Vrooooooooooooom!!! Go-Kart Fun!

Went Go-Karting with the guys from work tonight and it was fun! Haven't been karting for a long while so it took a while to get back into the swing of things, but after a while I was wearing a grin from ear to ear and screaming loudly going around corners and giggling like a schoolgirl when I *gently* nudge people... :)

It was a work do and so we headed out for dinner beforehand at a local Irish Pub in the city, and I had lamb shanks and a middy of Kilkenny beer... Mmmmm... yummo! And I thought of Max as wifey gets him a lamb shank just about every week... how come the dog eats better than I do? *grumble* ;)

Good to get out for a while, but felt a tad bad as the girls were home on their own and I got home close to 10pm, but wifey was very understanding... I managed a big stack and rammed into the barriers and got the kart and my right foot stuck in the barrier, but no damage to myself... yet... but we shall see in the morning... :)

Countdown to BlogDay 2005

Came across this and thought I'd post it as it could potentially be interesting...

What is BlogDay 2005?
(Taken from http://blogday.wikispaces.org/...)

BlogDay was initiated with the belief that bloggers should have one day which will be dedicated to know other bloggers, from other countries or areas of interests. In that day Bloggers will recommend about them to their Blog visitors.

Seeing the end in mind, in this is day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. In this day all Blog web surfers will find themselves leaping and discovering new, unknown blogs.

So effectively people post on their blogs on BlogDay, a recommendation of 5 new Blogs such that people who visit those blogs will in turn find another BlogDay post where they can dive into a cyclic recursion of links and discover a whole new world of ideas, views, attitudes that bloggers around the world share with their online readers... Cool eh?

It's on the 31st of August 2005, and I've included a cool little flash counter counting down the days before BlogDay. Instructions are on the link provided above... Happy Blogging! :)

*smiles*

Just finished feeding Hannah and put her back to bed... Not unlike most other nights for the last 10 weeks or so. Been rather tired lately, even though I don't think I've been letting my brain know about it, as I feel fine, but people have told me that I look tired so I'd better work on trying harder to convince my body that I'm not tired... :)

Even though I might be tired, it's been an absolute joy since Hannah came into the lives of my wife and I. I enjoy coming home from work to see the girls and look forward to the weekends. I was tired before I fed Hannah, but have been given a boost seeing how good she was feeding, she drank most of her milk, and went back to sleep. When I tucked her in, she was sleeping peacefully, then cracked this most gorgeous smile from ear to ear, which made my heart melt and the tiredness evaporated... *gush* :) I said a quick prayer with her and she smiled at the most appropriate times during the prayer. Sometimes I think that she understands more than what we give her credit for...

I'm sooooo looking forward to planning stuff to do with her as she grows, doodling with crayons, making up and singing silly songs, dancing around like fools with the radio blaring away, going to the park running around with Max, heading out to cafes drinking coffee with wifey, watching the world go by while Hannah enjoys her babycino... long car rides for holidays down south, plane rides to destinations afar... nice walks on the foreshore on beautiful Perth days, swimming lessons at the local pool, camping trips roughing it out in 5-star luxury as ordained by wifey... :) and oh all the cool geeky nerdy stuff that her dad so enjoys... ;)

Church, junk food, walks and screaming baby...

Lovely day outside...
Originally uploaded by swang.

Managed to make it out to church today, and it was great. Hannah slept through most of the worship as usual, and stirred during the message. I took her to the baby room which was packed today, must be baby season... :)

Had KFC for lunch which was a nice change seeing we haven't had it since Hannah came along, and it was the wifey's suggestion too! Yum, I can still feel the oil running through my arteries... Lazy afternoon followed by a nice walk with Hannah and Max. It was the most lovely weather outside today, so we enjoyed the walk, although we paid for it later... :(

Can we go out? It looks nice outside!
Originally uploaded by swang.

Hannah slept in the Baby Bjorn for most of the walk, then refused to sleep when we got home and pretty much cried and screamed until about 8:30pm... so there stress in the household. We even had my family over for dinner as well as the bro-in-law and his girlfriend, and felt a bit bad as wifey was stressed and baby was screaming, and I was feeling a bit stressed from the combo of the two...

But it's all cool now, as it always does end up... Bub is sleeping and so is wifey... it's 1am and all's well... :)

Happy Birthday Dude!

Darth Vadar Cake
Originally uploaded by swang.

It's Nick's birthday today, yay! Happy Birthday Dude! And many happy returns, I pray that God will continue to bless you richly and use you mightily in His good work, man! :)

We went round to his folks place for cake, which was very nice of them to invite us, and we packed the Cheeky Chicky (my new pet name for hannah) and the wifey in the car and headed off there. We made a few detours trying to find a cake place and both the Jean Claude Pattisaries in Subi and Wembly were shut so we went to Herdies Market to the Bakehouse there to pick up a cake to take along.

Nick's birthday cake was baked by his sister Tanya, and she bakes the most awesome cakes! He got a Darth Vadar cake (see pic) and it was the yummiest chocolate cake! Incidentally we set him (Vadar) alight for birthday rituals, but wasn't he burnt first before he had to wear the big black heavy suit and mask? :P

Nick was hassling me about my birthday pressie as wifey has already gotten it and I know it's arrive as the cleaner called me up at work when it arrived to tell me to let wifey know that it got here... Heheh... wifey not impressed with the leak of information, but I'm still none the wiser about the contents of that package. Even Nick and his wifey knows about it, so I must just put it out of my mind and not think about it for the next 2 weeks... Which is going to be hard! :)

Nick's pressie was a Sony PSP which we all chipped in for, and the consolation to my birthday pressie mystery is that he'll have to wait until the 1st of September before he can get his PSP as that is the official Australian release date. :) But at least he knows what he's getting... *grumble*

LEGO Show!

If I keep really still and grin, the spider mi...
Originally uploaded by swang.

Went to the LEGO show today, and it was pretty cool. Learnt a bit about the origins of LEGO and also a bit about the manufacturing process.

Interesting Factoid 1 : LEGO is produced in Denmark. The production of LEGO elements in Denmark takes place in Billund. Approximately 4000 people are employed in Billund. Half of these are working in production.

Interesting LEGO Factoid Display
Originally uploaded by swang.

Interesting Factoid 2 : Moulding. In the moulding department on "Kornmarken" there are 725 moulding machines. The moulding machines are supplied with plastics granulate via a pipe system above the machines. In the first section of the moulding machine the granulate is heated to 235-250 degrees centigrade. When the granulate has melted, it is pressed into the moulding form and cooled down with water - then the moulding form opens and out come the moulded LEGO elements.

Interesting Factoid 3 : Granulate. Plastics granulate is delivered by suppliers from Germany, The Netherlands and Italy. More than half of the granulate is ABS in the main colours of red, blue, yellow, black and white. Delivery takes place in the tank lorries, and the granulate is filled on big silos at the factory. Plus many other types and colours are used - in total approximately 250 variants. This granulate is delivered in containers with a weight of up to 800kgs.

What the Falck? :) Retro LEGO...
Originally uploaded by swang.

And I didn't make all that up... I took a picture of the display and it had all this information so I zoomed into the photo and retyped all the interesting facts. I'm bummed cos I realised that I should've taken the other display about the guy that came up with LEGO, and he used to make toys carved out of wood, and then progressed onto making LEGO when plastics became a bit more ubiquitous in the world. Although I did take a cool pic of a box of one of the original LEGO and it was pretty retro looking...

On the home front, Hannah has been put onto a tough love policy at home to try and get her to sleep more. We realised that we've been picking her up early and she hasn't been getting the sleep that she needs so now we're going to let her cry and not pick her up. And gosh it's the most heart-wrenching experience for wifey, and it's beginning to get to me too. I can usually let her cry and not take too much notice, but I think she's beginning to work hard at getting my heart to break hearing her cry for extended periods. I must be strong! I MUST! :) Poor little girl... I hope she forgives me eventually...

I mean once she learns to get herself back to sleep, and get more sleep, and grow physically and mentally, then everyone wins! That and if she sleeps through the night, then we would have crossed another milestone where we may return to semi-normal life. So everyone's support and prayers would be appreciated during this difficult time... well, difficult for wifey and I anyways...

I'm still keeping my chin up and staying positive though! :) And still having the time of my life... oh and did I mention I've been really looking forward to coming home each night and to the weekends to spend quality time with the girls? :)

Fresh Digital Start...

Blue Screen of Life?
Originally uploaded by swang.

It's been a busy but good weekend just past, and since my laptop has been flaking out a bit lately, I've decided to wipe it all and reinstall everything and get the new windows smell... Mmmmm... :)

Not without spending most of Saturday backing up all my stuff including pics, mail and other misc. stuff, then reinstalling it that night with some dramas. Firstly I had slipstreamed service pack 2 into a WinXP install disk that I had, but when I used that to reinstall, and it asked me for my product key, I flipped my laptop over and typed in the product key... hmmm... wrong key... turns out that the version that I had was for a volume licensing version which the NEC OEM product key didn't work for... Doh! Ended up digging up the product recovery disk from NEC to reinstall windows then manually installing the service pack after... *grumble*

Also when I did finally get windows installed it asked me to activate so I did it through the internet, but said I had an invalid product key... Hmmmm... I suppose it made sense, I mean the key was used to initially install windows, and now it thought that I used it on a different machine so a quick call to microsoft should sort it out... wrong! Their IVR telephony system was crap, I mean the announcements were incomprehensable... If you've watched the Peanuts cartoons on tv, it sounded like the adults talking in the cartoon... "Bwah bwah bwah bwah... bwah bwah bwah bwah... press 2..."

After the third time through the options I finally managed to get through the right channel, typed in a long stream of digits provided by the computer then talked to some indian dude who finally sorted me out. I thought I'd do everyone a favour and tell him about the faulty telephony IVR system and he said "Thank you sir, we'll fix it... Good Bye!" Yeah like he was going to something about it... :P

Max chilling out...
Originally uploaded by swang.

Anyways, laptop is back up and running, even managed to reinstall most of the important stuff like the digital camera software and even found an update on the Canon website so the new proggy is even better than before! Going to go easy on the re-installation and only put back what I'd actually use... :) This all happened yesterday and Max the little furball sat quietly behind me in the office and slept while I spend a lazy Sunday afternoon getting my laptop back to life... :)

Oh, and Hannah had her jabs today, 2 in fact and some polio drops... poor little precious girl of mine screamed a bit, but was fine after... what a trooper! She's a brave little one and I was thinking about her quite a bit today at work even though I was flat out again... I even had a chat to her before I went to work to let her know that Daddy will be praying for her and she'll be fine and be a brave little girl... I get all gushy talking about it now... :)

Weekend... Yay!

The weekend is finally here, and it's been a challenging and tiring week, not in a bad way, but in a good one. Finished my first week at the new job and it's been pretty good. Been flat out all week and it's just flew by, which means that I wasn't bored and it's been pretty full on, but I'm slowly finding my feet again and definitely looking forward to the weekend.

Not too sure what is planned for the weekend, however it's just downtime and good to spend it with the girls and catching up on much needed rest.

Fulfilling but tiring week

Mission Impossible: Fit that into car with pram
Originally uploaded by swang.

Mission accomplished!
Originally uploaded by swang.

Here is where I hid more stuff
Originally uploaded by swang.

Well it's been a while since my last post as I've had a really full week. Been out with the girls almost every day this week, and am paying for it now... :) Exhausted ourselves yesterday even though we had time out without Hannah, but we ended up going shopping and buying a whole heap of stuff for Hannah.

Note to self and other new dads, do not go shopping with new mum without new bub, as money will be spent on bubby and heaps of it as well... :) Target was having a toy sale and it was the last day so we decided to buy Hannah's Christmas gift and my sister decided to do the same. We had heaps of fun, although after the purchases and wheeling the trolley it began to dawn on me that it might be a challenge putting all the stuff into the car. But in a similar fashion to solving some kind of Rubik's puzzle, I managed to squeeze everything into the car as shown on the photos and even managed to put a trolley of groceries in after the other stuff was in the car as shown in the pics. :)

We even spoilt ourselves and bought the Star Wars Trivial Pursuit game which covered all 6 movies and had 2 DVD's which is cool as some of the questions are on the DVD and is interactive. We went over to Nick and Diana's place for dinner last night and managed to play a bit before packing everything up quickly and heading off as the girls were exhausted.

Managed to rest most of today and took on more feeding and caring duties for Hannah today whilst wifey rested, and went out for dinner at the local Thai place to celebrate my sister's birthday which is during the coming week.

Starting my new job tomorrow (or more like later today...) so that should be fun. Especially seeing it's back in the CBD which means that I can catchup with friends that work in the city and head into the city for a touch of retail therapy during lunchtimes.