Doh! DOH!! Hmm... Doh-nuts... and Energy Swords

CeBIT 2007 - feeding the inner geek

2007-04-29T23:50:00.000-07:00

How geeky is this?
I'm taking leave on Tuesday to attend the CeBIT exhibition in Sydney. (No - I'm not chucking a sickie!)
It isn't directly related to my current role, so I couldn't expect my boss to foot the bill.
But I've always wanted to go to one of these. And see what's shaking up other areas of IT.
Particularly the exhibits for Open Source and VOIP. Both have been tech buzzwords for quite a while, and it will be interesting to see how they're marketed to business.

Other must sees:

Have to pay a visit to the MyNetFone gang, who (along with the Whirlpool forums) introduced me to the wonderful el cheapo world of VOIP phone calls. (Shameless plug - but they deserve it)
The WalletFlash products look pretty cool. I'm a sucker for anything USB. Especially a creditcard thin USB drive and MP3 player for my wallet!
(Shameful plug - in the hope that they'll let me review their product)
How about we use this technology in the Access Card? Then it replaces 17 health and social services cards AND your iPod :)
The BloggerZone. They'll have an area set aside just for bloggers. Perhaps I'll do some Jack Bauer 'The following takes place between 10am and 11am' posts.

Stay tuned...

Did I mention that "I'll be back"?

2007-04-28T09:22:00.000-07:00

This blog has been sadly neglected over the last 4 months. (or 7, if you don't count the obligatory Christmas post)
I'm not sure what happened.
I remember that at one stage, I just had too much stuff I wanted to blog about. And I left it for a little while, so that the ideas could settle. But then life intervened. And a little while stretched... a while. And my days of blogging began to fade from memory.
Until last week.
I can't remember what Lisa and Maggie did. But it was funny. But only funny after Marge and I put them to bed and retired to our own room. Because before that, things were much more serious. We had to warn our twin tornadoes "not to do it again", and I think I had to use my angry voice. (BTW - the angry voice quickly loses credibility when you start to giggle midway. Hopefully my brilliantly disguised laugh-cough did the trick)
Anyway, Marge suggested that I should write about the girls' antics in my blog.
"My blog? I have a blog??"
And the clouds parted. And the sun shone through. And the turtle dove returned with an olive branch.
So here I am. Back with a vengeance. If only I could remember what my girls did that was so blogworthy.

Merry Christmas everyone!

2006-12-24T16:48:00.000-08:00

And don't forget the reason for the season! :)

This was our first Christmas without the Christmas tree.
A sad reflection of the age that we live in - or more accurately: the age of Lisa and Maggie.

This year we had decided to put up the Christmas tree early, mainly due to Bart being bored and wanting something to do. He did an impressive job with the decorations. Compared with last year's effort, this time there was a good distribution of tinsel, bows and baubles.
That was the first weekend in December.

I was at work when Cyclone Lisa and Hurricane Maggie hit the next day.
The girls managed to strip the tree bare. The decorations were strewn all over the lounge room floor. When Bart got home from school and saw the carnage, he was visibly upset but persevered with the task of rebuilding his masterpiece.
Piece by piece. Tinsel ribbon by tinsel ribbon. Until it was perfect again.
He reconstructed it so well that I wouldn't have known what transpired if Marge didn't tell me.

The next day, the girls struck again.
The resulting devastation made their last strike look like a dress rehearsal.
I can imagine them giggling as they tore tinsel shreds and gutted the foam from the hanging decorations. If we had angel decorations, I'm sure the girls would have plucked their wings!

So Bart gave up.
And so did Marge and I - in fear of what our sweet little Lisa and Maggie were planning next.
So the tree was packed away 3 weeks before Christmas.

To this day, we're still finding tinsel strands throughout every room in the house. In the cupboards. I even had a piece flutter down when I was in the shower!

Brain Age: Start Addictions in Minutes a Day

2006-09-17T09:34:00.000-07:00

Confession time:
My mum's been staying with us for a week.
During that time, I think I've turned my Mum into a Nintendo DS addict.

I introduced her to the Brain Age game a few nights ago.
She got pretty peeved (as we all did on our first attempt) when the chunky faced professor told her that she had the brain of an 80 year old. I haven't seen her so fired up! Especially yelling into the microphone: "Blue. Blue! Buh-lue! BLOOOOOOOOEEEE!!!"
On that first night, she played for almost an hour.
And then when I offered her another hit, an hour the following day.
And last night, it was Mum who approached me and asked me for the DS. And she played it till the batteries ran dead.

I may need to buy her one.

In other DS related news, this is what the family's been playing:
Homer - Mario Hoops 3 on 3 (US Import)
Marge - The mini-games on New Super Mario. But only vs me or Bart.
Bart - Not much. But Lego Star Wars II is waiting for him after he finishes his homework.
Lisa - Nintendogs. With the Corgi named Elmo.
Maggie - Are you kidding? I'm not letting her near the DS. Not after she snapped her Wiggles DVD in two with her bare hands. I kid you not.

It was supposed to be a simple mission

2006-09-17T06:51:00.000-07:00

It was supposed to be a simple mission.
Fix the dashboard menu on my brother's xbox, after it mysteriously turned blank last night.
I reckoned 30 minutes - max.

That was before realising that I had to manually set the IP address on his PC so I could FTP in, as the default network on the xbox was different.
That was before realising how slow his PC was because it was riddled with virii and spyware.
That was before discovering that his dashboard was Anod-X, something which I had never seen before.

After figuring out the menu definition, we FTPed a new config file - and all seemed good. But for some reason, the config file would then get corrupted or wiped intermittently after exiting the previous program, and then default to a blank menu. Very strange - and frustrating!
After a couple hours of this, I decided to install good ol' Evolution X instead.

That and XBoxMediaCentre. Now THAT is a brilliant piece of software.
I had been running the same old version for the last year, and only recently decided to install the latest CVS build. I'm glad I did. It's a totally different animal.
Much prettier (with the 360 look) and feature packed.
Plus it plays any video file I can stream to it. Even the ones that won't play on my PCs.

But I digress. Anyway, the 30 minute job ended up taking over 4 hours.
Isn't that so typical of an IT problem?
For my next trick: I say we nuke all of those virii on that darn PC. Reformat. It's the only way to be sure.

We had dinner in Dickson. My first time at the Zeffirelli Pizza Resturant. And it won't be the last. The food was great. And the servings were generous. Bart managed to finish a whole pizza (albeit a smallish one) by himself.

Still here

2006-09-14T07:57:00.000-07:00

It's been too long since the last entry.
So much has happened since then.
So much to write about, yet I don't know where to start.
So I think I'll just go to bed and sleep on it.
And perhaps dream of simpler times...
back in Toowoomba, living the life of a uni student.
just hanging out with friends 24/7. Friends for life. More than friends - we were like family.
Before Reality closed in. And presented the corporate ladder. And served it with kids and a mortgage.
And suddenly a lot of those friends are now just email addresses.
And I'm just another cc: on a forwarded email.

Maybe things would be different if I started replying to their emails.

Bart, please forgive me

2006-08-02T02:33:00.000-07:00

But I have to record this somewhere!

When you were 8 years old, you used to sleep with your calculator.
And last week, after you got your report card, you slept with that as well.
(Sure, it was an impressive report card with 11 A's - but that's not the point)

From the mouths of babes and 8 year olds who talk like babes

2006-08-02T01:47:00.000-07:00

Hearing our kids develop from babbling babes to semi-coherent little people is amazing.

These days I'm still getting over hearing Lisa talk.
Whenever we have fish for dinner, she'll yell out excitedly "Nemo! Nemo!"
Her favourite question: "How are ya doin?"
And when you ask her the same, she'll always respond with "I'm fine"
So far her questions are very answerable.
Unlike Bart with his "Daaaaad? How many [pick a noun]'s are there in [pick a city, state, country or planet]?"

Lisa's also developed an interesting linguistic quirk. Words ending in consonants will somehow get an extra 'er' or 'ed' tacked onto the end.
For example: "Daddy, I want peanut butter breaded" or "I want to read the book'er"

Bart has also unconsciously developed his own sentence structure.
I commend him on trying to tailor his vocabulary to suit his sisters, but his use of "no-no" is not going to impress anyone.
For example: "Lisa, you no-no touch my toys" or "Maggie, this is no-no Maggie's"

Maggie still babbles.
She can say "Daddy" and "Mummy" and "book" and "bubble"
But there is one command that she has learnt - one that gives her power.
And that command is "back".
She'll walk up to me (and only me) at any time of day and utter it with a huge emphasis on the "ck" sound.
And it would be wise for me to obey.
Because her definition of "back" is 'stop what you're doing and give me a piggyback, or I'll start screaming'
It works.

Toilet training - one more to go

2006-07-30T06:01:00.000-07:00

I know I've said it before. But this time, we're certain.

Lisa is now officially toilet trained. Woohoo!
She insists on wearing underwear instead of nappies, even at play school.
And she can go to the toilet all by herself - but not before she announces it to everyone first.

She'll still wait for us to pick up her signals though. Lisa will do her little dance on the spot or walk around frantically in circles.
Sometimes Bart is the same. Even now. He'll be grabbing the front of his pants while wriggling and casually talking to us.
And if we ask: "Bart, do you need to go to the toilet?"
He'll say "oh yeah" and then race to the toilet to empty a day's worth of water.

And Maggie?
Not quite ready yet.
But she is aware when her nappy is full.
Sometimes she'll point to it.
But most times she'll just cry and want to be picked up.
Or if I'm still in bed asleep, she'll just point her soiled little butt at my face and sit.

I am so looking forward to the day when I don't need to see another disposable nappy again.
Think of all that money we'll be saving... to pay for their school fees. Doh!

Thweety Day

2006-07-19T04:04:00.000-07:00

I woke up yesterday morning to find Marge standing at the bedroom doorway, looking utterly defeated.
In her left hand, a roll of toilet paper.
In her right hand, another roll of toilet paper minus the toilet paper. aka just the cardboard tube.

Hmmm...
Normally I would attempt to guess.
In hindsight, there may have been several witty remarks that I could have made, but my brain was still booting up.

So I just asked "What happened?"
She stared at me with helpless eyes and whimpered something about Lisa and Maggie.

"Huh?", I offered intelligently.

"The girls were playing in the toilet."
She held up the paperless tube.
"They unrolled the whole thing and tried to flush it. All of it!"
She held up the other roll.
"And they already started on this one when I caught them..."

It took me a while to comprehend the magnitude of this senseless act.
Did they think it was funny? In the dunny?
Had Marge not intervened, how many rolls would we have lost? Five? Ten? Ten thousand?!
All those sheets - just wasted... down the drain... without fulfilling their purpose.
So much potential to touch so many backsides...

I sat up and looked out beyond the hallway - to add some creepiness to the moment.
I imagined Lisa and Maggie cackling to themselves as they danced around the wee-wee and poo-poo chair...

Epilogue:
Once upon a time, a vacant toilet could have its door left open, as an invitation to those who needed relief.
Not anymore. The world has changed. We have been forced to become more vigilant.
In years to come, when my grandchildren come running to me, jumping up and down:
"Homer, why do you need to lock the toilet door when there's nobody inside?! I'm busting to go!!!"
I can calmly sit them on my lap and tell them about Thweety Day *.
And the atrocity committed on Thwee T's:
Toilet Tissue Tuesday.

(* Also so named because Maggie has finally found a soft toy companion to carry around everywhere.
A cute Tweety Bird that she grabs by its scrawny neck, leaving the oversized yellow head hanging limply.
Very adorable.)

Mouldy Jessica

2006-06-26T02:14:00.000-07:00

This month's 'Tough Toddler' award goes to Maggie:

for continuing to grab our hair as a means of pacifying herself to get to sleep.
for also biting the aforementioned hair and managing to rip out strands in the process.
for screams (especially in confined spaces) that have you clutching at your ears and checking afterwards for blood.
for learning to say 'no', in the cutest manner possible. It's a soft, tert 'na' - often repeated and accompanied by a quick turn of the head. She seems to say it at every opportunty. Even when Marge goes to kiss her goodnight.
for learning to jump. And jump. And jump.
for learning to spin around and around and around and *bump*
for quickly adapting to new technologies, particularly those that beep. Her latest toy - the kitchen timer.
for excellent climbing skills that have taken her to new heights and a variety of photos, books and cordless phones.
and lastly: for scaring the daylights out of Homer as she stood barefoot on a glass photo frame.
She placed it on the lounge suite and was rocking on it. I didn't see her until...
The glass broke with a sickening crunch and Maggie just stood stunned. I whisked her away and examined her feet. Thank God! Not even a scratch.

Honourable Mentions to Lisa:

for the quote of the month: 'I want to watch mouldy Jessica'. Of course, she's referring to the movie 'Madagascar'. Just as well her friend Jessica hasn't heard that one.
and for learning to forgo the disposable nappy. Yes, she is now officially toilet trained! Woohoo!!!!

And of course Special Mentions to:
Bart - for almost knocking out his front tooth with his own basketball.
Bart - for his willingness to finally chip in and do some chores (in exchange for some Nintendo DS time). He's currently into Nintendogs and has a German Shepherd pup named 'Deathy'.
Harry Kewell - for THAT goal against Croatia to send the Socceroos into the Final 16. Realistically, that's as far as they'll go. But we'll all be watching for a miracle against Italy. ;)

Dishonourable Mentions and a Yellow Card to:
Homer - for being a slacker with this blog. Doh!

c..c...cold

2006-06-14T19:30:00.000-07:00

I walked to work this morning. At 10am.
It felt strange. No sunshine. Face frozen.
When I got in, I found out that it was still minus 2 degrees outside. At 10:30am!
According to BoM, we've hit a maximum of - 0.2 degrees so far today.

And Bart still insists that he doesn't need to wear a jumper to school.

Where were you when Cahill scored THAT goal?

2006-06-14T03:12:00.000-07:00

Maggie woke up crying again at around 12:45pm on Monday night.
I barely heard her, through the headphones.
I was in bed, staring at my notebook.
Of course, my notebook was connected to the portable DTV tuner.
I was watching the beginning of the end of the Socceroos' World Cup fairytale.
One nil down against Japan. Just over 10 minutes to go. So many missed opportunities.
As Maggie's cries intensified, I took off the headphones, and crawled out of bed.
I turned back to see if Marge was awake. Nope - she was oblivious to the wailing across the hall, and the sporting disappointment unfolding across the world.

When I got to her room, Maggie was sitting up - as she usually does. She looked through me. And just kept crying.
I tucked her back into bed. She kicked off the covers and cried even louder.
My mind drifted back to the game, as I pondered what to do.
"It's over anyway. Might as well stay with Maggie until she falls asleep"
"No - don't give up. Australia may have already equalised. You can't write them off yet!"
So in one fluid motion, I rushed the crying Maggie back to our bedroom, jumped into bed, ~~threw~~ placed Maggie beside her sleeping mother and turned to the screen.

Australia: 0. Japan: 1.
My heart sank. 83 minutes gone, and nothing had changed.
A minute later, EVERYTHING changed. Australia's first World Cup goal. At least we come away with a draw. What a sigh of relief.
Five minutes later, I jumped up and punched the air as Cahill scored his 2nd.
(And so did Marge, except her punch connected with my leg as she scowled at me for waking her up!)
And when Aloisi made it 3 - 1, four minutes later, I was just smiling like an idiot. It took me another 2 hours to get to sleep after that.
What a game!

Well done Socceroos!!

Toilet humour is supposed to be funny

2006-06-02T02:48:00.000-07:00

The last 2 weeks have been quite a challenge.

Lisa picked up a nasty stomach bug - probably from playschool.
Since then, the kids have taken turns throwing up and diarrhea-ing.
And the two adults have been feeling queasy - possibly from all the exposure to the toxic output we've had to clean up.

Thankfully, Bart is old enough to talk into the porcelain bowl himself.
If only our two little princesses were more co-operative.
Marge and I have become adept at grabbing Lisa and Maggie and rushing them to the toilet.
And also identifying the visual queues to throw that bucket under them before the vomit hits the carpet.

We haven't been 100% successful though.
We've found that disposable nappies are not designed to withstand such forces of nature.
Our sighs would resonate through the house whenever we saw those wet brown patches seeping through the girls' pants.
And how those sighs quickly turn to screams when we discover that they've been sitting on the carpet. In the lounge room! Aaaarrggghhh!!!!
At least Maggie would try to tell us the she was uncomfortable.
Lisa on the other hand. Sometimes I think she could wear the same nappy for a week without being bothered.

I hope you've already eaten.

May 18, 2006 - Wii wees

2006-05-18T02:25:00.000-07:00

On this day:

I woke up to find that my short 'stay-with-Maggie-until-she-falls-asleep' nap had lasted 7 hours.
Bart was in a better mood this morning, considering the Tantrum Terror we witnessed last night.
The entire street endured over an hour of wailing with some screaming, jumping, and 'Not Fair's thrown in.
The reason: Homework. Marge delivers the spelling words better than I can.
I had KFC for lunch, while mulling over some mobile phone brochures.
I visited EB, where the manager gave me the privilege of letting me play with her pre-release Nintendo DS Lite. (Which makes me wonder. Could I innocently write the same thing in November for the <ahem> Wii, without causing a scandal?)
Marge phoned me to give me some breaking news... Lisa went to the toilet. And did a wee. ALL BY HERSELF.

Your mission Bart, should you accept it...

2006-05-12T00:33:00.000-07:00

** Begin transmission **
<whisper>
It's Mother's Day on Sunday.
I'm meeting Bart after work tonight to go gift shopping for Marge.
I did some recon during lunch and have identified some potential candidates:

The Uniden 2355+2 cordless phone pack with answering machine and headset
An ipod shuffle or nano
A bright pink bathrobe
An xbox360

Hopefully Bart will be focused on our mission.
The last time I took him on the field with me, he got distracted by the toy section and almost compromised the entire operation.
This time I'll let him eat first. So that his stomach is in harmony with his mind.
And then we'll strike our target, which funnily enough, is Target.
Homer out.
</whisper>
** End transmission **

while (system is down) {find meaning out of codelessness}

2006-05-03T23:25:00.000-07:00

Doh!
Our software development environment has crashed.
It's unlikely that we'll be able to do any programming for the rest of the day.
'We' being an entire floor of code hungry tech-heads with nowhere to channel their complex algorithms.
So far, it's not too bad.
The volume of chatter has gone up a bit.
Clusters of people can be seen congregating in the hallways.
But how soon will it be before such frivilous brain activity becomes boring?
There can only be so much social interaction that a tech-head can take before the desire to cut code overruns all sense of logic.

Oh look. Some people have started singing "Happy Birthday". For their sake, I hope it's genuine.
There's no telling what a tech-head will do to give themselves a sense of purpose.
Some of the most malicious pieces of code are those created out of boredom.
Viruses. Spyware. Windows ME. Tetris. <shudder>

She knows how to look after me

2006-04-28T01:09:00.000-07:00

This morning I was running late for work.
I plonk myself onto the rug and start putting on my socks.
She senses the urgency and starts mumbling as she walks off to the front door, grabs my work shoes and brings them to me.
She holds them up, motioning for me to slip my feet in.
I tell her it's not necessary, and gratefully take the shoes from her.
Next she walks over to the lounge room, and brings out my work bag.
For her, it must weigh a tonne, but she lifts it up by the strap and slowly begins walking to me.
The bag is too big for her, and it drags along the floor. Yet she still holds it up, in front of her, kicking into the bag as she awkwardly steps towards me.
I tell her that it would be easier if she dragged it behind her instead. But she ignores me, her face full of concentration.
I smile at her as she reaches me and give her the biggest hug and kiss.
She reciprocates and then says 'Bye bye' as she waves to me and backs away.
Then she runs off to Bart and Lisa to tell them I'm about to leave.

Marge and I could only watch in amazement.
Our 19 month old Maggie is truly an amazing child.

Statistics

2006-04-27T01:55:00.000-07:00

Bart's meals per day: 3
Bart's desired meals per day: 6
Minutes after breakfast for Bart to declare he's hungry: 10
Minutes after his post-breakfast sandwich for Bart to declare he's hungry: 5

Number of times Lisa has told me she wants to go to the toilet: 3
Number of times she has actually delivered the goods: 0
Metres between Lisa and me before I realised that she poo'ed her nappy this morning: 1
Seconds to rush Lisa into the bathroom to change her: 10
Jars of Nutella that I could have bottled from Lisa's nappy (and pants, and the sides of her legs) : 1

Maggie's favourite word : Daddeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Number of utterances in a day: 200
Number of utterances directed at Daddy: 10

Number of times Marge needs to call Bart before he responds: 3
Number of times Marge needs to call Lisa before she responds: 7
Number of times Marge needs to call Maggie before she responds: 1

Number of seconds for Bart to respond after Homer wields the cane: 0.1 - by rushing into obedience
Number of seconds for Lisa to respond after Homer wields the cane: 0.1 - by crying profusely, unable to move
Number of seconds for Maggie to respond after Homer wields the cane: 2.0 - by seeing what Bart and Lisa do first

She P's

2006-04-19T02:47:00.000-07:00

Last night, I was crouched on the floor, doing some handywork around the house.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lisa walk over and stop beside me, almost standing over me.
Before I had time to ask 'Lisa, do you want to go to the toilet?', I hear a waterfall as she semi-squats and shoots a jetstream of pee into her nappy.
I roll out of the way, just in case she tries to 'use the angle'*
She looks blankly at me, and then innocently waddles away with the nappy bulging through her pants.

* A few times, Lisa has managed to position her nappy in such a way that creates a pee-through blind spot.
The first time it happened, it was quite disturbing. A puddle of wee at her feet, yet the nappy was completely dry.

She speaks

2006-04-19T02:34:00.000-07:00

This month, Lisa started to really talk.
It's not just words anymore.
Lisa has finally realised that speech is a viable communications medium.
It's useful for getting into tit-for-tat arguments with Bart.
And for dobbing in her little sister whenever Maggie hits her.
And for telling Daddy over the phone about the busy day she's had.
This week, she even began to comfortably talk to other grownups.
Though we're still waiting for her to tell us when she needs to use the toilet.

Sleep Wars

2006-04-10T02:27:00.000-07:00

It's been over 6 months since I wrote about ~~kicking Maggie out of our bedroom~~ releasing Maggie into her own personal space.
Well, after this paragraph, I will finally reveal the truth about what REALLY happened.
[Queue 'Twilight Zone' music]

The celebrations were shortlived.
Gone were my plans of setting up the HP Notebook as a bedroom Media Centre.
Even though the cot and all the Maggie-ware were in Maggie's new room, Maggie was not.
She wanted nothing to do with the new room, crying herself into a frenzy if she was ever placed there for an afternoon nap.
Maggie continued to claim the master bed as her territory, refusing to sleep anywhere else.
Not only that, but her siblings soon wised up, and started to revolt against their own sleeping conditions.

'Mummy-Daddy's bed. Mummy-Daddy's bed!' Lisa's cries could be heard almost nightly, as the clock struck 9pm.
And then 10pm. Sometimes 1am. And 3am - each time while we carried her back to her own room.
But still, Marge and I would wake up the morning to find that somehow, Lisa had snuck into our bed again, under the radar.
It seemed that Lisa was unwilling to concede anything to her younger sister.

Enter daybreak. Enter Bart.
'Not fair! How come they get to sleep in Mummy and Daddy's bed. I'm sleeping here too!'
So he climbs in. But of course he wouldn't actually sleep.
He just plays. And baits his sisters. His sisters laugh, then cry.
And they all incur the wrath of a sleep-deprived Homer.

To be continued...

Before the beginning?

2006-04-05T01:48:00.000-07:00

Bart and I began a theological discussion last night, over dinner.
It didn't get very far. I couldn't even get past his first question.

Bart: "Dad, I know that God created everything. But how did God exist in the beginning?"
Homer: (thinks Doh! Doh! Doh!): "He just did, son"
Bart: "Yeah, but HOW?"
Homer: (silence) "Hey, what else did you learn in school today?!"

He told me that he also asked his teacher and she said that she didn't know.
Not only that, but she reckoned that no-one in the entire school knew the answer.
That has got to be THE understatement of the year.

I try not to think too much about such things. It just makes my brain hurt.
I'm hoping that God will give us all the answers after the game. *
Maybe with a play-by play commentary of everything that's happened in the history of everything. *

And then we'll probably all go "Ahhhhhh... Why didn't I think of that before?"
or "So that's what really happened to the dinosaurs..."
or "Wow, that's all we had to do to cure cancer?!"
or "Man, if only I had known my Nintendo DS could be modded to solve the world's energy crisis"

(* Yeah, I know these statements probably aren't biblically sound. But are they biblically unsound?)

Turning back time

2006-04-03T01:18:00.000-07:00

Daylight savings ended yesterday.
So we effectively gained an extra hour.
('We' being Homer and Marge. The kids didn't need to concern themselves with such frivolous matters.)
So we didn't bother adjusting the clocks in the house...

It's amazing what you can accomplish with a bit of chronological deception.
We managed to get the kids ready for church an hour earlier. :)
And we convinced the kids to go to sleep an hour before their actual bedtime. Woohoo!

Unfortunately, the start of the school week unravelled our scheme.
At 6am this morning, Bart woke everyone up, ready to go to school.
Marge weakened, and confessed the actual time.

But it's gotten me thinking...
Somebody needs to invent a remote control for clocks!

To evict Homer. SMS: 1-800-HOMER

2006-03-30T05:52:00.000-08:00

No wonder I've received so little feedback lately.
I just found out that my settings for Comments were restricted to Registered Blogger users only.

Well we can't have that.
Especially after my last mildly gross post.
(FYI - I almost deleted it. But self censorship just feels weird)

Please feel free to leave a comment or three.
Prove to me that it's not just Marge hitting refresh on the browser to boost my hit counter!
Is anybody out there?
Sometimes I just feel so ronery.

This can't be good

2006-03-28T00:35:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling quite uncomfortable here.
And it's quite painful when I get up to walk around.
(I don't know how I did the 20 minute walk to work today - and manage to stay conscious)

I could take a look, to confirm my suspicions.
But I'm too scared. Too scared to discover that my fears have been realised.

So, it has finally come to this.
It was only a few days ago that I warned Marge about this possibility.
* sigh *

Note to self:

Tell Marge to take more care when refilling the clothes drawers.
Remind Homer to be more vigilant when grabbing underwear out of the drawer...

Either I'm inadvertantly wearing Bart's jocks right now, or I've developed substantially overnight. D'oh!

Sister Act

2006-03-23T00:02:00.000-08:00

Maggie has reached another milestone.
The artist has awakened! The power of the pencil has been realised! The kitchen is now her canvas!
Yes, Maggie has been caught drawing on the pantry door.

And that's not the whole of it.
As soon as Lisa witnessed Maggie's daring raid, she grabbed a pencil and raced in to join her!

You see, this was one milestone that Lisa had bypassed during her toddler years.
Fortunately for us, Lisa was quite content growing up with the Megasketcher. And she quickly graduated to pencil on paper.

It's funny how Lisa now mimics the behaviour of her younger sister, rather than step up to the role of being big Sis.
We've seen Lisa regress to pointing instead of talking. Crawling instead of walking. And wanting to sit in Maggie's baby seat in the car.
Whenever Maggie runs to me with arms stretched, Lisa is sure to be hot on her heels, screaming to be picked up too.
According to the parenting books, this is all normal. Just a phase.
Enjoy it while it lasts, eh?

Happy xbox360Day - or not

2006-03-22T20:20:00.000-08:00

The xbox360 was launched in Australia today.

At the local shopping centre, it was pretty much a non-event.
All of the stores here were demoing Project Gotham Racing 3.
The games shops were practically empty. (Maybe everyone is at home playing with their new 360s?)
Good for me - because it made it easier for me to get my first 'touch'.

On a small standard definition LCD screen, the graphics looked good - but not great.
My 30 second verdict: Yeah, it's pretty nice. But not worth $650.

Until I get a largish HD LCD screen, I'm not too excited or eager to get a 360... yet.
Ask me again around Christmas time. :)
Or when Halo 3 is announced.

I'm also patiently waiting for the release of the PS3 in November.
A guy at work is a PS fanboy, who is absolutely convinced that Blue-Ray will rule the world and force the DVD format onto the Betamax scrapheap.
I'm not convinced. Though the built-in wireless sounds appealing.

And the mysterious Nintendo Revolution, with its groundbreaking controller - now THAT looks VERY intriguing.

To paraphrase a wise old lasersword wielding muppet:
"Begun, this console war has..."

A not so typical start

2006-03-21T07:40:00.000-08:00

The day started fairly typically. Sometime between 2am & 5am, Lisa woke up crying and crawled into our bed. Not long after, Maggie did the same.
Not typical was waking up to see Maggie cheerfully slapping Lisa on the head; Maggie kicking Lisa down the bed. Incredibly, Lisa slept through this barrage of abuse, subconsciously wriggling down the mattress to escape.
Of course, neither sister admitted to remembering any of this in the morning.
I hope this doesn't become a trend.

Simple things that make Homer smile.

2006-03-09T23:05:00.000-08:00

Walking home from work, enjoying the warm evening sun, and having a family of ducks waddle across my path.
Getting home and crouching down to take off my shoes. I get a welcome home slap on the back by Marge, that puts me off balance... followed by Maggie racing through and slamming her hands on my shoulders. I almost fall over.
Helping Lisa brush her teeth. And then watching my daughter laugh herself silly - seeing herself mirrored in the tap spout.
Bart comes in to see what's going on. And then both of them are cacking themselves, pointing at their distorted reflections.
Hearing Lisa string words together to form simple sentences.
Maggie. The questioning 'huh?' she utters whenever we ask her a question.
A spontaneous picnic at the park after work. Seeing Bart overcome his fear of heights to climb to the top of the previously unscalable 'Castle of Terror'.
Maggie's determination to pick up my mobile phone whenever she sees it, and return it to me.

On this day,,,

2006-03-02T04:58:00.000-08:00

25 years ago...
My Dad died.

I wish that I could say I knew you well.
But I was just a kid, just a couple years older than Bart is now.
I remember that you were always busy with work, just like I am now - I suppose.
And even though you worked back late, you would still find time to bring back toys. Like father, like son. :)
When I was sick, you'd have a plastic model kit waiting to cheer me up. It didn't matter that they were several years beyond my ability (and I really botched up that Apollo 13. No wonder it wouldn't stand. I had all the legs facing outwards!)

My clearest memory:
You and me, just the 2 of us, in the queue at Hoyts on George St, waiting to see Star Wars.
It must have just opened, because it was so packed.
You also bought me a ViewMaster set, with the Star Wars reels.
And my first Star Wars action figure: R2-D2.

Thanks Dad. You have no idea how close I hold that day to my heart.
(It also kicked off an expensive obsession with Star Wars that has filtered down to your grandson, but I'm cool with that)

I also remember the wake that we had at home, with all our relatives filling the place like sardines.
I remember seeing so many containers of prawn dumplings, but with no appetite to eat them.
I remember sitting on Uncle Mike's lap, sobbing away.
I remember Aunty Jen, wiping my eyes as she struggled to hold back her own tears.
She kept saying "Remember the good times. Remember the good times with your father"
I didn't see the wisdom in that. It just hurt even more. And it made me want to wail even louder.

25 years later...
Aunty Jen and Uncle Mike have also passed on.
And I have more memories. Good times. And tough times.
Yes, I still remember. How could I ever forget?
Miss you heaps.

- Your son

We're back!

2006-02-20T07:21:00.000-08:00

We've spent the last week recovering from our month long family holiday to Singapore and Malaysia.
It was very challenging with the 3 kids.
'Challenging?' Who am I kidding?!
~~IT WAS TORTURE! DO NOT travel overseas with young kids. Never. Ever.~~

Most of the time it was a lot of fun.
I'll write more later. In the meantime, enjoy a few more happy snaps...

Hey kids! Behold the Petronas Twin Towers - the tallest buildings in the world...

2006-02-20T07:16:00.000-08:00

Or just ignore them and play on the swings...

Happy Belated Chinese New Year

2006-02-20T07:10:00.000-08:00

This shot was taken in the Mid Valley Megamall.
If only I had a dollar for every time someone asked us 'Are they twins?'

2006-01-28T10:37:00.000-08:00

The freaky looking bird monster that guest starred at Lisa's party. We asked for Ronald McDonald, and they gave us Big Bird. Not only that, but it scared some of the younger kids.

2006-01-28T09:54:00.000-08:00

Lisa just turned 3. We had a birthday party at McDonalds with all of her cousins. She loved her cappuccino flavoured cake. And didn't even need the neighbouring chilli sauce to enjoy it.

2006-01-24T08:52:00.000-08:00

Singapore Zoo. "Look Daddy. Z is for..."

2006-01-24T08:50:00.000-08:00

We also caught up with Darth Vader at the "Art of Star Wars" Exhibition at the Singapore Science Centre.

2006-01-24T08:47:00.000-08:00

Another non-avian wildlife picture from Jurong Bird Park. Because we went on a weekday, there was hardly anyone else around.

2006-01-24T08:45:00.000-08:00

Jurong Bird Park - Singapore.One of the highlights of our kids' holiday. Not for the beautiful and exotic birds. But for the wet play area.

2006-01-24T08:38:00.000-08:00

The bassinet on our Singapore Airlines flight was a good idea. Too bad there wasn't much sleeping done in there.

2006-01-24T08:35:00.000-08:00

Catching up with some old friends in Singapore. In our hotel room at YMCA International House. All smiles, except for one cranky tired little miss. Can't blame her though. It was almost 2am according to her Australian body clock.

Brushing away the cobwebs...

2006-01-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

This blog has truly been neglected.

We've just been so busy lately.

In the meantime, I'll post some photos of our recent trip to Singapore and Malaysia...

Reality check

2006-01-11T06:03:00.000-08:00

A friend at work wisely checked himself into hospital yesterday after experiencing chest pains in the morning. The doctors ran various tests on him and requested that he stay overnight.
He later found out that when he had the chest pains, he was actually suffering a heart attack.

Pretty scary. Especially when this guy does more exercise and eats more salad than anyone else I know. And he's only 25 years old!

And here I am, eating fast food lunches 4 times a week - thinking that I'm blessed to have a ridiculously fast metabolism.
People must look at me in disgust. Not just because I stuff my face with junk at my workstation and litter my desk with crumbs. But because they see all the fat going in, yet my weight barely reaches 60kg.

For some people, eating a donut is a major life event. Each morning tea sees them calculating the amount of exercise required to burn off the calories. Me? I could chow down a box of Crispy Cremes without a second thought. My clothes will still fit me in 10 years time.

I used to think that was a cool thing. Like a nerd super power. Not anymore.
If anything, it masks what's happening inside. At least with the expanding waistline, it gives the owner a visual cue to slow down.

New Year's Resolution: Eat less rubbish.

Test post. Hello from Picasa

2006-01-08T07:14:00.000-08:00

Just testing the Picasa and Hello software combination to post to this blog.
I just installed Picasa yesterday and so far, I am VERY impressed.
This photo of Maggie was taken at Bateman's Bay in March last year.

Maggie's Hat Trick

2006-01-05T06:37:00.000-08:00

Maggie has grown up so much over the last couple of weeks.
She's learned to crawl out of and off the bed by herself, even in the middle of a nappy change. Grrrrrrr!
(Of course I'm still talking about OUR bed. Unfortunately the euphoria around her sleeping in her own cot was shortlived.)
She's also developed a unique laugh, which sounds more like a high pitched chuckle.

Today marked another milestone in Maggie's exciting life.
She managed to score a hat trick of mis-haps.

The first occurred while Marge took the kids shopping at Westfield Woden. As Marge wheeled Maggie's stroller out of Big W, she noticed something different about Maggie. Our baby's shirt and the sides of the stroller were soaked in vomit. Maggie was still smiling, so it musn't have been too uncomfortable for her.
The second - in the evening, after I got home from work. We heard a thud from the kid's computer table, followed by Maggie's unmistakable roar of pain. We rushed over and found Maggie crying face down on the carpet. She must have climbed onto the table again. These days, she loves to climb. Thankfully, it was only a 1 foot drop. Lisa was actually laughing at Maggie's misfortune, until she saw our panic when we realised that blood was trickling down the side of Maggie's mouth. We quickly checked her mouth. Her teeth seemed OK. We traced the blood to a cut on her top lip. It's a bit swollen now, but she's fine.
And the third. While Marge and I were winding down, after putting the kids to sleep. Another loud thud - this time from our room. We didn't even have time to roll our eyes and give each other the 'Not again' look. We rushed in and found Maggie on the floor sitting upright against Marge's bedside table! She stopped crying pretty quickly - she's had worse. Thank God she didn't roll off my side of the bed. She would have hit a minefield of junk.

I'm so glad Maggie's sleeping soundly now. After a day like today, she deserves it.

My kids (as seen through the Canon S2 IS)

2006-01-04T17:43:00.000-08:00

Never before have I been able to take portrait shots like these.

I was so impressed with these shots that I had them enlarged and framed.

(You can find larger versions via the Flickr badge or just visit my Flickr site)

This camera has transformed me overnight from an 'if-it-moves-we-can-shoot-it fully-auto camera-wielding wannabe' to an 'if-the-light-and aperture-and-shutterspeed-align-we-can-shoot-it wannabe photographer'!

Narnia: The Teacups, the Pins and the 'Benton.

2005-12-30T00:37:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, my cousin and her boyfriend made the trek from Sydney to join us for lunch (and a hilarious 80's session of Karaoke Revolution Party)
They came bearing gifts from the Sydney clan. The kids loved their presents.

Bart's biggest challenge with his new badminton set is trying to pronounce it. "Benton?" "Bedbenton?" "Bedmentin?"
Lisa has already managed to scatter her tea set throughout every room in the house. She'll also stop me occasionally to pour imaginary liquid down my throat. She and Maggie have great fun with it.
Maggie's hair band/pin kit was a major hit with Marge. Now she has more tools at her disposal to turn our daughters into literal china dolls.

That night, I surprised Bart by taking him to watch The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
I remember enjoying the book when I was young. It was the first fantasy book that I had read, and probably whetted my appetite for the whole fantasy genre.
Some reviews have described the movie as LoTR for kids with a bit of Passion of the Christ. For me, the Christian parallels strengthened the story, and they were portrayed well.
I was very impressed with the movie, even though it was aimed at kids. And it was probably aimed at 'slightly older than Bart' kids.

I watched Bart's posture throughout the movie. He was leaning back for most of the first half, sometimes stretching and sighing out of boredom.
As things got intense he turned sideways a bit and watched proceedings from the corner of his eye.
By the final act, he was literally on the edge of his seat, leaning forward - savouring the visualisation of the types of battles that he plays out all too often with his friends.

At 140 minutes, it was the longest movie that he's sat through.
We had a chat in the carpark afterwards. He was still evaluating what he had witnessed. He said it was pretty good.
But later he admitted to me that he didn't like the movie that much - too scary.
But those battle scenes - yeah, he'd like to watch them again and again. (or in Bart speak - "a thousand million times")

I've already reserved the DVD at the public library when it gets released next year.
A futile gesture - I'll end up buying it anyway!

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

2005-12-28T22:27:00.000-08:00

It's been a hectic 5 days off work.
And it's ironic that I'm finding time to post a blog entry only after getting back to work.

Even the weeks leading up to Christmas were quite relentless.
Shopping for Christmas dinner was done on Christmas Eve.
We only got The Tree up one week before Christmas.

Christmas tree Version 1 was constructed and decorated solely by Bart.
Most of the ornaments were strategically placed at the top and only on one side of the tree. I'm surprised it didn't topple over.
When I asked him why, he said something about them being shields, or guns or something.
This led to Version 2 being requested by Marge, who charged me with the task of normalising the decoration placement to provide a more aesthetically pleasing and balanced tree.
The next day, I realised there was probably some merit to Bart's original design.

Maggie quickly discovered that someone had lowered the tree ornaments to her height and was keen to show off her fruit picking skills.
At every opportunity, she would grab one and proudly waddle over to us to place it in our hands. Over and over and over again...
The gold balls were her favourite. I'm glad she didn't try to bite into them.

Christmas greetings

2005-12-25T02:09:00.000-08:00

Have a blessed and safe Christmas everyone.
It's been a frantic week leading up to Christmas Day. I might revisit it one day in a 'flashback' post.
But for now, this family is enjoying each other's company on Christmas day. We went to church this morning. Played Twister. Took the kids to the park - where Bart rode his new bike. Had a great family lunch and dinner. And I haven't even turned on the PC this weekend.
So how am I updating this blog?
This post is proudly brought to you by the letters: T and X. And by the abbreviations: WiFi and ADSL.
Sure, it takes longer to compose on a PDA, but I can still blog while watching my little girls play lego in their bedroom. And I just stopped Maggie from sucking on a tube of toothpaste.
OK, OK I'll admit it. I am a geek.

[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]

They've arrived!

2005-12-21T06:12:00.000-08:00

The Palm TX is now charging.
The Canon S2 IS has just taken its first photos.
I'm a very happy boy :D
At least until the credit card statement arrives.

Must try to sleep tonight.

T'was the week before Christmas...

2005-12-19T07:26:00.000-08:00

... when all through the house, not a creature was stirring - ~~not even a mouse~~
except the mouse, and the keyboard and the bleary eyed blogger.

We wrapped up most of the kids' presents tonight.

Maggie's getting some Sesame Street toys. A noisy laughing Cookie Monster head on a stick (that sounds pretty morbid). And a little musical saxaphone. Both guaranteed to drive the parents crazy. They'll also serve as excellent bait to entice Lisa to snatch them off her.

Lisa will be receiving a dress-up bear with 4 different costumes. And a Teletubbies book.

And Bart... Tough call. Marge and I are still having talks about that one.
He showed us his Christmas wishlist this morning. It comprised of the following:

Big castle (Lego)
Game boy DS
Invisible ink and special light
Laptop (Computer)
New Palm pilot (T3)

The laptop was a carry over demand from last year.

The Palm was a bit of a surprise. Last year he asked me whether he could have my T3 when I died. LOL! Maybe he's gotten tired of waiting. Though it looks like Marge will get the T3 when I get my TX. Bart will just have to be content with Marge's Tungsten E.

And the DS Dream may be over - even though I had my first go of Mario Kart DS at David Jones today. It was a lot of fun. But Marge is quite adamant that I am not to get one.
(Though she did hint that she might reconsider if I buy her a sewing machine. And bikes for the kids. And new curtains for the house. Doh!)

I guess I shouldn't be too disappointed.
Tomorrow I should be getting my Palm TX and also a Canon S2 IS digital camera. Woohoo!!!

Will Bart want a Nintendo DS for Christmas? Yes, he will.

2005-12-14T23:52:00.000-08:00

I have almost convinced myself that Bart would like a Nintendo DS for Christmas,
For $188, it comes bundled with Mario Kart DS.
I have fond memories of playing the original Mario Kart against my flatmates on the old Super Nintendo back in my Uni days.
And from all the reviews I've seen, this is one cool successor.

I hadn't considered the DS until I read this post from a like minded Canberran, who also happens to work in IT.
The thought of a wireless 'xbox-live' like experience on a handheld is just too intriguing (or nerdy) for me Bart to ignore.

Further online investigation revealed that there is significant progress being made towards unlocking the potential of the DS.
Such as hacking the wi-fi for other purposes. And SD card compatible cartridges for homebrew apps.
Stuff that Bart should certainly be excited about.

So I had a chat to Bart this morning about Christmas presents.
He seemed excited at first when I told him about my ~~plans~~ suggestion.
But then he slipped into his reasoning mode (something he does quite often these days).
He logically declared that he already had a Gameboy SP, so how about we got him Lego instead?
Doh!

Hmmm...
I'll probably still buy it anyway, because I know he'll change his mind when he sees it.

How's that sound, Smeagol?
Good. Good. Yes, let's do that. But what if he still doesn't want it?
Then we'll have to find someone who does. It would be such a shame to return it to the shop.
Yes, of course. You're such a good father, Homer.

Duets

2005-12-13T04:28:00.000-08:00

Tonight was the first time I did a concert with Lisa.
We sang the Alphabet Song, London Bridge is Falling Down, Jesus Loves Me, Jesus Loves the Little Children, This Little Light of Mine, Rock-a-Bye baby and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.
And she was quite particular about which songs to sing next.
Granted, the location was on Mummy & Daddy's bed - and the audience consisted of just Maggie (who fell asleep in the middle of the 3rd round of Twinkle, Twinkle)

But it was a great Homer/Lisa moment.

We woke up this morning to find...

2005-12-13T03:33:00.000-08:00

Some people must be so stoopid, that they can't think of anything better to do.

My manager told me this week that she woke up one morning to find that she suddenly had solar pwered garden lights on her front lawn. Someone else's lights, apparently.
And another work colleague was the victim of an exploding letterbox while he was watching late night TV.

Anyway, we woke up this morning to find that our wheelie bin was missing.
Stolen. My initial anger quickly turned to amusement.

Why would anyone want to steal our wheelie bin?
Over the last year, there have been so many food scrap and nappy spillages in there, even the flies have abandoned it. We've tried everything to get rid of the stink - from bicarb soda to moth ball flakes. Though we hadn't considered trying to get someone to steal it.

We pity the poor fool who took it. We really do.
Or perhaps it reeked so much, the garbo thought it was part of the rubbish.

Whatever happened, Marge and I are happy.
The council is delivering our new clean fresh-smelling bin to us tomorrow.

Footnote (16/12/05) - I shared this experience with my colleagues at work, and they said it wasn't uncommon. People steal these bins and jump into them to get a little joyride down the hill. LOL! I can't imagine any joy for the person silly enough to get into our bin.

Laser Tag is fun!

2005-12-10T06:45:00.000-08:00

My ex-colleagues at work had their Christmas lunch on Friday. I was happy that they still invited me. And even more happy that they decided to go with my suggestion for the post lunch activity - Zone 3 (Laser Tag).

Lunch was at the Turkish Pide House at Jamison. The banquet was good, though we didn't really feel like running around like crazy people immediately after stuffing ourselves. But we did it - and it was fun. More tiring than you'd expect from 2 x 15 minute games. My thighs are still sore, probably from that half-crouched stance that I maintained through the sessions. I finished ranked 3rd and then 4th. My Red Team won both games. And I had the dubious stat of catching most of my hits in the chest, while I seemed to hit a lot of people in the back.

Afterwards, I made the mistake of going to Westfield Belconnen for some window shopping.
I ended up spending $60 at Toys R Us.
The good news is that I've done the Christmas shopping for the kids.
The bad news is - Marge and I kinda already agreed not to spend much on kids toys this time. But why did I still do it? I'm always the one who complains about the toys being scattered all over the floor. And I've even threatened to throw them out.
After all these years, I still weaken at the Toy Store.

Australia's Brainiest Kid?

2005-12-08T03:40:00.000-08:00

Presenting... Bart.
[wild applause]

He just finished a week of exams yesterday.

And his school had their awards night tonight.
Guess who topped Grade 2 for academic achievement?

Well done son. All that hard work has paid off. Now you just need to keep that up for another 10 years at school and then 3 (maybe 5) at Uni.
Erm... let's just take it one year at a time.

We're all so proud of you son!

Remembering last Thursday...

2005-12-05T06:45:00.000-08:00

Thursday was a blogworthy day, but I didn't get around to it because I was just so busy, and tired by the end of it.
It started very early for me, with a bus to the National Convention Centre for the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 launch. As usual, for a 'free' event, Microsoft provided a very nice lunch and nice freebies.
Sometimes I miss coding in Visual Studio. Though it's becoming even more point and click programming with each VS release. But I enjoy the IDE, the runtime debugging, and the cool tools and controls. Much better than the el cheapo Editplus / MS Debugger combo we have at work.
Meanwhile, the family managed to get locked out of the house when Bart slammed the laundry door shut as Marge hung out the washing. Of course this had to happen on the one morning of the year that I'm not at work nearby. For $85, the locksmith let her in within seconds, and he didn't even have to touch the lock. Scary.

I made my baby cry :(

2005-12-05T04:04:00.000-08:00

I didn't mean to do it.
I didn't even use my Daddy voice.

Maggie was standing on our bed, walking towards the edge.
I was behind her when I said "Uh Uh, Maggie come back here"

We weren't prepared for the reaction that followed.
Marge was standing in front of her and had a perfect view of the transformation on Maggie's face.
The cheeky grin slowly turned into a frown. But it didn't stop there, it kept inverting until her mouth resembled an upside-down U. And then she started crying. The same kind of cry that she reserves for special painful occasions - like when Marge is carrying her around and accidently clips her head on the doorpost.
So Marge picks Maggie up to comfort her, and that's when I saw it.
As Maggie rested her head on her mother's shoulder, her eyes glanced sideways at me - and she gave me THAT look.

I kid you not.

Tough Day at the Office

2005-12-05T01:37:00.000-08:00

I need a hug.

At 3pm this arvo, a Priority 1 system problem landed on me.
(Followed by around 50 reported instances of it happening across the country)
I was calm and collected as my internal Doh-meter reached boiling point.
Despite being in the job for around 5 months, I found myself totally clueless about how to fix this problem. Just as well I had help on hand.

Meanwhile, a friend in Singapore decided to email me this picture. Kinda fitting. That's how big my brain really felt like today. Very humbling.

The face of a tourrerist?

2005-12-04T18:19:00.000-08:00

I finally went to the Post Office last week to get my passport renewed.
When I handed in my application, the scary woman at the counter asked me where my old passport was.
Doh! I couldn't believe that I left it at home!
Apparently, neither did she.
She gave me a suspicious look and proceeded to tell me that she wouldn't process it without the old one.
I smiled as the Doh's echoed in my head and told her I'll come back next week - with my old passport.
"Sure", she said, as her eyes scanned my face, checking to see if I fitted 'the profile'.
Head shaved with neo-Nazi tattoos - No
Middle eastern appearance with rocket launcher - No
Wearing a motor cycle helmet and large ticking backpack - No
Bumbling unassuming Asian man with obviously fabricated story of accidently leaving his credentials at home - Bingo!
As I left, I felt the security cameras turn towards me... or maybe I'm just paranoid.

Van Nguyen

2005-12-01T23:15:00.000-08:00

Van Nguyen, the 25 year old Aussie who made the worst mistake of his life by trafficking drugs, was executed this morning in Singapore at 9am. His plight for clemency has been in the media for the last few weeks.

I was drawn to the coverage on TV this morning. And as 9am approached, I found myself getting teary eyed, with the awful realisation that at that moment a young life was being extinguished.
A mother's son was put to death.
A brother's sacrifice was fully realised.
A single stupid mistake was refused any redemption.
An evil crime was permanently dealt with.
A nation's heart reached out to a grieving family.
A debate waged within a nation's government.
A country's law was upheld - their justice system prevailing.
An international relationship was tested.
A warning went out, sending chills down the spine of every potential trafficker.
Thanks to the media, there were so many sides to this story.
But the common message was clear: Don't deal drugs.

Kids, don't ever play with drugs.

Necessary evil has been vindicated...

2005-11-30T01:50:00.000-08:00

I've got a new computer at work!

Maybe my team leader has heard the gnashing of teeth each time I hit a problem with the old one.

It's an Acer V5700GX.

P4 3GHz with Hyper Threading
1GB DDRII DDR553 Hynix
250GB SATA HDD
DVD/CD-R/W combo
Black/silver USB keyboard
Logitech USB Optical Mouse
17 LCD Monitor!!!

I am so so so jealous of myself.
This is so so so much better than the PC I have at home.

"More rice please"

2005-11-28T04:58:00.000-08:00

It's not uncommon to hear those words from Bart. He has a VERY healthy appetite.

But when Lisa said those words at the dinner table tonight, we were pleasantly surprised.
It was the first time that she has ever asked for a second helping.

She hasn't been eating well lately. Even at breakfast, she eats around the sultanas in her bowl of Sultana Bran. And veges are still an issue. Last night we added snow peas and celery to the list of blacklisted greens. Even when they are well concealed within a spoonful of rice, Lisa still manages to identify and eject even the smallest pieces.
So it was a double surprise tonight when she asked for more rice AND more spinach. Woohoo! My daughter's not a meatetarian!

Marge is convinced that Lisa has just finished teething again.
That would explain the acts of terror that she's inflicted recently.
But over the last few days she has been happier, and has been sleeping better.
Hopefully this means that our angel is back!

She walks among us...

2005-11-28T04:27:00.000-08:00

Maggie is starting to really enjoying walking.
I think she may prefer this mode of transport to crawling.
Still needs to learn how to handle corners and turns though.

Watch tonight's video. (~700kb)
Apologies for the darkishness!

Free video hosting, video codes at www.vidiLife.com

The Broadband Generation

2005-11-27T23:20:00.000-08:00

Today's kids really are the broadband generation.

Everything they want, must be done immediately.
They want to see results, now.
"Wait", does not factor into their vocabulary.
If you ask them to do something, sometimes your request won't get through their firewall.
If you give them an answer they don't like, they'll treat it like a 502 or 404 and keep hitting 'Refresh' until their additional requests yield results.
They will look at you funny if you pick up an hourglass and start spinning it in front of them.

You know what I'm saying?

Anyway, I just phoned home to ask Marge how her day was.
As expected, Bart answered the phone.
"Hello Bart speaking. Who's here?"
Who's here? I pondered that for a second, trying to think up a witty response.
Apparently it was a second too long.
Before I could answer, he hung up on me.

Am I getting too slow, or is he just too fast? Perhaps he thought he answered the wrong chat window and closed it?

On the other hand, we have Lisa sometimes yelling at Bart or Maggie:
"Don't copy!"
She gets quite passionate about it as well, sometimes bursting into tears.
Who would have thought that Lisa would embrace the fight for intellectual property and support the plight of the MPAA.
Such strong convictions for a 3 year old, in the age of Peer to Peer and Bit Torrent.
Or maybe she doesn't know what piracy and copyright is.
Maybe - just maybe, she takes offence when her siblings imitate her actions.

Who knows, with this broadband generation?

Recent newsworthy discoveries

2005-11-26T06:33:00.000-08:00

Not quite Letterman's Top 10.
Or even Rove's: What the?

But here are [drumroll please]

Things we didn't know, but now we do

Homer
- Pat Morita (Mr "Wax on, wax off" Miyagi from Karate Kid) died a few days ago :(
- Abuthen is a word in Singaporean slang. But I still don't understand what it means.
- I can be a morning person. I've actually managed to semi-regularly wake up at 7:30am to have breakfast with Bart.
- Two of my work colleagues are sharpshooting Zone3 veterans who could singlehandedly wipe the floor with a platoon of casual players. Too bad I found this out AFTER suggesting laser tag for our team Christmas function.

Marge
- Don't give your name to a Jehovah's Witness. Pretty soon their congregation will know who you are and you probably end up on their prayer list too.
- Just because something is advertised cheap on the 'never buy stuff from TV, it's crap' informercial - doesn't mean that the postage is cheap. $25!!!!!!!
Bart
- Pedometers can be fun. (But we're waiting for him to realise that he doesn't need to jump around or exaggerate every step for it to work)
- Earwigs are NOT scorpions, and do not deserve the level of scariness that you give them.
Lisa
- Chopsticks do not function like straws
- Mummy and Daddy do not understand what Lisa's saying when she only 'Hmmpphh's through a closed mouth and throws a tantrum. (Correction: This is still something that Lisa doesn't know yet, but we wish she did...)
Maggie
- Walking can be heaps of fun (she's taking like 10 consecutive steps now!)

The kids are all asleep by 8pm! But how?!

2005-11-23T02:20:00.000-08:00

Lisa and Maggie were already asleep in the car when Marge picked me up from work at 7:15pm.
Bart had just finished an hour of Track and Field training, so he wasn't in the mood to talk either.

Usually when I carry the girls into the house and put them on their beds, they wake up immediately. Not this time. And when I turned to ask Bart to have a shower, he was already asleep in bed (in his track gear of course)

I was stunned. It was barely 8pm. Usually at this time, the kids are doing all they can to stay awake. And tonight, they were out cold without even a whimper.
I asked Marge to explain this phenomenon.

She couldn't. But she did share some observations which may or may not have had any bearing on this amazing miracle:

Today was the first time in a long, long time that I woke up at 7:30 to have breakfast with Bart. He is a very early starter. Too early for me. But we'll try to change that. We had a good chat about current events and global warming.
Lisa and Maggie did not have a nap during the day. They were preoccupied at Marge's women's group this morning. Maggie had a small accident involving boiling water. She managed to bump someone's cup and splashed some onto herself. It scolded quite a prominent 'V' shaped mark on her chest, about the size of a 20c piece. But she's over it.
Lisa was already falling asleep during dinner at 5pm.
Desma's funeral is tomorrow at 1:30pm. I'll look after the kids while Marge attends.
As Maggie lay sleeping just now, Marge whispered 'I love you Maggie' into her ear. Our baby stirred and groggily mumbled back to her. Don't know what she was trying to say, but it was priceless.
It's only 4.5 weeks till Christmas!

This post is heading towards the boring zone. Better quit now, before the blog police catch me rambling.

Necessary Evil

2005-11-22T21:09:00.000-08:00

I had to install Service Pack 2 on my XP machine at work today.
It was a necessary evil to be able to test an Internet Explorer hotfix.
This hotfix would save the users countless milliseconds of waiting for web pages to render.
I would be silently adored in the hearts of customer service officers around the country.
They would whisper "Homer... Hmmmm....Homer...." as the nice colourful flag in the top corner waved happily (it seems like only yesterday that it replaced the nice big blue 'e').

Necessary evil, eh?
Unfortunately, I should have re-evaluated the necessity of the action - for I truly underestimated the extent of the evil.
Due to some corporate restrictions on the XP build, the installation failed and then tried to back out.
How's this for an error message?

"Service Pack 2 installation did not complete"
"Windows XP has been partially updated and may not work properly"

So after it reboots it immediately presents me with the blue screen of death.
In a panic, I reboot again. Same thing.
The diagnosis from the Help Desk: My XP is well and truly stuffed. The PC needs to be reformatted, along with all those years of archived emails.

Doh! Doh! Doh!

Yep, I hate computers.

Palm News Reader Essentials

2005-11-21T06:42:00.000-08:00

Time for some more geek speak.

Of all the applications on my Palm T3, it's the news readers that get the most usage.
It's just so easy to download all the day's news from all your favourite websites in one hit.
And then they're ready to read anywhere.

Each of the apps below provide 320x480 support for the T3. And they allow for storage on the SD card as well. Each also has their own conduit to allow seamless Hotsync interaction.

Avantgo (www.avantgo.com)
My primary newsreader. Mainly for my daily dose of Slashdot, Wired News, Sci-Fi Channel and the Sydney Morning Herald. Recently, they've added support for RSS news feeds. Unfortunately, the 3MB limit isn't enough, and I'm too stingy to pay for the 8MB upgrade - which leads me to...
Quicknews (http://standalone.com/palmos/quick_news/)
Great little RSS/ATOM feed reader. You can even add feeds on the client. Lets you save your favourite posts. Unfortunately, does not support pictures - which leads me to...
Plucker (http://www.plkr.org/) and Sunrise (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=64)
This freeware combination has recently dethroned my reliance on iSilo and iSiloX, mainly for the RSS support. Sunrise is a Windows java application that parses RSS and HTML feeds and creates Pluckr documents with all the images and links of the source document. You can specify image size and link depth too.
Pluckr is a popular open source Palm reader. It renders pages very nicely. I also like the way Pluckr handles unresolved links. If you don't have wireless, it will save the bookmark to a memo entry for later retrieval.

And the cool thing is, when I get my Palm TX, I'll be able to use these same applications online!

Hmmmm... wi-fi.....

Bloggers block

2005-11-20T08:46:00.000-08:00

Must write.
But words fail me.
Can't even get full sentence structure.
Try unordered list - maybe get better as I go:

Got back into email contact with a good friend in Hong Kong. It only took 4 bounced emails! He got married in June this year. Must get over there sometime. It's on my to-do list.
Bart continues to improve in Track & Field. He came 3rd in the 200m on Saturday. And improved his discus distance by 30%.
Bart's weekend was just party after party. 2 birthday parties in 2 days. There was actually a 3rd one he was invited to at Zone 3 which I would have liked to have gone to.
Hayfever sucks. This is the first year that it's really hit me and Marge. We have sneezing marathons sometimes. Had itchy eyes for the last 4 weeks. Today my left eye has gotten very puffy. Gotta see the doc tomorrow methinks.
Lisa had a fever all weekend, and a big serving of crankiness to go with it. She'd cry and scream whenever Maggie touched her.
Found out that a friend from church had just passed away. Very sad news.
Peter and Desma have been pillars of strength for us. They stood with us in prayer when Marge was pregnant with Maggie, and there was the possibility of complications. They helped us through a very difficult time in our lives.
Earlier this year, Desma was diagnosed with cancer. From all accounts, the treatment was going well. And now she's gone to be with the Lord. Just like that. I don't know what else to say. Except 'why?'
Not that I expect an answer - not in this lifetime anyway.
10am meeting in the morning. must get to sleep.

Postscript: While composing this rather depressing post, I clicked on the 'Next Blog' button (in your top-right corner) to go to a random blog. And got this site: http://achristiancounselor.blogspot.com/ - a christian lady in Canada!

Now, how cool is that. And this is the first Christian blog I've come across via a random selection. Given the odds of that happening, I'll take that to mean 'Hey Homer, it's alright. I'm in control. GOD. ps - love your blog'.

Videogames ARE bad for your mental health

2005-11-17T23:40:00.000-08:00

I've always been a huge supporter of video games.

They promote hand/eye co-ordination.
They encourage you to think logically to solve puzzles.
They unconsciously prepare you with detailed weapon knowledge and defensive manoeuvres - in case you ever get attacked by 'plama-sword wielding' aliens, or 'bubble-blowing candy-eating' dinosaurs, or 'turtle-shell throwing' Italian plumbers, or scantily clad ninja girl beach volleyballers.

But for the last few days, I must admit, it's become apparent that the years of sustained console gaming may have finally taken their toll on me.
I fear that the virtual world may finally be invading my reality. Videogame psychosis seems imminent.
It's quite disturbing actually. And it comes from the most unlikely source. Not even Halo 2 has affected me like this.

What game can cause such mental anguish?
The abomination known as Karaoke Revolution Party.
I cannot get THAT song out of my head! It's driving me crazy.
And I know I've brought this upon myself. Why do I continue to perform duets of that evil, evil, EVIL song?!
The melody just keeps playing over and over in my mind, with the ferocity of chinese water torture.
Please make it stop!!!!

Maybe if I share it with you all, I'll feel better!
If you want to avert your eyes, you'd better do it now. Here it comes...

(In Napoli where love is king. When boy meets girl here's what they say)

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie
That's amore
When the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine
That's amore
Bells will ring ting-a-ling-a-ling, ting-a-ling-a-ling
And you'll sing "Vita bella"
Hearts will play tippy-tippy-tay, tippy-tippy-tay
Like a gay tarantella

When the stars make you drool just like a pasta fazool
That's amore
When you dance down the street with a cloud at your feet
You're in love
When you walk down in a dream but you know you're not
Dreaming signore
Scuzza me, but you see, back in old Napoli

[Repeat until it sears into your subconsciousness]

That's amore, (amore)
That's amore!

Disclaimer: This mental instability depicted in this posting has been exaggerated for dramatic effect.
Though the song is still playing in my head. But I'm OK. Really!!
Marge? Marge? Come back!

They'e so cute when they're sleeping

2005-11-17T07:09:00.000-08:00

As night watchman, my duty every night is to check on the kids before I go to sleep.
Over the last month, it's become easier - mainly because Maggie has gotten into a regular sleeping pattern (Thank you God!). Prior to that, the night watchman also had to provide rocking chair simulator functionality for restless babies.

Here are some of the night watchman's observations:

Once we manage to convince him to go to bed, Bart is quite a competent sleeper. Through the night, he'll sometimes manage to twist the doona around himself, till he resembles a giant Twistie. And he likes to listen to a CD as he goes to sleep. Not just any CD though. It has to be one of the dramatised kids Bible story CDs that has soldiers fighting and people shouting and screaming. And it needs to be turned up quite loud. Hmmm... future ipod geek?
Lisa's sleeping performances have been a mixed bag. She will still ask - no, demand that I keep her company as she sleeps. Tonight I managed to escape by telling her that I had to have dinner, and that I'd be back. She seemed to consider it for a while before allowing me to leave. She then fell asleep within 10 minutes.
Overall, her sleeping posture has improved. I no longer have to pry her out of the 'head down, bum sticking out' fetal position. And she no longer sleeps across the bed, or upside down.
Despite my inital joy at moving the cot out of our room, Maggie is still sleeping with us at night. She hates the doona or any bedsheet covering her, and will kick it off each time. She also draws comfort from clutching at Marge's hair. Sometimes it really does become her security blanket. She still rolls around a little bit. And sometimes we cop a flying fist in the face. That adds an extra dimension to your dreams too.

If I was South Parkian, I'd still have a lightsaber

2005-11-17T06:51:00.000-08:00

I used to like South Park - for the first few episodes anyway.
Then it got boring. But I've always liked the little South Park avatars that people have made of themselves.

Today I finally went looking for my own... and came up with the stereotypical sleep deprived serious looking Asian male armed with a lightsaber. (Of course I had to have the lightsaber!)

Make your own at:
http://spstudio.elena.hosting-friends.de/spstudio.html

Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!!!!!

2005-11-16T04:40:00.000-08:00

We're in the 2006 FIFA World Cup!
We, as in the Australian soccer team.
It was a match that, leading into it, we couldn't really win, but there was always hope.
In the end, it came down to a thrilling penalty shootout.
I'm not a big soccer fan. But this is really something special. Even the commentators were losing it when that final goal landed.
This will be our first appearance at a World Cup in over 30 years.
Well done to the Socceroos.

Dear Homer...

2005-11-16T00:24:00.000-08:00

Got my first piece of mail today!

"dear homer of spring st @ toowoomba, i have a visitor to our office today, he has just set up a new HR systems in my web server abt half an hr ago. which made me more worried abt what will happen next, as you know i'm a new kid on the web, and every time when i touch the web server, i will have something learnt the moment i step out of the room *hmmmm* oh no, he's going in to the server room again..."

Dear Chao Bee,
"homer of spring st @ toowoomba" - Now, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time... A long time....
Do I know you? You seem very familiar to me.
Anyway, could you please lock your visitor in the server room while I think of an answer to your question.
But before that, I need to ask myself "What was his question"?.
Now THAT's an interesting question. Hmmmm....

Stand back! That webpage looks really really sus....

2005-11-13T21:16:00.000-08:00

Not having much fun at work right now.
My entire morning was spent on the phone to the IT Helpdesk.

IE suddenly forgot what to do with a web page, even when first loading up the company intranet.
It asked me whether I wanted to save the intranet or open it.
It even warned me to be careful because "some files can harm your computer. If the file information below looks suspicious, or you do not fully trust the source, do not open or save this file"
What-lah!
I'm not asking you to open up an unattended backpack in an airport! Just show me the web page!!!!

[later, after Homer takes a chill pill]

In the end, it turned out to be a corrupt profile.
So I get that working and then the computer refuses to acknowledge my password to let me back in.
Doh! Doh! Doh! Doh!
I hate computers.

A whole week blogless - here are the main stories

2005-11-13T07:04:00.000-08:00

Last week, some alleged bad people were busted in Sydney and Melbourne while allegedly plotting to perform some terrorist acts on Australian soil. There seems to be a lot of criticism on the government around the legality of doing so. Some cynics suggest that the resulting media circus was just a smokescreen for pushing through the new IR laws. Maybe I'm just gullible, but I'm actually relieved that bad people (ok, ok - alleged bad people) are being investigated. I can't imagine a terrorist attack on this country.
We finally booked and paid for our flights to Malaysia via Singapore. Now we just need to let all our friends over there know!
Attended the inaugaral meeting of the local Web Standards Group, which was co-organised by a work colleague. Very interesting stuff. And the first meeting that I've ever gone to that will be Flickr'ed and podcasted. And the presentations were already online too. Afterwards, we had dinner with JC and his parents in Manuka, where Lisa demonstrated her ability to ostracize all of the peas from her fried rice.
Maggie has figured out the on/off button on the PC. Unfortunately for me, she figured out the OFF functionality first. Doh!
Bart did well in Track and Field on Saturday. He's improving with each race. This week, Marge was team manager of the 8yo boys. She enjoyed it. Although she disputes it, I think she may well be suited to a management role.
In the evening, we took advantage of the local KFC's 'Customer Appreciation Day' and got 3 free burgers with our 3 Twisters for dinner. We ate by the lake, and the kids had fun feeding the ducks and playing on the playground. Lisa showed that she is not scared of heights on the swings!
We got Karaoke Revolution Party for the xbox. It's a lot of fun, especially the duet modes. Bart and I made sweet music singing 'That's Amore' together. Though our onscreen characters looked a bit queer singing together like that. And Lisa walked out mid-song, sighing 'Oh dear!' to Marge.
Marge then showed us what real singing was, crooning a beautiful rendition of 'I will always love you' that rivalled Emily's performance in Australan Idol.
Introduced Bart to the game of Bocci. He enjoyed beating me 11 - 8 today, despite whinging the whole way through.
Maggie just rolled off our bed with a loud thud, followed by a roaring cry. She wasn't very impressed. Just as well it happened on Marge's watch. I've already let it happen once before!

Gadget Hoarders Anonymous

2005-11-13T06:01:00.000-08:00

"Hi. My name is Homer. And I'm a Gadget Hoarder"

When I buy a new gadget to supercede the old one, I find it difficult to part with the 'has-been' device.
Case in point: My first video game console collection. (We won't count that Radioshack "20 different sportsgames that all play like Pong" crap)

1992 - Super Nintendo - Purchased for Street Fighter 2. Multitap Bomberman was a blast with my Uni buddies.
1997 - Sony Playstation - Purchased in Malaysia for the unlimited range of 'cheap' games available.
2000 - Sega Dreamcast - Purchased for Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive 2 (and the fact that the console didn't have to be modded to play 'backups'.
2003 - Microsoft Xbox - Purchased for Halo. Now used as an entertainment hub with xbox media centre. Love Halo 2. Especially multiplayer. But I digress...

And I've kept all of them. Marge doesn't know why. I don't know why either. Maybe it's some weird sense of loyalty and a desire to see the device retire in a loving home. Or maybe I'm just greedy.

But I can sorta justify it: "Well, the kids can play with them"

If there are any other gadget hoarders out there, my advice to you is get some kids - preferably your own. Or at least a wife who has some gadget-geek tendencies. (Provided that her geekiness does not exceed yours, lest you end up with the obsolete device [shudder])

I've managed to hang on to (and hand down) several gadgets, without the guilt associated with selling them. It's a win-win situation.

Today, Bart has my old Palm m130. He loves it.

Lisa loves toy phones, so I gave her my old Nokia 7110 (with the Matrix-like retractable mouthpiece). She loves it.

And I've connected the old Playstation and Dreamcast for the kids to play. They love it.

And when I get my Palm TX, I'll give my Palm T3 to Marge.
Right, Marge?

News Flash: Maggie takes 3 steps!

2005-11-13T04:22:00.000-08:00

We interrupt this blogless lull with an important news flash.
Maggie has taken her first steps (unassisted)!

It started just like every other Sunday morning.
...the mad rush to get the kids ready for church on time.
...a quick prayer that the autodoor on the garage would work properly - after jamming recently.
...Maggie taking off her shoes in the car so she could munch on them.
Then during the announcements at church, while she was holding Marge's hand, Maggie decided that it was time to show the world.
I was watching as she took a first wobbly step away from Marge. Usually, she would fall to a crawl after 1 step, but she didn't this time. Step 2 was even more wobbly, but she managed to keep her balance with the poise of a drunken tightrope walker. By now I was ecstatic, looking around to see who else was witnessing this historic event. Marge caught my eye, and she nodded excitedly. And with the 3rd step, Maggie decided to end her performance with a graceful crash.
Well done Maggie!

(Marge! We need to get more baby gates for the house!)

Postscript: Later, she managed 5 steps outside, and I caught it on video! Woohoo!

The Brick Testament

2005-11-06T06:44:00.000-08:00

My brother told me about this site. It's very well done.
Bible stories illustrated using Lego. Check it out!
http://www.thebricktestament.com/

Sit down and please misbehave

2005-11-06T04:58:00.000-08:00

I gave Bart a simple instruction this evening in church. Sit down
Unfortunately, he misinterpreted that to mean:

throw the ball around
run and spin around
crawl after his sisters like a baby

Foolish. Very foolish.
The good news for him is that I don't believe in choking my kids. Yet I still find that picture strangely therapeutic.

Road rage at 120mph

2005-11-06T04:56:00.000-08:00

This blog entry was composed entirely on my Palm T3 in Versamail and then hotsynced to the web. Gotta love technology. 1t allows you to find a really complicated way to do a really simple task.

We were at Stefano & Polly's place on Saturday arvo, celebrating Polly's birthday.

They have these motorised ride-on bikes for the little ones to zoom around on their deck. Lisa enjoyed the experience. But once she had that pedal to the metal, nothing was going to stop her. Not even a brick wall. Not even her friends.

Joey's parents watched in terror as Lisa raced towards Joey at 120mph (that's metres per hour) without any signs of slowing down. The impact knocked Joey to the ground. But the worst was yet to come. As Joey was getting up, Lisa continued to floor the pedal, continuing to mow him down. I can replay the entire scene in my mind in slow motion - which, in actual fact, is the speed it all transpired in.

Thankfully, everyone walked away unscathed. Lisa & Joey are still friends. It turns out that it was all a simple misunderstanding. Lisa simply didn't realise that she had to stop accelerating in order to stop the bike. Doh! Well, they can both laugh about it now. They've even been sighted recently holding hands and feeding leaves to a giant mouse (or was that a labbit)

You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!

2005-11-03T07:48:00.000-08:00

Marge is a bit concerned about the way I'm portraying the kids in this blog, especially Bart.
The fact is, they are very well mannered, very well behaved most of the time.
And for that, we are very blessed.
We often get feedback from other people, commenting how wonderful and adorable our kids are.

So to balance things out:

Bart is generally very helpful. He'll help look after Maggie while Marge is in the kitchen, or out hanging the washing. He is doing very well at school, consistently getting excellent grades - especially in Maths.
Lisa is becoming quite independent now. She can feed herself, put on her pants and socks and shoes. She cares very much for her dolls, especially Po - the teletubby. Whenever Po is on the floor, it's not uncommon to see Lisa grab a blanket to cover her. She also plays well with Maggie, helping her to walk.
Maggie is a bundle of joy. She'll smile and laugh back at you. She's starting to get into a regular sleeping routine - no longer fighting to stay awake the longest.

So yes, they have their moments of anarchy - especially when they're tired.
But they really are the best kids. And we thank God for them every day.

Situation Normal

2005-11-03T07:39:00.000-08:00

Still awake at an obscene hour... check
Currently keeping Lisa company after she woke up crying at an obscene hour... check
Resisting the urge to open up a packet of chips to satisfy my late night junk food binges... check
Resisting the urge to jump on the xbox to play 'one more level' of SW:BF2... check
Resisting the urge to watch the extras on the Star Wars Episode 3 DVD I just bought... check
Just finding out that I have a 10am meeting in the morning... AAArrrggghhhh!!!!

Big Brother

2005-11-02T06:50:00.000-08:00

In Cantonese, the younger siblings usually address the eldest brother as 'Gor Gor'.
It's a title that my brothers still call me to this day.
It would actually sound strange to me (and them) if they called me by my first name.

Anyway, Marge just told me about this exchange between Bart and Lisa today.
Apparently, this happens quite a lot...

Lisa: 'Bart...'
Bart: 'No, call me Gor Gor'
Lisa: 'Bart...'
Bart: 'Lisa - call me Gor Gor'
Lisa: 'Bart...'
Bart: 'CALL ME GOR GOR!'
(Bart slaps Lisa in the face)
(Marge reprimands Bart and tells him to apologise)
Bart: 'Sorry Lisa'
Lisa: 'Sorry... Gor Gor'

LOL!

Bart's Blog

2005-11-02T06:41:00.000-08:00

Bart has loved writing stories since he learned how to write.
These days he's even making books and comic books with his friends.

I've just create a blog for him.
It contains all of the stories that he's typed on our computer over the last few months.
(The ones I could find anyway)
Check it out at http://xturn.blogspot.com
And be sure to leave him some encouraging feedback!

I can't wait to see the look on his face when I ask him to navigate there.

It's "Not fair" according to Bart

2005-11-01T04:57:00.000-08:00

Not fair!

It's one of Bart's catch-phrases.
That and 'Kill the English'. (We suspect, and hope, that he got that from Age of Empires II)

Tonight Bart asked me about daylight savings. I explained to him that it was just about setting the clocks forward an hour and then setting it back in March next year.
He didn't like that answer. He didn't want to hear about clocks, or time.
That didn't leave me with much to tell him, which made him even more frustrated. And angry.
He started whining and jumping up and down. And before you knew it, a tantrum had erupted.
And the mouth went into overdrive, criticising everyone and dragging up past indescretions.
Apparently, it's not fair that I don't understand his question. And it's not fair that I don't know the answer. And it's not fair that I didn't say sorry to him a few days ago when I asked him not to kick the ball around outside while I was mowing the lawn.
And it's probably not fair that I'm publishing his antics on the internet.

But one day son, you'll understand.
Calm down. Take a chill pill. Life wasn't meant to be easy. Just cop it sweet, and get on with it. Life's too short.
(Better stop now before I get philosophical, or run out of cliches...)

Veggie Tales

2005-10-30T04:58:00.000-08:00

There are some foods that Lisa refuses to eat.
And most of them are vegetables.
She knows that we expect her to eat them. So she'll still feed them to her mouth.
But that's where they stop. Those poor veggies never reach their gastronomical destiny. Somehow she manages to filter out the corn, peas and beans from being chewed and swallowed. Incredibly, they stay in her mouth, until she can't fit anymore food in.

At this stage, I'll ask her to chew. She won't even do that.
So tonight I left her at the table until she finished the mouthful of veges that had accumulated throughout dinner.
She was a sorry sight. She wanted to cry and scream, but she couldn't really open her mouth wide enough. She was so determined not to chew or swallow, that the excess saliva that was building up was trickling down the sides of her mouth. She was drooling profusely.
In the end though, she won. It was already 10:30pm. And we had no doubt that she would have continued until she fell asleep. So I let her spit it out. And when she ejected the mass with her tongue, it was pretty gross. All of those individual veggies, mashed and fused together in the sauna of Lisa's mouth until their identity was lost. Such a waste.
And as I looked closer, it was obvious that the mush was... very mushy.
Lisa could have easily swallowed it. But she stuck by her principles, even under the threat of a timeout in the corner.
If I wasn't so frustrated, I'd probably be impressed.

The 'if I had more time' progress report

2005-10-30T04:41:00.000-08:00

Following from yesterday's post.
Today's scorecard was a bit hit and miss.

I didn't spend additional time praying. In fact, I missed church altogether this morning - along with the kids. Call it Daylightsavings-itus. Marge was the only one who went, saying from the outset that she didn't want to be late this morning. By 10:05, she couldn't wait for the rest of us to get ready. Partly true. I was also home to look after Maggie, who has had a strange rash envelop most of her body since yesterday. And her temperement has matched the redness of the splotches. Bart learned a lesson though. As usual, he was taking things easy while everyone was rushing around him. He still had time to play chess with Lisa. Still had time to argue with me about the number of Queens you could have in chess. Still in his PJs as Marge grabbed the car keys and headed out the door. Suddenly he was shocked into action and raced into his room to get changed, screaming 'Tell Mummy to wait!'. But she didn't. When Bart emerged from his room (with a polo shirt and pyjama bottoms and his hair still sleepstyled) he was devastated. For the next 10 minutes, he pleaded with me to phone Marge back. To make her come back. After all, Bart had been awake since 6:30am. How could he be left behind? Sorry Bart. Not this time. Hopefully you'll start to take our words a bit more seriously in the future.
Whoops - I digress. Today's God objective = DOH!
But the morning's drama did leave 3 kids in my care, and therefore allowed me to spend more time with the kids - particularly with Bart. And with the wet weather, I couldn't finish the gardening I started yesterday. So today's family objective = WOOHOO!
Books? What? When looking after 3 kids. Yeah right! Failed that one.
Ditto for the programming. Failed that too. But I did introduce Bart to the wonders of Microsoft Powerpoint. He had fun recordng his own sound effects into his slides. He kept asking me how big my slideshows were, because he was already up to 18 slides and was going to beat it. Little does he know about the true nature of Powerpoint - the number one dumbing down tool in the workplace today.
And the xbox? Did I have time for that?! Um... yeah. The xbox = this generation's father/son bonding tool. Throw in a copy of Star Wars Battlefront 2, and you've got father/son conversation material to last the next few days. WOOHOO! And SWB2 is a BLAST!

If I had more time in the day... or even a 3 day weekend

2005-10-29T09:30:00.000-07:00

I would :

Pray more. Get in touch with God. My spiritual being has been undernourished for a while, which is inexcusable. Really. When you think about our priorities in life, most of them don't even factor into the after-life. Even a non-believer will tell you that it's difficult to reach your long term goals if you keep seeking short-term gratification.
Spend more time with the family. Quality time. Lately, Bart has been asking me to play Lego with him. I've been putting it off because there's just so much to do around the house.
Read more books. Real books. Actual treeware. I've got a backlog of them, especially about parenting. I'm sure they have some really good stuff in them. Most of the reading I do these days is on Avantgo on my Palm. It is so handy being able to hotsync the latest news to read on the go. You could even read this blog on Avantgo!
Do some R&D in other web technologies.
Play with the xbox more. I've got a backlog of good games. Plus an xbox live account that hasn't been used for 2 months. Hmmm.. this falls under the category of short-term gratification...

I'll stop there. There's more I can add. But there's also a lot I can remove - from what I currently spend my time on.

Marge has reminded me, on more than a few occasions:

You're a husband and a father. You can't continue living the lifestyle of a single person.

I know she's right. But why do I still find myself awake at 4am messing around with this blog and surfing the net?
(And Bart would respond: "But it's really 3am. It's only 4am because daylight savings just started")

Hi Dad. How was your day?

2005-10-28T06:28:00.000-07:00

Every evening, when I wander through the door after a tiring day at work, the kids have this little set-play they go through.
Actually, it starts when they hear the jingle of keys at the door and my attempts at turning 2 handles with only one hand free.
You can hear the thunder of footsteps as Bart and Lisa run race each other to the door, accompanied by their excited chanting: Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!
As I enter the house, Bart used to jump up and down like a yo-yo too - until I told him that a 'Hi Dad!' would be enough. Lisa is more restrained, just standing in the foyer smiling sweetly. And Maggie calls out some excited babytalk from her high chair, sometimes followed by a wave.
This evening, things happened a bit differently.
Bart greeted me at the door, alone. And then I heard Lisa calling from the bathroom.
"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" THUD! Apparently, in all the excitement, she tripped over a crawling Maggie, and hit her head on the door frame.
That set the scene for a very difficult night with Lisa, as she remained quite upset all night.
And all because Daddy is hopeless at sneaking into his own house.

Do not adjust your television

2005-10-27T09:04:00.000-07:00

I just found a free video hosting site that I can use to share some of our home vids with the rest of the world.
For my first trick, here's an example of the creativity that is unleashed when you leave your digital camera in the hands of Bart and Lisa.
Warning: This video clip contains disturbingly fast motion, and should not be viewed by persons who get dizzy playing Halo or other FPS's

Free video hosting, video codes at www.vidiLife.com

And if you enjoyed that, they've already made a sequel...

Free video hosting, video codes at www.vidiLife.com

Update (29/10): I've fixed the video settings. They should work now!

Who's there?

2005-10-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

I just noticed that there have been 12 views of my profile.
Considering that 6 of them have been by me, I'm amazed.
Amazed that people are actually visiting my blog, and might even read my ramblings.
Isn't the internet an amazing thing?
Now all I need to do is get people to leave some comments!

Time flies when you don't have time to think

2005-10-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

I'm still trying to work out where the weekend went!
It was just a moment ago when I came back from work on Friday night, and started to experiment with converting the Track & Field Access application into ASP. 5 hours later, I had some nice screens happening, but realised that I missed the 2nd TriNations Rugby League game between Australia and New Zealand. I found out later that Australia won. Woohoo! But it would have been a great game to watch live. DOH!
And now it's early Monday morning. I have to wake up in 5 hours to go to work.
But I've finally lodged my tax return via eTax.
I'll need to fill you in on the weekend highlights another time.

Have I mentioned that Lisa's starting to string some simple sentences and questions together?
It's improved from last week's:

Hello Gorman

(a rushed 'Hello, good morning')

Tonight we jammed her 2 Teletubbies with Cookie Monster into her baby stroller and played counting games. She asked things like 'How many hands/eyes etc' And then proceeded to count them. Well, I was impressed.
And then as she got into bed, out of the blue she said 'Good night Daddy' without needing any prompting.
I couldn't help but smile and think 'Lisa, you've just made my night.'
'Good night Lisa'.

M$ Acce$$

2005-10-19T08:29:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, we registered Bart at the local Track and Field club.
We took Bart to his first training session this evening. It was pretty informal. He did a few practice races and learned to throw the discus. Lisa tagged along behind him when he ran. She must have run around 400m in the hour we were there.
I also talked to the Registrar about the computer system that they're using. It's an Access database and they need someone to help tidy it up and do some enhancements. Marge and I have offered to help. One of the biggest issues is the number of nested menus. We had a look at the code last night. There's around 150 menu buttons over 13 menu screens. I want to put everything on one screen - with a tabbed interface.
This should be fun. It's not the greatest development environment. And there are some things I hate about it. But I used MS Access v1.0 for my final project at Uni. And Marge used v2.0 it for hers. So it's something that we can work on together. And maybe get some additional income from it.

Night watch

2005-10-19T07:55:00.000-07:00

I've just put Lisa back to bed.
The crying started at around midnight. I decided to give her an opportunity to cry herself back to sleep. But after 30 minutes, she was still going strong, and was probably wondering where her loving parents were. So she started walking down the hallway, still wailing. I intercepted her just before the family room and picked her up.
As usual, the loud crying turned into heavy sobbing and then she was asleep again.
And once again, I felt guilty for letting her cry that long.
But how else are we going to break this habit of the midnight howling?
What's the phone number of that Super Nanny?

Fighting against the machine.

2005-10-18T00:11:00.000-07:00

DOH!

My whizzbang gizmo card at work don't work anymore. :(
No, that's not entirely true. It still works, but it's telling me lies.

This is the card that gets me back into the computer systems, after I leave my desk.
It tells me 'Hey Homer, try this password: IMBECILE'.
So I type that in and the computer laughs at me and impersonates 'The Count' from Sesame St.
'HA, HA, HA - That's One. One password violation! ah ah ah ah ah!'
DOH!
'Sorry Homer. I miscalculated', the card says. 'Try this password: MORON'
'HA, HA, HA - That's Two. Two password violations! ah ah ah ah ah!'
DOH! DOH!
'How about you type in: CLUELESS'
I don't even trust the card anymore, but what can I do?
'HA, HA, HA - That's Three. Three password violations! ah ah ah ah ah! Three strikes! You are OUT!'
DOH! DOH! DOH!

So I take my card to the security desk and ask them for a new one - one that doesn't mock me as much.
They say 'Sure Homer' and give me another card. 'But you have to keep the old card as well. You'll need that to get into the building'
DOH!
So I take my new card and my old card back to my desk. And try my new card.
'Yawn....sorry bud...', it says. 'You need to get someone to activate me first'
DOH!
So I take my new card and my old card to the CardMaster around the block.
She zaps the new card and it wakes up.
So I take my new card and my old card back to my desk. And try the new card.
'Hey bud! Your new password is: TAKEN4aRIDE'
So I type that in. And the computer throws a pie in my face and laughs.
' What are you trying to do Homer? Your logon has been suspended because of password violations! ah ah ah ah ah!'
doh...
So I take my new card and my old card to the CardMaster around the block. It's past 4 o'clock. She's gone already home.
<sigh>

Buy 1 superhero - Get 1 free

2005-10-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

And apparently, with each purchase of an IncrediBoy, you also get a free limited edition IncrediGirl sidekick.
(Yes, I did think about taking a photo of IncrediBaby, but she probably would have eaten the mask)

Incrediboy

2005-10-17T09:02:00.000-07:00

We received a package in the mail last week from my brother's girlfriend.
Inside was a very cool looking outfit. All we needed to do was add 1 little boy and BANG! Suddenly we got this hyper energised pint-sized super hero.