It appears my two and a half year old son has picked up one of my more annoying childhood habits, putting his own cute yet disgusting spin on it. When I was a kid, I felt compelled to duplicate anything that I’d seen get a laugh on TV (If I could only have back the time I’d wasted pretending I was Mork from Ork), and it appears that he’s following in my footsteps in this regard.

Although this will be his third Christmas, it’s the first time he’s noticing patterns and sensing that we’re building up to something pretty big. To help set the mood, we’ve been using our personal video recorder (PVR) to record some of the shows they’ve already been showing for at least a week on network TV. Among these have been some of the classics, such as Dr. Suess’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the original with Boris Karloff, of course) and A Charlie Brown Christmas (with its lovely soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi). Read the rest of this entry »

Are you like me? Do you want to appear to be intelligent and eloquent in your written communications without having to put any real effort into it? Have you spent so much time in chat rooms and discussion boards you don’t know how to properly key in such phrases as “as far as I know” and “in my honest opinion” anymore? Well, if that’s the case, maybe this article can help you out. I’m going to show you how to customize Microsoft Office to make typing much easier so that you appear to be writing in a very formal manner  when, in actuality, you’re taking dozens of shortcuts that make your life easier and take a load off your fingers and your mind.

To really geek-out Office in this regard, you need to access the Auto-Correct Options. I usually do this through Outlook, Office’s email management application. You can find this under the Tools menu. Select Options, and from the Options menu click on the Spelling tab, click on the Spelling and AutoCorrection button, and then click on the AutoCorrect Options button. Convoluted? Yes, but now you’re where all the fun starts. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning I stumbled across this odd article about a high-end Chilean escort willing to do whatever it takes to help less fortunate kids. She’s decided to donate 27 hours worth of her services (apparently in one marathon stretch), which equates to about $5,400, according to this related article, with all proceeds going to a charity that helps Santiago’s disadvantaged and disabled children. Read the rest of this entry »

So I was reading this blog over at ProBlogger the other day when point 5 really resonated with me:

“Break with tradition: A great idea-sparking suggestion from Seth Godin is to ‘do the never‘ — in other words, to work out what your niche always seems to do, and then do the opposite.”

If everybody else does it the same way, you’re better off doing it differently, and my mom always did say I marched to the sound of a different drummer (seriously, she said it all the time - still does to this day - quite annoying, really). Read the rest of this entry »

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As I was blogging last night, my wife was watching the latest episode of Desperate Housewives on TV. Well, you could’ve knocked me over with a feather when the Martha Stewart wannabe character announced she wanted to adopt the concept of the Family Bed while raising her illegitimate child as her own.

As messed up as that may sound, I guess anything that helps get the word out about attachment parenting can’t be a bad thing, even if the same character also made a big deal out of circumcising the kid because just she didn’t want his willy to look funny.

I’m always genuinely surprised when I see the concepts that shaped the way my wife and I decided to raise our children being referenced in mainstream media. For anyone else interested in co-sleeping with their infants, you might also want to check out Three in a Bed. As the pizzeria guy said on the show, you just have to get creative. ;) Read the rest of this entry »

For last night’s family movie, my wife picked the Pixar classic Monster’s Inc. I guess it’s been a while since I’ve seen the film (which I’ve watched with my daughter dozens of times), because I totally forgot that Nemo makes a cameo in this film even before he shows up in his own film. Monsters Inc. came out in 2002, whereas Finding Nemo didn’t come out until 2003.

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So, the betta’s been in the community tank for about a week now, and things are going, for lack of a better word, swimmingly.

For starters, being in heated, filtered water seems to be doing wonders for his constitution. His colour is coming up like never before, and he’s actually swimming faster and longer than I’ve ever seen him swim before. To be honest, he used to sit lifeless on the bottom of his bowl for so long I used to start rehearsing how I’d explain to my daughter what fish heaven was all about. Read the rest of this entry »

Shameless plug time …

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Download Impulssive

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Ableton Live’s Impulse drum unit: I love the versatility regarding control of every sample, but I hate being limited to only 8 samples. Read the rest of this entry »