THOMnottom – Page 7 – Back and bloggier than ever

I am literally, figuratively drowning in music

Back in the day when owning CDs meant something, I bought a lot of them. I mean a lot of them. Most days I was spending more money on storage for music than most people spend on music. There was a time when suffering a mild bout of unemployment that those carefree spending days dried up, but the advent of inexpensive digital downloads courtesy of eMusic and their ilk brought back that purchasing power at a significantly reduced rate. That led to the halcyon days of 90 downloads per month supplemented with daily deals and random freebies. Sadly, those days came to a close many moons ago.

And so it appeared that the steady stream of new music would slow to a trickle as this family man has to adhere to budgets and whatnot. Just as this year began to truly dry up, deals seemingly found their way to me. September, in particular, opened the floodgates from which I will not soon recover.

You see, first I had temporarily rejoined eMusic to pick up some much needed new releases. Then my primary alternative store, Amie Street, decided to close up shop sending me and my fellow subscribers scrambling for as many last minute deals as possible. To sooth the wounds the powers that be (namely Amazon, who purchased and shut down dear Amie) sent out $5 “thanks for the memories” gift cards – in my case one for each of my 3 accounts. Cha-ching!

Finally we have Guvera. An attempt at making music free and legal via advertising. Interesting concept that worked decently enough to garner me a couple albums. But for the month of September a promotion was introduced allowing users to download 31 tracks from artists on EMI labels. 31 tracks per day. There were some ups and downs, some disappearing credits and songs, but in the end dozens of albums of classic rock, classic jazz, and Kylie Minogue found their way into my collection.

All totaled last month’s downloads come to over a week of music. No, not enough music to listen to for a week, but rather enough music that I would have to stay up 24 hours a day to listen to it all in about a week. Sure, you may question whether or not I truly need all of this, especially when it will be difficult to find time to listen to it all, but hey, addiction ain’t just a river in Egypt…

Anyway, maybe it’s time that I actually write about all this stuff streaming through my ears on a regular basis. Somebody has to let you guys know what all the hepcats are digging these days – word on the street is they’re all about the Simple Minds.

The return of television

So I’m giving $h*! My Dad Says a try. I’m not sure why… of course I am. It’s William Shatner. He cracks me up just being himself. Regardless, the son is already annoying me and the one-liners from Shatner just aren’t enough to carry it. About the midway point it’s time to switch the channel and see what’s on the DVR. Honestly, there haven’t been any new series that grabbed my attention, so it’s all leftovers:

The Big Bang Theory – Have I mentioned how in love with this show I am? Correction: we am? I only caught a few episodes the first season and found it funny but not very captivating. Sometime during the second season it popped back on my radar and it was clear they had really developed an understanding of geek humor. While Jim Parsons’ Sheldon Cooper steals the show, all 4 of the guys hit on different nerd stereotypes that make me cringe with recognition. While I had initial doubts about Kaley Cuoco’s “normal girl” being anything but a pretty face and object of affection, her regular verbal sparing with Jim Parsons has become a real highlight. Even The Woman looks forward to new episodes. Oh yeah, Wil Wheaton as Sheldon’s nemesis? Possibly the greatest TV idea ever!

Community – IF YOU ARE NOT WATCHING THIS SHOW YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME. Sorry, but it had to be said. Not until we stumbled across an early season mini-marathon did I even know anything about this show. And now it’s like an obsession – honestly it reminds me a bit of Arrested Development. By using the study group as its central “location”, Community avoids the typical pitfall for ensemble casts in which many of the characters fall through cracks having almost no screen time for weeks (see 30 Rock). While not all of them are on equal footing (obviously McHale’s Jeff Winger is the main guy), they all have regular parts that keep the humor just enough off balance. And, of course, the meta-humor is stupendous – driven largely by Abed’s obsession with TV and movies. Heck, they made fun of $h*! My Dad Says before it even premiered.

30 Rock – Sure, it’s not as great as it was the first couple seasons (they really need to get the secondary cast members involved more), but a below average episode of 30 Rock is funnier than 80% of whatever else is on. And the addition of Matt Damon, even if only as an occasional guest star, was a great move.

Medium – This one’s mostly for The Woman, but I enjoy it, too. We’ve only watched it sporadically until last season. Now it gets the full DVR experience. It’s a kooky enough procedural show to take the place of the ones we liked that ended (Monk) or that we lost interest in (House).

Parenthood – I definitely did write about this one before, but my intended follow-up never happened. After a few episodes this quickly vaulted to the status of “must watch” – although the hour long format and 10PM time slot means that we take awhile catching up each week. The show settled down some after the initial torrid pace of crises and allowed each of the characters to grow in their roles of parents, spouses, and kids in different parts of their lives. From the “perfect family” now dealing with a teenage daughter who has become secretive and a son diagnosed with Asperger syndrome to the irresponsible, single brother figuring out how to become a dad to a child he didn’t know existed. It still sometimes feels like Erika Christensen’s character doesn’t belong in he family and that she, her husband and daughter are almost shoehorned in, but that’s probably the weakest point. The family dynamic really developed well over the course of the first season – the first 2 episodes of this season are still on the DVR.

That’s pretty much it for now. The rest of the DVR is filled with Miffy, Maisy and Arthur episode for the little one. Am I missing anything good? Any great premieres to check out?

I’ll tumbl 4 ya

Is that headline lame enough? In case you can’t figure out what it means, I done started a tumblr. Actually, I started it… back in May? WTF? Why have I not been mentioning this? Why did I even need to start another blog that I would fail to maintain? And why does that first video use music from an obscure 80s flick?

I’m so glad you asked.

Video links are like a crutch for bloggers – at least for me. They are a quick and easy way to pretend I’m still contributing to a blog, when it’s really just cut and paste. The few times I’ve posted a video (that wasn’t a moment of (baby) zen) with virtually no commentary and then abandoned the blog for weeks it bothered me. Seriously. It was like cheating. And just like Matt Damon, it would be robbing you of your honor…

Anyone else watch School Ties last night? Anyone? Whatever…

After starting to follow a few tumblelogs it dawned on me that tumblr was the perfect service to keep track of pictures and moving pictures and moving pictures with sound that I wanted to share with people. Especially when it involves otters. While I’m not willing to commit my “creative” endeavors to an external service, this material clearly isn’t mine. And unlike posts that require at least the illusion of thought, why would I care if a list of things I didn’t create disappeared one day? Thus notTHOMnottom.com was born.

The eventual plan is to create a more seamless look and link it together with this site so that it’s easy for all 2 or 3 of my readers to find. The naming scheme is also why I’m considering moving this blog to the subdomain blog.thomnottom.com (with a potential other one called photo.thomnottom.com) and then the main site will bring them together. But I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

Occasionally I may still share videos and pictures over here if they call for more than a one liner, like this one:

Alright, that doesn’t require any additional commentary. But I have been laughing at if for like 2 days straight.

She’s got her own way

Kayleigh doesn’t like to be bothered with crust or pretty much any outside portions of bread-related foods. Not that she doesn’t like it, simply that she prefers to eat the insides first. Physics doesn’t really seem to bother her.

Pretty much amazing

I feel bad that the only words I’ve written about Kayleigh over the last couple of months revolve largely around her deciding to have a major meltdown upon entering the “terrible twos”. The reality is that our little girl has been blossoming into a a truly wonderful person to be around… most of the time. She just has a habit of showing off her worst side just before I get a chance to write about how much I love her. 20 minutes of uncontrollable screaming somehow manages to nearly wipeout an entire day of joy.

We’re talking blood curdling screams because we forgot to let her grab the diaper out of the bag before changing her. Or dropping to the floor and sobbing when we don’t let her press the buttons on microwave while rushing to get food prepared. Sometimes she can be such a… you know… baby.

But it really isn’t fair to the girl she has become to harp on those moments. It’s easy for kids to get pigeonholed for certain bad behaviors they develop. We still often think of Kayleigh as a bad sleeper even though I can count on one hand the number of times she hasn’t slept rather soundly through the night (or at least put herself right back to sleep) the last few months. And yet the habit of tiptoeing through the house and jumping at every rustling sound on the monitor is hard to break.

Just as our little mop topped moppet regularly beds down at a regular time with significantly less fuss than, say, 6 months ago, she has also grown as a person. With each passing day I can see in her a desire to connect with people – to connect with me. Leaving the room for too long provokes calls of “Daddy, Daddy” as she comes up with some little endeavor to demonstrate, just because she wants the company. She takes us on adventures throughout our house, acting out cartoons from the previous day while re-purposing various rooms to represent imaginary locales. Her little chair with the fuzzy cover has become an easel to accommodate her interest in “painting” with a basting brush. If we are so inclined to join her, a chopstick may be offered for our artistic contributions.

After months of being pushed away in defense of her personal space, the walls have been crumbling as she begins to reach out more and more for contact with people beyond Mommy. And while she remains a timid child (still requesting our support for navigating even the smallest of slides) a rambunctious side has broken through in the form of jumping on Daddy with great delight.

I haven’t done a good job of chronicling the changes this remarkable little scutch has gone through over the past year or so. Trust me when I say that it’s pretty much amazing.

Are you there blog? It’s me, Thom…

So that happened. Apparently taking my blogs offline so that I can fulfill some nerdy desire to have them installed in a very specific fashion for rational reason other than my own whims does not actually guarantee that anything will be accomplished. This is reminiscent of way back when I switched domain names and swore I wouldn’t write anything until the redesign was complete. A month later the transfer took place sans promised theme. At least this time more was accomplished… I guess.

As intended from the start, this blog is my major – perhaps only – outlet for creative endeavors. Shutting down for too long depresses me a little. Coupled with the torrent of e-mails inundating me with demands to return my content to the world as soon as possible, it became necessary for me to either figure out my way or switch to anyway that would work. What follows is an incredibly boring discussion regarding the technicalities of blog maintenance.

When WordPress 3.0 came out recently, my excitement level hit an all time high… in relation to other excitement levels recorded at WordPress releases. You see, this one included multisite! Finally I would only need a single installation to cover all 2 of my blogs! Alright, that may not be a big deal, but I dream big when it comes to websites no one but my sisters care about… plus my other site. The truth is I viewed it as a way to get more active by utilizing a single interface, and possibly open myself up to other projects. So what was the problem? Why didn’t I just upgrade and move on?

Way back in the early days of WordPress I had a single site that was sitting on my home server. All of the files sat in the main directory and it looked like a mess, but it worked so who cared? Eventually they made it possible to keep the bulk of the files in a subdirectory and only have an index.php and .htaccess file in the main directory. This made it easier for nitpicky idiots like me to keep software running in different parts of the website separate. It also made backing up and upgrading (before the automated systems in place) a breeze. It also worked well with my Site5 multisite plan which had everything not thomnottom.com as a subdirectory of thomnottom.com. It kind of looked like this:

public_html
   /_domain1
   /_domain2
   /_domain3
   /_subdomain
   /wordpress -> all of my precious WP files in here
   .htaccess
   index.php

Awesome, I know! But now multisite won’t play that way. It requires the installed directory and website to match. After debating moving my blog to a subdomain itself (blog.thomnottom.com? hmm, that actually sounds catchy now) I searched high and low for any kind of guides. Eventually some forum posts directed me to ideas of how to put the domain in a subdirectory and hide it via .htaccess. So I did. And it worked. So I reinstalled WordPress and imported my old site. And it worked. So I enabled multisite. And it worked. So I logged in… wait… it didn’t work.

For some reason it was botching the login process. Many more days of poking around Google and forums and whatnot led me nowhere. But a funny thing happened on the way to giving up. I realized that Site5 did not limit any of my other domain from being in directories above public_html. Why not just move everything else? So I did. And it worked. So I… you get the picture. Or else I can paint you a word picture:

mydirectory
  /domain1
  /domain2
  /really are there more?
  /pretend another directory goes here
  /public_html -> lots of WordPress files here

Maybe things aren’t exactly as I wanted them. And maybe I’ll still move this to the blog subdirectory because I just can’t leave well enough alone. Regardless, it’s time to move on and get back to writing about boring crap rather than just researching it…

Your moment of (baby) zen #12

Kayleigh is 2. She hasn’t technically been a baby for a year. So this is probably the last “baby” zen I’ll post as it’s time to come up with a new name.

Two

About twelve hours ago my little baby girl officially turned 2 years old. A few hours before that she made her official declaration that the terrible twos had begun. Alright, it wasn’t an official declaration; after all this has been building for days. Somewhere along the line Kayleigh went from constantly asking for help when encountering obstacles to throwing minor (and occasionally major) fits whenever we even suggest she need our assistance. Today the issues just happened to be complicated by a lack of sleep.

Kayleigh does a much better job these days when it comes to the tricky subject of sleep (not counting naps). The incidents of middle of the night or, indeed, any pre-6:30 AM wakings have practically vanished. At most she may inconvenient us with an hour of bizarre monologues streaming across the monitor sometime in the vicinity of 1 or 2 in the morning. Fortunately these tend to lead to later wake times. But today she decided to combine all of the issues into one. To be fair, that might have had more to do with the contents of her diaper rather than a personal decision. Regardless, a 4 AM wake time is simply no good for us or the little one, even if she did continue to perform her 1 baby, off-Broadway improv show for 1 and a half hours before it was time for me to kick down the door.

Even with a 2 hour nap in the middle of the morning, the day was filled with little tantrums around every corner. And we’re not talking “whining because we won’t let her watch TV” tantrums. No, we’re talking full blown freakouts because I had the audacity to answer the phone rather than check to see if she wanted to first or some kid briefly touched a toy that she was no longer playing with. Navigating this behavior is normally pretty rough, but doing it on a day when most of The Woman’s family was around for her birthday exaggerated the issues even more. I rarely look as forward to bedtime as I did this evening.

But that’s enough complaining. Really, I love my little girl. But days like today push that all to the limits. Still, I can’t express how much my love has grown over these 2 years watching my little girl grow up right before my eyes. Thank you Kayleigh for another wonderful year of being my daughter.

Why it is important to watch your language around kids

Scene: The Woman is changing Kayleigh’s diaper. The tube of Balmex just exploded out the bottom.
The Woman: Oh my god! That’s why the Balmex wasn’t coming out.

Scene: 5 minutes later. Kayleigh is watching Thomas & Friends.
Kayleigh: Oh my god! It’s Thomas! Oh my god! It’s Diesel! Oh my god! It’s Thomas again!

I’d give her some credit for using it properly, but it really wasn’t that surprising or exciting that Thomas or Diesel were on TV when we had clearly started an episode of Thomas & Friends for her. And let’s be honest, 3 times in less than 20 seconds is beyond excessive. I guess it still makes more sense than her constant declarations of “that’s possible” as though possible was an adjective you’d use to describe objects around the house.