TV Chill Time

Its 6:45 PM, dinner is finished, kitchen is clean, homework is done, and so its veg time. The kids seem to need this time as much as us parents do. Whether its Transformers (that was tonights choice), The Little Mermaid (Jillian's choice last night, which the boys quickly ditched and ran for their Legos), or a documentary on Animal Planet.... the after dinner/before bedtime hour is about vegging with the TV on. Right or wrong, it works for us and everyone goes to bed relaxed and happy.

Revenge of the Knight

I did this school work sometime back after October but before December - I think it was November 5th. I don't really remember when.

My dad asked why I and how I did this and I explained. Because in school I had finished my regular work so I started writing a story and it came out. I had a lot more time so I published it and did the cover. Yesterday I read the story out loud to my second grade class. I think they thought I did a good job.

If you want to hear my story read by me you can listen to it hear.

Revenge of the Knight

Loans that Change Lives

Thanks Drew and Christina for introducing us to Kiva and how we can help people improve their lives investing in their businesses and communities around the world. Jillian, Jack and Matthew are learning about the world and hard work by participating in the efforts of small businesses around the world.

Grampy's Slides from 1966 Tour in Vietnam

From 1966 Vietnam Tour

I finally completed scanning my father's old color slides from his 1966 tour in Vietnam. I am sure to come back and edit this posting later when I get my facts straight and in proper form but as I know it he was a 1st Lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers commanding a platoon in a floating bridge company. These slides don't last forever and these ones have been lost and found over the years. It is about time we get them published.

Merry Christmas Dad!

(We will get this cleaned up further in Picasa, captioned and geotagged as best we can)

The Cookbook

Seven years ago, a short time after our grandmother Eleanor had passed away, Aunt Eleanor published "The Cookbook"

"The Cookbook" is a group of wonderful recipes that were collected over the years by my mother. My mother, Eleanor, was a fussy, discriminating baker. She would pour over the Boston Globe's food pages, check the labels or boxes of products, or ask a person for a recipe. There were many tests that she would apply to a completed recipe to decide if it was worth keeping. One factor in the decision as to whether to keep a recipe or not was how long the product stayed around after it was cooked.

During the years that my sister Mary, brother Joe, and I were in elementary school,we never failed to volunteer to "bring in some cookies for the party". My mother would patiently make whatever cookies we had requested. The favorites were always the Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies and the Gingersnaps. My father's favorites were the Cream Puffs and the Date Bars. As each of us married, our spouses quickly became aware of the location of the cookies jar and helped to empty it. The cookies that had been our favorites growing up quickly became the favorites of all the grandchildren.

Eleanor
December 17, 2000

Even without my aunt's description, one may easily see which recipes are most special from how tattered and stained the pages are in The Cookbook. Gingersnaps are definitely a favorite of Eleanor's great grandchildren.

YouTube Channel Data Feed Slow to Update

Google AJAX Search API Blog: Direct Access to YouTube Channels

This is pretty cool feature just in time for StevensFive and the videos we are posting on our YouTube channel.

Update: the 'uploads' GData feed is working now and is no longer empty - probably just a provisioning delay

However, there are some discrepancies we have to work around currently. When we search using ytchannel:stevensfive we do not get any results. As this feature indicates it leverages YouTube Data APIs we looked there. Hitting our uploads data feed directly produces zero entries while our RSS feed is complete. Most of the data feeds seem coherent to the results from the user experience. It is just this feed which is empty. We will just have to use 'stevensfive' as a search term for now.

This "indexing latency" has been reported by others. Latency is expected, but the question is how much. StevensFive channel might be an edge case too because the channel was create a year ago but the first video was posted yesterday. We have been getting intermittent 500 errors on the YouTube site in last 24 hours (the ones which present an encoded blob back to the user) - maybe there are some stack traces out there for someone to look at which would explain why our data feed is empty.

(We had tried to post to the YouTube Data API Group but group joining is flaking out today).

Two Down One to Go

It has been a good year. A year where Jack has successfully launched into Kindergarten, is surviving (and actually enjoying!) being the only kindergartener on the bus...Matthew has begun to go by "Matt" at school, and has been awarded for being "trustworthy", a year in which we have said goodbye to cribs and diapers (good girl, Jillian!). It was a wonderful 8 years, but we are very happy to move on. :) Jillian starts preschool next month! So as we move into 2008, please check back often...there is always a story to tell!