Author: Mark

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Journal

Some days are diamonds, some days are stones…

My little princess, my darling Beccy, did not have a good day today..

When I got her up, she had taken her nappy off and made a little mess on the bed. Never mind, we cleaned it up, threw her in the shower and the sheets in the wash..

During her afternoon sleep, she took her training undies off and wet the bed. Better than last time, but the sheet and mattress protector are headed for the wash..

Then later in the afternoon, I’m working away soldering downstairs when I hear a click-click-click noise. I dashed up the stairs to find Beccy, who was supposed to be on the toilet has escaped into the kitchen and has turned the stove on and is trying to cook dinner.

Well, it was sort of cooked, but all the meat was still in the Supermarket trays and a couple of oranges got poached in thier skins and blue shopping bag…

The smell was horrible, and we had to just chuck the whole lot in the bin. Thankfully no-one was hurt, and the worst damage was the smell, a bit of soot in the kitchen and $30 worth of shipping stright in the bin.

If this is the worst day of parenting we ever have, we’ll be blessed!

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Journal

Catch them unawares….

I went in to Bec this morning when she woke up (I knew she’d been chatting and playing quietly for a while), and she was sitting up on the bed clasping three teddies in her lap.

She looked up at me proudly and said Look daddy, I catched them unawares.” “”Just like nana-jamas“”

I’m so proud..

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Journal

Kicked

Bern has been being kicked by the baby since she was about 12 weeks (she’s now 23), but I got to feel my first kick last night! It is beautiful to feel some contact, though I know Bern wishes [he/she] would calm down a bit, and stop sitting so high up and giving her indigestion.

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Journal

Mummy’s Microphone

Bec is very affectionate towards the baby (which has become very visible in last few weeks) She likes to kiss mummy’s tummy and talk to the baby. In fact we found out the other day that mummy’s belly button is in fact a microphone for talking to the baby..

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Links

DIY Data Projector

Got a bit of spare time and want a 3500 lumen projector that costs less than $500 and uses $50 globes try this

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People

Jay & Helena McNeil

Jay & Helena make up the team of Suitcase Music. We were just starting to get to know them when they moved to the U.S. to work with the worship team at Willow Creek. We’ve kept in contact both individually and as part of the Church community as a whole, but we were particularly exited by an email we received last week with the new that they were expecting.

Expecting (did I mention there were twins) is a fantastic thing in itself, but for this particular couple, who had struggled to start a family for so many years, it is simply a miracle. God has really blessed them, and they deserve it.

We just hope the come back to Australia some time soon.. We don’t want them having kids with American accents….

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Journal

Mardi Gras – Pancake Tuesday.

Mardi Gras, translated literally is Fat Tuesday” aka “”Shrove* Tuesday”” or “”Pancake Tuesday”” the day Christians Celebrate as the Day before Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. The idea is to get rid of all their perishable goods before the time of fasting, so they cook it all and make:

Pancakes
1 1/2 Cups Plain Flour
1/2 Tsp Salt
1 1/2 Tsp Baking Powder
1 1/2 Tblsp Sugar
2 Eggs
300ml Milk
2Tblsp Melted Butter

Mix, Stand for a while, Cook.

Recipe courtesy of my Brother-in-Law Chris. We found them a little thick, so we added more milk.

The Mardis Gras connection is explained better,(or at least corroborated) here. I first heard it on Light FM last year.

* Shrove seems to be from the Scottish “”Shriven”” or cleansed (of sins)

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Journal

root email accounts

I got a call from a Croydon Hills today (where I’m not actually working) because they had a problem with their Linux Proxy server. I SSH’d in and found that squid wasn’t starting, which meant no proxy…

I had a bit of a look round, and found the logs were full of arpwatch entries, which while looking at the manual I found can also be emailed to the root* user.

That was when I found root’s mailbox contained 2,274,574 messages totalling 1.7Gb of disk space! Not surprisingly, squid wasn’t starting because the server was out of disk space….

In my defence, I didn’t set the proxy server up, just kept it running.

* root is the superuser (Administrator) on a unix (linux) computer.

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Journal

Image Puzzle

I found this image puzzle, but I cant get past stage 3, coz I cant do those magic eye things….

AAaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhh!!!

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Journal

Changing Schools

I’ve moved Schools again, keeping Heathmont College two days a week, and handing over
Croydon Hills to a more specialised Mac tech.
The new Schools are: Billanook Primary, Rolling Hills Primary and Kilsyth Primary