shikora.org

Oh wow is it ever snowing. I can’t remember the last time we’ve had this much snow for this long. I’ve spent all day watching the fall snow and the wind pick up what was already on the ground and blow that around too. The first year my family and I moved to Oregon it was like this, all winterwonderlandish. I remember riding my dirt bike up and down the streets in my t-shirt while -10 degrees with windchill was nipping at my nose. In 2006 we had an ice storm for a few days that made me ride the bus to work. It was cold, but there just wasn’t that much snow. There were some other ice storms I’ve lived through while living in Oregon. Two of them I remember distinctly as I was trapped and couldn’t travel far for all the ice. This is different. Lots and lots and lots of snow (by Portland standards). It almost reminds me of growing up on the east coast, almost. I remember watching my parents dig out the car from the piles of snow.

I baked cookies today. I made chocolate chip cookies from the recipe on the bag, only I used splenda instead of sugar. They are still way yummy. The only issue is if you use splenda, you have to make the cookies flat to begin with, cause they won’t fall on their own in the oven. I found that out the hard way.

@jaacob showed me a book reader for my iphone the other day that rocks. Its called Stanza. My iPhone is now the dream machine I’ve always known it could be. I’ve read 2 books since putting it on. One was A Christmas Carol which I could download for free in the app. It was really interesting to read all the descriptions of food and parlor games people played back in the day (19th century style). For some reason I don’t read books unless I can carry them around in a portable device. I guess it’s just way more convenient.

There was question posted on craigslist recently that coincided with some discussions I’ve had with people recently. I figured I’d try and answer it here.

The question is: “The rapid increase in computing technology has greatly benefited mankind in many obvious ways. However, over-reliance on programs and formulas has also allowed for disastrous financial strategies such as credit default swaps. How do you strike a balance between the benefits and risks of computing technology’s growing role in our daily lives?”

My answer isn’t really cut and dry, but more the start of a conversation. Computer technology is just a tool, another tool in a long list of disruptive tools created and used throughout human history. It is how we use the tools that determines our quality of life, both as individuals and as a society. Tools do not change the essential nature of being, that is created by our actions to ourselves and others. As an example, it wasn’t financial instruments that caused the mortgage crises, it was people using them in unethical and illegal ways. The real question isn’t how we strike a balance with technology, any more then we need to strike a balance with hammers and can openers. The balance we have to find is within ourselves. That balance will be reflected in how we use the tools around us and what we accomplish with them.

Last weekend we took Shayna to see Santa for the first time. We went to the Fire Station museum on SE Belmont. It was a lot of fun. She enjoyed playing with the equipment she could reach. I’d like to take her back there when it’s fully open to the public. They have a fire engine that has a steam driven water pump. It looked very steam punk. They have a firetruck simulator that they promised felt “just like the real thing”. They also had firefighting equipment old and new that was fun to check out. Here’s the picture they took of her on Santa’s lap. She cried the whole time.

Shayna's first trip to see santa.

Hey there. I finally spend some quality time with my site. It now runs off of Wordpress 2.7 . It was a Joomla 1.0 site. I realised it was going to be just as much effort to upgrade to Joomla 1.5 as it was to switch over to Wordpress. After some annoying glitches, some having to do with me setting up the site in one folder, then moving it to another, others with using cform to set up the Contact Me section, it looks like its working. You still have to register to leave a comment unfortunately. I trust spammers to leave me alone as much as I trust George W. Bush to be able to speak in complete sentences. If you have something to say though, please leave comment. I’d really like to hear what you think of the new site.

I finally got tired of having to delete all the spam I get in the comments section of the site. At first it wasn’t so bad, but somehow they found me. Even with the capcha system, I get half a dozen new spams a day on my site. When I had my old site up, there was an exploite that allowed spammers to post an infinite amount of comment spam on the site. I didn’t realize it till I was allready google cached like crazy. Even today if you google my name or this site, you’ll get a bunch of links on other people’s sites that point to that old spam. So now you’ll have to register with the site to be able to post comments. We’ll see how that goes. I really don’t want to be on the front page of a google search for some happy pill again. Thanks for your understanding.

I went to OSCON 2008 this year. it was not only a great chance to see people and go to fun parties, but very educational too. Click below to read my list of things I did and a short summary of the talk along with links to all the slides I could find. The summaries are my off the cuff description of what I got out of it. To get a better feel for the talk, please read the slides. I’m happy to talk about anything I learned if anyone is interested. If I got something wrong, please let me know so I can correct it.

(continue reading…)

Last weekend Shayna went from taking 1 or 2 steps then falling down on Friday night, to taking about 5 steps on Saturday afternoon, to running around the house full time on Sunday. Me, Brooke and the folks at her daycare have been working with her for a number of months now, trying to help her get her footing. We all knew she could walk if she wanted, as she could stand fairly well, though shaky, on her own, and with someone holding her hand, she could almost run. Well now she’s doing it on her own and isn’t so interested in anyone helping her. It’s awesome to see. She’s getting more and more independent all the time. She can feed herself, walk, and communicate in lots of ways, if not using full words.

A few days ago, I asked her to find her shoes for me as I didn’t know where they went. She walked over to one shoe, picked it up, handed it to me, then went over to the other one in the other room, picked it up and handed me that one. If that wasn’t the clearest sign yet that she understands what we say to her, I don’t know what would be. Just cause she can’t communicate back yet with full words, doesn’t mean she isn’t processing what we say to her. I have memories of being very young, maybe even a few months old, and understanding what the people around me were saying, but being frustrated that I couldn’t respond back. It’s nice to be validated in some way that they are real memories.

So I’ve been listening to Shayna’s baby babel become more and more sophisticated as time goes on. She’s been able to clearly say mama when she want’s to for at least a month now, but I don’t know if that really counts since it’s such a natural extension of baby babbel. She says dada sometimes, but not in any really directed way. So this week I was told that she clearly said the name of her dog. While driving with her in the car that day she said the word baby quite a few times, I think because that’s the first thing other kids say when they first see her. I haven’t heard anything as distinct since, but that was the first time I heard her say something not quite baby babel.

This all makes me realise that the process of baby’s learning language skills isn’t always an on off switch. I always hear about a baby’s first word, and first sentences, but that comes after weeks and months of trial and error on their part. I don’t know if there really is a first word . Does it count if she says it, but not focused or directed at anything? How far away from baby babel do you get before it counts? Anyway, its amazing to watch her grow up and develop into an amazing person.

So if you came to my sight via Google in the last month, you were probably looking for the Randy Sebastian Renaissance Homes post that I had up since last summer, at least according to Google analytics statistics.

I am not interested in that article or Randy being the focus of my site, so I took it down. It was clear that it had moved from being a way for me to tell a story to something much more, which was not my intention when I originally posted it. For the people who emailed me about this previously, feel free to leave a comment on this post or contact me. If you haven’t already and you really want to hear the story, buy me a beer sometime.

Now, on to much more interesting topics….