48-Hour Days

Sigh.

Okay, there will be setbacks, right?

I shampooed the carpet this morning. Just before I started, Timmy and I went potty and I changed Kellie’s diaper. Good. I was just about finished with the carpet when Timmy stopped me and said, “Mommy, I pee-pee all over my big-boy underwear!”

I’m not sure how to handle this. I didn’t make a huge deal of it, but I did ask him why he didn’t tell me that he had to pee and reiterated that he shouldn’t go potty in his big-boy underwear. I know I’m not supposed to be harsh because even when he is going in the potty on his own there will be accidents. But it didn’t bother him at all that he had peed in his big-boy underwear. I was hoping it would. So, if it doesn’t bother him, what is going to get him to pee in the potty? If he just doesn’t care about peeing in whatever he has on, then he’s not going to bother with his potty. I’m extremely frustrated and really at a loss. I don’t want to push it too hard or make a huge deal of it, but I also can’t seem to find anything that will motivate him. So, what do I do? Give up?

I think that perhaps when he starts pre-school and sees the other kids going potty, he’ll want to. Maybe that will be the answer. Also, this is only the first day with his big-boy underwear, so it is entirely possible that I’m overreacting.

The other problem is accessibility. I’m trying to keep the bathroom open so that he can go potty when he needs to. He can take his underwear/pull-up off himself, go potty, put them back on (or put a new one on), and even wash his hands pretty much by himself. Of course, he doesn’t do it on his own yet, but he can. So, I’m trying not to put the baby gate at the bathroom door, but the problem is that Kellie likes to go through the cabinet under the sink where my hair gel, etc. is. Mostly, she is leaving things alone, but once she decides to go in there, I can’t keep her out and I end up putting the gate back up. I think I’m going to have to clean out everything in the cabinet and try to find somewhere else to put all the stuff. This is going to be hard, because there just isn’t much space for storage anywhere in this house.

Okay, so I’ve decided to finally get serious about this potty training thing. I’ve tried everything so far. Timmy wears Pull-Ups during the day, but that only makes it easier and quicker to change his diaper. He isn’t motivated to go on the potty. As motivation to stay dry, the car designs on them disappear when they get wet. He thought the disappearing cars was great, so he made the cars disappear. I tried the Cool Alert pull-ups. They get cold when they get wet and I thought this would be uncomfortable and he’d want to go in his potty instead. He never even noticed.

I’m unwilling to let him run around the house naked. I want to keep the cool big-boy underwear (the ones with Spiderman and stuff on them) for a reward when he no longer needs a diaper. So, I’ve bought some plain white underwear and rubber pants. The rubber pants really look silly on him, but they will keep the furniture safe.

He looks so cute in his little tightie whities, though. And, so far this morning, he hasn’t peed in them. We’ve gone on the potty together twice already! Keeping my fingers crossed, because pre-school starts soon.

I’m searching for an IRC client. I thought there would be lots to choose from and, ultimately, one that would fit all my requirements. Sadly, this is not so. It seems that IRC clients have been left to languish or they are brand-new (buggy) applications. This is a review of the ones that I’ve found.

The Requirements

Let’s start off with my requirements.

• Easy-To-Use I’m an IRC newbie. I have already learned some commands, but I’m not completely up on the terminology or exactly how to do everything I may want to do. I would much prefer an application that will let the user enter the commands themselves, but also has menu commands/buttons for the main actions. For instance, it must be exceedingly easy to connect to a server and join a chat room.
• Growl Support I want to see the new posts as they are added, but I don’t want to have to keep the window open and in front to do this. Growl is the perfect solution. A message pops up and I can decide if I want to respond or ignore it. I don’t have to leave what I’m working on unless I really have something to say.
• Menulet/Status Item I’ve become quite the menu item addict these days. Right now I have 13 items in my menu, counting the time and Spotlight. I really would like to have a menu item that will allow me to change my status and, ideally, connect or disconnect from favorite chat rooms. Again, this is all about not having to switch windows if I don’t want to. Also, it would be nice to have a badge on it so that I can see how many new messages there are, or at least if there are new messages.
• Easy To Read I want it to be very easy to distinguish who is saying what. IRC chats can go awfully fast and if everything is one color it starts to melt together into an unreadable mess. I know most of these applications are stylable and you can spend as much time as you want tweaking them to your liking, but I’d much rather have a style that comes with the app that does what I want. I want server communications/messages to be a different color from the chats. It would be nice to have alternating background colors for each message. I might even like the conversation to be separated from the server messages, but I’m not sure.
• Favorites I want a way to store channels that I’ll go back to, but not automatically connect me to all of them. I want the application to remember which rooms I was in when I quit and log me into just those rooms.
• Identification I want to be able to put my username for each server into the application and have it automatically identify me so that I’m not constantly typing /msg NickServ IDENTIFY

Colloquy

This open source application is hands-down most popular of the IRC clients. I can see why. This seems to be the most feature-complete IRC client available for Mac OS X—and it’s free! It is the one that I’ve used the most and the one that I seem to keep coming back to.

Colloquy has a nice interface, though it isn’t quite as polished as some of the others. It comes with a pretty nice array of styles and there are a couple of them that worked for me. You can even have different styles for different chat rooms.

Growl support is there and it is configurable for each type of event, which is nice. You can specify for each event if the notifications are sticky, too. My one complaint is that the notification simply tells you that there is a message, it doesn’t include the message or the username in it. That really doesn’t help me much.

The connections window makes it really super easy to set up the default server connections and to join chat rooms. The regular window where the actual conversations show up also lets you issue commands the old-fashioned way. Nice. You can also get a list of the rooms/channels available on a particular server and filter it! This makes it really easy to find a chat room.

Colloquy allows you to set up multiple connections and mark the ones that should be connected automatically. It will also identify me automatically.

Really, there are very few complaints I have for Colloquy. First, and this is really not their fault, is that it is rather buggy on Leopard. The window will swallow messages and I have to mess around resizing it to get them back. I’m sure this will be corrected soon. Next, there is no menu item. This is the biggest problem for me. Granted, it can be worked around, but I would really love to see one.

That’s it, though. Colloquy just feels rather complete and solid. It is a very nice client and none of the problems are show-stoppers. This is probably the client I’ll stick with.

Linkinus

I first heard of this one in a chat room, ironically.

The application’s main window is very pretty and slick. Definitely, Mac-like. The default style is great at differentiating the different messages. Not only does it color the entire line in a non-glaring way, but it has polished icons that denote what type of message it is.

Linkinus includes a nice menu item, too. It has options for setting your status globally or for each chat room. It also flashes when there are new messages. I had problems with it connecting to rooms I didn’t want to be connected to when I reset my status, but I think I found a preference that will turn that off. It is under Miscellaneous: /away applies to all connects. I think if I turn this off, it won’t connect to rooms to set my status. I haven’t tried this out, yet, though.

However, there are lots of problems. First, the list of users tends to go blank, with only the first user visible. To get the list back, I have to drag the split view to resize it.

Next, there is no readily apparent way to join a chat room. There is no toolbar button for it. There is a “+” button at the bottom of the window, but that adds a new server, with no option for adding a particular channel/room. The File menu only provides the option to cloase a channel, not open it. The Channel menu allows you to create a new room, but not connect to an existing one. The only way I found to actually join a room was to type in /join #room. This seems like a rather glaring omission.

Once you do join at channel, it stays in the sidebar. There is a small bubble next to it that allows you to disconnect from the channel easily. However, clicking on it again actually removes it from the sidebar, rather than reconnect. Right-clicking (or command-clicking) on the channel allows you to re-join it.

There is Growl support and it will include the message and the user who sent it. I very much like this.

It doesn’t identify me to the server automatically, although there is a shortcuts menu that I could add this command to. There are also ways to specify automatic actions, so I could probably tweak the application to do this.

Overall, this is a very new application and it feels more like a release candidate than a 1.1 version. I have a feeling, though, that if I spent enough time with it, I can get it tweaked to my liking. It is possible that the bugs with the split views is a Leopard thing, too. I got a free 1.1 license from MacHeist, but it doesn’t cover any upgrades for 1.2+. However, the application is reasonably priced at $20. There is also a plug-in architecture, which seems promising.

Snak

This is a commercial product (read “not free”). I only tried it for a little bit, but it was a pretty nice client. The interface is utilitarian and not very pretty. There are styles, but none of the built-in ones are very slick. You might be able to develop your own, though. There is no menu item, and no Growl support. That’s about as far as I got with this one. It is available for $29. For me, that is way too much. However, if you are an old-school IRC user, you might really prefer this client.

Conversation

It’s a rather pretty application. However, I’m not crazy about the conversation window. I didn’t see any way to style the window, either. There’s no Growl support. There is no menu item. That’s about as far as I went with this one.

The Conclusion

It’s a toss-up between Colloquy and Linkinus. Colloquy is the more mature of the two, but Linkinus has more of the features I want. Colloquy is free, also. I’m not sure I’m ready to spend any money on an IRC client because I’m not sure how much I’ll actually end up using it. However, I don’t have to make that decision for awhile. Linkinus seems worth some time and I think I’ll spend some with it soon. The nice thing about Colloquy being open source is that I can file enhancement requests and bug reports and, if I had the time, I could even contribute. So, I’ll probably be switching a bit between the two before I settle on one permanently.

We had so much fun today! I took the kids to the zoo for the first time this year. We just got our Discovery Wagon and it was so worth every penny. Timmy and Kellie rode in it side-by-side all day. When Timmy needed to see over a fence, he could stand up in and see. Then I was free to hold Kellie. Next year, they can both stand up in it. They both used the cup-holders. The cooler worked okay, but it would be much better with ice rather than the cold packs. It is fairly shallow, so I had to lay our bottles of water (for me) and juice on their sides. I think I’ll buy a big bag of ice and keep it in the freezer outside for zoo trips.

Lunch was amazingly expensive. For two double-cheeseburgers, a Big Mac, and a large fries it was $10. Any other McDonald’s the double-cheeseburger is on the dollar menu. There was no such thing here. So, next time I plan on taking our lunch with us.

I definitely needed the water. It was a workout tugging that wagon all over the place and especially up the big hill to see the apes and the aquarium.

You know it is a good day when the kids fall asleep within 30 seconds of being buckled in. Since they were sleeping, I stopped by the office to pick up the latest Leopard DVDs. Nothing really useful there, I don’t think, but I’m intrigued by all the flashy new stuff. I would really like to put Leopard Server on the iMac and try out the wiki. We really desperately need something like that for our internal documentation.

All of this is on hold until I get my SimpleTech SimpleShare 500GB NAS from CDW. The DHL tracking page said it was coming today, but by 7:30 p.m. it still wasn’t here. So, I called DHL and asked how late they deliver. He said he was showing a delivery date of Monday. Damn. I told him it would be much more helpful if their web site gave an accurate delivery date. He didn’t seem too interested. Well, I know who I won’t ever ship with.

Kellie has been very affectionate with Timmy lately. For no reason whatsoever, she’ll walk over to him, give him a hug, and tell him “a-ju”, which is her word for several phrases: “I love you”, “Thank you”, “Bless You”. I really love seeing them like that. Timmy always hugs her back and says “I love you, too, Lellie”. I really do have the greatest kids ever. I hope they always know how much I adore them. I tried to tell them this afternoon at the zoo. They both hugged me and kissed me and told me they loved me. I really, really, really want to have a much better relationship with my kids than my parents ever did with me. I think I’m off to a good start.

Kids, if you’re reading this years into the future, please know that I love you with all my heart and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you. I’m trying my absolute best, although I know you deserve better. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with me. I totally got the better end of the deal, as I know I am truly blessed with you two. I love you more than I could ever say and I just hope that I’ve conveyed that over the years and that you’ve felt it.

I am such a geek. I spent my birthday money on software—software of all things! I could have spent it on shoes or clothes or…or anything half-ways girlie. To be honest, I did think about it. I would love to have a new outfit to wear out.

But, really, clothes only make me happy a few times a year. I like to have a really nice outfit to go to the pipefitters events, which is about the only place I go out with my husband, but there are only two of them a year.

Computer stuff, now there is something I can appreciate daily!! Not only that, but organizational computer stuff! I spent my birthday money (thanks, Mom and Dad!) on EagleFiler, which is just the best brain-dump, organizational, knowledgebase, you-name-it app that I could find. There are a lot of them out, there, too! My search and subsequent love affair is another post, though.

So, anyway, I sit here importing things and tagging them and wondering, should I have gotten a new outfit? Some new jeans or something?

Then, I came across a post at LifeHacker about DD-WRT and now I’m thinking about messing with my router! I have installed Sveasoft’s Talisman and it has been rock-solid for me. But, I haven’t seen any upgrades and when last I browsed the forum (a week or so ago), there didn’t seem to be any more development. Hmmmm . . . new software?

New applications are so exciting to me. I am constantly trying out new things that help me be more productive. That’s how I stumbled upon TextMate, which I absolutely adore. And EagleFiler.

Computer stuff in general is exciting to me. I was thrilled yesterday when I was able to get a VNC server running on my Debian computer. Now I can use GNOME!! Yipee! I got a blank stare from my husband when I mentioned it.

*sigh*