The Dobrindt Family

Streets of Boston

Saturday afternoon I was getting ready to do some chores when the phone rang and it was Patti. The first thing she said was “Something VERY bad happened to the car”. That is not something you want to hear when you are trying to save for a house, a new car, and working toward paying off student loans. Especially when you only have one car.

Here’s what happened –

Patti had the baby in the car and had just picked up two friends who are in town and staying at a hotel downtown. They were on a small back road behind Beacon Street facing the Charles River and running parallel to Storrow Drive. For anyone who has driven in Boston, the streets are 1) full of pot holes, 2) narrow, 3) full of pot holes, 4) full of raised manhole covers, and 5) full of pot holes. As she was driving down the street, she went over a raised manhole cover that was a little too high and next to pot holes and yes, the car hit the cover, which was stationary, and did some serious damage. It turns out the axle, wheel arm and sub frame were bent. That, in a nutshell, is the risk you take when you drive in Boston with a car that sits low to the ground. Thank Goodness no one was hurt and insurance will cover the cost of damage and AAA took care of getting the car home. Patti’s friends and Emily were fine and Emily even got her first ride in a tow truck.

Thought I would share the fun.

Dot com flameouts

As some of you know, I work for IBM at a place called an Innovation Center, or more precisely, the IBM Center for e-business Innovation::Boston. It’s an IBM location that has a number if different skill sets working together to solve client problems related to their technology needs, and more often than not, related to their web site presence. As part of working with web and internet related technologies, I’ve closely followed the dot com rise and fall over the past few years because, well, it’s what my job is all about.

In 2000, a web site sprung up to poke fun at all these goofy dot coms that made no money, had no business plan and had no idea how they would make long term revenue. It was called F***edcompany.com, with the *** being replaced by letters that make the site a very bad word. The name was a play off of Fast Company, a magazine that was the darling of the magazine world during the height of the dot com era. It’s a great site to keep a check on the pulse of the dot com world. Well, the inventor of the site recently came out with a book called ‘F’d Company-Spectacular dot com Flameouts’ that highlight some of the more high profile failures. The author, Pud, has a very sarcastic writing style that I love. I am only a few pages into it but let me recite one of the first paragraphs.

“I’m out of dog food and my cat’s box needs new litter. I know what I’ll do: I’ll order Dog Chow and Fresh Step online from a sock puppet and then I’ll watch the dog starve and the cat shit all over the house while I wait for it to be delivered!”

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743228626/qid=1024971026/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-0123206-8744717">The book I am talking about</a>

Emily Update - week 7

Two fairly significant events took place this week regarding Emily. Neither one is very interesting, but after 7 weeks with her, we found them earth shattering.

The first one is that she slept through the night for the first time this past week. The other night she fell asleep around 11PM and we went to bed shortly after. Before we knew it, it was 6 AM and she hadn’t stirred. So in a little bit of a panic, Patti woke her up to eat – preventing sure starvation. Well, it turned out she didn’t want to eat, but wanted to go back to sleep. After a short nap at 6 AM, she had a big breakfast and was on her way.

For the next 5 nights, Emily would fall asleep between 11 and midnight and sleep until around 6 in the morning. Having a solid 7 hours of sleep, more for Patti than me, was like winning the lottery. I know it might not last, but it’s pretty great right now.

The other big event is the transition from a bassinet outside our bedroom to the crib in the nursery. This has two meanings – one is that she is getting bigger and has outgrown the small cage for the bigger one, and two, she is not within an arms reach. I think the latter has added a little bit of stress to our lives, because now we have to listen a little more carefully for fussing. And then on Saturday, I actually took the bassinet apart, signifying an end to that. Good stuff.

Just thought I’d share the fun.

There is a web site for anything

Don't ask me how I stumbled across this site, but it proves there is a site for everything and anything.

<a href="http://www.taquitos.net/">Snack product review</a>

My ride to work

I live 2.4 miles from the office I work out of. It is a very easy drive that includes basically three roads. This might sounds great, but yesterday it took 45 minutes to get to work, and this morning it took 30. If I go to the office on a Sunday, it takes between 10 to 15 minutes. But any morning with traffic, I sit there for anywhere from 20 to 50 minutes. I could walk to work faster and might start doing that. Just wanted to let everyone know.