I aten't dead

No, I'm really not dead, and have, in fact, just updated The In-Debt Net:

Cars and Budgets

I think I have to admit that I'm never going to manage to keep all my different juggling balls in the air at any one moment, and as soon as I put down one of the balls (say ... ooo... EFDSS) then I get others to pick up (EFDSS employment tribunal, new blog, community care singing project, etc.). I'm just resigning myself to the fact that there just aren't enough hours in the day, and to heck with it. At least the only person I'm letting down when I drop a ball is myself.

In other news of me, I am playing with a demo version of this program: MasterWriter which is *beyond* the world of cool. As I am an Open Source bunny, it has been a long time since I paid for a piece of commercial software - but the demo of this (30 days, fully featured - highly recommended) is seriously tempting me. Maybe I could ask for contributions for Christmas or something, as it isn't very cheap. For those who are curious, but don't want another window open (and please beware - the "demo" page is a huge bloated Flash ... aberration ... with sound and wiggly things etc.), it's a songwriting suite with rhyming dictionaries, thesauri, alliteration dbs, cliche dbs etc. all built in, along with the coolest "record a scratch track so you don't forget your melody" function I've seen. It has a number of built in rhythm click tracks so you can try your melody out in different styles (I'm tellin' ya - HipHop Swamp Thing was ... interesting...), and it all worked ridiculously easily for me. It's available for Mac and PC (and has won several Mac awards, in fact), and I'm having way too much fun with it :-)

Blocks are being laid in the basement of the new house - you can now see where I have different rooms! Wooo! It also shows that Tim's study is much bigger than *my* study, but he rationalises that by saying, "I'll have a drumkit in mine". Hmmm. I think it was at the point where he told me that he'd need to put his filing cabinets in my study to make room for the drumkit that he lost me :-D Mind you, up until yesterday I didn't know that it was actually going to be *my* study - I thought it had to be shared, so I'm all about the silver linings...

Jared has a stinky head/chest cold which has lead to him losing his voice. Three days before two full-day rehearsals and two shows. *sigh* I kept him home yesterday and force fed him with pineapple juice (which he loved), honey and lemon (which he hated) and bananas (which he loved). He got to stay in bed all day, drink lots of water and watch "Pirates of the Caribbean". Not a bad way to spend the day, actually! His voice is slowly coming back, which relieves us all greatly. Now to convince him to be gentle with it!

Errr.... Should I be worried?

Jared has some science homework which involves him using a rather nifty javascript program to create a planet, which he then has to keep alive by defending it from alien invaders etc. Whilst downstairs discussing the timing of Kick-boxing and whether we could make it this evening, we heard a noise upstairs from his computer.

"Rats!" he said, "The aliens just nuked my planet!"

So, what we have here is a class of highly intelligent, pre-pubescent boys being given computer simulations of planets to protect from alien invaders.

"Jared," says I in a slightly concerned tone, "Do these aliens look like.. err.. big bugs, by any chance?"

"Yeah!" he replies.

Ah. He wonders why his father and I wander off humming, "There's a boy... in a room..."

Methinks we have to get the Orson Scott Card collection out of storage sooner rather than later!