the clueless american

What a productive New Year's Day we've had in the clueless household! It's 22:40 and I've been wearing my pj's all day. We started off working this morning, dividing the cheeses and pepperoni from Sam's into smaller bags and sealing them up. Oops, apparently I'm thinking of yesterday morning when we did that. I just checked with e, and she confirms that today I really haven't done much of anything.

What I have done, for what it's worth, is mess around with our Audio CD's / MP3 files a lot. Some of our MP3 files are more than 6 years old and were ripped back when the technology was fairly new. I've always talked about re-ripping everything at a higher quality, etc., but never did anything about it until today.

I started out looking at flac, the Free Lossless Audio Compression codec. It basically is able to compress audio files smaller than a WAV without losing any of the quality, unlike MP3 and WMA which are lossy codecs. Well, after reading a lot about flac and downloading it for e's machine (she's the keeper of the MP3 files), I decided that it doesn't compress enough for our needs. The average file compressed between 50-60% at the highest setting. That would be nice if we wanted lossless archives of our CD's, but we'd rather have decent-sounding songs that are small enough to fit on the hard drive.

Being a Linux user and all-around open-source fan, I'd like to make the jump to Ogg Vorbis, but our 60GB Archos jukebox is only able to play MP3 songs which means I'm sticking with MP3 for now.

While reading about flac, I saw a lot of people talking about using Exact Audio Copy to rip their CD's. I generally use Grip on the Linux box and CD-DA X-Tractor (not Extractor, which is different) on Windows, but I'm always on the lookout for something better. As near as I can tell, EAC's main advantages are that it has a database of drives and that it works with AccurateRip, an extension that allows users to compare ripped files for accuracy. EAC is also faster than Easy CD-DA X-tractor, although for ease of use I'd still recommend Easy CDDAX to a new user. Don't forget to get the LAME codec no matter what program you use.

After ripping about 10 CD's with EAC, 4 of which were in AccurateRip's DB, I went looking at the dBpowerAMP Music Converter, or dMC. My initial interest was in its ability to transcode audio files between the various formats, but I quickly became interested in its own AccurateRip-enabled ripping ability. I haven't had the time or inclination to run a test yet, but the dMC rips seem to go a LOT faster than EAC while still achieving accurate results. I'll keep playing with both of them as I slowly work my way through our entire CD collection--or as much as e's MP3 drive will hold. In any event, I'm mostly not using Grip because 1) my Linux box is a slow P3-700 and 2) I still haven't gotten a CD to burn correctly since we stopped using the SCSI emulation for IDE drives. I'll stick with Windows for now and maybe move ripping back to Linux if I ever get around to fixing 1 and 2 above. I've brought up about 40 CD's from downstairs and am slowly ripping them while I type.

Well, our little one has been given an ultimatum. Either he comes out on his own or we go after him on Wednesday. We thought the doc was going to wait until next week, but he casually pulled out his calendar and said "How about Wednesday?" Wed night e goes in for some drugs to help prepare her, then Thursday morning they start the pitocin which will get her labor going. The Boy should come along Thursday, Friday at the latest if he's very stubborn. I'm almost disappointed that we don't get the surprise contractions and late-night drive to the hospital, but as long as he's healthy I'm not overly concerned about how he gets here.

On a sad note, while we were at the doc's office we saw a girl who looked about 12 years old waiting to be seen. She was probably a little older but not too much. Instead of parents she had her slightly-older boyfriend, ostensibly the father of the child. He was way more interested in adjusting his cool gang-looking watch cap and reading his Reader's Digest than talking to or even looking at the girl he'd knocked up. Poor kids! I have to be sure to tell MJ some day that he doesn't have any business bringing a girl to the OB/GYN before he's 18.

Well, I'm typing this with a little chunky chunk, as e likes to call him, sleeping on my lap. This is our first night back home, and so far our sleep/feed schedule is not working out as well as it did for 2 nights in the hospital.

We went in the hospital Wed night so that e could start on meds to prepare her for being induced the next morning. That medication made her crampy and uncomfortable despite the ambien to help her sleep, so we started off on the right foot with only an hour of sleep the first night. In the morning they didn't even start e on pitocin because the preparatory medication already had her contracting enough. They broke her water at about 7:25, and by 7:28 she was experiencing the first painful contraction. That got her pretty scared, but when the epidural went in at 8:30 life was beautiful.

Once the epi started taking effect the ambien remaining in her system let e sleep pretty well, giving me a chance to nap. The midwife started e's pitocin at about 9. At 10 her exam showed 8-9 cm, and at 11 the midwife was looking at the top of MJ's head. She got e to start pushing at 11:05, and we had a little son at 11:28!

I had more to write but got distracted by the phone. I realized that it was a decent hour in Spain and decided to call several of our friends over there. During that time MJ started getting ready to feed so I woke mama up.

So now you get the short version, which is that he's a healthy little boy and mama's doing great, too. We had him Thursday morning and checked out Saturday afternoon.

Let's see....what else...oh yeah, anyone for a picture? here he is:

Ok, 5:27 now...started this at about 4....time for some more sleep while mama's feeding him. We've decided to keep the specifics off of the website, so if you're a friend/family member and want the details, email and we'll get them to you.