HerdingChaos

We have had some server problems. They are still around and we plan to swap out some hardware soon. Trying to fix the hardware problems has taken most of my free "computer" time. So I have not had a chance to post a few things. They are queuing up and I plan to catchup soon.

Check out google code. Three really good projects open and licensed under BSD. Hopefully they will add more as time goes on.

I added a cool weather gizmo to the bottom of the sidebar. I put that in there for you Becky. So you would feel warm when you look outside and see all the snow.

A student photographer is using Loren for a school project. She has been turning out some really great photos.

I have an update on the way to talk about the weekend at the rodeo with the family, but I have to pack for a trip right now so you are going to have to wait. All 1 of you.

Today we took the kids down to Zilker park for the Zilker Kite Festival. We sat around in the great weather and watched people fly kites. It was simple fun. And we needed the break after the adventure getting there.

Normally it would take about 20 minutes to get to Zilker from our house. We did not need to be there at any particular time but decided to leave the house around noon. Noon was also the time that the other million people going to Zilker decided to head out. We drove down to the west side of the park and saw the line of cars. We doubled back and headed to 17th street and the free shuttle bus to and from the park. Well, the line of cars to get into the parking garage was short. But the line of people waiting for a bus?

Oh

My

God.

(more…)

The default header image for this theme did not fit with the title or subject or anything on this blog. It looked nice, but I wanted something that fit more with the subject matter or at least the title of the blog.

I googled around for large images of chaos. I did not find anything I liked. I switched the search term to fractal. Wow. There are some really cool fractal pictures out there. I spent way too long just paging through all the fractals. Then I found phidelity.com. You need to go by and check out this site. I really love the layout and the content. Best of all, it is running open source and everything is covered under creative commons.

I have always been a fan open source and free software. I have committed code to quite a few GPL programs and I always love giving something back. I wish I was as talented an artist as Kris over Phidelity. Check out the sand circles!! Way too cool.

I downloaded the dripples 6 fractal from the picture gallery and modified it a bit. It is now the niffty new header image for the blog. I swear the bathroom looks just like that picture after trying to clean the kids in the bathtub. Well, not exactly… there is more toothpaste and shampoo and just a little more chaos.

Andrew asked Becky if he could open his cat bank (what we would normally call a piggy bank, but its a cat) and count the money inside. The cat bank was given to him by my Aunt and Uncle for Christmas two years ago. Since the bank has a plastic plug on the bottom, pulling all the money out and then click and clanking it back into the bank is something he enjoys.

This time was a little different. Andrew started asking detailed questions about how much each coin was worth. Becky explained it all to him. She suggested he start by stacking the quarters into little stacks of four. As Andrew was starting his task of stacking all the quarters he explained the reason for the accounting to Becky.

Andrew stated that he remembers Mom and Dad and him and Tracy all going to Sam’s club to look around. Tracy saw this really cool princess dollhouse and asked for it. Mom and Dad told her that she could not have it and that it cost too much money anyway. Andrew had been thinking about it, and he was pretty sure that he had enough money in his cat bank to buy the dollhouse for Tracy and he wanted to count to make sure.

I am pretty sure that the cat bank is going to be short, but I think Andrew’s heart is going to make up for the difference.

We are getting new carpet. You have to understand that we intended on getting new carpet shortly after we moved into this house. That was over 5 years ago. This carpet already needed to be replaced and has now seen two cats, a dog and one growing to three kids over the past five years.

Getting the carpet has been a series of failed missions until now. Usually I shop in the "mission" mode. I pick out an objective. Then plan the mission. Then go in; get it; get out.

So far the carpet missions have been more like:

• go in
• look at things for about 2 minutes
• chase children playing in the paint stripper
• start looking for 1 minute
• chase children away from the toilet displays (bad things could have happened there)
• look for another 3 minutes
• chase the children outside into the car
• give up and take them to McDonald’s while we sit around and try to figure out where the mission when wrong

This Saturday we were able to complete a successful mission.

The day started with a trip into the city for a music and magic show. The kids really had a great time. They sold these HUGE balloons as part of the fund raising efforts. Andrew wanted one of the large red balloons. I had to hook up a 10oz bottle of water that and fill it to ballast the balloon so it would not float up in the gym. However when we were walking to the car I made the mistake of setting the balloons down. An updraft of wind caught it and it started to float away. We were lucky, the wind died down and the balloon slowly floated back down (glad I filled the water bottle all the way up!). Of course it took a while to float back down and I went off a chased it. A tall geeky dad chasing this gigantic balloon was not lost on the crowd. I got quite a few smiles and my kids were giggling the entire time.

That balloon did not fit in the back of the wagon. I had to squeeze it very carefully to get it to fit and not pop. It was very elliptical by the time I could close the gate door.

Then the whole family went to EZ’s for lunch.

The night before, my parents called and asked if we wanted some time to ourselves. They offered to take the kids for a few hours and spoil and pamper them like only grandparents can.

So when given the choice:

• romantic dinner
• a walk through the park holding hands and talking about things that adults talk about that does not include talking about the children
• sleep
• stopping by to see some friends and hang out
• go shopping for carpet and accomplish a five year old mission and put a string of horrid failures behind us

I am sure you would have made the same choice given the opportunity. No really, in less than three weeks this house will be full of new carpet. I have the rest of my life to lay on that carpet and plan romantic dinners and walks through the park!

I have been looking at all the themes available for wordpress and trying to decide on one. I picked this one. I hope you like it (listen to me go on about someone else liking it… I have a readership of one, and that includes me:P ). I think I will eventually learn more about css and php and work on making one all my own. But for now I really like the work that has been done at wpthemes.info.

I also just turned on the permalinks feature on wordpress. Click on the title of a post to see the results. The URL’s for the post used to just be a post ID going into a script. I like the permalinks much more.