brett's blog

Starting Weight: 257

Current Weight: 213

Target Weight: 225 210

Current Weight: 215

After about a week or so of wiggling, Justin's first tooth fell out today! To celebrate, Justin decided he wanted to have dinner at the place that you get the balls of dough (Don Pablos)..

I bet the Tooth Fairy is going to leave an assortmant of dollar bills and coins tonight under his pillow.

I got an iPod nano the first weekend they came out, it coincided perfectly with my birthday so who was I to tempt fate! I’ve been very happy with it ever since. You can't beat the price for a flash based mp3 player that holds 4GB. However it has gotten pretty badly scratched, and I haven’t been too hard on it. This isn't critical for me since I care more about functionality than looks, but it is still a bummer. 

After reading through many similar complaints, I came accross this great post from Todd Dailey's blog - Restore your iPod nano to new condition with a $4 can of Brasso. I am shocked that something like this would actually work but he includes some pretty convincing screenshots. I figure it is worth a shot, but I don't plan on going the 'ziplock baggy route'..

When converting a PDF to an image, I noticed the quality always seemed to be lacking. Here is a command line example that seems to produce better results..

> convert -geometry 850x -density 300 sourcefile.pdf newfile.jpg

digg.com
wemakemoneynotart
boingboing
metafilter
waxylinks
techcrunch
furl
43folders.com
lifehacker.com
moleskin notebooks

I am still holding out on starting my home brew PVR. Maybe it is because there isn't anything worth recording lately but that should change pretty soon when ABC's Lost returns next month..

Matthew Gast has a follow up article on his attempts to build a MythTV box.

Well, I am finally taking the time to start jotting down some notes on things that involve my family life. This is really just for my personal use so I can have a journal of what my kids are doing as they grow up and get more and more busy (is that possible?).

Anyway, Justin recently finished his first year of tee-ball (4-5 year olds) at the YMCA. His team was called the "Green Cannonballs" and I was the assistant coach. He really had a ton of fun and really improved in catching the ball with his glove. He was definitely one of the better hitters on the team despite his objections to letting me help him with his batting stance at home plate.. next up is soccer.

Eli has been sick for the past 3 or 4 days with a high temperature and he just starting getting a rash from it yesterday. Kathryn is convinced it is from their flight back from Florida one week earlier (the nurse said the incubation period is 5-7 days so I would have to agree). Other than that, Eli has been in great spirits. His vocabulary is really exploding right now, he is starting to put everything he says in complete sentences which is really cool to witness.