Electronic Garbage

Reading, for real

2010-08-14T23:02:00.000-07:00

This past Thursday night (8/12), Mag reads "Go, Dog, Go" cover-to-cover with no help. Then she reads the last few sentences of a printed-out email from Mischa. The girl is verifiably reading! A lot!

"It sounds like he's going to sing."

2009-12-11T08:09:00.000-08:00

-- Mags, upon hearing a snippet of Obama's (hawkish) Nobel acceptance speech

JPL, zero

2009-05-30T23:38:00.000-07:00

Walking up to JPL yesterday to take the bus home, Maggie points to the sign at the entrance and declares, "That say's JPL!" Not so surprising, as she recognizes the Roman alphabet with no trouble, but it does count as the second word (after "zoo") that she can read.

Aside: for a long time, she's been better with the hand sign alphabet than the written alphabet.

On skype with Julian this morning, Maggie did a "blast off" countdown: "5 4 2 1 0...blast off!" Points off for missing 3, but extra credit for getting the zero. I'm glad that she knows zero because very few of the kiddie books make any mention of this most-important number/concept.

Run, girl, run!

2009-05-02T21:05:00.000-07:00

We took Mag to USC today for the UCLA-USC track meet. The experience of taking her to the UCLA Invitational last month when Tak was in town taught us to only expect her to watch a few events. After a not-so-great early nap, we got in the car and she promptly fell asleep. We got to the track just as the 200's were being run. She was instantly inspired to run! After the meet (we got there 1 hour before the end), she ran onto the track and ran ~1500 m. It wasn't all at once, but it's about 3x more than she runs when we go to the Caltech track.

She enjoyed it so much that she made a commemorative drawing of the event.

proto reading

2009-02-28T14:13:00.000-08:00

Feb 25, 2009, 7:45 AM

Looking at her sippy cup, Mag says, "That's a Z, that's a O and that's a O. That spells 'zoo'!"

And so that's how we know that the word "zoo" is printed (in some tiny font) on that sippy cup.

Laughing maniacally,...

2008-12-28T18:52:00.000-08:00

she says, "Maggie is laughing because Maggie's tummy is happy!"

This after a dinner of broccolini, yams, wasa crackers and TJ's eggplant hummus.

LED lighting lies

2008-10-27T23:06:00.000-07:00

We've been using some AmerTac night lights that I bought at OSH when Maggie was a wee baby. Right on the back of them, they claim to only consume 0.3 W each. They were one of the first things I measured after I built a breakout box to measure the power consumption of household electronics with an ammeter. Lo and behold! the two that I measured use 1.8 and 2.4 Watts! I'll post photos of the rig soon...

Quote of the day (9/17/08)

2008-09-17T22:40:00.000-07:00

Maggie walks by a truck she can't identify and says to Nai-nai, "What's that?" Nai-nai doesn't know, so Mag says, "It's UNTHINKABLE!"

Quotes of the day: 9/16/08

2008-09-16T22:29:00.000-07:00

[I'm reading "Once a Mouse" to her]

P: What's that? (pointing to a little snake on the ground)
M: A snake!
P: What's that? (pointing to a big snake in a tree)
M: That's a snake, too!
M: (pointing at the little snake) Excuse me, that's a worm!

[Deirdre writes an "M" on a piece of paper for her]
M: Draw an "A"!
D: (DSA writes the A) What comes after that?
M: "G"
D: (write the G) What comes after the "G"?
M: "I"
D: (writes G and I) For your name, there are two "G"'s and then an "I".
P: What comes after "I"?
M: "J"!

[After evening clean-up]
M: Mama's not a guy.... Mama's not Dada.

Boolean logic

2008-08-27T21:23:00.000-07:00

I've seen the parenting advice of giving the kid a choice to limit options it a lot of places, so I tried it on Mag yesterday when we were about to cross the street. She has two pieces of "gravel" that she likes to carry around, but I have to hold her hand crossing the street. So I ask her, "Do you want to hold the little one or the big one?"
"Little one AND big one!"
"No, Mag, you can hold one rock -- the little one OR the big one."
"Two! Hold two -- little one AND big one!"

Conclusion: now, armed with NOT and AND, she can construct any truth table she needs.

Mag jokes

2008-07-21T20:29:00.000-07:00

This morning during "cleanup":

Mag: Go to work
Pete: Who goes to work?
Mag: Everyone go work
Pete: Where does Maggie work?
Mag: In Dada office
Pete: What does Maggie do there?
Mag: Dada computer... go pee-pee in Dada computer!

Her old 7 joke (about 3 wks old):
Pete: Maggie, what comes after chi? (seven in Chinese)
Mag: Cheeeeese!

McCain, Obama, or Clinton?

2008-06-05T21:16:00.000-07:00

We all know it's down to McCain or Obama now, but Maggie hasn't figured that out yet. About two months ago, I started showing her pictures of Obama and Clinton in the newspaper while we had breakfast. This was a few weeks after she heard Clinton on the radio saying, "Keep going...keep going..keep going to the convention." And then started telling me that the radio was going to "keep going."

After she could reliably identify them, she started calling Clinton either "kitten" or "chicken" and Obama became "Omama." When I showed her McCain, she was able to repeat his name right away.

So I asked Maggie today "McCain or Obama?" The answer was "McCain" whether I put him first or last. If I asked her "McCain or Clinton?" she always replies "Clinton."

So there you have it. The prediction from my 20 month old kid-girl who, in her own words, is "not a baby."

Weight Loss

2008-04-20T20:22:00.000-07:00

After the last move, I decided that I'm going to get rid of 135 kg of stuff, net. Deirdre, being the competetive type thinks she can out-do me.

The score so far: DSA: -1.82 kg, PHM: +~1.0 kg.

MAGZILLA EATS BEETS

2008-03-05T21:33:00.000-08:00

Mag thanks me for taking her to the Doodah parade

2008-01-20T21:00:00.001-08:00

We took Mag to the Doodah Parade today. Before her morning nap, I told her we would be going to a parade after her nap. She indicated her comprehension by rocking side to side and making the sign for "music." She woke up from her nap at 10:45 with loud, excited yells for "DADA!" She was unusally cooperative going into the jogger. Just like at the Rose Parade, she clapped and waved at the people going by. This time, though, she was sitting on my shoulders and in the middle of the parade, said "Dada... Dada..." to me and gave me a hug when I turned my head up to see her.

Mag poses for a photo

2007-12-26T07:14:00.000-08:00

I was on the phone with my bro, Mike, and Maggie was all excited -- running around and saying "EEEEEE!" I got the camera out and she stood next to me, pressed her little head into my arm and looked straight into the camera. What could I do? I had to take the photo!

Every third day

2007-11-17T21:59:00.000-08:00

Alan Labrador mentioned once that after William was born, he had something new happen to him every day. With Maggie, I think it's every third day that something totally unexpected happens. Yesterday, she asked Deirdre to show her how to use the camera. Poked at it for a while, and then pressed it into her Mommy's hands and somehow made it clear that she wanted to use it. Deirdre showed her, and then Maggie took a few photos.

Flickr > Blogger

2007-11-13T23:20:00.000-08:00

Following Camille's lead, I started posting photos on Flickr, which in conjuction with jUploadr, makes my life much easier. Pauline clued me in on Picasa web albums, but it was already too late. Besides, on my creaky old GNU-box, Picasa (the app) is much slower than GQview.

Crazy Mag stories are better conveyed here than at Flickr, but the photos were getting overwhelming and I needed something easier. Also, I've been meaning to write down the Megan story I should have told at her graduation party back in June, but I've still failed to do....

Teeth!

2007-07-31T23:12:00.000-07:00

Mag's first two teeth came in on June 23.

1. bath time, 7/15
2. pirate girl
3. baby pow-wow with Byron, Marjan and their brand-new Joey
4. actually, she's not that amused by juggling (yet?)
5. new sleeping position. we finally got her out of the swaddle in the first week of July. Or rather, she finally overpowered us and forced us to teach her to sleep unbound.

moving, crawling, racing

2007-07-05T21:38:00.000-07:00

We moved to Pasadena on June 1, and on her first day in the apartment, Maggie started crawling for real! The first photo is from June 9, the day of Megan's graduation party. That also happens to be the first time Maggie challenged me to a race. She did it rather surreptitiously, but I figured her out because she started to giggle at the same time she sped up to make for the chair.

I like the second photo because it's a rare one where she's not looking at the camera.

Next post, I'll have some photos of her teeth, which came in on June 23.

Getting dangerous!

2007-05-12T21:15:00.000-07:00

She crawled forward a little bit on my lap this evening, found the TV remote and managed to turn the TV on and change the station. All this with a remote that doesn't go with the TV! (volume down is the on/off button)

Then she managed to open up her (fortunately empty) formula bottle.

here are some old photos of her...

Starfish, piggie, water

2007-04-12T21:50:00.000-07:00

What do those three things have in common?

They've each been the magic word of the day for Maggie! Every so often, some word that I say to her makes her crack up with laughter. I have video of "starfish" and "piggie," but I missed out on "water."

"Starfish" came up sometime in February when she was playing in her water-world play-mat/gym. "Piggie" was the magic word in March while I was showing her the pig on her crib-bumper. Its nose squeaks.

"Water" was last Tuesday's word. It happened while I was eating dinner and Mischa was holding on to her. Traditionally, she laughs at me while I wolf down my dinner from 5:30-6:00 every day. On Tuesday, she laughed whenever I drank water, so that became the magic word. She smiles and giggles a lot, but would let out a big HAHAHA every time I said "water." So I tried signing it as well (sign the letter "W" and touch my chin with my index finger).

The next day, while Deirdre, Maggie and I were sitting on our bed, I sensed that she was in a goofy mood. When she looked over at me, I signed "water" without saying anything -- and she laughed!!

Solidus (a geologist joke that I don't actually understand...)

2007-04-06T10:05:00.000-07:00

6 months old!! Now she can eat "solids!" First was rice cereal, taken in with the beautiful Ag spoon from Ivett. Then, today, she had her first taste of Tierra Miguel Farm carrots.

Grandparents

2007-03-18T10:24:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post Grandparent photos for a long time, but Maggie-care makes it hard to get things done!

1. Mischa 3/8/07
2. Morgan 10/30/06
3. Charlotte 11/8/06
4. Dan 12/24/06
5. Renny 2/17/07

Teething, standing, stranger fright, holding the bottle

2007-03-18T02:26:00.000-07:00

2/11/07: first episode of stranger-fright. My Dad has some photos, but Deirdre and I weren't able to take any. Maggie was miserable!! We took her to my Aunt's house, and I made the mistake of popping her out of the car seat and handing her off to Auntie An. Previously, we had seen my family at restaurants, where it takes us quite a while to get settled with her. The transition was too fast this time and it took a good 90 minutes to get her calmed down.

2/18/07: first teething episode.

other February news: tried sitting up on her own.

week of 3/12: Phonemes are entering into her cries. Working hard on standing up.

Ack.... started this post sometime in mid-March. She's changing so quickly now! Tried to steal my food last night.

Soccer

2007-03-03T22:56:00.000-08:00

Maggie welcomes David Beckham to Los Angeles...

...but she and her dad prefer the Dutch colors.

January milestones

2007-02-02T20:13:00.000-08:00

1/7/07: turn over (front to back). I have video, but I have to upload it somewhere...

1/13/07: started to play with the toys in the "gym" that Chris and Jill Mindas gave her. I put her in it for the first time about a week or two before. She was so overwhelmed by the choices that she just lay there and stared for several minutes.

1/15/07: first cold (yuck!). this was a super-hard day for me. I was left all alone to take care of her.

1/15/07: no more thrush. She had a thrush (yeast) infection almost from day 1. Made her breath smell really good, like bread. Now she has the garbage-breath of a formula-supplemented baby. The purple lips in a few of these photos are from the gentian violet we had to put in her mouth. She HATED it!!! I gave the last of six doses and she was starting to get agitated long before I had to give it to her.

1/22/07: laugh (heh heh heh). again, we have video, but I need to edit it.

1/30/07: sit up, propped on her hands. I have to find the photos. she was really proud of herself when she realized she could sort of sit upright.

also: hand coordination, head became attached to body

last photo: You can tell that Maggie is half Asian from her eyes. Gringo right eye; Chinese left eye (at least on this day).

Dec 25 = Newton's birthday

2007-01-01T10:27:00.000-08:00

Click here for results from our pendulum experiments.

Pictures and words. Unrelated to each other.

2006-12-27T00:57:00.000-08:00

Busy month. As I last posted, Maggie started smiling the day after Thanksgiving. That's also the day she started to coo, well, in her case, it's, "Goo," which bodes well for Julie, since she is Maggie's "goo goo" (father's sister in Chinese).

I have some video of her talking, but the lead time for getting vids up is >> than that for photos -- I still have a clip of her INSIDE of Deirdre which I have yet to post!!

On Dec 25, Sir Isaac Newton's birthday (observed), Maggie participated in the festivities as the test mass for the pendulum. You will be glad to hear that experiment and theory agreed quite well on that day. Email me if you want a copy of our Newton day final report.

Smiles :) :D

2006-11-24T19:30:00.000-08:00

She's been flashing some big smiles lately, but this morning, I actually caught some on film (well, really, on CCD, but that doesn't have the same ring, does it?).

Ejecta

2006-11-22T23:29:00.001-08:00

Data

2006-11-22T08:31:00.000-08:00

Masses were measured either at the hospital or the doctor's office. Food intake was unkown until d35 when we started to supplement with formula.

Heredity

2006-11-19T01:48:00.000-08:00

When she's full (of milk) and relaxed, Maggie tends to cross her eyes. Typically, the left eye looks straight ahead and the right eye looks left. With a little effort, Deirdre and Mischa can pull off this trick as well. I'm not talented in this way:(

Halloween

2006-11-14T22:31:00.000-08:00

For Halloween, Grandma Adams made tomato worm costumes for everyone!

Happy Maggie with Grandma.

angry Maggie with her dad.

tomato bug family with the big tomato.

happy Maggie with her Mom

Faces

2006-10-21T13:48:00.000-07:00

Me and Maggie

2006-10-21T10:42:00.000-07:00

Scream

2006-10-21T10:25:00.000-07:00

Eat

2006-10-21T10:22:00.000-07:00

1. DSA feeding

2. Maggie post-feeding, with remarkable resemblance to a tick.

Sleep

2006-10-21T10:15:00.000-07:00

Maggie day 7. Behavior modification program.

2006-10-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

Deirdre with Maggie in the sling. If she's not pitching a fit when we put her in, she sleeps very nicely in there.
Karp's 5 S's in action (well, three out of five isn't bad). the 5 S's are Swaddle, Side/Stomach position, Shhhhh, Swing, Suck. I used the middle three here.
15:29:15

15:30:46

15:35:08

Mag, day 5

2006-10-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

1 AM. There was a hint of diaper rash on her, so I suggested we let her air-dry for a few minutes after changing a lightly pee-ed on diaper. And then she let loose in Deirdre's arms. The second shot came a few minutes later, after I had cleaned up the first volley.

I love the hair pattern on her head. Zero vorticity due to counterrotating spirals.

Don't be fooled by this photo. She was screaming throughout most of her first, badly needed bath.

She does pitch screaming fits, but nothing that the techniques described in Harvey Karp's "Happiest Baby..." book doesn't take care of. Highly recommended. Makes the screams so much more bearable knowing that I can turn them off like a switch!

Maggie Sheng-Jie Adams-Mao. d 1-3

2006-10-04T08:20:00.000-07:00

Our new baby, Margaret, was born on Friday 9/29/06 at 7 PM after >24 hrs of back-labor and 1 hr of the big push.

Her middle name is composed of her Chinese generational name, sheng, which means "birth," and jie, which means "victory." Deirdre always wanted to name our girl Nike, the Greek godess of victory, but a certain shoe company has already co-opted that name.

Ming Chiang Liu, one of the grad students in ESS at UCLA, suggested ri (day) for her given Chinese name, so every day would be her birthday. My Dad forbade the use of qi (gas or air) since "sheng qi" means "to become angry."

Props to Sean Bergin, RN for her excellent labor coaching.

The new girl in my life.
She will be cursed with wide feet. When she's grown up, if she wants to wear high heels, she'll have to go to Hubba-Hubba in Cambridge. (Is that even still around?)

Deirdre and Maggie in a test of wills.

I shaved my head earlier in the week, so that she won't be shocked the first time she sees me nearly hairless.

0.557215 664901 532860 618112 090082 39

2006-09-08T21:50:00.000-07:00

The Euler-Mascheroni constant (aka γ) is my new favorite number. Lots of people memorize &pi and e to some ridiculous number of digits, but I think &gamma should take its rightful place in the pantheon of cool numbers. It pains me to see that if I google &pi or e I get those numbers, but searching "gamma" does not return 0.55721566490...

The title of this blog, of course, is not &gamma itself, but Mascheroni's 32-digit calculation of &gamma (1790), which until now (I believe) has been missing from the vast store of "knowledge" which is the world wide web. I went to the library so you don't have to.

Why can't you find it elsewhere? Because the calculation has errors! 侘寂! [Wabi-sabi]

PS: for now, it's also on Wikipedia because I edited the history section of the Euler-Mascheroni constant. But who knows how long that will last?

Chace's ipod, continued...

2006-07-20T23:31:00.000-07:00

Once the screws are out, you can unfold the ipod like an accordion. The screen has been flipped over so that its face is sitting on the HD.

Another view of the opened up ipod. In case you're wondering, the battery is located on the back of the click-wheel, out of view.

I only found evidence of water damage in one spot: on a few of the pins connecting the display to the main board. It either looks like corrosion or damage due to overheating. Corrosion is more likely, as we know the device had been for a swim.

Aside: There was something rattling around in the ipod when I got my hands on it. It turned out to be a small phillips screw that held one side of the connector bracket to the steel back-shell.

Opening Chace's semi dead ipod

2006-07-20T23:21:00.000-07:00

This ipod came from Deirdre's co-worker, Chace, who accidentally submerged her ipod in water. The screen no longer shows anything, but when connected to a computer, one can read from and write to the drive.

These are the tools I used to open up the ipod. I started with a piece of blister-pack plastic, then worked in a seldom-used credit card whose corner had been sharpened with a knife. Once that piece was in, I took another credit-card-like item (my Von's club card) to pop open the case. The screwdrivers also may have come in handy, but it's better not to use them.

I googled "open 4g ipod" before starting and found some nice photos in the first link. The author there started on the left side and worked around three sides before opening the pod. I started on the right side, got frustrated on the left, and worked open all the clips on the right. Once they were undone, the ipod simply unfolded. I think the right side is preferred for opening, as it minimized risk to the ribbon cable.

The main board is held to the front cover by six Torx-head screws. I used a 0.050" Allen wrench to undo those screws. They're really not on that tight. I took the photo before I had all six out. The other two are underneath the hard drive (the object with the blue bumpers).

baby

2006-07-18T22:56:00.000-07:00

baby baby baby .... she has no name yet. if even she's a she.

protagonists

2006-07-16T22:17:00.000-07:00

If I actually had any facial hair to speak of, that's what I'd look like.....on America's Most Wanted.

We bought a fly swatter last year, but since then, Deirdre has found a better way to eliminate them. Much less messy this way...