Category: General

So tonight was Halloween and our little ones dressed up and headed out for a night of Tricks and Treats. Violet as a Bumble Bee and Jacob as a Pirate. A good time was had by all, though Violet was a little crabby. We were out past her bed time.  It will be interesting next year when she’s walking. Enjoy the pictures.

 

Tonight was night to spend with the family. Though we didn’t spent it in a traditional way. We had a quick jaunt to the mall to pick up the last few pieces of our kids costumes and while we were out we grabbed dinner. Wasn’t exciting, but I think we all enjoyed it. Though as we were coming home Jacob wanted to head out somewhere else. but then he’s three and he’s always up for an adventure.

Our little violet had some fun of her own. While we were having dinner she grabbed a roll from the table. She went to town on it. It was quite cute to watch. Of course we didn’t let her finish it all. It’s amazing how well she managed to it with her to 2 little teeth.

Tomorrow is Halloween, I’ll try to get the pictures of our little Bumble Bee and Pirate in tomorrows post. Otherwise it will have to wait until Sundays. Though I hope to start the month off with a more reflective post. I’ll see how the day goes. With all the excitement around Halloween and the regular weekend stuff it’s going to be a busy day tomorrow.

For the last 28 days I have managed a post a day, I’ve been feeling really good about my blogging over that time. I’ve been planning my posts days in advanced. Thinking about them, writing when I had a spare moment and it was going really great, until today.  Today I had my post worked out, but I haven’t written it yet I hoped to get it started last night, but the words never came. Today when I sat down on the bus, on the way to the office and began working on it I was disturbed to find that it wasn’t flowing. I just couldn’t get it. It wasn’t a complicated post just a review of a Twitter client that I use on my phone. I started it, and it just didn’t work.

So why did it go wrong? The more I think about the question the more I think it isn’t really a why but a when. The when being Tuesday when I lost to separate revisions of my my blog that day. Both times the loses were silly, the software I was working in didn’t support auto saving and I didn’t take a second to manually save. So over the last couple days I’ve been looking into alternative work flow for my blog posts. The hardest part is I want to be able to work on my posts on my Phone and Desktop without having to do transfer them between. So far all my methods have been kludgy. I need a Blog writer for Windows Mobile.

I’ve tried a number of different ways of working. I’ve tried using email to write the posts on my phone and then email to my blog or an email account. Was ok, but no conductive to working on one then the other. I’ tried using Datebook entries and using Google calendar to sync them between the phone and the device. It worked pretty well, except it was a desktop and mobile failure with that connection method that hit on Tuesday.  Today I’ve setup a new method, with a Text editor or maybe Pocket Word on Windows Mobile and Live Mesh to do the sync to to the desktop. This should allow for a two way work flow, but only time will tell. Of course what I really need is Windows Live Writer on my mobile. It’s my favourite software for working in my blog.

It would seem that talking about it was what I really needed. As I started to write this entry I found the flow I’ve had for my posting returning. I’m so glad about that, there was a moment today when I thought about not posting. It didn’t last long, looking at the calendar on the side of my blog with everyday highlight except the final 3 days of the month was more then enough to keep me from faltering before completing my goal of writing everyday in October. Of course whether I will be able to keep it going through November is still up in the air.

Ok, I know it’s wrong, and I know Melissa will probably not want to be seen in public with me for a while after saying this. But I really want to try this burger. Doesn’t it just look so burgeriffic???

In my last post I asked two questions (My Online addiction), today ‘I’m going to answer them.

Why do I sign up to so many online sites?
This is an easy question to answer, I sign up to some many sites because I’m looking for the next big thing. The next tool or service that is either going to make my life easier or be useful in some other way. Plus I want to get my desired user name. That’s why I signed up to twitter in March of 2007, but didn’t really use it till March of 2008. So I want to keep creating accounts.

Now that I know I have a problem what do I do about it?
After thinking about it, I don’t think this is the right question. I think the question should really be; What is the problem with signing up to so many sites? The short answer is that there isn’t a problem. It is the managing of the account once I have them. I need to keep track of the sites I’ve tried. A way to sift through them and find the ones that are worth going back too. To that end I’m going to start reviewing sites on a regular basis.

The series will be called Cloud Gazing. I’m planning on having 2 kinds of reviews, First Look and Reviews. First looks will just be my first impressions, this will be for most if not all the sites I sign up for. Reviews will be after I have been using the service for a while and can give a fair review.  The first review will probably be appearing next week.

Tomorrow my Dad’s second book “Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux Shell” is released.  If you are interested in Shell Scripts it’s probably a worthwhile buy. Even though I don’t write shell scripts I found his first book “Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach” fascinating to read. I’m looking forward to reading the new book.

Of course this will renew my interest in shell scripting and if I should get into it more. I don’t run Linux so I’d either have start that or see about working with Microsoft’s PowerShell. Perhaps I should try some of the scripts from the book in ‘PowerShell’ see if they run. I’ll post about my results when I try them.

Once again while surfing the internet I’ve come across a video that I thought should be shared.

 

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.

Saw this video on twitter this evening and thought I’d share.