No; we did not lift Annika up to that position on the ladder. We didn’t hold her hands and let her “walk” up the rungs. She climbed all the way up there. By herself. And fast. She is seriously a little monkey. We’re so screwed….

Turns out that I love watching myself on camera!

I also like digging in the dirt.

And playing with bubbles.

While we were outside playing, the dog-dogs went crazy. Mom got all excited, but Daddy wouldn’t let me go over to
Mommy to see what she was all excited about. Daddy took the dogs inside and then made Mommy and me go back to the
driveway. He said something about a gopher in our fence. That doesn’t even make sense. Sometimes I worry about
Daddy…

And Saturday she climbed up a flight of stairs (15 total) all by herself, and on the first try. She had been chasing a group of 3-5 year-olds who all ran up the stairs. Frustrated that she couldnt follow them, she sat at the bottom of the stairs and cried for a bit. Then, she just started climbing, and didnt stop.

Man, we are going to be in some serious trouble….

Oh, and yesterday (Tuesday) a tooth on the bottom came through.  So she’s up to 3 now.

Tasha came over to the house on Sunday afternoon (she had been at her Dad’s house). It was in the mid to high 90’s and we were currently under an EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING (actually, we’re STILL under an excessive heat warning). She was wearing jeans, a black, long-sleeve t-shirt, and then a black short sleeve t-shirt over the long-sleeve. Jeans and TWO shirts??? On a 90+ degree day???? We couldnt really get an answer out of her as to WHY she had chosen this outfit except that it wasn’t “that hot” to which we knew wasn’t legit. I’m confident that she thought the outfit was cool (and I would completely agree if it had been 70 degrees outside), and that fact alone was why she had chosen it. I’m also confident that I did something similar at that age, and was convinced that it was perfectly normal to dress like that, and that my parents were simply clueless.

Last night, I overheard Noelle and Tasha discussing some character in her (Tasha’s) Sims game who has a tattoo of the Misfit’s iconic skull. I asked her if she knew who the Misfits were. She didnt. Wow… One of the original punk bands in America; hugely influential on American punk in the early 80’s…. And while she thinks their logo is really cool, she has no idea about the band behind that icon. I was able to relate the band to her by explaining that the song Mother in Guitar Hero II that she likes is sung by the guy (Glen Danzig) who used to be the lead singer (and founder) of the Misfits. She didn’t seem impressed.

Last, Noelle and Tasha returned home from back-2-school clothes shopping. Tasha had gotten two pairs of jeans, one of which Noelle described as an “emo” cut, to which, I rolled my eyes, and thought “oh my gawd that’s ridiculous.” And right then, I knew I had reached a turning point in my life: I am now on the other side of the generational gap.

Now, dont get me wrong, I actually like most of the music side of emo. I grew up listening to Husker Du and Fugazi, both of which are credited for influencing the 1st and 2nd waves of emo, and enjoy many other “emo” bands like Sunny Day Real Estate, Jimmy Eat World, The Get Up Kids, Piebald, At the Drive-in, Jawbox, Dashboard Confessional, Taking Back Sunday, The Early November, Mae, Further Seems Forever, The Used, From Autumn to Ashes, etc., etc, blah, blah, blah.

No, what I don’t like, nor get, is the style associated with “emo”. Specifically, the skin tight jeans (usually guys wearing girl jeans). How can any guy wear skin tight jeans? Especially in any place south of Canada? And how can you wear women’s low-cut jeans???? And the too tight tshirts. The hair styles can be a bit silly, but whatever. I cant talk about hair since the hairstyle I had in high school was pretty obnoxious.

Back to music, the only thing that bugs me about the music are some of the emo bands who claim they are punk. Sorry, you are not punk. You might have had punk influences, you might even like punk, and while the music you make in many instances is enjoyable, it is not punk. Oh, and Hot Topic is not Punk Rock.

So, there you have it…. I have officially crossed over to the same spot my parents were in when I looked at them and thought there’s no way they can understand me, they dont know what “cool” is, they are so clueless. <sighs>

And for a laugh, give this song a listen: Emo Kid

Specifically, this quote from Scott Stanzel:

“What we are witnessing is an out-of-control Congress which spends time calling for special prosecutors, starting investigations, issuing subpoenas and generally just trying to settle scores,” said Scott M. Stanzel, a White House spokesman. “All the while they fail to pass appropriations bills and important issues like immigration reform, energy and other problems go unanswered.”

Excuse me??? Out of control Congress? Did the Republican-led senate and/or congress pass any appropriate bills that answered questions to any of the above issues? Uh, nope. They had six years to accomplish that, and failed. The Dems have TRIED to pass legislation, but have hit Republican roadblocks. And you know what? They NEED, let me repeat that…. NEED to be spending time issuing subpoenas, starting investigations and calling for special prosecutors. Why? Oh, I dont know… maybe illegally spying on U.S. citizens? Illegal torture of detainees? Leaking the name of a CIA operative? Falsifying the case to go to war with Iraq? Do I need to go on?

No, what we have here is a case where the White House is trying to divert attention from these investigations. They dont want people thinking about this stuff. They don’t want us (the citizens) to start asking questions.

First, if you are unfamiliar with U3, from the website:

Imagine carrying your software on the same flash drive that carries your files. That’s what you can do with a U3 smart drive. You can plug it into any PC and work, play a game, message friends, send email, edit photos and more. A U3 smart drive makes any PC your own PC. And when you unplug it, it leaves no personal data behind.

There are other, free options that do the same thing (like portableapps.com, PStart, etc), but I have a U3 drive, and it works just fine. Using the article above, I already had SecureCRT running on myportable drive, but it wasnt incorporated into the U3 Launcher and required me to open up the drive and manually launch it. Plus, U3 makes sure your apps are all closed before it disengages the drive. And there have been a couple of times where I ejected the drive but had forgotten about SecureCRT.

So, you are going to need a couple of tools in order to do this. Head over to U3.com and grab: U3 Package Prototyper and the Manifest Creator. Makes sure to have your U3 drive already plugged in as both of these apps actually install themselves to the drive. Ok, now, go follow all six steps in the directions from the newsletter I mentioned above. However, at step 1, dont copy your files over to the USB drive. Just copy them to a new location on your hard drive somewhere. We wont actually end up using the bat file you create at step 4, but do it anyway for now.

After you’ve completed all six steps, make sure SecureCRT is working correctly from your temp working area. Now, fire up the prototyper from your U3 Launcher. Use the browse button to select your Main Application Directory (thats the “SecureCRT” folder where you’ve been working in). Then, use the drop down menu to choose SecureCRT.exe as your Main Executable (see the screen shot). Then click the “Build” button. It will ask you where you want to store the U3 package its going to build. Pick somewhere you can get to easily since we have a bit more work to do. Click Save and it should build the package.

Once it finishes building the package, head on over to where you saved it. The package will have a u3p extension. A U3 package is really nothing more than a zip file. Change the extension from *.u3p to *.zip and then open it with your favorite zip application (I would strongly suggest WinRar). Extract the contents of the zip file. You should end up with 3 folders: Device, Host and Manifest. From your U3 Launchpad, start up the U3 Manifest Creator (UMC). In the UMC, go to the File menu, and open. Navigate to where you extracted the files and go into the Manifest folder. Open up the manifest.u3i file. It will warn you about the name having invalid contents. Dont worry about it, and just import anyway.

In the UMC go ahead and fill in the values on the Manifest Entries page tab (see screen shot). The icon file and UUID fields should already be filled out for you. If not, pick an icon you want to use, and click the Generate UUID button.

In the UMC, click on the Required Lifecycle Actions page tab. The important part here is the Action Arguments field. In this field, put in:

/F %U3_DEVICE_EXEC_PATH%\Config

Make sure everything looks like the screen shot.

Now, go to the File menu, and click on Validate Current Entries. Make sure you dont have any problems (for example, it doesnt like parentheses in the Product Description field). Last Save the file. Before proceeding, I would suggest re-opening the manifest file and make sure the Action Arguments line is what we put in. I have had a couple of problems where I would put in the arguments, and it wouldnt save correctly.

Since we no longer need it, go into the Device folder and delete the bat file we created earlier. Now we want to re-zip the three folders (Device, Host and Manifest) back into a zip file. Change the file extension on the resulting file from *.zip back to *.u3p. The last thing to do is to actually install the application on your U3 drive. From your U3 LaunchPad, go to Add Programs, Install from My Computer. Navigate to where your new .u3p file is. Follow the directions, and you should now find SecureCRT in your program listings in your U3 Launchpad.

Launch it and enjoy.

When mom arrived Monday night, she said that it sounded like Annika was in pain.  She asked if we had tried any orajel yet.  The thought hadnt even crossed our minds.   We gave it a shot, and sure enough: 2 minutes after applying it to her lower gums, she wasnt screaming anymore. Since then, Noelle has noticed what looks like TWO teeth coming in.  TWO?  =(

Man, kids grow up fast….