I’m packing this evening for a flight to Duluth, MN with Tara, Ashby and Roe (still in uterus). We’re spending the next several days with Tara’s family north of Duluth on Lake Superior. It’s a four hour flight to Minneapolis and another forty minute flight to Duluth. What are we packing for Ashby?

• Books – Ashby got some great new books from Roy, Steve and Brigette in the last couple days that I’m packing.
• Silly puddy
• Stickers
• Crayons, coloring books, notebook
• Little People
• Snacks

These are our usual standbys and are capable of tiding Ashby over for hours. But, I’ve got some other goodies I’m excited about.

Tara and I got Ashby a Tag Reading System from Leapfrog. I’m super excited to work with her on phonics and reading with Tag. It has solid reviews. I already played with it tonight and downloaded the audio for another book I bought with the Tag  that didn’t come pre-loaded. It was quick and easy peasy. 🙂

Then I’m also preparing for the flight with the free video podcasts from Nick Jr and PBS. Yup, that’s right, free educational video podcasts for kids. We have a Philips 8.5” DVD player with iPod dock that is going to come in handy. And the following video podcasts are now loaded on my video iPod and ready to roll.

• Super Why 
• Dragonfly TV
• Sesame Street
• Diego
• They Might be Giants Friday Night Video podcast for kids
• The Goodnight Show

I haven’t watched but a few of these yet, but it seems they’re mostly one to six minute excerpts from the show. Super Why is the full episode. By the way, I love the theme song for this show! Oh, and I couldn’t resist buying some Sponge Bob on iTunes. I know, Tara hates Sponge Bob too, but I think he’s awesome. And c’mon people. I grew up watching Tom and Jerry and Loony Tunes. I’ll bet you did too. That stuff is raw violence and brain rot with no redeeming quality.

Postscript- I love how I find my own photos using Zemanta, not on my Flickr account, but via Wikipedia. See first photo of Lake Superior.

Human gestation is 10 months not 9 months. Yes, really. It’s your standard off by one error. Stupid non-programmers. What a newb mistake. No, I’m not kidding. 40 weeks = 10 months. You count from 0, duh…

Perinea massage is not massage at all. Whoever dubbed it “massage” was sick and twisted and should be slapped around vigorously. It’s more akin to taffy making, but not at all fun to watch.

There are three phases of labor. Each phase is more terrifying than the previous and it builds to a crescendo of horror during the transitional phase at which time the woman releases a sustained shriek that is like nothing you’ve ever experienced. You can feel it in your sternum. This is also the smelliest phase of labor. 

Women giving birth do not remember much about giving birth. They’ll say: “it wasn’t so bad”. This is because natural selection has allowed the female gender to evolve a remarkably selective memory to the circumstances pertaining to birthing.

In short, unless you’ve seen some really twisted crimes against humanity, birthing is likely the most horrifying event you will ever witness. However, in the end, when you gaze upon your pointy headed co-creation you will ball your eyes out uncontrollably with joy and be filled with a sense of awe and wonder that can not be felt under any other circumstances. Lastly, you will have a new found respect for your partner that should sustain you through the first year of child rearing.

Rion just turned me on to NuevaSync. ROCK! At last, I can sync my Google calendar with my iPhone. But wait, there’s more. It’s bidirectional! I can add appointments from my iPhone and these post to my Google Calendar. And it’s free (still in beta).

“God Bless Us, Every One!” – Tiny Tim (the gimp, not the creepy guy with the ukulele)

 

I grew up with a skateboard. It was solely transportation for me. And where I grew up in Morgan Hill, CA the street conditions did not lend well to skating. I recently bought a very short board with a Russ Pope design; although it’s aesthetically appealing the trucks and wheels on it suck for street skating. Or perhaps just suck period. I’ve attempted to skate the 2.5 miles to work a couple times and invariably I jump on the bus about half way there. I’ve been meaning to outfit it with more suitable trucks and wheels, but mostly I was planning/hoping to get a longboard.

Needless to say, I was touched and blown away when I was gifted a longboard from everyone at the office. Frickin’ sweet! 🙂 With my new board I ventured out and skated Mission Hills and Hillcrest this weekend..a few times.

If you look closely at my leg in the photo above you’ll detect evidence of my lack of experience.

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When I post a photo to Flickr ~10 views in the first 12 hours is pretty good. I posted this photo of Tara last night:

And it racks up 150 unique views in the first 12 hours. What the hell? I know she’s hot, but is there that many people on the Interwebs with prego fetishes?

By the by, Tara is 7 months pregnant with my son: Roesevelt David Fulkerson. I snapped this photo a few days ago after Tara’s morning run. Yes, she runs and yes. it does get a lot of looks through Mission Hills and Hillcrest.

"…And I think we’re dead. time is going by really really really really slow."

I ❤ Zemanta. I’ve been using the WordPress plugin here at my personal blog for months. I had it installed at the MindTouch blog. I use the Live Writer plugin. It’s great. Why? Automatic links, images, related articles and tags. Imagine an auto-search in your blog sidebar while you’re writing that provides contextually relevant information and images to enrich your content. You can even provide your Flickr account and pull content from this as well! Love it. I will point out that Zemanta does a very poor job of providing contextually relevant content about themselves.

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I’m really psyched about our current campaign at MindTouch to encourage open source users to upgrade to the commercial build of MindTouch Deki. Any MindTouch Deki Open Source user that upgrades to MindTouch Deki Commercial (Deki Standard or Enterprise) will have a donation made on their behalf to the World Wildlife Fund, which will pay to save an endangered emperor penguin. Sarah describes it in full at the MindTouch blog. We just announced this campaign earlier this week in our December Newsletter. Last I checked, MindTouch had already saved six penguins on the behalf of others. The campaign got some pick up in the blogosphere too. Mhinkle wrote about it, as did Lisa at Ostatic.

That’s Guerric and Roy–MindTouchers.