The new kids

In a fit of serendipity, two kids made it over to Stacey's sleepover this weekend who have never been able to come before, which was great. Stacey and I are always happy to entertain new people at the house. When I realized that these two made 14 unique girls who had slept over during the past 4 years, I took the opportunity to reflect on how the behavior of this year's gang of 10 year olds differs from the sleepovers of the past -- how the new kids differ from the old kids, and to reflect on how happy and proud I am that so many kids find Stacey likable enough to want to come spend the night, and that so many families find me, a single dad, trustworthy enough to send their girls over. Even though Stacey and I face challenges in life, I feel that we are truly blessed.

The event this weekend was simple and lighthearted, we just went out for pizza and rented movies, and I did nothing more than set up mattresses in the family room, make Rice Krispies treats, and retire to my room with a book (Better Off) until I zonked out. As Stacey and her friends grow up, entertaining takes a lot less out of me. A few years ago, the kids were interested that I hang out with them, watch the movie, play the card game, judge the talent show, etc., but now the kids run the show themselves and want to talk secret girl stuff (who likes who, who's mean at school, who shaves their legs), or watch teen dramas instead of the animated movies they all loved just a couple years ago. No more giggling girls asking if they can paint my fingernails (one time was all I would submit to, and it was the rubbery kind that you could peel off later).

Sometimes I miss being the noble and cheerful master of ceremonies, praised for my cooking, humor, hair braiding, and understanding of things Disney, Brats, and fashion (I hear orange is the new black). What has replaced that is more fulfilling than the fleeting moments as the center of attention -- after all, the kids don't come over to see me, they come over to see Stacey. The style of the 10 year old sleepover is wonderful. It is my daughter maintaining her friendships over time, growing, becoming independent, and sharing her joy of living with her sisters.

One change from the 6 to the 10 year old style that I'm less fond of is how quickly my cloak of invisibility goes back up after a sleepover. [All adults have a cloak of invisibility, it is the thing that we have that makes kids ignore us.] Back when Stacey was in second grade, I taught a little weekly computer class as a volunteer, and the kids would always greet me when they passed me in the hallway when I picked up Stacey after school. When I stopped teaching the class, it took about 3 weeks before the cloak started to go back up. A select few of Stacey's closer friends kept waving to me in passing until the end of the year. In third grade, the cloak was completely back up, the kids (expectedly) having forgotten me over the summer. When Stacey would throw a party or a sleepover, the cloak came down for a few days. These days the cloak is on full-time, no matter what... except for two special girls.

One girl is from a rich family and is doted on by sycophants who want to come to her huge house and play in her pool. Stacey and I loved her since Kindergarten, never knowing where she lived or the financial status of her parents. She was always bright and sunny in the computer class I taught, quick to catch on and always happy. One day when she was feeling a little sick after recess (dehydration and running around sweating at recess = stomach cramps), I delayed the start of class while I walked her down to the office, made sure she got in to see the nurse, explained to the nurse the symptoms I saw, and left her with a pat on the back and saying something like "I hope you feel better, sweetie." Basically full daddy-mode had kicked in, and it was all the will I could muster to leave her and go back to class. The next week when I came back for class, I asked her how she was feeling, and she flashed me a big smile. After that, she could always see through my cloak of invisibility, and to this day will usually greet me in passing, unless too many of her buddies are around. I can live with that -- I'd hate to be the cause of someone breaking little kid social mores in front of her friends.

During the summer between the 3rd and 4th grade, she invited Stacey to come over and play one day, and when we saw where she lived, we understood what we thought of before as the odd behavior of her little tribe of friends. I think the fact that we never made a big deal about money or big houses, or made excuses to invite ourselves over helped her family warm up to us. Stacey and she aren't exactly close friends, but she does come over once in a blue moon for a sleepover, and Stacey and I get invited to big shindigs in her neighborhood.

The other girl who has the magic power to see otherwise invisible adults loved my cooking. I believe it was the tacos made with Old El Paso burrito mix that cinched it. That's always been a standby meal, quick, tasty, and high in fat -- my McDonalds dinner. She is a small, natural athlete, natural dancer, who is expressive sometimes and shy at others, embarrassed of her natural gifts. She, like some of Stacey's other friends, is comfortable at the house, free from older siblings and from being scolded for letting her hair down and going wild. What makes her special to me and why I'm glad Stacey and she are friends is a sort of Taoism she embodies. Basically no one hates her, and she never complains about anyone, odd traits for a 5th grader in the suburbs.

In the news, life is good. Stacey is rehearsing for this year's talent show, and was offered a solo in the finalè. I'm keeping my house nice and tidy, and my dog walked, through the miracle of listening to podcasts on my iPod, my personal "whistle while you work". I'm caught up on sleep and work. Lastly, Stacey brought home the total kick-ass report card for this 9 weeks, earning copious praise from her teachers.


Fun with bureaucracy

Note on cabinet at work yesterday: "Please return the four mugs reserved for guests."

Email to my floor this morning: "Please don't leave your dirty dishes in the sink."

The Long Tail

It's Girl Scout Cookie time again, the time of year where I reflect on my ability and motivation to sell to people. This year, the market for cookies was very saturated, and I did little more than hit my "regulars" at work for a few boxes, and one or two shameless affairs such as getting a woman 8 months pregnant to buy 13 boxes. But, I kept plugging away slowly until the numbers added up. Stacey and I also do the traditional door-to-door selling, which is becoming more frowned upon in "these times". I found out two interesting things while selling at the office: No one sells out of their racial preference, and with a modest amount of effort, most anyone can be talked into a box of cookies or two, even if they've already purchased from someone else.

The racial preference thing was unexpected. I work with a lot of Indian IT contractors, and I found that absolutely none of them had been pitched, while the white people around them had. I talked three Indians into buying a total of 6 boxes, two of them having never bought Girl Scout cookies before (the other Indians I pitched to politely declined, one offered to just donate cash, which I politely declined). So basically there is an untapped market of polite middle class people, some of whom are eager to participate in bizarre American rituals like direct marketing of snacks to pay for a girls' group's activities. Not being racist, in this case, could conceivably be a money maker.

The "Long Tail" is an economic theory used mainly in reference to Amazon.com. The idea is basically that rare items will be in demand if you have a big enough collection of potential buyers. Amazon makes use of this idea by having access to a wide variety of rare items, and has a huge audience of buyers looking for some book from their childhood that they liked which isn't on the shelves of their local retailer. Undesirable men use this idea by not being deterred by the hundreds of women who reject their advances, until they find a "buyer" who sees some particular quality in them that is more important than their overall putridness.

Girl Scout cookies are neither rare nor putrid, but are available for just a few weeks a year, so it's easy to suggest a box or two to just about anyone, which I did. What I lacked in desire to hard sell a few people, I made up for in a long tail, selling 1-4 boxes to 20 people. Between that, Stacey and I hitting the neighborhood, and family sales, the Autery family had an above-average year with 140 boxes sold.

..and now for something completely different.

A gem from PRI's "This American Life", here's a depressing story about would-be Nazi Saboteurs, and the failed attempt by two of them to defect:
This American Life 2004 archive. Scroll to episode 260, The Facts Don't Matter, and look up some of what's being talked about here.

Oh Death

Oh Death please consider my age
Please don't take me at this stage
My wealth is all at your command
If you'll remove your icy hands

..or as I would put it:

Cry the winter knife
Over iron and shadow
When will the light fall?

Our frantic whisper
Hot wind, sunshine, run, play, dream
We ache for summer

Moments stare sadly
Still water rusts the thousand
Time sleeps without will

Basically I'm sore, exhausted, and cold. And I love it. Sunday was mentor fun day at OSU's RPAC (unsure of the acronym, but it's OSU's new workout facility. I spent a few hours there with Dave, both of us getting winded and banged up pretty bad playing basketball and volleyball. While this was going on, snow was accumulating when I wasn't home to clear the driveway and sidewalk. After hanging out at RPAC, I went to a friend's surprise 40th birthday, getting home at about 8pm, too worn out to clear the snow. I also didn't get up early enough this morning to clear it before going to work.

After work today, Stacey wanted me to take her out sledding, so off we went to a local hill. At some point, I went down to the bottom of the hill to play catcher, to prevent Stacey from sailing off into the trees if she came down too fast. [Sidenote: This reminds me of a Dan Simmons story in his short story collection Lovedeath called Entropy's Bed at Midnight, although I'd like to think I was freaking out about my child's welfare slightly less than the protagonist of that story.] So when it was time to trudge my way back up the hill, I wanted to go faster and decided to jog up the steep, snowy incline. When I got to the top, my heart was racing and I couldn't stop panting for a minute or two. 250 pounds, 75% grade, 40 yards, extra muscle tension to maintain balance on a slippery surface -- 'nuff said.

So when we got home, I just had an hour or two of daylight left, and wanted to clear the snow from the driveway, so I grabbed my little wussy snowshovel and went to work while Stacey started on a snowman, and played with one of the neighbor kids. The snow had a thin layer of ice on top of it, and some of the snow had partially melted and refrozen since the precipitation yesterday. So the shoveling went slow, and I was less than 100% when I started. But I kept going.

An hour later, I finished, getting as close to complete clearance as I could. I came close to stopping a few times, but the knowledge that some of the neighborhood kids were out and potential witnesses kept me going. I didn't want them to see me give up, so I kept plugging away, slowly, mindful of my pending heart attack, the racking pain in my palm from holding the shovel, and my knees and back from hunching over to sling the piles of snow.

And now, Oh Death, won't you spare me over til another year. Pain and fatigue like I haven't felt since I managed a pizza shop. A nice hot shower to relax the muscles, reruns of The Crodocile Hunter, and I'm at peace with the world, anxiously expecting a restful night's sleep. Like Grandma says, hard work never hurt nobody.

Fun with Archie

Look ma', I'm in the paper... if you don't mind my last name being misspelled as "Autury" instead of "Autery".

Last Thursday, I was honored by the Mentoring Center of Central Ohio as a "commended mentor" for having volunteered for Northwest Counseling over the last 4 years. My mentee, Dave, attended with me, as did my daughter Stacey, roommate Bill, and 5 members of my church group. It felt good to be recognized, but as the article above shows, I and 6 of my fellows were honored mainly as footnotes to the 3 "outstanding" mentors who have either been mentoring for much longer, or who have done some truly amazing work with a volatile kid. Considering my lack of a rich public speaking background, I was happy to only have to take my certificate, get a picture taken with the other guys, and go sit back down.

Archie Griffin was the keynote speaker. I had never heard him speak before, except for a Kroger commercial or two back in the day, so I was taken by complete surprise when he gave a moving, inspiring speech, with emphasis, full command of his audience, and barely glancing at his notes. He was even deferential to the event by slipping away quietly after his speech before autograph seekers would have ruined the spirit of lobbying for mentoring. I'm not a sports nut, and I'm also not a sucker for a tearjerker speech, nor do I tend to put people on pedestals, so I can say objectively that Archie is a class act.

As fate would have it, the company I work for, AEP, was one of the sponsors of the event, and a major contributor to local mentoring agencies. Accepting a certificate and being in a major contributors' group photo would have been the director who works on my floor, Velda Otey (my boss' boss' boss), but she was committed to two different publicity events that night. I saw her name tag as I walked in, so I looked for her during the pre-ceremony dinner. I saw her come in and went over to say hi, and she was talking with Marilyn Pritchett, director of the Mentoring Center about needing to leave. When Velda saw me she said "Oh, thank goodness, you can accept the award for AEP."

"Um... sure," says I, so along with having to stand up and walk to the stage a second time to get a second certificate (amid the confused looks of some of my guests), I was in a group photo with some big-wigs from major area businesses like Huntington Banks, Chase, Nationwide, etc. So basically there is a picture somewhere with directors and Vice Presidents of big companies, and me. I had trouble not laughing like a fool when the picture was snapped, as I had this brief fantasy of showing future viewers that I was the lone coder among high paid businessmen by doing something a geek might do in a formal picture: the Spock hand-sign. Live long and prosper, indeed.

Fortunately, common sense won out.

The best moment of the evening, by far, was the look of pride on my daughter's face when I walked up to the stage for the commended mentor certificate. On the way up, the speaker narrated who I was, how long I had been placed with Dave, and some of the major activities we had done (including our two Habitat for Humanities projects). Stacey stood and clapped uproariously, with the rest of the gang attending on my behalf, and despite my long-practiced emotional control, I was moved to near tears. Stacey can do that to me -- cleanse my soul, be the medicine for my sky.

Oh The Ironcy

The year is 1993. I am making a whopping $6.25 an hour as a delivery driver for a local pizza chain, a then unheard of amount for a driver, but it was a small perk of stepping down from being an assistant manager. So what was I doing at 22 years old dropping out of a (mediocre) career path and not replacing it with something cooler, such as, say, college? Making $30,000 per year, that's what I was doing. How so? Delivery reimbursements at $0.75 each, the $1.25 average suburban tip, and about 35 deliveries per night. It works like this:

$6.25 x 40 = $250 in taxable pay per week, plus
($0.75 + $1.25) x 35 x 5 = $350 in cash, making
($250 + $350) x 50 = $30,000 per year, assuming 2 weeks of unpaid vacation.

So I averaged the same pay that I was getting as a manager, with a significant reduction in stress. Basically, I did so well for myself driving my car around town and listening to books on tape that I had no motivation to give up my lifestyle and live like a pauper, whether from working fewer hours and attending school, or from the giant pay cut I would take in an entry level position at a "real" company. I did the latter a couple years later, but all of this detracts from the anecdote. The point is, there I am, flipping pizza and observing the antics of my fellow man.

The head manager of the store I worked in, John, had a sycophant assistant manager, Debby, that was taken with him in a mad, unrequited love, and hung on his every word. One of my fellow manager-come-drivers, Dave, worked in the store with the three of us. Dave was sarcastic and aloof, and rarely had an honest conversation that wasn't full of double meaning or disparaging undercurrents. He was our local Stephen Colbert, the brilliance of his antics being lost on the people around him, who thought him simply ignorant and grouchy. Naturally, I liked him.

One day Dave had a conversation with John and Debby that they recounted to me, to illustrate that Dave wasn't as smart as he pretended to be. I don't remember the details of the conversation, but the punchline was Dave turning to Debby and saying "That's ironcy for ya'", pronouncing irony as "eye-ron-see". Debby gave him a puzzled look, and he shrugged and bobbed his head in a mock self-deprecating gesture and said "OK, Debby, ironcky", pronouncing irony as "eye-ronk-ee". Not exactly high comedy, but for something spur of the moment, it was still pretty good.

I insisted to them that Dave knew very well how to pronounce "irony", and this was an elaborate case of playing country-dumb, that John and Debby were both supposed to understand was an act. They would have none of it. No, Dave went around using words incorrectly because, despite his indications otherwise, he isn't any smarter than we regular folk.

I didn't understand then why they couldn't see the encounter as a gag, how Dave correcting himself with another incorrect word was typical of him being silly to pass the time. Were John and Debby incapable of that type of abstraction? I didn't think so. Were they threatened by Dave and latched onto every opportunity to vindicate themselves by making him out to be stupid? I swayed between those two beliefs until recently, but now I think something else was going on.

I think there is a class of people who can't read minutiae -- subtle gestures, inflection, pauses, facial tics, and some more intangible cues. Some of us can see them, others can't. Most people read each other just fine in normal social interaction; for example, people can tell right away which smiles from members of the opposite sex are cheerful, and which are amorous. Most people can tell when a toddler wants to be picked up, whether an upset person is angry or only sad, and dozens of other normal human things. However, some people can't read the subtleties, or the meaning someone is trying to broadcast if it falls outside of the basics, unless they broadcast very strongly and unambiguously.

Put simply, some people can't "feel" that the other guy is being sarcastic unless it is grossly overdone. If I'm right about this, then I have my explanation of why the world is so loud to me and my ilk. If I'm right, that explains why most popular stand-up comics are the ones with the wildest mannerisms or atypical voices. Think about it: Sam Kinison. Mork. Rodney Dangerfield. Carrot Top. Buddy Hacket. All people with broad appeal, and all a little over the top in their own way. But not Dave. No, he had to stick with pizza until he put himself through school.

Latest Projects

I've had a lot of fun lately with my first gen iPod Shuffle. It's a mere 512 megs, huge by the standards of 5 years ago, but low-end compared to the competing devices of 2007. Even though there are shinier, more powerful gadgets out there, the Shuffle does well for me.

It all started, oddly, when I bought my new car, a Saturn Vue. The Vue came with a free month of XM radio, which I did not renew, but is magically still working more than 2 months later, which I imagine they will try to bill me for. After browsing around through stations, I found XMPR in the talk radio block of stations, which is basically NPR for XM. So far I have been spared pledge drives.

Leaving for work at 6 in the morning, I found a great show on XMPR, "This American Life". The show is basically long interviews with people on a variety of topics, grouped into shows on the same theme. It was contemplative, reflective, funny, and moving, and I loved it. I loved it so much, I wanted to be able to regularly hear an entire episode, so I searched for their podcast on npr.org. I found "This American Life", as well as "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me", "Science Friday", "Pop Culture", and "World Cafe: Next" podcasts, and set about configuring a Linux app, Rhythmbox, to subscribe to and download as much of them as I could.

Why not just use iTunes on the Mac? Two reasons. First, it's Stacey's Mac, and I moved it into her room after her last birthday. Second, being in front of iTunes makes it too tempting to spend money on music or shows I may or may not listen to. No, a Linux replacement solution, free of charge and free from temptation was called for.

I bought my Shuffle in 2005, when they first came out. I used it excessively at first, mainly when working out, and imported most of my CD collection into iTunes. I tried an FM transmitter device to hear my music through the car stereo, but had poor luck with it, and poor luck again with a different brand, so I gave up. Over time, my excitement about the Shuffle abated, and it fell into disuse. Until recently.

As it turns out, the radio in my Vue has a standard mini input jack. I was able to take a mini-to-mini cable from my computer speakers, and use it to connect the Shuffle directly to the car stereo. A little tinkering around with output levels, and I was able to get pretty good sound.

At that point, I had a working podcast snagger for Linux, and a working Shuffle-to-car-speakers interface, leaving only a way to get the NPR shows onto the Shuffle using Linux. That problem has been solved 10 times over, which a quick web search told me. I downloaded a small Python script to update the iPod's database files, and found I could mount the Shuffle as a USB drive, copy mp3 files to it, run the Python script, and be in business.

And in business I am, and have been happily listening to podcasts and some ripped CDs in the car and on walks for the past couple weeks. I haven't taken on any geeky side-projects for a long time, having come close a few times to swearing off technology. This project had a clear goal, didn't require much time (no coding, just web searches), and as a side benefit improves the health of me and my dog. Not only do I spend more time doing laundry and dishes while listening to the iPod, but I take more walks, at work for lunch, and at home with Heidi.

Not much other news to report. I discovered another standard suburban tradition that was under my nose for years, but I never noticed: holiday gifts for teachers, troop leaders, coaches, et al. So now I'm guiltily trying to catch up on some gifts for the major adult players in Stacey's life. For the music teacher, I have a DVD burned of the latest Christmas concert -- that was a no brainer, really, as I had already made one for family when I went down to NC this Christmas. I came up with a suitable gift idea for Stacey's Girl Scouts troop leader to spring on her when it's my turn to bring snacks for the girls, but that will deserve its own write-up later. (You don't read my blog, do you Cheri?)

New Year's Fun

My power went out today for about an hour. There was a delay between the lights going off and the sound of the transformer blowing of about a half-second. Normal speed of sound is 344m/s, so I'll guesstimate the problem came from about 200 meters away (or about an eighth of a mile for you non-geeks), and sounded to me like it came from the southeast, putting the blown transformers here:




I may have to hike over there later today to see if those are really transformers and if any evidence of recent work on them has been done. Alternatively, I could sign onto work and see if any AEP trouble tickets for this area have been entered, however most of the lines in town are owned by Westerville's utility department and not AEP, so I might have to put my shoes on to go check it out.

The Christmas trip down to North Carolina was good. I wrote a CQ article that detailed one thing I witnessed. Stacey was glad to see the family down there, especially Grandma and Great-grandma. It's nice that Stacey has had a relationship with her great-grandmother. I met mine only a couple of times as a boy before she died. My memories of her are few, but I saw the respect and deference given to her by older relatives such as my grandmother and grandfather, and it struck me as curious. Stacey has had a strong relationship with her great-grandmother (and is well liked by the other 16 of the family down there, and is known on sight by most of the roughly 150 family members attending our annual family reunions). She's a lot more engaged with them than I was at her age, which makes me very happy.

This week we've been recovering from our trip, playing games we got as Christmas presents (my favorite being Marvel Comics Monopoly, her's being the stand-alone console game Dream Life), seeing Pursuit of Happyness (++good), attending a modest sized alcohol-free New Year's Eve party, and cooking breakfast over a match-lit gas stove while the power was out.

At work all the year-end projects got done on time, despite my getting a last minute project in early December, and three projects that a co-worker couldn't complete because she was out on sick leave. My boss is happy, and the bonuses come March should be decent, both nice, but both paling in comparison to quality time I've had for the last two weeks with my daughter, mother, grandmother, aunt, uncle, cousins, cousins-in-law, and their children.

All that plus the long weekend, and I'm ready to tackle the menial chores of life with full vigor come Tuesday.

Christmas 2006

Theme: Old School

Completed tasks:
- Presents for relatives
- Activity for Stacey and her friends
- Presents for Stacey
- Buy tree
- Decorate tree
- Decorate house

To-Do:
- Present for Roomie
- Present for Mentee
- Wrap presents
- Visit relatives
- Bake cookies

Christmas preparations are going pretty good this year. Most of my present buying was done on Black Friday or before, Stacey and I got a tree Friday the 1st, and we've done a sizeable kid activity recently (nothing big like the Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe shindig from last year, just the sleepover mentioned a few posts ago). We should be finished with everything before the trip down south.

I decided to learn how to string lights on my gutter this year, having only decorated inside my house, and maybe hung a wreath on the front door in previous years. It is a simple, albeit time-consuming process: Buy plastic gutter clips, clip one side to gutter, clip the other side to the lights, repeat until entire width of roof is covered, don't fall off ladder. I spent about two hours on this process after I had raked the last of the fall leaves to the curb (which took an additional hour), and I ended up plenty sore the next morning. The day after I strung the lights was when we started to get some bitter cold weather, so I couldn't have timed things better.

For the cold day, Stacey and I worked on decorating the tree. We popped some popcorn and experimented with making a string of popcorn and beads, which turned out OK. The trick with that turned out to be finding kernels of a particular shape that looked puffy, but did not break when a needle was poked through them. Stacey got out some construction paper and glue and made a couple chains of paper garland, and we hung everything with ornaments from my side of the family, and from Grandma and Grandpa in Wisconsin. No lights, no solid color glass bulbs. The result is very traditional looking, and was a lot of fun to put together.

Heidi poked her nose on the tree once, and hasn't been back. I don't know if I can trust her not to eat presents, and I never did get a good tree fence to keep her out... not that keeping out a determined Husky is possible without going completely overboard. I found out during Halloween that she has always been able, for example, to hop the two-foot fence to get into Stacey's playroom, but obliges us by staying out when there isn't constant doorbell ringing and the smell of dozens of sugared up little kids at the front door. Also, after being scolded a few times, she stopped eating remote controls, shoes, and library books, but she still occasionally munches on things with new smells. She's a good dog, but I think I'll have to watch her carefully when we get the presents wrapped and under the tree.

All is well, Grandma and Grandpa are coming down to see Stacey this Friday, which she will be excited about.

Thanksgiving fun

I was all braced for being miserable this Thanksgiving, so my surprisingly good cheer was a welcome relief, if anticlimactic. The ex had Stacey, and all my extended family is out of state right now. I made a choice several years ago when my wife and I split up not to take trips to see family without Stacey, so I planned on moping around the house for the long weekend.

Without going out of my way to plan anything, things just fell into place for the whole four days. Thanksgiving proper was cleanin' day. I caught up on all my laundry, gave my stovetop and countertops the weekly elbow-grease treatment, vacuumed up the week's dog hair (Huskies don't shed as much during the winter, thank God), etc. Thanksgiving dinner was a single can of corn chowder soup. I also snuck out in the afternoon to see a double feature, namely Deja Vu and Casino Royale, both commendable.

Friday I spent at Magic Mountain winning prize tickets at my favorite video game, VRS Marbles. I've written about that particular malady of mine before, and this was my annual excursion to win enough tickets to buy toys to donate. This year my church is sponsoring a "Christmas with Dignity" program asking parents to volunteer in their community to earn vouchers to buy discounted household goods and Christmas presents, and of course AEP is accepting presents to donate to the local Salvation Army. So I won a good number of tickets (6000-ish), and traded them for an array of $5 - $15 dollar toys, and gave half to church and half to AEP.

I also went to the mall on Friday ("Black Friday" in commercial parlance) and finished my Christmas shopping, without bankrupting myself. I usually splurge on Stacey, but I toned down considerably this year. After last Christmas, we talked about the amount of money I set aside for the holidays and where it all went, and we decided that she had plenty of games and toys (and gadgets) to occupy her for a good while, and some of the money should be deferred to her college fund and charity. Good kid, that. It's actually nice to not just go mad and buy everything you think will get a passing smile; with a tighter budget, a lot more thinking about your selections and shopping around is involved.

Saturday my mentee introduced me to his girlfriend, and we all went out to Easton, saw a movie, and hung out in the bookstore for a while. I hadn't seen him in a couple weeks, and I found out that someone had severely vandalized their home -- nice gift to start off the holiday season -- and he and his family were concentrating on getting the damage repaired, hence his being unavailable. So there's my mentee, the before was a pathological liar with anger issues, and the after, a mere 4 years later, gives up a chance at a fun weekend to help his family get their home back in order. It's nice to watch a boy grow into a man.

Sunday was less eventful. There was church, and then rescuing my neighbor's daughter from the boredom that is watching one's younger brother and his playmate climb through tubes at McDonalds. My neighbor, myself, and another member of our home group went out to eat after church, my neighbor with two little boys and one irritated teen in tow. She seemed upset about something (more than just not wanting to hang out with the little brother, and definitely none of my business), so after I finished my chicken sandwich (Ranch, BLT, and chicken, not bad), I asked her if she wanted a ride home rather than wait for the little kids to finish. She and dad both said yes, so off we went. On the way back, she fired off non-stop questions about my car, Stacey's room, where I met my roommate, what I'm planning on doing with the extra space downstairs, etc. It was cute; the stereotypical gabby teenaged girl, suddenly no longer down in the dumps.

She also has parents who live apart, and goes back and forth with her father and mother. Her father also splurges on her and makes time to entertain her and her friends. She also feels the loss of a whole family, like Stacey does. Stacey and she rotate between friendship and acquaintanceship, and she is often a member of Stacey's sleepovers or my trips out with Stacey and the neighborhood kids. Sometimes I think they would have made good sisters, and others I think that as sisters they would spend their time plotting each other's demise.

I spent the rest of Sunday porting all my calendars over to Google (see the Calendar link on the right), which has a pretty good interface. Early next year has some busy weeks, so it was nice to get everything in one place, and such that I could edit it from work or home without any hangups. Among other things, my divorce proceedings are under way, Stacey has several scouts and school activities, and I have been nominated for mentor of the year and invited to the big ceremony at the Statehouse mid-January. Busy busy busy.

See how I just slipped in that mentor thing like it was no big deal? I'm actually as excited as hell about that. I stand no chance of actually winning the award -- no, there's always some maniac who takes a crack-baby and teaches him how to fly fighter jets or something equally as impossibly self-sacrificing -- but I feel good about being invited and being recognized by my own local counseling group as worthwhile. Perhaps that's one of the reasons I didn't get the blues being alone for Thanksgiving, and made good use out of my time instead. The other reason, of course, is that I found 100 excuses to go into Stacey's room for a couple minutes. Hang up some clothes, re-make the bed, line up the flip-flops on the closet floor, take another peak at her remaining Halloween candy to make sure there isn't any taffy or caramel, etc. Each quick visit helping me remember that she is coming back soon, which is always enough to keeping me going.

So today is back to work, and I'm well rested. There seem to be no pending disasters for me to work, and life is getting back to normal.

Halloween fun

Stacey and I kept pretty busy over the last couple of weeks. The ballet teacher who teaches after Stacey's Hip Hop class invited her to stay and "audit" the ballet class for two weeks in a row now.

I'd like to have Stacey in more than one dance class, like most of the other kids are, but things are very touchy right now between me and Stacey's mom. I feel as though everything I do right now regarding Stacey is under greater than usual scrutiny, so new classes will have to wait until things settle down. For now, auditing the class a couple of times and seeing the teacher and getting some refresher ballet information will have to do. When she was 4, I signed her up for a ballet class, and that went pretty well. She had one recital, and then we stopped, for reasons I can't remember.

Stacey had a spur-of-the-moment sleepover on Friday the 20th. Taylor and Krissy's mom and dad helped get the gang to dinner and back to my house, for which I'm most grateful, as there were 7 kids total, and I don't have a van... yet. In attendance were Taylor and Krissy (of course), Shayley, Hayley, Tara, and Sophia. They had a lot of fun, made a lot of noise, and ate all my food the next morning. I've always said one of the house rules for Stacey's friends is "nobody leaves hungry", but I had a hard time pulling that off. I made my usual triangle omelettes, some with ham and cheese, some just with cheese, and a few stacks of waffles. Everything got eaten, and I had to fry up all my bacon, and go borrow a couple eggs from a neighbor to make more waffles. Very harrowing experience. Last year I had a gaggle of girls over for a night, and they didn't go through half as much food. They all must be hitting their growth spurts.

This last weekend, Stacey was invited to a Halloween party thrown by Meghan's dad. He rented out his condo associations community building for the evening, had decorations, prizes, etc. He showed some poor judgment regarding pumpkin carving, though. He ran out and purchased pumpkins at the last minute, and found out that all the grocery stores were out of carving kits, so he bought some steak knives and pairing knives instead, intending to give them to little kids who were up late at night and all sugared up.

Needless to say, I jumped in, as did Meghan's mom, and kept the kids from getting hurt. I think I cut the tops off of about 7 pumpkins in as many minutes. The kids then hollowed out the pumpkins, and used pens to draw the designs they wanted cut out, and the adults then went about butchering their designs. That was the only questionable item, though; everything else went off smoothly. There was bobbing for apples, various off the cuff party games (guess how many pieces of candy are in the jar, a musical chairs derivative, etc.), and the community center had a pool, so everyone went swimming when they were too wired to play games.

Prior to the party, Stacey and I had embarked on our own pumpkin carving adventure. I am usually a traditionalist, just eyeballing a standard Jack-O-Lantern face with big triangles for a nose and eyes, but this year we bought a kit. She chose a pattern that had a bat flying with a Jack-O-Lantern in its claws, and I chose one of a spider. They turned out pretty good, and I think after using the little tools the kit provided within a couple days of using a steak knife to do some carving, that I prefer the tiny saws and the stencil patterns. I've been converted.

And tonight, of course, is Beggar's Night. Stacey and I went shopping for her costume last week, and picked out a traditional witch outfit, complete with latex nose and green makeup. We will be strolling the neighborhood with a group of her friends, and hopefully more parents.

Miscellany

I haven't posted for a few months now, but the world has been turning all the same. Stacey had her 10th birthday party over the summer. This year we opted for a simple ice-skating party, and had about 10 invitees, most of whom showed. As usual, I took the week of Stacey's birthday party off, and she and I brushed up on our ice-skating skills for a few days. I haven't been skating in so long, I was telling the other parents that they could spot me easily at the party:

"I'll be the one in the cast."

Fortunately, Stacey and I got our sea legs in short order, and neither of us ended up with serious injury before the party. The party was fun and simple, and people enjoyed themselves to the same extent as the more elaborate parties Stacey and I have thrown over the last few years.

Also over the summer, Stacey went to the Skyhawks basketball camp, and was one of two girls in the group of kids approximately her age. She caught on pretty quickly, and found out just how sore you can get running up and down a wood floor for a few hours. After day three, her muscles adjusted, and she slept normally and didn't wake up miserable. The first couple days were another story, though. She's always been active and healthy, so it was no big surprise that she toned up quickly.

This is also our first year in soccer. We signed up through "WASA", a local Westerville soccer club, and we had lots of fun getting gear and practicing at the local park. Unfortunately her team hasn't won any games this season, but the girls seem to be bearing that load pretty well. A few of the parents are pretty cool, and the coach seems like a nice guy, and it's nice to see Stacey out running around and having a good time.

I took my video camera to one of the games (and will at the last game this coming Monday). I had some trouble getting the shot to look right. Either you couldn't see which kid was which, or you couldn't tell where the goals were; if Stacey becomes a super sports star or something, I'm going to need to figure out good camera work so she can have some "back when" footage to add to her highlight films when she retires.

Anyway, while I was filming, Stacey looks at me a little flustered, and pantomimes me turning the camera on her. Apparently she wanted me to get footage of her rather than the game as a whole, and we hadn't discussed what I was going to be filming, just that I was bringing the camera. Since I wasn't sure what quality of footage I was really getting, I did turn the camera on her, but I was so amused by her miming a camera and pointing to herself that I had a hard time holding the camera still for a minute.

It was a good thing I turned the camera on her though, as she almost immediately turned up the heat, stole a ball, and dribbled it upfield a little. She didn't end up scoring or making an assist (and I believe we tied that game), but she showed comfort and confidence, and she already knows how to read people. Maybe soccer or a similar field sport will end up being her "thing".

One of the soccer families hit it off well with Stacey and I. She gets along great with their twin girls, and they are both very involved parents and involved with their church. The dad invited me to come fill in on his over-30 league, and the girls and Stacey will probably end up hanging out some weekends shortly.

In other news, we're foregoing tap dance classes this year in favor of "hip-hop", which in dance seems to be less about being a hard gangster and more about having fun. Stacey likes it. I was on the fence for a while, but after she showed me some of her routine after a few weeks of practice, I've got to admit that it looks pretty cool.

How to waste a holiday

This Memorial Day my daughter was with her mom, my acquaintances were with their families (or chose not to invite me to group picnics, which is equally likely), and I of course had the day off from work. So with all my chores done, and no interest in going out, I tossed a ball around with my dog for a while, and settled down in front of the computer. Predictably.

I decided that I was ready to yet again reinstall my auterytech server so that I could get webdav working, and to upgrade to a modern Postfix to take advantage of better security features. I copied off all the content and config files, and set about installing a vanilla Debian 3.1 distro. Damn Small Linux wasn't doing it for me anymore, causing severe headaches whenever I attempted to apt-get anything, and all application logging was dumped by default into the same file: /var/log/messages, making administrative troubleshooting a very messy affair.

So about 2 hours and a pair of tutorials on webdav and php, and I had a working server. After messing around with phpicalendar as a web viewer and Korganizer as a publisher, I was able to get my .mac calendar ported to my home server, and to boot I can update it from work with Sunbird. The phpicalendar app needs some tweaking, and I haven't added RBL blocking or my list of spammer/hacker IP addresses with iptables, so I can still have fun configuring for the next evening or two.

Between that and watching guys wipe out on their motorcycles on Google Video, I successfully wasted an entire day. Yeah me!

In other news, Stacey's grandparents should be coming down sometime soon to celebrate Stacey being out of school, or someone's birthday, or just for the hell of it. All perfectly good reasons to see Stacey. I believe I may have lost the email that had dates and times on it, so if you're out there Don, could you send that again?

Also, it's Habitat For Humanities time again. AEP is sponsoring another house frame building session at one of our lineman training facilities this Saturday. I plan on taking my mentee and two other teenage boys that are brothers of one of Stacey's friends. This will cost me a little for equipment (it's BYOH, so I need to get another hammer or two) and a lot in pain and suffering, one way or another. I could either injure myself digitally due to negligence, or I could last the whole day and pay for it later when I next try to get out of bed.

Lastly, Stacey's glasses seemed to have helped. She is no longer struggling to stay above water with schoolwork, particularly reading assignments. Her improved performance has, I believed, also improved her confidence and level of self worth. That's the way it should be, of course -- an accomplishment, then an increase in self-esteem.

Link of the day: Feed me better manifesto

Jamie Oliver is a pretty inspiring guy. His story has quickened me in my pursuit of opening a child care center, and healthy from-scratch meals will be on the list of improvements to standard child care that Mittens Daycare will provide. (And yes, that's an official, registered name of the LLC I just formed with the help of my lawyer, good friend, and next door neighbor, Eric. Look for more announcements regarding that in the next week or two.)

Compare and Contrast

Streaming video will "choke the Internet"

Dark Fiber

The funny part here is that Bell's chief architect has the last name "Kafka", leading to such phrases in the article as "according to Kafka". "Your Internet bill will go up to $112 per month if you want to watch streaming video, according to Kafka." Oh yeah? Back in my day, you could be executed by the state without having the charges against you stated, according to Kafka. You could be transformed into a giant bug in the middle of the night, only to have your manager arrive at your house and demand that you go to work, according to Kafka.

The statements of Bell South's Kafka are no different than the statements by Franz Kafka. The world's controlling entities can enforce arbitrary punishment on the innocent, in this case lining their wallets with money they've stolen from their customers for upgrades that have already been performed.

In other news, last night I watched the first horror movie to severely freak me out since 28 Days Later. The movie was The Descent, which achieved its freak-out factor by the slow paced build-up and incremental escalation of problems. The main sequence of the movie takes place in the Appalachian area in North Carolina. Having lived in NC for a good part of my life, I can accurately say that there really are freaky albino cannibals living in the caves.

Contrast that to a recent popular horror/suspense flick, Hostel, where a premise with promise is completely ruined with bad dialog and weak caricatures who you are unsympathetic with. Go ahead, cut his Achilles tendon, what do I care?

I would recommend against seeing either movie unless you, like myself, learned to read by flipping through Fangoria.

Dog hair begone

I swear sometimes in person, but tend to avoid it unless I'm with a small group of people I'm comfortable with (or who are drunk and won't remember). I rarely swear in writing, since I have all the time in the world to think about how I want to say something, and resorting to profanity just isn't necessary to get a point across.

I'm anti-consumerism, anti-commercialism, etc. There is a basic element in advertising that makes me angry, the emotional appeal. Look, it's someone using a product, and see how happy they are? His kid's are smiling at him, his wife is looking at him amorously. You want a happy family don't you? Don't you love your family? Or maybe it's a man in a labcoat explaining facts to you, while in the background is a chart with numbers and icons on it. See how smart you would be if you used our product? Don't you want to be smart? To use these kinds of appeals to make money is no better than running a whorehouse or a casino, preying on people with poor judgment.

So with the above commentary in mind, here is a quick product review of my newly purchased vacuum cleaner, the Dyson DC14 Animal: Holy shit!

My dog, Heidi, is a Siberian Husky, and just got through a seasonal coat-blow, and basically every fabric surface and every collection point on tile surfaces (corners, running boards, table legs) had hair on them. Trying to vacuum it up, I destroyed what I thought was a decent vacuum cleaner, a Bissel PowerForce bagless, which had until then done a stand-up job.

So yesterday I took a chunk of cash and went to Home Depot and grabbed a Dyson. With one simple jaunt around the living room, all the dog hair was gone, as well as the few outstanding Christmas tree needles, and a sizable amount of dust. With a pair of hose attachments, the stairs, corners, the couch, and my bed's comforter (frequent hangout spot of the dog) were all hair free.

In other news, Stacey got her first pair of glasses this week, and reports being able to see loads clearer. Time will tell if this has an impact on her school work, but I believe it will. Naturally, she still manages to look beautiful with glasses on.

We just got back from Spring break in North Carolina, where I spent most of the week bedridden with flu symptoms. I was well enough later in the week for us to run down to Carowinds and ride some rides and win some prizes. I'm better at the water-gun game (shoot the little target with a stream of water until the car drives to the top of the board), and won a pair of prizes that way. My new approach is to aim low, expect a miss, and be prepared to recover quickly from the miss, which worked for two out the three rounds I played.

Lastly, I've taken myself off of Lexapro. The end results were weight gain (30 pounds worth), higher blood pressure, constant fatigue, and slowed mental functions. I can't work at my job as a computer programmer if I'm tired and stupid, and was beginning to fall behind in my work. After the first few days of having a nasty temper (a know side-effect of withdrawal), I found my calm again, and for now it seems like I remember how to be calm and happy, and feel better than before I started taking Lexapro. I may need to revisit psychoactive drugs in the future, only time will tell. Right now I'm just happy to have a working brain again, normal blood pressure, and 8 of the extra 30 pounds gone. With my recent treadmill purchase, hopefully the other 22 (and more afterwards) will be gone in short order.

Fun with Postfix

The new auterytech.com web/mail server is online and configured to my liking. I decided to go with Postfix instead of Exim to try something new. It was painless to set up, but shortly afterwards I noticed a spam attack that successfully relayed a message using the server by a complex attack involving a bogus auterytech email address that was denied, followed by a blank from address.

It was a good exploit, actually, but it galvanized me into action, and I spent the next couple of days locking down the server against similar exploits and common identifiable spam headers. Since I don’t actually source any emails from auterytech, I was able to take further action and defer outbound SMTP traffic to a hold queue in case I missed something, and to go for broke I blocked outbound port 25 traffic on that server from my router. OK, relay a message now, Mr. Script Kiddie!

Why don’t I send email from auterytech? What’s the point of registering a domain and configuring a mail server to not send mail? Roadrunner. The IP address range for Roadrunner customers (and other services giving machines semi-dynamic addresses) is blocked on a lot of mail servers. I don’t have the money to pipe in my own T1 line, but I do have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

Upgrades

Profession upgrade: IT professional to child care center administrator

I finally took the plunge and hired a lawyer to help me research licensing requirements and grant opportunities to open my daycare. I fleshed out sort of a "manifesto" on child care philosophy, and I wholeheartedly believe that the core beliefs I have about running a business and how to correctly take care of kids will pan out.

My goal is to have funding, licensing, training, and a few possible sites picked out by this time next year, quit my current job by March 2008, and to open the doors on or before June 2, 2008. Here are some basic points that will be at the core of the business:

• Low staff to child ratio
  
• Well compensated teachers (good pay, benefits)
  
• Well treated children
  
  • Be the child's advocate
    
  • Provide a healthy environment (good food, cleanliness, first aid supplies, etc.)
    
  • Provide a comforting environment (no prison wardens allowed)
    
  
  
• Lots of room to play (not overcrowded)
  
  • Child care is not a market.
    
  • Play is a child's job
    
  
  

Body upgrade: Adrian Adonis to Randy Savage

I just spent the last of my annual bonus on exercise equipment that will be delivered this weekend. I've been meaning to hit the gym as frequently as possible for some time now, but it hasn't been happening due to both my own laziness, and my not wanting to be away from my kid for any length of time.

This Saturday will be clean out the garage day to make room for the chin-up bar, upright ab-crunch thingy combo, which will also expose my heavy punching bag, which has been surrounded by boxes for about 6 months.

The treadmill goes in the family room. It's light enough to be dragged out of the way (note to self: maybe move bookshelves to living room) when not in use, and if it isn't in sight all the time, I'm going to forget about it and let it gather dust, so it has to stay in a prominent place in the house. The one I bought is like one you'd find in a gym, complete with incline and a fan to blow on you (I can't decide if I think that's cool or silly).

Webserver upgrade: P2 300mhz to P4 1.4ghz

The auterytech.com server sitting in my closet is on its last leg. The ethernet card does not reconnect after a network outage, and ifdown/up eth0 doesn't fix the problem, and it needs to be rebooted every time. In addition, the hard drive is slowly disintegrating, and each reboot has me holding my breath when fsck runs. A few days ago there was an outage and I just couldn't get linux past the boot sequence. It turns out my keyboard was the culprit, and it was not sending my "control-D" or the complete root password when I was prompted.

So I decided to lay the little bastard to rest and use the P4 that has been unplugged for awhile. This was my Windows XP gaming computer in 2000, complete with the whopping 20 gig hard drive and 56k modem, w00t! To turn it into a decent webserver environment, I decided to go with Damn Small Linux, which is a pretty neat distro, and I'm a fan of the minimalist approach.

I just got apache working correctly (e.g., turned on during the boot sequence) last night before I went to bed, and the remaining steps are to install exim, and copy over the (now archived on a third machine after the earlier fiasco) content files. In the process, I think I'll ditch the encrypted journal, redirect calls to the main page to this blog, and just use it for private content and as a host for smaller images and cgi scripts where my low RoadRunner upstream won't be a big issue. (Of course, speed isn't an issue now, as I get about 5 or so legitimate hits a day). I hope to have everything finalized on the new machine by Sunday night.

Fork in the road

Judging by what I've seen of her interactions with kids at school lately, whatever slump Stacey was in socially has abated. She seems happy when I pick her up from school, lots of kids say goodbye to her, and kids I don't know are being invited over for sleepovers.

One such example was Haley, who came over with another girl for a Saturday/Sunday sleepover. We didn't do anything fancy, just ordered a couple pizzas and went to a movie. Stacey and the other girls were happy and animated, didn't fight, got very little sleep. It's always nice to see a smile on my kid's face, especially with new friends. As for the staying up too late, they are no doubt paying for it today at school. Fortunately, the week of BS standardized testing is over, so they can afford to only be on their B games for one day.

In other news, I just paid off my credit card, and have vowed to never use it again. I'm struggling now to get my car paid off early, and to increase my emergency account funding from the measly $2000 in there now to an amount that would actually get me through an emergency. If I stick to my budget plan, don't get fired, and the price of gas stays under $5 a gallon for a little while longer, I'll be able to meet all my personal financial goals and still help Stacey with college.

I would consider it easy money, except for the little devil on my shoulder telling me to go take risks. I've been doing some beginning research on day care expenses and crunching numbers, considering everything from liability insurance and taxes to 401k matches and field trips, and I think that I can charge a reasonable rate and still pay the teachers well. Either I'm missing something, or what I've heard about day cares only being able to afford paying teachers kibbles and running a very thin profit line is all a sham.

I want to make my escape from IT and work with kids, which I've been saying for the last 5 years, but I also have financial commitments to my daughter. Her needs outweigh my desires, so I won't take any leaps unless I'm reasonably sure I'll be successful (or at least that I'll be able to recover from). I imagine this is what creates the resentment that some parents have for their children, when they realize that they are the old generation caring for the new, and that their pleasure and freedom has suddenly come to a stop. For me, being wishy-washy about making decisions helps to avoid that potential conflict.

I've been thinking about my escape and future entrepreneurship a lot lately, and will soon make the choice one way or the other to go for it, or to stay secure in the work I know will pay well, or take the unsure road of the work I would much rather be doing. Will I choose the road less traveled by? You know, the one that makes all the difference? Stay tuned.

Valentine's day & the talent show

If you really loved me, you'd buy me something from my wishlist, or at least read one of my favorite books for yourself.

Valentine's Day was pretty fun this year, both because I have no romantic interest right now, and also because I attended my kid's class Valentine's day party. I was the only fourth grade father to attend a party, and did my best to ham it up, including sitting at an empty desk with an empty boardgame box (Boggle) patiently awaiting my Valentines, and various one-liners. It was also my job to distribute pizza and pop (Cherry 7-Up, since it's red), so I organized the cups into a heart(ish) shape thusly:



The kids, teachers, and other volunteers seemed to enjoy my antics, which is worth the price of playing the fool.

Friday the 17th was this year's talent show for my kid's school. She was in two acts, one with her friends doing "Do You Believe In Magic", like I talked about last post, and a solo medley of three Disney tunes that she and her voice coach have been working on. Both were great, and I recorded them with my new camcorder, and burned my first DVD with the show's footage. iMovie and iDVD both proved to be pretty painless to use to that effect.

I also ended up with two possible images of my daughter in action to replace my outdated "Action Stace" icon used on auterytech.com. The old one was of her when she was 4:



That's been a favorite of mine for 5 years now, but she doesn't look like that any more, so it's time to move on.

A final note on the talent show: Stacey's acts went off without a hitch. The music was loud and clear, and the event was remarkably stress free. Contrast that to what happened last year, which was the final catalyst that sent me to my doctor saying "I don't want to be angry any more". Here is my journal entry from last year's talent show:

February 26, 2005

I felt rage today like I haven't felt for 10 years, and it was very liberating. It also passed quickly and didn't consume me like it would have at 23. But today wasn't about me, it was about Stacey.

Today was the talent show, and Stacey's first solo act. Grandma and Grandpa drove down from Wisconsin. The ex and I sat together and didn't fight. Stacey had a home-made Annie dress that grandma made and sent down, and an official Annie wig from one of Columbus's only year-round costume stores, and make up put on by an official teenager. Her act was well rehearsed, and she was taking it seriously, and sounding better each week. When it was her turn to perform, the spotlight came on, the song intro played, she spoke her opening dialog... And then the music died.

Trouble in the sound booth, since this was a free event and the Westerville South high school students running the sound couldn't get the music working. And Stacey stood there waiting, and looking nervous and confused. And she looked to the stage hand and turned up her hand questioningly. Of course, I thought, the suburban world that has struggled to beat all the happiness out of our lives raised another hateful fist. Of course many of the kids who Stacey thought were friends asked each other to be in duos and trios, but Stacey wasn't invited to join them. Of course since I was a parent that was not a member of the precious elite inner circle of suburban snobbery then it would be Stacey's solo act that would be the one to fail. And my beautiful daughter, who tried so hard to fit in and make friends and be a happy little girl, of course it would be her that would be crushed on her last attempt to make the world see that she was special and worth something. Of course.

And the rage came. OK, I thought, Stacey can have free reign from now on to be as destructive and anti-social to these bastards as she wants, and God help anyone who hints to me that there's a problem.

But as I said, this wasn't about me, it was about her. My rage came, but hers didn't. She waited for the music, and when it didn't come, she sang.

"I just stick out my chin, and grin, and say
the sun will come out tomorrow,
so you gotta hang on 'till tomorrow
come what may..."

My beautiful girl wasn't hurt, and knew the world wasn't trying to beat her down, and she sang her piece a cappella. She sang, and she played with the audience like her voice coach had practiced with her "Raise your hand if you believe, no truly believe the sun will shine tomorrow...don't be shy". And she sang, and she danced, and she was animated.

And they cheered. And they clapped. And they loved her. They loved my beautiful girl, who was trying to make it work, who did the best she could with what she had. They loved my girl, who was always such a better person than me. The girl that keeps me going. My Anastasia, you make me so proud.

Links of the day

No Autistics Allowed :: Beautifully well written articles and letters by Michelle Dawson describing her struggle for increasing the rights and perceived worth of autistics. Her writing style evokes a lot of emotion from me, due to both its clarity and fluidity, and also for the persistence in her struggle.

Webhosting is a market for lemons :: A thoughtful summary of the webhosting market as viewed from a financial/game theory perspective. It focuses on the concept of information asymmetry.

Well, it's tax season again. Even after adjusting my deductions last year, I'm still getting a sizeable return. Granted I'm happy with getting the money, but my goal was to get all the money I had coming to me in each paycheck, and end up with a zero balance on April 15. I'll have to re-examine my deductions again this year.

Stacey and a couple friends from her class are rehearsing their rendition of "Do You Believe In Magic", not the one by the Loving Spoonful, mind you, but the girly-pop remake by "Aly and AJ", whoever they are. Still, the kids are having fun, which matters more than my love of original versions of 60s tunes.

I decided to take Martin Luther King jr day off from work since Stacey will be out of school that day. She's having a modest-sized sleepover Sunday night (probably 3 other girls), and we'll probably all go hit a movie or something Monday. Should be a fun, hopefully low-stress weekend.

Interesting commentary style on arstechnica

The arstechnica.com website is, so I believed, a tech news site similar to Wired or any of the Ziff/Davis fare. I rarely surf these sites directly, but instead read individual stories from these sites that are linked to from sites like Slashdot.org. I read an interesting story today written by Ryan Paul, that contained an unusual amount of opinion mixed in with the normal reporting. The article was on Internet censorship in China, and is available here.

Here are some of the more interesting comments that pepper the article:

Like most other communist states, China and its government have very little respect for civil liberties and personal autonomy.

Censorship of Internet pornography is rarely effective.

I doubt that censorship and oppression in China will end any time soon,

It's almost as though I'm reading my local paper, The Columbus Dispatch. This article appears today listed on arstechnica's front page under the column "From the News Desk". Despite being declared news, most of the aritcle is either opinion or factual declarations without sources being cited (e.g., "the communist regime has committed its resources to crushing web sites that challenge government authority").

So my question is, did Mr. Paul get paid for this? If so, where can I submit my stream of thought opinions for some extra cash?

Fun with Firefox extensions

We've had a little downtime at work since the end of the year is approaching, so between emergencies I've been exploring the world of Firefox extensions. In standard open-source style, there are a few projects that are useful and are well-written, and many that are either whimsical or provide functionality that can be found in better quality apps elsewhere (calendar apps and web accelerators, for example).

The three I've installed so far are Adblock, NoScript, and Performancing (which I'm using to write this blog entry). Adblock does what the name suggests, blocks advertisements. Give it a pattern, such as http://*.falkag.net/*, and data that comes from that source is blocked. NoScript lets you block JavaScript (and applets like Java and Shockwave), but enable it on sites you trust.

Performancing links into a few blogging services, Blogger being one of them, and provides a little HTML editor about as sophisticated as the old Composer app from Netscape 3.0 Gold, one of my favorite editors from pre Y2K. Highlight the right blog, type your post, click Publish, voilá. The main drawback, which I can live with, is a slightly wacky rich text box. It reminds me a little of this (IE only, and try the right-click menu) editor I was working on several years back, one of my many abandoned projects.

Christmas went OK. The ex had Stacey, so she and I opened some presents a few days before Christmas, and I saved some for when she gets back from visiting Grandma and Grandpa up in Wisconsin. She was still in town Christmas day, so I picked her up in the afternoon and we saw Chicken Little, which was suprisingly good.

I had Friday and Monday off from work, and didn't have the kid, so I slept about 10 hours a night for 4 nights in a row. I'm a new man.

Merry Christmas

Hello, fair readers, I hope Christmas finds you well.
Here's a randomly generated ASCII tree for your enjoyment:

                        **
                       ***o
                      ******
                     ||******
                    **********
                   *||***o**|**
                  o*****o*******
                 *****||*****o***
                *o****|***********
               **********o*o****o|*
              ********o***|****o*o**
             |o|o****o**|***|******|o
            **************************
           **|************o************
          ****o**o*o****o*****|*|*******
         *****o|o*|**o**o****************
        ********|**o******************o*o*
       o***************o***||*********o****
      ***o****o***o|*******|****************
     ******o*******************|****|****||*|
    ****o*o********|***o**|***************o***
   ******|****|*************************|****||
  ***********************||******|*****o********
 **o*||******o*o|**|****|***|**|*****************
**************************o*******o***************
                       _||_

And the perl source code for generating it:

#!/usr/bin/perl

sub symbol    {
    my $r = rand;
    return '|' if $r < .07;
    return 'o' if $r < .15;
    '*';
}

my $width = shift || 30;
for my $cnt (1..$width/2)    {
    print "\n", ' ' x ($width/2 - $cnt);
    print symbol for 1..2*$cnt;
}

print "\n", ' ' x ($width/2 - 2) . "_||_\n\n\n";

Christmas 2005

To-Do List:

- Visit relatives :: done
- Presents for relatives :: done
- Activity for Stacey and her friends :: done
- Presents for Stacey :: done
- Presents for Roomie :: done
- Presents for Mentee :: done
- Presents for dog :: done
- Buy tree :: done
- Bake cookies :: done
- Decorate tree :: in progress
- Wrap presents :: not started

Everything Christmas has progressed on schedule this year, and yet I feel that I'm really cutting it close. I think it's just the unwrapped presents that are gnawing at me, and possibly that Stacey has had a lot of activities that I had little choice in, such as singing exhibitions with her school choir and voice coach's theater group, a trip with her "Able and Talented" math class.

The main stressor on top of the crazy schedule was the one big event I tried to schedule in the middle of all that, the dinner/movie/sleepover with 6 of her friends. Strangely enough, that went off without a hitch. All but one of the girls who were invited were able to go, plus a friend of one of the neighbor girls who everyone thought should tag along to use up the extra movie ticket. Dinner was at Buca Di Beppo, a very good Italian restaurant close to my favorite theater, the Arena Grand. At the theater, I had balcony tickets for the girls to see "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe", which was great (and had most of the girls crying at some point or other).

At the sleepover everyone stayed up until about 3:30am playing singing and dancing games, and bickering as they got tired, standard fare when a bunch of little girls get together for a night. I came off looking like the cool dad I am, and plus that can count as Christmas presents for everyone, releaving us from an obligation that is still ill-defined in popular American holiday culture: gifts for neighbors.

Last night Stacey and I baked some homemade cookies that turned out great. I used a recipe from the Food Network show "How to Boil Water", of all things. The recipe was as follows:

1 cup + 6 tbs all purpose flour. (This amount is puzzling, but I do what I'm told)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Mix dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix:

1 softened stick of unsalted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar (I used dark brown to, um, kick it up a notch)
1/2 cup cane sugar
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
Mix until creamy
Mix in dry ingredients

Chop up 6oz of bittersweet chocolate (not chips) into yeah-big pieces (I used 4 because that's the size of the bar I had, and that worked fine). Mix chocolate with other stuff. Roll into yeah-big spheres and squish down just a little. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes.

Good cookies, not much prep time, and we both had fun mixing, rolling, and squishing. Try it.

MythTV

Well, I finally got MythTV up and running on my Linux box. That would be this box:



This is the box I set up back in 2002 to be my main gaming and Linux desktop system. Since I spend more time on the iMac now than any other system in the house, I figured I'd put this one to good use.

It was a painful stretch of several days, trying to steal away a few minutes here and there to work on it, and overcoming one obstacle over another. I had purchased a WinTV PVR-150 model 1045 to set this up with, and had a lot of problems recognizing the tuner, and getting versions of MythTV and the Linux kernel, PVR-150 drivers (from both the ivtv website and my install CD) that all worked well together. I ended up with the following:

KnoppMyth R5A16
Linux Kernel 2.6.11
manual compile of ivtv 0.3.8
edit /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv to add line "options bttv card=80 tuner=6", and add "/sbin/modprobe bttv;" as first paramater after "install ivtv"

Seems pretty simple, but I was starting from scratch with how the modules interacted, where config files were, and how video4linux indexed my tuner. It was a bear, and I was about 1 or 2 reboots away from taking my tuner card back. Now things are up and running pretty smoothly and I'm able to record, download schedules, read the news, etc. This is only day 1, though, and I expect more problems to tackle as time goes on.

In other news, tomorrow morning starts the new schedule with me and Stacey. I'm up before dawn to get ready for work and cook breakfast, then dropping her off at a neighbor's house to be taken to school, and I'm getting home in time to pick her (and occasionally her friends) up from school. Cheaper than day care, I beat rush hour traffic to and from work, and I get to spend the critical first hour after school with my kid every day for the rest of the school year.

Last in the news of the week is this Thursday Stacey and probably an assortment of her friends will be heading out to a pumpkin patch to pick some pumpkins, buy farmer's market goodies, run through corn mazes, etc. It should be a hoot.

My mom moved out. More details available on request. The biggest impacts this has on me is requiring me to spend more time with my kid, a good thing, and requiring me to keep close ties with my neighbors, another good thing.

I picked my first lock today. It was the Kensington cable lock that secures my laptop to its docking station at work. I attempted to pick the lock Monday; I left work early and needed to take my laptop with me, but couldn't find the key to the Kensington lock. I actually failed to pick the lock, and after some more searching I found the key. I didn't want to get caught in that situation again, so I examined closely how the mechanism worked, and read about exploiting that type of lock on the net.

My tool of choice for picking the lock is a thin plastic strip used in the packaging of boxes of printer paper. Snip a small segment off, feed it into the lock, and twist. This is an improvement, in my opinion, over the other popular attacks, namely the scissors and paperclip, two paperclips, and the toilet paper roll and duct tape attacks. My best time so far with the plastic strip is slightly under a minute. Locksmithing might be a fun hobby, I'll have to put that on my to-do list.

Unfortunately, my to-do list still has items from 1987 on it.