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01
12
2008
 
Biggest Battle Yet For Social Networks: You, Your Identity And Your Data On The Open WebPosted by: Sitepost in 1st LifeOver the last couple of weeks our company has started laying off people with redundancies. If you keep an eye on the news you will know which company it is. We aren’t exactly covert with reactions from staff. Last Wednesday we were supposed to have a meeting to find out if we still had jobs but it was canceled at the last minute, so now it looks like we find out next week (the upcoming one). Last Saturday I took Sienna to the Indooroopilly Shopping Centre. They had a Santa Parade so I wanted to surprise her with it. We took the train there as I knew the car park would be packed. It turned out I was right because they also had Adam Gilchrist signing his new book. Shortly after we arrived Santa, Mrs Clause, Frosty the Snowman, a reindeer and many fairies walking around and singing. Sienna really enjoyed herself. Sunday we went to the Chermside Water Park "Splash". We spent about four hours there this time. We only went on the big slide once as it was packed out, but got plenty of fun just swimming around again. We left about 3:30pm and got home JUST before all the massive electric storms hit Brisbane. We just got inside as it started sprinkling and shortly thereafter there was much lightening and thunder plus rain pouring down. I decided to take Sienna home a bit later. I’ve got Striker interested in the Tech Talk Radio show now. He listens every week after the Australian Top Gear show. I ring him or SMS him to get online. He enjoys talking to the presenters as well and gets to talk about iiNet. Apparently the CEO of iiNet listens to the show every week as well heh. Thursday I took the day off as Sienna’s teacher wanted us in there for a parent/teacher interview about Sienna’s progress. I met Rebecca there and we went in and had a nice chat. Sienna is doing really well and she sat on my knee while the teacher talked. After that I headed to my own doctor to get a better opinion about my chest pains and dizziness. He said my heart is fine and it’s just chest pain from using a computer all the time. The dizziness he says is probably Low Blood Sugar. I already had this theory and started adding more sugar to my diet and feeling much better for it. My doctor explained that since the body uses sugar primarily for energy and if I don’t eat enough sugar it will try to convert my muscles into sugar, which is not a very efficient method. Today Sienna and I went to Video Ezy. She found two Pokemon movies and I got the new Nintendo Wii Wario Shake game. I actually quite like it. It’s still the standard old platformer, but has enough to differentiate it from your generic platformer. You jump on the little guys to stun them, then pick them up and shake the hell out of the Wiimote to shake garlic out of them for energy. I guess Italians like lots of garlic I downloaded some other free iPhone games. Jellycar (recommended by Leo Laporte on Macbreak Weekly) is a really fun physics game. Sienna loves watching me play it.
Powered by Twitter Tools. Last night I needed to reinstall Windows XP on my computer onto a new SATA drive. I started the XP install CD but it could not partition the drive or format it or anything because the install CD does not have support for SATA. I Googled around and eventually found this fantastic post "Install Windows XP on SATA without a floppy". It details how to use the NLite application to slipstream your Windows XP SATA drivers from your Motherboard drivers CD or download into your XP CD. You use your original Windows XP CD and it creates a new directory full of files from the XP CD which you then use NLite to create an ISO and burn the image to a CD. Once you do that, you can boot from the new CD and it has support for SATA automatically. You don’t need to tell it to install extra drivers during loading of the Windows XP CD. You just install as normal. BRILLIANT!
None of mine won or got a place. I had Septimus for Win/Place. Zipping, Guyno and Barbaricus for a Mystery Trifecta. Septimus, Honolulu and Mad Rush for my own Trifecta. Oh well. There goes $23 on expensive pieces of cardboard I picked up Sienna Friday night after work. She wasn’t well and had been coughing so we had dinner and I gave her some Panadol. She coughed for a while once she fell asleep, the poor thing. Saturday morning we got up and I took her to swimming lessons. Around 12:30pm I was searching around the internet for somewhere fun to take her when I came across the Chermside Water Park. We got dressed in our swimmers and I put Sunscreen on both of us and off we went. I didn’t tell her too much about it because I wanted it to be a surprised. She was very excited, though. We got there and I paid our entry fees. $10 for me and $5 for her to enable you to go on any of the slides as long as you want. We swam around for a bit as she took it all in and then climbed the stairs up about 60 feet or so up to the top of the big slides. We had a relatively short wait in line and then I sat on the slide and put her on my lap. The lifesaver gave us the signal and we were off! We slid to the bottom with a very excited Sienna. We splashed down in the pool at the bottom and I pulled her up. We went over to the other pools and she jumped in the deep parts.. her favourites. She isn’t too fussed on the shallow water pools. I took her to the island in the middle and she had me play dead and drowned. She would swim to where I was floating on my back and grab me by the Tshirt I was wearing and drag me back to the island. Then, she’d get me to do it again and again. After that wore off she got on my back and I swam across to the side. She paddled around there for a bit and tried out some kiddy slides, but even her lack of weight wasn’t enough to get her to slide due to only a small bit of water on the slide. She had to push herself down the slide to move. Around 1:30pm we got out and I grabbed some money from my locker and went to get some lunch. Sienna was far too excited to eat lunch and paddled in a kiddy pool nearby where I could see her while I ate. I got a burger and chips and lemonade - none of which she was interested in - and went to put the leftover money in my locker. Instead of putting the containers on the ground I tried juggling the chip packet and money while opening the locker and tipped my chips cup upside down and they all fell to the ground. I closed the locker and went back to buy more chips. ("Wanna chup, bro? Nah! I only eat plinktun!"). I drank the lemonade ("I’m parched as, bro!") and went back into the pools. We played for a while longer then she wanted to go on the other big slide so we climbed the stairs again. We slid down and swam again for about another 10 minutes and I decided it was time we went home. We’d spent nearly two hours there and I’d paid for 2 hours for my locker anyway. We collected our things and headed to the change rooms to dry off. We drove back home and had a relaxing afternoon watching Pokemon movies. On Sunday I drove to the Upper Mount Gravatt Garden City Westfield shopping centre. I wanted to get a cheap pedestal fan for the lounge while I’m on the computer - to save using the air conditioner all the time. We found a Crazy Clarks shop and the fan was only $12 so I was very pleased. We also stopped at Toys R Us and I bought Sienna a Pikachu Pokemon battle launcher. We came back home and watched some more Pokemon then played Super Smash Bros Brawl on the Nintendo Wii until it was time for her to go home again.
http://tinyurl.com/5pcgel - Posted by Andrew Horowitz. Last week I had Wednesday to Friday off work as my cousin Michael was visiting for a few days. He arrived Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday we caught a train into Brisbane City so I could show him around. We had lunch at The Beach House hotel. We wandered around and looked in JB Hifi, HMV records and a few other places around town then caught a train home. On Thursday we went for a drive up Mt Coot-tha and had morning tea at the expensive cafe. We chatted for a couple of hours there and then drove back down to Toowong to have lunch at Sizzler. It was a nice day out. Friday we went on a wine tour of Sirromet winery. It was $20 and you get the tour, a tasting and a glass with their logo on it. Very nice. Once that was over I dropped him off at home as he was feeling sick (not from the wine — he was already under the weather before we went) and I picked up Sienna. We had Asian takeaway that night. Saturday we took Sienna to swimming lessons then headed down the Gold Coast. We drove up Springbrook mountains and stopped at a lookout. We both took some photos and walked across the road to a nice cafe there (expensive again!). We had morning tea. Sienna was feeling a bit cold as it was windy and rainy up the mountains. We went to another lookout and I showed him the cabin where I stayed a couple of times. We drove back down the mountain and went to the Carrara markets. We had a look around and stopped for a bit of lunch. After our morning tea nobody was really that hungry so we just snacked. Mouse loved the markets. He said they were much nicer than the Sydney ones he had been too. Probably much bigger too. After that we came back home again and rested for the rest of the afternoon. Later that night we went to my local Sherwood Services Club for dinner. The next morning he left about 4 am or so after having only a couple of hours sleep due to being sick still. This morning I took Sienna to swimming lessons. This time I watched her for most of the time instead of watching something on my iPhone. When we got home we had a shower and put on the washing and dishwasher and drove to Indooroopilly shopping centre. We went to KMart and printed out a couple of photos of us and then headed to Crazy Clark’s to get some gifts for the Operation Christmas Child. We spent nearly $50 but it was worth it. Last year I forgot, but this year I got an email about it in time. We packed two boxes — one for a 5-9yo boy and one for a 5-9yo girl. I try to keep the ages around Sienna’s age so she can contribute to suggestions. We wrote a quick note on the back of our photos with our names and a brief Christmas message and packed the boxes up and headed to Yeronga to drop the boxes off. From there we headed to the AMF bowling alley at Upper Mt Gravatt. Sienna was very excited since she was trying out her own ball for the first time and they had most of the lights turned off and flashy, rainbow lights zooming up and down the lanes. It was very exciting. The first game she got about 84 points and I got 95. The second game she got several Spares and I got a Strike and a couple of Spares. The end score — Daddy: 118 Sienna: 119. She beat me! She was so impressed! We stayed and cashed in a $10 note for tokens and played on the games there. Sienna won one chocolate after about 25 goes on the weak claw game and we also played a basketball game, skeeball, crocodiles and Deal or No Deal. We ended up with a handful of tickets and took them to get counted. The new girl there (Cute but rather young) tried to use the ticket counting machine and turned it on, fed the tickets in and turned it off, then looked around the back at the LCD screen to see the count. However, there was nothing on the screen since she had turned the power off. Her boss (father perhaps?) told her to just make it an even 50. I don’t know what the actual number was. Probably something similar. Sienna had the choice of a bracelet or a racing car. Being a girl, of course she chose the red racing car. We drove to Westfield Garden City and had Hungry Jacks for lunch. We went to Gametraders and bought 2,000 Nintendo Points for the Wii. I picked up a few pairs of shorts for Sienna as she doesn’t have any at my place and I keep forgetting to get some from her mum’s when we visit. We came home after that and I traded in 1,000 points to download Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People. I had hoped Sam and Max would be out in Australia on WiiWare by now, but it doesn’t seem to be as the only TellTale Games games available are Episode 1 and 2 of SBCGFAP. We played that for a while this afternoon and Sienna loved the crazy voices. It was now time to make dinner so I put on some food in the oven and we watched an episode of Dr Who. Once it finished Sienna wanted to watch another so she put it on and fell asleep after about 10 minutes, lying on my lap. When the show finished I carried her to her room and put her in bed. The first thing we did today was go to the Post Office. There was a package there for me in a big box which I wasn’t expecting to find today. Several months ago I entered a competition on a Podcast "The Wii Show" to win some Nintendo Wii gear, well I won and my prize arrived today. It’s a Nyko Charge Station. Fortunately, I already had a Universal Adaptor for it. I plugged it into the wall and put one of my WiiMotes into it. It works perfectly. Now I have two charge stations and will have to get another couple of WiiMotes at some stage so when I take the Wii to my cousin Jo’s place there’s enough WiiMotes to go around everyone. Below is a photo of the Nyko Charge Station I won.. 
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hehe. He also does some gymnastics where he jumps up and grabs a horizontal pole and swings around it like an Olympic gymnast. Some of the levels are frustrating, but it’s still worthwhile. I don’t much like the submarine levels.
