Luke went to the pediatrician for his four month checkup on Wednesday. He is now 17 lbs., 6 oz. and 26 inches long. That puts him in about the 80th percentile for weight and 90th percentile for length according to the CDC charts. Not bad. The doctor said he looked very healthy. We can start feeding him baby food in a week or two. That should be interesting.

Luke mastered rolling over several weeks ago. He now sleeps on his stomach most of the time. That worries us a little bit, but there’s not much you can do about it. He has started teething. I don’t think there will be any coming through real soon, but he’s drooling a lot and he puts everything he gets his hands on in his mouth. In the last week or so he was started playing with his feet. Anytime you lay him on his back he goes for his feet. He chews on them occasionally, but not too often. Also in the past week or so he’s started reaching for things. He’ll reach for his bottle, his burp cloth, toys, people, etc. He even held his own bottle for a little bit the other night. He can sit up a little bit, but he slumps over pretty quick. We’re working on that.

I have decided to use Zenfolio for Luke’s pictures, but I still don’t have any up there. Soon, I promise.

I was glad to see this post on the Freakonomics blog today. Levitt summarizes a logical analysis of “the surge” by an MIT economist. To summarize it even further, the surge is making a difference in some areas, but it doesn’t seem to be making a long term difference.

The author’s main evidence on that front is the price of Iraqi government-issued bonds. If the government collapses the bonds won’t get paid. At the moment, the financial markets aren’t giving the government much of a chance based on the price of the bonds. Of course, financial markets do occasionally get things wrong, but they’re right more often than not.

Levitt also makes some interesting observations about academia at the end of the post.

Let’s be honest, not all of the candidates that were in the debate have a chance to win the nomination. Giuliani, Romney, and McCain are obviously in the running. Giuliani and Romney are frontrunners, but were defensive on several issues last night; Giuliani more so than Romney. I thought McCain was pretty strong in the debate. I had previously written him off s a true contender. While I still don’t think he’ll get the nomination, it’s probably too early to give up on him.

I think Mike Huckabee should be added to the list of real contenders. He came in second in Iowa, and I would argue he won the debate tonight. I don’t agree with him on a lot of things, but I thought all of his answers were strong and he wasn’t defensive. (It is interesting to note that Huckabee was born in the same small Arkansas town as Bill Clinton.) While he has executive experience, he doesn’t have a lot of the political baggage that Giuliani and Romney do. He’s got a long way to go to get the nomination, but I think he has a shot.

As a libertarian, I found Ron Paul’s responses to be interesting and amusing. He’s way more hardcore than me, but I do agree with him on a lot of issues. Have a look at his Wikipedia page. Unfortunately, like a typical Libertarian, he doesn’t know how to make his proposals palatable for the average citizen. He has no shot at winning.

Unfortunately I still think we have pretty sad selection of candidates this time around, though both parties have candidates that are better than their 2004 nominations. The question is, will their nominations be better than 2004’s nominations? I expect Hillary will win the Democratic nomination, which frankly scares me a little bit. Even scarier is I don’t see a Republican candidate that can beat her in the general election. I’m still holding out hope that Michael Bloomberg will run as a independent.

Luckily her room here at the Mississippi Surgery Center has Wifi. We’ll be headed home first thing in the morning as soon as Cassie’s doctor does his rounds.

Cassie is feeling good too. She’ll be having surgery in Jackson next week. That should clear up the last of her childbirth-related issues. Luke will be staying with our parents in Belmont while we’re in Jackson.

We’re leaving for Belmont this afternoon as soon as I get off work to enjoy the long weekend. My parents haven’t seen Luke in over three weeks, so it should be fun. I plan on taking lots of pictures.

Tomorrow is Ole Miss’ first football game of the season against Memphis. There are a lot of question marks for the team this year (more than usual), so it should be interesting to see how things turn out. I don’t plan on making it to many games this year, but I will be watching with interest. Mississippi State lost 45-0 to LSU last night in their first game. No one expected them to win, but no expected 45-0 either. I guess that’s what seven turnovers will do to you.

More soon.

Luke is doing just fine. He’ll be 7 weeks, 2 days old in a couple of hours. We weighed him a few days ago, and he’s already gained over three and half pounds. He’s been grinning at nothing in particular since day one, but in the last few days he’s started smiling in response to us talking to him. One little smile can make up for a lot of things. :)

I’ve put some pictures of Luke up on Flickr. However, I’ve taken a lot that aren’t up there. My Flickr Pro account expired, and I’ve been exploring my options. Zenfolio and Smugmug both looked promising, but I haven’t been real pleased with anything I’ve seen so far. I’m going to try to make up my mind soon so I can put some more pictures up.

My copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows arrived yesterday. I’m on page 330 of 759. So far the “Hallows” haven’t even been mentioned. The book is definitely a page turner, but I feel like it could be moving a little faster. I’ve felt the same way about the last couple of books. If you’re like me, and it’s been two years since you’ve read the Half-Blood Prince, you might have a look at it’s Wikipedia page. You probably don’t want to read this page though. :)

I haven’t had a chance to go through all 142 pictures I took at the hospital, but I’ve posted a few that caught my eye (set, slideshow). More details and pictures to come as soon as I catch up on my sleep. :)

Cassie hasn’t progressed any since her last visit, but the doctor said she’s already in good shape to be induced. If she hasn’t given birth by Monday morning, she’s going to be induced. We have to be at the hospital between 5:30 and 6:00am. The doctor said that if everything goes according to plan, Luke should arrive in the mid to late afternoon.

I got to hold Cassie’s cousin’s three day-old baby this past weekend. Now I’m even more exciting about Luke’s impending arrival. On the one hand I’d like him to be born in the next couple of days so I can spend the weekend plus my week off with him. On the other hand, it’d be nice to have one more weekend of normalcy. :) Good thing I have no choice in the matter.

We led 3-2 for most of the second game. In the bottom of the ninth Vanderbilt scored a run to make it 3-3 and force extra innings. (The tying run actually scored on a foul sacrifice fly to left field. That brings up the question of whether the left fielder should have let the foul ball drop instead of catching it for the out. I say yes, but it’s a pretty unique situation.)

In the top of the 10th, Ole Miss scored two runs when the catcher threw the ball into left field during a pickoff attempt at third base. The pickoff attempt occurred after a failed suicide squeeze. Crazy stuff. We then scored another run to make it 6-3. That’s a pretty secure lead in most extra inning situations, but we somehow allowed Vandy to score four runs in the bottom of the inning to win the game.

Sunday afternoon Vanderbilt played Arkansas for the SEC tournament championship. Vandy won 7-4. They are the first regular season champion to win the tournament in 10 years.

The NCAA also announced regional sites for the NCAA tournament Sunday afternoon. Vanderbilt, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Ole Miss will be hosting 4 of the 16 regionals. Vanderbilt is hosting its first ever regional. (Wow. That just shows you how far they’ve come.) Ole Miss is hosting one for the fourth year in a row. Texas is the only other school in the country that can make that claim.

Ole Miss will be hosting Southern Mississippi, Troy, and Sam Houston State this weekend in their regional. In my opinion, Southern Miss is the only team that has a chance to beat us, though Troy might surprise us. We’ve split two games against Southern Miss this year. However, neither team was using their best pitchers, so it’s hard to tell much from that. Our first game will be against Sam Houston State on Friday night.

I wandered around during the early afternoon and took a few pictures with my Fujifilm F31fd. I’ve posted 15 of them on Flickr. The slideshow is probably the best way to view them. Don’t miss the history in the description of one of the courthouse pictures.

This is the first set of pictures I’ve run through Lightroom. It saved a couple of them that were pretty badly underexposed. In the past I would’ve had to just throw them away. I think I’m getting better at separating the wheat from the chaff. I took over 100 photos and pared it down to these 15. Your comments are welcome. If you don’t have time to look at the entire set, I’ve posted four below.

Another issue is that my monitor wasn’t calibrated, so I ordered a copy of Colorvision Spyder2express. In a comment on my last post, Jeffrey says this is just as likely to hurt the color matching as to help it. Thankfully, in my case, it did help it. I can no longer differentiate between the Lightroom preview and an exported JPEG viewed in Firefox or Windows Picture Viewer. Here is the example photo I used earlier:

If your monitor is calibrated and you’re viewing it in a color managed application, it probably looks something like I intended it to. Otherwise, all bets are off. :) This is a photo from the Double Decker Festival last month. I’ll be posting some more soon. This particular one was pretty badly underexposed. I was able to save it with Lightroom.

Even if monitor calibration hadn’t helped, it’s always a good idea to have your monitor calibrated when editing images. I’ll never be able to control what my images look like in non-color managed applications, but at least I can control what they should look like. It does give me some amount of control.

While I still recommend Lightroom, I can’t really recommend it without some sort of monitor calibration package. I have no complaints about Spyder2express, and it’s only $60. Yes, there are better ones out there, but they cost a lot more. I’ll probably buy one of them some day, but for now I’m happy with Spyder2express.

I’ve been looking for a software project to do on my own time, and this experience may have pointed me toward one. Firefox should have some level of color management. However, I’m not sure where I’d even start, and it’s not something I want to get into right now with a baby on the way. Maybe in a couple of months.

Saturday at 1pm Ole Miss will play the winner of tonight’s Vanderbilt/Tennessee game. (Most likely Vanderbilt.) If we win, we go to Sunday’s championship game. If we lose we’ll play the same team again Saturday night since we haven’t lost a game in the tournament yet. We should have an advantage over our semifinal opponent due to the fact that we’ve played fewer games than them and aren’t as deep into our pitching staff.

We would face Arkansas or South Carolina in the championship game. One would hope South Carolina could upset Arkansas in the semifinals or at least force a second game. That would give us a pitching advantage in the championship game.

Yes, we got married before either of us had finished our Bachelor’s degree. It was in between my Junior and Senior years and her Sophomore and Junior years. It worked out well for us, but it’s not something I recommend for most couples. For whatever reason my GPA skyrocketed after we got married. Come to think of it, I haven’t made anything other than an “A” since we got married. Talk about a good luck charm. :)

Unfortunately, we don’t have anything spectacular planned for our fifth anniversary. I suppose we’ve been too focused on Luke. I halfway expected to be in the hospital (or already home) today. I imagine we’ll find a nice place to eat and use the long weekend to rest up before the little guy gets here.

We share our anniversary with some interesting historical events. For instance, the Constitutional Convention was convened today in 1787, John T. Scopes was indicted of teaching evolution in a Tennessee classroom in 1925, Babe Ruth hit his last home run in 1935 (his record stood for 39 years), JFK announced his goal of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth” in 1961, and the original Star Wars movie was released in only 32 theaters in 1977. Today is also Towel Day, a tribute to Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

She has another appointment for Wednesday (with another doctor). If she hasn’t had Luke by Monday, June 4th, her doctor will induce her. However, she’s due on Tuesday, May 29th, so we expect she’ll have Luke before then.

Cassie’s first cousin, Mandy, gave birth to her little boy, Braxton, in Tuscumbia, Alabama today. She wasn’t actually due until June 4th, but her doctor decided to induce her this morning. If Cassie had decided to be induced today, their grandmother would have become a great-grandmother twice in one day.

Mississippi State will have to play a vengeful Vanderbilt today at 1pm. Vanderbilt’s ace, David Price, is pitching. I predict State loses.

Ole Miss will be playing Tennessee tonight at 8pm. Tennessee took a series from us earlier in the season, but most people will tell you we are the better team. Lance Lynn will be pitching, and we have a bunch of fresh relievers. It should be a good game. Once again, I will not be staying up for it. Last night’s game was supposed to start at 8pm too, but it didn’t start until after 9:30pm and didn’t wrap up until 12:40am this morning. (Yes, that means MSU has just over 12 hours between games.)

If Ole Miss wins tonight, they won’t have to play again until Saturday. If they lose, they’ll have to play the winner of the Vanderbilt/MSU game tomorrow. That’s all the more reason to win. (Tournament schedule)

Earlier in the week Jordan Henry was named SEC Freshman of the Year. Zack Cozart made First Team All-SEC. Jordan Henry, Lance Lynn, and Cody Satterwhite made the Second Team. I was surprised to see that Justin Henry made neither.

Ole Miss and Mississippi State are about to square off in Game 4 of the SEC Tournament. Game time is set for 9:30pm. I will not be staying up for the conclusion. Three games have already been played today, and the biggest surprise so far is that Tennessee knocked off Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt is ranked #1 in the country and just finished sweeping Tennessee last weekend. The loser of the Ole Miss/MSU game has to play Vandy tomorrow. No one wants to play an angry, desperate Vanderbilt. Ole Miss won last year’s tournament by sweeping the field. They beat Vandy in the final game.

Ole Miss is fighting to host a regional. Some say we already have it in the bag. A good showing in the tournament would go a long way toward a case for a top 8 seed. Being a top 8 seed means you get to play at home in the second round of the tournament. The NCAA lists us as #14 in RPI, which is one of the measures they use to determine ranking for the NCAA tournament. Warrennolan.com, a web site that tracks college sports, lists us as having the toughest schedule in the country this year. It’ll be interesting to see how things pan out.

There is one small problem. I can tweak images to look exactly like I want them to in Lightroom, but then I have to export them to JPEGs. On my monitor at least, there is a notable color shift between the Lightroom preview and the exported JPEG viewed in Firefox or Windows Picture Viewer. Here’s an example:

The first one is a screenshot of the Lightroom preview. The second one is a scaled down version of the exported JPEG. On my monitor (and my monitor at work) there is an obvious color shift. Depending on the calibration of your monitor and the browser you’re using, these images may look completely different to you. If I import the exported JPEG back into Lightroom, the two look identical.

All of this led me to investigate the wonderful world of color management. Jeffrey Friedl has a good color management tutorial on his blog. It’s seven pages long, but the first three tell you most of what you need to know. Jeffrey is the author of O’Reilly’s Mastering Regular Expressions. I starting reading his blog a couple of months ago, but I missed his tutorial because he posted last year.

As it turns out, neither Firefox, nor IE, nor Windows Picture Viewer is color managed. Lightroom is, of course. The sRGB color space is supposed to render correctly in non-color managed applications. I knew this, and was exporting using sRGB, but the color shift was definitely there. ProPhoto RGB is the working color space for Lightroom, and there are definitely some colors in ProPhoto RGB that sRGB can’t display, but I don’t think that, by itself, accounts for the color shift.

I posted to a couple of forums, and the most viable explanation is that my monitor is miscalibrated. I’m not completely convinced, but I have ordered ColorVision Spyder2 Express. Hopefully it will solve my problem. If it doesn’t, well, I needed to have my monitor calibrated anyway. It should be here tomorrow, so we’ll find out soon.

We traveled to Kentucky last weekend for a three-game series. They are not that great of a team, but we let them take two of three games from us. Both Kline and Satterwhite had bad outings.

This weekend we are playing at Arkansas, the current SEC West leader and #9 in the country. We needed to win all three games and for Mississippi State to lose two of three to Alabama to win the SEC West. That’s a tall order, especially considering the way we’ve played lately and that we’re playing at Arkansas.

The first game was actually last night. It was a tight one, but we won 5-4. State also lost, so we were off to a good start. Tonight at was tied 1-1 going into the 10th inning. We scored two runs to go up 3-1. That’s about as close as you can get to a done deal in extra innings. We put in Cody Satterwhite, our normally very good stopper. In the top of the inning he walked four guys and allowed a double which put Arkansas up 4-3 and gave them the win. I honestly didn’t expect us to sweep, but that’s a depressing way to lose. We have a chance to win the series tomorrow.

Last night’s win clinched a spot in the SEC Tournament. We’ll be in the NCAA tournament for sure, but we’d like to host a regional for the fourth year in a row. That was nearly a given a couple of weeks ago, but it’s looking less certain at the moment.

Speaking of Luke, he’s still not here. We went back to the doctor on Tuesday and nothing had changed. We go back again next Tuesday. He’s due on the 29th. We’re ready for him to be here, but having another human to care for is a pretty scary proposition. He can take his time as far as I’m concerned. :)

We finally got our Internet connected this afternoon. I didn’t actually miss it that much, but I think Cassie did. Of course I was at work while she was stuck at home all day. We had DSL at the old place, but BellSouth doesn’t offer it at the new place, so we’re having to go with Vista III Media cable internet. It’ll be interesting to see how the two compare.

I got my camera in last week and got to test it out at Brandon’s graduation. I’ll be posting some pictures as soon as I get my monitor calibrated. (More on that later.)

I’m currently listening to the Ole Miss baseball game. Electromagnetic radiation is funny stuff. When I plug the Ethernet cable into the cable modem across the room from the radio, the static on the radio drastically increases. Baseball update coming soon.

I hope he can hang in there for at least another week. We are supposed to move on Friday. Yes, I know, great timing.

Cassie’s last day of work was Friday. She’s glad to be done with that, but I think she already misses it a little. However, based on the experiences she’s had as a teacher, I’m not certain she’s ever going to teach again. We briefly discussed her going to school to become a nurse. She’ll have a little time to make that decision though. She’ll be staying home with Luke for at least a year, probably more.

With Luke’s arrival imminent, I suppose we should decide on a middle name. The default seems to be “Luke Benjamin,” though “Luke Alexander” has also been mentioned. I’m currently cruising Wikipedia for names of famous leaders, scientists, mathematicians, architects, etc. that work well with Luke. Any suggestions? Yes, “Luke Skywalker Pharr” has been suggested, but Cassie vetoed it. :)