Tobin Family Website

School is now back in session and the kids are getting back into the routine of early to bed,  early to rise.  Delaney has adapted quite well, but Ben continues to struggle with the concept.  Delaney is like me, in that she can fall asleep almost immediately after her head touches the pillow.  Ben, on the other hand, takes after Karen and can stare at the ceiling for hours while laying in bed….even if he is dog tired.  I have tried to help him by suggesting things like sleeping on his stomach, but he just can’t seem to find a way to quickly fall asleep.

The kids like their new teachers this year, especially Delaney.  Ben got in trouble on Thursday when he stayed outside too long for recess.  His class was only allowed to be out for about 5 minutes, and he says that he ended up staying out for about 30 minutes (with kids from other classes).  When he finally realized that his class had long since gone inside, he returned to his room and got a warning from the teacher.  We were not happy that the teacher failed to go look for him or send anyone out to get him when she noticed him missing!  For all she knew, he could have run off or been abducted from the playground. 

Delaney was asked by her teacher if we had anyone famous in the family, to which she replied “My Uncle Eric is a famous drawer!”.  As a result, on Monday, she gets to bring in some pictures of Eric and his paintaings to show the class.  I printed some pictures from the gallery on this website, to include one that I took of Eric painting on top of Mount Mansfield.  I also printed one of Delaney and Ben with Eric when we were home for my parents 50th wedding anniverary in February.  She is excited to have something to show and tell, especially since she loves art so much and wants to be an artist like her Uncle Eric. 

Karen has been busy at home, finally able to catch up on some rest and some other activities around the house now that the kids are back in school.  She will be substitute teaching again this year, but demand is low in the first few weeks.  We have been told there is a shortage of subs in the system, so we expect she will be busy soon enough! 

I have been really busy in my spare time over at www.nhlpens.com, setting up my new hockey blog ahead of the start of the season on 5 Oct 07.  I have been working hard on getting all of the features in place, and have been putting up an article about every other day as well.  There has been plenty of pre-season news and information to get out and I want to build up a bit of a following before the season gets started.  So far, it has been pretty successful.  Since I started collecting some stats on 2 Sep, I have had 146 unique vistors (not including myself) that have viewed the website 600 times….and it is growing daily.  I have started to get a couple of people posting comments against my articles and posting in the discussion forums as well.  Hopefully it takes off and I can get a few advertising dollars out of it to cover my minor costs and time.  Regardless, as many of you know, I love hockey…..and I love playing around with websites, so it is a good, creative outlet for me. 

I also set up another TiVo related blog (www.tivoville.com), but have spent almost no time working on it since I set it up 2 weeks ago.  My focus has been the hockey site. 

I am in town for a couple of weeks, but will be heading back to San Diego at the end of the month.  Time seems to be whizzing by.  My time in the military is quickly drawing to an end….I can retire in 25 months.  I really need to start thinking about what I want to do when I grow up! 

Summer is winding down and the kids are getting ready to return to school next week.  On Friday, we attended the open house at the school and met Ben and Delaney’s new teachers.  We also dropped off their supplies.  One of the cool things they offered last year was a program whereby you can pre-order your supplies from Staples and they deliver them directly to the classroom.  They offered this for Delaney’s class, so we did it.  It was awesome, as all of her supplies were sitting neatly on her desk when we arrived.  Delaney is very excited about getting back to school…..Ben, not so much!

I spent most of last week in San Diego for my monthly program reveiws with the contractor.  While I was away, Karen and the kids all got sick with a nasty head cold.  I think they may have gotten exposed to some germs while we were all at the hospital in Charlottesville with Karen’s father.  Eeveryone is still hacking and coughing and wheezing….except me.  Karen has been miserable and can’t breathe through her nose.  We are hoping it passes soon!  Hopefully I can avoid it, but I am surrounded.  Karen’s father is back home after spending a few days in the hospital.  He appears to be recovering well from some surgery that he had. 

I continue my work on my new blogs, although most of my time has been devoted to the hockey blog I am developing, http://nhlpens.com.  It is starting to look pretty professional and I am starting to get some traffic visiting it.  Stop by and take a look.  I have spent a fair amount of time setting up the Rosters page, with pictures of the players.  I have also added a cool video server application that you can watch pre-selected videos on (see the Video page).  I am hoping more people will come and start making entries in the forum.  I am trying to make it look as good as possible, so if you see something goofy, let me know!! 

This website continues to get a fair share of hits, including some attempted spammers.  Fortunately, I have been able to keep the spam off of this website using various automated tools and security checks.  Since inception, one of my spam blocking tools has blocked over 5,000 attempted spam posts to this site.  Another one has blocked almost 18,000 attempted spam posts to the Live Shoutbox on this page.  This site generates about 40-60 unique visitors per week.  Many of them come in through internet web searches for various people listed in the Tobin Genealogy pages, or also looking for the Tobin Coat of Arms.  I also have a lot of hits for people searching for my brother Eric’s work, which is another reason I think he needs to have a web presence (and I would be more than happy to set it up and maintain it for him).  In fact, I was contacted last night by a very good friend of the family that I hadn’t spoken to in years who found my site by searching for Eric’s paintings in google.  I also get a lot of search hits to my hockey related articles (especially ones that include Sidney Crosby).  That is one of the reasons why I started http://nhlpens.com, because I think I can probably generate a lot of traffic and possibly a little revenue.  It also combines two of my hobbies (web page creation/maintenance and hockey). 

With everyone being sick, we haven’t really made any plans for the extended labor day weekend.  I have enjoyed just working on my new blogs and getting some rest after a week on the road.  We did go out to dinner at a local restaurant that we tried a few weeks ago named O’Meara’s.  It is a decent place and the food is very good an reasonably priced.  The place is split between a Irish bar which takes up 3/4 of the place and a non-smoking dining room which occupies the other 1/4.  The best part of the restaurant is that it is never crowded, so we can get right in and it is fairly quiet so you can hear each other talk.  We may go see a movie, however, I don’t even know what is playing!