Meme speed ahead

or how another nerd helps another nerd helps another nerd helps another nerd…..

I have been there, Brother

One of the most isolating factors for me as a Stay at Home Dad; aside from my personal proclivity for staying in the house and playing with all my toys; is the playground. When I take EJ to the playground, it has only been recently that any of the mothers would talk to me at all- it used to be only the nannies who would acknowledge my existence. I have even had trouble with the Dads as well, but that may be because I’m basically a weirdo who people think needs to be avoided.

Anyways, there are quite a few things within our culture which is disturbing when you realize the gender bias works in both directions. The advertising bias that men, and father in particular, are idiots is disturbing - this myth is even carried into sitcoms and other long forms of entertainment. I like to think of myself as a mythbuster, but maybe I’m just an anomaly.

Merry Shopping ( or how we learned to love Black Friday)

Macy’s Floor So, Steph dictatedwe decided to go to Macy’s on the first day after Thanksgiving and have a picture with Santa. Um, well, so did half the Western Hemisphere. It’s what is colloquially known as Black Friday - sometimes the busiest shopping day of the year. Fortunately, we had not set our hearts on actually doing any shopping!!

Anyways, not to be easily daunted, we walked up Broadway to Bryant Park to use the Public toilets and discovered the FREE ICE SKATING!!!

We also found a heated tent provided by our bank, to allow children and families to play and warm up. EJ found it to be quite restful, particularly as she was really starting to get cranky. I scavenged around for some really overpriced sandwiches and was wildly successful! Then I demanded we thought we could go and wait in line to ice skate,since they have Toddler size 9 skates, but it was a really huge line (guess the other half of the Hemisphere was already there!)

After getting really irritated by some meandering Heartlanders behind us, we jumped into the subway and safely emerged into our slumy little ghetto we call home! Ah, another good day were we managed not to kill anybody!

More changes

So recently, ie last week, I took my powerbook through the process of setting it up to be a dual boot system. Previously, I was only using Kubuntu Linux as my operating system, and that was a recent installation of Edgy Eft - the codename for the latest release of that software. However some of that code was still from the test release cycle, and in addition to some other problems I wanted to do a clean install. I also wanted a backup plan for last Friday night’s presentation; just in case I was unable to recognize the projector in Kubuntu - I wanted OS X around to be able to do that.

Rather than using this handy method, which required OS X already be installed, I had to wipe everything first, install the Apple software and the install Kubuntu. Did not really take more more than a couple hours to completely install, configure and recover my data. Now, this beast has a 8 GB partition that will allow me to run Apple software if I really want to do so. Plus, I found this package on SourceForge, that allows me to mount the Kubuntu partition under OS X and use my data over there! Awesome!

Tags: Ubuntu

To Be a Good Ancestor

Last night, I attended FactFest2006 on the campus of Farmingdale State University, in Long Island, NY. I was there to be a presenter for Kubuntu, however with the small attendance for the first time festival, my presentation was cancelled, along with several others - you got to admit having four speakers simultaneously in separate rooms is quite ambitious. Instead, they squeezed all of us together to form a panel discussion about the future of Open Source Software. We offered many vastly insightful comments and the audience was highly participatory. Part of the time up there, I felt significantly underqualified to discuss any of the stuff on the palate - but that could just have been my own insecurities firing up.

The Keynote speaker was [[John Perry Barlow]] who was one of the founders of the EFF. He spoke quite naturally and easily to us and I felt as if we were getting the hand down from the grizzled old-timer on the porch without any of that “back in my day, we had to walk…” business. It was highly enlightening to listen to his report. Hopefully it spurs more people into action, even if that action is only to write a check to the EFF. There are some very important issues which are being contested in several venues - many of which directly affect individual freedom and privacy, as well as the rights to create and innovate.

Tags: Ubuntu

Needless Update

Just because you were all wondering, “When oh when is he going to update his computer system?” Last night, I reconfigured my laptop once again - this time it was sane and safe and did not result in the loss of data, anywhere, except for some residual code that was still in my OS from beta testing the latest release of [[Kubuntu]]. Fortunately, some of my issues were resolved and I even got further along in the troubleshooting of my problem with the battery.

But, you are all here, not because of the bugs on my computer, but because of the Little Bug in our family, and she is doing just fine. At the moment she is rejecting the notion of a nap, and I am about to take her downstairs to the daycare in our building. How lucky is that?! Well, it’s hard for me to do. I’m not truly ready to let her go like that, but I’ll try it out and if it doesn’t suit us after five minutes I’ll go pick her up again.

So, anyways, wish me luck.

EDIT: I did it, and I cried because she didn’t even look at me from the time she walked into the joint!

ugh.

Unlike this news these pages remain highly personalized content contributed almost daily. Yup. No matter what or how little or ow much happens, something does get said at some point, occasionally.

Boy, school was rough today with two assignments due at once and EJ decided that she was going to be irritable all day long. It’s all over finally and I can get my act together and prepare for my big speech on Friday night about, you guessed it, my favorite flavor of penguin, [[Kubuntu]].

Tags: School, Ubuntu

Instant Idiots, just add water

It’s really not the weather that I hate, in fact I really do enjoy an nice downpour, all day long. The constant drone of dropping water, a bit of a chilly wind and heavy grey sky all put me in just the right space. I really do enjoy it. I put on my favorite cable knit sweater and have a piping hot cup of coffee.

But then when I have to take a toddler out into the mad mad world that is New York city, things become a touch unruly. New Yorkers are big babies wimps. Drop some water on them and they can not walk in a straight line anymore, nor can they manage to look at where they are going ( not that they could do that before the rains came). And EJ just wants to get wet, she loves loves loves the water. So she gets terribly upset when I don’t take off her raincoat and let her get soaked.

She also get upset when I have to stand in line at the computer store ( new router, keyboard and a game for EJ). Finally, I managed to get us both home alive and without having to shoot anybody.So I began my project for the day, rearranging the furniture. It may be two days, because there was great big ole mess in the living room when I started, and the laundry needs to be put away in the bedroom. Besides, as soon as I finish all this immediate work, I will begin to reorganize the data structure of this house. That could take me as long as a whole nother year to finish! Ok maybe just a week and a half, but it sounds fun.

Two days in a row

EJ and I both left the house for the second day in a row, and we left together even!

This time the excuse reason was to go vote, and then to spend my grant money on an external hard drive, half a teraflop, yeah baby! We did spend some quality time in Williamsburg - and it is definately still painfully hip. What’s more, it’s ugly half-sister Greenpoint is still stuck in the Polish backwaters of itself, although McCarren park did get a new astroturf surface for the football pitch.

Quick aside for those of you who are just joining us for the first time, when I say football, I am using that word to indicate the sport played with the feet, and called football by over four fifths of the worlds population, rather than the game which involves 300 lb orges who are asked to exhort themselves for thirty second intervals so someone else can throw a ball with his hand.

We also had dinner in a diner, pizza in a pizzeria, and EJ climbed stairs and slid the sliding board at Jacob’s Ladder playground. We managed to get home before the rains started, and long before Steph got home from work. Boo!

A Gamer??

I had an appointment in Midtown today, and afterwards EJ and I went to the Nintendo Store at Rockefeller Centre. She really had a lot of fun playing with their newest portable game the Nintendo DS. Mostly she enjoyed the action of using the stylus to be able to “write” on the screen, she did not even make a connection with the game going on underneath her actions. I was able to clear the first screen of [[Tetris]] before I got totally bored and she was still playing very hard. I have a small feeling that she would not get bored with one of these for a few years.

Next we went to a Brass and Woodwinds store where I got a spring for the middle value on my cornet. I have been playing it for several months now, with a paperclip wrapped around my finger and the valve stem so that I could operate it. Now, i need to unstick the tuning slide!

We stopped in Steph’s office to say hi for a few minutes and then we meandered through several stores before heading home. I just got her in bed and am now waiting for my lovely wife to return.