Garrett Knows His Body Parts

Garrett’s 1st Birthday – Smash Cake

Video of Garrett at 9 Months

Easter 2010

Happy Easter!

St. Patrick’s Day 2010

On St. Patrick’s Day it was such a pretty day we rode down to Kemah and walked around on the boardwalk.  Then we went down to Galveston to see the spring-breakers.  It was a nice little road trip.

Garrett's First Top Tooth

Garrett's first top tooth cut through his gums earlier this week.

Camera Kaput

I accidently smashed our camera last weekend.  I knocked it out of Kelly’s hands and it landed on the concrete, denting the lens and scratching the lens surface.  Luckily when we bought the camera from Best Buy back in July of ‘07 we also bought the 4-year Performance Service Plan with the Accidental Damage due to Handling Protection which protects it from stuff like that.  We took it back to Best Buy and they airmailed it to the service center.  If they can repair it we should get it back in a couple of weeks.  If they can’t repair it we get a new one in about a week.

Garrett is 9 Months Old

It’s hard to believe he is already nine months old.  That’s probably how I’ll start every post about him from now on.  “It’s hard to believe he is already ___ old.”

 

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We took Garrett to the pediatrician yesterday for his nine-month checkup.  He is 29” long and weighs 21 lbs.  He is in the 90th percentile for his height and the 60th percentile for his weight.  Basically he is a giant kid and growing fast.  He’s pretty tough too.  He got a shot in the leg and barely cried and when they pricked his finger to get blood he didn’t cry at all.  The doctor said he was doing excellent and we go back to see her when he is 1 year old.

His days start at 7:30 am sharp every morning.  He gets an 8 oz. bottle of formula and some cereal and a fruit and plays for a little while then get goes down for a little nap around 9 am.  Then he wakes up around 11am and has another bottle, some veggies, and a meat.  He’s up for a few hours playing and then around 2:00 he takes another nap until 4:30 or 5:00 pm.  Then he drinks another bottle, eats some meat and veggies or fruit and plays for a while longer.  At 7:30 we give him a bath and then he get’s his last bottle and passes out, and sleeps all night.  Then he does it all over again.

He crawls all over the place really fast and tries to get into everything.  He can pull himself up on whatever is close by and cruise around holding on to it.  He can stand up on his own for about 5-10 seconds before he realizes what he’s doing.  Once he figures it out, he sits down.  He can also take a short step from one couch to the other or from the couch to the table.  I’ve put covers on all the electrical outlets and kid-proof latches on the cabinets in the kitchen.  His favorite things to get into are the TV cables, the potted plants, Abigail’s water dish, and stacks of magazines.  But his absolute favorite trouble to get into is pulling rocks out of the fireplace.  So far we have been keeping one step ahead.  Telling him, “No!” just makes him giggle.

He still likes his “Your Baby Can Read” videos and American Idol but he really likes Kung Fu Panda.  He even light up when he hears Jack Black’s voice in other shows.

He’s got a million funny facial expressions that crack us up all day long.  He likes to be upside down too.  If he wants to see behind him, rather than turning around, he leans his head way back and looks over his shoulder.  He also likes playing tug with Abigail and she is warming up to him a little more.

He is a happy, healthy, hilarious, handful.

Crawfish Boil

Our friends Melanie and Chad had a crawfish boil at their house on Saturday.  I offered to cook and they came out pretty good. We had 60 lbs of crawfish, corn, potatoes, and sausage.  The weather was perfect for beer and bugs.  Afterward we played beer pong and then went out and sang karaoke.  We had a great time.

Valentine’s Day

Garrett and I made Kelly a Valentine’s Day card out of construction paper, glue, and ink.

 

For the last few years we’ve been going to The Melting Pot on Valentine’s Day for a special dinner. We went again this year on a double-date with our friends Angel and Jonathan.

The Spazmatics at Scout Bar

We went with a group of friends to see The Spazmatics at Scout Bar in Clear Lake.  I had never seen them before but Kelly had seen them a couple of times.  They are an 80’s cover band and they dress like… well… spazmatics.  They put on a really good show.  The place was packed and every song they played had me dancing and singing at the top of my lungs.  They play there every month so we are definitely seeing them again.

This is a video I shot from that show.

Garrett Christmas 2009 thru January 2010

New home movie of Garrett's first Christmas, standing up, and playing in his walker.

Jimmy’s 36th Birthday

We had a bunch of friends over for my 36th birthday. It was a blast. Lots of good food and drink with great friends.

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LinkedIn Recommendation

A couple of months ago my boss' boss left our company. Yesterday he asked me to write him a recommendation on LinkedIn. I wrote a honest and stellar recommendation for him and he returned the favor with this recommendation:

"Jimmy is an incredibly talented developer, architect and project manager. He was brought in to help us totally re-architect a failing system...while keeping the old one running day-to-day as the business grew explosively. Jimmy developed a scalable & reliable architecture, led the team that built the system in record time, and also helped improve our entire Development organization by introducing us to Agile methodologies. Jimmy also worked tirelessly to support the old system as he raced to fully deploy the new one. He worked with Sales, with customers, and with IT customer service teams to provide great service and enhance an industry-leading product. Jimmy is a real asset to an IT shop: he's technically astute, a clear communicator, a great project manager, a team-builder, and a mentor. I'd be honored to work with Jimmy again in the future."

For someone who I hold in such high regard to take the time to say a few kind works about me pretty much made my day.

Garrett’s First Tooth

Garrett’s first tooth poked through his gums today.   It’s his lower left central tooth.

Garrett is 7 Months Old

Garrett is 7 months old today. It seems like just yesterday when he would hardly move at all, now he is a happy little ball of energy. It sure does go by fast.

He’s eating solid food now. A few weeks ago we started him on rice cereal then moved on to barley cereal, this week it’s carrots and next week it’ll be squash. He’s a really good eater. You just have to hold to spoon up to his mouth and he opens wide. Of course, a lot of it gets spread from ear to ear and nose to neck on the first try but we're working on it. He can also feed himself a whole bottle.

He’s crawling now too and he gets around really good. When you set him down he’ll crawl all over the room and check out everything he can get his hands on. He’ll crawl from the living room, around the kitchen, out by the foyer, toward the front door, back around to the utility room to spill Abigail’s water bowl. One of his favorite discoveries are the metal springy doorstoppers. We took the tips off of them to be safe but likes to plunk them because they make a loud twanging noise.

He pulls himself up on everything he too. He’ll walk up to a table or chair or box or anything and pull himself all the way up to standing. He’ll then take a step or two around whatever he’s holding. Earlier this week he pulled himself up on a chair then reached out to his bouncer that was about a foot and half away so he was holding onto both, then he let go of the chair and moved over to stand next to the bouncer. He’s was pretty proud and let out a high squeak.

Every day he learns so much. He’s an amazing little guy.

Cold Cold Cold

We are all sick over here at the Strube house again. I think it started when we went shopping on December 23rd. First Garrett got a runny nose and cough and then Kelly and I got it. We took Garrett to the pediatrician on Dec 26th and she said that there's nothing we can give him and that since he didn't have a fever it would just have to run its course.

That was a couple of weeks ago and for a little bit it looked like we were all going to get better but now we are sick all over again. I went to the doctor on Wednesday and she said I had a throat and ear infection and gave me some antibiotics. We're taking Garrett back to the pediatrician today.

On top of being sick Garrett is also teething so he has not been a happy camper, especially when at bedtime. It sucks to start out the new year sick.

The weather isn't helping any. It's 25ºF here so we've got the pipes wrapped and the plants covered.

Holidays 2009

Wow, it’s been a long time since I posted.  We’ve been really busy. 

On Halloween day we went to Mary Jo Peckham Park where we had a photographer friend of Kelly’s take some pictures to use as gifts for Christmas.  They came out pretty good.

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We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at my cousins’ house with lots of our family.  The food was really good and we got a good 4-generation photo of Garrett’s great-grandfather Erlin, his grandfather Ken, and me & him.

… and lots of other good photos too.

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We made another Thanksgiving stop at Peggy’s house for dinner.  The food there was awesome as well.

I got off work on December 18th and I don’t go back until January 4th.  Since it was Garrett’s first Christmas we put up the tree this year.  This 9’ tree is really hard to put up but it is worth it.

 

Christmas was pretty hectic.  We had a couple of parties the weekend before Christmas.  Then on Christmas Eve we went to my mom’s and had lunch and exchanged gifts, then that night we had Kelly’s family over and dinner and exchanged gifts with them.  Then Christmas morning we went to my dad and step-mom’s house and had lunch and exchanged gifts with them and her family.  Then it was back to Kelly’s mom’s house for dinner and gift exchange with her brother & sister and kids.  Then back over to dad and step-mom’s house to play some games with her family.  It was a great time, but we’ve got to find a way to make fewer stops.  We did all of our shopping on December 23rd, which helped.

Garrett is growing up fast.  We took him to his 6 month checkup on December 11th.  He weighed 16lbs. 10oz. and was 28.5” tall.  This puts him in the 40th percentile for weight and the 90th percentile for height.  That means that he is taller than 90"% of children his age but only heavier than 40%.  Basically he is tall and lean.  But you wouldn’t think it by looking at his chubby cheeks.  My dad is 6’1” and Kelly’s dad was 6’ and her grandpa was 6’4” so Garrett might turn out to be a really tall guy.  I’ll have to go back to learning more Hapkido if he stay’s on that track.

He’s scooting around pretty good and he seems anxious to stand up.  He’s also started eating solid food.  Last week was rice cereal, this week is oatmeal cereal and next week we start on yellow and orange vegetables.

Halloween 2009

Kelly and I love Halloween because it gives us an excuse to dress up and act even more foolish than usual.  This year we went with the ‘70’s disco theme.  Kelly’s friend Hollie went as Amy Winehouse and my friend Eric went as Burger King Arthur.

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We stopped off at some friends’ house that were having a toga party and then went to Mo’s where we met up with some other friends.  This year was cool because Halloween fell on a Saturday and the clocks were set back because of Daylight Savings Time.  We drank and danced the night away.

Solar Concentrator (Part 1)

Project

Construct a solar concentrator

Primary Objective

Through various experiments, demonstrate the viability of a personal solar concentrator to produce energy through various techniques

Secondary Objective

Have fun catching stuff on fire using a backyard death ray.

Background

Originally I saw an episode of MythBusters called “Archimedes Death Ray” where they were testing the ancient myth of a large array of mirrors used to concentrate sunlight to set fire to the tar on invading ships.  They busted the myth but it made me want to try it too.

I stumbled across some blogs and videos about constructing a personal solar concentrator.  The difference between a solar concentrator and a solar collector is the collector is just an array of solar cells laid flat to collect sunlight, while the solar concentrator is a concave reflective surface that reflects light across a large surface into a small focal point.  It looked like a fun project that required minimal supplies.  Also, all the pictures and video I saw were weak.  Most were either using aluminum foil (sometimes the dull side of the foil?!), small dishes, large mirrors, inefficient mirror patterns, prime focus, or they didn’t take it a step beyond catching stuff on fire to actually producing some usable energy.  I thought I could better.

It also brought back childhood memories of frying ants with a magnifying glass on a hot summer day.  It also brought back good memories of high school physics projects with my friend Nathan.  We built boats out of cardboard big enough to hold us and paddle around the school’s swimming pool to demonstrate buoyancy and built an 8 foot tall hot air balloon out of nothing but tissue paper and rubber cement.

Safety Precautions:

None

Step 1 - Gather Materials

I sent my partner-in-crime, Nathan, the links to the blogs and videos and he like the idea of the project.  Nathan used to install satellite dishes a long time ago and had a lot of left over dishes in storage.

We knew we wanted the smallest mirrors we could find so we could maximize the surface area of whatever dish we found.  Nathan went online and found a place to order 1” square mirrors. They were $10 for 80 so he bought 240 thinking that would be about right to fill up a 15” dish.

Nathan then visited his storage area and gathered up several dishes ranging in size from 15”, like you see on most people’s home today, all the way up to a 53”x49” old PrimeStar dish. We decided that there was no reason to start out small and went with the PrimeStar dish. Apart from its size, this dish was the best because it was lightweight fiberglass and had an offset focus. This means that it’s shape is not a semi-sphere where the focal point would be directly over the center of the dish and it has to be pointed directly at the sun. Rather, this dish is a specially designed semi-ellipsoid whose focal point is off to one side and it stands upright and only slightly tilted. This is good for two reasons. First, whatever we place at the focal point wouldn’t block any of the mirrors and secondly if we were going to be burning stuff then we didn’t want to make a mess over the top of the mirrors. This particular dish also had a nice bracket where the focal point was to hold the LNB that could be adapted to hold whatever we want.

We didn’t have enough mirrors to cover the whole dish but at least we could start out with a parabola across the center. The surface area of a flat ellipse is (Pi * L * W ) / 4. That come out to 2040 mirrors! It would be even more for the interior of an elliptical dish. With 240 1” square mirrors we had only 12% of the mirrors we needed if we wanted to cover the entire dish.

We also did some research on collimator lenses, magnifying lens, Peltier coolers, small steam engines, etc. We also picked up a Peltier cooler and a solar cell from a local electronic parts outlet to play around with.

Step 2 – Attach the Mirrors to the Dish

We toyed around with several options for attaching the mirrors to the dish. One concern we had was if we weren’t happy with the results we wanted to be able to salvage the mirrors. We decided that concern wasn’t that important and went ahead and started attaching the mirrors with superglue. We couldn’t figure out why some of the people in the videos we’d seen wanted to arrange the mirrors in concentric circles. We thought this was a poor design because you lose a lot of surface area between the mirrors, and it’s not about making a pretty pattern but covering the maximum surface area of the dish with mirrors.

We washed all the gunk that had collected on the dish from it being stored outside and attached a row of 40 mirrors across the middle. It wasn’t perfectly aligned with the edges of the dish, but again, it doesn’t matter if they are straight across or diagonal, as long as you cover the entire thing. It was about 5:00 in the evening and the sun was still out so we rolled the dish into the driveway and pointed it at the sun. The focal point was pretty good with only a little variance around the edges. You could clearly make out a 1” square focal point. We didn’t take any measurements, but the early results looked promising so we pressed on.

We put the other 200 mirrors we had on the dish. It came out to 6 rows of 40 with a couple of mirrors offset for the mount bolt holes. By then the sun was down so we couldn’t test it, but there happened to be a full moon that night and clear skies so we were actually able to get some heat from of the sunlight reflected off the moon and focused on our hands!

The next day was sunny, so we did this test:

 

More to come when I get around to ordering more mirrors.