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Who Makes A Bully

In our quest to help our children grow up, to learn to fend for themselves, and to become responsible and productive members of society, do we as parents inadvertently create bullies in our own children?

Since reading the Amanda Todd story a few years ago, watching Bowling For Columbine, and hearing what seems to be an unending stream of bully stories on the six o’clock news, I have become more and more concerned about how my own kids are treating others, and mostly concerned about how they are being treated by other kids.
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Low Voltage Wiring

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series New Home Build Series
Introduction

This is yet another part of the Notes For A New Home Build series. This article will cover low voltage wiring in new construction homes and give you many things to think about as you plan your dream build.

You can future proof your home during the build by adding all sorts of wire to the house. Even if you don’t install all the devices right away, you can still run the wire and create a number of projects for the future. The idea is to prepare your new home for complete and comprehensive internet, TV, phone, alarm, and home automation.

You can apply many of the concepts to retrofit an existing home, but you’ll have to figure out running the wires on your own.

This article will deal specifically with Internet (ethernet), TV (RG6 coaxial cable), and phone. A future article will cover alarms and home automation.
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Where Are The Parents?

Our son attends Karate every Monday evening. The setting is informal – it is not a dedicated Karate Dojo. Instead, it is a class run by two (sometimes three) black belts and taught out of a school gymnasium. At least two of the black belts have their own Dojo, and I believe this is a way for them to reach more people than they could in their own Dojo. It’s certainly not charity, but for us it is a much less expensive alternative than putting our children into a class taught in a proper Dojo.

Of the 20 or so kids in this class, there are only a small handful that take it seriously and pay attention. Also, of the 20 or so kids there are only a small number of parents who are regularly present and pay attention to their children’s class. Many of these parent-less kids are the ones not paying attention and disrupting the class for everyone else. Where are the parents?
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New Home Build: Introduction

This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series New Home Build Series
Building? Read This.

In this series, the New Home Build Series, I will dive deeply into all the things you at least need to think about when building a new home, or even buying a resale home. This is a long read. I hope you take away some good ideas.

We’ve been through one new build home, and several previous moves into older homes. Overall it was a good experience and we are very pleased with our new home. I had the luxury to go to the build every day and managed to catch a few things Continue reading “New Home Build: Introduction”

Don’t Call Me Buddy

I hear it almost every day, and it drives me nuts. Fathers calling their sons “Buddy”.

I don’t understand. Are these men desperate to be liked by their sons? Do they think that using an alternate word for “friend” will strengthen the relationship that they have with their sons? Do they think that using the term is somehow more calming and reassuring than using their proper name, or are there actually that many boys named “Buddy”? (The only Buddy I know of is Buddy the Elf.)
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How Busy Should We Keep Our Kids?

Just for a minute, forget about the cost of after school activities. Pretend you have unlimited money. Ignore your own time constraints and the fact that you have to fix dinner and go to work.

Now that’s out of the way we can have a philosophical conversation.

How busy should we keep our kids?

And what should we keep them busy with?

There are a number of ways of looking at this. The two extremes are of course

  1. Keep them really busy so they stay out of trouble, and
  2. They’re kids, let them be kids and let them play.

I think the answer is somewhere in between these two, and of course some will depend on your religious, community, or family involvement which will take away from activity time.
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Don’t Miss The Concerts.

Tomorrow is my son’s school concert. He’s in Grade 1 and it is his first year in French Immersion. In previous years in a different school they always held the year end concert on a Saturday so I was always able to make it.

This year his is on a Friday right in the middle of the workday. And there is a ton of stuff to do at work. There always is.
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Should Boys Go To Dance Class?

I have a six year old son and a four year daughter. My wife and I have spent a lot of time planning out the activities we want them involved in.

We both feel strongly that we want our kids involved in a minimum of one activity outside of school almost all the time, and that there are a couple of activities that are not optional.

For example, knowing how to swim could save their life one day. It is not optional and both our kids have been in swimming for over a year. Also, since we are Canadians we consider skating lessons, hockey school, and hockey not optional at least for a few years. Once the kids are old enough to decide for themselves, they will continue in Hockey. Our daughter will be starting in the fall and our son is going into his 3rd year.

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2015 Home Theater PC Build

There are a lot of excellent blogs and articles out there on how to build a Home Theatre PC (HTPC). There are very detailed articles written almost weekly about choosing the ultimate components,  to long discussions about which is the best software to run and why.

This will be a little different. This is just a story about my build, how I chose my parts, and why I went about it the way I did. Maybe my experience will help you think about your build a touch differently.

Why build an HTPC in the first place? The story behind the story.

For a while we had satellite TV. Then we switched to cable. There were about five channels we regularly watched out of fifty or seventy channels. Amd there were a lot of shows on speciality channels I didn’t want to pay for. It was annoying.

As I learned more about online digital content I found that most of what we wanted to watch could be obtained online. Most. We’ll come back to that.

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