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Weather - In case you haven't heard, it's been a bit cold up here. My pseudo-belief in the law of averages has been validated. The warm temperatures we had in early January have been offset with recent trends. On my commute to work yesterday the thermometer built into my dashboard said -1°F. Well, at least I now know that the negative temperature indicator works. *grin* And mother nature threw in a healthy dose of wind just to really make sure you felt it. Luckily the diesel engine had no problem starting and running despite the cold.

No School - Michelle, in her attempt to offset time in purgatory, was home with seven children. Our five were home because of a teacher training day and the girls each invited a friend over to play with. After the kids were in bed, we watched the end of the comedy "A Night at the Roxbury". I hadn't heard of the movie until a couple of years ago when Chris and Suzy were visiting and started bobbing their heads when they heard Haddaway's song What Is Love. At the time I was missing the SNL cultural reference and they told me I should see the movie when I got the chance.

Chunky's - Today Claire goes to celebrate a good friend's birthday. They are going to Chunky's for a meal and movie. I'm a bit envious. I've never been to a Chunky's. The one time we tried to go, the movie was sold out.

Birthday - Tomorrow we'll celebrate the boys' birthdays. The twins official birthday was last week and Timothy's birthday is in a week. This weekend marks a sort of 'split the difference'. By celebrating them all together, we hope to avoid the "where's mine" that would come if we split them up into two celebrations. The boys often think of themselves as virtual triplets. Their presents are all laid out in our bedroom and the boys make frequent visits to admire them. They are bursting with desire to open them.

Wii - In somewhat sad news, it looks like I need to ship the Wii to Nintendo for repair or replacement. While the office-mates of mine who've bought one have had little issue with theirs, ours seems prone to lockup and will not connect to the network. Nintendo prefers that they handle it directly rather than through your local retail store. Considering the overall shortage of Wii's, I doubt I could return it to the store for an exchange anyway.

AMD - A minor bit of vanity... This past month AMD was awarded an Emmy for "Pioneering Work in Near and Real-Time fully programmable Shading via Modern Graphics Processors". To be fair our primary graphics competitor, nVidia, won an Emmy as well.

Commute - This weeks' commutes got me about half way through Anne Rice's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. It depicts Jesus' return from Egypt back to Nazareth from his point of view as a 7 year old who is just starting to understand who he is. He's piecing together bits of information about his past. It is completely fictional, as we have little written history on this phase of Jesus' life. And it's often been a debated how aware Jesus was of His divinity when He was young. So far it's been respectful and an enjoyable thought experiment for me.

I've also resumed listening to the Chronicles of Narnia. I'm currently on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I had listened to the first four books in chronological order via the iPod adaptor in my car, but the VW OEM iPod adaptor seems to have a problem with audio books purchased at the iTunes Music Store (iTMS). I think there's either something with the proprietary Audible format or just the excessive size/length of the tracks. Using the transcoding techniques I described earlier, I can convert the books in a semi-automated way into reasonable sized MP3 files and burn them to an MP3 CD that plays easily in the car.

Stove - One of my favorite skits by Bill Cosby (besides Noah) was his "children are brain damaged" skit. Not that I think that children are, but every so often you find yourself asking "what possessed you to ...". As I was getting ready for work yesterday I saw Michael holding a little cube of styrofoam, a little less than one inch on a side. I'd asked if we shouldn't just throw it away but Michelle said it was his item to hold at the moment. He often gets clingy like this with items. I think it's an extension of when he weaned off carrying his stuffed lamb.

As I was nearing the last few minutes before walking out to the car, I hear Michelle shout "Michael! What are you doing?!" Michael had decided to shove the little cube under the wood stove. There's an inch gap between the stove and the surface it rests on. That gap is where the air intake is. We tried to get the block out but it got sucked up into the air intake for the heat exchanger. Luckily it never got far into it. When the stove was turned off, you could see the cube resting on the fan blades. With a yardstick and an opened hanger, we got it out and immediately threw it away. Whew! Brain damage! Sometimes you get tempted to think so...