As mentioned last week, I got a new Mac mini. It’s lovely. The box that they shipped it in was 24″ x 18.5″ x 12″. Inside that was a box that was 12.5″ x 12″ x 8.5″. Inside that was a box that was 8.5″ x 8.5″ x 5″. Inside that was the mini – 6.5″ x 6.5″ x 2″. So they shipped it in a box that could have held 63 minis. And that held a box that could have held 15 minis. And that held a box that could have held 4 minis. And the whole thing weighed 9 pounds. This is a tiny computer.
And after spending a few hours this weekend working on it, I have it set up with a handy USB KVM switch from IOGear. To switch my mouse, keyboard and monitor from working with my pretty computer to the ugly PC, I just tap Ctrl-Ctrl.
Of course, no sooner did I take posession of my new toy than the other kids wanted one of their own. So Friday night, we bought Kellie an iMac G5. She decided against the laptop, and I can’t say no to her. It’s very beautiful.
We’re both now using the standard Mac keyboard which is very lovely and has a good key feel, but is not terribly ergonomic. I don’t do a whole lot of typing at home, so it shouldn’t make too much of a difference, but I’m going to be on the lookout for a Mac/PC compatible USB split/ergonomic keyboard with some built-in USB ports.
Now that the good stuff is out of the way: Jared stayed up really late on Friday night, and when he woke up at 7:11 on Saturday morning, he tripped and fell while running down the stairs. I heard the fall, and I heard him screaming, so I ran to the living room where I found him sitting on the couch. His face and hands were covered in a thin layer of blood, and there was a blackish pool of it forming on his forehead right at the hairline. I grabbed a blanket that was at hand and started cleaning it up so that I could see how bad it was. After realizing that it was a) bad enough to need stitches, and b) not bad enough that I couldn’t leave him for a second to get Kellie, I got Kellie. We washed him off, calmed him down, and taped a big gauze pad to his head. Kellie’s grandmother donated an ace bandage to the cause and, with a backpack full of things to keep him happy, Jared and I headed out for the hospital.
We live only a few blocks from a hospital, and Saturday morning isn’t the busiest time for the emergency room, so we were seen very quickly. Jared was in good spirits, and was very sweet about everything. When we got the ace bandage off, the pediatrician on duty agreed that he needed stitches after just lifting a corner of his bandage. We had to wrap Jared in a sheet and put him in what they call a papoose. It wasn’t quite big enough to hold his arms and chest, so I had to pin down his body while a nurse held his head steady. The doctor cleaned up the wound some more, and used a needle full of anasthetic to spray the outside of the wound. Then she lifted up each side of the inch-long cut and squirted the inside. Jared was pissed. I felt pretty bad for the nurse who was trying to hold his head, but I had my hands full keeping Jared from escaping and dealing with seeing my son’s skull through the open wound.
Stitching went better than I expected. I explained to Jared that he was a caterpillar and that the papoose was his cocoon. I promised him that if he sat very still, he would become a butterfly. He gritted his teeth and held still while they gave him his 6 stitches (that looks worse than it is because of bad lighting and the bacitracin goop that’s covering the area). Afterwards, Jared got up and ran around the room flapping his arms and yelling, “I’m a Butterfly now! I can fly! I can fly!”
It was all over pretty quickly – within two hours of the accident, we were leaving the hospital. He’s been just fine since, and doing things to scare me. While I’m glad that Jared is okay, and I’m very happy that he was well-behaved in the hospital, I’m getting increasingly afraid that this is the start of a new era in our house: the era of the hospital visits. Jared is now fast enough to get a good head of steam going, and heavy enough to have some force behind him. Smacking his head and splitting it open is the first step on his way to breaking bones. Thursday he has to get the stitches out and visit the doctor who prescribes him medicine for impulse control. That should be fun.
Everyone else have a nice weekend?
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