The Burlingames

One of the minor irritations I endured when moving to my mac was what to do about our financial software. We’ve been using an old version of Microsoft Money for a number of years and it does exactly what I want. The most important feature that it offers is the debt reduction planner. You put in all the account info (balance, interest rate, etc), how much you want to pay each month, and it will tell you how much to pay each month to each account as well as the dates each will be paid off.

Back to the point; Money is, of course, a Windows-only program. I have XP installed on a Boot Camp partition on my mac, but it is a pain to restart the machine and load Windows. The other option is to run a virtual machine program, like Parallels or Fusion. However, it seemed ridiculous to spend $80 on either of them to run a 7-year-old program.

This led me to look for a mac-compatible program, but none of the available options seemed very good. Plus, I would have to drop between $40 and $80 for a new financial program (not to mention the hassle of switching over the old data). Thus, I put up with Boot Camp for awhile.

Now, however, I have a new setup, and it is working great. I found a free virtual machine program called VirtualBox. I now run XP in the virtual machine and have Money installed on it: no restarting required. There are some other benefits, including wicked-fast startup and shutdown times for XP in the virtual machine. The last time I started XP, it took only 18 seconds to load (granted, I’m running a really stripped-down version of XP, but that’s at least twice as fast as loading the same version in Boot Camp).

It seems to be working really well. Now I can patiently wait for a native mac program that has everything I need. With as well as this works, though, I don’t see myself switching any time soon.

The air is crisp, the leaves are falling, and something primal within me has awakened. Deer hunting is rapidly approaching: yesssssssss. I went out to the range the other day to make sure I can still hit something with my rifle. After a bit of scope tweaking and shooting a box of shells, I am once again feeling like a killing machine. I have to say, I love the smell of gun powder in the morning. My hope is that Baby Rupert either comes early or stays put until hunting is over. It’s not just that I don’t want to miss hunting; I don’t want to be flying back to the city on Highway 10, trying to make it before the boy does. We’ll see how it shakes out.

Here are my pictures from the past few weeks – week 33 and 34. My apologies for not getting them up sooner.

I also have an update on Baby Rupert from the past couple of weeks as well. He is growing and his movements are becoming more exaggerated with each passing day. As I type this he is busy moving my entire stomach around, kinda fun to watch. I also learned what a contraction was suppose to feel like and I believe I’m having the Braxton Hicks contractions several times a day.

Anyway, each week we go in for an ultrasound called a ‘biophysical profile’ or BPP. The purpose of the BPP is to check five different areas: my amnio fluids, his movement, heart-rate, muscle tone and whether is practicing his breathing skills or not. Apparently babies only practice breathing 1/3 of the time they are in the womb. If Rupert does well and ‘passes’ these test they will put in him the ‘normal, healthy baby’ range.

He is graded on a 10 point scale.

• 10/10 = he passed and everything looks great
• 8/10 = he is missing one component of the test (typically not practicing breathing skills)
• 6/10 = I’m going back the next day for further assessments
• 4/10 = I’m going to the hospital for monitoring
• 2/10 = I’m having this baby NOW.

We have had two ‘tests’ and so far, Rupert has passed with a perfect score. Our son is a fighter and very determined to be born healthy.

We still covet your prayers for him, a complete healing of his heart and that he will be born complete and healthy. We also covet your prayers for us as we finish out the last few weeks of this pregnancy and continue to prepare for our little man to come home with us.

I have also added new pictures to the ‘Baby Boy Burlingame’ album. Go take a look!