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. :-)