Sorry for the interruption but I was out of town for most of the holiday (we left the 26th for Chicago, but thats a whole post on its own!). I did however, want to brag about some of the Christmas Gifts that blessed our house this season though.

Amy’s big gift this year is to have the Master Bath and Bedroom repainted. When we bought the house from her parents, we inherited the DEEP red color of the bath and bed room. Its a dark red (think maroon) that is hard to match colors with. Now we’re going for a lighter, beachier look and are painting them Beachnut (its a lowes color). The master bath is done (Amy found some Votive candle holders at a store in Nashville), next on to the bedroom!

Grace had a very Hannah Montanna Christmas. She got a Hannah Montanna Guitar Game (like Guitar Hero) that plugs in to the tv, a Hannah Costume, and doll. Its pretty cool and she likes pretending to be a rockstar. Maybe someday. I like playing her game (since I haven’t bought Guitar HEro World Tour yet) and she’s getting better at it.

Mose got a Trampoline. One of her favorite things to do is jump. We’d wake on Saturday mornings to the heavy thud of emma jumping up and down in our door way. Now she can do it all she wants and it doesn’t make the house shake. Its pretty cool and Grace and Emma take turns on it. Amy wanted to try it out, but its for people under 80 pounds (and neither of us meet that requirement!

The girls also got some tinkertoys, and some other little odds and ends that they like to play with, but the coolest by far is my Ultimate Wall-E Robot.

We saw the movie in the theaters and we’re big fans (mose loves him). We had seen the Ultimate Wall-e at the Disney Store but we weren’t going to get him because of the price tag. Needless to say, Santa found him on Sale and he was wrapped and under the tree for me on Christmas morning. He has fun dancing, chasing the dogs around and just exploring on his own. If you haven’t seen one yet, I’ll work on some video and see if I can get anything posted. Its pretty cool though and the way he can respond to voice commands or find his own way around the room is fairly smooth.

Was there one gift that you prized more than the others??

A couple of weeks ago, there was a viral video going around showing dads doing what dads do best. Taking ordinary fatherly tasks (changing diaper, feeding babies, etc.) and proving that we are indeed the weaker sex. Well, I have a solution for that, iDaddy. Following in the well vacuumed foot (roller?) steps of the iRobot Roomba Vacuum cleaner comes iDaddy, the revolutionary new way to rear your children. Or at least the little rugrats that claim to be yours.

Imagine a world where stinky diapers were handled in a vacuumed sealed dome, the mess neatly contained and any misguided roman fountains avoided. The dome (which can form a seal tight enough to keep out the most foul stench) is a clear plastic large enough to fit a two year old in for diaper changing. Once the youngster is placed on the changing pad, robotic arms do their thing as your child is pampered in either cloth or disposable diapers. Cleaned and ready to go another round.

iDaddy also comes equipped with rocking and burping arms and a special feeding adapter (separate arm with rubber nipple for feeding) can be attached to a self heating storage unit for formula (with a special adapter for powdered formula provided). The rocking arms have a built in iPod adapter so your young one will not need to go with out his or her favorite tunes. For those fathers who like to play a part in the youngster’s formative years, a special vent can be added to the dome to allow through a small amount of diaper odor (though if you’re anything like most father’s you’ll opt not to add the vent).

Will iDaddy only last through the diaper phase? Of course not. iDaddy can be recommissioned to play toss with your son or attend tea parties with your daughter and when your offspring reach the teen years it comes preprogrammed with phrases like “No, you may not borrow the car tonight”, “What happened to the last 20 dollars I gave you?” and the ever popular “YOU ARE NOT LEAVING THE HOUSE DRESSED LIKE THAT YOUNG LADY!”. iDaddy can also be used as a personal ATM for limiting your child’s access to their inheritance.

iDaddy. Make your life simpler today! - Available at Linen N Things, Bed Bath and Beyond and Spencer’s Gifts.

This post is part of the payperpost blog battle royale

Compiz-Fusion hits us with its first official release and its been worth the wait…

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Linuxtracker.org is pleased to announce the availability of Phantomix 4.0.2 on the linuxtracker bittorrent network. For faster downloads, more accurate statistics and to see all of the available torrents, please visit http://linuxtracker.org. Phantomix is a Live CD for anonymous surfing, chatting and other internet based applications.

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As I said in the last post we stayed at the Queen Anne Bed and Breakfast which (besides being Denver’s oldest Urban B&B) has been rated in the top ten of Colorado B&B’s several times. This was our second stay at a B&B and while I’m still not entirely comfortable with the whole B&B scene (its like staying at a distant relative’s house who you don’t know very well) this was a much better stay.

We woke up Monday and with some time to kill before we had to be at the airport, we had breakfast at the B&B (fruit topped waffles) and headed towards the 16th street mall to do some last minute shopping. We caught the “Light rail” and took it four blocks to the mall and then walked around for a couple of hours. The city of Denver (at least in some of the historical districts) have buildings dating back to the late 1900’s which were pretty cool to look at. There’s also a sidewalk that has sound piped under it through some of the vents. Amy was a little disappointed with the noise as she though it would be cooler than a train (I thought it was cool).

We visited the Rocky Mountain Candy Factory and Overland Sheep Company where, after 15 years, Amy made me buy a new wallet. I’ll admit, the one that I have had since my freshman year in High School has probably seen better days, and the new wallet is pretty nice. We caught the FREE (as in beer) mall ride down a couple of blocks to the Hard Rock Cafe (no, we didn’t eat there) popped in to a couple of other stores and then headed back towards the inn to get our bags and rental car so we could be at the airport in time.

People complain about security at Hartsfield-Jackson here in Atlanta, but the line at Denver International was much worse. They must have had a mile of stanchions and roping that we had to wind our way through before we got to the place where we could stand in line to go through the xray and metal detectors (not to mention the fact that we had to take off our shoes again… whats with that?). Once through security, the rest of the trip was rather normal, until we touched ground in Atlanta. We landed 10 minutes early however, a problem with a plane at the gate we were supposed to be at forced us to wait 20 or 30 minutes until they could find us an open gate to go to. Who knew that Atlanta was so busy at eight pm on a Monday?

Oh, Sunflower Sunflower is doing just fine in his bottle on our counter in Atlanta.

Dude, this rocks. Not only do they have Free Ringtones, but its a great way to get images, video, sounds and more to and from your cell phone. FOR FREE!! (whats better than free??) Cellfish is a free service that allows you to upload photos/video directly to your “locker” from your cell phone. You can share it with friends or not. It even allows your friends to pull it down to their cell phones as well with just a few simple clicks!

Not to mention, downloading content is easy and cool too. On the site, once I found a video I wanted, I clicked send to my phone. On the crackberry I logged in to my locker, selected the video and downloaded the 3gp version right to the memory on my phone. Now I can see how to fold shirts where ever I am. AWESOME. It even handles streaming video to the phone (not for the faint of data connection). I will say, static media (photos) worked better on my crackberry, but that may be due to the restriction that cingular (at&t) puts on data size.

I did have a little difficulty uploading from my phone, but I think it was because of how I was trying to send my photo. Instead of just username@cellfish.com I needed to use the special coded email addy. Once I used that one it worked like a charm. See:

Now, use the send to phone feature to send the photo of Darth Vader to your cell phone!

The cool thing is that in addition to uploading via your phone you can also upload via the web from your desktop (and you can link to other online media!). Not too many sites have features like this. The basic service is free, you can purchase tokens which will allow you to download non-free videos and ringtones and probably images too, however, if you need something to store images from your cell phone that will allow you to upload and blog, cellfish is the way to go.

Linuxtracker.org is pleased to announce the availability of BLAG 50000 (x86) VMware Image on the linuxtracker bittorrent network. For faster downloads, more accurate statistics and to see all of the available torrents, please visit http://linuxtracker.org.

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