Frenzied Daddy

Come home or the kids’ fashion sense gets it.

I’ve said it before, I have a lot of respect for single parents. I have no idea how they go on. Mrs. B is out this weekend at a Scrapbooking Convention and I’m alone with the girls. I love my girls. One of the things I like is doing spontaneous things with them. So on Friday, we went to Fry’s (sigh) and then stopped at the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner. I had diapers in the car, but no food for Ms K. We were all hungry, and it’s a good thing that we were in a table in 15 minutes. Ms K really enjoyed the crystal chandeliers and the stained glass windows in the foyer, and was totally fascinated with the fringy lamps hanging over our table.

However, after managing to order, feeding Ms K some applesauce and letting Ms B eat my salad, I was starting to wear out. I could see the value in bringing something to distract the one-year-old, because she was a ball of energy. Ms B was, of course, excellent, but very chatty. I was having a hard time relaxing, which is why I like to eat out, and also taking care of Ms K and keeping up my conversation with Ms B. By the time the dessert and the check came, I was ready to leave. Which is unfortunate, because I love my kids and enjoy spending the time with them. But perhaps this’ll teach me to bring something for the girls to play with so I can have a few minutes to eat my peas and carrots.

On the plus side, Ms K ate a lot of applesauce, a lot of macaroni and cheese, and then almost an entire dish of ice cream. Jeez. You’d think I never feed these kids.

Ever feel like you were the last kid on the cool bus?

The Google Pedometer is a slick use of the google map api to calculate distance traveled, miles per hour and even calories burned. Wish I’d thought of this one, but sadly, my use of the google maps api would be limited to graphing the locations of the nearest Starbucks.

Yes, I’m avoiding work. You see, Hal died, and coincidentally, my linux server at home died. Both computers suffered, what one might call ‘catastrophic hard drive failure.’ Yes, that means that there’s no backup for the three sites I had on Hal. I found an old copy of arghwebworks on the laptop, but wishease.com and veeshans-fury.com are both … down.

With it coming into a serious gift-giving season, it’s really appropriate that I get wishease.com back up and running, if I’m serious about providing that service and theoretically making money from it.

There are two weblogs that I read for no other reason than they give me an excuse to read weblogs and pretend to be working. It’s not making me any money directly, but I can see reflecting on them making me a better … wage-earner. Or whatever. Anyway, one of these two is Paul Graham. His essay on Ideas helps me understand myself a little better. On the one hand, I know that I don’t learn something very well unless I’m using it to solve a problem. Writing a hello world program in javascript is pretty dull, but I can see learning the same techniques to a task that’s more interesting. Like parsing a stock market price and updating a web page in near-real-time.

According to Paul Graham, ideas come up like doodles.

Perhaps letting your mind wander is like doodling with ideas. You have certain mental gestures you’ve learned in your work, and when you’re not paying attention, you keep making these same gestures, but somewhat randomly. In effect, you call the same functions on random arguments. That’s what a metaphor is: a function applied to an argument of the wrong type.

You need to have some knowledge of techniques (mental gestures) before you can be inspired with an idea. I rather like that, because it meshes well with my need to, for instance, learn C so I can write a water-sensing program that turns on a waterpump. It’s also crucial to “fill the hopper” (my term, not his) with a lot of interesting arguments that your function can be applied to.

Miss B really enjoys Zoo Tycoon 2. Recently they released Microsoft Zoo Tycoon 2: Endangered Species; a Cn add-on expansion pack for Zoo Tycoon 2. And for weeks before it was released, I would hear daily reports of how much she wanted this expansion pack. She loves creating zoos, she loves animals, and she worries about endangered species.

I’m tired of just buying her whatever she wants. So I figured I’d make her work for it; I made up a game sheet with Zoo Tycoon, the Jesse McCartney CD and pictures of cinnamon rolls. To “X” one out (and earn either breakfast at Starbucks or one of the items), she has to write a book report. A total of four for the Zoo Tycoon expansion. I wanted her to see what it was like to set a goal and work toward it.

Well, yesterday I got back my first book report. She read a book I bought for her when last I went to Powell’s. I try not to just buy her random books anymore; the Junie B Jones fiasco set that up for me. But this one I thought she might like. So here ya go, one book report, in her words, with her spellings and suchlike, but I’ve helped with some of the more confusing words.

What’s this all about, then?

A litte mad saniteste kid whow whants to have freinds so she makes a potchin to look nice and some days alhter she has to thren into her shlaf againg to safe her school.

Did you like it?

Yes.

What did you like about it?

That she makes alot of freinds.

What didn’t you like about it?

beyede liked frits.

Who would like this book?

Kids who like kids and mad sitisetes!

Stay tuned for The Eoin Colfer’s Legend of Spud Murphy!

I try to learn something new every day. Yesterday, I was looking at changing html with javascript and writing functions to move a layered “ad” (I was thinking a photo, rather than a popup window, but anyway) over the page. I think I’m going to try that out.

Today, I’ve learned that if you go to the store with the kids and a powerful lack-of-food-headache, you may wind up buying pie crusts, apple filling and caramel.

Ran our dungeons and dragons game. It was a smaller crew than usual.

Got a story up.

I’ll post some XP points shortly

I brought Miss K upstairs while I worked; I wanted a change of environment and wanted to get away from the television. Besides, it’s almost naptime. She’s wandering around the upstairs playing with various things, actually leaving the animals alone. She’s in a good mood. I’m in the library, a short hallway away from the living room.

Suddenly, a shriek rings out!

She doesn’t sound hurt, I didn’t hear a crash. I think she’s struggling with something. I give her about a minute of shrieking at whatever isn’t cooperating and then track her down (it isn’t hard, she’s still yelling.) I come out to the living room and find her taking off her shirt. Well, ok. I’ll let her. I’ll even help her. “Now honey, is that better? Let me know if you get cold.” (I routinely talk to the 15month old as if she can understand adult language). She toddles off and I go back to my laptop and couch combo. A few minutes later, she comes back and hands me her pants. “Uhh, ok.” And then with a heroic wrench she pulls off her diaper.

Naked Ninnies!

I let her run around naked, and then she brings me back her diaper. And I put it on. Remarkably, she stays still while I put it on her- I don’t have to wrestle with her. Then I put on her pants. She’s still happy. Then she brings me a clean dishtowel she fished out of the linen closet. What am I supposed to do with this? I pin it to her like a little cape, horizontally so she doesn’t trip on it. Then she brings me back her shirt, which I discover has a wet sleeve (she was playing in, err, the dog water bowl, you know, the one with the constant supply of fresh water). I put it on her anyway, and she starts yelling at me. So I take it off her and go get her a cute short sleeve shirt. That one stays on, go figure.

She was looking over my shoulder as I found her second shirt. Now she’s in the bedroom yelling at the dresser because she wants its treasures and it’s not complying.

How do I tell a fifteen month old kid that even though it has the word “toy” in it, she’s not supposed to play with the toilet?