Toren has already figured out how to use the word love to his advantage.  Debi had to leave one day and, of course, Toren didn’t want her to.  So he ran to her and said, “Mommy, don’t leave.  My love you.”

If you’ve ever downloaded a program to run in Linux from the web and not installed it from a repository, that program may not appear in your menu or dash (the activities screen activated when you hit the “super” button), making it difficult to launch, particularly with one of the new desktop managers like Gnome 3 or Ubuntu’s Unity.  There is a relatively easy way to add such programs to both the menu and the dash, however.  There is a program that comes installed with Ubuntu 12.04 called “alacarte” that provides a GUI for adding a program to the menu and dash.  Make sure you have it installed (check the Ubuntu software center, synaptic, or just type the following at the terminal):

sudo apt-get install alacarte

If you don’t have it installed, synaptic will install it with that command.

Next, download the program you want to run.  In all likelihood it will be zipped or compressed.  Uncompress it to a readable/writable location, like your home folder.  Once you’ve unzipped the downloaded program, now launch alacarte.  You can do that however you’d like.  I’m using Gnome 3, so I hit the “super” key (or “Windows” key) and type “alacarte”.  It will be listed as “main menu” but it is the program you want.  You’ll see this window once it loads:

Once that window is open, choose where you want your new program to be located.  I want mine in “Office” applications, so select “Office” in the left pane, then select “New Item” on the right.  You’ll see this window:

You should double check that the program you downloaded and unzipped has an “executable” file and that its permissions are set to allow it to run.  Once that’s done, type the name of the program, browse for the executable file, and type a comment to describe what it is you’re doing.  If your program has an icon associated with it, you can add that by clicking on the icon in the left of the window.  Once you’re done it should look something like this:

The program I’m installing is the stand alone version of Zotero.  It comes with icons.  Once you’ve filled everything out, hit “close” and then close alacarte as well.  That’s it.  Now you can verify that it load by clicking on the “super” key and searching for your program, like I did with Zotero here:

That should do it. You know have a non-repository based program included in the menu or dash.

I asked Toren to do something one night but he was busy.  How did he respond?  He put up one finger and said, “One sec.”

Despite having been to New Orleans at least twice before, neither Debi or I had ever had a beignet.  So, we made a special trip to Cafe Dumond before driving back to Tampa to pick up some beignets.  Toren and Debi loved them:

Eating a beignet in New Orleans. Not sure about the creepy guy in the background.

Me?  I thought they were okay, but a little too sugary for my taste.

We took Toren to the zoo while we were there.  It’s a nice zoo; very large.  But Toren didn’t seem extremely interested, though it could have been lack of sleep.

He did get his picture taken with the Buddha:

This was about the happiest he was the whole time we were at the zoo.

To entertain Toren on the ride up we put Star Wars – The Clone Wars on his tablet.  That, of course, led him to pretend to be a Jedi the entire time we were there.  Every stick he found was either a light saber or a laser gun, like the one in the photo below he is using to shoot me with from behind a tree:

I don't love that he's learning to shoot, but at least he's learning good tactics!

While we did spend a fair amount of time at the conference, we also found time to sneak out with Toren to see some of New Orleans.  We caught a movie at the aquarium… Well, Debi and I did.  Toren was so exhausted from not taking a nap that he fell asleep about 5 minutes in.  It was a good flick:

He was so tired he didn't even care when his glasses slipped off his face.

We went out that night to a nice Creole restaurant called Olivier’s.  The salad dressing is probably the best I’ve ever had.  And all of us loved the corn bread, but Toren did in particular:

Toren gobbling down his second helping of corn bread

In early April Debi and I had a conference in New Orleans where we presenting a poster with one of my students.  Since both of us were going, we decided it would be easiest to rent a car and drive to take Toren with us.  To break up the drive, which is about 11 hours, we got a hotel in Sandestin via Priceline (nice deal!) on the way there and the way back.  We ended up at a Marriott that is part of a resort.  We didn’t spend much time at the beach, but did make a visit to the private access beach of the resort in the morning before driving to New Orleans.  Here are a couple of shots of Toren enjoying the very nice beach:

Toren would have kept on walking if we didn't tell him we had to drive to New Orleans.

He brought a shovel, and found another at the beach. It was heaven for him!

Toren’s still not very neat when he eats.  Here he is pretending to be a pig while he eats spaghetti:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lKSObJsCOo

He doesn’t do much better with pears:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LcdEYqa9v0

Toren was invited to the birthday party of the son of one of my colleague’s.  Toren loved it.  They got to pop bubbles, which Toren loves:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjWQMwwmhWA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp2K33LJ34

They also got to blow bubbles with a gun, which combines two of Toren’s favorite activities – bubbles and shooting stuff (he doesn’t have a gun, but he pretends with whatever is handy):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RUnrz5mUYI

And they had cake, which makes everything worthwhile for Toren:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pszNF3Cjpk

You get Toren soccer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcgqYN7hNkg

I’m increasingly amazed at how athletic Toren is.  With parents who were better dancers than they were athletes, we’re not quite sure where he gets it, but he loves soccer and baseball.