• Category Archives Family

  • Freddy, Amy and Terry (and sometimes Cassie).

  • Please welcome my sister to the digital world.

    Posted on by beno Comment

    After years and years (and years and years) of asking, begging and coaxing, my sister finally has a blog!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    It was not me finally tipping her over the edge, it was her moving to the corner of no and where that resulted in her entrance to the digital diary world.
    That’s right, she has up and moved to Emerald. Queensland.

    Already her blog is the eclectic mix that I suspected it would be (hey, shes the extrovert of the family (and then some)), so its a real buzz to have her on the interwebs.

    You can find her here; http://sueweirsplace.blogspot.com/

    Welcome big sister. Its great to have you reaching out across the planet.
    Now that you have the blog, do I still have to call you every 6 months??? (Just kidding!)


    Family

  • Hes not mine!

    Posted on by beno 1 Comment

    Terry posted this on his Facebook page the other night…..

    He was all excited about it… I have no idea what its about (well, I get the sin thing at the very bottom, but the rest of it…….).

    For the longest time, we have been exposing Terry to all sorts of skills sets and challenges to try and find whats ‘his thing’. The thing that lights his fire, gets him all excited, the thing that he would be happy to do every (5 days a week at least) day for the rest of his life….. All to no avail…..
    Robots, RC planes and choppers, music, drawing, coding, bikes, cars electronics, soldering all sorts of activities, Parkour to name just one. He can do them all, but was not all that excited about any of them.
    Terry admits that while he enjoys computer games, he knows that he can not earn a living doing them.

    One day, a few months back, he turns to me and says ‘I think math is it’.
    Good job I was sitting down at the time!
    No wonder I could never offer an activity that would excite him!!!!!

    No way that hes my offspring……. Math… what would I know about math!


    Family

  • Computer grades

    Posted on by beno 1 Comment

    Im surprised….. Looking back over my old blogs does not show up one on the topic of how we ‘bribed’ Terry to start putting in some effort at school.
    So here is a rough outline.

    Terry was getting C’s and and the odd B in his first year of high school. In other words, average to above average.
    He was doing it with zero effort at all. Not doing homework, not doing any study for the exames, just showing up at school. Thats it.
    All well and good to be be passing, but we knew that a little effort now pays off down the track.
    So we started to try and prod him a little.
    Different methods were used. To no effect. Not even offering him money for better grades was winning him over.
    Long story short, one night he was complaining about the frame rate of one of his games on the clucker computer he was using. A little light went on in my head.

    “So heres the deal mate. I will build you a kick ass gaming computer if you get me straight A’s.”
    “How kick ass?”
    “Dude, dont question my geek.”
    “Righto. Your on.”

    And so with that, he got my good computer, and I got a laptop.
    His grades went through the roof. Straight A’s for the most part. Hes doing two Advance Placement (AP) classes and two collage level classes. A little annoyed with the lack of long term savings and the amount of money spent on pixels, but for the most part, hes kept his end of the deal.
    Over time, we have expanded and upgraded the PC to keep things moving along for him.
    I have been more and more disappointed with the laptops ability to keep up with my photography and other work.
    So. I brought the Mac.

    This then is the reason why I am loading Win7 on the Mac.
    Computing wise Im just trying to get back to where I was about 3 years ago.

    But the story does not end there.
    What of Terry and his grades?

    Observe the power of the bribe……

    20121217_170028

    Its pretty cool to see your sons name up in lights.

    I have a lot more to say about the education system and the student of the month breakfast that we went to with Terry, but thats another blog for another day.


    Computers Family Life in the USA

  • 19 and 32

    Posted on by beno 1 Comment

    So, as most of you know, a few months back we had our first baby… It was a girl…… Here we are and shes 19 already!
    Its just not possible.
    I did not even work at the hospital where she was born when she was born! (The one over the road, sure, but not the same one at that stage).
    Anyway, here is one of my favorite photos of her;

    Of course, if its Amys birthday, then it must also mean that its Freddys birthday….
    Its still amazing to think they they were born on the same day, within about half an hour of the same time even….
    So here is a shot of my young bride;

    Yeah, getting in the way back machine I know, but its good fun!

    SO, to the two women in my life, well done on another trip around the sun.
    Its been a crazy few years these last 4, but we are all growing and so its going to be a hoot to see what the next year holds for you two….


    Family

  • 17 Years.

    Posted on by beno 1 Comment

    So today (or yesterday, depending on your time zone) I become the father of a 17 year old boy.
    Wow. Time flys. It was not that long ago he was eating Lego and pouring fuel on my RC planes to ‘clean them’…..

    One of the cool things about having a boy is that, well, hes such a boy…..

    Terry vs the hunk of steak.

    The kid loves to eat steak. I mean, roll-your-sleeves-up-and-go-at-it loves it.
    We went to the Drs a few weeks back to get a chunk of bone that is sticking out of his shoulder looked at (don’t panic, nothing major) and they gave him a full blood test since hes never had one before. The Doc rang back a few days latter and said ‘Does your son eat a lot of red meat?’.
    Um, yeah, thats all he eats, why?
    Seems our boy has slightly high something…. Hehe, more green, eat more green… This should be fun.

    Anyway, I digress, so back to being a boy… Who loves a steak… being a boy, with messy hands, how in the world do you clean that stuff up….??
    Well, Terrys got that sorted as well…..

    Life is good with a dog.

    The kid is such a boy.

    We went down to the park to film his monthly parkour video, it was a lot of fun and one of those cool father and son things. Im way to old to keep up with him, but it was fun to come up with ideas to film.

    Here is his monthly video from that session…..

    In a week or two he goes back to his last year of high school as a senior.
    Then its off to collage.
    Yeah. Time flies.
    But its been fun.


    Family