BilikFamily.com

Timothy - This morning I was about to get Timothy's sandals on his feet to go outside. I looked at his face and realized that he was in serious need of a tissue. "Hang on, Timothy," I said as I quickly ran to get a tissue. As I ran to get a tissue, he ran in the other direction diving towards the couch. By the time I had returned no more than five seconds later, his face was relatively clean. "Oh no!", I said. Sure enough, I now had to clean the couch cushions. Note to self, never say something like 'wait here' with Timothy when nose wipes are involved. Just take him by the hand over to the box of tissues. Gross!

The Study - My plans for the weekend included aerating the lawn, but I didn't get that far. Michelle has been working on the living room, commonly referred to around here as "the study" because of the bookshelves, desks, computer, and comfortable reading furniture. She spent the better part of Friday and Saturday painting it what Behr calls pottery red. It's a pure red, but halfway between bright red and black, like this. One of the things she complained about was the bird's nest of wiring around the computer desk.

Airport Express - To organize and clean things up a bit, I did a couple of things. On Friday I bought an Apple Airport Express. It's basically a wireless networking widget about the size of a typical power brick. It can be set up in three ways: an access point to establish a new network, a bridge to act as a repeater to extend your range, or as a client on an existing wireless network. I chose this last option because you can hook up your speakers and USB printer to act as network assets.

Gadgets - I took our Brother laser printer off the desk and moved it out into the corner of the room. That's 2 wires off the desk and a lot more room on the computer desk. I took our Cambridge Soundworks speakers and moved them across the room. The subwoofer was tucked out of the way and the two satellite speakers were moved into the corners of the large (8 ft wide) window of that room. That was a bunch of wiring that now sits tucked behind a couch and gives better sound to the room due to increased stereo separation.

The Airport Express was amazingly simple to setup. It came with a CD of configuration software which I ran on my laptop. It sensed the presence of the box. It then asked which of the main modes I wanted to configure it into. After saying I wanted it to be a client on an existing wireless network, it asked which one. Lastly the operating system confirmed permission to give the program the secure data about our in house network stored on my laptop (notably, Airport Express needs the wireless security encryption key).

A few seconds later it was done. Both of my Macs could see the speakers via the network when I ran iTunes (or as Apple calls it now: AirTunes). When I went to print, our printer showed up on both machines as a network available printer. Apple really lived up to it's reputation on this one. Even as I printed a sample document via the wireless network, the music that was being simultaneously streamed wirelessly to the speakers never skipped a beat.

Next, I took all of Abby's edutainment CDs and put them into a little organizer case, similar to what is often used to carry around your favorite music CDs. We tossed all the jewel cases from those games. Lastly, I attached an uninterruptible power supply to the back of the computer desk and distributed power through it. Now if we get a short (an hour or less) power outage, the computer can keep running. It also helped neaten up some of the power cords. I'm investigating moving the cable modem and wireless router to the ceiling of the basement. That would really make the computer desk look empty with just the all-in-one iMac, it's wireless keyboard & mouse, and a small case of CDs.

Curtains - Sunday night I worked with Michelle on mounting new curtain rods for the study. While we got the front windows done, we weren't able to do the side one because we "misunderestimated" just how wide (8 ft) that window was.

Aerator - Working on the study kept me from putting together the aerator last weekend. Tonight I dug into that after the boys went down. I got the whole thing almost put together (mucho assembly required) except the last step requires a pair of wrenches that can tighten 15/16" nuts and bolts to put on the wheels. I guess sometime since the move to Milford we lost our large adjustable wrenches. I'll finish it up soon. Michelle is also eager for me to finish helping her with the last window.

Gymnastics - Tonight I picked up Claire and Abby from Gymnastics village. The new fall season is here and tonight was their first class. They seemed to like the sessions and their teachers. Abby seemed a bit let down that I didn't take them out to Quikava afterwards for a treat (like an Oreo Creme Blast), but then fell asleep about 5 minutes later as we drove home.

Photos pending - I do have a bunch of pictures waiting to be extracted from the camera, but that will have to wait until the lawn is aerated and the last curtains are up. Priorities! No more procrastinating the home stuff just so I can goof off in Photoshop. It'll have to wait until I locate a new round tuit.