My Journey to the Dark side is complete...
So today we decided we needed to do something about the little technofile in our house.

To recap:
Noelle and Isaac were in Calgary a week or so ago, and while they were staying with my parents, my Mom thought it would be a good idea to let Isaac smack the keys on her laptop to keep Isaac distracted while Noelle was trying to make snacks for the plane.

So ever since they got back, Isaac has decided he wants to play with our computers, every time he sees them. Which is always, because Noelle and I each have our own laptops, and for now they live on the kitchen table.

So he sees them all the time, and always wants to sit down and have a go. Which is an absolute non-starter in our house, because Noelle uses hers for work, and I'm just selfish in that I don't want someone to jam a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich into my CD ROM drive.

So then a rumour started to circulate about Isaac's IT Manager Uncle possibly starting Isaac down the road to his own IT Solution for Christmas. Then it occured to me. I have an old Compaq Armada laptop (which was somewhat churlishly described as a doorstop by a computer expert in Reno). It has 32 megs of Ram, and runs Windows 95. It's ancient, but it works, and the battery still holds a charge.

So why not, the logic goes, drag that out and let him bang on it. If he destroys it, no big deal, becuase the thing is basically worthless...i.e. you can buy them for about $12 on Ebay, and I have put it in free online classifieds around T.O. several times, and the only people who want to buy it are in Nigeria.

So I drag it out tonight, and start wondering what I'm going to put on the screen for him to look at while he's banging away, and then I did the unthinkable.

Yes, I developped a power point presentation for my 1 year old to watch.

I know it sounds insane, but it makes sense to me on some level. I can put transitions in on every page, so the words dance across the screen, and I can set it to loop so it plays over and over again.

But I think it says something about me as a father that I have a pretty big problem with putting Isaac in front of the TV to keep him busy (aside from the fact that he could care less about it), but have no problem developping a PP Presentation to keep him occupied.

I'm just no sure what.

I'll keep you posted as to it's effectiveness.

Baby As Juggernaut
I was watching Isaac navigate today...toddling as he tends to do...and it occured to me that there is something incredibly single minded about being a baby.

Today, I was sitting in front of the stairs, and he wanted to go up them. In fact I was sitting there to prevent him from trying to climb up, because we were in the basement, and his longsuffering mother wanted to eat her supper in peace.

No matter, he decided, "I'll just go over daddy."

And with that, he proceeded to toddle towards me, and just keep going. He first climbed into my lap, which I found endearing, until I realised it was a means to an end. He then proceeded to grab my shoulders and try and push me to one side (while standing on my crossed legs), and get by.

And of course drawing further on the "will of iron, lungs of steel" theme, you can imagine what happened when I tried to gently discourage him from shoving daddy out of the way to get what he wanted.

If only I could harness the persistence of being a baby. Think of the things I could accomplish. And I don't just mean in sales, just think what Bono and Paul Martin's relationship would be like if Bono simply refused to take Martin's "Sorry, can't meet the 7% target" attitude at face value.

First Bono would try pushing Martin physically in the direction he wanted him to go (in this case down the hall to Goodale's office), and then when Martin resisted, Bono could use the time honoured tactic of holding his breath for several eternal moments, and then screaming like a banshee.

Sometimes I wonder if that would be more effective than the whole "naming and shaming" routine Bono is doing now. It would make for a hell of a publicity stunt. Think about it. And Bono is a professional rock singer, so I imagine he could scream quite loud, and keep it up for some time. And what security guard is going to try and remove Bono? He's more likely to ask for an autograph for his neice...whenever Bono pauses for breath.

It's so crazy, it just might work...