The Best Idea Ever!

The miracle of YouTube. Where else could something like this be seen by millions of people? I mean, a take a cat, a washing machine and you have a good time. I'm totally going to get this for our 18 lbs blind cat. Enjoy

My Tech Blog

Most people don't know but I've also started a tech blog. Its basically for people who actually want (and can stomach) to hear me talk about programming and tech stuff. For the other 99.999% of the population I'd stay right here.

enjoy

http://dutytech.blogspot.com

Video Evidence

Here is the little guy in action. He is getting close, if only the chair was a little taller.


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Moving on up!

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Originally uploaded by jduty.

It seems like we have entered a race, For the last week or so everyday has been something new. Now Joshua is pulling himself to his feet every chance he gets. He is also eating a lot more so we are pretty sure he is staring his next growth spurt. Just watching him interact with toys, objects and other people you can see he is just a sponge right now.

After he was born everyone told me don't blink because you will miss something and before you know it they will be grown up. I'm beginning to think thats true.

Quick note, as you can tell from the bump on his head, he had a few unsuccessful tries before he got it right.

Running hard but going nowhere

Last night Kerry and I purchased a NordicTrack Elliptical 800 from Sears. I'm a pretty regular runner, but with the ice and snow its a little scary (I'm not quite ready for a broken hip) and Kerry has been looking to do some cardio. With Joshua its a little hard for either of us to get to a gym regularly so we thought this was the best option. We were never expecting to get a Nordic Track but got lucky finding a closed-out returned one at the store which was marked down heavily. Its not delivered until Saturday so don't except to see my pecks ripping through my shirt until then.

Where is the baby?

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Originally uploaded by jduty.

After looking at the sledding pictures, I'm not convinced he was actually with us. We may have accidentally left him inside and just taken a pile of winter clothes with us. Can you find the baby in this picture (helps if you cross your eyes)?

Need for Speed

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Originally uploaded by jduty.

Saturday there was a light dusting of snow, so we decided to try out Joshua's new sled. All and all it worked well, and you can almost see him through all the snow gear. This is him breaking 3-Gs in our front yard.

What's This????

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Originally uploaded by jduty.

Turned around in the kitchen today and saw this. Looks like we need to do another round of baby proofing.

sitting tall

Today Joshua went from a crawling position to sitting up on his own! This is a big deal now because now, without the help of us, he can crawl to something, sit up on his own, and play with it. Our boy is going places!

Its finally snowing!

I just looked out of the window where I work and saw that it is finally snowing! So far this winter has been filled with cold, wet, cloudy, icy days with no snow. That makes for a boring and uncomfortable winter, at least snow is fun and pretty to look at.

Kerry and I are super excited because we got Joshua a baby sled we have been really wanting to tryout. Don't worry, this baby sled comes equipped with seat belts, padding and roll bar. Plus, it got 5 stars in the 30 mile/hour side impact test. Hopefully I'll have some fun sledding pictures to put up after this weekend.

High definition sound

Kerry and I have really been enjoying our new HD-LCD TV. The picture quality is amazing and since our Comcast DVR has an HDMI interface, we can really take advantage of it. While its great to watch TV shots in high definition, I find you really get the most out of it in live television, usually sporting events. Panning through a packed football stadium seems to really show off the technology.

Once thing we have both noticed is while several TV shows and broadcasts are now in high definition, most commercials are not. This is fine, our TV shrinks the picture and displays it just fine. However something we have noticed is the sound volume increases quite a bit when a non-high definition commercial comes on while watching a HD channel. Its a pretty big difference and I'm trying to figure out if this is a function of our specific TV or just high definition in general.

Has anyone else had this issue?

roller coaster of life

M0nday Joshua had a procedure to open his tear ducts. People who have seen him lately know he usually has a lot of crud in his eyes, which is due to the tear ducts not working properly. Its a common thing and the procedure is also. However, its never fun taking you baby to the hospital and having to send him into surgery. Of course most of the worry is with mom and dad, Joshua was more interested in playing with the TV remote in the waiting room and figuring out a way to put the doctor's stethoscope in his mouth.

In the end everything turned out beautifully and he was already back to chasing the cats later that day. His eyes are looking great and I'm sure they feel better also.

On that same note, my co-worker Jason and his wife had their triplets a little over a month ago. They were delivered at 28 weeks and have been on a roller coaster of different issues.
I remember how scary it was to have Joshua in the NICU and can't even begin to imagine what they are feeling. Of course doctors today are amazing and what they can do with babies is even more amazing. Without going into specifics just keep them in your thoughts. If you want to follow he keeps a pretty detailed blog about the whole experience at:

The Myers Triplets Blog

On another note my friend Curtis lost his brother last week to cancer. This is a huge tragedy and we are all thinking and praying for him and his family.

jonandkerry.com is moving!

I have decided to move this blog to Blogger. This will take effect within the next day or so. This means if you are reading this blog using a news feed (rss, atom) then you will need to reset that feed to http://dutyfamily.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default . Using some code I wrote I have migrated all pasts posts to our new blog (let me know if you would like to do a similar thing and I’ll give you the code).

The new jonandkerry.com blog is at http://dutyfamily.blogspot.com/ and in a few hours jonandkerry.com will forward to that.

I’ve decided to do this for a few reasons

1. The new blogger is very cool and customizable. You can edit templates using a rich AJAX interface and posting via their web interface, phone, or mobile device is easy. I want this and I its for free! Plus, this will also allow me to post more often (which some will like, others won’t
2. The last few months my free time is decreased considerably (wonder why). Having someone host and manage my blog is one less thing I have to do.
3. SPAM! As of now the jonandkerry.com domain name gets about 800 pieces of spam a day, many of which is not getting caught by my filter. I’m getting tired of this and I’m getting tired of paying for the bandwidth to host this. If you know someone who makes money off of SPAM let me know, I have some smurf attack code from college I’d like to revive on their machine.
4. Multiple Blogs - I would like to start a blog for technical content and other stuff. Blogger allows me to do this. This way people only interested in family stuff (well, mostly Joshua) can just read the dutyfamily blog, and other can read my other blog.

So thats it. I have moved jonandkerry.com to point to this new blog, and will start posting in it immediently. Until then you can get to it at http://dutyfamily.blogspot.com/ .

Enjoy,

Jonathan

Back to the Grindstone

Well, its the new year and for the first time I’m sitting at my desk. Kerry, Joshua and I had a great vacation. We started by traveling to Dallas, Texas to see my family. Joshua did very well sleeping in a new place and even cut his first tooth while down there. While there we got to see my parents, brother, grandparents and some of our friends from college.

We flew back to Michigan on the 27th and decided to spend a day settling down at home before heading to Kerry’s parents in Okemos, MI. During this time Joshua was cutting his second tooth so we figured having him in his own bed was a good thing. On the 29th we headed to Okemos and had a great time with Kerry’s family. While there Joshua learned how to blow raspberries. Lets just say that was the last time I made it through the day with a dry shirt.

We headed back home on new years eve and literally not 30 minutes after we were back Joshua crawled for the first time. That sort of took Kerry and I by suprise so we will be spending the next few days installing gates and cabinet locks.

New Years was pretty low-key. Joshua didn’t sleep well the night before so Kerry and I were pretty tired. We elected to just stay in, get Joshua to bed early and watch a few movies.

Oh.. and speaking of watching movies, we did it on our brand new HD LCD flat panel. It was awesome! I can’t believe how clear the picture is. If you are looking for TVs, I highly recommend the LCDs, they are worth it.

So now I’m sitting here at my desk missing Joshua a little (got use to being around the little guy). Kerry has off today so she is having a mom/son day. Some new pictures are up from the trip, but I’ve got many more to publish, just not the time.

Happy New Years!