iohelix

for everybody who will be celebrating the coming new year, make sure you don’t start (or end) your new year’s countdown early.

the international earth rotation and reference systems service (IERS) has announced that a leap second will be added at the end of 2008, making 2008 one second longer than it should be.

so either start your countdown at 11, or end your countdown at -1, either way…

enjoy the extra long year!  (it has both a leap day, and a leap second)

so we got a new camcorder for christmas (mrs. claus was nice enough to bring one by for us), and I broke it out, started using it, got it home, and tried to hook it up to the computer…  well, that failed with a cryptic error message, but no big deal, the memory card is easily removed, and the camcorder conveniently came with a USB card reader. so i plugged that in, attached it to the comp, and tried to open the files with my favorite in-a-hurry audio/video player, VLC…

nope. try again.

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well everybody, we can stop using our “O” key when describing Skye’s current state of toothiness. she now, and for the rest of her life, has teeth. it’s official, there are two teeth in there, and it’s about time…   I think this one has been trying to break through for the past month or so. and she’s been letting us know the whole time.

anywho…

now for the top ones…   we’ll see how bad those ones are.

January 16, 2009

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I didn’t get tagged, but this one interested me, so here it is: Read the rest of this entry »

And you want to know what is surprisingly soft on a baby? The palm of the hand when it’s relaxed while baby is sleeping.

Microsoft Internet Explorer is about to ruin your day.  Read the story for more info:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7784908.stm

Done reading?

Now, do yourself a favor and grab one of these:

• Windows
  • Firefox (Highly Recommended)
  • Google Chrome (Also Recommended)
  • Apple Safari
  • Opera
• Mac
  • Firefox (Highly Recommended)
  • Apple Safari
  • Opera
• Linux
  • You’re good, no worries
  • But grab Firefox, just for the heck of it
  • You can also grab Opera, if you want

I’m not a religious person.  I’m not a full blown God-hating atheist, I’m more of an agnostic with atheistic tendencies.  Or rather…  I’m a scientist, and due to the lack of any kind of scientific proof of God’s existence, I tend not to subscribe to any religious beliefs.  But I digress.  And how can I digress before I even started making my point…

Anywho…

There are several mysteries of the Universe that people often attribute to God, and based on your belief system, you may lean more one way or the other.  Some of those beliefs are creation vs. evolution, the creation of the earth and the heavens (I’m talking of outer space, not the other kind of Heaven), what happened before the big bang, and where did life come from…

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here are a few things I’ve discovered because of my little one, that I didn’t understand before.  some of them probably make sense, and some of them you’ve probably heard before, but you don’t really understand them until you have a baby yourself.

1. giving birth is traumatic for everybody (especially the father, and orders of magnitude more so if it’s your first one (or so it seems))
2. always put a clean diaper underneath the dirty one BEFORE you open it
3. immobile babies are WAAAAY better easier than mobile ones
4. teething sucks
5. shot day sucks
6. constipation sucks
7. vacuums suck, and are a necessity (sorry, had to do it =) )
8. nothing smells worse than day old formula… except for maybe day old diapers.
9. there is no mute button Read the rest of this entry »