Hello friends and family!

We hope this letter finds you happy, healthy, and well-rested. We feel very fortunate to say that at least the first two of those have been true for us in 2011. That leads us to the biggest event of our year: Welcoming our son, Dashiell Finn Greenhunt, into the world on May 31 by emergency Caesarean.

We love being parents more than we ever imagined. We feel so lucky to have such a sweet-natured boy who constantly giggles and smiles throughout the day. We even enjoy watching him sleep. With rosy, plump cheeks and long, graceful eyelashes, he looks like such an angel. If you haven’t already, read more about our adventures in parenting at www.greenhunt.posterous.com.

At the end of October, after nearly five months of maternity leave and vacation time, Aimee returned to work four days a week. Preston then took over watching Dash through the end of the year, while continuing to work part-time remotely. Preston has become pretty good at multitasking: Aimee arrived home the other evening to find him sitting on the floor on a conference call, laptop in front and with Dash logging tummy time by his side.

When Preston returns to work full-time in January, Dash will go to day care. We are still in sticker shock over the cost -- $16,000 a year, about what it costs for tuition, room and board at state college!

In other news, Preston is attempting to toilet train our cat, Jill. Yes, we do mean teaching her to relieve herself into the toilet bowl. This involves placing a toilet-bowl-shaped litter tray on the toilet. Once Jill gets used to using the intact litter tray, Preston will slowly remove pieces until she is simply perched on the toilet seat, doing her business. So far Jill appears to be making good progress (after a few accidents). We are such proud kitty parents!

For the second year in a row, Preston bought a season’s ski pass to Mt. Hood. Last winter, he used his pass over 30 times, the most he’s ever skied in a season. Aimee stayed home because skiing while pregnant seemed too risky and she has little patience for 90-minute car trips to the mountain on icy roads.

We’re still enjoying yoga and walking everywhere around our urban neighborhood. The stroller is great for carrying groceries!

For the first time in many years, we didn’t take any big trips this year, storing up our vacation time in preparation for the new baby. Preston did manage a few work trips, to Las Vegas, in January, and to Germany, in March, where he eschewed €400 a night hotels and rented an apartment for a week from a Russian grandmother. In May, he attended his 20-year high school reunion in Atlanta, which was a lot of fun, but did make him feel old!

Thank you to all for the parenting advice, encouragement, and support this year. And for your holiday letters and photos--one of the highlights of our holiday season is decorating our wall with the cards, photos, and letters we receive.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

Related Links

• Last year's summary, 2010 Year in Review

Here is a collection of alternative places to get gadgets. I wish Microsoft had kept a read-only copy of the gadget store online. But they didn't. So this is all we have left:

• http://www.thoosje.com/
• http://gadgetsforvista.net/ (full of ads)
• http://wingadget.ru/cat/novosti (in Russian, use Chrome translate!)
• http://torentilo.com/download/4668072/Windows-Sidebar-Gadgets-Mega-Pack%7Bh33t%7D%7Bmad-dog%7D.html (a torrent containing a huge collection of gadgets)

I don't know why it took me so long to figure this out, but here is a nice little recipe for elevating a script to root permissions from inside the script.

#!/bin/bash

if (( UID != 0 )); then echo Re-running as root exec sudo bash $0 $* fi

echo Script is running as root echo Here are my arguments $* id

First, Apple's URL naming system is horrible. This is the URL for logging in to My Apple ID: https://appleid.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MyAppleId.woa/

More seriously, Apple has a feature where the perceived strength of your proposed password is shown to you as you type it. Unfortunately, their algorithm is busted. I tried a password "welcome-wildlife-fuji-ski" and was told that it was considered a "weak" password. I can guarantee you that "welcome-wildlife-fuji-ski" is completely unhackable by brute force attempts.

Meanwhile, "Aaa123!!" was given the password score of "strong" even though it is a substantially weaker password than "welcome-wildlife-fuji-ski".

Apple should fix these two issues by adopting a user-friendly URL, such as https://apple.com/appleid" and updating their password strength recommendation engine beyond the simplistic one-letter-one-symbol-one-number algorithm that is all too prevalent these days.

It took a lot longer to figure this out than it should have. So here it is for future Google searchers:

By default, Ubuntu uses Network Manager running in Gnome to set up wireless networks. This is a problem for many reasons. You may not be running Gnome. It requires extensive use of the mouse (keyboard control is impossible). It requires each user to manually configure the network settings. And the network is only running when a user is logged in. This last one is the most egregious; as a core service, networking should always be running regardless of whether a user is logged in!

Here is a recipe for switching from Network Manager to ifup:

1. Stop Network Manager from starting on boot

sudo vi /etc/init/network-manager.conf

Change the line "start on (xxx)" to "start on (xxx and never)"

2. Stop any running instances of Network Manager

sudo initctl stop network-manager

3. Edit the interfaces file to add the wireless settings

sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

Add a new section at the end of the file (tweak these settings as necessary, this example is for WPA2):

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid network-name-here
wpa-psk passphrase-here
wpa-proto WPA2
wpa-driver wext
wpa-key-mgmt WPA-PSK

4. Start the network

sudo ifup wlan0

(Or you can reboot)