Dan Delcollo’s Blog

I am having my own little crisis.  It isn’t really much of a crisis, more of a realization of a regret.  Lately I have been feeling very old.  Like a crossroad of sorts where my life is changing.  Gone are the days of every day being one crazy adventure after another.  Sure there are many new adventures ahead, but in a vastly different arena than those of my past.

While these adventures are many of my best memories, I am realizing that for most, no evidence exists that they ever happened except those memories.  This may not make total sense to some.  I am not even sure what it really means to me.  An example of what I mean would be something like the caving trip I took while in college to the Samwel caves near Shasta.  That trip is one of my fondest and dearest memories.  If you have never heard the story, ask me sometime.  The part about that whole experience hurts is that there are absolutely no photos of that entire trip.  Thinking back, there are almost no photos of ANY of my trips.  Taking friends to jump off 30 foot waterfalls at Bernie falls, all the years of rock climbing, mountain biking, camping, all of it.  All of my high school adventures with Henrik, Rob, and the rest of the guys.  All of the crazy trips and epic adventures with Mike, and Greg.  Most of my college shenanigans with people from APhiO.  Years of rafting trips.  I think the photos that I know of are less than a handful, I am not even sure I know were they are.

I guess I fear that without a photo, a record, something to prove that it happened, when my memories fade, the event will cease to exist.  I know I am not _that_ old, and that many more opportunities will develop new chances to cement my new memories.  I also know that my life could never be simplified to fit in a scrapbook, but I still wish I had a snapshot of so many of the wonderful things I have seen.

P.S.  as a side note, I did a little web search and discovered that in at least 2005, the Samwel caves were still open as a publicly accessible cave, without a docent!  I doubt I could do the 150ft rappel and ascent, but it would be an absolutely amazing trip to someday go back.  Anyone want to go?

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http://www.family-vacation-getaway-destinations.com/shasta-caverns.html

Before going to the cave you need to firest get a key to the locked entrance. You can get this key at the Shasta Lake Visitor Information Center or call  (530)275-1589  (530)275-1589 . This key and permit are free to obtain, but you need to know that the U.S. government is not liable or responsible for any injuries or damage to your property. If you become injured and rescue services are requested, you may be held accountable for costs incurred. At the station you can get a map of the cave and directions to the place, as it is a little tough to find. The long and short of it is that you will drive north on I-5 to the Salt Creek/Gilman Road exit (after you cross the bridge over Shasta Lake-20 miles north of Redding, CA). Once on Gilman road (heading east-or right), you will drive for about 30-40 minutes until you cross the McCloud bridge. Here you will head up a gravel road (to the right after the bridge) for about 1.5 miles. You will see a little marked parking lot that you can park in. To the right of the parking sign, you will see a little path. Go down this path, staying to the left at the forks, until you arrive at the entrance. Remember to lock the entrance gate behind you as you enter the cave. This is a safety precaution because you don’t want someone coming into the cave behind you without a key and you locking them in.

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Ouch.  I am sore.  Yesterday after hearing that the neighbors care got broken into yet again, I decided to move forward on an idea I have been mulling around in my head.  To improve our outdoor lighting. 

About a month ago our neighbor’s car was broken into, but not really, it was another one of those, “didn’t lock the car” and they grabbed everything that wasn’t nailed down deals like I had a year ago.  This newest event was way worse though.  Thursday the neighbor’s car was really broken into this time.  They broke a window, and stole their airbag.  That’s not all though.  They also stole the keys to one of their other cars, got into that and stole the whole families snow boots (4 pairs).  What’s more, they kept the keys.  What really takes the cake for me though was how planned the whole thing was.  One of the things they did was when they arrived, they unscrewed all the light bulbs from their outdoor lighting so that they could work in the dark.  They had to actually disassemble part of the fixture in order to do this.  Scary.

So when I saw them working on improving their outdoor lighting it inspired me to get moving on ours as well.  I went out to the store and bought new fixtures that put out more light, and added a third fixture.  I had been wanting to add a matching lamp on the far side of the garage, so I got to work on that.  I had to spend a lot of agonizing pretzel work inside the attic in order to get to the right places to tap into the existing fixture and drop it down in the right place on the other side.  The real anxiety kicked in when I busted out the hammer drill and chisel and hammer to bash out a hole to mount the new fixture.  There is nothing like the feeling of when you take the leap and destroy part of your house knowing that there is no going back, and hoping that your plan is actually going to come through ok.

I worked on it yesterday and today, and got the decorative lighting done today.  I plan on also doing some more lighting changes by adding some security floods.  I am going to wire them together so that they will all turn on when tripped.  The effect is probably going to look ridiculous when the whole front of the house is lit up like daylight.  In some ways I worry that having all the lights and video cameras may make us look like either we are up to no good, or that we actually have something worth protecting.

One of the things I want to do with the floods is that the sensors for this system are separate from the lights themselves.  I am not sure I would have picked this style if money were no object, but since money IS and object, and I could buy two of these lights for less than the cost of only one of the regular traditional ones, I figured it would be ok.  It gives some added flexibility in terms of detection areas and stuff too I suppose.  But the problem comes from that the sensors are powered by two AA batteries.  I am not keen on the idea of having to bust out the ladder and go around and tend all these sensors, so I think I am going to wire them up so that they are all powered off a plugged in wall wart someplace.  That way they don’t need to be changed.  Sure I still have to change the bulbs when they burn out, but that’s not the same as having to disassemble the sensors in order to get the batteries out.  I don’t even know how long the batteries last.  Anyway that will be a project for this week.  Then our Fort Knox will be a little more secure, or at least be a little more visible.  In the mean time I am going to try and recover from all the strained and overworked muscles.  Sore.

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We have been feeding the kids “solids” for a while.  I can put solids in quotes, cause really it is just mush.  Sure they have advanced to the level 2 mush, but its not like the level 1 mush was more mush-y.  We started them on grains, but quickly found that they didn’t really like grains by themselves.  We offered them veggies next which they seemed to like a lot better.  Even though they are pretty disgusting, they really took to carrots, peas and greenbeans.  They also liked sweet potato and squash.  We tried to stay away from the fruits at first because so many people told us how if you started them on fruit, they would be less likely to eat the veggies.  Eventually we added the fruits, but interestingly enough, they still liked the veggies better.  We had to start adding fruit to their grains to get them to eat them, and it wasn’t too long before even that wasn’t working.  They certainly like their veggies though.  We would force them to eat their grains and fruit and save the peas or carrots or something for after.  But even that was a struggle.  They would much prefer to eat just veggies, but rather than give in we tried to figure out a different solution so they would still get grains and their calories.  Then we discovered the premixed fruits with grains already mixed in.  They liked them better than the previous grains, but you still have to feed them the fruit first and then save the veggies for last otherwise they won’t finish their fruit. 

One of the downsides of them liking veggies so much is that they tend to eat a lot of them.  This makes for a couple of odd side effects.  For one, it makes their poop a little more disgusting since it has a distinctly veggie smell.  I am sure it will be much worse once we start adding meat to their diet, but in the mean time, yuck.  The other thing is that because 3 out of the 5 main veggies are orange, they tend to get a lot more beta-carotene in their diet.  If you know where I am heading with this you can predict what was happening.  Yup.  Orange tinted babies.  It was most noticeable in their noses and necks, but they were definitely orange.  We cut back a little and try to limit them to only one orange veggie per day, which only pushes the poo factor more towards the green and veggie smelling.

Is it wrong to spend a whole post writing about the babies diets?  I doubt it.  It is what parents obsess about.  Its a grand tradition.

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I caught spyware/malware.  I had my suspicions a weeks ago, today it was verified when “Vista Antivirus pro” started running and telling me my computer was infected.  It only took a few seconds of searching online to verify that the program that was claiming to be detecting spyware and viruses was itself a spyware program.  Unfortunately all my searches to figure out how to remove it were again referring me to other places of ill-repute that would undoubtedly result in again more spyware.

and I know where I got it too! it was from either coupons.com or smartsource.com.  I downloaded their coupon printing program.  Even while I was doing it I had a feeling I was in for it.  I was right.  I am not sure which one it was, but it was definitely one of the two.

I pulled my hair out for a while and tried reading a couple of shady articles on how to remove it without success when Susan suggested I simply roll back my computer to an earlier date.  I was skeptical, but tried it anyway since it was better than the majority of suggestions I was reading about.  So far I think it worked, but boy does it piss me off.  Now if I could figure out which site it was.  It is enough to make me not want to clip coupons online anymore.  Shady!

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Well last night didn’t go so great.  I went to bed at what I thought was a semi reasonable time. of about midnight.  I woke up at 1am wide awake like I had gotten up from a well executed nap.  No matter what I tried I was wide awake until 5am.  At 1pm Susan’s mom got worried about me and came to check that I was still alive thinking I had slept for  13 hours and was hibernating, or in a coma or something.

But now I am up.  The kids are both in their walkers zooming around the place playing bumper cars.  I certain that once they learn to walk they are going to spend a majority of their time running around and screaming.  This is of course terrifying, but I think it will mesh well with my plan to build them an ultimate backyard play-gym since Susan will ultimately be driven crazy and  demand that the kids scream themselves out in the backyard.

I am wondering if I should pick up the carpet in the front room so that the  kids can complete the circuit around the downstairs in their walkers.  They keep getting stuck on it.  Can you believe that in 3 days they are going to be 8 months old?  craziness.

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It looks like I survived my last string of work, but man it took a lot out of me and I am tired.  I really pushed hard to be as productive as possible at work and I look to have that locked in to finish the month strong.  Only one shift to go.

I spent today mostly in a fog, hopefully tomorrow will be better and I can find something productive and fun to do. 

I discovered that the embroidery machine I just bought had a major price drop of $150 dollars, so I bought another one with the intention of returning it using the receipt for the first so that I am essentially getting it price adjusted.  Costco is good for that sort of thing.

I have been watching bits and pieces of the Olympics.  I wish I could have watched more, but I can’t figure out how I could have.  The Tivo records like 10 hours day, when would I be able to watch it?

Our Disney vouchers came in for the volunteer work, so all seems like it came out well with that.  We will have four days worth of Fast Pass special exchange cards for our 5 day trip.  Since it will likely be busy because of spring break, I am hopeful it will let us really maximize our trip.  I have given up the idea of doing the behind the scenes scuba diving in the epcot aquarium thing.  While I am sure it would be cool, there a couple of downers that make it not as cool to me.  While it is a huge aquarium, something like the 3rd largest in the world or something, it is still only like 20 feet deep.  The don’t let you take your camera with you, but people on the outside can take pictures of you.  For me, I feel like I need to have photographic proof of the event in order to make it real.  The final straw was actually the reviews I read of people who have done it.  The biggest thing that people enjoyed about doing it in most of the reviews was being able to be a part of the show.  For whatever reason that I can’t clearly articulate, that counts as a negative to me.  Who knows.  I may see it on the first day and wish I had done it and still try to sign up, or pledge that “next time for sure” or something.  I would really like to dive again soon though.

Ok well this was probably one of my lamer posts, but its all about quantity not quality right?  Ill sign off here and go to bed early in hopes of being more awake tomorrow.

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Not too much to write about, but I am quickly coming to the end of my break.  I am back to work tomorrow, for a string of 4 which includes two of the dreaded overnights.   Only a few more shifts till the end of this month.

I have been wasting quite a bit of time playing with my embroidery machine.  I tested out its ability to convert drawings into embroidery files.  It does a fair job, but enough detail is lost that I find myself wanting to go in and edit the files to put some detail back in.  It would be great if that were not needed at all, and for some things I am sure it does just fine.  But the more editing I do, the more I wish I was doing less work on the laptop and more on my desktop, and of course the laptop is what is hooked up to the sewing machine for the the time being.  Whatever.  I am having a good time playing with it. 

Went to see Henrik, Andrea and Naomi a couple of times.  Everything seems to be going well there.  They plan on coming home tomorrow, and then the real adventure begins.

Ok this was suposed to be a quick post, so I will end it here and go play.

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Today Henrik and Andrea had their baby girl!  Naomi Michelina Lemos.  7lbs 13oz, 18 inches.  Wow.  For being 3 weeks early she tipped the scales!  Henrik posted some photos on his Picasa account, e-mail him for details.  I would tell you more, but I actually don’t really know more than that.  Susan and I had planned on going to the hospital to see them, and unfortunately Susan got called in to work.  This left me home alone to screw around with my projects, which meant by the time I realized I was hungry and had made dinner it was too late to be bugging them.  Tomorrow for sure.

So what did I waste all my time today doing?  My embroidery machine arrived.  It was intimidating to get started, and the laptop I wanted to hook it up to didn’t make everything easy, but I was able to test out a few things.  The vast majority of the included designs are pretty much crap, but I managed to play with it enough to prove that it is capable of some neat stuff.  Embroidery designs are plentiful online, but very quickly add up to be a lot of money.  That is where the software that came with the machine comes in.  I still have plenty more learning to do, but I at least proved that it is possible to take a simple drawing on the computer and translate it into an embroidery file that can be run on the machine.  If I get time tomorrow I will post some of the results.  If anyone I know happens to have an embroidery machine or knows someone who does and is willing to trade some files, I would certainly be interested.  Otherwise it is back to ripping off clip art for me.

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Susan claims that Jadis said her first word.  I am skeptical.  Not that I would wish to take away this milestone should it prove to be true.  Jadis is the less vocal of the two.  Isaac babbles to himself, and has an actual babble vocabulary where he experiments with making different sounds.  So far, Jadis just squawks when she is pissed off, and has not shown much interest in babbling.  Today to test for repeatability I snuck up on the cat with Jadis’ back to him, then turned her around to reveal the cat.  Nothing.  I did a couple more times to she if she would respond, then did it another half dozen times while holding her towards the cat and saying “CAT”.  Then I did it a couple of times towards Susan saying “MaMa”.  CAT, MaMa, CAT, MaMA, etc.  Then I let Jadis touch the cat and she proceeded to grab a fist-full of whiskers and pull.  CAT.

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Nothing important to post, just trying to keep up the posting habit.  Today was day 3 in a 4 day string.  Tomorrow is a night shift.  Then I have one off, and a string of 3 again.  Work has been especially brutal lately.  Today was busy and I was so tired from being so busy the last 2 days,  that I was dragging.  I am going to sleep in tomorrow plus take a nap before my night shift in hopes of surviving it. 

Just over a month till our Disney trip.  Yay.  In weird twist of ideas I have been stockpiling mountain dew and spicy ramen for the trip.  Since we will be staying at a Disney hotel and getting off property to stock up on late night snacks and stuff to carry with us during the day, I have been planning on bringing as much of that with us as possible.  Yep, that means checking bags full of snacks and junk food just to save a few bucks.  I am weird that way.  I will scrimp and save, shave a few cents here and there, use coupons when I can, then blow all my savings on something ridiculous.  Like an Embroidery machine.

A WHAT?  yep.  Embroidery machine.  I have lusted after one for so long, and now that Susan’s Mom is staying with us I think she would get a kick out of putting embroidered butterflies and ducks on the multitude of bibs we have for the kids.  It hasn’t arrived yet, and showing her how to use it might be tough, but I think it might be fun too.

Ok, tired, going to quit writing and take it easy.

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