Author: Gerry

Categories
Misc

On Under the Dome

I hadn’t read a Stephen King novel in a great while. There was a time when that was exceedingly unusual for me. I’d read all of his novels starting from Carrie up through It, including the first 3 installments of his The Dark Tower epic. I’ve also read a bunch of his Richard Bachman books. I think I just got burnt out on his storytelling. I remember starting The Tommyknockers, but I was never able to finish it; possibly the only time I’d ever started and not finished any book. That was many years ago and the last time I’d picked up one of his books.

The Wife got me Under the Dome for Father’s Day. At over 1000 pages long, it was a heckuva way to jump back into King’s world. I finished it up last night and I have to say, it was a story on par with his stuff I’d read and enjoyed so much.

The pacing is fast. King has a way for breathing life into a character all in the name of setup. He’ll spend 10 pages telling the life story of a woman taking flying lessons on a beautiful fall day in Maine, and then destroy her in 2 pages of gory detail. King used this technique throughout the book and I was almost always able to recognize what he was about to do. In fact, the entire book does that for King’s town of Chester’s Mill. Even so, I couldn’t look away because he had brought his good stuff to the story.

The story itself is about what happens to a town that is cut off from the world by a force shield, the Dome. It’s a simple concept that’s been done before. And in the mind of Stephen King, it takes about the shape his readership would expect. He quickly sets up his main antagonist, whom spends most of the book manipulating events to his benefit. The good guys aren’t so much set against him as they are simply trying to survive him. Being a King novel, I don’t think I’m giving much away when I say that most of them do not succeed.

Ostensibly, the book is about the cruelty people can visit on one another. Chester’s Mill is a small town and King does not spare it a dark and seedy underbelly (not that we’d expect him too). The Dome serves to amplify and draw out that cruelty as the story moves along. Atrocities both large and small are committed and King spares the reader little in terms of the depravity that such a situation can draw out.

However, I’d be careful to conclude that King’s story is a definitive narrative on what happens “under the dome.” King has a story to tell, and anyone familiar with his work should know that there are givens to where his mind will take the reader. But to read his story and try to generalize it to the point of saying “Yep, he nails exactly what would happen under these circumstances” is to go too far. The blend of characters and circumstances King weaves are believable enough, but are clearly contrived towards telling a certain kind of story. From the ego maniacal 2nd selectman and his enablers to the Iraqi vet and his cadre of like minded citizens to the drug maker addicted to his own product, the story is laced with characters so King can tell the story he wants. To think that every small town in the country has the same basic makeup gives King too much credit.

Under the Dome is a story, and an immensely enjoyable one at that. As far as Stephen King stories are concerned, I’d say it’s an example of his work at its best, though I’d rank any one of a number of his other stories as superior (The Shining, The Stand, Pet Semetary, Salem’s Lot– to name a few). It is as fast a read as can be for a 1000 page story. I’d recommend it to anyone interested.

But that said, don’t look to Under the Dome for larger messages on humanity or ideas about people. Ultimately, it’s just a story.

Categories
Family

They Aren’t Always Cute

Most of the stories I relate here are more to the innocent side of the spectrum. Examples of the kid’s naivete, amusing growing pains, that sort of thing. Lest this somewhat stilted sampling of the kids’ lives give the wrong impression, here’s an example of life with the lass when things don’t go so well.

Although, when it’s all said and done, I still find it amusing.

First, a little setup.

The lass woke up and came downstairs, did her typical morning ritual and then was served breakfast by the Wife. On her way to sit down, the lass dropped what was on her plate onto the floor.

Rather than do something about it (the sensible thing to do), she stood rooted to the spot gathering dark clouds. When the Wife told her that maybe, perhaps, possibly, it might be a good idea to clean up the mess the lass reacted in a completely sensible way. She unleashed hell.

Granted, it’s hell from a 5 year old, but the screaming was really something to behold. On balance, it didn’t go well for the lass either. She was put in the corner, where she continued her tirade and antics, at which point the Wife told her she’d be going to bed early.

And like that, the storm passed, the skies cleared, angels sang and there was peace unto the land.

Until about 7:15 that evening.

Continue reading “They Aren’t Always Cute”
Categories
Family

Eat Your Veggies

Saw a quick item on the local news this morning where a study stated something to the effect that kids eat more vegetables if you trick them into it (Here’s a link). By “tricking them into it” the study meant pureeing the vegetables and adding it to the food so kids didn’t know they were eating vegetables.

I’ll just say that we tried this on both kids and it was a colossal failure. Both kids caught on to what was going on and became forensic food scientists capable of spotting the tiniest bit of evidence that something didn’t belong. What made it worse is they started parsing their dishes even when there was no attempt to deceive, making even non-laced meals a fight.

So I’m wary of this study based on personal experience. Our kids eat veggies, but only because the Wife and I made them do so by not giving them any other choice. And we did that early on so that now, they aren’t excessively stringent in their veggie selection. Not to say they’re perfect, but we don’t have to resort to tricking them.

Categories
Football

Ain’t Gonna Happen

The Vikings are close to signing Donovan McNabb.

I won’t say this is a terrible, horrible, awful idea. I’ll guess that the Vikings are hoping (not betting- hoping) that McNabb has 1 year left in the tank. And not just any year- a year like Favre gave them a couple seasons ago.

I will say that I think it’s an exceedingly bad bet. I don’t think McNabb was ever half the quarterback that Favre was. I think McNabb benefited from a real good coaching staff in Philadelphia and just enough offensive talent around him to have some real good years there. I think that Philly also had some really good defensive teams that gave McNabb and his offense a lot of margin for error.

But McNabb isn’t young anymore and his mobility isn’t what it was and I don’t think he is flexible enough to move from one system to another. Look what happened in Washington last year.

I think Minnesota will be in for another disappointing year.

Categories
Family

Gold Rush

Somewhere along life’s unpredictable path, the boy picked up on the concept of gold hunting. It showed yesterday when he demonstrated a fierce case of gold fever at his swim lessons. He started picking up every rock he could find that he thought might have gold in it. He’d bring it to me, I’d tell him “No, there’s no gold in it”, he’d drop it with a disappointed look so I’d describe what he should be looking for, then he’d come back 30 seconds later saying “Dad, this looks like gold…”

Initially, it was amusing. But after the 5th or 6th iteration (I lost count), it got irritating. The fact that I was in the middle of reading a book and he kept interrupting me right about the time I figured out where to pick up from the previous interruption didn’t help.

The most amusing moment? When he revealed one of his motivations for the gold hunting.

“Dad, how much is gold worth?”

“It depends on how much of it you have. It’s worth about $400 dollars and ounce. So, the more you have the more you can get.” I just checked and it seems I considerably low-balled the value- it’s more like $1600 an ounce. Oh well, his eyes still popped a bit when I told him the numbers.

“So I could buy, like, a DS and some games with it. Right?”

“Well, yes. If you had an ounce or more.”

“So if this were gold would it be enough?” He held up a pebble a little bigger than a dime in circumference.

I chuckled. “Well, that’s probably an ounce so if it were all gold then yes. But you won’t find a piece of gold just lying there like that. It’ll be a small part of the rock, so there will be a lot less gold than the rock itself. That means you’ll need to find a whole bunch of those rocks.”

That didn’t seem to phase him in the slightest and he continued to bring me rocks he was sure had gold in them. When I mentioned the concept of fools gold, he decided that he would consult a rock and minerals book we have at home so he would be able to recognize fools gold and it wouldn’t “fool” him. He also figured he’d have better luck looking for gold back at the house, so we wrapped everything up and headed home.

Once we got home, he educated himself on fools gold and then started searching for gold out in back yard.

I just told him to let me know when he found something.

Categories
Computers

Biting the Bullet

The Wife’s desktop has been flaky for awhile now. I’ve suspected there was only one real resolution to the problem. I didn’t want to go there, but there’si been no selling the Wife on alternative solutions. So we purchased Windows 7 this weekend to install on her laptop and desktop.

The hardest part of the process was downloading a viable image from the Microsoft store. After numerous attempts, I finally hit paydirt with an install DVD that I burned last night. This was after a USB stick was trashed in my attempts to create an install image on it.

The install itself was painless enough. After telling it the language, the only other info requested was a username, password and computer name. I was even able to install all of the updates after the initial installation completed, as well as Thunderbird for email.

We’re waiting for some RAM to showup before we can install things on her desktop. After that, with any luck my interaction with Windows 7 will cease.

Categories
Football

NFL Lockout Done

Hardly news at this point, but my only prediction regarding the lockout was it would NOT shorten the season. There was just too much money on the line.

And I was right. Take that professional prognosticators.

Categories
Family

Questions and Answers

“Dad, is your shadow always to the your East side?”

Talk about a question out of the blue. They’d just finished they’re swimming lesson and had come back for a drink and a snack before spending some play time in the water. I was busy reading Under the Dome, Stephen King’s latest, and had to perform a quick mental inventory.

Frankly, I wasn’t sure how he got the “East” part correct, but he did. Questions like these can be irritating- they’re so random that’s it’s impossible to perform any kind of forensic work to figure out what drives it. He could have asked “Why isn’t gorilla fur pink?” and I would’ve reacted about the same.

But then, I realized a possible way to make this more interesting. At least, for me that is. Since there aren’t any instructions I’ve been given on how to answer random-question-from-7-year-olds, I figured I had nothing to lose.

Continue reading “Questions and Answers”
Categories
Misc

First Blooms

Categories
Misc

Hot

It was 92 by 11 this morning and the humidity makes it a little difficult to breathe. Luckily, the kids have swim lessons this afternoon, so we’ve got it handled.

That said, there’s something unseemly at the hype the heat is getting from local news outlets and TWC. Sure, it’s hot. But we’ve seen longer, hotter spells than this. For that matter, there are places where our current “plight” would be considered a relief.

For our part, we’ve got 1 room with air conditioning and- other than the dogs, who have permanent fur coats- none of us will be spending any time in it until tonight. I hate the heat, but I’m pretty sure I’ll survive this round of it. Just like the rounds before. Ditto for the Wife and kids.

Everyone needs to chill a little.

Categories
Football

Quick Thought on NFL Labor Deal

A quick read through some articles at ProFootballTalk and ESPN indicate that, while the owners have approved the deal, there’s a lot of confusion on the player’s part. They claim the owners slipped things in at the last minute and, generally, they seem to be distrustful of the new CBA. Also, I get the sense that the owners are trying to rush thing along.

Given some of the assertions and claims, for example: the owners are demanding the players recertify as a union, the owners added revenue sharing rules that hadn’t been discussed before, claims the players haven’t even seen the owner’s proposal; I think the players would be best served to take a deep breath and resist the temptation to rush to vote.

This tactic in negotiations seems to be the latest fad: push the talks to the brink of a deadline, create the appearance of majority agreement in the eleventh hour, and then rush to get everything signed. Think back to the end of year tax deal signed by the government, the current debt talks, even the ACA and they all have that general pattern. Personally, I don’t think any of them have ended well, and I’m thinking that the same may likely be true for the players.

That’s just my two cents; the players and owners have a lot more than that riding on this stuff.

Categories
Computers

Graphics Switching Returns

Within the past couple of days, the alternatives system for debian/wheezy has been updated to support nvidia again. That means it’s once again possible to graphics switch on the 1015PN. There are a few changes as packages have changed names and dependencies have changed as well. Details after the jump.

Continue reading “Graphics Switching Returns”
Categories
Family

Misapplied Memory

Never one to let her older brother have anything over her, the lass has decided she wants to read. Actually, this state of affairs has existed since before the Summer began. Without the constant distraction of going to school; however, the situation has intensified.

So we’ve purchased flash cards to help her memorize some of the common simple words like ‘of’, ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘are’, and so forth. She’s going to be learning these words as part of kindergarten this year, so she’ll just be ahead of the game a bit.

While going through some of the cards the other night, I thought I noticed something. After the first time through, she seemed to be predicting the next word. The giveaway was when she didn’t look at a card and managed to recite it. She had memorized the word order. Or come pretty close.

So I switched gears and did my best to pull randomly from the stack. Her focus shifted back towards looking at the words. But then another complication arose.

The cards all have a word on the back and the front; in some cases I would show her both words because I judged them appropriate for her. One example is ‘for’ and ‘get’. An easy one to remember.

Turns out she also started picking up the word pairs. So again she’d tilted a temporary advantage. I started using multiple cards and not showing the second sides to navigate around this particular adaptation of hers.

After the 3rd time through, I felt she’d done well enough so I handed her the cards and started asking her to hand back to me individual cards with a particular word on them. I started her out easy going with ‘the’ and ‘a’.

And that’s when she revealed a third trick that I hadn’t picked up on. The words on the cards are different colors. For instance, ‘the’ is printed in orange while ‘it’ is printed in green. She’d memorized the colors of the different words and used it as a cue to eliminate certain words from the realm of possibilities.

The other thing she did, which her brother did and still does to a degree, is look at the first letter in the word and make a guess. For instance, she never missed the word ‘the’ after the first time through. My suspicion is she noticed that the only flash card word that started with the letter ‘t’ was ‘the’ so she’d use that as her cue to say the word.

So that’s 4 different things she memorized, as opposed to just memorizing the words themselves.

This is what I’m up against.

Categories
Family

The Ghost in the Stairs

I heard his bellow from outside. It was hard to tell exactly what he was yelling about. In fact, at first I thought he was yelling at his sister. Since the Wife was still working, I headed inside to quiet him down and remind him about respecting his Mother’s need for a little quiet.

But when I got inside, it turned out the Wife was dealing with it. All I saw was the boy charging down the stairs with steam coming out of his ears. Upstairs, I could hear the bemused tone in the Wife’s voice, so I figured all was well and left it at that.

The Wife took a break a bit later to fill me in on what had happened.

The boy had jumped down a couple of the stairs. He slipped and fell when he landed. Luckily, our stairs have a turn in them and the larger steps there served to stop his falling further down the stairs. It was at this point that he started bellowing.

When the Wife arrived on the scene, it sounded like he was saying that his sister had pushed him. She defended the lass, who had been with her the whole time, stating that the lass “wasn’t anywhere near you.” The boy then recorrected the record:

“A GHOST PUSHED ME!”

The Wife started chuckling at this and he turned and yelled “I BELIEVE IN GHOSTS!” Apparently, that was intended to erase all doubt about what had just transpired. He then headed down the stairs to grab his shoes, and stomped off.

He even attempted to warn us that there’s a ghost in the stairs that likes to make people fall.

I swear, I couldn’t make this stuff up.

Categories
Football

How ’bout Soft Shell Helmets?

Reading this post about Alzheimer’s in pro football players, the thought occurred that maybe current football helmets should have a soft outer shell, as opposed to the current hard shell designs. A soft outer shell would have a dampening effect on shots to the head; as opposed to current hard shell designs which basically transfer energy directly to the noggin’. Going a step further, I decided to google it, because I can’t be the only one who’s had that thought.

Here’s one design. Here’s another.

They’re both a couple of different takes on the soft shell thought. One is supposed to be available this year, the other not until next year. I think soft shells would be most effective when all players are using them, since collisions between soft shell helmets should have twice the effect. Considering all of the focus on head injuries in recent years, it’ll be interesting to see if these kinds of helmets catch on.

As a final stray thought, I wonder if anyone is working on a combined shoulder-pad helmet design. The idea being that energy from a head collision is transferred to the shoulder pads. It would have the added benefit of taking some stress off of the neck during impact as well.

Categories
Admin

Here It Comes

I knew it couldn’t last all Summer. The weather had been too nice to this point. Sure, a couple of 90 degree days here or there, but it would always clear and be pleasant for several days afterward.

That all ends starting today. It’s basically supposed to be in the 90’s all week. Lucky for the kids, they’ve got swimming lessons all this week and next.

Categories
Family

Sometimes Kids Are Right

“Dad, can we go crayfishing today?”

They had both been introduced to crayfish a few weeks back when visiting family. Their initial attempt had proven futile as none of the critters were found in the stream. Scout camp had rekindled their interest because one of the Nature activities was to go crayfishing in the stream at the camp. They both had success there, getting a chance to see a crayfish for the first time as well as catch one.

Now, they wanted to go looking for crayfish in the stream that runs along the back of our property. To be honest, I didn’t.

The stream is not easily accessible, with lots of tall grasses and steep, muddy banks. Not to mention bugs the size of my fingers flying around and mosquitoes that carried around syringes. Plus, the only spot I could think that might be suitable for crayfishing was a bit of a hike away.

So, I let the question hang in the air and figured they’d get distracted by something else today. After all, when we ask them to do things they constantly get distracted by something else.

Naturally, such was not the case today and late this afternoon, I begrudgingly took them on a hike to look for crayfish.

When we got close to the spot, we lucked out that the property owner was around and he told us an easy way to get down to the stream where we wouldn’t have to deal with tall grasses. Plus, the bank got nice and close to the water for easy entry and exit. When we arrived at the spot, we got another bonus- it put us right in a spot in the stream where, if there were crayfish to be found, we were where they’d be.

So the boy and the lass, armed with plastic cups for catching purposes, plopped down into the stream. It was only about a minute before the boy was pointing and asking if that was a crayfish.

It was indeed, and a rather large specimen to boot. Bigger than any of the ones he’d seen at Scout camp. We didn’t catch that one as it shot under a large rock. But a little further upstream, we hit the motherload with 3 and 4 inch crayfish just sitting out in the open, rather than hiding under rocks.

The boy went about his own way catching them. I had to lend the lass a hand. She couldn’t quite master the coordination of getting the cup behind the critter and then driving them back into it. She finally scored a success with a smaller specimen towards the end of the adventure. The boy scored a success when he spotted and captured the biggest one of the day, probably close to 6 inches long.

When it was all said and done, I’d had an enjoyable time. In spite of myself, really. I had to admit that I was glad I’d let the kids convince me to take them out. Many times, they’ve got ideas that don’t quite pan out (like “The 13 Amazing Shows”- but that’s another post, maybe.) But this time, they got it right.

Categories
Family

Camp Roundup

The Scout camp wound down this past Friday. Having volunteered 4 out of the 5 days, I was pretty wiped out by the time we got home on Friday. But yesterday was beautiful weather wise and we went down to the beach for the day and had a great time catching hermit crabs, watching stripers swim around with us and swimming so I’m feeling pretty good today.

The boy’s experience could best be summed up by his request to attend camp again this Summer, which the camp personnel very cagily mentioned to everyone during the final closing flag ceremony on Friday. Matter of fact, quite a few of the boys were willing to go through another week of camp. Considering the curriculum consisted of BB’s, archery, fishing, swimming and sports; I think it’s pretty easy to understand why they were enthusiastic about the prospect. That’s cool stuff for a young boy.

The lass was also more than willing to spend another week. She didn’t get to do all the same activities as the Scouts, but she did get to spend a lot of time with other kids playing and keeping busy. At least she’s easy to please, for now.

I would also be willing to spend another week volunteering for camp. Alas, it won’t be this Summer.

But the camp did help me decide once and for all to take over as the Cub Master for the boy’s pack. In my time helping out with the younger Scouts, I’ve seen a lot of Mom’s volunteering their time to make things happen for the boys. In fact, our Pack committee is comprised entirely of Mom’s (save myself). It’ll be good for the boys to have a Dad step into a visible position like Cub Master; if for no other reason than it shows that Mom’s aren’t the only ones willing to volunteer.

Besides, perhaps I can finally get me some minions.

Categories
Computers

The ULTIMATE Lego Kit

Well, sort of anyway. Behold! The Wall-E Lego robot. Just don’t let the kids see it- I’m pretty sure it’s not available for Santa yet.

Categories
Family

My Way

A couple of the better examples of the lengths kids go to for the purpose of having their way:

  1. To get back to the main camp area we have to walk down a dirt road. This act is surprisingly tedious when trying to manage 10 6 and 7 year olds. In all likelihood, it would have been easier to herd that many cats down that road. Regardless, we managed. We did so by having some simple rules, like “NO RUNNING.”

    This was a rule that the kids tested often as the walk would often progress into a contest to be in front and from there it turned into an all out sprint. When we yelled at them to stop, all but on of them did. That one didn’t stop until the conditions of a yell to STOP and his being in front of everyone else was met.

    I told him to give me ten push-ups for not running and not listening. He gave me the ten push-ups and when he completed them, I reminded him again not to run. During his push-ups, he had forfeited his leading position. So, he started skipping. I was ready for him and told him to give me 10 more push-ups.

    He whirled around exclaiming “WHAT!? I wasn’t RUNNING!”

  2. The flag ceremony for Scouts is an activity that starts and ends the day. During the ceremony, the US Flag as well as State and Scouting flags are either raised or lowered. Accordingly, all the Scouts are supposed to stand at attention.

    I don’t know if it’s just our 6 and 7 year olds, or the age in general, but of everyone they were the only group who couldn’t just stand there. They fidget, they talk, they sit down, they stand up, they shuck, they jive. The one I clamped down on today had sat down. So I went over, picked him up and set him back on his feet.

    When I’d returned to my spot in the behind the kids, he half turned to see where I was and in doing so, “tangled” his feet and fell down. Hmm- I’m probably not being clear. Let’s put it this way: he deliberately flopped back to the ground. He then inspected his shoe and noted that it was untied, so he started to tie it. I watched as he tied it, decided it wasn’t to his liking and untied it, attempted to retie it, muffed, and started again.

    That’s how badly he wanted to be sitting.

    So I walked over to him, tied his shoe, double knotted it and stood him up again. That was just before the final flag was lowered and we were finally dismissed for the day.