CeBIT 2007 - feeding the inner geek

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"?

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.