Beebe's Stuff

Kansas City

2010-03-17T22:17:00.002-04:00

We made another fast trip to Kansas City this winter, at the end of January. This was one of the last times that we would be able to fly and have Raelynn ride on our laps. After this spring she will be 2 and that is the cutoff for "infant" though we got some funny looks when we told the flight attendants that she was only 1 and a half. Oh well. The trip went well, we got to see lots of friends and family while we were there.

Joys of Home ownership

2009-12-07T09:33:00.002-05:00

Well, how to start this, oh I know! I HATE BEING A HOMEOWNER. There now that is out of the way. I know it is the "American Dream" to own your own home, but it really isn't all it is cracked up to be, especially when you have a "pre-owned" home. Since purchasing our house, 4 years ago, our water heater died, and our sewer has backed up into the basement 4 times ruining the carpet down there. We discovered why the house is covered in wall-paper. It appears that it has lead based paint, so as we have been redoing rooms we have been removing wall paper and sealing the walls. UGH I didn't sign up for this, at least not knowingly. I am ready to be done with this thing and move somewhere when if something happens I call someone else and they come and fix the problem. What are my choices with this? Is it back to apartment living? Is this how most condos are run? I need to start researching my options.

Raelynn and the Big Girl Bed

2009-07-28T06:39:00.001-04:00

Well, the time has finally come, Raelynn has moved into a toddler bed. We made the conversion on Sunday night, and she slept the whole night in the bed no problems.

Raelynn and the Big Girl Bed from Aaron Beebe on Vimeo.

Raelynn and Spaghetti

2009-02-09T15:36:00.003-05:00

Here is the clip I was talking about.

A long time past

2009-02-08T23:04:00.005-05:00

Well after almost a year, I suppose it is time to break the silence, not that it was intentional. I guess I just went through this phase of who cares what I have to say, and honestly if you are reading this then that is one more person than I thought.

Well as you can see almost a year has gone by, I would print exactly how much time but I am already too much of a nerd so I don't feel inclined to go figure it out. Raelynn is 9mo almost 10mo old and she is doing wonderful. No walking on her own yet but she can take you on a tour of the house as long as you hold her hands. She is a garbage disposal, she will eat just about anything that you put in front of her. Now that she has 8 teeth Precia and I are hoping that the teething is done for a little while, at least a month. She hasn't really stopped teething since she got her first 2 the day she turned 4mo.

In this time, I have also discovered that I am a crappy parent, at least to my extended family. We haven't had any pro pictures taken of her, nor have I printed any out to send to anyone. That will be changing soon. This week we are going to pick out pictures and get some printed to send to family. If there are any on Flickr that you specifically want, let me know and I will be sure to include that one in the packet we send, otherwise we will just send a hand-full of our favorites.

Well, that should bring us up to date for now anyway, and I will be posting more of the recent pictures and a video up on youtube. Once it is there I will post the link so keep your eyes here.

She has arrived

2008-05-02T15:31:00.003-04:00

Raelynn has arrived. She decided to grace our presence after putting Precia through 22 hours of labor and a C-section. She was born on April 23rd at 4:38am. Everyone is healthy and Raelynn is growing like a weed. Sorry it took so long to get this update here, but as you can imagine having a baby in the house can consume quite a bit of time.

Everyone is doing well. Here are some pictures of our baby girl. She had her first doctors appointment and had gained a pound and grew an inch after just 4 days.

40 + 2

2008-04-21T09:57:00.003-04:00

Well, 40 weeks has come and gone, and we still don't have a baby. Things were looking up last night, however it all turned out to be false alarms as the contractions stopped when Precia switched positions. So we continue to wait. Hopefully we won't have to wait much longer, it is very difficult being patient at this point as we have waited so long. With as much as Raelynn is bumping around in there you would think she is ready to bust out at any given time, and that is what the doctors tell us. "It can be any day now so be ready." We have been ready since week 36, lets get this moving.

All we can do is wait and so that is what we will do.

The Return

2008-02-22T16:31:00.001-05:00

As I was leaving work today, I decided to stop at my LHS and see what games they may have that I had not played yet. As Precia and I are really just starting to enter into the realm of hobby style games the list is quite vast. As I was browsing the aisles of the store one box stuck out at me and I remember hearing about it on Diggnation, a weekly video podcast of the top stories on digg.com, the game, Munchkin. So as I was pondering which edition to get I asked the salesman there if they had the original version of the game, unfortunately they were sold out. He recommended a couple of the "expansion" boxes to me. I use the term expansion loosely as many of them can be played without having the original version of the game. So I picked up Munchkin Impossible, a fun little twist on the Mission Impossible and the James Bond style spy movies.

Our friends Rachel and Amanda had been on a trip the past week and had just returned on Thursday night so we had planned a night of games, pizza, and catching up. So I thought well it should be fun to break out this new game and give it a shot. Upon opening the box we were greeted with stacks of cards a standard D6 die and what appeared to be a page of direction folded in half. Upon closer inspection it was actually 4 pages of directions that although humorous left us a little vague on exactly how to play the game. Oh well, playing is the best way to learn right. After about 20 min. We had the basic game play down and the first hand lasted just a little shy of an hour. Not bad for play time when you have no idea what you are doing. The second hand, even though we knew what we were doing and perhaps for that reason, lasted a little over an hour.

The game play itself is a little bit of a mash-up between games I liken the battle system to Magic and the overall game play to a simplified Killer Bunnies. It is incredibly fun and quite humorous once everyone is involved. We all quite enjoyed it. So if you have a few extra dollars to spend, it cost 25 at my LHS, and some friends to play with, the game is playable with 2 people but the more that you have the more fun it will be, I would definitely recommend it.

Week 31.5 - Baby, and Room Update

2008-02-21T10:20:00.003-05:00

So we had a very busy weekend. We meaning Precia, our friend Joe, and myself primed the baby's room and were also able to get it painted and put up the wallpaper border. So now that those steps are completed we can move on to putting the baseboards back on and getting all of the furniture moved back into the room. So if all goes well, short of haning the curtains the room will be finished this week. YAY!

We also had another ultrasound yesterday and we found out that she is still a girl so that is good news to mom who had a girl shower planned and there was no going back. :-) We also found out that Raelynn decidied to co-operate and turn over so she is no-longer breech YAY!(and there was much rejoicing) This means that Precia will get a shot at natural birth which is what she wanted in the first place. If Raelynn had remained breech then Precia would have been scheduled for a C-section. All is well with both mom and baby and things seem to be progressing nicely.

Baby Update

2008-02-09T23:17:00.000-05:00

Today is the beginning of week 30. Wow it doesn't seem like that much time has actually passed. The big day is officially right around the corner and there are a number of things that need to be done to get ready. We now have all of the wall paper off of the walls in the nursery and I think that we will start priming the walls for paint tomorrow, by we I mean me, and maybe dad if I can con him into it with a free lunch. :-)

Precia is doing much better now, though entering the 3rd trimester has been easier than the last two people keep telling us that it will not be that great by the end. Oh well it was fun while it lasted.

Stayed tuned for more info in the coming weeks.

Introducing BABY!

2008-01-04T20:38:00.000-05:00

Here is the first shot of our baby Girl. Her name is Raelynn and is due April 19th.

Windows Live Writer

2007-12-11T23:25:00.001-05:00

Well based on the tests you saw earlier, the program I am using is the Windows Live Writer. It is a free download from Microsoft here. It is a very straight-forward text editor with built-in blog uploading. I would call it "syncing" except it can't get my template from blogger, so if there is a way to put the template in manually that would be a welcome addition to the software. But apart from that it seems to be a very robust piece of software. It is easy to insert links, just a couple of clicks, and it references your Internet Explorer link history so you can just start typing and it will auto-fill the rest of the URL for you, which is nice.

Another interesting feature is on the right sidebar there is a history of recent posts that were created using live writer. Which when you click on them fetches the information from your blog. This is a nice addition to the application as well. All in all from the limited testing that I have done it seems like a great way to start a blogging application. As I use it more perhaps I will find more things to like or dislike about it and I will be sure to bring those to another post in the future until then I will be using this software to update this blog.

DNS

2007-12-11T13:57:00.000-05:00

I don't know if my domain provider had a DNS hick-up or if it was Live Writer that broke it. But lets try again and see what happens.

Testing Post

2007-12-11T13:41:00.001-05:00

This is a post to test some new software. Lets see how it works.

Baby Update

2007-11-27T13:57:00.001-05:00

Well, here is the latest with the new addition. This is at 19 weeks, and we will find out on December 12th what the gender is. That is assuming that the baby co-operates. This little thing is a pain for our doctors since it doesn't like the doppler machine. It will hide and keep the doctor from hearing the heartbeat. So they will breakout the ultrasound machine and get us a picture.

16 Weeks

2007-11-07T22:11:00.000-05:00

Well 16 weeks in and Precia is still not feeling great. We have a doctors appointment coming up so hopefully they will be able to shed some light on the situation. If all goes well they will send us home and say keep doing what you have been doing. If things are not good they will send us to the hospital to get an IV to get some hydration.

I still find it hard to believe that in just 5 short months I am going to be a father. I hope that I will do a good job. Precia tells me I will be great but I think she is required to say that. As Donny Baker would say "State Law or somethin'."

I have been trying to get some new pictures loaded but they are not scanning as well as the first, I will keep trying when we get new pictures though you may have to wait until April to see what all the fuss is about.

It is Official

2007-09-19T09:18:00.000-04:00

We are having a baby! In an series of events over the past week, Precia and I ended up at the Hosiptal last night so she could get an IV and get re-hydrated. Once that was started they decided that they needed to check on the baby and make sure it was doing ok. So at 10:30pm we had our first ultrasound.

It was absolutly amazing to see those images on the screen and to hear our baby's heart beat 165 bpm, right down the middle for normal at this size. We found out that we are almost exactly 9 weeks along, so hopefully only another 3 weeks of this morning sickness stuff and then it will be smooth sailing, until April 22.

We were discharged around 11:30 and made the long trip home. Precia is feeling much better today, better than she has felt since the morning sickness started. So now the goal is to stay hydrated and get through the next 3 weeks.

Wii

2007-08-02T23:14:00.001-04:00

We found a Nintendo Wii, and since we got it we can't put down the controller. This is one of the most fun systems to play in a very long time. Between the Wii and the 360, I am going to have a very hard time deciding which games to buy!

Absolutely Unbelievable

2007-06-20T16:04:00.000-04:00

I read this today and couldn't believe that this would happen. Especially if the church is heading this up, an institution for acceptance and love is bearing down on a local library for summer programs that talk about and teach diversity. Come on now.

A South Carolina library system has closed down its summer programs for young adults after receiving threats and allegations that it was trying to promote "witchcraft" and "drug use."

The Pickens County Library System’s half-hour summer programs for middle and high school students were supposed to take a light-hearted look at the topics "Secrets and Spies: How to Keep a Secret by Writing in Code or Making Invisible Ink" and "What’s Your Sign?" Another program was to examine astrology, palmistry, and numerology; and others were to feature tarot cards, tie-dying t-shirts, how to make a Zen garden, and yoga.

Now the programs are cancelled in the wake of phone and e-mail threats from the community, believed to emanate from a single local Baptist church. The astrology program was labeled as "witchcraft" by callers, while the Zen garden and yoga programs were objected to as "promoting other religions." The t-shirts workshop? "Promotes the hippie culture and drug use," callers said.

You can read the rest of the article Here.

Windows Home Server Pt2

2007-06-19T20:01:00.000-04:00

This is a play by play of the installation so be forewarned, if you are looking for a review of how the actual system works that is coming soon.

Well here goes the second attempt. I installed a larger drive for my main drive, dropped in the DVD and booted the machine. First thing up, This computer doesn't have enough ram. 512 is required and only 255 was found install is now exiting. Wow that was kind of rude. Anyway pop open the case drop in another stick of 256 and reboot.

Next up it only recognized the local drive. No big deal you say but I have an onboard RAID controller with 200gb of storage, and it doesn't see it. Well why would I want software "RAID" when I can have hardware, so I will let the install complete and see if it can detect my RAID card at that point.

8:00pm
Installing ......

While this is installing I burned the Client CD no biggie there basic iso landed on a CD no problems

8:15pm
Still installing .......
Setup will complete in approximately 52 minutes. Looks like I have some time to do laundry

8:25pm
Auto Reboot
WHS is showing its roots with a Windows Server 2003 boot screen 39 Minutes remain, half of the laundry folded.

8:45
Installation screen goes grey and auto reboot. Another Win2k3 splash screen and starting home server. Back to installation screen and another reboot. It just auto-ran a chkdisk? and reboot again!

8:50pm
Updating windows update, still at the install screen and waiting, while it reboots yet again.

8:55
Installing more Updates and I see another reboot in the future. And the reboot at 8:58

Installing more updates and the .net framework. I will let you know when I can get to the actual console.

9:15
Welcome Screen from WHS!

So there it is 1 hour 15 minutes to install Windows Home Server RC 1

Stay tuned for the review

Moving?

2007-06-18T12:00:00.000-04:00

American Cities That Best Fit You:

65% Austin

55% Denver

55% Miami

55% San Diego

50% Atlanta

Which American Cities Best Fit You?

Windows Home Server

2007-06-17T20:50:00.001-04:00

I got the beta release for Windows Home Server(WHS) on Friday. I was planning on installing it this weekend until I ran into a road block. I knew from the beginning that the plan for this release of Windows was not initially going to be offered as a box version and that this is a Release Candidate and that it shouldn't be taken as the final version. The road block I ran into was the Hard drive requirements. WHS requires 65GB to install. 65, I have lots of 40 GB drives and even a 60GB drive, my next largest are 2 200GB and they are currently in a RAID setup that I don't want to break. So my plans for the weekend were shot as I could not even install the software to see the interface for myself. I was really looking forward to playing with it. I guess that will have to wait until I get more drives, or the hardware becomes available and the cost isn't too high.

MP3 Tunes Pt. 1

2007-06-04T15:13:00.000-04:00

I signed up for MP3 Tunes service about a month ago, and have been wanting to give it a try. My schedule has been a bit hectick for setting it up though. So about a week ago I got an e-mail from them that that said hey thanks for signing up and now that you have been a member for so long we would like to give you unlimited storage space for all your mp3s. So I figured what the heck. I downloaded the application to "sync" my files and set it to run. It took a very long time. In fact it still is not complete and I need to figure out where it left off. I am still checking out the site as far as streaming goes so I will let you know about that in a future post. But as far as the upload goes just realise that it is very slow. I uploaded just over 100 songs and it took 3 days to do this, this was with a machine that is not used regualarly(YMMV).

Toronto

2007-04-30T14:34:00.000-04:00

I just got back from a whirlwind 3 day trip to Toronto with the Caro High School Choir. Overall I would say it was a good time. No one died, we all came back in one piece, and I didn't have to tape any kids to the ceiling of the bus, though I think the charter company would have been a little upset about that.

Our Itinerary was definitely jam packed and I am sure that helped with keeping the kids in line. Here is what it looked like.

Day 1 - Leave the school, Lunch in Sarnia and some play time at a place called Playdium. It is kinda like Gameworks only not as big. After that leave for the hotel. On arrival get changed and head to The Old Spaghetti Factory for Dinner. Immediately following dinner head to the Princess of Wales Theatre for the evening performance of Phantom of the Opera. Return to hotel, sleep.

Day 2 - Leave hotel, head to Rogers Center "Skydome" for a tour, immediately after cross the park and head to the top of the CN Tower. After the CN tower, It's over to the Ontario Science Centre for Lunch and an afternoon of exploring a hands on museum which concludes with the Omnimax video presentation of Wired to Win. After the video it was off to dinner at Medieval times.

Day 3 - Started with checkout from the hotel and a trip to Casa Loma. After an extensive self guided tour of the castle, we headed off to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch. After browsing their selection of memorabilia and having a bacon cheeseburger, we were on our way to the last stop of the trip. We Will Rock You, at the Canon Theatre.

All in all I must say it was a good trip.

Beebe's Stuff

Kansas City

Joys of Home ownership

Raelynn and the Big Girl Bed

More Video

Raelynn and Spaghetti

A long time past

She has arrived

40 + 2

The Return

Week 31.5 - Baby, and Room Update

Baby Update

Introducing BABY!

Windows Live Writer

DNS

Testing Post

Baby Update

16 Weeks

It is Official

Wii

Absolutely Unbelievable

Windows Home Server Pt2

Moving?

Windows Home Server

MP3 Tunes Pt. 1

Toronto