"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it." - Jack Handy
Eric is 5 months old as of yesterday. Actually, scratch that. He's 20 weeks, which isn't quite 5 months unless every month were to have exactly 4 weeks. Which they don't. Whatever the case, the point is that over those 20 weeks, I've sure seen my blog usage drop off. I used to read a half-dozen blogs daily, plus a few more on a semi-regular or weekly basis. Now I read none. Zero. I have a few websites that I still check regularly - some sports pages, forums, and some others, but blogs have pretty much disappeared from my diet.
I don't really know why - all I know is that it has definitely happened. And to further the separation, believe it or not, I actually bought a book last weekend. Robinson Crusoe. It was first written almost 300 years ago - in 1719. I knew it was old, but I didn't realize it was that old. And I have to admit, while I haven't really missed the blogs, I'm certainly enjoying this book.
Wow. This is officially the longest I've ever gone without posting. I guess in my old age I've realized that sometimes it's better to keep my damn mouth shut.
Plus, that stupid Facebook Scrabulous is horribly addicting.
So, I haven't been around much the last month. I think with my child my priorities have changed around a bit (not to mention my schedule). I'd still like to be able to keep up this page, but honestly, it's not something I even think about on a day-to-day basis anymore. After nearly 10yrs of blogging, I'm finally losing steam.
I'll try and continue posting, but I'm not making any promises. This isn't an official "goodbye" note (at least not yet); it's just a friendly note saying "hey, I might not see you at the coffeeshop quite as often".
So I'm sitting at the computer yesterday doing a bit of work, when all of a sudden the whole thing shuts down. Ok, well my computers have spontaneously rebooted before, so it's not the end of the world. But I look around and nothing is coming back on. I flick the lamp switch by my desk - nothing. I walk upstairs to check on my wife, and notice that none of the appliances are showing the time. Sure enough, the TV she was watching had shut down, and so did everything else.
Power failures themselves are fairly uncommon here in Calgary, particularly in the middle of the afternoon, on a sunny day, with no indications of trouble. I went downstairs to check the fuses, which were fine. I came back upstairs and heard a few beeps of things turning back on. Then, turning back off. Then flicking on again for an instant, and then back off. Finally, some more beeps, and the power seemed to stay on this last time.
Alright, clocks are back working, TV is working, computers are turning on, excellent. Unfortunately, there was one casualty. My faithful router, the good ol' D-Link DI-614+ didn't make it through. For some reason, the power never came back on for it. So, my complete home network was rendered useless, with no internet, and certainly no webpage for you people to see. This lasted most of yesterday, since my son seems to think he's still the center of the universe, and I wasn't able to drop everything to work on my silly computer problems.
Anyway, eventually I managed to pick up a new router (this time, switching to a Linksys WRT54G router) and start my entire network over again from scratch. Actually, sometimes worse than scratch, because with the domain that I had set up, it doesn't spontaneously work with a new router, like most people's home configurations would.
Suffice it to say that if you're reading this, the webpage is back up, my internet is back, and things can slowly get back to normal. Although I have a feeling that over the next few days, I'm going to keep finding things that don't work, because I've forgotten to set something properly in the new router.
Wow. Just wow. I don't know how else to describe it. I have absolutely no idea how I can be so busy, for so long, with nothing to show for it. My intentions to get back here are good, but it just isn't happening. But it's not just this website - my overall computer time has taken a significant hit. I'm not browsing websites anymore, I'm not reading other people's journals, I'm barely coming online to check my hockey pools or Facebook. It just seems to be that my free time (what little there now is) is more importantly spent elsewhere.
Now, I'm expecting that may change, but who knows. Everyone says that having a kid changes your life, and so it does, but then they have TWO kids, and suddenly they yearn for the lazy, hazy days of only ONE kid. Well I'm in those days, and let me tell you that they're far from lazy, although the hazy is pretty accurate.
I hope you have a terrific New Year, and if anything important happens in the world after about 8pm, please send me an email about it because I'll be in bed. That is, if Eric decides to let us sleep...
I was planning on posting a lot more this past week about some of what's been going on with Eric and his parents, but the time seems to be disappearing in a hurry. Eric has been great - he's finaly taking to his bassinet so his mom and dad can get some sleep, and he's already started lifting his head and looking from side to side.
Anyway, I promise to try and post more once the holidays have passed, but in the meantime, I'm going to officially shut it down for the next couple of days.
