In with 2020

It's been long enough that I'm sure everyone's forgotten about the existence of this blog, which is all the more reason to shout into the echoless void!

Tommy in a spaghetti-related incident

 Sometimes we deign to take public transportation.

The only surviving picture of Labor Day, which I managed to survive.

Best story of 2019 was our leaking bathroom sink. It started randomly one evening while I was working late, and I didn't notice anything until after I had gone to bed and John woke me up complaining of a loud beeping. It was the smoke alarm downstairs shorting out.

Evidence of getting "mitigated."

Flee the house! To the park!

This was our upstairs for like...2 months. They tore up floorboards and disabled the bathroom while we got our insurance to figure out how to deal with being a condo. It was a lot harder than you would have thought.

So in the meantime, I got tickets for the very back of the Greek Theater to see Mark Knopfler in concert. Alison wasn't exactly enthused for the artist, but she was cool with getting away for an evening. She ended up being OK with the music.

Some extremely delicious potatoes at some Italian restaurant near Griffith Park. I'll be darned if I could remember, but geodata indicate it was Cosa Buona. Highly recommended.

Tommy showing off his jaw strength.

John does not like Regular Ordinary Swedish Mealtime, I guess...

Kids after a long day at work.

Our town puts on a "pumpkin festival" around Halloween, which is held in this historical site behind a park, which we have never seen before. They had pony rides.

One side benefit of Alison's new job, is every once and a while we can slip out to catch a Drafthouse film. Like Parasite (so good).

Tommy was ill at this Halloween party, so he did not stay long.

Tommy's preferred sleeping arrangements?

An evening in front of the tube...which doesn't have a tube anymore. We've gone full OLED these days, although even this may seem archaic 20 years from now.

We held off on the pumpkin carving until the day before Halloween, just to be sure that they didn't rot before the holiday. John wanted the cat, and I made some recommendations for Tommy's pumpkin.

With the brouhaha behind the fried chicken sandwich from Popeye's, I decided to investigate. Turns out I actually prefer the sandwich over Chick-fil-a's offering. Can get it spicy, too.

Our insurance finally came through, and, surprisingly, the call was to completely replace the flooring throughout the house. That meant we had to get moved out. Right in the middle of a massive payload test campaign, which meant neverending work for me (ended up doing 15 days straight). In the middle of this, we were evicted for the repairs and placed into an "extended-stay" hotel nearby, which didn't have much of a kitchen. We made the most of it, though, and insurance did foot the bill.

A park near our hotel provided some outlet for our kids.

One of the rare mornings where I was able to get breakfast with the kids in the lobby.

Despite it all, I had been saving up for a new computer build, which I hadn't upgraded (outside of a GPU) since 2011. Similar to my last build, I leaned heavily on Micro Center, which is absolutely the best place to buy PC parts. While I had originally planned on cannibalizing my old PC, I decided that it was better to make a complete grounds-up new build. Alison expressed interest in having a workable PC upstairs as well, so that all worked out.

With the latest AMD offerings, I decided that betting on their multicore performance would give me the best longevity for the future, as well as the promise of PCIe Gen 4. The 3700X was the sweet spot for my needs, although most builders recommended the 3600 for best value. Unfortunately, I rolled the dice a couple of times on some refurbished components, and lost each time. That ended up costing me several days...in fact, I didn't have everything fully working until after Thanksgiving. Micro Center's return policy, as well as price matching policy, made everything bearable, although the travel time is about 45 minutes each way. I went thrice. And I ended up replacing a power supply because I didn't fully understand how modular power supplies work (turns out you need to plug in 2 connectors at the PSU side for the 24 pin ATX connector).

Once I got a new-box 2070 Super and a replacement for my refurbished 3TB Seagate drive, everything hummed along nicely. 32 GB of 3600 GHz (CAS 16) RAM also covers many ills. My 1TB NVMe SSD is faster than I even know how to take advantage. Even picked up a 27" 1440p 144Hz monitor on discount. While debugging the build, I had everything strewn all over our hotel bed...I probably looked like someone dangerous to the housekeeping staff.

Why a new build now? Flight simulator. Extremely CPU heavy, and my old Sandy Bridge had finally met its match (it struggled to get better than 20 fps in X-Plane 11). Why flight simulator? Because I've always been interested in it, and for some reason, it just really grabbed me. To the point that I'm considering at some point getting my own pilot's license...but that's a much more expensive and long-term endeavor.

Anyway, we packed out of our hotel to pick up Grandma Debby from Laguna Beach, where she was staying at a fancy hotel or something.

We were going to stay in an Airbnb in Oceanside for the Thanksgiving holiday. Ate at this Mexican restaurant, which even the kids liked (because they had more than Mexican food).

LegoLand was the big draw, and we ended up getting annual passes because they cost less than a single day at Disneyland.

It was a very rainy day, and a lot of the rides started closing down. Still, the crowds were far more manageable than they ever are at Disneyland.

Thanksgiving Day was rainy as well, without much of a prospect of getting kids outside. John was excited to watch Home Alone, which we realized was a mistake because he immediately began emulating the behavior of Kevin McCallister during the film. We shut it down after he attempted to toboggan down stairs.

Thanksgiving evening, the rain let up enough to get the kids to a nearby park.

We met up with the rest of the family in Pasadena for Frozen 2: Frosty Bugaloo.

We packed it back into the hotel until we finally got our stuff moved back into the house, now with brand new floors. First week of December, so about 5 weeks we were nomads.

By this point, I finally had enough time to sit down with my machine and behold the fruits of my computer labor. 80 fps in situations where I was lucky to get 20. A thing of beauty.

I had a birthday, which I wanted to celebrate by seeing Knives Out. Worth it.

Typical late Sunday arrival. Not seen here were the results of the stomach flu hitting literally everyone in the family. I pushed Tommy through the neighborhood in the stroller after I thought he was on the mend...he wasn't, and the evidence of his applesauce was visible to all for about a mile.

Of course, I was sick on my actual birthday, so I didn't try out my newest toy until I had recovered.

John's kindergarten Christmas program.

Our Christmas campaign began with a train trip to Tucson. It was easiest to park the car at long-term ONT airport parking, since we would be returning to the airport later. The train was quite full, so the staff had us load our stuff in a luggage car rather than hauling up to coach, which was actually real nice. Now, we just needed Tommy to settle down and sleep for the trip...didn't fall asleep 'til about 1 AM.

No Christmas trip to Tucson is complete without a jaunt to Winterhaven, which was the busiest I think I've ever seen it.

Christie making herself comfortable.

The ladies were off doing...something, so Dad and I had the kids all day. Parks and museums as we attempted to keep everyone sane.

The Littlest Angel according to James Christmas tradition.

Christmas was an exciting day for the children, and a late night for the parents.

And of course never complete without China's finest products.

Dad got a Saturn V Lego set last year for Christmas, but he did not put it together until he asked for me to help. Over Christmas Eve and Christmas we got it done.

With Christmas in the books, we were on to the 2nd phase of Christmas, a flight to Houston from Tucson.

The Browns-Gibbs were there to meet us.

Got a chance to visit the temple where Alison and I were married.

Park time with the cousins.

We visited the Hundred Acre Wood, basically a farm-theme park. Tommy got to ride a pony again, and this time he didn't want to get off. He wasn't as thrilled to feed and pet the animals.

John and his cousins could not get enough of the zip line.

We took a trip to Johnson Space Center. I was excited, although I think a lot of it went over the kids' heads. That unfortunately led to a premature meltdown before I got to get up to the 747 Space Shuttle shuttle.

Did get to see the real Saturn V, after making the Lego variant.

We played this Pictionary game that required you to draw in the air. It was pretty difficult.

New Year's was before us. We opted to celebrate with the kids on Eastern time, although that was only a 1 hour advantage in Texas.

I was in bed by midnight, and still tired the following morning. Tommy agreed.

And suddenly, the vacation was over. There was a lot of advertising for some Apple TV show at KIAH.

Best trip configuration for our family is the 2+2, which the E-175 delivers. Unfortunately, the cabin temp was a bit high the entire way.

Finally home, John's basketball career began. Well, at least with a clinic to learn how to play the sport. The goal right now is to have John last an entire game and practice, because he has a tendency to check out about halfway through.

John had his 6th birthday with an informal collection of friends at the McDonald's play place.

John getting direction from his coach.

We had the California Gibbs over for John's gifting party.

And a later arrival from Grammy and Papa.

The latest medical episode manifest this week where Tommy was advised by our pediatrician office to go to the ER. He had been coughing a lot like he had when he was 8 months old. This time Alison took him to Huntington, and they ended up keeping him into the following morning. I came in time to see the pediatrician on staff say he could go home (thankfully) as Tommy was running around pulling off his monitoring equipment. The followup with our pediatrician was simply that Tommy had a virus that gave him lung congestion. So that headed off a potential weeks-long episode with the nebulizer. Unfortunately this also prices us out of a Spring Break trip...

Well, another year down and a new one to look forward to.