August 2007

Okay, I’ll admit it. As a guy, I’ve always wanted a son. When we were trying decide on baby names, I spent months tossing around exclusively boy names. Not that I was ever against daughters, it just never even occurred to me.

When we found out we were having a girl, I thought, that was just amazing. (I’ve always had this theory that boys with older sisters tend to be in a bit less trouble… and a girl with an older brother, and older guy friends, well that’d just be nothing but trouble… feel free to slam me on my theory as well).

However, something in the back of my mind still said, I guess we’ll just have to have a boy next time around (as if that was for me to decide)

But now, everytime I look at my daughter, I am just so completely floored, and I realize she is so much more than enough. She lacks nothing, and she is a total joy to me. I’m so glad she’s my little girl.

I took an assessment a few years back that diagnosed me with having ADD/ADHD, but who doesn’t these days?

I just stumbled on to this movie documenting the factors we all suspected (pharmaceutical industry, parents, teachers, media, etc) leading to the over-medicating of our children.

We had an awesome anniversary. I don’t know about other guys, but every year I think, how on earth am I going to top the last year?

This year my goal was to spend no more than ten bucks on the night (I was so tempted to do the fancy dinner thing, but that’d just be too easy, wouldn’t it?)

I told Yvz that we had reservations (it was with the sunset) and we rushed out the door as our friend Gloria babysat.

We headed down to the beach and roller-bladed by the shore to find our food.

I was banking on a hotdogs (My wife loves hotdogs oddly) and Ed’s Real Scoop (a popular ice cream shop downtown) to keep it under five bucks each.

Unfortunately, I was shocked we weren’t able to find any hotdog stands! We ended up caving into some random sushi place (it was okay, hotdogs would have been way better)

I’ve got a bit of a fascination with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, so Yvonne made some for me from scratch! Check out how colossal hers were compared to the puny originals!

Earlier in the day I organized a speed-art project where we would both paint something that we loved about the other person.

Amazingly we had very similar concepts, though different ways of expressing it.

Yvonne’s, depicted my ‘fiery’ passion in the darkness, and how it lit up ’sparks’ in other people. the folks to the right is our family (click for a close up), I love the cute baby Stellar she painted in!

Mine, was a silhouette of my wife and how God so often pierces her heart and brings about life-changing conviction. But it never just stops there. It always erupts out of her soul as she longs to share her passion with others, bringing light to those around her.

We painted them on canvas paper and added them to a new book of memories we’ll be creating together… memories we hope to be celebrating for all eternity.

I thought this was cute

SolarCrash is back and standing tall…

and look who else is (while holding on for dear life)…

Looks like the web hosting provider for my other site SolarCrash has been completely down for the last day. It was a great deal with next to no limits and being free, but being unavailable for this long without any information has been a bit of a pain. If this doesn’t get resolved soon, I might need to switch.

Does anyone know of any reliable providers that offers php/sql? Preferably free and bannerless, but if need be I might be willing to pay a low low fee (I’ve already tried freehostia and awardspace, and I’m currently with clearify).  Now that I think of it, I’m possibly open to sharing a quality paid space with others as well.

Anyhow, we just got back from traveling with a few friends from university days (who now all have families) in Pennsylvania

Stellar and I managed to fit into the hotel crib together

So tired of driving…

Stellar was getting tired of driving too…

Continuing the technology series on how I get things done… For me, Google Picasa is the only way to go in terms of photo management. I’ve got about 22,000 photos right now and Picasa handles it all with style and ease.

1. You can organize through folders or albums or search via tags and descriptions. Photos are instantly discovered and added to picasa.

2. In the tray, you can do batch editing and incredibly easy photo touch ups. My wife couldn’t care less for this geeky computer stuff, but she loves the ability to easily manipulate an image through this (ie. red eye removal, cropping, soft-focus, etc.). You can also email, blog, geotag, or send these photos easily to an online web album as well.

3. You can easily scale the albums and photos to your liking. Scrolling through photos is incredibly slick. Pictures can also be integrated easily into a slideshow or a screensaver.

Picasaweb albums is really the online counterpart to Picasa’s desktop software. It doesn’t quite have the community that Flickr offers, but it’s simple and free. ie. Check out the album for my latest trip to Boston. I like how it doesn’t scale down photos to tiny grainy shots like many other free photo sharing sites do.

What’s also fantastic that I’ve recently discovered is that there are plugins that have been developed for it, so that you can upload directly to other photo communities like flickr and facebook!

Google has also recently added additional shared storage between picasa and gmail you can purchase for a decent price. But the free space will be plenty enough for me for quite a while.

Overall, definitely one of the best free desktop applications that have helped enhance my productivity, period.

I pre-bought the latest Smashing Pumpkins album, Zeitgeist, off of itunes… I can’t say it lives up to their former glory.

They do however have a song that goes by the same name as my daughter, and it’s a decent tune.  If only the lyrics in some way echoed my daughter in all beauty.  Maybe I’ll just have to write my own some day.

I think I’ll head to their concert if they come to town though… just for old times’ sake.

An inconvenient truth… there are so many out there aren’t there?

My wife and I finally got around to watching Gore’s film.  Anybody have thoughts on the movie, or better yet, anyone else doing anything about practical about it?

My wife and I have always loved chicken wings. I find the skin of chicken wings an incredible medium for flavor and there’s something about sizzling chicken grease spurting back at you as bite into it.

I tried doing some flavor experimentation this week and didn’t want to risk an entire batch so I created a multi-flavor tasting experience for our dinner.

From Left to right:

Ginger and Wasabi / Lemon, orange, and garlic covered in bread crumbs / BBQ sauce and red pepper flakes / Coffee, brown sugar, and cinnamon, Honey, Raspberry vinigarett, and chili oil / Sweet and Sour and Sprite / Onion spice, paprika, and rosemary smothered in butter.

Do you have friends who’ve had children and it seems like they’ve given up on living their own lives?

Everything is suddenly about their children, and its as if they’ve transferred all of their own hopes and dreams onto these unsuspecting kids. Sometimes I’m tempted to just throw in the towel myself, just be a good parent, and bank on the next generation to do something extraordinary.

My concern is, if all we do is model for our children how to be great parents, well, they’ll just be great parents.

Nothing so wrong with that, but what if rather than simply being great parents and propagating more parents, we modeled living extraordinary lives ourselves? Wouldn’t we want to see our children do at least the same whether they have a family or not?

I’m sorry sweetheart you’re going to have to fold the laundry on your own while we go live life to the fullest… for you.

If you’re not on it, I just don’t know why… Of all the social networks - myspace is too messy, friendster’s too old-school, linked-in is a bit too business oriented, and google-sponsored socialstream is still just a dream - facebook is clean and it works well.

One in three Canadians use it, and Toronto has been reported to being the facebook capital of the world with 700,000 members (Although there are reports that London, England may be usurping the crown).

It seems like everytime I sneak a peak as I pass by laptops at the library, in coffeeshops, and at schools, people are staring at that classic facebook screen. Our provincial government recently banned facebook for all staff.

I’ve found that it’s been phenomenal for connecting with old friends, networking with peers, and being one-step closer to those who might have simply been acquaintances.

It’s also great if you’ve got question’s like…

Are the cool kids back in high school still cool?

Does this friend and that friend of mine know each other? because they should.

What are my co-workers really like outside of work? Photos posted by their friends usually tell all.

Is she still with him? Because I never thought that would last

Some call it stalker-central, others say it’s better than crack, if you’re a regular here, feel free to look me up.

My only concern is that one day it could come to this…