It's been a few months now since I last ran and I was really starting to feel bad about that. Additionally due to a few extra portions of holiday food and cheer I was starting to see the weight I had worked so hard to lose come back on slowly. I guess the final straw was related to the new Wii we got at Christmas. One of the "games" we have is called Wii Fit and includes this nifty little balance board that it uses for many of the activities.
In setting up my WiiMii (virtual John) in the Wii Fit it does a body mass estimate and everyone in the family came up in the healthy range, except me. Now, I'll claim that I am also the only one in the family who has worked out with weights and has a higher body mass but it still made for some well intentioned ribbing from the rest of the family.
So anyway I've decided to stop the slide and get back to running. I was going to make it a New Years resolution however the situation appears to be serious and cannot wait!
Monday, December 28, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Week with Willie
This past week we dog sat a 2 year old Bernese Mountain dog (sometimes called a Berner) named Willie for a friend at work. Willie is an awesome dog. He was great with the kids, REALLY attached to Melissa. He was a little skittish around me but eventually got very used to my presence and would let me pet him and scratch his ears. He was particularly fond of that for sure.
We loved having him here and he was really beautiful. In fact the breeder picked him up today to take him to a dog show over the next few days. He was a very high quality dog and we heard that he would cost $2000 as a puppy!! So we won't be getting one of these anytime soon!
We are missing him tonight.
You can see a bunch more pictures by clicking on this link:
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Weird videos the kids like: first edition
There are MANY weird and random videos that the kids like on YouTube (YouTube is a user contributed video site where anyone can load almost anything). We don't let the kids randomly search on YouTube for obvious reasons so I guess they hear of these things from friends at school. Anyway I thought I would share some of them with you over a series of posts.
One that is really pretty weird is a series videos about magic unicorns focused around a grumpy and sardonic unicorn named Charlie. There are two other nameless unicorns that Charlie has to deal with and they are normally bothering him while he is trying to sleep. Ultimately they talk him into going on some rather hard to describe adventures where something happens to Charlie.
There is a series of 4 I think and they are fairly heavily viewed out there on the Internet. I'll post them in order so you can follow the "story" as much as there is one. They are really more like short episodes.
In the first episode the two unicorns talk Charlie into going to "Candy Mountain" whatever that is.
Here Charlie is the "Banana" king.
Here is the third in the series:
Here is the fourth - if you are still watching they are pretty weird right!
Strange!
One that is really pretty weird is a series videos about magic unicorns focused around a grumpy and sardonic unicorn named Charlie. There are two other nameless unicorns that Charlie has to deal with and they are normally bothering him while he is trying to sleep. Ultimately they talk him into going on some rather hard to describe adventures where something happens to Charlie.
There is a series of 4 I think and they are fairly heavily viewed out there on the Internet. I'll post them in order so you can follow the "story" as much as there is one. They are really more like short episodes.
In the first episode the two unicorns talk Charlie into going to "Candy Mountain" whatever that is.
Here Charlie is the "Banana" king.
Here is the third in the series:
Here is the fourth - if you are still watching they are pretty weird right!
Strange!
Cool work videos
We've started using a cool San Francisco based company called the Kenwood Group to create neat and inspiring opening videos for some of the events we do at work. We put on several large events each year, one for our existing customers called a user conference, one for our publishing customers called the Digital Publishing Summit and one for our government customers called the Government Summit (creative I know).
I really like the look of these videos and was just sharing them with Melissa and Julia last night so I thought I would share them with you!
This is from our user conference:
This is from our government summit in November:
This is from our publishing summit in December.
I hope you enjoy them!
I really like the look of these videos and was just sharing them with Melissa and Julia last night so I thought I would share them with you!
This is from our user conference:
This is from our government summit in November:
This is from our publishing summit in December.
I hope you enjoy them!
Saturday, December 19, 2009
More on being a boy...
We've always encourage the kids to come in and snuggle with us in the mornings, particularly on weekend mornings when we are lazing around in bed (well one of the adults is anyway =). We figure that the kids will be too old (or too large) to care very soon -- so we value this special time...
Now a days it is still dark in the morning and we are dead asleep when they come in. There is a distinct gender difference in the approach to HOW they come in. The girls wander in almost silently, quietly walking up to the side of the bed, waiting on some acknowledgement that we notice them and want them to climb in. Then they ease into an open spot . Then then snuggle up keeping the covers high, find a pillow spot, and close their eyes and relax. The process is very warm, gentle and nice.Nicolas on the other hand is a different little beast. You can hear him coming a mile a way (well not a mile since our house isn't that big) but you get the point. He runs in with heavy footfalls (THUMP, THUMP, THUMP) in a very distinctive way. As he enters our room and rounds towards the bed he looks for a landing spot...
Now for a landing spot he is not really looking to see if anything is in his way, rather just aiming for somewhere -- anywhere on the bed. He launches himself up onto the bed usually landing on his knees. This means if he lands on the wrong place it can be really quite painful!!! He rarely misses body parts completely and if one of the girls is there first, he inevitably lands on one of them.Once on the bed he scrambles over to the top of the covers (again with disregard for where he is kneeing) and moves under the covers as quickly as possible.
This is all very disruptive. The unconscious parts of our brain has been trained to wake and be alert as soon as we hear his footsteps coming down the hall (a survival mechanism). Failure to take preventative action can cost you dearly, it has me many times.Even when under the covers he is the epitome of a whirling dervish (whatever that is) rotating around and around, climbing on Melissa, diving under the covers etc. He only spends a few moments sitting still before he is moving again.He is a disruptive force that shatters the quite tranquility that is the early morning sleeping chambers.
Now a days it is still dark in the morning and we are dead asleep when they come in. There is a distinct gender difference in the approach to HOW they come in. The girls wander in almost silently, quietly walking up to the side of the bed, waiting on some acknowledgement that we notice them and want them to climb in. Then they ease into an open spot . Then then snuggle up keeping the covers high, find a pillow spot, and close their eyes and relax. The process is very warm, gentle and nice.Nicolas on the other hand is a different little beast. You can hear him coming a mile a way (well not a mile since our house isn't that big) but you get the point. He runs in with heavy footfalls (THUMP, THUMP, THUMP) in a very distinctive way. As he enters our room and rounds towards the bed he looks for a landing spot...
Now for a landing spot he is not really looking to see if anything is in his way, rather just aiming for somewhere -- anywhere on the bed. He launches himself up onto the bed usually landing on his knees. This means if he lands on the wrong place it can be really quite painful!!! He rarely misses body parts completely and if one of the girls is there first, he inevitably lands on one of them.Once on the bed he scrambles over to the top of the covers (again with disregard for where he is kneeing) and moves under the covers as quickly as possible.
This is all very disruptive. The unconscious parts of our brain has been trained to wake and be alert as soon as we hear his footsteps coming down the hall (a survival mechanism). Failure to take preventative action can cost you dearly, it has me many times.Even when under the covers he is the epitome of a whirling dervish (whatever that is) rotating around and around, climbing on Melissa, diving under the covers etc. He only spends a few moments sitting still before he is moving again.He is a disruptive force that shatters the quite tranquility that is the early morning sleeping chambers.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Little man - big voice
I'm not sure whether it is the age, being a boy, being the third or all of the above but Nicolas has started to burst out at the top of his lungs! This can be at any moment, in a quite house, in the car, in a grocery store, outside (which is OK), where ever we are he will belt out almost anything!
The scenario typically goes like this. We are sitting at breakfast, eating, chatting what ever and I might ask Nicolas if he would like more milk, to which he responds "YES I WOULD LIKE MORE MILK!!!"
He might even do this if he is not addressed. He will below out things like "I"VE GOT TO GO TO THE BATHROOM!!!" and of course we say "that is great, can you use an inside voice?" and he will answer "YES I WILL!!!"
Now he is a little guy but he is getting amazing volume out of those little lungs! If his subliminal goal is to get attention he certainly does that. Everyone in the family ends up staring at him as if he were mad.
I am really hoping this is just a stage and not a trend!
"PLEASE!!"
The scenario typically goes like this. We are sitting at breakfast, eating, chatting what ever and I might ask Nicolas if he would like more milk, to which he responds "YES I WOULD LIKE MORE MILK!!!"
He might even do this if he is not addressed. He will below out things like "I"VE GOT TO GO TO THE BATHROOM!!!" and of course we say "that is great, can you use an inside voice?" and he will answer "YES I WILL!!!"
Now he is a little guy but he is getting amazing volume out of those little lungs! If his subliminal goal is to get attention he certainly does that. Everyone in the family ends up staring at him as if he were mad.
I am really hoping this is just a stage and not a trend!
"PLEASE!!"
Problems with Purple Puffles
All of our kids are extremely enamored with a Disney online kids website called Club Penguin. Club Penguin is an interactive virtual world where kids are penguins and can interact in a limited fashion with other penguins (kids). The penguins are customizable in a limited way so they can choose a color, a hat and a few other things. This virtual world is quite rich and there are lots and lots of penguins running around. On any given Saturday there are thousands of penguins running around in literally hundreds of penguin towns. In fact you can see if a friend is in a town and go to that town to interact so our kids will go and play games together virtually in their little world and some of their school friends will meet them online.
As far as the little environment there are towns with shops and various kinds of interactive games the kids can play. For example there are skiing games, surfing games (penguins don't care if the water is cold apparently). The world changes based on the seasons (of the northern hemisphere so must be a little strange for those down under for example) and currently the club penguin world is all wintery with snow on the ground and occasional snow precipitation. It is really quite amazing. Penguins have an individual home and penguins can earn coins by completing skill games. With the money they earn they can by things like furniture for their home, which is actually an igloo.
Penguins can also have little pets called puffles. This is partially where the diabolical nature of this little world comes in. Puffles are little round balls of fur from what I can tell and they are available in a variety of colors. The puffles need to be fed and I think they have to be purchased with the virtual money so the kids have to earn to get and keep a pet which is not necessarily a bad lesson. The issue is that there are two modes to Club Penguin - free and paid. In the free world kids can do a lot, lots of games, lots of adventures, stores etc. They can also get a good number of the puffles. It turns out that for a modest fee of about $5/month they can "join" club penguin and there is more cool stuff available. In particular they can purchase a wider varitey of things in their little world. They can get different and fancier furniture for their igloo, they can take special rides, there are new and different games etc. And, they can get a wider range of colors for their puffles. In fact there are a limited number of puffles and in order to get "all" the puffles you do need to be a member.
The problems around here came when our kids (mostly Lea and Nicolas) wanted to get the last of the puffles which required them to join. This last puffle they wanted to get was as you probably have guessed by now, was purple.
So, both Lea and Nicolas are now members (Julia is a member of some other fairy site) and in addition to getting the purple puffle they will now be able to participate in the holiday sleigh ride which occurs today.
That is my problem with purple puffles.
Click here to see the start page for Club Penguin.
p.s. don't worry they still play plenty of "real" imaginary games (Melissa says pretend games) which are not on the computer.
As far as the little environment there are towns with shops and various kinds of interactive games the kids can play. For example there are skiing games, surfing games (penguins don't care if the water is cold apparently). The world changes based on the seasons (of the northern hemisphere so must be a little strange for those down under for example) and currently the club penguin world is all wintery with snow on the ground and occasional snow precipitation. It is really quite amazing. Penguins have an individual home and penguins can earn coins by completing skill games. With the money they earn they can by things like furniture for their home, which is actually an igloo.
Penguins can also have little pets called puffles. This is partially where the diabolical nature of this little world comes in. Puffles are little round balls of fur from what I can tell and they are available in a variety of colors. The puffles need to be fed and I think they have to be purchased with the virtual money so the kids have to earn to get and keep a pet which is not necessarily a bad lesson. The issue is that there are two modes to Club Penguin - free and paid. In the free world kids can do a lot, lots of games, lots of adventures, stores etc. They can also get a good number of the puffles. It turns out that for a modest fee of about $5/month they can "join" club penguin and there is more cool stuff available. In particular they can purchase a wider varitey of things in their little world. They can get different and fancier furniture for their igloo, they can take special rides, there are new and different games etc. And, they can get a wider range of colors for their puffles. In fact there are a limited number of puffles and in order to get "all" the puffles you do need to be a member.
The problems around here came when our kids (mostly Lea and Nicolas) wanted to get the last of the puffles which required them to join. This last puffle they wanted to get was as you probably have guessed by now, was purple.
So, both Lea and Nicolas are now members (Julia is a member of some other fairy site) and in addition to getting the purple puffle they will now be able to participate in the holiday sleigh ride which occurs today.
That is my problem with purple puffles.
Click here to see the start page for Club Penguin.
p.s. don't worry they still play plenty of "real" imaginary games (Melissa says pretend games) which are not on the computer.
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