mrliburyin

Highlights include:

1. Taking my wife to the emergency room after she sprained her ankle
2. Dealing with a flat tire on my car
3. Dealing with a flat tire on my wife's car
4. Having several relatives comment on how much weight I have gained

We did spend 2 days at a Great Wolf Lodge in PA, which turned out not being such a bad thing. The Great Wolf Lodge has an indoor water park attached to it, and since my wife could not put weight on her sprained ankle, being in the water was one of the better places she could be. We were able to toss her into the wave pool and the lazy river and she could float around with the best of them.

The thing that I was most impressed about was that when you checked in, they would give the adults a waterproof wristband with an RFID chip in which you could use to get into your room and buy pretty much anything there and have it charged to your room. So, when I went to the water park, I didn't have to figure out where to leave my wallet, or go back to the room if I needed money. Nope, I just needed to wave my magic wristband in front of the cashier the ridiculously overpriced food or merchandise was all mine. I was very impressed with how easy they made it for me to give them my money. It was sheer brilliance, I tell ya.

Presumable the "Original & Best" slogan refers to the cereal and not the movie.

The other day ago* my son comes into my room and tells me that I need to get up. Why? Because there is something I need to remove from the bathroom sink. He said it was a large spider. It turns out that it was not just a large spider, but a huge gigantic tarantula-sized spider. I am pretty sure it was a wolf spider, which are not poisonous, but it was still way to large for a spider first thing in the morning.

Later, as I am getting the lawn mower out from under the porch, a notice something small and gray kind of flutter past me and then go underneath the lattice into the yard. Then I heard a familiar sound of a Carolina Wren scolding me. So I started to think that the 2 things might be related and looked around under the porch a bit. Sure enough, inside a bicycle helmet hanging from the handlebars of my wife's bicycle was a nest with several eggs in it. I guess we won't be biking anytime soon.

And then there was the snake slithering across the yard as I was moving, trying to find a good hiding place from the mower. Fortunately, when I saw it, it was going through the patch of grass I had already mowed.

*"The other day ago" is a phrase my son seems to have come up with on his own. He seems to use it to mean "yesterday" and at first I did not like it because it was wrong. However, it is growing on me, although I don't think it should mean "yesterday". I think it should mean several days in the past, long enough in the past that you can not remember exactly how many days ago it was, but still pretty recent. So that is how I am using it here.

Hurray, I fixed the lawn mower!
Oh, crap. Now I have to mow the lawn.

Aikido has been very weird for me recently. For several years, I was the lowest ranking member of my dojo. I had actually got my brown belt before we got someone else in the dojo to stick around long enough to get a blue belt (my style of aikido has 2 levels of orange belts, two levels of blue belts and then 2 levels of brown). So, whenever we paired off to practice a technique, I always had more of the role of "student" than "teacher". But as time has gone on, a few of our black belts have moved away or stopped attending, and the ones that remain all have had a somewhat erratic attendance (although they make sure that one of them is there to lead the class). Plus we now have several brand new students and 4 more people who I outrank. So, now I am sometimes the highest ranking person there besides the instructor, and the other people that I am paired with look to me for advice or help. I have struggled a lot with most of the techniques, so at least I can share what was helpful to me.

My son and his friend were playing outside and as I went by, I was presented with a standard 7-8 year boy type of question: "Are you a druid or a clown?"

When I was that age, I am pretty sure I played cowboys and indians or cops and robbers, but I can't keep up with current trends in boyhood mass media, so even though the specifics sounded strange, I could understand the general significance of the question well enough. On the spur of the moment, I decided to go with clown.

"No, not clown, CLONE."

Oh, well I certainly didn't want to be a clone, and I really liked the idea of being a druid better in the first place so I switched to that option.

"No, not druid. DROID.

Droids and Clones. Now I get it. I like the idea of clowns and druids better though.

I had to work on Sunday and when I came home, my wife asked my son to tell me what happened earlier in the day. Apparently 2 kids from the neighborhood knocked on our door to see if my son could come out and play, but he was doing his homework. My son related that "Mommy told me to stop doing my homework and go outside and play", even though he wanted to finish his homework first. Apparently it took some genuine coercion, but the wife did manage to get the boy outside and playing, and he did finish his homework later.

I am pretty sure it is the child who is suppose to want to run out and play without finishing his homework and the mother who is suppose to make him finish it first, but my family does pretty much everything backwards.

A few months ago, I affixed my vintage Watchmen pin, the one with the smiley face and the bloodstain, to my jacket.  With the movie coming out, I figured it would make me look trendy. I was mildly surprised that I actually kept the thing, and amazed that I could find it. 

Yesterday, I went to see the movie and enjoyed it very much (other than being mildly disappointed at a lack of giant octopus-like things), and of course sported the Watchmen pin for the occasion.  When I picked up my son from after care, the very observant employee told me that my pin reminded her of that movie that just came out, whatever it's name was.  Fancy that.  Then when I went to buy the ticket at the theater, the girl selling the tickets asked me where I got my Watchmen button, and we had a conversation that went something like this:

Ticket Seller: Where did you get that button?
Me: Actually, I don't remember.  I bought this about 20  years ago when I was reading the Watchmen comic books each month as they came out.
TS: Wow, I wish I could have read the comic books as they came out.  But I couldn't because I wasn't born yet.

I have been spending way to much time playing with the Wii that came to our house for Christmkwazakkah 2008.  Although I think my time spent playing with the Wii Fit has actually been helpful since I have lost a few pounds and can now do about 14 pushups, about 4 more than when I started (Although whether this is because I am geting stronger or because I have less weight to push up, is a matter of debate).

But aside from that, I have noticed a curious feature that has been programmed into at least 2 games.  They both have programmed in computer errors.  With the Wii fit, you get to choose a male or female ghast to be your trainer (They are not really ghasts, but they are depicted as extremely pale, washed out, physically fit humanaoids, so I call them the training ghasts).  On a few occassions when I have gone to do an exercise, instead of my normal trainer, I get the other one who makes some excuse and says she will be taking over for this session.  So what happend?  Did my regular ghast have to take a pee break?  Was he stuck in trraffic?  There is no explaination, but so far he has returned in time for the next exercise. 

The 2nd programmed error I found was in Madden '09.  Now in real football, if a coach thinks there was a bad call on the field, he is allowed to challenge the call and have the referee look at the reply to see if the call should be reversed.  Challenging a play is a feature in Madden.  Naturally I tried it once on a close play, and sure enough, the play was overturned.  So the computer messed up the call initially and then got it right when it computer controlled referee looked at the replay?  I imagine it uses some algorithm to decide if a challenged play should be overturned, but it strikes me as odd that the game would not be programmed to always get the call right in the first place.  It reminds me of the Piers Anthony Split Infinity series (I think I have that right) where the protaganist (Stiles) is playing a game of football which pits him and 11 robots against a human opponent and another 11 robots.  At one point towards the end of the game, Stiles throws an incomplete pass and he thinks the game is over.  But the referee calls pass interence on the defensive robot and Stiles gets to keep the ball.  Stiles goes over to his human opponent and says something like "that wasn't pass interference" and the opponent explains that in order to make the game more realistic to its origins, the referees make one really bad call each game.  

So, I wonder if we humans are more comfortable with computers, robots, technology etc, if they have some flaws too.  It would certainly explain Microsoft Vista.

At 3:30 today, I got a call on the reference desk from a student who wanted to know if the university was open this evening.   It was not snowing at the time.  There was no snow on the ground.  Admittedly, there was snow in the forecast.

But yes, the university is open.

Mr. President, us Baltimorons need some flinty Chicago toughness too.

My place of work allows each student to print 350 pages each semester as part of tuition, I guess.  Thereafter, students can buy additional groups of 100 more for $5 each.  Each public computer on campus requires that the students log in before they can use it, and if a student prints something while logged in, pages will be deducted from his/her account.

As one can imagine a problem can arise if a student forgets to log out.  If the next person who uses that computer, either intentionally or unitentionally, does not log off first, then he/she can print on someone else's account.

While working on the reference desk today, a student came up to me in a bit of an agitated state and said that she had sat down at a computer that was already on, and without thinking about it had begun to use the computer and print a bunch of stuff out.  She wanted to know how to go about giving the other person his pages back.Fortunately, each printout has a cover sheet that tells how many pages were printed, so I was able to remove the set number of pages from her account and restore them to that of the other person's. Even though she was in a hurry, she insisted on waiting until I completed the transaction to make sure everything was set right before she left. 

I probably shouldn't be so surprised, but I have grown too used to people trying to game the system that I was stunned by this display of integrity, however minor it may have been. 

I rather enjoyed the pesto that my wife very kindly made for dinner tonight.  I am not sure the members of my dojo did though.  Judging from their reactions, I seemed to have an unusually strong attack.

Almost 2 years ago, I started experimenting with iGoogle and added a countdown gadget to my page that showed the days left in the Bush presidency. I had mostly forgotten about it, although I would occasionally note how many months or days we had left.

Much to my amusement, this is what the gadget looked like today.

The dastardly powers that be have changed the 50 cents/can soda machine hidden in the bowels of my library and reset it to require 75 cents before releasing a 12oz can.  The rest of the campus seems to have them for 65 cents, so I used to be able to raise money by buying the 50 cent cans and selling them on the street for 60 cents (5 cents cheaper than they could get it anywhere else!).  It was a bitter pill to go to the vending machine one morning and see the bright friendly "$.50" sticker removed and replaced with "$.75" written by hand with a black permanent marker in its place.

Today, however, a new money making venture introduced itself to me.  The campus, including my library, had been leasing public copiers that broke down frequently and were down for weeks at a time before someone came to fix them.  So they ditched the old company and put the contract out for bidding.  Apparently, our campus volume is so low that they had a hard time finding someone willing to lease copiers to us.  Nobody thought it was worthwhile to send someone to campus on a regular basis to get the money from all the machines.  So what we wound up with is about as unfriendly of a system as I can imagine.

Here is how it works.  If you want to make a copy you have to buy a copy card from the copy card dispenser.  The card cost $1 and the dispenser only takes credit cards.  No cash whatsoever.  When you get your card it will have no value on it, so you have to stick the card in the "add value" slot, insert your credit card a second time, and then get money on your card.  Incidentally, you do not get a receipt for any of this.  Then you have to take the copy card to one of the 2 copiers to copy whatever it is you want, at a cost of 20 cents/page.  So, someone who wants to come in for one time only and make a copy of something that is say 5 pages, is out $2.   I am thinking that I can buy a copy card, and then let people who just need a few pages, do so for 30 cents a page.  This way, it would only cost the person who needs 5 pages $1.50, and I could take cash.  Hmm, maybe I will have to cut it to 25 cents/page if they need over 5 pages, but for someone needing just a page or 2, it would be quite a deal.

I don't understand why my university has a separate entrepreneurship center.  They obviously should just send students interested in running a business over to the library.

My son has been exposed to culture through his school, but has been unimpressed.  A trip to the symphony and an art museum were both described as "boring".  After the art museum visit he asked me: 
"And why do they have so many paintings of...  What's that guy's name again?.... Oh, yeah. Jesus".

I was reading a passage from a book entitled "The Bad Boy", there was a passage where a child points out the exact  point where, according to local legend, Columbus first landed in Massachusetts.  As soon as I finished my sentence, C asked me when the story took place, and I said it seemed like sometime in the 1800s, but I was not sure exactly. The conversation continued:

"And when did Columbus land in America". 

Well that would be 1492ish.

"So he must have been pointing to the water"

What?

"The child must have been pointing into the water, because the Atlantic Ocean grows 2 inches/year"

So, after 300 years, the original landing spot (if there were one) would now be 50 feet off the coast.  If only the narrator of the book were as discerning as my child.



 

The following announcement was sent out across campus today:
CANCELED: Tonight's Busy Students Support Group, 6-8pm

 I can accept the fact that our cat is a cold blooded killer who plays with her victims after she dispatches them.  It bothered me at first, but I have come to accept it.  Every year when the weather gets cold, we get mice in our house and they always manage to find their way into our pantry and they have a really annoying habit of pooping in what used to be our silverware drawer.  We wind up putting out traps for them anyway (the no-kill traps don't work well enough to get rid of more than a few).  So if the cat kills a few mice and maybe drives the rest away, I figure we are probably being kinder to more of the mice than if we didn't have a cat.

So when the cat leaves a dead mouse in our kitchen, I can just dispose of it.  However, every now and then instead of killing the mouse, she merely injures it severely enough that I can easily spot it and pick it up without it being able to run away.  These I hate, because I really don't know what to do with them.  I suppose at that point I should probably kill the mouse myself, but I can't really bring myself to do that.  I usually release them in the woods somewhere away from any houses, and some of them recover enough in the time it takes to get to the release point that they dash off.  But others don't  move much, and I doubt I am doing them any favors.

When I woke up this morning, I had the distinct sensation of wanting to pee.  So I put on my pants and shoes, headed downstairs, grabbed a jacket on my way and went outside to use the port-a-potty.  Afterward, I went about my usual flurry of activity in an effort to get get my son to school on time: I fed the dog, fed my son, got our lunches packed, brushed my teeth, shaved etc. etc. all in the space of about 20 minutes.  Since it was a bit chilly in the house, I didn't even bother to take off my jacket.  About 3/4 of the way to my son's school, I suddenly realized that I was still wearing the Orioles T-shirt in which I went to sleep.  In my haste to visit the port-a-potty, I hadn't changed my shirt and I forgot to go back to my room to finish putting on my work costume. I am sure I let out an exclamation of some sort in the car, and my son asked me what was wrong, but after a minute, I just started laughing at myself. I wound up dropping my son off at school and bought a new shirt at a nearby Target that opened at 8:00am. 

My jaw-droppingly amazing wife has gotten our "new" stove (from the 1930s) all put back together in the kitchen and working.  Not only did she disassemble the stove to get it into our house and put it back together again, but she got a propane line installed and ordered some tanks for it so she didn't have to limit herself to an electric range.  For a few weeks we had 2 ranges in the kitchen as my wife was gradually putting the new old sove back together and waiting for the propane tanks to arrive.  I told my wife that this was a bad idea, as the old old stove (which is actually of a more recent vintage than our new old stove) could see what was going and would get upset.  Sure enough, about a week before the propane tanks arrived, the element on the old old oven made a zapping sound and caught on fire.  It was only a small fire and it went out quickly, but we didn't have an oven for about a week.  But when you are going a few months trying not to use the toilets, being without an over for a week is no big thing.

After something like 4 months of chemotherapy, the vet decided that our rottweiler's cancer is in remission.  Despite the chemo, I suspect that my wife's efforts to teach the dog bad habits is the primary reason for the remission.  As long as he keeps being annoying, I imagine the cancer will stay away.

Normally I would be rooting for the Tampa Bay Rays to win the World Series.  Since they have one of the lowest payrolls in baseball and never had a winning season, they make a good story.  However, I am worried that some people will think a Rays's championship to be a sign of the Lord's approval for the dropping the "devil" from the team's name.  I would have rooted for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, but I really wish they would have had success before changing their name.  Plus Tampa Bay Rays is just too difficult to say, the "Bay" and the "Rays" kind of stumble upon each other.

A few weeks ago we had a problem with sewage backing up into our basement.  We initially called a plumber, who said the problem was that our septic system was too full. 

Except that it turns out that our lovely civil war era home does not have a septic system.  Instead it has what is technically a cesspool, and it is failing.  So we need to get it fixed, except that cesspools aren't quite up to code these days, so what we really need is to have a new septic system installed or to get connected to the city sewer system.

So, we called a few septic system installers and they all said that our property was too rocky for a septic system and had too much of a slope for a mound system (which is apparently plan B) and recommended that we try to connect to the city sewer.

  I then called the city's department of public works and a guy there tells me that there is a sewer line going by my house, but it is an 54" interceptor and that 1)they don't normally let people connect to an interceptor unless there are no other options and 2) even if they do allow us to connect to it, we need to get an engineering firm to draw up plans and submit it for approval first.  All this could be quite expensive, so he suggested that I might want to look into a septic system first.  But when I explained to him that a septic system was not an option he checked with his supervisor and said it was OK for us to connect to the sewer, pending approval of the engineering plan.

All this took a several phone calls over several days and now I am waiting for 3 engineering firms to give me a proposal for how much it will cost to draw up the plans.  One of them wants $1,000 to do an initial survey before they can write up a proposal, although the other one seems willing to create an actual proposal before taking our money.  None of the excavating firms have even given me a ballpark figure yet either, they all want to see the plans first.  Meanwhile, I am loathe to use the bathrooms in our house (did I mention sewage backing up?), so we have rented a chartreuse (that is the way the color is described on the brochure) port-a-potty until such time as we can get some sort of wastewater treatment option installed.  I imagine there was an outhouse originally, so I guess we have come full circle.

Earlier today I had the chance to have a conversation Nobel Laureate and what was our topic of conversation? Vomiting in cars and airplanes.

Dear C.

First of all, let me congratulate you on the occasion of loosing your first tooth. It is quite a milestone.

I regret to inform you that due to recent events in the financial markets, the Lehman Bros-Merrill-Lynch-Freddie Mac-AIG tooth fairy investment fund is under intense scrutiny. As part of the reforms already underway, we are no longer able to invest in baby teeth and can not purchase your tooth at this time.

Please hold onto your tooth as a keepsake, I am sure it will be a treasured heirloom in time, and you will be glad you kept it.

Sincerely,

The Tooth Fairy