Mina and I are sitting in our house with all the lights off, watching headlights go by. It’s funny how in your own house, darkness and shadows can be so wonderful.
Author: Justin
Oral candidiasis (oral thrush)
Mina’s got it, but we caught it early. The new nanny had seen it before and told us to get it checked out- yay for us finding an experienced nanny. The pediatrician started Mina on an oral course of nystatin; hopefully her whole mouth won’t turn to cottage cheese.
On a related note, Max’s cough is almost gone, which is a big relief. It took way too long for it to get better, and he’s been out of school for eight days now (this week the teachers were gone from Monday to Wed. to Udon Thani for a conference or something). Nam and I have been taking turns watching him and it’s a relief that he can go to school tomorrow so we can FINALLY GET STUFF DONE.
Mina is cute, Daddy is tired
I’m finally getting around to seeing some of our photos from the states.
@Zoomars petting zoo in San Juan Capistrano, where Max rode a pony!
In class just now…
…a student just told me I forgot to set my Gmail Talk status to “teaching.”
Thanks for that.
FYI, I hardly ever turn on Skype anymore and gave up using all other forms of chat. Google wins.
Coupla quick links 6/19/10
Anthony Bourdain: My war on fast food
An edited extract from his new book; the gist is that he hates fast food almost as much as he once loved cocaine, but his writing is entertaining as always.
You can probably guess in which country the shortest guardrail in the world is located.
Sadkeanu.com was served a DMCA cease and desist order and doesn’t have the resources to fight back against a heavy-handed government or wanker Hollywood stars who can’t comprehend fair use.
The Olympic Ruins of Modern Greece
There is a simple solution to this problem: Create a mobile Olympic venue and move it around to each city via zeppelin every four years.
ESL Lesson of the day – Son of of Bitch (i.e., Son of Bitch)
This video of a Korean English teacher explaining choice bits of slang and expletives had me snorting with laughter:
My favorite ESL-related clip of all time, though, is Harold Ramis’s opening scene in Stripes (I can’t believe it’s almost 30 years old – I remember watching it at the drive in with my parents):
Son of Bitch! Shit! – When you care enough to send the very best.
Max is staying home from school
…all this week so we can knock out this deep cough he’s had for a couple weeks, in addition to some eye infection we’re keeping check with eye drops… It seems that nursery school is just an incubator for germs, and the kids are walking petri dishes. I’m staying home with Max all day today and Nam’s at work, so I finally have a few minutes to start looking at photos from our trip back home. Here’s one of my favorite shots from the first few days:
Max with grandpa
Like most of the photos on our trip, I didn’t take it and don’t know who did, but good job whoever it was!
Google Talk Plugin Crash – Windows 7 Home Premium
I bought an ASUS UL30A laptop when we were in the states to replace my trusty, crusty old Dell Latitude x300 that lasted for seven whole years and still wouldn’t quit. I decided on the X5 variant because it was black (as opposed to the silver option) and cheaper than the updated version, but still good for ten hours (actual; ASUS claims 12 hours but all of the reviews say 10+. Good enough.)
It’s my first extended experience with Windows 7, and with a x64 Win OS. It kicks ass very hard.
One of the few problems I’ve had with it was with Google Video Chat crashing Gmail when I’d try to pop out the chat window, only when using video. Clicking on the pop-out button would result in Chrome locking up but often still sending and receiving audio streams from the chat.
Popping-out the chat screen isn’t a necessary feature, so I tried to ignore it. Hitting that pop-out button is a twitchy habit, though, so I’d often inadvertently crash the browser and go through the force quit, no error report, hurry up and terminate please, restart browser, yes restore pages I had open before Google Chrome didn’t shut down correctly, reinitiate video chat and don’t pop out the window this time cycle.
Then today, I had a strange error a couple times just when starting Chrome: The following plug-in has crashed: Google Talk Plugin
This new error meant something had to be done, and this is what I’ve come up with:
- Close Google Chrome
- Uninstall the Google Talk Plugin via the appropriate Control Panel in Windows
- Reinstall from http://www.google.com/chat/video
I’m just guessing, but this procedure might work for other problems with the Google Talk plugin on other platforms as well; it seems this particular one springs up in Vista most often.