On Sunday, a 13 year old girl shook up our quiet existance here on the Left Coast.

Well, maybe that’s being a bit melodramatic.  I must be picking it up from Gwen.  At any rate, Kayla (Gwen’s cousin and Goddaughter) flew into Abbotsford International Airport (seriously,  *international*) on Sunday from Halifax.  She’ll be staying with us for the next three weeks.

We picked her up from the airport and took her to lunch in the booming town of Fort Langley.  It was an interesting place … the proprietor was a chatty Asian guy who came to our table often with weird jokes.  It was more than a little too hands-on for me, and more than a little creepy and odd.  It served as a good way for her to decompress and for Aidan to warm up to her.  He was pretty shy at the airport initially, but did hold her hand walking out from the terminal.

After lunch we drove back to Vancouver (sitting in the long line waiting to cross the Port Mann back into Vancouver) and relaxed for a bit.  Then it was off to the playground so that Aidan could blow off some steam.  Kayla was pretty tired by the time we got home … apparently she didn’t sleep much the night before and it’s a long flight from Halifax.

Everyone was pretty tired and would you believe we were all in bed by 8pm?  I think Kayla was out by then.  Aidan checked out at 8:30 and I was gone by 10pm.  And other than me, no one was up until 7:30 in the morning.

By all accounts today was a hit, with Aidan and Kayla hitting it off pretty well.  She’s going to be pretty sick of him by the end of it!  We’ve got lots of things planned for her — she’s going to need a vacation from her vacation by the end of it.

This past week, our computer family grew by one.  You see, we bought one of those new ‘netbook’ class laptops — a brand new Asus Eee PC 901.

The 901 is a small laptop.  How small?  Well, it has a 9″ screen, and weighs in around 2.5 lbs.  It has one of those new Intel Atom CPUs, a dual-core CPU running at 800 MHz-1.6 GHz depending on what you’re doing.  Graphics are provided by the integrated Intel GMA 950 chipset.  It has a perfectly sufficient 1 GB RAM, which can be upgraded with standard laptop SODIMMs.  It comes with a 6-cell battery which means you’re going to get somewhere between 5 and 8 hours on a charge, again depending on what you’re doing.  It’s got both WiFi and Bluetooth built in.  It has no CD or DVD drive, and no hard drive.  It does have a 12 GB solid-state drive which means no moving parts, and extends the battery life.

You can get one preinstalled with either Windows XP (12 GB SSD) or with Linux (and a 20 GB SSD).  At the moment, however, you can only buy the Windows XP version.

It has a built-in 1.3 megapixel web cam, a microphone, speakers (as well as mic + headset jacks), VGA output, an SDHC reader, and 3 … count’em *3* USB ports.

In short, it is a diminutive but fully functional and fully capable laptop.

We got it because with Gwen’s new blogging gig, our ‘old’ laptop has effectively become hers.  So this one becomes effectively mine, plus it’s portable enough to bring to parks, coffee shops, etc.  Plus, it’s the ultimate geocaching companion.  I’ve already installed GSAK and MS Streets and Trips.  We have a USB GPS that works great with MS S&T, plus our Garmin Etrex Vista CX.  With the inverter that we have, it’ll make an easy road trip accessory.

After a few days of using it, it’s lived up to all my expectations.  I’ve adjusted to the tiny keyboard, and am able to touch type on it now without too many problems.  Mind you, I won’t be writing any theses with it, but this blog post is going ok! :)  The biggest issue with the keyboard is that the number row is shifted one key to the left, so I’m often typing 2 when I mean to type 1.  The speakers are awful, but functional.  The wifi works as expected.  I haven’t tried the Bluetooth.  The 12 GB storage seems small, but is more than sufficient for what we’re doing with it.  The CPU seems to work just as good as the Core 2 Duo in our Dell laptop.  I can stream avi’s from our media server like nobody’s business.  The battery life doesn’t disappoint.  The screen is bright and sharp.  It’s a little bit wonk with a wide-screen resolution of 1024×600 (usually it’s 1024×800) which means that reading web pages means a lot of vertical scrolling.

The biggest complaint I have is the touchpad.  It sometimes seems too sensitive and sometimes not sensitive enough.  As I’m typing my thumbs occasionally brush it and suddenly the cursor is somewhere unexpected.  Clicking on buttons, however, seems to require pounding instead of clicking.

Now, I just need to keep it away from Aidan…

Grrr, rant time.

This morning’s ride (commute) consisted of the following:

• Being cut off by the same car twice, 3 blocks from home
• Being cut off by a courier blindly turning right
• Being confronted by a recycling truck coming at me the wrong way through a traffic circle
• Being confronted by a car coming at me in the wrong lane on campus
• Being behind a car that came to a stop at a 4 way stop, and stayed there.  I went around her and three blocks later I could still see she was stopped there.  The passenger didn’t seem concerned.

So, seriously?  A 10 km ride in the gorgeous sunshine and mild temperatures complete and utterly destroyed by idiot drivers.

There are some things I really dislike about Vancouver and the dumbass car (and bike) drivers rate highly.

Aidan has his morning rituals.

After getting up, and going to the toilet (alleluia!) then washing his hands, he goes outside and nabs the newspaper for me. Then it’s upstairs to give me the cat dishes to clean, retrieve the cat food from the closet/pantry, and place the newly cleaned and filled cat dishes back on the cat mat.

This morning, after ascending the stairs and stealing a glance at the masthead of the newspaper, he spied a small 2″x2″ graphic with a purple “S” and a backward yellow “R”.

A: Look!  It’s a picture of Toys’R’Us on the newspaper!  It’s Toys’R’Us on Broadway!

And certainly it was.  Or, it’s a partial photo of its sign.  The sign is distinctive because it’s overlaid on top of the old (and historic) ‘Bowmac’ sign.

Aidan is *so* brainwashed with corporate imagery.

But ‘on Broadway’?!?  We were taking the bus downtown on Canada Day and he said something else (now forgotten) that made me turn to Gwen and remark that he’ll know all the street names and how to navigate around the city by the time he’s five.