why exactly...

did we buy a house with a tree in the front?

That's right, you guessed it... roots in the drain pipe... nasty.

Blogged with Flock

excuses

My iBook's battery is recalled. Again. They were previously recalled when I first got the iBook, and now they are recalled again with the whole Sony battery fiasco.

Well, it's not a fiasco, really. Batteries and laptops have a history of violence. Namely, bursting into flames.

Apple, for their part, is usually very good at recalls, and they take responsibility for problems, even if they aren't responsible for the manufacture of the defective part. One tends to think of Apple as the manufacturer of their computers, but in reality, they are made from parts sourced from the same suppliers and manufacturers that everyone else has to deal with. In fact, the new MacBook is "made" by Asustek.

Tom's thoughts this past weekend about excuses came to mind. Apple gets to shift the blame from itself to the third party manufacturer, in this case, Sony. Some self reflection reveals that I am a hugh procrastinator (no secret) and that I often shift the blame off of myself on to, well, anything or anyone else, really.

The following, from a late 80's Apple ad, is so me:

This has worked for me for 2 decades... why change now? :)

Well, no more. I'm a gonna change my cheatin' ways...

And it's time for the reveal. If you made it this far, you get to find out what "twopuffsofair" means. I went to Australia in 1995 with CTI for two months, and one of the songs we sang was "There's not a crown without a cross" as recorded by Michael English. One of the lines of the song is "to persevere to the end"... but his delivery is kinda mumbly, and it sounded like "two puffs of air". It was kind of our team's inside joke.

So there you have it. No more procrastination. Persevere to the end.

Blogged with Flock

language explosion

Tasha's up to 5 word sentences now... careful what you say around her, she'll say it right back! She's in that "mode"... soaking up new words and we've noticed an increased attention span for books that wasn't there before. She used to get only halfway thru a little book and then push it away, eager to explore something else. She's a physical sensory tactile type of kid. But now she'll bring you a book to read, and usually get through the whole thing. Her favourite is Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss. Her favourite page is "FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER That one is my other brother!"

Anyway, this book thing is great, because Jackie loves to recite her books to Tasha, and they keep each other occupied while we sneak off and watch a movie, um, I mean, while we clean up and get dinner ready... yeah... that's right...

technorati tags:kids, language, reading

Blogged with Flock

growing up

Today (Wed) Jackie was tall enough to go into Smaland at the Etobicoke IKEA (they only require a height of 37", whereas the other IKEA requires 39"). It was a momentous day. She's been waiting to be tall enough to go to this play area, and we checked today and she was just over the 37 mark. She was so excited.

So what I hadn't really clued in on was the fact that you DROP YOUR KIDS OFF at this thing. That meant we were down a kid, and we could shop with only one instead of two. Woo hoo!

I must admit I felt a twinge of emotion, probably what you feel when your kid goes off to school for the first time, but decreased by a factor of 10... It was strange, and I hadn't expected it. It was like, wow, she's growing up. She's going into this thing, by herself. Part of me wanted to go with her, just to, you know, be there in case she needed anything... but she was fine. She was more than fine. She was raring to go, and she had a blast. And we had an hour of free child care! :)

I've been thinking about milestones lately. How we measure our lives. In the first weeks and months of our lives, the markers come fast and furious. As they get to 2 and 3, it starts to be more spread apart. I think today was one of those milestones for Jackie. And for her dad.

technorati tags:IKEA, milestone, smaland, growing

Blogged with Flock

i must be a total geek

... because i found this article immensely enjoyable to read:

http://daringfireball.net/2006/08/curious_case

technorati tags:geek, daringfireball, shoddy, reporting

Blogged with Flock

1 Corinthians 13:1-2 for the geek

1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not my iPod, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not my Blackberry, I am nothing.

- a reprise from my thoughts on the weekend

I think the worst combination in the world has to be a love of tech gadgets and a love of comparison shopping. There's so many permutations and stats to compare between models, between configurations. Like when shopping for a digital camera, sites like www.dcresource.com just feed the fire. You can do a search on various models, and include certain features that you really want, and then it spits out a list of all the cameras that meet your criteria.

Or the MacPro... rather absurdly, Apple declares that there are 4.9 million possible combinations. I already know which one I want... :)

I can spend hours comparing things that I have no real hope of buying. At least I can be thankful I'm a J and not a P (Meyers Briggs)... I think the satisfaction of coming to a decision pushes me to make the decision rather than endlessly filtering more and more information.

Aaaahhhh! I need to get out of this idle-ness! More productive time! Are we, to borrow a phrase, amusing ourselves to death?[a] Why am I even writing this blog?! I should be doing something else more important!

For a week I would love to forgo all the tech news, all the comparison shopping, all the idle dreaming... maybe I just need to unplug... go take pictures or something... :)

I'll still write here, though... it helps me think, I think.

See ya!

[a] Neil Postman: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)

technorati tags:thoughts, MacPro, MeyersBriggs, unplug, postman

Blogged with Flock

worth it

After a whole day of being loud, fighting, not sharing, getting time outs, not using your 'inside' voice, being rude, jumping on the bed, putting cherry covered hands in your hair, getting your sister to jump on her bed, choosing mommy over daddy, telling us over and over that you "hate" your blue slippers, staying up late...

we put you to bed, and we read our stories, pray, and say good night, and I get

a hug

a kiss

and an "I love you"...

and somehow the whole day is worth it.

Daddy loves you.

Blogged with Flock

Tasha, Tasha, Tasha...

As recently as last month, Tasha would cry when we dropped her off at nursery during service. She would get really upset, to the point of throwing up. But one Sunday, we asked her if she was going to cry this week.

She said, "No. No cry. Babies cry." (except she says cry with a "w" instead of an "r"... so cute)

"And you're not a baby any more?"

"No. Babies cry."

Now we just laughed and thought it was so good that she would say that, and indeed, she didn't cry that week, or thereafter. But now, she's turned it on her big sister:

(Jackie gets upset about something and starts crying.)

Tasha: "No! Babies cry!"

Jackie: (crying) "I know, but I just can't... I have to cry!"

Tasha: "No! Babies cry!"

Jackie: (crying) "No Tasha! I can cry!"

Tasha: "No! Babies cry!"

Parents: <sigh>

Oh, the drama!

technorati tags:cry, kids, drama

Blogged with Flock

home alone

what we did when I was home with the kids... (it's a plane, in case you can't tell... and yes, they're both wearing CANADA T-shirts! represent!)

technorati tags:radio, flyer, canada

Blogged with Flock

Conversations

J: How come not everybody goes to Costco?

Well, not everyone has to...

J: Maybe they already have everything...

Yes, maybe they already have...

J: I know why not everybody goes to Costco!

Why, honey?

J: Because if you are dead and gone to heaven, right?

Uh, right...

J: Because you don't need anything in heaven, 'cuz God already has everything, right?

That's right, hon...

J:Although you might still need a toothbrush, I think...

technorati tags:heaven, costco, toothbrush, kids

Blogged with Flock

Maybe for Christmas? ;-)

Note the price... $14,954 CDN... hmm, i could buy a computer, or I could buy a car... or maybe the money would be better spent here?

Probably... :-)

technorati tags:msf, macpro, christmas, wish, apple

Blogged with Flock

It's heeeeere...

In what must be one of THE worst kept secrets in the product launch department, the Nikon N80 was officially announced today. http://www.dpreview.com/articles/nikond80/

A follow up to the D70s, although I'm not sure if the D70s is going to be discontinued. It has many of the same features as my D200. I'm not jealous, really... :)

Looks like a great package and I'm sure Nikon will have a huge success with it. Ships in September.

more from the WWDC

Hmm... you'd think I was obsessed or something...

Anyway, here's a funny (to me anyway) video of PC guy talking to Mac developers.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/wwdc2006/video/

technorati tags:WWDC, Mac, PC

Blogged with Flock

1GB : the new 256MB

I was just thinking about the new Mac Pro machines, and I was happy to see that they came standard with 1GB of RAM. For any kind of Pro work, 1 GB is kind of the minimum, so it's nice to see Apple acknowledge that.

For the longest time, Apple would only stick in the bare minimum, just enough to run the OS and one or two apps. The iMac prior to May 2005 came with only 256MB of RAM.

The previous, just replaced, Quad PowerMac G5 came with a paltry 512MB.

So what? We've come a long way from 64k, 128k machines of the 80's. But in the middle of this unstoppable march of progress, Moore's law, and incredible technological advancement, we come crashing up against this amazing thing called human adaptability. We adapt to whatever we're given, whether it's processor speed or hard drive size or memory, and we get used to it. And once we get used to it, then we want more. No matter how big your hard drive is, you always fill it. No matter how fast your processor(s), you find things to do that push it to the max.

So 1GB is the new 256MB. I can hear it now... "What? Your Mac only came with 1GB? what a rip... how can you even do anything with just 1GB?"

I guess I better get used to it.

"Redmond - start your photocopiers" - Bertrand Serlet

Apple - Apple - Mac OS X - Leopard Sneak Peek
Sorry, I couldn't help it.

We all know OSX is light years ahead of Windows XP... but with Vista finally being released this year next year (?) Microsoft is playing catch-up... again.

But anyway, on to the important stuff!

Apple - Mac Pro

The new heavy iron from Apple... it's Woodcrest (Xeon)! Yay! Two chips, four cores total, comes in three flavours, 2 GHz, 2.66GHz, and 3GHz. They can access a maximum of 16GB of RAM... 16GB!!! that's a lot of plug-ins, baby! It looks like Apple has finally hit the ball out of the park... no compromises, really. And $1000 less than the same config from Dell... which is scary for Dell, because guess what... these Macs will boot Windows too!

We live in interesting times, for sure...

In-N-Out: love that place

Matriarch of In-N-Out Burger dies at 86 (AP)

AP - Esther L. Snyder, who with her husband founded the iconic West Coast restaurant chain In-N-Out Burger, died Friday. She was 86.

---------------------

We always eat at In-N-Out at least once every time we go to SF. It's a tradition of Nancy's family that we've continued. French Fries that are cut from real potatoes right in the kitchen.... mmm... yummmy....

---------------------

Anyway, my post today was not to highlight In-N-Out, exactly, but to try out Flock. Flock is a new web browser that integrates blogging, RSS, and image sharing all in one place. I thought I'd start using it to blog instead of going into blogger.com. Blogging about the news article above was pretty easy. Let's see how easy it is to put a picture in?

oh... pretty easy, I guess. :)

Blogged with Flock

WWDC on Monday...

For those of you who don't know, I'm a big Mac geek. I love keeping up to date on all the latest Mac happenings, Mac news, anything to do with Apple. On the day of Macworld Keynote, I used to try to not look at any of the announcements until I had watched the stream of the keynote via Quicktime. Kinda like when we didn't have cable and we got people to tape the Raptors games for us, we'd have to create our own media blackout so we didn't hear the score before we watched the tape.

Anyhow, it is with great anticipation that I await the start of WWDC, the World Wide Developers Conference. Not really a general public event like MacWorld, and I have no interest nor skill in doing any program developing (think typing in programs from BYTE into a Vic20) ... but Steve Jobs is giving a keynote Monday morning, and he might introduce something new, besides OSX 10.5 Leopard, and besides iTunes movies... which in itself would be kind of cool, but I'm _really_ much more interested in what the specs of the Pro Towers are going to be... *salivating*

As you may or may not have heard, Apple is transitioning to Intel chips. The last remaining segment of their lineup is the towers, having already switched the consumer mini and iMac to Intel, and the whole laptop line (MacBook and MacBook Pro). So what will it be, Steve? Core 2 Duo? *meh* dual-processor Woodcrest with 4 cores each? *woohoo*

And of course, the most important question: how will it look? :)

Oh, and Nikon is introducing a new camera in 7 days... will the excitement never end?!?