Fnord.

Anna now has the expected digestive oddities babies get. The other night, she was being persistently and loudly flatulent, and after the usual “that’s Daddy’s girl” comments, I said we should nickname her “Vladimir.”

Not for the one we know, but the Russian president.

…pause…

Putin, that is. Heh.

Give yourself a second to get that one.

Second, equally bad: Anna hates wet diapers. She’ll cry immediately, no matter the quantity. I voted her a second nickname: “Princess and the Pee.”

Such is humor around here now.

Namely, where to get free high-res desktop wallpaper.

Lots of sunsets/sunrises/seashores:

And lots of cool outdoors pics:

Resolutions up to 2560×1600 (Yay 30″ LCD monitors!), very high quality stuff, free.

Recommended. I have a couple dozen in a folder and auto-pick a random one now and then.

Album in the works, hopefully this weekend!

Christian Cantrell, who runs WatchReport, has started a new site called TipBin. I write for him on WatchReport, so he asked me to try out the site and share it with my friends. Since both of you (a joke, I hope!) read this blog, please head on over there, write some tips, see what you think and let them know.

It reminds me of Matthew Baldwin’s Tricks of the Trade, but hopefully with more content. Baldwin decided to write a book from the tips, and since then the content flow has slowed to almost nothing. Lame.

Hopefully TipBin can do better.

Sorry, couldn’t resist the combination of Rove-departing news and classic Edward Gibbon. This is neither. And it has a little to do with Rove.

The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.

Who’s the author, you ask? One of the usual suspects? Nope.

David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called “chilling long-term simulations”.

These include “dramatic” tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.

Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.

Needless to say, it’s a bit unusual for the head of the GAO to compare the USA to the Roman Empire. On his own volition, too:

While most of its studies are commissioned by legislators, about 10 per cent – such as the one containing his latest warnings – are initiated by the comptroller general himself.

Well. Read the article here. (Financial Times, free)

My man James Richardson, of course.

392.
Succeed and the world becomes just.

and

450.
That the bookstores divide into romance and
mystery suggests that the two most powerful fan-
tasies are someone to love and someone to
blame.

Well, one more. This is more practical advice:

173:
Shop: for shoes in the afternoon, when the foot
is largest; for groceries overfed, when nothing
pleases.

Not sure where I found this one, but an awesome and long post on making your own bacon! Here’s a snapshot:

As previously noted we’re fans, and one should never forget the crazy bacontarians, who strive to get bacon accepted as a diet.

Really.

Anyway, read the article, its both informative and amusing.

If you spend much time at all hanging out on the forums on TimeZone, you quickly realize that many of the posters there have more disposable income than you or I have in toto. The most jaw-dropping example of this came up last week. A recurring motif there is to have a poster ask the members ‘Which of these two should I choose?’, and the forum software lets people vote for one watch or another.

However, this person took it to a new level. Here are the two choices he offered:

Yes, that’s a Ulysse Nardin Freak, the “Freak 28′800 V/h Diamond Heart” version. Limited edition of 99 pieces, and it really does MSRP for about, erp, one hundred grand. Which appears to be what the person has stacked up there.

The list of questions is long: What sorta person has 100k to spend on a watch?

More to the point, how the [censored] do they have 100k IN CASH on their desk?

In my best Keanu Reeves voice, I hafta say “Whoa.”

Go read the thread. The members did a pretty good job responding to this one.

More about the tech details of the watch:

Anna had her two-month checkup on Friday, and passed with flying colors. 10lbs 7oz, 23″, 50th percentile for weight and 75th for height. She got four injections and one oral vaccine, for which she got a bit of Tylenol. The picture is to tide y’all over until the next album, and to make Diego happy - he liked the ‘paul as furniture’ series too.

In other news, Anna is sleeping through the night! At least, I’d say 11-7 (on a good night) counts. This is a huge relief for us, though Chris still gets less sleep due to waking up herself and sometimes night feeding. Me, I feel like a new man - those first few weeks were rough.

As you can see, the cat is adapting nicely as well, took her a while but she’s accepted her reduced status. More or less. I’ve done more cleaning up than before.

More pictures soon!

…at least, that’s how I thought it was spelled.

From Eclipse with the XUL plugin installed, I created a new XUL project. Buried in the boilerplate was this awesome URL for the XML namespace:

Good to see there are still fans out there making bad puns.