Author: Gerry

Categories
Family

Change

Even as recently as a month ago, the kid’s morning routine consisted of coming down the stairs, being grumpy, eating some breakfast, and then sitting in front of Netflix watching Pink Panther reruns or Avatar. There might be a couple other cartoons thrown in for good measure.

But then, somewhere along the way, they started getting more interested in the computer and playing the games on it. So now, it’s about 50-50 whether they come down and turn on the TV or head over to the computer and start playing hearts or solitaire. We don’t let them play video games during the week, so the computer seems to be a way for them to skirt that rule. That said, I don’t mind it nearly so much as the mindlessness of the DS or Wii. Perhaps because I don’t think sitting in front of the computer is mindless, which, is probably because I sit in front of a computer so much. I’d hate to damn myself.

Anyway, my first impression is it’s a welcome change from TV viewing. But still, sometimes I think they really should be forced to be more resourceful.

Categories
Misc

More Rain

Seeing as how we’re already 7 or 8 inches above normal rainfall for the year (can’t find a useful link, but I remember seeing it on a local weather report), today’s rain will be very much welcomed around these here parts. What would we do without it? Besides cut the grass that is.

Maybe I should start building an ark.

Categories
Family

Can’t Find Won’t You Don’t Look For

Since it was to be a bit cooler on Saturday during the campout, I suggested to the boy that he bring one of his heavier sweat coats. It’s basically perfect for Fall and early Spring temps and, having a zipper, I figured it would be easier to take off than a sweatshirt.

My suggestion led to the one spot of trouble the boy had. He couldn’t find the coat and started getting upset. The thing of it is, I could tell that he’d barely looked it, and I let him know as much. My boldness only served to agitate him more. By the end of it, I was ticked off because he’d barely put any work into finding it; and, he was ticked off because he couldn’t find it and I refused to find it for him. He ended up going with just a pullover sweatshirt.

Fast-forward to this morning. He’s getting ready to head out to the car so I can take him to school. Lo and behold, he’s wearing the very sweatcoat in question. I paused a moment and then said “Well, well- where was that?” His initial reluctance to answer was all the answer I needed. It had been on the coat rack all along. But to admit so would also be admitting that he hadn’t looked very well.

So he improvised: “I don’t know how it got there! I looked before and it wasn’t there. This morning it was. Really!” His statement that high-toned, defensive quality that kids get when they’re actively trying to obfuscate a situation.

Sigh.

I didn’t say anything. I just smirked at him. He didn’t particularly care for that. Eventually, he stalked out to the car in a huff.

The kicker is, we’ll replay this whole act again. It’s a matter of when, not if. Lessons are taught until they’re learned.

Categories
Family

Back from Camping

After the boy’s soccer game yesterday afternoon, we made the trek up to a Scout cabin for a Pack sponsored overnight campout. The facility we stay at is pretty good, as these things go. The cabin is an open room, about 20×40 with bathroom facilities (no showers) and a reasonable kitchen. Outdoors, the land the cabin sits on was donated to the Scouts and has a couple of nice hiking trails and a couple of campground spots nearby. It sits atop a hill, so the view is pretty good on Fall evenings. Our pack typically uses the facility because it’s low cost, high value and fun. Yesterday was no exception.

The boy and I didn’t get up there in time for the hiking, but he got a chance to participate in the various games of tag, manhunt, hide-and-seek and what not with all of his buds. Dinner was a pot-luck format with a campfire that followed. Once the lights out time started approaching, we herded the boys up into the cabin for board games and getting ready for bed.

Lights out is a rather misleading term in all but the most literal sense. They did in fact go out at 10, but the kids were by no means ready to go to sleep. We had to suffer through a period of them getting the remainder of their sillies out of them. Air mattresses were squeaking, flashlight were going on and off, fake snoring was prevalent, loudly blurted “I can’t sleep because there’s too much noise” were prevalent and, generally, other sorts of antics that occur at just about any slumber party.

The most ironic part is that all of the boys did fall asleep eventually, with a cacophony of half-snores, deep breathing, and restless-turners serving as testimony. Many of us parents, including myself, weren’t so lucky. The dawn didn’t exactly come quickly, but it did arrive and we were awake to watch it do so. The kids woke up rested and raring to go. In the meantime, the parents were hooking up to coffee feeds in the kitchen.

The nicest moment, for myself, happened on the ride home. One of the boy’s fellow Wolf Scouts had run into a pricker bush during the games yesterday. Poor kid caught his eyelid on a thorn and was, understandably, none to pleased with the circumstances. The boy, on his own, chose to walk with his friend back to the cabin (and away from the still ongoing games) to keep him company and make sure that he was OK (he was). The boy was telling me that on the ride home and said “‘Cause that’s what Scouts do, right Dad? They help each other.”

Well, that’s what they tell me. But it’s still nice to see it put to practice every now and again. Pleasant surprises like that make the long nights more bearable.

Categories
Misc

Now for Something a Little Different

Behold Cubestormer! Its only purpose in life is to solve Rubik’s Cubes. Powered by a smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S II, it solves them faster than humans.

Do I even need to say “cool”?

Categories
Family

Questions and Answers

The boy seems to have decided that he really wants to earn his black belt. In order to achieve that he has to enroll in a what his school calls “Black Belt Club.” (Don’t start with the “No one talks about Black Belt Club jokes…) Aside from a means of getting a little higher tuition fee from the students, I think it’s a pre-screening method for those students whom really want to earn a black belt. To join the Club, a student has to write a letter of intent to the instructors explaining why they wish to earn a black belt.

To help the kids in writing the letter, the School provides a bunch of questions to answer. Following are the questions along with the boy’s answers (italicized). The answers are his own words.

  1. Why do I want to be in the Black Belt club?

    Make me better at karate
    Learn more forms
    I want to be a black belt

  2. What do I enjoy about martial arts? Where am I challenged?

    I enjoy the self-defenses and competitions/games
    I am challenged by sparring

  3. What do martial arts do for my character and me?

    Helped me get better at stuff I used to not be able to do before I joined karate. I used to give up on stuff that was really hard, but now I don’t.

  4. What does achieving a Black Belt mean to me?

    Means being able to protect myself, make me happy because most people don’t become Black Belts because it’s hard and it takes awhile.

  5. What kind of person receives a Black Belt- in your mind- and how/why is that your goal?

    That person is willing to do extra practice
    Do his best/ try hard
    Has patience
    Helps me learn stuff so I don’t get scared or anything like that.

I had to help him understand what the questions meant, but the words above are his. The Wife will help him turn that into a letter eventually. I thought it was a pretty good effort for a 7 year old. I will say he focused more on the physical side of martial arts, as opposed to the mental aspects. In other words, his responses always started from the physical side. But I was able to make him understand that many of the question were more attuned to the mental side of the discipline.

Categories
Computers

Dennis Ritchie- 1941-2011

A tough time for giants of the computer industry.

Dennis Ritchie was a co-creator of the C language, easily the longest lived (outside of assembly) and most prevalent programming language around. He’s also co-author of the best intro book to a programming language, simply titled *The C Programming Language”.

Categories
Family

Caramel Apple

The lass got her first birthday party invitation today. There was no hiding it because she was the one who grabbed the mail out of the mailbox and found the little envelope with her name. By this point, she’d seen enough of those sorts of letters show up for the boy that she instantly knew the contents. She was so happy, she decided to get right to work on making a birthday card for her friend.

After the jump is the picture of a “caramel apple” she decided to put on the inside of the card. I don’t really know why she decided to put a picture of a caramel apple on the card. Perhaps she was hungry; perhaps it’s her current favorite thing in the world; perhaps she was inspired by the pile of apples from the orchard sitting on the counter.

Regardless, I just want to be clear that it’s a picture of a caramel apple after the jump…

Continue reading “Caramel Apple”
Categories
Family

Not So Street Smart

Another thing yesterday’s adventure with the Kirby sales people pointed out to me was just how lacking in street smarts the kids are. In fact, I had this point driven home to me in rather dramatic fashion when I turned around to see the boy and the lass on the floor showing one of the sales people the money from their piggy banks. To say I was stupefied was an understatement. To make matters worse, when I told them to take that stuff back upstairs and put it away, they asked me “Why?” in all sincerity.

It was a double facepalm, fall off my chair moment if ever there was one.

I’ve never wanted to try and scare them about strangers. But their display of ignorance regarding strangers and what it’s OK and not OK to tell them forced my hand. While we were eating dinner, I went through a long spiel about not knowing what strangers might be after and not to tell them anything more than is necessary. Even going so far as to explain that they could have been there to scope out our house so they could come back some time and rob it. By the time it was over, the boy told me “Dad, I don’t want to eat anymore because the conversation kind of upset me.”

I initially felt a tinge of regret. But that was soon replaced by the notion that it’s better to cause him to lose his appetite than to become a statistic because of his own ignorance. That would be a tremendous failure of my job as a parent. To be honest, I’m upset with myself for not having done a better job of explaining the potential dangers a stranger can present. But, at least I get to rectify the situation.

Categories
Misc

An Expensive Floor Cleaning

To understand my afternoon, I have to supply a small, seemingly meaningless event from yesterday. I got a phone call during the afternoon, ostensibly from a “cleaning service”, that had done a random drawing and our address had come up to do a word of mouth ad campaign. We were to get a free demo of their services where they would actually clean a floor for us. I figured since it was someone else doing the cleaning, and it was “free”, I’d give it a shot.

Come 1 o’clock this afternoon, they cleaners arrived. My hope was that they’d be in and out within half-an-hour, 45 minutes tops. But when they got inside the house, I realized that I had been suckered. The devil was in the details.

You see, the outfit who called me does in fact sell a “cleaning service.” It’s just not what the average Joe or Jane would consider a cleaning service. They sell Kirby vacuum cleaners. Only (as I found out over the next 3 hours) it’s so much more than a vacumm cleaner. It’s an upholstery cleaner, and a carpet shampooer and a mattress cleaner and an electronics cleaner and a blower for inflating mattresses all rolled into one wonderful machine.

From a product standpoint, the demo is impressive. It’s clearly a well thought out and designed machine. It pulled more dirt off our floors and carpets than our current central vac setup. In fact, it was so good at it that I asked them to just clean a single spot because I was trying to figure out if the machine was actually cleaning or just recycling crap from a hidden chamber. Alas, it was legit.

The problem came when the actual cleaning portion of the program finally arrived. They shampooed one of the carpets and then asked me if I wanted to buy the thing for $2500. I told them it was an impressive machine, but I couldn’t justify paying that much money for it. Even though it clearly did a superior job, it wasn’t worth that much more to me.

Then I made 2 big mistakes by answering 2 of their questions. The first was, what would a like for a trade in on the current vacuum? The second question was, what would it take to make me interested in actually buying it?

I’m not a natural jerk, but I really wish I could have been at that moment. It would have saved me at least another hour worth of time. But rather than tell them to just get out, I gave them reasonable answers to their questions, at which point they called their “boss” who told them to give me everything I asked for the trade in value on my current vacuum. I was … shocked.

But I still wasn’t buying and told them so. So they got back on the phone and their boss dropped the price of the vacuum to $1500. Now, we were firmly into sleazy salesman territory. It’s one thing to peddle a quality product at a high price. It’s another thing entirely to then drop the price of the product by $1000 just to make a sale. Plus, the whole contact the boss thing gave the affair a distinctive car-salesman-tactics flavor. The only thing more they needed was some bad coffee.

So I finally told them “NO” in no uncertain terms. Even telling them that, at this point, I wasn’t really sure what the vacuum was worth since they seemed willing to give it to me at any price. They finished cleaning the floors and, to their credit, didn’t try to push me any further on the sale and didn’t show any kind of animosity. They packed up and were gone by 4:30. My entire afternoon was shot, just like that.

But at least the floors were clean…

Categories
Family

Columbus Day Weekend

It’s kind of a weird title, if thought about too much. Because Columbus Day is just a day. But it gets upgraded (or something) to a “weekend” because it’s one of those floating holidays that happens on a 1st or 2nd (or whatever) day of the month. In this case, it’s the 2nd Monday of October. But then it’s not just a weekend because the kids get the Monday off. To make matters more looney this year, the teachers have an in-service day on Tuesday, making it a 4 day weekend.

So it’s a day, that’s a weekend, that’s a long weekend, that’s even longer than normal. Kind of like this thought…

We spent yesterday with friends doing traditional, fall New England activities. We all met up at a road race, which was sponsored by a local church. After a little lunch, the kids ran in a “Kid’s Race” which was a 20-yard sprint. Our group had 6 kids total, 4 of whom were entered in the race. They took 1, 2, 3 in the sprint. YAY!

There was no crying from everyone who didn’t win. Double YAY! The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners each got a ribbon. Triple YAY! All the kids got bags of junk as a “Thanks for playing” gift. YA- mmm, hmmmph. More crap to throw away.

The boy came came in 2nd in the race. And since I’ve taken the time to point out his trouble with sportsmanship, I feel compelled to report that he congratulated his friend whom won without any prompting by myself or the Wife.

After the race, we went to an apple orchard from some good ol’ fashioned apple pickin’ fun. And corn mazin’ fun too. The corn maze was an adventure. First, it was loooong. All 6 of the kids went running into the maze without any inhibitions. Theoretically, all us Dads were supposed to shepherd them through the thing. The reality is that most of them shot ahead with one of the Dads, and the rest of us wandered around aimlessly trying to make sure all the kids were accounted for. The whole “let’s stay together thing” barely lasted our entry into the maze.

So when I and one of the other Dad’s finally emerged from the maze 30 minutes later, we were informed that the kids had come out a while ago and had gone back in to find us. So I headed back in to find them. I found them quick enough, but then couldn’t escape a little circle (I wasn’t lost– I was entending my understanding of the route through the maze…). Eventually, another Dad came along and we found our way out. But not before the boy got himself a little worked up about being lost in the maze. When we finally did make it out, he wasn’t interested in going back in.

The day finished back at the friend’s place with a pot-luck dinner. The kids ran around most of the evening playing games like hide-and-seek, tag, and something with sticks. Miraculously, no one lost an eye. The night ended with them watching The Wizard of Oz. Of the bunch, the lass seemed to be the most interested in watching the movie; though, by the end, all of them were watching intently to see how it to see if Dorothy would make it home. Mercifully, the dreaded flying-monkey scene didn’t seem to phase any of them too much.

As for us, the day ended with a long ride home. No ruby-red slippers for us. By that time, it was well passed the kids’ normal bedtime. They were asleep shortly after we hit the road. A Columbus Day… weekend… day, well spent.

Categories
Family

Sweet n’ Sour

It’s the weekend, which means the boy gets to play with his DS and on the Wii as well.

Sweet!

But the games he plays frustrate him and his coping skills are somewhat… wanting. Listening to his cries of anguish as yet another Mario life bites the dust, one would think he was undergoing some kind of exquisite torture. Well, I suppose he is, in his own fashion.

Sour!

Categories
Misc

Money Can’t Buy Championships

Just caught the result for the Cardinals-Phillies game last night, and I have to say I’m shocked. There was a point where the Phillies really did look undeniable; their late season swoon (they lost 7 or 8 straight towards the end of the year) not withstanding. After 102 wins, it looked like the money had been well spent.

But sports in general has no favorites. Anyone who’s been involved in sports for any length of time and takes the time to watch and observe quickly realizes there are eddy’s and undercurrents swirling all over the place, just out of sight but there and significant none-the-less. The Yankees and Red Sox have had the highest payroll for years now; the Phillies put up a lot of money to have the best starting rotation in the Majors. None of them will be hoisting a championship trophy of any kind this year.

The same goes for the NFL- the Colts are winless; the Bills are leading their division and have a comeback-win over the Patriots to their credit; the “Dream Team” Eagles have 1 win in 4 games. Come back in another month, and all of these current facts could look irrelevant.

Last season, my normal racquetball partner returned for the final league and we won the league after he’d been away for almost 2 years. His elbow problems were fixed and he was feeling good. Since then, I haven’t played a game and this past Monday, he herniated himself and won’t be able to play again until next year sometime.

Of course, money didn’t have much to do with that last point. Although it helps to underscore that the only constant in sports is its unpredictability. Small wonder people love sports so much- we never know what we’re gonna get.

Categories
Family

Mean What You Say

The kids were getting a little too wound up prior just before bed time tonight. The lass wanted to sit on the couch but her brother was blocking her and she was getting more and more upset with the circumstances. The boy was taking a little too much delight in her frustration, so since it was close enough to bed time anyway, I told them to start getting ready to go to bed.

And they promptly ignored me. I waited calmly for a bit to see if they would make any kind of move. They didn’t. Instead, things escalated a bit further- the lass took a shot to the hand from the boy as she was flailing at him a bit. It hurt and she got mad. Fortunately, she sat down. After she sat, I waited a bit more, but still no move to act upon my order.

Rather than repeat myself, I took the situation by the throat: “If you do not do as I told you to, the consequences will be…” I didn’t have to finish the statement. By that point, they were half-way up the stairs.

Continue reading “Mean What You Say”
Categories
Admin

Housekeeping Note

If you post a comment and it doesn’t show up, send me a quick note (the address is over there —> on the left sidebar on that big envelope looking thing labeled ‘E-MAIL’). I have a comment spam filter installed and it is has likely gobbled up the comment.

Of course, if you’re actually spamming my comments, I’ll just delete the comment entirely…

Categories
Misc

Steve Jobs: 1955-2011

Just catching up now to the news that Steve Jobs has passed away. I was never an Apple fan to any degree, but it’s hard to have anything but admiration for what the man accomplished. It’ll be a sad day for many an Apple fan, and it’s a little sadder day for everyone really. He oversaw the creation of a string of products that made peoples’ lives better. It will be awhile before we see his like again, if ever.

Categories
Computers Lua Programming

lua and require

A cool little feature I just came across with lua is that the require function can be used as part of the actual working code. For instance, an optional piece of functionality can be required based on an option flag. The benefit is unnecessary code is only loaded when it’s wanted.

I just wrote an IMAP4rev1 parser to help with making sure imap commands generated by luaimap are syntactically correct. The idea was to eliminate a potential point of confusion when working with the library. Of course, the checker is pretty green at this stage, so it may give a false negative. But at least is give a starting point to the would be developer.

Typically, I’d just require the module at the top of my code, like so:

local chksyntax = require("parser")

And then the parsing function can be invoked in the usual way.

But in this case, I figured the checker should really be part of the IMAP object that luaimap creates. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if I only loaded the module when syntax checking was desired? That way, after a debug and proving out phase, syntax checking could equally be turned off resulting in fast execution. So I added an options table to the new method and then inserted the following lines of code:

       .
       .
       .
if options then
    if options.syntaxchecking then
        o.__checksyntax = require("parser").parse
    end
end

The other cool thing here is that lua allows for grabbing the parse function reference inside the module. In other words, since require returns a table, I can immediately add the parse element for the assignment without generating a syntax error. This is also because lua treats functions as first class values, so they can be assigned just like other variables.

Now, elsewhere in the IMAP object, I can use the parser like so:

if self.__checksyntax and not self.__checksyntax(cmd) then
    error("I can't in good conscience send this command to the server: "..cmd)
end

Anyway, I thought this a somewhat novel (for me) insight into lua usage, and figured I’d pass it along.

Categories
Computers

luakit- A Minimal Browser that Works

Browsers are one of those software programs I’m always on the lookout for something potentially new and interesting. In particular, I have a soft spot for the minimalistic browsers. The ones that have small executable sizes and are, generally speaking, very quick. In the past I’ve tried uzbl and jumanji, in addition to all of the big boys like firefox, chrome, epiphany, safari and opera.

The problem with the smaller browsers is there always seems to be a page or site that just doesn’t work. Either iti the browser crashed, or something wasn’t supported properly, or the page didn’t render correctly, or the changes were happening to quickly to make it worth the time to customize the browser, only to have everything change and be back at ground zero.

Admittedly, some of that is my fault. That’s the price paid for early adoption.

So when I found luakit, I was intrigued but hesitant. I’m quite familiar with lua and the concept, using lua as a configuration language around a fast, compiled core browsing engine, seemed a good one. I did a little looking around and found pretty overwhelmingly positive reviews. Since luakit was already packaged in the debian system, I decided to give it a go.

And I’m pleasantly surprised to say, I haven’t used any other browser since. First off, it’s very uzbl like, right down to the spartan look of the status bar and command prompt. I don’t mind this at all, since it maximizes the viewing area. It’s highly geared towards keyboard based browsing, including link following. In fact, it’s possible to achieve all browsing without the use of a pointing device. Many standard features are provided like bookmarks, history, tabbed browsing, and quickmarks (basically, like bookmarks except it works with a couple keystrokes).

But what separates it from uzbl is the fact that luakit is tied together by lua. It uses webkit(the browsing library behind safari) and interfaces to gtk widgets for presentation purposes. The result is a browser with a fast, compiled core exposed by bindings via lua. All of the high level functionality is provided by lua code. So if, for instance, I don’t like having a statusbar on the bottom of my screen I can change a couple of lines of code and move the status bar to the top. Or, I can change the way bookmarks are displayed.

What’s nice is, I don’t have to edit esoteric configuration files, or worry about how to make a python module talk to a bash script. Everything is modifiable right in the lua code. What’s more, all of these changes can be accommodated without affecting the main program. A series of configuration files related to windows, key bindings, modes and options are all designed to be user configurable. So modification of actual source code is unnecessary.

There are other nice things about luakit (more on that in a future post), but the best complement I can pay it at this point is it’s the first browser of it’s kind I’ve used where I don’t have to keep going back to a standby. Flash content, ssl, cookies are all handled well enough that they work on all the sites I use frequently without any loss of browsing experience. As I stated earlier, I’ve used it exclusively (on both my 1015PN and my desktop) for several week now. I can’t say that about any other browser I’ve tried. I’ve always ended up back as an opera user.

I mean, let’s face it, tinkering with browser stuff can be fun, but at the end of the day it’s still got to work if I’m going to stick with it. Luakit does just that.

Categories
Family

The Lass Joins the Digital World

I’d setup the boy with an email account about 18 months ago. The lass is a bit younger at this stage, but just as eager. Being the only one in the family who doesn’t have an email account was, no doubt, weighing heavily on her little mind. With the Wife gone for a couple days, the lass wanted to be able to send Mom an email. So I set her up with her own account.

My first email to her was:

Did you have a good day at school?

Dad

And here was her response:

yes I did have a good time at school.

Of course, what you guys can’t know (until now that is) is that I was there helping her spell out her little message back to me. That took a little of the thrill away from me, personally. Her- not so much.

I’ll also not that she’s probably going to be a font snob. She complained that the ‘I’ looked like a little ‘l’ and then mistook another ‘l’ in a different font for the number ‘1’. She thought that was “stupid.”

There’s just no pleasing her sometimes.

UPDATE: Should’ve guessed this- another thing about her email is the unusual formatting, which should be better preserved here:

yes     I   did    have  a  good   time    at  school.
Categories
Misc

Waiting on Jack Frost

We’re so far ahead this year on rainfall totals, that we could go from now until the end of the year without any rain and we’d still end up, like 7″ above normal. According to the local weather talking-head, we’re closing in on a record for yearly rainfall. Just another 10″ or so should do it. If the current pattern holds, we should be there by the end of October.

While it’s nice for lawns and such, one problem all that rain has created is a large bug population. In particular, mosquitoes and those little biting flies. Even though the heat of the Summer is gone, the bugs have remained well past their usual time and it sucks to go outside. I’ve been bitten more in the past week-and-a-half than the entire Summer preceding. I guess that’s one thing the Summer heat is OK at- making sure the puddles and standing water dry up so that the bug breeding program is kept in check to a degree. With the heat gone, the puddles remain and the bug thrive.

Clearly, we need a frost or two to take a machete to the problem. Luckily, we may get just exactly that a little later this week. Though it’s supposed to warm up again for the weekend. Still, I’ll take what we can get at this stage. I’m tired of breathing bugs.