Victoria had her daily dose of semi-solid food. Today it was bananas, which she loved. But no matter how much she loved them she got more on her outside than on her inside. As Diana whisked her away after the meal she announced “I’m changing the banana basted baby.”
Avery perked up immediately, “Basted? No, don’t eat the baby! I will miss her!”
I guess he knows what “basted” means.
Claire has seen Star Wars a few times, but finally I got my say in the matter. Today Claire watched Star Trek. The episode in question was The Trouble With Tribbles, mainly because it was humorous and one of the few episodes with no death (aside from a few million tribbles). She liked it so much she begged to see the other episode on the disk, I, Mudd which was a bit darker (but still not frightening).
This may work out.
Well, the cat seems to have adopted our family,but it make be a week or so before we know for sure. He is very forceful about going outside (he bit me the first time I tried to stop him), we let him out frequently, but he is happy to come in when the mood strikes him and he likes being inside too. Sometimes he just sticks his head out for a minute to be sure he still is free to go.
The kids love to play with him, but he isn’t always in the mood. But he always seems to be in the mood for getting his head scratched.
I get the feeling he knows more than he’s letting on. It’s actually a bit annoying, but I often feel that way about animals and babies. Maybe it’s part of why I always treat animals kindly — there’s the odd impression that they are evaluating my behavior for some dark purpose. Probably nothing beyond getting the next meal, though.
Well, now that I’ve lost my job I had to get a new laptop. Fortunately my father wasn’t using his so it saved me a little coin at the expense of having a very iffy old version of windows on it.Having been working on Linux exclusively for the past few years I thought I’d give it a test as a personal OS. I installed Linux Mint 4.0 which is supposed to be very close to Windows XP.
Wow is it!
It installed easier than Windows. I didn’t even have to download drivers. Three pieces of hardware needed special drivers, and an icon on the system tray told me that. I clicked on it and checked three check boxes for the nVidia graphics card, the wireless card and the modem (which I’m unlikely to ever use anyway) and I was done.
I made a few adjustments in the Control Panel (which was a little nicer than the Windows equivalent, if anything) and ran an update. Updates are selectable from level 1 (only critical bugs) to level 5 (every little change). I kept the default level 3 (new versions and bug fixes only).
It did almost everything I needed out of the box: Open Office for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, Thunderbird for email, and video and audio players.
So why try it at all? Well, for one thing the Synaptic package manager allows you to download and install over 27,000 different programs. Just search for the keywords and click a check box. It’s as easy as the Windows Add/Remove programs dialog, but one that downloads and configures the programs for you. For another, you have to work pretty hard to get infected with a virus, and even local security blows Windows out of the water.
On the minus side: 1. Some programs just aren’t available. I miss Photoshop, and my personal accounting is too integrated with Microsoft Money to dump that just yet. More importantly, Diana needs her iTunes. gtkPod can communicate with an iPod, but only the official Apple client can buy music. 2. It is maybe a little too much like Windows since it ships with very few apps and everything has to be installed.
Fortunately there is hope. I’ve heard that Wine can run iTunes and Photoshop, just not very well, so if they ever figure out how to get it working properly I would be set to dump Windows altogether.
In short, looks cool and works great. If you have an old machine you might want to try installing Mint 4.0 just for a look.
Now I’m going to try Vixta, which is a Linux that imitates Windows Vista.
It started Saturday.
When the Birnbaums came an orange cat was waiting on our walkway. He followed the kids to the front door, but we didn’t let him in. I picked him up and carried him to the curb (he purred the whole way) and walked to the door. He was already there waiting for me. I took him to the curb again, gave him a little scratch and ran back to the house before he could start moving. He waited outside a while.
On my way to pick up my parents at the airport I almost hit the cat crossing the street. He glared at me a moment and then moved on.
Diana asked about him on Sunday. He’d been around teh neighborhood for a few weeks and almost everyone had fed him at some point.
On Monday Claire left the house and teh cat followed her up to the bus stop and waited for her to get on the bus. When she came back, he was still waiting for her and followed her home.
That was too much for Diana, she put him in the bathroom and called me for permission to take him to the vet. He didn’t have any collar or tracking device, but aside from a flea infestation he was perfectly healthy. The doctor figured he had to be a lost pet since he still wouldn’t stop purring and would put up with anything as long as someone was touching him.
She figured he probably was dumped at the animal shelter when the previous owner arrived after it closed (people do that a lot, it seems).
Now he’s in our basement, and unless we find the owner I think we have a new pet. Diana is only a little allergic, she says, but I have a feeling she’s hiding how she’s really reacting.
Just found some old stories about the kids from 2005 and thought I’d share them as 2007 comes to a close. Remember, Claire was 5 and just starting Kindergarten and Avery was 2.
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Claire: Today in gym we had a foot contest. Everyone lined up, and whoever had the most feet won.
Daddy: Oh, was it a tie?
Claire: No. Eric won.
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Claire: Today in Sunday School we learned about good and bad.
Mommy: Oh, what did you learn?
Claire: I’m saving it for a surprise.
Daddy: Can you surprise us with “good†first?
Claire: Um, no thanks.
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Avery has been playing with Celestia – a computer space simulator. He loves zooming between the planets.
Today Mars is the brightest it will be for 60,000 years, so we all went out to see the bright red dot in the sky. I pointed to it and told Avery that that was mars. “Oh, marns? Whoosh.†He wanted me to zoom in to the planet.
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12/31/05 This morning Avery woke me up and, keeping a promise I made last night, I woke Claire. As I was leaving the room Claire asked me to wait, saying “When you get bigger it’s harder to do things.†Referring to climbing down the ladder on her bunk.
Avery immediately corrected her. “Claire not big. Claire small like Pluto.â€
Avery: Daddy, how long can I breathe?
Me: As long as you want.
Avery: Then I’m going to breathe forever.
Me: Uh, that’s . . . good.