[Daniel] Gallery Change (Again)

(Sigh) I both love and hate switching the way we host images. Initially, we used Gallery, which was full-featured but bloated and notoriously difficult to upgrade. Then, we moved to Flickr. Flickr was great, we liked the features, but with the child coming, a 20Mb upload per month will not cut it and I don't want to pay for the Pro version.



So. We've got a new gallery up, hosted right here on Snow-Wolf. It's running ZenPhoto, a fantastic and relatively lightweight PHP gallery that imitates some Flickr features. It's mostly what I've been looking for and I'm glad that I don't have to roll my own now.



Hopefully, this will be the last time we change things around for a long while. Enjoy the pictures!

[Daniel] "Nanny Bear!"

"Nanny Bear!" is the new cry around the apartment. Bear is earning his title as the child's nanny. He has doted on Moriah for the last four days straight and will have precious little to do with me unless I'm offering to take him out or to rub his tummy. it's very cute to watch. But the proof is in the picture.







Hopefully, he'll let me see my own child. :D

[Moriah] I'm Pregnant!

Wow, I don't even know where to begin so I guess I'll just pick a spot. It all started two weeks ago. I thought I was coming down with the flu. I suddenly began feeling more tired and worn out than usual, and I started getting breathless while climbing stairs, which is not normal for me. I had a hard time taking Bear on our daily walks because of how weak and breathless I felt. Then came the nausea. It wasn't strong enough to make me really sick, just enough that I didn't feel like eating much and I had an upset stomach constantly. I surely thought I had come down with the flu or something. And it just kept lasting and lasting. For two weeks I felt like this, not understanding why I wasn't getting better. I am usually a very fast healer; when I get sick, it normally doesn't last more than a day, two at the most, and I'm back on my feet again. So I admit, this was concerning me. But I didn't think I was pregnant!



So, on with the story. I was supposed to go through some minor surgery at the end of March, and the pre-surgery instructions indicated that I should alert my doctor beforehand if I became pregnant or anything else came up. Well, just for laughs we decided to go to Target and pick up a home pregnancy test just to "make sure" I wasn't pregnant for my surgery. We brought the test home, joking along the way as I took it. Seconds later when the result appeared, my face dropped into a look of disbelief and all I could say was, "that was not the answer I was looking for!" Right there on the small digital screen was the word "Pregnant." Daniel and I looked at each other, not sure of what to say or do. Then, I decided I did not believe the result. I mean, I could have taken the test wrong, the test could have been broken, my hormones could have been acting up. So many possibilities for error were running through my head that I just didn't think I could actually be pregnant.



Nevertheless, Daniel suggested I call my doctor on Monday and go in for a blood test just to be certain. Tuesday morning (February 21), I went in and had the blood drawn. Wednesday morning (February 22), I received a call from my doctor's nurse stating that I was "most definitely pregnant." I couldn't believe it.



I was scheduled to come in for an ultrasound Wednesday afternoon to see how far along I was and to make sure everything was ok so far. I immediately picked Daniel up from work after he asked permission to leave and he went to the ultrasound with me that afternoon. It was amazing! There on the screen was our tiny little baby growing inside me.







We could even see its heart beating on the monitor! The doctor announced I was 4 1/2 weeks along already, which set my due date at October 14, 2006. We were so shocked, yet excited at the same time. We couldn't wait to tell all our family and friends!



In fact, that's exactly what we started doing that day. Right after the ultrasound was done, we headed home to pick up Bear and our luggage and we headed straight to Ft. Worth to surprise my mom. She had no idea we were coming up. When we knocked on the door at 7:00 PM and she answered, she was very surprised to see us standing there. But the look of utter shock and surprise when we told her the news was priceless! She nearly fell over! That night, after explaining everything to my mom, we called my dad and my sister, as well as Daniel's dad, mom, and brother. We didn't have time to call the rest of the relatives and siblings that night, but we continued to work on it the next night as well. Everyone was completely shocked, excited and happy for us. And after the initial worry and panic we felt, we are also getting excited to be parents.



So, that's my story so far. I plan to keep updating as time goes on and Daniel and I experience new things. I will also be adding pictures to our Flickr account of ultrasounds and of me getting larger. Yes, I know that's not usually something a woman likes to show off, but I can make an exception for pregnancy. :)

[Daniel] At A Loss...

***WARNING!*** - Read Moriah's post first.



Wow. The events of the last couple days have been crazy. Finding out that Moriah is pregnant and that we're soon to be parents was quite the unexpected shock, but it is most welcome. I actually never thought this day would come, when I would coming to terms with becoming a father within the next couple months.



It has put so very many things in perspective within the last couple days. Things will be somewhat tight financially but it looks doable so far. Moriah and I's ideas of where we are and where we're going have been turned 180* in what was mere hours. And I have so many questions. Will the baby be healthy? Will it arrive on time? Is it a boy or a girl? What is it's name going to be? Will I be a good father?



I know Moriah will be a good mother. I can see it already, from the moment I saw her when she picked me up from work yesterday (first time we had seen each other after she found out for sure), to the look on her face in the ultrasound room, to how she described the situation to everyone. I could not pick someone better to have and raise a child.



And I know that the child will be well protected. Bear seems to have already shifted his behaviors, as thought he can sense what has changed and is preparing for it. He is already spending time sitting on Moriah's lap, something he has never done before the last week. With the previous interactions he's had with kids, I know I have nothing to fear there either.



I can only look to the future in wonder and enjoy the present as much as I can. It's going to be a crazy ride.

[Moriah] New Haircut!

I had a brilliant idea last night. I decided it would be fun to get a haircut; you know, change things up a bit since I've had the same boring hair style for at least a year now. So, I went to a salon in the mall called Toni&Guy. The stylist did a wonderful job, but it was definitely more costly than Cost Cutters! Ha ha! Anyway, I ended up with a cool 'do that I feel good about, so it was worth it. Here is one picture.



You can see the rest at our Flickr account.

[Daniel] Ubuntu & SATA RAID 1

So as part of my endeavors, I was able to order two brand spanking new Seagate 80 Gb SATA hard drives to replace all the dead drives I threw out the other weekend. Newegg shipped them promptly and I received them on Monday. I installed them, spent just a moment (literally) setting up a RAID 1 array (RAID - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. RAID 1 - pure mirror. All data gets written to both drives, reducing the risk of data loss if one drive dies.) and then off I went.



As per my standard, I installed Ubuntu 5.10 ("Breezy Badger") on the computer. Not only are the drives quick but everything went just this side of perfect. My only hesitation came when partitioning, simply because it was non-obvious what I should do for the RAID. The rest of the install went brilliantly and the hardware seems to be working perfectly. I have yet to test if the mirroring is working correctly (as it's normally extremely transparent and would involve taking a hard drive down).



It would be an understatement to say I am taken by Ubuntu. I long resisted Debian, the "parent" Linux distribution on which Ubuntu was originally based for many reasons, not the least of which was the long release cycle and old software. Ubuntu seems to be much better on both accounts and is far slicker than Debian will ever manage to be. What's more, Ubuntu has replaced Slackware as my distro of choice. Considering Slackware was my favorite for almost 5 years, this was a big turn around for me.



I've got no buyer's remorse on this one and am happily rebuilding the server and enhancing it in severals ways, including the use of Lighttpd instead of Apache, the inclusion of PostgreSQL and a detailed log of everything I do to make future rebuilds/new servers easier and more standardized.