It’s been a while since I’ve really talked about my dogs.

And how much I love them.

And how much I want to strangle them at times.

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Carbonite.com

As long as I’m going around talking about services and things that I use, I might as well talk a little bit about my new backup solution.

As you may or may not be aware, I recently suffered through an untimely loss (of my computer).  Attempts to resurrect the machine met with limited success.  I basically bought myself enough time to order a new laptop and work towards organizing my files as best I could for transfer to the new machine.

Unfortunately during the course of this effort, I discovered that my previous backup solution had proved to be less than robust.   Fortunately for me, obsessive compulsive behavior sometimes has its benefits.   My backup had a backup (sort of) and I’m reasonably certain that my most if not all of my files are currently intact either on this machine or on my NAS appliance.

But this led me to think…maybe I should get something a little more robust.

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Mint.com

I’ve used Microsoft Money to track my finances for…years now. Maybe 2002. I’d have to dig around old cds to figure it out.

In any case, it wasn’t really a conscious decision. I think I got a free copy with a new computer or something along those lines. I had been using Quicken for much the same reason for a year or so prior to making the switch, but I didn’t really feel strongly one way or another. I just wanted to try and get a handle on how a person could be taking in so much money (relative to an average college student’s income) and still not have anything.

Never did figure that out.

Time went on, and I found out about Microsoft and Quicken’s little ploy. The first hit can be free, but you’ll pay us every year/other year to continue to watch all of your money circle the drain.

And I did. I’ve bought all the upgrades that have come out for Microsoft Money from 2002 onwards. The good ones and the really really bad ones.

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Click Me!

This past weekend passed in a bit of a blur.

My wife had a bridal shower in the city of Chicago.  Well, a bridal shower weekend, really.  As my sister lives in Chicago right now, I figured we might as well pop on down as well and do an overnight with her family.  This would give us the opportunity to do a lot of things that the calculus of time and naps had not really allowed us to do on a day trip.  Museums, aquariums, and the like.

My sister doesn’t actually live in Chicago.  She’s in one of the many suburbs just outside of the city, but still within spitting distance of the trains if she wanted to get into Town.  Either the train or a drive will add tens of minutes onto either end of a trip.  Add that to a two hour trip to get to her place and a normal arrival time of 10:30 to 11 AM, divided by our daughter’s need for a nap and multiplied by her usual reluctance to take one, and you wind up with a situation that doesn’t lend itself to exploring the Windy City.

Overnights, on the other hand, change the balance of the equation to your favor.

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“I see a tushy, all nice and squishy!”

For some reason my wife does not approve of me saying this particular phrase around our daughter during our evening bath time ritual.

Perhaps it’s the rapidity with which my daughter learned to repeat that exact phrase.   Perhaps it’s how she seems to enjoy pointing at just mommy and saying it.  Or perhaps it’s the lack of accuracy in my daughter’s assertion.  (She tends to point at random locations on my wife and repeat the little sing-song phrase.  It’s quite amusing when my daughter asserts that my wife’s head is a squishy tushy.)

You can’t win them all.

Click Me!

My daughter has decided to telling the bunnies and birdies in her room “Good night”.  Tonight she had me lift her up so she could kiss each and every bird on her wall.   My back hurts.

A weeks back, one of the RSS feeds I follow posted an article entitled “How to Make Kettle Corn in 3 Easy Steps“.

I could barely contain my excitement until that evening, when I shared the news of my discovery with my wife.

“If you make that abomination in my presence, I’m leaving you and taking the kid with me.”

My wife feels strongly about the proper preparation of popcorn.

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When we purchased our first home, it came with a number of appliances and systems.  We didn’t have to buy a new refrigerator.  We didn’t have to buy a dishwasher.  The house came with a water softener.  Stuff like that.

One of the more exciting items that came with our house was a Culligan drinking system.  I’ll be the first to admit that my wife and I are water snobs.  We don’t like tap water.  I know, I know.  I can almost quote for you studies about just how darn good tap water is.   We get yearly(?) reports on how good Janesville’s water is in particular.  But we can’t help it.  Fortunately we’re also very cheap.  So we tend to go for the water filters over the water bottles.  The Brita has been a mainstay in our refrigerator for years.

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Click Me!

We’re two days into our three day weekend, and I’m pretty darn exhausted.

Our daughter has visited the beach, picked apples, seen the Taste of Madison, and hung out with her bestest friends.  And that was just the past two days.

Tomorrow will probably involve a parade.  Possibly a petting zoo.  We haven’t decided yet.

Listing things out, I have to say that it doesn’t seem like all that much.  And yet somehow I’m drained.

I’m blaming the apples.   We picked too many.

My daughter enjoyed it at least.

Links to the Events of the Weekend:

Governor Nelson State Park

LaborFest

Eplegaarden