bonnie & jason

Bonnie’s new business

Some of you may have seen some of Bonnie’s crafty creations. Well, Bonnie is using Etsy.com to see if there might be a market for some of her designs.

Check out the store at www.alongcameapiglet.com. You may also recognize the baby model we used in the picture.

I’m an official volunteer

I’m now an official volunteer for the Moment by Moment organization. From the website:

Moment by Moment is a non-profit organization of professional photographers who will provide portraits for families of children with a life-limiting illness. Our goal is to create lasting memories, capturing the role of families, love and courage in living each day moment by moment.

Some of Bonnie’s hair clips

As Deeann mentioned on her blog, hair clips for babies are amazingly expensive! So Bonnie decided to try making some of her own with some supplies from the local crafts store. Here are some of the ideas she’s come up with so far. If you have any suggestions, let her know!

Cafepress store

Bonnie has opened up a Cafepress store.

There are only a few items on it right now since it’s a free store front. But here’s a sample:

Mac Pro 5th hard drive installation

I’ve been filling up hard drive space pretty quickly recently with all the HD video that I’ve been editing along with the Alissa and wedding pictures. As such, I’ve been looking for more storage as well as how to archive old stuff that I don’t need to access much.

Thankfully, the Mac Pro has four hard drive slots. Unfortunately, I really want five slots to have one system drive and four data drives setup as a Raid 10. So, originally, I was considering getting an external SATA enclosure taking advantage of the extra SATA ports on the Mac Pro motherboard. But then, I found that you can actually use the space in the optical drive bay to add a fifth hard drive.

Here’s an easy off-the shelf solution, but it’ll cost you $69. And here’s a guy who made things work with some spare parts and creative thinking.

I basically did the same thing the guy did but I didn’t have any spare parts lying around so I was able to do it “right” by buying new parts that would fit without modification.

Here’s my parts list:
2x$109: Seagate 500GB hard drive (These were made in Thailand vs. the ones I got from newegg which were made in China… no idea if it makes any difference.)
$4.99: 18″ SATA cable (right angle on one end, straight on the other… should have gotten the 24″ one.)
$2: Molex to SATA power adapter (I actually forgot to buy this initially and had to visit to my friendly Cosmic Computer to pick one up.)
$3.99: 3.5″ to 5.25″ drive bracket

So basically, instead of spending the money on an external enclosure, I was able to install the hard drive for an extra $11 in parts. Plus, the big benefit is that I don’t have to deal with another enclosure that requires power and a cable. Simple=good.

If I was really smart, I would have gotten the 24″ SATA cable because the 18″ one was a bear to get in. (Tip: if you screwed up and got the 18″ one, first thread it through from the SATA port to the drive bay after removing hard drives #1 and #2. Then attach it to the new hard drive and replace the optical drive assembly before attaching the right angle side to the SATA port.)

Here are some pictures that show how the SATA cable was routed:

Looking from the rear of the case towards the front, here’s the view of the SATA ports:

Here’s a closeup of the right angle SATA cable connected to one of the two free ports:

Here’s a view of the SATA cable routed behind the fan shroud. This is looking where the #1 hard drive would normally be. You can see the cable routing goes by the #1 SATA connection.

Here’s a view of the cable as it leaves the section in the above picture into the area where the 2 optical drive bays are normally located:

Fun with Shutterfly videos

I had some time on my hands tonight since Jason was shooting a wedding and instead of doing something productive, I decided to do something fun. So, I put Alissa, Abigail and Rylee in their very own music videos. I wanted to do one for Megan too, but I was unsuccessful in finding a picture that would fit. Anyways, here are each of their videos. They are all actually the same video, but with a different cute little face in it.

Alissa’s Alphabet Adventure video

Abigail’s Alphabet Adventure video

Rylee’s Alphabet Adventure video

Half Moon Bay Nursery

We went to the Half Moon Bay Nursery today to get some shrubs for the front planters. I haven’t done any sort of yard work since moving away from home but hopefully, I don’t end up killing these little guys of the left:

I’m actually thinking about pruning them so they end up looking like a big ball on the end of a stick. How hard can it be? We’ll see… they were only $10 a pop so if I end up killing one, we can always go get some more.
As you can see, we also picked up a hydrangea and a tomato plant. Those will be under Bonnie’s care. She’s had good luck with most of the plants we have around the house so hopefully they thrive as well. Here are a few more pictures from our day out:

Doesn’t Alissa look like such a big girl?  *Sigh*  They grow up so fast!

If I were in the Simpsons

You can create your own Simpsons avatar here.  Funny thing is, Dennis’ looks pretty much exactly the same… they don’t really have a lot of variation in Asian eye/hair combinations.  The only big difference is that he chose the super skinny body.  Of course, I chose the beefy body.  Not sure which one of us is more deluded.

Alissa the sumo wrestler

Happy Father’s Day

This is a slightly belated post, but here are some pictures from the dinner Bonnie made for me for father’s day.  Pretty fancy, huh?