Yes, I’m mostly a tech nerd with no hobbies outside of thigns that glow (or make me glow), but I’m trying to pretend to be a grown up; got 3 children now, gotta keep up appearances.

I don’t much care for Avent bottles; plastic sort of turns me off; stubby stature is pretty handy, but I’m pretty sure they make squat bottles so they can be different to everyone else .. by which I mean, different accessories (sterilizers, carryalls, warmers, etc.) But in the end, although durable, I find them leaky. Easy to wash with any kind of bottle cleaner though.

Gerbers, also plastic, yet tall and more what most peopel think when they hear ‘baby bottle’, are pretty good; never leak, but being tall and thin, harder to wash.. but we’ve got a sturdy thin bottle cleaner that works a treat, so okay.

But we had to switch around a bit, since one of the twins was inhaling the formula — slower nipple you could get, and that child was slirping it back too fast. Crazy. So we went to Evenflo glass bottles — glass is good, solid and nice and traditional; easy to wash, standard size for sterilizers etc; not a problem for us to clean due to the proper bottle cleaner.

And cheap, really.

Playtex drop-ins are pretty handy, and faster to use; drop in the little liner, fill up with goo and good to go; toss the liner and repeat, no fuss. But those liners do add up.

So over to the glass bottles, like momma used to use :)

okay okay, a few folks emailed me or otherwise bugged me…

- blog is ported to the new machine, so is physically up, you punks ;)

- bbs is ported to the new machine, so can stay up another 10 years! (telnet to bbs.skeleton.org, login bbs, password bbs)

.. and more shuffling of services around the old home cluster.  Even documented all the steps, so next time I have to do this, I’ll know what I did this time :P

Good to know (or creepy?) that you guys are still around ;)

We just found out we’ve got twins coming in a little while; *WOA*

I’ve been meaning to clear our some of the stuff in our ‘junk room’ and do audits of some of my gear; I’ve a number of very large collections of awesome junk, but sometimes you just don’t need so much; but nothing like getting news of twins to kick you into gear .. tick tock, only so many weekends before the big event, and then no free time for a year or two or decade after :) We’ve got bathrooms to finish, tiles to buy and lay down, cribs and highchairs and such to sort out, and who knows, maybe need to switch cars unless we can figure out a way to cram 3 carseats into the one we have now (!)

I’d relatively recently built a new shell server box to replace my existing older one, but hadn’t a lot of motivation to actually do the move.. so I’m running two shell servers right now; might as well get a move on that, and in doign so audit the services I’m running there. With Oracle’s takeover of mysql is it time to convert things to postgres? With so few people using the old BBS I keep running, is it time to shut it down and save myself the trouble? Should I keep this blog going .. do I actualyl have any readers, or is this jut for my own venting and occasional easy place to post reference material? Heck, at the same time could review .. I still host my own email since I don’t like Google reading it for me. I host my own blog, so I own the content and no worries. I host my own services in general.. but really, shoudl you worry, and just use the ‘cloud’ services and be happy, and have a lot less upkeep to do? hmrf. I mean, fighting spam and hosting my own crap is work sometimes and using gmail would be a hell of a lot easier sometimes…….

But I guess I should keep up the bbs; I mean, its been running (with a 6 year hiatus in the middle, sort of like Dr Who) more or less since 1988 or so .. like, nearly 25 years, or operating for say 16 or 17 years, mostly empty in the tail end of course. But its not hard to keep running, it basicly chugs along and runs itself. So, okay, a few people do seem to be using it and it makes me giggle.. and its a museum; so few BBSes are around today, and maybe a half dozen of Atari ones. Gotta wave the flag, I guess?

The blog.. hmm; wordpress is a security nightmare. I could use the official free wordpress service, but I’m ornery that way. Email me skeezix<boing>skeleton.org if you think I shoudl keep it up .. if I have a single reader ;) Otherwise, roll the dice :)

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I’m selling off a pile of arcade stuff (but by no means the family jewels), and I must admit.. firing up my emu-cabinet (MAMEcab), my JAMMA arcade boards, my MVS Neo Geo games, sorting out which harness adapters I have in what condition, pouring over my original Pacman pcboards .. it does bring back The Lust, that any collector is familiar with. I’m proud of my collection of ancient gadgetry. Not giving it up .. just some, to make back a bit of space, to tidy up a bit, to make a few bucks to help buy some stuff for the coming twins. If we have to buy a new car, be nice to have a few more bucks…

Old Atari gear; I posted a supremely rare device to a few forums, if anyone is interested. An ST Book, one of the first laptops, a gorgeous little beast; if you’re interested, I posted here: http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=20662&p=182269#p182269

But I’m keeping my other crazy Atari gear!

Old Role Playing Games / Wargames; I purged a bunch last year, but really, I’ve still got a bunch of this stuff, last looked at again back in the 80s. Time to clear it out, send it to a good home that might use the stuff, or give it one good fondling.

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So, yeah, time to clear out, be a grown up for once… well, pretend to anyway. Sure, selling off 25 arcade games is a bit of a help in the $$ arena, but I still have 50 more ….

*plays Galaxian*

<edit; I guess .. its easy to look at turning stuff off or selling it, until you give it one last whirl; it was easy to consider turning down the bbs, until I thought I’d just log in and see whats up .. and a few people were they hanging out. *damn* ;)>

Related to my prior posting, here is a brilliant, simple and cheap solution! I was building some shelving into a too-shallow closet and the idea flew into my mind. . its just too obvious, and perfect.

Shoe rack.

You’ve seen them I bet — ‘over the door shoe rack’ is really a sheet with hooks on one end, that hangs on a door; more to point, on the inside of a closet door usually, so its entirely invisible to the normal room, and adds space to an otherwise unused surface. If you’ve got an office or basement door or somesuch, why not just suspend a ’shoe rack’ from it. Free storage, very organized.. it just doesn’t get any better.

I picked up one at Canadian Tire for $8.97 .. there are a number of options, from transparent plastic pockets, to black fabric ones, to fashionable ones. Generally with 20 pockets on it, for allegedly popping shoes into. Say 5 pockets across by 4 rows, or 4 pockets by 5 rows.

Thats 20 little pockets you can shove power cables, chargers or widgemacollits into. For cheap, for free in space terms.

Awesome.

I remember book stores; I went to something claiming to be a book store yesterday, and they sold a lot of candles. Couldn’t find any books that I was looking for of course, but amazon.ca was on top of it. Surprisingly, even Fictionwise (now owned by Barnes and Noble) coudl fill the bill as well.

I also remember music stores, but theyr’e full of DVDs now because they think that will prolong their life. Least that is what I think they sell now, as I’ve not been to one in years.

Game stores still exist, but they don’t generally carry PC games, though Direct2Drive and Steam will take care of things. At least I can buy xbox games at a store still .. this year anyway.

The media loves to hype; it sells, and is IMHO highly irresponsible. We need _real science_ when discussing vaccination when it comes to children, not hyperbole and BS designed to scare. We need rationalism more than sensationalism right now, don’t we?

But let us be clear.. the world was ending for Y2k computer glitches; then for dot-bomb crash; 9/11; SARS. I think we had a year of rest before they slapped us with the economic meltdown and now of course H1N1.

So most of those are hype and also mostly man-made. SARS and H1N1 are at least real problems, but not so earth shattering you need to put the fear of Grod into people.

*Sigh* What are we normal blokes to do?

Back a couple years ago before we had a baby I worried over such trivial things; one was the concern I wouldn’t know what to do with the baby (to entertain her) when it arrived. Everyone says the knowledge will just come as you need it. They’re right, but it doesnt’ stop one from worrying :) Still, I learned quickly that babies just like their feet tickled, and toddlers really do believe that a chair lied down on its back is a rocket ship, and a laundry basket is the fastest car this side of Mos Eisley. During the early weeks of course most time was spent pacing.. back and forth, up and down the stairs, around the house, checking the VCR time to see how long your laps were taking. All night, every night, until you were just to the breaking point… but you never broke, since that’d make the crying increase in volume :) During these times living on no sleep your mind will wander, and for me it was trying to find new words to tumble from my mouth to sooth the little girl. I’m not one to listen to lyrics, never have, and just don’t remember such things. I’m a rhythm man. I also don’t remember jokes or lullabys, so I turned to making up songs (or occasional Iron Maiden songs when in a pinch.)

One little song stuck; I sung it in variations every night for the first year, and by the time she learned to talk she would start to cry when I’d sing it — she knew I was lulling her to sleep. Still, this simple song is one I will always cherish .. its mine, and I made it for her, one night, while checking the VCR lap-times.

She sings it now, on her own, in the back of the car or any wandering moment. Its not really mine anymore.. its hers now. (The sad part is, while fumbling through the first rounds I was struck by the notion of trying to make it mutate as it went, so in one line I say a word, and re-use that word in the next. Was trying to make a recursive thing out of it, but was too fried to pull it off. Still, I think its sort of cool :)

“Little Girl”, to the tune of “Smelly Cat” (yes, Phoebe on Friends. Like I said, middle of the night and all :)

Anyway, thats not quite it.. I can only remember it really while doing it, but I thought I’d write it down.

There are many topics that are better just avoided in the presence of others; parenting styles is one sure to enrage or at a minimum leave folks misunderstanding what you meant, angry that you’re judging them, or other sillyness.

I can summarize most of these arguments to if it all works out blissfully for one person, its just luck; it is not attributable to skill or to a perfect child or any such thing — no one is perfect, and certainly no one has training, etc. Sometimes it just works for them, and certainly will not work for you. Your baby or child could be a sleeper, or not, and either way its not your fault. Deal with it ;)

One facet of this conversation that generally leads to argument is the nurture versus ignore question; there are many schools of thought for those who somehow claw the time to investigate them..  the Ferber method etc. I don’t have the time, and figure to flail about like everyone has for thousands of years.  When you’re in your bed, and you hear your baby cry out in the night.. do you run over? do you wait a minute to see if its a fake cry, a fear cry, or sick cry? Or do you let them ‘cry it out’ and eventually fall back to sleep? (note that some kids will not cry to sleep, just go to hysterics!) Do you worry if you run to your child that you’ve over-mothered them, made them weak? Or would you say that just gives them a foundation of belief that their parents are there when needed, knowing they will grow up without questioning in the back of their minds that people are really caring about them? If you let them cry it out, do you teach them to be strong? Or that you’re not there when they’re afraid of the monsters? Hell, they’re only a child once so what do you do?

I’m not going to answer since we do it our way and it won’t matter to you, but suffice to say .. people have gone to hell for worse things than babying their baby, right?

(And most handsome, and who can barbecue the meanest smoked sausage.)

After some 20 hours or so of working over the yard in our relatively-new place, it was time to bike out to the park with my little girl for some down time. At the end of last year she was barely able to climb up alone to the smallest of slides but this year she can champ through pretty much all the activities unassisted. After the slides, the swings, the springy-sitting-things and the spinny-chair-pukey-things it was off to watch the kids soccer games for a minute before heading home for (her) nap time. Of course, the ice cream trucks are not piloted by fools and so encircled the soccer fields (like an encamped army*), and my little one being also not a fool knew instinctively what they contained, so we peddled over.

So yes, with sound mind I am riding a bicycle. With a rear-mounted toddler-seat. Piloted by a 2 year old child sitting immediately at my back. Holding and eating/mushing an ice cream cone. While I peddle. On a hot day.

And yet, we got home _alive_, and I tell the story.

* Wink to Mr. Plisken

In the middle of last year we went out and picked up our first bicycle seat for our little girl. If you’re up early on a weekend or have time before/after dinner and want to burn some calories for yourself and have a blast with the little one, biking is a great option. It was still alien for me to be out the door at 7am to the park, but it was a fun way to pass the time and we ended up going out probably 4 or more days a week every week. Awesome.

That was this post should you care.

Now that winter is coming to close we’re all very sick of being couped up inside – Play-doh is good, and colouring is great, but she just needs to get out and run and dig and climb.. she’s sick of her toys and its getting harder to invent ways to entertain her :) So I plugged her into the old bike seat and with her new found words she exclaimed ‘too tight!’ and ‘too big!’ so it was time to retire that awesome little device — at least we got a few months out of it!

After reviewing options at Zellers ($89.95) and Walmart (I forget) and Canadian Tire ($89.95) I checked out Toys-R-Us again, just like last time. Usually not an inexpensive place (and always a challenge to get a small child away from after a shopping run) they nevertheless, just like last time, had a pretty good price on the “Wallaroo” sized bicycle seat. $59.95 CDN seems pretty good for a device we’ll work over all summer and likely have to discard next spring..

The Toys-R-Us page is here

After our first outing last night I thought I would offer a few comments; let me break it down into positioning and balance, size, cost and construction.

Position/Balance

The Wee-Ride we had last year was front-mount, by which I mean the chair is in front of you (between your arms when driving the bike.) This is convenient and clever for a lot of reasons — you can see the child (and any mittens they may toss aside) and they have an unobstructed view. As she got older she also learned to hole the handlebars and attack the brakes and gear-shift, which was cute after the first surprise braking :) The new device is rear-mount which makes me a little paranoid since I cannot see her, but at least she can see me. I worry that she will tire of staring at my back, but hopefully the landscape whizzing by will entertain.

For what its worth in last nights first trip out, she was crying out ‘Weeeee!’ a lot, so I think she enjoyed it :)

With both mount-positions it was trivial to get used to the different weight and balance, and as a guy it was still easy to mount the bike. (Most guys I know swing their leg over the back tire to mount, but now I have to go bent-knee’d in front of the seat due to the large throne out back.)

Momentum is a little funny though with the new arrangement; if you’re parallel to a curb and then jog-left to go up onto the ramp to the sidewalk you may feel this seat jiggle and sway as you do the sharp turn, say. When going off a curb or doing any quick turns or drops, you wil feel the resistance as the seat swings around back, since its pretty heavy (30 pound child) and big (tall!) — it wasn’t a problem, but it did surprise me a few times to feel that ‘drag.’ See below.

Size

The previous seat was a great size; small, comfortable for the child, and had a little padded play area out front (I assume should the child get whipped forward its to cushion the blow.) The new seat is more like a small throne, very large and high-backed. I’ve seen smaller rear-mount seats around so thought this one seemed large, but it does seem very comfortable – I had my daughter sit in it at the store – and lets her sit back, or lean into the chair at the sides. The foot compartments are pretty deep and adjustable for a growing child. Overall the chair seems well made.

Really, the goal (aside from carrying) of these seats is to keep the feet out of the spokes, and this chair should be fine; the legs naturally dangle into the approproiate compartments, and the plastic is molded around to cup the child at all points so she’d have to go out of her way to get into anything .. just dawdling or kicking will not be a problem.

The chair can be removed from the bike pretty easily, as the previous younger-child model can be.

Construction

The chair is a strong plastic and seems fine for its purposes; a large lock-screw is used to hold the seat to the mounting bracket, so that it can be moved forward or back as the child needs, and can be removed alltogether. There is a safety strap fixing the chair to the bike, presumably for use if the bracket slides down the post .. seems dubious to me.

The main curiosity is the design — it uses a U-fork that plugs its tines into a bracket mounted on the main post under the real bike seat. The bent part of the U then sticks up and back over the wheel and the seat mounts onto it. Pretty clever in a way, as its a free shock absorber — drop off a curb and the chair just bounces an inch, no biggy. It strikes me they could pretty easily have run a bar down to the wheelmount axle to make it much stronger, but maybe they would have had to pad the chair heavily or otherwise provide shocks… still, as long as the bracket on the post holds it should be fine. If it slides down then at worst the wheel will start to rub on the seat bottom which should present no danger beyond your deceleration.

Cost

The cost seems good — $59.95 for a bike mount seat seems fine to me. $100 was starting to cross my line of interest, but I imagine thats where you get shock absorbers and such in the kits, but this seems a well built and inexpensive solution.

We loved the previous front mounted seat so much it gave me some trust in the brand, as foolish as that may seam.