Mostly Harmless

Mostly about my amusement

Category: Family (page 9 of 14)

September 6, 2008

Rain from Hanna

Yesterday when Lily and I got home, we went and took in the patio umbrella.  My parents had taken most of the stuff from outside already so I did not have much to take in.

Good thing we did that.  Go into your shower and put the water on to it’s maximum pressure and speed.  It was like that last night outside our bedroom.  It came down hard and woke us both up.  This morning I found out that it did not rain in Manhattan but it will.

I really like storms, especially if there is lots of lightning.  When I get a break today (I’m doing some WFH) I may look open up the garage and take some pictures.

August 30, 2008

Went to the American Air Power Museum today

Lily went to the U.S. Open today with our son, so I took the girl to the American Air Power Museum.  She had fun and I took some good pictures.  I’ve just made this one my desktop image.

Glamourus Gal

It came out much better that I thought it would.  The P-51 Glamorous Gal was not able to take off because of the weather.  That was a shame, seeing it in the air would have been awesome.  The plane was in fantastic condition.

August 28, 2008

Sigh, Yellow jackets might not be all dead

This morning we had no dead yellow jackets in the bedroom.  We got home after 7 PM tonight and found two new one’s on the carpet next to the door of the closet.  They were both dead but that means at least this morning some of them were alive enough to get out of the closet.

Tomorrow morning the exterminator comes back and we will see if we’ll see if anymore of them are alive or not.

I’m really, really beginning to hate those little monsters.

August 25, 2008

It’s not a leak

In my closet on the ceiling, the plasterboard is soft and discolored in a small area.  Looks like a leak in the roof and there is this noise which I though was something dripping.  The noise was constant and we just figured that it was some leak from a pipe in the attic.  I had no idea why there would be a pipe there (there wasn’t) but the stain looked like water damage, so it was either a pipe or the roof.

So I go get the ladder and climbed into the attic.  I had to crawl through a small space to get to the top of my closet.  It looked bone dry and the insulation did not seem to have any mold. There was no sign that the roof was less than perfect.

So my Dad went into my closet and pushed a wooden dowel through the soft part of the ceiling.  The hole he made was around a 1/4 of inch wide if that much.

When he took the dowel out approximately 20 wasps came through that tiny hole like dive bombers. I just made an appointment for Terminex to come here TODAY.

I’m glad it’s not a roof or some mysterious non-existant pipe but now I am locked out of my room while I wait for the exterminator.

UPDATE: Well the gentleman from Terminex was here. What happened is this: by poking the small hole in the ceiling, we made a simple extermination job really, really complicated.  If we did not make that hole, then he’d have made it but would have a) covered it up and b) pumped poison into the nest and just kill them.

My closet (with it’s door closed and a towel at the bottom!) has over 100 hornets inside. So he gassed the nest from the outside and then gassed the closet.  There are a bunch of dead hornets in my bedroom.  I’m to NOT go inside that closet until FRIDAY.  At that time either things will go really well and I’ll have a lot of dead hornets to clean up, or things will be really bad.

Either way if I open up that door and a dozen or more are still alive, I’m going to get stung. Can’t wait for Lily to come back home… all of her clothing is in that closet.

August 19, 2008

GPS Order is restored

On Saturday August 9th, my car got broken into and the Nuvi 360 was stolen.  The window was fixed last week and today I received the replacement navigation unit.  This time with a no-slip dashboard stand.

Lily and I thought about which one to buy. Rather than getting the latest and greatest, we just opted for the same model.  It works really well, has good Bluetooth support, and I’m used to it.  Also it was several hundred dollars cheaper than when I first bought it.  Why mess with what I’m used to?

Our next car will almost certainly have GPS built in, so this one is destined for my MINI Cooper.

This time I’m using the Garmin lock feature.  It works like this: when the GPS unit comes on and it’s at home, it just works.  When I’m away from home it will ask for a PIN.  If I forget the PIN and can’t take it to it’s home position, then I’ll have to send it to Garmin to have it unlocked.  I’m registering this new one with Garmin.

This won’t prevent my window from being smashed (yeah, yeah, I’m not leaving the unit in my car anymore) but if someone does steal it, at least it will be useless to the next person.

July 15, 2008

One day limo driver

This morning Lily was going to head to LaGuardia airport and catch a plane to Detroit. I was going to head to the office at my regular time and put in a fully productive day at the office.

The person who was going to pick her up forgot.  I ended up getting dressed in record time and driving her to the airport.  She was running late and had to leave NOW.

She made the flight but it was close.  I headed back home and called my boss to apologize for the last minute change in my schedule.  If I headed to the office I’d have gotten into the city almost 2 hours late and I was not sure if I had any conference calls. I don’t like making changes to my work schedule all off a sudden. Do it too often and it’s abusive.

The day worked out but the high point was my being on a call with my 6 year old son stage whispering “Daddy, can I play with the Nintendo DS?” and me pantomiming the reply of “LEAVE NOW OR FACE THE AWESOME WRATH OF DAD”.  All this while replying to people on the call with “Sure, that change should work. Let’s do it Friday after hours”.

Sign language is a parenting tool.

With Lily not coming back until the evening, I had to bathe both kids.  I need to install a power washer; did you know that little girls need hair conditioner?  Boys are much easier. Ivory soap can double as shampoo and no one ever notices on a boy.

Later on it was her turn to play a game but she kept giving the game to her brother.  She also complained often that he’s not letting her play. This is a life lesson for my son: watch out for girls.  That she just gave him the game did not stop her from trying to get him in trouble.

I’m really glad Lily came back today.

July 4, 2008

Disney and digital photography

The castle

The whole family came back from Disney World Wednesday and here are some of my notes for the pictures I took.

From Thursday the 26th to Wednesday the 2nd I took 1,600+ pictures with my Nikon D60.

What I have been doing since I got back is going through each vacation day and selecting photos for Flickr. So far I completed up to Sunday June 29th and have uploaded some 88 pictures.  You can see the Disney World 2008 set on Flickr here.

The Lowepro Fastpack 200 was a great idea.

It’s a great backpack and easy to use.  It was raining on and off everyday. Being able to quickly take the camera out, shoot the picture, and pack the camera away was fantastic.  The only thing I think I may change is replace the Nikon neck strap with a hand strap.

I need to buy an 18-200mm lens.

Stefan lent me his Nikkor lens and it was great for the trip.  Being able to take pictures close up and zoom out immediately without changing the lens was just way too useful.  I’m thinking of getting the Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS just to be different.

The Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM lens is still my main lens and does not disappoint.

In either Aperture or Program Auto mode it works great.  It covers low light really well and I took a lot of shots with it.

I forgot to switch to the zoom lens once and left the 30mm on during the Animal Kingdom tour.  I found out that Shutter Priority works well too; I took this picture from a really bouncy “safari” tour bus.  For that shot, the camera was set at ISO 400, f/4.5 and shutter speed was 1/2000 of a second.

I saw more Canon cameras than I did Nikons.

I guess Canon markets better in the U.S. 🙂 I don’t know what the Canon models were but the Nikons I saw were mostly D60s with the 18-55mm kit lens. The camera that all the wandering Disney staff use for taking shots of the guests? A Nikon D70.  The person I spoke to recommended it highly saying that they never have any problems with it.

I did see several D200s and one D300 with a Nikkor 17-35mm AF-S wide angle lens and a Manfrotto mono-pod stand (not that I pay attention to such things).  I tried not to be jealous, but the fact is I would not know what to do with a camera like that.

I am still uploading more pictures to Flickr and I should be done by Monday with the whole set.  I could dump all 1,600+ straight to Flickr but what would be the point?  I prefer to share only the good ones and not show people all the ones that were not in focus.

June 25, 2008

Tomorrow we all go to Disney World

Right before a trip

All packed up and ready to go.  We are all looking forward to this and we’ll be a week in Walt Disney World. The kids have been talking about this for weeks.

We wont be gone that long but two grown ups and two kids means lots of luggage.

I plan to take lots of pictures and post them on Flickr, so I’m going to carry on all the camera equipment.  The kids insist that I bring their cameras as well and if they take any really good shots I’ll post those as well.

June 8, 2008

Strawberries and downpours

Today the family started with this

DSC_0525

And ended up with this

And the day was going so well

We got to pick strawberries in the morning and in the afternoon we set up a inflatable pool on the patio. It hit 90+ degrees today and we found out that the second floor A/C does not work.  Good thing it rained; it is much cooler now.

Still we all had a great time. Some friends came over for dinner and all the kids got to play.

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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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