For those of you who know me, you know how much my wife and children mean to me - how much joy they bring into my heart every day, (yes, even when my wife is driving me nuts!
) how much I truly feel honored to have them with me in my life, (was funny, yesterday when I stopped in at the grocery store for something quick at lunchtime, the checkout girl said “I’m not used to seeing you without your girls - you don’t look right…” - she made me smile - and yes, she was right, I don’t look right without them!
).
My most recent bit of amusement came this morning while I was driving my younger daughter, Erin, (3 1/2) to her school. While waiting for my elder daughter, Katie’s, (5 1/2) bus this morning, the kids were on Nick Jr watching LazyTown videos - if you haven’t watched, you really should - it’s an excellent show, with really good messages on nutrition and exercise, (he says from sitting in a cushy chair by the fire inside a Panera - a highly recommended work environment, btw - free Wifi, all the coffee you can drink, made fresh for you, and some mighty tasty goodies!
). And, of course, as almost always happens, the songs got stuck in our heads, so we were singing “La-C-Scouts,” (the show comes from Iceland, so both Sportacus - who really is stunning with his flips, pushups, standing on one hand on a soccer ball, etc - I couldn’t do _any_ of that, even when I was in tip-top shape! - and Robbie Rotten have Icelandic accents - a “z” becomes an “s,” a “u” becomes an “o,” etc. - I love listening to accents, and having worked for a Norwegian company for 2 yrs, this kind of feels like “old home!”
). And when Erin was singing “sluggish,” she sang it as “sloggish,” which gave me quite a good laugh - my elder daughter has gotten a bit of a Dominican accent when she speaks Spanish, since her teacher was from the Dominican Republic, and my younger is definitely starting to have a bit of an Icelandic one on some of her words!
Good for them - I’ve always loved languages and accents, am glad that they’re developing, as well, (’course, the elder one won’t take corrections, so horse is “cabaejo,” rather than “cabaeyo,” so soon, if Erin follows suit, I may have to start referring to her as “Helga!”
).
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BTW, for the Nick Jr folks, (pitched to the woman in charge of in March / April, but can’t remember her name, and didn’t put her in my Contacts folder) - very simple enhancement to your site if you don’t want people pirating your content - if you’re dying to remove content from the main area where it’s accessed, (in this case, the video player, and, come on, it’s time to broaden out to include Firefox!) please make sure to provide an accessible archive somewhere - the kids love to watch videos on Nick Jr,* and it breaks their heart, and thus ours, to have to say “I know you liked watching Stephanie singing “Bing Bang,” or Robbie Rotten doing “You are a Pirate,” (thank you for bringing back this morning!) but I’m afraid we can’t anymore, it’s not there…. And you make a tech-savvy parent have to say “no” to their child for something that stupid, look for downloads of VirtualDub to start to rise to take make _your_ ability to disappoint _our_ children go away, (trust me, the _last_ thing good parents need is additional assistance in saying “no” to our children!) - hence the problem with many of these stupid DRM systems - when DRM is combined with poor choices, especially when young children are involved, you’re just _begging_ to turn folks into pirates, (”Yar Har, Fiddle-dee-dee”). And the pressure for this to happen didn’t need to be there - foolish choice, with fairly well-foreseeable negative consequences, (to both the site and the brands).
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* Even with those crap forced ads that you can’t skip by after 5 videos in the last couple of weeks - bogus, just bogus - I know you’re comped only on rev from the site, rather than the effect the site has as a branding tool to keep getting us all to purchase more Dora Live tickets, or Maya & Miguel Backpacks, etc., and that’s a bit of big-company foolishness, but come on, if you’re going to do a forced interrupt ad, you should at least be able to skip by, if you want to - there’ll _still_ be plenty of ads shown, you’ll still have facilitated an additional series of nags to us parents to buy this or that, etc. - online is supposed to be Interactive, which means User-Controlled, but back to our above story….)