Prayer Time! Excellent!

Well, I've debated posting this for some time but I think it couldn't hurt and I'm just nervous enough to feel that a little extra help is warranted.

I'm going for an interview for a Program Coordinator position at the house I work at tomorrow and while I think I'm the only applicant for the job and that my track record speaks for itself, I'm still nervous about the interview. I'm not so much worried about not knowing the answers as I am about saying something spectacularly stupid, which tends to be my fall-back position when I'm grasping for an answer.

Any prayers, happy thoughts or bribes to my manager would be appreciated. I'll keep everyone posted as the crisis, er, interview unfolds.

If I'm lucky, I might get swine flu and get the job posthumously.

Say Goodbye To Free Time

Just to warn you, what you may be about to download is highly addictive.

One of my favourite time-killer games of the past year or two has been Fairway Solitaire. I paid $10 for it a while back and have more than got my money out of it, but now the company that makes it is giving it away for free.

It's a fantastic combination of solitaire on the computer and golf. And it's free.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Happy Birthday Grant!

My littlest little brother is 29 today! Yeesh. I'm feeling old when my baby brother is pushing 30.

Hopefully he doesn't do something silly like blow up an orbital satellite or anything to celebrate. He can do that you know. Using only HIS MIND!

Thanks, Neighbour

I got home around 11:15 tonight and ran the last bag of garbage out to the curb. As I was coming back, one of my neighbours (and fellow board member) was coming down the parking lot and as I passed him he said, "Oh, thanks Brock. I saw you going out there and figured I'd wait to see how it went."

"How it went? What do you mean?"

"Oh, there was a skunk out behind your house a few minutes ago. I just wanted to make sure you didn't run into it out at the garbage pad."

Thanks, buddy. You couldn't have mentioned this BEFORE I wandered out to Pepe LePew's all-you-can-eat buffet? Sigh.

Lego From Heaven

Garrett has recently become obsessed with playing with my Star Wars Lego sets that have been gathering dust on top of my dresser for years. He's been bitten by the Lego bug something fierce and is constantly building and rebuilding little spaceships and Death Stars and various other interstellar gizmos.

Ah, it warms the heart.

I had to laugh when I took a peek in the 'journals' that were sent home from school today. He had three. One of them just said, "Star Wars" with a picture of... droids, I think? I'm not sure what they were. The other two were different pictures but both said the same thing. "Toys were falling out of the sky."

If only it were that easy... and cheap...

She's Fabulous!

Kara got a lot of new outfits for her birthday. Behold, the fashion show OF DOOM!






I've got some funny stories about Kara and her burgeoning vocabulary, but those will deserve an entire post later in the week.

Wooooords!

The sad thing is that I know a few people who like to do this whenever I read. Can they not appreciate the printed word?



Speaking of which, I'm reading Stephen King's newest collection of short stories (Just After Sunset) and it's GREAT.

The Joys Of Parenting

Have I embedded some kind of sleeper behaviour code in my kids? You'll just have to wait until they hit high school to find out!

Guess Who's 2!

Yup. It's Kara's second birthday today! Woo! To celebrate, we went to the doctor for her two-year check-up. Then we napped. Fun times.



We had a birthday cake in Corunna when we were down over Easter, so here's what we consumed.



We also got Kara her first hair-cut last Monday, so she looks a lot less shaggy now that she's two years old.



And this is just a silly picture of the kids that shall haunt them on their wedding days.

Can He Cut It? Yes He Can!

Check out this video of a modern-day samurai cutting things in half. He cuts a BB in mid-air on the draw at around the 4 minute mark. Crazy stuff.

Weekend Update

Sorry for not updating for a few days. I've been enjoying the fact that my PC actually works again :)

So, what's new this week? It was my mom's birthday yesterday (Happy Belated Birthday, Mom!), I had to work the overnight shift at a house I don't usually work at last night (zzz) and Garrett & I hit the park for a few hours this afternoon and threw around a lightweight glider/kite thingy.

Kara's been fighting this spring cold thing that has her throwing up once every couple of days but otherwise being fine (aside from some sniffles).

I watched Marley & Me last night. Like most of the uber-cynics that I know who saw it, I was tearing up during the last 10-15 minutes. And I don't even like dogs!

And that's about it for the major updates around these parts. I've also been bitten by the 'gotta get a DSi' bug, but I've managed to stave off terminal infection this weekend, helped along greatly by a large dose of 'don't even think about it' from Julie...

IT'S ALIVE!

Well, after much delay, I finally got my desktop rig back up and running.

And surprise! The problem was exactly what I thought it was. Once I got into Safe Mode, it was just a matter of uninstalling the video drivers and reinstalling some new ones et voila! Everything is tickety boo.

Note to self: Never update video drivers via the MS Update website. Something like this happens all the time.

Sigh.

At least I got all of my pictures backed up this time. If it dies now, I can cremate it without shedding much of a tear.

Would You Prefer Ivory Or Dove?

Of course, yesterday was also the opportunity for Garrett to show off the lovely curse words he'd picked up in the playground when he was in the nursery at church.

This lovely, conservatively dressed woman and her children came in and I told Garrett to close the door (as he was trying to escape). He said (in a not so quiet voice), "No, you have to say, 'Close the f-ing door!'"... only he filled in the F... Suffice it to say, a mouth came THIS close to being washed out. Supposedly he learned that gem on the playground at school...

It didn't help that he prattled on about waterfalls of blood and dead Pokemon for the whole time that the lady was there with her kids. I think we're going to be asked not to go back next time we're in town. Sigh.

He's a good kid but I think he spends too much time with his father for his own good :P

Happy Easter Monday!

For those lucky few who have today off (and didn't have to use a vacation day to do so), I salute you!

We had a great visit in the Greater Sarnia Area this weekend. It was kind of a whirlwind trip though, as we headed down on Friday morning and got back late last night.

The kids did the Easter In The Park thing on Saturday morning, which would have been fun if there handn't been about 3/4's of the population of Sarnia there with absolutely no rhyme or reason to what was supposed to happen. The kids seemed to enjoy the chaos though and we bumped into our friends while we were in the animal farm, so it's all good. I also inadvertantly butted in front of a line that was not small in order to put Garrett in the little lawn-tractor train ride. I didn't see the giant line that stretched back to the gates. I just saw teeming hordes milling about and an empty seat in the train car, so in Garrett went. Nobody said anything or raised a fuss, so there.

We also squeezed in a game of 5-Pin Bowling (aka The One True Pin) with my parents and the kids on Saturday. Garrett, in his usual bombast, declared, "Bowling is my favourite thing in the whole wide word. I've never been bowling."

Sunday was the usual Easter service and Easter luncheon thing with Julie's giant family. We didn't get home until late last night but the kids went right to bed and we didn't have a lot to unpack from the trip, so it was nice. I did blow out my brain reading 300 pages of the latest Pratchett Discworld book yesterday afternoon in order to give it to Julie's brother before he headed home. I don't think I've power-read a book like that in a good year or so.

Now if only I hadn't left my iPod connector cable at the Grace's...

Finally!

I think I found the right people to help me fix my desktop.

Send Your Pennies Here aka Charon Share Alike

Tim had a post on his blog tonight about what you get when you google your name. It had been a little while since I last indulged in this narcissistic activity, so I gave it a whirl.

The first page was just the usual things, like links to this here blog and a few other things I do related to writing about comics and videogames around the web. And for some reason, the Touring Poker Tour of Poker standings from 2005 were getting flagged after my one dismal showing.

Not much else aside from the odd UFC or Pokemon slash fiction story about other, much more famous Brocks.

Then I stumbled upon this story on the second page of results.

"Travelling back and forth across the Richmond River at Ballina 160 times a day like a latter-day Huck Finn does not drive Brock Wager around the bend."

Seems my alter-ego is a 62 (now 63) year old ferry drover down Australia way. Seems like a good chap from what I've read.



Now if only I could find the multi-millionaire who is approximately my age, weight and build and who wouldn't mind playing a hilarious prank on everyone...

Return Of The Dreaded Allergies

Garrett's go-to line when he doesn't like something is to say that he's allergic to it.

Tonight he declared, while going through the candy he got from the sitter after their Easter Egg hunt, that he is allergic to chocolate.

Now that's an allergy I can get behind! So if you feel like giving Garrett chocolate, please send it my way so I can make sure it's the kind he's not allergic to (he's especially allergic to dark chocolate and chocolate filled with caramel).

In other news, Kara's newest word in her vocabulary is, of course, chocolate.

Stand Down From Condition Brown!

Just to let everyone know...

Kara is doing fine and is back to her own bossy self!

What a difference a week makes.

On the downside, my computer is still down but I haven't really bothered to try to fix it this week. I think I'll chat with a few people over the weekend and next week, when I'm working evenings, I'll take some time during the days to see if I can get it either up and running or at least salvage my pictures!

Bad Kids Pt. 2

So I'm in bed this morning, shaking the cobwebs from my groggy head when I hear Garrett tell Julie that the kid from yesterday's tale actually DOES have Garrett's big toy.

"He snuck it out. I didn't want him to. I cried."

Yeah, right. Little scam artist...

Looks like I get to have a little heart to heart with the punk from around the corner today.

Falling In With A Bad Crowd

Garrett has been obsessed with Bakugan of late. They're this generation's Yu-Gi-Oh, which were the generation before that's Pokemon.

Suffice it to say, Garrett wants to dress up as a Bakugan for Halloween, get every Bakugan toy known to man for Christmas and has started to barter his Bakugan collection with the kids around the neighbourhood.

Unfortunately, this has led to Garrett becoming the disciple of one of the bigger kids who live behind us, to the point where he follows him everywhere and would probably give away his whole toy collection if the kid asked him for it.

He had already traded a small Bakugan toy the other week and that was fine with me as they were of equal value. Yesterday the big kid tried to scam Garrett by trading a small Bakugan for Garrett's BIG Bakugan (which costs about $12 to the $3 that the little one cost us) which was when we put the brakes on things. He still managed to walk out of our yard with MY mini AT-AT, but I got that back tonight.

The kid came over to visit with Garrett tonight and there was much talk about trading and so forth, but I put the kibosh on that. Of course, as I'm tucking Garrett into bed, I caught him hiding something behind his back and lo and behold, it's the small Bakugan that Garrett has been coveting for a few days.

Riot acts were read, promises were made and I shall be having a chat with this kid tomorrow and so help me if he swiped one of Garrett's toys after being told specifically not to...

Kids, I tell ya. Kids...

Beware The Sharks

Thanks to a chance encounter at a meeting I was at earlier this week, we were able to finally find a good home for the pool table. One of the managers of another home is also a pastor at a church down Hamilton way and their youth group took us up on our offer of the table. As of about 2pm today, our storage unit is officially empty (and we even got a deposit back!) and we can now start the long, slow process of unpacking my 40 boxes of books and other crap!

Live CDs, Please

I've been directed to try a boot with a Linux Live CD. The thing is, I've never used something like this. I know a lot of you out there DO know a thing or two about Linux and booting off a USB or Boot CD. A little help would be most appreciated. I need something I can use to access my old HDD and pull the pictures off of it.

I think that a reformat is in order once I get those pictures off the drive...

And To Top It All Off...

So let's see. I was feeling under the weather again today. Kara was essentially a fountain of vomit. I got to experience the soothing surroundings of the Georgetown ER waiting room for the secong time in a week AND I guess Garrett was also rather puketastic this evening.

And to top off all of this fun, my desktop PC is borked. I decided (for no real apparent reason) to do a Windows update today after many, many months of NOT doing a Windows update.

After all was said and done, I restarted the system and now, whenever I try to load up my profile (or Julie's), the computer basically tries to load things up (I can even delete a file or two or try to load up MSConfig) before it resets the resolution to 640x480 and then reboots the whole shooting match.

So on top of all this other stuff, I've been trying to do some mental troubleshooting in my head while killing the last 5 hours in the ER. Sigh. If the fixes I think I need to do will work, I should be ok. That said, I have been thinking of upgrading and I can always just slave the drive to the new machine...

At least the lappy will get some use for the next little bit until the desktop gets fixed.

Joose... JOOOOOSE!

After a day of not getting anything to stay in Kara for longer than 5-10 minutes and her looking just wretched, I decided to take her to the Georgetown emerg just before 4 this afternoon.

5 hours later... I just got home. Kara was given a pedialyte regimen every 10 minutes to see if things would stay down. I did get drenched once and she threw up the first time they gave her some... Zoloft? Zolon? Cubic Zirconium? I had the nurse and doctor tell me the name of the med a good 3-4 times and I can't for the life of me recall what it was...

Anyway, the first time they tried to give it to her, it came right back up but she was fine with the Pedialyte after that. We didn't get in to see the doctor again until 8pm and she took the med at that point and was fine for the next hour, with larger doses of Pedialyte. I ended up just leaving since the line at triage was pretty long at that point and I wanted to get home and change out of my pukey clothes.

So yeah. That's how I spent the afternoon. It was a struggle to keep Kara from trying to pull the bottle out of the diaper bag the whole evening, but it kept us busy. She also insisted on sleeping in the middle of the ER waiting room floor for some reason, but people were pretty good about stepping around her.

I'm so tired...

A Less Bile Filled April Fool's Post

So Kara's still doing her Bellagio Fountain impression, but that won't stop me from checking around the net to see what kind of cool pranks are being pulled. Here are a few that I've found that are pretty funny.

Alpine Legend (the sad thing is that I'd probably play and enjoy this...)



Gmail Autopilot App (also check out CADIE, Google's new AI. Her homepage is awesome.)

How does Gmail mirror my communication style?

The more Gmail messages Autopilot can sample, the better. With fewer than 100 messages, there may not be enough data to calibrate Autopilot effectively. You can adjust tone, typo propensity, and preferred punctuation from the Autopilot tab under Settings.

April Pukes!

I've been reeling from a cold or flu or ebola outbreak for the past few days, though it's probably a combination of utter exhaustion from last weekend coupled with the GI bug that has been making the rounds in Halton Hills. I've made it into work for a few hours the last two days but haven't managed to work a full shift. Heck, I slept for about 12 hours on Monday night, so I know something wasn't right.

Well, it looks like I'm no longer alone in my sickitude.

I woke up this morning at around 5:30 to Julie calling me over to Kara's room to investigate whether the stuff Kara had vomited was blood or applesauce. Thankfully it was just the purple applesauce she had for dessert last night at supper, but unthankfully, she hasn't been able to keep down as much as a sip of juice since then. It's a good thing I'm still feeling like every joint in my body has been run over by a truck and that I was planning on calling in sick today!

We knew something was up when the babysitter yesterday said that Kara had been pretty quiet all day long. That's definately not like her.

No April Fool's gags for me today, aside from trying to suppress various gag reflexes around Casa Del Wager.