ben.parmeter

I just had to share this adorable photo of Claire that Suzy took with her iPhone and I subsequently edited with my iPhone. So cute!

One might think that over the last month or so, nothing has happened of note in my life.  But alas, that is not the case.  For some reason, after sitting down in front of the keyboard, I’ve been struck with a terrible case of the writers block.  I just haven’t been motivated to write about things lately.  So instead of writing a well thought out post, chronicling the goings-on, I’m going to make a list of random things I’ve been up to with photos.  Ben’s month in lists…

Things I’ve been doing lately:

• Celebrated Suzy’s Birthday, Twice (Once at Ruby Tuesday – Shameful, Once at The Melting Pot – Delicious)
• Brewed an Oatmeal Stout for annual competition with one of my co-workers
• Purchased a PlayStation 3 (Mostly for Blu-Ray support, but also for games and media center)
• Got the Santa Fe fixed
• Read “Happiest baby on the Block”
• Visited like-minded friends on the Central Coast of California, made friends with their dog Parker

• Saw this drooling bird on the pier at the beach

• Went to a good old fashioned Melodrama (my first time… and a great experience)
• Visited Taipei, Taiwan for work

• Read “Baby Wise”
• Ate great Asian food in Taipei, Taiwan
• Worked in Taipei, Taiwan
• Took pictures in bathrooms in Taipei, Taiwan (“Keeping a Clean and Pleasant Environment Makes Everyone Delighted Thank You”)

• Played Beatles RockBand (Thanks Chris!)
• Traveled to Oregon for work, visited my parents
• Met Nico Edan Ferguson for the very first time.

• Said goodbye to my long time friends Pat & Cynthia – Have a great time in Taiwan my friends… see you in two years!
• Baby Shower plus BBQ with the family in Stockton
• Obtained a flash for my fancy camera – subsequently super impressed with results
• Took second place at the Oktoberfest for our Oatmeal Stout (See Above)

• Brewed Scottish Ale from a kit (I know… I was too lazy to do my own all-grain recipe)
• Toyed with the idea of brewing a blueberry wheat beer for my second keg
• Spent time with the fellas at one of my best buds houses while Suzy had another baby shower in Sacramento – More Rock Band
• Worked A Bunch

And that folks, is just a tiny portion, of the things that I’ve been up to lately.  More to come…

This weekend, we went back to the same Ultrasound clinic that we went to several weeks back, and splurged a little because we just can’t wait to see our little daughter’s face.  Thanks to some serious mathematics, processing power, and of course pure awesome physics, we can take a glimpse under our skin with a simple sound wave.  (If you seriously want to know more about the real-time rendering of the 3-D images for ultra sound, take a gander at this website.  Prepare to get your geek on.  You’ve been warned.)

I have to say I never expected the kind of emotional response that this experience elicited from me.  It’s as if I got to meet my daughter for the first time.  And I’ll be darned if that didn’t bring a tear to my eye.  I may be a little biased, but even looking at these distorted yellow images, I think she’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.

Without further delay, click here, to go straight to the gallery.

Personally, I think she is a spitting image of Suzy.  Her eyes and nose for sure.  Suzy seems to think she resembles me from the lower lip down.  You be the judge:

I’ll post the video’s later when I can get them compressed and posted to YouTube.  Instead of the lullaby’s that were recorded with the original, I’m thinking of re-dubbing it (like a Kung-Fu movie).  I’ll taking requests for potential tunes.

Until next time, I love you all.

It’s official, I am back on the bleeding edge of the internet.  Yes indeed.  I have officially signed up for a twitter account.  You’ve been hearing about it for a while.  Everyone is doing it… apparently.  Tweeting.  I’ve resisted for a good long time.  But I’ve finally succumb to the big’ol internet and it’s new-fangled technology.

I have a plan though, so it’s not without good reason that I have signed up.  You see, I have it in the plan to ‘Live-Blog’ the birth of my child.  Come November, prior to Suzy going into labor, I plan to start the countdown on this very blog.  And when we get to the actual event, the day (or days) of actual labor, I really want to post real-time updates replete with pictures to the internet so that friends and family can share in the experience from afar.

Here comes the technical rub.  I’ve looked into the ‘live-blogging’ plug-ins for WordPress (the software that this blog runs on) and I was a bit overwhelmed with the complexity that I’d face setting up such a system.  And, with people re-loading the page frequently, the site might actually buckle under the bandwidth pressure (that might be an overstatement, but it’s possible!).  So instead, I’ve come up with another third-party and entirely free solution.  Twitter.

Twitter allows me to update the world, very easily, in real-time, from my iphone in chunks of 140 characters or less.  It allows me to post pictures directly from my iPhone.  It’s nearly perfect for my plans.  It’s not quite as fancy as the Live-Blogging that Gizmodo or Engadget does for big tech announcements (like WWDC).   But it’ll do the trick.

So folks, come November, when we hit the big day, look for my link to twitter where I will be giving the blow-by-blow updates of what’s going on in our delivery room.  I am soooo bleeding edge.

Have you all noticed those little avatar/icons that show up in the comments on this blog?  Do you want one too?  That’s a Globally Recognized Avatar or Gravatar.  It works at any blog site that supports the Gravatar icons.  It’s free, quick to sign up, and lots of fun!  Most wordpress themes support it, or can be modified to support it in the comments section.  So select a picture, jump on over there, and sign up today!

My good friend Kyle, who passed away late 2008, e-mailed me today.  As I opened my e-mail account today, there was his name, right there at the top of my mail list with the title “RE: hi”.  My heart stopped for just a moment.  Certainly this couldn’t be Kyle communicating to me from the afterlife.  Confused and bewildered, I wasted no time opening the mail.  Here is what he sent to me:

Dear firend:

How are you doing recently?Some days ago, I came across a wonderful electronic company on the web and had a pleasant chat with the sales manager. He told me that they are planning to lower the prices greatly in order to adapt to the global economic crisis, so that they can expand their overseas market. I have bought an iphone and a computer,and i am very satisfied with their items and services.If you have time,you can have a look.The Web address:  [removed] E-mail: [removed]

Obviously this is e-mail spam.  And after reading this I was frankly, angry.  I suspect that many of Kyle’s family and friends will be getting similar e-mails from his e-mail account purely for marketing purposes.  I have two theories on how this could potentially happen.

1. His webmail account password was hacked/guessed. Probably not likely
2. This particular webmail service will de-activate accounts after 120 days.  That leaves spam-bots wide open to sign-up for those previously active accounts.  I’m sure they maintain a list of known e-mail accounts and every so often, attempt to sign up for a new account with those addresses.

In either case this is slimy, evil, morally reprehensible behavior.  I would expect no less from the spammers of the world.  The spam “machine” is enormous, crafty and without shame.  I wonder how many spam e-mails that I get are from user accounts that were inactivated because the users have died.  Just the thought sends a chill up my spine.

Unfortunately, I will now have to add my friend to my spam block list.  It saddens me a bit – but that’s the world we live in.

Well, it seems to work for Ingrid, so I’m going to take some pictures of my recent projects, post them here, and hope that I can get to them soon.

Here is my latest gadget. This is no ordinary record player, this is the Ion. It’s connected to my computer via a USB cable and is made specifically for backing up those old analog albums to digital files. It’s a beautiful mixture of old and new technology. I can’t wait to start converting those old tracks. But the work is time consuming. Lining up the needle, capturing the audio at just the right second, and all of the digital clean-up to remove the major scratches and pops takes a serious amount of time. Right now we just have a few albums to transfer. Suzy has a collection of Beatles albums at her parents house that I can’t wait to give a spin.

And recently for my birthday, I also received a turkey fryer kit! Before you get too excited, I’m not going to be using this to fry up any animal flesh. Suzy and I are basically vegetarians now anyway.  Instead, I’ll be using this to brew up some delicious batches of beer.  It’s the perfect setup, with a big aluminum brew-pot, propane stove, and long thermometer.  Pat also hooked me up with some copper tubing, which he had pre-fashioned into a spiral.  I’ll use this to make a wort chiller, to do a rapid cold-break.

This is all in preparation for brewing my first Organic Beer.  We recently visited an Organic Brew Shop in Santa Cruz.  I’m excited to get started on the brewing process for this one, but I’ve been putting it off until I got the propane burner and pot setup.  Organic beer may be taking the whole organic thing a bit too far, but hey, it’s beer.  Do you think it will taste any better, or worse or the same?  Time will tell.

Not only did I want to wait for the burner setup, but also the completed Wort Chiller.  While I had the copper tubing, I still needed hose to connect to a water source, to supply the cold water for the cold-break process.  Suzy and I recently went to the hardware store and I picked up a nice thin marine hose that hooks up nicely to spigots outside our house.  Here’s a picture of the cleaning process to remove the thin layer of laminate from the copper, boiling in a solution of water and vinegar.  Also a nice test of the burner.

And also on the docket is a full remodel of our guest room.  The previous owners must have taken it upon themselves to install some seriously bad crown molding, which is basically mounted flat on the wall.  I just want to look at them and say, really?!  And the baseboards themselves look like molding that would normally be used for a door.  The ceiling is still a pinkish purple, the blinds are purple, the carpet is dingy, stained and old and the ceiling fan is electrically dubious.  All this must go.  So I will be taking it upon myself to go to town on this room and turn it into something that we don’t have to be ashamed of anymore.  I’m not sure how long this project is going to take me, but it will probably some time before we get it going.  Here are some before shots…

And here is a closer shot of the horrid crown… and pink ceiling…

Well, I could go on for days about all the unfinished projects around here, but I need to get myself up off the couch.  Until next time…

I put myself under incredible pressure when putting together a new post for this blog.  I spend ten times the amount of time I would normally put into an e-mail.   I want it to be perfect, poetic, beautifully composed, a masterpiece.  But each and every time, I end up posting my text, which doesn’t live up to my strict standards.  This feeling of anxiety over blogging grows so much that I actually talk myself out of writing anything at all.  And when I truly sit down and think about this behavior, I realize just how silly I’m being.  I’m being silly right?

Sometimes I think I should try that twitter thing that everyone is talking about.  Surely that pressure would feel about blogging would be alleviated by being forced to 140 characters per short-attention-span post.  Sure, you’ve heard about twitter right?  I doubt you could have missed it recently.  It’s name is being bandied about in the news, your co-workers, your friends and relatives.  It’s everywhere.  And yet, I have never used it.   Ever.    Just like my aversion to MySpace and Facebook, I’ll probably resist Twitter to the very bitter end.   But someday I’ll get on there.   Lured in by someone – and I may even start my own.  But for now, I’ll just keep on writing these long antiquated blog-like things.

In other news, I recently purchased “The Oregon Trail” for my iPhone.  You’re probably wondering why I would spend $5.99 on an educational game.  I think most of the kids who were in school 80′s and early 90′s are quite familiar with the original game on the Apple II.

For some of us, we had to suffer with just the monochrome green version of the game, but it sure was fun!  I’m not sure I learned much from the game, but couldn’t wait for the “action” parts of the game where you actually got to hunt for animals.  And of course, we always had someone die of dysentery along the way.

Oh, what a great game.  And now, it’s been exhumed from it’s electronic grave, heavily updated and improved and released on yet another ground-breaking Apple device, the iPhone.  And here is what it looks like.

Pretty cool, huh?  I think I’m learning more with this version than I ever did with the old version.

With that, I bid you adeiu.

Readers, I just wanted to bring your attention to some changes around here recently.  I have quietly introduced several new blog links to my “friends links” just over there on the left hand side of this page.  See?  I’m proud to be hosting some of these new blogs right here on parmeter.net, but they are all excellent.  So head on over to Anne’s, Ingrid’s or Laura’s blog.  Heck, check them all out – they’re outstanding!  Also added to the parmeter.net home page is Kirstin’s blog on myspace music – and bonus, she has some great tunes on there too!  And of course don’t forget about Suzy’s excellent blog which trickles out some great material.  I’m so lucky to be surrounded by some superb writers in this family.  So get read’n!

It was around 9:40PM when we got the call at the house.  Suzy and I, and my parents-in-law were all enjoying a late dinner on Christmas Eve at their home.  Warm and comfortable, sipping mulled wine, we were interrupted by the ringing phone.  The phone call was for my father-in-law (we’ll call him ‘Dan’ to protect his identity), who works at a nearby grocery store as the head clerk.  It was the alarm company that monitors the security system for the grocery store.  Apparently, the entrance door sensors had been tripped, somehow.  According to Dan, this is not uncommon to have false alarms at the store.  And so we decided to put our jackets and shoes on and head over to the store to investigate (I offered to tag along so that he wasn’t alone).

Within minutes, we were slowly driving past the front doors of the building, looking for any abnormalities.  It was then, when we spotted that indeed the southeast automatic doors were slightly open, maybe an inch or so.  Dan remarked that he had locked the secured the doors himself, and this was definitely not normal.  We parked and walked up to the front of the store.  As we strolled up to the doors, the local police were also starting to arrive.  Without touching the door, we notice that the latch mechanism appeared to be intact, but the door itself appeared to be damaged.  It seemed if someone had pried the doors apart.  But why had they left the doors closed?  Did they go inside or were they deterred by the security monitors that are clearly displayed in the front of the store?  Instead of investigating any more, we decided it would be safest for the police to do a sweep of the store to make sure that the criminals weren’t still inside.  As more policemen arrived, and a K-9 unit, they finally began a sweep of the store.  I found all of this extremely fascinating and the adrenaline was coursing through my veins.   I barely noticed the cold air of the night as I stood, riveted, watching the police sweep the building.

After about thirty minutes, the police emerged from the front door, after clearing the store.  It seems the would-be thieves were long gone.  Dan spoke to his manager on the cell phone and subsequently to the police giving a report of the times that the store was closed and when the alarm was tripped.  The police evidence officer was on his way, as well as the loss prevention team from the store’s corporate office.

We decided to enter the building and see if we could determine what the robbers had done inside the store.  I strolled in after Dan and the police officers and started looking around for anything out of place.  The first thing we noticed was the self-check registers.  They had been opened and all cash removed at closing time, due to a corporate policy.  The doors on the machine were wide open, displaying the machinery inside.  The intent was that if any robbers did break into the store, they would not damage the machine trying to get into the cash trays.  This policy paid off for the store this night, as the robbers had removed two of the cash trays before realizing that they were empty leaving them splayed on the floor.  As we scanned the row of registers, nothing seemed amiss, until I came upon the first register which had the entire cash drawer ripped from the counter, and lay unopened on the floor.

It was at this time when the loss-prevention team arrived at the store to assess the situation.  We showed them the damage to the door and the registers.  And to my joy, they allowed us to follow them up to the security room where they had a row of monitors and three large digital video recorders.  I was in awe of the technology in the room.  It was surveillance that would make even a Vegas casino blush.  Well, maybe I’m getting a little carried away.  But it was very impressive to a novice.  The clarity of the digital video was superb and the amount of cameras and angles covered was mind boggling.  Based on the time the alarm was tripped, we were able to dial back the video at an instant to the approximate time of the break-in.  And very quickly they were able to locate the precise moment that a blue sports car pulled up and deposited two masked men in front of the store.

These guys knew exactly what they were doing.  We watched as the two thieves sauntered up to the front of the store with a crowbar in hand.  They popped the doors open with surprising ease with one swift move.  As they pushed the doors open and stepped inside, we could see that they were wearing black ski-masks which covered their nose and mouths, obscuring their identity.  They also wore gloves which would prevent the evidence officer, who was fastidiously dusting for prints at this very moment, from finding any fingerprints of the robbers.  Smartly, the sports car which dropped them off also sped away.  The loss prevention guy who was working the security systems, said “Maybe we can get this guy’s license plates with the outside camera”.  His fingers moved deftly over the controls as he brought up different angles of the outside.  Dialing back a few seconds, the main camera out in front of the building just misses the plates on the car.  However, interestingly the burglars getaway car driver was very shrewd and drove off into the distance facing the store with headlights on obscuring any chance of the cameras catching the plates.  Hopes dashed, the loss prevention guy tried to dial back the tape before the crime occurred to see if the same car could be seen in the parking lot.  Sure enough, about five minutes prior, the same car looped around the building, casing the joint.  This time it was close enough to get a good view – there may still be a chance they could get the plate numbers.

We continued to watch the video of the robbers as the walked into the store and with the focus of trained criminals, went straight for the self-checkout machines.  Since the machines were already open, they easily grabbed the money trays from the cabinets underneath the machine.  They quickly realized the trays were empty and then moved along to the cash register.   One of the thieves ripped the cash drawer from under the counter.  With the locked drawer on the floor, he used the crowbar to attempt to bend open the locking mechanism.  Either thwarted by the lock or after discovering the drawer was empty he gave up and both thieves casually walked back to the same door that they had previously pried open.  Surprisingly, they made sure the door was as closed as possible before dashing around the back of the building to meet up with the getaway car.  What a couple of gentleman.  The “Gentleman Robbers”, I will call them.  They were in and out of the store within 90 seconds, and though empty handed were focused and professional while doing their work.

And after fixing the lock and securing the store we called it a night and headed back home.  The adrenaline was starting to wear off and after another mug of mulled wine we retired to bed and slept so as to allow Santa to come, breach our security and deposit some gifts under the tree.  I will not soon forget this Christmas Eve.  It was exciting and saddening at the same time.