Zeigen

I don’t think I mentioned this before: Sammy can sit up by himself. Most of the time. More or less. For a few seconds, anyway, as long as you’re nearby, to catch him — because otherwise? Woah! Klunk.

I fixed our scanner on Saturday. Mom had given me a big box of old photos and school junk from England. This school photo is probably from 1975 or so, so I’d be about eight. Check out the old school tie — that’s from an all-boys elementary school known as Squirrels. Yup, we wore ties in elementary school.

Sammy was seven months yesterday; we cheated and took the photo today instead of yesterday. Continuing the trend for six months and five months, here’s the shot in front of the height-tracking clock. He seems a bit taller, and he stands a little easier. Perhaps next month I won’t need to balance him.

When we hit the year mark I’ll see about editing them and animating them together.

I wish we were better photographers; we’re not good about getting the right amount of light from our new flash (a Canon Speedlite 580EX for our Canon Rebel XT). Or maybe we just need to be better photo editors using Photoshop. Here’s one I took (during his bedtime story ritual) using the built-in flash instead; the light is less natural (I darkened it just a bit), but the picture looks better.

It was a busy Saturday morning. Tracee and Kimi headed up to the city for a hair appointment and to hang out with Tyler and Jeff. (Me? I’m playing Oblivion.)

Kimi and I packed up way more stuff than should be required for an overnight stay and headed up to Elk Grove to see my parents. Managing to avoid most of the traffic, it took us a couple of hours. We had set out a bit later than intended, and it was pushing Sammy’s bedtime when we arrived. My parents really wanted to eat out at a restaurant, while Kimi would have preferred to eat at their house. We ended up going out, eating at an okay Mexican place in Elk Grove (Plaza del Sol) and Sammy got to bed an hour late. Kimi was exhausted and went to bed early, so I ended up watching TV and talking with my parents.

Eventually Harry arrived, but before he did, Sammy started having a really rough night. He was crying a lot, threw up, and then kept on waking up every half hour from 3am on. He’s getting over being sick, may be teething (for real, finally?), was in an unusual place, with his parents in his room. I’d normally have him cry it out but with Harry and my parents around and him in the same room, that wasn’t an option. So he slept on my chest, which is great but I can’t sleep that way. He slept fitfully, and at 6:30 seemed up but then slept until 9, and we all slept in. That was the only solid sleep I got last night.

He had already barfed on his cute Easter bunny outfit on Saturday, but in the morning Kimi had some backup cute outfits.

We all had a nice breakfast/brunch, and played a quick round of some ancient boardgame Dad had dug up from somewhere (Image, from 1973).

A proud grandfather…

Kimi and I headed back home in the afternoon while Harry took the ‘rents to see V for Vendetta. (Harry’s Easter coverage is also blogged over on his site, with more photos.)

At home, Kimi wanted to make a fancy traditional Easter dinner, and who am I to argue with that? Kimi used to cook a lot, but we haven’t had as much time since Sammy was born. It was a great treat for all of us — chicken, homemade stuffing (amazing!) and roasted potatoes. Well done, baby.

In other news, Sammy turns seven months old today!

It’s definitely birthday season around here at Zeigen Inc. On Friday night, we had John and Yvonne over for pizza (it being Friday night, which is pizza night), and after cake we then proceeded to watch The Aristocrats — which is an experience worth having. You seen this film yet? Treat it as a documentary, and I think you’ll be in the right mindset as long as that mindset includes tolerance for taboo topics and four-letter words.

Afterwards, Kimi conked out and we put on Mr. & Mrs. Smith which put me to sleep near the end (and I’d say Brad and Angelina were sleep-walking through it too). Long week.

John contemplates being a year older; Yvonne takes cake-slicing very seriously. Happy belated birthday, John!

It was John R.’s birthday back at the end of March, and to celebrate, I took him to a movie on Tuesday night.

Now I’ve known John since high school — we were debate partners (State Champions, in fact) and also went to college together. We’re best friends, and he’s one of the smartest guys I know, but I hardly get to spend much time with him these days. He has two boys, Isaac and Adam, and works at Cisco, so all that combines to keep him as busy as me. He does join in for the biweekly Tuesday night poker games from time to time, but it was good to be able to catch up.

After our sons were all asleep, John came over and we first went over to Red Rock Cafe on Castro. I was surprised to find (and didn’t recognize) a contractor working for my team, Emily, behind the counter. She had been working for us for a few weeks but out of context of seeing her at TiVo she looked like a different person.

We were able to drink hot beverages and warm chocolatey desserts, then headed over to the MV Century 16 for some pre-movie “House of the Dead” video game action that was a perfect mood-setter for Slither.

Slither is a horror comedy movie. It is very far from high art, but it was intelligently written, well-paced, genuinely funny when it wanted to be funny, and genuinely tense when it wanted to be tense. Nathan Fillion (Captain Mal Reynolds for Firefly fans) was very enjoyable to watch — maybe too many notes of that performance were similar to Mal, but a police captain in Virginia does have a lot in common with a starship captain in a frontier setting, right? No? Hell, I just like the character.

There is a line dividing homage and plagiarism, and I think this movie, while definitely derivative, managed to successfully stay on the homage side. I picked up on a number of nods to several different horror movies (there’s the beginnings of a list over at imdb), and the director has confirmed his intentions in an interview.

A raging debate concerns whether or not this movie is really a zombie film. (Forget about immigration or nuclear proliferation; here at Zeigen Inc. we focus on the true important matters of the day facing our society.) Certainly one should score the point that in this movie there are flesh-eating humans shambling around, converting others to their state. The writer/director here (James Gunn) was the screenwriter for the so-so 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. But after those two facts, the zombie points break down. These zombies can talk, and there are other differences I won’t disclose due to my anti-spoiler policy. I conclude Slither is not really a zombie film. But despite that grave point against it, and the serious case of false advertising one might therefore be able to make, I actually do recommend this film to horror movie fans, since it’s fun and well-made.

Also, if you do see it: Stay until after the credits are done.

Today is my sister Joanna’s birthday, and Saturday was my youngest brother Harry’s birthday.

More news forthcoming, but I wanted to get that out of the way first. Happy birthday, you crazy kids!

Today is our first wedding anniversary.

I’ve noticed that I don’t really notice wearing my wedding ring anymore. It no longer phases me to introduce Kimi as “my wife.” Instead, I feel comfortable and happy. And, of course, Sammy has changed our lives in ways too numerous to count.

Kimi — Love you very much. Can’t wait to see the surprise you have planned for tonight. Love, S.

While I’m not much of a developer, I have a working knowledge of scripting and C++. Bob Pony created PonyPoker, LateNight, and some other fine apps that work via HME on your Series2 DVR. (You can find these apps at apps.tv.) Not to be outdone, I’m announcing today the finishing touches and beta launch of TiVo TiVo Revolution. Working with my brother Harry, a music composer for Mind Control Software, I think we’ve put together a compelling package, even if I do say so myself.

Here’s how it works: When running TiVo TiVo Revolution, you can select your programs from Now Playing normally. During video playback, little arrows start dropping down in time to the music that’s playing over TV audio. You have to hit the arrows on the remote at the right time.

Working with Paul Newby, TiVo’s award-winning hardware designer, we’ve come up with the dance pads (similar to what you use in Dance Dance Revolution). These full-size non-slip pads actually work as a replacement for the TiVo peanut remote.

Start dancing while you watch TV! Get enough “goods” and “excellents” and new songs from Live365 are unlocked. But, if you get too many misses, your show stops completely, and you have to wait five minutes before your DVR is unlocked. Not dancing? Not an option.

The good news is that I got confirmation today that this will be included in an upcoming release to customers, 7.4.1. The even better news is that this will be folded in to KidZone as a default feature, and we’ll start selling dance pads bundled with Series2 DVRs at BestBuy and Radio Shack. So now TiVo is not just helping you watch better TV, it’s also fighting childhood obesity.

I’m really pleased at the positive reception.