Holly, new PowerBook, eBay, Mac mini, William's birthday, taxes, James
sick and then better...
Over a month since the last update...
how time flies.
Holly, the older of Heather's two older sisters,
has been staying with us since January. She came back from Bahrain in order to
work on her and Martin's income taxes and also to hang out with us. William
especially has enjoyed having her around, and she has been babysitting the boys
when Heather has been traveling, which has been pretty often this year. That
is, when the boys are home, Holly looks after one while I, say, bathe the other
in the evenings or try to put one of them to
bed.
Unfortunately, her tax forms were
completed this weekend (including a hefty tax because US income taxes aren't
withheld while working overseas, apparently), and she left for Bahrain this
morning. She treated us out to dinner last night, and I think I'm absorbing all
her international phone calls to
Bahrain.
-----
Discovered
a stuck pixel on the 23" Cinema Display a few weeks ago. Very hard to see, but
I'm still disappointed that it's
there.
-----
Given
that IDL so far hasn't been announced as a universal binary, or been announced
as Rosetta compatible, and given my resistance to and disappointment in the
Intel transition on Macs, I went ahead and put my money where my mouth is -- I
bought a new 12" PowerBook G4 1.5 GHz on 2/27/06, and I immediately transferred
my work over. I'm typing on it now. It's very nice and noticeably faster than
my old PowerBook, so I'm very happy with the purchase. It should last me at
least three years, through the Applecare plan I also bought for it. I had some
problem registering for Applecare, since it was an old-stock item at the campus
bookstore, but I think it went through. That is, as of today, the registration
still hadn't gone through, but I called last week and was told that it would be
fixed sometime this week.
Eventually,
I'll let Heather have my old PowerBook, which is essentially identical to her
current one, except that William threw up on her current one long ago and the
keys still stick. I'll eventually clean out her keyboard more thoroughly and
sell it on eBay.
Speaking of eBay, I
went to an iSold-It near our home and got them to sell my old PowerMac G4 (dual
867 MHz, original packaging, etc.), my old 17" Studio Display, and my old Apple
DVI-ADC adapter. I've never sold anything on eBay myself, and I didn't want the
hassle of setting up the listing and shipping the items. All three sold at the
high end of their price range, and after subtracting the iSold-it commission and
eBay fees, I got a reasonably good pay-off.
-----
I
also finally set up the Mac mini to work with our home theater system. The Mac
mini video and sound now go through the Harman Kardon amplifier, through the
video 3 inputs. I also bought Apple's Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, so we can
control the mini from the couch. I copied over my iTunes and iPhoto libraries.
It's nice to look at pictures on the TV or listen to music on the stereo. In
theory, it's nice to surf the web from the couch, too, but the TV has such
crappy resolution that text is hard to read. This is pretty good incentive to
get a nice LCD HDTV with either HDMI or DVI
input.
-----
Speaking
of eBay again, I bought William Mars Pathfinder and Return to Mars Action Pack
Hot Wheels sets on eBay, for his birthday. Those are collectibles, and I think
he likes them.
William's birthday on
3/3 included cake at his daycare center, shared with his classmates, followed by
presents at home. I also bought him a couple of Buzz Lightyear action playsets
from Amazon.com, a couple of Lego Star Wars models, three spaceship models
(Saturn V, Lunar Lander and Command Module, and Space Shuttle), a cash register
(which he actually asked for), and a couple of Incredibles squeeze lights. Dan
sent him a bunch of Hot Wheels cars and a Hot Wheels play set (a week late --
he's been studying for the GMAT in prep for possibly getting an MBA). Holly and
grandma got him some activity books and some
clothes.
The house is crammed with
toys, many of which we'd like to donate to an upcoming rummage sale for the
boys'
daycare.
-----
Speaking
of daycare, I've been sitting on tuition rate calculations for next year, not to
mention budget calculations. There's a board meeting this week, at which I
intend to get some final tuitions proposed for next year. I had to set aside
those calculations because I've been working on family finances and income
taxes. I finally got through the income taxes on Turbotax yesterday. I had
originally intended to use our old tax accountant in Chicago and just do
Turbotax as practice for possibly doing our taxes myself next year. I hadn't
used Turbotax (or Macintax) in years, and our forms are complicated, especially
with some stock sales and Heather going on maternity leave last year.
Unfortunately (or fortunately), I've already done so much leg work on getting
stuff into Turbotax, and it's so late in the tax season, that I'm considering
just filing the taxes straight from the Turbotax work I've already done.
Besides, our old accountant uses Turbotax anyway (the professional version, I
assume), and I'd have to send him all the numbers myself regardless. I'll
review the forms later this week, I think, but it looks like we owe ~$1500 to CA
and will get ~$2600 back from the
IRS.
-----
On
the evening of Wednesday 3/1/06, James started throwing up. Unfortunately,
Heather had to leave for a business trip (of which there have been rather a lot,
recently), and I ended up staying home to take care of James the next day (after
dropping off William at daycare). I had assumed that James just had some sort
of minor stomach upset, but by evening, he started developing a mild fever. He
didn't throw up any more, but just to be safe, I put him on pedialyte instead of
formula. He ended up having diarrhea, so the pedialyte was definitely the smart
move. Heather came back Thursday night, after I had put the boys to bed, and
she stayed home the next day to look after James, apart from bringing cake to
William's birthday party that
Friday.
It was obvious that James had
developed a stomach flu, and Heather, Holly, and grandma all ended up getting
it, too. Maybe it was my good sanitation practice, or maybe we got partial
protection from our flu shots (influenza, though, doesn't cause stomach flu),
but William and I were mostly unaffected. (I had a little diarrhea, but not so
bad as to keep me in bed.) We had a doctor's visit for James along with
William's 4-year health check-up with the pediatrician on 3/6, and James had to
be tested for rotavirus -- a very common cause of stomach flu in children (and a
virus which has one or two surface proteins in common with influenza, according
to a rotavirus web site presentation I found -- so maybe the flu shot helped
after all).
Anyway, James recovered
last week, and he's been back in daycare. Given all the time at home, it's been
a little hard bringing him back, but I think he'll adjust
eventually.
Also, James should be ready
to walk, any day now. He stands fine, as long as he has something to hold onto,
and he's tentatively starting to stand on his own.
Posted: Mon - March 13, 2006 at 01:49 PM