I had the best Fathers Day experience this morning: at the hotel in Portland Maine after landing from Ireland, I took our two boys (ages 7 and 2) to the hotel’s pool for an hour. Lots of playing and laughing by all of us. Walking from the pool to start the process of heading up to Islesboro, Patrick, the 7 year-old, said enthusiastically, “That was SO much FUN!!”
It sure was.
I set up a proxy to contribute to the effort to get information out of Iran after the nutzo election. Whether Linux, Mac, or Windows, you can too.
cf. http://blog.austinheap.com/
P.S. I think you need a static IP address, otherwise when you reconnect your broadband the address you shared will no longer work. It should also be a system that isn’t closed/turned off.
Cool gathering of dedicated GNU hackers in Montreal this week. Many, it appears, are here on their own dime/pence/whatever, with most companies not forking out the cash this time around.
… they give you reasons to get great pictures when you’re away from home and miss your family. 🙂
A friend did a skydive at the end of May in an effort to raise funds for our kids’ primary school. In terms of ways to help children, the bar has been raised pretty high: a few thousand feet, in fact.
It was a really great success.
With our older son making his way through age 7 and no sign of stopping, we decided to try to find out what would make for good movies for him to watch. He’s old enough to actually enjoy a lot more of them.
Are we missing anything? This is our list to use to make random selections. Not to check off each one like we’re expecting he’ll see everything. 🙂
I’m not going try to link all of those over to the IMDB. Heh.
A few days ago our two year-old son was convinced a number of times that he had to use the toilet. Gestures varied but the intent was clear. Each time, nothing happened. Again.
When he believed he was finished, he stood up and pulled up his pants. He looked at me questioningly with his hand reaching back towards the toilet.
“You don’t have to flush it, sweetheart. You didn’t actually go!”
His usual response was a contemplative, “Oh!” Then a nod of agreement as he exited the bathroom.
This last time, Slow-Brain Dad stayed behind for a moment to consider what had been happening. Every one of his little sit–push–nothing–getup actions was followed by a keen interest in flushing the toilet.
Tick … tick … tick …
D’oh! He’s more interested in the fun of flushing the toilet then actually using it!
Deduction is clearly my true skill.
I wonder now if our seven year-old used the same trick. I must have blocked it from my memory.
What a horrible day.
The car alarm started going off for no good reason—and is still going off now. After multiple phone calls, someone from Ford Assist is supposed to show up by 17:45 (it’s now 17:00). Hope they do. The guy on the phone was suggesting I just wait to bring it in for service tomorrow—until I said my neighbors and I would join together in bashing the shit out of the car if it was going off all night. Oh, did I mention I tried calling the place where I got the car and am supposed to take it for service—but they never answered the phone? Even once? I’m worried that they’re not there anymore, even tho we did the annual service on the car a month ago perhaps they’ve all disappeared. You know, in these difficult economic times…
…and no, they bought the bank, to use a phrase I heard today. Interestingly, their cars are all going up for auction Saturday morning.
Simultaneously, the keypad for our house alarm decided to freak out. All the buttons flashing, nothing makes it shut up. A cryptic “VRKD V1.4 000” message flashing on the display. A couple of days ago the alarm went off at 23:30 for no good reason, and while E and I were looking at it we saw flashlights outside our front door. We open it, and there are three Garda in full riot gear asking if everything is okay; apparently the Panic Button of the alarm system sent a message up to them that were were in distress. … And now an hour later, the battery is disconnected in the car, and will hopefully stay quiet tho it might go off again. (And only once, Mr AA Guy said.)
So Mr ADT Repair Guy, a nice fellow, came yesterday to check the house alarm system. Didn’t find anything obvious, tho did replace the battery on the panel up in the attic. So now this afternoon it’s throwing a shit fit, and a few phone calls later I’m up in the attic pulling the power off the new battery—to no avail. Next phone call, I’m downstairs with a small screwdriver to open up the panel and disconnect the little red and black cables to cut the power to the panel. Ahhh, silence.
Of course I’m being told they don’t think they can get a new board for it—instead, did I know the Garda passed some 2-signal response thing Feb 2008 (??) so I need to upgrade my system. Mr Sales Dr0id is supposed to come tomorrow to talk about it … what a coincidence that my panel died, huh? Not to point fingers or anything…
Back to the car, Mr AA Guy was really nice and helped cut thru the bullshit on the phone with various people. I have to bring the car to the repair place over in Stillorgan tomorrow, where Enterprise Rent-a-Car will meet me with a car covered by Ford for 2 days. I doubt the car will be fixed tomorrow afternoon, but maybe Friday? Please?!
All of this is going on while I’m trying desperately to get past some nasty technical road-blocks in work that’s already well overdue. Low-level problems which involve crazy contortions to get at the source code for it to be able to know why their bug is making my program hang so much.
And tonight I have to go to a meeting at the school and mention that I’m the name they’ve seen on all of the letters about enrolling their kids in the school and it’s not my rules (but instead that of the whole Educate Together system of schools) which may have made their kid not get in.
exhale
But it’s okay.
I’ve got Elana.
To scribble down electronically what’s scribbled in pencil on a piece of scrap paper on my desk:
To change the length of time my Nokia N95-8GB spends ringing for an incoming call with Vodafone, I enter
**61*0875xxxyyyy**sec#
then press the green Call button. In this, xxx and yyyy are your mobile phone number, and sec is the number of seconds (divisible by 5) ranging from a minimum of 5 to a maximum of 30 seconds. So 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, or 30.
Paper recycled. 🙂
This morning the Scudder Falls Bridge entrance to I95 was just at the speed that made it too annoying to enter, so I drove over to Washington Crossing Bridge. Hunks of ice where flowing down it, not as large as the painting, but not to shabby. I could not help but draw a parallel to the inauguration, it made me a little faklempt about today.
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