Kevin Minnis

Okay, so i’m not a steady blogger. I’m not really sure what the reasons are, but some of them are just being busy being a dad, Twitter, and Facebook. It seems that I’ve done more micro-blogging if you want to call it that using Twitter.

So, what’s been going on? Well, we had  a great Christmas and 2009 started out pretty well inspite of The Great Depression II. I’m very fortunate that the Ag industry is holding strong.

Jayden has been learning all the time and is becoming the little man.  He loves to figure out how everything works. He also loves talking your ear off once he gets going. He also knows how to use pause on the DVR. It’s sad he won’t even know what a VCR was. (Actually, it’s a good thing the VCR is dead. ) Jayden got to make a pirate box to put his pull-ups into and have the pirates visit with a bunch of treasure. We’re so glad that he’s doing pretty well in making it through the night without a pull-up. He still wakes up wet occasionally, but he’s getting there.

Josie is a daddy’s girl. It’s not uncommon to hear her tell me, “I need you” and then proceed to try and get you to drop whatever you were doing and pick her up. I don’t mind. She’s my little Princess, Tinkerbell or Cinderella depending on the day. One day we tried to straighten her hair, but I told Kim that I never wanted it straighted again…unless Josie does it herself when she’s a teenager. She did not look like our little Josie at all.

Kim has been feeding her facebook “addication” and has hooked up with quite a few people from her past. It’s pretty cool to think we can reconnect with people in such an easy method.

Well, there you have it.  The start to 2009.

This past weekend we took a trip to the Minnis Farm. Jayden was thrilled and couldn’t wait to help Papa and Great Papa. He wouldn’t take a nap on Saturday because he just had to help Papa feed the cows. One of his favorite things to do while on the farm. We also did some exploring with Jayden and Josie. Kevin took Jayden out on Great Papa’s 4-Wheeler. They both had a good time and could have ridden all day. Josie was infatuated with all the cows. Even though she wanted to see some sheep too. But there are no sheep on the farm.
Jayden actually let a cow lick his fingers. That hasn’t happened since he was probably under 1 year old. He thought that was cool. Josie was going to let it lick her fingers until it jumped and she got scared. Maybe next time. Good thing for their “farm boots.” It was extra muddy with all the melting and rain. Josie loves her “farm boots.” She would wear them everyday if i let her. Even the big boys like their farm boots too. Kevin is modeling his new boots for the next issue of “G.Q.” Quite the stud he is, huh? I, on the other hand, need to invest in some farm boots! “Cosmo”–here I come!!

The most exciting thing from the weekend was actually witnessing a birth of a cow! Tis the season for births and after 6 years, I actually got to see one live. “Ace” as I like to call it, was born around 9:30 Friday night. I gave him/her the name Ace because it was the first birth of the season and my first birth to see. (Except my own children). It was really really cool. Man, to think we as humans get the opportunity for drugs to cope with the pain! Poor animals have to go through it all naturally. Thank Goodness for an Epidural! The cow really didn’t make any noises, she just kind of walked around/laid down and had him/her. It was fun watching the process afterwards of the mama cow, owning her child. It takes awhile, but she warmed up to it and started to lick her clean. (could you imagine if humans had to lick their child clean, yuck!!!) I’m glad it was a good birth and not one of those where Kevin’s dad would have had to pull it out! So it was a happy ending!

Kevin, Jayden, Josie and I, rode out in the bucket of the tractor (loader bucket) the next morning, to see baby Ace. They had moved the mom and baby so that they could be alone. The kids thought that was really cool to ride on the tractor like that. They were also excited to see the baby. Great papa was even more excited to take us out on the tractor to see it! What a ride!!

This will probably be short. It’s amazing how fast Josie is catching on to things. She’s almost 19 months and so far has sat on her potty and gone in it 3 times. Yeah! Amazing, I know. To most people this isn’t a big deal, but to a parent, this is huge. Now, if we can just find small enough undies for her. The ones Kim got last night are huge and that’s the smallest they make.

Okay, I thought I’d give it a try. I bought a 30 Gig Zune and took it for a drive. I owned a 20 Gig iPod before the Zune purchase, but it didn’t have video. In deed the Zune has video but in Microsoft’s infinite wisdom all video is converted to the wmv format instead of just supporting the major players (mpeg4, divx). There used to be hacks, and maybe they still work but I didn’t try it, to force the Zune to “use” the other formats. But again, the Zune software will convert it to wmv instead of keeping it in the original format.

Okay, now for the real pain with Zunes. Microsoft did update the Zune software and underlying firmware which is great. I do like the fact that they can upgrade the Zune to be a newer version, but in my eyes, it was a PR stunt and they wanted to get something, anything no matter what it consisted of, out there for the Christmas shopping rush. They may have upgraded the whole thing, but they left out the critical pieces (Forum Entry). Unlike the iPod, the rating system is limited to a heart, a broken heart, or not rated. There isn’t a smart/auto play list, only the playlist that you create by dragging the song to the playlist. For some people, this may be enough.

For a power user like me, having the smart play list found in the iPod is a must. I have 6 smart play lists which excludes songs from other smart playlists and includes into a playlist based on the rating of a song. For example, I have one name 1-No Kids. It’s the primary one that I use and as you can probably guess from the name, it excludes Kids music. It also excludes slow music (that’s in another playlist – 6-Good 4 Soul). The reason I use a number is that it sorts the playlists so that I can easily go to a play list while on the road with the iPod. I also have playlists based on ratings. 2-Best Stuff, 3-Great Stuff, 4-Good Stuff; each having songs included based on the 5 star rating scale.

One thing that I got used with my iPod using it as a hard drive. I didn’t store a lot on it, but it came in handy when I wanted to copy something from my work computer to take home and work on. The Zune doesn’t give you an option to even try and access it as a hard drive. Yes, there were hacks out there, but why fight it. The iPod just worked right out of the box. Who cares how you market a device, you shouldn’t restrict a user in the use of the device.

Lastly, the odd thing about the Zune website is that you have to go to zune.net instead of zune.com. You’d think Microsoft could at least buy zune.com and forward it to zune.net.

Welp, off to listen to my video iPod that I traded the Zune for on Craig’s List.

Well, the time is finally here. Jayden has mastered potty training and only wears his pull-up at night and when taking a nap, otherwise, he wants his “scibbies” and won’t let us put on a pull-up. It’s something how we grown-ups can think of it as a small thing to use the bathroom. In Jayden’s case, it’s like a horse and water. Jayden did it on his own time. You can’t just force a kid to use it no matter how hard you want them to. At any rate, we’re extremely happy that he is using it.

Yesterday we took our annual trip to Howell’s Tree Farm to get the kids their pumpkins and to have some fun playing with all the stuff they have setup. While there we also saw Amy and Zach Larson so that was cool. It had rained the night before and it was pretty muddy, but we had a good time anyway and washed our shoes when we got home.

More pictures can be seen at the Halloween 2007 Picture Set.