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How To Understand Your Screaming Demon-Child

A new parenting documentary! And if you think this is mean spirited, I’d wager that you’re not a parent…

Things To Do at Lunch When You Have No Friends at Work…

In case you ever find yourself working in an environment where everyone around you is 10 years, or more, older than you and shares nothing in common with you beyond the objectives of your employer, here’s some ideas I’ve found to keep from going insane on my mandated 1 hour lunch.

1. Watch stand-up comedy on YouTube. Sure I sound a little weird laughing by myself in my cubicle, but there’s some funny stuff out there, and my hour passes in no time.
2. Go to the Apple Store. After awhile, there’s really nothing new to discover in the store, but I just feel cooler after being in such a techno-trendy environment for a little while. Plus free and un-filtered Internet means I can do some chatting or catch up on BoingBoing.
3. Take a nap! I have the amazing ability to set my internal clock for whatever time I want to wake up. I can lean back in my car, and say “I’m going to take a 15 minute nap.” And I’ll wake up in almost exactly 15 minutes, without fail. More and more research is coming out about the value of a power nap, and I support this science completely!
4. Go to Panera and sit by the fireplace. If you get there before the rush, you can pick your seat. I like the two chairs right in front of the fire. They have free WiFi, so I can chill out and read some news while I eat.
5. Blog. There’s always something to blog about, and even if no one else finds it interesting, I can imagine people out there as bored at lunch time as I am are desperate to find something to read.
6. Take a walk. The area surrounding my office is pretty nice, so if it’s not too cold out, I like to take a stroll around the building. I find I’m more productive in the afternoon if I’ve gotten some fresh air too.

Anyone else got any suggestions?

The Bodily Function Triple Threat

So Nic had just finished feeding Benjamin and she sat him up to burp him… and put her hand in a wet spot on his back where poop had seeped up out of his diaper and into his little outfit.

Being the good husband that I am, I scooped him up (carefully, so as not to touch the poop) to change him. As I set him down on his change table, he vomits out his dinner all down the front of his clothes. Now there’s no safe place to touch his clothes as I peel them off.

Finally I get the diaper off and start wiping the perimeter of poop spread across the lower half of his body, and the second I glance away to ready the next diaper, he pees in his own face…

Needless to say, Benjamin got another bath tonite!

We need some more pictures….

I believe we are lacking in pictures of Benjamin so here are some that I picked out.
Here he is in one of my old pj’s, which by the way doesn’t fit him anymore.

Lounging on the couch

These two are of tummy time
Curled up on dad

Getting ready to face the cold weather yesterday…burrr it was cold!!

1 Month

Ok so today was Benjamin’s 1 month visit with the Doctor. He says that Benjamin is doing great, growing and gaining weight according to the growth curve he is on. Today he got his second Hep B shot and he did great, only cried for alittle while and calmed down right away. He weighed in at 10 lbs 13 ozs and is now 21 1/4 ins long. Here are some funny pictures from today….

Just So We’re Clear

26 is NOT “late 20’s”
I’m in my mid 20’s and no one can take that away from me

…for at least another year.

Verbizing

Frankenstein verb

1. To put together components from multiple sources to make a new machine or device. I’ll frankenstein a couple old workstations and make you a server for about $100.

Top Apps

In the vein of CNet, and others, top apps lists, here’s my top Mac downloadable applications that enable or enhance my roving work experience with my MacBook Pro…

TextWrangler is a free, lightweight and highly capable text editor. It’s perfect for reading documents with unidentifiable extensions, or editing some code, and light years ahead of TextEdit, the crappy text editor that comes with OS X. The UI can be a little confusing and non-intuitive at times, but practically anything you’d want to do is in there somewhere.

NetNewsWire Lite is the free version of this top-notch RSS reader. All my friend’s blogs and geek news sites are aggregated into one window that I can browse like e-mail. I know I’ve railed on RSS before, but when you read as many blogs as I do, it comes in handy to be able to see them all at a glance.

Location X is a tool that allows you to change a wide array of system settings based on your Location in System Preferences. It can even automatically detect that location by looking at your connected wireless network. If you work in a draconian network like I do during the day, but also want to be able to quickly re-configure for a less oppressive network when you get home, this tool is for you. It’ll change everything from your proxy settings to your default printer, and will fire one or more AppleScripts for you to change things it doesn’t handle.

Handbrake is a dead simple DVD ripper. There’s lots of legitimate reasons for ripping DVDs — backing up your home collection, putting videos on your iPod, or extracting clips from movies to put in a video (within the constraints of fair use, of course) but before Handbrake it wasn’t very easy to do.

MacJournal is just that. It’s a simple note-taking tool that offers hierarchical organization of your notes. It’s little more than a rich text editor, but it helps you structure and browse things like meeting notes easily. There’s a free version, and it’s worth the click.

Parallels Desktop + Bootcamp = cross platform bliss. Even in beta, the latest version of Parallels offers astounding functionality. This software is not free, but when they ship their next major version, I’ll put down the $80 in a heartbeat.

CocoaMySQL is like phpMyAdmin only slicker. If you administer WordPress or other sites that use mySQL, and you’re on a Mac, get this free program. It’s not quite as user friendly as SQL Server, but it’s pretty darn close, and it’s a whole lot cheaper to use MySQL.

Honourable Mention: Fan Control. There are times when you want your MacBook to warm up — like when you get your laptop out of the car and put it on your lap and it’s freezing cold. Most of the time though, it’s better to keep your computer cool. When given the choice, Apple will always choose “runs quiet” over “runs cool” and they rarely give you the choice. That’s what Fan Control is about. It allows you to set thresholds for when the fans kick in, and it also allows you to change the minimum speed. Since installing Fan Control, my computer has been consistently cooler — except that one staff meeting where the room was freezing cold, then I turned the minimum speed way down so I could warm my hands up!

Anyone else know any good Mac tools?

Good Day at the Office(s)

You gather as much information as you can, collect opinions, leverage everything you’ve learned in the past, and ultimately go with your gut…

But there’s nothing quiet so affirming as hearing your users say “You’re right, that’s what we need. Keep going!”

I got to hear that twice today — once at each job.

And it feels good!

R2-D2, the secret leader of the Rebellion?

I don’t usually re-post things I find on BoingBoing, but this was just too good. It posits that R2-D2 is in fact one of the leaders of the rebellion, given the information he has that, by the time A New Hope (Episode 4) starts, few other people in the galaxy are aware of. It’s pretty convincing…

Consider: at the end of RotS, Bail Organan orders 3PO’s memory wiped but not R2’s. He wouldn’t make the distinction casually. Both droids know that Yoda and Obi-Wan are alive and are plotting sedition with the Senator from Alderaan. They know that Amidala survived long enough to have twins and could easily deduce where they went. However, R2 must make an impassioned speech to the effect that he is far more use to them with his mind intact: he has observed Palpatine and Anakin at close quarters for many years, knows much that is useful and is one of the galaxy’s top experts at hacking into other people’s systems. Also he can lie through his teeth with a straight face. Organa, in immediate need of espionage resources, agrees.

Read the rest here…