ben.parmeter

Uncle Rick threw down the gauntlet during our yearly Parmeter Thanksgiving get-together, deep in the forested hills of Oregon. A challenge to post something (even if it is only a weak one liner) to their respective blogs. Well, here you go. It’s not much, but it will do. Now Uncle Rick, let’s see if you can match your challenge as well.

Remember a couple of years back where I made a rather bold, stake-in-the-ground, statement in a blog post?  Back then, I had such a different, pre-dad point of view.  It was such an innocent time.  A time with boundless amounts of energy, optimism and vanity.  At the time, it was all about maintaining that youthful, kid-less image.  It was about caring about style over function, performance over comfort.  At the time, a cross-over SUV seemed like a way to cling to those values, while getting some small level of practicality.

Mark your calendars (if you’re keeping track at home).  On August 12th, 2011 my will was finally broken and I have become a mini-van owner.  This post-dad point of view is 100% on-board with a mini-van and the lifestyle that it promises.  Mini-van’s are all about convenience and comfort.  They’re all about capacity and doors that open themselves with the push of a button.  They’re all about cup holders and arm rests and tinted windows.  They are about incrementally improving the family travel experience.

Just like last time, this is a new era.  An era that I fully admit that I resisted before but have come to completely embrace.  Next time I’m thinking about taking a stand on the topic, I’ll just remember this humbling moment when I waffled.

Continuing with the monthly video theme, I managed to spend some time this weekend working on the video for June.  In this video, you’ll see a family camping trip to Grover Hot Springs (mainly the nearby falls), painting a clay pot in the backyard, the zoo and one quick photo of Claire and Suzy at a friends wedding.  A fairly short one this time, but action packed.

Again, if you’re interested in the technical side of things, I decided to give Kdenlive a spin this time, creating the entire clip with that software.  It is yet another outstanding video editor that has come to Linux recently – and I am thoroughly impressed with its capabilities.  It’s definitely got more of a learning curve than OpenShot, but it’s still reasonably intuitive.  I found that it is better at handling Pan & Zoom type effects (Ken Burns style) than OpenShot, with a much smoother result.  However, tiling photos and video is still something that I’ve found difficult to do – and has resulted in several crashes.  I eventually gave up on that effort.  The title generator is not as snazzy as OpenShot either.  But it seems to be snappier, and renders on the fly better than OpenShot.  I’m really torn between the two and may ping pong between them until I can decide which I like best.

July is going to be a much bigger video.  Until next time…

My gallery has laid fallow for much too long.  So I decided to do a little spring update by infusing it with some brand new photos of some of the things we’ve been doing in April.  Granted, most of these pictures are of Claire, but I think you’ll agree, she’s great material for photos.  I picked a few photos that I liked the best, so they may seem a bit random.  Head on over to the gallery or check them out below.

This was taken a few months ago… but still pretty adorable in my opinion.

This post will officially break my 8 month long dry spell for posting to this blog.  I should complain about how I’ve been too busy to write, or spending more time with the new kiddo to get online, and all of those other excuses.  But alas, they will all fall flat in cyberspace.  I need to make time to write here on this page or my mind will wither and my creativity with it.   I know I’ve said it before but I really want to start writing more regularly again.  It’s cathartic, healing and introspective.  All things that I think would be good for my soul.

Alright, that’s all you get for today.  Back to work.  Until next time.

Well folks, I’m off to Asia once again.  This time it’s Korea and Taiwan, in a whirlwind business trip.  I’m on the plane writing this, killing some time on the 12 hour flight, so you may actually get this post later in the week when I get a spare moment to post to the website.  I may even be back in the states by the time you are reading this.   A little blog post latency.    Let’s get on with it.

I’m away from my girls for the first time since Claire was born, which is a big milestone in itself.  I underestimated how much it would tug at the heartstrings to leave Suzy and Claire behind for this relatively short jaunt to Asia.  As I kissed Suzy and Claire goodbye, I held back the tears and tried to steady my voice as I told them I loved them and that I would be back in a week.  Just a few weeks earlier, I didn’t quite think I’d be this emotional, but as the moment drew near I thought about all of the missed evenings with Claire and dinners with Suzy.  And don’t tell Suzy this, but I even will miss changing diapers in the middle of the night.   Sigh.  I do love my girls so much.  To make matters worse, all of the movies on the flight over to Korea were “themed” tear-jerkers.  Great.  Stupidly, I sat and watched these movies, descending further into my pit of despair.

Before leaving the house for the airport, Suzy, Claire and I did some last minute testing of Skype.  I was unsure about the microphone setup with Linux, and so I attempted to switch to Suzy’s laptop instead.  I’m not sure why I ever doubted setting it up on Linux, because it seems to be working just fine, whereas on her Windows XP laptop we can’t seem to get the video working correctly.  Chalk one up to Ubuntu.  The real test will come when we finally are able to get a real video-call going.  Unfortunately, they’ll either have to be super-late calls (after midnight here), to catch her early in the morning.  Or they’ll have to be early morning for me (late afternoon for Suzy).  I still find it pretty darned amazing that we will be able to see each other and talk in real time all the way on the other side of the globe (just about).  It’ll be nice to start the day here with a little reminder of home to take the edge off .

My live view of Suzy and Claire from Asia.

UPDATE: And yes, I posted this after returning from the continent.  Too busy to actually post in Asia…

I tend to post updates here on this blog in a flurry, when I have a free moment to steal away from the madness.  When I’m not working, I’m here at home, either working (sadly) or bouncing Claire or taking care of a random chore while Suzy bounces Claire.  Well, today, I grabbed a few moments to finish posting pictures from Christmas in Oregon in 2009.  Dang.  That only took a month.

Yes, yes, I know.  I’ve been busy, OK?  Forgive me?  Ok, thanks for letting me off the hook this time.  I managed to squeeze some blog time into weekend amongst bouncing with Claire, doing some home improvement, cleaning the house, and doing catch-up California Christmas.  At any rate, I’m still sorting through all of the Oregon photos.  But just to give you a taste, I’ve uploaded some photos into a gallery which I will categorize as mid-December, pre-Christmas photos.  As written about by my older(wiser) sister, the holidays were filled with “Awesome Times, and Awesome People”.  More about that later.  On to the photos…

It’s really quite fortunate that we love our offspring so much, because otherwise I’m not sure how we could put up with the sleepless nights.  I think it puts us into a state of sleep deprivation euphoria that fuels our endless dedication to feeding, diapering, and calming our newborns.  Suzy is grabbing some Z’s when Claire sleeps – and adjusting to the new schedule.   In fact, they’re napping together right now.  I felt it was a great time to quickly blog and to post some more photos of my girls.  So here they are: