Author: Gerry

Categories
Family

Cartoons for Your Viewing Pleasure

Of late, the kids have been smitten with a couple of “new to them” cartoon series. The first is Avatar: The Last Airbender and the other is Jackie Chan Adventures. Both are, I think, good cartoons for their age with simple-to-grasp plots, plenty of action, and a good amount of magic thrown in to boot.

Avatar, in particular, has been a good series for them to watch. It is a Tolkienesque story set in its own world but with much familiarity to it. The main story arc is about Ang, who is quickly revealed to be the last of the Airbenders and the Avatar- a chosen individual with great power. In addition to air bending, there is also fire bending, earth bending and water bending. While there are practitioners of each of these disciplines individually, the Avatar is the only one who can accomplish all 4. Fire benders have waged war on the world and are poised to establish rule over all the lands, thus throwing the world “out of balance.” It is Ang’s job to restore and maintain balance in the world, thus he must stop the fire benders from succeeding in their conquest. As the all-powerful Avatar, one would think it a trivial task. But there’s a catch: Ang disappeared for 100 years as a child and never learned how to bend earth, fire or water. The story follows his journey to learn enough to win the day, as well as the adventures of the friends he meets along the way.

There’s lots to like about Avatar. First, the cartoons are 30 minute episodes, just he right length for the kid’s attention spans. Plus, the main characters throughout the story are children, and recognizable as such so the kids seem take to the characters and their plight quicker. All of the stories have nice life lessons about friendship, making choices, handling conflict, confronting fears and doubts and so forth. The series itself is long (about 63 episodes) so the kids can’t possibly sit and watch it in a sitting, so it becomes an exercise in patience. There’s plenty to tickle their imagination as well. In addition to the various bending techniques, there’s fantastic creatures, forests, cities and cultures introduced throughout the tale.

All things considered, as good a cartoon as one could hope for the kids.

Jackie Chan Adventures shares many similarities with Avatar, lacking the strong overall story arc. None the less, I’d say it’s still a cartoon not to be shunned because it has enough imaginative characters and devices in addition to a well defined sense of good and bad. This cartoon sticks much more closely to “traditional” plot lines where the good guys win-out in each episode. There’s plenty of humor and action (it is Jackie Chan, after all) along the way to keep the kid’s interest. Most of the lessons are offered by Jackie’s nephew sidekick, Jade, whom is closer to the kids’ age than not. She’s a constant antagonist, getting herself into trouble that “Uncle Jackie” gets her out of eventually. Mainly, the show is about hunting magical talismans. Jackie wants them to keep the bad guys from getting them; the bad guys want them to rule the world. Doesn’t get much simpler than that.

The lass tolerates Jackie Chan Adventures, but the boy loves it because of “all the karate.” They both like Avatar; the lass because she thinks it’s funny, the boy because it’s “awesome.” So there you go.

Categories
Politics

Something to Tick You Off

Police in a Tennessee town think it’s parental neglect to allow a child to ride a bike to school. (h/t Instapundit)

The bottom line here is, a police officer took it upon himself to creatively interpret the law to scare a parent into changing their behavior. A commenter at the thread does some research and even talks to the Chief of Police and comes up lacking with any real evidence that the officer is acting within his limits. Everything hinges on the judgment of the officer involved, versus the judgment of the parent involved.

I suppose if I wanted to tease this out, I could go into a pseudo-impressive question mode. How busy is this road? Is the child in question following the rules of the road? Is the parent unable to give the child a ride to school in the morning? And on, and on.

But in the end, this comes down to one of those things that all parents are required to make: a judgment call balancing their child’s abilities with larger life lessons and safety. I’ll note that just because the officer in question wouldn’t let his child make that ride, clearly doesn’t mean everyone else would make that choice. To turn things on their head a bit, it is not hard to imagine his judgment on such matters being jaded by his job in favor of excessive safety. Children do not remain so forever and need to be exposed to responsibility, risk and decision making. Not all children grow up the same, as such only parents are equipped with the requisite base of knowledge to be able to make these kind of decisions. Micro-management of parental decision making is the very sort of thing that, I think, undermines the State’s authority.

Personally, I’d rather that we live in a world where the parent is given the latitude to make such a call without being threatened by State action. And, if he really felt the need to act, the officer could have simply dropped the child off at home and said “I was worried about the safety of your child and decided to give her a ride home. That route is pretty busy, you might want to reconsider letting her ride alone. Have a nice day.”

Categories
Family

Meaningless Child Observations

Naturally, on the first full day back with power, the kids had peanut butter on toast for breakfast. They never tire of such fare.

I’ve noticed it before and figured I’d commit it to digital memory because, well, what better way to waste bits, right?

The lass actually abhors toast. I figure that’s something she’s likely to grow out of. But what I’ve always noted about how she “butters” her bread is that every square inch of the bread has to have peanut butter on it. She refuses to tolerate any of the white of the bread showing through her peanut butter. She even gets huffy with me when I prepare her peanut butter and don’t completely cover the bread (she’s gone as far as refusing to eat the peanut-buttered bread). I solved that problem by not preparing her peanut butter anymore. She’s capable, she can do it. I don’t need grief about peanut butter at 7 in the morning.

As a side effect, anything within a several inch range of the bread also ends up with peanut butter on it. Her fine motor control not being so fine, yet. One might be tempted to draw a larger conclusion like “well, she’ll be real thorough when she grows up.” Don’t. I have 5 1/2 years of evidence to the contrary.

Categories
Misc

Hurricane Irene- Less and More

In the end, I did more damage to our yard than Irene.

After losing power at 9AM Sunday morning, we just had it come back on about half-an-hour ago. I was in the middle of making a comment to the Wife when we both heard an electronic beep and then the house roared back to life. The furnace fired, toilets started running as the water pump kicked on, the refrigerator and freezer compressors fired up, we had light. It was more than a little shocking since, after talking with folks around town, it was starting to sound like it might not happen until later in the week. I’m still wondering if it might only be temporary.

The last I saw, Irene was tracking further west and weakening faster than the early predictions indicated. I think that trend might have accelerated as I’d guess we had wind gusts some where in the 50’s with sustained winds around 30 at the peak of the storm. The rain also pretty much ended around noon on Sunday.

Not that I’m complaining. I’m glad I experienced it because it gives me something to go on for the next time.

The kids ended up managing just fine. They actually got kind of bored with the whole thing and started asking wondering why it wasn’t worse and when it would be done. Explaining that it’s a good thing that it wasn’t worse by telling them just how much worse it could have been had the desired effect. Unfortunately, we were equally anxious for it all to end, so there was no satisfaction there.

As far as damage goes, it was pretty much mild to non-existent. Downed limbs and the like with a couple of spots around town where trees came down on power lines. I saw one tree that hand landed on someone’s deck when it fell, but that was it.

We barely lost any food either. Just a couple of things from our refrigerator freezer. Although, if the power outage had lasted longer, the toll would’ve climbed substantially I’d wager.

In our yard, we basically had limbs and a few larger branches. I pulled out the chainsaw to chop of one of the branches to make it easier to deal with. Once I had the chainsaw in my hands, I decided now was as good a time as any to take care of some other problem shrubberies. That ended up taking longer than cleaning up the stuff from Irene.

But I’m OK with that.

Categories
Misc

Not As Bad As Expected

The winds started up around 2AM this morning, as well as heavier rain. Even so, it hasn’t been too bad. Looking at the radar images, Irene is further to our West than the original forecast. Irene is already a minimal Cat 1 hurricane and she hasn’t reached New York yet, so she’s going to be a lot weaker than expected as well. That’s all to the good.

The state is basically shutdown. Towns have closed roads all over and I-95 and the Merritt Parkway are closed. Frankly, I can’t imagine why people would be out driving in this weather, but there’s always some yahoo somewhere I guess. The state has further imposed a tractor trailer ban. The state has about 250,000 power outages at this point and that will likely continue to increase. School has been cancelled for tomorrow pretty much all over.

The worst is yet to come, but I’m more optimistic than before for us getting through this with minimal damage. The sustained winds haven’t been bad so far, the gusts have been pretty good, probably into the 40 mph range. One tree has sustained damage to its top, with most of it’s leaves stripped. Other than that, no damage to speak of.

The kids slept through the night. Getting them to bed was the hardest part, but the fact that the brunt of the storm hadn’t arrived meant there wasn’t anything to actively feed their anxiety, so they slept well. The lass finally came down as I’m typing, as did the boy. One good thing about the timing is that the worst of the storm will hit during daylight hours, so this won’t be some faceless nemesis in the dark for them to deal with. They’ll be able to watch it come and go. With a little luck, watching it go will reinforce to them that bad times do, in fact, come to and end.

Categories
Misc

The Waiting Begins

A little different from yesterday, huh? A mere 24 hours later and suddenly it doesn’t look so great. Though still, it could just be another cloudy day.

I flipped the picnic table over so wind couldn’t get under it and lift it while the umbrella is now in the garage and the chairs are under the deck, also upside down. All the plants are in the garage or the house. The grill has been moved into the alcove area between our garage and the house, along with some deck chairs.

We’ve pretty much done everything we can at this stage. The best news we’ve heard so far is that Irene has already “weakened” to a Cat 1 storm. The not so good news is that’s how she’s expected to remain until she hits Connecticut sometime in the early AM tomorrow. It’s all a matter of “How fast?” and “Where?” at this point.

We’ve had a little sprinkling at this point, but nothing intense. That’ll change, no doubt. The Wife was out a bit this morning and said that, even though everything was picked over, there was no mad rush. I observed the same yesterday. So, even though the news stories are all about the madness before the storm, let it be said that in north-eastern CT we calmly went about our business of getting ready. No panic, no fuss, no muss.

For now, all there is to do is wait.

Categories
Misc

A Clash of Kings

I finished the second book, A Clash of Kings, in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire epic a couple of nights ago. In my estimation, it was a better story than its predecessor with a more satisfying conclusion.

Martin continues to tell the story through many eyes. The interesting thing is how the timelines overlap between these varying viewpoints. Martin’s attention to detail here certainly seems pretty good on a first reading, though I’d venture there are discrepancies that can be teased out with enough research. In addition to the characters he started with, notably those of the Stark family, new character viewpoints are added to fully tell the story Martin wants.

Continue reading “A Clash of Kings”
Categories
Misc

The Calm Before the Storm

That picture was taken around noon time today and the day has not deteriorated at all since. It’s hard to believe we’ll be in the middle of a hurricane in another 36 hours. Tomorrow morning is supposed to be the same with conditions worsening as Irene bears down on us.

Looking at a day like today, it’s easy to understand how, 50 years ago, people could be caught completely flat footed. Even if people were to hear about a big hurricane, who’d think that it was going to make it all the way up here into the Northeast? Hurricane modeling and so forth gives us a big advantage nowadays.

For those curious, we’re solidly in the purple area of this graphic I captured off of The Weather Channel’s site:

In fact, I’ve seen path projections that would take Irene directly over us, but the majority of the projections place her out to the West of Hartford. We thought about packing up and heading out, but based on the track and the projected impact area there’s no where to go. Even to the north of us, amazingly, is expected to get a pretty good licking from Irene.

I’ve never experienced a hurricane, so I have no reference point for what to expect. My biggest concern are those trees in the 1st picture. That’s our Southern sky, so that’s where all the wind and rain will be coming from. Those trees are probably 70 to 80 feet tall, and they’re parked about 30 feet or so from the house. The math there isn’t hard. Since I can’t cut them down at this point, I’ve at least prepped my chainsaw for some work in the event the worst happens.

As far as other preparations, we’ve got flashlights, canned goods and propane for cooking. Additionally, we’ll be filling tubs as well as pitchers with water and turning our freezers and fridges to max sometime early tomorrow afternoon. We don’t lose power often out here (not even last Winter during the 2 big snow storms), but I’ll be very surprised if we don’t lose power. We don’t have a generator, but we’ll make the most of it.

We’ll also be, essentially, cleaning off our deck and front porch. Plants, chairs, umbrellas, picnic tables all will get relocated to minimize the chance they get picked up and deposited somewhere. Even though the wind predictions have diminished, best not to take any chances with stuff getting airborne. That’s the main chore to be done at this point.

We’re prepared to ride tomorrow night out in our basement, if need be. We’ll treat it like a camp out to try and keep the kids from getting too freaked out. They may well be the biggest challenge as they both don’t care for extreme weather. The boy in particular. I’ll need a lot of patience.

The timing is the strangest element to this storm, for me. Tomorrow we’ve got a birthday party to attend and then on Monday school starts for the kids. That’ll be a helluva end-to-the-Summer-start-of-school.

Record setting snow in the Winter; tornadoes this Spring; and now a hurricane in the Summer. Wonder when the locusts are gonna show?

Categories
Football

Suspensions at LSU

LSU’s 1st string QB and a linebacker are suspended indefinitely from the team. They’ve also “turned themselves in” to police according to the article. It sounds like there may be more guys dealt with before its all over.

Good on LSU for acting like that even with an important season opener coming up. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting much. Still, it’s too bad that something like this happened at all. I’m sure LSU is thinking that as well.

Categories
Football

Football Technology

Amusing.

Most people are aware that quarterbacks have wristbands with plays written on them in some kind of indecipherable code. Or some-such anyway. I wonder how long before someone figures out how to strap a cell-phone to their wrist with some kind of protector so the coaches can change the plays with the push of a button or in the middle of a drive or something.

Categories
Family

Gold Fever

The boy has spent most of his time outside the past two days going through the rocks in our driveway looking for gold. He has managed to find a number of them with gold-ish flecks all over. When I offered that it was likely “fools gold,” he referenced his minerals book and showed how the color of the gold in the books was different from the color of the gold on the rocks. There was no convincing him otherwise.

After finding them, he wanted to weigh the rocks because he understands more gold means more value. Unfortunately, his understanding was not complete. He was only thinking about the weight of the rock rather than the weight of the gold in the rock.

Once he understood that he had to remove the gold from the rock, he wanted to know how he could do it. When I told him I didn’t know, he became proactive and asked if he could look it up on the Internet. We were able to find some explanations of how gold is extracted from ore but they are not something that can be duplicated at home. Much to the boy’s chagrin I might add.

For the moment, his dreams of finding enough gold to buy Nintendo DS games will have to wait.

Categories
Family

Rewards of Stay-At-Home Parenting

Bill Quick writes:

In a perfect storm of cultural destruction, starting in about 1970 when household earnings began to stagnate, the cultural impetus of Women’s Lib combined with the need to somehow bring more money into individual homes sent millions of moms out into the workplace. Libbers rejoiced, but there is little evidence, after decades of experience, that either moms, dads, or kids are any better off as a result of two generations of latch-key kids.

Mr. Quick is more tuned into the politics of this sort of thing than myself, plus he’s, shall we say, a bit more “life experienced” that I. OK, fine, he’s older than me.

I only have anecdotal evidence to offer in support of his statement. I used to take the kids to our local YMCA where they offered “child watch” services. Basically, it was a 2-hour max daycare arrangement where a parent could drop the child off, go use the Y’s facilities, and then grab their kid(s) on the way out. One of the child watchers used to run a day-care and she was, at the time, becoming a kindergarten assistant.

She commented there was a difference in the kids who had full-time (or near full-time) parenting versus kids that were basically full-time day care participants. Basically, her take was the kids with full-time parents were better behaved and more respectful as well as better learners.

My own observations and experience somewhat dovetail with her statements. I’ve been at parks with the kids where total strangers have come up to complement to me about how well-behaved the kids were. To be honest, those sorts of interactions never fail to surprise me. My first thought is invariably “If you only knew…” I’ve also noted that, compared to other kids who I know go to daycare or are cared for predominantly by grandparents, our kids self-regulate better than others, especially when under the influence of other kids and their energies.

But this is all anecdotal evidence at best. Way back when this whole adventure of ours began, the Wife and I knew we wanted to be primary caretakers for our kids. We were only going to get one shot with them; the kids were only going to be young once; we wanted to be the ones to spend that time with them. That the Wife ended up working full-time and I eventually ended up with full-time child duty is just the way the financial cookie crumbled around us. Either way, we wanted the full responsibility for them because no one else, no matter how well compensated, was going to take as much interest in the well being of our kids, as us.

The other part to consider is that the job isn’t done. The boy enters 2nd grade while the lass enters kindergarten next week. Until they’ve started off on their own in the world, it’s premature to declare success. But I have reason to believe that we’ve set them on the right path. On that score, it’s good to know that the past 6 years have not been in vain.

Categories
Family

The Know-It-All

“Time for you to get dressed,” I told them after their last cartoon finished.

“I know,” she replied.

“Make sure to brush you teeth,” I added.

“I know,” she replied.

“You know, but you don’t do. Make sure to brush them well.” She has, er, breath problems when she doesn’t brush well.

“I know,” she replied.

“Know isn’t the same as doing. You know it all, but I still have to remind you to do it,” I finished.

“I KNOW!” she semi-snapped at me. I’d finally gotten to her a bit.

Dealing with 5-year-old know-it-alls is hard.

Believe me, I know.

Categories
Misc

Fall in the Air?

Yesterday was just fantastic weather wise, high 70’s and dry with nary a cloud in the sky and today’s supposed to be more of the same. The only thing marring it was my annual late-Summer allergy affliction which finally reared its ugly head late yesterday. A bummer to be sure, because it was so late in coming this year I started to believe I was going to get a free pass.

But checking the longer range forecast, highs are forecast for mid-to-upper 70’s for the most part, with a couple days of low 80’s. Even for late August, that’s highly unusual. More typically, this has been mid-to-late September kind of weather.

My sense tells me that we’re gonna get another round of heat because, well, we always do. But there’s a niggling doubt telling me the Summer has packed it in. That’s because, even without a lot of rain, it’s really been an unusually cool Summer to my mind. The pattern this year has been for a few days of heat followed by many more days of relief. In recent years, the relief has been brief while the heat has stuck around to make life very uncomfortable. The humidity has sucked, like always, though.

As with any amateur weather forecasting, I reserve the right to be wrong. But I’ve still got my cord wood and pellets on order. Best to be prepared.

Categories
Misc

Cool Science

The website Watts Up With That? shows us something novel and cool where science is concerned. In particular, it involves a solar panel array and how best to arrange it.

A 7th grader designed a 5V solar array based on the arrangement of leaves on an oak tree. It outperformed a typical flat array in overall output as well as the length of time the panel generated electricity. The results and original link are all in the above link.

Who’d of thought that something that depends on sunlight for it’s existence would be well designed for the situation?

Categories
Family

Mommy’s Little Girl

Over the course of making a marriage work, the Wife and I have established a number of what I’ll call “behavioral agreements.” For the purposes of this post, an example would be as follows: when the Wife is sitting down and doesn’t want to get off her duff to get something for herself, she’ll ask me to do it for her. But she always makes the request prior to me sitting down; as in, I start to sit down and she’ll say “Before you sit down, could you get me a drink of water?”

She won’t make the request if I’m already sitting down; and, if I’m fortunate enough to get my rear planted prior to the request, she’s SOL. She started doing that because way back in paleolithic times, she’d make the request literally as I sat down or a microsecond thereafter; and I let it be known that her timing sucked. She’s improved her timing and I’m still working on my next plausible excuse to evade the requests.

So this morning, having cooked everyone a nice bacon and egg breakfast I went to sit down and putter around the intertubes for a bit, when from behind me arose a very familiar sounding request, only this time it was from the lass: “Dad, before you sit down could you get me some more milk from the ‘frigerator?”

The Wife just laughed.

Categories
Football

More College Football Stupidity

Just what the game needs.

It all sounds good, but running those guys isn’t enough. I don’t have any doubt that Miles knows the players involved. I’d be more apt to believe him serious if he’d declared that all those involved would be suspended for the 1st game, with further discipline to be determined as more facts come in.

But, as the article mentions, LSU has a pre-season rank of #4. And their first game is against pre-season #3 Oregon.

Got to keep those priorities straight.

Categories
Family

The First Law of Child Conversations

Having spent the past few days riding for extended periods of time with the kids in a car, I’ve decided to propose The First Law of Child Conversations:

As the length of a conversation between children increases, the probability that one of the following words (or a variant thereof) will be used approaches 1: poop, butt, fart, burp, diarrhea, pee.

Also, I propose the following corollary:

The time before one of these words is used decreases exponentially for each additional child in the conversation.

I, personally, have witnessed a gathering with as few as 6 children where a conversation started with the comment “I think the dog farted.” I’ll also note there was no dog around.

Categories
Football

No Dot Connecting

Pat Forde has an article out about the Miami football debacle. He basically chronicles Miami football’s penchant for breaking NCAA rules and speculates about the severity of the coming punishment. He mentions that they may get the “death” penalty, which would basically kill football at Miami.

It looks to me like Forde is trying to setup the old “rotten apple” argument. I expect we’ll see this form of argument a lot in the weeks and months ahead. By sticking to that argument, it keeps the focus on the schools not enforcing rules properly and obscures the reality of the situation.

What’s the reality you ask? It’s the money making machine that is NCAA football. Thanks to NCAA football, we have football games almost every day of the week during the season. We’ve got multi-million dollar TV deals with conferences, multi-million dollar bowl games, multi-million dollar coaches and multi-million dollar facilities. We’ve got an entire parasitic culture (called “reporters” and “editorialists”) making money on the side for their 4 or 5 months worth of effort during the season.

Let me be more succinct. We’ve got everyone and anyone even peripherally involved with NCAA football making good money. With one notable exception. Have you noticed it yet?

No mention of the players. And without them, there is no money to be made. They are the lynch pin of college football- none of the above is possible without the players. Given all the money sloshing around the “amateur” apparatus, is it really so hard to believe that players might look at the occasional payout as a way for them to cash in?

I love the game. That’s what happens from the opening kickoff until time expires and a winner is determined. But the apparatus around the game; the rules makers and their apparatchiks from coaching staffs to the media, are rotten to the core. Playing whack-a-mole with the offenders won’t fix anything. For one, give Miami the death penalty and next year it’ll be Florida or Florida State.

More importantly, it obscures the real problem. That the system is the problem. A system where the very driver of the revenue is taken advantage of for 4 years of their lives. As long as that situation persists, so too will the Miami’s of college football.

Categories
Family

The Pretzel Nazi

The Wife took us to Yankee Candle yesterday. I don’t have the greatest sense of smell, but Yankee Candle makes my olfactory system go bonkers.

But the kids had fun candle dipping. No, that’s not like skinny dipping except in molten wax. Well, I suppose the hand dipping is- as long as you’re not wearing gloves. Anyway, they also made a scented candle.

After the candle and wax stuff, the Wife took her turn shopping and walking. I eventually took a break in the snack area where I picked up a soft-pretzel. The kids found me after I’d finished about half of it. Naturally, they got hungry as well, the power of suggestion and all. Or the power of the pretzel.

Rather than jump up and buy them something to sate their appetite, I let them work it all out: where to order, what to get, etc. That took them longer than I expected, but they figured it all out. So I gave them some cash and they got their pretzels.

And then made what could have been the biggest mistake of their lives, had I not been there to correct them.

They wanted to put ketchup on their pretzels. KETCHUP! Can you imagine? It’s sacrilege!

The kids, for their part, initially thought I was joking. I quickly disabused them of that notion and they reluctantly tossed the ketchup and replaced it with mustard. After the universe had been rebalanced, the boy tried to get a little wise with me:

“So is it, like, a law or something that you have to have mustard on a pretzel?” he asked.

“Yep,” I answered.

“No it’s not. I can put ketchup on my pretzel if I want.”

The insolence. I played for keeps:

“It’s my law. If you want to live in my house, you have to live by my laws. This one’s right up there in the top 10, next to ‘Thou shalt go to bed at 8’ and ‘Thou shalt pee in the toilet, not on it’.” I squinted my eyes, pointed at him and finished “If I catch you using ketchup on a pretzel, you’ll lose that pretzel faster than you can think up a question.” The Wife had been mulling around and was returning at this point. I took advantage of the opportunity, “Hey Mom, do you know what they did? They tried to put ketchup on their pretzel. Can you believe it?”

The Wife backed me up. “You can’t put ketchup on a pretzel!” Both kids giggled. They finished eating their pretzels. With mustard.

Still, I suspect they’ll make a play for the ketchup again.