Wow, hidden forums, SB1.0 lurking in the wings somewhere - CP quiet???! The latter in particular is hard to fathom! Thanks, yes, I live in the Redlands (southern Moreton Bay), but Saturday mornings are "my" time (and hubby and the kids have their own time together), when my camera and I travel around, between Tweed Heads and Fraser Island (sleeping in the car for half the night before is not unheard of :) )

A mum and loving it![^]

I thought I'd drop by and see how everyone is doing here. CP seems to be thriving as much as ever, but there are some curious changes. The SB is now onto version 2.0? And there's a PHP forum! Anything other radical changes I've missed? Hope you guys are all doing well, despite the last year's rocky ride :)

A mum and loving it![^]

I'm thinking of getting a little point and shoot camera to carry around when out and about with the kids. We're often on the beach (almost daily) and Mikey, nearly 3, loves everything to do with marine life. So I'm thinking of getting one of those P&S's which are waterproof to 5 metres (I doubt we'll need more than that till the kids are older, by which time we'd probably want to upgrade anyway). Any suggestions?

A mum and loving it![^]

Very hard choice (when you know you want 'em all ;) ) However...

Chris Losinger wrote:

Nikon has a new 70-300mm 4.5-5.6 VR lens

You know if you don't go for this one you're going to be continually cursing that you need more length (not that the 300mm will stop this, but at least you'll only start cursing at 300mm, not 240mm :rolleyes: ) Have fun with whatever you decide on!

A mum and loving it![^]

:wtf: Should this not be considered child abuse???

A mum and loving it![^]

We're in Brisbane, you're right, once I feel I would be reliable I should probably pursue the course of action you suggest. With my husband away 60% of the year (interstate and international) and a baby and a toddler in the home I really feel I'd be doing any prospective employer a disservice right now to pretend I could deliver a high quality of work and be reliable for them. On the up side I have a friend round the corner who works with COBOL, so with any luck SQL Server 2003, ASP.NET, etc won't be too outdated by the time I'm ready to return to the work force properly :)

A mum and loving it![^]

Christian Graus wrote:

Have you thought about trying to find dev work you can do from home ? I've worked from home for two years now.

I tried 2 places when Mikey turned one. The first advertised for someone with experience in MS technologies, but actually wanted someone to do MySQL and PHP. To make matters worse the boss wanted to use Joomla, but would then hack it if he couldn't get it to work. Then his hacks wouldn't work and I'd be stuck trying to debug it. It really wasn't worth the pay. The other crowd got me to do a whole load of work, then promptly went bankrupt because they hadn't changed their internet banking passwords after firing an employee (apparently). What a PITA. Also, my skills are probably slipping somewhat. Would it be fair to an employer to submit my cv of three years ago when I've done almost nothing since? Added to that the fact that my babies never seem to like to give up their milk at night (admittedly Mikey weaned more than a year ago, but Emma's a total milk monster at night) and I spend much of my life sleep deprived, I think I'd be rather unreasonable applying for a dev position at a reputable (ie. not going to do the dirty on me like the last crowd) firm. From that point of view data entry from home would be awesome - not letting anyone down if I'm simply too tired to stay up after the kids' bedtimes, etc. But yes, is rather a downturn in "status". If only motherhood wasn't so undervalued :)

A mum and loving it![^]

Does anyone know anything about this? I'd never really thought about it until today when I saw an ad (American). I assume there would be plenty of scams - is there such a thing as reputable online data entry? I realise this seems quite a drop in ambition from a developer. When Mikey was born almost 3 years ago I had only intended to take 6 months maternity leave - but now I can't imagine thinking of going back even to part time work until Emma (6 months) is at least 3 years old. I realise I'm extremely fortunate to be in the position where this is even possible. A bit of extra cash never did anyone any harm though :) Has anyone tried online data entry? Any well known pitfalls? I do feel rather out of the loop these days :-O

A mum and loving it![^]

Hi Colin,

Colin Angus Mackay wrote:

It's been a long time since you were last here

Very noticeable by the multitude of new "faces" - great to see CP is still thriving :cool:.

Colin Angus Mackay wrote:

How are the kids doing?

Awesome thanks - Emma's just turned 6 months, so life's becoming slightly more normal again. Mikey will be 3 in 4 months time - how life whizzes by! How are you doing? Last I heard from you you were moving to Glasgow, has that worked out well?

A mum and loving it![^]

More of a buzzphrase - but when did "I couldn't care less" (which makes perfect sense if you're telling someone that something really doesn't matter to you) turn into "I could care less" (which probably means you care quite a lot about the issue in question)? Ack - drives me nuts! Strangely I only ever seem to come across it on CP (most other forums I frequent are UK or Aussie based, maybe it's an American thing?) which is why I thought I'd add it to this superb new board :)

A mum and loving it![^]

Christian Graus wrote:

Is 'bowt' going to be in the Oxford dictionary in 5 years time

Hopefully - in a "Parents English-Kidspeak Translation Dictionary" :sigh:

A mum and loving it![^]

Naively I thought that having come from an IT background before becoming a mum I'd have a bit of an advantage once my kids get to the online surfing stage. Less than 3(!!!) years later, today, I've gone to have a look at DH's teenage half sister's Facebook profile to see how she's doing this year - the second half of this "msg" is like a foreign language to me: "Shit ya i knw so much kak this weekend hay but we wil be lafn about it by next weekend.i wil try c u 2day promise !x damb pity last nyt didnt work out but we wil suck it up aka we wil get ova it but miss u so much my mental bitch hahahaha cnt blve our rents sed that we u knw wat so fukn funny sniff sniff twitch twitch if u get it:) love u meggy mwah!owe and we must make it up to nimi damb we feel kak bowt that one sowi nimi " How on earth do those of you with older kids keep one step ahead of this mayhem? I posted this in the Soapbox because of some of the language in that message. Also, it just so happens her name is also "Megan" - hence the "meggy"

A mum and loving it![^]

Richard A. Abbott wrote:

Unlike Australia, there is not much spare green areas in the over-populated UK.

A huge problem :(. Actually, I can't understand why the entire British population didn't uproot and move here while they had the chance. Not that I'm complaining - water restrictions are pretty tight around here even with a small population :rolleyes:

A mum and loving it![^]

K(arl) wrote:

When I was a kid I lived in the countryside. No youth clubs, no scouts, no organized activities. Nonetheless, we did not destroy everything, we did not spit on people in the streets.

Large, safe green areas for kids would do much to alleviate the problems facing urban youths (and the societies living around them). Given a chance to play outdoors daily I believe most kids would grow up a lot happier. Plus they'd have a chance to run their energy out instead of using it aggressively. A healthy diet containing the nutrients needed by their developing brains would go a long way too - the kind of food you most likely had growing up in the country. I'm not saying no fast food ever, but certainly a healthy amount of Omega-3 instead of trans fats daily would probably aid brain development. Unfortunately society seems to have evolved way ahead of our biology and sadly very few countries invest in their youth in the way that Sweden does.

A mum and loving it![^]

Steve Mayfield wrote:

ending kids outside around here would probably lead to an increase in drive-by shootings and disappearances

Which is why it's worth really thinking about where to bring a family up - there's a lot besides the breadwinner's income to consider (which sadly seems to get forgotten a lot). It does seem rather unlikely though that such a tax (in isolation) will have much of a lifestyle effect for 21st century kids

A mum and loving it![^]

Thanks for the answers - I suspect if there was desperately wrong then the first 3 would have contained messages of doom :) I suspect that the resale value would be affected - it is going for about $20K less than similar homes in the immediate area (which does make it rather attractive now while we're buying, but yes, less so for the future when we'll be selling). Chris, I didn't know you'd moved back to Aus - how are you enjoying being home?

A mum and loving it![^]

We're looking at buying a house we really love in every way - except that it's next door neighbour on one side is a Telstra exchange. There's no celphone tower or anything like that, but it is a telephone exchange. We're trying to figure out via Google whether this is any risk to ours or our kids health. I then remembered that some of you are quite likely to know about this sort of thing and thought I'd ask here too :) Thanks! (and sorry for being such a stranger - my young bosses set serious limits on how long I'm allowed to spend online :rolleyes: )

A mum and loving it! My (very young) blog[^]

Thanks - it's good to be home! :cool:

A mum and loving it! My (very young) blog[^]

Wow, so I came back and broke the lounge :-O I'll do my best not to do that again! Thanks Christian for fixing it, and to everyone else for the replies. Sorry to hear Michael was unwell :rose: Gary, I'm not sure we think of Emma as a spawned subprocess, but thanks :laugh:. I'm feeling rather groggy from the almost 24 hour feeding, but she's so gorgeous I can put up with it :-D

A mum and loving it! My (very young) blog[^]

Hi from a long lost CPian! It looks like CP has really been thriving while I've been off doing stuff mothers do (it would all sound too boring to write down, yet it's surprisingly exhausting!) :cool: With our new arrival (Emma) I decided I should really start blogging again for our family scattered around the globe, yet when I went looking for my old blog at WDevs I found it has vanished. Can anyone tell me what happened (unless there was a sensitive bust up, in which case please tell me to mind my own business and stop causing trouble :-O ) Anyway, hi to anyone who can remember me :)

A mum and loving it! My (very young) blog[^]