Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

The good news is that Paela gained back some of her lost birthweight. The bad news is that she hasn't gained back all her birthweight. The pediatrician said she likes to see babies gain 1-2 oz. a day and Paela just isn't catching up. Unless the pediatrician's scale is different than the hospital's. After our experience with mismeasuring the kid in the hospital, I wouldn't put it past the pediatrician to have a false measurement. Hopefully this Monday we can prove that Paela eats like a ravenous wild beast and the pediatrician won't tell us to supplement with formula. My mom told me that I did the same thing when I was born and didn't gain back my birthweigth very quickly. So our long lanky baby might just have my genes.  read more »

Please use open standards

Today marks the release of Kubuntu 7.10, and almost the beginning of a new era with KDE 4.0 running as beta. If that doesn't mean anything to you, then I think you need to be brought up to speed with what open source is and how you fit into the picture. Because you do.  read more »

It wasn't until Wednesday morning that we knew any more details on the baby. However, now that we know we know about as much as all of you (next to nothing), we've moved on with our lives and are waiting for either contractions or an induction. Whichever comes first, right?

Monday evening we finished off canning the rest of the pears we had purchased last week from the 50¢/lb sale. Six quart jars later, we think we have enough home canned pears to last us for another year. Since we have tried a few more cans this week, we feel really bad we missed the peach season and are currently making a list of what we need to can next season. We aren't very creative, so we need some suggestions.  read more »

Star cat loves her new-to-her kitty tower. She can climb it instead of just jumping and chilling like she did with her old pedestal; there are hiding places galore; and she can sit up higher to observe the situation (i.e. when babies come over, she can see them without being reachable by them! She thinks this is the best feature, by far.). Yay for craigslist and freecycle. I can't recommend them enough to people. We also inherited some canning jars this weekend, and regifted our old cat post. Good stuff.  read more »

Because this week wasn't jam-packed with events on our calender, our first in a while, we don't actually remember much about what we did. Sure, there was a Costco item per item cost analysis that we did one evening. And I think there was lots of time spent trying to figure out if there is any software fix for the desktop upgrades. But we only remember the past two days in detail.  read more »

Rain, glorious rain! It's been many months since the last time we can remember it raining here; it didn't even rain here during the "rainy season," so, much longer than either of us has gone without a rainy day before. And since we actually like rain, we were celebrating yesterday as it dripped all day long.

Of course, this means the used crib we are buying off craigslist wasn't delivered yesterday as planned; perhaps this coming weekend. The people we're buying the crib from are delivering it for us, since we weren't sure it'd fit in our car and they have a truck. And they were worried on our behalf about the solid hardwood getting wet while being moved to/from the truck...so we wait. That's okay. We don't expect this little one coming early, and even if she does, we have a box and some blankets, right?  read more »

Open source dialectic: the gift economy of artistic practice and the social systems created through open source artworks.  read more »

Even though I lived through three years of Rebecca's graduate experience, I didn't notice anything different between what she was doing and how I approached undergraduate classes. This, I now know, was a lack of perception on my part because there are obvious differences between graduate programs and undergraduate programs, especially with the current program I am in. My first year was a blur, but not because I was appropriately using my time to research my field. It is true that I was learning about theory and practice in my discipline -- which I needed to spend a year to catch up -- but I was missing the essential research ingredient which would inform my practice.  read more »