Daniel, the little rascal, is climbing out of his crib. It started late last week. We tried to shift cribs on him since the other crib has taller sides. It didn't stop him. He still hoisted himself up and over. I think he's going to have great upper body strength when he gets older. We removed a crib from the room and just set up a mattress and a guard rail. That really threw him. In his mind he couldn't connect it with a bed. He played for about an hour tonight after we set him down in it. Afterward Michelle found him asleep on the floor in the middle of the room. She gently placed him back on his mattress. Hopefully soon he gets the idea that the mattress is where he should sleep.
The school instruction Claire is getting in math is not clear to us. Admittedly, we not clear if it's just the way she does things or if it's what she's being taught. It's almost like algebra, without the balancing of equations.
At work the staff is preparing for the release of our new processor next quarter, the A6. I'm going to be busy over the next week or so trying to get together a training outline for it. The "meat" of the slides will be filled out by engineering but the scope and topics will be my concern.
I came across this tidbit about Hilaire Belloc, a favorite writer of mine. I found this quote interesting: "At its heart, all human conflict is theological." I haven't thought it through much yet, but it's food for thought. I find it especially intriguing since the USA is supposed to be a religiously pluralistic and neutral society. I always thought of theology as just the cover for war. I always thought of most wars as economic in nature. While we may claim that we don't like the other side's lifestyle, world view, etc. it seems there always money, property, and assets on the line, at least for one side. The other may just be concerned with defending itself. Perhaps I'm oversimplifying.
Meanwhile, over on slashdot there is a discussion about a VW concept car that gets 239 miles per gallon. Most of the discussion is regarding the USA perspective on vehicles, economy, efficiency, safety and alternative fuels. My favorite comments debated whether SUVs where actually any safer, considering they aren't designed with the same safety systems that cars require. They're just big, but that inertia can work against them - maneuvering, stopping, etc. There was also some interesting discussion about the differences in population density between Europe and the USA and what that does to your mindset about automobiles.
I came across a Wired magazine article about how obsessive Mac loyalists are. The way the article is written, Mac enthusiasts seem blindly loyal. I don't buy it. When we first got married, I bought a couple of Macs. Michelle was studying graphic arts. In the early 1990's that meant Macintosh. I was using unix workstations at work. When we moved to NH and Michelle became a stay at home mom, I used Windows PCs. Windows 95/98 had made the Mac advantages seem slim for the price. As Linux evolved, I put it on our PC while keeping Windows on for the kids' games. The new Macs gave me the best of both worlds. It runs most of my kids software but also had a powerful unix at it's core. So while Abby is playing Reader Rabbit, that same computer is also serving the web pages of BilikFamily.com in the background with the unix standard Apache webserver software. I was also impressed that the machine came with a nice developer tool suite. If you want to encourage developers and development, start by not charging them several hundred dollars in development tools.
I've got a new geek project in mind now that the webpage work is getting stable. I want to have the database of daily entries backed up to my Apple iDisk account and have the webpages mirrored to my .Mac website (that link is a draft of the attempt). My concern is that if (or as Stu says, "when") Abby crashes my desktop, I still have all the data and can quickly redirect the domain while getting things set back up on a different system. Having a webpage that exists only on your computer and it's hard disk is just asking for Murphy to strike.