Categories
Family

Not the Usual Kindergartener

Well, I should be surprised by this, but I’m not. At least, not completely.

After it became clear that the boy would be coming home with homework on a daily basis, the lass has been, literally, clamoring for homework. And before all the problem solvers out there pitch in with “give her something” I’ll state that we did. And that wasn’t good enough for her. It had to be from her teacher.

She even went so far as to ask her teacher when they would start getting homework. We should just give her an apple to bring in…

Finally, today, her prayers were answered. She came home with a workbook that she has to complete. She’s already done the first few pages.

Categories
Misc

Warm for the Winter

Just got 6 chord of firewood delivered. I’m always amazed at how good the operators are with the claw-arm. It might as well be their own hand moving the wood. Considering they’re moving logs weighing several-hundred pounds each and moving 4 or 5 at a time, that’s pretty dexterous for a mechanical extension.

One more thing for the to-do list.

Categories
Football

Going for it on 4th Down

I’d heard about this analysis, but hadn’t taken the time to go through it. But after reading this article at Wired, I’ve downloaded it and decided to go through it and see if I can make heads or tails of it.

From the article, there are a couple of key graphs:

So let’s say you are NFL coach, and you have a fourth and three on your opponent’s 30 yard line. Romer could tell you that 1) you have a 60 percent chance of getting a first down, and that teams with 1st downs inside the thirty yard line score a touchdown 40 percent of the time, for an expected point value of 1.7 and 2) that field goal attempts from the 32 yard line failed almost 65 percent of the time, which meant that going for a field goal only had an expected point value of 1.05. In other words, it’s almost twice as effective to go for it than to attempt a field goal.

That’s the gist of how the study on 4th downs was done. Now, for the payoff:

So what do most coaches do? They consistently make the wrong decision. According to Romer’s analysis, teams would have been better off going for it on fourth down during the 1st quarter on 1100 different drives. Instead, coaches decided to kick the ball 992 times. This meant that NFL coaches made the wrong decision over 90 percent of the time. Romer summarized his counterintuitive results: “This analysis implies that teams should be quite aggressive. A team facing fourth and goal is better off on average trying for a touchdown as long as it is within 5 yards of the endzone. At midfield, being within 5 yards of a first down makes going for it on average desirable. Even on its own 10 yard line – 90 yards from a score – a team within three yards of a first down is better off on average going for it.” Romer conservatively estimates that a more aggressive approach on fourth downs would make a team 5 percent more likely to win the game.

So, NFL coaches have been making bad 4th down decisions for all of time. The article goes on to lament that, since the paper had been published, 4th down decision making has not changed one bit in the NFL. Thus, proving that humans are incapable of taking useful information and applying it.

I’m all for counter-intuitive results, but I’ve got a few questions. For instance, how does Romer account for the fact that, if a coach goes for it on 4th-and-3 from their own 10 and doesn’t make it, the opponent has a virtual certainty of scoring a touchdown? Also, should we really expect such a huge change in decision making for a measly 5% improved chance to win a game? Does he assume that each team has a 50-50 shot at winning the game? If so, that’s a big problem. While I believe in the old “On any given Sudnay” maxim in football, I also believe that good teams are good for a reason and they’re chances of winning are substantially higher than 50-50 week in and week out.

Also, I wonder if he attempts to account for momentum? Not converting on 4th down is a mental hit in football. Does something like that show up in the math?

Football has been played long enough that I tend to think that 4th down decision making has evolved the way it has for a reason. I’m willing to listen to the possibility that it’s wrong. That’s why I’ll read through the paper to try and make sense of it. But I’ll state straight out that I’m skeptical. Math is one thing. The real world is something else.

Categories
Family

Fun with Water- Part 1 billion

I’m a broken record about this, I know. Still, it never ceases to amaze how simple the following equation is for kids:

WATER + anything = FUN!!!

And I do mean anything. Though, today’s example is pretty pedestrian. But amusing none-the-less when all factors are taken into consideration.

I’m breaking down our Intex pool. The weather has cooled off and, even though I’m figuring on an Indian Summer at some point, I don’t see any point maintaining the pool. Hi’s are supposed to be in the 60’s later this week, and that’s for sunny days.

Anyway, underneath the pool, I placed a tarp which I then covered with a layer of sand. I used the sand as a last bit of leveling as well as making it a little easier on the feet and knees when in the pool. It’s amazing how 5000 gallons of water sitting on top of 175sqft of liner can make every little pebble feel like a boulder.

As I’m draining the pool, some of the water has washed back into the sandy area, creating a swampy, beachy sort of mess. There, in the middle of the mess, stood the lass. She was grabbing great handfuls of wet sand, shaping them into balls and then dropping them and watching it disintegrate into the puddle of sandy mess.

I stood there watching her for a few minutes and then observed “You know, we made that nice sandbox for you guys. If you like playing in the sand, why don’t you go play in that?”

No dice. Not even close. “No- it’s more fun here with the water. Plus, it keeps my feet nice and cool. I don’t have any shoes on either, so I can get my feet wet” was her matter-of-fact reply. She then scooped up a big wad of wet sand and looked up at me with a Cheshire Cat grin while she let the sand ooze out from between her hands back into the slop around her feet. She punctuated it by swinging her hands back and forth for the last couple of plops.

All I could do was shake my head.

Categories
Family

Not Ready for 9/11 Yet

So yesterday, the Wife and I tried to talk to the kids a bit about what happened 10 years ago on that day. I even pulled up some Youtube footage so they could see the destruction. Being the age they are at, the idea of a large building being destroyed only existed in their minds as action in a movie or video game, so they thought it was kind of cool.

The Wife and I both explained that there was nothing “cool” about what happened. That there were real people and real lives lost that day. As well as the real destruction of buildings around Ground Zero. By the end of it, they understood that a bad thing had happened that day.

But still, it seemed clear that the concept was too foreign to them. Or, perhaps more accurately, it was something that hadn’t happened to them so they weren’t too bothered by it. After thinking on it, I concluded that making that day theirs wasn’t possible. Something conceptually, but intangibly, large isn’t within their capability to truly appreciate.

In some ways, that’s just as well. They are still young and should be allowed to have their innocence and to worry about whether they have to eat hot dogs or ham sandwiches for lunch, about whether they’ll get enough time on the Wii or DS, about their dance classes and soccer practices. They should have their chance to believe only in all the good things in the world.

But that time can’t last forever. The only question is whether it’s something they’ll come to understand in their own time, or if the lesson will be forced on them by their own 9/11. I know which one I hope for them.

Categories
Computers

Streaming with the 1015PN

After Thursday’s debacle with streaming from ESPN3, last night was a bit of redemption. I watched the entire Michigan/ Notre Dame game streaming it through my 1015PN onto our 41″ Sony Bravia.

On the downside, I had trouble getting good video quality. The Nvidia ION graphics processor defaulted to 1080P resolution. The video was very choppy, and it often seemed like it “degraded” to the point where I was just getting stills every 10-15 seconds or so. When I was getting motion, the picture was very blurry. Also, using the Opera browser, the full-screen mode did not work at all. It would give a bigger picture, but it was not full-screen. Rather, it was “window” centered in the screen with a picture that wasn’t centered properly.

I was tempted to lay these issues at my ISP’s door, but I decided to try fiddling with the resolution (per the Wife’s suggestion) to see if that would improve the picture. I also tried a different browser. The results were dramatic.

First, I switched to Google’s Chrome browser. That fixed the full-screen problem.

In conjunction with that, I modified my xorg.conf to limit the resolution the ION was outputting through the HDMI to 720p. I managed that with the following two lines added to the Screen section:

Options "TVStandard"   "HD720p"
Options "MetaModes"    "1280x720"

The TV indicated it was still receiving 1080p over the HDMI connection, but when I relaunched X and reconnected to the game using Chrome, the picture quality was outstanding. Also, I noticed that my statusbar from the window manager was much larger, indicating that I was getting a different resolution. As for the video, it was basically crystal clear with excellent motion. There was a just a little choppiness in the motion, and the occasional blurry patch for certain colors (yellow in particular, no idea why). But overall, the game was completely watchable.

Given those successes, I’ll definitely be doing the streaming thing again. I was quite pleased that the 1015PN proved itself capable, with a little tweaking. The only other thing I need to figure out is how to stop it from suspending. Having to touch the trackpad every few minutes was a nuisance.

Categories
Football

College Football is Back!

I didn’t blog this last night because by the time the game ended, it was real late and the last thing I wanted to do was blog. Now that I’m refreshed from a night’s sleep, allow me to just say “HOLY S**T! WHAT AN INCREDIBLE GAME!” Oh, that would be the Notre Dame-Michigan game last night.

Unlike Brent Musberger, I don’t think that Denard Robinson is the “most exciting player in college football”; but, he certainly made things exciting last night. Besides, we all know good ol’ Brent will become star struck by a new piece of football candy during next week’s game. That’s just how he rolls.

Still, I’d say Michigan is in for a fair amount of disappoint this year. For one thing, they don’t seem capable of doing anything without a big play offensively. Every score benefited from a long pass, or a long run. Hell, their first touchdown benefited from their own fumble! But less weirdly, their final touchdown drive was a perfect example: 80 yards to go and 30 seconds to do it for a score, Notre Dame inexplicably botches their deep coverage and Robinson throws a deep ball to a wide open receiver, who then runs 50 yards across the field to get them inside the 20. That’s big play number 1 of the drive. On the next play, rather than spike it or move the ball to the center of the field, Robinson tosses a bad fade route pass that his receiver adjusts to for a winning touchdown. Big play number 2. All the other drives were similar- deep pass to setup score of for the score.

Another observation: Herbstreit kept giving Robinson credit for throwing those deep-ball completions short so his receivers could come back to the ball. I’m not buying it. Yes, that’s how those passes were completed, but from what I saw I don’t think Robinson’s arm is accurate enough to throw a 40-yard pass in the air long versus short to a moving receiver. In fact, based on some other comments Herbstreit made, I wonder if he has the arm strength to make deep ball completions to a receiver in stride. Don’t be surprised if future defenses start covering Michigan receivers underneath, rather than over-the-top like Notre Dame did last night. There were a lot more interceptions to be had there, and any one of them changes the game result.

Defensively, Michigan was OK. I was buying into the bend-but-don’t-break description right up until Notre Dame managed 2 fourth quarter touchdowns. The second came with 30 seconds remaining giving them the lead, however temporarily. You can’t break when the game is on the line.

So in all, Michigan got a fun win last night. But I doubt they’ll be competing for top honors this year.

In other news, Penn St.: not so good; Auburn is using up their magic finishes real quick; Ohio St. is not looking quite so competitive; LSU is good, as will be most of the good teams from the SEC and Oregon rebounded a little.

Still plenty of football to be played.

Categories
Family

First Day of Soccer

The lass had her first soccer practice this morning. She was up early and when I came downstairs, she already had on her short and shinguards. She also had her cleats lined up and ready to go. All she was missing was a ball. Thankfully, it was still outside.

Her practice lasted about an hour. They split the kids up into a boys and girls group and then proceeded to do some simple ball control drills. Then they let them play a 3-on-3 game for the last 10 or 15 minutes. The lass was all business the whole time. The coaches gave them water breaks and she’d jog over and linger just long enough to grab a swig and then head back over. No staying to chat things up or ask when practice would be over or if she could play the Wii when she got home.

I suppose this requires a little perspective. A couple years ago, we signed her up for a soccer camp through the Y. She was all for the camp right up to the point where ball was put in front of her. After that, she didn’t want anything to do with soccer. It took the Wife going out and playing to get her to do anything.

Proof positive that kids do grow-up a bit.

Categories
Family

More Playing with Water

Just when I think there are no more ways for the kids to play with water, they invent a new one. This time, it involved the toothpaste.

As I squeezed the toothpaste tube to put some toothpaste on the brush, the toothpaste started oozing out in a runny mess. What’s more, it seemed like half the tube was like that. It was so runny I couldn’t get any of it to actually stay on the brush; it just dribbled off in a soupy mess into the sink and down the brush and on my fingers.

This stunt had the lass’ fingerprints all over it. The Wife thought that she might be trying to extend the life of the toothpaste by adding water. She’s done the same with bubbles and soap with not so good results, you’d think she’d have learned by now that it doesn’t work. But as it turned out, the reasoning was much simpler.

She likes her toothpaste wet. So, rather than wet it on the brush she figured filling the tube with water would be easier. After explaining her reasons, the lass quickly added that she didn’t know I used the toothpaste in “her” bathroom and she was “sorry ’bout that.”

I didn’t really want an apology. Just don’t do it again. That’ll be enough.

Categories
Computers

Updating flashplayer

Last night I had the house to myself for a time so I figured I’d stream the Arizona/ Oklahoma St. game and watch it on our flatscreen TV. I hadn’t had the opportunity yet and it seemed a good one to test out the HDMI port on my 1015PN.

So I configured my 1015 to use the Nvidia ION graphics, plugged in the HDMI cable to make sure both screens were recognized when X started and then brought up ESPN3’s website. But when I clicked on the link to view the game, flashplayer refused to run properly.

So I went through a bunch of steps to try and get it working. I installed chromium, I went to Adobe’s website to test the flashplayer (it was working), I even tried disabling the WiFi and connecting via ethernet. All to no avail.

The only other thing I noticed through all my efforts was that I wasn’t running an up-to-date version of flashplayer. It wasn’t immediately obvious how to update flashplayer either. The plugin package that I have for Opera was properly up-to-date, but there isn’t a repository package to make sure flashplayer is current.

Once again, google and the debian wiki’s saved the day. Updating flashplayer is as simple as running the following command as root:

update-flashplugin-nonfree --install --verbose

For those interested, this command is run as a post install hook when the plugin package is installed.

After running the update command, my flashplayer was updated to RC1 for version 11. I restarted Opera and lo-and-behold, ESPN3 came up and worked.

Too bad the game was over by then.

Categories
Family

A Better Day

Yesterday was a better one for the boy. No problems with “Mrs. Yell”. In fact, he referred to her by her actual name. I figure all of her students got the message regarding who’s in charge of the class; they lost in mass. Good for the teacher I say.

I was talking with the Dad last night and he was chuckling about the whole thing. He felt it a positive that the boy have a teacher who “makes them tow the line” as he put it. I actually agree with him. Most teachers I’ve met use lots of manipulation techniques to keep kids in line: combinations of appeasement and negotiation like threats of timeouts and rewards like extra recess time and such. I don’t see the harm in giving them a bit of good ol’ fashion bull headed “sit down and be quiet because that’s my way.” There’s more than a few employers who bring that kind of heat, kids should be exposed to it so they have some experience dealing with it. I’ll dip into my own experience and note that there were more than a few teachers like that back in my grade school experience, I managed just fine. I don’t see why this generation can’t manage similarly.

But enough about all that. I also wanted to mention that the boy did something very gracious yesterday. It was my birthday and he and the lass made me cards. The boy’s card even included a handmade envelope, all taped up. Inside the card he made me was a one dollar bill. He actually took the money out of his own piggy bank to give me as a gift.

I thanked him for it but refused as I’m pretty sure parental etiquette requires me to do. But he insisted, so rather than fight it out then, I let it be. The Wife discussed it with him a bit later and he told her he just wanted to give me some money to help “pay the bills and stuff.” The Wife explained that was very nice of him but Mom and Dad worry about the bills for now, not him. She further explained that his piggy bank money is money for him to spend on himself. After that, he took his dollar back.

I’ll have to find some other way to pay the bills now.

Categories
Computers

gnucash 2.4.7 on Windows

I’ve spent the last day or so updating the Wife’s desktop to Windows 7. It’s gone pretty smoothly, although it’s taken more time to install “updates” than it did to install the OS. Whatever.

After I reinstalled gnucash, I attempted to setup the online banking stuff. I figured I should be able to get it to work since it had been working just fine with a previous version of gnucash. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any joy, even with all of the info from the previous install. I even tried to build the data files to configure accounts and users, to no avail.

Today, I finally solved the problem. When setting up a “user”, which is basically the bank’s routing number along with some other important info, there is an “Expert Settings” section under the OFX tab. In that section are an APPVER and ‘APPID’. I had to set those to ‘1600’ and ‘QWIN’ respectively. Then I was able to get account information and download transaction info. I’ll add that we use Bank of America.

Categories
Family

A Contrast in Style

The lass came home from school today and couldn’t have been happier. She found a potential new friend just down the road, she got to see Louie and she is officially in Kindergarten. As far as she’s concerned, it’s all good. She was even ecstatic about getting 3 folders for her class. “You’re never going to believe this…” she said. She was right, I never would have believed it.

Then there was the boy. Who sullenly slunk off the bus with nary a word. He shuffled down the driveway in the rain, unwilling to respond to my questions. Finally, when I asked how the teacher was he replied “The should call her Mrs. Yell, ’cause that’s all she did all day.” Strong words. Why was she yelling?

“She yelled at us to be quiet and to sit down and to pay attention.”

Hmmm. I suspect that his definition of yelling doesn’t match my own. Frankly, I’m disappointed in myself; perhaps I should yell more so he can tell the difference. I also know that his teacher is a new one and likely wanted to lay down the law with a bunch of 2nd graders who were all still a bit over excited at seeing each other after Summer vacation.

He also wasn’t too excited at the prospect of homework. Nor his assignment book where he’s supposed to have us sign off on his doing 10 minutes of reading a night. Plus he’s got spelling tests coming up every Friday.

So, in all, plenty of things for him to get worked up about. One hopes there’s no where to go but up from here.

Categories
Computers

Check Your Drive Boot Priorities

I don’t normally reboot my Linux machine. But this morning I was forced to because I installed a hard drive that the Wife’s desktop machine was no longer recognizing properly. It’s a 1.5TB Caviar drive from Western Digital. I installed it many moons ago (at this point) to store some of her home video work. At the time, it worked fine. It was only ever a backup drive so usage was minimal and somewhere along the way, Windows refused to recognize it as anything more than a 500GB drive that was inaccessible because Windows wanted to reformat it. This may or may not be related to the computer’s BIOS, which also only recognizes it as a 500GB drive.

Rather than be so hasty, I figured I’d try it out on my machine to see if the drive itself was bad, or if Windows was bad (my money was secretly on Windows.) So I shutdown my computer, installed the drive, plugged in all the cables and rebooted.

And was summarily dumped into grub rescue mode with a wonderfully cryptic message “Symbol not found: grub_divmod64_full.”

My initial reaction was … unprintable. All I can say is there was no physical violence, though it was touch and go for a couple seconds. Alas, the same cannot be said for my mouth.

On the chance that the newly installed hard drive was at fault, I powered down and disconnected the power and the data cables. Unfortunately, I ended up in the same place after re-powering.

After calming down, I futzed with things for a bit and quickly concluded that the problem was that grub was not attempting to boot the correct drive. I was somewhat flummoxed as to how that happened, but it seemed clear enough. The whole circumstance felt eerily familiar.

I had actually resolved myself to fixing the problem via a USB stick install medium. Towards that end, I rebooted into the BIOS setup to check the boot priorities. The computer was already configured properly in terms of device, so then, on a lark, I checked the hard drive boot priorities.

There is where I found my problem. The hard drive boot priorities had been shuffled and the drive with grub on it was no longer the 1st device. After ordering the drives properly, I rebooted and was happy to see a proper bootloader screen followed by everything loading up without issue. I can only conclude that installing the new drive caused the BIOS to shuffle the drive priorities around thus, breaking my system.

On the plus side, the hard drive works great. I don’t think I’ll be un-installing it any time soon though.

Categories
Family

Last Day of Vacation

Since we don’t have any hurricane warnings or watches this week, I’m feeling pretty confident in declaring today the final day of Summer Vacation 2011. It remains to be seen just how far behind the 8-ball the kids end up as a result of missing the first week of school. Since this week also has an in-service day planned, in addition to today’s holiday, this week will be a bad one to start things off. None the less, start it they will.

We spent the majority of the day at the town fair. Some friends had extra tickets and asked if we wanted to get together and let their kids and ours have a little fun running around together. It worked out pretty well, but I can see the beginnings of a problem emerging.

Continue reading “Last Day of Vacation”
Categories
Football

Today’s Winner for Breathless Hyperbole…

… is Pat Forde on Les Miles after LSU’s huge, colossal, landscape changing victory over Oregon. Let’s go to the tape:

Tumult and trouble don’t touch The Hat. They bounce off him, like he has some sort of invisible force field protecting him.

You can take away LSU coach Les Miles’ starting quarterback after a bar brawl. You can take away one of his most dangerous play makers after an NCAA violation. You can take away his offensive coordinator after being stricken by Parkinson’s. You can take away three defensive players chosen in the first 87 picks of the 2011 NFL draft.

It won’t matter. The madcap Miles will make sense of the chaos.

You can take away Forde’s pen. You can take away his metaphors. You can take away the most skilled research staff in the history of sports writing. But it won’t matter. Forde will still find a way to breathless deify the object of his ardour.

Forde doesn’t stop there either. After all but proclaiming Miles the Jesus of college football coaching, he lays it on even thicker:

When the sun shines too long — that’s the time to worry about Les. When storm clouds are gathering — Jordan Jefferson arrested on a felony battery charge, receiver Russell Shepard suspended by the NCAA, assistant Steve Kragthorpe relinquishing play-calling duties, Oregon’s up-tempo offense looming — that’s when he’s at his best.

Awesome. Relatedly, I’m pretty sure Miles didn’t bother returning to Baton Rouge on the team plane. Rather, he tamed the whole space-time continuum thing and teleported himself back along. Word has it, he arrived before the game film that he emailed to himself.

A question: where was Miles during Hurricane Irene? An observation: Forde better hope Miles doesn’t turn around too suddenly; he’ll break Forde’s neck.

What’s particularly great about this is it’s game 1 of the season. We don’t know if Oregon just hasn’t gotten their stuff together; if their not top 25 material; if LSU is really the best team in the country; if LSU will end up 1-10; if it’s just a matchup issue for Oregon; anything. No matter for Forde though, who’s clearly mastered the art of elevating his article’s object to the point of deity.

This sort of writing has become all to common, to be honest. Think of any star and it’s a guarantee that in addition to all the vanquished foes in their wake will be a trail of sports articles like this telling us how gravity-defyingly great they are.

Best of all, it’s week 1. We’ve got games into December including league championships, bowl games and BCS championship games. There will be a lot more gods defined before it’s over.

Categories
Family

Staying a Step Ahead

Whilst at the fair today, as we were regrouping after lunch, the lass bade me “Father, wouldst thou carry these heavy bags for our fair Mother, who is weary worn from a long morning of drudgery in the fields?”

To which I replied, “Go soak your head.”

Actually, it didn’t quite happen like that. It was more like, the lass ordered that I carry the bag for the Wife. Never minding the fact that I had been carrying the lass’ bag all morning because “it was too heavy” for her. Regardless, I was more amused at her audacity and asked who “had put her in charge?”

She hates when I challenge her like that and didn’t reply. Instead, she started doing this body-checking thing. I asked her a couple of more times (good naturedly, I’ll add) and also threw in a “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me” for good measure.

Finally, the Wife picked up one bag, I grabbed the other and I looked at my brother and made the comment “I can’t show her a soft underbelly ever, or it’ll be game over from then on. It’s going to be challenge enough when she hits the teens.”

He chuckled a little. I did too. But only a little.

Categories
Misc

Tropical Storm Irene?

I’d seen this earlier, but I hadn’t seen any follow-up until now. There appears to be decent evidence that “Hurricane” Irene was never, in fact, a hurricane. At least, not at any point where she made landfall. In fact, it appears that once it cleared the Carolina’s, it was barely a tropical storm.

The theory also does a neat job of explaining why the storm surge failed to materialize as expected: the winds weren’t strong enough.

I’ll be curious to see if this gets any traction from the likes of The Weather Channel or The National Weather Service. It doesn’t change the fact that Irene did do damage once she made landfall. But it is important from a decision making standpoint, allowing the people in charge to determine the appropriate actions to take in preparation for the storm, as the above link points out. It’ll also be a serious blackeye for the “over hyping” of weather. As such, I expect this to be quietly swept under the rug, if it’s dealt with at all.

One more thing: if the storm really was as weak as the evidence suggests, I’d say it’s even more damning for our local power company, whom seems to be pretty hamfisted in terms of getting power back on in a timely manner. They’ve already cost a lot of kids an entire week of school, in addition to all the other frustrations being without power entails. Makes me shudder to consider the results if Irene really had been a hurricane when she got here.

Categories
Family

Comedy Gold

I took the kids grocery shopping yesterday in preparation for an impending visit from my brother. One of the items on the list was “chick peas” which we (well, the Wife and I anyway) like to put on salads. The kids have seen them enough, so in a bid to keep them busy, I asked them to find the chick peas and bring back a couple of cans. The know what the can looks like, and the boy can read so I didn’t give it a second thought when they came back with 2 cans that sure looked like chick peas.

So last night, after the kids went to bed, the Wife asked me why I bought white beans.

What the hell are “white beans”? It only took a second for me to realize what had happened and I explained it as above. A simple mistake.

The Wife chuckled and explained that when she showed them to the lass and asked, the lass informed her she thought they were the chick peas. When the Wife told her that they were in fact beans, the lass gave that a couple seconds thought and then asked “Are white beans good for your heart too?”

Categories
Misc

The Other Shoe Drops

While we here at chateau SAHD have once again been blessed with the wonder of electricity; sadly, the same cannot be said for the rest of our fair town. In fact, it’s something like 80 or 85% of the town is still without power. There’s something to be said for living close to a commercial stretch of road. And for living on the same road as the town’s First Selectman!

Anyway, the kids were scheduled to start school this past Monday. School was cancelled largely due to lack of progress with power. So too on Tuesday and today. Finally, a “decision” has been made to open school on September 6th. My understanding is the kids need to be in school 180 days and there wer 183 scheduled this year. So they’ll be starting the year two in the hole. With Winter to come.

A very frustrating state of affairs, in my opinion. I’m tempted to frustration by the lack of progress by the power company and the lack of contingency planning by the school district. But ultimately, I just can’t hold them accountable for an event like this. At some point, I think we have to throw our hands in the air and admit that we cannot account for everything. With the infrequency of hurricanes up this far north, I judge this to have been too far outside the norm.

On the flip side, its a good thing this storm didn’t pan out like the original forecasts suggested. We’d be that much the worse for wear.