Bang All You Want
At our house, you can’t use the computer when Hailey is around. She likes to help you by banging on the keyboard as you try to type. She thinks she is helping, but it is hard to type a coherent message when little fingers are busy reaching for keys.
Today at Fry’s we picked up a keyboard just for Hailey. I opened the box and cut the cord off the keyboard even before I had unwrapped all the plastic. It is weird feeling to disable, completely, a brand new keyboard before it has ever sent a keystroke. If the plan works, Hailey will enjoy banging on her very own keyboard more than she likes being herded away from the main keyboard. If all goes well this could be the best $4.99 we ever spent.
PHP Markdown
John Gruber wrote an awesome Perl script called Markdown that allows blog entries to be written in the old school usenet and plain text e-mail way.
A PHPified Wordpress plugin of the same is included with Wordpress or, for the latest and greatest, look to the official home of the PHP Markdown plugin.
Note: The preceding announcement is to help me remember where I found the latest and greatest PHP Markdown plugin, you my technophobic reader, may disregard this post.
We’ve Moved
Easy things are easy and hard things are possible.
That is the Perl mantra. The easy thing of moving my site from a custom Template::Toolkit based site over to the CMS d’jour was much more difficult than anticipated.
I wrote scripts to parse my articles, photgraphs, and photo albums. Then I learned enough PHP to write a custom plug-in to manage all my photographs and photo galleries.
I like how easy it was to learn PHP and create my “Ansel” plug-in, but that doesn’t stop me from wishing I could have written it in Perl.
All the links, articles, and photographs should be here. All the links should work. If you “clicky-clicky” on something and it doesn’t work, please let me know.
Thank you, that is all.
40 Days, and 40 Nights
San Marcos is a small town situated midway between the sprawling outskirts of Austin and San Antonio. Each year, in the summer, approximately half of the town’s population leave when the school year ends. Today Fredd and I returned to visit the history, memories, and landscape of the town that was our once our home.
Central Texas has seen rain since the week began. The rivers San Marcos and Blanco make their course through the small town. The heavy continuous rain has resulted in speculation that one or both of the rivers could flood. We were on the lookout, camera’s in hand, to document the flood. Instead we come away with the luscious green landscape and roaring waterfalls.
Summertime
Today is cloudy, gloomy, wet, and grey. But through the magic of pictures we can return to the sunny, and glorious beginning of the week.
To Sleep
To sleep
will I go
peacefully
and with ease
without screams
Can I allow
pleasant dreams
to find me
No, Not Me
Books
Each day at day care Hailey’s teachers write a brief paragraph describing her day. Yesterday we learned that Hailey liked the snake that came with the petting zoo. Some of the other kids did as well, I overheard one little boy telling his parents all about it. Today we learned that Hailey enjoys Mexican Fiesta Chicken Casserole. I don’t know what that is but Hailey enjoyed three servings of it.
We also learned that her book habit from home has carried over to school. If you let Hailey near the stairs, she will climb up to her room, bypassing all the toys and excitement along the way, and head straight for her books. You will then have the joy of reading one or two pages from a book while she goes to get you another one. You must sit Indian style during this time. Hailey will sit on your lap between books. Day care reports that Hailey asks for books during play time.
Wow
It’s been almost 30 days since I last updated this site. Some may think that I have simply fallen off earth. Others may think, or are hoping, that I have been abducted by space aliens. The truth is that none of the aforementioned doomsday scenarios have come to pass. Instead, I am my own victim.
At work I have been busy getting my unrulely and overwhelming project back on the road to success. At times, coding this project is tedious and mind numbingly boring. Other times doing something clever and non-obvious makes the job fun again.
At home I have been busy with household chores. We have moved the office from upstairs to downstairs. This move has resulted in more space in Hailey’s room because the big person’s bed has been moved to the Longhorn Guest Room (fka the old office). We are now ready to accommodate guests, should any decide to venture to this area. We now have more space in the office for books and can begin to purchase reading material once more.
Hailey continues to change at her incredibly alarming pace. She can understand complete and complex phrases. Pick up the paper and take it to the trash, results in an action that resembles the phrase. She can tell you, with her albeit limited vocabulary, what she wants. “Up please,” is my current favorite phrase. To hear it would absolutely melt your heart.
Hailey has moved from her crib to a toddler bed. Going to bed now seems to take forever. Eventually this too will be easy and second nature. For now though, going to bed seems to be the most difficult thing in our day.
Over the weekend we were outside in the back yard when Hailey started saying ball, ball, ball. I had to tell Hailey that there is no ball back here. I shouldn’t have been so quick to jump to my conclusion. When I looked up from what I was doing I noticed that one of the neighbors kids had lobed a beach ball over the fence and there was, in fact, a ball in the backyard. I guess she told me, I’m sure it won’t be the only time that she is right and I am wrong.