Family Brunch

Most of the Hudson side of the family in the are got together for brunch last Sunday. We hosted it here at House Hudson. The two featured guests were Hilary and Rob's son David and our son Trent. We have a bunch of new pictures. There are some good ones including a picture of Great Grandma Otto holding Trent and Trent and the Caterpillar.

The Name of Trent

In one of my trips to the wikipedia, I discovered that the name Trent is one of the standard cast of characters adopted by the cryptographic community when creating narratives about communications sequences. For instance, "Alice wants to send a message to Bob". Trent is the name used for a trusted third party or a neutral arbiter. Here's the disambiguation page for Trent. As mentioned on the page, Trent was the location of an important catholic convention and a major diplomatic incident that could have changed the course of the American Civil War. The name is a favorite of mine because it is the name of one of the characters from Daniel Keyes Moran's The Long Run.

Trent Comes Home

Trent came home from the hospital today. He has a clean bill of health so far. It took him about a day to learn to breast feed, which was worrisome, but he's doing well with it now. The cats have both approached him and sniffed him a bit. Tina's parents brought his first hat home early so that the cats could smell his scent for a day or so before Trent's arrival. I'm feeling pretty good. Haven't gotten much sleep, but seemingly enough to function at the level required to take care of an infant.

Trent Nathaniel Hudson Is Born

Trent Nathaniel Hudson was born on September 23, 2005 at Howard County General Hospital. He weight 7 lbs. and 12 onces. He measured 21.25 inches in length. Mother and baby are doing well. There are some blury low resolution pictures over at the moblog [Again Text America appears to have deleted the account, so these pictures are lost]. Here's a nicer higher resolution better lit shot of Trent. Here's a picture of the new familty. Poor Tina was such a champion pusher, that she blew out all of the capillaries around her eyes. That's why she looks a little bruised in the picture.

Finally, Something to Plan

Tina's OB appointment today resulted in a trip to the hospital for possible preeclampsia symptoms. The further tests for preeclampsia were negative, but some other test was borderline for indicating a possible problem with degraded performance of the placenta. So, now they are planning to induce the baby tomorrow morning. So, finally something to plan. We'll be at the hospital tomorrow at 7:30 to try to get labor started. We'll probably be at the hospital until Sunday, so I probably won't post here again until then. From the hospital, I should be able to post some pictures to my moblog [Note:Text America seems to have deleted my account, so these pictures are lost] from mobile phone friendly areas of the hospital. So, check there for updates until Sunday.

The Toys Of My Youth

Of all the toys I played with as a child, perhaps my favorite was the giant tinkertoys. The only picture I can find on the net that shows the scale is from someone's picnic. I had endless hours of fun with these toys. I built robots, spaceships, and helicopters. The beauty of the toys is that they are child scale. I have no idea why they stopped making them. Since I'm going to be a father soon, I would like my children to have that same opportunity. E-Bay has an auction going right now that's selling a complete set in the original box. The last time such a set was sold it went for $350. There are some modern alternatives. Toybeez are a similar toy. They are child size and look like they have versatile connectors. There is also a Belgian company making Omagles. They appear to be able to build actual vehicles. The set has wheels and pictures of people sitting on the constructions. Finally, there was an article on making your own construction set from PVC pipe and fitting available from Home Depot. That last option really appeals to my do it myself nature.

Painting The Nursery

Painting in the nursery has been completed. The project involved painting a landscape of mountains under a cloudy sky and a mural with all sorts of funny storytime characters. Because of the close quarters in the room I had to stich these pictures together from several shots. You may note some digital artifacts in the pictures that are a result of stiching process. The actual window in the room is a little less Dali-esque. The whole project took about three weeks of my free time. The walls are Duron Minor Blue. The mountains were painted freehand with colors I mixed. I was inspired by my time on the A.T. The mural was a kit that we found online.

More Crimson Raptor

I've been delinquent in posting more baby pictures. What can I say? The move and everything just happened at the same time. But, now I've got the computer up again and I have some time to scan a one of the thermographs and capture some frames from the ultrasound video. Here they are. Plus, here's an MP3 of the heartbeat.

Star Wars Essays

My basic criticisms of Star Wars are poor storytelling. I haven't had the time to write down all my problems with the movies, but luckily David Brin has. Check out his excellent discussion of the problems with Star Wars.

Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Tina and I went to see Episode III this morning. The special effects were incredible. The sound was great. The action scenes were fast and furious. The climax of the movie was entirely unbelievable. You might argue that a lightsaber battle in the middle of a lava flow is completely believable in a science fiction movie. Before you play the "suspend your disbelief" card, I would respond by pointing out that the fight isn't the climax. In terms of story structure, the climax is the point beyond which nothing can remain the same. I would argue that the climax is the moment when Anakin falls to the dark side.

It's supposed to be a huge emotional moment. He's choosing to turn from the path of everything he's believed to be good in life to everything he's thought to be evil. I'm left asking why he made the choice. I don't think that the storytellers created enough of a character for me to understand why he made the decision. If I don't understand why he made the decision, then what do I take away from the movie? The purpose of fiction is to allow the audience to learn from the experieces of characters without having to live through the events themselves. When the storytellers fail to create characters that you can believe and identify with, they have failed the audience.

So, I have no trouble suspending my disbelief for a light saber battle between two men who fling things around with hand gestures within instant ignition distance of molten lava. But if you allow the flashy special effects to persuade you to suspend your disbelief of the reality of the characters then the dark side will forever dominate the destiny of science fiction.

Home Owner's Insurance

About two weeks after we moved into the new house, Allstate cancelled our homeowner's insurance. They sent us a form letter where they said that our siding had dry rot. The next day, they sent us a check for the balance of our policy. This caused me a little worry. I called our agent (who was great throughout the whole process) and she said she would find some details for us. While we were waiting for that, we panicked. We started trying to get estimates on residing the house. Tried to find another insurance company that would cover us. Residing the house would cost at least $10,000. State Farm said they would not insure us if we had dry rot. They also said they would not insure us if we fixed the dry rot because they don't insure anyone who has either filed a claim or suffered a loss in the last three years. Repairing the siding would have counted as a loss. Finally, (again our agent was very supportive throughout the whole process) the insurance inspector came back out to the house to point out the problems. He wanted us to replace about 16 square feet of siding. Our insurance policy was cancelled over 16 square feet of siding. Our agent says that if we fix it, she will be able to reinstate our policy. I fixed it this afternoon. All that's left to do is a little painting.

It's a Boy!

Tina and I just returned from our 18 week ultrasound. Crimson Raptor is a boy! All the ultrasound measurements of development were normal. There were twenty digits all in the right places. There was a four-chambered heart, a brain, a good looking spine, and a pair of kidneys. I'll post some pictures and maybe some video a little later on when I've got the computer better set up. I recorded the whole ultrasound exam on video, so we have that for posterity. Now, we just have to find a name for a boy. We'd actually already settled on a name for a girl. Not because we had a preference, just because we happened to agree on that particular name. Anyway, there it is!

Moving In Complete

With one last load of boxes from Carolyn's basement, we've completed our move into the new house. I expect to finish unpacking sometime in early 2007. Okay, maybe late 2007. Carolyn was kind enough to lend us some of her basement space during our move process. We moved a bunch of our clutter into her basement so that the house wouldn't look so cluttered when we had the house on the market. Thanks Carolyn! There's no way we could have made the townhouse look as good as it did without your help.

Our first priority was to get the kitchen up and operational. We've achieved that. My next priority is to get the home theatre back into operation. I've been pulling cables through walls and ceilings. That went pretty well until I discovered that a wall I was hoping to route cable through is actually built onto the face of a cinderblock wall. And the walls downstairs have a textured surface, so I can't just tear into them and patch them up later because I can't reproduce the texture. Well, what's life without a challenge?

I've started reading up on putting together my woodshop out in the new garage. I'm looking into heating/cooling solutions. A guy from Trane is suppossed to come out and give me some ideas about what I can do for such a small building.

Also soon to come is redecorating the nursery. I keep telling Tina that babies like beige, but she doesn't seem to be buying it.

Tina just mentioned another priority that I'd forgotten. We really need to replace the packing paper and masking tape that we're using for curtains. I know...it's a very guy thing for me to forget about that.

Moving Day

We moved today. Well, to be honest, three very strong men we hired did most of the work. The most harrowing moment was, as expected, the extraction of the china hutch from the old townhouse. It makes it down the stairs with less that an inch to spare. The new house is great. It has a garage. This allows me to do something I've always wanted to do. Put things in the garage. We also have a crawl space. I'm looking forward to putting things in it too. The house also fulfils another of my life long dreams. Shortly after closing on the house, I filled a glass of water from the dispenser on the refrigerator. There are pictures of the event.

After moving all of the stuff, we moved the cats. They're prowling about the new master bedroom. Havoc has already tried to convince us to let him out into the rest of the house, but I told him he has to convince me that he knows where the litter box is before I let him roam.

I'm planning to put a woodshop into our detached garage. This will involve insulating the walls and ceiling, installing some sort of heating/cooling unit, and buying a bunch of really cool machines.

But first, the great task of unpacking begins. That will be followed by the task of working on the yard and the outside of the house. The inside of the house has just been entirely redone. So, the inside is like a new house. The outside is less so. The yard mostly needs work. Oh, and decorating the nursery. There's that too. :-)

New House

We've successfully gotten a contract on a new house. That's good. The days of not knowing where we would live are, pending a house inspection and an appraisal, over. I really like the walls of glass. I'm a sucker for a big window.

Sold the House

Tina and I have successfully sold the house. We had some help from Judy and Bob Caton. We put the house up for sale on a Friday. Over the weekend we had 40 agents show the house. Thirteen people made offers. We accepted one significantly above the list price. Selling a house isn't done until the settlement, of course, but we think we've got a good buyer and we think the house is in really good shape so we have every confidence that the sale will go through.

If you have flash installed you can see the web advertisement.

Our New Fetus Codename: Crimson Raptor

Tina and I would like to announce the existence of our new fetus. The fetus is currently code named Crimson Raptor. It's hard to find a good gender neutral code name, but luckily the Internet is full of helpful people willing to lend a hand. This is a close up of the fetus taken using ultrasound technology. The picture is from March 1st. The baby is due September 25. Here's the wide angle version of the picture. Update: I corrected the due date from 9/21 to 9/25

Baby Name Voyager

Here's a really neat program for exploring baby names. I got it from Sarah Lane's blog. Check it out. It explores frequency of baby names from 1900 to 2003.

An Expensive Education

As part of the moving process, I called in a GE repairman to look at our gas stove. The front right burner would no longer light on it's own. It made the clicking sound. I could light it myself, so the gas was flowing, but it just wouldn't light normally. So, after not finding any anwers on the GE website in the "fix it yourself" section of the website, I called in an expert. In my defense, I'm nervous about messing around with anything that uses natural gas. He flipped up the stove top. He pulled the whole burner assembly out. I had no idea that it would come out so easily. He cleaned out a small whole with a special tool. By special, here, I mean something that looked like a small wire. Like a paperclip. He cleaned out some holes with the tool and the burner works flawlessly now. He said it was a "customer education visit" and charged me $89.95. I thanked him and he went on his way.

The Moving Process Has Begun

Well, the moving process has begun. I've gotten together with my real estate agents, Judy and Bob Caton, and signed all the paperwork to start the listing process. We picked the listing price, worked out agent commissions, decided on disclosure versus disclaimer, and got a picture taken of the house. Now, as soon as I finish my list of preparations, we're ready to go. Carolyn has been nice enough to loan us her basement to store some of our clutter during the moving process. There's still a lot of decluttering to go. I'm hoping to hire professionals to give it a good cleaning. There's a little painting to do. Some appliances to get into top working order. Then it'll be onto the market!

Kara Goes Home Again (Spoilers)

This week's episode of Battlestar Galactica, "You Can't Go Home Again", has a few small touches that I wanted to point out. After Apollo recognizes Starbuck's raider, there's a moment where they greet each other by rolling their vipers from side to side. The original Galactica has an episode in it where Apollo and Starbuck fly a captured Cylon raider back from a mission on a Basestar. They signal to the fleet's vipers that they are not cylons by "waggling their wings".

Another moment that I wanted to point out is a line from the deck chief to Apollo. He says, "You can push a man a lot further than you can push a machine." That's a very interesting line if you think about it. Does that line explain the course of evolution that the cylons are following in becoming indistinguishable from humans? An interesting question...

Moving Out...

We've decided to move. A recent study ranks moving as one of the top sources of stress in life. It's right up there with getting married, having a baby, or changing jobs. We're moving for several reasons. I've developed a feeling that if we don't take advantage of the lowest interest rates in my lifetime, I'm being financially irresponsible. We'd also like to move closer to Annapolis if possible. The preparations for putting the townhouse on the market have begun. We've got some cleaning to do and some basic repairs to make. Once we've sold the townhouse, we can begin our search for a new place to live.

Battlestar Galactica

This is a great show. As a teenager, I was a big fan of the original Battlestar Galactica. Later in life I watched some reruns and learned the awful truth. It was really just another Glen A. Larson TV show. Perhaps I'm being a little defensive here. I was a fan of a lot of Glen A. Larson TV shows. He was the executive producer of most of the popular TV shows while I was growing up. I watched a lot of his TV. I'll admit I was entertained. Now, I'm twice as old as I was when those shows first aired. My tastes have developed. When I was that age I enjoyed grape juice. Now I enjoy a nice Pinot or Cabernet. That is the difference between the original Battlestar Galactica and the new Battlestar Galactica. One was a sugary indulgence and the other is a complex bouquet.

Yes, Starbuck is a girl. If I were Dirk Benedict, I'd be irritated that my writers didn't give me nearly as much to work with as Katee Sackhoff got. Sackhoff just pulls off an amazing performance. I'll admit I was skeptical about the female Starbuck. Starbuck was my favorite character from the original show. But, Sackhoff sold it perfectly. There's all the stuff that I enjoyed from the original Starbuck in there, but there's a layer of complexity sewn on top of it.

Then there's Baltar. It was always difficult for me to understand the motivations of the original Baltar. Why did he sell out humanity? So he could ride around in that baseship and make snide comments to his Cylon sidekick? Now, if Tricia Helfer had been on the battlestar, I could understand his motivation. And so, I can understand how the new Baltar got into the situation he's in. I particularly enjoyed the bit of artistry the writers employed working Baltar's dialogue with Number Six into the conversation Baltar was having with the people actually present in the room.

Then there's Edward James Olmos. Ever since the Bushido episode of Miami Vice, there's been a special place in my heart for Edward James Olmos. He's dead on for playing the new more complex character of Commander Adama. I love that the quest for Earth is just a myth that Adama resurrects as a focal point for his intrepid band of refugees.

I've told the TiVo to record it. I'll be watching...