Few things make a work day as sweet as dreading putting 1000's upon 1000's of pieces of data into a new database only to find out that you can cut and paste it from excel and it not be a disaster.

Hours of dread turn to a sweet couple of minutes!  Priceless! 

     Jordan and Justice both went to their nanas house this weekend while I went riding with my pops, and Melissa got a well deserved and long overdue girls weekend without any kids within screaming distance.  It was a pretty relaxing weekend but like all riding/fishing/campling... etc,  trips it can't end without a story.  The story was pretty short and not really that interesting but on the way home (when I thought I was home free), Justice vomited like a child out of the excercist.   He hurled so hard that some landed in the front seat.  So here I am on the side of the road, with the wind whipping about 20-30 mph, stripping JT and his car seat down to put in a plastic bag.  I cleaned up everything as much as I could, but it still stunk pretty bad for the final hour of the trip.  I am guessing he just got car sick.  He was sleeping soundly right before this happened.  He woke up and mumbled for a minute or two then let loose.  Fortunately, Jordan was not with us and I just put him in her carseat, I am not sure what I would have done if I didn't have that option other than let him sit in the dirty seat.  Just another chapter in the book of parenthood.

 

School minute

    Over the past couple of weeks I have noticed that since we are entering a new era of storage capacity, that a whole lot of people are not informed about what comes after gigabyte.  I have heard at least ten people refer to the "Tetrabyte" size of storage capacity.  That is not correct.... it is "Terabyte".  This scale, though similar to metric sizing scale is not the same.  It was developed by IBM in 1956 with the origination of the term "byte" which allowed for the defining of  4-bit fields known today as a byte.  This allows for 1-16 bits to be stored in this configuration.

    Anyway, below is the official scale of bytes, so you don't have an excuse in the future.

Decimal
Value	SI
1000	k	kilo-
10002	M	mega-
10003	G	giga-
10004	T	tera-
10005	P	peta-
10006	E	exa-
10007	Z	zetta-
10008	Y	yotta-

 

 FYI, Binary

Binary
Value	IEC		JEDEC
1024	Ki	kibi-	K	kilo-
10242	Mi	mebi-	M	mega-
10243	Gi	gibi-	G	giga-
10244	Ti	tebi-
10245	Pi	pebi-
10246	Ei	exbi-
10247	Zi	zebi-
10248	Yi	yobi

   Besides being a great piece of cinematic history, things really are tough all over..... or so they seem.  Melissa, the kids and I were dining at a ritzy establishment here in town called Taco Bell.  You may have heard of it.  Anywho, while I was waiting for them to get my order ready, this lady (who was with two unruly kids and a husband) approached me and asked " So how do we get our food, do we just wait for them to call our number or something).  I was a little struck by the question, and politely said yes and helped to inform her of the complex dining process that is fast food at Taco Bell.  After that exchange, I observed several cues that suggest that she and her family may be lowering their usual dining standards perhaps because of the economic times. 

    This was a strange encounter because I can't imagine anyone, natively born in the US, that hasn't partaken the in delictable dishes served at the the premier mexican/american fast food joint.  I could be way off base and it was just a sort of brain fart situation on the part of the woman.  However, another episode occurred in the same encounter that still leaves me perplexed.  One of the fine ladies sons proceeded (with parental supervision) over to the drink dispenser and dialed up this fantabulous concoction.  1/4 pepsi, 1/2 pink lemonade, 1/4 water.  The parent seem to be directing the child on the amounts that they were allowed to consume.  I understand that maybe mixing lemonade with water, but the pepsi mixed just boggled my mind.  It was a strange occurrence but hey, I at least got something to noodle on for a while and bizzare story to share!

    What makes a good attorney?   Is it the stack of law books on the shelf behind him/her in a commercial at 3am in the morning?  If not, why in the hell do they all seem to stiffly stand in front of a bunch of books?  Does that really project intelligence?

    The differences between the two little ones is pretty amazing sometimes.  Jordan is a happy go lucky, talk your ear off, just happy to be hanging around little girl.  The monkey man, is the complete opposite.  If he is the least bit uncomfortable or bothered, he is pissed.  It has been a week and a half since he started his new class room and he still screams and throws fits in the mornings when I drop him off.  He is happy as a clam when we are dropping Jordan off in her room, but he just hates his new room.  I am not sure why, it has more kids that are his age group and much better toys.  In the afternoons, he seems to be fine, wobbling around and playing.  Jordan never really had transistioning problems other than the odd day or two.  I feel bad for the teachers, but they seem to not mind.  It would drive me crazy personally, it takes a lot of patience to keep kids all day everyday. 

     

     I am settling into my new job.  This has been a pretty good week.  I finished up my first project and it should be deployed with the customer today.  It was simple and I leaned heavily on my mentor/boss, but I learned a whole lot.  I am gearing up today, to start my next project which will be next weeks task. Hopefully it won't take me the whole week to finish, I figure a couple of days should suffice.  It is a really neat experience so far and hope to help Bryan keep things rolling and maybe be able to keep working with him after my two month contract.

      Enough about me..... The kids are doing well.  The monkey man seems to be over his ailments right now, but is still having a difficult time in his transition to the big boy room at his daycare.  He screams and throws fits when I drop him off in the morning.  Evidently he has been getting better as the week has went on but I haven't seem much of a change.  Melissa claims he is showing much better attitudes in the afternoon, so hopefully he will be more accomidating for me in the mornings soon.  

     Jordan is bumping along pretty well herself.  She is really growing up now and you can really tell that she puts together pretty complex thought patterns now.  They are also, starting to teach her more school time things like reading and writing.  She is funny and continues to dazzle me daily by saying or doing something new and unexpected.

 Hope everyone has a great weekend!

     It has been an interesting week.  Justice transitioned to his new big boy room at daycare and found out some life altering news with his newly discovered food allergy.  Jordan went to a birthday party on Saturday where some parents threw economic caution to the wind and really threw a fun (expensive) birthday party for their daughter and around 15 of her friends.  Jordan had a blast and got to make a bear (from a kit) and they even broke a pinata.  Not sure why the pinata other than for the candy, it wasn't a cultural attachment, just an activity.  After Melissa got back with Jordan from the party, she quickly downed two pieces of Pizza before taking Justice to Urgent care.  He has been really fussy for the past two days and was tugging at his ear pretty bad yesterday.  He was diagnosed with a barely noticeable ear infection, so they gave him some medicine and sent him back home.  So a pretty long day for Melissa.  She did most of the footwork, so I feel pretty guilty this morning.  I got up early with the kids so she can sleep in, its the least I can do.  The little guy seems better this morning but he woke up with the literal red ass.  I am sure that doesn't feel too good either, so we will make sure he is creamed up. 

Hope everyone has a good SuperBowl Sunday and a good work week.

 

 

 Oh BTW, I got a new job as a software developer!