I’m back to blogging full swing this week. A lot of what I have posted for May June and July have been things I’ve just written and never got around to posting, or things I had rough notes about and just never really elaborated on them. Not fully sure what got me to start posting again, but what’s made it really easy has been the ability to dictate what I want to say to my phone. Currently I’m running Mac OS X Mountain lion. Unfortunately it is not currently compatible with Dragon dictate that I have. After a long day working and writing on the computer typing a blog post sometimes is physically uncomfortable. So before I stopped blogging I was using dictation on my Mac. I was getting mixed results from it, but I was using it. With me being unable to use the dictation software on the computer I gave talking into my phone a try. I’m pleasantly surprised by the positive results. I first tried my android tablet because it has off-line dictation, but honestly the keyboard editing on android has not been very fun to deal with. So now I’m using my iPhone 4S and the WordPress app to edit after I dictate has been pretty simple.
Month: August 2012
Maybe Out From Under The Blockers
This week it work has been stressful because I am under a deadline that is coming due next month to deliver some software and we had several items that have been blocking us from progressing most of our tasks. This is not uncommon but it’s a big deadline and things just have been progressing slowly so I have gotten concerned. Thankfully early this morning to the major issues seem to of been resolved and the third was clearing up. That means a lot of other items that have been kind of in limbo are now able to proceed.
We’re not out of the woods but I just feel better that we pushed some items aside that of been haunting me all week. I think I’ve mentioned that this deadline has been more stressful than most just because I’m going to most likely be away when MC has the baby right when it’s coming due. That means I need to make sure that everybody else’s up to speed and doing what’s needed and I have to be able to just walk away at a moments notice. My boss and I have a plan for my absence, but it still doesn’t make me any less uneasy with all that’s going on.
I’m glad I’m able to start wrapping up the week before holiday weekend on a positive note. Now just one more day until the weekend!
Meetup With Gus
Today I met up with Gus after work to grab some drinks and dinner. He emailed me a week or so ago seeing if I wanted to meet up before the baby came. Since I was doing that with a lot of people anyway it was perfect timing.
Both of us were able to get out relatively early and we met up at a sushi place near Union Square that he highly recommended. The food was pretty good, and I tried unfiltered sake for the first time. MC and I have tried regular cold sake but never the unfiltered. Gus insisted we try it and it turned out to be very tasty.
It was good to see him and hang out. We talked about a numerous topics and were able to get out relatively early so I was able to get home at a decent hour. I was glad for that since I had been up since 5:45 to do a call with China.
Tuesday, August 28
I think I’m going back to using the date as the title of blog posts instead of coming up with snappy subjects for each regular day I write about.
Today was the first day are cleaning has been here since late July. I think she took some vacation time and also was resting from minor injury. We were glad that she’s back. Her arrival meant I had to leave for work early. I had a lot to do anyway.
I know I have an awesome wife when her best friend is going to be in town and she says I might be busy Saturday night because it’s the premiere of Dr. Who. I didn’t think of that and of course I’m available see her friend. I just thought it was hysterical that she would think that I would want to bail out for TV. It was very sweet though.
On the plus side one of MC’s best friend that lives in DC is going to be in New York this weekend. We will hopefully get to see her for brunch one day.
This evening was pretty low-key. I need to get up early for a meeting at 6 AM going to bed early. The rest of the night was taken up with a little bit of TV, and calling some perspective nannies.
Monday August 27
I am working towards a deadline for a big project at work. Were not late yet, but I have concerns about making our date. I generally am very sensitive to this sort of stuff but there is still a lot of work to be done, not a lot of time to do it, and I may have to run out any time have a baby. That last part about having to leave in a moments notice is probably what’s causing me to be the most concerned. Generally this kind of hectic work pace happens towards a deadline but as I said it is a little different this time because MC is due in two weeks.
Most of my day today involved making sure things were on track for the project that is due, and generally ensuring that we haven’t missed anything. The other half of the day was making sure everybody on the team knew what their priorities were.
I left work a little after 5 PM because MC and I have an appointment after work interviewing a perspective postpartum Doula.
Work Around The Apartment
This morning we both were able to sleep in a little. We are living that up while we can before the baby gets here. Once I was up and dressed i headed out to run an errand and then grab some bagels for breakfast.
In the afternoon I hung curtain hangers in the babies room. I’m not normally a fan of doing that sort of work, since it’s pretty exacting and I like to do things right and I am not that precise with things like drilling holes into walls with my vision all. I totally messed up one of the brackets for one of the curtains but in the end you really can’t tell the difference so MC was pleased with the results, and if she is pleased with her vision I am happy. The short curtains, I’m not sure what they’re called look really good in the room. Overall the room is turned out pretty awesome.
After curtain hanging we did some laundry and then I got MC set up so she can work on the wedding photo albums for our parents. The mockup she has for my parents right now looks really good, she’s just touching it up and I think we will put an order in.
My sister and my nieces and nephew came over to see the babies room and grab some dinner. They are spending a couple of days at my parents before school starts so they swung by here on the way. We ate at bear burger. It was really good and I’m just glad to spend some time with the kids and my sister before the baby comes.
All of them, including Alexis, especially Alexis, is very excited for the baby to arrive. Alexis keeps asking about baby peanut, the name my mom uses for the baby until she officially has a name. Morgan worked on some babes and onesies decorations since she didn’t go to the shower. They were very cute. Alexis got to review and approve some of the baby books she donated to us when she was checking out the babies room. When I mean donated to us, I mean she said she wanted to give these books to the baby and gave them to my sister. It was hysterical when she did it.
All in all relatively productive weekend. It was good to see both sets of parents and my sister especially since it will get hectic pretty soon.
Day & Evening With Different Parents
Last night we got a call from MC’s parents asking if we were free for lunch today. They were visiting two of MC’s nephews and on the way back wanted to see us and check out the finished babies room. We had no plans so we looked forward to the visit.
They arrived around 11 and got to see all the work we have done on the apt. We then showed them the finished Wedding Album and then we walked to a greek place on Austin St for brunch. We had a good meal and then we all came back to the apt and went over the wedding photos in more details so we could put together an album for them.
In the evening my parents came over to drop off an air mattress we need for when guests visit. The one we have wasn’t so great. After that they took us out for dinner at a pizza place they like. After dinner we went to Italian ices and then headed back to our apartment. Since we worked on the photo album for my parents we realized we could add more photos to the album than we originally anticipated. we went through the list of photos again and had them add other shots they really wanted.
To show both sets of parents the photos, I used my MacBook air to send my screen to my Apple TV so they were able to sit on the couch and watch the photo stream while I made edits at their request. It was pretty cool. I just had iPhoto in full-screen mode and it was pretty seamless.
MC and I will work on the layout for both albums for our parents in the next week or so.
Hulu Plus Take 2
Last September, I tried Hulu plus for about two months. I ended up canceling it because I didn’t use it that much to justify the $7.95 a month charge. My original thoughts were to use it on my iPad and possibly my TiVo. It didn’t really happen.
Flash forward to last week and I signed up for a weeks free trial of Hulu plus again. What’s changed is it is now available on the AppleTV. Last month even having Hulu plus available on the AppleTV wouldn’t really matter to me, but recently I have jailbroken the operating system on my Apple TV so I could install Plex media center. With Plex on my AppleTV I am using that as my main Media Center endpoint on my TV instead of using a Mac Mini plugged directly into the TV. So far it’s actually been working out really well. Adding Hulu plus for streaming of TV shows in addition to the downloaded content I have on Plex both available via the AppleTV has been working out pretty well. It’s also less buggy than using the Plex UI on my Mac Mini directly plugged into my television.
For now I just started paying for the first month of service. Will I keep it forever? Who knows, but were enjoying it while we have it.
Friday August 24th
Today has been a long day at work. I got the office around 8 a.m. I treated myself to an omelette from the cafeteria and then started my calls from 9 a.m. Schedule call to up all morning and early afternoon, and then working out some issues with an ongoing project of the rest of the day. By 4:30 I was exhausted figured hey its Friday in the summer I was cutting out about 30 minutes early.
No major plans for the evening at home. M said she was leaving in a bit from work so she least won’t be home late. Hopefully we can just relax for the evening.
Jaybird Bluetooth Headphones
For at least 2 years or more I have owned a pair of Jaybird Sportsband 2 headphones. When I first bought them I thought they were very cool but never really started wearing them as a replacement to wired headphones. I had a few issues with skipping or other sound issues with the headphones and my iPhone 4. I also had some freak issue were the iPhone crashed and needed to be restored from a backup. It happened when I was using my Jaybird
It wasn’t until I wanted to control volume and skip, play & pause on my Android phone did I look to the Jaybird headphones again. I don’t have a wired headphone that will do that with the Android phone so after I moved to Woodside and now spend much more time on the train I started trying them with my Android phone. The setup worked really well. I am not sure when it happened but instead of using them with my Android phone I started using them with my iPhone 4S.
Now after wearing them for a year I am finding wearing wireless headphones especially on the way to and from work and doing laundry to be great. I don’t know why I didn’t really get into them for almost a year of owning them.
The headphones feel a bit uncomfortable after a long period of time so i may shop around for more comfortable ones.