Today is the third anniversary of our young family being front page news. We’ve had the framed article hanging in Hallie’s room ever since.

So far we haven’t been successful in getting Travis on the front page, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, eh?

(And once again, I’m less than impressed with the N&O’s link-unfriendly website. The original link goes nowhere. Sheesh.)

This story came out last week but didn’t get much attention. A study by Wake Forest University shows evidence that showering may be bad for you. The problem lies in inhaling the manganese that is in the water supply. Manganese is far more likely to enter your brain through breathing than through the other ways one encounters the metal: through eating and drinking. Showering for ten minutes a day for ten years leads to potentially damaging levels of manganese in your brain.

“Inhaling manganese, rather than eating or drinking it, is far more efficient at delivering manganese to the brain,â€? said Dr. John Spangler, one of the study’s researchers. “The nerve cells involved in smell are a direct pathway for toxins to enter the brain. Once inside these small nerves, manganese can travel throughout the brain.â€?

From my searches, there appears to be a wealth of medical research on the effects of managanese exposure, such as this scary article by Dr. Aschner for the National Institute of Health. Dr. Aschner is also a researcher at Wake Forest.

I’ve always been concerned about the strange metals in the water supply, but I never considered that my shower would be the biggest threat. Maybe its time to consider taking baths?

Pop The Cap, the effort to allow North Carolinians to enjoy better beer, has fizzled in the State Senate, according to the Greensboro’s News and Record’s Capitol Beat blog. According to the blog, Senators John Kerr, Jim Jacomin, and Larry Shaw — all from the Fayetteville/Goldsboro area — led the efforts to quash the bill, kicking it back to committee and keeping it from being voted on.

Why not take a minute to call these fine representatives and find out why they chose to keep good beer from the good people of North Carolina? I mean, what are they afraid of?
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Our yard has tons of Japanese beetles crawling over it. The apple and cherry trees were taking the brunt of the attack. I got fed up with the beetle invasion and bought a Bag-A-Bug beetle trap. The trap seems to work, drawing plenty of beetles into the bag, where they get trapped and die. If you’re lazy like me, though, the bag can begin to smell with ammonia from dead beetles.

The directions for the Bag-A-Bug say to change the bag frequently as the smell of rotting beetles is repellant to other beetles. That suggests the question: why not make the plants you want to protect smell like dead beetles? I mean, if this smell is what keeps beetles away, it seems to me the best way to protect your plants is to make them smell like ammonia.

I wonder if hanging a bag of dead beetles (with no pheromone bait) on the trees I wish to protect will keep the beetles away?

I spent the better part of yesterday evening working to repair Kelly’s color printer, which I had broken a few weeks before when I stepped on its power cord. The cord yanked the power socket loose on the pcboard, which made the printer not turn on unless you jiggled the cord a bit.

I popped the cover off the printer, located the offending socket, and promptly was confused. It looked like all the socket’s leads were still connected to the board, yet there was no power getting to the printer. After checking it and rechecking it, I decided the only way I was going to get the printer working again was to solder the cable directly to the board, bypassing the socket.

It’s been a while since I soldered, but I did a decent job with the soldering gun in putting the wires on the board. With a proud look, I plugged the printer in, and … nothing. I wonder now if the short in the socket right after I broke it was enough to fry the board.

Fortunately, color inkjet printers cost about, oh $20, so it really wasn’t worth my effort to repair it. Still, the practice with the soldering gun reminded me just how much of a geek I really am.

Since I don’t have a mulching lawnmower, I’ve been collecting the grass I cut into bags and leaving them at the curb. Our neighborhood newsletter recently printed a reminder that all yard waste needs to be in clear plastic bags. The City of Raleigh’s recycling page says that, too. I’d be happy to oblige, but clear year waste bags are impossible to find. I’ve checked Lowes Foods, BJs, and Target. None of them sell clear yard waste bags. I think its a conspiracy.

I’m not sure what the big deal is, anyway. One morning, I almost missed the yard waste truck as it drove through the neighborhood. I ran out to hand the guy my bags. He simply ripped them open on the spot, dumped their contents into the truck, and hung what was left of the bags on a hook on the truck. The lifespan of the bag in the hands of the sanitation worker was all of 3 seconds.

I think it’ll be easier getting off my lazy duff and setting up a compost heap than actually finding clear plastic bags. Either that, or I’ll get a mulching mower and put the cut grass where it belongs: back on the lawn.

The long weekend is now over. There’s been a lot going on throughout. I’ll try to summarize as best I can.

I left work Friday a little earlier than usual in order to swing by DHL to drop off some shipments for work. I assumed this would be routine, but it was anything but. The packages are headed to Mexico, which means a buttload more paperwork needed to be filled out. I rushed home to pull up the DHL website and complete the paperwork, only to find their website absolutely sucks. It crashed Mozilla and Firefox straightaway, but in IE, it waited until I’d filled out 99% of the forms before it ate it. I cursed that thing for the three times it took for me to get it right. I’m crossing my fingers that it will actually get there.

Kelly, Hallie, and Travis joined me for my trip back to DHL. We got there ten minutes before they closed (so much for leaving early, eh?). With that off my plate, we got dinner at Zest in Celebration at Six Forks. After a tasty meal of fried catfish and a side trip to Goodberry’s, we wandered home, laughing all the way. The night was capped when I got another chance to put Travis to bed all by myself, which I accomplished successfully. There’s nothing better than the feeling of your child falling asleep in your arms.

Saturday began a bit earlier than we had hoped. Travis woke up at 5:30, thinking it was time to get up. We had decided to let him holler for a while with the thought that he’d go back to sleep, but he was having none of it. When we fetched him around 6, Hallie was awake, too. Sleeping in? Hah!

I’d volunteered to help my dad with replacing an attic fan, so I headed over there for about two hours. It involved balancing on a 12′ ladder while unbolting the fan over my head, trying hard not to drop it on my noggin all the while. Dad handed tools up when they were needed and kept me laughing while we worked. Once the old fan was down, we palled around long enough to make me late for being home in time for Kelly’s haircut appointment. Once again, I got to put Travis to sleep – this time for his nap. You’d think I’m getting to be a pro at this stuff.

Once everyone was back and awake, we got ready to head to the pool at my Mom and Dad’s club. We were met at the house by Kelly’s friend Marnie, her daughter Susanna, and her husband, John. We had a blast watching the kids splash around.

It was Travis’s first dip into a real pool. He seemed to take it in stride. At one point, we watched amused as he floated away from us. He had figured out how to kick and apparently decided to go exploring. Kelly and I both knew he’d take to water, but like his sister has consistently done he exceeded our expectations. Guess we should’nt have been surprised.

On Sunday, we had a more normal wakeup (6:30AM). After a lazy breakfast, I remembered I still had to help Dad put in the new fan. I put Travis down for his nap (woo woo!) and headed out the door around 10:30.

More attic fun followed. The installation was easier than I anticipated. Once again, it was fun spending time with my Dad and Mom. After an hour or so, the job was done. We then spent the next hour yapping together downstairs to the point where Kelly had to call over there to see where I was! In actuality, she wanted to know if I would be joining them for a trip to the store. I did, and off we went.

We navigated through the aisles of our local Red Big Box Store, filling the cart to overflowing with … stuff. Half the haul was baby food, the rest plastic stuff. I did pick up a new pillow, though, which went a long way towards last night’s fantastic night of sleep. At thirteen bucks, I’m wondering why I didn’t buy a new pillow sooner.

We had lunch and then did another round of naps. I stepped outside and began to cut the grass. Our neighbors and we had planned a block party for Sunday afternoon. Some of them were already arriving next door. I had time to mow the front yard before Kelly appeared around the corner with a smiling Travis in her arms. It was time to party, apparently.

We got cleaned up and headed next door to the party. There were three tables stocked with all kinds of food. There were two kegs of beer iced down in the garage. Spread out under two tents were our friends and neighbors, all laughing and carrying on. There were too many bad jokes, too many Jello shots, and too many mosquitoes, but everybody had a good time. We left around 10 PM having met some neighbors for the first time and knowing our other neighbors a lot better.

Kelly and I awoke feeling fine. In my case, excellent. I’m thinking it was the new pillow, rather than the 6 or 8 drinks I had at the party. A breakfast of pancakes with strawberries and blueberries started the day on the right foot.

Speaking of feet, the neighborhood sponsored a Fourth of July parade for the kids. The kids rode bicycles down the main street, following the ladder truck from nearby Raleigh Fire Station 22. Though it was his nap time, Travis was really in his element among the new faces. Hallie enjoyed the parade in the back of her red wagon. We walked with our neighbors, Frank and Brea and their daughter, Madison.

On the way, I spotted a professional-quality DV camera in the hands of a neighbor who runs an aerial photography business. We left the parade with new friends. Man, this is a cool neighborhood.

Travis went down like a champ at 10 AM, an hour after his usual naptime. I took the time to finish mowing the yard. It was oppressively hot today, without the breeze we enjoyed the day before. I was happy to finish things up just in time for lunch.

The kids took their usual naps. Kelly asked me if I was planning to nap, too. Unlike most weekends, I didn’t feel the need to nap at all – another testament to my good night of sleep. Instead, we got even more chores done around the house.

I spent spare time this weekend working on building my own MythTV box, a free Tivo-like PVR. After much head-scratching, I got it to the point where it downloads the TV listings and tunes my satellite card. The big obstacle remaining is getting the channels properly configured. DVB satellite signals have a number of parameters which must be specified. I don’t know enough about MythTV yet to know where to put it all. I’m maddeningly close to completing this project, but I ran out of time to finish it tonight. Perhaps this week I’ll have it up and running.

That brings things up to date. I’m looking forward to the short work week and the next weekend that comes along. This has been a summer that didn’t really have many things planned for each weekend. It’s been great just doing what we want to do.

On my lunch hour Friday, I stopped by the television studios of the Raleigh Television Network, the city’s cable TV community access channels. A very helpful Mr. Ted Savage welcomed me and gave me a tour of the facilities.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the studio is now all-digital, with equipment free to for anyone’s use providing they have taken the appropriate course for using it. These courses were scheduled for September, but as I understand it classes will be opening sooner. A meeting anouncing the upcoming courses will be held on July 16th in the Raleigh City Council chambers.

I drooled over the three-CCD Mini-DV field cameras now available for use. They provide a quantum-leap in quality for a fraction of weight that the clunky SVHS cameras provided. The two Final Cut Pro editing stations (with widescreen flatpanel monitors) were sitting idle. The all-digital studio (with chroma-key), was also waiting for activity.

I never put together a show the last time I was a registered producer as I was busy with one thing or another. This time, however, I fully intend to put this digital system through its paces. I don’t even know what shows or programming I want to produce, but it’ll be something interesting. My three years of blogging has been good training for coming up with ideas.

(And if you’ve got something you’d like to see on community access TV, drop me a comment below.)

Yesterday, a coworker and I were driving back from lunch when we had to stop at the light for Jones Franklin Road. The light turned green as we chatted and we were first in line. Rather than jet out across the intersection like I sometimes do, I hesitated. The car on the right was stopped. Out of my left, a green car was headed straight for us at 45 miles per hour.

As she saw me edging out into the intersection, she had enough time to slam on brakes. She veered off to the right, her car stopping ten feet from mine. The look of shock and embarassment on her face was all the apology I needed.

If I hadn’t gone with my intuition and waited, I might have at best a few broken ribs now. At worst, I’d be dead. High-speed side impacts are no picnic.

Let’s be careful out there over the holiday weekend. And always keep an eye out for the other guy.