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If you’ve been following the kids blog you know that August is a month where our lives get pushed into fast forward. August is Lisa’s birthday, our anniversary, both my parents’ birthdays, around the time when Jaya comes to visit, and when we take most of our trips out of state (if we haven’t done so already).

Over 1,000 miles later, we’re almost done. Jaya leaves this Saturday.

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Have you ever had a moment where you know you’re in a ‘moment’, and you don’t want to do or say anything to ruin the moment? That happened a few weeks ago. Nora and Isaac were in Nora’s room: Isaac started crawling towards Nora, and she’d run out of the room, and run back and start making silly noises which Isaac found hysterical. Then Nora would run to one of us and jump in our arms, and Isaac would crawl as fast as his little legs would allow. This went on for a good long while, and it was just simply amazing to watch.

Nora is an amazing big sister. She won’t admit to loving Isaac (in fact, she’s mentioned that we should leave Isaac at every rest stop we hit in NJ) but she really does care for him. Just last night, Isaac was throwing a fit about eating, so I decided we were having a break from feeding for a minute. Nora pulled up a chair, declared that Isaac wants his big sister to feed him, and she did – a whole jar of puree and a cup of yogurt.

It’s pretty clear in Isaac’s world that Nora is rated #1, with everyone else a distant second. He always wants to do what she’s doing (much to her chagrin and consternation) and we’re certain that’s why he’s worked so hard to learn how to crawl (and now he’s trying to walk. At seven months!).

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Projects: I never posted the pictures. Sorry. You don’t care, I know. In any event, we put up a fence, and naturally our neighbors didn’t like how high it went (8 feet!). It was illegal for sure, and we expected it to be an issue, but not in the way that happened.

After Michael wrecked the r/c truck, it went into hibernation until two days ago where I did a complete tear down and used compressed air to clean it out. I’ve de-tuned it even further and upped the torque, going with a 53/14 setup. 53/13 would’ve been nice, but the gear wouldn’t fit properly (it may be an investment for later).

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Brief reviews

Mourn the Living by Henry Perez was a fascinating page turner that had only one issue, and it’s a weird one: the main character’s name. Instead of referring to Alex Chapa as ‘Alex’ or ‘Chapa’, the writer would write out ‘Alex Chapa’. It’s an odd thing that I’ve never seen before. Even towards the end, it’d pop up. Otherwise, fantastic book.

Monster Truck Nitro (ip/t): from the makers of Trials HD, it follows a similar physics based vein where you’re trying to get your monster truck to the end of the obstacle course in a ridiculously short amount of time. Great game.

Dark Nebula (ip/t): it’s a labyrinth game on steroids. It’s production values are stellar. Dark Nebula, Ep 1 is now free and Ep 2 is 99c. Go get them, you’ll love them.

Lilracerz (ip/t): top down racer ala Micro Machines for the NES. Tons of tracks, and the difficulty curve is steep. It’s a brilliant retro game (with retro chiptunes, too), well worth the price of admission (99c).

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Today there will hopefully be an announcement for a new ipod touch which I can lust after. Toodledo has been a smashing success: the alarms do work (though they aren’t nearly loud and as annoying as my palm and winmo device), and since it’s syncs so nicely, I’ve been able to jot notes down in the car to and from work or as an idea strikes and have it available on the desktop right away.

I won’t lie: ever since Toodledo, I’ve been a complete nut for this device and carry it by my side at all times. I am running into a space quandry: Nora’s tv shows take up a big chunk of the 8gb. My desire to upgrade has nothing to do with iOS4 or the retina display; in fact, my hope is that the new installment drives down the price of the 3rd Gen devices so I can pick one up used in a reasonably good condition.

My other thought is getting an unlocked 3GS, getting a t-mobile prepay plan and use it like an ipod touch except in case of an emergency (like last weekend, when the internet was out and we ended up calling Ray after exhausting all the local hotspot locations).

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Basketball season starts soon, and Rod Thorn (not Eddie Stefanski) is at the helm. Who is Rod Thorn you ask? He’s the guy the drafted Michael Jordan and made the New Jersey Nets relevant.

There’s a legend that the Sixers offered Dr. J for the third pick of that draft, and Thorn turned it down. Can you imagine what life would’ve been like in Philly if Jordan were a Sixer? …words, they fail me.

For those wondering, they drafted Charles Barkley in that draft. Had the Sixers managed that trade, they would’ve had Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, two members of the dream team that won gold medals in 1992 and 1996. Holy crap.

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As a final note, I fixed my laptop cd-rom drive. The distro reviews shall recommence!

Zenwalk: A paris based organization which uses a distro based on slackware. It arrived very bare – which is good in one sense – but it’s basically a pre-configured slackware. Unlike Slax (which I will get to in a moment), it lacked some basic configuration stuff (couldn’t load the wired NIC but could load the wireless?, no CPU throttling at all even though many new PCs use throttling). If I wanted to muck around that much, I would’ve just installed Arch or Slack.

Slax is a live distro based on Slackware. Slax can be installed to the hard drive, but in a very hackish way. If you go to the Slax site, you can custom build the distro and download your creation. It’s quite a nifty feature, and the distro has a very well put together feel. It does exactly what you ask and it does it well. Even though it’s a live cd, it runs very quickly.

Vector: the latest one is the opposite of Slax. Things configured just fine, but it’s a slapdash amalgamation of ‘things’. There’s no focus, which is a shame since at one time it was a really nice distro.

Ubuntu: definitely not my first choice (obviously) but xubuntu’s installer was balky (which seems to happen somewhat frequently). Ubuntu sets the bar for user experience, and it does what it needs to do right out of the box.

However, for my laptop it’s not the best solution. Given the age of my hardware, Ubuntu runs intolerably hot. To add salt to the wound, Lisa’s laptop (also running 10.04) runs whisper quiet and while it’s slightly warm, it’s comfortable.

I’m going to attempt to mod Ubuntu instead of distro hopping and chronicle it here.

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I loved Arch and still do, but when you leave your computer for a time and come back to it, the number of updates and things I needed to consider was overwhelming. Sometimes I don’t turn on my laptop for weeks. Arch is like a dog and needs daily attention.

It’s likely I’ll be trying out pure slackware for my purposes in a few months, but right now I don’t have the patience.

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That’s it. Hopefully I won’t be going another few weeks without an update.

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