Here are three cheap strollers that anyone having a baby soon could use. We know a couple pregnant folks, so this post is for them. Here is one Combi and two Safety First strollers at remarkable discounts.

I haven’t done research to see how they’re rated or if they’re safe strollers; that’s for you to do. I’m just here to help you save money!!!

       
In order:

The Combi is down 66% from $229.99 –> $79.00
The Safety First Ivy Cottage is down 66% from $259.99 –> $89
The Safety First Biltmore is down 72% from $354.99 –> $99.

Enjoy!!!

Hard to believe isn’t it?  What with all the Darwin Award emails and Dateline’s To Catch a Predator series.  But, they do exist.  And they took our stroller.  HUH?  Yup, our stroller.

I drove to the train station Friday on my way to work and parked in the outdoor lot.  Aileen came into the city that day and offered me a ride home.  We went the way home that is not the way home to pass by the station, so in a fit of laziness we left the car in the lot for the weekend.  Turns out we risked it getting towed - Kent Station is owned and operated by Sound Transit who have a semi-strict policy on 24 hour parking limits.  KC Metro allows 72 parking, but now I’m on some Sound Transit hit list of cars to be towed if they hit 24:00:01 time parked.

I digress.  So, Aileen drives me back to the parking lot Monday morning so I can move the car and get to work.  She goes up to drive it to the indoor lot and asks me why I left our daughter Kelsey’s bike helmet on the ground next to the car.  I curiously told her I had not (considering it had been in the trunk…) and went over.  The car was locked, but a bit ransacked inside with the driver seat reclined.  There were NO signs of forced locks.  No broken window.  NOTHING.  The guys that got into the car were good, nay, VERY good at their job.

Here’s the kicker though.  They stole ONE thing - a stroller from the trunk.  Now, we know they didn’t want it for their own or a friend’s kid.  How you ask?  Because they left a slew of toys and bikes in the car that could have gone to the same kid.  They even went to the trouble of taking the busy bar OFF of the stroller.  Come on, what self righteous thief says this busy bar isn’t worth the stroller it’s tied to?  None that I can think of.

My guess?  They used it to wheel something else off from someone else’s car.  But that begs the question of how good the thieves actually are.  If they are THAT good at getting INTO a car, what stopped them from hotwiring the car and driving the whole darn thing away?  Maybe they were interrupted??  Missing tools? gaps in knowledge?  Too big a crime?
Who knows.  But to leave a  car capable of carrying a LOT of stuff and being smart enough to see kids toys in a car and hit it for the possibility of a storller in the trunk is brilliant.  I’m not sure I’d have thought of it had I been stealing things.

A misinformed Sprint PCS telephone support worker severely endangered the life of a 10 month old baby
(Via NBC4 ):

EASTVALE, Calif. – A stolen car that had a kidnapped baby and a cell phone inside has become the center of a new controversy.

The parents of the kidnapped baby are outraged that the phone that could have been used to find the baby was not.
…
The Cochran family of Eastvale was loading their baby into their SUV in the home’s driveway. The father, Jason, belted in their 10-month-old baby and came back inside for their 3-year-old.

“Stephanie was finishing brushing his teeth. I went and got him and walked out the door and the car was gone with Wade in it,” said father Jason Cochran.

When the parents called 911 they also realized that the father’s Sprint cell phone with GPS locator technology was also in the car.

NBC4 reported that Sprint wouldn’t provide a location to the parents or to the deputies.

“The deputies were told that Sprint had the location of the vehicle but that they could not disclose it to them because they needed to pay the $25 fee for a subpoena or fill out some forms,” said Stephanie.

Almost 2 ? hours later a passer-by spotted the SUV abandoned a mile away.

Responding deputies found the boy safe in his car seat.

The two lessons in effect here:
1) NEVER leave your kids alone in the car (or anywhere for that matter…)
2) If something happens and your kid is taken like this, don’t waste time speaking with the first line people who say they can’t help you. FIGHT for your kid. You own that contract and don’t need to subpeona yourself. YOU have the authority to demand the information be released.

No there, is no scientific generation i, I made it up after a realization tonight. The masses that are growing up now are growing up more in tune with a new corporate culture than any other generation.

The proliferation of iPods has propelled Apple back onto the map. Even if they never gain desktop or business workstation market share, they have forever changed teh way that the world listens to music.

iPods have outsold Sony’s walkman numbers by laughable amounts. iTunes is profitable. iPhoto, iChat, iThis, iThat. We’re surrounded by the new MAC culture. They are bringing the convergent home to reality. Others are helping out and doing the same, but none have been as successful or innovative about it as Apple.

How did I realize all this? When while going to free scoop day, my 2.5 year old daughter turned to me and yelped (yes yelped!) with glee, “DADDY, DADDY, LOOK!!! I WANNA GO IN THE APPLE STORE!!!” Not only did she recognize the store itself from the outside, she knew what it was, and here’s the killer - what awaited her inside. And she was so enamored by past visits that she wanted, no HAD to go back in again.

As we passed the tables of iPods, she immediatley points and says, “look mommy, like daddy’s!.” She doesnt skip a beat and heads straight for the center table in the back by the theater and sits down on the black ball in front of a slick iMac and starts drawing. After a while, we ask her to come along and she just tells us, “no, I’m working.”

Guess it’s time to get her a WACOM tablet eh??

*sigh, cry* Those are our old condo keys. Yes, old, as in no longer ours.

This past Friday we closed a book in our life. The buyers of our condo took possession at 9PM. Whereas we’re glad to have sold it and be on our way to places with much more space to grow, we still close this book with a bit of sadness. We lived in this neighborhood for almost seven years. We did so much in our life while we lived in this building.

Aileen and I moved here just after getting engaged. We started our new life together here. We walked the streets, went to the parks. Hempfest, Bumbershoot, Folk Life, Vegfest, the St Patty’s Day Dash, Pagdiriwang, and more were all 5-10 minutes walk away.

I worked in the office building next door and started to realize how stressful I found driving to work. To this day I still take the bus, even though we live further away. I’ve found an inner peace that can’t be bought.

We had many superbowl parties and BBQs in both units. We made freinds, we formed bonds.

We got married and bought our first condo after our apartment building got converted to condos. This was a big step for us as we started to grow in our life together.

We had our first daughter, Kelsey. A miracle then, now, and forever.

I got laid off for the first time. I think the management was surprised at how in stride I took it. I was actually welcoming it, as I got to stay home and take care of Kelsey for two years. They were stressful, but I wouldn’t give anything at all in exchange for them. I formed a bond with her that most fathers could only dream of having with their daughters.

I started my business and worked from home out of a makeshift office we created in our bedroom with a door desk and two free-standing partitions we scored off of Craigslist. This was by far the hardest thing ever. Kelsey would refuse to go to bed until I was done working at night, and I could only get things done after Aileen got home from work to take over night shift day care duties.

We moved my mom to Seattle and out of the sheer drudgery that was Middletown, PA. I have not seen her this happy, full of life and enrgetic since I was in high school. She’s come to a palce she can call home (with or w/o us). After years of inactivity and boredom, she walks and buses all ove rthe city every day. She even walked a 5K with us on St Patricks Day.

We got pregnant again and are less than a month away from delivering K2, Kelsey’s younger sister.

In January it was with great sorrow that we decided to sell our condo FSBO. Things were going veyr well at first, but we just couldn’t get enough people in, and it proved much to stressful with everything else going on to get enough people in to see it. A month or so ago (it seems like forever right now) we hired a realtor to list it on the MLS and represent us.

Now, as of Friday we no longer own the condo, we are preparing for the end of May when Aileen is due, and are looking forward to the future which holds places that have at least 3 bedrooms. Our current lease ends in July or when the house we’re renting sells. Likely we’ll rent again for another year or two while we save for another down payment.

This will give Aileen the chance to stay home with K2 like I got to do with Kelsey. She’ll soon be starting the SAHM/start your own business cycle I did a few years ago. I know without a douby that she’ll be as successful at it as I was.

Goodbye Queen Anne…

I was doing a wikipedia lookup on a word I was using (found out it was the wrong word BTW) and stumbled on the concept of backronyms.

Found this one as an example on the list of backronyms page:

Apgar - a brief medical examination of new-born babies - was named after the doctor who introduced it but can be understood as an acronym for Appearance (skin color), Pulse (heart rate), Grimace (reflex irritability), Activity (muscle tone), Respiration.

I love Wikipedia…

The company I work for, Pure Networks, released Network Magic to the public this morning.

Network Magic makes management of a home network much simpler and provides a much easier way to setup Windows networking for sharing files and printers.

It shows the status of your network and all connected devices through a Network Map that is very easy to read:

Besides sharing files and printers, you can also detect wifi signal strength of any wireless device from any PC running Network Magic. You can track and defend against wireless intruders. It will also throw your computer into a “shields up” mode when you roam off your home network and protect your shares from other devices on the roamed onto network until or unless you tell it not to.

I might be a little biased, but I wouldn’t write up an entry suggesting you go download it unless I absolutely believed in it myself. It solves so many of my home networking problems; I think it can do the same for you.

Now that I’m back online after a day w/o my domain I just noticed I haven’t posted in about a month. Much has been going on, and I want to catch you up.

In no particular order:

1. We are expecting another daughter (temporarily named K2) May 29th. Kelsey is already looking forward to little sister and is starting to divide the play things up. She says goodnight to K2 in Aileen’s tummy every night!
2. We are in the process of selling our condo. Closing is coming up in the middle of April.
3. I started a full time job at Pure Networks. The company is extremely exhilirating. I’ve never worked with such a talented, dedicated group (and given some of the companies I’ve worked at, this says a lot about my current co-workers.) We’ve got a beta going for our new product Network Magic (I’ll post more on this soon…)
4. After about 3 years on the wait list, we finally got a plot at one of Seattle’s community P-Patch gardens. We have a cure little 10′x10′ plot and will be growing all manner of vegetables this year. We can’t wait!!
5. Aileen is gearing up to start her own business as I’m gearing to slow mine down.

So, we’ve been a touch busy… Sorry for the absence and look for more posts as things start to stabalize at least a little bit.

I just saw the Amber Alert Ticker on another blog and was psyched that such a thing exists. Whenever there is an active Amber Alert, it turns yellow and gives the details of the alert.

I’ve already added it to the top of my Kelsey and Who’s Your Daddy category pages. I don’t know yet if I’m going to add it to every page, as I don’t want to start diluting my blog with tickers here and ad space there, but it seems particularly pertinent where it is.

Julie wrote an entry recently about breastfeeding in public (which I fully support.) It had a picture of a parking sign for expectant mothers. I recall having seen one near Southcenter once, but I can’t remember for sure.

Anywho, one place I do recall seeing something similiar is IKEA. In their always full garage, they have a half dozen spots slotted for family parking. Without them, I could never go and visit the store. If you’re looking for them (and have a kid with you…) go into the main garage, go straight, and look for them just left of the entrance along their little metal fence.