I'm heading to the zoo on Thursday with Garrett's class. I'm afraid... very afraid...
At least we'll be able to say hi to Kara's Monkey Mom and Monkey Dad. We're trying to convince her that we picked her up at the monkey cage the last time we visited :)
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Inside Garrett's Mouth
This comic over at Penny Arcade is likely what's going on in Garrett's mouth. Why will he never brush his teeth? Sigh.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Ghibli Minecraft
As a huge fan of Miyazaki's body of work and all of the excellent films that Studio Ghibli has put out over the years AND as someone who has spent a fair amount of time tinkering around in Minecraft, this just blows me away.
The sheer amount of time needed to make all of that architecture blows me away, not to mention the attention to detail for most of those sets. Lovely stuff.
The sheer amount of time needed to make all of that architecture blows me away, not to mention the attention to detail for most of those sets. Lovely stuff.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Good Thing This Couch Is Comfy
Sooooo.... I picked up an iPad 2 today. I was heading home from a day of writing protocols in Kitchener and had seen that the Guelph Future Shop had them in stock. I figured I'd pop in just on the off chance that they had some and lo and behold, there were 3 left.
Now, I've been having my eye on an iPad 2 for some time. It basically did everything that I'd hoped the first iPad would do but didn't, plus I'd heard a lot of good things about the improved battery, faster processors, etc. Of course, finding one in stock was pretty much impossible and I was broke, so it was a moot point.
But we just got our tax returns back and it was a pretty hefty one this year, so I put aside enough to cover the cost of the iPad should I ever find one and put the rest towards paying off the basement and a few other bills. I just anticipated having a few more months of idly checking Best Buy and Future Shop stockrooms before I'd luck across one of the units!
Suffice it to say, I'm really enjoying the thing so far. Granted, I spent most of tonight setting it up and futzing about with the app layout and synching it with my phone data and such, but it is a very nice piece of tech. I've only just started to plumb the depths of the thing, but I'm shocked by how much content even something as simple as the Weather Network app has packed into it.
But Julie, on the other hand, is none too pleased with me (hence the lovely couch I may be sleeping on for the next while). Granted, I think she'll change her tune once she starts fiddling around with it and watching TV on it, etc. Right Julie? RIGHT?!
Now, I've been having my eye on an iPad 2 for some time. It basically did everything that I'd hoped the first iPad would do but didn't, plus I'd heard a lot of good things about the improved battery, faster processors, etc. Of course, finding one in stock was pretty much impossible and I was broke, so it was a moot point.
But we just got our tax returns back and it was a pretty hefty one this year, so I put aside enough to cover the cost of the iPad should I ever find one and put the rest towards paying off the basement and a few other bills. I just anticipated having a few more months of idly checking Best Buy and Future Shop stockrooms before I'd luck across one of the units!
Suffice it to say, I'm really enjoying the thing so far. Granted, I spent most of tonight setting it up and futzing about with the app layout and synching it with my phone data and such, but it is a very nice piece of tech. I've only just started to plumb the depths of the thing, but I'm shocked by how much content even something as simple as the Weather Network app has packed into it.
But Julie, on the other hand, is none too pleased with me (hence the lovely couch I may be sleeping on for the next while). Granted, I think she'll change her tune once she starts fiddling around with it and watching TV on it, etc. Right Julie? RIGHT?!
Garrett: Roughneck
After a few years of having minimal communication from Garrett's teacher, we were greated with a novella in his planner today. Unfortunately, it seems that Garrett's been a little rowdy on the playground.
He insists that he accidentally pushed a kid down who was walking backwards, blindfolded, while on roller skates, in a snowstorm... I'm trying to say that I'm not sure whether to believe it was an accident when the details shift around more than a stack of bowling balls in an earthquake.
Hopefully it's just your typical playground shenanigans and Garrett will keep his nose clean. He does tend to hang out with a lot of the meaner kids though, so I'm hoping they're not rubbing off on him. He's such a sweet lad :)
He insists that he accidentally pushed a kid down who was walking backwards, blindfolded, while on roller skates, in a snowstorm... I'm trying to say that I'm not sure whether to believe it was an accident when the details shift around more than a stack of bowling balls in an earthquake.
Hopefully it's just your typical playground shenanigans and Garrett will keep his nose clean. He does tend to hang out with a lot of the meaner kids though, so I'm hoping they're not rubbing off on him. He's such a sweet lad :)
A Spoonful Of Yogurt
Kara came down with an ear infection last week and is now on some antibiotics to help get her back to her usual spunky self.
Unfortunately, the medicine tastes like liquid death with a pinch of distilled horror to spice it up. I thought Kara was exaggerating about it being disgusting until I tried a little drop that was on the counter and had to scrub my tongue down to the bone* with a chunk of pumice to get rid of the taste.
After almost having to do a restraint to force the medicine down her throat on Sunday, we've decided to take a different tack: bribery and disguise. The bribery thing is easy: she'll get a little Polly Pocket doll and/or outfit each day that she takes the medicine. She's also able to have one or two chocolate eggs from Easter, which is fine as we have tonnes of those lying around.
We're also mixing the medicine in with apple sauce or yogurt. It still tastes nasty, but it's somewhat diluted by the taste of the snack that it's mixed in and she is able to take a lot of swigs on her juice/water glass to help wash down the vile poison.
So far it's working, though Kara is still not a huge fan of medicine time. And I don't blame her!
* I know that tongues don't have bones :)
Unfortunately, the medicine tastes like liquid death with a pinch of distilled horror to spice it up. I thought Kara was exaggerating about it being disgusting until I tried a little drop that was on the counter and had to scrub my tongue down to the bone* with a chunk of pumice to get rid of the taste.
After almost having to do a restraint to force the medicine down her throat on Sunday, we've decided to take a different tack: bribery and disguise. The bribery thing is easy: she'll get a little Polly Pocket doll and/or outfit each day that she takes the medicine. She's also able to have one or two chocolate eggs from Easter, which is fine as we have tonnes of those lying around.
We're also mixing the medicine in with apple sauce or yogurt. It still tastes nasty, but it's somewhat diluted by the taste of the snack that it's mixed in and she is able to take a lot of swigs on her juice/water glass to help wash down the vile poison.
So far it's working, though Kara is still not a huge fan of medicine time. And I don't blame her!
* I know that tongues don't have bones :)
Sunday, May 01, 2011
BLARF!
Kara is sick... again. She was sick on Thursday and now she's sick again. She hasn't had to throw up since about 4:30 or so, but man, the poor little thing!
Hopefully it's yet another 24-hour bug. At least she has a doctor's appointment tomorrow so we'll see what's going on one way or another.
Hopefully it's yet another 24-hour bug. At least she has a doctor's appointment tomorrow so we'll see what's going on one way or another.
VGL Wrap-Up
Well, Garrett was very impressed by Videogames Live the other night. The seats were awesome (front row, middle of the balcony) and there were a lot of great performances through the night. I was very impressed by Martin Leung (the videogame pianist) and blown away by the flute skills of Laura Intravia (aka Flute Link).
I'd love it if the show came back to the area again next year. There is a lot of stuff that is the same but they do have enough new content to warrant repeated viewings. And it's just a great concert regardless.
Also, the winner of the costume contest was a guy dressed up as a Lego minifig. The costume was amazing.
I'd love it if the show came back to the area again next year. There is a lot of stuff that is the same but they do have enough new content to warrant repeated viewings. And it's just a great concert regardless.
Also, the winner of the costume contest was a guy dressed up as a Lego minifig. The costume was amazing.
Happy (Belated) Birthday, Grant!
I did send the guy a message but was out most of Friday, so in case he happens to stumble by here, happy birthday, little brother!
Now if only we could figure out why he keeps moving further and further away from the rest of his loving, caring family :)
Now if only we could figure out why he keeps moving further and further away from the rest of his loving, caring family :)
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
VGL
This should be interesting.
I'm taking Garrett with me to see Videogames Live tonight (Wed) in Kitchener. I'm very excited as it's a fantastic concert and I think he'll have a blast. I need to make sure he wears something videogamey!
I'm also interested to see how many tags I can get with my 3DS. So far I've found ONE person in the wild and that was at the Sarnia easter egg hunt. If I don't find very many other people with a 3DS tomorrow night, I won't find them anywhere!
I'm taking Garrett with me to see Videogames Live tonight (Wed) in Kitchener. I'm very excited as it's a fantastic concert and I think he'll have a blast. I need to make sure he wears something videogamey!
I'm also interested to see how many tags I can get with my 3DS. So far I've found ONE person in the wild and that was at the Sarnia easter egg hunt. If I don't find very many other people with a 3DS tomorrow night, I won't find them anywhere!
Happy 4th Birthday Kara
Kara turned 4 last week and I was so busy I forgot to post! I'll have to dig up some pictures from last week's string of birthday parties, but suffice it to say, she's very happy to be four now!
Monday, April 18, 2011
Happy Birthday Mom!
My mom is [REDACTED] years old today! Congratulations for making it through another trip around the sun, mom!
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Fun Is Work!
Speaking of work that is fun, I've been totally engrossed in this Portal 2 ARG (Alternate Reality Game) that has been going on since the beginning of the month. The reason it is so neat is because there's a chance that, due to a lot of geeks playing a lot of indie games, Portal 2 will be available at least a day earlier than planned! It is supposed to launch on Tuesday but because everyone has been playing a bunch of neat little games on Steam, we'll be able to play it by Monday night if all of the calculations are correct.
I'm sure that's gibberish for most of you, but it's really cool and one of the great things about being a gamer. What other medium will give you a chance to partake of their content early by watching/reading/listening to other movies/books/songs?
I'm sure that's gibberish for most of you, but it's really cool and one of the great things about being a gamer. What other medium will give you a chance to partake of their content early by watching/reading/listening to other movies/books/songs?
Work Is Hard
If you see a few more gray hairs on my head, I think it's because work is out to age me 20 years over the past few weeks. The last couple of days have been the first where I feel like I've got my feet back under me and it's so nice to have a day where I can just cook food and hang out with the guys instead of being buried in paperwork up to my eyeballs.
Not that I don't have paperwork, but the high priority stuff is definately wrangled for the moment. Phew!
Not that I don't have paperwork, but the high priority stuff is definately wrangled for the moment. Phew!
Monday, April 04, 2011
It's Still Easier Than Explaining It To My Grandparents
Please check out this epic flowchart detailing how to explain the internet to a 19th century street urchin. It is about 8 kinds of awesome.
And it's pretty funny too.
And it's pretty funny too.
Saturday, April 02, 2011
The Best Worst Thing You'll Hear All Day
If you've been exposed to the virulent strain of earworm that is Rebecca Black's 'Friday', do yourself a favour and watch this video.
At the very least, Colbert & Fallon have managed to wash the sound of the original version out of my brain.
Edit: I give up. Just go on Youtube and search for Friday and Colbert.
At the very least, Colbert & Fallon have managed to wash the sound of the original version out of my brain.
Edit: I give up. Just go on Youtube and search for Friday and Colbert.
Chicks Dig Scars
Garrett & I got to spend about 6 hours or so in the local ER waiting to see if he had any kind of internal damage after he had an unexpected meeting of his stomach and the bare metal end of his handlebars while riding around outside today.
We were a little concerned that the force of the blow and the fact that it took the skin off his stomach (and left it imprinted on the inside of the shirt!) so I drove him over to the hospital after work to have a professional give him a once-over. While we did have an almost 6 hour wait there, they took it seriously enough to do a urine test and ultrasound to ensure that there wasn't any internal injury. Thankfully, it looks like he'll just be tender on his tummy for a bit and have a very odd scar to show to his friends when he's older.
And I have to say, for a kid in some amount of pain and with not a lot to do, Garrett handled the long wait at the hospital like a trooper. He played his DS, my 3DS, my iPhone, read some magazines, flounced about a bit and ate a bunch of junk food from the vending machine with nary a complaint. I think he was more interested in all of the stuff going on through the glass doors into the ward and with all of the people around to realize how dull it was!
To add insult to injury to this whole evening, we got trapped in the parking lot for about 10 minutes when we were trying to leave. On the upside, we didn't have to pay the obscenely high cost for parking ($16 to park for 2 hours? SERIOUSLY?!?) but it was kind of annoying nonetheless.
We were a little concerned that the force of the blow and the fact that it took the skin off his stomach (and left it imprinted on the inside of the shirt!) so I drove him over to the hospital after work to have a professional give him a once-over. While we did have an almost 6 hour wait there, they took it seriously enough to do a urine test and ultrasound to ensure that there wasn't any internal injury. Thankfully, it looks like he'll just be tender on his tummy for a bit and have a very odd scar to show to his friends when he's older.
And I have to say, for a kid in some amount of pain and with not a lot to do, Garrett handled the long wait at the hospital like a trooper. He played his DS, my 3DS, my iPhone, read some magazines, flounced about a bit and ate a bunch of junk food from the vending machine with nary a complaint. I think he was more interested in all of the stuff going on through the glass doors into the ward and with all of the people around to realize how dull it was!
To add insult to injury to this whole evening, we got trapped in the parking lot for about 10 minutes when we were trying to leave. On the upside, we didn't have to pay the obscenely high cost for parking ($16 to park for 2 hours? SERIOUSLY?!?) but it was kind of annoying nonetheless.
Friday, April 01, 2011
On A Happier Note...
This has been a bear of a week for me, but tomorrow (today?) is my day off (yay) so I'm finally getting a bit of time to decompress. Despite the insanity of the previous post, the absolute emotional wringer of a day I had on Wednesday at work and the fact that it was year end at work on Thursday and the paperwork was flying furiously, there is a glimmer in the darkness!
Our church had a spectacular opening Sunday on the 27th. Our first service was about 75% capacity in the sanctuary, which holds about 700 people. For the second service, it was standing room only, not to mention all of the people spilling out into the foyer and the coffee shop. Altogether, we had something like 1200 people come to the church on Sunday with 200 kids in the children's area. Woo!
And in a fit of insanity, I had volunteered to help with parking. Here's a still shot of the parking lot from the far edge of the lot to show how many cars there were...
It was a bit packed. We had cars lined up all the way from the cul-de-sac at the end of 10th Line to the lights at Argentia at one point, but we managed to squeeze about 400 or so cars into a lot designed to hold about 300. It was nuts. 3.5 hours of nuts, to be precise, because that's how long I spent outside directing traffic that day! At least the weather was beautiful, though I got a pretty nasty sunburn for my troubles.
Hopefully the coming Sundays will be a little more... sane. We had a lot of visitors, special guests and curious people who likely won't be around on a regular basis, though it would be awesome to have this kind of turn out every week.
I'm just happy that we have a building to call home for the church now. It has been a long time coming and it's like the church is coming into its adolescence now (almost literally, what with the congregation being about 10 years old this coming September) so we have all sorts of new challenges and opportunities to look forward in this new phase of the church's life. Time to sit back and buckle in and enjoy the ride.
Our church had a spectacular opening Sunday on the 27th. Our first service was about 75% capacity in the sanctuary, which holds about 700 people. For the second service, it was standing room only, not to mention all of the people spilling out into the foyer and the coffee shop. Altogether, we had something like 1200 people come to the church on Sunday with 200 kids in the children's area. Woo!
And in a fit of insanity, I had volunteered to help with parking. Here's a still shot of the parking lot from the far edge of the lot to show how many cars there were...
It was a bit packed. We had cars lined up all the way from the cul-de-sac at the end of 10th Line to the lights at Argentia at one point, but we managed to squeeze about 400 or so cars into a lot designed to hold about 300. It was nuts. 3.5 hours of nuts, to be precise, because that's how long I spent outside directing traffic that day! At least the weather was beautiful, though I got a pretty nasty sunburn for my troubles.
Hopefully the coming Sundays will be a little more... sane. We had a lot of visitors, special guests and curious people who likely won't be around on a regular basis, though it would be awesome to have this kind of turn out every week.
I'm just happy that we have a building to call home for the church now. It has been a long time coming and it's like the church is coming into its adolescence now (almost literally, what with the congregation being about 10 years old this coming September) so we have all sorts of new challenges and opportunities to look forward in this new phase of the church's life. Time to sit back and buckle in and enjoy the ride.
Take That, Good Deed Doer!
How I wish this was an April Fool's joke. There is a very surreal thing going down around our neighbourhood and it just goes to show how small a town Acton is.
A week ago or so (during that crazy freak blizzard) one of the people living near us had their dog either stolen or lost from their yard. I'm not sure whether they're exaggerating or not and I honestly don't know why anyone would wait until the nastiest day of the year so far to bother to try to steal their puppy, but that's their story and they're sticking to it.
So they went to the cops, it didn't seem like much would happen but a few days later, it appears that they've retrieved their dog from a supposed breeder or some such. Hooray! Happy end of story.
Except now it seems that one of our friends that lives across town has learned that no good deed goes unpunished. They found a dog on one of the sideroads near Acton and called the local humane society and someone came to take the dog to the shelter. And yes, it was that missing puppy. So the cops have been paying a visit to our good friends and they're worried that they're going to be under the spotlight as suspected dognappers when they were just trying to do the right thing.
And to make things even more crazy, it turns out that the person who came from the shelter to take the dog away is a fake. The shelter has nobody like this on staff. So that's a whole other layer of insanity on this surreal pancake.
Hopefully everything will be fine for our friends and the real dognappers in this case will be caught and/or never stalk the Hills of Halton again, but it sucks that our friends are stuck in the middle for having tried to do the right thing.
Draaaama!
A week ago or so (during that crazy freak blizzard) one of the people living near us had their dog either stolen or lost from their yard. I'm not sure whether they're exaggerating or not and I honestly don't know why anyone would wait until the nastiest day of the year so far to bother to try to steal their puppy, but that's their story and they're sticking to it.
So they went to the cops, it didn't seem like much would happen but a few days later, it appears that they've retrieved their dog from a supposed breeder or some such. Hooray! Happy end of story.
Except now it seems that one of our friends that lives across town has learned that no good deed goes unpunished. They found a dog on one of the sideroads near Acton and called the local humane society and someone came to take the dog to the shelter. And yes, it was that missing puppy. So the cops have been paying a visit to our good friends and they're worried that they're going to be under the spotlight as suspected dognappers when they were just trying to do the right thing.
And to make things even more crazy, it turns out that the person who came from the shelter to take the dog away is a fake. The shelter has nobody like this on staff. So that's a whole other layer of insanity on this surreal pancake.
Hopefully everything will be fine for our friends and the real dognappers in this case will be caught and/or never stalk the Hills of Halton again, but it sucks that our friends are stuck in the middle for having tried to do the right thing.
Draaaama!
Saturday, March 26, 2011
One More Sleep!
Tomorrow is the launch date for the new Nintendo 3DS! I can't wait. I've had mine paid off for at least a month or two and am really excited to see this thing in action.
I'm only getting one game at launch (Pilotwings) but I'm really excited to play around with the Augmented Reality stuff. It looks really slick. And given that nary a day goes by where I don't play my DS, an enhanced version of my favourite game system of the past 5 years is more than welcome!
Garrett's pretty excited to see it too. We love 3D movies and such and it will be neat to see how this works without glasses.
I'm only getting one game at launch (Pilotwings) but I'm really excited to play around with the Augmented Reality stuff. It looks really slick. And given that nary a day goes by where I don't play my DS, an enhanced version of my favourite game system of the past 5 years is more than welcome!
Garrett's pretty excited to see it too. We love 3D movies and such and it will be neat to see how this works without glasses.
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