Slow down

My 2 1/2 year old is an amazing boy who reminded me to slow down today. At the grocery store he noticed a couple of potted plants. He gently touched the petals of the flower then leaned forward to smell the flowers. That's right, he stopped to smell the flowers then looked at me with a small smile.

Later in the evening, we started our first fire in the fireplace. We all sat down in front of the fire to enjoy its warmth. I was my usual chatty self until he said, "Mommy be quiet... please." I looked at him and asked, "Why?" His response was a shushing sound. At first I could not figure out why he wanted me to be quiet. Then, when all was quiet I heard it too. The sound of the fire and a soft whooshing sound. It was an amazing realization. I told him that I heard the fire too and he gave me another one of his incredible smiles.

Thank you!

fbFund Competition

I am very sad to say that we lost the fbFund Competition. It is unfortunate. Congratulations to the winners!

We will continue to work hard and Kountr will win the next competition! We have a few speculations as to why we lost:
- It does not have all of the functions of the website yet. We are working as fast as we can to get this completed.
- The application is not very popular yet because we have not published it in the Facebook application list.
- The application was broken for a couple of days but Michael was at work and couldn't fix right away.
- We still don't have the feedback form available on the application.
- We need to make it more sociable, such as notifications.

We have a list of things that we plan on executing next:
- Add all of the functions from the website.
- Add a feedback form on the application.
- Publish the application.
- Continue to market the application.
- Allow users to choose to make some kounts publicly available to all Facebook users.
- Notification when somebody writes a post to a kount.

Michael and I have learned two main things in the process. First, we are a great team. Michael is better at getting us on track at the beginning and I am better at keeping us motivated at the end. Second, we have to continue to market Kountr.

We welcome all feedback on either the Kountr website or Facebook application. You can help us improve Kountr. Let's count the ways to make Kountr better.

Cyclist

On the way home tonight we saw a scene out of a movie. We were in the car stopped at the light. As we waited for the light to change we watched a cyclist. He was riding with his guitar. This is not unusual except he was playing the guitar while he was biking! It reminded me of a scene out of There's Something About Mary or Scrubs. It is one of those moment when I wish I had my camera handy.

fbFund delay

My heart sunk this morning when I checked my email and didn't find one from the fbFund. Then, I looked into who the winners are and found that they are not announcing the winners for round I until Oct. 10th. This means that we have another 17 days to make Kountr a killer application. When the fbFund team reviews Kountr they will notice that we are continuing to enhance Kountr and add features.



We are celebrating Kountr's first visitor birthday by hosting a feature party for the Facebook Kountr application. I am very excited to hear the new ideas and to see them come life on the Kountr application. Just wait fbFund, Kountr will continue to be a unique application that satisfies friends needs and requests!

There is no rest here. We are plowing on to make Kountr a huge success.

Hartland Open House

The Hartland Landfill had an open house on Saturday from 9:30 am to 2:00 pm. We wanted to go first thing in the morning but had other chores to do so, we didn't arrive until 11 am. There were cars lined along the road to the entrance of the landfill! They directed us up the hill to the active part of the landfill where they had a makeshift parking lot. A school bus took us down to the open house. It took 20 minutes to park the car. At the entrance of the open house, they provided free food and drink tickets and asked us where we lived. They were taking a poll and by the time we entered they had admitted 940 people! It was crazy busy! They offered lots of free items, including a free cloth bag if you agree to not to use plastic bags and free photos but the printer broke down. They created a 10' x 10' sandpit with tons of trucks. It was covered with kids. The kids couldn't lift an arm without touching another kid. Needless to say, we didn't participate in the sandpit. Instead, we waited 10 minutes for our eldest to sit on the backhoe. Then, another 10 minutes for the dump truck. There were red tail hawks, a display describing the landfill, a display about recycling and another by CRD water. CRD water asked our eldest what he can do to reduce water consumption. My 2 1/2 year old said "yeah." She gave him a toothbrush. Hahaha... At the Arts & Crafts section, our eldest decorated a miniature recycling box with markers, pom poms and stickers. He enjoyed it. The lineup for the food and landfill tour was at least 30 minutes long. We skipped on both. It would have been nice to do the tour but it was late and both kids were done. Can you believe we had to wait 30 minutes for the bus to take us to our car?! It was fun! We will have to go earlier next year!

Our deer visitor

We live in a beautiful city! We got home tonight at nightfall and discovered a buck standing in our neighbours yard. It was looking the other way then, it turned and watched us. He didn't know what to make of the car. I tried to take a picture but it was too dark. What I would do for a digital SLR...

We sat in the car and watched the buck with our son (our daughter was fast asleep). At first our son was excited then, he seemed scared of the buck. I think he was reacting to Michael's fear of getting the kids out of the car. Michael was worried about the buck attacking us. Michael is afraid of a deer attacking because he spends too much time watching random videos on YouTube, including deer attacks. So, Michael got out of the car and clapped his hands. The buck looked at him then, turned and walked away. Wow! Bucks are majestic.

Virus

I had my first encounter with a virus a couple of nights ago... I want to share my experience so that we can all learn from my lapse in judgement.

On Facebook, I got an email from a friend that had a link and an innocuous one line sentence saying that I should check out a video. The link was long but I clicked on it anyways. The link looked like YouTube. Above the video section, it said that I needed to download the newer version of Flash. I clicked the link and decided not to save it but run it instead. It is not one of the smarter moments in my life. I got an error saying that it could not download the newer version. I thought nothing of it at first but then, my computer started acting funny. On Facebook, the screen kept turning off. For example, while I was typing an email my cursor kept disappearing and the top of the screen would turn to a lighter colour like it was no longer the main screen being used. This is when I got worried so, I automatically disconnected my computer from the Internet. Michael looked at what was running on my computer and researched the funny looking items on the Internet. He discovered that I had downloaded a worm. This worm copies itself and automatically sends an email to the entire friends list in Facebook. He followed the directions on how to remove it and I changed my password on Facebook. We, then, ran an anti-virus software on the computer which took the rest of the evening.

Here are the three top things that we can all do to avoid getting a virus:
1. Use an updated anti-virus software
2. Don't download or run .exe files
3. Don't open any links that look suspicious or ask the person who sent the email if they sent it before opening the link or file.