Lisa was in Rite Aid today. Lisa decided to buy Emily a treat, so Lisa told Emily, "Give it to the lady so we can pay." Emily handed it the cashier and said "Here lady!"
Emily said, "Make me a bundle of trouble, Honey." What a nut.
This merits a little explanation. We will wrap Emily up in a blanket to make her "a little bundle." After Emily figured out that she really, really liked this, she would keep requesting to be a "bundle". One time after I wrapped her up, I asked her, "Emily, are you a bundle?" She said "Yeah." I said, "A bundle of trouble!" and she just laughed. However, the "bundle of trouble" stuck.
Even more parsing.... I call Lisa "Honey," so naturally, Emily started calling Lisa "Honey" too. Sometimes she calls Lisa "Mommy" and sometimes "Honey." It's pretty funny.
So once again, "Make me a bundle of trouble, Honey!"
"Trains don't eat, but they do choo." Ouch. Who comes up with this stuff? Fire the writers for Sesame Street!
That's right, my beta fish, Phineas II (affectionately know as "Foo"), died sometime yesterday. I presume it was peaceful, but the pleco hasn't left much behind for forensic analysis. Foo wasn't doing very well for the last week. He was sitting on the ground and the fake plants almost all the time--even during feeding time. Poor Foo.
I got Phineas II at PetSmart October 2003--a couple months after moving to Corvallis for grad school. I had to leave a very aging Phineas behind (in good care) in Azusa when I moved. "Finny" died a couple weeks later. I'd like to believe it was from a broken heart. ;-)
In the grand tradition of extending the painful programming metaphor, I will probably name my next beta "Bar." That's right, the successor to "Foo."
Back in 2003, James Janssen tried to get me hooked on wikis--or at least he would continually share his unbounded enthusiasm for wikis. Now, in 2005, I'm a self-professed wiki junky. Graduate research did what James couldn't: give me a reason to need a wiki.
I'm using MediaWiki to keep track of information pertaining to my research. The wiki is indispensable. I'm particularly fond of being able to maintain loosely organized blurbs of information with very little effort. Previously, I kept notes in text files on my hard drive, but I'm finding that much less effective than dumping everything in my wiki.
However, I still have a need to keep some notes on my computer and not online. For this, I discovered tomboy. Think of tomboy as a hybrid of post-it notes and a wiki--or even just a personal wiki for your desktop. I'm finding it useful for lists of things (todo, blog ideas, little inspirations, etc.) It's a little irritating that tomboy doesn't get reloaded automatically across gnome sessions, but I'm sure that bugfix is just a matter of time. (Gentoo folks: It's in portage, so just "emerge tomboy".)
Here's to you and your wiki.
I'm always impressed by what I can find in Wikipedia and how helpful it usually is. When I want to understand a concept in computer science or higher math, Wikipedia is the first place I look, but I'm discovering the content is very, very diverse.
For example, I'm doing research that involves American football. I know basically nothing about American football other than how to keep score and who has possession of the ball. I was looking all over (via Google) to find a good overview of some of the finer details of the game. Finally after much frustration, I decided to check out Wikipedia. Volia! Wikipedia has a great article about the fundamentals including links to lots of other wiki pages for even more detail (of course.)
Now, if I can only interface Wikipedia with my brain, I'll be set.
For some reason Emily has taken to swearing lately. No, it's not the cursing like a sailor variety, but it sounds like swearing none the less: Elmo! That's right. Elmo! When she's startled, she shouts "Elmo!" When she falls down and gets hurt, "Elmo!" When I chased the cat out of her room while making loud noises, "Elmo!"
How did this all get started? One can only wonder. How long will it last? It's been a few weeks and still going strong. Who knows what goes on in the mind of a 2 year-old?
Joey Lawrance, Mike Miller, and I went to OSCON this past Wednesday and Thursday. It was a blast. We decided to go since it was nearby (in Portland) and free (exhibit hall only.) Even without the keynotes and workshops it was still a blast. The best part about the conference was that we talked one-on-one with many developers and advocates in the open source community.
OSCON was different than other conferences I've been to (eg. JavaOne, E3). Instead of having some marketing/PR person give you a slick talk about how wonderful their product is, many of the people manning the booths were volunteers, developers, or the company founders. Everyone was excited just to tell you how cool their project is. The most excited people were the ones not selling anything--they simply wanted to know about their project so you could go and download it. It was great.
Of course, no conference is complete with out swag. And boy did I get some cool swag. At the top of the list, I got a free Perl shirt which I had autographed by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Damian Conway, Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, and Brian D Foy. It was awsome to meet them and get their autographs! Since I was wearing my JavaOne backpack, the Sun rep just up and gave me a wireless network finder and a retractable network cable. Very cool! I also got a great shirt from No Starch Press and had a great talk with the founder. (Look for a future review of "Silence on the Wire." I'm reading it right now.) I bought a PostgreSQL pin and put it on my backpack. I have a Gentoo sticker on my notebook. I have a mini swiss army knife from the Perl folks. And I have more swag I won't bother mentioning. I'm all decked out.
Wednesday night was a blast. Patrick Mochel had a BBQ at his house in place of the regular kernel hackers meeting. Greg K-H invited Joey, Mike, and myself to come along. (We know Greg from his visits to the OSULUG.) It was a mix of a few kernel hackers and a lot of their friends. It was funny when I mentioned Linux and one of the friends rolled his eyes and walked off because it was the last thing he wanted to hear about (not being a hacker himself.) In the end, I spent most of the evening talking to Jeff Waugh (the Gnome release manager) about Gnome, life in Australia, and Ubuntu (yes, he works for Canonical.) Jeff was a blast to talk to, and it was fascinating to hear his story about how he got involved in the Gnome community (hint: it wasn't because he was an awsome programmer.)
All-in-all, I expect an OSCON repeat next year. I can hardly wait!