WobLog: Family News Archives

July 29, 2010

Missing Conflict Cather

One of the new features of Snow Leopard (a feature which some love and many hate) is that special keystrokes (like CMD-Tab for application switching) get passed to the target machine rather than being captured by the local machine. I like this feature quite a lot, but unfortunately, it stopped working on my iMac and I couldn't seem to figure out why (nothing obvious related to ScreenSharing, VNC, or ARD preferences).

Well, after determining that the problem only existed with my user account, I removed all of my preferences, logged back in, and Voila!, problem solved. However, getting rid of all your preferences is a huge pain. That's why I missed Conflict Catcher today. It was a method of automating a binary search to find a problematic extension. I decided to apply the same technique (manually) to my preference files.

Well, after half a dozen iterations, I narrowed it down to one of two widget preference files:

widget-com.apple.widget.calendar.plist
widget-com.apple.widget.dictionary.plist

Since I didn't need either of them, I declared victory at that point.

By the way, if anyone is interested in how to toggle the special keys passing feature on and off in Snow Leopard, you can find the details here.

UPDATE: As noted in the comment below, Quicken Scheduler is the culprit. This is a know conflict between Quicken Scheduler and key-logging applications, detailed here and here.

Posted by Don Roberts at 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

March 14, 2010

"Brother's name"

Helen, now 2 1/2, has struggled with the names of her siblings ever since she started talking. Originally "Sarah" and "Alex" sounded exactly the same, but eventually "Sarah" became "Eye-yah" and Alex became "Ah-gah." After even more time passed, Helen finally got to the point where she could say, "Sarah."

Today she said, "Alex." Don was trying to get her to do it again for me without himself using the name.

Don: Helen, who is that over there?
Helen: Seven (which is Alex's age)
Don: No, say your brother's name.
Helen: Brother's name.

Yes, it really was like George and Gracie. She eventually said it for me, and while I was excited, I was also a little sad. Her days of saying "Ah-gah" are numbered, just one more proof that the toddler days are swiftly passing.

Posted by Lisa Roberts at 9:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 28, 2010

Homeschooling Moment

We almost always eat pancakes or waffles on Sunday before church. This morning, feeling a bit whimsical, I placed two pancakes beside each other on my plate, like eyes, and then a strip of bacon like a mouth. The kids found this hilarious. Inspired by the muses, I then stacked the two pancakes and asked the kids, "Who am I now?" Alex yelled out, "Cyclops!" and the kids burst into laugher again. Shortly after that, Alex exclaimed, "Mom, you're going to eat Polyphemus!"

This Homeschooling Moment has been brought to you by the Ancient Greeks.

Posted by Lisa Roberts at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 17, 2009

American Thanksgiving in Gricigliano

The American website of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest has a story (with pictures!) of last month's celebration of American Thanksgiving at the Institute's seminary near Florence, Italy. As the number of American seminarians grows, this feast becomes a bigger celebration each year, helping the international cadre of future priests learn something about the U.S. and our traditions.

Parenthetically, we've had two of the young men in the picture above over to our house for dinner, and I can vouch that they're solid guys and will, God-willing, someday be good, holy priests.

Posted by Don Roberts at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 1, 2009

From Atlantic to Pacific, the Traffic is terrific

We just got back from our Thanksgiving travels. We started at the Livermore airport, whence we departed with Lisa's Dad for Tehachapi. We spent a very relaxing, enjoyable Thanksgiving with my in-laws in their just-finished home — after 13 years in the small cottage on their property, they were ready for more room.

On Saturday, we drove down to Orange County for my extended family's Christmas party that night. There must have been over 50 people at the party. No inverted family tree here, baby!

After a really nice stay with my cousin Joe, our family was treated to my birthday dinner on Sunday by Joe and my Aunt Betty and Uncle Floyd at the Outback Steakhouse in Laguna Hills. We are becoming quite fond of Outback. The main reason is that they have a gluten-free menu. Many of the items are also dairy-free (or can be made so). These GFCF choices are a real boon for Lisa and Sarah.

Posted by Don Roberts at 9:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 30, 2009

Santa Fe Spa Review

On a recent trip, I spent a full work-week in New Mexico. To avoid getting in no workouts, I looked for a suitable gym. I found the Santa Fe Spa on St. Francis Drive in northern Santa Fe. For a $10 per visit guest fee ($40 per week), they have a very good selection of free weights, weight machines, and cardio equipment. My only criticism was the lack of power cage / squat racks. However, since the gym is at over 7000' elevation, squats were probably not on the menu, anyway.

I'd definitely recommend it to others spending time in the area.

Posted by Don Roberts at 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 6, 2009

He gave his life for tourism

In honor of yesterday's family visit to the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibit at the de Young Museum:

Continue reading "He gave his life for tourism" »

Posted by Don Roberts at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

August 27, 2009

The worst part about being sick

Is that you feel so uncomfortable in your own skin.

I told Lisa that it's like being followed everywhere by a really annoying person. Only that annoying person is you.

Posted by Don Roberts at 4:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

August 16, 2009

1001 Uses for your electrical outlet

We've got a house guest staying with us for the next three weeks, which necessitated moving Lisa's desk and computer out of the home office and replacing it with a guest bed. We set up Lisa's desk and computer in our bedroom for now, and that immediately lead to the obvious question: how do we connect Lisa's computer to our home network? Her machine is old enough that it doesn't have wi-fi, so connecting to our wi-fi wasn't viable. I didn't want to have to run ethernet cable under the house and drill holes in the bedroom wall. The solution: Netgear's Powerline Ethernet Adapters, purchased from Amazon.

These adapters are pretty slick: you plug one in to a wall socket near your existing LAN and connect an ethernet cable. Then plug the second into a wall socket near where you want to extend the network and connect another ethernet cable. In our case, I ran this cable into a 4-port bridge so I could connect both Lisa's computer and our Vonage adapter. Once the adapters recognize each other, you push the little security button on each to generate a private encryption key, at which point the signal on the 60 Hz AC carrier is encrypted (the signal can cross breaker boxes but not transformers).

The other cool thing about these adapters is that they act as bridges rather than switches, so everthing stays on the same subnet and can see each other (i.e., no double NAT problems).

Pretty cool.

Posted by Don Roberts at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

July 17, 2009

Congratulations Canon Apple

Congratulations to Canon Jason Apple, who was ordained a priest on Thursday, 2 July 2009 (the Feast of the Visitation in the old calendar). As a seminarian, then-Abbe Apple served several times in our parish. Our family, our kids especially, became quite fond of him (Sarah in particular, since Jason's family had horses).

The photo shows the newly ordained Canon Apple giving his priestly blessing to our own Bishop of Oakland, Msgr. Salvatore Cordileone, who attended the priestly ordinations in Florence in choro.

If you'd like to give your French a workout, you can view more images from the ordinations at the Institute of Christ the King website.

Posted by Don Roberts at 9:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)