August 2013

More alike than they know

August 27, 2013

Yesterday afternoon was time to go "upsize" the skis for the kids. Owing to scheduling conflicts it became two separate trips. Earlier in the day the middle one went, along with her younger non-skiing sister, and later in the day the eldest went.

When I picked up the eldest from her after-school YMCA program she told me she wanted "pink or purple" skis. And that she wanted to take half-day, not full-day, lessons this year. When it came time to ask for what she wanted my normally chatty daughter is very modest and doesn't want to speak up. With a little prodding she told the sales person what she wanted and he proceeded to show her three pairs of pink and purple skis. Knowing her love of butterflies and seeing the third pair with it's pink and purple butterflies I was certain I knew what she'd pick.

I was certainly wrong. Without a moment's hesitation she picked the first pair she had seen. As the ticket was being written up I looked at her younger sister's pick to see that they had picked the same skis and same boots.

Oh the places you'll go...

August 19, 2013

It could have been worse

All things considered I'm a pretty good traveler. I've racked up more than a handful of frequent flyer miles criss-crossing the globe to help deliver Open Source software to places far and wide.

Given the number of days I've spent in airports and on their companion tubes hurdling through the air a few tricks to make things easier have been picked up along the way. In addition there is plenty to know about scheduling and when to do certain things. This all brought me to the airport early Friday morning for a short flight from Boise to San Francisco for work. Arriving at the airport and flitting through security, my laptop was coming to life as soon as it touched the desk in the business center.

Oh the writing

August 6, 2013

Back to school time means lots of writing. Not so much for the grade-school kids, their turn will come but for parents. And it's not the sort of writing one does with a keyboard.

On the eve of a new school year it is the parents who do the writing. Our daughter's teacher had a great idea of having a note for each of the four days this first week and how the child was getting home. Also on each note was the emergency contact, all on a small note that could be kept with the child. A great idea for sure. But man oh man did it highlight just how infrequently I write long-hand these days. Combine that with the added fine-motor insult of not having my own pen which rolls easier and the day ended with a cramped hand to be sure.

One day soon even many of these routine writing tasks may well be done on the keyboard but until then each August as the new school year rolls around parents will get a taste of good old fashioned writing.

Practical parenthood

August 5, 2013

In a single moment the memory memory comes ringing out loud and clear.

"Don't forget the carseat is in my car," she had reminded me as I dropped her off at the airport.

Indeed I did not forget. Well not completely. For it is as you're walking with a 10-month old and a 4-year old, just about to reach the "wrong" car that the "now what was I forgetting" thought comes back loud and clear.

So it is that on day one of being a solo parent while the wife is away we end up leaving daycare with two girls and not the right car-seats. Of course with that one last thing that came up at work it's too close to closing time to take the kids back in and return home to get the seat.

I could walk home and get it crosses the mind briefly but the two-mile walk is longer than can be accomplished and still pick up the other kiddo.

Ah the other kiddo well at least there's an extra booster seat. It might not be the rear-facing bastion of side-impact security that one plans to put their infant in. Then you think "hmm it's probably not even legal." Even under Idaho's relatively lax child seat laws.

Farewell comments

August 3, 2013

For quite some time I have been thinking about how to make sites that are more useful and better assembled. No this is not a post-CMS look how we're managing content like it is 1995 post. But how to best put together sites that have services that the site or a small group of sites consume. The Distributed Blocks module in Drupal is a piece of this that I have batted around with several folks much brighter than me (I don't have any experience with the Distributed Blocks module or involvement in it's creation just an example of the sort of distributed SaaS solution I've envisioned.)

At any rate while I was doing some work on this site today I was facing the problem of what to do with commenting. The comments here haven't been used in a long time for anything but an attempt to spam the site. In the typical flow of things there are waves of time when spammers overwhelm or come up with a new technique to get past the excellent Mollom service. Over the last few years I've removed far more spam posts than there have been meaningful additions.