http://ii.homeip.net/ en-us Nucleus CMS v3.24 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://ii.homeip.net//nucleus/nucleus2.gif http://ii.homeip.net/ http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1470 Miranda ended up in the hospital, but any time your kid is sick it's trying. Of course, right now you watch them like a hawk for signs that it's H1N1, but so far it's just the fever and nausea. No respiratory distress. He seems pretty perky from time to time, too.

On a happier note, Miranda's continuing to develop nicely. I know, what a clinical way to put it. But she is. Her reading is really progressing. She's now pretty much off the charts for a kindergartener. Her SIDES teacher is struggling to find something to challenge her. She's asked Tammy to start getting her to write her own stories now. I had a laugh this morning: I'd heard her saying something when we were all at the breakfast table. I eventually looked to see what she was doing, and she was reading the word on Ian's shirt. It said "SPOT", under a picture of a dog. But Miranda said "STOP". I corrected her, thinking she'd misread it. She said "I know, Daddy, I was just making up other words with the letters. SPOT, TOPS, STOP, POTS." I was flabbergasted. I told her she'd start playing Boggle with us soon.

Since Ian was sick, I took Miranda to her swimming lesson and took a seat in the parents' area with a book. I got a chance to see what she was doing. Normally, I am in the pool with Ian for his lesson. I was very impressed. Most of her lesson was in the big pool, and I saw her kicking along on her back, trying the front crawl, and treading water. That's a lot further ahead than when I saw her the last time.

She also had a pretty good karate lesson today. It was a sparring lesson, and she did okay in the first part, where Sensei was getting them to punch and kick the heavy bags. Then they moved to the back half of the dojo and started sparring while the big kids got their turn with the bags. Then hilarity ensued. She sparred with Rylan and then with Declan, and she did well in both of them, but better against Declan. She finally stopped moving backwards all the time and moved forward. She managed to "corner" him and he was just covering up and she was (lightly) raining punches on his (helmeted) head. It was hilarious to watch. I was the only parent who had moved down to that end to watch, and I was laughing out loud. Sempai Kieren was laughing also and he turned to me and made a comment that Miranda was a real scrapper. All in good fun. Miranda's never mean or bullying when doing it, she's just starting to get the hang of it.

This afternoon, she helped me get the Christmas lights organized. Evan arranged for new LED lights this year and they've arrived. I had to unscrew all of the old incandescent bulbs and then replace them with the new ones. I managed to get the strings up around the garage doors; I'll do the rest tomorrow if the weather's good. Miranda even managed to impress me there. I was unscrewing the bulbs, and I asked her to pass me the colour that I asked for. I passed her the old bulb, which she was piling by colour. Eventually, she came up with a system that she would leave one green, one red and one white bulb sitting right were I could get it and I would pass her the old bulb. Whatever bulb I grabbed, she replaced. It was super-efficient and we finished quickly. I was thrilled. In computer terms, she independently figured out how to make a high-performance cache.

Enough gushing about her. Sorry about that. She's just been really impressing me lately. ]]> General http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1470 Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:45:01 -0800 http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1469

We've still got a lot of material to cover tomorrow. My feet are sore from standing. My voice is rough from speaking.

Come on, weekend!]]> General http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1469 Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:36:09 -0800 http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1468 Last year it took me until the 15th to get this far. I don't think I'll be able to finish in 50,000 words. I think that this novel is a little longer than that. I still hope to type "The End" before the 30th, though.]]> General http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1468 Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:09:04 -0800 http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1467 General http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1467 Sat, 7 Nov 2009 18:02:08 -0800 http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1466 National Novel Writing Month and both Tammy and I are off to great starts. As of this morning, our word counts are neck-and-neck at almost 6500, which is a healthy 1500 more than we should have at this point. Almost a day ahead, three days in! Again, Tammy's finding that she needs to write in longhand, at least when she's thinking really hard, and then she's transcribing onto the computer. I'm finding success with my typewriters; I switched last night from the Underwood Standard to my Smith-Corona portable just for fun and fancy. I think I'll continue swapping night to night. It's what I expected: physically strenuous but viscerally exciting in a mechanically percussive sort of way. My forearms and hands are already getting stronger.

So we both have our "challenges", but at this point our greater uncertainties are over the novels themselves. That's to be expected. Last year it wasn't until the 40,000 mark that I really felt confident that I would win: I could see everything that needed to happen, and it would take about 10,000 more words. You can watch our progress using the little graph in the sidebar. I whipped that up myself this year. The PHP code accesses NaNoWriMo's word count web services and generates the HTML. I would have used the stock widget from NaNoWriMo like last year, but even as of last night, theirs weren't working.]]> General http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1466 Wed, 4 Nov 2009 06:57:33 -0800 http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1465 dojo after regular sparring class. All the kids got changed into their costumes and went through a number of relays to get treats. They were also presented with an additional bag of treats. Our usual get together with Katya and her family didn't happen this year since a number of us are unwell. Instead this year I took the kids out and Simon stayed home. Considering we only had contributions from about 8 houses, their pumpkin buckets were overflowing. I don't know what we're going to do with all their candy and the left-overs we have. Our grand total this year: 36. The numbers have been dwindling:

• 2004 - 109
  
• 2005 - 82
  
• 2006 - 72
  
• 2007 - 43
  
• 2008 - 29
  
• 2009 - 36
  

Simon sat in the garage with his typewriter, kettle, cup and teabags listening for halloweeners. He figured this would reduce the wear-and-tear on the cats' nerves (avoiding constant doorbell ringing). After I came back with the kids I took Miranda over to the Fire Hall to jump in the bouncy castles. There wasn't much to do their other than the castles. There was face painting and a Haunted House, but both were by donation. When we came back Simon had set up his telescope and was looking at the moon. He invited those who came calling to look too. It was a nice clear night for a bit and you could really see the craters. I'm glad the rain held off. Too bad we had so few come by. Now we have a fair amount of candy and nowhere to offload it.]]> General http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1465 Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:21:56 -0700 http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1464 Typecast. See read more for text.This is a bit of an experiment. The kind of experiment that comes
about on days that you're not feeling well and are waiting for things
to happen (like Halloween tonight and NaNoWriMo tomorrow). This is
called typecasting, and it's one way to put to use my newly-acquired
typewriters. :-) Of course, I might not feel like it during the
next month as I'll be typing about two extra hours per day, but
for today, it's something to do. Tammy and Miranda are off at karate
class. Today is a sparring class, and that will be followed by some
kind of Halloween party at the dojo. I'm keeping an eye on Ian.
I should be well enough next week to resume my usual taking of
Miranda to karate. Not sure what I have wrong with me, but it's mostly
just a sore head and a sore throat.

But enough about that. Hope you enjoyed the experiment. Might happen
again, might not.
]]> General http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1464 Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:49:46 -0700 http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1463

I asked Tammy later if we'd known about it would we have gone. With a sick husband, two kids and a downpour at 7 a.m., she declined.]]> General http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1463 Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:17:56 -0700 http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1462
Update

Well, the weather hasn't cooperated, and today it's snowing. The snow isn't staying on the ground, so it's more like light rain. The neat thing that I've noticed on this trip is the birds flying overhead. It seems as though Regina is on one or more major flyways for migrating birds. This morning when I was waiting for the cab, I tried counting the birds in their V-shaped flocks passing overhead and couldn't keep up, even counting by rough fives.]]> General http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1462 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:15:18 -0700 http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1461 when we got the blue and white G3 used. That seems unlike me. Oh well, time to make amends.

Yesterday when we got home from the Ocean Centre, there was a FedEx doorknocker hanging on our front door. They'd tried delivering, but we weren't home. A few phone calls later, and I ended up at the Total Delivery Systems depot off Tennyson a little after 4.

The new mac in question is tiny. It's a Mac Mini, and it's about the size of five CD cases stacked.

Mac Mini

When the kids were in bed, I started setting it up. I left the Migration Assistant working to transfer my files and settings from the iMac and went to bed. Now, all is ready. Since it's so small, and it's plugged into my existing 24" monitor, my desk is much more open. The iMac is now upstairs for school use and that has decluttered things up there, too. There's still a lot of life left in that computer, even if the Mini is much faster. Tammy gets her 2003 iBook back, just in time for NaNoWriMo with her favourite writing program, Scrivener.]]> General http://ii.homeip.net/index.php?itemid=1461 Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:44:12 -0700