it walks !

so we were in Prague, waiting at a park for the train (see Prague post) and a bipedal creature we had heard stories of suddenly appeared, and then just as soon… disappeared.

we saw it near us a couple of times, and we were in shock and weren’t thinking straight, but as it passed by for the third or fourth time, we grabbed the camera and quickly began shooting video. we don’t know what it was, haven’t seen it before, and haven’t seen it since, but it was the strangest, most amazing little creature I think I’ve ever seen.

shocking video after the break.  Continue reading “it walks !”

Welcome Reese

A big fat Congratulations to my boy Josh and his wife Kati who just had their first child, Reese Daniel Farrer who was born at 5:58a MDT. He weighed in at barely under 7 lbs. and 20 in. long. We hear that both mom and baby are doing great. So Congratulations to both Josh and Kati, and welcome to Earth, Reese, there’s beer in the fridge.

T-Mobile… smart? not so much

chelsea wanted a new phone, and was looking at the BlackBerry, and because Verizon has a propensity for handicapping phones, I didn’t want to buy a BlackBerry from them. so we switched to T-Mobile, but this required us to sign a new 2-year contract, which is fine, but then we moved to Slovakia, and they don’t have service here. so we called up T-Mobile after we arrived and they said it’s fine, just get them proof that we are in fact living overseas and they’ll remove the $400 early cancellation fee.

Continue reading “T-Mobile… smart?  not so much”

identification

so there is a species of bird that lives here that has a song like I’ve never heard before. the song is not the most amazing song I’ve ever heard (although it is really cool, and I love listening to it while I work), but what is amazing is that it sings mostly in the evenings, and I’ve heard several of the same species of bird in different areas of town, and while I can tell that it’s the same bird, the songs are vastly different (in one area, the song could have been recorded and used as 8-bit video game sound effects, it was amazing the types of noises coming out of this bird), and even from the same bird, the songs are somewhat similar (in that songs sung by the same singer are similar), but every time it sings, it’s a new song.

here are some videos of the bird…   Continue reading “identification”

hacking iTunes paths

so unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that we’ve moved to Slovakia. during the move, I was unable and unwilling to pack my computer up to bring with us. it was just too large to be feasible. the next best thing was to backup my digital life onto an external hard drive–which chelsea so conveniently gave me for christmas–and bring that with us instead. one problem with this is that, as with every other time that I had to wipe my hard drive, I would be forced to re-import my entire iTunes library into iTunes, and if you’ve ever tried to import an iTunes library, it’s better than starting from scratch, but it sucks. playlists don’t sync properly, especially if they are based on other playlists. and the add date for all your songs becomes the same date, which I use in many of my playlists (recently added, etc.) but I think I found a solution to my problems…

Continue reading “hacking iTunes paths”

a good day

So we had made some tentative plans to go to Vienna sometime this weekend or next, and we woke up on Saturday, and just decided to go. The weather was mostly nice, and we still had time to catch the train. So we got all our stuff ready and left. After a few miscommunications by the bus schedule and some frantic bus catching, we finally made it to the train station with about 5 minutes to spare. We boarded the train and were off for another country.

Continue reading “a good day”

random pictures

Here are a few pictures I’ve taken recently.

The first set is from Slavín, a war memorial and cemetery on the hillside that commemorates the liberation of Bratislava from the Germans in WWII. It’s crazy to think that the history of the war that you hear about on TV and read about in books actually happened here. It also has a really good view of the city (I have more pics, but I want to make a panorama of them before posting them all).

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The first image is of the memorial itself. It really is fairly tall, more so than I had imagined. The second image is a view of Bratislava looking east across the city. The third image is a view of Bratislava Castle, and if you look closely on the left, you can see the top of St. Martin’s Cathedral (not taken from Slavín, but from a break in the houses on the walk back home. On a side note, there are some amazing houses up here.)

And the second set is, of course, pics of our little one who is just too cute not to photograph every second. In the set is her first bump on the noggin that she got the other day. She likes to stand next to the shelves we have on the ground here, and pull out everything she can and throw it on the floor. She was doing that, and was standing on a book, which slipped out from under her, and she fell and began to cry. We consoled her from the couch, because she often falls and doesn’t hit anything, just scares herself, and that’s what we thought happened. When we looked over a few moments later, she looked at us and smiled with a bruise on her head.

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The first image shows her little bump on the noggin, not bad, but it was her first one. The second image shows her new thing lately, where she tilts her head to one side and looks at you in a shy, cute kinda way. The third image is her in the tub with bubbles, which she wasn’t sure of at first, but is starting to enjoy more and more each time.

Well… that’s all for now, more to come, I’m sure.