MichaelandChrissy.com

Tonight, we reached a milestone that we have long anticipated: Aiden has pee-peed in the potty for the first time.  We’ve been sitting Aiden on his little training potty for about six months now, just to get him used to it, but he has never done anything in it before.  Last week, Chrissy moved the training potty from his room to the bathroom so that the serious training could begin.

Aiden has an issue with warm bath water, in that he pees almost as soon as he hits it.  Gross, I know.  But tonight, Chrissy set Aiden down on the potty before she put him in the tub.  To get him “in the zone”, she splashed some warm water on him while he sat on the potty (like a sleeping college frat boy).  Sure enough, he started to pee.  We cheered.  He was so proud of his pee.

The next step will be to get him to come to us when he has to use the potty.  I’m not sure how quickly potty training is supposed to work, but it’ll be nice when I don’t have to change his diapers anymore.   I always tell him, “We wouldn’t have to do this if you would just pee-pee in the potty…”  But I shouldn’t get my hopes up completely, as we still have to tackle the poo-poo.  I’m so not looking forward to this.

My first video game memories were of the Atari 2600.  I first saw one when I was five, and the controls were easy enough for me to play “Combat” against anyone.  I still think that “Adventure” is the best game ever (”You were a DOT, man, and you LIKED IT THAT WAY!”).  I eventually got one of my own around 1981, and played it non-stop on a tiny 12-inch black and white TV in my room.  “River Raid”, “Pitfall”, and “Yars Revenge” were some of my favorite games.

I heard a rumor of the first Nintendo gaming system at an arcade.  Some kids playing “Super Mario Brothers” were talking about a new Atari that could play games just like the arcade games.  I didn’t believe it, not after the debacle that was Atari’s “Pac-Man”.  But the NES did come out, from Nintendo (not Atari, which was synonymous with gaming until then), and I got one for Christmas in 1985.  I even got a small color TV by then.  I remember the hype before the first Zelda game came out, and was amazed that you could play it TWICE.

“Castlevania” and “Metroid” were a couple of my favorite games for the NES.  My friends and I rented video games from Blockbuster Video every weekend.  We would play “Punch-Out” all night, yet never beat Mike Tyson, and then switched to “Metal Gear” (back before Snake went all 3D).  I didn’t play sports in high school, so video games took up a lot of my time then.  Although I had upgraded to the Super Nintendo by ‘91, I didn’t play games much while in college, except for “Warcraft” and “Diablo” on the PC.

It wasn’t until I got my first place, and my first roommate, Carl, that I started playing video games again.  My roomie introduced me to “Resident Evil 2″ on the Playstation, and we would play “Final Fantasy VII” into the wee hours of the night.  “Symphony of the Night” was the best Castlevania game ever, and we explored every room of both castles and maxed out the levels on every familiar before we were happy.  We played more Playstation than we watched TV (mostly Star Trek and Farscape).

Carl got hooked on racing games, and he switched to “Gran Tourismo”.  I never like racing games, so I moved back to PC games instead.  “Baldur’s Gate” started my great love of RPG games.  I’ve followed the D&D game franchise ever since.  “Starcraft” was another big one, but I didn’t play it online.  I would play “Diablo 2″ across the internet all night, however, to an almost unhealthy amount.  But I stuck with PC gaming, since computer games looked better and were more fun than console games (depending on your hardware, of course).

I’ve focused more on RPG games in the last few years, which are usually much better on the PC than on the console systems.  I played “Elder Scrolls: Morrowind” for nine months straight, along with the two expansion packs.  Based on my Morrowind addiction, I was first in line when “Elder Scrolls: Oblivion” came out in 2006.  All told, I probably played Oblivion for about six months, and that was before the “Shivering Isles” expansion pack came out.  I’ve had a lot of fun with computer games this year as well, most recently with “Gears of War”, “Crysis” and “Titan Quest”.

It’s looking like consoles are finally starting to overpower computers today though.  Some games, like “Star Wars: Force Unleashed”, won’t even be available for the PC, since the developers know that you would need a Power Rig to run it.  I’m not quite ready to trade in my PC games for XBOX games though.  But that didn’t stop me from getting a Wii last June!  I do like the casual gaming style and the fitness aspects of the Wii.  I barely even consider the Wii as gaming, but I enjoy the shooting games and the Wii Fit balance games.

I think that my next batch of fond memories will revolve around family gaming.  I can’t wait for Aiden to be old enough to play video games with me.  Not the NC-17 games that I’m used to playing, surely, but he’ll want age-appropriate games.  I’ll make certain that he spends time doing real-life activities (sports, music, karate, etc.) as well, but I think that we’ll bond most over video games.  Who knows what gaming will be like by the time Gavin is ready to pick up his first controller?  It should be interesting to find out!

On the day after Halloween last year, Chrissy and I bought a whole bunch of new decorations on clearance.  In fact, Chrissy left early that morning in order to get the best deals on the 50%-off holiday swag, and she grabbed so much that she had to call me at home to come and man a second cart.  We toted two jammed grocery carts out of Target that day!  We got two stand-up interactive monsters, a giant pumpkin, several new tombstones, a weird skeleton lamp post, and other assorted goodies.

Fast-forward to this year.  I usually wait until the last second to put up Halloween decorations, but the neighbors next door started putting theirs up last weekend.  Then the people across the street saw them doing it, and immediately ran outside to get theirs started too.  What’s the rush?  There’s still a good week of September left!  Of course, Chrissy saw all this and ordered me to pull all of our own Halloween decorations out of storage as well.

I had completely forgotten about last year’s post-holiday haul, so I was amazed at home much I had to carry down out of the garage rafters.  We almost have as many Halloween decorations as Christmas decorations now!  Well, maybe a 2:3 ratio, but close to 1:1.  I used as many extension cords to electrify everything as I usually do for Christmas, so that’s a lot.  I’ve got a big front yard, so I haven’t really been satisfied with our anemic Halloween setup until this year.

Everything looks really good though.  And I haven’t even put out my strobe lights and fog machine yet!  I took Aiden outside with me last night to plug in the final few decorations (the mosquitos chased me off the first time).  He’s enamored with the six-foot-tall monsters on our front porch.  And anything that even remotely looks like a cat.  He loves those.  We’ll have to see if he still loves them when they get all spooky on Halloween night!

At the last Botcon, Hasbro announced a whole slew of new homage figures to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Transformers, to be released under the Universe moniker.  Not only would more G1 characters be receiving new, updated designs (as in the Classics series), but characters from all Transformers lines would also be getting updates.  The fan base was very excited.  Recently, a new repaint for the Universe line was announced: Hasbro would be repainting Cyberton Scourge (”Flame Convoy”, in Japan) as “Robots In Disguise” Bruticus.

“Predacon Bruticus” seems like an odd choice of characters to pay homage to, since that figure wasn’t very well received by fans or collectors.  At the time, Takara had just thrown Transformers fans a colossal bone with the return of realistic vehicular alternative modes: “Car Robots” featured robots that turned into models of real-life cars, as opposed to animals.   The Beast Machines series was trying to introduce vehicles, in the way of “Vehicons“, but there was little fan support for these futuristic styles (I’m one of the few that liked them).

Bruticus was meant to be an addition to the eclectic Maximal lineup on Beast Machines, but the series died before he could be released.  However, Hasbro managed to shoe-horn him into the next line, “Robots in Disguise” (RiD), which was basically the Car Robots line from Japan repackaged into English packages.  Bruticus didn’t appear on the television show and had a strange form in both modes.  Worse, he used up a name from Generation 1, so the actual repaint of G1 Bruticus for the RiD line was instead named “Ruination”.

As for the new paint scheme, I’m not sure if I like it.  Was RiD Bruticus originally supposed to have a similar paint application?  He was styled in red, yellow and black, after the original G1 Predacon combiners (orange and gold would have been a given, but blue works).  He may have actually had more paint on him in pre-production stages, but those were probably nixed for cost reasons (in order to retain the complexity of the mold).  To be honest, RiD Bruticus would have looked great with some gold and dark blue highlights on him, as one of the biggest complaints leveled against him was a lack of paint applications.

I really liked RiD Bruticus though.  What’s not to like?  He’s an armored, three-headed dog with bat wings on his head.  He’s got spikes and saw blades everywhere.  And he’s mysterious.  I mean, why do his back legs turn into a second pair of arms, complete with flip-up weapons?  Why does he have a broken chain on his leg?  Why does his robot mode have three faces?  What was supposed to go under the flip-up panel on his chest?  It’s clear that this figure never quite reached his potential, but I’d like to know what was the original plan for this guy.

There was a recurring mystical theme with the Maximals in the Beast Machines line.  There was a unicorn, a griffon, a dragon, and even a lion.  The inclusion of Cerberus would have been natural.  Toss in a personality conflict, one persona for each beast head, which would correspond in turn to each robot face, and you’ve got an interesting story.  Maybe he was supposed to be a quadruple-changer, with each robot face having a slightly different robot mode?  This would explain the extra set of arms.  We’ll never know, I guess.

Chrissy and I bought a “Sleep Number” mattress from the local Select Comfort store about two and a half years ago.  Chrissy’s parents had let us try their Sleep Number mattress and we really liked it, so we decided to buy one because our old mattress was sagging terribly in the middle.  The problem was that these things are really expensive.  But considering that we paid $1100 for our Sealy Posturepedic, and it was hard to sleep on after only four years, we figured that the investment was safe because Select Comfort offered a twenty year warranty.

Like every other Sleep Number owner that we’ve ever met, Chrissy and I really love our mattress.   Recently, however, Chrissy’s side starting losing about half of the air pressure during the night.  She called customer support, and they told her to inflate the mattress to her favorite setting, then remove the tubes to the pump and cap off the mattress.  After two days, the air pressure remained constant, so customer support concluded that it must be the pump or the hoses (which are one piece since you can’t remove the hoses from the pump).  We would need to replace the unit.

This is where the twenty year warranty should have kicked in, and we should have gotten a new pump sent to us in the mail for free.  Unfortunately, this was not the case.  We were not aware that the replacement pumps are only free for the first two years of ownership.  After two years, Select Comfort pro-rates the cost of the pump at 20% plus 4% for each year of ownership, up to a total cost of $500.  Because the pump was two and a half years old, our portion of the price of the new pump came to $160.  This was highway robbery!

First of all, I would not pay $500 for a plastic air compressor at Sears, so I’m not sure what makes Select Comfort think that this thing is worth $500.  Secondly, someone should have said something about this obvious loophole in the warranty, since we didn’t think that we would be spending any more money on our damn-expensive mattress for the next twenty years (aside from the $100 pillows; again, ridiculous).  If this had been told to us during the original purchase, we would have thought twice about buying it to begin with.

Needless to say, we bought the replacement pump.  It took about a week for the new pump to arrive, Chrissy and I installed it and now her side of the mattress works fine.  I’m still aggravated that this wasn’t covered completely under warranty.  They should really come right out and say that they have a two year warranty, and you’re kind of on the hook for anything after that.  I’m just wondering if the new pump is covered for another two years, or will I have to pay the pro-rate of the original pump once this one dies in another two and a half years?

Despite the flooding last weekend, Aiden and I tried to drive over to Target to visit the pharmacy.  We couldn’t take the normal way, since Main street was closed between Kennedy Avenue and Indianapolis Blvd due to flooding.  The second normal way was closed too, since 45th Street was also closed due to high water.  We went to the next intersection north, Hart Road, and crossed over to Indianapolis Blvd there, then turned back south towards Target.

Once we got there, we saw that the entire parking lot was under water.  We drove towards the stores, but had to turn back because there was literally nowhere to go but into the lake that had formed in the lot.  The road was dry along the mall itself, but I couldn’t get over there.  The water between me and the stores was at least two feet deep (you could tell from the half-submerged car).  I wasn’t going to chance it.

On the way home, we took some pictures of the flooding at Main Street and on 45th Avenue.  The flooding on 45th wasn’t evident from Kennedy Avenue, but you could plainly see it from Indianapolis.  There were work crews out with pumps and portable pipes to try to drain the water.  It was all pretty crazy.  Aiden watched it all from the copilot seat.  We made it home safe and sound though.  Maybe we’ll try again tomorrow.

The remnants of Hurricane Ike came up through the Midwest from Texas and hit Northwest Indiana hard. It rained for several days straight, causing all of the local rivers to flood.  The Little Calumet river crested and flooded many Northwest Indiana towns along its banks.  Nobody seems to notice the Little Cal until it rains too much, but no one could have expected the nine to ten inches of rainfall that we received last weekend.

The news is showing aerial footage of Calumet Avenue in Munster where the Target and all surrounding roads are under water.  Lake George has gone all wonky in Hobart (where I grew up) and washed away the Third Street bridge.  In Highland, the Highland Plaza parking lot was completely under water.  The Lake County Board of Commissioners declared a state of emergency Monday morning in the wake of last weekend’s record rainfall.

The heavy flooding is causing road closures all over the place. The Borman (80/94), which runs parallel to the Little Calumet, was closed from 394 in the west to Cline Avenue in the east. The Bishop Ford was closed completely. The onramps to the Borman were under water at Calumet Avenue and Kennedy Avenue.  Cline Avenue was closed as well, but I’m not sure how bad the flooding was there.  Since I live south of the Borman, I couldn’t get to work at all this morning!

I’ve been uploading a photo a day (actually three photos per day) to Flickr for the last 31 days.  It hasn’t become an abominable chore yet, but I have found it difficult to make time for new pictures every day.   It’s also a bit of a pain to edit every photo once they’re sent, since Picnik takes forever and a day to load, but the results are well worth it.  In fact, you can already see how Aiden and Gavin have changed over the last month.  The long term results should be very gratifying.

I learned of a 3D photo gallery tool called FotoViewr from a friend on Twitter.  You just pop in your Flickr handle, select a subset of pictures to display (by set name or by tag word) and then choose a 3D format.  FotoViewr then creates an interactive photo gallery of your last thirty photos.  I really like the “wall” format, shown above, but the “floor” format is also very cool.  There are also links to each photo on Flickr and a full-screen mode (although my monitor resolution is too high to make this work well).

The best part is that you can embed a FotoViewr gallery in any blog post.  This would come in handy if I uploaded lots of pictures to Flickr, but I’m only using it for my 365 projects now.  There’s even a WordPress plugin to show a FotoViewr gallery on your blog sidebar, but it might be too small to see clearly.  I’ve downloaded it and will play with the settings on our blog later.  Expect more FotoViewr galleries from us in the future!

I was listening to the 9-11 memorial on CNN this morning, and I was shocked that it has been seven years since the World Trade Center fell. That was a crazy day. I remember seeing the first tower fall on the tiny television in our Chicago office, and shortly afterward looking up at the Sears Tower once our building had been evacuated (the NeuStar offices were right across the street on Wacker). Hundreds of people crowded outside, and we were all sure that Chicago would be next, and we were standing under the biggest target. Just looking up.

Although I had never seen it before, I was very impressed with John Stewart’s words in the eve of September 11th, when he returned to the Daily Show after the tragedy. It was devastating for everyone, but worse still for those actually in New York that day. To be able to actually feel the ground shake, to see the clouds of debris, I can’t imagine what that was like. But “to grieve, but not depair,” that about sums up the American resolve going forward.

Last summer, I was mowing the back yard when I noticed something big and green clinging to our wooden fence.  I stopped the mower to get a better look, and it was a praying mantis!  I don’t think that I had ever seen one up close before, so it was kinda cool.  I invited the neighbor kids to check him out, and the younger one named him “Bob”.  Bob hung out in the back yard for a day or two, but we didn’t hear from him much after that.  We figured that he went off to get his head eaten.

Today, Chrissy was heading out to the garage with the boys when she spotted Bob coming down our driveway.  He was making his way back to our yard, where lunch was plentiful.  He was pretty wary of Chrissy though.  She got the kids into the CR-V and then checked on Bob to make certain that she wouldn’t run him over, but he was already near the gate to the back yard.  Good ol’ Bob.  I’ll have to keep an eye out for him when I mow the lawn next weekend.