Tonight I was checking my email and I a new message from Clicker.com. It seems I have 5 beta invites I can share. I thought cool… What is Clicker again? This isn’t the first time I’ve received that latest news about a Application or Service and found myself scratching my head trying to remember what the service was and when I signed up for it. I seem to sign up for every beta I see, regardless of need or something real interest. I could be just surfing along see some information about a new website or application that has a free beta and the next thing I know I’m signing up for it. It’s new, it’s exclusive, I want in. That’s all that seems to mater.
Sometimes this works out really well. I signed up to both Ping.FM and Digsby without thinking about it and both I now use everyday. But others like Hellotxt and Robo.to I can’t remember the last time I logged into, let alone used the services. I must have hundreds of accounts scattered around the web on different services. Most of them I’ve forgotten about, or have forgetting the username/password combo I used when I signed up.
Just last week I found myself creating an account on cliqset.com and my primary username was taken so I looked up the profile of the user who had it. Sure enough I had signed up for it the week before. It was then that I knew I had a problem. So over the last week I have been trying to think of what a solution to that problem might be. All I have come up with are 2 Questions;
- Why do I sign up to so many online sites?
- Now that I know I have a problem what do I do about it?
As I write this I don’t have the answers, and I’m not even sure they are the right questions. Stay tuned for a a follow up in the next couple of days.
Tonight when I got home after work I thought I’d let Melissa unwind a little. So I told Jacob that we were going upstairs and play with Violet. He was quite excited, he started to pick up some of Violets toys so that she would have something to play with. It was a very sweet. So the three of use spent close to an hour playing with different toys in Jacobs room.
Of course Jacob wanted to play with his train table, so while we did that Violet pulled herself up and tried to play too. It was quite fun, though Jacob wasn’t happy when she grabbed at the train he was pushing around the track. After the train we played with some of Jacobs letters and with our large Fisher Price Laugh and Learn House. It was one of Jacob’s favourite toys when he was younger. He was quite happy to show her the different songs that plays. He was disappointed when she lost interest and started crawling away.
Though today they really just played by themselves while next to each other. It was like looking into the future, before I know it it will be the 2 of them playing upstairs causing mischief instead of just Jacob. Of course I don’t want that day to come to quickly, I don’t want my little girl to growup to quickly.
Over the last few weeks I’ve had some problems with my hosting provider. At first it was intermittent downtime. Then it was the suspension of an account without warning. I’ve been happy with my host up until now, there support has always been quick and helpful. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case with this last issue and so I’m left wondering if perhaps it’s time to change hosts. Currently there are 5 or 6 domains under my account so it’s not an easy decision. Changing hosts will be a lot of work.
I spent a chunk of this evening looking at different hosting providers, and none caught my eye. So going forward I think I’m going to start reviewing other options. So that the next time I become frustrated with my current provider I will be ready to replace them. To help with that I thought I’d ask, do any of my readers have a host the can recommend?
Today our family celebrated Thanksgiving, Melissa and I hosted her family for a dinner of Turkey, Mashed Potatoes, Carrots, Sweet Potatoes, gravy, and I can’t for get Stuffing. We also had Pie with whipped cream for desert. It was a great dinner, Melissa did an amazing job making all the food. As a rule we let Melissa handle all the cooking, my role in the kitchen is one of minion. Fetching, Lifting, cleaning and even some tasting. We find this produces the best meals. Which is fair, though I tried to learn to cook a few years ago, I’m much happy leaving that chore to others.
A memorable part of dinner tonight for me was watching Violet sitting in her high chair enjoying the dinner with the family. She happily feed herself chunks of potato and carrot. She looked like such a big girl. Combine that with her close to picking up a new sign this after noon, and I’m forced to accept that my baby girl will be nine months in 9 short days.
Enough talk about my growing little girl, I think that all the food is getting to me. I’m tired and would like to just curl up and go to sleep… in fact I think I will embrace the turkey coma.
Yesterday was second week of swimming class, so I thought today I would take a moment to talk about how the first to classes went. Here like at swimming we’ll start with Jacob.
Jacob:
The first week of swimming went mostly well, Jacob was excited to have a women teacher again and for the most of the class he listened. There was few incidents where he was more interested in his own thing then what the teacher was teaching. One incident stands out though, when the were practicing jumping into the pool Jacob decided that he’d prefer to use the stairs and ran away from his group and climbed down the stairs into the pool.
The second week started out ok, but he soon became more interested in his own thing the the teachers, and often seemed to do things to try and get her attention. Things like swimming away from the group while they were in life Jackets doing jumping practice in the deep end, to no following the teacher as the swam back from the deep end.
What I found interesting is after the lesson as he was walking towards Melissa and I you could see that he new he was in trouble. That he had done something wrong. What I’m not sure is how best to deal with this. He needs to be in a class room environment, after all he starts kindergarten next fall, but I’m thinking he’ll learn more if we go back to one on one lessons for swimming.
Violet:
Her first class was good, she took a while to get used to the pool but once she did there wasn’t a problem She even managed to go under after 3 times without screaming. She came close to being upset the last time but I managed to keep her calm. She enjoyed doing front floats, her little tongue darting out to try and taste the water like a cat was so cute. Her back floats were good too, she didn’t fuss at all when we were doing them. Jacob always hated back floats. All and all her first lesson went really well.
For the second lesson we had a tired baby, and though she mostly enjoyed it there were times that she let me know that she didn’t want to be there. It took her longer to adjust to being in the water and she didn’t really slash or kick her feet. Though there were times that she enjoyed it and when we practiced going under water she didn’t cry. When we were singing Grand Old Duke of York and I lifted her out of the water she cried, but that was near the end of class and buy then se was close to falling a sleep on my shoulder.
I know it’s only been to classes but I really am enjoying the time in the pool with Violet. I hadn’t realised how much I missed swimming with Jacob until I got into the pool with Violet. It’s a special time that I can share with my little girl. I’m not sure how old she’ll be when we switch to one on one lessons with an instructor, but I’m happy to continue swimming with her as long as I can.
For months Melissa has been saying she wants an IPhone, for months I have been saying we have to wait till our contract is up before we can switch to Rogers to get you an IPhone. It all started 18 months ago Melissa and I activated a couples plan with TELUS Mobility on a three year contract. We both got HTC S720 Windows Mobile Smartphones, Its a functional but not practical or elegant. Both Melissa and I are coveting other phones.
Our plan was to wait till our contract was up in another 18 months and then move to Rogers, get Melissa an IPhone and me a Google Phone. With the news that both TELUS and Bell are going to start offering the IPhone new options emerge. We should be able to get Melissa her IPhone as soon as we are eligible for a Smartphone upgrade. Though for her IPhone we’ll probably wait an additional 4 months so that we can get the newest model when it’s release in June or July.
Of course that still leaves me wondering what phone I will get. I don’t want an IPhone. I think it’s a great gadget and I love the touch screen and tons of apps, but I want a physical keyboard. I like the HTC Dream’s slide out keyboard and more open OS. I want to have more control of my device. I want to be able to develop for my phone, and right now the only phone I’ve done any developing for is Windows Mobile, so I’m leaning to something like the HTC Pro2 or some new phone running Windows 6.5. But all this is speculation. I don’t know what Phone TELUS will have in 6 months let alone 10 when we’ll probably buy them. I might even be an IPhone convert by then. Only Time will tell
When Google first announce wave back in the spring I was intrigued. It looked like it could change the way that things worked on the web. Of course having to wait after the announcement to get access just built the curiosity. I applied for access to the developers sandbox as soon as I could. I was surprised back in July when I was granted access.
My first thought when I sat in front of the interface was ‘Cool’ and I started to explore. What I found after a short time of exploring was a bit chaotic, there were a ton of waves most of which I couldn’t seem to join. So after being frustrated in the chaos I asked myself what could I build with this. I never came up with an answer and life never seemed to give me the time to really explore it so my account sat mostly unused. I logged in every few weeks to see what’s changed but that’s about it.
When the major expansion of users came round and the hype started to build I thought it might be time to give it another shot. When I first logged in the interface looked the same but there was less Waves. Just one from Dr. Wave explaining how things worked, one for Inviting people to join wave(these are more recommendations then invites though), and one with some sample gadgets that can be used in waves. After exploring the waves I had I was soon wondering what the point was. none of my friend have access yet and I don’t know when the ‘Recommended’ users will be given access.
It was then that I found the ‘with:public’ search that gives you access to all the public waves. With the search chaos returned, but this time I could interact with the waves, and though I did experience some trolls editing my wave in troll like ways I also found a few Waves where the conversation was flowing and I saw the power hidden in Wave. Just one catch you need to have people to talk with. So though I’m sure I will take the occasional swim in the Wave until some of my friends join it wont be a daily destination.
As I’ve been taking about my experiences and not really reviewing the service I thought I would share the a video I found on Lifehacker that explains at least part of what wave does:
