True speech

I was telling Mia the other day about the cute way that Ethan pauses while he's talking.

Then, yesterday, it hit me. He pauses like that because he's constructing his own sentences. He's not just repeating things that he has heard us say to him.

Our boy is smart. S-M-R-T!

???pedia

I've been doing some work with Wikipedia for my job, as well as reading some things about it in other places like blogs and Wired.

Now, it's my turn to say how I feel about Wikipedia. It bugs me.

There are a couple of things about the site that are noble aspirations but that in practice are less than desirable. The foremost of those being the mob-mentality. While the wiki model might be useful for focused groups who can all knowledgably contribute to one topic and build on each others work, opening that same model up to anyone with a Web browser doesn't accomplish the same thing.
I'm not saying that all (and maybe not even most) of the information on Wikipedia is wrong. I'm just saying that the community that is ensuring the accuracy of the articles may not be well-enough informed to do so. Fundamentally, Wikipedia relies on a small group of people who do actually have an in-depth knowledge of the subject to ensure it's correct. But, they allow anyone to make the inital postings and make changes. So, even if a small group of experts is actively working to keep an article, or articles, correct they are competing againt the combined "wisdom" of the unwashed masses.

Secondly, Wikipedia is not really as open as they like to claim. With the rise of wiki-wars and commercialization, Wikipedia now has an extensive group of moderators that can (again, with little actual knowledge about a topic) halt discussion, delete pages, or lock articles from being edited. This removes the concept of "all the world's knowledge" by once again creating a layer of gatekeepers that decide what knowledge is permissable to be distributed.

I think the line that is most blurry in Wikipedia is the commercial line. Where does an article stop being informational and start being advertorial? And, along those same lines, when does information about a company, it's products, it's services, it's history, etc., stop being part of the collected human knowledge?
I can understand that a sales pitch from a company is not necessarily an important thing to preserve. But why not the rest of it? Why not even for a small company?
If the topic were non-commerical, how large an audience does Wikipedia require before it's considered worthy to be entombed in their annals? (Notice the gatekeeper language I'm using for effect).

Since I doubt that I'll ever be able to make a dent in Wikipedia, and since I can see it barrelling along crushing any knowledge that gets in its way, I'll close this little rant.
I use Wikipedia to introduce myself to topics. But, the Internet is full of resources that are more reliable and credible. I hope that all of you Internet researchers out there are taking the time to move beyond the wiki articles and find those sources.

Sometimes, I'm glad that I don't try to publicize my blog.

RSS

Apparently when I publish my blogs, Blogger is automatically creating an RSS feed for me. If anyone wants it, I'll post the link.

Happy Birthday (Again)

I wanted to post a couple of things that happened with Ethan this weekend. But, of course, right now I can't think of what they were.

So, I'll just make a post about Ethan's combined Birthday/Christmas weekend with his grandparents.

We went out to Albany this weekend (as should be obvious by the above statement) now that Ethan is a 2 year-old. We were worried that he wouldn't do well but he seemed to take it all in stride.

He enjoyed walking through the 'woods' behind Grandpa Gibson's house. And walking on the bridge over the stream. In fact, the boy kept trying to get into the stream and I had to keep pulling him back.
Mia and I enjoyed watching the Best Christmas Pagent Ever starring Cris, McKay, and Bryson (and some other people from the community).
After the play, Ethan enjoyed chasing Bryson around the house and opening his Train presents. He loves trains. You usually won't see Ethan without seeing a train in his hand (and his cup in the other hand).

The evening we went over to Grandma Miller's and Ethan got a sombrero to add to his hat collection. I picked up a car outlet. It's a little battery-generator thing that you can plug into your car and has two normal outlet sockets for pluging things in. Very handy. Mia got stuff too ;)
Then, we sat down and decorated little cake trains (did I mention that Ethan likes trains) that Linda had made. Ethan mostly just ate the candy that we gave him to decorate with... so did I.
They turned out looking very unique and very good. Mia and Linda did most of the hard work, but Tim created a car or two as well.

On Sunday we did some more hanging out with the families. Took some Christmas pictures with all the brothers and sisters (a feat to get everyone in the same place at once). And in the evening, took the back wheel off the car to see why the brakes were making a scratching sound everytime we braked.

We couldn't find anything wrong (or at least fatally wrong) with them on Sunday night so we drove back to Boston. On Monday, Mia took the car in and had to replace all four rotors and brakepads. The one consolation we have is that the mechanic told us the parts on the Grand Marquis are made to wear out quickly, so it's not that we neglected them.
I guess that's good news. Fortunately, I had a Christmas bonus that we used to pay for it. (Again... I guess that's good news)

But, aside from that, then entire weekend was fun. And Ethan loves seeing his grandparents. Mom and Dad, I'm sure that includes you too ;)

Date Night

Mia and I went and had a date night last weekend. We needed it.

I can't believe how easily we forget that going out on dates helps us unwind and re-connect with each other. We went into Boston (something we do more often these days as we are no longer afraid of driving downtown) and watched a movie.

We went to see Stranger Than Fiction. The movie was quite good, we liked it. The entire premise was interesting and I suppose a little strange. However the execution made watching it entertaining and we even felt that the ending was very well done.
I think that this is the first movie I've seen that worked well while touching on the inward-focus of a writer writing something. :)

Also, I found a universal AC adapter at Best Buy that I'm going to pick up and hopefully be back in action with the video camera.

The Wedding

We went out to New York the weekend of Thanksgiving for Linda's wedding. She is now married to Tim and we are very happy for both of them. They are also happy together and it shows.

The ceremony was very nice, simple but meaningful. They held it in the Inn that Tim manages. I can't believe how many people they were able to pack in :) The entire inn was filled with people coming to support Linda and Tim as they begin their marriage. I got to be introduced (and re-introduced) to a number of Linda's old friends and much of Tim's family. Mia had a great time reconnecting with people that she hadn't seen in years.

Ethan also enjoyed the ceremony. He did a much better job this time of taking the rings up to the bride and groom. In fact, he stayed up their with them after dropping off his cargo. He is really starting to remember people and wanted to be near his grandma. We think he's just the cutest little boy!

While we were out in Albany we also stopped by to visit David and got a little video of Ethan playing with his Grandpa.

P.S.

I know this will be the top post of the day but I'm writing it after my last post. I haven't forgotten to post the video of Ethan's birthday. Our camera ran out of battery and I can't find the charging cable right now.

I'm Published

It's way more exciting than it sounds but a bylined article that I wrote for TODAY magazine. The article was published under our CEOs name. Fortunately, in my industry not having my name in the byline doesn't limit my ability to add it to my portfolio.

I was talking with some friends of mine and they were concerned that I'd basically written myself out of the chance to take some credit for the article. They are more in the realm of academia so of course they would want their name all over anything they write. :)

And, just in case you are missing anything excited because I can't post the full article here, the title is:
Finding the Sweet Spot in Document Imaging -- Image Quality and Its Effect on Productivity

2 years

Two long, hard years. Wait, I mean two fun, exciting years!

Or, for those that have kids, you know that both are true. Ethan has been a great joy in our lives. He's happy, energetic, inquisitive, adventurous, smart, and a great sleeper. But he also wants all our attention, likes to push boundaries, sometimes doesn't understand why hitting, biting, spitting, (etc.) are bad, and still has a hard time if we leave him (like with a babysitter or in nursery).

In short, we have a perfectly normal two-year old child.

I should say that even with the hard times, we wouldn't give our son up for anything in the world. Not even a million anythings! Our lives have been enriched and our understanding has been greatly expanded by having him.

As his birthday has approached, I've been thinking about the time when we brought him home from the hospital. Mia and I were so nervous because he was this little (metaphorically) baby that depended on us for everything. He could barely even move on his own. We wondered if we were really able to give him the constant care that he would need and were a bit surprised that the hospital staff was willing to just send us home with a 3 day old baby. I guess they needed the room for someone else ;)

Somehow we survived the long nights, especially long during the 2-hours of sleep at a time phase. We survived the breastfeeding ('we' is used very loosely here). We survived the first baby-proofing phase when we were surprised by how many things could be dangerous to him. We are now entering the second baby-proofing phase in which we are surprised at how innovative he can be when he wants to get something. This phase is mostly characterized by throwing stuff into our bedroom, or on top of the refridgirator. We'll see how long until those don't work either.

We have some video from the birthday boy to post up later. But I just wanted to get down some of the thoughts that I've been having on my son's birthday.

Oh, speaking of which, he loves having Happy Birthday sung to him. And he is starting to sing along too! Then he tells us to sing it about Mommy :)