchen had become indispensable, like coffee in the morning.

My morning wake up routine became

  1. Drink coffee
  2. Check my e-mail
  3. Check out my social networks
  4. Do a little sysadmin on my servers
  5. Drink some more coffee

And all from my kitchen notebook. But the HP notebook was overheating and automatically shutting down on a routine basis. As a result Lily and I thought “why not replace it with a Mac book?”

Once we got to the Apple store we realized that the iMac was more bang for the buck, and the small kitchen notebook never moved from its place. We now have the 21.5 inch iMac cheerfully sitting on my kitchen island and I’m writing this up on it now.

We selected an iMac because the kids use them in school and more importantly, I just want the thing to work. It’s pretty straight forward and after I ran the software updater a few times I was up to date on all the patches.

It’s got a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. The mouse was easy to get used to (it’s a Magic Mouse after all) but the keyboard makes me do an occasional double-take. There are no insert or page down/up keys and while the chiclet keys are not small, the overall size of the keyboard is.

Adding my network printer to the iMac was a breeze. Once it found the printer on the network, all I had to do was confirm that I wanted to install it.

Overall I’m really pleased with it. Everyone likes the iMac and the display looks great. The only thing that I’ll need to do is find the equivalent versions of the software I use. I’m mostly a Notepad++, PuTTY, and Firefox user so I should be able to find Mac equivalents.

July 3, 2010

Alice in Wonderland (not in 3D)

Last night I sat through Alice in Wonderland with my daughter and got to see Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, and company in a Tim Burton epic. We watched it on DVD.

I had low expectations but was surprised when I really liked it. The story starts off in usual visual Tim Burton fashion and grows from there on. Alice ends up in the Rabbit Hole and by the end of the movie it’s all connected and works out.

What I can’t get is how would this, or most movies, benefit from being in 3D? When I saw Pocahontas Avatar on Blu-Ray, I liked it. I could easily see how the movie was shot and generated for 3D, but the predictable story line played out well.

I’m not criticizing Avatar; who doesn’t like it when the hero beats the bad guy and gets the girl? James Cameron really knew what he was doing. He had a vision to show and kept with it. Everyone I know who saw it in 3D says that it doesn’t distract from his movie. With the right application, 3D can complement the experience. But the same movie in 2D will still work if the story line is any good.

Now 3D is a gimmick for getting people in the theater *cough* Last Airbender *cough*. But it can’t make a bad movie better. Alice in Wonderland was a good movie and I think that the 3D gimmick would distract from that.

June 12, 2010

Pool algorithm?

Tomorrow we’re having some friends over, so today I’m doing pool duty. This involves me vacuuming the portions that the robot does a bad job on, and then tossing in said robot so it can do it’s thing.

Around 7 AM I turned on the filter pump, went over the lines where the pool slopes meet, and made my way around the pool. I started on the deep end, made my way around, and checked that I didn’t leave any big patches. Not complicated just tedious.

I ended up with a bucket full of leaves, dead bugs, and some pebbles. I turned off the filter pump and tossed in the robot. It’ll take 2 hours for it to run it’s cycle.

This is what geeks think about: How does it make a decision to go one way or the other? When it hits a boundary it sometimes climbs up the wall. Other times it pauses and goes back and turns. In a couple of hours I’ll pull it out and wash it’s filter. That will have a bagful of leaves, sand, bugs, etc.

It’s work, but watching it run is a kick for me. Later on I’ll double check how clean it is by doing some swimming with the family.

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Jan Dembowski

Jan Dembowski

I am a software enthusiast who is easily amused and definitely mostly harmless.

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