Both my son and daughter have become very good computer users.  It is no surprise since I spend a lot of my time online.  I do a wide range of things such as blogging, banking, research, creating WordPress niche blogs, investing.  I also play many different video games when I can. 

My kids have taken a liking to computers and have developed pretty good skills already.  They love to play PC games and I have a pretty large archive.  My daughter (Aeriana 7 years) seems to prefer RPG’s and strategy games while my son (Logan 2.5 Years) prefers FPS first person shooters.

One day I was playing Left for Dead and I walked away to do something and left the game up. Well, Logan decided to go to the computer and start trying to play the game.  He already knew about moving around with the mouse and W,A,S,D combo because of previous games he had played.  Most first person shooters share the same standard of controls.  He really enjoys the game and is really good at it..  Check out this video of him playing.

He started really getting into it and asked to play it all the time.  I was amazed at first but started to become concerned that the game may be way too violent for a kid so young.  So I tried to get him into other games that were much less violent and horror related.  Regardless, he just seems really entertained by the game and wants to keep playing it.

I remind him all the time that that the game is not real and it is not good to shoot people because they can really get hurt and there is no coming back.  I have to admit that I am amazed to watch him play and watch him learn so fast.  Regardless, I will always guide him and make sure he understands right from wrong and that video games are not reality and they are for entertainment only.

It is now 4:13am and my kids are finally going to bed.  I said, "What the hell!?  It’s New Years. Let em stay up and play".  Tonight I spent the entire new years evening sober and hanging out with my two kids.  Most of the time was spent playing The Secret of Mana with my 6 year old daughter.  It is really old but cool role playing game for Super Nintendo.  I used an emulator to play it on my PC.

My son spent his time on the PC next to us playing various games and going to Nick Jr.  He is getting the hang of the controls for first person shooter games already.  This is not bad considering he is only 28 months.  His favorite game is Left for Dead.  I am not sure how this may affect his growth in the long run, but I am not that worried. 

When my daughter was around 4 she used to love watching Nightmare on Elm Street.  One day she watched one of the movies with her mom and she started to like it.  She would even ask us to put it on to go to bed!  At 4 years old!  I know this may sound twisted, sick, or just plain wrong, but when I asked her about it she said, "Daddy, I know Freddie Krueger isn’t real.  I am not scared."  She has never had any nightmares either.

The First Time Sober on New Years

Well, enough with the unethical behavior.  Let’s talk about the first time I was sober on New Years.  The first time it happened was when I was in the Navy.  I was struck with bad luck and my duty day just happened to fall on New Years Eve.  When you are in the Navy and are stationed on a ship, there must be a minimum amount of people 24/7 watching over the ship.  It is quite impressive to know that, from the day a U.S. Navy ship is christened, to the day it goes out of commission, there is always someone there on watch.

Duty days usually start in the morning and end 24 hours later when you turn over the watch to the on coming duty section.  During that time you may be assigned a watch.  A watch is anywhere from a 4 hour to 12 period of time where you perform specific duties (usually standing in one spot) for security purposes.  I was lucky enough not to have a watch on that day so I at least got to spend the evening watching the ball drop on TV.

Two unlucky individuals were assigned watches during the late hours of that day.  The first guy had a watch from 7:55pm to 11:55pm and the second guy had what we call, "the balls to 4" watch (11:55pm-3:55am).  The first guy was able run downstairs at the last minute and watch the ball drop on TV with us but the second guy had to wake up early and watch it first then go on watch for 4 hours after that.  I think I would rather have the first guys watch, because at least you can celebrate for the rest of the night and morning if you wanted to. 

Both watches really suck, but are honorable duties.  While everyone is out carelessly partying there is a small group of people sacrificing that time to watch over the country.  This is of course the way it should be looked at.

On that note, I will finish by saying that I enjoyed not being drunk-out-of-my-mind this time around.  Instead, I spent some quality time with my kids.  I will also be feeling a lot better than a lot of people when I wake up on New Year’s Day.  

Happy New Years to everyone who reads this or will read it, and no matter what you did for this night I hope you had fun.

The Buddy Geek.

I filmed this with a regular digital camera and used windows movie maker for editing.  It is not the best quality video in the world but it was fun and easy.  I am pleased with the results.

Enjoy it and rate it on youtube!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOGAN!

My son just turned two today.  It makes me think back to the day he was born.  I remember being in the hospital room watching him being pushed out.  The birth of my two children have been the most interesting, exciting and unique experiences of my life.  There is nothing like it.  The very idea of child birth is amazing.  I remember watching his head peek it’s way out and the doctor trying to grab a hold of it. 

If you have never witnessed a live child birth then what you will see is the head come out first most of the time.  Very rarely the child will be born feet first, which they call a “breach” birth.  The doctor reaches inside and grabs a hold of the head of the child.  If necessary he will cut the women to create more room to grab the child.  When my son’s head came out the doctor reached in and grabbed his arm and literally twisted him out.

My son was born much larger than my daughter was which caused a slight complication.  Due to his large size he was taking up a lot of space in the uterus which diluted the strength of the embryonic fluid.  This in turn made it so that when my son had bowl movements in the womb it didn’t get filtered fast enough by the fluid and ended up making him a yellowish color when he came out.  My daughter came out a white color.

What is remarkable to see is when a child first comes out it looks almost fake like a doll.  It literally is not breathing at first, but then the doctor will rub the baby’s chest or something to stimulate the nerves which in turn causes the child to breath.  The head will usually come out slightly smashed looking, but as soon as the baby starts crying it’s body will puff back up into shape.  It is like nothing you ever seen before.  It looks unreal.

After that they will start to clean up the baby and suck the remaining fluid out of its mouth.  Then the nurses will take the baby into the nursery to perform many other after birth procedures.  During that time the doctor will be stitching up the mother, remove the afterbirth and stop any excess bleeding, etc.

Here he is now already two years old.  He is starting to talk a lot (babbling words you can’t understand yet), he climbs on everything and gets into everything.  He often tries to explain situations that happen to him to me but I just can’t make out the words.  He will use hand gestures, noises and facial expressions too.  Amazing stuff!  Anyway, this post is dedicated to my descendant.  May he be stronger, faster, smarter and more successful with women than I ever was.

Last night my 2 year old son was playing inside of a laundry basket next to me while I was on the computer. He was laying down in it and playing. He was acting like your average 2 year old would. He was just laying there kicking his legs up in the air and thinking about “who knows what”. He kept folding the sides of the basket over to close himself inside (This was a flimsy basket). All of the sudden I heard a gurgling sound and I reached down and moved the sides of the basket to reveal my son was choking on something. When I looked at him I noticed he had a look of pain on his face.

He was trying to sit himself up but he was choking too much and was having trouble. I grabbed him and immediately flipped him over on his stomach across my lap and began to hit him in the back and telling him to spit it out. Nothing happened at first, but then I started hitting him a little harder and a quarter fell out of his mouth onto the ground. He took a deep breath right after that and started crying. He looked like he was in a lot of pain and was very frightened. I held him close and rubbed his back and told him everything was going to be ok.

It made me feel very uneasy as I just witnessed my son possibly choking to death on a quarter. It is a horrible feeling to see your child like that. It makes you really analyze yourself as a parent and think that you are doing a terrible job. It makes you beat yourself up mentally. I still feel bad about it now as I am writing this. I imagine what I would have done if I was unable to remove the object from his throat and he died, right there in my arms. I would probably never forgive myself and would have many years of counseling and pain.

Of course accidents happen all the time but I still can’t help but to take measures to ensure this doesn’t happen ever again. I am thoroughly cleaning my house and removing every object I can find out of the reach of the child. I was very lucky that I was able to get him to spit out that quarter. After reading the proper way to perform the maneuver I realized that I was missing a step. I forgot to put one fist below the point where the ribs meet the breastbone. This situation could have turned out much worse.

The Heimlich Maneuver

Not too long ago I was curious on how to perform the Heimlich maneuver on little kids because I had caught my son trying to put a small object in his mouth in the past. For those who are not familiar it is very important that you learn this maneuver because it can save your child’s life.

There are actually two ways to perform this maneuver. For a detailed, step by step instruction on how to properly perform the Heimlich maneuver click here.