If anyone owes the troops an apology, he said, it’s “George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it.”
Rock on, Kerry-dude!
Sphere: Related ContentSo last week Ben came home frmo school with a notice saying that his teacher would like him to start attending a before-school math tutoring session. It said something like she felt our child could benefit from some additional help.
I was very disappointed because I had always heard from Ben that he did well in math. And after the shake-up at the beginning of the year where he was hiding some homework that wasn’t done I was wondering what was going on with my guy. So all of a sudden he needs special tutoring BEFORE school?!
ugh.
While I was disappointed in this news I was encouraged by his apparent enthusiasm for it. He actually seemed excited about it. I thought that was pretty fortunate because if the kid is struggling in math its great that he’s optimistic about it.
…
I had it all wrong. ALL WRONG. The class isn’t for kids who are struggling. Its for kids who are doing exceptionally well!! The teacher took all the smartest kids in class and asked them to start coming early so they could learn more advanced math concepts!!
HOW GREAT IS THAT?!!
I was so wrong and it felt so great to hear that! I LOVE news like that!!
Ain’t that great?!
Sphere: Related ContentSo I got an advertisement from Adorama Photo for their new digital photography service. Just like Shutterfly or Ofoto you can send them pctures and they will develop them and send them to you.
I used the promotional code PXHAWE06 to get 50 photos for the cost of shipping ($5). Which is great! I had a bunch of pictures that needed to be developed.
Sphere: Related ContentTruck Spills 2 Tons of Pig Heads on Road
October 31,2006 | NEW YORK — Google Inc. has acquired a California startup that develops online collaboration tools known as wikis.
The announcement came Tuesday through separate Web log postings by Google and JotSpot Inc. Terms were not immediately disclosed.
Wiki tools, popularized by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, let users to create, modify and even delete information on what others in a group have worked.
As JotSpot makes the transition to Google’s systems, new registrations have been suspended.
JotSpot has both free and paid versions. The free, JotSpot-hosted service restricts the number of pages and the size of the collaborating group.
Shares of Google rose $2.32 to $478.89 in early trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Sphere: Related ContentSo another weekend has come and gone. This one was finally more productive than the others. I have to admit that since we started doing scouts a lot more of our weekends are occupied. Well, maybe not. I mean we’re not doing soccer any more so maybe that means FEWER of our weekends are consumed by a kid event.
In any case, I recently got Liz a small LCD television for the kitchen. It was part of an anniversary present. Naturally when we got it set up it couldn’t pick up any signals in that part of the house. I tried an interesting device to send a television signal wirelessly at 2.4Ghz but I couldn’t make that work. And I knew that at best the signal wouldn’t as good as what Liz was used to.
So I agreed to run cable to the kitchen. I took my help, Chloe, to Home Depot and picked up some new coax cable – 50’ of white, a splitter and a 6’ white cable and a bunch of clips. I spent much of Sunday running cable and trying to keep it tucked out of the way. I drilled holes in walls and got use my staple gun for what it was intended. No kidding it took a couple of hours. In the end I have to admit that I rather like how it turned out.
It starts in the basement behind the TV where there is now a splitter. It goes up the doorjam of the stairs, across the top of the doorjam and in to the stairwell. Then it shimmies up one corner and hides under a board all the way to the front/top of the stairs. This part was easy because the stairwell is pretty ugly and kind of dimly lit so a stray cable doesn’t look out of place, no matter how discretely and tastefully its hidden away.
Then it zips through a half-inch hole in the wall to reappear behind the coffee maker and dish drainer where it passes behind the sink. The white color of the cable is actually more attractive than the crack that was there before! Finally it winds its way behind the microwave where it pops up behind the television ready for use.
So that’s what we did with Sunday.
Ben came home with a cold and a fever on Friday afternoon. So he didn’t do anything all weekend. All the other kids went for swimming lessons on Saturday morning and asked if they could please please please keep taking swimming lessons through the winter. However, they did ask if we could please look in to the 9am class instead of the 8am class.
MMMmmm… no. I like the 9am class better because it leaves the whole rest of the day free for other activities. And since I’m the Dad I get to decide these things. “Benevolent Dictator” and all that.
Rats, where’s the time gone? The end of the day caught up with me quicker than I expected. I have to run because I am expecting several visitors tonight to give me popcorn order forms for their cubscouts. I have to fill what orders I can from the shipment I have in my basement and then place orders for whatever is left. I think I’ll be doing this all flipping night unless I get a move on!
Peace out!
Sphere: Related ContentSome days are more productive than others. Because of the nature of my job, sometimes I come to work and solve 100 different problems. I leave work and feel great about a job well done. Other days, like today, I can’t seem to fix even one single thing. I have spent ALL day trying to get some client software installed on a laptop and its STILL not working. We had this problem a while back, so I feel its important to find the underlying problem rather than sweep it under the rug by re-imaging the machine. So I’ve “wasted” practically my whole day by not figuring out the problem.
But sometimes, that’s what it takes to get to the answer.
Sphere: Related ContentSo yesterday evening I got home from work and immediately took Benjamin and Gabriel around the block to start selling popcorn to our neighbors. I was a little nervous because I wasn’t sure how well the boys would do with rejection.
When I was a kid we would sell tickets to a troop jamboree. I don’t remember how much they cost but we would set up at the local civic center and demonstrate “scout skills” I realize now and probably understood then too, that this was a pretty lame event. What I don’t think I grasped was how kind it was of my neighbors to support me when I asked for it. Although, even with the generous neighbors I had as a kid only a few of them had any interest in buying tickets to the scout jamboree.
So I wasn’t sure how they would handle rejection. The good news is that after visiting maybe 12 houses in an hour last night I’m still not sure how they would handle rejection because virtually nobody rejected them!!
There was one house of foreigners who maybe didn’t know anything about the scouts who turned their noses up at the price of the popcorn and didn’t buy any, but I attribute that to not understanding what the scouts were doing.
Otherwsie, EVERYONE gave us something. One old man didn’t want any popcorn but gave us $1.75!! Another woman who didn’t want popcorn actually went to the trouble of writing us a check for $5!
The boys were very good about how they presented themselves. They would ring the bell and then when someone answered it they would nervously introduce themselves:
“Hi! My name is Ben/Gabe Solomon and I’m with cub scout pack 615 here in Melrose. Would you be interested in buying some popcorn to support scouting?”
They were IRRESISTABLE!! Young women and old women would smile and giggle at the adorable scouts in their uniforms who were being unbelievably polite in a day and age when few children offer respect to their elders and are polite. There were some working men (like tradesmen) who were very generous as well. Everyone seemed to like scouting! It was very impressive. By the end of the hour Gabriel didn’t want to do the talking any more and would have been happy to let Ben do the talking. But I think they actually get something out of the process so I wouldn’t let him back out.
They sold a fair amount of popcorn and said they would like to go out again tonight. I wouldn’t mind going out again, but I would prefer to do it before the sun goes down, which is about 5:45pm here.
Sphere: Related ContentWay back when I was a lad, just cutting my teeth on fantasy and science fiction literature, my parents used to take me to the local bookstore where they would spend literally hours of time wandering their three aisles of books. No joke: three aisles. no exaggeration: hours. the bookstore was called “Gateway”. As I recall, the last time I was in my hometown it had closed down.
Well, my brother and I had to find something to do there, so we would pick out a book in short order and sit down to read it. In truth we rarely got very far in to the books. In any case, one of the first and most accessible real fantasy books I read was called “A Spell for Chameleon” by Piers Anthony. Although I have fond memories of it I have no illusions about its place in the pantheon of fantasy literature.
I looked at Epinions to see what they thought of it and they used words like lighthearted, imaginative, juvenile and inconsequential.
I remember someone I knew described Piers Anthony as a mysoginist. I don’t remember that coming through in this book, but its been, maybe 25 years since I read it. wow.
So when Ben and I were returning from camping we were talking about things and he expressed an interest in writing in general and about gnomes in particular. He’s developed an interest/fascination with gnomes lately. Don’t ask why - well, don’t ask me.
You can ask him, but I have no idea.
So we were talking on the way home and his interest in fantasy in general and writing made me think that he’s probably ready to take on a full-sized book and I remember A Spell for Chameleon as being funny and silly and … accessible, you know? He’s ten years old. I think he’ll dig it.
So I ordered it from half.com and it just arrived today, so I can give it to him this evening.
I wonder if he’ll be interested or just discard it.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
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