Ty’s Weblog

I’ve been a parent for 7 1/2 years now. CNN has an article up with some of the things about parenting that no one talks about. I altered the title a bit, since it applies to dads just as much as moms.

The ones that have been hardest to learn for me are “You feel helpless sometimes” and “You have to force yourself to back off”.

Just about the hardest thing for me about being a parent is that sometimes there just isn’t anything you can do. Sometimes your kid is sick and feels horrible and you can’t fix it. Or a friend has said something hurtful to them and you can’t make the hurt go away. Sometimes animals and people die and you can’t bring them back. There isn’t much about being a parent that I don’t, at least in some small amount, enjoy. This part though, I would gladly be done with. One of the worst parts about it is that it’s going to last forever. Even when Xander is 34 years old, I’m going to hate that there are things that go wrong for him that I can’t do anything about. Just like today, sometimes all I can do is comfort and lend support as best I can.

After 3 days of headaches, I was finally able to play Bioshock last night! It was awesome. I decided to get it for the Xbox360 since I had a nice new HDTV to play it on. It looks incredible on it. The game play has been excellent so far also. I’ve finished the first two levels. I was throughly involved in the world that they have created. The controls are good for the most part, though weapon switching is a little bit clunky to me. The Big Daddies are very tough. I’ve taken care of one of them and I’m on my second, and it is no cake walk.

I’ve decided that on my first run through the game, I’m going to save all the little sisters. You have the option of saving them, or harvesting them, and I’m going to take the moral high ground the first time through. We’ll see if I’m able to keep that up through the whole game, since it makes the game a bit harder since you have fewer resources that way.

The sound in the game is amazing. I wish I had a 5.1 setup on the television, just because it would be even more immersive that way. Rapture is a very quite place for the most part, so every noise is a clue to what you have coming up. The lighting is also useful, with shadows giving clues to what lies ahead.

The whole world is very well constructed and I’m looking forward to making more progress in it soon.

So we headed off to CosoCo this afternoon and came home with our new television! It’s a Vizio VU42LF LCD 1080p. The XBox 360 looks awesome on it! Standard Def television leaves a little something to be desired, but after 30 minutes or so of watching it, we didn’t mind it at all. Shrek looked very nice on it, and that’s on an old DVD player that doesn’t know about 16:9 televisions and over s-video instead of component or HDMI. We’ll likely end up with a PS3 as a DVD player in the near future to replace the aging player we have now and to upgrade to an HD DVD format.

Mattel is in the middle of a huge toy recall. Make sure to check to see if you have anything on the list. Most of the items have lead paint issues, some are problems with small magnets that come loose. In any case, I think Mattel is doing a great job of getting in front of the issue.

After an 138 hour outage, we finally have access to the Internet again.  You really don’t realize how much you use something like that till it’s gone.  Kate and I were at wits end not being able to rush over to look something up online when we had a passing question about something.  We are just used to having the answers to our questions at our fingertips.  All is well now though.

We went and met my parents in Colonial Heights today to pick the kids up.  They’d had a great time visiting, but were happy to see us as well.  We all ate lunch together and then went our separate ways.  It’s great having them back home.  I’m glad they had fun, but I still like having them back home with us again.

Kate and I got home yesterday from visiting my family.  We went down on Wednesday last week to Clinton.  Then we went to the beach on Thursday and stayed there till Saturday night.  Xander and Mira had a great time playing in the water and riding the boat.  Joey even taught Xander how to fish!  He caught 9 fish Friday evening from the end of the pier and 6 more Saturday morning.  He had a great time doing it!  We were back in Clinton on Sunday and Xander got to ride the go-cart some more (he’d ridden it some on Wednesday also).  Mira had a great time playing with the dogs.

Monday Kate and I left to go to Durham for a couple of days and we got back home last night.  The kids are with my parents for a few more days and we’ll go pick them up this weekend, most likely.  All reports are that they are having a great time down there without us as well.