Her birthday was actually at the beginning of the month, and she recently found a birthday buddy.  I'm just slow and have been busy, hence the late celebration post.

I got told once (not directly, the person doing the telling was telling it on a forum) that personalities are more or less developed by the age of 7 or something to that effect.  If this is the case, then my daughter has my nasty streak which is not something I wanted her to inherit, but fortunately she is a lot nicer than I am most of the time.

I have often described her to others as my "perfect" child (local society's often idiot notion of "perfect", seeing as I use the word to indicate how happy or annoyed I am with something), as she is really cruisy, easygoing, compliant, helpful and frighteningly mature and responsible for someone that age.

It started sometime after I upgraded to Mavericks (it was 10.9.something by the time I got around to it, and I really do quite enjoy using it) and before the next update.  I would be poking around on the internet and seemingly at random, everything would just stop working.

Everything that wasn't going over http would work fine (ssh on terminal, im programs, Tor).

I initially assumed there was something wrong with dns so tried using OpenDNS instead of my isp, but that didn't fix it.

I tried flushing dns caches every way I found relevant to OSX 10.8 and 10.9 on the internet, but that didn't fix it.

I figured there might be something wrong with the routing maybe as when I tracerouted any given site, I would get stuck somewhere inside hwng.net or bandcon.com (which appear to be the same thing), however Tor worked.

I had Quadrapop over earlier today and she was looking over my shoulder and critting the work I'd done on Red's hands so far.  I am aware the hand is the wrong shape and was planning on fixing that in Lightwave where I have poly modelling tools but after receiving the second degree I got motivated enough to attempt it in Sculptris (after firing up Lightwave and fixing the hands on the base models and putting the legs in Da Vinci pose while I was about it).

Quadrapop had in the meantime headed home so I dropped the following image into a group chat blaming her for the kick up the arse:

Late night lojban lesson with the stubborn 4yo:

me: Do you remember any lojban? mi prami do
4yo: mi prami do, what does dat mean?
me: it means "I love you"
4yo: mi prami do *gives me a cuddle*
me: cinba *gives him a kiss*
4yo: what does dat mean?
me: it means 'kiss'
4yo: sheen ba! *gives me a kiss*
me: ko sipna, that means 'go to sleep!'

He's still not asleep.

7yo: Mummy what do you want for Christmas?
Me: world peace and everyone to stop shoving their beliefs down everyone else's throats.
7yo: w...orl...d...pea...ce...world peace I think.

[I look over and realise she's writing a list]

All times are estimated :P

4am: Cub wets the bed for the second morning in a row (yesterday morning it was 5am).  I bathe him and strip the sheets and make up half the bed and in the meantime he goes to his bed where Josh is.  Josh comes and squeezes into the dry side of the bed with me (tight fit as it's the equivalent of a single at this point)

9am: finally haul self out of bed.  Ru has been awesome as per usual and has been managing Cub while I slept in.  Coffee, laundry, try to get some 3d done while intermittently poking at the server trying to figure out which bits were nomming the memory and cpu so much so often.  Brain refusing to cooperate.

8yo (watching me touch type): how do you tap random keys and come up with words?

So once upon a time (not really so very long ago, only a handful of years), Josh's favourite AFL team the Fremantle Dockers made it into a qualifying final (and then got knocked out).  I said that if they ever made it into the finals again, I would do the anchor in my hair.

They're currently up for a semi.

So...

I wonder if whoever it was got the idea for the Minbari horn crests while waiting for their hair to bleach

Back in Perth now and this post is going to be a long one.

The holiday has been great because I was home and crap because in the second week, I got a swollen gland or lymph node that pressed onto the nerve of one of my back teeth and caused a LOT of pain and made eating difficult, and the kids got sick.  In the third week the kids recovered and I got sick (two days completely out of action and just general misery, persistent headache and neverending mucous production for the rest of the week and continuing as I type).  I am feeling slightly bitter about it and thinking it's brutally unfair but at least I stayed there the entire time unlike a certain Christmas where I got medevac'd.

Fail summary

I'd told the 4yo to go and rest up prior to a planned outing as he'd power chucked from the dining table to the back door at lunch time and we wanted to make sure he was okay for the trip (which didn't eventuate as he was still coughing in a manner that had us paranoid that he might do it again).

I heard screaming matches between him and the 8yo and walked in, found the 4yo lying on the bed looking sleepy and upset and the 8yo playing his DS.  Told off the 8yo for antagonising the 4yo (he protested, but he has been antagoising his siblings for the past couple of days).  After giving the 8yo a serve I again told the 4yo to lie there and rest up and as I was walking out he smiled and said "Ahhh nothing is sweeter than victory."