Goodnight

The Man is in the Navy Reserves, which means at least once a year he takes a trip to do training. When he does he’ll be gone for at least two weeks and the Kiddo really misses him. The day before the Man leaves we all go into the Kiddo’s room and look at his calendar, we take a crayon and circle the day the Man will be back home, and the Kiddo crosses off the days as they pass.

Generally we have a couple sleep overs where the Kiddo brings his stuffies and spends the night in my room. He’s always been something of a night owl so we talk and sing lullabies until he’s wound down enough to go to finally sleep. It’s fun for me to see the things he does to entertain himself when the lights are out, hand puppets and having his stuffies talk to each other.

(the flash was so bright he squinched his eyes as I took the picture, he was having a conversation with his giraffe about how it’s okay to be afraid of the dark).

This most recent trip we decided to try something new, Skype chat. We weren’t sure how it would work, the Kiddo loves to video chat but the Mans computer doesn’t have very good sound so they end up doing video with typing instead of speaking.

I can only say that it’s incredibly surreal watching my 5 year old boy having a typing conversation back and forth on a computer. He takes awhile to hunt and peck, and his spelling is awful (I help, spelling the words out loud for him, when he lets me) but he's talking with his Daddy and he loves it.

Slate

This one is for the Man, and my dad. I had a lengthy conversation with my dad about the ipad while visiting last week. We were discussing who it was for (what market group) and who would actually USE it, vs the people who would buy it just because it's a neat looking gadget. Then last night I had almost the same conversation with the Man, except with him I also was able to mention that HP is going to be coming out with something similar. Though it does seem like nobody knows the actual "real" specs on it.

I for one hope that it's as good as they say. I like the idea of a very light laptop to use for my everyday purposes. Mine (as my dad knows now *chuckle*) weighs at least 8 lbs. It's an old model HP, does the job and has a nice big screen BUT it's a portable desktop (I think that's what my dad called it) and not really made for transporting around.

Watch the linked utube video ad (I appologize for the size issue, I can't figure out how to shrink an imbeded utube video so if it bugs you to watch follow it to utube and watch it there). After that follow the link and read about the HP Slate. Then tell me what you think. The only thing that I read that I wasn't sure on was the lower battery life... Though if I had one I'd be using it at home 90% of the time and I'm more then used to being plugged in to use a computer. It has the sd card slot on the side, usb jack,.. I love the camera, and more I LOVE the video camera (skype video phone conversations for the kiddo with aunties and uncles anyone?).

Computer bugs..

I know most of you guys have heard about the Conficker virus and I really don't have anything to say about it... I mean computer stuff is a little above my head. Still I worry that I might have it or what it might do if I do have it.

Recently I came across an link for an easy online test to do to see if your computer has the Conficker bug. I ran it and it says I don't have it. (Imagine me doing a happy little dance).

On the off chance that any of you all have not seen this little Conficker Eye Chart I'm posting the link. Read the article on the how the eye chart works and then follow the link inside the article to test your computer. Quick and easy.

computer illiterate

I'm trying very hard to get a visitor # tracker onto my page. It's giving me a migrane. I know there are several people that come by and try to stay caught up but :( I don't know how many or who because I can't track it yet!!

I'll get it fixed soon hopefully, till then um erm I'll just assume you really are out there lurking around reading my random nuron firings.

If you by chance have any helpful tidbits of information on how to get it up and running let me know!! :D

******Edited to add: got it!! I figured it out, I read pages and pages of help documents and finally figured out what I was missing. Now I can FINALLY track ((grin)) ****