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Abigail is 6 - Today's is officially Abby's birthday. She had a couple of girl friends over last Saturday but today, it's official. Saturday had all the elements Abby wanted: nice weather, pizza, playing on the trampoline, opening presents, and a piñata. Her two friends couldn't be more different: one is a bit louder and more forward, the other is a bit quieter and more reserved. Still, in the end she expressed what a nice time she had. I took a few pictures at the event but I'm not feeling all that confident with how interesting the photos will be.

Sunday - We were so tired Saturday night that Michelle and I resolved to take the girls to the local Milford parish in split shifts on Sunday morning. While Michelle took Abby, I took Claire and the twins on a walk to the Souhegan River. For some reason the twins get such a kick out of seeing it. Sunday evening Michelle (with assist from me and Abby) cleared the final level of Mario Kart by winning the All Cup Tour in Mirror Mode and unlocking the Parade Kart. It's a brutal level because you race all 16 available tracks back to back and each track is mirrored left to right from the way you've played it in the lower levels. Besides trying to remember to turn the opposite ways (which really messes with your mind), the other computer-based drivers on the race track are quite aggressive in their countermeasures. It's more like a road rally or crash derby! After she successfully completed the course I noted that it was exactly four months since Christmas, the day we received it from Chris and Katie. Thanks again. It really helped mitigate against this year's winter cabin fever.

Vacation - This week is school spring vacation week in NH. Yesterday was pretty rough for Michelle because it rained pretty much all day -- trapping the kids indoors, but today it cleared up so that the kids could play outside. Hopefully there won't be too many more rainy days this week. One of the funnier moments on Monday occurred when Claire was watching a re-run of the Brady Bunch. She noted that if Michelle just had one more daughter, we'd be "just like the Brady Bunch". Michelle rolled her eyes a bit and said, "sure Claire, we'll get right on that". I can see it now: Abby sighing, "Claire, Claire, Claire! Why is it always Claire?!"

Easter Carol - At the recommendation of a friend, Claire and I watched a new VeggieTales movie: An Easter Carol. Ebenezer Nezzer plays the role of a scrooge, but a scrooge who misunderstands Easter rather than Christmas. Overall a cute movie with typical Veggietales humor and message.

Work - This week marks five years since I started at VAutomation, now ARC. A couple months from now it will be the longest I've worked at any one position, exceeding my time on active duty with the US Air Force. It's one of the few times I took a job at the recommendation from Michelle (after a brief frustrating time at Unique Technologies) and while it's had some frustrations (as all jobs do), I've enjoyed the nature of the work and the people I've worked with.

People often ask what I do at work. First you need to have a little understanding of what is meant by an embedded system. Here is one man's summary. They are everywhere around you and you barely notice them. It reminds me of the way Grandpa Bilik (founder of All-Rite Spring) used to always say "you know... there's a spring in there". Then you have to realize that we don't actually produce the final product. Our customers do (or their customers do). We merely sell the design work for a piece of embedded system that will be re-used by our customers. It could be the processor, an interface (ethernet, USB, serial), an operating system or networking protocol, or the compilers and debuggers used to develop the software on the system. My group within ARC assists the high tech customers who buy the design work when they have issues, questions, bugs, etc. When there are problems, we debug the issue, consulting with our engineering if necessary, but trying to keep our own developers insulated a bit so that they can focus on new product development without too much customer distraction. If the bug is on the customer's usage of the design, we guide them towards fixing the problem. If the bug is some unforeseen corner case of our design work, we work to try and isolate the cause and suggest logic changes that can be folded into upcoming product releases. It's challenging and really works your problem solving skills. Customers can be so ingenious in the ways they can make our product not work. ;-) But hey, it pays our mortgage.

March for Women's Lives - If you didn't turn on the news the past few days, you might have missed the media fawning over the hundreds of thousands of women who marched last Sunday in protest of the Bush administration with respect to abortion rights. It's amazing that every year more people show up in January (on the twins' birthday) to protest the existing abortion laws and it gets hardly a radar bleep on the news. Here are a bunch of uncensored photos from the event [warning: not for the shy]. It was sad to read some of the stories of the harassment that the handful of prolifers underwent at the event. Truly cruel. It reminded me of the story of St. Stephen (the first martyr) from the Acts of the Apostles read just this past Tuesday at Mass. More commentary here, here, and here. Given the tone of their rhetoric, I'd have to say they sound like they're getting seriously worried that many of the lies that they've told are being exposed. More and more young adults are realizing that a third of their peers don't even exist due to unrestricted abortion. That's what happens when you eliminate over a million US births per year for over thirty years.

Toy Car - When mom and dad last visited, they gave us a check that they wanted us to use towards getting the boys a battery powered ride-on jeep. While I hate the real Hummer H2, we're thinking of getting the twins this mini-version of the H2 that was just released. I'm a bit torn only because I wouldn't want to give GM any money that they'd get from licensing the "brand" of the H2 to Little Tikes.