Frenzied Daddy

The TT (don’t I think I should update those photos?) somehow got free rein on a package of O-R-E-OH!s … She wound up with her face covered in oreogoo. I was brushing my teeth when I saw her run by, so I grabbed a facecloth, got it nice and wet, and chased her down from one end of the house to the other ( some houses are well-suited for playing chase, and the kids can run around in circles all day. Ours isn’t. ) I held her down and scrubbed her face. Finally, she broke free, giggling, and shouted “Missed a spot!” and ran off!

Of course I had to chase her and try again. Six or seven times.

But it could give you heart damage.

“After one can it seemed to turn the young individual into one with more of the type of profile you would expect to see with someone with cardiovascular disease. People who already have existing cardiovascular disease may want to talk to their physician before they drink Red Bull in future,” the scientist said.

Crumb. What is this world coming to when one of my favorite “mana potions” encourages me to kick the bucket? I mean, the heart racing, heart pounding palpitations, I understand, but blood stickiness and possible clots? Eeew.

Last weekend, the TT came into the house, crying. She tried to to “pet the fuzzy bee.” She was more upset that the bee wouldn’t let her pet it than she was hurt that it stung her. Now she tells me to be careful of them.

Tonight, while I’m working in the bedroom, she came to me, asked me to get down one of her dresses, because, very seriously, she was invited to a party and she needs the dress to dance in. Please can she have a dress to dance? She was very serious about all of this.

I love my kids

It’s 08/08/08, and the Olympics are starting. I’m still unsure how I, personally, feel about the Olympics being in China. On the one hand, I hate their politics and their human wrongs. On the other; well, the Olympics are supposed to be unifying the world in the field of sports even through wars and other strife. The Olympics are supposed to transcend our “normal” lives to some other plane.

But, of course, politics and war come back to play again, as it appears that Russia is invading Georgia using the Olympics as a distraction. Sources: here and here.

Lastly, welcome to Nola Schader, who is entering the world today. Happy Birthday, Kid!

Of course I keep the squirtguns in the refridgerator. Doesn’t everyone?

The TT got a pair of big tank-type pump action squirtguns for her birthday. Now, I had a squirtgun, the kind you pump full of air and then you can hold the trigger down and hose the recipient. These are bigger, but you can only shoot one “pump” at a time. They hold a lot more water, too.

It’s fun to run through the yard squirting and being squirted. We put them on her list because the little pistols we had gotten were too hard to shoot; the triggers wouldn’t pull back for little ( three year old, at the time ) fingers. She loves them.

She also got a “big girl bike”- the DQ’s old kiddie bike with training wheels. She loves that too. She’ll want to ride her bike up to 9:00 PM and then when she gets up in the morning. Just try keeping her off. She wears her helmet every time ( got a new one of those too ). As she gets faster and faster, I have to run faster and faster to keep up. Those training wheels are never coming off. :p

I told her the other night that I couldn’t run behind her (hey, I was worn out) and she’d have to stay closer to home. I said I was “old and feeble.” She disagreed. She believes that “Ten is old and feeble.” I guess I’m not ten yet; but her sister shouted “HEY!”

Got forty-five minutes? Good.
At work? Got headphones? Good.
Got a twisted sense of humor and a mildly warped sense of good and evil?
Check out Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Yup.

I can hear you asking… WHY?! Why would you do this to us?

Because it’s Joss Whedon. And Nathan Fillion. And Neil Freakin Patrick Oh-my-goddess Harris. Neil Patrick Harris has recently resurfaced in my conscience as a very funny guy. But I can’t believe Nathan Fillion in this. Over. The. Top.

I suppose it stands to reason that I liked it so much, because I adored the “once more with feeling” episode of Buffy. I think that episode peed on my leg and marked me as its own.

Yeah, you can tell a lot about a guy who likes musicals: Dr Horrible, Once More With Feeling, and twisted mummy movies ( Bubba Ho-tep ). And Weird Al.

And I can finally talk about it

The Hyperdesk site is finally live. This site has been a challenge; the design is about three notches over my usual attempts. I’m really excited about this site. Honestly, most of the html and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) was out of my league. I built the “back end” where Jeff updates the content. I did most of the javascript too; we’re using the mootools libraries. I did put in a few minor css/html/image changes, but for the most part what you see is the result of another design group making Jeff’s vision come to the realm of html.

Working on this project has felt in some ways similar to working at Hot Off The Press. Jeff leads a team of incredibly talented designers and their inspiration and excitement encourage, excite and inspire me. As I’ve noted before, artistic inspiration is like fire; once it’s extinguished, the easiest way to bring it back to life is to wave more fire at it.

I don’t think I can brag about the new themes he has in production; you can see that he’s obviously working with Sony-Ericsson and Disney / Pixar. He has also signed some other big-name companies for some recognizable characters. If you’re interested in Windows Themes, you really should check this out.

As it happened, I loaded up a Ubuntu CD and checked the RAM and the hard drive. Found a bunch of errors, told it to chkdisk on the next reboot and rebooted. While I was working on it, I asked the DQ to paint on my case.

I can see you’re jealous.

The computer is working, more or less, “fine” now. Hurray for chkdsk.

Why does it always happen that as soon as you think you can relax, you can’t?

My ‘play computer’ went belly up. While Ms B was on vacation and while Miss B and Miss K were home from school. So they’re going crazy looking for something to do while their mother plays on her computer. Work computer’s still fine, and laptop’s still fine, but I’d really like to upgrade the laptop ( it’s kind of puny. And elderly. )

My days are full right now, but I think I’m going to either track down a Ubuntu cd and test the ram/hard drive ( and probably reinstall windows ) or ask my Brother to diagnose it for me, so I know what I need to replace. It pretends it’s a hardware problem ( a windows xp blue screen flashes on the screen briefly and then it reboots ) but I’ve tried stripping it down to just processor, motherboard, each stick of ram and harddrive with no change.