Categories
Football

This Guy Sounds Like an Expert

I was cruising through some sports articles in my RSS app on the Nook when the following headline grabbed my attention: John Gruden says he would trade a first-round pick to get Kirk Cousins. It led me to a Yahoo Sports opinion piece by Anwar Richardson.

In the article, Mr. Richardson isn’t impressed with Gruden’s judgement. He notes that Gruden only ever developed veteran quarterbacks in the league like Rich Gannon and Brad Johnson, but claims he (Gruden) never had the patience to develop young quarterbacks like Chris Simms and Bruce Gradkowski. Finally, he finishes with the following:

Cousins, a fourth-round pick in 2012, played well when Robert Griffin III missed a game last season due to a knee injury. The backup completed 26-of-37 passes for 329 yards and two touchdowns during a 38-21 victory against Cleveland. If an NFL team offered a first-round pick for Cousins, it would mean they believed he was better than every quarterback in the 2014 NFL draft class, which could include Louisville’s Teddy Bridgewater, Clemson’s Tajh Boyd, Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel and UCLA’s Brett Hundley. That just does not seem likely, considering NFL teams had a chance to just take Cousins last year and passed until Washington took him with pick No. 102.

Anyone with any kind of memory for great-college-quarterbacks-that-flopped-in-the-NFL should immediately recognize that his guy doesn’t have any capacity for reasoning. His a short list of celebrated college quarterbacks that never made it: Tim Tebow, Ryan Leaf, Gino Torretta, Tim Couch, Akili Smith, Vinny Testaverde, Kerry Collins and Danny Wuerffel. So the notion that a current backup with one really good pro-game under his belt doesn’t have a better resume than a bunch of college stars is pretty thin gruel.

Also, he claims that Gruden didn’t have the patience to develop young talent. That’s possible. It’s also possible that Gruden quickly realized those guys would never make it. Considering that the 2 guys Mr. Richardson names aren’t even recognizable names makes me think the latter, as opposed to Mr. Richardson’s thesis.

None of this is to say that Kirk Cousins is worth a 1st round draft pick to get. (I’d never considered the notion until now- I actually think it’s justifiable.) It’s mainly to point out that Mr. Richardson’s reasoning is completely lacking.

Categories
Misc

What to Make of This?

With the new school year approaching, I have Cub Scout business to attend to. Most importantly, I had to make sure I reserved the school’s cafeteria for our upcoming Joining Night activity, where we will hopefully pull in a new battalion of future Scouts. In order to do so, I have to stop by our school and fill out a building use form.

When I stepped into the office, everyone was busy with whatever business needs attending to by the office personnel. So I quietly stepped around the welcome counter to where most of the pertinent forms are and pulled out a couple of building use forms. I’ve done this action many times now since taking over as Cubmaster for our town’s Pack. I figure it saves everyone time and hassle since the office people don’t have to stop what they’re doing and I don’t have to wait. I then returned to the visitors side of the counter and started filling out my form.

At which point, I was disturbed by a tiny, pleasant looking woman with brown curly hair. “Hi,” she began. I lifted my eyes to look at her, but didn’t really lift my head. She put some kind of a smile on her face as she continued “I’m with the office police and you’re not supposed to come back here.” She pointed at the floor behind the counter. “Someone is supposed to help you by getting the forms for you. I have to warn you about this, so, um, considered yourself warned. OK?” She then flashed me her biggest smile.

I politely smiled back, nodded and said “Yep, I guess I’ve been warned.” She then returned to her desk at the rear of the office and I finished filling out the form, turned it so it was prominent on the counter, and left.

I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t a sign of something, what I’m not sure. I mean, this is a small town and I’m pretty recognizable around here. I was actually a bit of a running joke last year for the school’s office because I visited regularly. I’m not asking for special treatment either- anyone that the office personnel recognize as being with any of the many school related organizations should be able to go grab one of those forms. I mean, what’s important is that the form gets filled out, not who gets it right? And, well, when someone introduces themselves as “the office police” and acts like they are standing on hallowed ground, call me crazy, but that ain’t right. I’m also wondering, what are the consequences now that I’ve been warned?

Also, for some reason, this person came to mind.

Categories
Family

The Boy Earns Junior Apprentice

At the end of July, the boy earned his Junior Apprentice Black Belt at his martial arts school. The instructors at the school have created a stripped down curriculum for kids not yet in their teens. The instructors experience is that young kids don’t have the maturity to properly learn all of the nuances needed to earn a full “adult” black belt. So, in order to reward their progress and dedication, they created an intermediate level belt called a “junior black belt” that serves as a bridge to a full adult black belt. This is the path the boy is now on.

There was a meeting last week for all of the kid about to enter the next “testing cycle” for the black belt and junior black belt levels. It was interesting in that the expectations for the kids in the testing phase are quite high. The instructors were quite clear in communicating that it was on the kids to make sure they were ready for the upcoming tests, that they knew which classes they needed to attend and that they adhered to the “roadmap” provided them. In short, they were telling the parents that outside of getting the kids to the school, to back off and let the kids flounder.

The rationale for this approach was pretty simple- they feel the kids need to struggle, fail, cope, persevere, succeed. In particular, in order for the success to have its maximum effect, they want the kids to be able to recognize that it was their own efforts and dedication, rather than their parents driving them, that resulted in their success. The instructors have created a curriculum, or “roadmap” as they referred to it, that, in addition to the classes, they believe will allow the kids to successfully negotiate their apprentice belt level.

Tonight, the boy was doing some of his push-up and sit-up requirements as specified by the curriculum. The Wife also took him for a bike ride this morning to help satisfy other parts of it. Assuming he’s able to stick it out, I think it’s safe to assume he’ll have learned more about how to succeed than I had at his age.

Categories
Misc

The Latest Scam

UPDATE:
It appears this has been around for awhile, according to this Ars Technica article. Amusingly, the same guy got another call from these bozos. Sadly, I have to agree with some of his conclusions. Happily, these bozos also got a dose of their own medicine.

There seems to be no end to what scam artists will try. Whether it’s claiming you’ve won a big prize to other well known concoction, they never seem to run out of hooks. I just took a call from one the Wife had previously dealt with, and I dispatched him with great prejudice.

Unfortunately, the caller blocked their phone number, so my caller ID came up with “Private Caller.” But after picking up, there was a pause, which is always a bad sign, followed by some fellow with some kind of accent telling me he was contacting me about something. I couldn’t catch what the something was- a combination of the accent and what seemed to be a crappy phone connection. After about 4 times, I finally heard enough to understand: he was returning our call about tech support for our computer.

The problem was, I hadn’t called anyone about tech support for our computers. I AM tech support for our computers.

I told him this, and he innocently replied “Are you sure someone didn’t call about tech support?”

Now I was mad, because this was so obviously some sort of scam. My guess is they wanted to put some kind of malware on our computers that snooped username, passwords and anything else of value they could pull of our computers, possibly some kind of keyboard tracker as well.

So I got belligerent and started demanding to know how he’d gotten my number. I went through this about 3 times, he’d reply with some kind of BS, I’d call him on it and demand to know how he got our phone number. He finally hung up on me. With any luck, they removed our number from their system.

So be on the lookout for this kind of crap. Obviously, someone thinks it’s the next big thing.

Categories
Family

Of Tweezles and Things

Tucked away in the woods of Storrs here in Connecticut, is a little park. It’s call, somewhat unimaginatively, The Adventure Park. I mean, aren’t they all?

What sets this one apart is that some mad genius devised a way for people to safely traverse through the trees of a forest like a bunch of monkeys, or maybe squirrels, or any other woodland creature that calls the trees their home. Essentially, they’ve created a bunch of “trails” through the trees, where a participant’s sole goal is to make it from one tree platform to the next along a trail.

Did I mention the lowest trail is 15 feet in the air?

Did I also mention my rather strong aversion to heights?

There are any number of ways to get from one platform to the next on these trails. The how depends on the trail’s difficulty rating. For instance, the easiest trail, which is also the lowest, had things like swings that we had to walk across, an 6 inch log to walk across, wires with hoops to pass through, and on and on. The easiest ways to get from one platform to the next is using the zip lines- those are also the most fun way to do it. The harder trails had things like, tightropes.

The adventure starts with getting outfitted in a climbing harness. Then, it’s on to the safety course, where the wonderful tweezle is introduced. The safety harness has two clips, one of which is always attached to the safety lines that are run throughout the course. Manipulation of these two safety clips is the key to being able to navigate the courses. First, one clip is always locked, the other is not. The one that is unlocked is used to latch on to the next safety line. On that line is a tweezle, which is a locking/unlocking device for the clips. Once the clip is put onto the line, the tweezle is used to lock that clip to the line. Locking the one clip simultaneously unlocks the other clip, which can than be removed from the previous safety line. Then, it is attached to the safety line with the other clip and the climber can move on to the next section of the course. In this way, a climber is always attached to a safety line until the end of the course. Or they decide they’ve had enough of navigating flimsy pathways high in the air and ask the staff to rescue them.

So here’s how all this work in practice. Start on a platform and locate the safety loop wrapped around the tree. Clip onto the loop with the unlocked clip, tweezle to lock it, then attach the other clip to the safety loop. Then, work around to the “path” to the next platform. Take the unlocked clip, unhook it from the safety loop and attach it to the safety line for the path, tweezle to lock it, then unhook the other clip from the loop and hook it to the safety line. Take a deep breath, say a prayer, work across to the next platform, and start the cycle again. Keep doing this until the end of the trail, then kiss the sweet ground and glory in it’s solidity.

There are 5 color coded courses, increasing in difficulty and height. As I mentioned earlier, the yellow course is about 15 feet off the ground and the easiest. There are 2 green courses that are about 20 feet in the air. Next, there is a blue course which is about the same height, but more challenging in passing from one platform to the next. Finally, there is the “black oak” course. It starts with a twenty foot climb up a “ladder” where the “rungs” are six-inch wide bars. The stringers for this “ladder” are some kind of wire. Supposedly, this course is 25 feet in the air. I had no interest in further discovery there.

So we finished our safety course and then got to work on the yellow course. It took us about 20 minutes, with me leading the way, followed by the boy and the lass and finally the Wife. With the kids sandwiched between us, we figured that was the best way to make sure they were tweezling properly. The obstacles were more challenging for me than the kids because most of the things I had to squat down to pass through, the kids could more easily just bend down a bit, or even pass through without any problem.

Having completed the beginner course, the Wife decided to stay below and watch. Leaving me, the height averse one, to work through one of the green courses with the kids. So we started on our next adventure, which was pretty straight forward until we reached a fairly unassuming looking series of wooden slatted tunnels. The slats ran the length of the tunnel and were attached to 3 metal rings. There were three of these tunnels between the tree platforms.

After looking it over, I decided to just crawl through them- they were way to narrow for me to simply squat down or bend over to pass through. The Wife called up from below that I should go through feet first. When I got to the end of the first tunnel, I realized she was right.

The first unobvious thing was the tunnels were a bit slippery. By itself, that’s not a big deal. But couple with the other unobvious fact that the tunnels were not LEVEL, and I found myself sliding down towards the open end of the tunnel. Which brings me to the third unobvious thing about this particular obstacle- I had to pass from one tunnel to the next over a gap that was about 18 inches wide and 20 feet in the air. This meant that I basically had to reach across open space and then drag myself across that space to get to the next tunnel. Then, I had to do it again to get to another tunnel, and a final time to get onto the next platform.

I’d hoped that was the worst of it. Alas, it was not meant to be.

After passing across a couple more relatively simple platforms, we came to a tightrope. Literally. Twenty feet in the air and we had to walk across 1/2″ piece of wire. Uphill no less. The only thing we had to help with balance was a 4-foot long board suspended above the tightrope. The board is suspended from another line with a roller, so we could work across the tightrope while holding onto it. Halfway across, the tightrope started shaking uncontrollably. It occurred to me that, if I slipped, the safety system would catch me, but I’d roll back down to the platform I’d just left- meaning I’d have to start all over again at this obstacle. I completed that obstacle on the first try, but I was relieved to get to that little 5-foot square platform on the other side and tweezle onto the safety of the tree.

In the end, the lass out did us all. My nerves were shot after completing that second course, I was done. The lass wanted to continue on to the next course. But that was it.

That had been enough adventure for one morning.

Categories
Football

In Related News Patriot Football Fans Taken Off Suicide Watch

Just thought I’d note this.

Whatever hopes New England has for a successful season are pretty much in stride with Tom Brady and how he performs. I saw a tweet earlier today that he’d been injured during practice and my first thought was “All of New England is holding their breath now.” Looks like they can breath again.

Categories
Family

A Summer of Harry Potter

It’s actually kind of interesting for me to think back on this. When the boy was about 5 and the lass about 4, I read them the entire 1st book of the Harry Potter series. They were both intrigued by it and even more so after seeing the movie.

And that’s where things stayed for several years.

The Wife and I stuck to our guns on the matter of the movies- we would not let them watch the movies until they had completed the books. The boy made several attempts at starting the 2nd book, but it wasn’t until the beginning of this past school year when he finally managed to keep at it. It was during a martial arts tournament in March that he finally finished the 2nd book and also started the 3rd.

I also remember back in May when he started the 4th book, The Goblet of Fire. He was a little intimidated by the 700+ page count. He figured it would take until the end of the Summer for him to finish it. The Wife and I told him, there was no rush and whenever he finished it would be fine.

He finished it shortly after school got out.

He finished The Order of the Phoenix a month-and-a-half later, and then the Half Blood Prince he finished this past Saturday. He finished The Deathly Hallows today- he could barely put it down.

Talking with him about it, he didn’t retain all of the details and he missed some things as well. I suppose that’s to be expected for a 9-year old reading big books like the final few were. Still, in some respects it’s too bad because there are a lot of details that make the story more enjoyable. Perhaps some day he’ll go back and re-read the series.

The best part, though, was a question he asked shortly after he’d finished The Deathly Hallows. “What story should I read next?” he asked.

Categories
Family

Still Learning to Look

There’s the old adage “An emergency on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” I bring this up in the context of the boy coming screaming down the steps this morning and asking me, in an extremely agitated state, “Do you know where my swim shirt is?”

I flatly replied “No.”

He seems not to have figured out that I don’t have a “lost item” tracker in my cerebral cortex. Nor do I have x-ray vision. I can use logic though, and invariably this is all that’s needed to track down 99% of the “lost” items he and his sister come at me with. The thing is, I hate to do that because he’d rather I or the Wife find his lost items. He won’t learn if he doesn’t do.

“Well, it’s not my fault that it’s lost because you did laundry, so you were the last one to see it.”

These sorts of statements test my patience. On the one hand, he’s frustrated and doesn’t possess very good coping skills yet and I’m aware of that circumstance. On the other, he’s being extraordinarily rude to someone he’s asking for help. On yet another hand, he seems capable of using logic, albeit a twisted form of it. Ultimately, today, I decide to hold my tongue and let his comment slide. But I don’t get up to help him look- I’m sure it’s somewhere obvious and sensible, he’s just too worked up to think of that spot.

He stomps upstairs to continue his search, screaming “It’s not anywhere!” This is always the pattern for lost items. He looks in the spots where he expects the item to be and doesn’t find it. He then looks more frantically in the spot he expects the item to be, and still doesn’t find it. In between, he gets up and walks in circles gazing at all areas of the room along the way, declares “It isn’t anywhere!” and then looks a third time where he expects it to be. Unremarkably, he still does not find it. When I or the Wife ask “Where did you see or have it last?” the reply is invariably “I had it and then put it away right here. Someone picked it up and moved it on me. This always happens to me!” The thumping sound that follows is typically my palm hitting my face.

By this point, the boy is highly agitated and difficult to deal with. He yells, and retorts to suggestions with great amounts of sarcasm. We calmly try to suggest places he might look and he invariably replies he already looked there. The Wife and I are dubious of this prospect because, well, every time we intervene we look in a couple of spots and lo-and-behold the item turns up exactly where we said it would.

The good news is the boy finally found his swim shirt in the laundry. Apparently, he actually had to look to find it. You know, that means moving a couple of other articles of clothing to uncover his shirt. The bad news is he was an ootch to his Mother, who was trying to get ready for the day while he stomped around with his searching antics, along the way.

My assumption is that someday he’ll learn how to find things in a more congenial manner. The tough part is I’ve been thinking that for what seems a long time now.

Categories
DIY Patio

Before and After

Now that it’s basically completed, I thought some before and after pictures for the patio area were in order. My first pictures were taken on May 1st, while today is, well, today. I wasn’t able to work every day on it during that time between weather, vacations, trips and other duties or logistical delays. I’d guess I have about 250 hours into it as of today.

First, a wide view:

Tough to see much there with the pool dominating the foreground. And yes, I’ve got to get some grass growing again. I did say “basically” done.

Now, here’s the left side as viewed from under the deck:

Just a little different. Now the right side:

As I mentioned earlier, the first order of business will be to get some grass growing again around the pool. Next year, I think, we’ll tackle some of the landscaping in the immediate area of the patio.

Here are some statistics about the scope of the project:

  • There are 20 tons of wall stone in the 3 retaining walls.
  • There are 20 tons of 3/4″ stone used behind the retaining walls and under the patio.
  • There are 15 tons of 3/4″ processed gravel (this is a combination of sand and gravel) in the project, about 10 of those are under the patio and the remainder is under the pool.
  • I had to move about 30 tons of earth between digging out for the retaining walls and then down to set the patio height. Most of that is under the pool, the rest I spread out in different parts of the property.
  • There are about 11 tons of pavers in the patio.
  • There are roughly 7 tons of sand, a couple under the pavers and the rest under the pool. There is another quarter ton of polymeric sand filling the paver joints.
  • The apron around the pool has about 3 tons of 4″ river rock.

Suffice it to say, it wasn’t a ton of work- it was many tons of work.

Categories
Cub Scouts Family

Home

The one thing I’ll remember about our week at Scout camp is the singing. Boy Scouts love to sing, especially during meals. Chants of all kinds, camp songs I’ve heard of, camp songs I haven’t heard of. On day 1, it was amusing but I assumed myself “above” the nonsense. By Wednesday evening, when a Scout yelled “BANANA!”, I was answering the call, yelling “Did someone say BANANA?” and the whole place erupted in the Banana Cheer:

BANANA’S OF THE UNIVERSE UNITE!
Peel!
Peel!
Peel!
BANANA!
Peel!
Peel!
Peel!
BANANA!
GO!
GO!
GO!
BANANA!
GO!
GO!
GO!
BANANA!
GOOOOOOOOOOO BANANAS!

The cheer comes complete with hand gestures. During the “Peel!” parts, arms are stretched above heads with hands touching, then on each “Peel!” call, the are spread apart- like peeling a banana. During the “Go!” part, the arms are pumped to the beat of each call.

You should hear the Napkin cheer.

Every breakfast and dinner was served family style. Each group of campers would send waiters to the dining hall for these meals. The waiters would serve the food, setup the table and take care of cleanup at the end of meals. In between, they were also responsible for getting refills of food when it was all gone. It was at the end of these meals, where the Camp staff would also sing some kind of sing-along song at the top of their lungs. Most of the campers didn’t know the songs, but they were easy enough to pick up on, like “Little Bunny Foo Foo.” Yes, I just wrote that.

Aside from the unique experience that was eating at camp, the boys were kept busy with the business of learning things to help earn their rank badges. They got to swim, do archery, shoot BB’s, fish, take nature hikes, do crafts and learn how to safely use a pocket knife. There was some free time where the kids could do whatever they wanted- which was invariably to end up down at the water front. There, they could swim, go boating or go kayaking, or even go on an inflatable water slide out in the pond. The weather was beautiful almost all week, thus conducive to being in or on the water.

Friday was a washout. It poured like the dickens all day and sapped the remaining enthusiasm out of all the campers. I’d say 90% of the campers were gone by 4 o’clock, even though there was a chicken BBQ still to come as well as closing ceremonies for the camp.

The other memorable item from the week was the theme- space. All of the camp staff would dress up each morning in costumes from all the space movies- Star Wars, Start Trek, Battlestar Gallactica. Even Firefly was represented. The campers were told all week to be on the lookout for aliens, who would invariable sneak around in full view of everyone but the staff. This would lead to amusing altercations between Star Wars characters and Star Trek characters over who had jurisdiction to capture the aliens, who would then quietly escape unharmed. We even got to witness a lightsaber duel between a camp staffer and camper. The staffer won handily and there were no more lightsaber challenges.

Despite the grand time had by the kids and the parents, it was still nice to come home last night and sleep in a bed. No worries about wolf spiders or other creepy crawlies spooking the kids. No worries about rain or getting up early to start the day. After a zany week of camp, it was good to come home to some normalcy.

Categories
Cub Scouts Family

A Letter From Camp

As it turns out, the camp is not isolated. There’s WIFI access and even a community computer, from which I logged this post. Had I known, I defintely would have taken advantage of the amenities. The weather has been beyond fantastic so far- no humidity, cool nights, lots of Sun but not too hot. For August, we’ll take this weather as long as it comes.

The following is a letter the boy wrote to his Mom on the first day of camp. Per my usual, all spelling and punctuation is as the boy wrote it. I did modify one small section to remove names:

Dear Mom,

I had a great time at camp. I past my swim test! I am in the blue section witch is the deapest end. That also means I am in the read and white. The red is the second deapest, and the white setion is the most shallow. There are waiters in the cafe and two of my Pack mates were waiters today. After they talked about the Archery and BB gun range. we went to place were we had a second sarimony except with little acts my favorit was a one called channel flipper I think then we finally went to bed.

THE END

That was written Sunday night, after we put all the boys to bed finally. The following day, Monday, was when all the camp wide activities and “curriculum” began. That’s why he noted “they talked about Archery and BB gun range”- there was a talk Sunday night to make sure the boys understood the rules and what would be expected of them at those activities.

It’s an interesting experience being immersed with 9 and 10 year olds for such an extended period of time. I get to know them in a way that I’d never see otherwise. Perhaps some thoughts on that another time- like when I have some. But now, the hour is late and the Polar Swim is at 6:30AM. Time to get some sleep.

Good night.

Categories
Family

We’re Their Too

Surprise! Through the miracle of scheduled posts, a surprise post this week to break the silence.

I saw this article via a Tweet which I unfortunately can’t find again for proper attribution. It’s about hitting the “sweet spot” of parenting. The author does a nice job of describing the signs:

I was at the community pool, looking around to see what my kids were up to. Then I really looked at them. The big one was playing with her friends, her long arms and legs splashing. The little one was throwing herself off the diving board like a boss. The boy was in the shade, cracking jokes with his buddies.

This is it- when you don’t need to be on your guard at all times for something that may happen. The kids are less reliant on you for comfort and stability, they rest easy knowing they are with your friends and that you lurk somewhere in their general vicinity. This frees you up to relax, read a few pages from that book that’s been on hold since they were born, perhaps even work a little on your own projects.

Reading the article, I realized that by and large, the Wife and I have been in that spot for a bit now. In fact, I think it’s possible to say my blogging is indicative of it. For some time now, I’ve been having a harder time coming up with parenting related material, largely because whatever problems the kids come up with are well worn topics here and, for the most part, pretty much trivial in the scheme of things. The posts I do come up with tend to relate to the humorous incidents, or the sorts of thing that I think every parent deals with. I don’t have any particular insights into these sorts of things, mainly it’s parenting maintenance.

I figure there’s maybe a couple more years of this before the boy begins to pull us onto some rockier roads. I only choose him since he’s the older of the two- it’s possible the lass will be the first to start going astray, but I figure odds are on the boy.

In the meantime, the sweet spot is definitely a nice place to be. I’ve managed to complete an entire patio project over the course of this Spring and Summer, largely because of it. The Wife is getting some of her knitting projects done and in the meantime, both the boy and the lass continue to develop at a steady pace in their capabilities and responsibilities.

I like to think it’s a sort of interim reward for some of the fights and trials that have been dealt with over the years. Initially, there is the stage where they start to learn rules and limitations, there are fights over food and diet, arguments over treating siblings with respect, fights over homework and school and behavior and respect. The current pause indicates a sort of balance that’s been reached, where they know their place and are basically comfortable with it. The same goes for the Wife and I, we have an idea of what needs to be dealt with and what can be let alone (hint: a lot!).

Of course, it can’t be like this forever. Eventually, they’ll need to be pushed and prodded as their capabilities grow. They’ll also sense the changes in themselves and will begin their campaigns for more independence and “freedoms.” The fights and battles will begin anew at that point.

But not this day. For now, we just get to enjoy being a family.

Categories
Cub Scouts

Gone Camping

I’ve still got a couple of hours, but I’ll be leaving with the boy for WEBELOS Resident Camp today. It’s my first time with such an adventure, the boy’s as well. We’ll be back this Friday. What our state will be remains to be seen.

The boy is excited but nervous. I suppose the whole thing is softened considerably by the fact that I’ll be there, so he won’t be completely isolated. That said, it’s still different from our other camping which has either been a single overnight, or extended but with everyone. Who know what effect it will have on him.

Blogging, after this, will basically be non-existent until my return next Friday. They don’t allow electronic devices at the camp because they feel that’s the best way to prevent home sickness. Anything that allows the boys to start thinking about the comforts of home can bring it on, so they keep the kids busy and moving the whole time. The schedule indicates as much as well. Anyway, I’ll be smuggling my crappy feature phone into camp, but will limit my usage of it and even then, I’ll basically be checking email and perhaps checking in with Twitter. Anything more will be non-existent.

With that, have a great week and see you on the other side.

Categories
Misc

A New Tenant

We had a freakish line of ran come through here a few minutes ago. After it cleared up, I wandered outside to check on things. Mainly, I was curious about the water flow around the new retaining wall around the pool, which I’d just recently completed. Mainly, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t getting gouged out at the wall’s base.

On the far side of the wall from the house, I found a new tenant. Can you see him?

No? How about now?

Still no? Here he is:

Categories
BBQ Notweet

Rubbed the Right Way

I was looking for a little different wrinkle on the usual rub I use when cooking ribs. I’ll be smoking some spare ribs on the ol’ WSM tomorrow. A few minutes of googling revealed this rub recipe. It looked promising, so I’m going with it, although I’ve made a few modifications based. Here’s what I whipped up:

  1. 1 cup brown sugar
  2. 2 tablespoons chili powder
  3. 2 tablespoons paprika
  4. 1 tablespoon garlic powder
  5. 1 tablespoon onion powder
  6. 2 teaspoons black pepper
  7. 1 teaspoon cumin
  8. 3/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

A whole tablespoon of cayenne, which the original recipe calls for, would have had everyone screaming. So I reduced it significantly. I didn’t see the point of all the paprika, so I replaced some of it with chili powder. I never include salt in my rubs- I prefer to salt the meat directly and then apply the rub. In this case, I used a pink salt we recently purchased- it has a funky twang in addition to the normal salt taste. Wow, can’t believe I just wrote that. Finally, I like cumin too much to not include it.

The rub tasted good, we’ll see what the overnight does for it. Most importantly, we’ll see what a little heat and smoke does to it tomorrow.

Categories
Family Notweet

A Project for the Kids…

I built a deck for our house years ago now. It’s held up extremely well. A couple of the decking boards are rotting out, which I won’t take the blame for since they are PT boards and supposedly don’t rot. Guess they don’t make them like they used to.

Aside from the decking boards, the other thing that has slowly been chipped away at are the post caps I fashioned. They were simple enough- squares cut from a 2×6 that I then cut into shallow pyramid shapes and then glued on to the tops of the posts. They looked nice when I originally did it but time and weather has undone it all. Most of the caps have fallen off due over the years as the glue has given out.

So, to give the deck a new look and some more light, the Wife found and ordered solar light caps. They are kind of like squatty looking lightpost lamps, with a solar panel on the top to charge a pair of AA batteries that in turn run a couple of LED’s.

The lamps arrived today, and there is some assembly required. Specifically, the tops need to be taken off and the batteries installed. At which point, they need to be set out in the Sun to charge the batteries.

Seems like a great job for a couple of kids to take care of tomorrow.

Categories
Family

A Letter for the Boy

I handed the letter to the boy and he was initially excited. He figured it was from his martial arts instructors congratulating him on his latest belt advancement. So I pointed out the return address area on the envelope and he immediately became more subdued.

It was from the school.

But mail is mail, especially when you’re 9 so he ripped it open with some enthusiasm and pulled out the contents. Two sheets of paper. One had a list of the other students in his class. The other was a letter from his teacher.

At first, he was upset because there are 9 girls in his class, which is apparently 9 too many. “My WHOLE class is girls!” he claimed. I pointed out that the 8 other boys in his class would probably disagree with his assessment. After doing the math, he still felt it was 9 too many girls in the class. But he wasn’t as upset anymore.

Then he read through the letter, which was just a quick intro of his teacher as well as some of the topics they’d be covering this year- more math, more reading, more writing, book reports, physics (well- studying motion anyway) and a couple of neat field trips. He wasn’t excited about the reading, the writing, or the math. He thought the physics (motion!) stuff might be interesting, but then went into a rant about how it would probably be “babyish.”

After a few more moments reflection, he declared “I think I know why I hate school. It’s too slow for me.”

I almost choked on the air I breathed in.

I’ll have to remember this one when that first book report comes due and he’s whining at me “I CAN’T DO IT! IT’S TOO HARRRRRRRRRRRRD!”

Categories
DIY Patio

Patio Pix

When this whole thing is done, I’ll have to put a page together showing the various stages of progress. As originally envisioned, the project is complete. However, due to realities on the ground, I have a final stage to complete- construction of a small retaining wall around the pool. Once that’s completed and then filled with river rock around the pool, everything will be done.

Categories
Computers Programming

Minor Twitget Improvement

I noticed today that the Twitter feed over there was not displaying my tweets properly. Specifically, any links are displayed using the t.co URL structure which Twitter uses. I’d fixed this once before for the old feed, I figured it was worth investigating to see if I could fix it in the new one.

As it happens, the modification is pretty trivial, with only a few lines of code added in 1 source file.

The file to modify is twitget.php. Start by changing the function process_links to look like the following:

function process_links($text, $new, $urls) {
    if($new) {
        $linkmarkup = '<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="';
        $text = preg_replace('/@(\w+)/', '<a href="http://twitter.com/$1" target="_blank">@$1</a>', $text);
        $text = preg_replace('/\s#(\w+)/', '<a href="http://twitter.com/search?q=%23$1&src=hash" target="_blank">#$1</a>', $text);
    }
    else {
        $linkmarkup = '<a rel="nofollow" href="';
        $text = preg_replace('/@(\w+)/', '<a href="http://twitter.com/$1">@$1</a>', $text);
        $text = preg_replace('/\s#(\w+)/', '<a href="http://twitter.com/search?q=%23$1&src=hash">#$1</a>', $text);              
    }
    if (!empty($urls))
        foreach($urls as $url){
            $find = $url['url'];
            $replace = $linkmarkup.$find.'">'.$url['expanded_url'].'</a>';
            $text = str_replace($find, $replace, $text);
        }
    return $text;
}

Here, we’ve added the argument $urls, which will come from the entities field of the tweet data. This data is used to create the appropriate anchor markup, in the foreach loop. The actual link URL is maintained, while the display URL is changed to the expanded_url field supplied by the entities information. Note I’ve also modified the replacement string for hashtag searches, adding &src=hash to the href attribute in the achor tag.

Now we need to add the entity data to the function calls. Search for the process_links function within the file. There were only two instances of it used in my version. Add the third parameter to the function calls as follows:

$link_processed = process_links($whole_tweet, $options['links_new_window'], $tweet['entities']['urls'])

That third parameter should be added to every invocation of process_links. That provides the URL information to make our earlier changes work.

That’s it. Save the file and Tweets should now display the proper link text, while still linking to the t.co URL’s as specified by Twitter’s guidelines.

Categories
Misc

YIKES!

For purposes of scale, the deck board the hive is attached to is a standard 1×6 PT decking board.