Secret Life of the McEachern Family

Pictures of You, Pictures of Me

2009-04-19T22:32:00.003-05:00

Well there might no be pictures of you up here and I think there's only one or two that I actually show up in but that's beside the point. It's been a while since I've actually posted anything on the web site and tonight I sat down and put together three updates. Count em, three. Never mind that I'm actually about to go blind after staring at this screen for the last three hours, it's what I do to keep you happy.

First up are more pictures of Caroline. I've been told a number of times that people have been asking for more pictures so here you go. There's some really good ones in this set now that she's more alert and making some expressive faces. (That or she's got gas.)

Second, I've pulled together a couple of pictures from Easter. We took the boys to Andrew's school where they were doing a community Easter Egg hunt and to be honest I think they had more people show up then they anticipated. There were about a zillion kids running around, the lines for the activities where huge, and at one point the sheer number of kids overwhelmed the volunteers as they just started to Easter Egg hunt before they were ready.

And lastly, hot off the digital camera memory stick are pictures from Alex's birthday party which we did this weekend. Last week we did a small family gathering and this weekend was the official broomball party at the ice rink with his friends.

Adventure Guides Spring Campout

2009-04-09T21:03:00.001-05:00

Last weekend was Adventure Guides campout weekend for Alex and I. Just like the fall campout we were in the southern part of Oklahoma, but instead of the freezing weather we had last time this time it was quite nice. We even got to wear shorts on Saturday.

I took a bunch of pictures and put them up in a fancy schmancy flash based photo album which made it much easier to pull together. The only drawback was that I didn't take the time to put comments on all the pictures so you'll have to make up your own commentary.

Pictures are here: http://www.mceachernfamily.com/comanchecubs/2009springcampout/index.html

Happy St. Patricks Day.

2009-03-17T07:00:00.002-05:00

Happy ~~Guinness~~ St. Patrick's Day! A pot at the end of the rainbow for you courtesy of Andrew.

Pictures from Stars Game

2009-03-15T09:21:00.002-05:00

Couple of pictures from the Stars Game that Alex, Andrew, and I went to last night. We all looked very sporty wearing our hockey jerseys. Stars ended up winning 3-2 in overtime which was pretty exciting though Andrew was more intested in seeing the Zamboni and Ice Girls.

Adobe Flash and Acrobat Upgrades

2009-03-14T10:33:00.003-05:00

A couple of months back I installed Google Analytics on the web site as an experiment. Analytics collects various information about who visits the site, what browser you use, what pages you visit, if you got here via a search engine what search terms got you here, and other interesting stuff. I'm an information junkie and love sifting through this type of information.

One of the things it reports is the version of Adobe's Flash Player installed. Since I work with computers and try and keep with the latest goings on in the security front I feel I need to tell you it's time to update your flash player.

Why does it matter you might wonder? Virus writers and purveyors of spyware exploit vulnerabilities in software that lots of people use. Things like Flash Player, Acrobat Reader, Internet Explorer, Windows, etc. A couple of weeks back Adobe released an update to Flash to address a vulnerability Players 10.0.12.36 and earlier which can allow attackers to take complete control of the affected machine.

Based on my Google Analytics results 93% of users visiting here in the last two weeks are running outdated flash versions. Nine different versions in fact.

How can you figure out what version of flash your running? Go to Adobe's web site at the following link:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/about/

and it will show you the version you have installed. Here's a screen shot:

If the version you have installed doesn't match the version you should be running then upgrade from the following link:
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

The installation should be pretty straight forward. I use Firefox and my install was to download the install program, close my browser and run the installation. Once you have upgraded go back to the about web site and verify that your installed version has been upgraded.

This is also where I warn you never to install flash from any web site other then Adobe. If you surf your way onto a site that tells you your running an old version of flash don't believe them, check with the official Adobe site and verify. A very popular phishing technique is to tell you your running an old version and provide you with a convenient download to upgrade but it's actually just spyware. Any reputable site will direct you to Adobe's site to get the correct version if you really are running and outdated version.

Once you've upgraded flash go ahead and upgrade Adobe's Acrobat reader if you use it for reading pdf files. On Wednesday they released version 9.1 which fixes a number of critical vulnerabilities . You can get that here:
http://get.adobe.com/reader/

Couple of Pictures

2009-03-13T22:01:00.002-05:00

Just a couple of pictures of Caroline. The one on the left is of her sleeping on the couch during the afternoon wearing her fancy designer bably outfit. On the right is a decidely less fancy outfit with the mult-coloured, multi-pom-pomed toque. Just the perfect picture she's going to love when she gets older.

We are so going to need Speech Therapy

2009-03-07T18:53:00.002-06:00

I was helping Andrew get his shoes on this morning and we were having this conversation.

"Which foot does this shoe go on?" I asked him.

"This one here, the right one."

"Well actually, this foot over here is your right one, that's your left one."

"Oh, this is my weft one."

"Left, LLLLLL, Left. Try saying it again."

"Weft"

"No, no. Left, LLL sound."

"Oh, I know like WuWuWuWu Wion."

Home at Last

2009-03-03T18:48:00.002-06:00

We are finally home from the hospital and I would love to report that it has all been very smooth and wonderful but unfortunately it's been anything but. A couple of minutes after being home Andrew threw up in the front room and since then the stomach virus has been making its round through the family. So far Jen has had it the worst which landed us back in hospital last night for a couple hours while they loaded her up on IV fluids and anti-nausea medication. I've manged to keep everything down but my stomach has been churning and by a small miracle Caroline and Alex have not yet showed any signs of being sick. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping it stays that way.

I took this picture of Caroline just before we left the hospital. This is the manditory "babies first picture in a car seat" photo. We have a similar pictures of both Alex and Andrew so why break with tradition. (I couldn't find Alex's but Andrew's is on this page.)

Day Four at the Hospital

2009-02-28T20:17:00.000-06:00

We're wrapping up day four at the hospital and we are both really ready to head home. Sleeping last night went from being just a little bit of a nuisance to an all out painful exercise. I woke up a couple of times during the night in pain, it was actually being in pain that woke me up. I must have been sleeping in a different position or something but it felt like this fold up chair was trying to swallow me.

Our routine hasn't changed much in the last couple of days. Feedings every couple of hours during the night, Jen orders breakfast in the morning when she wakes up which I usually skip, more feedings, and couple of doctor visits thrown in for good measure. Around lunch I'll head out to find something near by, more feedings, and then the coveted nap during serenity time from 2:00 to 4:00. As excited as I am about getting to leave here I'm really going to miss getting that afternoon nap. In the evening I usually head out to find dinner and then we spend the evening watching TV before one last feeding and thenback to sleep.

There isn't much to do while hanging out at the hospital so we spend a good amount of time watching TV/channel surfing. I've come to the conclusion that daytime TV is absolutely the worst, there isn't anything decent on worth watching. But the most difficult part of watching TV is actually hearing it since that there is only one small speaker in the nurse call button/light switch/integrated TV remote thingy.

Day Three at the Hospital

2009-02-27T22:14:00.002-06:00

We are winding down day number three at the hospital. Alex and Andrew came up here again tonight and I took them out for dinner so Pat could have a little bit of a break and gave me a chance to hang out with them. They were pretty excited to see Caroline again. She was a little more awake this time and Andrew was very excited that he got to touch her.

Last night wasn't bad either. We only had two feeding sessions during the night and we managed to get some sleep. When I woke up this morning I actually felt pretty good and thought, "hey, this isn't too bad. I can handle this." when I realized it was just after 8:30 in the morning. Once we leave the hospital I'm going to have to have to the boys off to school and be at work before 8:30 so things are going to change.

Our nurse last night was the best we've had but when she first came in I was totally freaked out because she sounded exactly like Kathy Bates character Annie Wilkes from Misery. She was telling us something and all I could think about was her leaning of James Caan holding the big hammer getting ready to crush his ankles. Like I said, we made it through the night ok, ankles in one piece.

Caroline Grace

2009-02-26T13:58:00.003-06:00

I've received about a zillion requests for pictures of Caroline Grace so I've managed to get some time during the day to get them off the camera and upload them to the website.

The pictures from the ER were taken by the Larry the anesthesiologist. The nurse let us know before hand that Larry liked to commandeer the camera and take pictures so I would have to worry about. Thankfully he was able to keep with his anesthesiologist duties and take pictures at the same time. The first time Larry came in to work on Jen he looked at her and said, "your a swimmer". After 15 years of working on peoples backs he's apparently acquired the skill of back type interpretation.

The whole procedure seemed to take a lot longer then I remember it taking with Andrew. Once they had Caroline out they took her over to the baby table, cleaned her up, examined her, then they let us hang out for a while with Jen before we went off to the nursery.

Later in the day Pat brought Alex and Andrew up to the hospital to see their new sister and I think they were both very excited. Andrew was intrigued by the fact that she was now out of Jen's tummy and he was very excited that she would now be able to go running again. Now we just have to convince him it's going to be a while before that can happen.

Enjoy the pictures.

God's House

2009-02-18T21:31:00.003-06:00

When I was dropping off Andrew at school this morning we pulled into the parking lot and drove past the chapel when he said,

"That's God's house." pause, pause, pause, "It has lots of chairs in it."

Fruit Loops, Fruitie Loops.

2009-02-15T08:23:00.002-06:00

Alex was getting his and Andrew's breakfast cereal this morning, two bowls of Fruit Loops, and Andrew was walking around the kitchen singing,

"Fruit Loops, Fruitie Loops, I'm eating Fruitie Loops."

Alex was having some problems pouring the cereal so I helped him finish it out, get them both some Orange Juice, and get it to the table. I went back to the fridge, got the milk out and came back to the table to find out who wanted milk in their cereal. (More often then not Alex doesn't take milk in his cereal and Andrew has started picking up the habit.) Andrew took one bit of his Fruit Loops and yelled and made a big production out of,

"I didn't want this, I wanted Life cereal."

Derby Car Pictures

2009-02-08T12:15:00.001-06:00

I've been kind of slow in getting around to posting pictures to the web site.� This morning I pulled together the pictures from the Adventure Guides Derby Day Race back in January.

Bob Zimmer

2009-02-01T14:19:00.000-06:00

Andrew came in the other day all dressed up and announced,

"I'm Bob Zimmer and I'm here to work!"

Apparently he has some alter ego we don't know about.

Snow Day

2009-01-28T09:05:00.001-06:00

I guess it would be more correct to say that it's more of an Ice Day then a Snow Day.� Yesterday it rained/drizzled most of the afternoon and into the night and then the temperatures dropped below freezing so everything is covered in ice now.� When I woke up this morning the temperature was 24� F (-4� C) and the schools were closed for the day.� I think the boys are really upset they can't go this morning.� I haven't been able to go to work yet since the car door is frozen shut.

Alex Looses Another Tooth

2009-01-21T08:35:00.001-06:00

Alex lost his second front tooth and he's now sporting the two missing front teeth look.� It was only a couple of days ago that it started getting loose and when he woke up this morning he was playing with it in bed and it fell out.

Rough Night with Wonder Pets from the Twlight Zone

2009-01-19T21:28:00.002-06:00

It was a rough night last night. Alex had a friend over and they were playing board games in the front room and I was keeping Andrew occupied and we sitting at the kitchen table with my computer looking at on line videos from Nick Jr. and the Disney.

We watched a full episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse but before that we watched a number of shorter videos on the "Wonder Pets". Andrew's a fan of the Wonder Pets and with the right amound of coaxing will even sing the theme song. For those not familiar with the show there are three classroom pets Linny the guinea pig, Turtle Tuck, and Ming-Ming the duckling who travel around on a makeshift toy sailboat and help out other baby animals that have gotten thenself in trouble.

In just about every video they played some portion of the theme song,

"Wonder Pets! Wonder Pets! We're on our way
To help a baby elephant (or whatever bably animal they are saving that day) and save the day!"

"We're not too big."

"And we're not too tough."

"But when we all work together we've got the right stuff!
Go, Wonder Pets! Yay!"

It all seemed very innocent until it turned out the that I had the theme song going through my head over and over all night long. I woke up at least a half a dozen times from a restless sleep and all I could remember dreaming about was the song with Linny, Tuck, and Ming-Ming, flying through the air in the flyboat. I couldn't get that dream out of my head all night and work up feeling tired and just a little freaked out this morning.

Here's to hoping Linny leaves me alone tonight so I can get a decent sleep.

Joke of the Day

2009-01-07T08:44:00.001-06:00

A pirate walks into a bar wearing a paper towel on his head. He sits down at the bar and orders some dirty rum. The bartender asks, "Why are you wearing a paper towel?"

"Arrr..." says the pirate. "I've got a bounty on me head!"

2008 Year in Numbers

2009-01-05T20:27:00.002-06:00

Some useless numbers and statistics to sum up 2008.

mfdc in numbers
It was a record year for web site traffic this year with 79,870 hits from 1,803 unique visitors. In the overall scheme of web site volume 79,000 visitors isn't all that many but the target audience for this site is meant to be small and this still works out to 218 hits a day which is fine. When I include all the auto crawlers from seach engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc, we had a total of 108,858 hits.

By month the trend looks like this:

I would have assumed that the huge tickup in traffic in November would have come around the time I posted the Disney vacation pictures but after looking at the traffic that wasn't the case. Someone from France (see below) pretty much went through the entire site in about 10 minutes so it was probably some type of automated collector even though the browser type doesn't indicate that's what it was.

Top visitors to the site came from addresses ending in .net, followed by a chunk of unknown, then .com. The next three largest groups came from France (1,961 - 857 being the suspected automated web site crawler from above), Poland (827), and Mexico (772). You Canadian visitors came in 7th with 744 hits.

Excluding the home page, blog home page and rss feeds the most popular page was the January trip to Great Wolf Lodge, Christmas pictures from 2007, and Alex's Matisse.

The top browsers used to visit the site were Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari (mainly mac users), and Opera. There were 23 hits from a Lynx user which surprises me since Lynx is a text based and out site is pretty much graphics driven. (Then again it was only 23 hits, only for the home page, but it spanned from January to September so whoever it was kept coming back.)

Blog Posts
Compared to previous years I managed to get out a couple more blog posts then years past with 70 items. That accounts for 24% of all posts and I've been posting on or off since July of 2004. It's hard to beleive that it's been that it's been that long which got me thinking how long I've had this site up. Looking at the WHOIS record I've owned mfdc since October of 2001. Holy cow, 2001. I remember I got the site while Jen was pregant with Alex as a good way to share pictures with the family. (And now she's pregant again....cue twilight zone music.)

Swim Numbers
Ever since I was in high school I've more or less kept track of all my workouts. It's a habit one of my old coaches got me into and it's been impossible to break. It doesn't feel like a complete workout until I've written it down and recorded the yardage.

This year I swam 290,600 yards which works out to about 165 miles (265 km). February and March were really down months since I took them off due to surgery so I'm relatively pleased with how far I went. The thing that's aways a little surprising to me is that it was only 165 miles for the whole year since it sure feels like way longer while I'm in the pool. On a map 165 miles doesn't look all that impressive and depending on which way I go from our house it doesn't even get me out of the state.

So instead of ploting how far I've gone horizontally how about looking at it vertically. According to Google Earth this is what the view of our house would look like from 165 miles up. More impressive if you ask me.

Netflix
According to Netflix we rented 61 movies last year and I wactched 1 online using the "Watch Now" feature. That works out to more movies then remember watching in previous years and now that I know how many it is I feel like I'm getting my money's worth even if I'm not one of those 260+ movies a year type person.

There you go, the 2008 ocd numbers summary.

Christmas 2008 Pictures Posted

2009-01-01T09:56:00.001-06:00

Hope that everyone had a good Christmas and Happy New Year to all.� We didn't actually manage to stay up until midnight to usher in the New Year but I'm pretty sure I'm feeling better this morning for not doing so.

I updated the web site with pictures from Christmas to finish out 2008.� Enjoy.

1977 From Germany

2008-12-14T09:16:00.001-06:00

When I posted the first postcard on mfdc back in September I went through my collection to find the oldest one I had to start the series. So a couple of weeks ago I was checking out picasa photo software since I need to find something better for cataloging all my pictures that runs reasonably well on my old clunker of a computer. After picasa had finished indexing the collection I was checking out how everything was organised and I came across a folder called "Derek's Album" which I had largly forgotten about. A couple of years ago I spent some time scanning pictures from my photo album when I was a kid.

As I was looking through the pictures I come across three post cards that my mom put in the section for the trip I took to Germany with Omi and Opa in 1977. The first one is of a Lufthansa DC10 which I'm going to assume was the plane I probably flew on to get there. I have some vague memories of the trip and on the flight I remember they showed an in flight movie but I was so short I couldn't see over the seat in front of me and and they kept trying to prop me up on blankets. I can't remember what the movie was about but it was in German (go figure) and part of it took place in a midevil castle.

Omi writes,

"We are in Herrenberg, it is snowing, and today is Derek's birthday. Derek is fine. The first night he slept 15 hours."

The card is cut around the edges so that it would fit into the spot in the album so it's hard to follow what's written. Apparently the plane was very full because British Airways was on strike during that time.

This is the first postcard of three so I figured I would start with the beginning of the trip but it turns out that this 1977 card isn't the oldest one of the three. When I pulled them out to read the back one of them is dated 1975. It's a picture of Herrenberg which is a place I visited but was sent by Omi and Opa when they were on a previous trip to Germany.

Spaghetti With Santa

2008-12-13T07:43:00.002-06:00

Last night Andrew's school they had a spaghetti with Santa and silent auction fundraiser. It's almost become a tradition for us since we have been going to it since Alex first started attending the school. But, last night the the first night that any of the kids actually went to go and visit with Santa and get their picture taken.

Alex still won't have anything to do with it so we don't force it but Andrew was really excited and wanted to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas.

Just how old are you?

2008-12-09T19:32:00.001-06:00

Alex brought home a school assignment today were they have to do a Service Project.� It lists items like

Donate snacks to a charity
Donate food to a pet shelter or to the food pantry
Sing songs for a nursing home
Bake cookies for the crossing guard

and so one.

Alex is reading it over and he gets to one item "Read a book to an elderly person."� and he says,

"Hey, I know what I can do for this one, I can read to you mom."

Thanksgiving in New Orleans

2008-12-07T20:30:00.001-06:00

For the first time in a couple years we travelled to New Orelans for the Thanksgiving holiday. We started the Thanksgiving festivities by running in the 101st Annual Turkey Run put on by the New Orelans Track Club. Alex and I ran the 1 mile fun run while Amanda and Ben ran in the full on 5 mile event. I'm sure I wouldn't have run in it at all but Alex really wanted to run and he wasn't going to do it by himself so I ran with him. We ran a 10:07 which I think is a pretty respectable time for a six year old. It was also the first time I've run in the past year and I have to say my legs were a bit sore the next day, especially going up and down stairs. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing on the couch watching football and eating a fantasic turkey meal.

The following day we took part in a New Orleans tradition and went to the Fair Grounds to do a little wagering on the horses. We didn't end up winning any money but let me tell you, we were this close. That night we finished up by going to the opening night of Celebration in the Oaks at City Park. We rode on some rides, we walked through the light displays, and took a night time train ride around the park.

I've posted a couple pages of pictures from the weekend which you can find here.

And, since I haven't had time to sit down and sift through the post card collection I figured I would add this one of the St. Charles street car which we picked up last year to send but never got around to it. I think my collection of "purchased with the intent to send" postcards is as large as the ones that I've received. This one even has the stamp on the back so this one got reasonably far in the process.

What's happened in the past couple of years is that we let Alex and Andrew pick out a couple cards with the intent that we'll sit down and write them to grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and we usually get one out the door and consider it a success. The rest end up in the lonely pile of forgotten postcards.