Barry’s Daily Web News

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It was 46 degrees out when I drove home from work. Sean was very comfortable in his fleece pajamas. We had fun tonight playing follow-the-leader running around the furniture in the great room. Sean still isn’t speaking his words clearly, but he can understand our words. He clearly understands the difference between cat and hat. When I said pet the cat, Sean ran after zip. When I said get the hat, Sean grabbed his toy cowboy hat and put it on his head. He’s a great kid.

I started ordering some of the new computer parts on-line. It’s been tougher than I thought it would be. It seems like whenever I had found a vendor that was decently rated with a low price on the product I wanted, that product would be out-of-stock. I was able to place the order for the motherboard, cpu, and memory. I still need to order the graphics card and dvd-rom drive.

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Interesting article on Global Warming. Actually, what I find most interesting is that is seems to be impossible to have a scientific debate on global warming without getting into political issues. Those who defend global warming are said to be paid by government to say so and those who attack global warming are said to be paid by industrial corporations. The more I read on the subject, however, the more I find that there isn’t enough evidence to support the political idea of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

We could be in for some bad weather in the next few days. Phoenix will be getting rain and cold temperatures. The forecast is for snow at 3000 feet elevation, and if that holds true, we should be able to see snow on mountain peaks visible near our house.

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Sean and I went on a nice hike today. We took the longest trail at the park near our house. It seems only hardcore hikers and trail runners were out this morning. Everyone going the same direction we were going ended up passing us. I still got in a good workout though. It was a nice clear morning, and I think Sean had a good time.

I got a lot done around the house today. I mowed the lawn, cleaned up the pool, and put the lights on the Christmas tree. I replaced a burned out light in the ceiling of the great room, but I ended up dropping and breaking 3 bulbs in the process. The light is a good twenty feet off the ground, and I couldn’t get the bulb seated in the socket correctly. I use a long pole with a suction cup at the end, and the suction cup kept sliding off. I ended up vacuuming most of the floor, since the glass went everywhere after the bulb exploded on the tile floor.

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We bought our Christmas tree today. The woman working the Christmas trees at Home Depot was very helpful. She said she worked at Fed Ex, and she must have been used to moving heavy boxes, because when I went to pay for the tree, she had already carried the tree across the parking lot and loaded it into the minivan. So far, Sean hasn’t shown any interest in the tree. This will probably change after we load the tree with lights and ornaments.

The weather was very nice today. In addition to taking Sean to the park, I also put up the lights on the hedges in the front yard. I’m still not quite over my cold yet, or otherwise I would have gone running and spent even more time outside.

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It was a nice day to day, even if it was just a little cooler than the forecast. Cortney thinks Sean may be coming down with a cold. He slept until 9:30 this morning. We did take him to the park, where he was a little fussy, but he still had fun.

After dinner, Sean and I went shopping for the parts for our new computer. We bought an 80G hard drive, on sale at Fry’s for $120 after a 50$ rebate. This is a top of the line model: Seagate Barracuda ATA IV - ST380021A; I was considering buying the 60G drive at around the same price without the rebate, so I feel I got a terrific deal. We also stopped to buy the new computer case at Best Buy. I bought an Antec SX830 Workstation Case.

Even though I could have gotten a cheaper price by mail order, the shipping costs are high enough that it was cheaper to buy at the store. I was even able to use a 10% off coupon. I will by buying the rest of the components by mail order. My shopping list is the following:

• Intel D850MVL motherboard
• Intel P4 478 pin 1.8Ghz processor
• 2 256M ECC 800Mhz RDRAM RIMMs
• VisionTek Xtasy 6564 GeForce3 Ti 200 video card

I expect the total cost of this system to come under $1000. By the way, Sean had a great time strolling through the store.

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I’m feeling better today. At work, I had to attend a four hour class on diversity awareness. The only good thing about the class is that I didn’t have to make any stressful decisions for half the day. It’s finally warming back up in Phoenix; the high tomorrow should be in the seventies. I’m actually looking forward to taking Sean to the park tomorrow.

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I think I’m coming down with the same cold that Cortney did. Time to rest-up.

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It was cold and rainy all day today. Yuck. We took Sean to the library for story time tonight, only to find that story time has been cancelled until January. At least Sean had the opportunity to play with some of the toys at the library.

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I’m back to working 10 hour days after a 2 week break. Today seemed to be extra long. Cortney has come down with a cold, and she is having a tough time dealing with the cold and Sean at the same time. I noticed a minor flair up of my shingles, which I had just about a year ago. I’m hoping it stays minor; I don’t think I can deal with what I went through last year right now.

Today, Sean opened up one of his books and said Ba! One of the pages has a pop-up of a sheep, and asks what does a sheep say, but I don’t know for sure if that is what Sean was trying to say. I think one of the reasons Sean has been slow to pick up words is that he is trying to get us to say the sounds he makes, not the other way around.

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Another nice day today, although it was a little cloudy. Sean and I went on a hike this morning. There were lots of dogs and a few horses on the trail, so Sean had something to catch his attention other than the desert scenery. At the end of the hike, I let him walk on his own. He is getting better at walking on uneven ground.

I went shopping for the parts for my new computer. I decided that the local store prices are too expensive, and I will be mail-ordering most of the parts. I did buy the components for the new network system. Currently, my computer is the gateway for Cortney’s computer. It won’t do to take away Cortney’s internet access while I work on the new computer. So, I am going to a hardware router solution. I bought an SMC barricade router along with a couple of 10/100 network cards. One bonus is that the network access between the computers will now be 100 mbs instead of 10 mbs. I will be installing the new network before I start building the new computer.

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Beautiful day today in Phoenix. Bright and sunny, with the high temperature around 70 degrees. We started off the day by making a trip to the outlet mall. I needed to get a light jacket for the cooler weather. I haven’t bought a new light jacket in over 12 years. I also ended up getting a new pair of shoes and a pair of khaki pants. We also bought Sean a new pair of shoes. He is now up to size 8 1/2.

After the mall, we stopped by a park that was nearby. This park has a really nice playground. Sean is too young for most of the playground equipment, but I couldn’t resist climbing up the tall towers and sliding down the big tube slides. Sean spent most of his time wandering around and watching the other kids play. In the afternoon, we took Sean to our local park, where he was able to run up and down the hill and chase after a dog one of the families brought to the park. Sean had a big lunch and dinner, so with all of the exercise he had today, he should sleep well tonight.