Mike Pirnat

As the Christmas Day festivities wound down and we settled into a quiet afternoon together, Liz asked me a question:

“Did you get what you wanted for Christmas?”

My thoughts flickered quickly across the warm and happy morning spent with my beautiful wife and daughter, singing songs, opening presents, cooking breakfast together, playing with the cats. The smiles on the faces of my two favorite ladies. Savoring old memories and making new ones. Being a family.

“Yeah,” I said. “I did.”

children, christmas, claire, family, holidays, life, liz, nostalgia

I haven’t been posting much lately because I’ve either been too busy to write anything or too not-busy to have anything worth writing about. So here’s a quick recap of what I’ve been up to, in more or less random order.

I’m thinking of moving our blogs to private hosting on WebFaction, partly because I like WordPress, and partly because the sale of LiveJournal to SUP makes me uneasy about paying LJ any more of my money. I’ve been hacking on a Python program to crawl my journal and re-emit it as a WordPress XML export file, suitable for slurping up into WP with just a few clicks, and it’s pretty much done. I just have a few decisions to make (should I keep userpics attached to all my exported entries?) and then I think it’ll be time to pull the trigger.

At work, we’ve wrapped up our first big run of cafeteria-free lunches (58 straight lunches, of which we had a repeat-free streak of 56 lunches before hitting some of our “greatest hits” before the end of the year). Naturally, we’re blogging it so that we remember where we’ve gone.

Claire continues to grow and change. Having just passed the 100-day mark, she can now sit in her Bumbo chair, enjoys standing practice, and is really excited about grabbing her toes. I continue to shoot and post tons of cute photos.

We’ve been doing weekly videoconferences with my parents instead of phone calls. They get to see Claire, and Claire gets to stare at my screen and be confused. Plus my parents get to be the envy of all other long-distance grandparents that they know, who are in awe of their “technical savvy.” So, kudos to iChat for making it stupidly easy.

I am in love with Rock Band and want to marry it. If that’s not possible, I’d settle for going over to my friend’s place to play it on a regular basis. (Turns out that after a couple beers, I am pretty decent on vocals–scary!)

Egad. I have almost 8 GB of music (over four days’ worth!) in my “new and unrated” playlist needing review. When am I going to have time for that?

Last night we watched Paprika, the latest film from anime director Satoshi Kon. I’m utterly blown away by it. The coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a little bit Dreamscape, a little bit Ghost in the Shell. Good, good stuff.

Not sure if it’s the kid (probably) or what, but I’ve fallen off the deep end of the Christmas season and am starting to scare Liz with my sunny holiday cheer. Usually I’m pretty down on the consumerism and not too hip to whatever religiosity seeps through the month-long shopping orgy of December, but this year things are different. I’m giggling as I wrap presents for Liz and Claire, and–much to Liz’s annoyance–bouncing off the walls waiting for the big day to arrive. Is it Christmas yet? Is it Christmas yet? IS IT CHRISTMAS YET???

Speaking of Christmas, I’m happy that I managed to get the annual card produced and out the door relatively on-time. One of these years, I’m going to have inspiration and time in November so that I can get full-bleed, professional printing done, but I’ll take what little victories I can get. I may post the images or a PDF at some point if I get motivated enough. (Here’s your opportunity to convince me…)

Finally, if it’s at all possible, I’d like to be your personal penguin.

Okay, enough of this foolishness. Time to go be Dad for awhile. Cheers!

christmas, claire, food, geekery, life, movies, music, photos, video-games

Had a nice visit with my parents this week; their arrival was delayed from Friday until Sunday thanks to the weather in Denver, which allowed us a couple of extra days to get things in order. They’re back in Mountain Time now, driving from Phoenix to Durango. Highlights include:

• A couple of excellent feasts for Christmas Eve and Day. Liz really knows her way around the kitchen.
• Learned that Mom really likes white Burgundy. A lot.
• Lunch at Melt was a huge hit.
• My mother-in-law knitted me a Jayne hat!! It keeps my noggin surprisingly, delightfully warm.
• Liz and my parents and my mother-in-law and I pitched in on a shiny new Mac as a combination Christmas/birthday present. It’s job will be to help both my aging iMac and still-spry-but-time-consuming Linux box retire to gentler pastures. So far it’s doing this quite admirably.
• Liz surprised the hell out of me by hiding a Wii in one of the Mac boxes. The look on my face was apparently priceless.
• Liz kicks my butt at most of Wii Sports, but I can totally take my dad at Wii Baseball.

…

As a nice bonus, Webfaction rolled out WebDav support, so I can shift all of our iCal sharing off to that and have one less reason to keep a machine running all day here at home. Yay!

christmas, family, food, geekery, holidays, liz, video-games, wine

Wii are online!

(My wife rocks.)

christmas, geekery, holidays, video-games

Bizarre dream this morning… The Galactica crew arrived at Earth to discover that the cast of Heroes are a Cylon genetic experiment based on the DNA of Jack Bauer, who presently has 24 hours to remodel a home in time for Christmas.

christmas, dreams, holidays, tv

An ornament (the mate to another stolen but recovered earlier in the day) has disappeared from our Christmas tree; I suspect feline involvement. Time to round up the usual suspects…

cats, christmas, holidays

Good: Got first big chunk of big project delivered on time and more or less working as desired. Business folks are generally happy with what our team produced in the limited time available.

Bad: Had to miss the holiday party at German class in order to get there, so no Sekt and no beer for me.

Good: It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas! We have the tree up and decorated, presents wrapped, and I cashed in some iTunes credit to pick up the new Twisted Sister Christmas CD (so deliciously, horribly addictive, it transcends awfulness, leapfrogs novelty, and lands, perhaps a bit teeteringly, just within the realm of totally kick-ass). Here’s what I’ve basically been doing since then: \m/ >_< \m/

Bad: Thanks to global warming (or a giant cloud of liberal claptrap, take your pick), it sure doesn’t look like Christmas… It’s December in Cleveland; should we be having temperatures close to 60 degrees? I’m not the biggest fan of snow–especially when I have to deal with idiots who don’t know how to drive in it–but do we really only get one week of winter this year?

Good: The Lost Room. Check it out in reruns or the inevitable DVD if you missed it.

Bad: The Lost Room left the door wide open (yes, a deliberately awful pun, deal with it) to become a full-fledged series. I’m not sure I have time to be obsessed over another long-form serial.

Good: New firmware for my router, maybe it’ll solve my streaming audio throughput issues!

Bad: New router firmware makes streaming audio around the house even worse. My (admittedly venerable) SliMP3 now chokes after 9 seconds instead of 37. Bah, humbug!

Good: My tire was repairable, and still under warranty to boot, which means it was free! Yay!

Funny: I got a job offer from a headhunter today, very excited that I had Python experience. Turns out he’s trying to place me into the company where I already work. (Woops!) After quite nearly LMAO, I shot back a polite rejection. I wonder what my boss would say if a headhunter slipped her my resumé…

Speaking of my resumé… where exactly should I list being named Time’s Person of the Year?

cars, christmas, holidays, humor, life, music, python, tv, work

I’ve found myself not listening to my iPod as much over the past year or so, even though I love it and it has done more to preserve my sanity at work than any three other gizmos, and I lay the blame on headphones. I disliked the original iPod earbuds (uncomfortable, crappy); my over-the-ear, fold-up replacements sounded great and traveled well, but were painful to wear with glasses (which is to say, they were always uncomfortable), and the wire flaked out last spring; the series of cheap earbuds that followed were both uncomfortable and flaked out quickly. I won’t do the gigantic, over-the-top-of-my-head style headphones because they either don’t fit well, don’t sound good, or are too expensive (*cough*Bose*cough*)–plus I’m more than a bit sensitive about my hair, and I hate things that squish it.

So Liz wins first prize this Christmas for dropping a pair of new headphones in my stocking. I’ve been dubious of in-ear headphones for a while, but I have to admit that these have really surprised me with how much I’m enjoying them. They sound great, and the bass is shockingly full. They seal out the exterior world quite nicely–I find the office’s white noise to be almost deafening when I remove them to head off to a meeting–and I’m able to turn the volume way down and still enjoy listening. They’re comfortable enough that I can wear them for most of a day and not feel any fatigue or discomfort. Plus, Target had them for a price far lower than what’s suggested on Sony’s online store.

As a consequence, I have been listening like a fiend this past week; highlights include:

The Signal, a podcast about “Firefly”/Serenity that I’ve subscribed to but haven’t listened to for several months. If you’re turning into as much of a “Firefly” geek as I am, then you’ll probably enjoy this–news, interviews, music bits, episode reviews, and even lessons on useful Chinese phrases (such as “the explosive diahrrea of an elephant“). And it’s strangely shiny to have my usual mish-mash of NIN and VNV Nation interrupted by an hour of sci-fi geekery.

Seu Jorge – The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions. Seu Jorge, from the cast of The Life Aquatic, covers David Bowie songs, translated into Portuguese, and plays acoustic guitar. Yeah, exactly. This is a transcendantly interesting record, its excellent novelty value far surpassed by how downright good it is.

The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan. Every now and then, I break down and pick up something “popular” and “mainstream,” and this is one of those occasions. I must confess, I hadn’t even heard the White Stripes until their recent “Daily Show” appearance. This album is warm, bluesy, raw, and a damn lot of fun, and I never expected a glockenspiel to rock so hard.

VNV Nation – Pastperfect. Okay, so this hasn’t left my iPod since I originally fell for it, but the live version of “Electronaut” came around on shuffle play on Friday afternoon, and with the deep bass and sealed-in feeling I get from the new headphones, it was mindblowingly awesome at a level only second to being at the live show last summer. This track sounded so good that when I closed my eyes, I was transported to a place of serious ass-kicking goodness, a sort of glorious EBM nirvana. Most excellent!

Okay, enough for now — I have to get up early for jury duty in the morning (whee!).

christmas, firefly, liz, music, science-fiction, serenity, vnv-nation

Phew! Even though I’ve been on vacation for a week, I don’t think I’ve been so busy in a long time! The cause? Liz crafted an elaborate “honey do” list to help me pass the time. Since last Friday, I’ve vacuumed, scrubbed, buffed, shined, mopped, painted, repaired, mailed, and picked up just about everything in the house that a person can do those things to. (Well, other than the hand rail in the stairwell, and the coat rack in the laundry room, both of which have recently torn out of their respective walls and need some serious love to properly address them.) On a related note, I am now a big fan of the Method products–specifically the stainless steel cleaner, which worked absolute miracles on our sink and stove.

Oh, and our guest bedroom is now a lovely purple color, a refreshing change from the entirely too drab white that it had been for many years. (It’s now Benjamin Moore’s “Wild Orchid”–many thanks to butterandjelly for providing objective third-party input on the matter; I definitely think it was the right choice.) I know it wasn’t the most brilliant idea to repaint the guest bedroom mere days before the impending arrival of guests, but it’s done now, and looks nice, and there’s to be no more painting until 2006, so that’s all that matters. Right?

My mother-in-law has arrived to help celebrate Christmas; as always it’s good to see her. Last night we hung ornaments on the tree, had a marvelous feast of braised short ribs, and watched A Christmas Story last night to officially inaugurate the season.

Today, there’s very little on the agenda, so once I get cleaned up and get some food into me, I think it’s high time for some well-deserved KotOR2. Yes, I think that would be just lovely.

christmas, food, holidays, house, life, liz, paint, vacation, video-games

Had two completely different weekends in one the past two days–one lazy and relaxing, and one busy and productive.

On the lazy front: sleeping in, watching the snow fall, playing with the cats, watching TV and movies of varying badness (from Hellboy to a Gene Autry movie whose title I never caught, but which was excellent MST3K fodder), wine and cheese, and staying up obscenely late playing KotOR2 (aka “The Next Damn Star Wars Game”).

Busy? You bet: we set up and lit the Christmas tree, put some paint samples on the wall in the guest bedroom (and possibly chose a winner), renewed the repainting effort with the master bedroom and master bathroom doors, shoveled snow, cleaned up the kitchen a bit, prepped the annual Christmas letter, wrapped and shipped family gifts, roughed out the schedule for the upcoming visits from my mother-in-law and my parents, and researched replacement doorknobs (as ours are, to put it politely, “dated”).

It would be nice, at some point, if perhaps it could stop snowing for more than a day or so at a time, but it’s so far looking like my only recourse is to either grump about it here or simply shut up and cope.

christmas, holidays, liz, star-wars, video-games, weather, weekends