Babies and Baseball

Baby Judah

Yesterday, Nov 4th, was a special day for me. At 2:28 my second nephew, my brother’s first child, was born. I’ve known my brother all his life. I remember being so excited when he was born. When my mother was expecting each of my sisters I was praying for a brother. My childhood best friend and I had big plans for him. On the list was to teach him about baseball and to be a die-hard NY Yankees fan.

Soaking in the Moment

I left home for college when he was 5yrs old and starting kindergarten. Since I had only gone 3 hrs away from home, and had a car, I was able to get home regularly. Still, there are times I wish I had more time with as he was growing up. A few years ago he got married to a wonderful young lady. I call her FSIL (Favorite SIL).

Now, having turned 30 this year, he is now a father. Though it feels weird saying that, I am soooo happy for him. He has always been great with kids. My daughters always say “Uncle Gregory” with such affection. He is the best uncle! Often times he would tell me I was a great dad.

Last night the Yankees won their 27th World Series Championship. It’s been 9 years since the last one. Well, there were a couple heart-breakers in there. But last night … the trophy came home!

The Yankees celebrate their World Series championship. (Nick Laham/Getty Images)

I’m A Human

You’ve seen the Microsoft commercials. “I am a PC.” For a company with so much money their commercials suck big time.

The Preamble

Friday I decided to upgrade the laptop the Mrs and the kids use from Windows Vista to Windows 7. No particular reason other than subconsciously avoiding something else. And of course I wasn’t upgrading mine first. Are you kidding me?

In the past I have always done a fresh install. Rather than mindlessly jumping right into the upgrade, I decided to create a disk image as part of my back out procedure. Not that I don’t ::cough:: trust Microsoft for a successful upgrade. So I downloaded a trial of Acronis True Image Home 2010 and created an image on an external hard disk. This probably took about 15-20 mins.

In the initial phase of the installation it checks your system and identifies possible issues. One recommendation was to uninstall iTunes and reinstall it after the upgrade completed. So I followed the recommendation. More on this later.

The upgrade started copying and expanding files so I left it to do it’s thing. No need for me to sit and watch it. I came back more than an hour later before going to sleep (around 1AM at this point) and there was a message informing me that the setup program was not responding. At which point I said to myself, “I’ll deal with this tomorrow.”

Saturday afternoon I started the setup program for the upgrade again. This time it ran. And ran. And ran. About 4hrs and numerous reboots later I was finally able to login. This is what I usually avoided by doing a fresh install. It was encouraging at least to see all the users listed.

Life in Lane Number 7

The first time logging into each user account it took about 3mins for the user profile and settings to be setup. My Logitech QuickCam Communicate STX was recognized and Logitech software started downloading after the drivers installed.

I have noticed that the performance on the laptop is better that the Windows Vista Home Basic. Switching users as way quicker than on Vista or XP.

The true test – will anyone notice or be thrown off. Other tan the Mrs not knowing how to launch MS Outlook without the Email shortcut at the top of the Start menu, no issues. My nine year logged in and into the browser to do some searches related to her homework without an assistance. Mission successful from that standpoint.

You Did What?

I installed iTunes again on the laptop. I had a shared iTunes library configured for the kids using junctions/links. In each of their Music folders I created a junction named iTunes pointing to the shared folder “C:\Users\Public\Music\iTunes Kids”. After the upgrade the junctions no longer existed and I had to recreate both of them again. Thanks MS.

iTunes launched just fine and the library was in tact. Well, sort of. I played music, video, podcast and TV tracks ripped and purchased. The majority of them played. A handful of videos that were purchased prompted me to authorize the computer. I feared something like this would happen. So I emailed the issue to iTunes support.

I’ve had to email iTunes support on issues in the past with good resolutions. Tonight (Sunday) I checked my email and found a response. It started off good until I read this statement that made my jaw drop and nearly fall off my chair.

Anderson, I have removed the authorizations from your account and  will ask you to follow a few steps to attempt to resolve this issue.

I fired back an email basically saying “You did what??? All of them??? Tell me you didn’t.” For you see, there was no issue with iTunes on my laptop. Now I might have one. And since I did not read the email and reply before the support person was done for the day (he included his work schedule) my email won’t be read until Wednesday, his next day in the office. Backup my library before checking this out. I report back on that later.

Technical Difficulties

Last night I attended a pastoral appreciation dinner in New Rochelle, NY with a buddy. It was held a banquet house on the water. (I never new there was water in New Rochelle) The evening was going well. A live band performing. (sidebar: I had Blackened Salmon. It was lightly blackened and the inside was moist but I wasn’t trilled the pineapple/passion fruit combo it was topped with.)  As the liturgical dancers were announced to perform, the master of ceremonies says “they will be dance to the pastor’s favorite song.” When the performance started, the young ladies entered the room and assembled in their places to start the song. ::cue the track:: What was heard next was intro to “Beat It.” Yes, Michael Jackson “Beat It”! I don’t know the pastor and bishop that well, but I’m pretty sure that isn’t his favorite song. So as that got put on pause, “We are having some technical difficulties …” from the master of ceremonies. He quickly moved into to some filler.

About 15 minutes later we finally had “the pastor’s favorite song” queued up which is “Total Praise” by Richard Smallwood. (Great song if you’ve never heard and should be in every choir’s repertoire) The dancers were moving gracefully when midway through the performance the CD just STOPPED! (more technical difficulties) But the dancers continued with out missing a beat. Members of the church choir seated throughout the room immediately began singing the song to support dancers. Then the keyboardist and drummer from the band joining right in.

There were a few more technical difficulties requiring hotel staff to assemble at the audio closet for periods of time. My friend and I commented on how banquet halls often seem to have crappy audio equipment.