All idiot's eve

So after I picked the girls up from their mother's, where they were trick-or-treating, I lost my car keys. While the girls were locked in the car. Yep. Girls in the car. Door locked. No keys.

I had gone into their mom's quickly to get their school clothes and back packs. When I went in, I had my cell phone and keys in hand. When I came out, I also had two back packs, two pairs of pants, two shirts, two pairs of sneakers, two jackets, and two pairs of socks in my hands. At some point, shuffling all that around, I must have dropped my keys. After looking in the darkness myself for a couple minutes, I knocked on the door for a flashlight. Before long we had two flashlights and large halogen work light out there looking in the grass and leaves for my keys. Yes, I felt like an idiot. All the while the girls were watching us with distressed looks on their faces.

I wasn't terribly worried about the girls safety, because I did have an emergency key in my wallet. However, had I used it to open the door, my alarm would have gone off and my starter would have disengaged for 17 minutes. I didn't want to do that until I was certain the keys were not findable (at which point I would have had to borrow a car to go get my extra set... which would have been a huge pain).

My ex-wife's husband did eventually find my keys. In a place I had already looked even. Luckily, the keys had fallen into Shelby's backpack, which was unzipped, while I was carrying everything. All in all, we lost about twenty minutes out of the evening (the girls still had homework to do), but it could have turned out much worse.

Either way, I am an idiot.

Playing with # (sharp) objects

Darby had her Halloween piano recital this afternoon. It was her first recital in quite a while, but she did pretty well.

After the recital we went to a friend's neighborhood block party. There the girls got to carve pumpkins. Shelby did one all by herself, though I was a bit nervous about her handling the carving tool at first. Darby co-authored hers with my friend's son.

After the block party, my friend's mother watched the kids while some of the adults went to a pub for some darts and karaoke. No, I did not sing. I just played darts. And I was the designated driver. I didn't realize that some pubs give the DDs free sodas. Maybe I should do that more often.

"Boys like to do the F-word"

Or so says Shelby... but this is a third-party story, so, pardon any slight inaccuracies.

The girls were at dinner with their mother last night when the waitress pointed out something to the effect of there being cute little princes a few tables away from the cute little princesses (the girls). Shelby responded that she hated boys. When questioned about the statement by her mother, Shelby responded with the now infamous, "because boys like to do the f-word".

Yes, Shelby said that. And yes, it got the expected reaction from Shelby's mother and the waitress.

When Shelby's mother challenged the statement ("Shelby, what does 'the f-word' mean?"), Shelby responded with a "you know", to which her mother requested elaboration. Shelby's response... "F-A-R-T" (she spelled it out).

As you might expect, there was much relief in the room, along with much laughter. That Shelby, what a character. As much because she doesn't realize it.

APB to the OK DPS

My little brother received his driver's license today. Everybody look out. DPS keep your eyes open.

Not only that, but he was a lucky dog, because just few days later and he would have fallen under the new Oklahoma Graduated License program, which would have restricted his driving between certain hours. Instead he's got a completely unrestricted license...

Road trip to Elizabethtown

If you know me well, you know that I'm a huge Cameron Crowe fan. So, as you might then imagine, being treated to Mr. Crowe's latest work, Elizabethtown, for my birthday, was quite the treat indeed. It was an excellent movie (if you like that sort of thing). I predict it will become an iconic road-trip movie. I know I wanted to take the road trip the lead character took.

Particularly cool for an OKC area resident is that the road trip in the movie goes through Oklahoma City as the lead character visits the survivor tree at the Oklahoma City National Memorial. They did a fantastic job with that scene.

So, while it was certainly no Say Anything or Jerry Maguire, it was a quality movie that I will own when it comes out on DVD. If you're a fan, it's definitely better than Vanilla Sky, so go ahead and spend the money on it.

Good-golly, Ms. Darby

It's no secret that Darby packs some sizeable clunkers (she's now in a size 5). But I had not, of late, seriously considered her overall stature. Well, this evening, my father decided to weigh and measure her. As it turns out, at 74-lbs, she is heavier than my mother was when my father married her (72-lbs), and nearly as all (4'6" vs. 4'11"). Sheesh. She's only nine!

Nobody wants a sweep

I mean, right?

You want it to be interesting... A classic struggle... One for the books/blogs.

You'd like to see game 6, and you hope (pray even) to see game 7.

That whole "I live for this" MLB slogan... it just doesn't apply to 4-game sweeps. Nobody lives for that. Well, maybe Cubs fans. But nobody else.

For the record, EVEN if the Phillies had gone to the series, I would NOT have wanted them to sweep their opponents.


Poor 'stros. Poor Rocket. I hope it's not over for you Roger. I hope you get another chance. Better yet I hope (okay dream) you'll find your way to Philadelphia to help them help you get that next chance.

Boo Zoo

We completed our traditional candy-gathering exercise at the Zoo tonight. And yes, I told you their costumes left a little to be desired. Though Darby did scare the heck out of a couple little kids tonight.

Global reach?

I'm a gVisit user, so I keep an interested eye on what parts of the world find themselves loitering on this here blog. Today I notice that, for I'm pretty sure the first time, I have recent visitors from all of the significantly inhabited continents. That's a pretty cool feat for this largely-meaningless-in-the-grand-scheme site. Thanks people of the Earth for stopping by and making me feel... noticed.

Paying the karmic reaper

A few weeks ago, following my car accident, I found myself not purchasing insurance on my rental car and then having an "incident".

Well, today, I found myself in another rental car, and purchasing rental car insurance, though in the end it was not needed. I had to think long and hard, but I just knew that I had to restore balance to the karmic forces, and that if I had not purchased rental car insurance I would have simply been begging for another incident to occur.

So why was I renting another car? No, not another accident. But yes there were more Vue repairs needed, though not previous accident related.

On Saturday I took the Vue in for routine maintenance and asked that they check on a couple other things I was worried about. Sure enough my concerns were well founded and there was a few hundred dollars in repairs needed. Fortunately, I had previously purchased an extended warranty, so all but $90 (for "rotor grinding" -- not covered as it is "normal wear and tear") of that few hundred was covered. HOWEVER, the extended warranty company was closed on Saturday, so the dealership could not get authorization for the repairs. They needed to bring me back in on Monday, but agreed to rent me a car for the day because the repairs would take 5+ hours and I had many things to take care of I explained.


So here's the breakdown of the crazy Monday that justified a rental car:
- 7:45am departed home
- 7:50am dropped the kids off at school
- 8:00am arrived at doctor's office for appointment
- 8:30am dropped off prescription order
- 8:45am arrived at Saturn dealership to drop off Vue
- 9:15am drove away from Saturn in a rental car (Hyundai Accent)
- 9:35am arrived at Tinker AFB pass and ID to get a base car pass
- 9:55am arrived at pharmacy to pick up prescription
- 10:00am arrived at Shelby's school to pick her up for a doctor appointment
- 10:20am arrived at Shelby's doctor's office
- 10:30am spent several minutes calming a screaming/kicking Shelby down after she got a flu shot
- 11:00am arrived at a lunch place of Shelby's choosing (her treat for having to get a shot)
- 12:00pm dropped Shelby off at school, headed to work (finally)
- 4:50pm Saturn called, the Vue is fixed
- 5:00pm left work to get the Vue
- 5:20pm filled up the rental with gas -- I put 45 miles on that thing in just a few hours!
- 5:30pm turned in rental car (no damage!), picked up Vue
- 5:50pm picked up girls from school
- 6:15pm girls and I grabbed some dinner
- 7:15pm got a haircut while girls did homework
- 7:50pm stopped at the library to get research material for Darby's science project
- 9:00pm left library as it was closing
- 9:10pm home at last


So, a slightly more hectic than usual Monday... very glad it's over.

Say hello to the real October

Six days ago we set a record. 93 degrees in mid-October. I loved it.

Today we barely reached 50, and as I type it's 37. I'm pretty sure the warm weather is done, and that the real October has finally arrived.

Me... I'm a boy of summer, so I was doing just fine with the false-October we'd been experiencing until just a few days ago.

Experimenting

Darby's next science project is an experimental one. She has to state a hypothesis, carry out an experiment, and report the results and conclusion.

I wanted her to come up with something she could largely do herself, though I expected we might need some help in the materiel support department. After discussing my ideas with her, we came up with the title "Which Ball is Best?"

The idea is to create a reasonably constant environment with which to experiment, so that only the ball we use will vary. We intend to hit several softball brands, from generic to premium, to see if the brand matters in terms of distance the ball travels.

As I have virtually no physical skills whatsoever, I enlisted my father's help. I explained the idea and gave some suggestions, and the mechanically inclined grandfather of Darby hit the ground running. After just a couple days of measuring and wood-working, we now have a contraption with which Darby can conduct her experiment. Below are a photo and video of it in action.

Darby will do the actual experimenting. She will load the device and pull the string to release the bat probably dozens of times. She will measure the distance of each hit ball, and she will do the math (average distance per ball) before writing-up her conclusions.

You might think it would all end there, but then she has to present her results orally AND via a tri-fold presentation board with photos, diagrams, etc.

Costumed

We're usually more on top of it than this, but we just aren't this year. With a week remaining, we finally got Halloween costumes for the girls today. Their choices leave a little to be desired, but it's a done deal at this point.

Haunting and dreaming

The girls are usually with their mother on Fridays, but their mom wanted to take Darby to the haunted warehouse tonight. So I met them downtown after work to keep Shelby entertained while Darby and her mother partook of the haunting (Shelby has no tolerance for fright).

I thought they would be gone for awhile (due to long lines) so was going to take Shelby to see Dreamer. But they got done fairly quick, so we all went to see the movie. It was a decent kid movie which both kids really enjoyed. I have little doubt that they would both give it two mini-thumbs up.

50 Tallies in 44 Days

The girls got report cards today, and their mother and I had parent teacher conferences bright and early at 7:30am.

Darby's PTC was first. Nothing but stellar reviews for her. She had all As with one exception (math - an 87), but her overall average is still a 91.14 and so still an A. Best of all, she only had 7 tallies for the whole quarter. SEVEN! In the five previous years of going to her school, she has never had so few tallies in a one-quarter time frame. Wow.

However, she had 10 tardies, some of which may be my fault. But Shelby only had 1 tardy, and they are dropped off at the same time. So... I think someone is dilly-dallying about instead of getting straight to her classroom.

We most feared Shelby's PTC, and it didn't seem like it was going to start out well when the teacher closed the door behind us (she left the door open for all the previous PTCs). I was pleased to see Shelby maintained the straight Bs (an 85.33 average) reflected on her progress report of a few weeks ago, but was rather astounded to see that she had 50 tallies for the quarter (44 days). That's 1.14 tallies per day (TPD) for Shelby compared to .16 TPD for Darby. As could be expected by observing the tally count, the teacher asked for some leverage to use on Shelby. She said pretty much nothing works in trying to get Shelby to behave in a disciplined manner. Though she did say that Shelby has been improving somewhat in recent weeks. So maybe there's hope yet. In the interim we've recommended that she start taking away Shelby's snack money (with our permission). Shelby is quite particular about her money.

16 all over again

Am I in denial?

Maybe.

I seem to just prefer the sound of being 16 twice over rather than being 32. Sounds more... youthful-ish.

I don't generally make a fuss about the annual celebration of my birth, so it often goes largely unnoticed. However, today, before 10am, I had already received 3 email messages with birthday greetings from a few long time (>14 years) friends. That was certainly appreciated despite my general preference towards anti-fanfare.

Who threw dirt on your pickle?

Darby's team lost their last game tonight, but Darby did get an error-induced homerun on her first at bat. So for that brief (and only) moment we were in the lead thanks to Darby.

But what will go down as the second most memorable event of the evening will be what we'll call the "dirty pickle incident". Shelby was eating a pickle when a little kid (the brother of one of Darby's teammates) threw dirt at her, which landed on her pickle. Well, as she LOVES pickles (I have no idea who taught her that), she immediately flipped out and went crying to mommy. Mommy took Shelby to the bathroom to wash off the pickle, and then went and spoke to the boy and his mother. So the whole thing was generally resolved fairly quickly. BUT... it was all rather surreal, in that there was so much commotion over a bloody (well, dirty) pickle. It became a great inspiration for laughter after the fact.

So, from then on we began to use the "dirty pickle" reference as a pretext in dealing with other issues. For example, "what's wrong with you, someone throw dirt on your pickle?" Or, "go sit down before I throw dirt on your pickle." The best we've found thus far is the rhetorical, "who threw dirt on your pickle?"

So if you hear me saying such an absurd thing, you'll know where it came from. And don't be surprise if you hear it mixed with other absurdly humorous statements such as, "if you get dirt on my pickle, I'll snap you like crisp bacon". The crisp bacon story is a tale from long ago and for another day...

Hired

I got the word this morning, that my Technical Writer position had been filled. My new team member starts work on November first.

So, just the two developer spots left. But keep those resumes coming.

One left

We lost both games again tonight. The first was pretty much a slaughter, but the second we hung in there until the end. There were some very bright moments where several girls made stellar efforts. For Darby, who has been playing first base instead of third the last few games, it was an awesome play at first that just barely missed being an out, but was otherwise very well executed (you had to be there to understand).

We have our LAST game tomorrow. I'm really hoping we can pull out a win (for the girls' non-discouragement prior to next season sake).

Sweet! (16 [th])

Today is my little brother's 16th birthday. I lamented about the issues I have with this last year, so I won't do it again. But happy birthday anyway, bro.

I couldn't resist getting him a "Sweet 16" birthday card (which he SO appreciated). But I figure he got a manly enough gift from me that he's already been enjoying.

My dad took us both out to dinner, where he surprised the heck out of me with his birthday gift. I had been talking to him about a cool device I had seen, and he went and got it for me, which I didn't expect, because he had previously told me he was just going to give me a check. Thanks dad. It's VERY cool.

So now I can watch TV while browsing the net from anywhere that I have an internet connection. How cool is that? I'm often not home and miss various shows, but am not much for using a VCR or Tivo (too high maintenance). I'd rather just see it or miss it. Well, with this device, if I'm somewhere with a net connection but no TV, I can just watch TV with the trusty laptop. In particular it should been handy for road/business trips.

Sweet!

Where have all the heroes gone? (Oklahoma !?!)

So I woke up at 8am, with no real plans for the day, other than taking Darby to church for her alter services training (yes, she wants to be an alter girl). But then I saw the article in "the morning paper", stating that, of all places in the world, Oklahoma was establishing a Toy and Action Figure Museum.

Well, as a former comic book and action figure collector myself, I couldn't let this event go by unexperienced. So, after Darby's training, we drove the fifty miles south to attend the grand opening of the museum.

It was a pretty cool museum, though it was a little unfinished. It was still very neat and has much potential. There was Captain Planet, a bat cave filled with more bat-toys than imaginable, an enormous wall of toys (I couldn't get far enough back to get the whole thing in a photo), and a very cool super hero mural with Oklahoma City as the back-drop (something else I couldn't fit in a single photo).

The girls thought it was pretty neat, too. Outside the place there was live music, food, rides for the kids, and other entertainment. And considering they were giving free tours of the place (i.e. weren't charging admission) today, I think we got our money's worth (even factoring in the ~$8.50 in gas for the round trip).

While I wouldn't say (just yet) that it was worth crossing the country to see, I would definitely say that if such things interest you, and you're already planning to be in Oklahoma for a visit, you should make the 100-mile round trip from OKC to see the museum.

Injunction

So, after helping with her divorce and buying her house (which she got the divorce but didn't have the means to finance), I'm now trying to help my mother file for bankruptcy. It's been... a challenge to say the least, as I'm sure you can imagine from all the news of late. We actually won't make the impending deadline, so the lawyer is filing an emergency injunction tomorrow so that we'll have more time to get our crap together.

I can think of a couple better things to do with my time. But the things we do for our parents because of the things they did for us...

So much for losslessness

After three softball games of non-losing, Darby's team played what must be the best team in the league. Unlike most teams we've played, this one consistently hit into the outfield. As you might guess, we don't exactly put our strongest players in the outfield, so... it was over before it stared. We couldn't even rally from behind the plate because the other team was so good in the field as well. Darby had what would have been a solid hit in any other game we've played, but it was snagged in the air.

The second game of the night was close (within 2 runs) until the end. We lost our focus or something and the other team blew it wide open. We have three more games left in the season to be played next week.

It's now official

It took more than a week, but the previous offender has now removed the photo of my daughter from their site and asked permission to use it. I have now given permission for its use, so the photo should re-appear soon, and should also cite shawnwright.com in the future.


UPDATE, 14 OCT
The photo is back, and properly cited. Here's an updated screenshot.

Getting out of a pickle

It's harder than one might think to teach a bunch of U10 softball girls how to chase down a base runner caught in a pickle. So much so that we spent almost the whole practice tonight working on it. The coaches had to play all the roles (a runner and a couple fielders) before the girls started to get it, but even then some didn't quite put it all together (not that there's anything wrong with that... it takes time). The main thing here was not just teaching the girls how to handle runners, but also how to be those runners. We've had this problem of late, and aren't sure how it got started. But suddenly even the veteran players are running right to opposing players that are holding the ball. Nobody seems to realize that sometimes you can turn around and go back, instead of running right into the tag.


So now I feel like there's some kind of life-parallel I'm supposed to be realizing myself...

Don't get caught in a pickle?

Turn around and go back?

Stay on the bag in the first place?

Eye on the ball stupid?

Run Forrest?

Wasted

The day can be summed up reasonably accurately by a couple examples:

- I went to the post office to mail a package... it was closed (read: I am a dumb ass).

- I took the kids a number of miles out of the way for dinner because it was "family night" (kids eat for $.99), but I used the drive through... turns out the deal is only applicable for dine-in, so we drove all that way only to pay full price (read: I am an unfortunate dumb ass).


So, yeah, a whole lot of wasting going on today. There's more, but these were the two biggies.

Grrrr

Eagles... come ON!

You're giving me Superbowl XXXIX nightmare flashbacks here...

OU-ed up for nothing

I picked the girls up early from their mother's so we could attend at least part of an OU/Texas watch party, which we were a little late for, despite our rushing. As has become traditional, the girls were OU-ed up for the party.



We had to leave at half-time to attend a birthday party Darby was invited to, I think everyone had fun. There were many other kids there, plenty of food, and a puppy, which is always enough to make my kids happy. Darby is such an animal fiend that you could lock her away with the animals and she'd be plenty entertained. While I would have hoped for different, it turns out we got to see the good half of the game.



As I was as unprepared as always, we had to swing by a store on the way to the birthday party to pick up a gift. Time was real tight though, so after picking up a present and racing across town (again), we barely made it to the party with five minutes to spare. The party was at Incredible Pizza, the same place where Shelby's party was back in August, so the kids were brimming with excitement.

So the girls got to have a couple hours of fun, but it was tainted at the end by the fact that we needed to leave, but once again Shelby hadn't yet finished with her game-playing. She still had credit left on her game card and was throwing a fit about not getting to use it all up. And also, Darby "got lost", which added to the tainting. As she likes a wider variety of games than her sister, I let her roam the game floor with less direct supervision than Shelby. I followed Shelby around everywhere she went and I told Darby to keep an eye on where we were. Apparently she did not do that, couldn't find us, and so went to the front desk to have me paged. It just so happened that it was time to leave when I heard the page over the PA, so we were about to round Darby up anyway. When I got up to the front, there was Darby, bawling her eyes out because she couldn't find us. I don't think she'll do that again.

So we were trying to get out of there because we were going to see a movie (like we didn't do enough in one day as it was). Shelby was still griping about her game card, though, so I suggested we might come back later and we all got our hands stamped. Trouble was the fit-throwing and lost-getting created some delay and we were down to twenty minutes until show-time.

Rushing around for the third time today, we did actually make it before the movie started, though we missed a minute or so of the pre-movie featurette. We were there to see Wallace and Gromit, and there was a Madagascar Penguins short flick showing before the movie. Both the short flick and full feature were quite good as it turns out. I was rather surprised at how much I liked the seemingly silly movie. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that it was better than the Corpse Bride in overall enjoyment (though not in animation quality).

As promised, after the movie, I took the girls back to IP so that Shelby could use the rest of her game card. I then re-charged both girls' cards so that they could play a little longer. That might have been an error, parentally, though the girls had plenty of fun. The thing I most don't like about such places is the waiting in line for the cheap prizes once the kids have won all the tickets they can. Ironically, I'm pretty sure that would be described by the girls as their favorite part.

After the almost non-stop day, I'm pretty zonked, and Darby fell asleep in the car on the way home, so she is too. I think Shelby would play more games if I let her, though. She almost never falls asleep in the car, including tonight, regardless of how much running around we do. Where does she GET all that energy (my gut feeling is to say she sucks it from me [and those around her] somehow)?

Fall Festivus

The girls' school had their "Fall Festival" this evening, which really meant that the parents got to be put in the high pressure situations of working carnival-like booths while practially every kid in the school comes by to give you tickets and play the game at your booth.

Fortunately, the booth the ex and I worked was fairly tame this year. Just a football toss through a target for a prize type of thing. The worst was back in first grade when we worked a hair-coloring booth where we got to color kids hair pink and purple and green, etc. Our hands were those colors for days afterward, and let's not forget the smell.

Speaking of hair coloring, Shelby got hers colored red. I suggested she get it color brown instead, but that didn't work. The girls also won something like five gold fishes between the two of them, which will go into the aquarium at their mother's house.

The surprising turn of events to me was that Shelby was the conservative one with her game tickets. The girls got ten dollars worth of tickets each (which equals 30 tickets; games range from 2-4 tickets), and Darby burned through hers in five or ten minutes, whereas Shelby made hers last the duration of time that we were there. I would have expected that to work the other way around.

Good news and (like) new Vues

The good news is that my stupidness of yesterday, while no less stupid, went unobserved today, which thereby removes that bit of angst from my noggin.

The great news is that I got my Vue back today from its aforementioned need for reconstructive surgery. It's like-new all over again (photos forthcoming) and good to have it back. Though there were some nice things about the larger vehicle, I'm glad to be able to park again without seven adjustments just to get somewhat near between-the-lines. In total, I'm out $786 (rental, deductible, gas), not to mention time lost at work dealing with accident related crud. I'd sure like to recoup some of that cost, so remember to call the authorities if you see the hit-and-runner wandering somewhere around the world.

The less great news was that, despite 50-something degree weather and rain, Darby's ballgame was NOT cancelled this evening. The game was supposed to start at 8:15, but was late-starting because of the length of the prior game. The weather really impacted the way the girls played, so the other team went up 7-0 right away. Fortunately we were able to come back. Darby hit a two-run homer (inside the park and error induced, but cool all the same), and that got us on a roll. We tied it up at 7-7, but by then it was already 9:15 (i.e. past the original 55 minute game time had we started on time), raining harder, and a bit colder. So, upon tying the game, our head coach decided to call it. One of our girls had already left because she was freezing. The coach said enough was enough, and that it wasn't worth the girls' health to play further. So while we didn't get a chance to win it, it was our third straight non-loss.



So are you still wondering what warranted yesterday's high dumb-factor rating?

Well, considering I was called at 9:42am by the body shop, informing me that my car was being detailed and therefore would be ready late in the afternoon, I should have gotten my Vue back yesterday. However, I hesitated because of my stupid act, which involved a certain pole in a certain parking lot and a certain vehicle not of my ownership.

Yes, I backed into a pole with the rental car. And I had previously chosen NOT to buy the extra rental insurance. I am an ass. But I really was looking quite intently as I backed out. It's just that the pole was quite non-visible through the tailgate of the pickup in the rearviewmirror, and also wasn't visible via the side mirrors. AND, the passenger in the vehicle didn't see it either (so there).

As it turns out, I put a rather noticeable dent in the rear bumper of the rental, so I thought for sure I'd get nailed for it this morning. I took it by my dad's house last night to see if it was recoverable with a little parental assistance, but he didn't think it would be. So I crossed my fingers and took the rental back this morning. I hoped they would be so busy they wouldn't have time to inspect the vehicle. But nope. It was rather non-busy, and they did in fact inspect the vehicle. But much to my rejoiceful surprise, they did NOT notice the bumper impurity. Yes, I still feel quite guilty about it. But I can't imagine the rental agency won't continue to get their full value out of the vehicle via future rentals.

Please pardon my atypical parting with integrity. I don't intend on making a habit of it.


So here's the car saga of the last two weeks in executive summary format:
-Car fails to yield to oncoming traffic
-I hit said car
-Driver of offending car is insurance-less
-Deadbeat driver flees the scene of the accident
-I confirm that I've got to pay for my own rental since there's no other insured driver to pay, and since I wasn't smart enough to have rental coverage
-I get huge, gas-guzzling rental
-I learn there's $4,300+ damage to my car
-I learn that the estimated duration of car repair is 19 days
-Car repair completes early, in 14 days
-On the last day of rental usage, I damage the rental
-I return the slightly damaged rental, damage un-noticed
-I get my car back
-I've yet to hear from police hit-and-run investigators
-The assailant remains at large

Dumb-factor 10

I did something enourmously stupid today. I can't go into it just yet, but trust me... stupid. A select few know what I did, and the vote is unanimous. STUPID.

At lunch, appropriately, there was much discusion about what we were calling the "dumb-factor". There was debate about a higher dumb-factor implying more dumbness, vs. a lower dumb-factor being not as dumb. In that context, I maxed out the dumb-factometer today. And the immediate future is really going to suck because of it.


Of course, then it poured. No, really. When I left work, the lunchtime mid-80s temperatures had given way to 60s and it was pouring rain. I was pretty wet by the time I got to my (well, the rental) vehicle, and I was already running behind, so I had to drive more agressively in the rain than I would have liked in order to pick-up the girls on time. I made it, but barely.

That's kind of how they day was in general. Not terrible. But barely not terrible. Which is still also not great.

Leaving

After several days of staring at leaves and flipping through books and websites trying to identify those leaves, Darby's latest science project is finally done.

It took some extra parental work just to get it done on time (it's due tomorrow). I skipped lunch today, went outside and spent the whole hour looking for more leaves. Darby's mom did some additional leaf gathering as well, getting six mosquito bites in the process.

Turns out this assignment was rather more difficult than the last. Leaves are surprisingly more difficult to identify than bugs. With a bug, everything you need to identify it is self-contained. You don't need much context. With leaves, if you find one that is rather typical looking, it's very difficult to identify without context. Such as how the leaves were arranged on the branch, what kind of fruit was on the tree, etc. We had way more than the 25 requisite leaves going into the weekend, but as we started to identify the leaves we learned quickly that it would have been better to identify the leaf BEFORE removing it from the tree. We had to get rid of more than half the leaves we started with because we just didn't have enough context, thus the extra parental effort this afternoon.

I really wish they would stop giving the kids assignments that were practically impossible for the kids to get done on their own. This past weekend I tried to have Darby sit there with the stack of five tree/leaf identification books we checked out from the library to determine what some of the leaves were and she "got tired of it" after only an hour, plus she didn't get a single identification right. This was after I had been identifying leaves for several hours. I just don't think she could have gotten it done without A LOT of help, and that doesn't seem as productive or educational to me. I made her write out all of the labels and glue all of the leaves to the poster board, plus she helped find some of the leaves, but I can't say she learned as much (I tried to explain much, but am not sure it took) as if the approach were different. For example, if the teacher brought in a bag of common leaves and as a class exercise they went through the bag together and identified the leaves via a structured method using a botanical field guide.

Anyway, I'm glad it's done, and I am NOT looking forward to the next project.

Hey, that's my daughter!

Someone has asked permission to use this photo from this blog entry in a sunblock brochure of sorts. I can't get into much detail at the moment, but I have agreed to the use with certain conditions.

However, when they explained how they found the photo (via a Google Image search for "sunburn" -- watch out, some inappropriate images come up in the search), I went looking for it myself. Sure enough, Shelby's photo comes up on the first page of the search.

Well, I clicked through more pages in the results, and her photo popped up again on page 7. However, it wasn't reference from my site, but rather this one (see the two screenshots if the site has been changed).

Imagine my surprise to find a personal photo of my daughter being used on a commercial website in India that uses a copyright statement on the very page showing her photo (which could give the impression that MY photo is copyrighted by THEM)!

So I have emailed the operators of the site via the email address (feedback@punjabkesari.com) on their "contact us" page, and have also emailed the domain administrative contact (arvind_chopra@vsnl.com), but have yet to receive a response. I asked them to either remove the photo or request permission and cite credit for the photo. I don't really expect to get a response.


UPDATE, 12 OCTOBER
The webmaster at the above site did finally ask for permission to use my daughter's photo on their site. I have given permission, and they will cite this site in the future use of the photo.

Good run, Phils

While I was certainly hoping for a playoff berth from you gents, I find it difficult to complain, as you had a surprisingly good year, and finished a very respectable 88-74 (just 2 games shy of the Braves, not too shabby). You gave it your all, made it entertaining down to the wire, and I thank you. Keep the magic alive in the offseason and make me all the more proud next year.

The cat is out

The previously divulged secret is out of the bag.

For his birthday, I got my little brother a network adapter for his PS/2, as he's been dying to play online for quite some time. I ordered it a month ago, installed it and tested it, but then left it attached to the PS/2 figuring he'd never look at the back of it.

I think the plan was pretty much sound, but then when my dad ran network wire through a wall requiring him to move the entertainment center that housed the PS/2, he must have disturbed the connections. Later than same night, my brother played a game, was getting poor reception, and so checked the back of the console only to find... a network adapter!

So today my dad asked if we should make my brother wait another two weeks, for his birthday, to use his newly discovered gift, but I figured that would just be a waste of perfectly good game time.

By now, he's been playing a few hours and can't get enough of it. I'm glad I was able to get him something he can enjoy, rather than something silly and useless.

Coming home

It's been nine years since I graduated college. And while I've been back to visit a couple times, I had yet to attend any campus alumni events. Given it was cheap entertainment with free kid activities, I decided to take the girls to my college's homecoming football game.

It wasn't a disappointment. I got to see the many improvements made to the campus, the home team won the game, we enjoyed the halftime show, and the girls got to play a little as well (they particularly enjoyed riding the bull... and falling off).








After the game and dinner, we went to see the Corpse Bride. It was entertaining, but I didn't realize there was a musical aspect to it. I think it would have been a little better without that. But the girls liked it, which matters more than my opinion of it.