Stiff arm
I spent most of today at my dad's place, wielding heavy duty gardening gadgetry. My dad runs a gardening business and lately his place is proof of the saying about…
cmkl
More screaming. We think pinworms are back
Despite a slight reddening around her vagina, the night time only screaming makes us think it’s pinworms. Again. This is the child we’re talking about, in case that’s not clear.…
Web hosting: how the other 90 per cent live
Lately I've been doing some work on other people's websites, hosted elsewhere. It's a bit new to me how things are done these days, so forgive me if I show…
One down six to go
Today we launched one of the seven websites I need to relaunch this summer. There are still some rough patches, but it's mostly there. I hope this will start a…
So the latest version of WordPress now requires PHP 5.2
And CentOS is still offering only 5.1.6. Oh yes, I've read the reams of 'your mileage may vary' message board conversations about getting their version of 5.3 to work, but…
It’s a mighty expensive swimming lesson
But it is working. Mallory was swimming with her head underwater today. Also doing bobs without a noodle. And swimming across the pool by herself. And swimming on her back…
Have a non-oppressive Canada Day while acknowledging the country’s past as a colonialist enterprise built upon a stolen continent and our tremendous potential for social change exhale
As the parties rage on in the apartments across the street and the improv fireworks pop and boom seemingly right outside my sleeping child's window, I must confess my ambivalence…
Boy if I was trying to do something serious
Like, say, get media attention for a real issue, like say the flotilla to Gaza, the fight against the dismantling of Greece's social programs, or even trying to get across…
And back to school she goes, we think
Tomorrow Mallory will likely head back to school. She's past the contagious period and has been sleeping well, unmedicated for two nights now. No oatmeal bath or lotion either. She…
Social media vs email: your best activist tool is…
It's not so clear to me. Numerically speaking, still email. But from the perspective of response rates, it's not clear. It could still be email. Here's what I mean:
You’d never know it to look at her face
...but I think Mallory is either getting off easy or dealing well with the chicken pox. Last night did not see the three hour wail fest, and I expect this…
And now I brace myself
If last night is any indication, we're about 40 minutes off from the start of screaming. Mallory went down like a ton of bricks, half an hour ago, dosed withe…
Chicken pox. Who’s happy now?
I have to confess when Irene and I first discovered Mallory had chicken pox yesterday morning, we were kind of happy. Like when you put a tick beside something relatively…
Did the NDP fall into a trap?
I suppose the doyens of public opinion research will tell us the answers soon enough, but I'm wondering if, as Bob Rae claims, the NDP fell into a Tory-set trap…
Two hard drive failures
It's a sign of something. Within days of each other the drive on Irene's Macbook Air and one of the mechanisms in my desktop computer fail. One more spectacularly than…
Being Zen about the pool part 2
Total breeze of an evening. Home in time to put together leftovers for dinner. Dinner done in time for a bath, and then out for a beer with a friend.…
The Canada Post lockout busting legislation explained
It all makes perfect sense to me now. At first I thought it strange that the Tory government was ordering its wholly-owned crown corporation and its Tory government-appointed president to…
Being zen about the pool, part one
I came home today to find my kid and two of my neighbours' three kids swimming in the pool. And the landscapers prepping the area where a stone path will…
I really need to remove some stress from my life
I have two websites to launch this week for work, one freelance project that needs some attention, one volunteer website that needs to launch by the end of this month,…
Rights versus the economy
In uniondom we talk a lot about the 'right to free collective bargaining'. I expect most of us realize the meaning of that phrase is lost on most people in…