O'Rourke

So funny I want to cry...

From TheOnion.com

What's wrong with this picture?

I just got my awesome new 1.5 TB drive, put it in an external USB case, and connected it to the Mac I use as a server in the office upstairs. Downloaded Silverkeeper, a backup program for Mac, and tried to take my first backup snapshot. Got the following error message: 

<quote>Sorry: The Destination volume you have chosen is too small to hold the required backup data. You will nee to go back and make another choice</quote>

My Mac has an 80 GB drive. My new external drive is 1500GB. If my drive was full, I could make a copy once a week and not run out of space until Mackenzie starts Kindergarden next fall.

I'm sure it's an easy fix. I haven't even consulted google yet. But still...

Made more progress today on the two wheel front. Conor can now start from a standing stop pretty much. Uphill is no problem. He's working on peddling while STANDING (to get more speed), and he's actually trying to ride DOWN THE SNOWBANK to start off. He also wants to know when I'll let him get some ramps set up.

Today was Coach Pitch "evaluations" where they run every boy through some hitting (6 pitches, infield, outfield, baserunning and pitching) and mark them up to keep the teams as even as possible. While last year we barely made it through with many tears and angst, this year Conor was one of the BEST hitters in his group (about 10 kids), handled the infield grounders like a pro with great throws, caught the first three pop flies for outfield (then they gave him REALLY HARD ones in his second try, but he managed to track them down too), and he was one of the better base runners as well. Plus he had a really fun time with his friends, and had a really fun time. Pretty good considering he had not picked up a bat since last year, and we played catch for 10 minutes before the session started.

 We celebrated the first weekend of spring by getting Conor going without Training Wheels on his bike. Take a look.

files/users/mikeo/Conor%20Bike%202.mov

We actually got him a "new" bike courtesy of one of our neighbors that's a bit more BMX like than his current one and turned him loose on it. It took about 3 tries going down the driveway, but he can now go down the driveway and with some helpful pushing to get started make it back up the driveway. We also went all the way out to the Cul-de-Sac, around once and back again with only one stop in the middle. He still has the tendency to want to leap from the bike if things go badly, but we are slowly raising the seat so that he can actually peddle more easily. When he turns now, he is in danger of hitting his knees on the handlbars.

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So funny I can't tell if he's making it up or not

Here's the link.

Well, it's not exactly Telluride, but when you live in the south east Houston area, you take what you can get. It snowed tonight for the first time since Christmas Eve, 2004. And even that is like yesterday, in terms of how often it snows down here.  According to the Weather Research center, it's snowed in Houston 16 times since I was born, and only 4 times since I moved here in 1990.

The best thing about this time is that all the girls are old enough to remember it. They had a great time running around, making snowballs, and catching snow flakes. We even made a small snowman. We felt like major Scrooges, making the girls come in and get ready for bed. I promised the girls we'd save the snowman's head in the freezer. Mike says we should call him Ted Williams. Now I need a very small Red Sox cap.

It's supposed to keep snowing until about 3am. Hope it's still on the ground when we wake up.

 Like before, click on one of the pictures if you want to see some more.

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The Night before Christmas for Moms

It was the night before Christmas, when all thru the abode Only one creature was stirring, and she was cleaning the commode. The children were finally sleeping, all snug in their beds, While visions of Nintendo 64 and Barbie, flipped through their heads. The dad was snoring in front of the TV, With a half-constructed bicycle on his knee. So only the mom heard the reindeer hooves clatter, Which made her sigh, "Now what's the matter?" Read more>>

Updated: with pictures. And click on the picture to the right to check out the rest of the pics.

For the weekend before Thanksgiving, we took off to Garner State Park, out in central Texas. It's about 5-6 hours drive and Cheryl was working Friday, so we left Saturday morning and arrived in plenty of time to set up camp and have a look around. It was pretty overcast and damp enough that it felt like it was going to rain, but we never got anything more than some drizzle on the windshield and no rain once we got there. We brought the bikes on the bike rack, so we took a spin around our section of the park. They have some really nice cabins there. A good option if we try to bring along some of our less out-doorsey friends next time. The first night was a little cold. I think it may have gotten down to the low 40's.We had the girls in 2 layers of PJs and 2 sleeping bags each, complete with hats and socks. Some of those little bodies don't hold heat too well. Cheryl & I stayed up and played cards by the lantern. Sunday, we did some hiking in the morning and drove around the rest of the camp on our way south to Uvalde. The kids & Cheryl got a decent nap on the ride, and we stopped at Wal-Mart to pick up a few things we forgot and headed back to camp. Not much to do in Uvalde.

Sunday night was warmer, but the card-playing was interrupted by a very persistent family of skunks. I guess they either know the end-of-weekend routine,

or sensed a big dropoff in camp activity level and decided the left-over feast was on. The girls were in the tent and we were playing cards at the picnick table and heard something behind us. I shined a flashlight over at the water faucet about 10 feet away and there were 2 skunks digging the the rock basin scrounging for post-dishwashing scraps.

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Been trying to network my Desktop Mac and my T61 Vista machine with no success. The Vista machine can see the Mac, but I can't log in. Finally found out Vista is set to ingnore the security handshake OS X is sending. Not sure if OS X (I'm running 10.4) needs a security update, or if Microsoft is just being finicky, but it sure was a pain trying to get it working.

Here's the fix:

1. Click the Start Orb, type gpedit.msc into the Start Search field, and press Enter

Click the Continue button on the User Account Control prompt.
This will launch the Group Policy Object Editor for the Local Computer Policy.

2. In the Group Policy Object Editor, expand:

-> Computer Configuration

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