Possession by Sarah McLachlan

One of my favorite songs of all time is “Possession” by Sarah McLachlan.  I have always felt it was perhaps the “sexiest” song I’ve ever heard, and was definitely one of the songs that made me become a huge Sarah fan.  I bet you don’t know what really inspired the song though…  Check this out.

I never would have guessed it… but now that I know the background story — it does make perfect sense.

“Don’t go mommy!”

With my lunch bag and computer briefcase in hand, I was getting ready to go to work when Lauren asked, “Mommy, are you going to work?”

“Yes, honey, mommy is leaving for work now.” I said.

“Don’t go mommy!” Lauren responded.

Without thinking, I blurted out, “Well, honey, but I have to! If mommy doesn’t go to work, what will you eat and wear?” Little Lauren pondered a bit as if she’s in deep thought, but I quickly realized that she didn’t understand my response. So I tried again, “well, honey, if mommy doesn’t go to work, who is going to buy you pretty clothes to wear?!” This time, she understood what I was saying and her eyes lit up. “Po-Po!” She grinned and shouted.

“Aww, that’s very nice of you to say, Lauren. I’ll let Po-Po know you said that.” I said. “But wait a minute! You told Po-Po to go home last time, that was not very nice and made her very sad.” Lauren looked at me, and I could tell that she was trying to think of something smart to come-back at me. But before she was able to respond, Thomas, who has been listening quietly to our conversation this whole time, suddenly jumped in and said, “I want to give Po-Po a hug!”

“Aww, that’s very nice of you Thomas!” I said, and then I remembered… “But wait a minute! You told Nien-Nien to get off of your couch last week! That was not very nice and made her very sad, too!” Thomas looked at me and I can see the wheels turning in his little head… “ABBEY get off the couch!” he responded, as if to say that he didn’t mean for “Nien-Nien” to get off of the couch, but for Abbey (our dog) to get off the couch. Nice try, Thomas. ;-P

Chipmunk #1 and Chipmunk #2

Got a call at work from the day care today. The teacher called to inform me that Lauren had an incident at school today. “What?! Is she ok?!” I asked nervously.

“Oh she is fine. She was bitten today in the class but she is ok.” The teacher responded. “The reason I am calling is, usually when incidents like this happen in school, we don’t inform the parents of the name of the child who did the biting. However, in this situation, we thought we should let you know since you’ll be signing on both incident forms.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, it was Thomas who bit Lauren on the shoulder.” The teacher responded.

“What?! Why did he do that?” I asked. Although in the back of my mind I was thinking, somehow I am not so surprised as Thomas has on many occasions bitten Lauren at home because he’s mad about something that Lauren had done.

“Well, it appears that Lauren had taken a book away from Thomas and wouldn’t give it back.” The teacher responded. “We’ve asked Lauren to ’stop taking things away from others’ and Thomas to ‘keep his teeth to himself’.”

Oh brother. There used to be a period of time where I would get calls from school DAILY notifying me that Lauren had bitten somebody in class. Sometimes as many as 3 calls a day. I had to talk to a behavior coach from the school, etc. I thought she was going to be the first toddler to get kicked out of DayCare before even reaching age 2! She also earned the nickname of “Chipmunk” in my office. Looks like I’ve got more than one chipmunk on hand now… I now have Chipmunk #1 and Chipmunk #2.

InfoWorld IT Exec-Connect link

What if every student had a laptop?

What if every student had a laptop?  In the US, schools don’t see that as an option - b/c it’s too expensive.  But in the developing world (where there’s actually LESS MONEY), they are trying something out that will provide millions of students with access to computers and the internet… even where basic necessities such as electricity are scarce or unreliable.  Enter, the One Laptop Per Child initiative.

A group of technologists have been working on a project to put together rugged hardware, hand crank powered, internet enabled laptops together for about $150 each (if I recall correctly).  They run a customized version of Linux (Fedora).  The benefits of this low cost approach are obvious.

• Lower cost = more students get more technology
• Linux = customizable, open and reliable technology
• Hand crank = usable anywhere, and more exercise for the kids (j/k)

I think this is AWESOME!

Makes one wonder why we can’t consume these types of laptops for children across the USA…

Like Sister Like Brother

Lauren recently got in BIG trouble with Po-Po. Po-Po was trying to put Lauren down for the night, and Lauren, being her usual self, was not ready for bed yet.  She apparently didn’t like what Po-Po had to say to her, so in her childish voice she said: “Po-Po, go home,…this is MY house,…I buy house.”A few days later, after dinner while the family gathered in the basement watching TV, Thomas was laying on top of Snoopy and preventing Lauren from putting on Snoopy’s diaper. Nien-Nien asked Thomas to get up, and in response, he muttered, “get off MY couch”.

Goodness.  At least they don’t play favoritism… they managed to offend both grandmas in one week!

I give up! I need to blog, too!

So I’ve finally given in. I’ve been watching Kevin update his “crazy world” blog and from time to time I would check it out just to see what goes on in his head. Today I decided that it was time for me to start blogging too…just so I can keep track of all the happenings in this crazy little family of ours (Cuz there are just too many crazy things for me to keep track in my head and I can’t remember it all!). I guess this would be a good way for our friends and family to catch up with us too since we certainly don’t have much free time to catch up in person these days! So here it goes.

gDesklets tutorial

I’ll have to try these out…  Tutorial

WorldMapper

WorldMapper creates maps of the world based on various statistics.  The stats enlarge or shrink territories of the map based on whether something is large or small.  There are hundreds of interesting maps to check out…

Isn’t technology cool!?!?

Carbon Emissions Map