My daughter, the future rock star drummer

My daughter, Lily, showing off her skills at drumming. She's the best.


enjoy :)

Father's Day Gift Project Part 1

So, on Father's Day I received what can only be described as the coolest present ever, a "lego compatible" Coffee Mug from Think Geek. Not only does it look like the coolest 8-bit representation of a Coffee Mug, but it can fit Legos and multiple other types of building blocks.

I also received the Vader's Little Princess book, which is a whole other story in itself. Perhaps I'll talk about it later, but it's definitely sufficient enough to say that this book is a definite must-have for any Dad who is a fan of Star Wars. Not only does it portray the Darth Vader / Princess Leia story in a different tone, but it almost brings you to tears with both comedy and the realization that, even though you may not have an intergalactic princess, she will grow up much faster than you will want her to.

Any ways, the mug. Since it attached to Legos, and there just "happens" to be a Lego store within a 5-minute drive of where I work, I decided to personalize the Mug with Legos to make it as Geeky as possible. I thought Star Wars, but that much of the Star Wars designs and emblems just won't fit too well onto a rectangle mug, I thought I would go with an 8-bit character from Nintendo. The mushroom (1-up, of course) will do nicely.

Now I can't very well just go buy a bunch of Legos and go to town on this thing, especially since: A.) I suck at 8-bit pictures, and B.) the Mug front is just a "little" too small for representation of the mushrooms. Sure I could cut out a few pixels, but then it might just look silly. then I came to the realization that the mug fits Legos all the way around it. This led me to the realization that I could attempt to design a 3D mushroom by implementing colored Lego blocks all the way around it (fixing the pixel size issue) and adding to the cool-factor.

But first I have to design it.

This should work for me to be able to design it. Drawn representations of the Coffee Mug front (and back) and the Left (and Right) sides and the handle. They're all identical to each other in the fact that the Front and Back and the Left and Right are the same number of "pixels" each. This allows for me to wrap the mushroom around the mug  for the full effect. The only issue remains what to do with the unfilled pixels, which I will probably keep as the base color (gray) until the last minute when I can decide what color to fill in around the mushroom.

Pictured here is a better view of the mug representation that I will be using to design the mushroom around the mug.

As of right now, this idea has only started, and since I have a lot of actual work to do at this moment I will have to work on this off and on until I get the design right and then it's off to the Lego store to get the required supplies.

Stay tuned to the progress of my "Mushroom Mug" and we'll see just how awesome this turns out.

Oh  yeah, and a happy (late) fathers day to all of the Fathers out there.

peek - a - boo I see you

more Lily cuteness, as she plays peek - a - boo with me. I love her so much.

More of my Amazing daughter.

Watch "Lily helps me count to 9" on YouTube
Watch my little girl flex her brain muscle and help me count to nine. I got lucky this time, usually she only does stuff like this whenever she feels like it, I actually had to pretend that I wasn't videoing her.

Think that's amazing? You should see it when I catch her singing the Alphabet.

Lily Can Skate

Greetings ***Random internet viewer:  61345***

In keeping with the very recent theme of mine where, I show my daughter do amazing things, I have now  even completely blown my own mind. My daughter, less than 18 months at the time of this writing, has taken to roller skates rather quickly (as evidenced by this wonderful video).



I know what you're thinking, "so what! She's got those toddler skates on, they're probably locked out and she's walking!" You are correct in that statement, random Internet viewer you, however, those skates also have a rather impressive ability to unlock the wheels. Those wheels, by the way, are pretty loose and you can get pretty fast in them.

Cut to the video, BAM!!!! she's got the wheels, unlocked, ready to rock, and she's rolling like she came out skating.

Be amazed, be very amazed.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: My daughter did, in fact, not come out skating...just saying ;

Taking Care of the Little Girl

The aftermath of a 100 degree temperature on the little one. She was obviously looking and feeling crummy and so when we got done with dinner I decided that we should chill out in my room and watch Star Trek and hopefully she would feel better. So apparently being sick and watching Star Trek means instant sleepy time for the baby, nothing a warm bath and a bed time story wont fix.

Daughter dances to "Gangnam Style"

I thought I should place this here, frankly, because my daughter is hilarious.

A little back story:

we were dancing to some music in our living room (where she obviously plays with all of her toys), and when ever I tried to video her dancing to the music I was listening to she would want to play with the phone. It was at that moment I was like, "hey! the computer has a web cam on it!" and this video was made. I, however, did not separate the music play back from the video recording so the sound sucks. There is also a section of he video where she decided she wanted to be curious about the video recording and gradually worked her way up to the couch to watch her self...watching herself...and do a little bit more dancing.

Once again, hilarious.

Anniversary for this tech guy.

Well, it would seem that today is the day that, not only am I thankful for my wife (which I am everyday), but also the day in which we celebrate our anniversary. Now since I'll reminisce about that day, you'll have to excuse me if there are no pictures of the events to which I'll describe, I'm just making up the pictures as I go along.

 Two years ago today we were married, and if you're doing the math on how old my child is...well...then you can probably figure out just how quickly we went from: "married on our own" to "married and expecting" if you can't figure it out...well then YOU need to go back to health class.

Here's a hint

All kinds of memories are fresh in my mind (and they should be, it was only 2 years ago): Bachelor party, the heavy drinking, the broken furnace. 

Oh yeah, the broken furnace.

So funny thing. I woke up at around 7 am that day, not because I was nervous, but because my house was colder than Hilary Clinton on a hot day (read: frost on windows). During the night my furnace decided to take a shit and die...well...die is such a harsh word...more like refused to work.

it was an old furnace

One thing leads to another, and before you know it, my house is mind numbingly cold. The whole party is now all trying to get dressed in our tuxedos and attempt to fix my furnace by telling it just how much we loved it and would cherish it forever. Not really, we gutted it and disassembled it on the floor and passed the pieces to each member of the groomsmen who were then scrubbing each and every piece until it shined. Meanwhile me and my friend are now elbow deep in the furnace (possibly inhaling the gas, not sure) seeing what else we can take out before we decide to put it back together again.

It goes red, red, blue, orange, blue, army-man-lodged-in-pipe, right?

After about 3 hours of on and off cleaning and rubik-tetris style assembly we had the whole thing fixed. All that was left was to let the furnace run (and burn up at least 100 dollars to heat the house back up) and get to the ceremony's location, oh, and feverishly brush off all of the dust and soot from our tuxes without looking like we were dusting off the soot and dust...because if my wife found out...crap she just did...she WILL most likely kill / maim me with interest up to today.

So if you're in the neighborhood, I'm probably in traction right now while me and the wife look back on all of the pictures we had taken of that day.

Seriously, help, my wife is.........

oh, hey...never mind.

The short of it is, this day is the best, and I thank the maker for everyday that I have with my wife. Now if you'll excuse me I have to schedule my Anniversary Dinner around Thanksgiving Dinner (becacuse if I fill her up on Turkey then my dinner will be cheaper...just kidding...I love you Christina please don't hurt me)

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY CHRISTINA EMMERT!!!

Fifteen month old knows animal noises

Well, if my daughter isn't the cutest thing ever, even though she's just fifteen months she already knows animals and their noises. Unfortunately the only one I was able to "voluntarily" get her to do was the pig noise, after that she realized I was videoing her and got shy. Regardless of the end result, it's hard to not be amazed at what this little girl can do.

Enjoy

Juggling "disaster" amuses my daughter.

What is this? Two posts in a day? well, unless it's a weekend, this situation may or may not come up a lot. The point is, you never know what I'll have to share.

Like today, when my daughter thought my little juggling routine was incredibly hilarious, I thought I'd video it and share it with the world.

Enjoy!