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recently i posted a couple of introductory articles on jmeter, a great apache open-source tool that allows you to measure the performance and scalability of a wide variety of services, especially web-applications.

i wrote these articles because although the online documentation provides reasonable reference material, it doesn't serve well as a jmeter introduction or tutorial.

things have changed a bit since then. the uk-based publishing house packt publishing were kind enough to send me a copy of emily halili's newly published book on jmeter, which is as far as i can tell, is the first book dedicated to the subject.

i have very few (okay, exactly one) direct friends with children who live in the bay area. however, the number of "one degree of separation" friends-of-friends who have children born within six months of ava is quite high. now that they are all mobile, talking and fun to hang around with, shannon, arantxa and i having been trying to organize some sort of multi-baby outing for awhile now. we finally succeeded today, taking a trip to the discovery museum with evan (five weeks younger than ava) and his mom kelley, and ronan (six weeks younger than ava).

ronan is the son of shannon's neighbours, and a last minute addition to the festivities. shannon wandered by her neighbours 5 minutes before departure and asked to borrow ronan for the morning. wise parents that they are, they responded "hell - yeah", packed him a diaper bag and buckled him in to kelly's car. ronan experienced such high anxiety about this situation that he drifted off to sleep for the drive over. when he woke up, he initially looked a little dazed and confused, but got more and more enthusiastic throughout the trip.

ava is typically very opinionated about where exactly she's going to go, so getting her to follow along with a group can be challenging. we did very well on this expedition though, by bribing her around with "crunchies". "crunchies" , in ava's world, means "snack food with a high fat and/or salt content that mean mommy won't give me very often. i have better luck with daddy." in this particular case, it meant an organic, baked and much healthier version of "cheetos" that kelley happened to bring along. ava was a big fan, and consequently was a docile little angel the whole morning. see full, annotated gallery here.

it was a typical fourth of july in san francisco. i awoke to the pitter patter of accumulated fog dripping off the trees. i expected this though, and had a fog-free adventure planned for ava and grandma. we started the outing with a visit to a lovely little neighborhood playground in belvedere. belvedere is a tiny little city on an island across the golden gate bridge with an entry level housing price of around $2.5 million dollars (i just got curious and looked that up). the trickle down effect of all that property tax revenue is a very nice playground with immaculately groomed lawns and playground-owned cars and kettler trikes scattered about for anybody to use. i think we might just come back.

after that we continued our journey north towards the sun, to the marin county fair. the big hit for ava was the "great american petting zoo", which featured some standard petting zoo characters like goats and sheep. and then some unexpected entries like a wallabee and a llama. we wandered around the rest of the barnyard, watched the chinese dragon dancers and then headed home for naptime. next year we'll come back and try out the rides!

today was ava's fifth swimming lesson at la petite baleen, and her behavior has improved to the point where i am willing to talk about it. there are many things i really like about la petite baleen. the first is the location - right on the bay, in the presidio, at the end of crissy field. see view from the parking lot to the right. not bad. the second thing is that they are pretty hardcore. these folks believe in the swimming version of "cry it out" - this means that no little bodies escape from the pool for the duration of their 30 minute lesson - no matter what. however, this very strict rule is balanced by a huge amount of compassion, patience and good humor from the instructors. ava's instructor said to me on the first day : "if we let them do what they want, then they learn to manipulate us, see?". hmmm . . . yup . . . got it. okay, you seem to know what you're talking about - we'll give this a shot, your way.

the first class ava screamed at the top of her lungs the entire time, while trying to climb my body to get out of the water. picture her hanging on to my ears for dear life. the second class, she was much improved, and only screamed during the "boat" part of the program. the third class was just plain bad luck. it was an unusually cold day, and therefore daycare was running on a slightly altered schedule. ava wasn't playing outside where she usually was, and we wound up leaving daycare through the "wrong" door. omg. meltdown. must never vary from the routine. never, ever, ever. i never really got her calmed down from the door episode, so she just carried on with the meltdown all the way through her swimming lesson too.

ava cheered up quite a bit for lesson number four though, so much so that her instructor was pretty much jumping up and down for joy. lesson number five was another incremental improvement. still objecting to the "boats", but she's lowered her objection to a dull moan, rather than an ear piercing scream. and, cracking some smiles now and again too. at today's lesson we were also fortunate enough to have grandma along to snap some pics. more pics here.

grandma has arrived for a mid-summer visit, just in time for our worst period of summer fog, combined with a lovely smoky haze from the numerous wildfires burning in california. we're going to try and escape at least the foggy part a few times this week, and began that goal with a trip to hidden valley farm in los altos.

i couldn't find much information online about hidden valley, so didn't really know what to expect. it turned out to be a sprawling complex of gardens and barns, full of veggies, fruit, flower and animals. really nice even in our current period of drought, and must be extra-ordinary in winter / spring when the multiple creeks are flowing with water.

ava still has a cold, and isn't quite herself, but we still had a good time. highlights (from ava's perspective)

• the "grape vine house" in the organic garden
• the cat in the organic garden
• the baby goat that kissed me
• eating fresh blackberries

low points :

• when stupid mommy tried to take my long-sleeved shirt off. who cares if its 85 F in the shade? i like my whale shirt!!!
• smacking my head really hard on the fence trying to pet the baby goat
• when stupid mommy tried to trick me into putting on shorts after my diaper change. it's just not proper for a young lady not to cover her knees!

more pics

today we took a trip to central park in san mateo, for ayan's annual photoshoot. i think ava really enjoyed not being the center of photographic attention, and i enjoyed not being the baby wrangler. we both puttered around and watched the madness, and i took a few shots and videos of "life behind the scenes". here's my favourite pic from the shoot, see the full gallery here

click read more (below) for live video footage of the photographer in action.

ava's had a cold all week. as baby illnesses go, it hasn't really been remarkable, or even particularly annoying. it has had a weird side effect though - ava is a little more cantakerous than usual and has suddenly decided that she hates taking a bath! i think tomorrow we might try the shower instead.

aside from the beach, the most popular father-daughter activity in our home is biking. on father's day, john took it up a notch, by popping ava into her bike seat and biking her half-way up mt tamalpais, to the west point inn. unfortunately, that was a solo (adult) expedition, so there were no photos. fortunately, they both had so much fun, that they repeated it the next weekend, with jonathan along for the ride as well.

the trail in question is called "railroad grade", and did, in fact, used to host railroad tracks. it's a very mellow dirt road, that gently switchbacks up the mountain with a technical difficulty rating of about 1/10. it's popular both with lazy hikers, and mountain bikers from age 7-70.

on this second trip, they finished off with a trip to the pelican inn, which has a lawn on which you are simultaneously allowed to a) park your bike, b) have a beer and c) play with your dog child (see video).

click "read more", below to see the video.

as ava gets older, she and daddy are developing more and more common interests. one of those is ocean beach. okay, ava's not exactly up for surfing just yet, but she does love to go hang out on a sunny day and watch the waves. ava loves all aspects of beach trips with daddy, starting with a treasured ride in the van, but especially the part where she gets as sandy as possible.

on this particular trip, ava reached an important milestone : she finally managed to get both feet off the ground simulaneously, in an action vaguely resembling "jumping". (see video at bottom). now, i think hope that her vertical leap will improve somewhat over time, but this may be one (of many) areas in which she is somewhat genetically doomed. john and i are both slow-twitch muscle dominated, and are loaded with endurance, but low on attributes like "spring".

john and i share a few more attributes. for example, we were both born with an innate ability to derive the correct answer on a graduate level math / physics/ chemistry exam - regardless of whether or not we actually have any idea what exactly it is we're doing. and, we're both hypnotized by bad television, although john prefers "reality tv" (deadliest catch, etc.) while i prefer "other wordly soap operas" (lost, battlestar galactica). it's a very good thing that we don't actually own any television reception devices.

so . . . how does ava stack up against her parents? perhaps it's time for our second genetics showdown . . .

well, so far it looks like physically ava is just headed in her own weird direction, while behaviorally she matches mommy. of course, most traits shared with mommy are also shared with most toddlers. hmm . . . what exactly does that say about me?

click read more (below) to see live action of ava at the beach.

well, it's officially an unusual summer here in san francisco, as we have now had three summer heat waves. the first was around may 14-16, temps climbed to the triple digits, and we had a pool party. the second was around june 9-12, and in our neighbourhood it was more of a "warm wave". i don't think the temperature topped 80 F, but it was still an unexpected break in the fog. this week, the heat hit a third time, peaking at 95 F in downtown on san francisco the afternoon of friday, june 20th. we, of course, took every opportunity to let ava frolic in the back garden in both her "ghetto pool" (empty storage bin) or her "padding pool" (the nice blue pool), depending on how motivated we were feeling. we're quite positive that we've used our back garden more in the past 30 days, than in the last 3 years combined.

watching ava frolic naked in her pool while alternately hugging and devouring her frog , i was struck by three thoughts. 1) that kid is crazy. 2) why must she drink her bath water. 3) who stuck this long shapely leg on my baby girl?