Amazon Smile

This is kind of cool…

If you are doing any online shopping through Amazon.com please make sure to start at AmazonSmile - http://smile.amazon.com . Through AmazonSmile, at no cost to you, Amazon makes a donation for every eligible purchase you make, to the charity of your choice. It’s free and it’seasy. . Follow this link and register today: http://smile.amazon.com .  If you already have an  Amazon.com account,you still need to start at http://smile.amazon.com (every time you shop Amazon).   Just Plug in your login, password and select a charity.  Once selected, all eligible purchases will be registered to benefit the charity every time you purchase through AmazonSmile. 

I saw this and think that if we are going to buy anything on Amazon, why not have a portion of what we are already going to spend go to a charity we choose. When you first go to the site, they have a few main charities highlighted or you can do a search. You can search for things like Children’s hospital of Buffalo or Roswell Park, both of which I was able to find in their list. Once selected, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of your eligible AmazonSmile purchases when you shop at AmazonSmile (smile.amazon.com).

Searching for a feed reader….

We had relied on Google reader for so long. And now it is gone. Finally getting around to finding something to put on our Android devices for pulling down posts.

I think I am going to try the following for a while.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.news.rssfeedreader&hl=en

If anyone has any better suggestion let us know.

Whose Blog is it?

 

After I posted the last video, Ben asked if I was putting it on his website. I told him I put it on mine. He says, “you have a website too? Let me see.” I show my blog, and he says, “that is not your website, that is mine.” I pull up his and tell him that that is his and it is for what he does at school, and he says “Oh,” and goes back to eating dinner. After a couple of bites, he comes back over and says, “My web site is just for me, and you share yours.” That sounds about right. That may be a good way to explain it.

Do Squirrels have something against Angry Birds?

Just wondering why the squirrels have attacked the angry bird Jack O Lantern and not the one right next to it.

The Claw

So John has been talking about claw machines. There is one in the Budweys by my house. I cannot remember the last time I tried to get something out of those machines, so I try on the machine at Budweys. The first attempt, I pull out a bear that is almost as big as Mason. This got the kids excited and Ben pointed out which one he wanted, but I am unable to grab that one. The next try I pull out a backpack for Julie. I go one more time, get a bear by the leg, but as it drags across the other toys, it pulls loose. 2 toys for $4 is not bad. When John creates his app he may want to add this machine.

Unusual sight in the sky

I glanced out the window at work and this caught my eye. We are thinking that it is in town for the Bills vs Patriots game on Sunday.

Don’t touch my food!

We had a couple of Applesauce cups in the fridge. I grabbed one for Mason to eat for dinner. When I opened it, Ben and Julie wanted a spoonful of it. Mason was not too happy, but let it go. Then when the kids where done with dinner, Ben and Julie wanted applesauce for dessert. I gave Julie the rest of the open one and Ben got another from the fridge. At this point Mason started yelling at all of us. No idea what he said, but he was mad that I would let the kids eat his food. Then when Ben was done, he got up and then I let mason down on the floor. He crawled around the table to where Julie was still eating applesauce, and pulled himself to a standing position against the chair and started slapping Julie. I think we get the point.

Family Wii

Who has a Wii, and what online games do you have?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wii_Wi-Fi_Connection_games

Computer Guy

One of the user at work referenced this clip when I was looking at her computer. She suggested I look it up. I got a laugh out of it.

How is this for a nice evening?

Yesterday was our anniversary. My plan was to feed the kids at the normal time for dinner and then have a meal ready for when Lisa got home from work at 11:30. Lisa had promised Ben he could have Burger King for dinner, so I stopped at Lisa’s work to grab some cash on my way to get the kids. Ben was excited to get fast food, he has been begging for a few weeks. We go through the drive through, we are car back from paying and Ben goes, Daddy, I am not feeling good, ad throws up all over himself. I jump out and start cleaning him up. We have to pull up to pay and get the food, then I park and pull him out and get him in clean clothes and clean up the seat as much as possible with wipes. I get him back in his seat, and then walk to the pickup window and as for a large bag or a garbage bag to put his dirty clothes in, and they tell me that they cannot. Great. So I open the trunk, and I have a blanket that I keep back there. I open that bag, it rips, but is too small anyway. After a little thought, I grab the blanket, wrap the clothes in  it and throw it in the trunk. Ok, back to Lisa’s work to give her a sandwich and fries, and then head home. I get the kids home, sit them at the table and give them their now cold meals. I go and start bringing everything in from the car, and I hear Ben start crying. He had thrown up again and has diarrhea. Ok, new change of clothes, medicine and clean up that mess. I get the later meal in the slow cooker and then go to get Ben’s clothes in the washer.  As I am down there I hear Ben again, he threw up on a couch cushion. I have him strip down to his pull up wrap in a blanket and he lays down, and I give him a sippy cup of water. It is close enough to Julies bedtime, that I send her up there. I strip the couch cushion and take that with Bens clothes for the next load. Lisa had stripped 2 of the other couch cushions earlier today because of a milk explosion and those were in the dryer now. I come back up, finally eat the burger (fries were beyond hope). After sitting with Ben for a little bit, we decide Julie is asleep enough for Ben to get a bath. After his bath, he says he is feeling better now and goes to bed. I go back down stairs, the house is a mess, and so I start cleaning. At some point I hear Ben again, I run upstairs, and more throw up. I clean him up, strip clean and then make the bed again. He just wants to go back to sleep, so I let him. Time to move the laundry and so the sheets and the stuff from the couch goes in. I finish cleaning, and move the laundry along one more time. I made cookies, and then finished dinner as Lisa was walking in. We eat. We were both tired, so after dinner we just crashed.

Ben and Julie

See Done

The kids were eating dinner and Julie finished, so I gave her some ice cream. Ben wanted some ice cream too, but I told him he had to finish his dinner first. So he continued to eat slowly. The when Julie was done, she wanted to go to bed. Ben wanted ice cream before I took her up there. I told him no and that he needed to eat a little bit more before he got ice cream. He sits down, goes to take a bite, but stops and looks at me with this look of I have a plan and am going to put it into action. A look I am probably going to fear. I take Julie up slowly and try to keep an eye on the downstairs as I am going up… And here comes Ben past the stairs with his plate going into the kitchen. I call to him, he stops and goes back to the table. After Julie is in bed, I come downstairs and find that Ben had emptied his plate into the garbage and he is sitting back at the table. He sees me and goes, “See Done!” I am glad he only had a little left on his plate. I had to wait a while to give him ice cream so I was not rewarding him for throwing out his food.

Not so good vibrations

They have been driving supports of some kind into the ground near the new building next to the hospital. We have been dealing with an almost constant rumbling in our building. You can kind of get an idea of the motion from the bobble head. I was just going to record the motion of the monitors, but that did not show up very well on video, so I grabbed Einstein off my shelf.

Mini GG

The other day, Ben was playing with the toys and he started saying “GG,” what he calls my Mom. The he holds up this toy and continues to say GG.

Step into Wellness

At work they have put together a walking challenge. I am carrying a pedometer with me and submitting the number of steps each day for the month of October. The goal is to eventually do 10,000 steps a day, which equals about 5 miles! I set up a page off my blog to keep up with this. In the first week, I have walked 39747 steps or roughly 20 miles.

Tim Hortons anyone

With parking lots disappearing for construction, I am back to taking the train in every day. I do not mind taking the train at all. As I was walking in this morning, I was thinking I am parking by one Tim Hortons and walking by another. Hmmm… How long will I be able to resist stopping at one or the other everyday. As we all know, resistance is futile. Hot chocolate and a donut will sound so good on those cold mornings…

Stanley Cup in Buffalo?

I forgot that Patrick Kane was taking the Stanley Cup around town today. I was able to take this photo from our office area. If only I had a better camera with me...

Earthquake or a really heavy machine?

I was working on a COW on the 13th floor of the tower at BGH this afternoon. The floor started to shake, and the nurses around me started asking each other what that was, and an X-ray tech that happened to be rolling a portable x-ray machine said it was just his machine. We were like it feels a bit different than that. Then people started saying that it could have been an earthquake. That is what I kept hearing as I was walking back to my office. When I got to my office, I checked and sure enough, there was a 5.5 earthquake in Canada. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/last_event/world/world_canada.php They just sent out a system wide email, two hours after the fact, stating that there was a confirmed earthquake, but no damage reported in any of the facilities or Western NY.

Outside and....

Cooking... Lisa bought me a new grill as an early Father's day gift. The one I had, had been limping along since it got crushed by a tree in the October storm a few years ago and had finally given up. I had put the new grill together on Monday and then we tried it out yesterday. This is a photo from yesterday. It was nice to be able to eat in the backyard.


Play on the computer... What you don't think a computer should be outside? That's why they are mobile, besides when then would you get this post. I have a nice signal from my router back here.

Network Issues

"When a Fail-Safe system fails, it fails by failing to fail safe." - John Gall

I come into work today, and on the elevator someone from another department says to me that I will have a fun day today, all the computers are down. Okay, whatever. I get to my office, and yes the entire network is down. I cannot get to any internal sites nor to the internet! Then I find out that the shipment of COWs just showed up in receiving. Well, that at least gives me something to do. We bring the herd of 51 up to our area, and then I go to the computer room to see how things are going. They were still trying to figure out what had happened. It looked like all the servers and applications were running, but the was no communication. They have been trying to bring things back slowly and there has been stuff up and down throughout the system. I just got internet up and am still waiting on the internal stuff to be up. What happened to the redundant systems that are suppose to prevent this. 5-6 hours of downtime is a long time.

Update: It looks like the redundant system that was suppose to prevent this was the cause.