We got the pictures back from ShutterFly from the Tarpey visit. They turned out well. If you are on the Bilik side of the family, I'd recommend a print from their visit. The pictures of all eight children did very well. What I have difficulty with is the wait. I get an email notification that they were sent out. It then takes about a week for them to ship from California to Nashua by normal US Mail. I'm considering trying out a service that's closer to the northeast, perhaps DotPhoto which is in New Jersey. Who knows? I'll try it after I take care of getting my cable internet connection set up.
Maria Passos came today to clean. Michelle loves it when she comes. I don't know if I mentioned we started to have her come to help Michelle with housecleaning. We started using her services a few months before the twins were born. She gets things that Michelle finds it hard to get around to: floors, bathrooms, etc. Between other items like nursing, laundry, and cooking, Michelle is glad to know Maria will cover her on the rest. With four small children, wouldn't you?
No major news to report. I took the Accord in for its annual state inspection. Tomorrow or Wednesday I'll get the Odyssey inspected. I cleaned up around the computer desk today so that the cable installation guy would be able to get back there. Tomorrow I'll likely install the network card and see if I need any additional cables, cords, or connectors.
In geek headlines today, Compac decided to sell off its Alpha line of microprocessors (which it inherited when it bought Digital) to (drum roll please) Intel. Give me a break. If the FTC doesn't look into this one, it ... It's kind of like when Exxon and Mobil were allowed to merge. Or Lockheed and Martin-Marietta. Let's just hope Sun and IBM can keep selling their microprocessors. It won't be a fun world if your choices are Pentiums and Pentium clones. I predict Intel will axe the Alpha within 2 years, after it has milked all the good technology and put it into their own line.
Tonight we played a family game where we went through the alphabet and we (Michelle, Scott, Claire, and Abby) each had to think of a word that started with that letter. Abby did amazingly well. For each letter she guessed a word that started with it. For kicks I tried to limit my guesses to engineering words: "architecture, configuration, orthogonal, ..." You can imagine the looks Claire and Michelle would give me. ;-) Earlier when I was doing some flash cards with Abby, she nailed all her upper and lower case letters. I guess those Reader Rabbit CDs were sinking in more than I expected. I don't recall Claire being this far along so soon after turning three. Perhaps it's also due to Abby watching Claire use the computer. Either way I was very impressed at her letter and phonics skills for her age. "Abby, you go girl!"