I think I like many of renetto’s suggestions. I hope YouTube listens particularly to ways to manage commenters. His video is 10 minutes but you can put it in the background and listen while doing other things and still get his message.
Month: August 2006
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Is it just because of their age?
- Sarah, 13, frustrates me with her attitude but that’s just what teenage girls do.
- Tommy, 16, smells like teen spirit even after a bath (and no, I’m not referring to the song or the deoderant) but teenage boys just smell.
- Noah, 10, is a space cadet but all 10 year old boys have their brains turned off.
- Amy, 4, is having her terrible twos but all children go through this.
- Evan, 14 months, is clingly but he is still a baby and needs coddling (2nd definition! Not first!).
- Cathy, 27, is simply wonderful but if I put anything here I’ll be cut off for a year.
- Doug, 37, has CRS disease but that is because of stress and bad sleep habits.
So when do we quit attributing actions to their ages and just brushing them off? That is not accurate. We are a very consequence based family. Cathy and I put great weight in natural consequences. "if you choose to walk across the gravel in your bare feet rather than slip on shoes, your feet will hurt." When the child is going to learn the lesson for themselves, the lesson sticks more than if it is scolded or yelled into their head. Besides, why create a riff between child and parent when nature is going to handle it? You may bring about a shortterm solution faster or avoid a mess by forcing a child to do something, but having patience and taking time to clean up this mess will have a much more positive impact long term. I know, easier said than done.
Just this week, Tommy started asking everyone to be sure to rinse their dishes before putting in the sink. He has learned on his own that cleaning the dish is more difficult after the food has dried and hardened. That comes from the natural consequence of having to rewash dishes.
So Noah. I fear his absentmindedness is going to hurt him in school badly this year. Seems he has gone from spacey to deep spacey. Just yesterday he gets out of the van, goes to the tailgate, opens it, gets his $200 karate gear (pads) out of the back, sets them down on the ground to close the gate, closes the tailgate, and walks into the house. Hours later, fortunately no rain, Cathy returns from an errand and is agast to see the brand new pads in the yard where weather, animal, child or crook could have put a damper on Noah’s karate lessons. We ask Noah to look in the yard and he just stares in confusion failing to see the pads. 10? I’m thinking daily games that improve memory, concentration and attention to details are in order! Of course, as much as I hate to become one of those adults, I cannot help but think that video games are contributing to the absentmindedness.
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From the mouths of babes
Granddaddy: "So, who does Evan look like?"
Cathy: "He’s a mix of everyone."
Granddaddy: "You mean my grandson is Heinz 57?"
Cathy: "Yes. He’s all the leftover DNA. I used the rest up." -
From the mouths of babes
The other day we went to Cracker Barrel with Cathy, Noah, Amy, Evan and myself. If you have never been to a cracker barrel, you should know ever table has that triangular game with the golf tees. (which ironically, is how they describe it in their product description! I wrote mine first!) I have accidentally solved it once in my life.
Amy is playing the peg game and drops a golf tee on the floor. We ask Noah to pick it up. Now Noah could be holding something and still be unable to find the object he is holding. The rest of this plays like it was scripted for a movie.
Noah begins looking for the golf tee on the dark tile floor and Amy watches Noah intently from her booster seat with this pleasant, relaxed look on her face. The guests around us take no notice as they continue to eat their pancakes, grits, and chicken and dumplings. The checkers board sits on a barrel just waiting for two players. We are near the kitchen and the wait staff enter and leave at haste and Noah stays out of their way. Noah is bent over staring at the floor. A waitress quickly sweeps the floor in front of her on the way back to the kitchen. It almost looks Monkish as if she does not want to step on a dirty floor. Amy continues to watch Noah as he stares at the floor moving his head back and forth as he scans for the golf tee. Knives and forks clink on plates. Conversations hum.
Dad: "Amy can you see it?"
Amy, non-chalantly and continuing to watch Noah: "She sweepered it." -
Without the Internet, I wouldn’t know what to do with my a*$
I probably could have lived the rest of my life without seeing this product. Without the Internet, and within the confines of the sacred Walmart, I just may have done that. But, no, I’ve seen it and now so must you. So without further ado, I present you Sphincterine by http://mintyass.com/. Believe it or not, this site is worksafe with great content.
Cost: Howard Stern $495,000.
It will cost you a lot less!!!Let’s not forget the tag line.
It’s stimulating… and refreshing!
And you know what Pucker says!
It tingles!
You’ll note this product is not on my amazon wish list.
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What’s it like working for yourself?
I’ve spent 2 solid hours on the phone today.
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What’s marriage about?
Marriage is just plain fun! I
fearlove my wife! She makes me laugh. -
Can’t see the code for all the debugging
So I’m pulling my hair out and pulling my hair out trying to figure out why my code isn’t working. In the process I resolve a fairly significant logic flaw (which is a good thing) but still it doesn’t seem to work and nothing is changing in the results when I finally remember that I put maxrows="10" on the <cfoutput> for troubleshooting.
Long and short that means I couldn’t figure out why anything past the 10th record was not updating and the reason was because I told the code not to update anything past the 10th record.
Thank you for joining me for that moment of Geek Zen.
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Now I am an IT manager!
Sometimes I don’t think. When I setup our home network, I did what most people probably do and set up DHCP which means the router dynamically gives a computer connecting to our network an IP address. This is nice that if someone with a laptop visits or I am working on someone’s computer that all we do is plug it into the network and the machine works on the Internet. Well, for a network of 7 computers that never move, DHCP is a bit of overkill.
Sometimes I like to look at the router logs and see what the kids are looking at on the Internet. Conceptually, their IP addresses could change and I never really know whose traffic I am observing. DHCP simply makes that difficult.
Sometimes I want to yank the Internet from one or more children. With DHCP the easiest thing to do was to walk to the router and pull the cable.
That has all changed! I wised up and set static IP addresses for all the machines. The ending ip number simply corresponds to the year of birth for the primary user of the computer. Now the logs make sense. Now in a couple of seconds I can deny the appropriate computer access to the Internet. Now I’m thinking.
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August Challenge – Early Bird
I am happy that I was able to pull myself from bed at 4am. The silence is soothing. The crackling of a tree branch breaking and falling to the ground is pronounced in a way that would be lessened or missed during the day.
Can you meet The August Challenge?
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August Challenge – All in the numbers
I am happy today is 8/7/6. I just find that amusing.
I am happy my children are caught up on their shots. Evan 6 shots. Amy 4 shots. Sarah 1 shot. They aren’t so happy about that. Sarah took it worst; her pain was all in the anticipation.
Can you meet The August Challenge?
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Age of Innocence
They say children see 9 dolphins in this picture. What do you see?
Incase anyone missed the reference, I’ll post it below. Click more to see the details.
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Parents reviewing video games
KidGamers is fresh on the scene to give parents an opportunity to understand the video games their children want to play.
KidGamers.org is a video game review site for parents and by parents. While there are plenty of video game sites out there, few of them cater to parents who wish to help their kids find fun and challenging video games.
As we all know, the ESRB’s rating system is a blunt instrument. It tells you the basics of what is “bad” about a game, but nothing about what is good for a game from a child’s perspective.
Their reviews, with attention on pre-teen and younger, will focus on skills needed to play the game, accuracy of the ESRB rating, what did the children think, and did the parents enjoy the game.
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Big holes!
So I was reading about the biggest hole in Russia
The gaint hole is actually a diamond mine in Eastern Siberia near the town Mirna. It is 525 meters deep and 1.25 km in the diameter.
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The suction above the hole resulted in several helicopter crashes, so all flight above the hole is prohibited now.and learned about Bingham Canyon Copper mine via the post comments. The facts about the mine are fascinating. And the pictures are impressive. I wonder if this is what the West Virginia mountains will look like in 100 years. (see also)
