My sight had some difficulty, but after a bit of fumbling, I think I've gotten it  on the road to recovery.  Hopefully, it works out that I can streamline this into something useful again.  I've really gotten to enjoy posting the "Briefly" posts! :-)

30 weeks!  10 more to go... its AMAZING that its gone by so quickly!

Your baby's a bit more than 15 1/2 inches long now, and she weighs almost 3 pounds. A pint and a half of amniotic fluid surrounds her, but that volume will decrease as she gets bigger and takes up more room in your uterus.

Her eyesight continues to develop, though it's not very keen; even after she's born, she'll keep her eyes closed for a good part of the day. When she does open them, she'll respond to changes in light but will have 20/400 vision — which means she can only make out objects a few inches from her face.
 

Its exciting!  It won't be long now, and we'll be a family of 3!
 

Just for the memories... the "stork pic"...

An unusual shower on September 1, 2007
Some time in the 40 years or so around 4 A.D., comet Kiess (C/1911 N1) passed by the Sun, ejecting a cloud of dust particles. The comet returned in 1911, after completing one orbit. The dust particles were pushed by the Sun's light into slightly wider orbits and have been returning ever since, forming a thin ongoing stream of dust that usually passes just outside Earth's orbit. On occasion, the combined gravity of the solar system's planets moves this dust trail into Earth's path. Earth encountered this 2000-year-old dust in 1935, 1986, and 1994, causing a meteor shower known as the Aurigids.

This very rare shower will occur again on 1 September 2007. A brief shower of tens of meteors will radiate from the constellation of Auriga, many as bright as the brighter stars in the sky. The Earth will be in the thick of it during the one hour centered on 04:33 a.m. PDT. The shower will be visible by the naked eye from locations in the western United States, including Hawaii and Alaska, from Mexico, and from the western provinces of Canada.

This unique encounter could provide insights about how long-period comets loose large dust grains and about how to translate the observed dust trail crossing into physical data about the parent comet, and even provide more evidence for the hypothesized "pristine crust" of a comet. This crust would be the product of cosmic ray bombardment during the years when the comet was in cold storage in the Oort cloud.
 

I know I put this in today's Update, but I think its important enough to put here too... POPCORN MIGHT BE DANGEROUS!

Its true... Pop Weaver, one of the 'biggies' in the microwave popcorn industry - and, its all they do - stopped using diacetyl.  NO ONE ELSE HAS, THOUGH.

Diacetyl is the flavoring that give the Microwave Popcorn that buttery smell and taste... Workers at the Pop Weaver plant had their lungs destroyed by exposure to diacetyl - and the EPA says that the risk to folks popping popcorn in their microwave is significant enough to care about...

More details can be found in the Seattle P-I article:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/329640_popcorn30.html

Just in case they remove it, I also archived the page on my website:

Interesting on MyPNW: is Popcorn Dangerous?

As I was getting on the highway this morning, the view struck me as interesting, so I pulled out my trusty phone, and snapped a picture of it.  The timing is just right with the season we're in, and I'm normally heading in to work about the same time the sun is rising over the Cascades... Which makes for a nice start to the drive in to town, on most days.

since Rattlesnake ridge is higher, it gets washed in the Sun's light first, which is a striking contrast to those on the valley floor below...

The other day, during the Lunar Eclipse, the Moon set behind the Ridge just as it was nearing its darkest period... Today, though, it was still up as the sun was coming up... It really set the scene on the way in.

For lunch today, I stopped by the store I'd talked about a few days ago (where I saw the Michael W Smith book, and heard the hymns)... I had chicken curry, which was the special of the day.  It was pretty good... I really like that little place.  Even though its in the city, it has that "small town" feel about it.

The couple that run the place are very nice, and I enjoyed talking to them while I was there - not a lot, mostly because they don't speak English very well.

I'll be back there again before too long... I'm sure of it!

My website has passed 3,000 pages, and is about 2.4 GB in size.  That's probably "big" for a personal website, but we have to remember, I've been adding pages since 1995 or so... 12 years is a pretty long time. 

(I say that, but even then it breaks down to 253 pages a year, or a about 5 pages a week for 12 years)

I ran across a wiki page that said there was some 91,000 terabytes of data on the Internet.

In 2005, it was estimated that there were 11.5 BILLION pages indexed, and that there were nearly a TRILLION that weren’t indexed…

I did some math…

If you viewed just the indexed pages, at a rate of one page for one second, and went to the next, it'd take you 133,000 days, or more than 350 YEARS to view them all... NOT COUNTING the pages that were added after you started - you'd NEVER finish!

If you spent a WHOLE MINUTE per page on my website, and then moved to the next, you'd take less than 2 1/2 days to get through everthing.

I think that sort of puts my 3,000-someodd page website in perspective... :-)

This morning, as I was perusing the news, I noticed the weather for where I live and my family lives... and thought it was pretty interesting... for once, the PNW is going to have better weather!  :)

The Shadow Lady and I stopped by Fatburgers on the way back from a sale at Home Depot... they had patio furniture on a stupid discount.  There were slim pickings, but we found a couple of tables that would work for the short term, and we picked them up.  Anyway, while making the order, I noticed the tip jar, and snapped a quick picture.

You gotta love a place with a sense of humor... :-)

Oh... the guy at the counter said that I was the first person he knew of to actually take a picture... imagine that. :-)
 

I switched to a "blog" type of Briefly entry in March of 2006.  That worked OK, until about two weeks ago, when something went wrong.  An XML document that drives Dot Net Nuke got corrupted somehow when I was on my Alaska trip - I lost connection at a bad time, I guess... anyway, it cascaded, and now its non-functional.... I needed a new plan, so I went back to the old one.

The cascading effect of the failures was pretty interesting to watch, if not increasingly frustrating, and eventually, the whole thing became non-functional.  The only error reported by DNN the whole time was "Malformed XML Document", with no indication of where it was, or why, or what to do to fix it.  On the DNN website, some folks mentioned it as a precursor to eventual death of their website.  At first, it was when I tried to edit an entry I made.  Then it was when the system tried to update the cache for the list on the main page.  Then it was when I wanted to add, then to using other components other than the blog (DNN also ran the family-only website, which was a private region)... yesterday, the whole thing collapsed, and nothing worked at all.

I suppose it COULD be fixed by upgrading the interface, but I'm gun-shy of it now.  I had worried about "what if" for a while, especially since an increasingly larger audience mentioned it died on them with catastrophic results... I guess I feel their pain now.

The problem is that I can't access the database that the information was stored in... its a SQL Server DB, and it's not letting me in using the credentials I had written down.  I'm locked out, and the blog software can't seem to get in either, which is why it finally quit altogether.

I have access to the images, so I MIGHT be able to get most of it back - I did a dump of the stuff I had in DNN before it went totally down.  It gave me an error while it was doing it, but it seems most of it can be recovered.

So, its back to the "old and inferior" way, which had less problems, anyway.  I won't be able to post remotely for a while, until I can figure something out... It'll be a programming challenge... my favorite!  :)

I was in a little shop that I get my morning coffee from in Seattle... its owned and operated by a nice couple, and I enjoy going there and making friendly conversation.... although I haven't gotten their names yet.  Its not the place you'd expect to see a book about Michael W. Smith, but there it was...

They play "Elevator music" versions of hymns, which is what prompted me to go back.  They also do a decent breakfast sandwich, and a very nice and economical lunch.

Anyway, one day, I noticed this book either by or about Michael W Smith... my phone didn't do too well, but hopefully, you can make it out...

 

 
The Shadow Lady's younger sister celebrated her recent successful trip around the sun, and we went to Anthony's to do it... Good food, and great company... it really made for a nice end to a day!  I got to hear some more tidbits of memories of birthday's past, and funny memories from "so long ago"...

I feel old.  When she was born, I was patrolling the East-West German border, fighting a short-timer's attitude, getting ready to head to Ft Lewis... (sigh)  CD players were becoming the rage, Cell Phones were becoming usable as a "take it with you" phone (although they were 'Bricks' still), and the US was just putting up the last of its GPS network... it doesn't feel "long ago" to me...

Oh, well, I had a GREAT time visiting... its always nice to be able to spend an evening with family.

 
The Shadow Lady took me out to celebrate the fact that I'd recently had another successful trek around the sun... my 42'nd.  They're getting faster... at least it seems that way!

we went to the Museum of Flight... and had a GREAT time!

 
Its good to be back!  Driving in to work, I got a nice treat this morning... Mt Si, shrouded in clouds.

What a nice way to start the commute off!

 
We're back from our trip... we had a GREAT time!  When I parked this morning, I went to check on the Seagull... she was still there, almost daring me to come closer... :-)

I posted a set of pictures on the "Currently" section, and I'll shortly add a more comprehensive set of pictures (yep, you hear right) in the trips area.

 

So, we're on day 2 of our trip to "Way up North"... we've had a good time so far... and we haven't even landed anywhere yet...

 

We left out of Seattle... not the greatest of views, but we did get a good seat to the Blue Angels, so that's OK...

Discovery point.  Sailing out of the Puget Sound was pretty awesome!  We sat and ate lunch and watched the scenery drift by... we walked around the ship for a bit, watched the scenery, ate more food than we should have, and took in the introductory show, where a comedian had us wanting more... he's going to do another show later.

This morning's sunrise was STELLAR!  It was a very calm evening, with quite slight seas.  The weather today is pretty much as it was yesterday... overcast in the morning, and sunny in the afternoon... its very nice!

We ran into a bit of wind, which brought some waves with it.  The bow planes on the boat more than makes up for it, though, so we're not having any difficulties at all as far as movement goes.

The decks are fun to walk around, and there's not too much of a crowd.  There's 1800 passengers, but its easy to find places that allow you to be pretty much by yourself.

The Oosterdam was built in 2003, and is 950 feet long.  It has 10 passenger decks... its a VERY big boat!

We still haven't walked everywhere there is to walk, but we're slowly taking it all in... this globe is at the top of the central atrium, which has the "Grand Staircase", and it she showcase area for the ship. 

We land in Juneau tomorrow... looking forward to that!  Today, we're spending the day mostly doing NOTHING - recovering from all the work we've both been doing, and we're sitting on our balcony, watching the scenery go by.  Room service is free (what a mistake for them!), so we're going to be taking advantage of it.  :-)

 
Its been a year already.  Time really DOES fly when you're having fun!  A big indicator of the passing time is that the Blue Angels are back in town, and they're getting ready to fly in this weekend's airshow for SeaFair, Seattle's annual summer bash.

I'm working in Seattle now, but unfortunately, the window I have doesn't face quite the right direction to get a good view of the pracice runs they're making...

Its their first day, so mostly they're just setting waypoints, and timing the distances between them... tomorrow, they'll fly their formations, and by Saturday, they'll be ready for the big show.

It is pretty impressive to see the jets fly so low, and so close to the city.  According to the interviews they have with the Blue Angel pilots on the local news, this is the only place they get to do it, and they look forward to their trip up here... apparently flying around buildings is a lot of fun.

 
Week 26!  According to the averages, BabyJ weighs a bit less than 2 pounds, and measures about 14 inches.  He'll more than triple his weight in the next 3 months or so.  Less than 100 days, now... it'll be here before we know it!  Exciting times!

The Shadow Lady is holding up very well... she seems to be having an OK time dealing with everything, although she's starting to noticed the belly getting in the way a bit more than she'd like... welcome to MY world!

Welcome to August... Wow.  THAT was a quick year... A year ago, I was  getting ready for my wedding... its pretty amazing how fast the year went by!

A lot has happened... Married, moved the Shadow Lady, we both changed jobs, we found out we need to prepare for BabyJ, and we moved to another town... several major life-changing events, all packed into one busy year!

So now the Dog Days of Summer are upon us.  It won't be too long before the Mariners start thier annual tail spin.  :-)

Added in 2007

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