Archelon Kingdom

New Home

2010-01-09T23:19:00.001-07:00

2010 is going to be a rather eventful year and accordingly I feel it's time for me to set up shop elsewhere from now on. This blog will remain here as an archive for all things posted before, but from now on you can find me here:

http://randomflanagan.blogspot.com

Random Jack is a Ghostie!

2009-11-27T22:33:00.002-07:00

Random Jack in a Field

2009-11-27T22:32:00.003-07:00

Random Jack with Mommy

2009-11-27T22:26:00.004-07:00

Random Jack Walking Around

2009-11-27T22:23:00.004-07:00

Miscellaneous Random Jack

2009-11-14T12:02:00.009-07:00

Random Jack in a Fort

2009-11-14T11:57:00.008-07:00

Random Jack Kills an Oreo

2009-11-03T21:46:00.003-07:00

Random Jack in Your Face

2009-11-03T21:43:00.004-07:00

Random Jack on Halloween

2009-10-31T19:41:00.005-06:00

The Wonderful, Wonderful Door

2009-10-19T10:28:00.003-06:00

This past week has been a good one for Jack learning new skills and his favorite new skill is knowing how to open and shut doors around the house. Holly caught him on tape the other day with the bedroom door and I thought some of you might like to see it.

Random Jack on Daddy's Face

2009-10-19T06:19:00.008-06:00

Long Overdue Random Jack

2009-09-29T22:31:00.010-06:00

For all of you who do not frequent the realm of Facebook, here are some recent pictures of Jack from the past weekend that you might enjoy.

Oh, to Splash the Day Away

2009-09-19T10:14:00.004-06:00

Last night we had a bath after a trip to the mall to check the clearance rack at Baby Gap. Normally during bath time we play with our floating friends and crawl around the tub, but apparently that was not what was scheduled this time around. This time we were fascinated with constant and intense splashing. The video is a lot longer than some I've posted, it clocks it at 3 minutes total, but he is pretty cute the whole time.

9 Months = Bipedal

2009-09-16T22:14:00.004-06:00

Well, some people don't seem to want to believe me that my son can walk when he only had his nine-month marker yesterday, but guess what? I have video proof. He can go a lot further in one go than he does in these videos, but when he sees the camera is on him he gets a little flustered and gets a bit anxious for some reason. Anyways, now that he can walk basically the length of the apartment I'm moving on from telling people that he is "learning to walk" to saying "he can walk."

And Then He Could Clap

2009-09-13T22:09:00.004-06:00

Yesterday Holly noticed Jack doing something new with his hands. Instead of flailing them about like a bird on crack cocaine and swinging them all over the place while growling and groaning, he was watching them very intently as he smacked his palms together. He was starting to figure out clapping after seeing Holly and I do it time and time again.

It didn't take him long because this evening he was clapping up a storm, non-stop, as much as I could get him to do it. He would clap when I gave him a piece of my brownie, when he saw something he thought was funny, or at just about anything else. Even better? I have video proof for all of you to see.

For Aunt Shyla

2009-08-29T12:08:00.004-06:00

Lately Jack has taken to finding the most random things to be hilarious. Yesterday it was when I sneezed while playing with him on the floor. He went bonkers, so of course I milked it for all it was worth. Luckily we were able to catch the laughing fit on camera this time.

Shyla and Russell Leaving

2009-08-01T11:41:00.002-06:00

Well, the day finally arrived that Shyla and Russell had to officially depart for their new home in California. I've got a lot of conflicting emotions about the whole thing, but mostly I really wish they hadn't had to leave.

Having them nearby in Spanish Fork has been a good thing for me. They came to Grandma Chatfield's for dinner on occasion to break up the monotony of me being the only person who wasn't technically related to anyone else (not to mention providing another male presence at the table), they had us over top play games every once and awhile, they liked to come over to hang out and especially to see Jack, Shyla was always an eager and willing babysitter, and perhaps more than anything I really, really enjoy spending time with Russell.

I owe him in particular a very big thank you for all the patience and support he has put forth in helping me to pursue a career in web programming. Shyla told me once that one of the only reasons he actually taught the class I took from him after there weren't enough students was because I was in it and he wanted to make sure I learned things the right way. He took a pay cut to keep teaching that class. I don't know how to pay that kind of generosity back.

Everything I know about web programming has basically been taught to me by Russell. Even the smaller stuff I learned before I took his class he has helped me to refine, make better, or replace with better practices and ideas. Without Russell my Conquer Club Trivia website and my website for the creative writing instructors at BYU, Writers Camp, would not be in existence. He put in a lot of time and effort to be my advisor during the capstone class for the minor and he has put in even more time on his own when I have questions about new things I'm trying to learn or have been struggling to get something to work properly that I know I should have been able to figure out on my own.

I owe Russell a lot for what he has taught me and I'm sure I will owe him a lot for what he will likely continue to teach me in the future. I still don't know javascript very well after all.

In the end, I know that moving to California was really the only option for them, and it does make sense to keep a job that pays you well, but I'm going to miss them a lot. I think Holly will miss them a lot and I am positive that Jack is going to miss them. He really, really would light up to see Shyla come through the door for a visit, and he was starting to do the same for Russell over the past couple of months before they had to leave.

Shyla was pretty impressive last night when they finally had to say goodbye after going to dinner with us to Cracker Barrel and then spending some time hanging out. I can't say I have done nearly as well today. Holly and Julie are off to see the new Oquirrh Mountain Temple this morning and I'm watching Jack while they are gone. We took a nice nap together, but I woke up with tears because I miss Shyla and Russell so much already. That is not something I normally do.

I really, really wish they hadn't had to go.

Not Entirely Sure

2009-07-23T15:59:00.000-06:00

I'm not really sure what I want to write about today even if I really shouldn't feel the need to write about anything in particular as this is my blog after all, but I want to write about something, so I think I may just ramble for a little while and see where things go.

This morning I sent of my resume and portfolio to yet another potential employer. Yesterday I followed up on other jobs that I had either applied for or saw new listings for and all of them had been "filled" so I went my merry way towards the next ones on the list. This particular job is actually here on campus in the mechanical engineering department. They are looking for what seems to be a junior-ish web developer to help with the department website. I took a look at the website and can't really see why they need someone but I'm not going to complain.

I called up the contact within the department to ask if they were still looking for someone and they said that they were, so I got a few more details and sent off my information. According to the job listing the only real requirement is that you have a proficient knowledge in at least one of the following programming languages: HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, or mySQL. Lucky for me they weren't another employer looking for Flash and .NET programmers, and also lucky for me that I think I could consider myself at least proficient in three or four of the languages asked for.

Seems like I fit the bill, at least at first glance. The contact in the department told me that they would review my resume and portfolio and then most likely call me to set up a preliminary interview. It's a waiting game now I guess.

I'm cruising right along in my efforts to re-read the entire Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan before the next book comes out on November 3rd. I'm almost finished with the third book (my favorite) and will be trying to finish at least 2 per month for the next couple of months. I may want to try and cram as much in before the start of school as I can if possible because I've got a couple of literature classes, but we'll see how things turn out. There are also a lot of other things happening this summer that take up time too.

Conquer Club Trivia is doing as well as can be expected. I still haven't found a lot of time to stock the system with questions (there are only about 300 or so right now), but Russell was kind enough (and much more tolerant with me than I probably deserve) to help me find a bug in the system that was allowing repeat questions when it shouldn't have been. It turns out that I had made another what we now call "Caleb Mistake" in an entirely different place that was backing things up wrong. It's now fixed though, so that is good.

The first day the site was live I had 96 unique visitors, and the next day I had 156, but that has been the record so far. Since then things have tapered off rather dramatically and it seems there are about 25 to 30 visitors a day, which is respectable for something that only fits such a small audience anyways. If I can get more questions in I think it will help a bit, but like I've said before, I don't expect it to be anything that is wildly popular, especially since I'm not making any money off of it in the long run.

I finally broke down and asked my first every question on the BYU 100 Hour Board this week, something I've always refrained from doing on some sort of strange principle before, but I had a fun question after going to dinner with Holly the other day and figured since we personally know one of the board writers I could address it to them personally and have a little fun with it. Now I just have to wait and see how long it takes for them to find the answer I guess.

Which leads me to another thought. The BYU 100 Hour Board is old, like really, really ancient, and as far as I can tell hasn't had a proper face lift in quite some time. It has the appearance of a website built in the late 90s in my opinion and doesn't seem to function all that well according to the writer that I know. Obviously given my current area of interest this has me pondering and considering the idea of making a website with a similar approach, but in a much more aesthetically pleasing way. We'll see if anything substantial comes of the thought down the line, but it's at least something to think about.

Jack is crawling, but that certainly seems like old news at this point. He now stands up next to the furniture with only one hand and steps to the side so he is barely holding on. He also has learned to push boxes against walls and use them as step stools to get to drawer and cupboard handles that he has been a long time in pursuing. Even yesterday I found him unexpectedly hanging onto the cross-bars on the back of our kitchen chairs with both feet off the floor and on the cross-bar between the chair legs. No fear, that's my son it seems.

He is also getting a bit better at sleeping through the night. Sometimes he still wakes himself up, but now he doesn't necessarily need to be fed in order to get back to sleep. Many times I can just rock him in the rocking chair for a few minutes and he's out cold again. If he does eat, he doesn't chow down on six or eight ounces of formula like before, he's lucky if he makes it through two before nodding off. I take it as a slow and steady move towards not eating at all during the night and sleeping more soundly because of his heavily increased physical activity during the day.

Solid food have been an interesting endeavor to say the least. He loves his rice cereal, but basically refuses any sort of "baby food" that we've tried. We have gone with peas, applesauce, peaches, pears, squash, and a couple others, but his reaction is to spit it back out, clamp his mouth shut and give us a look of, "Are you seriously trying to feed me that?" So, we eat a lot of rice cereal, share Daddy's mashed potatoes from time to time, and luckily we've added oatmeal to the list of things we'll eat as well. I'm thinking he is just going to go straight from the rice cereal to the real people food, sort of like Cymbre did back in the day.

I guess that is enough rambling for one day, I'll try to get some new pictures of Jack up sometime soon for everyone who likes to see those. Maybe some from our recent trip to the zoo or something.

The Job Hunt

2009-07-22T07:38:00.002-06:00

I'm not looking for much, just a solid job for either part-time or full-time somewhere in the web programming field. I know I don't know every single programming language out there, but if I can find a few open positions that are pretty close to what I know I think I can learn whatever else is needed fairly quickly.

The one job I had hoped to get because I was pretty sure my skills were either on par with or far beyond what they needed was at Heritage Web Solutions, but they refuse to return calls and have "misplaced" my resume and application twice now. I guess that option is out. It would have been the most convenient by a long shot though.

I found a few new jobs to apply or at least research a little more yesterday, one in Sandy and one with the Provo Daily Herald that seems like it might be promising. I also put in a call in response to an advertisement on Craigslist to someone who was looking to pay to have their small business site reworked into something more professional looking. That one would be a freelance job, but could net a little bit of money and experience as well.

Mostly I wish I had time to learn new programming languages more quickly, but with school, my current job, and taking care of the family there isn't much time for that sort of thing. The catch is that without some of the new languages I worry I might not be all that marketable while looking for better employment. Steep hill to climb I guess.

If anyone has any leads on jobs or freelance projects, let me know as I'd certainly be interested.

The Elfish Gene

2009-07-21T12:16:00.002-06:00

Holly, Carlie, Jack and I went to the local library a few days ago and while all of them were off looking for books to occupy their time this summer I was browsing the stand with the new hardcover books on it while I held Jack. I came across this book about a guy who was addicted to the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game as a teenager and it looked like a good read.

In the end it was a decent enough book, but I found much of it to be repetitive. He told a lot of stories that were very similar just with altered details such as one time he was dealing with an elf character and the next time it was a dragon. Overall the message of the book was good, don't let things such as Dungeons & Dragons take over your every waking moment, but there wasn't a whole lot of meat to the story.

Sleep Hygiene

2009-07-21T12:04:00.002-06:00

For the better part of the past year I have had some serious problems with sleeping, and sleeping well. Many nights I find it very difficult to get tired enough to fall asleep and even if I do I find that when I wake up in the mornings I rarely have managed to sleep in a restful way. As a result I've had some strange experiences with crashing in class, taking six hour naps on the weekends, etc.

Finally after the problem has been getting worse for the past couple of months I decided that perhaps it would be a good idea to go and see a doctor about it. I wasn't sure if it was stress induced, a chemical imbalance of some kind, or something else entirely.

Yesterday I had my appointment with Dr. Wilmore, and told him that I would like to first try solutions that did not revolve around taking any sort of medication if that was possible. The last thing I want is to be knocked unconscious for eight straight hours and unable to help with Jack during the night. He sleeps quite well most nights now, but we still have nights where he wakes up a couple times and that isn't something I want to leave Holly entirely responsible for.

Dr. Wilmore said that was entirely doable and that he often suggests that as the first step for anyone who comes in with similar problems. He then gave me the rundown on what is officially called "Sleep Hygiene" and the basic idea is to condition your body to expect certain activities shortly before going to sleep so it gets into a rhythm each night and you can fall asleep more easily.

The steps he told me to use for the next three to four weeks include the following:

30 minutes of light exercise each day before 7:00pm
A warm shower just before it's time for bed each night
Reading just before bed, but not in bed
A relaxation technique
Don't stay in bed longer than 15 minutes if not asleep

I gave it a try for the first time last night and I slept like a dream. I didn't wake up for anything, and luckily Jack didn't wake up either, so the first night was nice and easy. I'll do it all again tonight and see if the habits can start forming for me. It would sure be nice not to have trouble sleeping anymore.

Conquer Club Trivia

2009-07-21T07:48:00.000-06:00

The time has finally come! With many consultations with Russell to fix small (and sometimes large) bugs I finally managed to get my first website out to the public that isn't a personal portfolio of some kind. I'm pretty excited, and so far things have gone well for it.

I was pretty dead on in my thinking that it would have a lot of visitors the first couple days and then taper off into something much less high-traffic, but that is okay, Conquer Club Trivia is certainly not a website you are going to join unless you are a fairly serious addict of the game it was inspired by anyways.

Time for a New Look

2009-07-17T10:33:00.000-06:00

I was tired of the boring and dull greenish look of the blog this morning, so I decided to spice it up a bit. Something a little more extreme if you will.

I'll See You in a Little While

2009-07-11T09:26:00.001-06:00

I'm going to take a break from blogging for a bit. Right now I don't have much that I really feel like sharing with anyone.

Random Jack, Another Edition

2009-07-09T21:51:00.008-06:00

Bathtime Jack

2009-07-05T22:02:00.002-06:00

I don't remember if I have ever posted pictures of Jack during his bath time, but if I did I'm sure they were not the most exciting of things because until earlier this week all we did was lay down on our back and wiggle a bit while Daddy cleaned us up.

Nowadays we sit up tall and crawl around and stand up on the sides, and splash the water all while making Daddy work up a sweat trying to make sure we don't drown ourselves.

Yep, He Can Crawl Now

2009-07-05T21:24:00.003-06:00

While Jack was in California he learned all sorts of amazing tricks. As he left town he was able to get himself up on his hands and knees, but the best he could do is rock back and forth, or maybe sometimes get a bit of a lunge in to reach a toy that was right in front of him.

However, now that he's home, he crawls like a pro anywhere he wants to go in the apartment, and spends most of his time on two feet walking along the edges of the couch, tv stand, chair, or walls. Obviously it won't take him too much longer to make the leap to walking. I predict he's got that down by his 10 month mark at the latest.

This video showcases some crawling and standing up.

Not Sleeping Well

2009-07-05T08:01:00.003-06:00

When Holly left town with Jack for a full month I thought I would catch up on some sleep, maybe rest up for the coming semester, etc. What happened instead was that I developed some sort of sleeping problem that I cannot seem to shake.

I've had trouble sleeping before in my life, but usually it lasts for a few days, maybe a week at most where I can't get to sleep until really late at night, but I can always manage to wake up just fine the next morning for the most part.

This time around I not only can't fall asleep, but I also can't wake up, and when I do sleep, even if I don't wake up during the night, the sleep is not restful to even the slightest degree. I spend the rest of the day wishing for naps and wishing I didn't have to be to work so early in the mornings.

The most unfortunate part of the whole situation is that I feel terrible about the lack of sleep because I want to be helping with Jack during the night since Holly had to do it all on her own for a whole month. Luckily, Jack is starting to learn to sleep through the night a little better, but sometimes he still wakes up and I try to help if I can.

What I wish for most is that I could solve this problem and get into a pattern of healthy sleep that would allow me to function at a much higher level.

Speed Racer

2009-06-26T11:30:00.002-06:00

I'm not exactly sure what makes this movie appeal to me so much, but for some reason I enjoy it more than most movies I watch. It doesn't quite rank as high as Transformers or anything, but I think it could definitely be one I have on the shelf someday to watch with the kids on a Saturday afternoon or something. If you haven't seen it (and you don't mind movies that are just made for the fun of viewing them), you should give it a try.

otissito.com

2009-06-25T12:25:00.003-06:00

As many long time readers of my blog know, I'm trying very hard to become a web programmer as my career of choice. A while back I mentioned my personal "brand" called otissito.com but it was sort of in a fluid state while I truly decided what I wanted to do with it.

While Holly has been out of town my goal was to put the finishing touches on something like 6 or 7 different websites I had built for classes that needed some tweaks here and there, but unfortunately I have been a large pile of completed unmotivated uselessness for most of the time she's been gone.

Today I finally got otissito.com finished entirely. I settled for a simple functionality of introduction homepage, contact form, and simply designed portfolio with my most recent work listed first. I think it will do adequately to showcase my skills and allow potential employers to see what I'm capable of at this point.

Now I just need to finish the rest of my websites so the portfolio can be a little bigger, which might help me find better work a bit quicker.

Transformers was Great

2009-06-24T12:08:00.003-06:00

I don't want to reveal many details because I don't want to ruin the movie for anyone since it only came out today, but I went to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen for the first showing at midnight last night and was thrilled by how it turned out.

One thing I'll never understand is why so many critics can't get the idea that movies like this are not intended to have brilliant plot points, stellar acting, or anything else, they are made simply to entertain, blow some stuff up, and have some funny jokes.

That is exactly what I was looking for and it was exactly what I got, not to mention some incredibly awesome fight scenes where Optimus Prime battles basically the entirety of the Decepticon forces all on his own and totally wails on them.

Can't wait to see it again, perhaps on the IMAX next time because apparently the forest fight scene shows Optimus Prime at actual life size in the IMAX version.

Jack in California

2009-06-23T14:34:00.010-06:00

Holly recently posted this pictures on her Facebook account, but I know there are several people out there who won't see them there and thought you might like to see them here instead. My favorite is the first one, followed by the one with him staring down Marshall Minor.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

2009-06-23T11:42:00.002-06:00

I've been waiting for this movie for three years since the last movie came out and I get to go see it for the first showing tonight in exactly 12 hours and 14 minutes. Supposedly this movie is supposed to be epic in regards to special effects, number of robots, and battle scenes.

I'm so excited I'm bouncing off the walls.

World of Warcraft

2009-06-23T10:32:00.002-06:00

It took me a long time, but I finally gave in and gave World of Warcraft, the computer game a try this month. As a teenager I quite enjoyed the strategy game Warcraft II and Starcraft by the same company, but I've never been able to really connect with the roleplaying and first person character types of games, which is what World of Warcraft is.

However, Russell is a big fan of the game and has been desperate for someone to play with since his past comrades have gotten married to wives who won't let them play much anymore. He had a 30 day free trial that he signed me up for a day or two after Holly left town and I started testing the waters of the game.

It took me a few days to really get a handle on things and work out some confusion I had about how things worked, but Russell sat down and teamed up with me for a couple hours and got me all straightened out. Now I'm cruising through the game having fun and Russell and I have enjoyed a couple sessions of teaming up for some quests and adventures.

The games is quite different from what I was expecting because there are so many different things you can spend your time doing. You can go on quests, simply explore, have multiple different characters, each with different skills, or you can do a mix of a little bit of everything. Right now I've got a Dwarf Warrior, named Tierk, who is a Level 22, which I guess is pretty decent. We'll see how fancy I get get him before Holly gets back in town.

After the free trial is up it costs $15 a month to keep playing, so I think I might pay for the two months of summer remaining and then see where I stand. Once school starts I don't think I'll have time to play much and Russell said you can save your character as long as you like, so if you walk away for 6 months without playing you can just pick right back up where you left off as soon as you start paying again, which is sort of nice. So I can put it aside during the school year, maybe pay for a month over Christmas break, and then wait again until summer to pick it up again. Or, if Russell and I wanted to sit down for a "guys day" one Saturday I think I could get $15 worth of value out of an afternoon and evening of questing. Lots of options, fun game to be sure.

I think Holly was worried that I might become addicted to the game like so many people do, but for me it is more of a distraction type thing during the month I've been playing. Instead of flipping channels I'll go play for an hour and then go see some friends. Instead of going to see all the movies in the theater I can play for an hour until the urge goes away. I don't think I'll ever be one of the guys who has to gather every single thing possible, or beat every single quest by any means.

Good time waster while the wife is out of town though.

Cute Jack Times Two

2009-06-23T10:26:00.003-06:00

Here are a couple of recent picture of Jack. One is of him wearing his Disneyland hat from his adventures with Holly in California and the other is of him doing battle with a stuffed monkey at Rick and Shelley's house in Pasadena.

Carpet Replacement Epic Fail

2009-06-23T10:02:00.003-06:00

About two weeks ago a small note was attached to the clipboard next to our front door which explained that Wymount was planning on replacing all of the carpet in apartments within our quad. At first I told myself that I didn't want them to come and then I convinced myself it would be okay since Holly and Jack were out of town as long as the process did not require me to disassemble my crib and treadmill that are in a back bedroom. Both of them had to be put together inside of the room because they were too big to fit through the door.

It took a few back and forth phone calls with Wymount to organize the best possible day, which turned out to be yesterday. I had to work all day because Roxy is gone for the week, so I was out of the apartment by 8:00am and after work went over to Shyla and Russell's house for dinner and games, so I did not return home until 10:30pm.

From the discussions with Wymount I was lead to believe that because I had emptied the entire apartment onto the balcony or into closets so the only thing on the carpet when I left was the bed, couch, crib, and treadmill that the crew would have more than enough time to finish the entire apartment in one day because I would be gone and nothing would be in their way.

Clearly I was mistaken.

When I got home late last night I arrived to an apartment with every single light on in the house. Added to that as I got to the top of the stairs I noticed that both the front door and balcony door had been left wide open and unlocked whenever the crew had left for the day. Walking inside I noticed new carpet in the living room, nursery, and living room closet, but no carpet, not even the old carpet, in the bedroom or storage closet/office. The floor had been stripped down entirely to the concrete base.

Furthermore, my bed was piled in a corner of the living room on its end with several pieces of furniture I had put on the balcony piled up to the ceiling in front of it (I still don't know how that happened) and my couch had been put on end in the kitchen with other things piled behind, effectively blocking me from reaching any food, dishes, or cleaning supplies.

By this time I was livid. I really needed to be able to move things back into the apartment from the balcony when I got home because I had certain things that needed to be done the next day. But no, it gets worse. While inspecting the mess I noticed at least four or five used razor blades littering the carpet throughout the apartment. If Jack were home and not in California he easily could have discovered one of those and sliced his hands up something fierce.

Wait for it... it gets even better.

After taking everything in I decided it might be worth it to try and find somewhere else to sleep for the night. I didn't have the energy or the time really to move furniture to somewhere else to make room for the bed or to empty the kitchen so I could get to my food. So, I tried calling Shyla and Russell back, but I'm pretty sure they went to bed immediately after I left. Shawn Saunders was unreachable as well, and all my friends in the ward are out of town on internships.

So, I tried getting online, but wait, my computer had dead batteries. No big deal right? Just plug it in and see what I can do. Yeah... there isn't a single outlet in my apartment that works right now. None, nada, zilch. The only electricity that works is the overhead lighting. No air conditioner, no microwave (even if I had been able to reach it), and I'm willing to bet I'm going to need to check the refrigerator for spoiled food because it likely lost power for about 24 hours as well.

All in all, a nightmare. I wound up pulling a few blankets from the top of our closet and sleeping in a corner of the nursery, and this morning at 8:00am I went over to the Wymount office before work and after listing off my complaints told them that if the power and carpet were not fixed before I get home today they will be giving me a credit for my July rent when it comes due in one week.

I don't know if they got the message or not, but they said it would be fixed by 5:00pm when I get home. We'll see if that is really the case, and if not I might have to pull a Dad or something, we'll see.

A Brief Recap

2009-06-05T09:50:00.002-06:00

Holly is down in Redlands with her family for the next few weeks while one of her sisters graduates from high school and several other events take place. She took Jack with her since I can't keep track of him while I'm at work all day each day.

That means I'm home alone living the bachelor life for a little bit. It's not as much fun as you would think, but I am hoping to get lots of stuff done while she is gone. I'll probably go see a couple of movies that Holly never would have wanted to see, I'll give Shawn Saunders a call and see if he wants to do something once or twice, and I'll probably do some stuff with Gerald Smith as well to pass the time, but he doesn't get back in town until the 11th.

I also want to finish off some websites, read several books, clean up some cupboards and closets in the apartment and maybe wash out the car and the FoJ if I have time. Mostly I'm just going to try and be productive but relaxed at the same time so that I can make the best use of the time I have distraction free.

Luckily with Holly's new computer she has a webcam so before she left I got her set up on Skype to video chat every couple of days so I can see Jack and her a little bit while they are gone. We did the first chat last night and now Holly is apparently addicted to Skyping.

Wish me luck in my life of bachelorhood!

Sick, Sick Jack Attack

2009-06-01T22:52:00.007-06:00

This morning we had a bit of an interesting time. During the night we ran out of Jack's normal soy formula because he had been a big eater the day before. We thought he wouldn't have any trouble just having a bottle with Jett's normal formula, but boy were we wrong. Jack drank the bottle just fine and fell back asleep, but when he woke up all hell broke loose.

First he projectile vomited the formula still in his stomach, and then he proceeded to dry heave up the stomach acid he had left for the next few hours. I had left to get new soy formula at Target this morning when the ordeal first started, and when I got home he was stripped to nothing but his diaper and stayed that way for most of the day.

He spent two hours in the bed with me right after I got home, then he woke up for about 20 minutes, dry heaved six or seven times, and then was so exhausted he fell right back to sleep on my shoulder within minutes. He spent about three hours on the living room floor so we could keep an eye on him if he threw up again. Luckily when he woke up from this nap he was a happy camper having purged all of whatever was bothering him.

Jack and Jett

2009-06-01T22:46:00.005-06:00

Jack and his cousin Jett have been having a grand old time together for the past couple of days. They seem to get along pretty well, and spent a lot of time hanging out on the floor competing in rolling contests, grabbing each other's various extremities, and chattering away at each other.

Looks like they are on the fast track to being buddies.

Catch Up on Random Jack

2009-06-01T22:36:00.007-06:00

Sideburns No More

2009-05-28T08:58:00.002-06:00

This morning I decided I was tired of my sideburns so I shaved them off during my shower. I'm not sure what it was that motivated me to do so exactly. They didn't seem to fit with the shape of my face anymore, and they are kind of itchy in the warmer weather, and I have never had a good way of trimming them when they get really long without getting a full haircut.

I guess it was sort of a conglomeration of several things. Anyways, now I don't have sideburns anymore, so we'll see how long that lasts.

Time to Be Serious

2009-05-26T11:00:00.001-06:00

Remember way back when, months ago when I added that fancy little progress meter to the side of the blog here to track my progress with re-reading the Wheel of Time series before the new book came out in October?

Yeah... you probably also notice that it has never gone past zero, which is a direct result of me not actually having started that particular reading project yet.

But, I am going to reassert myself starting today. It has been over four years since the last book was released, which means in order for the new book which now comes out the first week of November to make any sense I think I need to re-read the entire series. That is 12 books if you count the prequel (which sort of makes sense), and that means I need to make this a seriously reading heavy summer.

Holly will be out of town for most of June, so I think I can get a good chunk in during that month, but perhaps I can knock off the first couple of books before she even leaves town, that would be helpful. Especially since I need to read a few books before the beginning of the semester for school as well.

Wish me luck!

Memorial Day

2009-05-26T10:17:00.002-06:00

A few days ago Holly reminded me that Memorial Day was coming up and that I had the day off. Somehow I had forgotten all about the long weekend and in my mind was set to head off to work first thing Monday morning as though everything was fine and dandy.

Instead of that though, we enjoyed yesterday by engaging in several fun adventures. First and foremost, Jack managed to sleep through the entire night and didn't wake up once until about 6:30am, which meant we both slept quite well. Holly fed him when he woke up and he fell right back asleep in her arms (in the bed) until about 8:45, which let me wake up, take a shower, do a few small things around the house, and figure out what we were going to do for the day.

I woke the two of them up just before nine o'clock and Holly got ready so we could make it to the movie theater for the 10:00am showing of the new Night at the Museum movie. We figured if we went really early to the first show that Jack would sleep through most of it (right during nap time) and that there wouldn't be very many people present for him to bother if he got out of control. Turns out I was wrong on the number of people who would be there as the theater was pretty full, but Jack did cooperate at least for the first half of the movie by sleeping. After that he sort of got wiggly and in the end I wound up walking up and down the side aisle with him while we finished the movie. All in all it was a fun time though.

After the movie we came home and I had to go to work for Conquer Club (it wasn't a holiday in Canada where the site is based), so Holly hung out with Jack for a few hours, and then eventually packed Jack up to go over to Julie's apartment for some swimming adventures. It was Jack's first time and from what I've been told he loved every minute of it. I'll post pictures once I get them off of the camera. I guess we'll have to go again soon so that he can have fun again.

By the time Holly got home with Jack from swimming my work was almost done and then we wanted to get something fun for dinner. We were just deciding on what to go get when Shyla and Russell stopped by with Amish Friendship Bread (my favorite) and visited for a little while. Once they left we decided on a new burger joint called Chadders that is just a few blocks away and got dinner there.

Also, all my paychecks finally came in so we were able to head on over to Babies'r'us and pick up a high chair, which is something we have sorely been needing ever since we started going hard core with the rice cereal a couple times a day. Jack was a little skeptical at first about the whole not being held while eating thing, but once he figured out what was going on he did pretty well. Now we just need to learn that chewing on the high chair tray between bites is counter-productive to the whole eating process. It sure made feeding him a lot easier though, it only took one person and not both of us, so Holly should be able to get more solids in him during the day now without too much trouble.

That's about it for our Memorial Day, hopefully yours was pretty good too!

Family Blog Anyone?

2009-05-25T08:19:00.007-06:00

Over the past week I've begun to resign myself to the fact that this blog has transitioned from a place of deep thoughts and musings to a family blog that focuses mostly on pictures of Jack. I struggled with this realization for a few days and then decided that I didn't really mind if that was what happened because at the moment I'm closer to my goal of being an everyday blogger than I've ever been because of it. So, in celebration, lets look at some pictures of Jack (yet again).

Taking a nap with Mom after a long day of jumping in our new jumper. This will always be the favorite picture for me whenever I have the chance to take them. Both of them look so happy to just snuggle the time away when they sleep together.

Aunt Shyla came to visit the other day and we couldn't help but fall asleep on her. He stayed that way for a long time and didn't seem to mind in the slightest.

Dad likes to put things on Jack's head, however he doesn't ever seem to mind, he just carries on with whatever he is doing at the time, like eating the red pillows Cooper gave us recently. Every time he sees one of those pillows he freaks out with excitement and wants to eat them.

My New Best Friend

2009-05-19T10:04:00.002-06:00

Seriously? How can you not be in love with this kid? I came home from work just before Jack woke up from his nap yesterday and was sitting on the couch eating some lunch. Holly took him out of his crib when he woke up and put him on the other end of the couch while she did a couple of things. He sat there and stared straight at me with this face for at least 15 minutes.

A Battle with the Toilet

2009-05-18T11:39:00.002-06:00

Shortly after arriving at work this morning I got a phone call from Holly. Apparently the toilet had started flooding the bathroom for what appears to be no really apparent reason. Luckily I had the scooter at work, and that meant I could get home rather quickly.

I made it home in about five minutes, sent Holly and Jack on a run to the store to get Jack some diapers because he was almost out, and then set to work figuring out how to fix the predicament the bathroom was currently in. I put in a call to the maintenance folks at Wymount and about ten minutes later a guy showed up to make sure the toilet drain was clear. It didn't take him very long, but he had the unfortunate news of letting me know that the cleanup of the water was basically up to me because they didn't have a crew available today.

That meant that I got to throw down all of our towels and then pick them up, wring them out in the bathtub and repeat the process over and over until the almost 1 inch of water filling the bathroom floor was gone. It took a little while, but I got it all taken care of (luckily the water was just clean water). The biggest problem is a rather largely sized wet spot in the hallway between the bathroom, bedrooms, and living room. I got out our box fan and put it to work, and then had to come back to the office because nobody else was in yet.

Holly told me a bit later that Wymount finally sent some guys over with a carpet vacuum to suck out most of the water and leave an industrial fan to help speed along the drying process. It may dry faster, but I'm sure that noisy fan isn't making Jack all that happy.

Backwards Motion Achieved

2009-05-16T11:29:00.002-06:00

Jack has known how to roll over for weeks now, possibly even getting close to months (alright, maybe not), but definitely weeks and he has shown some great skill in using his rolling to move around the floor or the bed, or his crib to reach things that are not too far away. He has also been doing a great job of getting his arms underneath him and looking around for things and people when he is on his stomach.

However, crawling is what we are really trying to achieve these days, and he has started to make some serious progress... going backwards. Yesterday during the day, and then in the evening when I was home he was on the floor while Holly, Julie, and I were hanging out. Then, all of the sudden he starts chattering like a madman and moves at least 10 feet across the living room, and halfway into the hallway to the bedrooms... backwards. Yes, backwards. He seems to be able to get the motions down at least most of the way, but he has them in reverse so pretty quick I went from seeing my son be happy as a jaybird in the middle of the living room floor to listening to a disembodied happy squeal when he found himself in the hallway.

Quite entertaining to be sure.

Holly leaves to go to Redlands on June 10th, and I think we have a pretty decent shot of Jack crawling pretty regularly before then, but at the very least he is going to figure it out by the time he gets back into town with her on July 1st. I'm sort of really hoping he figures it out before they leave town because I don't really want to miss it. Lucky for me Holly has her new MacBook so if he starts to figure it out while she's gone we can hook up the Skype webcams and she can point the computer towards him so I can watch at the same time. Thank goodness for modern technology I suppose.

25th Birthday Extravaganza

2009-05-15T12:25:00.003-06:00

Yesterday was my 25th birthday. I don't really get extremely hyped-up about my birthday because I'm usually busy with a lot of other stuff given when it falls in the year, but Holly likes to make sure that I always have a good day on my birthday and she always does an excellent job. I thought I would share how the day went for me and all the fun stuff that we did.

Jack woke up just before 6:00am and was wide awake, so Holly took him out to the living room to play while I got to sleep in. I took the day off of work so I could do whatever I wanted. I slept until about 8:00am which is about two hours later than I get to sleep most days and then Jack came in to play in the bed with me while Holly made breakfast.

She made me Bisquick pancakes (my favorite) along with some delicious scrambled eggs (also my favorite). I was nice and full when breakfast was over and then I played with Jack while Holly took a shower and got ready. When she was done I took my turn getting ready while Jack took his nap. He slept for a really long time and it was nice to hang around the house and do a few small things I wanted to do.

I took the day off from my job on Conquer Club as well, but I did spend some time finishing the coordinate centering for the newly revamped Brazil map. It was a fun bit of code that didn't take much time or much energy to do.

Once Jack woke up Holly wanted to take me to get my birthday presents so we packed up Jack and went over to JC Penney. Holly got me a set of really cool silver Transformers logo cufflinks that I had been wanting recently and so she wanted to get me a new shirt with french cuffs and some new sunday shoes to go with them. I haven't had new sunday shoes since before we got married and we found some great ones.

JC Penney had a great sale of buy one, get one for 99 cents on the dress shirts, so I got a white one for church and a blue one for other times. Then I wanted to take a look at some new cargo shorts to buy with my birthday money from Grandma Chatfield. They had the same sale on those so I got two new pairs as well.

After the shopping we went up to a new burger joint in town called Five Guys Burgers and Fries. I had been hearing some good things about the place and I thought it would be fun for lunch. As it turns out the french fries were just sort of alright, but the burgers were delicious. I'll probably go back sometime again.

When we got home from lunch we hung out for a little bit and then Holly and Jack made me a great birthday cake (chocolate with vanilla frosting) while I went out for a scooter ride. I don't normally get to take the scooter out for more than to just run to the store or go to and from work, but sometimes I like to go for nice rides where I don't have to start and stop all the time. The problem is that there isn't usually time for that sort of thing. It was a great day weather-wise, so Holly wanted me to go enjoy it on the scooter. I wound up going about 42 miles round trip and was gone for about an hour.

Shortly after I got home Shyla came to pick up Jack to babysit while Holly and I went to dinner at Gloria's Little Italy in downtown Provo and then to the movies to see the new Star Trek movie. The dinner was delicious and the movie was great and it was an awesome finish to my birthday extravaganza.

The Gathering Storm Cover Art

2009-05-15T07:50:00.002-06:00

As an avid fan of Brandon Sanderson and his work I follow his blog with my Google Reader. Late yesterday he posted that the cover art for Wheel of Time Book 12: The Gathering Storm had been finalized and he was allowed to post it. Here is a sneak peak for anyone who is interested. More details can be found here.

A Little More Random Jack

2009-05-14T11:09:00.009-06:00

Just a few random pictures we've taken recently of Jack. Apparently one day Holly and Jack decided to spend a little time making faces in the camera. The first picture is of how Jack spends a majority of his time these days. Lying on his back with his feet in the air. Enjoy!

CSS Positioning

2009-05-12T09:34:00.003-06:00

I've been working with web design for almost two years now. Actually, I might have passed the two year mark, I'm not entirely sure, I should go check that sometime just to know. Anyways, one thing I've been using for a long time is CSS positioning to get things to show up where I want them on the page. You can do all sorts of nifty stuff with positioning, but here is the catch: sometimes it is just downright confusing to understand.

Sure, I've made it work just fine. I have built several websites, but to be honest there were times and still are occasionally when I truly don't entirely grasp why something I just added to my code worked to fix the problem I was having. It was more of a stab in the dark that happened to be successful.

So, this morning I set out to figure out exactly how it works. I have always understood absolute positioning as it is incredibly straightforward. You simple tell the piece of the page exactly where to go and it stays there, end of story. Floating was always pretty straightforward as well. Tell something to float either direction and it moves as far as it can to the left or right and sticks there until you tell it to do something else.

What always sort of confused me was relative positioning. I've had it explained to me many, many times with several different analogies, but it never truly made sense. So, after owning a copy of CSS Mastery for quite some time now and never actually reading the entire thing I decided to lug it to work today and see what it could help me with. As it turns out if I would have just taken the time to read the book in the first place I would have understood relative positioning the entire time.

It seems my confusion on the issue stems from the fact that somewhere in either my classwork or my own haphazard trial and error I have gotten into the habit of always applying a relative position to everything that I wanted to float. That might not make sense to a lot of people, but it did to me at the time, and I've been doing it ever since. In actuality those to properties are not required to be used together, and can be used independently for different purposes. Sometimes they have to both be used, but not always. That is what had me entirely thrown off.

Knowing now that I can float things with just the float property and in some cases a position property is entirely pointless and unnecessary has opened my eyes to some new solutions in my CSS code that I've struggled with for a long time.

Now I'm determined to read CSS Mastery from cover to cover in its entirety to make sure I don't have any other strange habits that are causing me to stumble unawares. It's quite interesting how sometimes I get myself into a rut of thinking I've got one particular part all figured out and consider it "basic" but then discover I had it a little sideways the entire time.

Joe and Whitney Hardie

2009-05-11T13:32:00.002-06:00

Holly and I have been living in Wymount Terrace (BYU Married Student Housing if you don't know already) for quite some time. Sure, we took a brief hiatus to go and live in Grandma Chatfield's basement, but that was so short I sort of feel like I can count it as if I had just gone away for the summer for an internship in another state. Wymount has basically been our home since the day we got married and it looks to stay that way between now and when I graduate next spring.

We've had a couple great sets of friends while we living in our three different apartments, but I would have to say that the closest friends we found here are Joe and Whitney Hardie.

Joe is one of those guys who sort of always has his ducks in a row. He always seems to be on top of what he needs to get done and he always has a smile on his face for the people he meets during the day. There are a lot of times that I can remember thinking to myself, "If I can just make it through the day like Joe does," and then finding the strength to tackle whatever challenge had been thrown in my way.

He's a great friend. The kind you can count on to watch your back if you need them to, or the kind who will be over at the drop of a hat if you need a little extra help with something. Not to mention he'll let me talk his ear off about web programming whether or not he has a clue as to what I'm actually getting on about.

Then there is Joe's wife, Whitney. Ah, Whitney, my nemesis in all things. Not really of course, but it is sort of a standing joke that we likely have an opposite opinion on just about everything. I think there was a day once where we agreed on some rather large subject and then sort of sat there wondering what to do next because it had never happened before. Don't get me wrong though, Whitney and I are friends, good friends to be sure, we just happen to know how to push each other's buttons and do so often. It wouldn't be nearly as fun if the pseudo-conflict wasn't there.

Whitney is a hoot. My wife loves her and she loves my wife, so we've been exposed to the Hardies and awful lot and truth be told wouldn't have it any other way. Sometimes I'll come home from work to Whitney sitting in our living room discussing some subject or another with Holly and I'll just sit back and watch. Pure entertainment.

Now for the bad news... Joe and Whitney left for the summer to fulfill some sort of internship that Joe needs for graduation. That means we are without them until somewhere in the beginning of August, which makes the summer a little less fun all of the sudden. Oh well, there isn't really anything I can do about it, but it does sort of suck.

In the end, they will be back, and we'll throw some sort of party to be sure. Now if only I can keep myself from counting the days.

ABC Quiz for Kicks

2009-05-10T18:58:00.002-06:00

A - Age: 24

B - Bed size: Queen

C - Chore you hate: Dishes

D - Dog's name: Never had one

E - Essential start your day item: Shower

F - Favorite color: Blue

G - Gold or Silver: Silver

H - Height: 5' 7"

I - Instruments you play: Used to play the trumpet and piano, but not anymore.

J - Job title: Operations Manager

K - Kid(s): Jack (5 months)

L - Living arrangements: Wymount (gotta love the cinder blocks)

M - Mom's name: LuAnn

N - Nicknames: Boy

O - Outrageous idea: Starting a scooter gang

P - Pet Peeve: Being late

Q - Quote from a movie: "In 50 years when you look back don't you want to be able to say you had the guts to get in the car?" - Sam Witwicky

R - Right or left handed: Right

S - Shakespeare Play: King Lear

T - Time you wake up: 6:30am

U - Underwear: Yep

V - Vegetable you dislike: Most of them

W - Ways you run late: Doesn't happen

X - X-rays you've had: Too many to count.

Y - Yummy food you make: Peanut Butter, Honey, and Doritos Sandwiches

Z - Zoo favorite: Fish

Jumping Jack

2009-05-09T09:11:00.003-06:00

Jack is nearing his 5 month mark in just a few days and because he has been so great at learning to try and sit himself up, rolling over, and jumping around he has sort of outgrown the swing that Mom and Dad bought for him when he was born. Even when we strap him in he tries to roll himself out which isn't the safest of things. So, we decided to retire the swing until the new baby arrives at the end of the year and upgrade to the jumper style seat. This video is of Jack and his jumping prowess.

Promotion: Operations Manager

2009-05-08T11:09:00.002-06:00

It wasn't that long ago that I was expounding right here on this very blog about my excitement regarding being hired as the new Volunteer Coordinator for Conquer Club. Now, I have reason to expound a little more because yesterday I was promoted from Volunteer Coordinator to a new position of Operations Manager.

The Community Manager, Hyasri, who was hired at the same time I was has left for other employment opportunities and so that left the owner of Conquer Club with the predicament of having to fill the role and not really having anyone he wanted to give it to. So, instead he decided to split the two main areas that the Community Manager worked in and give one to me and the other to one of the other admins, AndyDufresne.

So, I have all my job duties from before, and added to that I have all of the projects, activities, and site improvement work that the Community Manager was doing. AndyDufresne is picking up the role of Chief Moderator and dealing directly with the public to ease concerns, put out fires, and be a public face for the site. He'll do a great job at that as he is easily the most level-headed of all the admins. I get a little too fiesty from time to time.

I'm really excited about the opportunity because it fits right into one of my personal skill sets of organization and planning. It also gives me five more hours of work each week which offsets some of my stress over increased expenses with a new baby arriving at the end of the year at least a little bit.

There are some big things planned for Conquer Club in the coming weeks (which I hope I can get the go-ahead on rather quickly), and hopefully they will improve the site for the better.

Styling Form Buttons: Take Two

2009-05-07T11:11:00.004-06:00

Alright, so when I wrote this post the first time it got rendered all sorts of crazy because I didn't realize that by inserting actual code into my post it would render it as if it were part of the actual page. So... let's try this again.

Over the past couple of days I decided that it would be nice to learn if it was possible to add styles and visual changes to the buttons used on forms in websites. Everyone has seen those buttons before. They are most common on logins, comment forms, contact information forms, or updating profiles on sites. The problem is that the default browser styling for buttons is incredibly bland and boring.

I wanted to see if I could figure out how to make them more visually appealing and exciting. As it turns out, it is entirely possible, but not as easy as you would normally think.

There are two ways of putting a button into a form. The first is by using a standard submit input and the second is to use the button tags with the appropriate attributes. If you use the first method you can do some styling, but the amount of control you have is not nearly as impressive. It is impossible to add an icon or image to a submit input (at least from what I have found so far) and the other styling options are somewhat limited.

However, if you use the button tags you can easily add an icon, adjust the margins or paddings as you wish and deal with all sorts of background colors or borders. The advantage here is that you can make some very nice looking buttons without needing to generate a truckload of "button images" in Photoshop or some other image creation software.

It was a fun experience trying to figure out how to make the buttons work the way I wanted and when I finally had some success I decided that I may try and incorporate them into the Writers Camp website I've been working on for a BYU professor by the end of the summer.

A Baby with No Bones

2009-05-06T07:00:00.000-06:00

Yesterday Jack had to go and get his four month immunizations, which meant he spent the majority of the day either asleep or sort of out of it because he was hopped up on Infant Tylenol. He made it through the day remarkably well, but it was sort of funny to watch him because he spent lots of time as a boneless weight on our laps.

New Office Space

2009-05-05T23:45:00.007-06:00

With the imminent arrival of our second child it has been on my mind lately as to how I am going to make room for another little one to live here in our small Wymount apartment. Space is sort of at a premium, and we have enough stuff that rearranging only does so much good in the long run. Add on to that the fact that we will just accumulate more stuff when the new baby arrives and I have my own little cocktail for living space disaster.

However, a few weeks ago I had an idea. This particular apartment has a rather "largish" walk in storage room attached to the bedroom, which we just had a bunch of stuff thrown into in order to get it out of our way. I thought that perhaps if I were to take the time to clean it out I could maybe alter it into a sort of half storage, half office type of area and free up a bunch of space in the second bedroom for a second baby.

After several hours of work this past Saturday the following results came to fruition. I think it turned out rather well, and after a couple of days "working" in my new office I'm beginning to wonder why I never thought of it to begin with.

Summer Project Update

2009-05-04T17:24:00.001-06:00

A few days ago I posted about my current summer project which is to build my personal "professional" site to begin seriously working as a web developer/programmer (albeit a very amateur one).

As of today the front page is finish. None of the links work, but I finally settled on a color scheme and main page design that I really like.

You can find it here: http://calebflanagan.com

The Adventures of Diaper Containment

2009-05-04T13:19:00.003-06:00

So, in the past week Jack has begun to sleep through almost the entire night. However, because of this he doesn't get his diaper changed until he wakes up anywhere from 8-12 hours after going to bed. This presents a problem because his current diapers do not seem up to the task of urine containment like they should be.

Apparently this is one of the shortcomings of using the store brand diapers. Sure, they cost 50% less, which means I will continue using them for daytime use, but they definitely are not capable of keeping Jack comfortable during the night shift.

Therefore, after some consultation with a few people in the ward, and with Dad on the phone we've decided to give a try to having a single package of name brand diapers such as Pampers or Huggies on hand to use specifically for the night and see if they do a better job at containment.

Wish us luck.

Helping with the Blog

2009-05-01T16:33:00.003-06:00

The other day while I was doing a little work on my blog posts Jack was sitting right next to me and doing his best to help with the pushing of the keyboard buttons and the moving of the mouse with the trackpad. He thinks he can be a great helper but sometimes he deletes things on accident and then I can't remember what I had already typed. Silly kid!

Sound Asleep

2009-05-01T08:49:00.001-06:00

I don't know if anyone else experiences this phenomena.

Most night I sleep fairly well. I wake up rested well enough to go about my activities for the day and I don't feel too terribly groggy or like I am dragging my feet. Sometimes I feel a bit tired, and some days I feel like I have a little extra energy. I figure it is about the same with most other folks that I know.

However, on occasion I have a night where I absolutely am dead to the world. Last night was one of those nights. I'm talking about the kind of sleep that is so intense you never move and when your alarm goes off in the morning it feels like your limbs are full of cement and you can't move them. Sleep so intense that when you sit up for the first time you have to wait a minute before you get up because you aren't sure you are really awake.

The strange thing about this is it never happens after I've been exhausting myself with physical activity, or when I'm sick. It just happens on random occasions, not very often, and sort of comes out of the blue. I can't come up with an explanation for it, but I feel so awake the day after I sleep like that I wish I could do it every night.

Summer Project

2009-04-30T10:28:00.002-06:00

I've mentioned previously that I have several website projects to put the finishing touches on over the next couple of months before school starts up again, but along with that I had been wanting to decide on another project that has not been started yet to work on that would allow me to try and reinforce current skills but also figure out some new things I haven't learned yet.

After mulling it over for a couple of weeks I've decided that the best option is to begin work on my 100% custom designed blog site. I've never been entirely satisfied with the way that Blogger or Wordpress sort of limit the way I can adjust the appearance of my blog, and I have a very specific vision for what I want it to look like. The problem is that working within those two platforms is not all that easy, so building it from scratch seems like the best idea.

Now, don't worry, I'm going to keep this personal/family blog right here, so you won't have to worry about learning a new address or finding me when I move. This new blog is going to be of a more professional nature, with posts twice weekly I think rather than every single day. I don't have a subject matter figured out yet, but it will have something to do with something, how is that for ambiguity?

Building this new site (http://calebflanagan.com) will give me the chance to practice what I already know, but also build on it by needing to figure out the storage of pictures in a database, WYSIWYG editors, tagging of posts, and some other things that will be helpful. I'm hoping I can incorporate some new javascript and perhaps even some Flash knowledge as well in some way. We'll sort of see where it takes me.

I don't have a finite timetable for it to be finished, but I'm thinking with regular work throughout the semester I can get a solid foundation finished before school begins again, and perhaps have another good website for my personal portfolio when all is said and done.

Jack on Video: Attempt #1

2009-04-29T13:38:00.004-06:00

Lately I have been wanting to add some videos of Jack doing things but only recently was reminded that we can take short videos with our digital camera. This video isn't anything spectacular, but I figured I would give it a try at least.

A Little More Random Jack

2009-04-29T13:22:00.007-06:00

Jack and Mommy

2009-04-29T13:16:00.005-06:00

Sometimes I walk into a room in our apartment and see something that resembles the scene below. I always think it is cute, and I always try to take pictures. On this particular instance, I had been working hard in the office on my web project for school while Holly and Jack were hanging out on their own. They had decided to go into the bedroom since it was getting close to bedtime and were watching an episode of some show on Hulu together.

My Perfect Workspace

2009-04-29T10:19:00.003-06:00

I often go on and on about how I wish I had this amazing dream office that was filled with all sorts of wonderful things like a massive desk, four computer monitors, picture windows, and huge bookcases, but if I am 100% honest with myself, I really need much less to be happy when I am working on anything from paying the bills to writing code for a website and everything in between.

Today is a slow day here at the office and I'm trying to keep up to speed with my blogging goals for this year, so I thought it might be fun to expound on my perfect "workspace" for a little while, using the constraints of the small apartment that I currently share with my wife, son, and soon to be second child. Obviously that means I don't have much space, perhaps barely a corner of a room to work with, so lets see what I can come up with that seems reasonable.

Computer: I currently own a nice 13" Macbook, which is more than capable of meeting my computing needs. If I need to upgrade my RAM or my hard drive capacity I can do so for a relatively small amount of money in the future without needing to replace the computer altogether.

Computer Monitor: The laptop I own has a very small screen which is fine for when I am on campus or working away from home, but when I need to really buckle down and be productive a bigger portion of real estate is much appreciated. For this last Christmas my parents gifted me a great 22" flat screen monitor which works like a charm and when connected to my laptop gives me plenty of space to work. Many days I will use just the external monitor, but sometime the dual screen is nice for whatever I'm working on at the time.

Printer: Doesn't need to be anything fancy. All I need is black and white printing mostly with the occasional color print, so the basic inkjet that we currently own works like a charm, no need to change anything in this category.

Desk Chair: I like a comfortable desk chair, especially since I spend a lot of time sitting in it. Right now I have a great chair that I received as a birthday present a couple of years ago, and it works like a charm, the only problem is that it is a bit on the big side and as more children keep arriving I'm a bit concerned it might be taking up too much space at the moment. Mostly my chair just needs to be good enough that I don't get sore sitting in it for long periods of time.

External Keyboard & Mouse: Already have both of these and don't plan on replacing them anytime soon. I like wireless for my mouse, and would prefer wireless for my keyboard, but the wireless keyboard available from Apple isn't full sized yet, so I'm current wired in that regard.

Filing Cabinet: I have enough papers and records that I need to keep on file that a filing cabinet would be a wonderful addition that I don't have at the moment. I don't need a large one by any means. One of those small two-drawer types would work just fine, or even one that has a small drawer for office supplies on top and a filing drawer below would work well.

Shelving: I am not sure that I need an entire bookshelf, especially not if I have a filing cabinet or a desk drawer of some type, but one or two medium sized shelves of some type would be nice. Just enough room to keep my reference books and perhaps some other random items that I use on a regular basis.

Desk: Right now I'm working with a $5 desk that I bought from the BYU auction when I first got married, but if I'm honest it is about twice as big as I need it to be and if I could find something smaller that had just enough room to hold my monitor and keyboard/mouse I would be alright. I don't do a lot of writing or "open desk" work so extra desktop space is not a necessity for me right now, if ever.

Office Supplies: There are a few things that I like having on hand so I don't have to go searching for them. They include: Pens, Scissors, Ruler, Three Hole Punch, Printer Paper, Rubber Bands, Paper Clips, Stapler, Lined Paper, Manila Folders, Highlighters, Mechanical Pencils, Labels, and a few other random things I can't think of off the top of my head.

So, I think that is a reasonable list of things, and the great thing is that I already own most of it, excluding the cabinet or a smaller desk. The only problem I'm facing at the moment is where to put my workspace because the apartment isn't all that conducive to me keeping it in the same room as the babies, especially not when the second one arrives, and I'm not a very big fan of having it out in the living room with everything else.

One idea I have been tossing around lately is to reorganize the oversized storage closet we have into a sort of makeshift office/workspace if I can find a table or desk small enough to fit. I think I could make it work for the time remaining that we have here in Provo, and it would allow me to shut myself off from the party crowd as well because of the small door it has. The only thing I'm worried about is whether it is too cramped, but when Holly is gone in June to visit her family in Redlands I think I may give it a test drive and see if I can find a way to make it work somehow.

Turning 25

2009-04-29T09:14:00.002-06:00

Yep, it is finally arriving, the quarter-century mark is approaching fast for me and in a couple of weeks I'll be officially 25 years old. I can remember a time when I thought turning 25 would be a really big deal, and perhaps it still is in some manner, but after having been married for almost three years, having one child with another on the way it seems like turning 25 is just the same as turning 24, or turning 26 will be next year.

I'm not a big birthday party type of person because I'm not really a party person in general and now that I'm older I'm not exactly sure what makes a good "birthday party" anyways. Holly keeps telling me that I should at least do something, but the problem with that is that my favorite activity is taking her to dinner and a movie; something we do all the time, so it isn't really "special" for my birthday to be honest.

The only thing I've ever wanted to do was go to this big go-kart track up in Salt Lake where you can pay to have you and a group of your friends do some qualifying laps and then a nice long race. The problem is that it is about $30 per person, which I can't afford to pay for everyone and I'm certainly not going to ask people to pay for themselves, so that idea is out. It would certainly be fun someday though. Maybe when I'm not a poor college student anymore or something.

Holly has also been asking for a birthday list, but I don't have much to put on one at the moment. It seems like all the stuff I want or need is far out of an acceptable price range right now. Regardless, here is a list for you sweetheart of at least a couple of things:

Transformers Cufflinks
Hardcover copy of Mistborn
Hardcover copy of Well of Ascension
New Sunday Shoes
Briefcase/Laptop Bag
iTunes Gift Card
Tinted Helmet Visor

Summertime Plans

2009-04-28T17:30:00.000-06:00

This summer will prove to be interesting for many reasons. The foremost of which is the fact that little Jack is around and he'll be learning some great new tricks in the next 3 or 4 months such as crawling, sitting up, eating solid foods, and perhaps even a smidgen of standing up or possibly walking. All of that is sure to keep me busy, but several other things will as well.

Holly is taking a jaunt back to Redlands for basically the majority of the month of June to see Carlie graduate and then spend some time showing Jack off to family and friends. I'll be staying home to work, which means I'll have a couple of weeks to myself, not a common occurance and likely time that can be spent to do some great projects of my own.

I'm not taking any classes this spring or summer so I can concentrate on earning some money to put away towards our second child due this fall, and because I can only take so much school in a row before I start to get far too stressed out and everything begins to blur together for some reason.

Some things I'm hoping to accomplish in the summer months include:

Finish Conquer Club Trivia
Finish Writers Camp
Upgrade Wants & Wishes
Redesign otissito.com
Read the Wheel of Time books
Learn Javascript
Read some programming books
Finish off my Conquer Club tournaments
Organize the kitchen cupboards
Organize the storage closet
See some great movies
Find a new project to start

BYU Removes ESPN from Cable Package

2009-04-28T17:00:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted about this development for a week or so because I am quite irate about the very thought of it. Here at BYU the campus cable package is severely lacking, as in so lacking it probably should never be referred to as an actual cable package, but the one thing it did have was ESPN to provide sports coverage whenever I wanted it.

The entire time I've been in married student housing I've settled for this knowing that as long as I could get highlights and news from ESPN I could consider myself lucky and move along with life.

Then not long ago I got the following message from BYU:

With the industry changes in television from an analog to a digital signal, changes are being made to our Campus Television service. A new contract for digital content has been negotiated and will take effect May 1, 2009.

The CBS College Sports network will be added to the line-up. The network carries Mountain West Conference athletic events and will allow students and employees to access additional BYU games from campus locations.

All other currently offered channels will continue to be available with the exception of ESPN. The cost of the ESPN package alone is now more than all of our other content combined, and this expense could not be justified. ESPN will no longer be provided as part of our television content beginning May 1st.

Yep, my ESPN channel disappears in two days. I'm not happy about it, not happy at all. Sure, a lot of the stuff can be found on the ESPN website, but most of the video coverage cannot, especially not my favorite one, Top 10 Plays of each day.

Sometimes BYU is run by unintelligent people. Sometimes.

Jack Loves Clapping

2009-04-28T16:16:00.002-06:00

On Sunday evening Jack was being a bit fussy and when it was finally time to go to bed he was having a bit of a tough time settling down to try and fall asleep. It was one of those times when he didn't want to sit up, didn't want to lie down, didn't want to lay on the floor, didn't want to suck on his pacifier or eat his bottle, etc.

The only thing that had worked to any degree for me the entire evening was putting him in his crib and then sitting next to it with my arm hanging over the side so that he could play with my fingers and bend them or squeeze them or lick them to his little heart's content.

So, when he started crying as Holly was attempting to put him to sleep I suggested that she go lay him in the crib and see what happened. She did, but it wasn't helping much until Holly started clapping. Yes, you heard me right, she started clapping. Apparently she does this from time to time to distract him from whatever is making him cry and shorten the crying fit by a good amount of time.

The strange thing was that she was clapping really loud, as in the kind of clapping you do when you are trying to be just a little bit obnoxious about it, not the kind of polite clapping you do at the end of a performance or speech.

Of course, Jack being the strange little boy that he is at times thought the clapping was the perfect sedative and promptly rolled over on his side and got a serious bout of the droopy eye syndrome so common in little babies who just can't stay awake any longer. A few more minutes of clapping and he was basically out, so Holly grabbed the closest book she could find, The Search for Wallace Whipple (my favorite of all time) and read him the first two pages.

He fell asleep and didn't wake up for 7 hours. Ridiculous I say, ridiculous!

Time for Dairy Queen

2009-04-22T09:00:00.000-06:00

Every summer since we have been married Holly and I have made a bit of a tradition of going to Dairy Queen on occasion for a fun little treat. There is a DQ sitting right down at the bottom of the hill from us and is about a 10 minute walk each direction, so we've walked down there a couple of times from our apartment in Wymount. This year we commemorated the start of spring by taking Jack on his first Diary Queen adventure.

Yes, I did give him ice cream, and yes, he did love it.

Jack Attack Collage

2009-04-22T06:00:00.000-06:00

Showertime!

2009-04-21T23:00:00.006-06:00

Last Thursday was a bit of a rough day for Jack and I. We both woke up with some strange cough/runny noses and had a bit of a tough time dealing with it. Both of us were coughing and sneezing and moaning all day trying to get over it. By the time it we were ready to lay down and go to sleep for the night we needed to give Jack a bath, but I decided it might be good for him to take a shower with me because I could stand at one end of the shower and turn the water up nice and hot so the steam could help relax him and make his cough feel a little better.

Now We Roll Over

2009-04-21T23:00:00.000-06:00

On Sunday Jack was just having a grand old time on the floor doing his thing with his friends Memphis and Nemo. He has really begun to like spending time on the floor wiggling around on his blanket. Over the past two weeks he has become really good at scooting around on his back or spinning in circles by rolling from his back to side and back.

However, on Sunday he accomplished the feat of finally rolling all the way over to his stomach. He had been close for a couple of days, but couldn't quite figure out how to tuck his bottom arm underneath himself to get the rest of the way over, but he did on Sunday and once he did it once, he was doing it all the time. I think he may have rolled over about 30 times that day and then at the doctor's office on Monday he was on the table and rolled right over while waiting for the doctor to arrive.

Now I can't just leave him on the couch or the bed like I used to, I'll have to put up barriers or keep him on the floor. However, he really has the leg movements down for crawling, but can't get up on his hands and knees the right way yet, so we'll have to work on that. I don't think it will be too long, probably before the end of the summer vacation I would think, possibly even by the time Holly and him return from their trip in June by chance.

He really doesn't like it if I put him back on his back after he rolls over, and he just rolls right back to his stomach as quickly as possible. He never liked to spend time on his stomach before, but now he certainly does. We'll see how quickly he starts getting himself into trouble.

CHum 489R Project: Writers Camp

2009-04-21T22:23:00.003-06:00

Well, it is finally done. Sort of.

Tonight was the final presentation for my CHum 489R Computing Project class and I had to take my website that I had built and go present it in front of the other students from the class as well as the professor and my technical and content advisors.

My project was a website called Writers Camp which I built for Stephen Tuttle, one of the faculty members in the English Department and a teacher that I've taken a class from before. I wanted to find a teacher I felt like I would enjoy working with rather than someone who I didn't really know. As it turns out building the website for Professor Tuttle was a great experience.

I think the website turned out quite well, and it accomplishes everything that he wanted plus a little extra. As it stands right now if I never worked on it again it would serve the purpose it was built for to let Professor Tuttle manage the students in his class along with their stories, but I think there are some great things that could still be added to the site that wouldn't take much to do and that I think I can do with little to no extra help if I put my mind to it.

I'm glad the class is finished and I'm glad that I can take a week or two to relax and take a bit of a breather and enjoy some time to myself. I need to help Holly around the house with a few things and Jack is starting to learn new things all the time, so not having class for a little while will certainly be a good thing for me.

Sick Little Jack

2009-04-20T09:19:00.002-06:00

A couple of days ago both Jack and I woke up with this strange runny nose/cough ordeal that we were not suffering from the day before. I took solace in the fact that I personally had not made him sick since we both caught it at the same time, but I was still not all that happy about the situation because it befell us at a rather inconvenient time.

It was the first day of reading days for the semester and I was supposed to be getting all sorts of awesome work done on my web project as well as several other things to get ready for finals. Instead I was feeling like an inflamed nasal cavity and having a really hard time focusing on anything.

Luckily I made it through the day without too much drama, although I did not accomplish nearly as much as I had hoped I would, and when I woke up the next day I was feeling better. Every day since then I have gradually progressed to a better state, but Jack has not. He stayed even for a day or two, got better for a day, and then last night was coughing and hacking so hard that he was making himself throw up and having a really difficult time breathing.

It was a hard night for me, and I didn't sleep much at all. I was constantly checking on Jack every time I woke up to roll over and probably spent more time in the rocking chair next to his crib to make sure he was still okay than I did in my bed last night. He made it alright though, and eventually Holly brought him into the bed with her which seemed to help him sleep a little bit better for the last couple of hours.

Oddly enough, Jack is scheduled to go see the doctor today for his four month checkup, so it was a bit of fortuitous timing that he didn't get to a really bad state until late last night. I'm hoping the doctor will have some suggestions on how we can help him get rid of this cough and/or give him some medicine to make him feel better. I really hope he doesn't have anything serious. One of the other babies in the ward has RSV recently and came to church a week or so ago still coughing and hacking even though the parents said that the doctors told them he was fine to go out.

Needless to say, I'm a bit skeptical at the moment.

Alias

2009-04-16T10:38:00.003-06:00

I have been a member of Netflix for well over a year now, possibly even pushing 18 months if I were to actually look up the information, and it has been one of the best decisions that I ever made. Prior to using Netflix I was spending a ton of money on movie rentals and now for much, much less I get unlimited movies each month. I would estimate that the subscription to Netflix saves us about $30 a month at least, so it was definitely a better option.

Recently I just finished watching the tv show Alias on DVD using my Netflix. I had watched the first six or seven episodes when the show first aired many years ago, but then got busy and lost interest. However, I always wanted to watch it again, and when I had finished watching Las Vegas a few months ago I thought I would give Alias another try.

Watching that show on DVD is an entirely different experience. You don't lose track of who is who or who is doing what or who is double-crossing who. It is far more enjoyable when you don't have to wait weeks or months between episodes.

Overall I think Alias was a great show. The last two seasons started to stretch the limits of reality, but only by a little bit, and the series finale was a little over the top, but then, most finales for tv shows are, so I can give Alias the benefit of the doubt. There were certainly some twists and turns along the road during the five seasons that I was not expecting, and there were some that I saw coming from a mile away. It was a pleasant balance I think, one that kept me coming back for more without frustrating me or making me think I was smarter than the characters in the show at the same time.

To anyone who hasn't seen Alias and is looking for another show to pick up on their own Netflix or something to pass the time in the upcoming summer months, give it a try, I think you will enjoy it.

Jack's New Playmate

2009-04-14T14:57:00.003-06:00

I know that most of the people who read this blog already are privy to this information, but I just realized that I had not blogged about it yet, so today is the day to do so it appears.

Holly is pregnant.

Three words is all it takes to really open your eyes sometimes. Was it planned? Nope. Was it even close to planned? Once again, nope. Does God have a curious sense of humor? I'm convinced of it now. I always suspected, but now I'm 100% convinced.

According to what I've been told by Holly she is due on approximately November 22, 2009. For those of you who don't remember, Jack doesn't turn 1 until December 15, 2009....... think on that for a little bit.

All in all, I can't do much but say to myself, "Looks like there is some sort of plan you weren't entirely informed of. It can't be that bad, so let's just roll with it," and so that is what I'm doing. I do however think it quite awesome that Jack will never be able to remember a time in his life that he didn't have a sidekick.

New Calling: Elder's Quorum Instructor

2009-04-13T20:00:00.000-06:00

Yep, it's that time again. After living in the old folk's ward over when we were living in Grandma Chatfield's basement and not having callings, it apparently is time for me to have another one. Bishop Olsen, our bishop here in Wymount, told me I was safe until at least the end of the semester but I guess the Elder's Quorum Presidency had different plans in mind.

Aaron Jacob, one of the Elder's Quorum counselors stopped by earlier this week and asked if I would be willing to accept the calling of being an instructor in the Elder's Quorum. I told him sure, why not, I had done it on several other occasions, and I don't mind teaching at all.

It looks like I will be the instructor on the fourth Sunday of each month which means from what I can tell that I will be the person doing the Ensign lessons. That makes me happy because I always liked teaching those lessons because you have so much more flexibility than you do with the other ones. You just take the topic and make it your own. When you have to teach from the manual you are sort of locked in to certain things that you need to cover and it doesn't make it easy for you to put your own personal touch to the lesson.

Now, let's just hope I can keep this one for a long time, or at least until we move. It's the perfect kind of calling for me.

The Sun is Out, so the FoJ Runs Free!

2009-04-13T16:00:00.001-06:00

Guess what? The weather has finally turned, and while it still rains (for inexplicable reasons) every couple of days, the temperatures are at a point where the throttle no longer gets frozen on the FoJ and I can take it anywhere and everywhere I so please.

I'm down to only my white hoodie for cold protection on the way to campus in the mornings, and on the way home it usually isn't needed because the temperature is up into the 50s or sometimes 60s (like today). It's nice to not have to spend 15 minutes getting bundled up again, and I can't wait for about four weeks from now when I don't have to bundle at all and the evenings will be perfect for some stress-reducing joyrides every so often.

I need to give the FoJ another oil change here in about 200 more miles, which means I am drawing nearer and nearer to the 2,000 mile mark. I feel like that is quite an accomplishment since I haven't even owned the scooter for a year yet. It sure is saving a lot of money as well as a lot of wear and tear on the Saturn these days. Not to mention that now that Jack is old enough to go on adventures with Holly she isn't cooped up waiting for me to get home everyday anymore.

I love my scooter. I also love my wife for allowing me to get it.

Wheel of Time Book 12: Now Three Books

2009-04-13T13:36:00.002-06:00

This news is at least a week or two old, and I meant to post about it back when it was fresh on my mind, but I can post about it now that I have a few spare minutes in my day.

The Wheel of Time series has been ongoing for years, and it is one of my favorite series of all time, only recently surpassed by Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. I've been waiting for Book 12 of Wheel of Time for almost 4 years and it was scheduled to be released this coming October as I have mentioned previously here on the blog.

As it turns out while working on the book, Brandon Sanderson, the replacement author for Robert Jordan, has discovered that he cannot possibly write the story in the way it was intended in any less than 800,000 words. To put that into perspective consider that most mass market books are published at about 200,000 words at most.

So, with this revelation the editors and publishers decided to release the book as three parts, the first of which will be titled The Gathering Storm and will be released in mid-November of this year. The following two books should be released in November 2010 and November 2011 respectively unless something crazy happens.

Here are some pertinent links to the information:

1. Tor Books Press Release

2. Comments on the Situation by Brandon Sanderson

3. Interview with Harriet (Robert Jordan's wife and editor)

In the end, I think I am okay with this situation. I simply don't want to wait past the end of this year to get some more of the story that I can read. If it takes three more books to finish things the right way, then by all means, I will buy each and every one of those three books. Besides, I'm a huge Brandon Sanderson fan, and I'll take all of his writing that I can get.

Jack and Daddy Napping

2009-04-13T13:24:00.002-06:00

I haven't posted a new picture of Jack recently so I think it is about time. Since I'm getting caught up on some backlogged blogging I thought I might share this one of Jack and I (along with Memphis) taking a nap a couple of days ago. I don't think that Holly realized were were in the bedroom sleeping and so when she discovered us she snapped this lovely picture to capture the moment. Enjoy!

Finishing the Semester

2009-04-13T13:13:00.002-06:00

There is only one day left of class following today. I can't tell you how happy that makes me because this semester has not gone at all like it was supposed to. I was planning on having a nice schedule that let me have some time at home and a workload that was not too demanding so that I could help with Jack when he was so small.

Did any of that happen? No, it most certainly did not.

As it turns out, my grades should be fine, mostly in the B or B+ range with one or two that might sneak up into the A- or flat out A range. The only one I think I have a solid A in is my computing project class, but who knows, Russell is a tricky one and he may flunk me just for kicks or something. Now that would be funny.

All I want is to make it through finals, get my grades and take a break. This summer should be nice and relaxing because I am not taking any classes, I am not working horrible jobs, and I get to work at least 15 hours a week from home, which is so much better than sitting in a quiet office all day. Not to mention, Roxy will be here for the summer this year, and that is going to be fun.

This semester was so disappointing I can't really put it into words. The spring and summer breaks can't get here fast enough, even if they are only 36 hours away.

Decluttering My Life, Step 1: Deactivate My Facebook Account

2009-03-26T15:35:00.003-06:00

Yep, I did it. I deactivated my Facebook account a couple of days ago because the concept behind that site has officially becoming boring to me. There is never anything all that exciting going on with Facebook except for the poorly designed layout changes from time to time, and the site has grown far to big for its britches if you ask me.

It was one thing when Facebook was only available to university students. At that point it held a certain mysterious appeal for me, knowing that a bunch of hormone induced teenagers wouldn't be cluttering my wall space with their absurd speech patterns was quite comforting to say the least.

Then Facebook sold out. They opened the doors to everyone and their MySpace crew, and things went downhill fast. Then was the introduction of "applications" and I knew my time was growing short.

I hung on for a while longer, knowing that my wife enjoys seeing the activities of my friends almost more than I do from time to time, but in the end, it was a waste of my time, a waste of society's time, and overall a waste of time in general.

I've got so many things on my plate right now that I'm looking for ways to simplify, adjust, and come to grips with the most important things to occupy my attention. Watching constant "someone saw someone and it made that someone so happy the other someone wanted to smile at someone" statuses is the epitome of inane in my mind. Thanks, but no thanks.

Ask yourself this: If Facebook has grown to the point where you are now considered a rebel to not be on Facebook, don't you think that tells you something about the world nowadays?

Twitter is Busy

2009-03-24T15:32:00.002-06:00

What is up with this new development by way of Twitter? I'm really starting to like this website, but for the past three days anytime I try to log on and post an update all I get is,

We're sorry, Twitter is currently overloading, come back later.

That's just lame.

A Couple Cute Pictures of Jack

2009-03-24T10:24:00.003-06:00

The first one is easily in my top five favorite pictures of Jack so far. He is working so hard to give his friend Memphis a hug/kiss. Nowadays whenever we put Jack in his chair that Mom and Dad got for him when he was born we often hand him either Memphis or some other small toys to start getting him engaged with entertaining himself. Memphis is far and away his absolute favorite and he will go crazy trying to talk to him sometimes. If you put Jack on the floor on his back and put Memphis on his stomach Jack will wrap both his arms and legs around Memphis and try to roll over with him. It's pretty awesome.

Post #300

2009-03-23T15:25:00.003-06:00

Well, would you look at that, I have reached the 300 post mark in my blogging career. It only took several years and several blogs to get to this point, but I got here nonetheless. In celebration I would like to share some pictures of how I get to work nowadays with my new job. Yes, my new job is that cool.

Saturday Night with Jack

2009-03-21T19:28:00.002-06:00

Right now I am sitting in Shyla and Russell's living room because Holly is holding a PostSecret night over at our place. There were going to be something like 8 girls over for the party and since it had nothing to do with me I figured I might as well leave them to whatever they will be doing.

The problem is that I needed to take care of Jack as well, but I can't take him to a movie or anything similar. So, I called up Shyla and asked if I could hang out at their place for a couple of hours where it would be quieter and more peaceful for Jack if he got fussy or was sleepy.

As it turns out, Shyla and Russell have Stake Conference tonight so I'm just sitting here with a semi-sleepy little boy trying to get a few things done before I head back home after Holly's party. Regardless, I'm going to be up late tonight trying to stay ahead on homework. I may even be up all the way until Jack's normal "first shift" as we call it.

We'll see how it goes.

The Book Project

2009-03-16T21:18:00.002-06:00

I suppose it is about time that I post something new so everyone stops thinking I am so depressed all the time.

For my print publishing class I need to do one final project using Adobe InDesign to finish off the work and skills we are learning this semester. The interesting thing about this class is that it is almost identical to the first print publishing class that I took, only each of the projects is a little bit longer or bigger than the last time. It sure makes for an interesting experience.

It's also strange that there are 7 people in the class. 6 girls, and me. Funny, eh?

Anyways, the final project is a book project that has to be at least 70 pages long and have at least 4 chapters when I am done. I've known about this project the entire semester and have been trying to think of something to use for me "content" but had been coming up blank until just a couple days ago. I decided that instead of being like everyone else and making a personal history or some sort of cookbook that I would write my own content that was fresh and new and then put it into a format that was more stylistic than a run of the mill 6in x 9in book.

What I decided on was a 4in tall by 10in wide book utilizing 4 columns (trust me, it looks cool) and that my subject matter would be Conquer Club. Why you ask? Well, on March 12th I had my two year anniversary as a member of Conquer Club and in that two years I climbed from a "newbie" all the way to the top of the ladder as the "admin" that I am now. I thought it might be fun to write a sort of memoir of the experiences I've had on the site and then use that for my content. Obviously it wouldn't be too serious or weighty, but it could be a fun little read if you ask me.

I'm thinking of a title something along the lines of From Newbie to Admin: My Journey Through the World of Conquer Club or something just as entertaining.

Too Much, Too Much, Too Much

2009-03-12T11:46:00.003-06:00

There are too many things for me to do right now.

I have three jobs (although one of them will be done in a few weeks) that take up a lot of my time.

I have a full load of classes at school, some of which are taking far more work that I had anticipated and are leaving me behind on other school projects that I should be ahead on.

My CHum 489R project? Let's not even go there.

I need to spend more time with Holly and Jack and can't seem to make it work.

I hate the cold, and the dreariness associated with it.

I'm tired all the time.

This complaint has been brought to you by an angry writer.

Jack and Memphis: Friends Forever

2009-03-11T14:21:00.004-06:00

The past couple of days Jack has been learning how to spend greater amounts of time in his fancy chair that my Mom and Dad bought for him when he was born. It's been great because now I can have him sitting next to me while I do some work, or Holly can put him down long enough to take a shower or do some dishes for more than five minutes at a time.

One day we decided to put Memphis in the chair with him and Jack promptly used his new skills of grabbing at things to pull Memphis to his face and give him kisses. Well, kisses is what Holly thought he was doing, but I'm pretty sure he is just trying to eat him.

Conquer Club Volunteer Coordinator

2009-03-11T13:58:00.003-06:00

Well, remember that job I was talking about a week or so ago? It's finally been announced to the public and so now I can inform everyone that I have taken a job with my favorite website (Conquer Club) to be the Volunteer Coordinator.

The position is an "admin" position, which means my name is now red on the forums, and I have to work closely with the other admin, including the website owner, to help Conquer Club improve and grow moving forward.

My specific job responsibilities include the following:

Conduct moderator team meetings
Train new moderators
Develop new policies as needed
Organize and implement various site projects
Manage forum permissions and forum settings
Support site moderators in their work
Perform quality checks on moderation team

On top of that, I will be working on any other stuff that the owner decides to throw my way. There is a lot of work to do that has been on hold for a long time. I've been working for about a week now and am loving every minute of it. The job allows me to enjoy the site I love while being paid, and it also lets me use my talents for organization and project management.

Also along those lines is that the job is online, which means it is far closer to my career of choice than sitting in a department office on campus answering the phone each day. I don't do any web development with this position, but there is potential for it down the road, and it is the type of job that helps build a lot of contacts for things in the future. Who knows, if the site continues to grow perhaps it could turn into a career all of its own.

Holly just shook her head when she found out I had gotten the job because way back when I first started playing games on CC I told her something along the lines of, "If I ever get the chance to work for this place and actually get paid I'm going to take the job without even asking you first, even if it means we have to move to Canada." She laughed then, but now she enjoys the fact that I can work my shifts from home and help out with Jack if she needs me to out of the blue.

I'm thrilled, and I don't know how many people can truly appreciate that, but I'm thrilled nonetheless.

For Your Information

2009-03-05T08:47:00.002-07:00

Anyone using the email addresses listed below to contact me should be advised that none of them work anymore. I have finally condensed myself down to two addresses, one for my Google accounts and applications, and one for more professional work uses.

These ones no longer work:

cg.flanagan@live.com
caleb.flanagan@hotmail.com
tournamusprime@hotmail.com
tournamusprime@yahoo.com
tournamusprime@aim.com

If you want to get ahold of me use either of the following two addresses:

cg.flan@gmail.com
calebflanagan@otissito.com

Also, some of you may wish to know the proper way to contact me via instant messaging services. Another post will follow shortly outlining those details. Thanks.

Moving In

2009-03-04T17:37:00.002-07:00

As many of you already know, Holly and I decided to move back to Wymount last weekend. The decision was based on a variety of reasons that I'm not going to expound upon, but it should suffice to say that having our own place is a benefit to us in both the short and long term.

The move went pretty successfully. Holly and I had everything packed by Friday afternoon and then I rented a U-Haul for Saturday morning and had a few guys from the Wymount ward help me load it and then unload it. All in all it took about 3 hours to get it done from start to finish.

We moved back into an apartment that has the same floor plan as our very first one, which meant unpacking took very little time at all. We knew where to put everything off the top of our heads and didn't have to sit and wonder where things should go. Along with that, we got rid of a ton of stuff, which means we have a lot more "growing space" for Jack as he gets older and starts accumulating some of his own stuff.

There are still a few things left at Grandma Chatfield's house, like the crib which I'm going to go and take apart to move over this evening, and some of our pictures that we will certainly want to hang up over here at the new place, but we are almost entirely settled. I know that Holly is liking having her friends around again, and I feel like being closer to campus is going to be better for us in that I have more of a chance to come home if I need to some days between classes.

I'm sure I'll post some pictures soon once we officially have everything over here.

The Gloves are Off

2009-03-04T12:57:00.002-07:00

I have made it all the way through the winter months, and now it is time for me to enjoy some warmer (albeit slightly) weather while I ride the FoJ. I have had to wear gloves for the past 5 months every time I got on, but for the last 4 days I've been able to ride with my bare hands and don't even need my neck sleeve either to keep my neck warm.

It is a glorious thing indeed. Another 6 weeks and I'll be riding without a jacket on some days, I can't wait for that.

U-Haul Reserved, Now to Pack

2009-02-26T09:26:00.002-07:00

Just got off the phone with the Provo U-Haul and it looks like they are good to go with giving me a 14' moving truck for this coming Saturday morning. I can only have it until 2:00pm however, so I will have to work fast. I don't think I'll need more than one trip though, we have already taken a bunch of stuff over to the new place, and the only thing left in the storage unit is the treadmill, which doesn't take up that much space.

With this development I think I'm going to refrain from using my car to take boxes back and forth to the new apartment because the truck will have way more than enough room. I would say that almost half of our belongings are already at the new place, so if Holly and I go over and empty a few boxes tonight to supplement the ones we've already got at home we should be able to pack just about everything and just take it in the truck on Saturday. That will be helpful with the workload of other stuff I need to get done this week.

I have a big presentation for my CHum 489R project in about 90 minutes, and I'm hoping that it goes well. I checked this morning and they only have VGA connections to the monitors in that classroom so I spent my morning transferring my database tables to my own server space so I could get to everything online and not have to use my computer. It was a hassle, but worked, so the problem is solved I guess. I could have used the time to get some other homework done I didn't do yesterday though.

Excellent News!!!

2009-02-25T14:06:00.002-07:00

Remember that job I was talking about yesterday? Turns out that I was officially offered it this afternoon, but I don't think I'm allowed to reveal details yet, so that will have to come later.

I'm pretty excited though.

Busy Week

2009-02-25T12:16:00.002-07:00

Most of you know by now that Holly and I are moving back to Wymount this coming weekend, which means that we've been spending a lot of time packing and trying to plan things out properly. Holly packs several boxes each day, and then we take them over to the new place each evening when I get home from work. The goal is to get all of the small stuff over there without having to get a massive truck to do it. So far it is working out nicely.

On Saturday morning I'll get the smallest U-Haul available and have a few guys from the ward help me move the big furniture like the bed, couch, and crib, and then we should be mostly done. Thankfully if there are a few straggling items, Grandma Chatfield isn't going to care if we have to come back for them over a couple of days next week. That takes the edge off the stress of getting everything done right at once.

The weather has picked back up, which means I'm back on the Federation of Joy every day, which pleases me to no end. I like being able to feel like Holly has the ability to go somewhere if she needs to, and do things with her sisters or someone without needing to wait for me to get back from campus. The other plus is that by living in Wymount again I can come home for lunch if I have time between classes because the scooter makes parking next to the buildings I need to be in so convenient.

Also been working on a massive project for my CHum 489R class this past week or so. Russell is my technical advisor and has been very patient with me as I worked through a few hurdles. However, the past two days I've managed to clear the hurdles myself as I am finally understanding how a while() loop is supposed to work, and the proper ways to refer to objects and join database tables together. It is nice to feel like I'm learning something and having it stick, even if it seems like it is always a small piece each time.

I have to give a presentation on this project tomorrow morning and I'm hoping that I have enough done to keep myself from looking like a slacker/fool. Russell seems to think that I'll be much further along than anyone else, but until I see that I'm still a little bit worried. The core of the project site is working now, but I'm hoping to tack on a couple of "bells and whistles" before the presentation tomorrow to try and make it a little more complete. I do like the style that I've applied to the site though, I'm quite proud of that. It looks very modern and sleek. Once I have it up on an actual server (curse you slow BYU people) I'll post a link so people can see what it looks like so far.

Let's see, what else is going on... Oh, I was sick, then Holly was sick, and Jack wound up catching a little bit of it, but nothing too bad. He even learned how to shoot snot out of his eye the other day, which I told him was not a skill that we really needed to practice a whole lot if he didn't mind.

That's all of the big news for now, mostly just trying to get my list of things done each day and help Holly as much as I can when I get home in the evenings.