Story from Cian: The Boys

Once there was two boys, Cian and Owen. They had a big job list:

• build a robot pig
• go hunting
• kill ants
• watch youtube

They built a robot pig which was three feet tall and four feet wide.
Then they killed three ducks, one deer, and four chickens. After than, they got out the poison and sprayed like maniacs.
Finally, they watched youtube for an hour.

Bridge Crossing

Today was a public holiday, Labour Day or some such (yay for 8 hour working days!) and we decided to go for a walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The kids love it, and well ok, I do too. Here's a couple of shots on the way.

 

We stopped in Argyle Plaza for lunch where some hokey "talent" was playing keyboard. We were worried about getting wet since there's a thunderstorm due this afternoon, so we didn't stick around more than an hour or so in the Rocks, but enjoyed the bite and looking around at the stalls.

The Introduction.

And, lo, today marketh the day that Cian Roberts was introduced to the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Having seen me go off once a week to play this mysterious game, and even host many sessions downstairs in the Den, Cian accepted his first rulebook to read and character sheet to fill out with due reverence and excitement.
I have started him off with the Basic D&D set, the one published in 1983, in fact an original copy that I myself used more that twenty years ago, now complete with badly coloured pictures of female clerics and large snakes sitting atop piles of gold. Yes, of course I kept it, what? You don't just throw out stuff like that.
The Basic rules from this era were written with kids in mind, and as Cian will be 8 in a couple of weeks, I'm sure he'll be on top of the game mechanics in no time. Also, with his already formidable imagination, I'm sure this game will grab him and not let go. The only problem will be in encouraging his friends to play. I'll have to start off as DM of course, but it is my sworn duty as Nerd Father.

Ten years

Today, Sinead and I have been married for ten wonderful years. It seems to have gone so quickly, but has easily been the best ten years of my life. I feel so lucky to have met her. Not only my lover, but my best friend, a brilliant financial partner and special mother of two gorgeous kids. I couldn't have wished for anything else. Here's to another hundred years!

Thank you Sinead, I love you!

A bad day that ended well.

It was one of THOSE days today.
It started as I woke to the sound of a quite unwell wife asking me to sort the kids out this morning and get them to school. OK. No worries, I'm feeling good, and fair is fair. Driving back from school, I realise I've given Cian a peanut butter sandwich, and dammit, I've only just been allowed to rejoin polite society after the last time I did this about 13 months ago.
I get home, and Sinead's work partner Sioned is on the phone telling me the server at work will not boot. At all. And I'm the CTO. Bugger, drive into their office, and yep, sure enough, it won't boot and looks baaad. I set the router to do DHCP so they can get internet without a domain controller (*sigh*) and hauled its matt grey metal ass out of there. I dropped it off at the local PC Guy Shop, cause, you know, I'm supposed to be working today.
Right, so then I'm working at home, and I hear this almighty, slow motion creaky cracking sound. It is a deep and powerful noise. I look outside in time to see a massive branch, hell, a whole tree in its own right break right off a tree out the back and fall towards the earth. The patch of earth in this case is my back yard, complete with flimsy aluminium pool fence, and well, my house. It crashes to the ground, scything through the fence as if it was plastacine painted gum-nut-grey. I didn't even hear the metal complain over the sound of the awesome deep crashing of tree vs pavers, grass and pool. It missed the house. Here's some pics.
One should note that this is the very branch that the kids' swing hangs from, and which they were using not 18 hours previously. The obvious alternate universes here left me feeling cold, quite unwell and not a little shaken.


Then I got the call that the motherboard on Sinead's server had just given it up, and thus the server needed a complete rebuild. Mobo, CPU, RAM, all of it. At least the disk was fine.
The day started to improve from here. Insurance should cover the tree damage, Sinead's server was fixed by 6pm and reinstalled by 8pm. Then I sat in front of Good News Week with a whiskey. Ahhhh.

Back from Canberra

Just back from Canberra and we had a great time. We took the kids round

• Questacon
• Parliament House
• Canberra Space Centre
• Cockington Green

Questacon had loads of really cool experiments and interactive science displays including an earthquake simulator, giant animated Funnel Web spider, optical illusions, holograms, lightning cage etc.

Star Wars Exhibition

We had a great day today, having taken the kids out of school and going into the Powerhouse Museum to see the Star Wars exhibition. It was pretty cool. There were loads of costumes on display, the 8ft tall Wookie costumes looked awesome. And the Wampa - that was really cool. Also there were loads of large models of spacecraft and actual lightsaber props and other weapons. The kids enjoyed the various hands on science areas such as robot kits, maglev train sets and an actual hovercraft you could sit in and drive in a circle.
We also had lunch in Darling harbour and rode the monorail through the city. The kids had a ball, and well, so did I.

ECOdirect video

I just uploaded my first video to YouTube. Its an info-ad for Sinead's company ECOdirect. I also shot the video.

Systems online!

Wooh! Back online. Haven't had a great month, but all's well for Christmas, and been doing some serious chilling. I've been getting some good solid hammock time the last two days just reading. And to use a simple term, that's been very very nice. Christmas has been the usual fun crazy family time, we had Christmas Eve with the Roberts clan at our place, and went to my Dad's place on Christmas Day. Lots of seafood, totally delicious. Sinead's Mum and Dad are over from Ireland, and they are having a blast out here in the warm sunshine. Their first non-cold Christmas - crazy concepts!
I'm taking all of next week off from work, and damn, I'm just going to enjoy doing very little. Working hard on getting my stress levels waaaay down. Gotta start looking for another job in say, mid January, as I'm out of Websense latest end of March, but that is for later.
Going to do Palm Beach followed by the Newport Arms with Sinead's oldies tomorrow. That's always good.

Awesome weekend

Wow- what an awesome weekend.
Friday was my birthday, thanks to all the well-wishers! I bought some geeky t-shirts from here, to celebrate.
Saturday, we dropped the kids off at my Dad's place and then went to Andrew's wedding. That was really cool. Andrew showed a brilliant video of himself (and others) instead of doing a speech.
Sinead and I stayed in a hotel afterwards. No kids. Whooo-hooo!
Sunday we relaxed, eventually went and picked up the kids and had a Thai takeaway for dinner. It just doesn't get much better :_)

Free Nappies!

Free sample at ecodirect.com.au, and check out the sunscreen while you are there.
OK, a little gratuitous, but links is links :_)

Sinead's business is going well. I've just been over to check on the backup system I've just put in place. I have a RAID 1 NAS set up, sending it daily backups at night.
I used a Lacie 2big Network. I've one issue so far with the windows share on it disappearing, but it came back with a reboot, so I'll have to keep an eye on it. But it looks pretty!

Cian - Owen

Illustrated by Cian and Owen.
Written by Owen and Cian.
Once upon a time there lived two boys and the little one was Cian and the big one was Owen! Those boys were poisoning the ants, cleaning the back yard and at the end they had a big ... KISS!! They were very tired after all the work, so they went to bed. Cian had a dream of a pile of rubbish. Dad had a dream of spaceships in the sky! In the morning they had Uncle Toby's Oatbrits for breakfast, it was disgusting! and then they watched video hits! After that they played Gimy Nut troon on the computer.


The End!

Neise not well

Neise has pneumonia and a partially collapsed lung from an infection! She seems ok aside from constant coughing, and although she was very narky this morning is usually in good form. Poor thing. We're hitting her with more and stronger antibiotics after an x-ray showed a bad lung. The last doctors visit a few weeks ago suggested she just had a throat cough and she'd get over it in time. Lucky we pushed for an x-ray.

A Short Walk

We walked along the Castle Rock track this afternoon. The kids had fun, we all got muddy. Actually Neise started to cry the minute she got wet feet. Little princesses don't like to be muddy.

Ah well. We pushed on :_)

Dad & Janet visited

Dad and Janet visited today. One of the highlights was when Cian sat us all down to play the board game he just created. Cian is six. Here's a picture of the board.

There were many rules:

• Each player takes turns to roll a d6 to proceed. Note the game tokens are lego pieces.
• If you land on a black dot, you got a card, which could have said "go back 3" or "hold this money for 10 seconds"
• To cross a bridge with a number on it, you needed to roll the exact number to cross it, that or you could add the numbers from your last two rolls.
  
• There was a complex rule about branch decisions being decided about whether or not you landed on a particular previous spot or not.

It was awesome. Janet won. Oh, yeh, Janet also rolled the following during her subsequent turns: 6,6,6,5,6,5. That is like rolling up a character in D&D with an 18 and a 16. Damn!

Core Interest: Family

Now, these core interests aren't blogged in any particular order. Woe betide any fool of a took who puts software or D&D in front of family! I have a wonderful, amazing wife, Sinéad, and two high-energy, take-it-to-the-MAX kids, Cian(6) and Neise(4).
I met Sinéad through a friend at work - Hi Nuala! Sinéad is Irish of course, and we spent nearly four years living in Dublin to get married and spend some time with her family before moving back to Aus. We've been married for nine years now! Sinéad runs her own business ECOdirect, (with her partner Sionéd), and is a busy super-mum and super-wife!
Cian is a brilliant boy in Year 1 who likes to know how stuff works, loves reading, and inventing things, such as his very successful GPS Boots. (boots that tell you where you are).
Neise is a funny and beautiful princess-mermaid who will start Kindy next year. She loves pink. And Cinderella.
I love them all :_)