Parenting

I have been wanting to blog about my ideas about good parenting techniques, but have never gotten around to it. Now that both my brother and sister are going to have children (with separate partners mind you) I feel compelled to finally get around to it.
I have always been hesitant about giving out parenting advice. It seems that whenever someone is going to have their first child every parent feels compelled to tell them what they think about parenting. I figure that they will find out when the baby comes what a big change it is, and as that child grows they should be able to figure most of it out. Certainly what information I may offer now will not be remembered by the time it may actually be useful, assuming it actually is useful.
So the main purpose of this blog is to just flesh out for the record my thoughts and opinions on parenting, for whatever they are worth.
My first piece of advice to any prospective parent is to take a look at what their parents did. Think about the things that they did right and the things they did wrong. It is natural for a new parent to do exactly what their parents did, even if they don't realize they are doing it. It is important to only repeat the good things they did and learn from their mistakes.
Take this new roll of parenting more seriously than anything you have ever done before. As a parent you have the full ability to ruin your child's self image for the rest of their life, or to set them on track to live a happy and successful life. Children put a lot of emotional stake in who their parents are and what their parents think of them. Even as adults many people still put a lot of stake in their image of their parents.
As a parent remember to be interesting and fun. Don't be that parent that takes their child to work, comes home, makes dinner, cleans, watches TV and then goes to bed. I mean, many nights that will be necessary, but you should show to your child that you are an exciting person.
Go out and do things with your child. Go camping or fishing. Visit cool places like national parks or a local place of interest. If you ever learned to play an instrument get some sheet music for kids songs so that you can play them their favorite songs while everyone sings along. Whatever it is you do, make sure it is interesting. Children need to understand life can be fun, and the world we live in is awesome. There is a world out their beyond the social awkwardness that is grade school.
At the playground don't just let your kid loose. Get on your hands and knees and play with your children. Climb up the slide with them, go down the fire pole. Ran around and scream while you chase them. It is good exercise, it develops a strong bond with your child, and it reminds you that you are still young (assuming you aren't becoming a parent in your 40s.)
Being a parent is tough work filled with lots of stress. Take every opportunity to have fun while you can. It is a lot harder than it may sound, but it is also very rewarding.

One of those "I Run Linux" moments.

A friend came over for dinner last Sunday. She had some music on her iPod she wanted me to check out. There wasn't a good way to plug it into my stereo system, so I plugged it into my laptop which runs Kubuntu. I wasn't sure what to expect. I opened up Amarok (the media player in Kubuntu) and her iPod showed up as a connected device. I copied the artist in question to the playlist and began listening to the music. It was that easy.
On Windows I would have had to install iTunes. I've never used iTunes, but I believe there is some kind of protection so you cannot just copy your music around as you like. She was worried that her iPod was going to try to synch with my music collection.
So it was great that all I had to do was plug her iPod in and my desktop was configured by default to just handle everything with ease.
I frequently have a similar situation happen when trying to grab photos from someone's camera. They say, "Oh no, you need the driver disk." To which I reply, "Oh no, none of that is necessary." Then I plug in their camera and the pictures start copying over to my local pictures folder. It should be that easy on any operating system.

More Internet, same cost

While paying my phone bill last night, I checked the DSL availability in my area. It turns out that the latest pricing allows me to go from 3.0M to 5.0M for only 40¢ more. Woot!

It is viruses, not virii

According to Wikipedia, the plural of virus is viruses, not virii. This completely changes EVERYTHING.

Rodrigo y Grabiela

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001FZSKMY/

Image from amazon.comRodrigo y Gabriela - Live in Japan.
As soon as I get a little money I am going to order this album. I have all of their previous albums and they have frequented my rotation since purchase. To add another piece of their work to my collection is an honor.

Programming

I really love programming. My job as a programmer brings me a lot of satisfaction. Some days I will voluntarily skip my lunch and work through it because I am so enthusiastic about a problem I am talking that I cannot bring myself to part from it.
On days that I am making good progress I enjoy my job the most. Tackling a lot of problems gives me a really big energy boost that I carry with me. Being able to take things I don't know anything about and quickly whipping them into shape has been one of my specialties. Just two weeks ago I took an application that two others had been trying to port to our new system without success, and I knocked it out in four hours, even though I had no experience with the application or the technology it runs on.
So this week I am back on a project that I had started when I first got this job. This project is a complete rewrite of an application that runs on an IBM mainframe. It is a large task that will end up taking well over six months once it is completed. The problem is that right now I am stuck. I have tried understanding a current process so I can duplicate it in our new system. After a lot of work and research I still don't understand the process very well. It is complicated and in large doesn't make a lot of sense. I have been making such little progress for so long that it is affecting my ability to focus. I find distraction everywhere. I can look to anything to get my mind off of the impossible task.
For most of the week I have put a lot of priority on to smaller "back burner" projects that aren't suppose to get much attention right now. Today I have committed to getting myself back on track so I can tackle this final road block. Once this road block is done our IBM rewrite will almost be 100% complete and I can claim victory over this large project. But mustering myself up to tackle this final challenge may prove to be the real challenge. UGH!

Google getting crazy with their street view

My parents live out in the middle of absolutely nowhere on a river called the Sopchoppy River in the town of Sopchoppy. In the outskirts of this Sopchoppy town is a tiny road that they live down. I happened to notice that Google has taken their Stree View van and made a Street View of their road. I wonder if Google is seriously looking at having a street view of every street in the US. If they are doing this small country road out in the extremes of the boons, I can't imagine too many places they would consider to be too insignificant to cover.
Image from Google maps.

Sick

Yesterday I came down with a bad case of sick. I had sore muscles and a scratchy throat. My brain felt like it only half operating as well. It didn't really hit until I got home. I made it through helping Kim the best I could, cooking and doing dishes. As soon as the last girl went to bed I did too.

Then I woke up at two-thirty and couldn't get back to sleep until four. I felt a lot better this morning but was really crabby. When I sat down for work I felt terrible again.

Usually being sick doesn't affect my spirits, but I have really been on edge since last night. I have been doing what I can to avoid dealing with people and problems.

Science vs. the Devil

If the extropianists are right, then the devil is going to have a hard time making deals. Why settle for having to live of the flesh of mortals or going through other extreme measures in the pursuit of immortality if all you have to do is go visit your doctor?

No shaving in December

http://www.noshavingindecember.org/
Argh! I forgot all about it. I learned about this special holiday last year and intended to partake in the festivities this year. I'm going to add it to my Google calendar so I remember in 2009.