Five Cats Blog
~ The life and antics of 5 cats and their human family
TechBot
~ Killer apps, cool widgets, sweet gadgets, hot fixes, must-gets, everything on the web
HELP: BECAUSE YOU CAN
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Slow Machine
Hmm I've had two complaints already that this blog is slow to load. I've trimmed several more Javascripts and replaced the Flickr Flash badge with a HTML one. It appears to speed up a little.
Yeah, I am breaking my own design rule of no more than 2 Javascripts per page but these days it is impossible to avoid them if we want to be connected.
Please let me know if it is still slow for you. Thanks!
Rugs are the epitome of luxury. Not jewels, not gold, not that nice mansion up the hill (okay, maybe the last). But there is nothing like sinking your toes into soft zillion-threadcount rug or carpet under your feet. Ahh...
I inherited my love for soft rugs and carpets from my Mom, who for the love of our cat Boy or really her carpets, hid them all away for 10 years so that he wouldn't scratch them to bits. Me? I love them all but the expensive ones do feel eons more heavenly that the Ikea ones. In our household, the cats enjoy all the carpets. :)
Anyhoo, if you are fortunate enough to live near Scottsdale, Arizona or LA or NYC, head on over to the Tufenkian Rug Sale and drool (not on!) over the lovely lovely handmade Tibetan and Armenian rugs right now. They're up to 75% off and if you register, you'll get another 10% off!
It was a delicious lunch as always on the 2nd day of Chinese New Year at my friend Hon Chung's place. We ate our fill and had wine to boot. I got an extra hour and a half sleep in the morning when hubby generously took Jack for a walk and let tired old me sleep in. We caught up with friends and the latest goss.
One acquaintance was pregnant and another turned out to be her sister. Jack was the star of the day and enjoyed hugs and lots of attention from his doting aunts and uncles. Come 5.30pm, we took leave of our friends and headed home. Jack fell asleep in the car and woke up almost an hour later.
I did up a bubble bath for him and he played, very enthralled by the bubbles swirling in the water. I wrapped him in a towel after he was done and he spent the rest of the evening standing on the rails, racing (crawling) across the living room and back again till I finally changed him for bedtime and turned out the light. That was his cue and with a nipple (attached to Mom) in the mouth, he was out like a light (pun unintended). :)
There's nothing that brightens up my day more than reading pet humour. Pets do the funniest things. Just look at what my cats are up to every day! Sam in particular loves to sit like a human and lie down like a pretzel.
In the tradition of America's Funniest Animals which is always guaranteed to elicit delight, PetHumor.cominvites humans, as well as very tech-savvy cats (Boy forced me to include that), to submit their funniest pet photos and the best get selected to be published.
There are funny pet photos, cartoons, animal stories, funny animal videos, jokes about pets, pet trivia, and funny top 10 lists. Readers can choose to subscribe to their RSS feed too.
There are so many intricate things that a baby does, many things his parents may not even register until they actually sit and think about it. Moms do this even less because usually they're exhausted out of their mind.
Nonetheless, I made an interesting observation about Jack today. When he's had a night feed and I leave, he still mouths for a nipple and failing which, he'll wail, "ay..." The funny thing is, I say "ay" (not to him) when denied something. Has he learnt it via observation or is it inate?
Delightedly we woke up 2 hours early to dress up for Jack's first CNY. He looked so smart and handsome in his blue shirt and brown cords. Later I was to find out that the early wake-up really messed up his day for him.
He was uncharacteristically shy the first hour at my Mom's, although unshy about taking red packets from his family. After the first hour he warmed up to the cooing grandaunts and granduncles and began his journey around the house.
Following a short nap, we headed to Uncle Gene's where the house was filled to a brim. Gleeful adults pushed us to the room where a 13 month old boy dressed in a red onesie was happily toddling around.
"Look at the baby," they hollered. So both Moms carried their offspring to meet. Unfortunately the older one decided to greet Jack by poking him in the eye. I quickly checked for damage (he was okay) but he burst out crying from the shock of it.
Swiftly I forced a smile and exited the room. He calmed down not long after and amused himself with a plastic cup. I had some lunch and we left not long after. My Mom commented that it was normal for babies to poke each other in the eye. I begged to differ. My girlfriend Karen's son who was 1 year old when Jack met him did no such thing.
Tea at my godma's and after that a short visit to my goddaughter's. Jack fell asleep in my arms for an hour from 5.50-6.50pm and we went to dinner with the whole family again. At 8.30pm, Jack dozed off again till 9.10pm and I suddenly realised that it was the earlier wake-up time that screwed up his schedule.
My poor son was grouchy all day because his nap times were all jumbled up and he obviously didn't sleep enough last night. So no more funny too-enthusiastic early wake-ups for Jack. We'll be sleeping in tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm going to investigate this eye-poking phenomenon my Mom claims is normal.
Yup, a brand new way of online marketing is in town and it's in theatres right near you. Blog marketing is the hottest marketing tool on the net now and it's attracting the talented and connected spreading the word just for you.
PayPerPost (or as we bloggers fondly call it, PPP) is only charging a 35% service fee compared to ReviewMe (read: competitor) which charges 100%, meaning they take half your earnings for every post you write. Even modelling agencies don't take that much of a cut.
Now, it doesn't matter if you have a low traffic or high traffic blog. There's enough opportunities for everyone. (I speak from experience.) Of course you earn more with a high traffic blog as advertisers pay more for the exposure, which is incentive for anyone to find out how to increase traffic on their site already. It's a good learning opportunity, for me at least.
Even if you have a low traffic site and can't be bothered working on increasing your traffic, don't fret. If you think about it, the advertiser gets YOU to view their product and look at it long enough to like it and write about it (I'm fans of 2 sites I reviewed already) so it's really a win-win situation for all.
For the past 2 months (or maybe one month), Jack has been waking up in the middle of the night and in the mornings - not all the time but most of the time - somehow standing on his hands and feet, eyes closed and crying. I quickly carry him and turn him to lying down again, nurse him, and he's out like a light again.
This evening, it happened again about 3-4 times. 2 times he didn't even seem to be awake. I turned him back and patted his back and he was asleep again. The last time I nursed him a bit and he fell asleep again.
I'm searching online to see what it could be. But so far the one post I found was of another mother whose baby is doing the same and she is as perplexed as me. Hmm...
It's the eve of CNY today and we spent the day lazing around and playing with Jack who seems to have a 9 month developmental thingy where he suddenly cries and seems inconsolable. He does get bored real fast however, and now can dart into another room by himself on his very own adventures. He loves grabbing onto furniture and pulling himself up.
We went for lunch at KFC and then visited Tom & Stephanie to see if they stocked the rubber mats to line our floor for Jack's safety. Aside from being nice and spongy to walk on, they also protect Jack if he falls. Despite him being steady on his feet 95%, 5% he gets excited and reaches for something that causes him to lose his balance.
He'll be walking very soon, my Mom estimates perhaps at 11 months, it's high time to childproof our home even more. He'll be running faster than any of us can catch him and at least the floor is safe if he falls. Worth the investment of $16.90 per 4x 1m square mat. Green too.
We let the cats out to hang with us. We've missed them so much and I think the enzyme cleaner should have killed all the old scents by now. Jack is rather entralled by them and now Buffy is shyly approaching Jack as their Dad pets her lovingly. We hope that by example, he'll learn to love them very much too. More supervised playtimes ahead. :)
Every bit of literature I've read, scientific and otherwise, advises that children under the age of 2 should not be watching TV. I happen to agree.
Of course, implementation can be tough, especially with TVs just about everywhere - at home, at Grandma's house, at other family members' homes. Plus, it is tempting. Dump child in front of TV, yay free time. Dump child in front of TV, yay no fussing about eating.
So what we've implemented in our household is that no one watches TV. In fact, in my final month of pregnancy, I passed my cable box to my brother and asked him to return it. We'll only watch DVDs or movies in the cinema, if ever.
The strange thing is I don't miss TV. Not all that much. Aside from a couple of films - Xmen III and Superman Returns - I really wanted to watch, I haven't caught anything else scheduled. Sure, there is the occasional viewing of some random news or movie on my brother's TV but that's about it.
Plus neither of us is tempted (him by the remote) to spend endless hours on the TV. Instead, he plays and I read a book or magazine, we play or read a book together, or we go out to the park or for a swim or to meet some friends to catch up.
Maybe some day in the future when he is back to school, I'll catch the 2nd and 3rd seasons of Prison Break but for now, I'm quite happy to relish my bittersweet memories of Buffy and Angel, and enjoy watching Jack, my real-life TV star in my very own extended version trilogy.
"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness." -- Bertrand Russell
"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
-- Thomas Edison (Harper's Magazine, 1890)
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