to persevere: parenting stories and other geekery

… about Mac is the ability to make multiple users. Now I know, Windows can do this too, I’m not here to bash XP today. But with my recent iBook failure (I got the data off, but it won’t boot up now, even with the Heinz bottle…) I moved to a temporary Powerbook graciously lent to me by N & E while they are away on vacation. So I simply set up a new user account, set up my .Mac information, synced my address book and calendar, and I had all the information I needed right there on this new computer. I’m so glad I turned on .Mac sync on the iBook set to “Daily”. I realize that I rely on my address book and iCal a lot, so it only makes sense to keep it synced to the main .Mac server. Hey, I’m paying for this service, I might as well use it as much as possible, right? If it saves my bacon in case of a hardware failure, then at least the pain of migrating to a new machine is lessened somewhat. If you don’t have .Mac, a lot of this kind of functionality could be achieved by Google Calendar, Contacts, and so forth. I’ve always been an advocate of a web based email address, rather than one provided by your ISP, since I’m always changing ISP’s, but tired of changing emails. What I like about offline email tools and offline calendars is that, well, they can be used offline.

This is becoming less and less of an issue, at least in major urban centres. There’s internet access pretty much everywhere. Anyone used the Toronto Hydro One Zone yet? It’s still free for a few more months. Just enough time to get used to it, and then miss it enough to sign on when it’s no longer free. What a great business model! Make yourself indispensable. I still haven’t gotten used to Toronto Hydro being a telecom company. My dad worked for Ontario Hydro before it became Ontario Power Generation, or Hydro One, or whatever it is now… Aren’t these companies in the business of electricity? When did they start dipping into fiber optics and networks? Ah well, it’s all the same thing now, isn’t it.

Wow, this was my most rambling post ever, I think.

J: Why did Jesus die?

E: Just a minute.

J: What?

E: I’m writing an email, just a minute.

J: O-kay. It’ll just be a second.

J: (answering her own question) To save us from our sins?

E: Right, to save us from our sin.

J: Not only Jesus died, in the story, two other people died with him. Two robbers.

E: Yes. But they died because they had done something wrong, they were robbers. But Jesus died not because he did anything wrong.

J: He died to save us from our sin.

E: Right, and if we believe in him, and follow him, we are saved.

J: Does he have to die again?

E: No just once, for all time.

J: I think he died because he knew we didn’t want to die.

E: Yeah, if we believe in him and follow him, we are saved, right? And we go to heaven.

J: Right.

J: Dad?

E: Mmmm?

J: I don’t want any more toast. I’m full.

If your child is writing words in mirror writing, ie. backwards and reversed, what does that mean? J will do this occasionally, without noticing. When you ask her, she’ll go, “Oh yeah. Oops.” and kind of laugh and shrug. Today at a friend’s house she arranged alphabet magnets into her name, but again, in mirror mode. Save for the J, it’s possible because the capital letters that make up her name will be in mirror mode if you rotate them 180°. (Try it, you’ll see what I mean.)

Should I be worried about dyslexia? Or is this just an active mind at work?

… to the power of social networking. I joined VIRB, the latest social network to come along after myspace and facebook. It just came out of beta last week, so I signed up.

So far it’s been cool. Today Chris Tomlin added me as a friend… how bizarre!

Anyway, check out my profile!

technorati tags:social, network, virb

Blogged with Flock

My iBook died yesterday. It was working fine, we set it down, came back to it, and the screen was black. Tried to restart it, and it came on with the fan running full blast, and no startup chime. Uh oh. Tried a few basic diagnostics, but nothing worked. Everything ended up with about 20 seconds of working time, and then poof! Black screen.

Being Saturday, I didn’t have much time to figure it out until the evening. It turns out it’s the infamous iBook G4 logic board “issue”, which involves a loose connector on the graphics processor. You can get the machine to work by applying pressure on the case, just under the ‘option’ key, on the palm rest. Here’s what I used to keep the pressure on while I did an emergency backup of all the data… good ol’ Heinz!