Vacation time...

Welcome back there.

Rarely do I ever leave further then I can connect and keep updated at least on a daily basis. And with the current information flow a good deal of time is spend this way.
For instance, scanning Facebook news feed chronologically to see if anything important happened there in the past 24 hours usually takes 20 minutes or so, assuming there's nothing that really needs my grander attention.

Google+ is usually the same, yet with the few contact I have there I have to turn the stream down as much of the information in periods tend to be fairly time consuming.

Blogs, not a big deal on average 2 Blogs are published pr. day from my entire collection. Again in periods everyone publish at the same time, giving hunchbacks. Still not the bigger issue when i spend the some 30-45 minutes devoting attention to actually reading it and interact where appropriate.

My lofty goal of at least a blog publish every second day, seems to have dwindled. One reason is the lack of interaction, lack of followers essentially. With only 2-3 people reading or seeing a post on average, i don't feel that huge a commitment to stay committed, and my time is spend elsewhere doing other things rather then writing up new posts here. Of course that brings the Maxx Loproc project blog to a crawl, but nothing much goes on there anyway.

Now I've been on the family choice of vacation:
Summer cabin with  nice fireplace (average temps 10-15C daytime, 5-10C nighttime), No TV, No computers, No Telephone. If it doesn't run on "brainpower" it's banned...
Brainpower is a house term we use for activities that aren't run on electrical power, and is often used as a child punishment. There's little point in giving the kids house arrests, when they never leave the house, Not try a "brainpower day" where all entertainment is powered by your own imagination.... See first off it teaches them imagination.
Sorry, got sidetracked there.

Anyhow, spending the last week on vacation meaning no connectivity to anything that wasn't run on a piece of paper is a pleasant calm time. And I enjoy it as much as the kids enjoy my full and utter attention.

It's when I get back to the Internet it gets funny, since people suddenly find me available again. For the past 48 hours I've been clammed down at work. Not able to go in to much details here, but basically basic issues have showed them self, and been waiting for my return rather then just going through the workpipe. Basically the week I've been on vacation I've just not been doing the work and therefore it's waiting for me to do now, and currently I'm not shall we say having much spare time during the short work hours. I hope most people familiar with me would know that this results in me just running a bit faster, as I haven't broken yet I seem able to run faster.
Sometimes I get amused of considering what will happen when I finally crack, whether that be tomorrow or next century, it'll happen sooner or later, and I doubt the world will be fixed before then sooo...

Same goes with all these Internet things:
This blog, Facebook, G+, other peoples blogs....

Now you might wonder: Why doesn't i just cut the crap then. How important is Facebook really...
In truth not much which can be seen on the time consumption I have with it. 30-45 minutes to run it through and interact with the most important from these past 11 days offline.
It's roughly the time I'll spend authoring this post.
What i get out of it? Well currently I'm merely updated as to who's doing something different then usual. The most recent E scams running, the heads up news on peoples heads. (haven't followed the news, so can't say which important issues are currently active).
Sure I could cut it, but it's unlikely i will as the trade off is okay and I need to remain FB active a while longer.
G+?
Well going through G+ took me less then 10 minutes. Why?
I don't need to pick up why the Apple Mini sucks or sucks not. I don't need to digest the images that are in the stream. So basically I can skip everything, as long as I don't get involved in anything. Easy...

 Reading Blogs.... This I started already back Sunday, and I've spend an hour or 3 doing so already, but I still have the 5-10 hour backlog now. Why do it?
Because i care.

Now you might know why I'm reluctant to hold vacations. But what's your take on taking vacations?
Bring some feedback. Let's bring some life here.

The wonders of children

If you didn't know I have a couple of kids. 3 in fact. And as with any other emotional touchy feely stuff, they might not have drawn the best straw getting a father. But such is life.

Still I do my best to provide as any parent would do, but my quirks of course raise issues that I don't see that many other places. First off, I've realized along the line somewhere that good parenting wasn't so much about being liked, but rather guiding and leaving a decent product in the end: Grown decent human beings. Thus far I seem to succeed, be that to their mother saving them from my insanity or just the fact children er resilient I have no comments.
At any rate, I'm a nerd. And proud of it. It's that simple. It would seem that my Oldest daughter now almost 9 years, 8,5 something, 9 at the end of august, mkay... Being my firstborn and thusly being the prime subject of my strange views on existence when looking for guidance in the worlds have become a nerd too. Whether that's genetics of heritage you can debate for hours with no results, but the fact is that she's a nerd too.

She shows some funny trades, ohh keep in mind that my Dwarflike single minded stubbornness and skills for debating she have too. This results in facts like no is merely someone that hasn't yet seen the reasons and meaning of things and must thusly be shown the light. Most often used word in our household is "Why?". Authorities, well they are there, but maybe I'm smarter then they are. This trade is common I believe and course of much trouble in danish households these days, so nothing special there. Yet she doesn't have a ground moral compass as to what is basically right and wrong, and is mostly ruled by her logic. As foul language for instance is not something understood, so there's language... she uses the language and word used around her, and there's no filter to this. Again you try explaining why censoring is good without making exceptions...

Anyway, i started this text from an experience I had yesterday sitting on the couch feeding the smallest and focusing on that, while she and her little brother started debating something and I took a listen to the details. He's 5, going on 6, He'll be 6 by September... And he also shows the sign of not merely accepting the first explanation if it doesn't co-exists with his perception of the world. They are called Lucien, and Akita.

Anyway I noticed they were discussing relative sizes, how they got that started beats me, but Akita was starting to explain to Lucien how the sun was way bigger then both the earth and the moon, to the size that he could fit 1.000 earths into the sun. The debate come to think of it had to do with sun burns and summer temperatures. And the details aren't really important. what stoke my attention was the fact she was starting to describe and illustrate the Earth evolves around Sun, with moon revolving the Earth, and every one of them spinning.
You might have been exposed to this somehow, somewhere else with Oranges, strings, sticks, apples and spinning devises. From what I know this setup is presented children in the age 12'ish and that seems consistent with around 10 year olds being able to sense abstractly. But she's 8,5. Now if someone had set up a rig like it for her to watch I wouldn't have cared, she'd just memorized the rig. But she hasn't. I expect she's picked it up from a book I noticed her reading a few weeks ago. Still going from a text to actually understanding and conceptualize abstracts like that takes me a bit on a surprise. Guess I'll have to ramp up geometric shapes and structures soon...


But that's just one thing striking me. Another thing is: taking a step back and watching it from a 3rd. person perspective both of them are rather nerdish. The way to read, memorize and use facts either picked up watching Disney Channel, reading fact books, asking teachers or others. They pick up facts like this and sets them as universal truths. Don't get me wrong, they aren't savants or anything, in fact they are merely ordinary kids, it's just the way they pick up knowledge that's fascinating. They do it literally. And well not all their logic is sound, for instance: Santa doesn't actually live next door to grandma, nor do I actually put the sun at the sky every morning. Innocent beliefs that'll be replaced in time, yet it's the way they understand the world and its logic.

I can't say I'm all innocent in the effect though and frankly I need a bit of help this summer:
In the schools among the kids today there's hobby with Soccer cards, and they collect those from age 6, kinder garden classes and up with obsessive behaviours. This weekend Lucien was exposed to this and naturally the hype got hold of him, and as any drug dealer he was offered a couple of cards.
From his perspective, it's cards with soccer players on them, and he knows nothing or relatively little about soccer. The fact there's clubs like Barcelona FC or what ever else there s is obvious to him. This is something I'm sure given the chance someone will teach him, and the corruption starts now.
So I'm going to throw a counter to that:
The main objective in the collection is to get the kids to buy more card to get the full team, following the real life clubs team setups, with transfers shirt changes and so forth. This is a common market trick and the kids are easy targets once hooked. Now how to unhook....
He doesn't know much about football, which good, so that's not going to drive him. He loves Transformers, star wars and stuff like that.
The main point in the activity is to compare collections to have the most complete collection of cards.
Bringing him a card collection that no one else have would eliminate the competitive element of it all, and getting a relatively complete collection (1 season is a collection. Season 1-10 is a collection of collections) would make it a fix expense and should last a few years.
So been looking for it, but haven't found SW which is mercantile enough to threaten the exclusive component, to Transformers. Of course all the Bacucan, Beyblade, Pokemon etc are options, but still needing to retain the exclusive and completeness illusions to ward of the soccer corruption.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.