September 28th, 2005

My birthday today. I had lunch with Kevin at the Tecate Grill (my favorite Mexican restaraunt). When I got home, Erin had one of my favorite meals prepared, and Gracie surprised me with a bag of Skittles. Matt kept repeating "happy birthday", almost like he was trying to sing the song, but couldn't quite get the tune.

We went for a walk after dinner (around the loop), Matt and Grace took turns riding in, then pulling the wagon. At one point Graice was pulling the wagon down a hill, Matt was walking well ahead of her -- when all of the sudden Grace lost control of the wagon and had to let it go by itself down the hill. Wouldn't you know, as it gained speed, it formed a perfect line to Matt, and would have ploughed him over had it not been for a bump on the pavement that knocked the wagon just enough off course to only brush up against Matt's right side. Erin and I were anticipating a major catastrophe -- fortunately most of the crying was about the possibility of the wagon going down the hillside of the ravine.

Grace has been having a difficult time riding the bus lately. She's pretty good about going to school, but she gets teary coming home. She loves school, but the bus ride is intimidating. So many loud, older kids.

We went to a 1 hour presentation given by Gracie's kindergarten teachers (Mrs. Janzen and Ms. Jocelyn) last night. They're amazing. I am so glad that Gracie's first experience with school is with these two instructors. We're really fortunate to live in a place when our children can be educated by some of the finest teachers. Gracie's also got lots of friends at school. Makenna Kwasney, Julie Gedlaman, Kayla Lee, Sydney Taylor, Nathan Kearl, Rian McMullen (I'm sure there are others).

Icons

In addition to the icon set that shipped with VS.2005, I found this free icon set that may be of some use.

http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/preview.php

Monday September 26, 2005

Had a busy day at work, and came home to sick, crying kids. Erin took Matt to the doctor today, and he confirmed that Matt's got an ear infection. Erin pointed out that Matt is getting old enough that he can communicate what part of his body hurts. This is the first time he's been sick, that he's been able to say what's bothering him.

Gracie didn't go to school today. She's been sick a bit also -- just sick enough that she couldn't overcome her anxious feelings about riding the bus. When I got home from work, I took Grace and Matt off Erin's hands and went for a walk. Gracie and I talked about going to school and riding the bus, and she told me that she would go to school tomorrow. She's really growing up.

While we were out walking, we passed by the Harker's house. They happend to be out picking vegetables out of thier garden, so we stoped for a chat. Shelly was kind enough to send us on our way with a bag of carrots. When we got home, Erin cleaned off the carrots, and Matt and Gracie dipped them in ranch dressing. They really enjoyed it.

The Webdeveloper's Handbook

I found this site the other day -- it's got tons of very good web development links.

Scary...

Very scary.

Web App Lessons Learned

Here's a summary by Jason Freid, a successful application developer, of some lessons learned while developing his project management tool Bascamp.

Karl's will love this.

IE Developer Toolbar

Perhaps I'm easily impressed, but this Internet Explorere Developer's tool is absolutely awesome. There's also one for Firefox.

Great CSS Resource

http://www.westciv.com/style_master/academy/hands_on_tutorial/index.html

XHTML Entity Reference

http://www.digitalmediaminute.com/reference/entity/

September 21, 2005

Went out with the kids tonight to pickup some photos from Future Shop. On the way home we stoped by 7-11 for a treat. Gracie and Matt got the usual $0.05 candies, and on the way to the till I spotted some "Pop Rocks" popping candy. In the car on the way home, I put some in my mouth and showed the kids -- they loved it. Matt instantly wanted to try some, Grace was hesitant. Matt had two mouthfulls, each time opening his mouth wide (like I had done) to let the popping sound out.

I had lunch with the Saunders boys today (Tom, Dave & Chuck). We met at the usual spot -- Chili's. It's nice to catch up with those guys. I miss being around Tom, now that we don't work together any longer.

MSN Form Fill

Some documentation on authoring webpages that work with MSN form fill.

The E-commerce standard: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3106.txt
MSN Documentation: http://search.msn.com/docs/toolbar.aspx?t=MSNTbar_CONC_FormFillForWebmasters.htm

September 8th, 2005

I got a phone call from Erin today at lunch saying that my old Toronto elementary school buddy, Ben Gaum, was in town. I called Ben on his cell phone (he happed to be at Northland Mall, just 15 minutes from our house) and invited him over for dinner.

Ben is completing his graduate school to become an architect, and he's currently in a work term that takes him all over North America.

Ben showed up at about 5:30, ate dinner, played in the park with the kids, and spent about an hour and a half catching up. He then got in his rented truck, and drove up to Edmonton . What a fun night.

After Ben left, Gracie and I got in the car and delivered flyers for the food bank. The six Calgary stakes are sponsoring a city-wide food drive for the Inter-Faith food bank. Gracie rode her bike from house to house while I delivered the flyers. After about 30 minutes, she got smart to the idea that she could also deliver the flyers. So, she would walk up to the door of every-other house and hang the donation bag/flyer on the handle of the front door. She'd jump back on her bike and catch up with me. It was so much fun.

September 6th, 2005

Gracie's first day of school. What a fun day. I came home from work at about noon, and met Grace and Erin at home. Grandma and Grandpa Wolff came also. At 12:20 we walked down the street to the bus stop, and waited for the bus. Makenna Kwasney was there also. The bus came late, and Gracie was so excited all day. She's been excited all week actually (every night she would count down the number of sleeps until school).

I admit I was a little bit axious about putting Grace on the bus alone, and sending her on a 25 minute bus ride to Marion Carson Elementary (in Varsity) -- but Gracie was excited, and did just fine. She cried a bit when waiting to get on the bust at school to come home. Fortunately Lara was there to pick up Sommer, and was able to calm her a little bit. Erin asked Grace about it later in the evening, and Grace said she was a little bit intimidated by all the noise and older kids. It's now September 9th, and she's been on the bus and back three times, and hasn't cried since. She's having a really fun time at school.

After putting Grace on the bus, Erin went down to meet her at the school and reassure Gracie that school was going to be great. I think it was Erin who was looking for the reassurance. Erin watched as Gracie went into her class and looked for her name tag. All the kids got thier name tags, but Gracie was still a bit confused. Grace knows how to spell her name, "G-R-A-C-E", and the only nametag left to pick up (after all the kids had taken thier nametags) had the name "G-R-A-C-I-E". Erin was looking in from the window and could see that Grace was getting a little upset and confused. It looked like her name, but clearly wasn't. Erin went in and explained that it was her nametag, and quickly taught her that Graice and Grace have two different spellings, and that they could make a new nametage if she didn't like the Gracie nametag.

The theme for the Gracie's school year is "Water water everywher, and not a drop to spare". I think it's a great idea to have a theme -- I also think that particular theme is very timely.

I can't believe Gracie is old enough to be away at school for the afternoon. She's really enjoying it.

MTOM

An article from Microsoft about MTOM (Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism) the replacement of DIME.