October 2004 Archives
I once read an article about how toddlers and young kids were the most violent people on earth. Luckily they are small enough that they don't do much damage, and hopefully, they learn that this is not an effective communication method. (Of course some people never do learn this, and end up having what we parents call a "time out" but what judges refer to as "five to ten".)
Anyway, Campbell's teacher mentioned that he has been having some issues with hitting other kids at school, which she said is actually quite normal as they get frustrated that they can't communicate and tend to get physical. He's not the only one, but that doesn't make it any less disturbing. And at the playground the other day with a friend he really slapped her hard over something. Naturally we are taking swift and decisive action -- removal from scene immediately (ideally without stopping the others from continuing their play so the message is clear that hitting changes nothing except for him being removed) -- but for Carol especially she feels really embarrassed in front of the other parents. One in particular now seems to view Campbell as a dangerous offender, although for the most part they are totally understanding having been there at one point themselves.
So at school today, a little boy came up to me when I was with Campbell and said "Lui tapper" which is kind of dodgy French for "He hits." Sigh.
Oh God that is a painfully bad title. Let me say sorry now. But it's a dark cloudy day and I'm in SAD mode I think.
Anyway, the point is only that Carol's fall and winter Kid Brother line launched online yesterday, which was a relief for her web designer anyway. Our friend Doug Shimizu (who has his own design company but is now branching out into photography) did the fall photos with his awsome professional digital camera hooked up directly to a titanium G4. Nice.
I also notice that Kid Brother been creeping up the Google rankings on "Kid Brother" searches now, in a weird way. Recently it started showing up as the Sympatico default link (that is, the URL that points to our Sympatio personal webspace rather than the site name), which is weird, because it used to show up as the name properly. I think this is because now it finds the actual website rather than the redirect through EasyDNS. Or maybe it's parsing EasyDNS's redirect frame? Ah well, better than nothing I guess, as she didn't used to show up at all. What a mysterious world Google is. Search Engine Optimization is the new snake oil.
As some are aware, I had a namesake in the musician best known for his contributions to the Good Will Hunting soundtrack. Naturally, this makes me unfindable on Google, as there have always been hundreds of references to him and none to me. (Why this is completely wrong and not at reflective of my enormous contribution to the world is the subject of a different post). However, the other Elliott, who had been battling depresssion and various addictions for some time, tragically killed himself this year.
One odd little consequence of this is that the URL elliottsmith.ca has come available. A few years ago when I was setting up my portfolio site, it was a bought domain but not active. I assumed that it had been bought by a squatter hoping to cash in on the singer's ascension into stardom, or maybe even just another guy named Elliott Smith. There's something kind of ghoulish about it, that someone would buy the domain, then just drop it when Smith died. Anyway, I just bought it -- no one knows my middle initial and I'd be happy to let the elliottcsmith one go -- but now I also feel a bit ghoulish, like I'm moving into a house where someone died. Perhaps it'll feel better after a coat of paint and a new fridge?
Carol went to a friend's wedding in Scotland last weekend, five days away, and I was single Dad for awhile. It was mostly pretty good, and not that hard insofar as I hang out with the boys a lot on the weekends anyway -- and bathe them most evenings. There is an interesting "familarity breeds contemp" aspect to it all though, in that they start to disregard you after a bit. There's a lot to be said for switching up caregiving between parents, seems to keep them on their toes a little more... childcare is allllllll about strategy, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
But Tuesday morning, getting a two year old and a four year old out of bed, fed, clothed and (in Campbell's case) out the door in time for school was brutal! I really have a new appreciation for the single working parent. As it happened, I had to be at work for a 9am meeting too, so it was a dash from the moment I woke up until I got home. Man, I was stressed. It also gives me a new appreciation for why a good marriage is worth hanging on to. Imagine that and worrying about custody and visitation and alimony... it'd be enough to drive you to drink.
Hm. I seem to have got to the latter part without the divorce. Good for me.
We just got a new modem in the mail for our Sympatico hi-speed, unasked for, uncharged for. Apparently they're upgrading the system and the whole thing is way faster. Hooray! I was awestruck, (and deeply suspicious) that they were doing this for free, waiting for the notice saying in order to have it work properly I needed to upgrade to MSN Premium -- but I guess this is the world of competition. Got to stay ahead of Rogers. So I say, bring it on.
On the other hand, the personal webspaces that both Carol and I have for our sites on have been down for about a week now. I called Customer Service about it, and went through about 15 minutes of questions about my system etc, before he thought to actually see if the network was down. And apparently it is. I was thinking of just moving us over to a proper hosting service, but it kind of irks me that if we're paying Sympatico this dough on a monthly basis, 5 Mb of server space that works isn't too much to ask.
For the second time in a week, I've come out of our garage in the alley to find a big pile of garbage beside the garage and across the way in front of the neighbour's door. Stuff like old broken chairs, broken fan, unidentifiable crap etc., like someone has been emptying out the boot room in the back of the house they just bought from an old man or something. The first set I tossed into a bin down the alley where they are gutting an old house (I had a suspicion that's where it was coming from), but this backfired insofar as the little rodents who are doing this likely figured "Oh good, someone will clean it up, let's dump more." And this morning there was an old tire, a bunch of kitchen cupboard doors, more chairs, boxes and bags of old clothes and some magazines. This time I just called the city. The woman was very nice, and said they'd send someone. When I mentioned that I was amazed that this was happening, she laughed and said, "Oh you don't know that half of it. You'd be astonished at what people just dump in public areas, mostly because they don't want to pay to take it to a transfer station and figure someone else will do it."
I think I take this stuff too seriously, but it makes me really pessamistic about the human race. There is a percentage of people who really just have no interest in the concept of community at all, and while this is just a minor annoyance, I start thinking that in any real crisis situation these personalities are the ones who just start stealing and looting or whatever. It's not hard to see how this view of the world -- "I have no interest in any greater well-being, I am only interested in satisfying my own short term needs and make no apologies for it" -- is exactly the reason that it's so hard to generate real change in environmental practice. Or at its most extreme, why in places like Bosnia, when things turned dire, people started killing their neighbours or having them killed, then taking their stuff. Why not? There didn't appear to be any consequences for it so hey, go for it.
Did I mention I take this too seriously? It's just some crap in the alley. Now, where did I put that Paxil?
