Nathan has gotten the hang of several words recently.   He’s had “uh-oh” down pat for quite some time, but now he’s branching out: “Wa-wa” (water), “Na-na” (banana, his most-requested food), “Apo” (apple), “Da-da”, “Hi”, “Up”, “Anen” (at the end of prayers, with arms crossed nonetheless), and my favorite — “E-I-E-I-O”.

He also really likes music.   We’ll hear him singing gibberish to himself after he wakes up from his naps, and he likes waving his arms to “conduct” the music at church.   He also likes to play with my old Casio keyboard, which can withstand a little drool.

So we’ve been sleeping in our new house for a little more than a week now, and we are getting settled in. The biggest annoyance left is the fact that we don’t have a fridge in the house.   (Sarah is planning to re-finish the hardwood floors in the front entry, hall and kitchen/dining room, so we didn’t want to move the refrigerator in and out and in again.)

There are also some boxes left to be unpacked (especially in our bedroom, where yesterday we dumped a load of books that need to be put on our shelf) and photos/decorations/clocks to be hung on the walls, but overall we’re getting there.   Yesterday our big project was to cut a bunch of branches off the evergreen tree that were scratching on the back windows and siding.

The other day we made cookies to take to meet our neighbors.   We met with varying degrees of receptivity, from the teenaged girl who gave us a why-the-heck-are-you-here look, to the family up the street who had us come in for a 10-minute chat and offered to loan us tools.   People in our ward have been friendly and engaging with us, but of course we don’t feel as comfortable at Church yet as we did in the Brookhaven Ward after 4 1/2 years.

Moving always means scrounging boxes from wherever you can in order to get all of your stuff from House A to House B.   In our case, we’ve been collecting boxes since before I left Channel 4 — paper boxes, Nexpress cylinder boxes, diaper boxes, etc.   We hauled a lot of stuff down to the Shefchiks’ garage in the last several months in those boxes.

Now we’re coming down to the wire and packing away a lot of stuff — anything that we don’t think we’ll need in the next week goes in a box.   Sarah sent me out on a box-hunting mission this morning.   My journey started and ended in Wal-mart’s customer service area.   I walked in and saw a shopping cart full of collapsed boxes that once had held bags of Malt o Meal cereal, asked if I could have them, and walked out.   I didn’t have to do a thing except load them into my car.   There were 23 24 of the boxes, measuring 20 x 13 x 16 and they’re wonderful for packing stuff in.

My favorite part of the story is that I walked past the shipping supply department at Wal-mart, where they sell (for about $5) smaller boxes than the ones they gave me for free.   That’s more than $100 worth of boxes that Wal-mart just gave away — you’d think they wouldn’t do that to avoid cutting into their own business plan, but I was a very happy customer.

—

Update: I found another box upstairs that I’d started to pack in.   Count is now 24.

So last night was a ward/stake Valentine’s dinner and dance.   After a minor babysitter-related trauma (“I don’t like Emily!” repeated about 500 times), we had fun at an adult dinner party at our neighbors’ house, then went over to the Stake Center for the dance.   They were playing some really lame songs, and we only lasted about an hour before we decided to go make our own fun.

While Sarah got the kids to bed, I took the babysitter home and went to the video store to get a Wii game. Sarah had heard that Wario Land: Shake It! was fun, so I picked it up.   It wasn’t until I got home and our friends Brad and Debbie were already over that we realized that it was only a 1-player game.

While Brad and I amused ourselves with Guitar Hero III, Sarah and Debbie went back to the store specifically looking for a 4-player game.   They came home with Bust-A-Move Bash! — advertised to support up to 8 players.

To me, the name “Bust-A-Move Bash!” implies a party atmosphere, but the game was anything but a party.   Instead, it was a tired rehash of a game we had on our computer 10 years ago, Snood. While the rest of us were trying to line up the colors and shoot precisely, Debbie won the first round by randomly pushing buttons.   So that’s what we all did for the second (and final) round, which Sarah ended up winning.   We poked around in the single-player mode for a couple of minutes, but there was nothing interesting to us, so we ended up playing a game that Sarah had bought me for Valentine’s Day a few weeks ago, Boogie.   (Which has its own set of problems.)

Anyway, I didn’t intend to write a whole long story about our night last night, but rather to warn potential purchasers or renters of Bust-A-Move Bash that it’s lame and derivative, with cheesy graphics and annoying music.   My final grade is a D.

So last night, Sarah and I went to the LDS Film Festival in Orem — the first such festival I’d ever been to.   (Yes, I’ve lived in Utah for 90% of my life and never been to a screening at Sundance.)   There were some signs of the pretentious artists who frequent these kinds of things, but for the most part, it was just like watching a bunch of movies, even down to the annoying cell phones lighting up the theater during the shows (even after their owners had been requested to leave them off).

We decided to go because one of Sarah’s old drama friends, Tim Hall, directed one of the movies in the Short Film Competition, “Dirt.”   It was the last of the films we saw in the showing, and one of the best.

First up on the rundown was “The Teller’s Tale” by some BYU film students.   I thought the story and the visual effects were fun, but the acting wasn’t the best — what can you expect from child actors?

Next, we saw “The Skeleton Dance”, which was a class project for East Hollywood high school students and didn’t exceed my expectations at all.   It was three minutes of stop-motion animation that looked like it was emulating “The Nightmare Before Christmas” — and I couldn’t have handled much more than that.

“Face to Face” was one of my favorites in the show — an interesting character piece with one actor playing two versions of his character — a meek loser and his insulting, violent inner self.   Sarah thought it was too dark, but I voted for it as one of the best in the competition.   Bonus points for the director being named Spanky.

“Medicine Man” was the first film in the screening that I really disliked.   It mixed Native American mystical ideas (and peyote) with the Atonement of Jesus Christ in a way that really rubbed me wrong.   It wasn’t very interesting either.

“The Edge of the World” was a fun animated piece like something you might expect to see done in Flash on the Internet, but it had a good little moral about recognizing the opportunities God gives you in life.

“Fifty Cents” was a heart-warming story of a boy who likes a girl and asks her to the big dance despite anti-cooties peer pressure from his friends.   I thought the scenery and cinematography were very nice, and since I liked the story, it ended up being the second vote on my ballot.   Sarah thought the acting was a little stilted.

“Do or Die-08” — if I disliked “Medicine Man”, I hated this movie.   Hated, hated, hated.   It had random flashes of weirdness, very little storyline, and the only dialog was in Norwegian(?) with English subtitles.   The festival web site says this was 12 minutes long (way too long for me) and a trailer for a full-length film — I can’t imagine anything worse!

“These Words Are Mine” — a harmless story about a wise-cracking teenager and the terrible story that his girl friend writes.   I thought it was kinda fun, with attractive and amiable leads, but nothing to write home about.

“A Piece of Infinity” was a silent film about a woman who lost her husband and has flashbacks about their life together.   After 6 and a half minutes, I was ready to shout at the screen, “We get it, she misses him!”   This was another one helped by pretty people.

“Dirt” was the tale of a man who’d lost his wife to a divorce and lost his life in the process.   His healing process was an interesting one to watch, and Sarah voted for it as the best in the the show.

Overall, the films weren’t all that great — nothing that you’d run out to buy on DVD or anything, but good for a couple of hours of entertainment.   Sarah and I were also suprised that the only film that specifically mentioned LDS culture or doctrine was the weird Mormon/American Indian mash-up.   Not that movies made by LDS artists have to be only for Mormon audiences, but we thought there would be more.

Like last year, I’m posting ABC 4’s year in review video. Unlike last year, I wasn’t involved in the behind-the-scenes planning of the recap, since I no longer work there. But when I watched the events of Utah news from 2008, it brought back a lot of memories for me — with the notable exception of the LDS protests after California’s Proposition 8 passed in November, I was directly involved in every one of the stories they showed. (I count boothing the Red Zone show for several weeks a close enough link to the Utes going 12-0 this year, even if I wasn’t there when they finished the job. Congratulations, by the way, to Coach Kyle and his team, for their great season and their Sugar Bowl win last night.)

Anyway, even if my work isn’t so much in the public eye anymore (unless you’re interested in putting your own colors on a customized name tag — I wrote the code that lets you do that), I feel like I helped accomplish something at channel 4 in 2008, with some great people in front of and behind the cameras. (It has been nice to lay off the news fix for a while since I left.)

Here’s an impersonal Christmas letter from the Gibby family: http://www.curtisgibby.com/christmas2008

I tried my best to make it interesting and somewhat interactive — have fun reading it!

We bought ourselves a Nintendo Wii for Christmas, but because Sarah’s brother and sister have been in town for Thanksgiving, we opened it early so the whole family could enjoy it.

And enjoy it we did.   The first game that comes with the system is Wii Sports, which we used a lot the first couple of days.   The kids had a good time flailing their arms in Wii Boxing, and more often than not, they landed just as many blows as we did using our well-planned techniques.

We also got Wii Play because it includes another Wiimote and Nunchuk.   It has a few interesting mini-games, but not much that will hold our attention for extended periods of time.

The biggest hit of the season at the Shefchik house has been Wii Fit, which tries to keep you healthy through exercises and balance games.   It comes with a washboard-sized Balance Board that weighs you, tells you your Wii Fit Age and lets you do all kinds of fun activities.   It keeps records of who has done the best on which activities, and the Top 10 rankings are a big motivator.   (I’ve constantly been trying to best James on top of the lists for each activity — and I’ve gotten most of the records on our system already.   Now that James has gone home to California, I’m confident that I can hold the titles for all of the major games.)

I also got Guitar Hero III with a couple of Frontman guitars.   My brothers have all of the iterations of Guitar Hero for the XBox 360 and I’ve fought an addiction to it at times.   I haven’t had as much chance to play my own version in the last few days since we got it (the kids are always asking to play other games, plus I wouldn’t want to play Rage Against the Machine with 4-year-olds around), but so far I’m not as impressed with the Wii version as with the Xbox.   The guitars I have aren’t as nice as the stock GH guitars.

The only reason that Sarah wanted to get a Wii is because it encourages activity, waving the Wiimote around or throwing punches or lobbing tennis serves.   The Wii is also a very social gaming system — people flock around it.   (So much so that Judy got sick of it and asked us to leave it off for Thanksgiving Day.)   I highly recommend the Wii for families, and it’s just getting to the point where you can find them in stores (rather than waiting for them to come in-stock).   So far, we’ve had plenty of fun with it, and it’s only been a week since we got it out of the box.

This post used to be entitled “Wii Belong” for a little Pat Benatar action, but this is a much better title, don’t you think?

At ten months, Nathan has been learning to stand on his own.

At first, he didn’t trust himself on his feet.   As soon as he realized he was up alone, he’d immediately sit down — but it was a controlled sit.   So we would distract/bribe him with a treat or toy and he’d be up for a few more seconds.   (That’s why I called this post “Standing for Something”.)

But in the last couple of days, he’s gotten used to standing up.   He even laughs when he realizes that’s what’s going on, rather than bailing out.   I took a photo of his new trick yesterday, but it’s still on my camera and we don’t have the cord with us.   I’ll post it when we get home tomorrow.

Update: Here’s the promised photo.

A while back I wrote about the web service I was using to listen to music at work, MediaMaster.   (It’s also much better now than I imply in that blog entry — they now have a newer Flash-based browswer service that’s not slow and clunky, my main complaints before.)

But a few weeks ago, MediaMaster had an outage that made it so I couldn’t listen to my music there — what was I going to do?   Sit at my computer in silence?   Not hardly, especially since there are loud servers and an air conditioner running constantly in my office.   Go back to the ad-laden Yahoo! Music?   That lasted about an hour before I couldn’t stand it anymore and set out looking for a better alternative.

I found it in Pandora.   Like Y!M, you start out with a base song or artist that you like, then build a radio station from there.   You give thumbs up or thumbs down to songs that it plays for you and it uses proprietary “Music Genome Project” technology to figure out what characteristics of the music you like.   There are no audio or video ads to distract from the music and it doesn’t play as many unknown artists as Yahoo! Music.   There are supposedly ad-themed skins for the site that refresh every time you interact with the site (play/pause or thumbs up/down, etc.), but I never see them thanks to Adblock Plus.

I also found a cool way to control Pandora on the desktop — OpenPandora.   It’s a Windows application that lets you use keyboard shortcuts to play/pause/skip and pops up a descriptive window in the TaskBar when each song begins.   No ads there either.

Between the two services, I’m a happy man at work.   I split my time between both — MediaMaster in the morning and Pandora after lunch.   But there are a couple of things that I would change about Pandora — options for more fine-grained control.   First, they let you create different “radio stations” and run a QuickMix of any or all of your stations.   But they don’t let you give one station more weight in the mix — if you wanted to hear 5 songs from your popular music station for every one classical song, for example.   I also wish you could give one seed artist more precendence over another — I like Eric Clapton, but I like U2 more — but since I have both among my seed artists, the program pulls songs from similar artists to both Clapton and U2 at the same rate.