Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

Kids and Video Games

Wednesday, October 25th, 2006

It hadn’t occurred to me just how blurred the distinction between, say, watching daddy play a sports video game and watching an actual real-life sporting event was for our son, Micah, until last night. A lot of times when there is an on screen representation of players Micah will point to one and guess “that’s you”. One some of the newer games that feature customizable player models, he has been better at picking out the right person because I often make players that at least somewhat resemble me (red hair, goatee, etc). Last night we were watching Tigers-Cardinals Game 3, and they happened to show a close up of Detroit pitcher Nate Robertson (pictured below unless AP or Reuters somehow gets really upset with me). Personally I had never seen enough of a resemblance to make me take note, but I could stop laughing when Micah looked up at the screen and said “that’s you!”. It took quite a while to try to explain the difference between a “real life” game and my video games, and I’m still not sure it has sunk in completely.

<——- Not “Daddy”

Stuff like this does make me wonder what the implications of more and more photorealistic graphics will be on generations to come as the gap between real and computer-generated narrows. In the meantime, though, it’s great fodder for cute two-year-old stories.

Posted in Family, Video Games | No Comments »

Amgen shifts some operations

Saturday, June 24th, 2006

Well, I think the move rumors at work that most people wanted to ignore or didn’t know what to make of got a little more real this week when we finally announced a bit more publicly that we’re going to be expanding in Longmont, CO. There’s an article in the local paper this morning about it.

Some of us have sort of been anticipating this, and Christy and I actually took a trip out there recently. It’s actually really nice, although obviously it gets quite a bit colder during the winter there than it does in Southern California. Housing is cheaper, and there is the attractive possibility of living very close to work. There is also the side benefit of being in the “right” color of these maps for a change.

In any case, it seems better to me to be proactive and move “early” rather than waiting for someone else to force your hand if possible. Obviously it’s a pretty tough call for a couple of SoCal natives though.

Posted in Family, Work | No Comments »

Well it’s *a* reason

Saturday, June 17th, 2006

As a relatively new participant in the whole Father’s Day thing (see the BabyYates blog for more on this), I find some of the rationale behind the day of honoring fatherhood interesting. Melinda at the STR blog (and an article quoted there) had an unique take on a (IMHO) more important idea of
Husband’s Day.

The whole emphasis on loyalty seems like it’s getting at something pretty fundamental to making marriages actually last past the “twitterpated” stage. I thought the movie Jerry Maguire provided a good commentary about Hollywood’s misunderstanding of the marriage relationship when it had Rod Tidwell (he of the “Show me the money” raison d’etre) practically scoff at Jerry for replying simply “loyalty” when asked why he would to marry Dorothy (the Rene Zellweger character). The idea that someone would be motivated to marriage by something other than the ever-popular “follow your heart” methodology apparently is inconceivable to many folks. Personally I actually kind of liked him for that response, although you may not want to take a lot of serious marital direction from that movie in general.

Don’t get me wrong, being head-over-heels in love with someone is one of the best things I’ve ever experienced, but it should in no way be a pre-requisite for being engaged and responsible as a husband and a father. You’d certainly be hard-pressed to find biblical support for that idea, and I think it would be difficult to make a very persuasive extra-biblical moral argument for it as well.

Posted in Evangelical, Family | No Comments »

Weekend Project – Book Archive

Saturday, June 17th, 2006

As grown-up items around the Gatekeeper HQ retreat in favor of plastic toddler and baby playthings, we are looking for ways to optimize some of our use of space. One obvious target is the preponderance of bookcases containing classic, frequently-accessed works such as: Statistical Methods in Medical Research and Introduction to Compiler Construction. Many of these are textbooks from graduate school, or even undergrad classes, and let’s face it, I haven’t cracked open Greek Philosophy: Thales to Aristotle too often since the early 90’s. Actually, if my grade from that Humanities Tutorial class is any indication, I didn’t crack it open often enough then.

Anyway…. My point was that a method to clear out some of the clutter without having to part with some items that might be useful someday, we needed a good way to put these things a little more “away” while still being able to retrieve them on demand. Enter Delicious Library. This oh-so-slick little app let’s us take advantage of the built-in camera on the new MacBook Pro to barcode scan and catalog all these old books. It uses Amazon’s web services for actually looking up a barcode or ISBN number to retrieve all the appropriate data. We simply need to tag the entry with a box number, and start filling up file storage boxes with books.

Overall the program has performed quite admirably, although you’ll definitely have more luck getting good information on newer books. This is probably more an reflection on the contents of Amazon’s catalog than on the behavior of the app itself. If you have a Mac with a built-in camera and any substantial number of books, CDs, movies, or video games you would like to track, I highly recommend checking this thing out. The free trial will give you a pretty good idea of what the experience will be like, and the full version will set you back only $40.

PS If you noticed a referral entry on the Amazon links above, it’s from Delicious Library, not from me. I’m not trying to make any money from the 2 other people who ever look at this site, trust me.

Posted in Family, Geek, Mac | No Comments »

Sgt Yates Campaign Medal

Friday, January 6th, 2006

Charlie just sent this picture of himself (click on it for the full version) getting presented with his Iraqi Campaign Medal. The men and women over there really are doing a great job (most of them anyway), but I have to admit it will be nice to have him home again in a little while.

Iraqi Freedom Medal

Posted in Family, War | No Comments »