Ryan and Debi

Travel, Tech, Thoughts…

  • Toren eating his cake

    Apparently the “thing to do” at a first birthday party is to give your kid some of the cake and let him/her just go at it, smearing it all over him/herself.  I’ve been cued in to this tradition by various friends with kids who all have the pictures to prove to me this is, in…

  • Toren’s Birthday Party – singing Happy Birthday

    We had a dozen or so friends come over for Toren’s first birthday on Saturday.  There was only one child who is close to Toren’s age.  The rest were our friends.  Here’s the invite I put together for the party via a very cool evite alternative called pingg.com (strongly recommend it over evite.com): We basically…

  • I’ve been shot!

    I was standing in line at the grocery store Friday night picking up some stuff for Toren’s birthday party.  The woman checking out in front of me was chatting with the employee scanning her purchases – I think they were discussing recipes.  I wasn’t really paying very close attention.  I put all of my groceries…

  • Toren 1 year stats

    So, I didn’t write these down at the doctor’s office yesterday, but I’m pretty sure their accurate (I’m positive on the weight, because I was paying close attention on that one): height – 30.5 inches (60th percentile) weight – 22lbs 4 oz. (50th percentile) head circumference – 18.5 inches (75th percentile) In other words, Toren…

  • Ubuntu: xbindkeys to replace Firefox’s clippings extension

    I’ve been a loyal user of Firefox for years and plan to still use it as my secondary browser (and will use it regularly for Zotero).  But Google’s new browser, Chrome, has really impressed me and I’m going to start using it as my primary browser for email, surfing the web, and every day online…

  • Toren as Computer

    I had to replace the motherboard on my computer (bad ethernet port, but still under warranty; 2 weeks without my desktop, but worth it).  While my computer was out of commission, the little cubby where my computer goes was empty.  In a never-ending bid to find awful ways to torment Toren, I put him inside…

  • Toren is 1!

    Yep, Debi and I did it!  We kept Toren alive for a whole year!  Hooray for us!  Here’s a picture for you to enjoy: He has his 1 year checkup Thursday, so I’ll have stats on height/weight then.  I’m also compiling some statistics.  Here’s a sampler: Total posts on the blog about Toren since he…

  • news interviews

    Here are the other two interviews I did that landed me on local TV. The first is from the day of the raid – May 20th.  I happened to have students coming over for dinner that night (from a small May class I taught).  A reporter from Fox 13 stopped by before my students did…

  • fire this advertising company

    I’ve seen this billboard a few times in the last few weeks and figured I’d take a picture of it: Not sure what they were thinking.  Memorable? Yes.  Witty? No.

  • HTC Droid Incredible – additional thoughts

    I posted before about our new phones – HTC Droid Incredibles.  Perhaps I’m just trying to justify the purchase to myself, but I’ve figured out a few new tricks with the phone that are worth mentioning. Perhaps the coolest feature I’ve found recently, which really makes this a smart phone, is what it does when…