We've been saving them up...

He's a keeper

This is an outfit I wore as a baby. You can tell it's old because it has a drawstring in the little sweatshirt (SAFETY HAZARD!! I didn't die...).










We got him a little swing. He's pretty content when he's in there but he refuses to go to sleep.










These three are just because he's cute...

Meet Lincoln

We've finally taken some pictures so I guess we can write a post. I don't know if it's because he's mine or because he was past due but I think he skipped the new born phase and went straight to the cute phase (if you disagree keep it to yourself...). He was born 27-Jan-09 at 11:36PM. He was 8lbs 4oz (they said 3oz originally but changed it) and 20" long (that number may be a little conservative as well). He seems to be healthy in every way, already getting top marks on all his tests.



Lincoln is just meeting mom for the first time but, he's more concerned with his fingers...





Check out the awesome Spock toes on his massive feet. Angel's current favorite possession is the footprints pages they made for us in the nursery. It's like his first art project sent home with him and if his feet had been much bigger they would have needed bigger boxes...



This is him just before his first bathing during which he cried more than when they gave him a shot for his immunization. The exact opposite reactions his mother would have given...



This is the hat Aunt Kelsey made for him. Later I'll post some pictures of the amazingly awesome quilt she made for him too. I'm thinking about commissioning some bumper pads (I say commission because that's what you do when you want a good piece or art made and that's what Kelsey makes).






I don't want to go too much into the labor. Angel started having contractions at about 4:00 in the morning. We went to the hospital at about 3:00 in the after noon. Intense back pain, epidurals are worth whatever they charge, pretty quick dilation, followed by lots of pushing. Angel hadn't eaten more than a roll and three bites of pizza all day. This made it really hard for her to have the strength for about 2 and a half hours of pushing. She was a trooper though and eventually, with a little help from a vacuum pump we got Lincoln out at about 11:30pm.

Mom and baby are both doing really well. We came home this afternoon and everybody is happy to be home.

No news is not necessarily good news...

First off, this isn't really bad news per say, at least it isn't really, really bad news. But if you ask Angel, it's really bad news. If anyone is wondering why you haven't heard anything about our baby being born even though his due date was last Friday, it's because he still isn't here... Everyone says everything is looking good and he looks great and Angel seems all ready to go into labor and yet... he waits. By the way, in case you only get news about us through this blog, he's a boy. If all else fails the hospital will let the doctors induce her on Friday so as long as everything goes to plan he should be here sometime between now and Friday. We'll keep you updated (but probably not before he's born...we're kind of like that).

Finally, some news

So, we haven't posted anything on here in quite some time. But, really not a whole lot has happened. Sure, school got out and summer started, which means Angel finished her first year of teaching and she graduated from college. I still have one year left, boo. We went to a Ben Fold concert, we hiked up to Timpanogos cave, I'm still working at the job two posts ago but now I know what I'm doing.

Anyways, Angel has been interviewing for various positions over the summer trying to find somewhere worthy of her talents an abilities. She had an interview at a charter school in Lehi on July 2nd (they made her teach some kids for 15 minutes). Then on July 3rd while we were in Boise on our way to Oregon they made her an offer to think over for the weekend. So, for the 4th of July weekend we hung out on the Oregon coast.

This is the view from our hotel room (Thank you Gramma and Grandpa Whittier!!)










We went to the aquarium, where I poked a giant squid in the eye











and we felt totally underdressed when we caught a glimpse of proper aquarium attending attire.













Then we went back to the hotel and reenacted Pirate of the Caribbean (which we had watched on the way up out there in the Uncle Rico van. Thanks Mom, and Chuck)











Eventually, the Oregon fun had to end and we made the incredibly long drive home. We left early Monday morning and reached home at about 2:00AM Tuesday morning. I was glad I told my work I wouldn't be in until about noon. We got up in the morning and Angel called the Charter school back and accepted their offer, HOORAY!

Right after Angel got off the phone with the school we got in the car for the real reason I told my work I wasn't going to be in until noon. We had an appointment for a photo shoot.

We decided to go with the black and white for a more classic look.











You thought the trip and the job were the big news didn't you? Ha, ha, gotcha...

It's not super clear (the kid's only 4.67cm tall after all) but, you should be able to make out the head. In video mode you could see the heart beating, some feet, and an arm. Angel is about 12 weeks along and her due date is 23-Jan-09. We're pretty excited. Good thing I didn't really stab her with that pirate sword huh?

That's all the new we have for now. Check back in a couple of months...

Historical Travel Wiki Has Launched

I created and launched a new website this week that shall soon be taking the world by storm. Probably not, but hopefully it will get me a good grade in my history of creativity project. The site is at www.historicaltravelwiki.com. It's a wiki, if you don't know what that is, think wikipedia. Anyone can log on and edit the content. It's a collaborative project with the whole world.

This particular wiki is devoted to the idea that traveling and seeing the world is more fun and more interesting when you know some history and facts about what you are visiting and seeing. Before this next Monday the 14th (when the project is due) I'll be filling out some demo type pages, probably for places in Utah and Hong Kong. If you have anything to contribute about any place you've been I'd encourage you to get on and share your experiences and expertise.

P.s. Mom, if you wanted to design me a better logo that was about 135x135 pixels I wouldn't reject it. But definitely don't spend much time on it (or any if you're busy or just don't want to) as I don't think I'll be doing much with this site in the future.

My next resume might actually look good...

Today I sold my soul (or at least my summer) to ParentLink. I'll be working for them full-time this summer and most likely part-time for my last year of college. You can check out the link to see more of what they do but the high level overview is that they make software to help increase communication between k-12 parents and teachers. I should be working more on developing in-house projects. The main programming language is python. It should be interesting, I'm pretty excited about it. I tried to think of downsides to it before I accepted their offer and couldn't really come up with any so... If you have any keep them to yourselves because it's too late now.

Garfield is hilarious and not funny at the same time

I don't like Garfield. It turns out the comic strip is much funnier if you take Garfield out of it entirely. Also, if it's live action and then throw a weird music video thing at the end it raises the humor level significantly.

Long tail feathers

Sorry I only ever post to this anymore when I have a new post on my other blog but... like Kuris Blow once said "that's the brakes." The post this time is a bit longer because it's inspired by a book we had to read for the class The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll. If you're looking for a good nonfiction account of a guy tracking a hacker in the late 80's this is a good one. I like it. And now I'll throw in a random picture or two for good measure.

Another duck

I just posted another one to the other blog. It's due Thursday morning at 11:00 or so. Anybody who wants to tear it apart....go for it. Also, some people asked and the assignment for posts on that blog is to write a paragraph about something from our reading for the class period. In order to get points it needs to be mechanically correct and show that we put some thought into it. Thanks for the help.

new duck post

I just posted a new one on my other blog. It ready for any writing help. Thanks everybody.

Technology is like a duck

Hey everybody, for my CS404 class I'm required to post all of my writing assignments to a personal blog. So, I started another blog titled "Technology is Like A Duck" located at hectorsduck.blogspot.com. You may or may not be interested in anything I write about on there but either way I'll be trying to post to it a couple days before the posts are due and would welcome any editing from qualified persons (or even semi-qualified persons). I just put the first post on and it's due tomorrow by class I believe. If you have any suggestions you can comment on them. Please don't be offended if I don't take your editing advice, I may just not have read it in time before it was due (or maybe I like it better my way). Oh ya, there's no explanation for the title other than it was the only thing I could think of at the time. Thanks everybody!

Here's the technology and duck related pictures I was able to find. Just to make it interesting.

Best New Years Ever!!!

So, we may have lost most of Christmas Day to leaving Christmas morning and the International Date Line and everything but we made up for it a little bit with New Years. For anybody who doesn't know we were here for the last week or 8 days: For those who don't recognize the picture, that's Hong Kong. I'll see if I get time to post more about the rest of the trip later but after reading my Mom and Kelsey's blogs about their awesome New Years' I thought I would share a bit about ours. I think it has a bit of a different tone than theirs though. The morning of New Years Eve we got up early as usual due to the jet lag. We rode the subway out to Lantau Island to a special subway line. Can you figure out from these pictures where the train went?
If not then you probably just don't know the destination exists. Or you don't know Angel well enough to know that there's only one thing that makes her that excited. Here's a little bigger hint: That's right, the train goes to a big sign with Angel standing in front of it. Oh ya, and Disneyland is behind the sign and to the right. We got there right when the gates opened at 10:00 and figured we would check it all out and leave in the middle of the day for a while and then come back at night for the New Years festivities because the park is so small. But we actually spent the large majority of the day in the park. We watched a couple of the shows and checked out most of the rides. Took this extremely Hong Kong style picture in front of the castle: If you combine these two pictures you get a pretty good idea of what the castle looked like when they lit it up at night.
The big square in the middle was a big screen. They set up a few of them around that area so they could show pictures of a pontiac muscle car and other stuff bouncing around and spinning with neat effects in the background while they played techno music for the New Years dance party. Obviously totally necessary but, not the best placement. Then here's us on Main Street and I believe the countdown started right when this picture was taken. You'll just have to imagine the castle in the background since you don't see it with the flash and you don't see us without it. Then the countdown , the kiss, and sitting around waiting for the hordes of people to clear out of the park and the area around our hotel where the rest of Hong Kong was. We got back to our room at about 2:00am. It was mostly cleared out by then. Overall, the best and most memorable New Years to date. If it's any consolation to Mom or Kelsey we were about 17 hours ahead of you so at least we weren't really having fun at the exact same time you were having your New Years "parties." I'm sure that helps.

A Gingerbread Tribute to Assassinated US Presidents

So, I had to do a creativity project for my history of creativity class. This is what I came up with. Angel really made most of it and had a large part in my idea. So, most of the credit belongs to her.

Overview


Honest Abe in the balcony with his wife (notice the flying buttresses)

It's a pretty sweet how-to

So, I did it. I actually did something I said I would. There is a screencast (a video of my screen with me talking) showing how to set up google reader so you don't have to manually check blogs for new posts (or any site with an RSS feed for that matter). Check it out here.

google reader

So, I'm planning on making a little screencast video thing when I get time to show how to set up google reader on igoogle. When I do I'll let you know. If you're feeling adventurous you can try to figure it out on your own. igoogle, google reader gadget. It's not too hard.

www.hectorscout.com

Sorry, last post today. I recently bought a web domain. It's www.hectorscout.com. I'm hosting it on my own webserver since I recently got a public ip. I'm also going to be hosting and developing a web site www.sutekistuff.com for my buddy Joe Harding and his business partner Ryan Blanscett's side ties business. So, you should go check those out... they're not that cool yet.

Another Jazz Game, Same Jacket

So, we went to Salt Lake, again. And we saw a Jazz game, again. And we met the president of the United States....Again. OK, maybe not that last part but I like Forest Gump. Anyway, we did get to go to another Jazz game. This time it was because Angel's sister Wendy and her husband Lee went in on season tickets with some other couples and this was one of the games they had four tickets for. It was the home season opener. They played the Rockets and even though they lost (Tracy McGrady scored like 48 points or something) it was still a fun, entertaining game. And this time I had advanced notice so I could get stuff done and didn't have to bring my laptop in to do homework during the game. The seats were better too. Good times.


These are phone pictures so they aren't quite as good but I think that's Yao Ming at the top of the key there. We saw a jazz dancer chick walk past him at one point and she came up to the waist on his shorts. It was humorous.

Kitty Kat Friend

This is Angel with our little kitty cat friend that shows up every so often in our backyard. He's super friendly and Angel likes him because he's still small. She claims she only likes 'em when they're small. I think if we got one small she would still at least kind of like him when he got bigger.