Allie is going through a bit of an intellectual renaissance period right now, which has been a lot of fun to watch. She's learned a lot of new words, most critically being "yeah" (which we're very gently encouraging towards "yes") and "again" (pronounced "ennnnNNN?") Those two words go a long way in helping her communicate what she wants, which must be very liberating from her.
One of her favorite toys is a wooden alphabet puzzle. It's a board with cutout letters that can be removed and replaced. We dump out all the letters, and she can pick them up individually and recognize which letter goes in which spot. She sometimes has a hard time rotating them correctly to get them to fit in the cutout shape of the letter, but she's getting better at that. She knows the sounds of many of them, too. B's say "buh, buh", and L's say "la-la-la" and S's say "ssssss", etc.
She's pretty much mastered the spoon. There used to be a certain amount of dumping of food between bowl and mouth, but she can now keep it pretty level and get most of the food in there. So, for most of the meal, we just put food in front of her and let her go to town. Quite often, she's putting it away as fast as we can get it in front of her.
She still loves to run and chase and be chased. At some point, we were moving a futon out to the garage, and in the process we put the big futon mattress on the floor of our living room. It's still there, because she loves to jump and play on it. She'll ask for music, and run walk in circles clapping her hands and giggling in her own method of dancing. Putting a our big bean-bag thing on the futon makes a nice mountain for climbing on and off. She loves climbing, and does a lot of practicing stepping on and off stair steps.
She's generally eating well, sleeping well, and happy and playful. Good times all around.
In other news, we got our annual electric bill. You may remember that we invested in a solar power solution a little over a year ago, and exactly a year ago, turned on "net metering". This means that we don't pay a monthly bill, but instead let everything run for a year. During the day, we generate excess electricity, and our meter runs backwards (effectively crediting our account). During the night, we consume electricity, and our meter runs forwards as normal. At the end of the year, all the debits and credits are added up, and we pay an annual bill. Our bill was $190, which I think is pretty good for a full years worth of electricity. (Of course, any savings are going to go towards repaying the debt of thousands of dollars to get solar in the first place, but whatever. It's still pretty cool.)
In even other news, I got hit by a computer virus recently. I downloaded a program called "Super" or something, which is a REALLY cool video conversion software package. Video formats are kind of black magic, and this program let you convert from one format to another, and set a bunch of options, etc. In retrospect, there is some suspicion that this program is an open door for malware to get onto your computer. That's unfortunate, 'cause it was a really cool program.
Shortly afterwards, I was hit with the "MS Antispyware 2009" program. It popped up and started scanning my PC, coming up with all sorts of Bad Things. Basically, this program intentionally puts stuff on your machine, then scans it, reports the bad things, and extorts money from you to clean it up.
It did some other really nasty stuff. If I tried to run Spybot Search and Destroy, for example, it would intercept the call and not let the application run.
It would also redirect web searches. For example, if I searched on google for "ms antispyware 2009", I'd get a lot of search results on how to remove it. Clicking on any of those links, however, redirected me to "windowsclick.com" which a big encoded URL. Online virus scanners didn't appear to work, either.
However, I found that I could hit the Google "cached" link, and still get to the page. That eventually led me to my savior, Malwarebyte's anti-malware program, which appears to have found all the bad stuff and cleaned it up. Oh, and when I actually was able to download this program, I couldn't install it. After some more "cache" web searches, I found that I could rename the installer executeable, and then it would run. So I got it installed. I then needed to rename the actual installed exe program name before I could run IT. Motherfuckers.
It burns me to the core that smart computer people could be so evil to write stuff like this. I compare it to a doctor that makes patients sick on purpose, or firefighters who start fires. A special, ironic breed of evil. Attentive readers may remember that I've chosen to forego virus protection on my PC, and this hasn't made me second guess that decision at all. It's almost worth testing, though… setting up a virtual PC with a virus checker, and see what it detects and catches. Maybe I'll give that a shot someday.
Speaking of computers, we bought a new laptop. Our old laptop was just that… old and slow, and it's something I've wanted to do for a while. I loaded it with the newest version of Windows, called Windows 7, which is going to be the successor to Vista. Like Star Trek movies, it's commonly known that every other version of Windows is good, and every alternate version sucks. Star Treks 2 (KAAAAHN!), 4, and 6 were considered good. 1, 3, and 5, not as much.
Windows 98 was good. Windows ME, not good. Windows XP is good. Windows Vista is apparently not good. Windows 7 is in beta, but has gotten lots of good buzz, so we'll see. So far, I think it's pretty snazzy.
Ok, that's enough of an update for now. Smell you later.
One of her favorite toys is a wooden alphabet puzzle. It's a board with cutout letters that can be removed and replaced. We dump out all the letters, and she can pick them up individually and recognize which letter goes in which spot. She sometimes has a hard time rotating them correctly to get them to fit in the cutout shape of the letter, but she's getting better at that. She knows the sounds of many of them, too. B's say "buh, buh", and L's say "la-la-la" and S's say "ssssss", etc.
She's pretty much mastered the spoon. There used to be a certain amount of dumping of food between bowl and mouth, but she can now keep it pretty level and get most of the food in there. So, for most of the meal, we just put food in front of her and let her go to town. Quite often, she's putting it away as fast as we can get it in front of her.
She still loves to run and chase and be chased. At some point, we were moving a futon out to the garage, and in the process we put the big futon mattress on the floor of our living room. It's still there, because she loves to jump and play on it. She'll ask for music, and run walk in circles clapping her hands and giggling in her own method of dancing. Putting a our big bean-bag thing on the futon makes a nice mountain for climbing on and off. She loves climbing, and does a lot of practicing stepping on and off stair steps.
She's generally eating well, sleeping well, and happy and playful. Good times all around.
In other news, we got our annual electric bill. You may remember that we invested in a solar power solution a little over a year ago, and exactly a year ago, turned on "net metering". This means that we don't pay a monthly bill, but instead let everything run for a year. During the day, we generate excess electricity, and our meter runs backwards (effectively crediting our account). During the night, we consume electricity, and our meter runs forwards as normal. At the end of the year, all the debits and credits are added up, and we pay an annual bill. Our bill was $190, which I think is pretty good for a full years worth of electricity. (Of course, any savings are going to go towards repaying the debt of thousands of dollars to get solar in the first place, but whatever. It's still pretty cool.)
In even other news, I got hit by a computer virus recently. I downloaded a program called "Super" or something, which is a REALLY cool video conversion software package. Video formats are kind of black magic, and this program let you convert from one format to another, and set a bunch of options, etc. In retrospect, there is some suspicion that this program is an open door for malware to get onto your computer. That's unfortunate, 'cause it was a really cool program.
Shortly afterwards, I was hit with the "MS Antispyware 2009" program. It popped up and started scanning my PC, coming up with all sorts of Bad Things. Basically, this program intentionally puts stuff on your machine, then scans it, reports the bad things, and extorts money from you to clean it up.
It did some other really nasty stuff. If I tried to run Spybot Search and Destroy, for example, it would intercept the call and not let the application run.
It would also redirect web searches. For example, if I searched on google for "ms antispyware 2009", I'd get a lot of search results on how to remove it. Clicking on any of those links, however, redirected me to "windowsclick.com" which a big encoded URL. Online virus scanners didn't appear to work, either.
However, I found that I could hit the Google "cached" link, and still get to the page. That eventually led me to my savior, Malwarebyte's anti-malware program, which appears to have found all the bad stuff and cleaned it up. Oh, and when I actually was able to download this program, I couldn't install it. After some more "cache" web searches, I found that I could rename the installer executeable, and then it would run. So I got it installed. I then needed to rename the actual installed exe program name before I could run IT. Motherfuckers.
It burns me to the core that smart computer people could be so evil to write stuff like this. I compare it to a doctor that makes patients sick on purpose, or firefighters who start fires. A special, ironic breed of evil. Attentive readers may remember that I've chosen to forego virus protection on my PC, and this hasn't made me second guess that decision at all. It's almost worth testing, though… setting up a virtual PC with a virus checker, and see what it detects and catches. Maybe I'll give that a shot someday.
Speaking of computers, we bought a new laptop. Our old laptop was just that… old and slow, and it's something I've wanted to do for a while. I loaded it with the newest version of Windows, called Windows 7, which is going to be the successor to Vista. Like Star Trek movies, it's commonly known that every other version of Windows is good, and every alternate version sucks. Star Treks 2 (KAAAAHN!), 4, and 6 were considered good. 1, 3, and 5, not as much.
Windows 98 was good. Windows ME, not good. Windows XP is good. Windows Vista is apparently not good. Windows 7 is in beta, but has gotten lots of good buzz, so we'll see. So far, I think it's pretty snazzy.
Ok, that's enough of an update for now. Smell you later.
