Great-grandma Betka knitted the blanket and hat, Robin really likes them.
For some reason, all the pictures of Robin seem to be when he’s asleep, we’ll have to try to fix that in the near future.
Thanks for the blanket and hat
1
Mom’s turn
It’s Mom’s turn for a nap.
Family visits
Babys seem like relative magnets. Alisha’s parents came to visit last Wednesday, cooked us a nice dinner, held Robin and headed home. I wish I would have gotten some pictures, but I really didn’t think about it at the time.
My parents came by for a short visit on Thursday. They held Robin for awhile and headed out for dinner.
Today, my parents, grandparents and an aunt came over. Robin was excellent.
I think just about everyone got a least one chance to hold him.
We even got a bit of a family photo.
More photos.
Naptime
Dad needed a nap.
Lyle Lovett Concert at Krannert
(Obviously, this entry has been delayed by other events.)
Last Friday night, my parents and I went to the Lyle Lovett Acoustic Ensemble performance at the Krannert Center. Overall, it was an excellent performance to attend. Lyle played a wide range of crowd favorites from all his albums, with some wonderful solos by the individual players. Between songs, he would banter with the members of the band, including Viktor Krauss.
Being a Champaign native and a University of Illinois graduate, Viktor got a very enthusiastic reception from the crowd, though he was visibly nervous, trying to hide behind the neck of his bass and quite hesistant at first to use the mic when answering questions from Lyle. He opened up after a little prodding and got several more rousing rounds of applause.
Lyle also included some background on his song writing process, including an old college roommate that used to tell him that many of his songs weren’t about something that should be put to song, probably best embodied by Penguins on I Love Everybody. He explained the song was insipred by a girl he met in college that had her entire apartment decorated with penguin items; the curtains, the slip cover on the couch, the salt and pepper shakers, etc.
I would highly recommend the Tryon Festival Theatre for performances such as this, there didn’t appear to be a bad seat anywhere and the sound was excellent. Our seats were on the right end of a row but they were still excellent. With only 950 seats, it’s a very intimate venue with the sound quality of a much larger hall.
Stories
So, I’ve told these stories enough that I need to write them down and in honor of Robin’s 1 week “birthday” tonight, here they are.
(Medical details and terms after the break.)
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Charging the camera
(Only a few will find this funny or even understand, but oh well)
I’ve had to charge the battery for my Canon PowerShot S410 twice in the last 2 days. Leaving it plugged into the computer for several hours while you entertain a baby drains the battery pretty fast. I think that nearly doubles the number of charges since I bought it, 1 1/2 years ago.
First and second doctor visits
Robin had his first doctor visit yesterday, 6 lbs 6 3/4 oz, 19 1/2″ long. That was still weight loss, so we had to go back for a check today. He’s gained 1/4 oz, so no more visits until the 1 month checkup, The breastfeeding clinic at Carle will do walk-in weight checks, so if we are worried we may visit on Monday.
He seems to like the carseat once he’s fallen asleep.
Robin Maxwell
Robin Maxwell Betka says hello!
He was born, weighed 6 lbs 14 oz and was 19″ long. Mom and baby are doing fine, we came home from the hospital today. More pictures.
Read This
Josh Marshall at TPM has a post about a WP article on “network neutrality“. Go read it.
Done? Alright, now imagine that you dial the 1-800 number of your favorite mail order clothing company and it takes 400 rings before it connects. You give up long before that, grab the competitors catalog off the end table and call their 1-800 number. It connects without a full ring. Wow, the competitor must have much better service, right? Nope, they just paid your phone company a fee to be considered the “perferred” vendor over the other. (I know this isn’t feasible in how the phone system really works, but the analogy sounds good.)
This is essentially what the backbone Internet providers are proposing as a new revenue source, charging bigger customers for “preferred” status. The backbone providers claim that they don’t get any more money for higher bandwidth customers. If that’s true, the providers need to fix their funding model and charging structure, not start looking for new ways to suck more money from successful companies that happen to have large piles of market capitalization whose entire business models rely on quick site response times.
Or, swing all the way to the market forces side of the argument and say this is a cost of doing business and a free market economy establishing appropriate charges.