Christmas with a little girl

Firsts are always special. This isn't technically a "first" because it's, well, a second, but it's a first where Alice isn't just sleeping through everything. Holidays are more interesting now. I'm sure that they will only continue to be.

Alice seems trained now to get up at 6 am which isn't great when it's a weekend. I'm sure that will wear off in like 10 or 15 years, but until then I guess we'll just have to deal with it. However until then it means that we'll have xmas stocking opening pictures where I look like I've been run over with a truck. The below shot is actually the best one - my eyes aren't half closed. I'm enjoying this new normal. ;-)

Alice discovers oranges in the giant sock!

Having fun growing up

I keep on thinking how awesome things are right now. Alice engages us all the time. Sometimes she's sneaky, but most of the time she's just having fun with us. She's constantly parroting new words which means that we really have to watch out what we say around her. But what gets me the most is that she seems to understand a lot of what's going on. She looks were sounds come from. When you say words of things she looks for the object. And the other day she started to use the word "more" (sounds like Mmmmm-or) in a non-food context. She wanted us to keep singing. Which sadly means she's tone deaf like the rest of us.

I no longer need to make elaborate scenarios of what's she's thinking because she's actually communicating it. Not super well of course, but it's a lot better than before. She's started on her most important developmental stage: playing with lego. Maybe "playing" is a bit of a generous description here. She's quite adapt at taking the duplo towers we build for her apart or knocking them over.

Physically she's standing and she keeps on teasing us that she'll walk. Then she changes her mind and crawls, but I'm not encouraging walking. I'm having a hard enough time keeping up as it is. Other than that the biggie is that she's actually got hair. Not blond fuzz like before, but something we can put into shapes to amuse ourselves, because that's really the important part. Fun fun.

Not looking over the edge

I was shocked to hear the news the other day of the school shooting. I know what's happened. I've read the stories. I feel that I've blocked it out. I've tried not to think about it. It's such a nightmare that I don't want to open myself emotionally to it. It's like I know that I'm at a great height and would poop my pants if I looked down. But that's not going to help the situation so I'm just not going to look down. I know that I am protecting myself from it, from feeling. But I feel guilty about not feeling (if that makes any sense).

It's just a nightmare.

I want all the toys. Just not enough to buy them.

It's very confusing. I want to have all the toys. I want the latest gadgets. The home automation. The blinky boo things in the car. The super camera. The thing is I don't want to pay for it all.

Today we moved my brother-in-law and his girl friend into their new house. It's a new house that's got fiber into the house, each room having at least one "network" wall plate with cable and I think at least 4 lan drops. Awesome. And that's not even talking about the wireless or VoIP systems. I would love to have that. It's just not worth it to me to retrofit our 50+ year old house to do that. It wouldn't even be too bad to run CAT5 (or cat6? Whatever the kids are using these days...) around the house since wireless works "well enough".

So being cheap, or frugal, or smart, or dumb, I buy something that's "good enough" all the time. I'm typing away on my 5+ year old low end macbook. Do I want a new shinny laptop? Of course. But this one is working well enough for what I use it for. Do I want to replace our entry level DSLR with something like a D600? Sure. Do I want to drop the 3k for a new body and full frame lenses? Not right now. Maybe some day. Maybe never. The longer I can hold out buying a tech toy, the more bang for my buck I can get.

Even then I think about what I need. It's not really much when you think about it. I need food. Shelter. To be healthy and have the ones I love be healthy. I need time to spend with those loved ones. When you reduce things to that level it helps clarify what exactly those other things can be. A distraction.

Exchanging electrons for physical tokens in order to get electrons

It's funny how the world always seems a bit slow to get caught up to what makes sense now. For instance we want to buy someone a book for Christmas, but we don't know which one. So we would get them a gift certificate. But they don't read physical books anymore. And we don't pay for things with physical cash - we charge it.

So the situation would go like this:

1. Using an electric transaction purchase a physical gift card at a physical store
2. Give gift
3. Copy gift card number into computer to add credit to ebook account
4. Purchase books
5. Throw away card

The only physical part would be having a plastic card to hand to someone just to show "look, I'm giving you something". But it's supposed to be the thought that counts right? You're not supposed to be showing "This is what I gave person X. Be in awe!!"

This is clearly dumb and a waste of time. But it didn't occur to me or Laura before going shopping tonight that there was any other way. "Of course a gift card has to be physical! How else could you add credit to your electronic account... wait..."

Eventually our brains and society will catch up to what we've been capable of for many years now.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

This was my last post on my old blog.

This is goodbye. This is the last post to beernut.ca. I've moved everything over to blogger under the blog j-i-m-s.blogspot.ca. The first post was written by a very different Jim than this last one. There have been weddings, funerals and births. Life has gone on and I've been riding the wave. I'll still be surfing, just at a different beach.

Thank you for reading.

Moving from Movable Type to Blogger

It's been a long time at beernut but it's time to move on. Close to 1300 posts and a decade of thoughts, rants and memories. I'm going to be porting my posts into here using some helpful advice but I've got to do a bit of cleanup first. It's been a long time without any real html validation and I want to make sure that I port clean stuff in. I'd also like to change all the self referencing links to this new home, but that's going to take a bit I think.

I'm both sad and happy about the move.

Should I say or should I go now?

I keep on debating about moving this blog. Closing the door, putting up a sign with "forward mail to...". I like writing a blog. I don't like mucking around with the markup, or thinking about backups, or deleting spam. I hate blog spam and I get it all the time. It's getting sneakier too.

Every time I check my blog it makes me think of Ryan. It makes me sad. He's been gone just over 3 years now and the feelings aren't as sharp anymore, but they are still there.

Blogger has an import function, but I think that it's more of a "export from blogger, to blogger" process. I'd have to look into it. I feel the days that I'm posting to this site are numbered.

Sunrise. Sunset.

Q: Light speed, too slow? A: Yes, we're gonna have to go right to ludicrous book speed.

I enjoy a good book now and again. I don't feel that I read them that quickly but sometimes I surprise myself. I find it harder to tell with digital books because it's missing the heft and visual clue that tells you "yes, this is a lot of words".

I bought a bundle of books which included Old Man's War. I enjoyed it. A couple of weeks later I bought the sequel on a Sunday. I finished it on Tuesday. Hum. Well, it must not have been too long a book. A couple of weeks later I bought the third book on a Saturday. Again, finished it on Tuesday.

I was starting to feel that I wasn't getting my money's worth. Then I checked how many pages those books have - 384 and 336 pages respectfully. Well then. Maybe I read faster than I thought. This is perhaps how I went through The Wise Man's Fear in a week.

This is why I'm considering becoming a member of Worldcon just so that I can get the Hugo voter packet. Good books, cheap, in electronic format. What wouldn't be to like?

Auto go away

I have a gmail account that I got back when it was really hard to get an invite. Waaaay back. Like the summer of 2004. So I have a nice and simple username. Which makes anyone afterwards with a similar name to me get a similar email account. Which means I get that person's emails sometimes. Most of the time it's a quick reply with "sorry, you've got the wrong person. Remove me from your address book. Best of luck". Most of the time.

I keep on getting emails from people at Virginia Tech. An email to several people, including one that gets into my account. So I reply-all right away with my standard-ish message. Then someone replies continuing the original conversation... to my message. And there is another reply. Anger level increases. They are now wasting my time. I like being helpful, but only to a point.

What do I do for things that annoy me? I try to automate it. Apparently with google labs you can auto reply based on a filter with a canned response. So, I set up a filter for anyone from @vt.edu going to the wrong email (same every time). They get a custom response and the email gets deleted.

Boo freaking ya.

Where have I been, #5

Time for an update of the places I've been before I forget. Other places are tracked in #1, #2, #3, and #4.

Places in western Canada including:
Banff
Jasper
Columbia Icefield
Field, BC
Radium, BC
Calgary

In Australia we went to:
Sydney
Cairns
Melbourne
Phillip Island
Torquay
Apollo Bay
Warrnambool
Katoomba

Now I will leave you with a couple of pictures from those trips.

The new normal

Now we are both back at work we have a new normal. It's a very different schedule than we had 13 months ago. I no longer wander into work at the crack of 10. Now I'm there at ungodly o'clock. I'm sure it'd be an okay time to be at work if I lived in Lisbon, but you know... I don't. I no longer stay at work hours after everyone else has gone home. I have an alarm on my phone that rings, and I leave work. But I have not really had to use the alarm because I've been watching the clock for the last hour.

I want to go home. I want to see my little girl. It's not only that, but now I have to be going home so that I can pick her up. No dragging my heals and doing "one last thing". When it's time to go home, I leave. This is new to me. I've not worked this way since... well, ever.

New topic.

Now that it's getting colder it's even more of a challenge to get out of the house. It was easier when she was small. Bundle her into the bucket car seat (where it's warm), dash to the car, click it on, zoom!! Well, at the time it didn't feel like "zoom", but compared to now it does. I have a theory that car seats are designed so that you're never 100% sure you've done it right. I keep on checking, adjusting, fiddling. Even going for walks can be a challenge. At least right now she's not good at fighting us too much.

I think that I'm blathering so I'm going to stop, but not before I leave you with a pic.