Mike, Jill, Lucy, & Wubie!

“Sometimes fyashyights get yost. They fall awound stuff.”
— Lucy explaining how household flashlights go missing
(“Sometimes flashlights get lost. They fall around stuff”)

What do ya know, another memory post. Please contain your excitement.

Once I was sure our new iMac was a keeper, I quickly ordered an extra 4GB of RAM. I took some pics while installing the additional RAM and decided to post ‘em here, along with notes on the installation process.

I made my first doll for madame tonight (this morning?!) It was a great deal of fun, and I put a lot of love into this dolly. I hope she lasts til Lucy has babies.

She was from a waldorf doll kit, so basically everything was done, I just had to sew her head to her body, stuff her a bit more, and close the arm seams.  I have a new level of respect for dollmakers…even this little bit was a lot of work, and took me a few hours. I can’t imagine making her from scratch.

Here are some pics I took while I was putting her together…

and finally, she is finished!

getting dressed…

at the play table waiting to be discovered. Hope you love her sweetie!

“Welcome to bundle’s
The place to be
when the cats are barfing

Welcome to bundle’s
Washing away the barf
Cleaning up the barf

Welcome to bundle’s
When the cat barfs up!

Welcome to bundle’s
Where mommy gets it on her hands!”
— Lucy improvising a song while her Mom cleans up after a sick Wubert

Kinda New Computer from Mike C on Vimeo.

We got a new (actually a refurb) computer last week, a 27″ i7 iMac, to replace the system I sold to my sister. I ordered it last Thursday afternoon and it actually arrived the very next day, so Wubie and I were psyched to bust it open and fire it up.

This was probably the 4th or 5th computer Wubie and I have opened together. We started with a G3 Blue and White back in 1999 when Wubie was a youngster. Wubie’s a teenager now, about 70 in human years, so he’s a little creakier now than he was back then (but then again, so am I.)

I’m hoping he’ll stick around for a few more system changes. It wouldn’t be the same (or nearly as fun) without him.

Here’s a photo collage of Wubie and some of the computers he’s “inspected” over the last 10+ years:

“Hey, stop calling me Lucan! Call yourself Lucan!”
— Lucy’s rebuttal upon being compared to a 70s TV character

Occasionally the kid lets her freak flag fly and expresses her general disagreement with the concept of clothing by running around in her underwear shouting, “I’m half-naked! Can’t catch me!”

Picture a 3′ 3″ blur of hair, undies, and attitude. She basically looks like a miniature caveman with a Pampers sponsorship running amuck. Invariably, I’ll start calling her Lucan, no doubt because the most accessible (and least cluttered) filing cabinet in my brain is labeled:

“Old TV Show/Comic Book/Movie/Music (60s-80s) Trivia—VERY IMPORTANT!”

Lucan was a short-lived TV show in the ’70s that my little sister and I watched semi-regularly. It told the story of a dude who spends his childhood out in the forest and is raised by a bunch of wolves. He eventually gets reclaimed by society as a dirty, snarling, crazy-haired wild-child (the Bundle connection). He then grows up as a guinea pig in some government-sponsored research lab until his inevitable escape. Action and stuff ensue (at least for the season it was on). I’m actually startled by how much of this I’m remembering.

Lucan Attacks!

Anyway, like a lot of useless info, the tale of Lucan is permanently embedded in my brain, probably hunkered down in my hippocampus, shooing away frivolous thoughts regarding the placement of car keys, wallets, and PIN codes.

So this is why I call the kid Lucan. And the funny thing is: this kid, all of 42 months old, takes much umbrage with this label. “Stop calling me Lucan. YOU’RE LUCAN!” she’ll yell as she dashes away from the 30+ year TV show aspersion. I get a kick out of that.

“The trains are not racing. They’re crumbling—and it’s very frustrating!”
— Lucy, when her toy trains were being uncooperative yesterday morning

When the Amazon Kindle E-Reader was first released in late 2007, I thought it looked interesting. However, at $400 it was never a serious consideration for me. Over the next few years, its price dropped substantilly, but at a price just north of $200 I still wasn’t sufficiently enticed enough to pry open my wallet.

Earlier this year, the Apple iPad was released. This was another gadget with promise, though again at a prohibitive pricepoint. However, the release of the iPad was great in that it coaxed products like the Kindle (and the Barnes & Noble Nook) to reduce their prices. So on June 21, the Kindle dropped to $189—less than half its 2007 price. And it was still too rich for my blood.

Well, last week Amazon bought Woot, an online retailer that has gained notoriety by basically selling one item each day. Woot’s a site I try to visit every day, usually at 10 PM PST, the time their one product for the day goes on sale. And wouldn’t you know it, the day Amazon buys Woot, Woot offers a Kindle 2 for $149.

Well, though it wasn’t a “no-brainer” purchase (I guess $99 would have met this criterion) this was enough to get me to spend about an hour researching the product. And after completing my research I pulled the trigger and finally bought a Kindle. It arrived this past Wednesday, and so far it has been pretty cool. A few pics, observations:

Product box seemed sturdy enough.

The Kindle itself looked compact, sleek and stylish. At a little over 10 ounces, it’s a very appealing package for what’s basically a mobile library.

Selling points for me:

• Holds over 1500 books
• Battery lasts up to two weeks (with wireless off).
• In addition to the Kindle format, supports unprotected epub, pdf, and html via conversion with free Calibre software (this was a big selling point for me)
• Adjustable text-size (my deteriorating eyesight very much appreciates this)
• Built-in dictionary

When I finally decided to get the Kindle, I tried to justify the purchase by thinking, “Now I have a convenient way to access all those free public domain classics I’ve either forgotten about or never read in the first place.”

And I followed through with that pledge by dutifully downloading a bunch of classics at places like Google Books and Project Gutenberg. Yep—and those classics are currently sitting on my Kindle, unread.

Oh, I’m using my Kindle alright. And I am more than pleased with it. However, though I had aspirations of reading more substantial fare, the books I’ve read thus far are truer gauges of my maturity level:

• Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern (really funny stuff, especially the younger years)
• The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee by Sarah Silverman (more serious than I thought it’d be)

I suppose one of these days I’ll get to those neglected classics. Who knows, maybe the kid will end up reading them to me. But for now—at least I’m reading, right?

I got a new phone recently and have been a bit surprised at how much fun I’ve been having with it. It’s a Droid Incredible running Android. As you can see in this picture, it’s pretty customizable:

I’ve been wasting a lot of time playing around with different apps, looks, etc.. A fews of the apps I’ve been playing with:

• Misc Google Apps (Voice, Listen, Gmail, Goggles, Shopper, Earth, Places, etc.)
• Where (Location-based app for discovering new places)
• Layar (Augment your reality, dude!)
• Gmote (Remote Control)
• Ringdroid (Make your own ringtones)

I’m constantly on the lookout for cool apps. Any apps you consider essential for your phone?

BTW, here are a few other looks I’ve been using on my phone:

One of our local stores has little shopping carts for the kids…Lucy loves it! She pushes her cart around and puts random things in it. If the bunch of bananas needs room, out goes the lettuce. No mommy, you may not put that in my cart!

I try to steer her clear of the other shoppers as she gleefully strolls down the aisles singing. The checkers are always very nice to her too…and point her to the treat box by the door. It’s a great way to shop!

Well, all good things come to an end. The last episode of Lost airs tonight. The series started way back in 2004, amazing considering it’s survived on a major network TV station all this time. In six years it’s had its share of klunker episodes, but in that time it also reached stages of flat-out genius. In fact, I can’t recall any TV show that’s left me stunned or marveling at the storytelling on such a continual basis. Just a few great things that stick out:

1) ‘Through the Looking Glass‘ – Season 3

Awesome. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, Google has turned their logo into an actual playable Pac-Man game. How cool is that?!

I remember playing Pac-Man all the time with two friends, Kevin and John, way back when. I still even recall the day Kevin visited me flush with excitement because he’d actually witnessed a player who knew the correct patterns needed to advance far beyond the Pac-Man levels that had continually stumped us.

Kevin had actually drawn “maps” with the correct patterns for each stage while watching the Pac-Man guru (is that dedication or what?) We were stoked when we tried using the maps during our next Pac-Man session and realized they actually worked (though it was still quite challenging—any small miscue or hesitation during gameplay and the whole pattern was useless.)

The game’s supposed to remain on Google through the weekend. However, even when it’s gone you’ll still be able to play it by just grabbing the game from Google Gadgets. If that’s too much of a hassle, you can play Pac-Man right here!:

Pretty cool, eh? I just wish I could remember Kevin’s maps. But hey, at least there’s no need to scrounge up any quarters!

One of the goofier things Lucy and I do most days is snail racing.

We go out to our garden, and check for snails on various plants, esp. the lemon tree. We pick our contenders. After watering the racetrack, we place the snails in a line with a goal in mind, usually the top of a nearby pot. And they’re off!

Racing snails is similar to cats…they take naps, go the wrong way, turn around a lot. So it can be quite exciting…you never can tell who will win.