Crossing Wires

09/02/07
Crossing Wires
I am not a very good electrician. I do, however, have a lot of experience running wires for various stereo components. Which is why this particular problem really irks me that I can't come up with a better solution.

Here's the deal. I have a HD digital cable box and a Tivo. I love Tivo because I can record shows and keep them forever on my computer, something the cable companies will never allow you to do. My point is to establish why I don't just get the cable company's HD DVR box.

Anyways.

The problem is with audio. I run audio from the cable box to the TV and I can watch HDTV with sound, but I can't record any digital cable channels on the Tivo. So I run the audio cables from the cable box to the Tivo. Great, now I am watching HDTV in silence. I wish like all hell that the second pair of audio out connectors on the cable box actually worked, but alas they do not.

My solution is rather backwards. I ran audio cables from each of the sources on the TV (Tivo and cable box) to a 4 way AV splitter and then ran the OUT to the Tivo box with the cable's audio running into the Tivo. In this case, the Tivo basically functions as a passthrough for the cable box's audio and the splitter lets me listen to either source while viewing it.

I still don't get exactly why it works though. If the in's and out's on the splitter are labelled correctly then I shouldn't get any sound on either input, but I think they're "in" and "out" can be reversed as I did it.

Am I missing something? Is there a better way?



Corrected Crossing Wires
So it sounded good, right?

"My solution is rather backwards. I ran audio cables from each of the sources on the TV (Tivo and cable box) to a 4 way AV splitter and then ran the OUT to the Tivo box with the cable's audio running into the Tivo. In this case, the Tivo basically functions as a passthrough for the cable box's audio and the splitter lets me listen to either source while viewing it."

Yah, not so much. It turns out that the Tivo is not a good pass through and it also delays the signal slightly as it caches it.

So here's the real solution and this makes even less sense than what I came up with before, but again it works :

from out cable box to out 4 way switch
from tivo out to tv s-video 1 in (the only one that is somewhat straightforward)
from tivo in to switch #2 in
from switch #3 in to tv component #1 in

did ya follow all that? good, cuz I have no frigging idea why that works, so maybe you can explain it to me.

I also figured out how to run both at the same time by pushing in both of the buttons at the same time, effectively creating a powered split instead of a switch.

Williams Family's First Visit to MSI - September 1st

09/01/07
MSI Visit - 9/1
Williams Family's First Visit to MSI - September 1st

Williams Family's First Visit to MSI - September 1st

We lived in Milwaukee for 8 years. During our stay in Milwaukee, we made a habit of going to the City's main Zoo every Saturday, if for no other reason than just to walk around and enjoy the weather. In the winters, it was tough. And let's face it, there's all of about two weeks of Summer in Milwaukee. I exaggerate, but...well, no I don't. Anyways, it's a habit we fell out of when we moved to Chicago, partially because our neighborhood is so nice, we didn't feel the immediate need. But now that we're settled in a little bit, we decided to start a new family tradition. The zoos in Chicago are not convenient from our house, and we felt that Michigan City's zoo would be a bit of a letdown after Milwaukee.

Therefore, we decided on the Musem of Science and Industry (MSI). I always loved MSI as a kid because it really appealed to my science / geek side (ok, it's pretty much "all" as opposed to "side". Recently though, I discovered that the building that MSI is in is the last remaining structure from the 1893 World's Fair which officially put Chicago on the map as a major world power, only 22 years after the Great Chicago Fire. History may come full circle if Mayor Daley gets his wish to host the 2016 Olympics. Fittingly enough, the Olympic Stadium is slated to be built just a couple miles due West of the 1893 World's Fair Grounds. Stay tuned on that.

Anyways, we got to the Museum, pretty much right when they opened and we purchased our memberships. The staff was very well trained - they comped our parking, they got us signed up, they took our money and off we went. Very efficient, extremely polite. On the way in, we noticed the Pioneer Zephyr (forgive me if I don't get these names right the first time) and although we didn't stop to see it until we were leaving, I put the photo here for continuity's sake :

The opening hall is quite impressive - you can see the banner for the Star Wars exhibit opening in a couple of weeks. I expect I will jump out of my skin when that opens up!

The first exhibit room we got to see was a large collection of model ships. There were about two dozen of them. Here are three shots of one of the more detailed models :

Next up was a room full of cars. Matthew got so excited he started banging on the glass and we had to restrain him a bit. His grandfather is a bit of a car nut and Matthew just feeds off that. Check out the cute model showing off this beauty! :)

As we were leaving the room full of cars, we saw this solar car built by students at the University of Michigan. It was really hard to get the whole vehicle into one shot. I had to paste in the description (which you can't really read in this size) from another picture.

The next room was a room about digital effects in photography and video. The stuff was pretty tame by today's standards but a good primer nonetheless. I'll be interested to see how this room evolves over time because it's clearly out of date for anyone who has seen a movie in the last ten years. Matthew, Kelley and I sat down to watch one of the demonstrations for just a minute.

Next we walked through the "Net" room which had a very trippy Matrix-esque floor :

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3aF1Wzz4LM[/youtube]

Kelley wasn't interested in being the fireman but Matthew was up for it! Oh and Grandpa, I took the engineer's job in your place since you couldn't be there? What's that? Oh...different engineer, I got it...

Although the ships and the cars were nice, today was all about RAILROADS! For those who have never been to MSI, they have the most FANTASTIC model railroad setup I have ever seen. I hear tell there is a better one somewhere in West Virginia, but this is pretty outstanding nonetheless. Just to the left of this picture, there is a very small dynamite demonstration that just about scared the pants off my poor daughter. It says push the button, and then there are a few flashes, a very loud boom, and a rather sad plastic wall descends into a hole demonstrating how they cleared paths through rock. It was funny to see her jump back at the boom and then see this sad little piece of plastic move.

You can see in the distance of the next picture downtown Chicago. There's a good reason I didn't post anymore pictures of it - it's mostly wrong. The LaSalle Bank Building is not there at all. The Chicago Board of Trade is south of the "el" tracks instead of north of them like it should be and there are countless other buildings which are just in the wrong place. I was about to take up the issue with one of the staff there and then decided a Saturday morning probably isn't the most appropriate time to start abusing my membership privileges. All in all, the effect was very good but the bad layout just left me scratching my head.

Union Station from the theoretical west :

On the other side of the floor was Seattle. I have never been to Seattle, so any Seattle folk out there can tell me if they got it close to correct or not.

Another shot of Seattle's model skyline - what IS that structure at the bottom left of the picture. It looks like 4 different colored pieces of play dough mashed together and made into a concert hall or something. Very bizarre looking. I'll take a better picture during my next visit.

At the far end of the previous picture you can see some loading dock equipment which I recorded video of here :

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8pzW6x8pOI[/youtube]

Suspended from the ceiling of the railroad rooms were several planes, including this United Airlines jet which was missing its left wing (presumably so it could fit in the room). Very impressive.

As we were exiting the train room, I caught a couple shots of this beauty. I'll have to get the story on this one later. If someone knows, please fill it in the comments.

There was a room dedicated to oil and all of its various uses. I took the following video of this room which was a fancy light show using bubbles and some hydrocarbon gel. I didn't stay for the whole explanation because the guy was really loud. I tried to edit this video and when Quicktime exported it, it got a little messed up for the first 5 seconds. I'm still learning this stuff...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKV2LnLiqjw[/youtube]

For whatever bizarre reason, I started getting a really bad leg cramp right about here, so we cut the trip short and headed back to the van. We had been there for over an hour anyways which is more or less what we like to limit our little trips to anyways.

 

More pictures and stories in weeks to come!

Anniversary Video

08/25/07
Anniversary Video
Last year, I wanted to do something special for my 6th wedding anniversary. I had in mind something a bit more elaborate but by the time I got around to it, this was the best I could do :




The video was created through a website called "onetruemedia.com" or something like that. They have a relationship with Tivo so that presentations stored online can be viewed on your TV.

By the way, the pictures are roughly speaking in time order, so that they go from oldest to newest from roughly 1997 - 2006.

The lighthouse that is featured prominently is on Kelleys Island, Ohio and is where I proposed to her.

Also, I should explain the wedding cake picture. This is the "she feeds you the first piece of cake and then vice versa" part of the reception. Well, I told her - "if you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you". Well, she mashed it into my face and hence my expression of "here it comes" in that pic.

The picture where the dog is guarding the rawhide bone - that's not his. He stole that from a Border Collie that was triple his size and was guarding it ferociously. The Border Collie was not pleased, but tolerated him because he's cute. He was maybe 7 lbs at the time of that picture. He grew up to over 40 lbs.

The first picture of my wife in the hospital bed is the very first time she got to hold our daughter and I got to hand her over. That was a special moment. That was also when we named her. My wife and I had a list of names for our daughter (the same one that went to school for the first time this week) and I really wanted to name her Kelley. We sort of knew we were having a girl from the ultrasounds even though we had asked the doctors not to tell us. But, I was afraid of picking that exact moment to be selfish about naming her, so I suggested a different name (I think it was Stephanie but I can't remember). In a surprise response, my wife said "I think she looks like a Kelley." And the rest is history.

The picture where Kelley is giving her daddy a hug was not staged at all. I was holding her in that rocking chair and as she fell asleep, her arms drifted down my sides, making it look like she was giving me a hug. I asked my wife to take that pic.

The pic of me and Kelley on the brown chair was taken for a homemade first Mother's Day card for my wife. Kelley was a month old.

Later on, you see Kelley's first dilly bar and my son showing a bit more of himself than I originally thought when I first took that pic. Sorry about that. I thought my son looked very much like Marlon Brando when he was first born. Last but not least, there's a picture of a candlelight dinner I prepared for my wife on a weekend where the kids went to Grandma's and a family photo which is very hard because my son hates posing for pictures.

Here we go again...

08/24/07
Here we go again...

What is up with thunderstorms this summer? I don't ever remember a summer with weather this violent - crazy.

So while we've had the usual problems of fallen tree limbs again...

...the real story this time around was a loss of power for 24 hours and significant flooding.

This street is about a quarter of a mile from my house. If you can kind of pick out the black gates in front of the red house, that's supposed to be guiding a sidewalk around a small stream. By the way, those people on the bikes eventually decided they would try to ride across. The water went all the way up to their seats.

Here's that gate up close and personal :

Looks like Niagara falls. I remarked to one of the bicyclists that this would be a hell of a lot of fun if you had a kayak.

We lost power for 24 hours and I was extremely worried that our sump pump area would back up into the crawl space. I came home in a panic on Thursday night and pulled all of the cardboard boxes out of the crawl, leaving the plastic tubs in. My panic turned out to be for nothing as our crawl stayed dry as a bone throughout the whole ordeal.

We did have to sleep as one big family in the living room. The kids slept on the futon and us parents slept on the floor. The kids were fairly frightened by all the lightning and thunder. Actually it was quite a show. I saw some of the best lightning strikes that I have seen in years last night.

Our neighbors across the street were not so lucky on the flooding front. They have a raised ranch which puts their basement floor at the same level as our crawlspace. They had carpet down there and unfortunately water got in and it flooded. The worst part is they were scheduled to leave for a Niagara Falls vacation today (how ironic) and they had to cancel their plans.

So once again, a huge storm passes through my neighborhood and we emerge more or less unscathed. We are very thankful to the Lord for blessing our house in this way.

First Day of School Reflections

08/22/07
First Day of School Reflections

I still can't believe it. She's all grown up. My wife and I were looking at photos of her walking to and from school tonight and two struck me as being almost exact copies of pictures we had taken in the summer of 2003 when she was only a year old and just starting to walk.

 

The chubby little baby fat is gone and what we see now is this beautiful little girl, older than she has a right to be. But I'm biased. I just miss my baby girl.

First Day of School Over!

08/22/07
First Day of School Over!

My daughter's first day at half day Kindergarten is over!

They called her name and she came out the door yelling behind her "I'll see you tomorrow!" She already has more friends than names she can remember.

At once, she ran over to mom and gave her a big hug!

And then we walked home - a family reunited once again!

And *I* got a special gift from my little girl when we got home!

And she was my little baby girl all over again.

First Day of School

08/22/07
First Day of School

This is a story of a father's pain. I took my little girl to school today and I realized she's not a little girl anymore. I had known this day was coming for months, well technically for years since she was born, but I had denied it. I refused to admit to myself that my little princess was growing up. Well today, it hit me. She's not my little baby anymore. She's a big girl.

My Baby Girl ~6-12 Hours after birth :

My wife's mother joined us for this historic event and it's a good thing because her camera shots were better than mine. My wife helped her pick out a fabulous red dress for her to wear on her first day.

My little girl was so excited she nearly forgot her backpack, and she nearly knocked me over rushing back into the house to grab it. We posed for a few shots in the driveway and then started off.

We left the house about 7:50am to get to school by 8:10am, when her class starts. I didn't really feel any pain or angst until we got to the crossing guard.

Then it started to hit me how incredibly nervous I had been during every single one of my first days of school. But my little girl wasn't nervous - she was excited, nearly running ahead of us by 50 feet before we asked her to slow down. I've never seen a kid so happy and excited to go to school - it was fun to watch.

Seeing the buses in front of the school made me remember all the "fun" times I had on school buses as a kid (and all the REALLY cold mornings).

Finally, we were at her door.

Today, we were allowed inside to take her to the classroom. We will not be allowed to do that again.

She posed for a few pics at her table and then we left unexpectedly.

I turned to my wife in a panic - "That's it?!?" "That's it!" she replied with an annoying cheerful tone. "I didn't even get to say goodbye..." I said.

Then the most surprising thing happened when we got outside - my younger son started calling his sister's name over and over again and started bawling on my wife's shoulder. I was prepared for me and my wife to have issues with this, but not my son. He cried for about half the walk home and then he saw our neighbor standing at the corner and he immediately perked up and ran after him.

All in all, it went much faster than I was prepared for and was much less ceremonious than I guess I had in mind. I was ready for a "walk her to the altar" type ceremony but I guess THAT pain will have to wait for another day. Someone pass me the kleenex.