It's almost time!

37 weeks as of Sunday, and she's already 6 lb, 10 oz...

The times, they are a-changin'

Soon, this will be an all-too-common sight.

We're in the process of getting the nursery ready, and part of that involves washing EVERYTHING. Katie's kicking butt at laundry so far!

No Turning Back Now

It's go time.

  

This is about what the yard looked like when we moved into the house a little over a year ago. occasional patches of St. Augustine grass scattered amongst large patches of thick, dead thatch. Weeds everywhere. Occasional dirt patches. More dead grass. And more weeds. Most of it looked like this:

I tried to do what watering I could that first summer, but we spent a solid half of it out of town while the Austin area was going through a pretty severe drought. And with no sprinkler system, my yard didn't get nearly as much water as it needed.

So why "no turning back?" About two hours ago, I put about 5 (diluted) gallons of RoundUp on the yard. And only 18-ish hours before Earth Day! Most of our yard will be completely dead in the next 12 hours or so, and all of it should be dead in 3 or 4 days.

Two weeks from tomorrow I'm going to renovate the entire front yard. That includes fixing and bordering our flower beds, which currently look like this:

As well as re-mulching and bordering our two trees, one of which currently looks like this:

Needless to say, I'll have my work cut out for me—but the result will (hopefully) be a sexy Bermudagrass lawn that's a lot more drought tolerant and a lot less dead. I'll post updates as I do interesting stuff. Wish me luck and stay tuned!

Worth a (re)post

Some of you may have already seen this picture, but I just rediscovered it and wanted to share again.

My youngest brother Brent was but a high schooler in 2005, when Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of The Sith was released. He and a bunch of his nerdier friends decided, as Star Wars nerds are wont to do, to go to the premiere in costume. He's the second character from the left in this picture; can you guess who he is?

If you guessed "George Lucas, the director of the movie," you're correct. That's him "directing a scene" with his friends. He said he even signed a few autographs at the theater.

Congratulations, little brother; you've managed to out-nerd the nerds. Now that's Jedi.

The Bailey Family

I was looking through some pictures from Christmas (finally processing them) and found one of my favorite things: an unexpectedly interesting picture that I forgot about almost as soon as I took it. For as long as I can remember, grandma and grandpa have had a set of little clear plastic magnetic picture frames on the fridge—one for each of their grandkids. As they get new pictures, they simply put them in front of the old ones. There's a surprising amount of family history in small little piles on that fridge.

(P.S. In case you can't tell, I'm having a love affair with Aperture and Silver Efex Pro tonight.)

Katie's looking pregnant!

In other news, I can feel the baby moving around! Here's Katie last week:

Drumroll please...

It's a...

Click the pic to make it bigger.

My brother, the marathon runner

Contrary to what the picture would suggest, he can’t actually fly, but he came pretty close! Brent ran the Dallas White Rock Marathon this past Saturday. He didn’t walk a step, and he finished the race in just over four hours. We chased him around Dallas thanks to a printed map, an iPhone, and a Suburban. Every time we saw him he looked like he had just started the race. I think I was more tired from walking around afterwards than he was from running the marathon. There are plenty of pictures here. Click through to see a few of my favorites as well.

An early Merry Christmas from Molly!

We’re almost done decorating the house for Christmas. It looks pretty awesome, and there will definitely be pictures coming. Katie definitely has an eye for this stuff.

In the meantime, I caught Molly taking a nap on one of our new Christmas pillows. Fortunately this time, unlike most times, she actually stayed asleep long enough for me to run upstairs and get my camera.

Way to go, KPark!

The girls of Kingwood Park dominated the 4A girls’ Cross Country meet, scoring 35 points and coming in first in the state. They also had 4 runners in the top ten. The gallery of entirely too many pictures is right here.  

Now HERE'S Some Change I Can Get Behind

Newsweek has been running a series of 'special projects' that involve getting reporters deep within the presidential candidates' campaigns under the condition that they can't reveal information until after the election. However, if they would have released this quote from Barack Obama, it might have actually helped:

When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

Whether you agree with what he plans to do or not, you've got to admit that's some refreshing honesty in a sea of bullcrap.

(via Newsweek's "Hackers and Spending Sprees")

Quote Of The Day

The opinions presented or not presented in this blog post may or may not reflect the views or lack of views of the blog's author or non-author, but I thought this was too clever not to share:

A Brief Comment on the Economy

From Overcoming Bias:

Few experts in our society could pull off saying:

Emergency!!! We will suffer terribly if you don't spend a trillion dollars right now overpaying for stuff from our friends! No, you don't have time to study the problem, nor will we present an analysis for your review. No, other experts in our field cannot actually see this problem, and there will never be data showing the problem really existed. You just have to trust us and give us the trillion right now!!

Source is here: Overcoming Bias: Trust Us!

My First Political Entry...

Without trying to get too one-sided, here are some great rejected John McCain phone scripts. For example:

"Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama won't stop repeating those stupid Chuck Norris facts. For example, before the third debate, Barack opened a bag of Lay's potato chips. My friends, I knew what was coming. I've been tested. It was either a Chuck Norris joke or a Seinfeld double dip. John McCain gets it. Chuck Norris can only eat one. But don't be fooled. Barack Obama was just pandering to the Florida vote. But you need to know that Barack Obama was for the cancellation of Walker, Texas Ranger before he was against it. And he also hates Everybody Loves Raymond. That's not reaching across the aisle. That's changing the channel on small-town American values. Not on John McCain's dial."

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: McCain's Rejected Robo-Call Scripts.

Image courtesy of The Big Picture

I love photography. I love nature. I love The Big Picture from the Boston globe. When the three of those things collide, you get some absolutely amazing pictures of wildlife. Check out World Animal Day at The Big Picture.

Molly Sees Something Interesting

Molly Sees Something Interesting

Originally uploaded by cebailey59

Molly has to be just about the cutest dog ever. Every time I try to get a picture of her and Charlie she wants to come sniff the camera, but every once in a while I can catch a cute face without her realizing.

Pictures from the Chuy's 5k

Check out the whole set!

Say hello to Molly!

This is Molly, our new seven-week-old Beagle. She was living with a coworker's grandmother, but she proved to be too much to handle.

We introduced her to Charlie, and she seemed scared... for about 3 minutes. Pretty soon, they were running around in the backyard like they'd known each other for years. It's funny to be thinking of Charlie as the mature and well-behaved one!

Her hobbies include chewing lots of things, peeing on the rug, and being completely adorable. Check out the Flickr set to see more of the cuteness.

My First YouTube Video...

The internet has really been excited about the Flip Video Camera recently. For $150 or so, you get a video camera with no zoom, no removable storage, but 640x480 video and surprisingly good quality. One of my favorite web celebrities, Merlin Mann of 43 folders, does a show called "30 Seconds with That Phone Guy" where he makes fun of those obnoxious people on cell phones in public by talking into his wallet. Literally is one of my favorite episodes, and since he recently had a daughter, he upgraded his fake phone.

Anyway, this inspired me to dig out my Flip camera as well. Mine's not the "retail" one, but the hacked $30 Pure Digital / CVS Disposable Digital Camcorder, complete with the super-ghetto torn-up Palm III sync cable for transfer.

Well, now there's a Mac utility that you can use to get videos off the camera, and you can dump them straight to YouTube! Here's a video I took of my friend Brandon wearing the last bit off of the back tires of his Corvette:

I'll hopefully upload some video of the house (and the dog) soon...

You down with ELP?

I wholeheartedly approve of one of the latest competitions to arise out of hiring a bunch of Type-A overachievers here at NI. As each start group moves out of training into "real work," they throw a happy hour for the department where they announce what team they'll be joining. These have gotten more and more ridiculous since they started shortly after I joined the company. (Luckily, we were the last start group that DIDN'T have to spend a bunch of money on one!) They often feature some well-done videos, decorations, excellent food, and lots of beer.

(Yes, beer at work. I have a picture of our President and CEO waiting in line for the keg at one of our company-wide parties, but I can't find it right now.)

Here's a music video from the latest happy hour: