for the past several months we’ve been letting Mia’s bangs grow out. As such, her hair’s been looking like that of a shaggy dog lately, hanging down over her eyes for most of the day… we’ve been using barrettes and bows in her hair to keep it out.

to get an idea of what she looked like, here’s a picture… yes, Mia is in fact painting her younger brother’s nails purple!

anyway, yesterday we took Mia (who turned five a few days ago, by the way… happy birthday to Mia!) to get her hair cut, and I got the hairdresser to cut her hair so that it was all the length of her newly-grown out bangs. As a result she had five or six inches cut off the back. It was a bit of a risk, but I must admit… she looks great! Here’s a picture of her new haircut; meanwhile she is wearing a dress that Yvonne made for her:

note that you can see her missing tooth in this picture… as I mentioned in this post we had to have one of her front teeth removed, and as she’s only just turned five she’ll be missing a tooth for the next two or three years! Albeit it certainly does add to her “character”. Here’s another picture of her haircut.

meanwhile, Callum has a Portal (the video game) addiction… while he’s unable to play certain levels (he’s only just turned seven), he’s played the ones he can play over and over… and frequently says things like “hey, remember that part of Test Chamber 17 where you have to do this?” Anyway it’s a friend’s birthday tonight, and we’re going over to their house for a party, so I asked the kids to decorate a paper bag, one side each, with “whatever you like”… and this was what Callum drew:

so… there’s that.

finally, the other week I got a new computer – a 17″ i7 MacBook Pro! I’m extremely pleased with it, so much so that here’s a picture of me loading software on it! The kids are in the background laughing at – yes – a YouTube video of some guy mucking around with Portal turrets.

here’s a picture of Mia at the Princess Dinner at Norway in the Epcot World Showcase. You’ll notice that Mia has all of her front teeth; this was before we had to have one of them pulled. I’ll post pictures of her new look later. She bonked her top front right tooth on the counter while trying to wash her hands in the kitchen sink, and it got infected and had to be removed – the root of the tooth pretty much disintegrated. As she’s only 4 years old she’s going to be spending the next two or three years of her life missing a front tooth, poor thing. Not that she seems to care in the slightest! Anyway this is a pretty good picture of Mia in her element that I neglected to post in my last Disneyworld post, so here it is!

and here’s a photo of Mia and Lachlan doing some reading, the way humans were meant to – upside-down on the couch. Mia is a pretty voracious reader. I think Lachlan was just looking at the pictures – but hey, he’s only 2.

the week before we took the family to Disneyworld. It was of course pretty fun, and everyone had a great time. Some of the highlights included riding the monorail around and around, meeting up with my sister (who lives in Tampa) and her daughter, doing the Princess dinner at Norway in the World Showcase at Epcot, and eating at a variety of character dinners. We also went on a whole bunch of rides – Callum really liked Expedition Everest, the roller coaster that features the elusive yeti. Mia, on the other hand, wasn’t so keen on the Tower of Terror or Splash Mountain. Maybe in a few years.

a personal highlight was watching the International Space Station pass over central Florida on April 28th. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, having never seen it, but I certainly didn’t expect it would be so bright and clear. I waved; not sure if anybody up there waved back.

of course we took a bunch of pictures while we were there, and so of course I’m going to post a few here (clicking on them makes them bigger).

Obligatory picture of me hanging with Mickey Mouse. Looks like he’s about to do some farming.

Callum, Von, and Mia hanging out at Disneyworld. Oh no wait, that’s not Von, that’s Pluto.

Callum and one of his favorite things – the Disneyworld monorail. Callum actually loves monorails even outside of Disneyworld… one of his favorite movies (perhaps tied with the first Harry Potter movie for first place) is a documentary called High Tech Monorails.

The kids outside the LEGO store at the Disney Marketplace. Those aren’t real dogs. They’re made of LEGO. FYI.

Von and Lachlan outside the LEGO store. Von is trying to listen in on the LEGO lady’s cell phone conversation, while Lachlan is simultaneously trying to beep her nose.

Callum and Mia with Goliath from JoJo’s Circus. If you don’t know what JoJo’s Circus is that’s probably okay. I almost got into a fight with Goliath because I kept calling him “Dudester the Lion”. Well okay that’s not really true, but that would have been pretty funny.

yesterday morning was Bring Your Child to Work Day here at Blackbaud, and I brought my eldest son for half of the morning, and my daughter for the other half. It was pretty fun! This morning while I was at work my son (who just turned 7) filled out the form that came in his goodie bag. Here it is exactly as he filled it out:

Child’s Name: Callum
Parent’s Name: Brian
Parent’s Job Title: program manuger
Department: PD

1. Describe your parent’s job and duties.

meetings

2. What have you learned in school that would help you be successful at this job?

reading and Science

3. What is the hardest thing about your parent’s job?

meetings

4. What does your parent like most about their job?

People

5. Do you think you would like to have your parent’s job? Why or why not?

Why not

6. What do you like most about Blackbaud?

that it is a 4 story bilding.

I should point out that on this particular morning I went to some stand-up meetings to check on how regression testing was going, and then to a sprint demo, so his vision of what I do all day was a little skewed. Still, I found it pretty amusing.

here in South Carolina one of the nicest times of year is that short window during the springtime when the azaleas are blooming. And one of the nicest places to be when the azaleas are in full color is at one of Charleston’s beautiful plantations.

this past weekend we took the family to Middleton Place Plantation here in Charleston (actually in Summerville, just northwest of here). Middleton Place was originally built in the 1730s; one of its previous residents, Arthur Middleton, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. As a family we walked around for a while, saw a few alligators sunning by the reflection pools, ran around in the grass, and generally enjoyed the awesome weather.

while at the plantation I took a few pictures, and here are three of them. I will put forth the caveat that we don’t have an awesome camera, and it’s times like these that I wish I did! It’s on my short list of things I’d like to purchase within the next year (that and a 17-inch MacBook Pro, though that may just be wishful thinking). Perhaps next year I’ll be back at Middleton ready to dazzle you with eye-popping colors and super-fine resolution. That being said, here they are:

and, if you’re interested in seeing a bit of Charleston on your desktop, I’ve made this last picture into a background image in two sizes:

• 1024×768
• 1280×1024

how to get the kids to do their chores in the Crawford household:

1. Issue the order something like this: “Autobots, <perform action>!!” (some viable examples: ‘roll out’, ‘clean room’, ‘eat dinner’)
2. The kids will ask you, “what Transformer are you?”
3. You answer, “I’m Optimus Prime!” (authoritative voice optional)
4. Chain of command is established. The kids will defer to your authority and complete requisite action, unless either or both of them happen to be Decepticons, in which case:
5. Chore will not be completed. Laser battle will ensue.

it’s not perfect. But it’s better than bribery.

Callum, who is 6 (now almost 7), has been taking weekly violin lessons since last fall with some music teachers who give lessons out of their home in Mt. Pleasant. He’s been practicing (nearly) every day, and seems to really enjoy playing the instrument – not only that, but he’s getting quite good at it – he’s not a pro by any means, but his practice has been paying off. His note reading has been improving, and he’s been learning a lot about music theory.

the other day Callum was completing a writing assignment in his notebook – as part of his schooling we often give him a set of words to write about, and he’ll write a story about the words, or describe them, or something similar. At any rate, on this day he was writing, and started to hum to himself, and ended up composing a little song. He wrote the song from his head on his writing paper – not by using the actual notes (A, B, C#, D, E, F# etc), but by indicating how many fingers to put down on each string of the violin – so A1 is the first finger down on the A string, A2 is the first two fingers, etc. You can see the song he wrote in this picture.

when I got home from work Callum got out his violin and played the song he’d composed for me. It wasn’t the Magic Flute, of course, but I must admit I was pretty impressed, mostly at the fact that he had the gumption to go ahead and think up a song and write it down. When he asked Yvonne if it was okay that he included that as a part of his writing assignment, she said “of course!” – and I agree, I wholeheartedly encourage this sort of experimentation. I think it is a great sign – and if he keeps it up, his skills and creativity in this area will certainly improve.

a few days ago while the 2010 Olympics were in progress I posted this tally of how many Olympic medals countries were earning per million people, to help to gauge how countries were performing compared to the number of potential athletes available to choose from. Now that the Olympics are over I’ve updated the tally, and here it is:

1. Norway: 23 medals, 4,769,274 population, 4.823 mpm (medals per million)
2. Austria: 16 medals, 8,344,319 population, 1.917 mpm
3. Sweden: 11 medals, 9,220,986 population, 1.193 mpm
4. Canada: 26 medals, 33,311,389 population, 0.781 mpm
5. Germany: 30 medals, 82,140,043 population, 0.365 mpm
6. Korea: 14 medals, 48,607,000 population, 0.288 mpm
7. France: 11 medals, 62,048,473 population, 0.177 mpm
8. United States: 37 medals, 304,059,724 population, 0.122 mpm
9. Russian Federation: 15 medals, 141,800,000 population, 0.106 mpm
10. China: 11 medals, 1,325,639,982 population, 0.008 mpm

and just for fun, here’s a quick chart that gives a graphical representation of how it turned out:

I realize that the results are skewed – some countries have a lot more snow than other countries, and therefore a lot more of an interest in winter sports – but regardless, I found this an interesting exercise. At any rate I’m pretty pleased at Canada’s performance on a per capita basis during these Olympics, though you can see from the chart that Norway totally crushed it!

Edit: I’ve updated this list – see the final results for the 2010 Olympics medals per capita.

currently, the United States is leading the Olympic medals count, with 35 medals. My native Canada is in third place, with 23 medals (we also have the highest number of gold medals, with 12)! I was thinking that in comparison to the United States we’re actually doing pretty well, as we have roughly a tenth the population that the USA has… in which case, per capita, we’re earning many more medals than the United States is.

that got me thinking… of the current leaderboard, who is getting the most medals, per capita? Is it Canada, or someone else? I assumed it was someone else, and I was right… but I was pretty amazed to see by just how much that other country is getting more medals per capita than my own!

of the current top 10 medal holders (I didn’t calculate for 11+), the tally looks like this:

1. Norway – 4.403 medals per million!! (21 medals, population 4,769,274)
2. Austria – 1.914 mpm (15 medals, population 8,344,319)
3. Switzerland – 1.179 mpm (9 medals, population 7,630,605)
4. Canada – 0.690 mpm (23 medals, population 33,311,389)
5. Germany – 0.341 mpm (27 medals, population 82,140,043)
6. Korea – 0.288 mpm (14 medals, population 48,607,000)
7. France – 0.177 mpm (11 medals, population 62,048,473)
8. United States – 0.115 mpm (35 medals, population 304,059,724)
9. Russian Federation – 0.106 mpm (15 medals, population 141,800,000)
10. China – 0.008 mpm (11 medals, population 1,325,639,982)

this medals per million leaderboard is going to change as soon as I publish this, of course – perhaps I’ll make another post with the final tallies when the Olympics is over. But I have to say… way to go Norway, for cranking out four and a half Olympic medals per million people… that is simply amazing!!