Yesterday was a really good day.
Missus was out of town, but I managed to have a nice family day with the girls, and my dad, who came by mid-morning. My friend, C., purchased a couple of bitcoin miners on Alibaba a few weeks ago, and needed some electrical help getting them set up. My dad is an electrical engineer, and C. wanted to take out a couple of floorboard heaters in his mother in law’s room and replace them with one of the Antminers. So we loaded up the kids and headed over around lunchtime.
My dad and C. worked on the electrical stuff while I let the girls get on their screens. Then I discovered that C. had every Oculus rift made. Now I’ve got the original CV1, but have never used the Touch, and my CV1 has been locked up in the closet ever since I stopped doing sim-racing a few years ago. The kids have never used it. Hell, Missus has never used it either, but anyways. I broke out C.’s Quest with the Touch controllers and was really amazed and the quality. It seemed a lot better than what I remembered, and the Touch integration brought it to a whole new level. Then I let the girls use it.
Elder was blown away. I let her play around with it, and put a skydiving video on for Younger. I don’t really know how much she was into it. The headset didn’t fit her quite right so I’m not sure she enjoyed it.
One of the reasons that I haven’t let the kids use my Oculus already is that I understand that the effects of VR on their brains is even more pronounced than on an adult. I’ve heard that they have a difficult time distinguishing VR from actual reality. So I’ve been hesitant to let them use it. It’s certainly something that I would have to monitor, and one of the problems with the standalone Quest units is that I can’t see what they’re seeing.
After we got the miner running, we started heading back home, and stopped at a park. My dad sat in the car while the kids climbed hills and played on the playground. Younger is getting really good at monkey bars.
On the way home, Younger had an accident. We had to stop at three places before we found a bathroom that she could use, and by that time it was a bit too late, so I cleaned her up as best I could, bought them hotdogs and chips for dinner, and an ice cream dessert, and headed the rest of the way home.
Yesterday we figured out that Elder is two years past the requirement for wearing a booster seat, so we let her throw that in the trunk. I used the opportunity to give her more responsibility and told her that she’s now a babysitter in training, and that I was going to supervise her while she ‘sat’ for her sister. And that’s how I managed to get her to put her sister to bed without any help from me. It’s quite remarkable, and I feel like I’ve levelled up my parenting skills considerably.
Missus got home last night, late, and we spent the day out at a kids event at the local nature museum. They were doing a vaccination drive, so I got my booster and the kids got their first dose. We stopped for Mexican food on the way home and now the girls are all watching TV.
I also spent some time last night playing video games, all in the name of work research of course. More on that another time though.