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Isaac's reflux flares up? September 25, 2007

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I think Isaac’s reflux is flaring up again. It’s been months now but then he hasn’t had any teeth come through in that time and we suspect he’s got teeth coming through again. He’s been wanting to avoid eating in the evening, probably because he knows how much it’ll hurt when he goes to bed. Poor little guy. He’s got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow so hopefully we’ll have some idea what we can do for him (probably just Losec again until the teeth stop moving).

Update 1 October 2007

It’s definitely reflux. Isaac is back on Losec and is leaving his little vomit pools around the place. I had to give him a shower and brush his teeth the other day because there was a vomit smell all over him and his clothes.

Island Holiday September 24, 2007

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We’ve been on Stone Island for the last week. Here’s a summary of the things that happened.

Emily has named her doll. They must have started doing Christmas stuff at kindy because she’s called it baby Jesus.

There’s a new boat at Stone Island. For years they just had a tinnie which was rough and prone to getting you wet. Last year they were borrowing a boat which was bigger but not exactly built for comfort (eg. only 2 seats). Now they’ve got an ex-charter boat. It’s got bench seats in the middle and it’s got plenty of room. The motor has a trim control so you can make it faster (for flat seas) or make it stable in rough seas. The boat has a berth in the marina but it wasn’t very hard to park.

A series of events meant that the boat’s rego had lapsed and since we were there we helped put the new letters on. Unlike cars with convenient plates boats have to have lettering on both sides. We picked up some stickers to avoid having to paint them on but since we didn’t want to use a dry dock we had a bit of fun getting the letters on. Getting the old ones off was just a matter of using a scraper. Getting the new ones on was a different story. It was a relatively calm day but still, getting the letters straight was difficult. After doing the first side we realised we were short 2 numbers (we needed four 2’s but only had two). Getting the second set on was a bit harder. I sat on the edge of the Jetty and my dad stood on the other side of the boat to lift the bit the letters go on out of the water. The letters aren’t quite straight but they’re readable which is I guess the point. Unfortunately some of the letters were broken after driving the boat around. The bottom half of 2 of the letters went missing.

Bree and I went out to lunch without the kids. That doesn’t happen very often. It was nice. The cafe we went to obviously fell for the whole Coke Zero thing because they had a heap of it in their fridge. We took the last two sugared drinks, a Coke and a Pepsi. I really wish Coke would stop pushing Coke Zero down everyone’s throats. It’s everywhere but I only know 1 person that prefers it to regular Coke. I can’t stand the taste of aspartame (the sweetener they use) so I’m never going to accept Coke Zero. I mean… they presumably needed Coke Zero to compete with Pepsi Max (because Diet Coke just can’t compete with Pepsi Max) but I really have to wonder. I can actually drink Pepsi Max (despite it’s use of aspartame). I consider both Pepsi and Pepsi Max to be competition for Coke. To me, the fact that Pepsi Max has no sugar is a non-issue. Ask any dentist and they’ll tell you the sugar in Coke is the least damaging bit. Perhaps people that drink several cans per day can do without the sugar but really, they can do without the other crap in there even more.

There’s a kangaroo they call Fatty. He comes over in the evenings to eat and fights off the other kangaroos so they don’t come over.

I took some photos including a huge panorama of the whole island (I can’t stitch it together because I’m down to 3.7 GB free space and the process requires more space than that!). I took a photo of an eagle who was nice enough to hold still for me while I took a photo of him flying (floating in an updraft).

There were some cheap dirt bikes on the island. As a point of reference, a similar, non-cheap bike cost about $6,000 while these were about $1,000. They looked fine until they got used (by my cousins several months ago). The faults were numerous. Cheap wiring leading to sparks when starting. One had a ground wire that was just not connected (WTF?). The rear end wasn’t connected properly, one of them had managed to lose a bolt which let the chain come off really easily. The exhaust system heated to a glowing red when running the engine… that’s about 2 cm from your leg! The batteries were crap and without manual starter systems we had to resort to using jumper leads from a car to start them. Even then, one cut out inexplicably after a short while. Talk about crap. If you ever go to buy crap like that watch out unless you are (or have access to) someone who’s mechanically minded and want to waste a lot of time.

Emily and Isaac had fun on the dirt bikes and in the car. I got them to “drive” on my lap. Isaac was a bit better than Emily but only because he didn’t try to turn the car all the time. Emily also went on the Jet Ski. She was a bit funny because she didn’t want to go on the boat, she didn’t want to go on the Jet Ski and she didn’t want to go on the bikes. She was sobbing and trying to run away every time we came to a new vehicle but after being dragged on she enjoyed the experience and wanted to go on again. It was scary when she tried to drive the bike. She had a bit of trouble grasping that the throttle shouldn’t be pushed all the way in and after the inevitable “bunny hop” she kind of panicked and grabbed the throttle. I had to pry her hand off before we could stop accelerating at top speed. Bree got her to have another go and she actually seemed to get the idea.

There was one day that was so flat we could ride the Jet Ski around the island. Normally you can’t even take a boat due to the big swells (the ocean side is classed as open waters) but for some reason it was like glass. I took Bree around and we saw a turtle (I’d seen several by the end of the trip).

There was a big fishing thing happening in Bowen and there were so many boats the public car park was full. We normally see almost no boats around but this time there were boats everywhere and they were fishing all around Stone Island.

We checked online to see that our outgoing flight was delayed but when we went to check our return flight we found Jetstar had neglected to include a number on the receipt thing we had. I guess they really don’t like you to call (makes sense, since then they have to employ people to answer phones). We eventually found out the number and our plane was delayed. Something at 6am had caused the plane to be late and it hadn’t caught up all day. We ended up getting home 2 hours late. Then we almost got stuck behind a big accident on the Gateway… The ambulance arrived while we were waiting to go past.

Bree set the record for fishing this time by catching 9 fish. Only 3 of them were big enough to keep though.

Bree also bogged one of the bikes. A mis-communication got her to ride into thick, sticky mud. It even ate her thongs when she tried to get off. I had to use the other bike to tow it out and it required a good scrub to get clean after that.

Flash outside the frame? September 18, 2007

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I saw a flash ad today (animated but for once, not annoying). It was an iTunes ad and featured people jumping around in silhouette. It had sound but only when the mouse was over it (how polite).

Anyway, the thing was the ad was drawing contents outside it’s frame!

It turns out this isn’t as tricky as it seems. Flash ads can be drawn at z index 0 and can have a transparent background. Clever positioning/flow control ensures the ad appears to be restricted to an “ad frame” when it actually has access to more of the page.

I’m not sure how useful this is in general but in this case it makes for a superb effect. The use of the “extra space” is sparing so instead of being annoying it’s almost possible to miss it. Then again it’s clearly meant to get your attention… it certainly got mine!

Alphabet song September 18, 2007

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Emily can sing the Alphabet song!

The melody and rhythm are quite close and while she stuffs up some words she gets the general sound mostly right.

It’s really cute to hear but she gets very shy when asked to sing for other people.

Is Isaac getting ready to toilet train? September 12, 2007

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Isaac has started telling us (reliably) when he’s done a poo. Bree thinks he might be getting ready to toilet train.

I tried getting him to do a wee on the toilet the other day (standing on a stool) but he was scared of the toilet. We’ll have to dig out the small plastic one for him to use for a while.

We’re not sure if we want to encourage standing or sitting when doing a wee. Besides the obvious aim issue, standing should be all right as long as there’s a stool for him to stand on. Emily’s seat has a step on it but I don’t think it’s stable enough to use when standing up to do a a wee. It also makes the hole smaller.

For sitting Emily’s seat is a bit annoying. We use it with the toilet seat down because it makes it more stable but it doesn’t quite fit and splashes on the front end up going on our toilet seat. If Isaac sits there and doesn’t point himself down the wee will escape out the front.

Update 18 September 2007

Isaac is definitely not interested in sitting on the toilet. We haven’t had a chance to put him on when he needs to go (because we don’t know when he needs to go). We almost got him the other day. He was a bit shocked when we picked him up and ran down the hall but he’d already squeezed his poo out :(

Two days of fun September 6, 2007

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Emily and Isaac were sick and Bree had to work so I looked after them on Monday and Tuesday. We had fun watching TV, going to the park, reading book and playing with toys. I think the kids really enjoyed it.

I had to wipe Emily’s nose all day because she can’t blow her nose yet. She makes the sound but she does it with her mouth.

Isaac repeats just about anything you say to him these days. All sorts of new words are coming out of him.

Both of the kids love dancing and singing along with Bindi Irwin’s kid fitness DVD.

Microwave is dead September 5, 2007

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I was making dinner last night. I heated up two bowls of tuna pasta and when I went to do the third one the microwave was dead. It doesn’t respond to buttons and appears to run whenever the door is closed. I’ll be at the shops tomorrow night getting a new one. Bree said to me “we don’t use it very often” but I’m pretty sure I use the microwave at least once a day. I had to do porridge on the stove this morning (which I didn’t figure out until after I’d got ready to do it in the microwave).

Update 6 September 2007

We got the same model of microwave. It’s white though instead of silver so it feels strange. We had to get the model from the floor because they didn’t have any in stock.

Pain in the neck September 5, 2007

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For fathers day I got a pain in the neck. Literally!

Shortly after getting up I noticed that my neck was stiff and it just got worse and worse until I could barely move my head. I had to go and get my neck, shoulders and back massaged to get back movement (the guy commented on just how tight my muscles were) and even now, 3 days later I’m still getting pain when moving my head around. The pain isn’t a big deal but the lack of movement was. I can’t figure out what triggered it.

Hard disk warranties September 1, 2007

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So my dying hard disk passes the long (takes hours to run) Seagate drive self test. That means it can’t be put in for a warranty replacement despite the bad sectors I found. The Seagate program I found doesn’t even report on how many sectors have been remapped. If it did that I’d at least have some idea about how long it had left (eg. 10 bad sectors when the remap pool has 10,000 entries is not a big deal but 9,000 bad sectors is).

It seems a bit strange to me that despite known errors I can’t get the drive replaced. I guess the official line would be along the lines of “we design for some defects to happen in the field” but both my experience and the experience of other people I’ve talked to indicates that once you notice bad sectors there’s a high probability that the drive will die quite quickly. I can only hope that doesn’t happen to me.

Given that the drive claims to be ok I’m going to continue using it (a new drive just isn’t on the budget right now). I’ll try to do more regular backups and I’ll monitor the results a bit better. The only problem now is knowing what files I need to replace on the restored filesystem. I’ve already reinstalled the data files from Jedi Knight and confirmed that the game works but I know that Blade Runner has a bad data file and I’m not sure what other files might be bad. The problem is that I can’t get read errors to let me know of problems anymore and I’m not at all sure how to detect data corruption in files (that should be the filesystem’s job, I can’t wait for ZFS support in Mac OS X!). I think I might just start from a clean install and re-install the games again. It’s not like I’ve got tons of programs or updates installed.