Mental Junk

My parents headed out to my sister's over the weekend and saw my niece and nephew for the first time since Christmas.  It was the first time we were able to exchange Christmas gifts.  It sucks being so far away sometimes, but it has been an eventful (and amazingly blessed) start to the year.

The boys received great new hats that they loved so much they wanted them at bedtime – Nate looked great in his Jester hat and Cam buzzed around his room as an airplane.

Thanks guys!!! 

As I am writing this, my 2 1/2 year old is bouncing around the house like a hopped up junkie.  Great way to start the day!

I
got up this morning and realized that both boys were still quiet and
still asleep, Michelle hasn't been sleeping well, so I decided to get
up and get ready quietly.  After my shower, I quietly got dressed and
opened our bedroom door.

As soon as I did – my stomach dropped.  Cameron's room was wide open and no one was there.  Dead silence.  Not good.

I
woke and told Mic then started to head towards Nate's room listening
for a boy about to get into trouble.  Nothing.  Nate is quiet.  So, I
started heading downstairs.

This is when thoughts of kidnapping, children wandering the streets at three in the morning, and —- OH MY!!! MY LAPTOP!!!
I passed the livingroom – the most inoccuous room he could be left
alone in – empty.   Drat.   Looking into the dining room, I see he has
set up his little chair and table like a tea party.  Awwww.  That's
cute….. still may have to kill him.  He's been here, though – and he
is quiet now.

Quick look into my office saved his life – no damage.  Laptop fine, all things good.  Now – to find him.

Heading into the kitchen I didn't see him at first.  The lower
cupboard was open (which opens right to the floor) and is half-hidden
by the kitchen island.  I was beginning to think he may be in the
basement – a place not in the least bit kid-proofed.  As I rounded the
island, however, I discovered the quivering, vibrating body of a child
on a major sugar rush.

"What are you doing?" I asked in my most stern of parent's voice.

"White pepper and peanut butter."

Oh, boy.  Don't laugh – he's in crap.  I brought him upstairs,
stripped the glazed clothes off his back and changed him.  All the
while, attempting to admonish his actions.  Now Michelle and I are
trying to figure out how to attach a bell to his door so we can hear
him leaving.

I still like my chain idea….

EDIT: My wife pointed out I never explained it properly – "white pepper" is sugar to Cameron.

That is the message that greeted me when I tried to log into my VPS (webserver).

I had no way of accessing my box at the console – so I couldn't do much of anything.  All the posts I could find that solved the issue (or presented solutions, anyway) required you to log into the box.  Uhhh…. this is a VIRTUAL SYSTEM.  There is NO console.  How do you log in to fix it, guys?

Continuing my search, I stumbled upon Yak Shaving's blog regarding the same issue.  The magic command? 

ssh user@host "/bin/bash -i"

Ah!  Pure magic!!  Back into the system as root.  Just the way it should be.

Please check out his entire entry for the full solution. 

 Thanks again Yak.

Edit: tldr;

rm -rf /dev/ptmx
mknod /dev/ptmx c 5 2
chmod 666 /dev/ptmx
umount /dev/pts
rm -rf /dev/pts
mkdir /dev/pts
mount /dev/pts

Just got back from the police station to drop off a rusting hunting knife.

I found it on our lawn – didn't know what it was, until I picked it up.  I thought it was a gardening saw – the kind of serated blade for cutting down small trees and scrub brush.  Kris was out there last fall playing with his new brush cutter/weed eater, so I though he may have forgotten it out.

I unsheathed it – and saw it was a hunting knife.  The best part?  There seems to have been dried blood on the blade.  Great.

I thought about calling the station to have an officer come down to pickit up, but I already touched it – and don't really want it in the house until they come by.  So, I just drove up and dropped it off.

With the car break in and now this, maybe we should move?  Na.  Still love the house.  It was probably someone driving by and threw it out the window.  I can still live in my happy little world.

Sunday morning we were rushing around trying to get to Church on time (as usual).  I put Nate into the car and noticed all the stuff from our glove box emptied out on the front seats.  When I went back in the house to get Cam, I asked Mic why she left everything in the open for people to see.  When she said she hadn't, we both had the same thought go through our minds.  Was anything missing?  Was the GPS still in the console?

When I headed out with Cam to buckle him in, I took a look, and sure enough – no GPS.  Crap.  Oh well – that sucks.

As it turned out, we had left the doors unlocked.  We got home early Saturday afternoon, and thinking we would be heading back out, we didn't lock the doors.  We ended up staying in, and so, never gave it another thought.

We headed into Church counting our blessings that at least nothing was damaged.  I decided to file a police report just to make fencing it that much harder.  I doubted I would ever hear anything about it, let alone see it again.  When I headed into the station to make a report, I was told that the officer I should speak to would be back on duty at 7pm Sunday evening and I should call him to file the report.

Sunday afternoon, after a bit of running around, we came home and ran into our neighbors.  Rick told me what happened – he saw the guy in our car and called the cops.  Rick then followed the guy until the officers showed up.  Awesome.

At 7, I headed into the station to make the report after the officer called to say he had our property and to come in to claim it.  The GPS wasn't out of the car for 24 hours!  Amazing.

So, thank you Rick, and thank you DRPD.

Just to record this day, we are running from a new server out there.

I broke down and bought some space in the cloud, let's see how this fairs from shared hosting and VPS.

So far, I am pretty impressed.  The cost vs performance and control is just great!

Root!  Woot!

I'm stubborn.

Very stubborn.

Trouble is, so are my kids.  That is where we clash a lot.  If I tell them "No, don't touch that." – just once, then I have to keep telling them that.

Nate has discovered this weekend that I actually mean it when I tell him to stay off the living room end table.  I keep telling him (and so does Mic) over and over all weekend until I have to get up, pull him down and place him in the chair for a time-out.  3 minutes of sitting there without getting down.  After the 15 or so minutes of starting over because he constantly gets down, he is finally let down.  What does he do?  GOES RIGHT BACK ON THE TABLE!!

So, the cycle of life punishment repeats itself.  Needless to say, neither of us have had a great weekend.  A lot of crying, a lot of hurt feelings and a whole lot of stubbornness.

We eventually worked things out (I WON!!) but there were many times during the past two days I kept questioning whether I should just give in and let him fall from the table to learn.  That would be soooo much easier!  The trouble is, I don't think he would have fallen.  The kid has good balance when he isn't tired, and even if he did fall, the guy would just shake it off and take it in stride.  He has such a high pain threshold I doubt he would notice.

I know my stubbornness may be a problem in my parenting skills/style.  It may not be a good thing, but I don't know if it is such a bad thing.  If I did give in he would just learn that if he tries long enough he would eventually get his way.  I remember going through the same thing not long ago with Cameron.  With him – it was shoes.  I had the same thoughts and concerns back then too.

I have since come to understand that what is best for them is usually what is hardest for me.  Which SUCKS.  I mean, this weekend was just the three of us (Michelle was working).  So we could have spent the time playing and horsing around.  Instead, there was a lot of crying and screaming.

Oh well.  Cameron has learned from the shoe incident (and some more since) that I usually win on the stubborn front. Nate will too.  It willjust take a few more clashes like this weekend to enforce it.  Michelle likes to compare it to the elephants in the zoo that are only tied down with light ropes and they don't go anywhere because they were tied down with heavy chains in their youth so they learned if there was something around their feet there was no point in trying to move.

So, we are raising a couple of elephants.  Trust me, some days it  sounds like it around here.

Up at David's there is still a lot of snow.  More snow than I have seen here all winter.

We took the boys up there to romp around on Feb. 27th.  They had a blast!

I love posting these.  My Dad comes up with great solutions to minor problems all the time. The shame is that not a lot of people get to see how creative and ingenius he is.  This is just another example of that.

He just bought himself a new laptop and doesn't like the touchpad, so he got a small mouse with it.  Now, however, it no longer works well as an actual "LAP"+"TOP".  So, he made a portable desk for it.

The side mousepad folds up.  It even has a slot carved out for the mouse!

Since it is one of the new small netbooks, the whole thing folds up and fits into a normal laptop case with the PC tucked safely inside.