Sleep 1, Nora 0

You can only achieve this after a long, hard battle with sleep. How she could snooze in this position I'll never know. Watch for Nora as an Olympic Gold Medal Gymnast in 2020!

Firefox 3 Lament

I have oft been a promoter of Firefox, the free web browser by Mozilla. Firefox (FF for short) has long incorporated such convenient features as tabbed browsing, fast loading times and of course the ability to add third-party plugins that greatly improve the usefulness of the browser. I have installed FF 1.x-2.x on the browsers of family and friends, encouraging them to use FF for convenience and better security.

Then came Firefox 3. I was a beta tester but got frustrated enough with the beta that I uninstalled it and went back to the official 2.[something] version. Even after FF3 came out I avoided it. The only thing wrong with FF2 was a memory leak that would tie up more and more RAM if you left it open long enough. I was aware of this but it never really caused me problems. Then I got a new/fast/cool/strong work computer and was too lazy to try to find FF 2.x, since 3 had been released, and just installed FF3.

Now, if I make it through a day with fewer than 5 crashes I count myself lucky indeed. Firefox 3 is slow. Sites sometimes pause while scrolling and the whole browser locks up for 10-30 seconds. When I launch it nothing happens for half a minute before the window finally decides to show itself on my desktop. Same with opening a new tab...long delays. Any site that features lots of javascript calls such as gmail, facebook, google maps or other feature-rich pages is virtually guaranteed to crash.

Most crashes are recoverable, I can force-quit Firefox 3 and relaunch it. However, occasionally it crashes so bad that it actually kills my whole computer. Earlier today I was trying to log into a webex meeting (a software that allows you to share desktops for virtual product demonstrations). Firefox actually blacked the screen out with a bunch of verticle white bars. It required a hard-restart which is darn inconvenient when you have 10 people waiting on you in an online meeting.

Because I love Firefox, I installed v3 on my home machine to make sure it wasn't just my work laptop. My home laptop has had Firefox 2.x running on it fine for a long time. Same problems plague it with FF3.

So, betrayed, bitter, disappointed, I have to warn our readers...for the sake of your sanity, do NOT upgrade to Firefox 3. If something changes I will post about it but for now I simply can't recommend it for any environment. Find Firefox 2.x or use Opera (I still don't recommend any IE product).

Nora and Dad

My aunt "Nurse" took this pic at our family reunion, which we went to at the beginning of August. I intend to post more pics but I really like this pic of Nora and I, right after she got a bath...so I thought I'd post it.

Old News, But Fun News

We went to "cornland" to visit my family. It was lots of fun. This is a picture of Uncle Justin, Nora, and my niece(Senna) and nephew(Ocean) at "The Ledges," a park that has a creek that runs through it. It was so pretty. It recently flooded really bad and we could see the damage it had done to the whole area. This area was unaffected.



Here is an affected area.



Nora got to play with her cousins. I think Glade is spanking the baby...that cracks me up for some reason. Is that bad of me?



Getting some shooting in out in the field.



My uncle built this amazing stream that runs through his backyard. The man can pretty much do whatever he puts his mind to. It is quite a hit with the children...and me too. I want to play in it all day long.





Nora testing out the stream for herself. It was a bit cold for her to sit in.



Annie, the porch pooch. She is a sweetie, and a really pretty porch pooch too.



Hubby about to take the plunge from the tree house.



Now catching his breath after the adrenalin rush. It's scarier than it looks because you feel like you're gonna fall right when your letting go to swing. The let-go is a total leap of faith.



Just thinking back about a year ago. This is one of my favorite pictures of Nora when she was first born. I'm not quite sure why...Maybe it's her first (really alert) look into the world.



This must be the last pregnant picture of me. Not sure about the expression on my face.

Happy Birthday Nora!

These are some one year pictures I took of Nora with the beach towel gramma "M" got her. I wanted to try bright, vibrant colors for a change and a different angle. I like how they turned out. I will be getting around to sending them out, but you know me it takes me a while.








































Here's Nora in her pool at her pool party. She had a good time until her Dad dumped her in the pool. No, he just accidentally let her fall forward. It was quite a shock to her and when she stopped fussing about it she continued to yell at the water. She is now terrified of getting water on her head. I think it's swimming lessons time.











Here is the turtle cake I made for her. I think it looked better than it tasted. Next year I think I'll go for making the cake actually taste really good. At least this way we didn't gorge ourselves on sweets.... right?


I'll get this posted and then there will be video to come. HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NORA! We love you so very much.