Split family

My family was kinda slip up over the weekend and the last few weeks. Nothing serious. My 14yr old has been traveling with church groups or over to friend's house. Then she traveled to Detroit to visit with her Aunt, Uncle and cousin for a few days. My wife then traveled on Sunday with my 6yr old son to spend the night and pick up my daughter. I was with my 4yr old and 3yr old. I tried to do things with them that they would remember and be special for just the three of us. I got a glimpse of what it would be like to be a single dad. I did not like it at all. It is not the extra work that comes with being a single parent. That I am sure I could eventually handle. It was the fact that I only had 2 out of the 5 other members of my family with me.

I know my wife and I work a lot. I know my kids have activities, school and sports. There are so many distractions too. Internet, TV, video games, etc. There is no substitute for good old fashion family time though. Too often many families try to schedule one on one time, but we get enough time away from our families nowadays. Make time for your family. Especially if you have kids of any age. These are the things they will carry forever onto their children and their grandchildren.

Teen car accidents

We have a a rash of teenagers getting killed in auto accidents recently in West Michigan. Since July 1st there have been at least 12 deaths. Some of the accidents have been drinking related some have not. There was a Jeep Wrangler that rolled over just a few days ago that had 6 teens riding in it, none wearing seat belts. I am not sure what the solution to this is, but I have a few thoughts.

• Where are the parents of these kids. Do they know what their kids are doing or even where they are and with whom?
• When drinking is involved where are these kids getting the alcohol at?
• Do we need to revise MI law again so that teens under 18 cannot have passengers and cannot be out after 10pm without parental supervision?

I feel so sorry for the friends and families of these young people. There is nothing more difficult for a parent than to bury a child. I morn with them and pray for them.

Facebook

Just got a Facebook page. It is really kinds neat. I mainly signed up so that I could help monitor my 14yr old daughter's page. I am very computer and internet savvy and worry about her sometimes. I know she is growing up and I need to trust her more, but a lot of the things she is exposed to my wife and I did not have to deal with. Many things are the same though. So far she is doing great and Facebook seems to be the best of both worlds for her and us.

I'm Back!!

Sorry I have been neglecting my blog. Just a lot of things going on with family, work and such.

I will try to keep things updated more.

Let's see...

Saw FF2. Not that impressed. It was OK.

Saw Transformers. Great movie. Very entertaining. Very, very good special effects. Too busy at times though. My 6 yr old son had trouble keeping up with the action sometimes.

PortableApps saved the day

I know many of you don't really need to hear this, but this might help some who are just guests here and wondering if a portable version of your browser and email if the right way to go. I will try to make this a brief as possible.

My 14yr old daughter asked me the other day to upgrade her iTunes on our main PC. She said she had tried to but couldn't, because of admin rights. She did have admin rights at one time, but a bad experience with BearShare convinced me she needs monitoring on installs. iTunes did not like the fact that it was originally installed under her user id. After many attempts at fixing the registry for permissions, I attempted the ultimate fix. I uninstalled both QuickTime and iTunes. Seems sensible right? iTunes installer then told me that I needed Windows Installer 3.0. Again, seemed sensible. I went to the MS web site and attempted to download Installer 3.0. Of course the "Genuine Advantage" validation thing came up. MS would not validate my copy of windows, which I bought with this PC and have validated at least a dozen times before. Then after a restart a few hours later, I discovered that my PC was running so slow that it was not even functional. It took about 5 minutes to open each folder. At this point a reinstall of Windows seemed the likely fix.

Was I frustrated? Yes. Did I panic? No. I keep all of my important documents and programs on my flash drive, including my web browser Mozilla FireFox Portable Edition and email Mozilla Thunderbird Portable Edition . I of course use the PortableApps Suite Backup feature to backup my documents and application data 2 or 3 times a week. I then upload the backup files to my Gspace in case of a complete melt down of a PC.

I also needed to get document and other important files off of the PC before reinstall. Well, since Windows XP was running so slow, I decided to use a Knoppix Live CD . With the Knoppix CD I was able to burn DVD's of all the document's I needed.

I did forget one thing though. I have converted my wife from Outlook to Thunderbird, and I forgot to copy her profile over before the re-install. I of course did not have that problem, because all of my email's are either web based or on my flash drive.

I am almost done with the re-install and the estimated 200 Windows XP updates and SP's. Seems like every time, I reboot there are 30 or 40 more to do. If my wife could handle it and the rest of the world would get with it, I would dump Windows for Linux in a heartbeat. Let's face it though, most of the PC world is addicted to MS.

Thanks to John T Haller at PortableApps.com and all of the great developers there.

Life hits you hard sometimes

My wife and I have a 14yr old daughter. Since she entered middle school she has developed a very strong friendship with another classmate. Her parents were recently divorced when we met her. I am not exactly sure of the dates.

Over the last few years we have almost become a second family for this young lady. Her parents fought like an two ex's can tend to do. Her father had a bad drinking problem. This was one of the main reasons that they divorced. It was difficult for her to spend time with him after the divorce especially when the alcohol was around.

The worst thing happened the other night though. He took his own life. She is of course in shock. Regardless of how strained a relationship she had with him recently, this is still very devastating to a young lady. She is a great kid. My daughter is doing a great job of supporting her. We are trying to do everything we can to support her in this difficult time.

It's quite a shame that he had to put her through this. I will post more at a later date about the recovery process, especially how a young Chrisitan girl handles this tragedy.

The Kazoo Spartan

1st Post

This is just a test post to setup my blog.