Minivan: Fully Loaded

As you may recall, I have been driving to Duvall (from Monroe) for the past several months now in order to catch the Microsoft Connector bus every day.  This has been roughly a 20 mile round trip drive and an hour long (each way) bus ride.

Well, I am happy to announce that as of next Monday, my commute just got even better.  Microsoft added a new Connector route directly from Monroe!  Yep, I will now have a 3 mile round trip drive and still keep my two hour round tip bus ride (well, it may be 5-10 min longer each way...not sure).

Riding the bus not only reduces my fuel cost, but it lets me do so much more during that normally wasted drive - it is great.

Today Tanner went in and had his tonsils removed. 

I recall having my own tonsils out when I was a kid.  I don't recall my age exactly, but I think I was close to Tanner's age (8).  All I remember of it is waking up in the hospital after it was done.  I don't recall anything of the pain afterwards.  Jody also had hers out when she was almost a teenager and she remembers the pain vividly.

Anyway, our hope is that Tanner will sleep better once he has healed up.  This past school year we learned (with the help of our pediatrician), that Tanner has sleep apnea.   He had a very hard time staying focused, was very hyper at times, and essentially made us begin to question if he has ADHD.  Compared to the other boys his age, he was struggling.

Turns out that some kids behave like they have ADHD when they are not sleeping well.  So we took Tanner in for a sleep study test at Seattle's Children's Hospital and the results came back that he has sleep apnea. He snores quite a bit and stops breathing an average of 7 times an hour! 

After learning this the doctors recommended a consult with an Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) doctor to consider removing his tonsils.  This is a common next step in treating young kids with sleep apnea.  They remove the tonsils and the adenoids so that breathing is less obstructed.  After our consult with the ENT, the surgery was scheduled and today was the day.

He is home now and seems to be enjoying his new diet of popsicles, ice cream, and juice.  So far he hasn't complained much.  Granted we are dosing him with the Tylenol they gave us and I am sure that helps.  He's been a trooper and I wager he won't be down long.

Hopefully this new school year will be better!

(after surgery)

I have been running a 64 bit version of Windows on my development machines at work for a few years now.  Overall I have had little problems, but I don't do anything overly taxing - I run development programs.  At home I do:

• Video and photo editing
• DVD "backups" (my kids are no longer allowed to touch an original DVD movie)
• Web site tinkering (which includes FTP)
• Virtual PC (for sandboxing apps I want to play with)
• Blogging (obviously)
• and the usual web, email, music etc

For a long time you couldn't find many programs compiled and optimized around 64 bit systems.  For the last few years many have been buying 64 bit capable computers, yet running just 32 bit versions of all their software because there wasn't much choice.  I myself refused to jump on the 64 bit bandwagon at home simply because compatibility with the things I do was scarce.  More than one of my key programs installs a service driver of some sort, and without a 64 bit version, it simply will not run on a 64 bit version of Windows. Standard 32 bit applications that do not have driver dependencies will often work just fine on 64 bit Windows.

Well I am pleased to say that I am now running a 64 bit version of Windows on this machine (feel free to guess, but it's not Vista) and almost all of my key apps are now 64 bit native.  Once Sony Vegas Pro 8 (my main video editor) released a free update to a 64 bit version, I decided it was time to jump ship.  So I rebuilt my system and so far things have been smooth sailing.  And I have been surprised to find 64 bit releases for nearly everything I run now. 

Now to be clear, running something 64 bit natively doesn't mean you go twice as fast.  Certainly you can see some big gains, but it's application dependant.  Poorly written software may not gain anything, or may even run slower.  A big win for Windows is the ability to address large amounts of memory (greater than 4GB) - something most standard 32 bit systems cannot do (without PAE support). 

In fact, given the 4GB addressing limitation of 32 bit systems, Windows will only be able to use 3.2 - 3.5GB of the 4GB of ram that may exist in your system.  This is because the hardware in your machine also requires addressing space, so depending on hardware needs, you will lose physical memory to make everything work.  I therefore do not recommend installing more than 3GB in a system if you plan to run XP or 32 bit Vista.

NOTE: There are many variables that make this all pretty complex.  Poorly designed systems or systems with poorly written BIOS code can also have problems with memory reported as available to Windows.  Chances are though, a recent 64 bit system will be fine.

Anyway, I think I'll be 64 bit from here on out.  It's only been a little over a week, but it would take some pretty big compatibility problems to force a rollback at this point.

It has been a bit since our last update.  One reason was due to re-building my main computer system.  And the other reasons are simply work and kids.  Hats off to you serious daily bloggers out there.  It isn't easy to keep it up.  I feel like a total slacker when I realize co-workers such as Raymond Chen manage to kick out two posts per day via an automated posting system, and he is so ahead of the game that posts keep coming even while on vacation...and no he isn't just blogging while on the road.  Like clockwork, two posts every day at 7:00am.  One technical, one random.

Anyway, we are still alive and kicking.  I'll try and get more content rolling again...at least every other day or something.  I know I can do better than once a week or more.

The other day Jody loaded up the family (I was at work) and she took off to run some errands.  Wait, before I continue I should back up and explain something else first.

Ever since our long driving trip this summer, Ciera has developed this bitter hatred towards her car seat and especially the car.  If she is awake in the car, she is most often screaming.  It has made going anywhere a struggle.  Ok, back to the story...

So while Jody, her mother, and all the kids spent the day bumming around to various locations (one of which was Ikea), Ciera's patience began to fade quickly. So long as she was out of the car and walking a store she was happy.  In the car...not so much.

One method of trying to keep her happy, which is only possible with the other kids in the car (especially Tanner), is to bust out singing a song while being a little goofy.  If you can distract her, she will mellow out sometimes.

Well, at one point (as I was later told) Ciera became pretty frustrated so everyone began singing to her.  When Jody started singing "Row Row Row Your Boat", Tanner and all the kids joined in happily.  Grandma Dale decided to be creative, and she also joined in with the singing, but she delayed her start of the song - you know, person A starts singing, then follows person B etc.  I guess my kids had never heard this song performed this way, and Tanner especially found it amusing.

Each time the song would end, Grandma Dale was always the last one to finish.  Each time Tanner would look at her and shake his head smiling. 

Eventually he couldn't keep quiet and he leaned over and whispered to his mom, "Mom, Grandma is never going to catch us...she is too slow!".  

Disclaimer:  I was not present for this exchange, and while I have tried to capture the essence of the moment, it was apparently so funny that Jody had a hard time even telling me about it (she was laughing too hard).  If I left out a detail, she will have me correct it later.