Monday, August 31, 2009

Projects

Is it because this week is everyone's first week or school of is it something weather related? I don't know, but I am in a project starting kinda mood. (note I did not say project starting and finishing kinda mood... I'm one of those people)

Jen and I have already started working on a programming project, even if we're not actually sure what the project is going to be yet. Work has commenced at the Rob-needs-to-learn-how-to-write-in-C#-and-use-Visual-Studio-.net level.

Last night Jen was out with some friends and I was up kinda late waiting for her and I did something I haven't often done... I used our playstation 3 to play an actual game. Star Wars the Force Unleashed. I now have this drive to play the game all the way through. That will probably go away once I get to a level that is the least bit difficult, but for now it has me looking at walk throughs and strategy guides.

I also have this sudden interested in learning how to use Apple's Garageband software. I'm thinking I might try to use Jenny's Macbook to record the next RPM challenge and it might be fun to write a tune or two and record them as practice. Granted I haven't touched my guitar since mid-July, but that doesn't change the sudden project desire.

Odd how this happens to me at this time of year.

The kids have their pre-back-to-school carnival today. Tomorrow they are off, and then on Wednesday they go back to school for real. One lucky son-of-my-wife will be starting first grade. He's nervous and excited at the same time. I am super excited. I can't wait for him to show off that brainiac like intellect of his. He's a smart one. His sister is starting third grade and will continue her dominance of the elementary school smarties.

I took the day off from work and will get to join in on the bringing of the kiddies to school. I also am lucky enough to be the lucky guy who gets to pick them up after school and bring them to their after school program's orientation. I am triple lucky! (I also get to go to the dentist, which sort of reduces the effect of the overall luckiness)

So the great start of the school year fun/end of the summer blues begins for real on Wednesday. Until then, enjoy this trailer for what can only be called a cinematic masterpiece. (have I posted this one before?)

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Errand Sunday

Nothing special going on today. Laundry, dishes, Jen went food shopping and is now out sneaker shopping with one of the kids while I am home with the other. She is also hoping to get her iPhone repaired at the Apple store later today.

We watched the Disney Channel's Wizard of Waverly Place movie earlier today and have spent lots of time trying to figure out how the spells work.

Later tonight might be another movie, but for now I have to get back to the laundry.

Good Day

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Friday, August 28, 2009

File This Under OMG!!!

I'm Tired

I am tired. Really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really tired.

I mean really tired.

Last night I went to bed at about 9:00. I fell asleep almost immediately and then woke up again at about 10:30. Then again at 11:00. Then again at 11:30. And so on and so forth.

My teeth were the reason, of course.

The pain has been constant over the last couple of days. At times it's been as close to excruciating as my limited pain receiving experience has gotten. It sucks. I've tried ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and whatever the hell Aleve is made out of. They all knock it back a little, but not enough. At least not enough for me to sleep much last night. I still have percocet from the first attempt at a Dental visit and I haven't cracked open the bottle yet. I don't want to, but tonight might be the night. I hope not.

I have done a little research into "sedation dentistry" and have decided to pin my hopes on it. I have a consultation at a place in Andover on Wednesday. My hope of hopes is that the doctor will hear my tale of gag-reflexive woah and say, as a light shines down from the heavens upon him making him look like he has a sort of halo over his head and maybe a pair of angel wings sprouting out of his back, "I'll take care of you. I'll fix your problems."

Let's hope so. Please please please please please please please please please please please.

I feel sleep deprived enough to have my judgment affected. On the first full day of my marriage to the beautiful and talented and amazing Jenny my wedding ring fell off in the shower. Each shower since then I have removed it and put it on the bathroom sink while showering, and then shortly (if not immediately) after getting out I have returned the ring to it's rightful place on my left hand.

Today I got out of the shower and was in a hurry because my sleep deprived self had been a little zombie-esque and took too much time getting into first gear this morning and was worried about making Jen late.

When I got to work I noticed that I didn't have my watch on. I stopped in the bathroom on the way back from dropping my lunch off in the kitchen and while washing my hands realized the ring wasn't there. It's still on the bathroom sink.

I feel terrible. That ring is a symbol of my feelings for my wife. It is a symbol of our marriage. It is a symbol of our love. And I have not had it on my finger since about 6:35 this morning. I won't have it on my finger until about 6:45 this evening. 12 hours with a ringless ring finger. I hate myself right now.

I've been tired enough today that I have been chugging caffeinated beverages since before 8:00am. My hands and my eyes are jittery. (Yes, my eyes. You read that correctly.) I am exhausted but too wired to worry about falling asleep. I just can't think 100% clearly. This sucks.

To top it off, the tooth pain has actually been different since I got up this morning. Generally it has just been a wicked powerful ache. Today, however it has added the bonus factor of being really sensitive. There are two teeth in question here, both on the upper left. One actually broke off at the gum line a few years ago. The root is still there and has been hurting a bit. The real problem is two teeth back from there where a cavity is forming around a filling. Today when I take a drink (of a caffeinated beverage) it hurts whenever the liquid touches that tooth. That's a new one for me today. My teeth have always been a little sensitive to cold (especially the broken tooth. I wonder why? Duh.) but it's never felt like this before. I can definitely live with it, it's just an added flipping of the dental bird.

Oh well.

Tonight I will be able to keep my shit together long enough to get home and eat some tacos with the wife and kids. Mmmmmmm tacos. I learned many years ago that for some retarded reason when I have a tooth ache it is much worse on an empty stomach. If I have a bite to eat the pain lessens. How do you spell psychosomatic? Over the last two or three days that has still been the case, it's just that the lessening doesn't last as long. Still, I can honestly look forward to tacos as a kind of homeopathic (how do you spell placebo?) remedy in this case. That's pretty cool. After the kids go to bed Jen and I are going to play around with some more programming in C#, but I don't think I'll be up for more than an hour or so. I want to try and go to bed a little early (again) and hopefully be too tired to notice that I'm in pain.

Tomorrow we have to get new school shoes for the kids. After that we're going to risk taking them to the movies to see the new Harry Potter flick. I will definitely be covering a certain boy's eyes through a certain Inferi scene. (note: I went to a Harry Potter glossary site to look up the proper spelling of inferi.) After that it's dinner with the newly moved to Haverhill Geyers. We missed out on seeing their new house last weekend, hopefully things will work out better this weekend. I know we had something on the agenda for Sunday too but I can't for the life of me remember what it was... was it Harry Potter? Had we planned on that for Sunday originally? I can't remember.

As for right now, I want to go home. Simple as that.

Laugh. Your. Ass. Off.

You'll never watch sesame street the same way again:

Sometimes I Suck...

Sometimes I suck so bad it hurts. I suck so bad I want to crawl into a little ball and hide until people forget about how bad I suck.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Post-Rapture Pet Care

While perusing twitter I saw this from @BoingBoing, "Atheists who'll take in your pets after the Rapture http://url4.eu/Js4Q"

Here is a link to the actual site, Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, USA.

One question...


WHY THE HELL DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT???

Sedation Dentistry... Have You Tried It?

Sedation Dentistry... is it the solution to my dental work problems? Is it a dream come true?

I don't know, I'm hoping you can tell me.

Seriously, if you wander across this silly little page and have actually gone to a Dentist who heavily sedates you and then does all of your dental work in one sitting could you tell me how it went? I found a few places near me that do it and I'm going to pick the one with the best press and schedule a consultation. My teeth are hurting quite a bit and I really want to stop taking over the counter meds all day every day trying to keep the pain under control.

So if you've done it, tell me about it. There has to be a way for me to beat this effing gag-reflex garbage that I've been screwing myself over with since I cut my first baby teeth. It sucks, I'm sick of it. I want to feel like a grown up at the Dentist's office for a change.

Anyway, massive subject change...

How is this for a rock band's rhythm section: Dave Grohl on drums and John Paul Jones on bass. (That's the guy from Led Zeppelin, not the American Revolution period sailor)

Check this out: Them Crooked Vultures

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Ted Kennedy

Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy died last night.

Say what you will about Ted's personal life, he fought for the causes he believed in and always stood for his constituents.

It's the end of an era.

Happy Trails Ted

Surprise Discovery

One of the first things that brought my wife Jen and I together was a love of The Beatles. Any time we go on any drive of any significant length, The Beatles are our soundtrack. Our first dance as a married couple was a Beatles song. I can go on and on.

Last night we discovered that Jen's father, who she did not know growing up, met The Beatles in 1964. He won a radio contest and had his picture taken with the band. Neither Jen nor her mother have seen the picture, but one of her cousins, who she recently met for the first time in ages through Facebook, confirmed it's existence.

My wife's dad met The Beatles right during the insanity known as Beatlemania.

She is sooooooo cool!

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Physiological Signs of Tone Deafness?

CNN.com is running a cool story that discusses some brain studies dealing with different senses. There is a section on your sense of direction (not very good), your sense of smell (your nostrils appear to be in competition with each other), and on tone deafness. I found this one very interesting.

My wife and one of my best friends are tone deaf. Jen complains about it now and then. She seems to think that there is something wrong with her because she can't sing in tune. I disagree. My friend Larry is in the same boat, but he was a music minor in college and had to take a course that required a great deal of recognizing different sounds, including pitches. How did he do it? He trained himself. As with everything, practice makes perfect. The more he worked at being able to match pitches with his voice the better he got at it.

This story doesn't go into detail, but it does say that it is possible to teach some one who is tone deaf how to hear specific tones. I knew it all along. It just takes practice.

Here's the segment from the article (I have removed the links)...

Some people are really bad at singing a song they've heard, and scientists are figuring out why.

The phenomenon, called tone deafness, refers to people who do poorly at distinguishing between different musical tones.

Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, looked at images of the brains of 10 people who tested as being tone deaf, and 10 people who were not...

Previous research has shown that people with lesions in the brain pathway that connects perception and motor areas of the brain have trouble with language, said Psyche Loui, instructor in the department of neurology at Harvard University. People with damage to this area tend to have problems with repeating words they hear.

The new study in the Journal of Neuroscience also found that the pathways in this brain area, which usually have top and bottom branches, were implicated in tonal recognition. In fact, scientists could not identify a right-top branch in any of the 10 tone-deaf participants.

"The better you can tell the difference between two tones, the larger that particular brain pathway was," Loui said.

The findings do not mean there is no hope for tone deaf people, however.

"I think there's a lot of music training in general that could help enlarge these pathways," Loui said.

In fact, a treatment for tone deafness might also help people with speech disorders such as dyslexia, she said. There has been evidence that people with dyslexia have same auditory processing problems as people with tone deafness, she said. Her lab showed last year that children with musical training performed better on dyslexia tests.

On the other end of the spectrum, some people have perfect or "absolute" pitch, and can name any musical note they hear. Diana Deutsch, psychologist at the University of California, San Diego, has found people who speak "tone" languages, with words that change meaning entirely depending on tone, seem to have a greater likelihood of perfect pitch. More speakers of Mandarin and Cantonese, two tone languages, tend to have perfect pitch than English, for example, she said.

In theory, in Deutsch's view, it should be as easy to call a pitch "F" as it is to say that an object is red or blue.

"If you assume that there's something missing in our environment in terms of early exposure to the right types of sounds, and that it is bundled in with speech, then the whole thing makes sense," she said.


Practice. Practice. Practice.

Rainbows... Two of Them!

Last night while driving home from work I had to stop at the Home Depot store in Tewksbury to buy some spray paint to artlessly put our house number onto our new garbage barrels. (too much information? Deal with it!)

While walking into the store I saw this:
Ominous Pre-Rainbow Storm Clouds

Storm's a-comin'.

At the very moment I exited the building the rain started. Lucky me, eh? It was very large drops at first, but not many of them. I got into the car without getting very wet.

Just after I got into the car, however, the sky fell on me. It poured. It only lasted about five minutes though and then it pretty much stopped and the sun came back out.

By the time I reached the junction with route 93 I saw this:
Double Rainbow Drive Home

Rainbows are great, but look closely. You may have to click on the image and look at one of the larger versions of it to see the super cool aspect...

Do you see it?

That's right, there are TWO RAINBOWS.

I saw a double rainbow. I think it's only the second or third time I've seen one. I think that is wicked cool.

Double Rainbow Drive Home

Double Rainbow Drive Home

The only downside of those pictures is that you can't see what I saw while driving around the bend on the exit ramp. The inner, brighter rainbow was complete. You could see the entire thing. You could see where it started, all the way up to the top, and all the way down to the end where the Leprechaun was hiding with my gold!

I thought that was cool. I just wanted to share it.

Monday, August 24, 2009

No More Anonymity for Bloggers... sorry kids

So there was this blog, hosted by Google's blogger (just like this one that no one is reading right now) where this person anonymously trashed a model named Liskula Cohen. The title of said blog was the uber classy Skanks of New York. Terrible title for your site, but still better than the two rotten cruds I use. Anyway.

So Ms (Mrs? I'd look it up but I'm lazy) Cohen decides she doesn't like getting the Skank treatment and sues. But whom does she sue? The writer of the Skank page is unknown. What's a libeled fashion model to do? Smartly she goes after the company that hosts the skank site in an attempt to out the author so that she can sue the right person.

A judge (again, too lazy to get the specifics, like a name or a court) rules in favor of Ms Cohen and forces Google to unveil the author's name, Rosemary Port.

Ms Port then decides to sue Google:
“When I was being defended by attorneys for Google, I thought my right to privacy was being protected … Inherent in the First Amendment is the right to speak anonymously. Shouldn’t that right extend to the new public square of the Internet?”
I think you're out of line Ms Port. First of all, you have the right to free speech but you do not have the right to lie. Only Fox News, politicians, and baseball players caught using steroids have that right. Secondly, doesn't Ms Cohen have the right to face her accuser? I know the 6th amendment refers to court cases, but shouldn't that right extend to the court of public opinion? At least in cases like this where whether she is a skank or not can affect her profession? Who wants to book a skank for a photo shoot? Okay, well some magazines would gladly book skanks for photo shoots, but they are generally kept at the back or the store or in brown paper bags.

Okay, so I am getting off the point. The point is, if you want to write anonymously go ahead and do it. Have fun with it. Hell, Benjamin Franklin did it all the time. Just don't expect that your anonymity gives you the right to commit libel. If you are going to go after some one make sure you have evidence to back up your claims, and don't expect your hosting service to be your white knight and break the law so that you continue to break the law anonymously. It was a judge who told Google to out you. A judge. Do you understand that? It was a judge. Not a lawyer, not a reporter, not a politician... it was a judge. Did you really think that Google would ignore a ruling from the bench in order to let you continue to commit libel on your little blog?

If being anonymous is fun for you then go ahead and enjoy it. Just don't use it as a shield against responsibility. You still have to play by the rules. If you don't then you're going to have your anonymity taken away from you. Rightfully so.

I'm tired of writing this post now so I am going to stop right here.



http://mashable.com/2009/08/24/skanks-of-new-york-lawsuit/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_amendment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_Amendment

Stuff

So this weekend we had three hair cuts. One each for 3/4 of the household. We bought tons of new school clothes for the 2/4 of the family who are going back to school. We had steak and cake for my little brother who turned 32 on Sunday. If he's 32 then I must be really really old.

Sunday was a quiet stay at home kinda day. We did sneak out to Portsmouth for lunch and to see where Jen is working now. We also got a quick view of the ocean and a couple of light houses. I have decided that I really like light houses.

This week is looking pretty quiet. Laundry and food shopping and fun stuff. Some more work on our still yet undefined programming-at-home project. Maybe an episode of Scrubs or two.

Next weekend is still up in the air to some extent. We had a cook out with Mike and Tammy and Cecilia scheduled for this past Sunday that had to be postponed. One of the kids earned a Sunday full of being punished that was lightened slightly by our need to go out to lunch, but otherwise was stuck too all day. We are hoping to reschedule for this coming Sunday. I hope so it happens as I'm looking forward to seeing their new house. Jen also has a party with some old work friends on Sunday evening. Saturday is pretty much up in the air. There was some brief talk about maybe taking the kids to see the new Harry Potter. There is one scene that will undoubtedly result in nightmares for at least 1/2 of the household children, but I think we can work out a way to cover a pair of eyes or two when that scene happens. We'll have to be spot on with our timing, but we'll be able to pull it off. Still, that was only in the discussion phase. We might put that off for a few weeks more.

All of this is leading toward the One Big Event on the horizon...

The first day of school.

Not only is it the first day of school, but for one lucky little man it is the first day of first grade! I took a vacation day for that special day so I can join in on the fun. Hopefully all of the tears will come from a very happy and proud mom, and not from a nervous six year old. He's going to do fine, but he does seem a little apprehensive. Lucky for him he has a big sister to help show him the ropes.





On a totally unrelated subject, I want to watch these youtube clips later if I get a chance.



On a slightly unrelated topic, my wife is much much smarter than I am.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Quest

I am on a quest to get ice cream.

I do so love ice cream.

Grounded

I think grounding a kid for a day might be the most difficult thing ever.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

The Yankees Scored How Many Runs?

The is the most painful Red Sox stretch in a long while.

They scored 11 runs last night against the Yankees and still got blown out?

Yankees 20 - Red Sox 11?

When does hockey start?

This sucks.

Friday, August 21, 2009

The Twitter Wagon

Last night my wife, the beautiful Jennifer I rave so much about on these here pages, finally had a holy-shit-that-was-fun! experience on twitter.

One of the top 10 trending topics was #songsincode. Song lyrics written in source code. She ate it for lunch. She was so good at it that after a little while she had two or three people telling her how awesome her posts were and she was being retweeted left and right.

Here's what she posted. (I hope she doesn't mind being retweeted outside of twitter. hehe)

1: int acceptKnock= 3; int deniedKnock= 2; if (wantsMe) assert("Knock " + acceptKnock.ToString() + " times on the ceiling");

2: do { document.write("young") };

3: SELECT * FROM ROCK WHERE YOU Like 'Hurricane%'

4: if (forest.Unrest== true && trees.Trouble == true) maples.formUnion();

5: if (sprit.HasVision) { dream.HasMission = true} ;

6: for (int i=1; i<=4; i++) { assert(i.ToString() + " banana" } assert("Tra la la");

7: case (name == "love"): break;

8: if (!preacher.Son) !me.Reach();

9: if (you.Ready) { me.Ready = true; }

10: if (DateTime.Now.Hour == 5) { somewhere == true};

11: me.IsTooSexy(shirt) == true; me.IsTooSexy(milan) == true; me.IsTooSexy(NY) == true;

12: while (you.Breathe && you.Move) { me.DoWatch(you); }

13: you.GetOut(dreams); you.GetIn(car); me.Say(Yeah);

14: double money = 0; ArrayList chicks = new ArrayList(); foreach (chick in chicks) { chick.cost = money; }

15: if (me.Sing(!tune)) { you.WalkOut(me); }

16: leaves.color = #8B4513; sky.color == #A9A9A9; if (season == "Winter) { me.Dreaming(California);}

17: baby.color = #000000; me.feeling.color = #0000FF;

18: girl.dress.color = #000000; me.feeling.color = #0000FF;

19: me.GimmeThat(FiletOFish); me.GimmeThat(Fish);

20: if (!you) { me.Hear(birds) = false; }

21: debris.Contains(car); car.color = #DC143C; car.fireEngine(); foreach(Tire tire in car.Tires) { tire.SpitGravel(); };

22: ElderlyWoman.SetLocation(Pasadena);

23: if (DateTime.Now.Hour >= 9 && DateTime.Now.Hour <= 5) person.Working;

24: div id="oldOakTree" style = "color: #FAFAD2;">ribbon /div> (one < style="font-size:78%;">

There you have it. 24 reasons why I love my wife.




answer key... if I know the title I'll write it, if I don't I'll write the lyric... unless I can't figure it out, then we'll have to hope Mrs P adds a comment.

1: Knock three times by Tony Orlando
2: Forever Young by... Rod Stewart but he didn't write that one, did he?
3: Rock You Like a Hurricane in SQL by The Scorpions
4: The Trees by Rush (I would marry her all over again just for that)
5: Mission by Rush (I would marry her all over again for that one too)
6: The Banana Splits Theme. Absolute Genius!
7: Stop in the Name of Love by The Supremes.
8: Son of a Preacher Man (is that the title?) by Dusty Springfield (I think? Yes)
9: I'm Ready by Allison Weiss. A massive twitter user's song gets tweeted in code.
10: It's five o'clock somewhere.
11: I'm Too Sexy... Right Said Fred? Was that their name?
12: Every Breath You Take by The Police.
13: Get Out of My Dreams, Get Into My Car by some one whose name I forget. Billy Ocean?
14: Money for Nothing by Dire Straits. Freakin Brilliant!
15: A Little Help from My Friends by The Beatles. (I would marry her again for that one as well)
16: California Dreaming by The Mamas and the Papas. Pure #songsincode Gold!
17: Baby's in Black by The Beatles (another worthy of marrying all over again)
18: This one I don't know... girl in a black dress makes me blue. hmmmm
19: Gimme that Filet o Fish jingle. I wife is the most amazing person ever to exist among humans.
20: Till There Was You as done by The Beatles. Our wedding dance.
21: Red Barchetta by Rush. (do I have to tell you'd I'd remarry her for this? I would)
22: Little Old Lady from Pasadena.
23: Working 9 to 5.
24: Book ending with Tony Orlando... Tie a Yellow Ribbon.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

This Video Talks About Me

How many bloggers? Did I mention I found new trash barrels at Home Depot and they are nice? hehe

I am the inspiration for this video!



C'Mon and inflate this red head's ego some more!

C#

I have a degree in Computer Science. I am a programmer. When some one can't figure out how our application works I look directly at the code and tell them step by step what it does. I also have some nice tools that allow me to track data values as they are being operated on so that when a value is entered into the system and comes out as something unexpected or possibly even incorrect, I can track through and see where the fruitiness happens.

My beautiful wife is a Software Engineer. A really good one. If we worked in the same company she would be the one actually writing the application that my group uses. She'd be the brains behind it all.

When I was at Middlesex Community College my classes primarily used the programming language called C. I also spent one semester touching on C++ and another touching on Java. At UMass Lowell again most of the programming courses used C. One semester used C++. My senior project courses, 2 semesters, used a number of different things here and there including HTML, javascript, and Java Swing. There was also a little bit of lex and yak in a database class along with a little SQL, and one horrible semester's worth of Scheme. (a shudder of horror just went down my spine)

When I started my job all of that went out the window. The company I work for uses it's own language, it's own database, it's own operating system (in one of the platforms I work on), it's own email client, it's own word processor, it's own calendar/schedule program, it's own everything.

After a few years all of the language syntaxes and conventions and structures along with a lot of the design techniques I'd worked on in school were pretty much gone.

Then I met my wife. (Hi Jen!)

A lot of what I had done in school was already becoming obsolete when I graduated and Jen had already moved beyond it into new and better things. We had talked a lot about maybe trying to figure out a project that we could work on for fun that would have the side effect of keeping her skills sharp away from the office, and letting me see some of the cool stuff that has come along since I left school. Win/Win as far as I can see. Add to that the fact that we are very much two computer nerds who are inseparable and would enjoy nothing more than to sit side by side with a couple of computers hammering out geekiness for other people's online consumption. Wouldn't every married couple see that as a honkin' good time? If they don't then they should get the sticks out of their asses and do it.

Last night we finally got around to it. We have a couple of vague ideas for the overall project we want to work on. Maybe something social for families, or maybe something to catalog your DVD/CD collection. Maybe even simple things like a website for my father's tax business. Who knows what we'll end up with.

The first step, however, is getting me back up to speed using current tools. We started with Microsoft's Visual Studio .Net. I had used Visual Studio 6.0, but the next version after that was the first version of .Net and it changed everything. I was very much lost poking around the development environment, but Jen cleared up what I need to get by for now.

We also played with a language that was totally new for me, C#. It is an object oriented programming language that I had never looked at before. C++ and Java are both object oriented too, so conceptually it wasn't new to me, but I still had to dig the correct terminology out of the deep recesses of my memory, and get back into the swing of writing source code in a language that allows white space again.

We didn't do anything terribly useful for anything other than a teaching tool. We defined a class that defines a person and then defined a second class that defines a student which inherits the properties of a person. Simple stuff, but I hadn't used that portion of my brain in something like seven years. It was nice to brush a little dust off, and it was fun playing techie with my sweetie.

She wants to get into ASP .Net tonight. Server side programming. That's a new one for me. I've done some web stuff using HTML and javascript and even a tiny bit of XML but it was all client side. I'm looking forward to the next lesson. Believe it or not, dorky stuff like this is fun.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Happy Birthday Ginger Baker cont... cont...

And another one. These are the only three songs from this shoot that I know of. Are there more?

Happy Birthday Ginger Baker cont...

Another song from the same shoot...

Happy Birthday Ginger Baker

The British invasion is starting to reach their 70's. Today is Cream/Blind Faith drummer Ginger Baker's 70th birthday.

Happy Birthday Ginger!

Weird Day

Today is one of those weird days when I have nothing to talk about. Nothing to bitch about, nothing to complain about, nothing to whine about. It's really weird.

All this week I have been going into work an hour early and getting out at 4:30 instead of 5:30. It's a little one-week-per-summer-benefit they give us. On top of that, yesterday I had a dentist appointment at 4:45 so I took a half day and left work at noon.

The dentist canceled the appointment. I went to Home Depot and bought a couple of new metal garbage barrels to replace our half eaten plastic one. (the squirrels did a number on it. Hopefully they aren't genetically superior squirrels, like the black squirrels in my parent's yard, who can eat through metal.) I need to get some bungee chords to hold the covers down and some spray paint to paint our address on them. Two things I could have done yesterday but just plain forgot.

Since I was home without a dentist appointment I was able to get the kids at day care and bring them to karate class. There was almost an hour of free time in the middle so we went to a play ground in Salem and they had a good time climbing all over stuff while Robbie stressed over the thousands of ways they could have gotten hurt. Of course they didn't get hurt at all.

I got a treat at karate too. We were under the impression that now that the kids are in the big kids karate class parents are not allowed to sit and watch like they could at the little kid's class. I had planned to drop them off and drive across the street to dunkin donuts and grab a soda and a table and read a book for half an hour before going to pick them up. Instead they asked the teacher if I could stay and he said yes... which now makes sense seeing as there were 4-5 other grown ups watching the class as well.

When we got home mom had made us dinner. A dinner from my past, as it were. When I was younger my mother used to make us something she called Toutins. Here's what you do. Put some oil in a pan and put it on the stove. Take a big ball of pizza dough and rip off a few hand fulls and drop them into the oil. Flip 'em a few times and when they are brown on both sides you eat them. How that is different from fried dough I don't know. What I do know is that they are yummy and the kids really liked them.

What do you know, Toutins are a Newfie thing! From wikipedia:
Toutin (or Tiffin or Touton) is a Newfoundland term for a dough cake fried in fat and made from fresh bread dough which was normally in excess of the amount needed to fill loaf pans. It has many terms and spelling depending on the community in which people of Newfoundland were from. Some of the more common spellings of toutin is toutan, touten, touton, and towtent.[1] It also had some colorful names such as damper dogs or damper devils which was in direct reference to how the toutin was cooked, on the damper of a stove fueled by natural combustible materials such as firewood and coals.

Depending on where one is in the province, there are many other colorful names including fantails, gandies, posies etc.


Tonight Jen and I are going to my parent's house to play the ol' car swap game again. We had Jen's Saturn in the shop for problems with the wheels last week. This week it is going back in to have the breaks done. My folk's will let us borrow one of their cars until we get our car back. That is a sweet deal and I can't thank my parents enough for it. Thanks!

What else, what else... This weekend is a kid weekend so we won't be cleaning up the playroom or the office. I might try to move their computer desk from point A to point B anyway. Next weekend is a kids weekend too due to their taking a trip to Pennsylvania with their dad last weekend. They saw the Liberty Bell, and the bridge of the USS Enterprise D, which apparently lives in Philly.

Do you see what happened here? Why is it that when I clearly have nothing to complain about I just write something in order to have something and it ends up being a pretty long post? Funny how that happens, isn't it?

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

iPhone About to be the #1 Camera on Flickr?

Mashable reported today that the iPhone is about to become the most used camera on Flickr.

People are able to use their iPhone, or other smart phone, to take a picture and immediately upload it to the site. No wires or computer middlemen needed, just take it and post it.

It also means that the overall quality of pictures on Flickr is dropping fast. The 3G has a two megapixel camera, the 3GS has a 3 megapixel camera. The soon-to-be-supplanted-#1-camera, the Canon Digital Rebel series, start at about 10 megapixels and have ass kicking lenses and unreal features that would allow even a hack like me to take really good pictures now and then. The iPhone? Not so much. So the result is Flickr will host many many more pictures that are of a much crappier quality.

I'll take the blame for this one. Look at all these crappy pictures I've uploaded off of my iPhone. I have a whole set!

And because I am a picture whore, here are a few hi(low)lights.

0eccd69a

Out in Boston

Out in Boston

Honeymoon Day One

Honeymoon Day One

photo

photo

photo

The Cupcake Boutique

photo-723347

I started a group called iPhone Astrophotography which proves I'm the only twit in the universe who takes cheesy astronomy themed pictures with his iPhone.
photo(2)

IMG_0370

I'm working a half day today due to a Dentist appointment (grrrrrrrr). I have a shit load of errands to run too, but I am hoping I will be able to spare a few minutes to take my camera to the Spicket River waterfall in Methuen and grab a shot or two. Keep your fingers crossed.

Monday, August 17, 2009

RiffTrax

I'm a little confused... and I think I might be way out of date with my info...

So... A bunch of people from Mystery Science Theater 3000 have a new Internet mail order DVD project called Cinematic Titanic which basically is MST3K under a different name. I knew that, I've seen a few of the DVDs, it's awesome and you should love it.

What I did not know, is that three other former cast members/writers from MST3K have a separate project doing exactly the same thing called RiffTrax. RiffTrax apparently shows less mercy upon the Hollywood elite by destroying big budget block busters instead of mostly forgotten B movies. In fact, I just watched a clip of them hammering away brilliantly on Star Wars Episode III.

What brought this second slice of brilliance pie to my attention? @BadAstronomer on twitter posted that there was going to be a RiffTrax movie event. Here is the link to the announcement.

In short, you will be able to go to a cinema near you to see a simulcast of the guys riffing on none other than the worst movie ever made, Plan 9 from Outer Space. This is incredibly cool, although not as cool as the Cinematic Titanic group going on tour about a year ago... that was cooler... I wonder if there is animosity between the two groups. Lawsuits and name calling and what not.

Still, as coolness goes, this ranks exceptionally high. Especially when the target film is the atrociously horrible Plan 9. On the awesome scale from 1-10 this clocks in at about a 2,000.

We won't be going, but if you can get there you should. Here is a link to the list of participating theaters. For those of you who live near me, the best bet looks like the AMC in Burlington, MA.

Good luck getting tickets and laugh your ass off.

iPhones are Cooler Today Then They Were Yesterday

It's here. Turn by turn directions from a name brand for the iPhone 3G and 3GS. The new TomTom GPS application is now available.

It's expensive. The US version is selling for $99.99. It's also huge. At 1.21 gigs it would eat up over 15% of my phone's memory. Hopefully by the time I need to upgrade my phone they'll be selling 120 gig models. That's what I call drool worthy.

Here's a video of the app in use... sort of. At least you'll get to see what it looks like, even if you don't really see it in action.



I'm not getting it because we already have a GPS system for any trips we might go on. (we named it Dorothy, as in click your heels three times to get home) If, however, you are in the market for one it looks like it's cheaper than a stand alone model, and it's on your iPhone which gives it 50 times the coolness points.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Define Brilliant

Adds

Should I put adds on this page?

Should I?

I can do it real easy with Google. In fact there is a link on the dashboard for Blogger that is called Monetize.

I have held off doing it because I'm a hippie rocker, not a sell out corporate stooge. I have also held off doing it because only four people (including me) actually read this. (Hi Jen, Hi Mary, Hi Chris)

What to do, what to do.

Hot Stuff

7:00am... it already feels like it's 120 degrees in the house.

Is there an additional air conditioner purchase in our future?

Could be.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Keys

A couple of years ago my friend Larry started some huge renovations on his house. He completely rebuilt the second floor, moving everything he could to the first floor. He didn't quite have enough room downstairs though and asked for some help in storing stuff.

He asked me to hold onto his very swanky Korg SP-100 electric piano. I agreed and took it to my house and put it into the computer room. I never played it, but I held onto it, and it's cool so it was nice to look at.

Shortly after that I moved out into Chez 'Plex and the piano stayed where it was. Jen's kids however had begun taking piano lessons. They had a keyboard to practice on at their father's house, but not at our house.

Over the last few weeks their teacher has been getting on us about making them practice. Well, one plus one equals two and now Larry's piano is in our office so the kids can play piano when their here too.

photo

Very swanky.

Errands Kinda Saturday

We're running errands and trying not to overheat in the hot summer (finally!) weather.

Jen is starting a new job this week so we are about to get her some new threads. It should be nice and frosty cool in the mall. Sweet!

Friday, August 14, 2009

Les Paul

I'm feeling pretty sad about Les Paul. He was 94 years old and had many many illnesses and injuries that must have made his last years difficult, but he was an extraordinary person.

He was an excellent guitar player. He played country early in his career and then mostly jazz. His most recognizable recordings are with his former wife, Mary Ford, as well as his own band, The Les Paul Trio.

All that aside though, he literally invented modern music from the recording point of view. The story goes that he was always a tinkerer. He built an electric guitar for himself out of a railroad tie. It was the world's first solid body guitar. That in itself revolutionized everything as, when he teamed up with Gibson to manufacture their Les Paul series of guitars, it eliminated much of the extraneous noise produced by the early electric guitars, it allowed guitarists a seemingly endless amount of sustain (that is the duration of a note. Early electric guitars couldn't hold onto a note for very long), and it eliminated a lot of the horrible feedback early electrics produced. It's not hard to extend those innovations to their logical conclusion: Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton all destroying the ear drums of legions of Rock and Roll fans while playing Les Pauls in The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, The Jeff Beck Group, and Cream. Jimi Hendrix stands as the missing link in that chain. He mostly used Fender guitars, Gibson's primary competition in the market. He was rarely seen playing a Les Paul (pictures do exist though) but those Stratocasters were still solid bodies. Even the Strat and the Tele owe a debt to Les Paul.

Again, the invention of the solid body electric guitar alone could make Les Paul a legend in the music industry... but he topped that in a major way.

The story continues that Bing Crosby gave him a tape recorder. A single track, mono, reel to reel tape deck. He took that machine and started messing with it. He developed new techniques and invented new hardware that turned the music industry on it's head.

Les Paul and Mary Ford released records where Ford can be heard singing harmony... with herself. Paul could be heard playing two separate guitar parts at the same time. That was revolutionary. It was, frankly, impossible. How could one voice be heard singing along with itself? Magic? Nope. Multi-tracking. I think he initially used two machines. He would record a take of the song on one machine, then he would record the playback along with another take onto the second machine. Eventually this lead to having more than one record head on the tape machine. That way they could record one take onto a strip of the magnetic tape, then rewind and record another take onto a separate strip of the tape while listening to the first strip.

He did other things with a tape recorder that may seem simple now, but at the time were stunning. How did he play so fast? How did he play notes that were higher than the guitar's pitch range? Simple, he changed the speed of the tape. High end tape recorders offered two tape speeds. 15 inches per second and 7.5 inches per second. (Or was it 32 ips and 15 ips. I am going to look like a total buffoon if those numbers are inaccurate. It's been a loooong time, but I am pretty sure I have them right. Let's just say for the sake of this post that it was 15 and 7.5) The faster the tape moves across the record head, the higher the quality of the recording. Professional recording engineers used 15 ips. However, music is math. If you divide the speed of the recording in half (15/2=7.5) you also divide the tempo of the recorded music in half. You also cut the frequency of the music in half. It's not common knowledge, but if you divide the frequency of a note in half you lower the pitch by one octave. So Les would record his band at 15 ips and then record himself playing at 7.5 ips. The tempo of the music would be half of the original recording, but the music would be in the same key, one octave lower. When his 7.5 ips recording was played at the normal 15 ips it would sound as if he were playing twice as fast as he actually did and the picthes would be one octave higher than they actually were. In real terms, he was able to play notes that were higher than his guitar could physically reach, and at a blinding speed.

There is one other innovation that can't be left unmentioned. Les Paul figured out a way to separate the record head and the playback head on the tape machine. He put them in different places. He then would take the playback from one track and record it onto a second track. Because the two heads were in different places there was a delay between the playing and the recording. The result? Tape echo. Hugely ground breaking. It was an electronic way to produce an echo. Brilliant. It opened the door for a seemingly infinite number of electronic effects, none of witch sound any better than Les's tape echo.

Put it simply: The recording industry we have today would not exist without Les Paul. He is a giant. He is a legend. Rest in Peace Les Paul.

Now for my stupid pictures of Gibson Les Paul guitars.

This is the second Les Paul I've owned. The first was a Les Paul Deluxe that was stolen from my car in 1990. Even though this one is a custom and much higher quality, I am still crushed over the loss of my Deluxe. It was awesome.
...after changing the pick ups and machine heads.

This picture is from the recent Break Even reunion. There were three guitar players playing that day. All three were playing Les Pauls. I had my custom, Steve had his standard, and Tim played an Epiphone copy. Epiphone used to be a high end guitar maker but at some point in the past Gibson bought them and turned them into low end Gibson product line. "Low end" in this case being relative, as an Epiphone still kicks the ass out of just about any other guitar.
Three Les Pauls

Finally, a shot of me playing my Les Paul... probably poorly, but it can't be any worse than my singing.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Les Paul has died at the age of 94.

Coming Up Empty

What to say? No idea.

Check out this USA Today story on former Red Sox and current Reds pitcher Bronson Arroyo. In it he talks very openly about taking supplements, blurring the line between supplements and steroids, and the general issue of drugs in baseball. It's an interesting read. It might be the first time I've heard a player be completely open about the situation. He says he expects that he's on the list of 104 players from the 2003 drug tests. He also says that he takes many items that are not on baseball's banned list, but also aren't on the approved list. The story hints that a 50 game suspension might be in his future. Is he being reckless? Yes. Is he being smart? Absolutely. When his inevitable 50 game vacation comes down the pike he can look at this story and say, I didn't take steroids and I told you all about it. Nice move.

The Red Sox play at 1:35 today. After getting annihilated by the Yankees they have a chance to annihilate the 1st place Tigers in return. It's not exactly payback, but if feels good. We get Texas over the weekend. Hopefully we'll be able to open up some breathing room in the wild card race.

We need to go on a weekend getaway. We won't because we're using our money for other more important things, but I would love to go hide some where for an overnight. The mountains beckon. The Ocean beckons. The Pawtucket Red Sox beckon. (and by that I mean everything beckons) Leave a comment and suggest something.

There is a game night this weekend. We might have to miss it. There will be kids there and there will be others with recently compromised immune systems. Jen and I have been hanging around with a kid who has pneumonia that was caused by a contagious bacterial infection. I am 99% sure no one would get anything from us. I am 100% sure that the other 1% makes staying away a smart move. If we don't go we'll volunteer to host the next one, and if someone already claimed September we'll do October. Maybe we'll do that even if we do go.

I've got nothing else on my mind right now. I guess I'll leave it there for now. Have a good one, everybody.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight

Spinal Tap tried to include this video on a DVD release. Lego refused to allow it.

This is brilliant. Watch it. Live it. Love it.

Thinking About Buying Microsoft Word?

Have you been thinking about buying Microsoft Word?

You might be out of luck.

Looks like Word includes a patented piece of software related somehow to handling XML. The patent belongs to a Canadian company called i4i Inc. They took Microsoft to court for patent infringement and won.

As the article states, there is no way this is going to end with Word disappearing from the U.S. market. MS will shell out money to keep i4i quiet and all of the MS Office products will go merrily on their way.

But, if you want an alternative you could try Open Office. It's a Sun Microsystems product, it's free, it's open source, and it can handle anything Microsoft Office can handle.

Or you could always try Google Docs. It is Google's entry into the Office software fray, it's free, and it's all web based. If you like it you can impress people by telling them you're into Cloud Computing.

Enjoy!

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Flapjack - The Plague Song

A few minutes ago I was struck with an unstoppable need to know the lyrics to the song the plague rat sings on the show The Misadventures of Flapjack.

Found it



Ohhhhh! Tryin' to make friends, but people are jerks!

So I'm gunna' put some fleas on you!

And the fleas will have the plague and they'll make you cough a lot!

Then you'll be too sick to hurt my feelings anymore!

again

This is brilliant

Monday, August 10, 2009

Pests and Car Issues

I've talked here a few times about how much I hate house centipedes. They are evil and vile and I want them to be extinct. (at least from our house)

On Saturday we were at an auto shop getting one of the cars inspected and I saw this van...



Perfect, thinks me, if we see more than the occasional centipede (we've only seen a couple this summer) we can call those folks to brutally murder the rest of them.

At that moment I happened to look across the street and I saw this...



You can't make it out on this iPhone photo, but the little white building with the red shutters is an exterminator's office. Was some one trying to tell us something?

As for the car, it flunked the Mass state inspection due to bad tires. The tires looked fine to me, but I'm clueless. They told us the back tires needed to be replaced. So, we went up to Sullivan Tire in Salem and got them replaced. Perfect! Not really. They told us that the struts were leaking and the CV Boot was ripped. I had never heard of a CV Boot. Jen's mother had. She had because one of hers went bad and she lost the ability to steer the car. So... the car is in the shop, hopefully getting a new CV Boot today.

Oh, and after getting tires we went back to the station across the street from the exterminator and got reinspected. The little blue car is now legal. It's in the shop, but it's legal.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Saturday, August 8, 2009

I got a new case for my iPhone and took a pic of my wife to celebrate.

Harry 6

We are at Jordan's Furniture in Natick, about to see Harry Potter on
IMAX.

Inspection Blues

The Saturn flunked inspection! Bummer. They failed it over the rear
tires so we are out getting new ones. It'll take an hour. Then we
will try to get reinspected.

OS3 update

There's an iphone update. Plug in yer phone and get it.

Gee I hope it fixes the slowness-everywhere bug.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Another nice thing about www.alonetone.com is that you can play music from it on your iPhone. You can't use the play function but you can use the download function. When you press the link it will load the file in a QuickTime player (just like firefox does). It can only handle one song at a time, which sucks, but if you Absolutely must hear that one song like right now it will work for you.

iPhones freakin' rock!

ListenApp!

There is this site, right, called alonetone.

It's a music site geared toward musicians. It's more than just another place to post your songs so folks can hear them, it's a community. Lots of songwriters/performers/recording artists hanging out and listening to each other's work.

I started posting there a while ago... probably over a year at least. The site was very new and the community very small and I dumped the few 8 track recordings I had done back in 2007 there. It's a very clean and simple site. No clutter, no garbage. It does what it does and I really like it.

Now there is a tool for people who want to just listen to music, rather than plug their own. It's called ListenApp!. It's an iTunes looking web application that will play music hosted by alonetone. It's also brand new and pretty buggy. I am a Firefox user 99% of the time, but I couldn't get it to stream anything so I tried Safari and it worked. (I know the creator of alonetone uses Safari, so when something seems buggy to me I use that browser to see if it's just me or not.)

Anyway, if you're looking for someplace to go to listen to some music that you've never heard before and probably won't hear anywhere else give this new site a try.

It's called ListenApp! and in case you're wondering, my stuff is under the name Robert James.

Photo Shoot


Photo Shoot Voyuer
Originally uploaded by robj_1971
Yesterday just after I pulled out of the office's driveway and stopped at the nearest light I saw two people having a little photo shoot on the grass next to the road. I sneaked a picture with my phone.

I wondered how many random passers bye have smiled while snapping a picture of me taking a picture of Jen. Has that ever happened?

I kind of hope so.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Cheer You Up on a Twitterless Day

Enjoy


Extreme Pool Jump - Funny bloopers R us

It Sort of Continues

I can see the tweets from the people I follow, but I can't actually post anything myself. So the twitter problems continue for some of us.

Now Mashable is reporting that the problems facebook had earlier today were also due to a denial of service attack.

Let's sum up...

The two sites that people generally go to these days when they are bored or have lots of time to kill or just plain don't wanna work are twitter and facebook.

Some one, some where, was so bored with the places you go when you're board that he/she took the time and energy to architect their temporary destruction.

Talk about having too much free time!

Myspace worked fine though. What does that tell ya Rupert Murdock?

The Crisis Continues!

As I sit here I am watching firefox try to load twitter... and it just failed.

A few minutes ago I even had problems loading flickr! Oh no!

(myspace looks fine, but who really cares?)

Here is that song by The Who I referenced in the last post. "Another Tricky Day" from Face Dances.

I tried to use myflashfetish.com for the mp3 player but that site appears to be a mess today too. Coincidence? (yeah, I think it is) I found this little one song embed here. It'll do for now.



Of course... twitter just loaded for me. So I guess it's over for now.

For now.

Addendum 12:47pm - Twitter is down again. My post is relevant once more.

Apocalypse Right Effing Now!

What are we going to do? The end is here! Run for your social networking lives!

Twitter has been down since just after I got to work, around quarter to nine.

Facebook has been really slow all morning too. I've seen pages fail to load and I've gotten network connection errors that are definitely not on my end.

Twitter's status blog says they are defending themselves against a denial of service attack. Two things of note there. First, I think defending might be overstating the fact given the 2+ hour outage. Second, anyone find it giggleable that Twitter's status blog is on Tumblr?

Mashable has commented on the ongoing social crisis (which just allowed a The Who song to pop into my head. "This is no social crisis, just another tricky day for you." Mashable is fast becoming my online bible. I get so much good stuff from them. Granted, none of it is anything that I can actually make use of for anything other than talking about Twitter and Facebook and other social networking sites. Still, I could live on that site if I had to... as long as I had Blogger and Facebook and Twitter (oh my!).

While I was typing this I went to Mashable's home page to get the link because I am too lazy to write it out myself and therefore must copy and past it here. Their latest article is about twitter's announcing their denial of service attack. If only I'd typed this post out quicker... I could have scooped them! I got that info from Twitter's Tumblog (hehe) something like 10 minutes ago. Damn!

Hang onto your hats social networkers. We can make it through this. We can survive. We can still go to myspace. (heheh just kidding) Leave comments here to discuss how you are dealing with the situation. We'll get through this together.

Good luck!

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Stumbleupon Pads My Stats

So I added a bunch of my pictures from Flickr to Stumbleupon. Yes, I am a hit count whore. I thought it would bump up my hits a little... A little. I now have over 20 pictures with over 100 views. The previous high was 80. The current high is 785. Still low numbers compared to most users, but I don't care. Three digit view counts rule.

I made a slide show... that required me to make a set... which is even more narcissistic back patting, but who cares. I am, as recently stated, a hit count whore.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Hot Tuna on Minnesota Public Radio 8/3/09

I got this one from the source, Jorma Kaukonen on twitter. Hot Tuna in studio on Minnesota Public radio yesterday morning.

They are playing electric in Lowell next month. I marked it on my calendar but probably won't be going. Hopefully the embedded player works and you can enjoy this. It runs about an hour. the actual program doesn't begin until about two minutes into the stream. Most of it is interviews, but they do treat us to three songs.

Annoying Drivers Annoy me.

Yesterday, morning commute. There was this woman on a motorcycle who was driving me crazy. She was going as slow as possible. There were times I thought her bike would fall over because she wasn't moving fast enough to keep it balanced. On rt 126 in Wayland I cut out early to jump over to rt 27 at the first of the crossing points I know of. Of course when I reached the rt 27 end of the second crossing she pulled out in front of me again. I was steamed.

Fast-forward to the evening commute. I was stuck behind a huge truck on the smallest residential street imaginable.



This guy was almost as bad as the motorcycle had been, but with the added bonus that cars coming in the other direction had to pull off the road to let his dumb ass go by.

After a mile or so I turned off and the truck didn't. Thankfully... or so I thought. I pulled up behind this.



Can you guess who that is? It's the same friggin' motorcycle I was pissed off at during the drive into work. There she was again. Pissing me off once more. Talk about dumb luck.

Once I got home it was all better though. Jen suggested going out to eat. We went to the 99 in Salem and had a nice dinner. Afterward I got to take a rare summer iPhone astrophotography picture.



After we got home we ate some cake that Jen made while I was fuming at the assholes in front of me on the ride home. So it all worked out in the end.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Monday Morning Blues

Ahh those mean old Monday morning blues. I've got 'em bad.

Not really, I just wish it were still the weekend.

In reference to this post here, we failed in our attempt to make cookie dough cupcakes. We don't own a cup cake pan. Damn, we thought we did but we didn't. So the cup cakes were a Fail.

We made a cake instead. The cake had cookie dough frosting.

Win Win Win Win Win.

Oh so good. Oh so very very good.

We all helped a little with various parts of the baking process, but really all the delicious credit goes to Jen. That is one damn good cake. Unfortunately we have been asked by one of the kids to save some for the next time they stay with us. That would be Wednesday. That means I can't sow down the remaining cake until Wednesday night at the earliest. That's two full days of non-cake eating.

I hope I can hold out.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Wow, Look at the Time!

It's almost 5:00pm and I haven't posted here yet! What's the matter with me? I don't think I've missed a day since I started this ridiculous waste of time back in November. What a shame to miss a day now.

What have we done today?

Sleep.

After coming home from the emergency room late last night (she's fine, we just didn't give the medicine enough time to bring the fever down and got a little scared) we went to bed and were all so tired we managed to sleep a little bit late.

Once we got up I started laundry, then I played a hard hitting game of Mouse Trap with the kids. After a few on-demand cartoons Jen and my step son went grocery shopping while the sick girl and I stayed home and watched Freaky Friday... the Lindsy Lohan version. How do you spell, "ouch?"

Then we had lunch, followed by a very competitive game of Life. After all these years I still think it's the best board game in the known universe.

After Life the kids wanted to sit on the living room and play games on our laptops. Now Mom is making us an Indian food dinner. After that we'll have some more of the cake we baked yesterday.

Did I mention we baked a chocolate chip cookie dough cake with home made cookie dough frosting? I had one bite and my heart rate increased by 20%. Bliss.

It's been a long, busy weekend that some how barely involved us leaving the house. It's been a blast.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Right Move, Bad Timing

We seem to have picked the wrong night to get scared by an eight year
old's fever and go to the emergency room.

The fever was down two degrees at check in and that was two and a half
hours ago. When the doctor finally got here 30 minutes ago the fever
was just about gone, but in the interest of ruling out even the most
unlikely causes she is getting an X-Ray.

Given what we know now we could have waited untill morning, but coming
here and putting our minds at ease was the right thing to do... Even
if we're still here at midnight. It royally sucks, but it's the right
thing to do.

She's fine.

T-Bird

When I see one of these I really miss my old Thunderbird, even if it
was a P.O.S.

Amoxicillin

>scratch scratch<

So my Dentist put me on the antibiotic Amoxicillin.

>scratch scratch scratch<

Did you know that Amoxicillin can have side effects?

>scratch scratch<

Did you know that one possible side effect is itchiness?

>scratch scratch scratch scratch<

Might be time to self un-medicate.

>scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch<