2010 News http://www.tandj.net/%7Esimkintr daily 1 2009-09-28T02:08:57Z Eddie and Singing Frankenstein http://www.tandj.net/%7Esimkintr/news/2010/eddie-frankenstein Eddie talks to Frankenstein, kicks him, and rolls over. With cameos by Wyatt and Pepper. Kristen shot this great video of Eddie playing with the singing Frankenstein. He's really starting to roll over now, and he's tolerating "tummy time" better now that he's getting there himself!

 

]]> No publisher Tim Simkins 2010-11-05T12:38:53Z News Item Happy Eddie! http://www.tandj.net/%7Esimkintr/news/2010/happy-eddie Eddie's a happy baby on his changing table. He likes talking to Mom and Dad. ]]> No publisher Tim Simkins 2010-10-07T01:39:36Z News Item Videos of Wyatt and Pepper with Eddie http://www.tandj.net/%7Esimkintr/news/2010/videos-of-wyatt-and-pepper-with-eddie The dogs love Eddie! These are some videos we shot with our Flip Video camera of them interacting with him. Pepper and Eddie

Pepper's very curious, but doesn't know what to make of Eddie's squeaking.

 

Wyatt watching Eddie's diaper change

Wyatt is showing lots of the doggy anxiety signs while watching HIS baby getting changed.

]]> No publisher Tim Simkins 2010-09-16T23:32:50Z News Item Dad reading to Eddie http://www.tandj.net/%7Esimkintr/news/2010/0624-ers-reading We were reading "Mickey and the Beanstalk", and it seemed to be a hit. Although he pooped himself and fell asleep halfway through. ]]> No publisher Tim Simkins 2010-06-24T13:47:46Z News Item Edward's Film Debut http://www.tandj.net/%7Esimkintr/news/2010/0621-edward-ridge Edward's awake and ready to eat! I tried to talk Kristen into "dinner and a show", but she's not that much of an exhibitionist. Edward and mommy are doing really well, and are planning on coming home tomorrow. ]]> No publisher Tim Simkins 2010-06-21T22:14:19Z News Item Edward Ridge Simkins http://www.tandj.net/%7Esimkintr/news/2010/0620-edward-ridge Born 10:46pm 6/20/2010. 6 pounds, 7oz. 20 inches. Pictures on Flickr:

Edward Ridge Simkins

 

Kristen's water broke at 6am on 6/20, and we got to the hospital around 8:00am. Labor went slow at first, but some walking around got things going. Contractions were steady, but nothing was really happening, so Kristen got some Pitocin to help speed things along around 8pm, and things started happening faster. Kristen was cursing me until around 9:40pm, when she was completely dilated, and could start pushing.  She popped him out at 10:46pm after an hour of pushing.

I'm really proud of Kristen, since she made it through the whole thing without any pain medication or epidurals. She's still not sure if she's happy about that, but we'll see.

More pictures to follow, but we have to go do baby stuff now. Edward is as stretchy now that he's on the outside as he was on the inside!

]]> No publisher Tim Simkins 2010-06-21T04:45:00Z News Item Snakes In The Yard http://www.tandj.net/%7Esimkintr/news/2010/snakes-in-the-yard Kristen and I were planting some forsythia in the yard, and we kept seeing different snakes on and around the rocks.

 

We think the two spotted snakes were corn snakes, and the striped ones were garter snakes. Overall, we probably saw at least eight snakes sunning themselves on our rocks. It wasn't particularly sunny today, but they were catching some rays anyway!

This was the first video from our Flip Video camera that I played with in iMovie.

]]> No publisher Tim Simkins 2010-05-24T00:05:00Z News Item Corbin Jay Poirier http://www.tandj.net/%7Esimkintr/news/2010/corbin-jay-poirier Justin and Marie's new addition! Corbin Jay Poirier was born on April 1, 2010 (no April Fools here!) Within 24 hours, the little fella had a web site up and running.  He's a quick learner!

With any luck, Edward or Zofia will have one ready to go beforehand, and we'll just wait to register a domain until we figure out if it's a boy or girl.

Visit Corbin Poirier's site and check out the cute baby pictures!

]]> No publisher Tim Simkins 2010-04-19T00:06:23Z News Item .357 Magnum: Good for cropping photos? http://www.tandj.net/%7Esimkintr/news/2010/357-pictures Target shooting this afternoon had an unusual outcome! After getting all the yard work done today, I figured I would put a few rounds through the Ruger GP-100 .357.  Initially I was shooting at some expired picnic relish squeeze bottles, but after a few shots, they're kind of unusable. I hit one just right, though, and splattered relish all over the side of the hill.

I moved on to shooting at a hard-bound high school "Who's Who" from 1992 that my wife was throwing out.  When I finished with that, I went to check and see how the 158 grain semi-jacked hollow points worked on a book. To my surprise, I found a handful of locket-sized portraits that the hollow points had neatly carved out into ovals slightly larger than a dime (0.705 inches.)

So, in addition to expanding to twice the original diameter, these bullets worked very well for cropping pictures! I was pretty impressed.

]]> No publisher Tim Simkins 2010-04-11T22:57:06Z News Item 26 Week Sonogram http://www.tandj.net/%7Esimkintr/news/2010/sonogram-26-week So far so good! Nothing major to report from our sonogram today.  All the parts and pieces checked out normally!

]]> No publisher Tim Simkins 2010-03-31T01:56:11Z News Item Baby's Room http://www.tandj.net/%7Esimkintr/news/2010/baby-room Update on the baby's room Last weekend Kristen's sister Kelly and our niece Nikki came up to help us paint the baby's room.  Previously, we'd had a poorly painted bright colored squares motif. Since we're not finding out if it's a boy or girl, we elected to go with a gender-neutral jungle theme.

Kristen had primed previously to the guest painters arriving, and they did the yellow and blue paint over the weekend. This weekend we put up the border, and it looks really sharp!  The picture is a little bright, since I had the 'Vivid' setting on the camera, but you get the idea.

Today we cut and primed the trim for the chalk board.  That's going to be the same dark red as the kitchen.  We might as well use up the excess paint!

]]> No publisher Tim Simkins 2010-03-28T04:00:00Z News Item Website now in Plone! http://www.tandj.net/%7Esimkintr/news/2010/website-now-in-plone Since I've been working with Plone at Penn State, I decided to put my personal site into Plone as well. The initial skinning and content creation/import was done in two weekends in October.  However, I still needed to get my DVD Library was a big sticking point.  Over the winter, I never quite got around to it, and when I did have time to tinker, writing a SQL database app in Plone just wasn't making sense.

So, I sat down this weekend, and created what will (at some point) be 'collective.dvdlibrary'.  I just finished the import of all 712 movies, and got everything tweaked.

]]> No publisher Tim Simkins 2010-02-24T04:05:00Z News Item