August 1st, 2005 by Jemaleddin Cole

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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