Dominated

Kids’ ability to pick up new words from context is amazing.

Kids’ confidence even when they’ve misunderstood how a word is used is hilarious. 😊

This evening, our 7-year-old was boasting about how well-behaved his class was while their regular teacher had to attend an all-day meeting, vs how much it impressed the temporary teacher they had.

His words: “Today we had a supply teacher and we totally DOMINATED her!”

Note #24972

Future Arimaa grand masters at practice, this Sunday morning boardgaming session.

In a cluttered dining room, two children play Arimaa, a chess-like board game.

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Go back to bed!

Things my children have gotten out of bed to say to me tonight:

  • I don’t want to go to school tomorrow
  • I can’t find [name of toy]
  • I want [name of toy I lent to my sibling] back
  • if I’m ill, I don’t have to go to school tomorrow, right?
  • I can’t sleep
  • I might be ill: I don’t think I should go to school tomorrow
  • I want a hot water bottle
  • I’m too hot
  • I’ve lost my hot water bottle
  • I spilt my water1
  • I went to the toilet because I thought I was going to throw up but I didn’t but I think I’m too ill to go to school tomorrow
  • my book is wet
  • I forgot to brush my teeth
  • I don’t like these pyjamas
  • I still can’t sleep

Footnotes

1 it later turned out to have been spilled on an electrical extension socket! 😱

Note #24906

As the kids grow older… someday our final soft play session – something we used to do all the time, and now do only rarely – will be in the past.

A mug of coffee held in front of a view of a multicoloured soft playground.

But for now, at least, it remains a chaotic way to tire them out on a morning!

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Dan Q found GCAA274 Garrigues #23 – El Vilosell

This checkin to GCAA274 Garrigues #23 - El Vilosell reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

The geokids and I are staying nearby and came out for a walk this morning to discover this under-appreciated cache. What an amazing location and such a great view! We searched many “obvious” locations without luck, then translated some logs to get a clue. We should have checked the attributes! A little danger later and the cache was in hand. SL, TFTC/GPC! FP awarded – thanks so much for bringing us here. Greetings from Oxfordshire, UK!

Dan and two kids look excited atop a castle in rural Catalonia.

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PortAventura

Made it through a day and a half of theme park fun with the kids. Time for a much-needed beer, then as long a sleep as circumstance will allow.

Three glasses of beer held by adult hands clink together against a glass of water and a bottle of Fanta held 6 by cold hands.

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Note #24831

Parenting is about sacrifices.

Dan drinks a beer, a children's football match is being played in the background.

Here, I’m making the noble sacrifice of forcing myself to drink a delicious beer so my 10-year-old can use the customer-only bathroom at a beachside amateur football club. Such a sacrifice.

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Double Sausages

This child is eating sausages with one hand while playing a video game about eating sausages with the other.

A child slouches in an airport lounge chair. Her right hand is being used to eat a plate of sausages. Her left hand is playing 'Fork N Sausage' on a tablet.

Is this life-imitating-art or the other way around? Who can possibly say?

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Bad Names for Servers

Six or seven years ago our eldest child, then a preschooler, drew me a picture of the Internet1. I framed it and I keep it on the landing outside my bedroom – y’know, in case I get lost on the Internet and need a map:

Framed child-drawn picture showing multiple circles, connected by lines, each with a number 0 or 1 in it.
Lots of circles, all connected to one another, passing zeroes and ones around. Around this time she’d observed that I wrote my number zeroes “programmer-style” (crossed) and clearly tried to emulate this, too.

I found myself reminded of this piece of childhood art when she once again helped me with a network map, this weekend.

As I kick off my Automattic sabbatical I’m aiming to spend some of this and next month building a new server architecture for Three Rings. To share my plans, this weekend, I’d been drawing network diagrams showing my fellow volunteers what I was planning to implement. Later, our eldest swooped in and decided to “enhance” the picture with faces and names for each server:

Network diagram but with entities having faces and named Chungus, Atul, Summer, Gwen, Alice, Astrid, and Demmy.
I don’t think she intended it, but she’s made the primary application servers look the grumpiest. This might well fit with my experience of those servers, too.

I noted that she named the read-replica database server Demmy2, after our dog.

French Bulldog with her tongue sticking out.
You might have come across our dog before, if you followed me through Bleptember.

It’s a cute name for a server, but I don’t think I’m going to follow it. The last thing I want is for her to overhear me complaining about some possible future server problem and misinterpret what I’m saying. “Demmy is a bit slow; can you give her a kick,” could easily cause distress, not to mention “Demmy’s dying; can we spin up a replacement?”

I’ll stick to more-conventional server names for this new cluster, I think.

Footnotes

1 She spelled it “the Itnet”, but still: max props to her for thinking “what would he like a picture of… oh; he likes the Internet! I’ll draw him that!”

2 She also drew ears and a snout on the Demmy-server, in case the identity wasn’t clear to me!

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Note #24701

Playing simultaneous games against both children might have been less challenging if they hadn’t both kept trying to start fights with one another at the same time! 😂

Two frustrated-looking children each sit in front of a separate chessboard (the photographer is presumably playing both of them).

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Note #24625

This morning’s actual breakfast order from the 7-year-old: “A sesame seed bagel with honey, unless there aren’t any sesame seed bagels, in which case a plain bagel with honey on one half and jam on the other half, unless there aren’t any plain bagels, in which case a cinnamon and raisin bagel with JimJams on one half and Biscoff on the other half.”

Dan, looking confused, next to a cinnamon and raisin bagel with JimJams on one half and Biscoff on the other half (and their respective jars).

Some day, this boy will make a great LISP programmer. 😂

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Note #24382

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a parent look as awkward as the one whose kid, in a combined toilets/changing room, just pointed at me, saying: “Daddy, look! Look! That man’s using his willy to pee-pee in the standing-up toilet!” 🤣