My training has started

So I was a bad boy yesterday and bought myself this: Logitech Formula Force GP Steering Wheel.
Its awesome! Right now I am playing Colin McRae 2005 with it (its a rally racing game) and its like a whole new experience. The force feedback really adds to it. For instance, when I am racing in Sweden on the snow, when I have my left wheels in the snow bank, it pulls to the left, just like in a real car. Definitely the best computer peripheral I have bought this year.

Opposite ends of the scale

Anne is worked 12 hours yesterday and is working 8 today. So what this means for me is that I have to take Maya to the babysitters on the way to work.
The night before last night Maya decided she was going to have none of this. Monday night she didnt' go to sleep until 1:30am, then when Anne went to leave at 7am she woke up and wouldn't go back to sleep and cried....and cried... and cried. She didn't cry while I carried her to Kim's but cried when I got there and apparently cried most of the day. When I picked her up she was pretty happy until Anne go home and then was mostly sad. You would think that due to the lack of sleep she would go to bed early and sleep soundly, but she didnt' go to sleep until midnight last night.
However, this morning although she did initially wake up when Anne left, she went back to sleep and stayed that way. I was able to get dresses, eat breakfast and get all her stuff together in peace! I even got her all bundled up and in the sling and to Kim's without her waking.

Note: I know these posts are probably very boring for everybody. But I am sure I will look at them with interest years from now.

What NOT to get me for Christmas

I stole this off of some other site... Some are sort of techy so understand but its funny.

Worst Gifts for Geeks

11. Coupon for 1 Year of Free Computer Service
10. Age of Office Assistants video game
9. Box of floppies
8. Swiss Army Spork
7. "Sodium + Glass of Water" Gift Set
6. A copy of Windows 3.x For Dummies
5. ie51setup.exe
4. Their very own Bonzi Buddy
3. Year's supply of Diet Caffeine-free Mountain Dew
2. AOL membership
1. "Greedo Shot First" T-shirt

I guess I might actually want the "Greedo Shot First" shirt as its pretty funny to me.

A new link

I have replaced my friend Nathan's blog link with a link to my sister Meghans blog, A Warm Gun. Nate hasn't updated past his first 2 posts so he is getting the boot.
Meghan is a psychology major at the University of Waterloo and in her fifth year I think. She does quite well and that's about all I know about what she does there.
She is also a major Bare Naked Ladies nut and has been to more than a few concerts. Apparently the band members even recognize her by site now. Anne and I think its only a matter of time before she is on stage with them... Even if it is just once.
Meaghan also loves hockey and I think she has got signatures from and met all the major Leaf players at one point or another.

And it was THIS big!

Because I wasn't going to hockey in Paisley last night and to let Anne have a good sleep, Maya and I went to my parents house to visit my Mom yesterday afternoon. Maya was a very happy character and was having a blast.
This gave me the oportunity to play gamecube for a couple of hours (I still rock at Soul Calibur 2).
My brother when outside and started make a snowball. The snow was perfect for rolling and soon enough it got too big for him to roll on his own. So I went out to help and shortly the ball was about the same height as me. To make it even bigger we rolled it down a hill expecting it to break. It didn't, it just got bigger and broke through a fence but the wire on the fence did slice it in half.
So we started another one which also very quickly was as big as us, and needed to roll it downhill. We rolled it down the side lawn him hoping for it to stop at an apple tree by side of the rode. Unfortunatly it went off to the side and crashed into the pine forest there. It didnt' take out any trees which would have been very cool to see, only a couple of large branches. So after a few snowball fights and hand-to-hand combat (John is a black belt in karate and fairly high up in Jui-Jitsu and so is quite a challenge, I had never actually been tossed over someones head before yesterday) we started a third snowball with the intention of a snowman on the front lawn. It made it to the corner of the lawn intact and without major damage to anything, although it did threaten to crush John or I a couple of times. So after a couple of smaller snowballs on it we had a very large snowman for all to see. We took a couple of pictures with my Mom's camera so we will have to wait of pics until later.
My arms are very sore today.

So very tired....

So Anne worked nights all weekend for the first time since we had Maya. Some of the fun I had the first night she worked can be found here.
Maya was quite bad the first night. She went to sleep at about 10:30 but woke up when I went to bed at 1:30 and it took about 30 minutes to get her back to sleep. Then she woke up at 3:30 am and cried for about half and hour and then decide she wanted to be awake. It was 5am before she got back to sleep again. She woke up briefly about 3 times before Anne (and more importantly, her breasts) was home at 8am. We sleep until about 10am and them Maya decided to wake up fully and start to play. So I dragged myself up and got Maya and I breakfast and then went to Owen Sound to do some shopping.
She was better Sunday and Monday nights, as she only woke up every 2 or so hours for a few minutes at a time. But I think that's becase I gave her Tylenol before bed. She also won't go back to sleep unless I let her sleep on my chest and I can only move her once she is sleeping deeply. Needless to say I spend most of the night asleep with her on my chest.
Overall I think she is getting better and after a couple of more weekends of nights she will be fine.

Apparently people actually fall for those things.

You know those ads you see on the internet all the time says things like "your IP is being broadcast" and "You computer has been scanned and is running too slow" and things of that nature.
Well today I was having coffee with one of the Vice Presidents in the hospital and he mentioned how he had gotten a warning that he had spyware on his computer. My mind sees the "You computer is infected with Spyware" fake windows warning message ad that you see on some sites, so I laugh and say "Haha, ya thats such a scam and bad advertising".
HE says "Well I downloaded the Spyware scanning it linked me to and it found spyware on my computer".
I am aghast at this point and just staring at him. I had never met anyone who actually fell for that before.
He continued "And after it scanned it said it couldn't remove it unless I bought it, so I did"
My jaw literally dropped. If he fell for it, how many other people have? My faith in humanity remains very low.
So I'm like, "well as long as you are happy with your purchase I guess. I just always assume those ads where scams", and smiled weakly. I did mention about AdAware and how it was free, but he seemed pretty happy with his spyware scanner that almost certainly is spyware itself. But I guess people can do what they want with their computers and pay me later to fix them :) .

A hard nights sleep

So on Monday night Anne worked her first night shift since Maya was born. The reason this is a big deal is that Maya sleeps in the bed with us and is breastfed during the night. So you can see that not having Anne in the bed when she expects a nipple in her mouth might pose a problem (and possibly a night time surprise for me).
I booked Tuesday off.
The night didn't actually go too bad, it could have been better but could have been much worse. She went to sleep at about 11:30pm for me and didn't' wake up until 1:37am when I got into bed (despite the great pains I went to not wake her). The hysterics only lasted about half-an-hour and she fell asleep again. This time she slept until about 6am which was better than I thought she would do. After that it was just a few minutes at a time to get her back to sleep. She would only fall asleep on top of my chest so I wasn't terribly comfortable but it was a small price to pay really.
Anne also got home from work late (8:30am rather than the usually 7:40ish) which didn't really help but we did get about 1 hour of sleep after that.
When Maya woke up (her happy "its time to get up" wake up) I got up and fed her and we when shopping in Owen Sound while Anne got some sleep.
Unfortuntely it was only one night shift so Maya really didn't' have the opportunity to get used to Anne not being there. She has a weekend coming up soon where works 3 nights in a row which should be easier by the third night as (hopefully) Maya will be a bit more used to it then.
We will see I guess.

Rally of the Tall Pines 2004

Another year, another great rally.
Ian and I went to Bancroft for the rally last Saturday and had a great time. It would have been nice to have more open class cars and have less of the ones that were there to go out in the first half of the day, but thats what makes rallying interesting I guess.
This year we had a different spectating area than last year as the bridge that they usually go over was out last year and redone over the summer. We had a good viewing area that had the cars coming toward us at about 120km/h turning a hard right (their right) then going up about a 500m straight into a hard left. They did that twice and came from the other direction on the third pass. This was over about a 6 hour period.
They then did 2 passes at night at a different location. I think watching the cars a night is the best as they seem to be moving faster and the huge lights on them do add an extra bit of show. There were no mishapsthis year but there were some close calls.
The weather of the day was pretty cooperative except for some rain for a couple hours in the afternoon. We were a little more prepared for it this year though and fell warm.
Overall it was a success and we had a great time. Hopefully next year we can get a few more people to go. We are probably going to go to one more rally in New York in the fall next year as well.

Half Life 2

The biggest PC game of the year, Half Life 2, came out 3AM EST on Tuesday. I had purchased the game via the STEAM network offered by the company that made the game, Valve.
So far the game is definitely one the best PC games I have every played. Its extremely fun, immersive, and graphically stunning. If you want to play it you need a half-decent computer though.

Hockey Afternoon in Rural Ontario

Tomorrow I have my first hockey tournament of the winter. Its just four teams including us (a couple that were droped out earlier) so we are just going to play 3 games and the best team wins. Then we have our regular saturday night game after that. It should be lots of fun.
I am still really pumped about next weekend though. 58 cars are registered for the rally and all the top Canadian drivers are there.

BRAP brap bang BANG VVVRROOOOMMMM

So on the 20th is Rally of the Tall Pines.
This is just an open invitation to anyone that might like to join Ian and I (and Chris?) on a trip to Bancroft. Yes it will be cold and yes there are long waits for the cars, but its VERY much worth it.
This year we will have a video camera as well as my digital camera so there will be lots of clips and pics afterwards.

And the Results are in!

And I was worryed about who would win the election! Thank goodness the good guys won!

Those damn Decepticons are gonna get it good now!

She's too much like her parents...

For the last week or so, Maya has not been tired enough to go to bed until after midnight. She hasn't been having extra naps or getting up particualrly late or anything, but she just doesn't seem tired late at night.
When you try and put her to bed she just sits up and wants to play and is very happy. Its not really that big of a deal but it means that Anne and I really get no alone time which can be rather frustating and makes us snarky.

Hopefully she can get back on track this weekend?

Seriously, it was THAT bad.

So I was working on a problem at someone's desk today and they were away today. This particular person has chronic bad breath. REALLY bad breath.
I had to use their phone and the smell of on the phone was so bad that I could barely hold it close enough to my mouth to use it. I am dead serious too.

Day off

Since the month I took off was parental leave and not vacation, I actually still have 2 and a half weeks I need to take off before the end of the year. I took today off but it doesn't count either as I am just using extra time I have built up with after-hours work. I am very glad to have it off as work has been crazy lately and its nice to be able to be at home and hang out with Maya.
I also have been doing a ton of computer work for people at home. I have had 2 new computers to build and install as well as 3 or 4 one to repair on the go.
Add that up with my purchase of the Half-life 2: Silver package with has got me Counter Strike: Source until HL2 is released and I haven't had a lot of time for stuff.

Heh, right now Maya is dancing to the music I am listening to, its really cute.

The end of an era...

So this week Anne and I got rid of our TV.
We used to have a crappy one but when my brother went into the army we borrowed his and gave away our old one (which we got for free). But since my brother quit the army he wanted his back, so now we don't have a TV anymore.
We are perfectly okay with this as we don't really watch any TV anyway and all the shows we do follow we download and watch on the computer anyway. So here is the plan.
When Anne goes back to work we are going to get a new 22" monitor (from here) to facilitate the computer watching (this will have a nice side affect on my gaming). And in a few years, we are going to get one of the HDTV's that you can hang on the wall.
We are both pleased with this arrangement and it does tidy up the living room a bit. One side affect may be that I will have to build a second computer for Anne so she can watch her shows while I do something else. But we will see I guess.

Julie is Cool

This is my friend Julies blog. She is really cool and practices attachment parenting and has four kids and two of those are twins and she is really thrifty and has a hairless cat that I covet and cloth diapers and is half way crunchy like me and I really like her and wished she lived in Hanover. Sometimes I stalk her to see what she says on MDC but that's ok cause she isn't supposed to know about that but I let it slip all the time- opps.

Computer Upgrade

One thing is new that I forgot. On friday I upgraded by system to an Asus K8N-E Deluxe Motherboard and an Athlon64 3000+ chip. Its not really a great speed upgrade to what I had but it will overclock well. To assist with that I have this Thermalright XP-120 heatsink coming this week and I need new RAM. The heatsink is my price for a computer I am building someone and the RAM I will have to swing a deal somehow with Nathan or something.
I am pretty pleased with the new hardware but I did have to reinstall Windows from scratch to get it to work. Its going to take a bit of work as well to figure out how well its going to OC too. But thats more than half the fun to me :) (yes I am a huge nerd thank you)
The upgrades I have planned (depending on how much comptuer work I do for people) are a new 22" monitor, 2 SATA HD's (in RAID 0), and a new Videocard (ATI Radeon whatever-is-the-newest).
Our current system specs are:

• Athlon64 3000+ (2.0 Ghz)
• Asus k8N-E Deluxe
• Radeon 9700 Pro
• 240 GB Total Hard drive space (80% full, its the Anime and 6 Feet Under downloads!)
• 1 GB Ram
• Audigy 2
  

Nothing really new going on right now. It looks like the fall has arrived.
I played hockey last night again and it was fun. Some cousins and may sister were playing too, and surprisingly well.
I picked up Anne at the airport Wednesday night last week which was uneventful. I did miss them both a lot while they were gone, Maya took a couple of minutes to relize who I was I think.
Other than that there really is nothing really fun or interesting to report...