IHOM

Migrating Playcount info in Clementine

2011-05-23T15:17:00.000-07:00

Recently discovered Clementine, a fork of Amarok which used to be my music player of choice when I had a functioning linux box. It's been great. As it happens, I had to dump my database and re-scan my music collection - which causes all playcounts and scores to be lost (and other stats which I care less about). Here are the steps I took to restore them. Probably is a way to do this with less steps.

I used a free trial of RazorSQL for this - it's ok. Nothing to scream about, IMO, compared to PgAdmin III which I'm used to for this sort of thing.
Extract the data from your db backup with a query like: SELECT title,artist,album,playcount,score FROM songs WHERE score > 0;
Export the data to a tab-separated file
Convert it to a bunch of update statements with a regex

First replace all ' with ''
Then s/{.*}\t{.*}\t{.*}\t{.*}\t{.*}/UPDATE songs SET playcount = \4, score = \5 WHERE title='\1' AND artist='\2' AND album='\3';/

Run the resulting statements on your live database. I believe Clementine needs to not be running when you do this.

Spokane Hospitals vs Medicare statistics

2011-04-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

Via this post from the Sunlight Foundation - http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2011/medical-errors-2/ - I thought I'd see how the Spokane hospitals stack up in screwing up. I filtered each of the datasets to Spokane and sorted by name, not rate. Read the article for any disclaimers on the content of the data.

Falls and Trauma

Blood Infections

Urinary tract infections

Bed Sores

Poor Glycemic Control

Foreign objects left in body

Our hospitals each reported zero Air Embolisms and Wrong blood type.

C# 4 Dynamics and XML

2011-04-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

I've seen a couple of cool libraries for using dynamics to magically access your JSON. I knew similar things must be available for XML, and went looking. At this point, my usage is focused on read-only access to xml, of varying styles. Values may arbitrarily be in attributes or child nodes.

The two that I found that and decided to evaluate were Anoop Madhusudanan's ElasticObject and Aaron Powell's Dynamics library.

I set up a test application looking to evaluate performance and syntax. I accessed a handful of nodes, including one array of nodes and it's children. For the hand-built version, I set up a simple set of objects with simple properties and wrote code to extract values from XElements.

I had a bit of trouble with the API for the Dynamics library, but I saw some performance promise, so I went ahead to make modifications and support my needs. I went ahead and forked the project on bitbucket to share my changes here.

For the performance check, my Hand-Built code ended up at 6 milliseconds, Dynamics at 75 ms, and Elastic at 237 milliseconds (I pre-loaded the xml into an XElement and timed the parsing). So, the tradeoff here is time spent coding vs runtime. I don't expect my real usage to have a significant impact on the user's experience, so I'm ok with Dynamic's 12x slowdown for now. If it becomes a problem, I'll have a nice bottleneck to remove for version 2 :).

Here are some syntax comparisons:

Attribute Access
Hand-Built	if (t.MizConfig.InstrumentPlatform != "TC")
ElasticObject	if (t.MizConfig.InstrumentPlatform != "TC")
Dynamics plus mod	Multi-level nesting was not possible as written, MizConfig was returning a string. Changed code to allow if (t.MizConfig.InstrumentPlatform != "TC")
Iterating multiple same-named elements
Hand-Built	foreach (var ch in t.MizConfig.HWChannels)
ElasticObject	foreach (var ch in t.MizConfig["HWChannel"])
Dynamics	foreach (var ch in t.MizConfig.HWChannels)
Accessing Value (non-iterator) as a double. Note: hand-built is able to hide extraneous nodes from me
Hand-Built	d = t.PusherConfiguration.MaxForwardSpeed;
ElasticObject	d = double.Parse(~t.PusherConfiguration.Speeds.Record_Speed.Max);
Dynamics	d = double.Parse(t.PusherConfiguration.Speeds.Record_Speed.Max.Value);
Dynamics plus mod	d = t.PusherConfiguration.Speeds.Record_Speed.Max.To();
Conditionally dealing with optional children
Hand-Built	if(xelement.Element("YoMama") != null) during parsing
ElasticObject	if (~dyn.MizConfig.YoMama != null)
Dynamics plus mod	Didn't find an easy was as implemented, probably would have had to do dyn.MizConfig.Element.Element("YoMama") mixing in XElement access. Instead, I modified the code to allow if (dyn.MizConfig.YoMama != null)

Updates to Kent Boogaart's Resizer control

2011-01-04T11:59:00.001-08:00

I've used and abandoned the Resizer control a few times over the last couple years for various reasons. This time it seems it will be finding a permanent home in one of my apps. I had to make a modification to it and Blogger says I have too much text for a comment, so I'll make a new post.

I'm using Resizer inside a docking panel, so I wanted the width to stay tied to its parent panel. With that use case, I've added North, South, East, and West to the ResizeDirection enum. It's a pretty simple change, so I'll just post a few parts that people might miss if they wanted to reproduce it.


    private static void OnUpdateSizeCommand(object sender, ExecutedRoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            Resizer resizer = sender as Resizer;
            Debug.Assert(resizer != null);

            if (resizer._frameworkElement != null)
            {
                Point point = resizer._frameworkElement.PointToScreen(Mouse.GetPosition(resizer._frameworkElement));
                //If we're not adjusting the width or height, we want to leave it alone so it has its default sizing characteristics
                double? widthDelta = null;
                double? heightDelta = null;

                switch (resizer.ResizeDirection)
                {
               case ResizeDirection.North:
                  heightDelta = resizer._resizeOrigin.Y - point.Y;
                  break;
               case ResizeDirection.East:
                  widthDelta = point.X - resizer._resizeOrigin.X;
                  break;
               case ResizeDirection.South:
                  heightDelta = point.Y - resizer._resizeOrigin.Y;
                  break;
               case ResizeDirection.West:
                  widthDelta = resizer._resizeOrigin.X - point.X;
                  break;
               case ResizeDirection.NorthEast:
                  widthDelta = point.X - resizer._resizeOrigin.X;
                  heightDelta = resizer._resizeOrigin.Y - point.Y;
                  break;
               case ResizeDirection.NorthWest:
                        widthDelta = resizer._resizeOrigin.X - point.X;
                        heightDelta = resizer._resizeOrigin.Y - point.Y;
                        break;
                    case ResizeDirection.SouthEast:
                        widthDelta = point.X - resizer._resizeOrigin.X;
                        heightDelta = point.Y - resizer._resizeOrigin.Y;
                        break;
                    case ResizeDirection.SouthWest:
                        widthDelta = resizer._resizeOrigin.X - point.X;
                        heightDelta = point.Y - resizer._resizeOrigin.Y;
                        break;
                    default:
                        Debug.Fail("Unexpected ResizeDirection: " + resizer.ResizeDirection);
                        break;
                }

                //update the width and height, making sure we don't set to below zero
            if (widthDelta != null)
               resizer.Width = Math.Max(0, resizer._originalWidth + widthDelta.Value);
            if (heightDelta != null)
               resizer.Height = Math.Max(0, resizer._originalHeight + heightDelta.Value);
            }

            e.Handled = true;
        }

in GripAlignmentConverter.Convert:


            switch (orientation)
            {
                case Orientation.Horizontal:
               if (resizeDirection == ResizeDirection.NorthEast ||
                  resizeDirection == ResizeDirection.SouthEast ||
                  resizeDirection == ResizeDirection.South ||
                  resizeDirection == ResizeDirection.North)
                    {
                        return HorizontalAlignment.Right;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        return HorizontalAlignment.Left;
                    }
                case Orientation.Vertical:
                    if (resizeDirection == ResizeDirection.NorthEast ||
                  resizeDirection == ResizeDirection.NorthWest ||
                  resizeDirection == ResizeDirection.North)
                    {
                        return VerticalAlignment.Top;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        return VerticalAlignment.Bottom;
                    }
            }

new cases in GripCursorConverter.Convert


            case ResizeDirection.North:
            case ResizeDirection.South:
               return Cursors.SizeNS;
            case ResizeDirection.West:
            case ResizeDirection.East:
               return Cursors.SizeWE;

in GripRotationConverter:


            switch (resizeDirection)
            {
            case ResizeDirection.SouthWest:
                    return 90;
            case ResizeDirection.NorthWest:
            case ResizeDirection.West:
                    return 180;
            case ResizeDirection.NorthEast:
            case ResizeDirection.North:
                    return 270;
            }

If I've left something out or you're having problems, let me know.

I really want to develop for WP7, wish I had an idea...

2010-09-29T08:14:00.000-07:00

Dying to get some info about WP7 phones on Sprint. Timelines! I need timelines.

Gmail's Spam filter supports Democrats?

2010-09-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, I poke around in my spam filter in my gmail accounts. I virtually never find anything, but today I did. 3 emails from gopsenator.com in one account. Three from nrccmail.org, and some other gopsenator.com in the other. All fund-raising emails. If potential donors (sorry senators, I'm not a donor) don't get the emails, then funds are decreased.

So, built in bias? Lots of clever dems subscribing then marking as spam? Who knows. I'll do my part by un-marking them as spam and deleting them manually.

Cooking

2010-07-23T09:20:00.000-07:00

I am here to blog about cooking; I have cooked muffins, cupcakes, cassoroles and cakes. The first things I cooked were oatmeal muffins at 5 in the morning for breakfast w/o any help from anyone. When my parents woke up they were very suprised. I had fallen asleep on the couch exasusted from waking up so early.

The latest thing that i've made was a spice cake. It made 2 8" round cakes. I topped it w/cream cheese frosting (store-bought not home-made).The cake was delicious.TTFN, Emma

your.flowingdata

2009-07-15T13:34:00.000-07:00

I've been reading http://flowingdata.com/ for a while now. I was interested when the your.flowingdata tool was announced a while back but didn't bother to sign up. Decided to give it a try with the newest release. Seems like fun stuff, though I wish I had a phone w/ a real keyboard.

Anyhoo, I decided I wanted to track how many times I build my software and this is how I set it up.

First, I downloaded Twitter CLI, a command line twitter update post tool. I looked into the powershell options out there, but decided to keep it simple. I set it up in my path.

Next I opened up my trusty Visual Studio macro editor and set up a handler for OnBuildBegin like so:

    Private Sub BuildEvents_OnBuildBegin(ByVal Scope As EnvDTE.vsBuildScope, ByVal Action As EnvDTE.vsBuildAction) Handles BuildEvents.OnBuildBegin
      DTE.ExecuteCommand("Tools.Shell", "twitter.bat ""d yfd compiled " & DTE.Solution.FullName & """")
  End Sub

And viola, VS now direct messages @yfd every time I build.

Now I just need to hack bzflag...

Meet Bobbie Frank

2009-04-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a great picture of a nice Lady, Bobbie Frank

Hopefully that's not an expiring link, if it is, I'll download it and put it here permanently. If you have any special Bobbie Frank memories, please deen us worthy to share them here.

My little artist

2008-11-30T10:14:00.000-08:00

A sweet little pencil drawing by Eliza.

SNL horridly funny sketch

2008-10-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

I skipped over an excellent Lawrence Welk intro, but I think this will be one of the popular Halloween costumes of this year. Sorry for the ads on the video, especially if you get one of the PG-13 ones I saw (boo to that, Hulu).

Software Support Rant

2008-09-24T16:42:00.000-07:00

So, I had this issue with my coding tools (Visual Studio 2008) where I installed the software/drivers for a webcam, and a major chunk of development functionality stopped working. Unfortunately, the installation timing closely coincided with my installing a service pack.

Long story short, I submitted an issue with Microsoft, got some mixed quality of responses from their support staff, and finally they pointed me towards 3rd party apps interfering and I spent a long time tracking down the source. During the course of that, they asked about a few other third party apps that they've seen cause interference. Today, they closed my bug report as Will Not Fix.

To me, having a system where random third party apps might interfere with your internal communication is defective, and should be resolved. I guess its the benefit of being the big guy. You get to say that certain cases are not important enough to fix. Perhaps its just sour grapes because its my case they didn't fix. I highly doubt Logitech would care that their drivers are causing me to not be able to write software. So, I guess no webcam for me on my main computer.

If anyone's googling for Visual Studio 2008 debug hang and ends up here, try killing LVPrcSvr.exe.

For people reading my blog (hah!) who don't care about my whining, here's a picture of Ruby

From Ruby June Hannah

Ser-tah-fyed

2008-09-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

Ruby is all ours, forever. Went to court today, the commissioner (judge) was so nice and it went excellently. New birth certificate will arrive in the mail after a while. A great day for us.

And then there were 6

2008-08-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

6 Matelich's in my family. Ruby is home and, as expected, the kids are gaga for her. Things have been going nicely. Sleeping, eating, diapers. Its almost like we've done this before :)

Ruby

2008-08-12T20:45:00.000-07:00

Hard to keep track of where I've talked about Ruby. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, email me. Court hearing is tomorrow (pray pray pray!!!!) and they're saying she'll be released Friday if all goes well. A couple more pictures in http://picasaweb.google.com/matelich/RubyJuneHannah like this one:

UPDATE: She's ours!!!!!! She will be coming home sometime in the next week. Final report will be filed in about a month, when she'll get a new birth certificate.

I went in this morning and changed/fed/took her temp. Such a sweet girl. Thank you Lord.

Barockin out

2008-08-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

I might have to set this as the ringtone for my sister in law: go go go go obama, obama

Oh, and people on both sides of the isle can enjoy this music video

Implementing Interfaces in C++/cli

2008-08-05T06:20:00.000-07:00

This must be such a simple topic that its hard to google for, because I couldn't find it. So, I figured I'd blog it quickly for other .NET newcomers who've been mainly doing C#.

Given IFace.cs in dll SomeInterface.dll:

namespace Some
{
  public interface IFace
  {
    void Express(string mood);
  }
}

This would be implemented like so in DogFace.h:

#using <SomeInterface.dll>
#using <mscorlib.dll>

using namespace System;
using namespace Some;

public ref class DogFace: IFace
{
public:
   virtual void Express(String^ mood); //virtual is required
};

Pretty simple, but it took me longer than I would have liked.

Moves, epilogue

2008-07-22T20:46:00.000-07:00

Ended up not getting the property due to bad information from our mortgage chick. Oh well. So, we bought a cheapo RV!!!!!!! Yeeehaaawwwwwww. Gonna be rockin the campgrounds this summer. Pictures to come!

Me

2008-07-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

Mememmememememememememememememememememememememememememe
Mememmememememememememememememememememememememememememe
Mememmememememememememememememememememememememememememe
Mememmememememememememememememememememememememememememe
Mememmememememememememememememememememememememememememe
Mememmememememememememememememememememememememememememe
Mememmememememememememememememememememememememememememe
Mememmememememememememememememememememememememememememe
Mememmememememememememememememememememememememememememe
Mememmememememememememememememememememememememememememe
Mememmememememememememememememememememememememememememe
Mememmememememememememememememememememememememememememe

The Read It Paper

2008-07-13T18:20:00.000-07:00

Today,I hope that every one's having A good day.If today is your birthday,Happy Birthday!

Today if it's your shopping day then you want to go to Albertson's,If you want to know why,it's because They have great savings if you have an Albertsons card.

Today will be most likely warm.

The Read It Paper is having a Story Contest.Due August first for First-Third graders. Please mail it to emma at mateli dot ch or leave it in the comments section. The prize is $5.

We think YOUR complements count.

New Blogger

2008-07-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

Emma's been dying to start writing her own stuff on the internet, she's starting with making her own daily newspaper. So, watch this space for new things from her.

more on moving

2008-07-08T08:38:00.000-07:00

Well, the last property we made an offer on was a bust, we found another cool one out by Eloika Lake, but it was only 5 acres and up on a plateau with a narrow driveway cut into the hill. The pictured plot is 20 acres of mixed grass and light woods. 13ish on one side of the road, 6ish on the other. Put in an offer yesterday, we'll see......

moves

2008-06-24T15:03:00.001-07:00

Well, you may have noticed you got redirected to blog.mateli.ch when you visited. I've been thinking about getting a domain name for a good while now. I was going to do matelich.com, but then came up with mateli.ch. The dorkiness of it makes me happy, though matelly-dot-c-h doesn't quite roll off the tongue. I probably should get matelich.com too and have it redirect to mateli.ch or vice versa, but I'm too much of a spendthrift.

Then google has a free Google Apps for Domains setup where you get gmail to handle your email, and localized calendar, docs, etc. for your domain name. Fun stuff. The kids like getting to pick whatever email aliases they feel like in addition to their own names. Sara's holding out on using her account, but she'll break one of these days :)

If you're a matelich and want an account, let me know. I get up to a hundred. I won't be able to read your email, nor would I. I guess as administrator, I could reset your password, and get in, but you'd at least know I'd broken your trust when you went to login. Oh, and if you have any bright ideas for something to put at http://mateli.ch that would be peachy.

The other move is a bit down the line, but we're in the market for some land to build a house on in the future. Looking for 10ish acres north of Spokane. Put a long-shot offer on a site we really love today, but its contingent on them installing a well. We'll see.

ugly and distracting

2008-06-06T22:28:00.000-07:00

Official Google Blog: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

I, for one of many, hate the new google favicon. I do not associate a lowercase blue g with google in the least. Every time I see it, I wonder what site I'm on. Bring back the big G, put it in a circle, cube, whatever. I'm find with colored backgrounds.

I even don't get all that riled up at the lack of American patriotic google images on important dates like Memorial Day and D-Day. But an ugly favicon? inconceivable!

pretty graphs

2008-06-06T21:48:00.000-07:00

I guess I'm a sucker for interactive pie charts and line graphs. I can't get enough of my mint.com account. It makes me want to open more accounts in more places just so I can track them!

Now I got in on their Inventment account beta, and they have support for my ira, and my 401k's sites, so I can watch expectantly for the day I stop losing money in the stock market :) So, if you like wasting time finding out how much you spent on gas this month versus last month (huh, spent $50 less in may than april, wierd), try out mint.com. Too bad financial information is so personal, it'd be great fun to get some social networking going on there.

I kinda feel bad though. They look at things like how much you've got on your cards and try and hook you up with better deals, which I assume they would get a commission on. I always check them out, but ugh, too much work for too little gain. Well, I'm sure I'll find a way to financially support them at some point. Heck, I might even pay a couple bucks a month for the service.

Math geeks unite

2008-05-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

I always planned on writing work related stuff

2008-05-22T08:21:00.001-07:00

Bonus personal info for friends/family - we got a frog, and I discovered I dislike crickets :). I was thankful we had a dustbuster to take care of them.

Two things in working with WPF that took me a while to figure out.

First, I had a bug where _'s were going missing in a button's label. I'd read about the keyboard accelerator stuff, but it didn't occur to me because I was putting a directory name in there. Quick fix was to make a converter:


  public class NoMnemonicConverter : IValueConverter
  {
     public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
     {
        return ((string)value).Replace("_", "__");
     }

     public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
     {
        return ((string)value).Replace("__", "_");
     }
  }

Second, I was trying to put some of my common controls and some I'd borrowed from others into a single library. My generic ResourceDictionary just would not get recognized. I googled and grepped until my eyes fell out, then I found this segment to put into the library's AssemblyInfo.cs:


[assembly: ThemeInfo(
    ResourceDictionaryLocation.None, //where theme specific resource dictionaries are located
   //(used if a resource is not found in the page, 
   // or application resource dictionaries)
    ResourceDictionaryLocation.SourceAssembly //where the generic resource dictionary is located
   //(used if a resource is not found in the page, 
   // app, or any theme specific resource dictionaries)
)]

What a relief!

Oh where oh where has my little dog gone

2008-03-26T14:08:00.000-07:00

Boohoo, somehow the front door blew open and Kevin Trevino ran away. Dex was out and about too, but made his way home. Puts a real damper on the day. Had to put "afraid of cameras" on the lost flyer because I don't have any pictures.

Math Is Cool

2008-03-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

Emma is going to be participating in a Math Is Cool competition this Friday and is really looking forward to it. She loves her NWC Math Team tshirt. I guess there is a "big rivalry" between Northwest Christian and St. George's. She's been working really hard on it, so here's praying she takes her time and remembers all the tricks and formulas.

New Church

2008-02-11T06:34:00.000-08:00

Well, after leaving our church last year when the pastor left, we'd enjoyed the children's program at Life Center, and Pastor Joe is a great speaker, no wonder they're so huge. The size of the baptism services and the number of people who answer altar calls is impressive.

But we always hoped John Repsold would start a new church like he'd planned, and we've been going there since it opened, Mosaic Fellowship. It certainly is different from any church experience we've had in the past. Initially, trying to attend with 3 kids was kinda painful, but we've gotten better at it, and the kids have too. They have a kids area for 5 and under, but Eliza doesn't really go for that. The biggest problem I have is that they are really focused on getting us active in the community (like we should be) and that is something we haven't made much time for*, so there's a bit of guilt there.

Now I just need to suppress the feeling that I should lead a small group :)

* We do stuff, just not enough for me to not feel a nagging feeling in my heart.

glasses

2008-02-05T14:03:00.000-08:00

Got myself some spiffy new glasses. Silhouettes even. Haven't worn glasses since I got my radial karatotomy (and I didn't wear them much anyway). I've gotten tired of having to be 10 feet from a street sign before I can read it, so I went to get glasses. I'll post a pic when I get around to it.

Vacation Summary

2008-01-29T09:52:00.000-08:00

Tuesday evening: fly to LAX, drive to hotel at Disneyland maingate. whee

Wednesday morning: continental breakfast - we love cheap danishes. Go to pick up pre-purchased tickets. They're expired - thanks getawaytoday. Pay $50 to update tickets, non-sarcastic thanks to disney customer service. Go have lots of fun. (see update 2)
Wednesday afternoon: Rain rolls in. LA gets more rain in half a day than they did the previous year. Talk of snow possible. We bundle up and take advantage of even shorter lines.

Thursday: Good oranges, bad danishes. Go to California Adventure - lots of Eliza friendly rides closed, but we had a lot of fun. Only a little rain. Didn't get to hit California Screamin' due to light showers though. Emma still loves Tower of Terror.

Friday: Maybe some toast instead of danishes... Hit the beach, started in Malibu, played in the sand a bit. Drove north. Walked out on the Huntington beach pier and we all saw a dolphin leap out of the waves 3 times. Made our day.
Friday evening: Tried to catch the Disneyland parade, but were late so we only caught a little. Picked up a few rides.

Saturday: Ugh, cheap danishes. Back to Disneyland for our last day. Nice weather, had a ton of fun. Headed out late afternoon to find an El Pollo Loco. Got lost. Finally found it really close to our hotel. Oh well. Yummy.

Sunday: Up early to catch our flight. Accidentally kept a key card in my pocket, that'll be an expensive souvenir. Shortly before boarding we hear Spokane is not accepting inbound flights, while they deal with a mega snowstorm. After an hour or so, they finally let us take off. We had just got our tray tables in their upright position and turned off electronics when they informed us of this little booboo and shipped us off to Portland. Being in the back of the plane, we were at the end of the customer service line to get a new flight lined up. After our 90 minute wait in line (why oh why didn't I go find a different agent somewhere to help me?) the next available flight was Monday at 8:20 PM. We took it and then went to wait for an hour for our baggage to be delivered. Finally to the hotel (which we had to pay for - weather related you know), we had dinner and went to sleep.

Monday: Got up to a real continental breakfast - bagels, belgian waffles, sausage scrambled eggs - good work Country Inns and Suites. Took Emma and Abe for a quick swim in the uncomfortably warm pool and headed to the airport to see if we could get on standby. Short story - we didn't. 3 flights went out full with us making doe eyes at the Alaska people trying to get them to give us tickets. Thank goodness the portland airport has a tv playing Boomerang all day. Flight went out late (are there Alaska flights that don't leave at least a little late?), no taxis at the airport for ages, Eliza crying because she had to wake up at 10:30 when we got off the plane, and didn't stop till after we got home at 11:15 (poor tired baby).

Then I got to wake up this fine Tuesday morning and shovel a foot of snow. Did about half of it. Enough to get the van out if Sara gets motivated to go somewhere today. Thank goodness school was out yesterday and today.

Summary - great time in california, terrible time getting home. Thanks to our friends who helped us out while we were gone.

Update: Here's a smattering of pictures
Update 2: Talked to Get Away Today, apparently the expiration date was due to the price we paid. Disney raised prices $10 a ticket after that. $10*5 people = $50.

What if...

2008-01-19T08:50:00.000-08:00

Eliza (3 1/2) is a rather imaginative, verbal little girl. She is an incorrigible what if'er (not that I would corrige her if I could :). This morning I went in to wake her up.

Thomas: Did you sleep well?
Eliza: No *grunt*
Thomas: Did you have nightmares?
Eliza: No
Thomas: Were there squirrels in your bed?
Eliza: What if squirrels ate nuts out of my brain?
Thomas: You don't have squirrels in your brain.
Eliza: What if I did?
Thomas: Well, then it might be good to have squirrels eat them out.
Eliza: Or it might be bad. That would be silly.

"What if it did" is definitely a common phrase around here.

John Boyd

2008-01-07T06:05:00.000-08:00

I found this article quite interesting. It describes a man driven to keep America great, who persevered against a rigid bureaucracy, and describes his successes from post-vietnam through the application of his ideas in Iraq I and II.

Speak to me

2007-12-10T12:09:00.000-08:00

I mentioned Kevin Trevino to my mom the other day and realized I hadn't yet told her we had a new dog. Next, of course, was the shock that she didn't faithfully follow my blog :). Anyhoo, she mentioned she'd really like to have something to read the news to her. So I started doing a bit of searching.

First, I tried talkr.com and put those handy-dandy read-this-post tools at the top of each post. Works pretty nice, though machine reading really brings out the dull-ness of my prose.

Next, I downloaded a trial of NewsPiper Pro, but it won't show me old posts I guess. So, I'm writing this one to try and get it to work for me. I'll update this later w/ more info.

Update: Gave up on NewsPiper Pro. Couldn't get it to say anything. Just tried NewsAloud which recently added RSS support. Apparently that doesn't include ATOM support. As much as I love hearing a computer voice saying zero zero seven hyphen comma semicolon four two zero ..., that's not going to work for me.

Well, maybe I'll look at some other stuff later.

Kevin Trevino

2007-11-17T19:16:00.000-08:00

Well, I was a bit premature in announcing Poppy the puppy's joining of our family. she only lasted a few days before Eliza realized that puppy teeth are terrifying. We found her a nice new home to be friends with a wiener dog. But the desire to have a new dog wasn't dashed by the experience.

Sara found a 3 year old beagle named Buddy on craiglist, and we went to meet him. Who could say no to such a cute little guy??? He's got pretty good manners, loves to chase cats, knows a few tricks, and has a wiggle-bum like his "cousin" Hercules. The name Buddy didn't work for us because we call Abe our Buddy often. So, after much discussion, we came up with a name we all could agree on - Kevin. Eliza calls him Keveeeeen, like the big guy on 3-2-1 Penguins. Abe likes to call him Kevin 11 as in Ben 10. Emma hangs onto his old name with Kevin Buddy, but Sara's nickname has become most prevalent - Kevin Trevino. She's not sure where it came from, but it just sounds right.

He's a good dog, but this is one of the rare pictures of him. For reasons unbeknownst to us, he is petrified of cameras. Run-and-hide-under-a-bed scared. He and Dexter get along fine, enjoying cat patrol together.

English language rules

2007-08-14T07:25:00.000-07:00

Of course, all my kids are the smartest and the best, and Eliza is no exception. Her major skills are being exceedingly verbal and a flair for the dramatic. Like all children, she has some quirks to her speech that are always endearingly cute. My favorite by a mile is her mis-application of reduction from plural to singular, a la cats -> cat.

Misapplications:
Apple Juice -> Apple Joo
Bruise -> Broo
Ear Wax -> Ear Whack

My do I love my kids.

Baby Birds

2007-07-26T18:17:00.000-07:00

We have tried every summer to spot the babies in the nest at the back of our house, and Sara finally did it. I'm pretty impressed with the quality of the picture, just because I've never had much luck with the digital zoom on my camera.

coolness

2007-06-29T06:37:00.000-07:00

I have long loved google maps more than its competitors (though MSN's LineDrive is really cool). One thing I've always wished for is a way to avoid areas you know are slow at a certain time of day, or take a side trip, etc. Well, Google came through for me. Now, you can just drag the line on the map, and it will map a new route with leaving the road before where you grabbed and going where you dropped.

It took a second to change poor directions to my mom's house to the better way. Thanks Google.

Google Maps New Features

uh oh

2007-06-15T13:18:00.000-07:00

My wonderful wife has a small issue with presents. She hates waiting. Whether she's on the giving or receiving side, its pure torture for her. So, when a package arrived in the mail for me today, she let me know that I was more than free to open it early. Really, opening it is fine. If I want. I can wait, or OPEN IT NOW!!!!!!!

So I did. That naughty girl bought me a Nintendo Wii. Whatever will I do now. I'm going to stop sleeping, working and eating, I fear. After a 90 minute lunch, I managed to drag myself back to work, but I'm having trouble not searching for games to buy, figuring out how much extra remotes cost, etc. I named it BollWiivil.

Yippee! Hope the tivo doesn't get jealous.

Yummy Ice Cream

2007-05-15T08:35:00.000-07:00

So, I had a pint of ice cream the other night. I usually make them last two nights, but before I knew it, I was past 65% gone and once you hit that, you might as well finish to avoid disappointment on night two :). It was Haagen Dazs Pomegranate Chip, one of their Reserve ice creams. If you like pomegranates, I'd zip down to the store. Quite tasty.

Sara's gonna kill me

2007-05-02T14:36:00.000-07:00

A politics related post!

The COUP returns

2007-04-29T22:02:00.000-07:00

Well, after a 15 year hiatus, the rec-league basketball sensation which wowed Coeur d'Alene has the returned. This inspiring team, known as The COUP, took on the Hillyard Ballers, an elite team of players who've definitely got the title on their minds. Featuring the original core members of Shay, John, and Tom, The COUP showed the league what they were made of in this impressive 74-21 blowout [ed. note - the Hillyard Ballers won].

Though the statistician hasn't been hired yet, Tom took home an impressive 5 points, 5 turnovers, and the most impressive foul of the night. Look for more excitement from these old farts in the coming weeks.

Hope

2007-04-27T06:12:00.000-07:00

My BSF study for today took me to Romans 15:13:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

What a wonderful benediction. I love how Paul can fit so many things into one verse.

God of hope
filled with all joy and peace
trust in him
overflow with hope
power of the Holy Spirit

Sometimes its a bit too much for my one-track-mind to handle, which is why I like BSF. Forces me to look at just a handful of verses at a time to ensure that I actually read all that is there.

And if you have insomnia, my hope for you is that you can sleep like this:

(had to throw in a picture of my kids while I was here!)

2007-04-25T17:42:00.000-07:00

I decided to put Google ads on the blog, earn a few cents. So, what's the first ad I see? "Gay. Are you?" I wonder how well a quiz can determine that.

Hmm, now that I put that in a text in a blog post, I guess that means I have a higher chance of continuing to see it.

Milk Jug Sculpture

2007-04-25T17:39:00.000-07:00

For Emma's LIGHTS program, she had to create something out of 2-25 milk jugs. We ended up making this lovely elephant out of 15. 8 for the body, 4 for the legs, one for the head with pieces for the ears and handles for the tusks. The non-jug portions are the trunk (newspaper wrapped in duct tape, with a cap taped on the end) and the tail (rolled newspaper circular, with the end snipped to look hairy). We spray painted the whole thing grey and put on the toenails and eyes.

My biggest recommendation, don't assume you got the jugs clean when you rinsed them out. Use soap. It was a little frustrating, but came out pretty nice for a 2 hour project.

Google Reader revisited

2007-04-23T14:04:00.000-07:00

I recently wrote about my change of RSS feed aggregators to Google Reader. As a matter of fairness, I'll list the things I've discovered I don't like about Reader.

Can't force an update. I have no idea how to know if its really gotten the latest elements. Also, when I refresh my items from, say, overnight, there are huge chunks of data from sites that I know publish more incrementally. The timestamps appear to be the timestamps from when reader retrieved them.

Akregator lets you have scheduled checks of your feeds, customizable per feed, as well as re-checking one or all at your hearts desire.

No searching. GASP! How can a google product not let me search my feed elements???

Akregator has a quite nice search utility.

In short, I've got a huge tradeoff of functionality right now. However, the convenience of google's display and being on the web is winning at the moment.

RSS

2007-04-20T21:17:00.000-07:00

I know you all are dying to hear more about RSS feeds from the overwhelming response I got previously :). So, to sate your desires I figured I fill you in on how I'm surfing the blogs these days. I was fearful my linux box was going to have some catastrophic hardware failure, so I decided to give google reader (http://google.com/reader) another try. Well, they've redone the interface and I'm sorry to say, it leave Akregator in the dust. The ease of use, and the bonus that I can now use it anywhere is almost too good to be true.

Since everyone knows their own likes are the best and assumes everyone else wants to know about them, I've put the reader shared items doohickey on this blog. What that means is if I read something that I think rules, I click a little box and it goes over on the right in "Tom's shared blog posts" (though I don't like what I titled that box). Now you get to know what I find interesting, whoopee for you.

Anyway, give reader a try, and if you want, I'll point you to some good blogs.

CUTE!

2007-03-22T15:28:00.000-07:00

By Abe

When Beasts Attack

2007-03-19T11:45:00.000-07:00

Poor Dexter. Got attacked by a dog who lives a couple blocks away when we were out for a walk with Emma and Abe on their bikes. I (Tom) was trying to kick the attacker off, yelling "Get off him, you beast." It does sound like I shoulda been swinging my purse or using my cane, but oh well.

Anyhoo, we took him to the Pet ER and got him all stitched up. He's moving pretty slow today. Very odd to see macaroni sticking out of your dog. The owner of the attacking dog didn't give me any trouble in paying the bill, so that's nice.

Christmas Eve

2006-12-24T20:07:00.000-08:00

Finally in bed! after a busy day of horse drawn carriage rides and playing in the snow.

Light of my life

2006-09-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

Or at least one of them. Emma is going to be in the Lights program at school, which is their gifted and talented system. We knew she was getting tested, and she came home today said she missed by two points so wouldn't be in it. She was a little disappointed, and then this evening the teacher called and said she had used the wrong scale for her thinking she was older than 8.

Hearsay from Emma says that disection of a sand shark (!) is part of things, but that may just be for the older kids, we're not sure yet. Anyway, go Emma!

Eliza sings the ABC's

2006-09-21T18:52:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I've only posted Eliza videos. Perhaps because the older kids ham it up too much. Enjoy. BTW, she's barely 2!!!!!

We've decided child videos on the internet probably aren't a good idea, so it you would like to see this cute email, let me know and I'll email it to you.

One more thing

2006-06-24T20:51:00.000-07:00

One standard is never good enough for anyone. Turns out RSS is the name of one kind of "feed." Apparently Blogger doesn't use RSS, it uses Atom. I don't know what the difference is. I don't think it matters. I was shocked after reading my last post to actually look at this blog and see that there was no link to our feed! It now on the side in my links and at the very bottom of the page too.

Let me know what you think of the new layout, too.

Update: Just looked at this under Internet Explorer and the sidebar is all messed up, pushed down to the bottom. I'll take a look at fixing it later. You should be using firefox anyway.

Confusion

2006-06-24T19:03:00.000-07:00

Wow, one might think I was on drugs reading my last post. How embarrassing :). Let me try to clarify. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It's basically a way for you to subscribe to a list of headlines from some website. Usually a column someone writes or a blog or a comic strip.

There are many different RSS readers out there. I recommended RSS Reader merely because it was the first Windows based tool that looked like Akregator (the Linux based tool I use). Basically, you look for the RSS feed icon, copy the link it goes to and put it in your reader. Then it will check the feed every so often and show you what new items have been posted.

Some of my favorite feeds are 101cookbooks (recipes I'll never make), the dilbert blog (he's annoyingly atheistic, but very humorous otherwise), lots of right-wing blogs (like hughhewitt.com and soundpolitics.com). Oh and each category on craigslist.org has its own RSS feed. I can't believe the number of dogs and cats that roll through the Free list (well, I guess I can considering our track record).

Hopefully I cleared at least something up. Oh, and maybe the last post will make a little more sense, though probably not. Here's a picture Emma made so you don't have go away empty handed.

Blogs, RSS, etc

2006-06-15T20:36:00.000-07:00

I started to write this post to inform my family who might read this of what RSS is so they could set up an RSS reader and be able to see when I added more amazing new info. But then I started to worry about their free time.

I fired up KDE's Akregator several months ago to see what all the hype was about. I liked keeping up with http://planetkde.org and preferred it to my email digest of new stuff at slashdot. Soon, I started looking for other blogs I might care to read and found reddit.com, digg.com, oy! Sara made me stop sending her links. Now I've gotten into the blogosphere, instapundit, hugh hewitt, corruption chronicles, and more.

Not good for my daily internet overhead. But I can quit any time :). Anyhoo, http://www.rssreader.com/ seems to look a lot like Akregator (though if you're really brave, download Kubuntu and try out a real operating system).

Get me a shotgun for my birthday

2006-06-15T18:57:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to need it for this cutie. Oh, and I guess Google has started a beta of online web albums. I tried it out with some pictures of Abe and I at Disneyland. Check it out here. We'll probably add more later when we get around to it.

Blueberry Muffin Fever by Emma Matelich

2006-05-10T22:37:00.000-07:00

Sose loves her parents. Sose loves blueberry muffins. Her parents let her eat blueberry muffins all of the time. She has blueberry muffin crumbs on pork chops, salmon, tunafish sandwiches, hotdogs, and last but not least, ice cream.

Sose had a twin sister named Dove. Dove is a good sis. She doesn’t pull Sose’s braids.

Sose started feeling funny. She went to the bathroom. She went to the mirror and screamed! Her eyes were blueberries. Plus her hair was blue and white. Her mom saw her and fainted. Could someone help them?

Sose grabbed Dove and ran as fast as she could. Sose and Dove ran to Gram and Gramps house. Gram took them to nurse Emma Matelich. Nurse Emma Matelich had never seen this kind of fever ever. She took them to the children’s center. A doctor came and greeted them and then he took them into a room. After they got in the room, he pulled one of Sose’s hairs.

“Ouch!” she said.

“Did that hurt?” asked the doctor.

“No, but I thought it would, “she said.

He said to one of his helpers, “Take this to the office.” He took it to the office and came back and said to the doctor, “That hair is blueberry muffin!” When he went out of the room, Sose ran out of the room and to her friend’s house. She got her friend’s mom, who drove her to a different country. Sose went to the store in Japan. The storekeeper saw her and told her she saw a girl that looked like her. Sose asked how she got cured. She learned this lesson: You have to have a little of everything, not a lot of one kind of food. And she ate mustard pills. When Sose woke up, she was the same as she used to be. And she was home.

For breakfast, she had waffles and salmon. She put salmon on her waffles. It tasted good. She wondered if there was such thing as salmon fever. What do you think?

April Flowers

2006-04-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

I wish I could take credit for these, but they were planted by the previous owners. I really love this first one, its a huge plant growing over the edge of the wall next to our driveway with all these hundreds of purple flowers.

Open mouthed wonder

2006-04-10T19:20:00.000-07:00

This is Sara, by the way. I can never rememeber how to sign in. Abe and the others were watching a Monsters, Inc story on the computer. They kind of lose themselves. PLus, we have all been sick. When I was at Disneyland with Emma, she had an ear infection, Eliza has strep, Abe has a the puky flu, and I have a horrid head cold. Can someone say SUMMER, PLEASE!!!!

Instant sleep

2006-04-10T19:03:00.000-07:00

Eliza was up a little late and was pretty grumpy. After a while she just tossed herself on the ottoman, kicked her legs a couple times and fell fast asleep.'

Here's a joke from Abe:
Knock Knock
Who's there?
Go Go
Go Go Who?
Go and go and goes and goes and goes and goes and goes and doesn't come back and... (something about texas and getting a knife and lots more goes, I lost track).

And Emma's favorite knock knock joke is:
Knock Knock
Who's there?
Ben and Don
Ben and Don who?
Ben there and Don that.

Pretty princess

2006-03-25T16:56:00.000-08:00

Eliza is one baby who loves dressing up. While this princess outfit was great, nothing beats finding a pair of Emma's underwear and pulling them over whatever she's wearing. Oh help us when she is old enough to find Sara's makeup (or Emma's in too few years, EEK!).

Emma's first soccer game

2006-03-25T16:48:00.000-08:00

Emma's first soccer game was a lot of fun, they may not have won, but Emma did really well. She played goalie for one period and had great hands, then she scored a goal the next period. Emma and Abe's friends Ian and Zachary were watching for a little while and Abe and Zack had a good time.

GOOOOO SOCCER ANGELS!!!!!

Fun with paints

2006-02-26T08:48:00.000-08:00

Well, she's no Picaso, but Eliza sure gets in to her work! To save space, I edited out the part where she stuck the paint in her mouth, I'll make one with that later. So far, I'm liking Vimeo.com, I think I'll put some more vids up there later.

Update: new pedophilophobia policy. No videos of kids online. Email me if you want to see them

Thomas just reminded me...

2006-02-02T18:57:00.000-08:00

So, those last posts were from me-Sara-because I always remember Thomas' username and password and not my own. Don't know why. Anyway, you can count on me trying to remember my stuff, but use the humor as a guide-if there is any, it's mine. :)

2006-02-02T18:50:00.000-08:00

This was one happy piglet for about a second, then she needed the costume off like now and when she disgustly threw it aside after peeling it off, she pulled her diaper off for good measure. Take that, diaper that botherith me! BE gone with you!

The picture speaks volumes

2006-02-02T18:46:00.000-08:00

Eliza eats a little and then if there is any left and it is in a semi liquid form, she ALWAYS puts it in her hair. Only with the right hand and then puts one or two fingers, depending on the mood, up a nostril.

How blessed am I?

2006-01-08T19:03:00.000-08:00

Here are recent photos of my 3 cuties. I can't believe how lucky I am too have such a great family. Emma's starting a short swimming class tomorrow, she can't wait to get back in the water. Abe's doing a preschool soccer league, had his first practice/game yesterday. Truly hilarious, too bad I forgot my digital camera. As you can see Eliza is still a doll. She has enough hair for some pigtails. She actually kept them in for about half an hour.

Stop the insanity

2006-01-01T23:10:00.000-08:00

Of course I'm not clever or motivated enough to make the previous posts, they're from Sara. Well, to avoid confusing our huge fanbase, I've made a separate account for Sara so when she posts things it will say its from her. Aren't you relieved?

And while I know you're dying to know what IHOM stands for, I'm afraid you'll have to keep guessing.

THE AMAZING RACE

2006-01-01T22:52:00.000-08:00

Okay, some of you dont watch as much TV as others. Make sure to tune in when we are on the Amazing Race. We have sent in our application and video. This is one of the photos we sent. It's sooo wonderful and witty, we know we'll be chosen. You wish we were joking. Emily is ready to send out postcards to the city of Moscow. This is bringin out a whole new side of us, esp my reserved, oh so quiet and smart, sister. Yeah right.

Blinky

2006-01-01T22:48:00.000-08:00

This picture looks like a mistake. However-she love to be weird and blink for a really long time. She finds herself quite humerous like her mother. I mean, how her mother finds herself...the actual fact is being debated. I am cute and clever for sure. 2 b 2 cute 4 ever is difficult, but attainable.

2006-01-01T22:45:00.000-08:00

Emma at her Christmas Program

2005-12-17T13:26:00.000-08:00

Northwest Christian had a huge turn out! They did great singing CHRISTMAS songs.

Fat Daddy

2005-12-16T18:18:00.000-08:00

The first day of snow and we are loving it.

Looks like Abe already found a present under the tree!

2005-12-16T18:17:00.000-08:00

almost bedtime

2005-12-15T13:49:00.000-08:00

Well, if I'm going to put my car up here, I may as well put a new picture of the kids too.

Buy my car

2005-12-15T13:40:00.000-08:00

2001 Dodge Intrepid SE, 55k miles, power windows/locks, automatic transmission, cruise control, AM/FM Stereo cassete, great car, handles well, very comfortable. $7,700 5o9 868 3986

2005-10-02T18:10:00.000-07:00

just got out of the bath

2005-09-23T06:34:00.000-07:00

What a cute dude with his new glasses! Shortly before we buzzed his head. Wonder when it'll grow out that long again.

2005-09-23T06:33:00.000-07:00

Emma and Eliza (with minor carrot skin-tone)

may as well

2005-09-23T06:22:00.000-07:00

Really, I just wanted to have something to reference when posting on another blogger post, but it'll be nice to have somewhere to post pictures with picasa.

Perhaps I'll get hooked :)