Keeping your kids safe on the web: Lesson 1.
As any red-blooded seven year old should, Rhiannon has recently become uber-interested in a) snakes and lizards b) egyptian mummies and c) sharks. I'm sure we'd all agree that any of these are much better than sniffing Pritt-Stick and mainlining glitter stars on any day of the week.
Thus:
"Dad, can I look at mummies on the computer?"
"Sure - you know what you're doing?"
"Yeeess"
Later on, not much later, but later on enough, she came back and said she was stuck and couldn't find anything about them. Here comes lesson one people... wait for it...
When you have a different login for everybody, enforce it. Sarah had left her screen on, so instead of logging out and in again, Little Miss Clever simply stayed on it to save time. Search one for "mummys" revealed some interesting results and thankfully, she only looked at the results, didn't see anything she might like and revamped her search criteria to "dead mummys".
Being as she didn't see anything she fancied in those results either, she chose a different tact. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing and our final crackerjack search of the evening was "pulling your brains out through your nose with a stick".
At which point, Sarah walked in and saved us all from a bucketful of grief. Check out the searches for yourself. I honestly thought she was going to end up at some milf-hunter website when I heard what she'd done - thankfully, all was reasonably safe.
I think that was a get out of jail free card we just played.
Lesson of the day? Always set your wife's ability to look for stuff on the internet to as close to zero as you can get. It will save you much money in the long run as she won't be able to buy shoes.
The other lesson is obvious. Horseshoes and hand grenades and all that.
I finally picked up my Saab 900 today. It seems OK. It's not an Audi, but then again, it's no tin-pot Ford either. It's the first time I've had a clutch in about five years, so that's weird for a start. Then just about everything that can be is in the wrong place - the people at Saab have some odd solutions to living in the modern world. The ignition is down between the gear stick and the hand brake. To start the car, you have to have it in reverse with the clutch down. To get your keys out of the ignition when you've stopped, you have to put it in reverse, and then swtich the engine off before you can get them out.
I kind of like these quirly little things in a car. It has the compulsory 'check engine' warning light on the dash too which probably lit up about three years ago, but at least it doesn't pump CO into the car when you put the heater on. That's always a bonus... and I thought the boot was big in the Audi. The Saab's is like nightclub!
Those things happened outside of my head today. Inside my head, I've finally finished issue one of Too Hot For Dogs. I'm not even looking at issue two until at least the weekend. There is so much to do with regards to the business end of the stick that if I don't do it now, it will never get done. Plus all the time I've been chipping away at that, I've discovered that the other half of my brain has been busy fleshing out the remainder of Almost Human, so once I'm done here, I reckon there's a few chapters of that to be pumped out before bed.
In a tiny snippet of other news, my buddy Neil has asked me to write a few bits on Bon Jovi for his new book on er, Bon Jovi. Neat. Must go up in the loft and find my memories of "glory days long since past". I feel a New Jersey session coming on.
