This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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OK, the quick version first: Brandy and I will finally be making it official and getting married. TODAY. More specifically, we will do it at 22:00 UTC (2 PM Pacific, 5 PM Eastern). We will attempt to stream it live for anybody who may want to watch. I’ll post an embedded version at abulsme.com. You’ll also be able to find it at http://www.livestream.com/abulsme/. If all goes well of course. I could screw the whole thing up and nobody will see anything.
Longer version. Brandy was finally divorced on August 11th 2010. We finally got around to getting a marriage license this past Monday. My mom, who is also a minister, arrived in town on Tuesday. On Thursday we asked her if she would marry us while she was in town. On Friday we made sure we had the required number of witnesses (who will be a couple of my cousins who also live in the Seattle area). My mom leaves town Sunday, so we’ll do this on Saturday. Today. In the next 14 hours, Brandy and I still need to figure out exactly what will go into the ceremony itself, what we’ll say, etc. We intend to be fairly minimalist, not much more than what is required by law, so it will probably be very short, but there will still be some words said. We’ll do it in our living room. It will be very informal. We won’t be dressing up. There won’t be a big party afterwards. (Although those of us in the room will probably go eat somewhere right afterwards.) We basically just see this as letting our legal status catch up with what has been the reality on the ground for quite a few years now. We’re going to try to live stream it because there may be a few people who would like to see it. And I think it would be neat. If it works. I’ll also just take a normal video to put online at a later date that will likely be better quality and the like than the live stream, which will probably be pretty marginal quality wise. But for those who want to watch, there ya go. As I mentioned in the short version, I’ll try to post the embedded feed and the link again shortly before we start.
If any of you do decide to drop by and watch, we would of course be honored. Thank you. :-)
We think it is the neighbor’s cat, but it now likes us too. It has been trying to come in with us. I am not sure either Roscoe or my allergies would appreciate that though.
For the first time in years. The ones I was wearing were actually two sets ago. The last set I lost in the ocean in Florida about six years ago after only having them about a year. So I reverted to my previous pair, which probably were of mid-90s vintage. and they were very very very scratched up at this point.
So all I can say now is, oh my gosh, I can SEE!
(Picture taken 2010 Dec 7 03:28 UTC)
As of the time this post goes live… 05:54 UTC on the 13th (9:54 PM on the 12th Pacific, 12:54 AM on the 13th Eastern) Alex will be exactly 15 months old. I’ve fallen way way behind on posting pictures and video and such, just too many other things going on. Maybe I’ll catch up eventually. :-) But of course time keeps on marching, and Alex keeps growing and learning new things every day.
Lets see, some things from the past few months.
- Well, just in the last few weeks he finally really “gets” coloring and is grabbing his coloring book and special pens that will only color on THAT book and excitedly using them.
- He is very good about following “Please take this to mommy” type instructions. He understands, runs to do what was asked, and claps for himself when he does it successfully.
- When he finds coins he runs to one of several coin jars we have in the house and puts them in. (Also followed by a squeal and clapping.)
- He knows how to turn on his iPod nano and change songs, and will happily find something he likes then dance to it, holding the iPod to his ear.
- Almost anything thin and rectangular is a phone. He’ll pick them up, hold them to his ear, and talk and talk and talk. If it is a real phone with someone on the other end he gets even more exciting and he will pace around the room while talking to them.
- He will run up to his sister’s door and knock until she comes out and plays with him.
- When he is bored with what is on the TV or the music that is playing on our family room entertainment system he knows how to change what is on or turn it off. Even if the rest of the family is watching.
- He sneaks the dog food all the time. Both he and the dog enjoy this quite a bit.
- He will try to get the dog to chase him as well, running up to the dog, then running away squealing and laughing. Sometimes Roscoe will follow.
- His vocabulary continues to grow of course. Most sounds still aren’t words, at least ones we can understand, but the percentage that are increases every day.
- He is all about putting things away (sometimes the right place, sometimes not, but that doesn’t matter, does it?)
- This also includes things like trying to plug headphones in. Sometimes where they belong, sometimes not.
- He will help put on or take off his shirts by putting his arms up appropriately.
- He climbs everything, and (usually) can get down safely on his own.
- He knows how to take apart his potty piece by piece, then touch the two contacts together to make it sing. He’ll occasionally sit on it too, but of course would not even consider making it sing the way you are supposed to.
- He has several more iPhone apps he likes, including one where he pushes piano keys and makes music. He also now knows however how to push the button to get to the main menu when he is done. He hasn’t quite gotten yet how to START his games though.
- Although he has used utensils to eat for a long long time, he is now pretty darn good at using both forks and spoons. (Knives, not so much.)
- And lots of other stuff…
As I write this (a bit before it is scheduled to post) it is time for dinner now, so I need to stop. But anyway, Alex is 15 months now. A year and a quarter. He is so big! Oh, and quite a personality too. :-)
So, the latest update. The newest book of the last 20 I read was not available on Kindle, while the one that fell off had been, so the ratio falls from 70% to 65%, with 13 of the last 20 available on Kindle. For reference:
1 – NO – 9 Ways to Bring Out the Best in You and Your Child
2 – YES – Shadow of the Hegemon
3 – NO – The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
4 – YES – Ender’s Shadow
5 – YES – The Elegant Universe
6 – YES – Children of the Mind
7 – NO – Introduction to Algorithms
8 – YES – Xenocide
9 – YES – The Geography of Bliss
10 – YES – Speaker for the Dead
11 – NO – First Break all the Rules
12 – YES – Ender’s Game
13 – YES – Until the Sea Shall Free Them
14 – YES – Foucault’s Pendulum
15 – YES – Java The Complete Reference
16 – NO – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
17 – YES – The Audacity of Hope
18 – NO – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
19 – NO – Data Mining
20 – YES – The Children of Hurin
And there we are for the moment.
While we were all driving in the car a few days ago, Amy pointed out just how long we’d been together as a family. Namely a pretty long time. And more specifically, now that I checked it out, at the moment this post goes live, it will have been exactly seven years since I made a post publicly mentioning that Brandy and I were a couple. Now, we’d been “dating” for probably at least a month before that, maybe more, and we’d known each other for well over a year at that point, and it was still a while little longer until Brandy and Amy actually moved in, but it seems like as good a starting marker as any.
So, seven years. During that time we’ve lived together at five addresses in three states as I worked for three different companies in a variety of different roles. We lost Brandy’s Dad. We also lost a few good pets that we loved dearly. We adopted Roscoe. Amy has grown from elementary school to high school and from a bubbly little kid to a wonderful almost-adult. Brandy has gone from being a Real Estate Agent to a Stay-at-Home-Mom to a College Student. And of course Alex was born and has grown into a sparkly eyed toddler and is doing exciting new things every day.
We bonded into a family almost from the very start. As with any family there have been ups and downs, but overall it has been a very good seven years. Somehow, simultaneously, I can’t believe it has really been that long, and I can’t believe it was ever any other way.
Thank you Brandy and Amy and Alex for these seven years.
I love you all very much.
Yet another update of the percentage of the last 20 books I have read which are available on Kindle as of right after I wrote the post about Shadow of the Hegemon. That book was available on Kindle, the one that fell off the 20 was not, and none of the ones in between changed status, so the percentage goes up from 65% to 70%. For reference:
- YES – Shadow of the Hegemon
- NO – The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
- YES – Ender’s Shadow
- YES – The Elegant Universe
- YES – Children of the Mind
- NO – Introduction to Algorithms
- YES – Xenocide
- YES – The Geography of Bliss
- YES – Speaker for the Dead
- NO – First Break all the Rules
- YES – Ender’s Game
- YES – Until the Sea Shall Free Them
- YES – Foucoult’s Pendulum
- YES – Java The Complete Reference
- NO – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
- YES – The Audacity of Hope
- NO – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
- NO – Data Mining
- YES – The Children of Hurin
- YES – Dreams from my Father
So, yet another update of the percentage of the last 20 books I’ve read that are available on Kindle as of soon after I posted about The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. The book that fell off was not available, neither was the one I just added, and none of the ones in between changed status, so the metric stayed at 65%.
- NO – The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
- YES – Ender’s Shadow
- YES – The Elegant Universe
- YES – Children of the Mind
- NO – Introduction to Algorithms
- YES – Xenocide
- YES – The Geography of Bliss
- YES – Speaker for the Dead
- NO – First Break all the Rules
- YES – Ender’s Game
- YES – Until the Sea Shall Free Them
- YES – Foucoult’s Pendulum
- YES – Java The Complete Reference
- NO – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
- YES – The Audacity of Hope
- NO – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
- NO – Data Mining
- YES – The Children of Hurin
- YES – Dreams from my Father
- NO – The Odyssey
I’ll note as I have the last few times that other editions of The Odyssey are available on Kindle, just not the specific edition I read.
Looks like Brandy’s 1995 Nissan Maxima with 246k miles on it now needs an expensive repair that may or may not actually completely fix the problem. If it doesn’t fix it then actually fixing it would most likely cost significantly more than the car is worth.
So we are car shopping. Right now Brandy is looking at a 2007 Volkswagen Passat 2.0T Wagon and is really excited about it. Test drive coming after we eat lunch. If she likes it we may end up with it. We shall see.
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