Cool clouds

I don't know anything about clouds, but I thought these looked cool.  I took these Friday afternoon as the cold front rolled in.  I was amazed at their uniformity.  They were in rows that were the same width and length, and equally spaced.  They went on across the whole sky, but without a wide angle lens, you just get to see a little piece here.

Triskaidekaphilia

One month ago tonight, we were headed to the hospital for Wyatt's birth.  Colette remarked to me that if he was born on the 13th, his birthday would occasionally fall on a Friday the 13th.  I said "Hey, we were married on the 13th of January."  So, we do not suffer from triskaidekaphobia in the Amey household, we embrace the number 13.

So far our anniversary has only fallen on a Friday the 13th once, in 2006.  It was fine.  Others have chosen to fly in the face of the number 13, like the original George W. (Washington that is) who laid the cornerstone to the White House on October 13, 1792.  Though those being born on the 13th don't have much choice in the matter, Wyatt shares his birthday with Jerry Rice, Kelly Preston, Marie Osmond, Sammy Hagar, and Paul Simon.

Our anniversary is also the birthday of Orlando Bloom, Patrick Dempsey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Trace Adkins (whom I have met, and he is as tall as I am), and that certain person American Idol made famous for being awful, whom I will only identify as W.H.

I made up the title as the logical opposite of triskaidekaphobia, but I was certainly not the first to do so.  Even though the word isn't in the dictionary, you will find plenty of uses on the web with a quick google search.

Anyway, October the 13th of 2008 was certainly a joyous day for us.  God is great, and our first month with Wyatt has been such a blessing.

For more photos, don't forget to check Colette's blog: ameybc.blogspot.com

Kelsey stars in my first YouTube post

Kelsey, our 50 lb shepherd mix, loves to play with balloons and try to keep them in the air.  I think it is hilarious.  You can also hear Lila laughing in the background, as she thinks it is great fun, too.  It inspired me to try my first YouTube post.

BMI & The Metric System

I recently crossed the 100 kilogram mark. For my fellow American-educated friends, that is just a hair* over 220 pounds. I am also just a little over 6'7" tall, which puts me right at 2 meters. This makes BMI calculation easy, because it is (mass in kilograms) divided by (height in meters) squared. This puts me right at a body mass index of 25. This easy math got me thinking about how horrible the English units of measure are. I imagine that BMI is a recent creation and that its ties to the metric system are somewhat arbitrary, but it was still a reminder.

Working in engineering, almost everything is metric, and I love it. I want to pull my hair out when I come across something in a weird English unit. For example we use microns, that's one millionth of a meter, as a unit of length all the time at work, but every once and awhile somebody will document something in "mils" which is thousandths of an inch.

This somehow made me think about facebook groups and how I could start one for people who thought America should switch to the metric system. Of course, such a group existed already.

I joined.

But for the foreseeable future, our children will probably just have to learn that BMI is their weight in pounds divided by their height in inches squared, multiplied by some conversion factor that few of them will ever be able to remember.

*note: a "hair" is not a metric unit, but I like it. Does that make me a hypocrite?

Sorry Mastercard, I wrote checks.

Whole house treated for termites after termites found -- $1534
New relay for A/C after it failed on a really hot day -- $132
Having a plumber come clean out a clogged sewer line -- $297
Having our home ready for when our son is born -- priceless!

Okay, so I had to write this for a few reasons.

First, I tried to find information online about what prices to expect for the termite treatment and the sewer line clean-out, and it was very difficult. Websites for service companies would say "Call us for a quote." People in plumbing forums would say stuff like "that was really expensive." But people would never give me a price to use to set my expectations. So maybe some random person looking for this information will find this post. As they say in the boy scouts, do a good turn daily.

Second, I just found it ironic that I paid for every one of these items with a check. Sorry mastercard, I really do appreciate your services.

Third, we've always experienced costly repairs in waves. I'm hoping this wave is almost over, but yesterday I found water leaking from the bottom of the AC unit in the attic. I'll have to call somebody tomorrow, and I don't expect it to be cheap. We had several major things go wrong with the house when Colette was pregnant with Lila, so maybe this is God's way of helping us get these things out of the way before we have a new baby join the family.

Fourth, I just kept thinking up more possible things to go with "priceless."
Keeping my pregnant wife happy -- Priceless
Knowing God is in control -- Priceless
The blessing to live in a safe, sturdy, air conditioned home -- Priceless

Well, this got longer than I intended.

Windows Media Center

I'll start by saying that I love my windows media center and its DVR feature.

Sorry my friendly MSFT'ers (BTW, do you have a fun name for yourselves?) Nothing worked in windows media center after my Windows XP Media Center Edition updated to Service Pack 3. It gave errors like "Component Registration Failure" and "Some of the files needed to play radio or video are missing or corrupt. Media Center component registration may have failed" and "Critical Process Failure" and "A critical Media Center process has unexpectedly failed. If problems persist, please restart your machine and try again, or contact technical support. Code 3."

But I found a post by 1stknight (any relation to one of the knights who might read this post?) on this Microsoft website and it fixed my problem. It was in this forum: http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3358277&SiteID=17

My 802.11b wireless adapter also doesn't work since the update, but I haven't tried to debug that yet, and it is a generic one that I got for like $8 at Fry's 4 years ago. I guess I'll work on that one next.

Puzzle Quest for Wii

I just finished Puzzle Quest for Wii. It tried to play to my previous addictions of both puzzle games and fantasy RPGs. The puzzle aspect isn't near as good as Tetris or Dr. Mario, and the RPG aspect isn't near as good as any Final Fantasy game, but it certainly was addictive. The game plays like bejeweled, but clearing gems gives you powers or does damage to your enemies. The game has the depth of hundreds of items and spells, and you have to clear unique screens to get the learn spells or forge new items, but you basically can get through the game by just playing hundreds of enemy screens over and over until your enemies are all dead.

I really can't figure out why I played it to the end when it is so repetitive, other than it is inexplicably addictive. (and I have to finish games I start)

Frankfurt

I have a few pictures to share from Frankfurt. The weather last night was in the mid 70s and beautiful, so we enjoyed eating outside at a place downtown. Today looks to be rainy and foggy, but at least it's not 106 like Dallas.



This is the view of downtown, taken Sunday from my hotel room window. In the lower right of the photo, you can see the wooded park which neighbors the hotel.

This is the same view at night, taken by a pro.

The hotel lucky enough to have me.

"Die Alte Oper" or The Old Opera. One of my favorite downtown landmarks--because it has good parking!

The building in the center Commerzbank Tower, the tallest building in the European Union. This photo was taken from in front of the Opera. (the building on the far right is shorter, but closer). There are several radio/tv towers that are taller, but this is the tallest building.

Frankfurt Bound

I'm on my way to Frankfurt for work this week. Before new readers get too excited for me, let me say this will be my 8th trip (plus or minus one, I haven't really kept track). I do have a one small thing to be excited about on this trip.

I got this 1 GB micro SD card for my phone and a little card reader so I could get pictures from my phone to my laptop easily. It is so small, I might start using it instead of my flash stick. You can see it's only about twice the size of the usb connector.

Also, I read an article on the plane about people who "flip" websites like people flip houses. They buy websites cheap, fix them up in ways to drive more traffic, and resell them. Feel free to make me an offer.

So I had to play with the camera on my phone a little bit. Here is O'Hare's add for their wifi, which I can tell you if you are reading this, works beautifully. I can't really say the same for the camera that is built in to my phone. It seems to be about as cheap as they come. When the new 3G iPhones came out last month, one complaint I heard was that the camera was only 1.3 megapixels. Sounds good to me... I've only got 0.3 megapixels.

Auf Wiedersehen!

Scrap Metal

We are remodeling our guest bathroom, and I decided to take all the brass fixtures we removed to a scrap metal recycler, OK Scrap and Recycling. I had two brass faucets, some copper pipe, the frame of our old shower doors, cabinet door hardware, light fixtures, etc. It totaled about 27 pounds. I figured recycling this stuff was better than sending it to the landfill.

I didn't really know what to expect about this scrap metal place. I thought they might laugh at my small quantities and pay me a pittance that wouldn't cover the gas to get there. Since I was going anyway, I threw in some aluminum cans that would normally go in our curbside recycling, and two old garage door opener motors. If you are wondering why I had two old garage door opener motors, then you don't know me very well.

They paid me 70 cents a pound for the 2 pounds of cans, 65 cents to 70 cents for the brass (they characterized it in two different ways. I'm not sure why.), and 7.5 cents a pound for the motors, which they categorized as "steel."

So I left with a little over $22--more than enough to cover the gas to get there and enough to make me feel like it was worthwhile. It's something to consider if you ever remodel...or replace a garage door opener :)

Online Chess

Here's a classic "What's Ben into now?" example. Online Chess.

Chess.com is a great website for playing chess against anyone anywhere in the world. You just make a move, and your opponent is alerted that it is their turn. Check back the next day and make another move.

My friend Alan Smith got me started on this. I hadn't played chess in at least 15 years. I'm sure this will only last a few months, but right now, I'm hooked.

Sign up and challenge me. You can find my profile at http://www.chess.com/members/view/bigpixy
My username is bigpixy, which is a story for another day. For some reason I didn't think to use SpoilingCitrus.

Getting Started

Colette's blog (ameybc.blogspot.com) will probably always be the official Amey blog. But Colette tells me that I go through hobbies like Lila goes through diapers. Hence, the title, What's Ben into Now? Family stuff, home maintenance, and video games are all probable topics for future posts.

My screen name of choice for years was Bigben. But it is just too popular to get when creating new accounts. Since I'm not a big fan of variations with numbers like bigben1978, I had t0 come up with something else. I've always been a big Dave Barry fan, and he liked to list possible funny band names by just combining random adjectives and nouns. Then one time I ate some questionable mandarin oranges and had an allergic reaction (or poisoning?) which caused my fingers to get bumpy and tingly for a few days. After that I started telling people I was allergic to spoiling citrus, which fit Dave Barry's criteria for band names perfectly.

Then I REALLY got into Guitar Hero. When I had to choose a band name, and bigben was taken already, SpoilingCitrus seemed to be the best choice. And now it is working its way to the top spot over bigben for all new logins and screen names.