How much are you loved?

Faith

Laura can testify that this next sentence is absolutely, unequivocally true. Gus lives like a king in our house. When we first got him, we hadn’t yet brought Kiley into the world, so he was, and always will be, our first child. Therefore, we spoil him, love on him, and treat him like one of the family. He eats Blue Buffalo brand dog food to keep him fit and healthy. (Blue Buffalo is the one of only a few brands of food that doesn’t have corn or some other starch as the first and main ingredient. Science Diet, Eukanuba, Purina One, and all the other malarky will fatten your dog over time and isn’t as healthy as the marketing will lead you to believe.)

Gus has his own blanket on the couch so he can be comfy when sleeping up off the ground. He gets special treats for going pee-pee outside, to the point that when he finishes, he can’t wait to get back inside to get his treat. He gets walked almost every day I’m home, and has free reign over his kingdom: our quarter acre back yard. He has even taken to sleeping in our bed, something even Kiley won’t be able to do! Yes, he is treated well, indeed.
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Two Months Old

Kiley

Kiley is two months old this August, and time is flying by. She is still on the small side, like her parents, and is in the 12th percentile for weight verses other babies in North America. With our country’s fascination with carbs without exercise, maybe that’s a good thing? At nine pounds and five ounces, she still weighs less than one of her cousin’s birth weight! She is 22.5 inches long (46th percentile) and is still growing, so no one is concerned about her.

Kiley has had quite the bout with acid reflux problems and pains with intestinal gas. Combining the problem, I call them gassid pains. That leaves her in pain, which equals crying a lot of the time. In a comical side note, Laura looked up the symptoms of reflux online, and found that our little baby girl displayed all 12 of the signs. She was scheduled to get a upper gastrointestinal study done, but the test was cancelled because we knew she obviously had reflux. Canceling was fine with me, because it would have involved drinking barium and then getting x-rayed. I get x-rays all the time at 40,000 feet above the north pole, so no biggie there, but getting Kiley to drink barium was going to be a feat we didn’t want to try and accomplish.
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Hide Your Spam Count

Computing

I rarely, if ever, get spam in my Gmail inbox which is great. Spam filtering is probably the best reason to be using Gmail in the first place. However, most of the time I use Apple Mail to check my e-mail, and it has an unread count of all the spam sitting in my spam folder. When I glance at my inbox, I see two highlighted numbers: an inbox unread count, and a spam folder unread count. I wanted the spam count number removed because it was distracting me from my inbox count. Luckily, for those of us as pedantic as I am, there is a simple fix for this if you use Gmail.

We are going to create a new filter that marks all spam messages as read. That way, in your Apple Mail, Outlook, or even the online inbox, you won’t be bothered with seeing the unread count in your spam folder. Log in to your Gmail account online and click on the gear icon -> Settings -> Filters. Click: “Create a new filter” and in the box that says “Has the words” type: in:spam Finally, click “Create filter with this search.” I also check the box to have the new filter apply to the messages already in the spam folder.

Google will give you a warning, but it can be dismissed in this case. Now, the spam can mount up colossally in your spam folder, but you won’t see it or think about it and can simply focus on your inbox. Great!

New 747-8 Simulator

Aviation

Almost one year after receiving the real 747-8 aircraft, we finally have a simulator to actually train with. Our chief pilot says that it looks like something out of Star Wars, and I think he’s right. It certainly looks different than the older 747 sims that Cathay Pacific has. No one has flown this simulator yet, but when I do, I’ll update the blog as to what it is like.

Supposedly, it has a much better motion computer for better realism and feel, and upgraded graphics out the front windscreens. Even with great graphics, we almost always fly on instruments in the simulator with nothing to see out front but clouds. However, everyone once and a while we do visual approach training, and that ought to be fun with the new visuals and motion.
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Baby Cam

Fun, Internet, Kiley, Photography

This past winter, the geek in me set up a couple ip cameras around the house so that when Laura and I were out, we could check in on what Gus was up to. I added another one so I could see the baby’s crib while in Hong Kong, and added a third in the living room for security.

They are neat, cheap little ip cameras from Foscam and when set up, I can view and hear live video on my computer or iPhone from anywhere in the world, in real time. They even come with motion sensors to take pictures of a burglar.
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Kiley in the tub

Kiley

Kiley got her first bath in the baby tub today. Up until this point, she has only been getting sponge baths because we couldn’t submerge her belly-button until it was fully healed. She had a special rubber ducky that told us if the water was too hot, and mom bathed her while dad took lots of video and photos.

She surprised us and tolerated the water wonderfully, and actually smiled a bit while Laura poured water on her head. So far, she likes her bath and being in the water, but once she got out and dried off with a towel, out came the screams with the force of pent-up energy. Oh well, the bath was fun! You can click her picture for more photos of the bath time.

Seeing her all wet in the sink reminded me of another baby we have that gets bathed in the sink . . .

Mint QuickView

Financial

For you Mint.com users out there who use Macs, Intuit has brought yet another free tool to make following your finances even easier. It’s called QuickView, it lives in your menu bar, and it shows you nearly everything you could want to see on the Mint website in a nice simplified overview. QuickView is a tiny program and uses almost no system resources when in the background so I set it to run when I login. A really snazzy feature is that transactions show up as little notices and you may categorize them right from the menu — no more logging into the site to fix errant category descriptions. So basically, right from your menu bar, you can get your complete financial overview, see trends and graphs, sort transactions, and follow your budget. It’s even got a password lock option for the super private folks.

My sister and her husband got us onto Mint, and we’ve loved it ever since. Combined with the principles that Dave Ramsey teaches about always staying on top of your finances and being gazelle-intense about watching every penny to get rid of debt, Mint’s QuickView is a great addition in the arsenal of weapons to control your money. We’ve paid off over $60,000 in debt simply by following Dave’s common sense advice and using Mint to track where it all really goes. If you are in the same boat or want to get there, I would start reading Dave Ramsey here, sign up for Mint.com for free here, and check out QuickView by clicking the Mint leaves above. Good luck, and happy saving!