La Familia Brophy

… I’ll come to your house and install it for you.

I am starting a new campaign to convince people to stop using web browsers owned by big businesses, and start using a lovely and superior open source web browser called Firefox. More and more people are doing it, don’t be the last one on your block using a moldy old web browser.

Reasons to use Firefox

• Speed. Web pages load noticeably faster so you won’t waste precious seconds waiting for Nathan’s photos to appear.
• Security and Privacy. This is mostly for you Microsoft Internet Explorer users. Don’t you get sick of all those ‘trojan horses’ and spyware and the non-stop annoying pop-up and pop-behind ads you get bombarded with? I don’t how you do it. It can’t be fun. Firefox is free, it’ll cost you nothing, and it will help you with all of those problems.
• Tabbed browsing. It’s hard to explain without experiencing it, but using tabbed browsing will transform your experience of the web. For example, say you come to la familia brophy and see there two new links in the fresh links area. Using tabbed browsing you can open them in new tabs, and they will load in the background while read the latest Nathan update. Another example: You do a search for Boba Fett action figures on ebay. You get a list of twenty, and quickly open the five best looking ones in new tabs. They all open in the background, and you can browse them at your leisure. It ’s so easy, and it is so much easier than keeping track of a bunch of browser windows.
• Cool plugins. There are all sorts of cool plug-ins for firefox. If you are big into ebay or Amazon or Google there is surely a special tool bar for you. Plus you can search just about any search engine right from the tool bar.
• Aesthetics. The web looks better in Firefox. Many of web designers use styles that are invisible to explorer but display beautifully in firefox. I think the fonts are easier to read in Firefox too.

If you want help setting up Firefox and I am within two miles of your computer, I will come and set Firefox up for you. We’ll import your old book marks, get tabbed browsing setup, discuss your options for plugins. I am that committed. You could also just download it yourself (it’s pretty easy). Let me know if you have any trouble.

Nathan told his first joke to me the other day. It goes like this: “Cow. Dude glasses. Silly cow!!” Ha ha! Dude glasses are the sun glasses, if you need a translation, and it would pretty damn silly for a cow to wear them. Get it?

I’ve been knitting a lot lately for various Christmas presents. I’ve also taken some time to knit a new scarf for myself and some hats for Nathan. I finished this one today. I ended up creating the pattern as I went because I ran into a few pproblems. I really like the way the yarn striped but the decreases messed it up. So I decided not to decrease but just ended and pulled the yarn through all the stitches. Of course there was a big hole at the top so I put the big pom pom on to keep out the cold. It turns out that the pom pom is very popular with Nathan.

I made this hat today from some yarn that my mom sent. It is knit as a rectangle and sewn into place. I think he’ll look cute in it.

It feels a little funny, but I began saving for Nathan’s college tuition today. I got a Fidelity 529 account, which will pull $50 a month from my bank account. It feels good to have it going, even though college is a long way away. It’s not a lot but it’s something, and hopefully it will accrue interest well since I’m starting now. I’m not sure why I’m blogging this, it just feels significant somehow. Maybe I’ll start taking Nathan on campus tours. He’s seen MIT and Harvard so far. We’re taking him to visit Berkeley next.

Yep, we found an apartment in Berkeley, so we’re definitely going. We’ll be spending January and February there. I’ll be working on a software project at UCB. We’ll be living in a pretty small apartment walking distance from campus. I think it’s going to be a fun way to have a change of scene for a while, without having to totally change our lives. Nathan’s not in school yet and Lisa’s a stay-at-home mom right now, so the timing’s perfect.

Nathan loves this library book called “Car Wash” that’s kind of a Jules Verne version of driving through a car wash. This morning Nathan wanted to look at my computer to see pictures and since I don’t have many on my laptop, I showed him the photo section of this site. He wanted more of course and so I moved over to Flickr and then he said “car wash!” (many of his statements end in an exclamation point) so just for the heck of it I searched for carwash photos on Flickr. I came up with quite few, and if you ignore those first few self portraits you get a whole variety of photos taken while driving through car washes. We watched the slide show and Nathan loved it. It was just a fine example of the kind of the random random fun you have with a two year old.

Each night before Nathan goes to bed and every afternoon before his nap Ben or I say “Have sweet dreams.” It is one of those funny language things because Nathan doesn’t yet know what a dream is, being that he is a two year old and a concrete thinker. He is unable to understand such an abstraction and there is no way for us to really describe it to him.

On some level he gets it though, at least the idea that it is meant to be a positive thing. This morning I had some proof of this. I asked him if he had a good sleep. He looked at me with a big smile and said, “Yeah!” and then he added, “Sweet dreams!”

Here is a random photo of Nathan looking sweet.

Occasionally work is busy, so I eat a quick lunch in my cube. Don’t feel sad for me though - check out this lunch! I took a quick pic with the camera on my lap top.

That’s a leek and goat cheese tart, roasted squash with garlic and fresh herbs, toast and a local apple. I think the main thing is all those ingedients are top notch. Man it’s good. Thanks, Lisa! OK, I have to get back work…

Nathan’s been doing this funny thing. When people say he’s cute or ask how old he is, he gets all shy in a theatrical way . I tried to catch it on video. Here’s a movie of him as he turns his head away and bats his eye lashes. He does it the same way every time. This wasn’t a great example because he really wanted to get back to the trucks he was playing with. This interview is also perhaps the first time he’s said how old he is without being reminded.

I once told Nathan that the Reese’s peanut butter cup I was eating was my medicine becuase he understands that we don’t share medicine. Well he has now generalized this to all candy which I’ve been eating too much of since it is still laying around after Halloween. Today he saw me with a mini Milk Duds box and said “See medicine.” I gave him the empty box and he sat there sniffing the delectable chocolate scent for a while. He thinks I’m pretty lucky for getting such good medicine.

My mother used to lie to me too. I can’t believe I always fell for the one about the rides outside the department stores being broken every time we were there.

Here is Nathan sporting his first barbershop haircut that he got today. The barber bribed him with a lollipop which he loved.