Family Matters
House Pictures Return!
Friday, August 15th, 2008For those who’ve noticed that I haven’t updated our House Construction Photoblog in a while (yeah, yeah, I know, it’s all over the news…), your interminable wait is over.
Click on the photoblog in the left sidebar (or on the link above) and check out the last few pictures. Highlights include a (mostly) finished deck, a hot tub, and (drum-roll…….) walls!
Also, I’m here to tell you that once the big decisions about the house are done, the little ones come along, and it’s those that take up all the time (or at least enough time that it becomes tough to maintain a photoblog). I think we’re getting over the hump, though, so I’ll try to be better about providing updates…
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Things You See While…Driving to Boston
Friday, August 15th, 2008Hello and welcome to what I hope will be a regular feature here at I Should be Sleeping, “Things You See While…”
Categories: Family Matters, Travel Talk | Comments Off on Things You See While…Driving to Boston
House Update: New Video!
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008Exciting news:
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Oh yeah, the house…
Sunday, July 13th, 2008It just occurred to me that while I was migrating my blog (a period that shall heretofore be referred to as “the dark times”), we began renovations on our house, and even though the featured video and photo album on the left refer to it, I never really blogged about it.
Here’s the skinny:
Categories: Family Matters | 2 Comments »
Problem Getting into Webkinz World?
Sunday, April 27th, 2008If you’ve got kids, and they’re anything like my kids, then Webkinz world is a familiar place. Both of my sons login regularly to feed and play with their virtual pet, and to complete the hourly, daily, and specially highlighted tasks that can earn them KinzCash, with which they can buy their pal anything from food to furniture to medical attention.
So imagine the disappointment when, suddenly and without warning, a visit to the Webkinz URL, http://www.webkinz.com/, started returning an HTML error and wouldn’t let them on the page? I mean, it’s like the kids’ equivalent of Blogger doing down for twelve days!
Anyway, Webkinz technical support here with a solution. Use the following URL:
Voila! Problem solved.
For the geeky, tech folks out there, here’s what’s going on: the main URL, www.webkinz.com, is receiving a parameter that tells it what location you’re in, for the purposes (I believe) of displaying the site in your native language. But the programming logic that interprets this parameter is not working, causing the “Error on Page” message. By deep linking directly to the United States/English page (www.webkinz.com/us_en/), you bypass this faulty logic and proceed directly to the site itself.
It’s been about a week now, and no one at Webkinz seems to have noticed, even though the number of kids logging in has to have dropped dramatically (has everyone figured this out on their own?). As I said earlier, it’s like someone decided that customer service and technical support were just going to shutdown around the world, and no one told me…
Anyway, enjoy your Webkinz. I’ll accept my fee in KinzCash…
Categories: Family Matters, Tech Talk | 7 Comments »
The Second Most Famous Family in Springfield
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008Hey, check it out – two Simpsons posts in a row!
This one comes with a big tip o’ the hat to Lee Salz, who sent me one of the best sites I’ve seen in ages – Simpsonizeme.com. Just give it a 640×480 picture of your face, and it will draw you as a Simpsons character. To wit:
Categories: Family Matters, Primetime TV | 1 Comment »
In Minnesota, Your 15 Minutes Is Easier to Come By…
Monday, August 27th, 2007Just got back from a wonderful four-day weekend visiting family in Maple Grove, Minnesota (just outside of Minneapolis). We did the standard things, I suppose – marvelled at the Mall of America (including the theme park formerly known as Camp Snoopy), sampled some local restaurants, and cooked S’mores in a bonfire on the driveway while neighborhood kids came by to play and dance to various Hannah Montana & High School Musical tunes.
As a daily Bleat reader, I made one additional suggestion. Isn’t the Minnesota State Fair going on? Wouldn’t the kids enjoy spending a day there? Also, I know someone who’s working there (well, “know” in the web-sense of the word – read what he writes every day & send him an occasional e-mail, which he reads and occasionally responds to as one of a sea of e-mails he receives from loyal readers).
Anyway, off to the fair we went:
A few rides, a TON of food (including several things “on a stick” that you wouldn’t expect to find on a stick – including a Snickers Bar), and then the long walk back to the car (we had a pretty good parking spot. I believe they call the lot “Wisconsin.”) Anyway, on the way back we passed the Star Tribune booth and I dragged the family off the beaten path for a second. “Excuse me, is James Lileks here?” “Why sure – he’s on the back porch.”
Perfect.
And so it was that I got to meet the man who writes the words I read every morning on my way to work. I told him so, and he said it made his day. Then he gave us some sage advice about holding our breath during the tour of the animal exhibits, and we were off – him to his Buzz.mn writing, us to our car. The next morning, this time at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport waiting for our flight, I pull up the today’s Daily Bleat. Lo & behold, look what I see:
It’s wonderfully gratifying to meet people at the Fair who read the stuff and enjoy it. (One fellow came up to the Official Buzz.mn Porch today, and told me he reads the Bleat on his Blackberry while taking the train into NYC. To Rockefeller Center! Made my day.)
Now how friggin’ cool is that? James, if you’re reading this (and there’s a chance you are, since I’m going to e-mail it to you as soon as I’m done posting it), please know that reading the reference to us the next morning made my day as well (and my wife’s day & my kids’ day…)
One more picture from the fair. It strikes me as something the Bleat-master himself might have posted if he had taken it (and, of course, he’s free to pilfer it as his discretion if he so chooses). Some contextual irony that can only be understood after passing the “Gator on a Stick” and “Teriyaki Ostrich on a Stick” booths:
Like I said – Perfect.
Categories: Blogging about Blogs, Family Matters, Travel Talk | 1 Comment »
Yankee Stadium Blogging…
Sunday, August 19th, 2007Here’s something most people who go to Yankee Stadium don’t see:
That’s the construction site across the street from the stadium, which will become the new Yankee Stadium at the beginning of the 2009 season. When Phil Rizzuto died, the construction workers apparently spray-painted “Scooter Rizzuto, MVP” on some of their materials. From the picture, it looks like temporary wooden boards used during the building process, but I’d like to think that those boards will somehow become part of the completed stadium, and that Scooter’s name will be entombed in the new stadium for as long as it stands. Unless I find out differently, I think I’ll choose to believe that story from now on…
Oh, and as long as I have your attention, here’s something most people who go to Yankee Stadium do see:
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Sign of the Times…
Friday, June 8th, 2007My son, Avery, in the car this afternoon, passing a bank: Daddy, what does ATM stand for?
Me: Automatic Teller Machine
Avery: Daddy, what’s a teller?
Categories: Family Matters, The Future is Now | Comments Off on Sign of the Times…
Another blow to privacy…
Friday, May 11th, 2007Google Analytics just revamped their interface to provide more (and easier to understand) results about the way people interact with your web page. Based on this data and a little bit of deductive reasoning, I can make this statement with reasonable confidence (if not reasonable grammar):
Yesterday, my wife’s mother’s brother’s wife’s brother googled his sister (that would be my wife’s mother’s brother’s wife), and then clicked on this page, the third result on the list he received, which, sadly, currently contains her old, non-working e-mail address.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: God Bless Google.
Now, I’m off to update that e-mail address…
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