Posted by nathan on Oct 31, 2006 in
Father Yesterday, EJ and I checked out of the hotel at one o’clock, Steph was working so she missed out on the fun. We went back to the mall where we had gotten EJ two pairs of shoes the day before, and let her play in the playare for about an hour. Then she and I caught a bus downtown.
We shared fish & chips and a crabcake on the patio at Harborplace, actually EJ really only wanted the fried potato chips. When we began our little snack, I was afraid that we were going to get attacked by a host of gulls, pidgeons and threshes, but they left when they discovered that we were not going to share.
After playing in the grass, and in BestBuy, we walked up Charles St, where I discovered that a cafe on Centre St where I had hung painting five years ago, was out of business and the painting was still where I had put it. Huh?!
We all took the train home and climbed ourselves into bed, despite the serious mess of stuff we had everywhere. Oh well, guess I’ll have to straighten up sometime this week! 
Posted by nathan on Oct 29, 2006 in
Father 
So I guess you will all be switching!
Tags: Ubuntu
Posted by nathan on Oct 28, 2006 in
Father You could say that we have done some travelling today. This morning we went to the [[Metropolitan Museum]] to meet Steph’s friend from back home. They ran forty-five minutes late and the rain didn’t make the difficult task of finding your way around Manhattan any easier for them. EJ got a little bored and upset particularly as it was right in the middle of her normal naptime. But once they arrived and we all cleared the security and admissions area everything was just fine. We headed towards the [[Temple of Dendur]] by slowly weaviing through the Egyptian artifacts wing. Steph and Dave were able to catch up while EJ and I took lots of photos (they’ll be up in a new album in a day or two.)
After we made it into the Arms and Armory exhibit, we left the Aussies there and headed home where we had to finish throwing our luggage together for a train ride down to Baltimore. It is a business sponsored trip so we are staying in a businessy hotel and EJ really loves it here - however we discovered really quick that we are much much much happier in our lives without television. The short period of time which we had the TV set on, it was just plainly obvious that we have made a Good Choice (TM) when we got rid of our television and began to take control of our viewing entertainment habits.
Posted by nathan on Oct 27, 2006 in
Father Today, I was researching an assignment with was due for one of my classes at
Uni, when I ran across this remarkable thesis paper by Uhriel Edgardo Wood Bedoya. On page twelve of the thesis, the author claims that Francois Mitterand had three [[Ortolan_Bunting|ortolans]] the week before he died. I had never heard of such a creature much less the delicate business of eating one!
Tags: School, Ubuntu
Posted by nathan on Oct 27, 2006 in
Father I had one heck of a day to wring myself through!
Halfway through EJ’s nap, I decided that the problem with my life was that my computer was too out of date and too slow and that I deserved a really good and brand new computer. Part of the problem is that Kubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft was released today and Firefox 2.0 was released earlier this week, but as I have been testing both products for the last month, I was certainly feeling just like Dave B on Christmas morning. [Both of us seem to prefer the KDE Experience over the GNOME lifestyle]
So, I bundled EJ up and we headed to Sydney’s Playground where I was led to believe that our indoor nirvana was to be found. Boy! was I wrong, I should have stayed at home and continued to surf all the the google.com results for the following searches:
- Tablet PC
- Desktop PC
- Server
Or continued to peruse the selection of merchandise at System76 Instead, I had to push EJ in every single car on the floor, coax her into every single room in the playhouse and generally avoid making eye contact with the nannies and moms who were in the playroom as well! Mostly, I had to be patient, attendant and give my daughter my full and undivided attention as she was/is quite capable of cause herself/others bodily harm. Maybe I should go back to being a Production Assistant on lousy television shows I never watch and movies I never go to see. Hmmmm….
Anyways, enjoy your new Operating System!
Tags: Ubuntu
Posted by nathan on Oct 24, 2006 in
Father And a Good thing, too! Or there would have been big trouble!
Now, I can return to my normal position of disdain distaste for the [[Vegemite|stuff]].
Posted by nathan on Oct 24, 2006 in
Father In lieu of recent stupidity, on the part of the All-Knowing-All-Seeing-and-Completely-Infallable Government Administration which has decided to BAN [[Vegemite]],there may be drastic changes in the wind. Especially, if my reactionary instincts get to have full use of the facilities.
Apparently, this ban is due to the addition of [[folate]] to the formula for Vegemite, a formula which has remained unchanged for 80 years. Folate is an important nutrient necessary to prevent anemia during pregnancy. The FDA deems that only bread and ceral may have folate added to them in this country. Other sources of folate are spinach, turnip greens, dried beans and some fruits and vegetables.
People take vitamins and supplements all the time, especially people who are pregnant. It seems ridiculously stupid for the government to ban another option for receiving a very important nutrient, particularly when that government is taking the necessary steps to insure that any woman who happens to become pregnant MUST keep the baby.
I feel sorry for the thirteen year old girls who live in absolute poverty that get raped, repeatedly becoming impregnated by an older relative/associate and is unable to a) have an abortion to insure the safety of her own _LIFE_, b) insure that she can actually give birth later in life and provide for her child, and c) have a healthy child, period. HELL, I feel sorry for a Twenty-something college graduate who is saddled with a student loan and is working a nice middle-class job just to pay off her debt and pay the rent, and she gets pregnant despite taking all the necessary birth control precautions, in fact I feel sorry for the extremely wealthy socialite who is married and is a regular attendee of the local Baptist Church - or any other person who is told that just because they have the capacity to become pregnant, and if they happen to become pregnant they must stay pregnant until the baby comes out naturally. (As a completely unrelated aside here, I wonder how many homeless people are in this country? And did you hear that the population of the US just passed 300 million people last Tuesday?)
The Government of this Country is owned by crass commercial interests stupid for banning Vegemite. It’s just a breakfast spread for toast, enjoyed by Australians and New Zealandersaround the world everywhere except for here.
Australians like EJ.
Posted by nathan on Oct 22, 2006 in
Father
Posted by nathan on Oct 22, 2006 in
Father Our game was to see who got worn out first.
We had no coffee in the house this morning, which forced us all to go the the coffeeshop to break our fast. EJ loves the coffeeshop as it is very super child friendly. The owner is a young neighborhood mom herself! EJ goes straight for the back corner every time we walk in, because that is where all the toys are located. She had lots of other kids to play with too.
After we spent enough energy in there, we trooped home and everybody took a nap.
The Kids
When we woke up we all got dressed and headed out to the Central Park zoo to meet a group of parents and kids from church. It had been a long train ride and I was getting quite grumpy, in an understated sort of way. So I said that I needed coffee, and had remarked that we could jump into the monkey cage and chop one up for a snack. So, everyone moved that we have coffee there at that cafe and then watched the sea lions eat fish before touring the Linux Users
Penguin and Puffin House
Then when the zoo was done, we guided Pastor John Kim and his family over to the Borders Store at Columbus Circle, where we browsed aimlessly before heading up to the Samsung showroom, which mostly had the purpose of demonstrating how far they were able to advance technology in the area of consumer electronics, but most of the items were unavailable in this country due to many reasons, some of which involve the distance behind the leading edge our society is currently located and other involve the legalistic monopolies which telcos and cable supplies hold over the Congress. But you didn’t come here for politics.
After we we a hold on the reality of the moment we realized how long we had been in there and slowly made our way back home. We saw our friends Jaime & Anthony on the train with their son Joshua. When we got to the house and fed the midget, she made it plainly obvious that we had worn her out and would we be kind enough to allow her to go to bed, now?
Posted by nathan on Oct 20, 2006 in
Father As an online university student, I face the prospect of making citations to support my accusations statements. With the advent of all things [[WEb 2.0]] and the [[Wikipedia]], these challenges have been increased beyond the scope of my past experiences with citing sources. In High School, there was not a broadrange of internet adoption unless you were Matthew Broderick in War Games, it was pretty much no existent (NOTE: I did connect to some BBS’es but that was merely silly games, none of this actually doing something with it!)
SO today, in my newsreader I get this wonderful essay about the manner which Biella Coleman discusses the trick nature of researching a subject which is entirely on the internet, the internet itself. I was unaware of the version numbers which are contained within WikiMedia applications, and think that in the future as I make my citations for class, I will be including these.
Unfortunately, many of my professors do not believe in the basic concepts behind the construction of sources such as the Wikipedia, they tend to be wary of the information as produced by an amalgamation of anonymous sources. Alas, the open source/standards/information movement is not a hippie counter culture to the “All Mighty Establishment!” It is a groundswell of common folks and interests being connected through the communications technology and no longer do we require a central repository of knowledge, we can mirror that knowledge across many bases and through many processes and forms.
