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Here’s a batch of new pictures.

Jillian (6 – 9 months)
The Kids: Vol. 2
Christmas 2005

Bonus Album – Snowmen
My mom seems to have collected quite a few snowmen over the past few years. I decided to document exactly how many snowmen she has in this photo album.

During our trip to Tahoe last week Emily and I discovered a Mad Libs books in the cabin where we were staying. Here’s a few of the ones we did. Enjoy.

Fable #1 (Mad Libs by Michael)
Once upon a time a squishy house expert named Emily felt a squeaky pain. She sent for a bottle surgeon who looked at his wet stomach and said, “Ahh”! Then he muttered gleefully, “I see your trouble. The PowerBook on your giant stomach is overlapping the power supply next to your kidney.” The surgeon merrily took her to the dead operating room of the hospital. There he made a yellow incision reaching from the patient’s tire to his cell phone. “Gadzooks!” said the surgeon. “That takes care of that slow remote control.” With that, he began sewing up the incision. However, on the tenth stitch the patient sneezed and almost pulled the fire out of the ant, but the surgeon took one final stitch and saved the bottle. MORAL: A butter in time saves nine.

Army Information (Mad Libs by Emily)
If you plan on joining the army, here are some scary hints that will help you become a bloody soldier. The army is made up of officers, non-coms, and boats. You can recognize an officer by the bag on his shoulders and the couch on his cap. When you address an officer, always saw, “Wreath” and salute quickly. If you get a smelly haircut, keep your books shined, and see that your bike is clean at all time. You will be a credit to the slogan, “The Army builds windows.” And at roll call, when the stupid sergeant calls your name, shout “Oops!” loud and clear. Also, become familiar with basic weapons such as the thirty-caliber smoke detector and the automatic pinecone. Follow this advice and in no time you’ll win the Wet Conduct Rock.

Travel Suggestions (Mad Libs by Michael)
If you’re looking for a place to spend a rubbery honey-moon, think of sticky Mexico. There, under a brilliant, slippery sky, you and your shiny bride can spend hours inspecting the quaint farts and the ancient Aztec beans. You will be fascinated by the smelly customs of the natives. In the evening, you can retire to the local moron, which is what the Mexicans call their socks, and watch the famous gas pedal dance called the toe. Hotels there have all bright conveniences, including hard water, stiff air-conditioning, and stupid service. The rates are also very beautiful. In a few days, you and your bride will be lolling on the boxer shorts, just like the silly natives.

Description of Wedding (Mad Libs by Emily)
The slippery wedding yesterday afternoon between warm Emily and her groom Michael, was carried off lazily. The bride wore a long dark tree with greedy edging and a smoky neckline. At the and of the dirty ceremony, there wasn’t a dry lemon in the place. Later, at the reception, the bride’s mother said, “The groom is a stupid man, just the type of pipe we wanted for our purple daughter.” The greasy couple left midst a flurry of loud congratulations, to spend a hot honeymoon visiting clouds in Timbuktu. They are sure to live quickly for many years.

We recently bought some lawn furniture from Ikea. This included some pads for the chairs. Take a look at the sheer number and size of the tags that come attached to each of these pads.

This is ridiculous! The first tag says the pad is made of 100% polyester. The second tag says that the 100% polyester is all new material. Apparently this means nothing came from recycled materials. I’m not sure if that’s intended to be a good thing or a bad thing. Then the third tag tells us in three different languages that the pad meets Callifornia’s first resistant requirements. The fourth tag — moving in a clockwise motion — tells us in 17 different languages that the pad is made of 100% polyester. Wasn’t that fact already established twice? Then the last tag tells us that the name of the product is “Rakö” and it comes from Ikea.

Do you think they could have consolidated some of this information just a little bit?

I haven’t seen anything in the usual tech news sites yet but I just noticed by Yahoo mailbox went from 100 MB to 250 MB this morning. Cool!

Upon returning from our trip to Oregon over the Thanksgiving break we found this in our bathroom. If anyone can provide an explanation for how this might have happened please leave a comment.

I have just seen one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my life. Emily just started a quilting class and one of the materials she uses is this green mat called the “Miracle Mat”. It’s a 16′ by 22′ mat that she uses to measure and cut fabric on. The cool thing is that it’s self-healing. It actually heals itself when you cut it!

She has this little rotary cutter and demonstrated it to me. She ran the cutter along the surface of the mat hard enough to make a little slice in the mat. Then the small little slit closed itself up. I took my eyes off the mat for a few minutes and came back to it to see if I could find where the cut was. I couldn’t see it at all! It was a completely smooth mat!

Truly a modern wonder.

As you’re watching the “debate” between Bush and Kerry tonight keep this in mind.

Top 10 Secrets They Don’t Want You to Know About the Debates

Wish there was a way to break the two-party system? It could be done but our lawmakers will never enact the changes required. Read the following article paying special attention to “Problem #2″.

6 Ways to Reboot the System

Also, Solano county in California has hired a former voting machine sales-rep to run its elections.

Diebold Rep Now Runs Elections

But it’s not all bad news. On the bright side, the Supreme Court ruled a portion of the Patriot Act as unconstitutional.

Part of Patriot Act Struck Down

Yes, I like Wired News.

Tyler’s Grandpa and Nana told us they were going to baby sit for us last Tuesday and it didn’t sound like we had much of a choice in the matter. “Cool”, we thought, “let’s go see an A’s game.” At the Coliseum we went to the ticket window and stood in line to buy tickets. A guy from American Airlines walked up to us and said, “Hey, I have some extra complimentary tickets if you want them. They’re completely free; no strings attached. If I don’t give them away they’ll just go unused.” We look at where the seats were and they were only 18 rows back from the field! So we took the tickets, said our thanks and headed on in.

Of course the bad news is that the A’s lost but at least we didn’t have to pay to see them lose.

As if email spam isn’t bad enough. Now spammers are targeting blogs with open registration-free comment systems like this one. Spammers will post comments that link to online gambling sites or prescription drug sites and in some cases worse. Since I’m notified by email as soon as a comment is posted I can delete the spam somewhat quickly. However, if I’m on vacation like I was last week or am not checking my email because it’s the weekend then spam on this site can remain online for a few days before I find out about it.

The problem has gotten worse the last few weeks. During my vacation one guy managed to post over twenty spam comments to various entries.

Therefore, I’m going to be closing comments on anything but the most recent entry. Given that I have over 200 entries I’m not going to be able to get to them all of them right away. Just be aware that for the time being you’ll only be able to leave comments on the most recent entry for a few days after it’s been posted.

In the future I’ll be switching to different blog software that’ll have better spam protection in the commenting system. Please bear with me until then.

Emily and I had a small “date night” last night and went to the A’s game. It was certainly a quick game. Nobody scored a single run until the bottom of the 9th when, with two outs, Marco Scuturo hit a walk-off homer. Exciting stuff but we wish the two and half hours prior to that was a little more action filled. I know many people claim that a pitcher’s duel is more exciting to watch but we wanted to see people actually hitting the ball last night.

Emily and I spent most of the evening trying to identify the source of a hideous odor that kept wafting over us. I’m talking about a truly awful stench! The best we could figure is that one member of the family in the row in front us was the culprit since the smell went away around the same time they made their exit late in the game.

One foul ball landed in an empty cameraman’s “crows nest”. That’s the best way I know how to describe the contraption that houses TV cameras in the upper levels. Well, the foul ball landed in one of these things that happened to be empty. A few people looked over the railing at the ball but were unable to retrieve it. I couldn’t help but think that if someone had some type of homemade ball retrieving device they could have had themselves a foul ball.