Zeigen

After my first full week back at work, I’ve learned that I really have to figure out when I want to do my blogging. I’m too busy at work (and usually work through lunch), and when I come home I haven’t figured out when to do it. After Sammy goes to bed at 8pm seems like a logical choice, but I’ve been really consumed in watching the Winter Olympics lately.

Amazing how quickly eight days can go by without a blog entry. Kimi promised to write about Sammy’s first solid food experience last weekend, and it would be great to talk about our trip to Santa Cruz last Sunday to see Auntie Tracee. Or perhaps I should have described hosting poker night on Tuesday and coming in tied for first both tournaments. Certainly my reaction to some of more interesting Olympic events — women’s snowboarding cross, cross-country 4×10km relay — is blogworthy. Maybe we’ll go back and fill in the gaps sometime. But maybe not.

Here’s one event while it’s still fresh in my mind. Last night Kimi and I went to eat at our favorite Japanese restaurant in Mountain View, Yakko, and the staff there was crazy over Sammy, poking and prodding him to mutual delight. He fell asleep not long after the food arrived, so all worked out on that score. I’m not sure why Yakko’s chose to name a lightly seared tuna sashimi dish “Screaming Orgasm” — cultural divide? – and I actually felt self-conscious when the couple at the next table asked what it was called. But it’s an amazing thing to eat.

Today Kimi is with Yvonne at a scrapbooking expo for most of the day, so it was me and the kid. Around noon we took off in the jogging stroller to play in the park and buy some milk – it’s such a warm day. Some states are buried in snow, but here in California we wear t-shirts in February. They all came back for lunch, and we went out to eat at Los Portales (a wonderful family-run Mexican restaurant on Moffett), then I took some photos to try to figure out how to use the new external flash Kimi got for her birthday. Let me know what you think.

This song came up on random shuffle the other day, reminding me that I had never posted the promised fifth entry in this series. Directed by Jonathan Glazer (who also worked with Radiohead on “Street Spirit” and Massive Attack for “Karmacoma,” as well as directing the very popular Jamiroquai video “Virtual Insanity”), they took the interesting choice of overlaying the audio from the video’s events on top of the song. The effects work better on a real screen rather than a monitor, but see if you don’t think the buildup is worth the payoff.

“Rabbit in Your Headlights” by U.N.K.L.E. (IFILM, sorry for the ads)

Previous video recommendations: 1, 2, 3, and 4.

I went to Cal. Kimi went to Cal. Why, then, is Sammy wearing the emblem of this accursed school? O woe betide those with school spirit who receive hand-me-downs from their friends and co-workers.

Sammy turned 5 months old yesterday. Inspired by our friends George and Zöe and what they did with their son Nick, we’ll take a picture of him every month in front of this height chart (thanks Garry and Marilyn!). Then, I’ll photoshop out the blue background (and extraneous stuff like, say, me) and when Sammy turns two, I’ll make a big long animated GIF or something out of the 20 images. Assuming I get photoshop.

According to this random parent-exploiting web site that doesn’t present any scientific credentials, at 5 months:

• Most kids:
  • Can distinguish between bold colors;
  • Can roll over;
  • Amuse themselves by playing with their hands and feet.
• Half of kids can:
  • Turn toward new sounds;
  • Recognize their own name.
• A few kids:
  • May sit momentarily without support;
  • Mouth objects;
  • May have stranger anxiety begin.

Sammy:

• May be able to distinguish between bold colors, but how do I test that?
• Can roll over if I help him;
• Definitely amuses himself by sucking his hands for extended periods of time;
• Usually turns toward sounds, especially if the sound is the word “peek-a-boo”;
• May possibly recognize his own name, but I would need a laboratory environment and control group to prove it;
• Sits and even stands momentarily without support, if by “momentarily” you mean “for a nanosecond”;
• Most definitely and certainly mouths objects, check;
• Is having a little trouble adjusting to his new nanny, which may be evidence of stranger anxiety or just a reaction to the big change of dad going back to work.

Tough to grade, but let’s give him an A-.

Today at work was wall-to-wall meetings. Not quite as fun as hanging out with Sammy all day. But on the other hand, I’m getting back up to speed with all the projects going on.

This is the blogging equivalent of a chain letter. Dave Zatz tagged me (and I could follow the tagging back nine places, to this site, where the trail stopped). I’m not sure how many tags like this I’ll pass on, but who am I to resist talking about myself?

Four shows I enjoy (other than Survivor, the Olympics, 30 Days, and Mythbusters which I’ve mentioned in this blog previously):

• (the new) Battlestar Galactica (dark but well-made)
• Lost (they’d better know where this is ultimately heading, or I will be very ticked off)
• Veronica Mars (possibly the best show on TV right now)
• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (it dared to put forensics science as the star; still extremely well made)

Four jobs I’ve held (prior to TiVo, and setting aside my freelance technical writing and web design gigs):

• Caterer (in high school and summers of college)
• High School debate coach (during college)
• Corporate trainer (for a training company, SJSU continuing education, and freelance)
• Software release manager (at SGI, where a lot of the early folks at TiVo came from, including the co-founders)

Four places I’ve vacationed:

• Montreal
• Las Vegas (for BARGE)
• Kauai
• Tulum, Mexico (on our honeymoon)

Four cool toys (well, the upcoming Series3 would top the list, but excluding TiVo products):

• TomTom Go 700 (Kimi got one for Christmas)
• Settlers of Catan deluxe 10th anniversary edition (greatest boardgame ever, in a premium design)
• Baby Einstein Neptune Soothing Sea Aquarium Crib Toy (Sammy’s favorite thing)
• Civilization 4

Four Web sites I visit daily (other than the blogs listed in my blogroll):

• TiVoCommunity.com
• Gmail
• Orkut
• TiVo’s corporate intranet/document management system, “The Big Book of TiVo”

Four places I’d rather be:

• Retired, living in Crete, writing short fiction
• Snowboarding in Lake Tahoe
• Playing poker at the TOC
• Stars Hollow

Four bloggers I’m tagging:

• Rich Thomas of Sad Salvation
• Steve Lacy of slacy
• Ron E.
• Scot Hacker of Birdhouse

Today is the last day of my one-month paternity leave. Tomorrow morning it’s back to TiVo.

I’m extremely glad I took the paternity leave, and grateful to the State of California for helping to cover costs. During the month, I learned a lot about Sammy — who he is, and what it takes to take care of an infant. I now have a new appreciation for what Kimi accomplished (and also my own parents, and, indeed, any parent).

I’ve told people this is the toughest job I’ve ever had. Any individual hour is fine — enjoyable, even — but the weight of the day’s watchfulness, combined with the lack of meaningful adult interaction, is exhausting. I’m actually looking forward to work.

I certainly didn’t accomplish all that I hoped I would. Certain tasks, like migrating my old web site over to this domain, or repairing some old hard drives, or getting Quicken set up, or getting our floors redone, were too ambitious. I grossly overestimated how much free time there would be in a day.

But at least I stayed somewhat current with work, I set up this blog, and I adjusted his schedule, and we Ferberized him. Most nights he sleeps from 8pm to 4am, nurses, then sleeps again until 7:30am. That’s a workable schedule. Tonight, of course, to prove me wrong, he’s crying after being in bed an hour. So there’s still some work to do on that front.

At work there are many projects underway; it’s a very busy period. The holiday quarter and immediately afterwards is the toughest time of year: Holiday readiness, CES, closing the fiscal month/quarter/year, software releases, budgeting for the next fiscal year, launching certain projects as early in the year as possible — it all puts a strain on every team. Customer support, of course, is the hardest hit, since so many new customers in so short a period of time is practically impossible to staff and schedule for properly. So, this wasn’t the best time for me to take a leave; but there’s never a good time.

Despite seven long and hard years, I still love my job and am anxious to see what we can accomplish in 2006. Before I met Kimi and got married, I would have said TiVo was my number one priority. Now I have to admit that I put Kimi and Sammy first and work second. Before, I would do all-nighters to catch up. That’s not a good option now, and it’s sometimes challenging to balance work needs with family needs. But part of the reason I love my job is because of how great I think the product is.

When he’s old enough to watch TV, Sammy will grow up with TiVo. Other parents have told me that when they take their TiVo-raised kids out to movies or on vacations, their kids don’t understand why they can’t do an instant replay or watch the Blue’s Clues episode they want to see. I look forward to seeing Sammy experience that. In the same way that he won’t understand that I used to write my high school and college papers in longhand or on a manual typewriter, or that I grew up in England with only four TV channels, or that if I wanted to research something prior to 1995 I used a library rather than the web, the TiVo-less world will seem archaic to him.

Gotta go — Sammy’s still crying. (He might be teething; new challenges ahead.) Time for bed, Sammy. Then bed for me soon too: long day tomorrow.

Today is not just Valentine’s Day, but it’s also Kimi’s birthday, and the two-year anniversary of our engagement. To celebrate, I took her to Chez TJ’s in Mountain View. (Thanks go to Kyrie for watching Sammy for us.)

We proceeded to have an eleven course meal: a tiny goat cheese pastry puff for an appetizer, three plates of amuse bouche (including foie gras wrapped in fig, and two others I don’t remember), soup (carrot with crab for me, onion with poached egg for Kimi), vegetable (beets for Kimi, foie gras au torchon for me), seafood (bay scallops and sweet shrimp over wood-ear mushrooms for me, salmon for Kimi), main (since neither of us eat red meat, it was a goat cheese ravioli for me and the scallops/shrimp for Kimi), desert (gateau, ice cream, poached pears), coffee, and, to finish, mignardises (”preciousnesses”) – miniature chocolate and jelly sweets. Not being big wine drinkers we opted not to do the pairing, but instead we shared a delightful glass of Riesling recommended by the wine stewardess.

Each course was tiny and delicate, and an absolute delight. The service was impeccable. The setting is a converted house and the ambience is very romantic. If you’re looking for an extravagant French-California meal, and can secure a reservation (they have a very long waiting list), I would definitely recommend Chez TJ.

To Kimi: Sweetheart, I love you very much. Happy birthday and happy Valentine’s Day.

The Greek word for “Messiah” is “Christos” — or Χριστος to use the Greek alphabet — and it begins, as you can see, with a character that looks like the Western X (or a Chi as you’d know if you studied Greek or if you were ever in a fraternity).

In legal tradition dating back centuries, when you signed your name to a legal document, it was practice to sign your name beneath the phrase, “As Christ is my witness.” It was further tradition to kiss the document in order to seal it and prove your honesty.

For those who were non-literate and couldn’t sign their name, the X alone was signed as an abbreviation for the phrase involving Christos. And, with the following act of kissing the X, over time the letter X itself came to represent a kiss.

Is this folk etymology? Perhaps. A cursory search didn’t turn up anything except this Wikipedia article about hugs and kisses, and that one doesn’t cite any sources.

But assuming this isn’t a fabrication, now you know why you sign your mushy love letters with XOXOXOX. Happy Valentine’s Day!

I don’t often head in to San Francisco, despite it being close by. When I lived in Berkeley, my friend Mike (who now lives in Davis) was terrified of driving into the City, and felt like doing anything in S.F. took much longer to accomplish. I’m not that bad, but the City can be intimidating. That didn’t stop me from hauling Sammy up there to meet with the real-life people behind the names “Thomas Hawk” and “Davis Freeberg” of the Thomas Hawk Digital Connection.

We met for lunch at Taylor’s Automatic Refresher in the Ferry Building — somehow I have managed to never visit the Ferry Building previously — and talked for nearly two hours about blogging, technology, photography, and (naturally) TiVo. Thomas’s article is forthcoming and will cover what we talked about.

I enjoyed meeting Thomas and Davis a great deal. They are very enthusiastic about technology and at heart I think they want TiVo to succeed as a company.

(Thomas on the left, Davis on the right.)

Afterwards Sammy and I did some shopping and I took a picture or two (with our Nikon point’n’shoot, since Tracee had borrowed our Canon Rebel XT). Even though I had already had lunch, I couldn’t help but get some bread and an apple turnover from the Acme Bread Company, and sample the crab cake sandwich and clam chowder at the San Francisco Fish Company. (I only had a little bit of the crab cake; the rest I brought back for Kimi.)

Next I’ll post a picture or two in the style of Thomas’s site — the difference being that I’m not a good photographer, while Thomas is a pro.

Sammy is normally so well-behaved, but I think Taylor’s was a little loud for him, and he wasn’t as enthusiastic about talking for two hours as I was, so he got a bit fussy. Fortunately, he loved the Ferry Building itself and was happy to nap both for the ride there and back.

Update, 14-Feb-06, 9:33pm: Thomas Hawk’s article detailing what we talked about is now posted at his site. Thanks Thomas!

As a boy growing up in England, I have fond memories of watching the Olympics every four years with my family, rooting for the British athletes. The medal count for the Brits may have been low, but the sense of pride and patriotism was palpable (we’d discuss the events ad nauseum in the schoolyards).

Even though I’m not really a sports guy, the habit has stayed with me and I love watching the Olympics to this day. Sports I wouldn’t normally spare two brain cells to think about — short track, curling, alpine skiing — become riveting. Even Kimi will watch the figure skating with me. (Unlike me, she shows some restraint and stops watching sometime before her eyes start bleeding.)

This year in Turin, I was impressed by the Cirque-du-Soleil-like opening ceremonies, and I’ve been really impressed by the snowboarding.

TiVo, of course, makes watching the Olympics bearable. Four-hour blocks (the kind that include several sporting events preliminaries or athlete profiles you don’t care about) can be devoured in under an hour. Even I’m getting sick of how often some of the commercials are repeated, and I don’t have to watch them — I’m fast-forwarding by at 60x. The last time I watched the Olympics with commercials was 1996. Ah, technology!

It was good to watch the profile about _____ ____ (name too hard to spell or pronounce), who has dominated his event since a young boy. With his hours of practice and years of dedication, he quickly climbed to the highest ranks of international competition. A hero in his hometown of _____, few could believe upon meeting this humble and unassuming (blond/brunette) with (salient physical feature) that he was a world-renowned champion. With top finishes in the regional world nationals, everyone believed he would take the gold in 2002 at Salt Lake. The pressure was enormous. Tragically, however, just two weeks before flying to Utah, _____ was struck down with a rare and undiagnosed case of ______. The tests confirmed the diagnosis. (Orchestra swells here.) Doctors told him he would never (skate/ski/jump) again. (fade to black)

(Fade in to montage) But ____ never gave up. No, not _____. He worked night and day to regain his form. Last year, he competed in (minor event). He told himself he would be happy just to finish. But he won. And he kept on winning. And now, miraculously, he is here in Turin, and once again eyes around the world are on ____, wondering if he has what it takes to take the gold.

Not a crummy silver or bronze, or heaven forbid he only come in fourth or fifth. Because it’s not enough to be one of the ten best in the world. The only thing that counts is the complete and utter humiliation of his opponents. Which we certainly hope ___ can deliver tonight. No pressure or anything. Now back to you, Jim.

Jim: Thank you for that report, Suzanne. But before we bring you to that thrilling race with _____, we’re off first to the Sestrianilini Race Track, where we’ve just received word of an upset in the men’s 1500 meter single skate hop, and…

On Saturday, Kimi had to drag me away from the Olympics, and we packed up Sammy, picked up Rob, and headed to Elk Grove for my mom’s ordination as a lay preacher on Sunday at her church, St. Mary’s. Saturday night at my parent’s place, Rob, Harry and I cooked up some tacos, and we had a delicious strawberry’n'cream ice cream cake for Kimi’s birthday (coming up on February 14th).

Kimi, Sammy and I spent the night at Phil and Erin’s (my brother and sister in law, parents of Sarah), and Phil, Rob, Harry and I once again failed to complete a game of Descent. I’ll write a more involved review once I actually finish a game, but I think it has some serious balance and time problems.

Then, church on Sunday. Ever since college I have considered myself an agnostic, but in high school I used to be an acolyte at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Saratoga. While my brothers and sister and my wife all don’t really seem to like going to church, I don’t mind it; it’s comforting, if not my preferred way to spend a Sunday morning. I feel at peace there — so much so I often nod off. Sunday was my first time attending a service in years. My mom worked really hard to pass her course and become a lay preacher, and I was very proud to see her walk up the aisle on her own two feet (a struggle for her since her aneurysm back in 1995).

Afterwards, to celebrate mom’s achievement, we all went out for Chinese food, and the House of Chang became House of Mack for a couple of hours. (I recommend the sesame prawns, but it all tasted pretty good.)

I enjoyed hanging out with my family for a weekend. I was going to say more, but Harry already pretty much said it.