Working out again

We went to the gym for the first time this year. It went pretty good. Brinklee acted decent and didn't get us called out in the normal 15 minutes. Courtney and I both did 30 minutes on the tread mill. I also did some light upper body.

Then I helped Jared move his washer and dryer. I thought it would be simple because they are the apartment sized ones that stack. I told Courtney "It'll be easier because they are smaller." Boy was I wrong.

It didn't help that Jared and Elizabeth live on the second story. We got it done though!

Ikea

Wow what a store. That's all I've got to say about that.

Weekending

Amber came in this weekend. We switched out the bed furniture in the guest room. Its much better. We put a full bed with a nice headboad and a new comforter set that my Mom gave us. It makes the room look much nicer.

The rest of my Saturday was pretty plain. We started watching the movie "Trauma", but turned it off as it was both boring and hard to understand the Irish accent. We are now watching the Interpreter with Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman. She's so hot. He's so ugly. I don't even think he can act all that well. She's a pretty good actress though. I wonder if she actually had to learn some of the several languages she spoke in this movie. I'll review it tomorrow.

Cheaper By The Dozen 2

Funny movie. Steve Martin gets better with age. I don't know how long they can milk it, but they did a pretty good job.

Speaking of ideas, Hollywood hasn't had many unique ones lately. We watched the Skeleton Key the other day, and it was very good. It had a not Hollywood ending. Such a good twist. About half way into it I was starting to put it together, somewhat.

But I digress. Cheaper by the Dozen 2. It was a classic Mano e Mano pitting the main character, the dad, against his arch rival. They both are overly competitive and leads to a funny but heartfelt ending.

I must say that Hillary Duff was not looking so good. I always thought she was a cute girl and would be a beautiful woman someday, but she was waaaay to skinny. Her cheeks were sunken and her hair was bad.

I thought I had posted yesterday

But I guess I didn't. So this is the post for 1/12/2006.

Brooklyn had a teeny, tiny little splinter in her foot last night. But if you saw the way she was acting you would have thought that we were trying to cut her foot off instead of pulling it out!

It was so bad that I had to hold her down while Elizabeth and Courtney dug it out with a needle. It was so small in fact that the only way we could tell it was gone was the fact that we couldn't see it in her foot any more!

And that got me to thinking about how bad we make things seem in our imagination. I can tell you how many times I didn't do something or dreaded it and then when it happened it was nothing! We should be fearless in this world, but often we are not.

In our last house in Midland we had a water softener. After being in the house for only a couple of months it stopped working. We thought for sure that it would need to be replaced and we could not afford the just under a thousand dollar price tag that came along with replacement. So we just shut it off and never used it again.

Well after a year we had to move so we sold the house. The buyers wanted to have a service man come out and look at it. I agreed only if they would foot the bill for replacement. They agreed. $75. That was how much it cost to fix it!

Quantum Computing

0101010111000100110010001101010101

That's what a piece of binary computer code looks like. "0" means false, and "1" means true. All computing systems ultimately use this technique at their lowest levels. We call these 0's and 1's "bits".

The quantum counter part is a qubit. It has 8 states instead of the 0 or 1 state of a bit. So while a bit can only exist in the state of 0 or the state of 1, a qubit can actually exist in many different states (0, 1, or some where in between and many different positions or superpositions between) at the same time. Imagine 8 to the power of 8 as compared to 0 or 1.

Its been theorized that Quantum Computing will create computer systems that are millions of times more powerful than our current fastest supercomputers today. The problem is creating a computer to put the theory to use.

Today it was announced that the first semiconductor has been created that is actually used to create pairs of entangled protons, which is the first major hurdle in having a quantum computer. Entanglement is something that completely freaked out Einstein. He called it "Spooky actions".

Entanglement is where two particles that are seperated by space act and react as if it were the same particle. Imagine if you had a proton at point A vibrating north and south, and then you had another proton at point B that mimiced that same motion. Exactly. Even thousands of miles away. Freaky, huh?

Now apply that theory to computers. Say that you determine that if your proton is moving north to south it represents something. And have the proton's counterpart in another state. If the proton represents some piece of data, then you have automatically replicated your data. Constantly. Freaky, huh?

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8568

Corporal Punishment

While having dinner the discussion came up on spanking. The comment was made, "You have another daddy here, ask him about spanking." (referring to me).

I can't remember exactly what my reply was, but here's a more detailed response:

You don't spank a child to inflict pain. Kids don't respond to pain. As I see it, you spank for two reasons:

1. Get their attention. A little pain in the rear will get any body to pay attention. Think about it, when you feel pain you try to focus on what is causing you the pain. If its another person, you try to figure out why they are causing you pain and try to get them to stop. Spanking is a quick end to what ever the behavior was that caused the spanking in the first place.

2. It will hurt their feelings. Having pain inflicted by someone you love dearly hurts you on an emotional level. You know you have done something wrong. And hopefully you will try in the future to avoid that behavior that caused the person you love to have to hurt you.

However, you can't stop at the spanking. You must always, always stop and explain why you had to give the spanking. A spanking without followup is pointless. I know many children that after a while the spanking is just something to deal with, not a behavior modification technique.

Would you, as an adult like to get a spanking? No. If you received a spanking from a loved one, would you change the behavior that caused it? You bet. Should adults get spanking? probably not. Why? Because they are adults and should be able to understand someone discussing an issue with them and be able to correct it. Kids cannot make that reasoning just yet. That's why we need to keep corporal punishment in the schools and in the home.

Finally! I have my house back!

J and E moved out and on today. I am so happy for them. I think they will now have the chance to grow as a family. Its difficult to do that when you have so many outside influences for so long. I think its been well over a year since they have been alone.

Their apartment is only a few blocks away from us. Within a 5 minute drive anyway. And now since they have their second car E can get around better when J is at work. Courtney is still planning on keeping Logan while she works.

E had a run in with a co-worker on New Years Eve and quit her job. She said she wasn't ever a good waitress, but I don't know. She made decent money at it. She must have been doing something right.

This is the first time my family has been alone in our own house in over four months! It's so nice. I like spending time with them, but I also enjoy time alone with my girls.

Off to Church!

Today (1.8) was the first day back at church since the new year. We were out of town the other Sunday.

We actually made it to church on time today! Its amazing! I don't know what the difference is, but if we would just get our stuff ready on Saturday night then it would be so much easier on us come morning.

Service was good. It was about getting up and out and accomplishing things as Christians. Very inspirational.

Do I finally get my house back? No.

So, last weekend we pushed hard to get all of Jared and Elizabeth's stuff from Midland to Plano. We were thinking that if we could at least get it here, then they would be able to move into their new apartment. Not so!

I don't know what the deal is, but they still have not moved out! I think part of it is that Jared works such crazy times (security guard) that he isn't awake when E is.

1.6

Ok, so this experiment is not going as planned. It's a lot tougher to blog on a daily basis than I had imagined. I'm changing tactics. I am now going to make blogging part of my nightly routine. Maybe then I can get it done.


Today (1.6) was my first Friday back since being sick. Its nice to have a short week. Nothing special happening. Just code today.

Geek

You know, I'm a geek. The first step is admitting it, right?

I think my wife is a geek too, or at least in the process of morphing into one. Its funny how a complete cable outage could alter your perspective on technology around the house. There were several subjects that came up throughout the day when Courtney would say to me, "Just look it up on... Oh year, no Internet?"

I have been on cable Internet for almost 6 years now. I can't imagine a world without it. I was sooo looking forward to the Texas/USC game, but suddenly was struck how dependent I had become. Think about it; No cable - Can't watch the game. No cable - Can't check ESPN for score updates. No Internet- Can't check out espn.com for score updates. Holy purple cow! I was extremely disappointed.

Luckily though my cable operator (Comcast) called a mire two hours before kick off with news that it was a system failure in our area and service had been restored.

And year I did get to watch the game. And what a game it was. UT:41, USC:39!

Hook 'em Horns!

The flu... Still

Still have the flu.

The girls have been sick too. I don't know what to do. Write a poem?

Ode to the Flu:

Flu, you are not a friend of mine
Not in darkness nor in shine.

As I lay upon my back
I ponder of the food I lack.

For I cannot stomach the smell or taste
as everything that touches my tongue is instant paste.

Blistering heat as I shiver below
a mountain of covers and a throw.

My lips parched dry
a tear in my eye.

Oh flu, can you leave me alone.

Day 3, the Flu

The flu is no fun. I had to miss a couple of days, so I am blogging now for 1/3.

Jared and Elizabeth are in Midland getting the rest of their belongings. As soon as they get their things back here they will begin moving into their new apartment. It's a nice apartment, the perfect size for their small family.

Its definitely been an adventure having them stay with us. We enjoyed many days and nights just hanging out, watching movies or playing XBox games.

Day Two

It is January the 2nd, 2006. Not much happened today, except that I have been sick all day. bI've had a fever and a bad headache. My kids have been ill also.

My wife has had to take care of all of us today. She's great. Such a trooper.