Thursday 31 August 2006

This week's most ...

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Tuesday 29 August 2006

Pinch me, I must be dreaming!

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Allergic Living

I stumbled across this the other day. It looked interesting and informative. And if I read correctly, it's Canadian to boot! Thought I'd give it a plug.

They bill themselves as:
"the magazine and website for people dealing with serious food and environmental allergies and asthma."

http://www.allergicliving.com/




Monday 28 August 2006

Sunday 27 August 2006

Saturday 26 August 2006

Words of wisdom

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Friday 25 August 2006

Friday Fun!

Puppetry like you've never seen before!
http://machomedia.blogspot.com/2006/06/little-girl-giant.html
The little girl giant
woke up one morning
got a shower from
the Sultan's Elephant,
and wandered off to
play in the park...

[Warning: Sound]




Thursday 24 August 2006

This week's most ...

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Wednesday 23 August 2006

Tuesday 22 August 2006

Monday 21 August 2006

Shopping carts and injuries

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Sunday 20 August 2006

Friday 18 August 2006

Friday Fun!

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Thursday 17 August 2006

This week's most ...

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Wednesday 16 August 2006

Tuesday 15 August 2006

Tech Notes: web hosting and domain names

Recently, I was helping a friend makeover their website. In the process, they also needed web-hosting. There was only one requirement: that their money go to a Canadian company.

I thought I'd share some of my research and findings, in case any of you out there are in the market too. (And this give me a chance to document things on the off-chance I ever need it again!)




monthly webhosting as low as(*) domain registration available(+) domain privacy available(%)
canaca.com $3.95 no no
blacksun.ca $10.00 yes yes
stormweb.ca $2.99 yes yes
dotcanada-costco.com $99.00 per year yes unknown
selectMyDomain.com
(a division of StormWeb)
no yes yes




* the "as low as" packages typically require you to commit for a year or more at a time
+ typically, .ca domain names cost almost twice as much as .com domains. I've seen them "on special" as low as ~$10 for a year and as high as $40
NOTE: watch out if your purchasing a secondary domain that you wish to point to an existing domain... often obtaining the domain is inexpensive, but they fleece you when you decide you want to actually have the domain point to something
% as of this post, it is not possible to hide your personal information from the whois database if you've got a .ca domain (although I hear that's coming in the near future)



Lessons learned:
  • for privacy to be enabled on your domain name (so that people can't whois your phone number and address) you often have to contact tech support separately as the information isn't always apparent on the sign-up forms
  • check to find out what happens if you exceed your monthly bandwidth (network traffic). Do they charge you more or shut your site down?
  • find out what other services or widgets they offer that may or may not appeal to you
  • investigate claims or guarantees about service availability
  • if pre-sales support is shoddy, don't expect anything better after you buy
  • investigate tech support hours of availability
  • sometimes smaller organizations provide better support than the larger, well established ones
  • sometimes they don't




Monday 14 August 2006

You're On Notice!

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Sunday 13 August 2006

Friday 11 August 2006

Friday Fun!

Practical Math:
A Backhoe weighing 8 tons is on top of a flatbed trailer and heading east on Interstate 70 near Hays, Kansas. The extended shovel arm is made of hardened refined steel and the approaching overpass is made of commercial-grade concrete, reinforced with 1 1/2 inch steel rebar spaced at 6 inch intervals in a criss-cross pattern layered at 1 foot vertical spacing.

Solve: When the shovel arm hits the overpass, how fast do you have to be going to slice the bridge in half? (Assume no effect for headwind and no braking by the driver...)

Demonstrative solution.




Thursday 10 August 2006

This week's most ...

... wonderful linguistic accomplishment:

Spontaneous speech has been a long time coming for weeMiche. She's been able to repeat words with clarity for over half a year.

"Say Dada, weeMiche."

"Da-dah!"

But she had chosen not to use those words. Chosen not to refer to Mr. Miche or me with any label.

About a month ago she started to point to us and use the appropriate labels. But only to a third person. (As in, my Daddy's over there.)

Last night, weeMiche marched up to Mr. Miche, said "Da-dah" and proceeded to inform him of a task with which she'd like him to assist.

Brilliant!


Wednesday 9 August 2006

I could care less.

This isn't going to be a post about how much it drives me crazy when people use the phrase "I could care less" when they really mean that they couldn't care less. I really mean what the title says -- I could care less.

I care a lot. About everything. I was known in my place of employment as someone who had extraordinary attention to detail. I excelled at managing projects. Not because I was a good project manager, mind you. But because I cared so much about my work that I often picked-up the slack of others so things would some together in the end.

I worry too. Because I care. When tragedy befalls a friend, I try to find ways to help. And if I can't actually contribute something beneficial, I will often spend of a lot of mental energy brooding about the situation.

Let's not forget the time spend wondering if I offended the cashier at the grocery store. Or technical support on the telephone. Or the hours feeling put out because of an ill-thought out comment made by a complete stranger. Why do I care about what these people think? Why do I spend my energy on people who have likely completely forgotten about our little insignificant interaction through the day?

This takes a lot of energy.

Don't get me wrong. Caring is a good thing. It helps to make me a good friend, daughter, wife and mother. It's the glue that holds the human race together despite mankind's determination to do otherwise. But you can't care 100% about 100% of the things in your life. At least, I can't.

Not only could I care less, I should care less. Even if only as a matter of self-survival.

Tuesday 8 August 2006

One whole day.

Mr. Miche noticed that I've been looking exhausted of late. He kindly offered up child-care for One Whole Day so that I could recharge.

What to do? What to do? One. Whole. Day. I could do anything I wanted! Spa time? (Try getting that last minute on a long weekend.) Personal pursuit time? (Like I can find any of my personal pursuits under all this clutter.) I could tend to my garden! (Did I mention recently about my stupid ankle?) It was looking like I might spend the day actually catching up on some much needed rest!! Woo hoo!

So. What did I do, you ask with envy?

I spent the day painting my parents' porch railing. Yep. That's right. I could get the whole thing done in one day or take 5 evenings to do it. I really need to protect my evening wind-down time. And it's done. And for One Whole Day I didn't have to plan, make or clean-up meals!

After dinner, the familyMiche went out for ice cream and playground time.

I didn't get the physical rest my body could probably have used, but the mental break sure felt good.

Monday 7 August 2006

The Art of Medicine

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Saturday 5 August 2006

Last Vaccination

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Friday 4 August 2006

Friday Fun!

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Thursday 3 August 2006

This week's most ...

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Wednesday 2 August 2006

How do you do it?

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