2010 Vacation – Outer Banks, NC

Again this year we went to the Outer Banks for vacation.  We had a great time!  There were eight adults that went so we were able to split the cost and rent a really nice beach house!

Our Vacation Rental House At The Outer Banks

To get to the house you had to drive eight miles on the beach!  There were no roads to get to the house.  If you ever go to this part of the Outer Banks make sure you do your research and only attempt to drive on the beach at low tide.  :D   We got stuck twice on the way to the house and had to be pulled out both times.  :D

But, once we made it to the house we were able to relax in the pool and hot tub…

Ace In The Pool In North Carolina

Ace In The Pool In North Carolina

And our house was also in the Wild Horse Reserves, so there were wild horses everywhere!  They came right up to our house and even slept in our back yard…

Outer Banks Wild Horses

Outer Banks Wild Horses

Outer Banks Wild Horses Sleeping

Outer Banks Wild Horses Sleeping In The Back Yard

And when we were not playing on the beach…

Jared At The Beach

Jared At The Beach

Ace At The Beach

Ace At The Beach

Ace's Cousin Livi At The Beach

Ace's Cousin Livi At The Beach

Ace and Livi At The Beach

Ace and Livi At The Beach

…we went out to look at the famous light houses…

Currituck Light House

Currituck Light House

Cape Hatteras Light House

Cape Hatteras Light House

… saw the Inn at Roadanthe (From the movie Nights in Roadanthe)…

Inn At Roadanthe

Inn At Roadanthe

… saw all kinds of cool critters…

The Lizard

The Lizard

A Dragon Fly

A Dragon Fly

Pink and Yellow Moth

Pink and Yellow Moth

The Cool Bear

The Cool Bear

Whoever said vacation was relaxing?  :D   At the end of every day we were all pooped…

Ace Worn Out

Ace Worn Out

Ace, Calling It A Day

Ace, Calling It A Day

… and now we are back home…planning next year’s vacation.  :D

Teeth Scary? Nah!

So, we’ve had Ruby for about a month now.  This has to be the most hyper dog ever born.  Very loving and loyal, but Ruby, feel free to tone it down a bit.  :)

She thinks that we are all dogs and that we enjoy to be chewed on, jumped on, and tackled.  Fifty pound puppies are a handful!

Ace and Ruby get along OK…when they are in separate rooms.  But if Ace is playing by himself…here comes Ruby.  And if Ruby is lying down chewing her bone….here comes Ace.

No one has gotten hurt.  There have been a few yelps, and a few tears, but for the most part they enjoy each other.

However, it is quite scary to see how they play…

Ruby

Ace loves dogs!  He always gets so excited when he sees a dog.  So, after quite a bit of convincing from Momma, I finally gave in…

But Ruby is a puppy…a big puppy!  :D   And a hyper one at that.  The running and jumping is not Ace’s favorite part for sure…but I’m sure he’ll get used to it.  :D

If Prison Wasn’t Such A Bad Place…

Ace and I were at the playground behind the neighborhood school the other morning.  The sun was shining (for once), and I was bound determined to soak up every ounce I could get.  It was going to be a good day!  I was taking loads pictures with the new camera and Ace was enjoying the curvy slide, the swing, and the bouncy bridge at the playground!

Everything was great!  We were both having a good time until…….I came across the first person that I wanted to literally strangle the life out of!

I have seen many people in my life.  Probably in the multiple tens of thousands I would guess.  Most of them are nice people.  Some are jack-asses, but not a single one ever fired me up like this one.

So,  I was helping Ace climb up the ladder to the bridge that leads to the slide when I heard, from around the corner of the school, a lady…sorry, wrong word, she was far from a lady…a bellowing woman yell at the top of her lungs… “SHUT THE F*CK UP!”

It caught me off guard.  I mean after all, we were at a school…ya know…where kids are present?   …and then she yelled it again…and again…and again!

Finally the bellowing woman rounded the corner of the school building with two other adults, three kids (maybe 8, 10, and 12 yrs old), and a dog on a leash.

They finally made it over to the playground…and of course had to play on the same piece of playground equipment that Ace was on.

I could hear one of the boys (the 10yr old) whining to his Mom (biologically..not emotionally) that he wanted to walk the dog.

She yells again, “YOU HAD YOUR F*CKING CHANCE TO WALK HIM AT HOME!  YOUR BROTHER IS WALKING HIM NOW SO SHUT THE F*CK UP AND QUIT YOUR DAMN CRYING!”

The boy cries more and asks again.  “Please Mom…I just want to walk the dog….please please please…”

The woman stands up and starts to unbuckle her belt.  The boy runs and screams…”GIVE ME ONE MORE CHANCE!  ONE MORE CHANCE MOMMY!  JUST ONE MORE CHANCE!”

At this time Ace has just made his way up onto the bridge and is walking across it.  I’m standing on the ground below him.

The lady whips out her belt and chases her son around the playground.  The other two adults with the group were laughing hysterically.

The boy runs up the ladder onto the same piece of playground equipment that Ace was on…and the Mom follows with belt cocked.

The boy stops about two feet before he gets to where Ace is and…WHACK!  She whipped the boy with her belt diagonally across his upper back.  And if a belt across the upper back wasn’t bad enough…it was a STUDDED BELT.  You know, the ones with the big stainless steel spikey looking things…!

After she cracked the boy…it was silent.  The laughing stopped.  The boys screaming stopped.  The only sound I could hear was the panting of the crazy woman.

I didn’t say a word.  I was speechless.  And then she looked at me and said, “Go ahead and call f*cking Child Services.  They can raise them.  I gave birth to them.  I can do whatever the f*ck I want to them.”

Aaaaand now I am pissed.  If a look could kill I’m pretty sure she would have died ten times over.

If it wasn’t for the whole going to prison thing I could have easily strangled her right there with her belt…

And then to top it off the other adults start laughing and yelling at the boy to stop crying.  His crying was scaring the little boy (Ace).

“No..you bunch of hill jack, loud mouth, studded belt swinging, piece of shit parents who think it’s funny to chase a little 10 year old around the playground putting all of these other younger kids at risk for getting hurt are scaring him!”

Man, that would have felt good coming out of my mouth…but I held it in.  It definitely went through my mind though!

No matter how bad I wanted to, I knew I couldn’t say anything.  These were the kind of people who honestly don’t care.  If they would go through all of that trouble to punish a boy for asking to walk the dog, what do you think they would do if I threatened to call the police?  And I was there by myself with Ace.  Nope.  I was not putting him in any kind of danger.

So I sucked it up…and kept my mouth shut.  I got Ace down from the playground and we walked over to the next playground area.

No stupid hill jack, loud mouth, studded belt swinging POS Mom was going to ruin our day!

Mind Over Bladder

Today was the day.  The day that Ace was going to start using the potty!

Ace woke up about 10 o’clock…straight to the bathroom we went.  Nothing.

No diaper for this little guy today.  The boys were going to air themselves out…plus this way I could make sure he didn’t spoil my plan.

Breakfast was made and devoured.  Off to the bathroom we went.  Nothing.

Ace played…watched cartoons…and every 15-20 minutes…off to the bathroom we went.  And every time….nothing!

About two hours had passed.  I keep thinking to myself that my strategy is working.  His bladder is getting full and his will power weakening.  Yet, still…nothing.

So I bring out the big guns…a big cup of water. Ace downed it like he had been hiking across Death Valley in search for something to quench his thirst.

I chuckled a little bit inside, knowing that he had fallen for it.  My plan was working!

Fifteen minutes roll by.  “The pee potion must be really taking affect now!”, I think to myself.  So we head to the bathroom…nothing!

Man this kid is strong!  I start to second guess my strategy, but soon realize that what goes in must come out.  It is only a matter of time now!

I stand my ground.  Every 15 minutes like clock work we visit the bathroom…only for me to leave a little less confident.

Finally, it is 2 o’clock.  Four hours had passed.  Hell, I have went three times and yet Ace’s bladder of steel still holds strong!  That thing has got to be about ready to burst!

To my dismay, in walks Momma.  “Get your shoes on.  We are going to a birthday party today.”

Can it not wait a bit longer?  He is going to break any minute now!  I just know it!

What?  It can’t be!  I have been defeated!  Ace’s aired out nether regions are being covered up by the dreaded Sesame Street covered diapers of doom!

Four long hours of battle and Ace wins by bringing in reinforcements!

My head hangs low in defeat, but there will be another day.  Ace, you may have won the battle, but you have not won the war!

Knight Image by pasukaru76

Speech Therapy?

I cannot believe it.  Ace will be 3 years old in 6 days!

At three years old there is the three year check up with the doctor…

Ace has always been small for his age, 4th to 5th percentile for his weight, but it looks like he is making some progress!  He was in the 25th percentile this time!

Ace  has entered the “parrot stage” and that leads to some interesting moments in our household.  :D   Special thanks goes out to his uncle Mike and Jason for teaching him to chant “Whitey Tighteys!  Whitey Tighteys!”…or more recently….”JEEEEESSSSSUUUSSSSSSS!!!!”

Ace is a jibber-jabberrer.  Constantly talking about who knows what.  It is mostly repeating what he hears on his cartoons, or his more recent past time…his Sesame Street game on the “COMPUUUUUTER”.

Ace is smart.  I would have to say quite a bit smarter than the average soon to be 3 year old…but he gets that honest.  :D   Just kidding…

No really… he knows all of his letters, upper and lower case…all of his numbers up to 20…the names of almost any animal that can be found in one of his books…the sounds that all of these animals make…and just about every inanimate object in our house…including the refrigerator, dishwasher, washing machine, dryer…you name it, he can tell you what it is.  The names of all the characters in the cartoons he watches…hell, he can even sing along with many of the songs on the radio..!

He knows how things work, and if he doesn’t he will play with them until he does. Ever see a kid roll his cars over to check that the wheels spin freely before playing with it?  Well, then you have never seen Ace.  :D

Ever seen a soon to be three year old hop up to the laptop, close all of the open programs, save your work if you left it open, then open a game for him to play?  Well, then you have never seen Ace.  :D

But there is one thing that concerns his doctor (and me and Momma too a little bit).  He has never asked for anything.  Ever! If he is thirsty, he might bring you his empty cup, but he has never verbally asked.

If he is tired, he may grab your hand and pull you upstairs to his bedroom.  But not once has he said “Bedtime!”

If I point to a picture of  Momma and I, he will call us Momma and Daddy.  If I say, “Go get your Momma!”, he will run to her.  But, he never says “Mommy come here.” or “Daddy, I’m hungry”

He is very self sufficient.  If he wants something, and can do it himself…he does.  If he can’t do it himself…he finds  some way to communicate to us what he wants.

I guess that asking for things is a very important step in the learning process. And somehow Ace is behind in that aspect according to all of the “experts”.

So, we get to go see a speech therapist for a consult just to make sure that Ace is on track.

Which, I guess is a good thing.  If he does need help learning in some areas, it would definitely be better to know now, rather than when he starts Kindergarten in a few years.

Have you ever had to take your children to a speech therapist?  What do they do there?  What can we expect?  Please share your stories in the comments!

Happy Valentines Day To Me!

It’s been snowing here a lot the past week.  Ace has never really enjoyed the snow.  When he goes outside in the snow he just stands there and looks in amazement and the white fluffiness covering the once green lawn.

I’ve tried to get him to lay down..roll around…pick up a sow ball…and nothing.  He just points,with a big smile on his face and says, “SNOOOOWWW!”

So the other day (I used a sick day…shhhhh) Ace and I went outside to play.  This time I dug my snow pants out of the closet and suited up with him.  I though that if I rolled around  in the snow that maybe he would soon follow and start to enjoy it.

Nope…instead there is a two year old standing pointing at the snow and a 31 year old rolling around in the drifts, making snow angels, and making snowmen like he was 8 years old again.

I had fun…not so sure about Ace.  :D

Anyways, the point of this post is that I took my digital camera outside to take pictures if Ace did decide to play in the snow.   Even though he did not roll around in the freshly fallen flakes, he did look pretty cool in his new snow attire.  So, I got out my camera…and nothing.  It would not turn on.

The batteries are probably dead.  Nope!  The camera is dead. D.E.A.D. Dead.

So, Momma, being the quick thinker and most excellent wife that she is went out and bought me a Nikon D5000 DSLR camera.

She knew I would not spend that kind of money on a camera even though I have been talking about getting a DSLR for years!

Ace’s birthday is coming up next month and she was afraid that I would go out and buy a $200 point-and-shoot camera that I really did not want. (And you know what…she was right.)  :D

So, she surprised me with my Valentines Day present a week early.  (I was also informed that I will not be receiving any more gifts until next Christmas.)  :D

I’ve been practicing every night for a week now and am starting to get the hang of the thing.  Many buttons. Many settings.  Many things I have no idea what they are for.  :D

So,without further ado…I present my first photos taken with the new camera…

Me...seeing what I look like with my new companion.

Me...seeing what I look like with my new companion.

Ace being his onry self...

Ace eating pretzels (the only time he holds still long enough to take his picture is when he is eating. :D )

Ace Eating His Fingers

Ace Divided By Two

So there you have it.  I think I did OK, for being a complete beginner.  I’m planing on taking some workshops here in Columbus so that I can learn to use this camera to it’s fullest potential.

Maybe someday I can be as good as a few of my fellow blogger friends turned photographers…PG and Kim.

Can Being In A Rut Be Fun?

Ever feel like you are in a rut…digging and digging to get out, but getting no where fast?

Ever since Momma started staying at home with Ace instead of going to work, we have really had to watch where our money goes.  And now that we are living in a recession it almost like a noose around our necks!

We pay all of our bills on time, but what’s left over leaves little room for much entertainment or extra curricular activities.

The added stress and lack of doing things hasn’t really helped my blogging much. I mean, do you really want to hear about how we do the same thing every day?  I didn’t think so…  :D

I know that the recession has hurt many families much more than it has hurt ours and I am very grateful that we have done as well as we have throughout these tough times.

I have friends that have been laid off for over a year, depleted all of their savings, and ran up their credit cards.  Now they are living on a shoestring budget struggling to make ends meet.

So how has the recession put unwanted stress on your family?

What have you done to alleviate this stress?

What are some fun (and inexpensive) things that your family does for entertainment?

Using His Words…

Forever, I thought that ace was never going to talk.  But here lately he has really been jibber-jabbing about everything under the sun.

I recorded this video at dinner time the other night.  Ace had been saying PIIIZZA  all day, and so I figured he was asking for it…  Momma wasn’t home to cook dinner, and I didn’t feel like cooking again, so we ordered some Donatos!!

Looks like he likes pizza just as much as me!  He ate 6 pieces…  :D

Why Buy Toys?

I mean seriously.  Ace has a whole room full of toys.  Hell, you risk life and limb just to venture into the booby trapped maze of Fisher Price land mines!

With all the toys that Ace has, it never seems to amaze me the things that he plays with…

Favorite toy #1 is the toilet plunger!  How much more sanitary of a toy could he find?  If we leave the bathroom door open, it is a given that I will eventually trip over a tool designed to push a chunk of poo the size of a drain pipe!

Favorite toy #2 is the toilet brush…  If you find the poop pusher in the kitchen, you are likely to find the Porcelain God’s  loofah somewhere nearby.  Let’s just see how many places we can spread the fecal matter, shall we?

Favorite Toy #3 is the attachment for the vacuum.  But you know what’s funny..?  If I actually attach it to the vacuum and turn it on so that he will actually be doing some cleaning…he wants nothing to do with it.  :D

Favorite Toy #4 is the trash can lid.  If you take it off of the trash can, put it in the middle of the tile kitchen floor, stand on it until it is flat, and then jump off… it snaps back into shape with a loud POP.  Damned Rubbermaid…

And finally, Favorite Toys #5, 6, 7, 8, and 9…anything that is stacked in a neat pile, put away in a cabinet, on the counters, hanging from the Christmas tree, or otherwise purposely hidden from a two year olds view and/or reach…

What are your kids’ favorite “toys”?

Ever Lost Your Kid?

The other morning Momma woke up and heard the TV on downstairs…and it was on cartoons.  Ace has never gone down the stairs before in his life (without rolling down them).  She went downstairs to find Ace running around the downstairs nekkid as a jay bird!!

Apparently, he took off his jams and diaper and decided to let the boys air out a bit…

Then she noticed a Fed Ex package sitting inside the living room next to the front door.  She figured that I met the Fed Ex guy on my way out the door and threw the package inside…but I didn’t.

So our best guess is that Ace unlocked the front door and opened it when the Fed Ex guy knocked… probably greeting him in his birthday suit.   The Fed Ex guy didn’t see a parent around, threw the package inside and shut the door.

Thank goodness it was our honest Fed Ex guy at the door, and not a child molester!!!

We have had a few things in place to keep this from happening…a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs, and a chain lock on the front door.

However, when I leave for work I can not lock the chain lock because you can only lock it from the inside.  And the baby gate?  I know I shut it.  So Ace found some way of forcing it open and then shut it behind him…or he climbed over it.

Then a few days later I wake up to go to work and went to check on Ace before I left.  He got sick in the middle of he night and we had to change his sheets at 3 AM, so I was making sure he didn’t puke all over himself again…

He was not in his bed.

I checked the baby gate down the stairs and it was shut.  The chain was still on the door.  He has to be in the house somewhere!?

I checked all the closets thinking that maybe he climbed in there and slept for the night.  I checked all the rooms upstairs and even in the bathtub.

Ace was no where to be found!

So eventually I go downstairs to find Ace lying in the middle of the living room floor, fast asleep, with his Teddy and Blanky where he apparently fell asleep watching cartoons in the middle of the night.

He had shut the gate behind him and could not get it back open to go back upstairs to bed.

One of the scary things is that he isn’t the most graceful person going down the stairs, and he likes to carry 20 times his weight in stuffed animals down with him.  I know I am going to wake up one morning the sound of THUMP THUMP THUMP as he is tumbling down the stairs.

And the sad thing is there is no way to gate off the top of the stairs!!

Maybe we’ll have to lock him in his room…but I’m sure that is against all kinds rules to Children Services .  :D

So, we’ve been practicing going down the stairs.  If he’s going to do it, we might as well teach him the safe way to do it.  Hand on the wall.  One step at a time.  Put down the stuffed animals.  Quit horsing around!

And now I leave through the side door…which he hasn’t figured out how to open yet.  This way the chain lock can stay on the front door.

Can you imagine the look on the Fed Ex guy’s face when a butt naked two year old answered the door?  :D

New Look and New Reviews Section!

I finally got the new theme for DadThing done, and am happy with it!   In fact, I’m seriously considering starting a web design business.  In addition to DadThing I have also also designed the following sites:

All of these were designed from scratch…no FrontPage or DreamWeaver or any of that crap…just plain ole’ HTML and CSS typed in Notepad.  :D

Let me know what you think about the new DadThing design in the comments section!

Oh, yeah…I have also started a new Reviews Section at DadThing.  In the Reviews Section I plan to review items that can either be used by a Dad, or their children and family.

I’ve already got quite a few interesting products to review on the way, and and will continue to pursue other cool guy products.

If you have a product that you would like me to review, please email me at jared(at)dadthign(dot)com

Freeing Up Some Space…

So many times I take pictures and forget I even took them.  I downloaded all of the pictures off of my digital camera and realized that I completely forgot to write about the awesome time we had on a mini vacation in September!

The whole goal of this mini vacation was to get out of Dodge for the weekend, and go down to see the leaves changing along the Ohio river.  There were a few other festivals that we were planing on attending as well.

So, we loaded up the truck, and we moved to Beverly….not really…but we did go to the hills.  Not the Hollywood Hills, but the hills of Kentucky!

We drove down on a Friday night after work and got into the hotel kinda late.  Ace was zonkerred out and Momma and I quickly followed his lead.

Saturday morning we got up early to go to a harvest festival/car show a few towns over.  We get to the little po-dunk town and there was nothing…not one car being showed.  We drove around the 5 whole blocks of this town to realize that their website was wrong.  We finally found a sign advertising the car show… THE NEXT WEEKEND.

So much for the car show.  We had all day and a full tank of gas.  We just started driving and saw a sign for a National Park.  We had not visited a National Park since we lived in Colorado.  Ohio just does not have many extreme wilderness areas…ya know?

We paid for our day pass and drove about 10 miles back into this forest until we found ourselves parked at the end of a hiking trail alongside the Ohio River.  Ace has never been hiking…let’s do it!

Off we go…hiking through the forest.  It was pretty muddy because it rained the night before, and Ace hit every mud puddle along the trail.  I rolled up the bottoms of Ace’s pants to keep them from getting too muddy…and I had to roll up mine as well.  :D   We were having fun!

The cliffs were amazingly high…and steep!

Tall Cliffs Near The Ohio River

Tall Cliffs Near The Ohio River

Ace got to see a lot of things he had never seen before…big cliffs, the Ohio River, people riding horses, and even a few barges hauling stuff down the river (one was hauling port-a-potties…a whole barge full of porta-potties!)  :D

We hiked and hiked…and hiked!  I’m surprised  that Ace’s little stubby legs still worked!  But he did stop a few times to take a rest…

Taking A Rest While Hiking

Taking A Rest While Hiking

We hiked all the way back to the truck where ace decided that there was something wrong with the front tire..

Dad, Here Is The Problem...

Dad, Here Is The Problem...

And after he fixed the problem…not real sure what he did…we headed back out on the road.

We came across a little park that marked a battle site from the Civil War…or something.  ( I never have been a history buff.)  There was a cannon that was used in the battle, and for some reason an old cabin.

Looking Down The Barrell Of A Cannon

Looking Down The Barrell Of A Cannon

Notice the jacket that Momma is wearing?  It’s the one I reviewed…  :D
Which by the way has been moved over to the new DadThing Reviews Blog!

Sitting On The Front Porch Of An 1800's Cabin

Sitting On The Front Porch Of An 1800's Cabin

We quickly bored ourselves with a history lesson and headed back out onto the road.  This time we ended up at the Louisville zoo!

Just so happens they were having a trick or treat night!!  So, we got Ace dressed up in his best Fire Fighter Uniform and went to keep all of the zoo animals safe from any blazing infernos.  :D

Firefighter Halloween Costume

Firefighter Halloween Costume

And wouldn’t you know it…Dorothy, The Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow from Oz were there!

We just had to meet them…and get our pictures taken with them…

The Tin Man and Dorothy

The Tin Man and Dorothy

The Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion

The Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion

Dad and aat the Emerald Palace!

Dad and Ace at the Emerald Palace!

Notice the bottoms of my pants?

Yup, some ‘tard forgot to roll them back down after hiking… :D

I guess Momma is right…I am special sometimes.  :D

All Is Clear On The Home Front…

Some of you might have noticed that DadThing was labeled an Attack Site…again… a few hours last night.

I quickly backed up the site and wiped it clean….reloaded a fresh new install or WordPress…using my old theme…and now Google says my site is no longer an attack site…thank goodness!

The last time this happened I went through everything…and deleted a ton of extraneous stuff from the site that had compiled over the past few years…and a few weeks later, the site is “bad” again.  WTH?

My only inclination of what could possibly be wreaking so much terror on the site was the Google AdSense ads that were scattered across the site.  They were the only thing that was not hosted on the DadThing server!  So, they are gone…forever.  :D

I have also done my research on web site security and applied a few more techniques to prevent this type of thing from happening again in the future.

So all is clear….again…  :D

I’ve been working a new site design and will hopeful release it in the near future.  I am also opening up a “Reviews” section of the blog where I will be reviewing many interesting Dad/Guy/Kid/Family related items.  The future is looking very exciting here at DadThing!  :D

Back to your regularly scheduled DadThing fun… :D

EDIT:  Went back to the blacklist.  I did really find the problem this time. I had to dig through over 10,000 fies on the server, but finally found the culprit!  The site has been submitted for review.  This theme is only temporary until I get the new on done… :D

Our Yearly Photo Shoot With Lotz Studios!

Remember a few weeks back…I told you I was excited to go get our yearly pictures done?  Every year since ace was born we have called up Lotz Photography, here in Columbus, and they do an amazing job of capturing  Ace’s personality…

Ace

They have posted some of the pictures from this years photo shoot on their blog:
http://www.lotzstudios.net/blog/hoylman-family/

I just got the rest of the pictures today (125 pictures total!), so I’ll write up a post about our experience, and post a few more pictures in the very near future.  :D   Stay tuned!

…and while you are at the Lotz Studios website, see just how many pictures of Ace you can find…leave a comment with the number of pictures you found, and if you are right?  We’ll see…  :D

Dad, Here Is The Problem…

Wordless Wednesday

Dad, Here Is The Problem...

How Do You Know You Spend Too Much Time Playing Bejeweled Blitz On Facebook?

Bejweled Blitz

Bejweled Blitz

So how do you know when you spend too much time playing Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook?

Maybe you check the leader board while on break at work to make sure that no one has beaten your score!

Could it be that you find yourself organizing the cans in your cabinets into groups of three?

Do you dream up ways to sabotage that person’s computer who will always get 200,000 points every single week and you’re lucky to get 100, 000?!

Or maybe…just maybe…a good sign would be your two year old, who only speaks the language of Nick Jr, running around the house saying, “One Minute…Go!”…”Bang Bang Crash”…”A New High Score!”

Maybe…just maybe…that would mean that you play just a little too much.  :D

More Of A Treat Than A Trick

Ace Trick Or Treat 2009So this year was a pretty fun one for Trick-Or-Treat!

The past few years Ace could really give a crap.  I think it was more of an inconvenience for him actually.  He probably saw Trick-Or-Treat as just wearing some uncomfortable clothes…being made to walk (ride in the stroller or Dad’s arms) an insanely long distance…being surrounded by people with bad customes…and it was all for nothing!  He didn’t even like candy!

But, this year was a different story.  I was so proud of him.  We took off from Grandma’s house walking…yes actually walking this year.  He was carrying his candy bucket, kept his hat on, and only tried ripping his costume off a few times.  :D

Ace walked house to house, up and down stairs, for six whole blocks without even being asked to be carried.  (My arms thanked him)  :D

There was some people trying to be scary to the little kids by wearing scary masks while passing out the candy.  We walked up to one house and here comes a girl about Ace’s age with tears flying.  I thought about walking past this house to keep Ace from getting scared, but then I changed my mind.  After all, Halloween is all about being a little scared, right?

Ace walked up to the scary guy with some weird mask on and just stared at him like he was thinking, “What the hell is wrong with your face?”  Ace took his candy and calmly walked to the next house.  I was rolling… :D

After about 6 blocks Ace has had enough and his candy bucket probably weighed about as much as he did.  We called it a night and went inside to check the candy for tampering.  There were a few pieces where I deemed that a taste test was necessary…  :D

Next year’s post will probably be about how out of breath I will be after chasing him from house-to-house, keeping him out of the street, and my sugar deprevation.  :D

DadThing Is Healthy Again!

So, yesterday Google reported DadThing as an attack site.   Yeah, real viscious isn’t it! :D

This is probably the third time in the past year that DadThing has been hacked.  I’m getting pretty good at fixing it now.  The first two times it was obvious.  If you would view the HTML you would see an encrypted JavaScript being ran in the background.  I had to remove this code from about 100 files throughout the WordPress core.   But this last time I’m not real sure what Google considered malware.

I removed all of the little widgets and chicklets to random sites that promise to send you traffic…cause they weren’t working any ways!  I removed an ad that I added the day before, and I removed a bunch of questionable links left by commenters.

I submitted my site to Google for review around lunch time and 12 hours later DadThing is reported as a friendly site again.  (Click for proof)  Hip Hip Hooray!

So, now back to the regularly scheduled (or not so regularly scheduled) content…  :D

DadThing Hacked!

Hello loyal readers!

It looks as though DadThing.com was hacked and is now being reported as an “Attack Site”!

I have went through all of the code on the site and removed any suspicious code, widgets, and links.  DadThing has been submitted for review to remove the label of Attack Site.

I will post again, when the coast is clear!

Thanks again for your patience!

Jared