The Wargo Blog

August found a bunch of acorns recently and this weekend he and Elizabeth decided to try to actually catch a squirrel using them. They laid out a path of acorns leading to a box and planned on jumping out to drop the box on any squirrel that ventured out to eat the acorns.

I showed him to tie a string to the end of a stick and pull the stick out to trap the squirrel in the box. He loved it. He immediately setup three traps and sat there patiently, hiding, waiting for a squirrel to come eat the acorns. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he probably wouldn’t catch one.

We head up to Chicago at least once a year to spend some time with Anna’s friends. We usually end up spending a lot of time with one of her friends who lives on a circle at the end of the road. They have three girls, a lot of toys and a lot of room to play in the street. They had this little pedal car and August fell in love with it. After the second year of visiting and August spending all of his time in the car, we finally got him one. It’s called a Kettcar and it’s made by a company called Kettler. He LOVES it – spends a whole bunch of time just sitting in it or pedaling around the driveway.

He’s too big for it, but has the seat pushed back as far as it can go. We’ll replace it when we get to our new house (haven’t sold the old one yet). It’s really an awesome toy.

Being a geek is a lot of fun (don’t call me a nerd, that’s different). It’s probably one of the things that makes me so interesting to Anna. Anyway, we’ve always joked about how I’m such a geek then I found this article this morning:

Top 10 Endearing Habits of a Geeky Spouse | GeekDad | Wired.com.

Made stilts for the twins today. Anna asked me a long time ago to make some and Elizabeth had a tea party this morning, so August and I got to work. Note to self: It’s always easier to build something without a 5 year old asking a million questions.

Anna, the twins and I spent some time in Baltimore last weekend. We spent all day Saturday taking the Water Taxi over to Ft. McHenry and back – not what we expected. Here’s a photo of us on one of the taxi rides (there were several – had to change boats three times on the way over).

Safari Books Online published the first half of the book in rough-cuts format today. You can start reading the book here.

For years, Anna and I would try different dog toys and the silly dogs would break them within seconds of getting them. We just realized though that there’s one toy they’ve used for years and they haven’t broken it. It’s called a soft bite floppy disk and, although the one we have is crumpled, torn and crappy looking – it is still in one piece and the dogs play with it all the time. We love it.

No, not THAT chapter 11, chapter 11 of my book.

I submitted the remaining chapters for review and got an email from one of the reviewers indicating that she had some problems with the chapter and wanted to talk about it. We chatted for a while and I agreed with her. I’d written about what I knew about BlackBerry Java Development, but I didn’t present the information in as structured of a way as was needed for the book. I asked her to write-up her concerns and I’d rewrite the chapter with her comments in mind. Well, she gave me an outline to use to structure the content and it was spot on. I’ve studied her outline, adjusted it a little bit and now I’m using it as a guide for the rewrite. Ultimately this will make it a better book, but I’m truly not excited to be back in writing mode again.

The entire first half of the book has been through the edit and review process, so it should be up on Safari Books Online in a couple of weeks. Now all I need to do is finish 11 (and any corresponding changes that happen in the appendix) and get the content off for review.

It looks like I will actually be done with the book on schedule and, because I wrapped up the review into the editing process, I may actually see the book released early. I’ve been getting a lot of attention this week on the Internet. Berryreview.com wrote about the book and many of the other blogs picked it up. There were even some translations into Spanish that popped up a day later. I’ll try to post all of the links to <a href=”http://www.bbdevfundamentals.com” target=”_blank”>www.bbdevfundamentals.com</a> when I get a chance.