Harry Couple of Weeks

There are people out there who have no clue about what's going on in the world. I doubt those people read blogs, but just in case they do (and happen to be reading mine), this post is about the phenomenon that is Harry Potter.

This past month saw not just one, but two (count with me: 1, 2!) major Harry Potter events:

1. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the 5th movie in the series, was released on July 11 (I think that's right — it seems so long ago now)
2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last Harry Potter book ever, was released on July 21

If you've ever been to my house you know that it is populated with Potterheads. No, we don't have a snitch inlaid in the foyer tile, though that's not a bad idea! But you are likely to see a wand or two lying about. Maybe a Hogwarts robe. Probably a book or DVD.

So July was a very exciting month. Both kids wanted to go to the first showing of the movie, but I refused to go to a midnight showing of anything besides the Rocky Horror Picture Show. But we did go on opening weekend. In fact, we went to a 9:30 a.m. showing (because that was the cheapest ticket).

I liked the movie. The kids loved it. I'm sure we'll be adding the DVD to our set. I think there were two things that prevented me from liking the movie more: first was that there were so many things that just couldn't be made to fit in the time limits of a movie that I would really liked to have seen. I mean, my internal movie projector has imagined them, but it would be interesting to see them on the big screen. And second, there were several things that just seemed to be missing the energy they should have had, or were just plain done wrong.

Case in point: the very first scene. Privet Drive is in the middle of suburbia. English suburbia, yes, but suburbia nonetheless. So why is Harry walking through a wheat field? Maybe they were trying to highlight Harry's loneliness or feeling of isolation. But come on! What is more lonely and depressing and oppressive than mile after mile of tract housing? That's how I picture Privet Drive. Faux upscale tract housing; each house predictably different from the ones on either side but with a repeating pattern more obvious than wallpaper.

And then there's Mrs. Figg. She sure didn't seem all that fussed about the dementors in the movie, but why not? I fear that in trying to cut down all the stuff in the book they are tempted to keep only the exciting bits, and then they discover that having only high tension and excitement becomes numbing long before you reach the end. So they have to take emotion out of high tension or high excitement scenes. But then it just feels wrong. I think it would have been far better to settle us back down and set us up for the next jolt by using calmer passages from the book.

But overall it was a decent movie, and those who only watch the movies and don't read the books may not understand my feelings on this.

And then there was the book. Don't worry, I won't spoil it for anyone. We were one of those million who pre-ordered from Amazon with the promise that it would arrive on the release date. And it did. But once again I refused to go to the midnight sale at the local Barnes and Noble or Borders. Noon delivery from the post office was good enough for me — I don't care if Evelyn Wood had already finished reading her copy and sold it to Half Price Books.

As it turns out, my kids were at their grandparents' house on the 21st, so we didn't get to start reading until that evening. But we stayed up late to read a few chapters out loud.

One promise I made to my kids was that I wouldn't read ahead and I wouldn't let anyone else read ahead. That last bit was required to keep 2 of 2 happy because 1 of 2 would've hogged the book while I was at work during the week and would undoubtedly have let one or two facts slip out accidentally on purpose, spoiling some excitement.

To that end, I didn't open the package when the book arrived. I waited until I picked them up that evening, opening it in the car and reading aloud while 6/10ths drove. And each night I hid the book until the next evening when I returned home.

By the following Saturday morning we were only about halfway done. But 2 of 2 had an ear infection and 6/10ths was feeling lousy and coughing her head off and I was feeling kind of down and had a headache that just wouldn't go away. So we spent practically the entire weekend reading off and on. We finished the book early Sunday afternoon.

I read the entire thing aloud. Did voices for all the dialog. Hagrid in any state (calm or angry) is the hardest on my voice. Yelling is also hard after awhile, and there is a lot of yelling in this book. The kids were particularly amused by my impression of Phlegm.

I don't know if this book just invited it, or if my kids are just developing, but there were a lot of breaks where we each offered our predictions about what would happen next, or what would happen to some character, or how some turn of events might affect things later on.

And we kept saying, "she can't kill Harry yet, there're too many pages left!"

But boy did he (and just about everyone else) find themselves in mortal danger at every turn. And strangely, I don't recall any mention of Mrs. Weasley's clock! I guess mentioning it would've been a forhead slapping, DOH!

I liked this book a lot. I liked the lot of them a lot, but I think this one might be my favorite.

I wonder if Ms. Rowling will allow someone to do a spin-off based on Luna Lovegood? They could probably make a pretty good sitcom around that character. And by "they" I mean the BBC. Us Merkins would screw it up.

Peep! (Part Two)

Wow, I'm a bit stunned. In my previous post I whined about how smoke alarms never seem to signal a low battery at a convenient time. Then I bemoaned the inability to find a replacement of the same brand and how this was a problem caused by incompatibilities in the way interconnected smoke detectors are interconnected.

The second comment to that post is Anonymous, but it's pretty clear that it was posted by a FireX employee. I can guarantee that a Kidde employee wouldn't have included the comment about FireX making smoke alarms for over 25 years.

But it brings up a serious issue: fire safety and the impact of standards on safety. I'd like to ask the nice folks at Firex (and Kidde and all other brands) two questions:

1. Why don't you make your batteries easier to replace?
2. Why don't you make it easier to replace an old or failed smoke alarm?

Oh, and here's another one:

HOW DO YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT?

Years ago you'd see a report on the evening news about a fatal house fire and the reporter would say in somber tones, "there were no smoke alarms in the house."

But listen now and the comment is somewhat different.

There were no WORKING smoke alarms in the house.

That one extra word is huge, and it is the reason that I ask how the makers of smoke alarms can sleep at night.

I know from personal experience that replacing the batteries in my old smoke alarms was difficult, and often physically painful. To start with, the battery was hard to get to — you had to remove the alarm from the ceiling to get to it. And far too often, twisting the alarm to remove it from the base plate caused the base plate to come off the ceiling with the alarm. And it was hard to separate the two pieces because there were no really good places to grab hold, and the alarms were large enough around that it was hard to get a really tight grip, and there were lots of sharp little plastic bits. When you did manage to separate the base plate from the alarm, the door was hard to pry open with a fingernail. And when you did get it open there was that infernal 9-volt battery connector that is so hard to get off.

Backing up again to that base plate problem: yes, I could put it on the ceiling so that turning the alarm wouldn't remove the plate with it. But then putting the alarm back on would make the plate come off! Tighten the screws holding the plate, you say? What a brilliant idea! Unfortunately, the screws only go into those stupid keyhole slots. Nothing to hold them tight but friction. And since we're talking about wired alarms, they're mounted over electrical boxes. That means that at least part of the plastic around the keyhole is over air. Plastic flexes under pressure. Do too much and you either break it or you deform it so much that the base plate no longer mates with the alarm. And if you find that happy middle ground, just wait a year and the base plate will have weakened enough that — wait for it — it'll come off with the alarm!

What happens when batteries are too hard to replace? They don't get replaced. Is that the homeowners fault? Partly. But I think the companies who make the devices also share some of the blame. And they know it. How do I know that they know it? Because some new models have batteries that are very easy to replace. My new Kidde smoke alarms have a front accessible battery compartment and don't use that hated battery connector. I look forward to years of easy battery replacements.

But I noticed something. Not all Kidde smoke alarms have this easy to replace battery. FireX also has some, but not all, models with easy to replace batteries. Why not all? What possible reason can they give to justify the deaths that must surely occur because of unreplaced smoke alarm batteries?

And then there's the lifetime issue. Everything has a lifetime. Nothing lasts forever. I accept that. But why is there the vendor lock-in for those wonderful AC powered, interconnected smoke alarms? Are they looking out for the safety of the end-user with that proprietary connector and signaling specification? Or are they trying to support electrical contractors and their own market share?

The anonymous poster was right. Many people lack the skill or confidence or time or money to rewire their smoke alarms while replacing the whole lot. But why should they have to have any skill or confidence or even much time? Why should they have to replace them all at once? Why should they have to rewire? Why should they have to hire a contractor?

I had to replace one of my smoke alarms a few years ago. I was replacing all of the batteries and one alarm started sounding the instant I put in its new battery. Not chirping — full volume alarm tone. I pulled out the battery and called FireX. They replaced the unit and I was reasonably happy. But not anymore.

Again, I accept that everything has a lifetime. But when you're talking about something like this it would sure be nice to be able to replace them over a few months. But that wasn't an option because none of the local retail establishments carry FireX. Faced with the choice to leave a hole where the failed alarm had been (an old, failed alarm was what started this whole thing) and saving up the money, or biting the bullet and replacing them all right now, I chose to replace them all right now.

But why was that choice necessary? How many people can't afford to do what I did? And that isn't even considering the cost of hiring someone since I did it myself. How many people have no choice but to wait. And hope.

There were no working smoke alarms in the house.

Standards are good. Standards save lifes. Ease of use is good. Ease of use saves lives.

How do you sleep at night?

PEEP!

What is about smoke alarms that causes them to peep (or beep, chirp, or whatever you call that sound) at 2 a.m.?

Aside #9V: If you have a night job (meaning that you sleep during the day), does your smoke alarm peep only during the day?

If you don't know what I'm talking about then you're probably one of those sick people who dutifully changes the batteries in their smoke alarms each year when you switch back to daylight saving time (or are you supposed to do it when you go back to standard time?).

But as a founding member of the local chapter of the Procrastinator's Club (well, I will be when I get around to helping found it) I tend to put off replacing the batteries until one of them dies, causing the alarm to start chirping (at 2 a.m.). Actually, I tend to think that the first failure is premature and wait until the second or third before 6/10ths manages to force me to replace them all.

And I did just that — changed all the smoke alarm batteries — a couple months ago. So why did that smoke alarm start chirping at 2 a.m. last week? And why did it chirp 3 times, then stop? For a couple of days. Chirp three more times (at 2 a.m.), then stop? And why did the second one start doing the same thing? And maybe even a third?

After testing the batteries I came to the conclusion that the batteries were not bad, but the smoke alarms had crossed that magical threshold called "the end of the warrantee period". Unfortunately, further research revealed that they were probably well beyond the warrantee period. And when they tell you to replace your smoke detectors every 10 years, they mean it. If you don't follow that advice you can expect to deal with a lot of chirping that stops just before you manage to zero in on the offender. At 2 a.m.

I decided to bite the bullet and replace all of my smoke alarms. That's when I figured out why my builder's own house burned to the ground — it was probably torched by an irate homeowner who was ticked off by the constant and malicious use of products that are either non-standard sizes or regional brands from some other region than our own. Current example: Firex brand smoke alarms. Not sold at Home Depot. Not sold at Lowes. Not sold at Elliots. Not sold at Ace. Not sold at True Value. Not sold at Target. Not sold at Wal-Mart.

What can you get at all those stores? Kidde brand.

I'm not trying to imply that Firex doesn't make good smoke alarms or that Kidde makes a better smoke alarm. I have no way of knowing and have had no complaints regarding my Firex smoke alarms (except for the 2 a.m. chirping). The problem is that all of my smoke alarms are wired together and there is no standard for such connections. You can't replace one Firex smoke alarm with a Kidde if they're wired together.

Why would you wire together smoke alarms? Well, if your smoke alarms are wired together then they will all go off if one senses a fire. So the alarm is sounded throughout your McMansion, helping to ensure that everyone gets out safely.

Guess what I did last weekend? Yep. I bought seven new Kidde smoke alarms and replaced the whole lot. I'm set for another 10 years.

End of Hiatus

I know I haven't posted much in the past many months. But I have a feeling that's about to change.

Why the drought? There are a combination of reasons, most of which I won't go into here, but one that I will mention is concern over any potential impact to my employment.

I started a new job at the beginning of April and, as one might imagine, there were a lot of things that I could have blogged about. After 10 years as a full-time telecommuter I find myself going into an office every day. That alone was probably worth a dozen postings. But even though my identity is fairly well hidden there are still people who might recognize references to my new employer and figure out that I am the author.

And it's not even that my new bosses are particularly evil or pointy-haired — they aren't — but it is a fairly big company and fairly big companies have a tendency to occasionally do pointy-haired things. They can't help themselves.

So while I could have blogged about my new pimps, I choose not to just to avoid the admittedly remote chance of offending them.

But I feel the urge once again and have a supply of topics about which I would like to write. I won't be winning any Pullet Surprises or Webbies; I might not even inspire (m)any comments. And that's okay, because I'm good enough, and I'm smart enough, and, doggone it, people like me!

Cinco de Mayo

Is it just me, or did we collectively forget about Cinco de Mayo this year?

We Americans take our melting pot history seriously, or at least we seem to be willing to celebrate any holiday from a country with decent beer. Oktoberfest and St. Patrick's Day are just two. Cinco de Mayo used to be a third. But this year we seem to have forgotten it, which is especially odd since it fell on a weekend. Weekend holidays are especially treasured because they coincide with our normal hedonistic cycle.

Even Google, which modifies its logo for everything, didn't have anything special this year on the 5th.

Or maybe Jay Leno gave us a hint when he joked that Cinco de Mayo means "they outnumber us 5 to 1." There has been a lot of news in the past year about immigration, most of which is from Mexico. Are we so fed up with talking about Mexico and Mexicans and Mexican-Americans that we don't even want to drink cerveza in early May? Can we really go from Mardi Gras (which bucks the trend by being from a country without a beer tradition) to Memorial Day with only one hangover?

I never thought I'd see it come this.

Happy Emancipation Day

Thank God for emancipation!

Federal income taxes are usually due on the 15th of April, unless that day falls on a weekend or federal holiday, which bumps the due date to the next business day.

Aside #15: The 15th of April is not the Ides of April. Lots of people have heard the warning, "Beware the Ides of March," from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Those people can be forgiven for thinking that the Ides of every month is on the 15th, as it is in March. But those people don't have the friends I do, and so they don't know that the Ides is only on the 15th in March, May, July, and October. In all other months the Ides is on the 13th.

Since the 15th of April (17 days before the Kalends of May) falls on a Sunday you'd also be justified in thinking that taxes were due on the 16th. In fact, the IRS thought that was the due date when they printed this year's forms.

But there is another rule which says that taxes cannot be due on a holiday celebrated in the District of Columbia. Guess what? Today (16 days before the Kalends of May) is a holiday in my birthplace, Washington, D.C. It is Emancipation Day. Therefore, taxpayers across this great land are allowed to mail their tax returns (or applications for an extension) on the 17th and still be counted as on-time.

Don't believe me? Check out the following (poorly worded) posting on the IRS website:

Questions and Answers — April 17 Deadline

So today I add a new reason to celebrate the freeing of the slaves. And we Texans get to celebrate it again in just a couple of months.

New Grindstone

After a longer time than I would have liked, I have a new job. I started today and can report that while the job search market has changed considerably since the last time I was looking, the struggles to get new hires productive are the same as they ever were.

I was told to show up at 10 a.m. But the "first day logistics team" wasn't there. Maybe that's because today was a Monday. I wouldn't ordinarily think that should be a factor, but several people expressed surprise that this was my first day because most people start on Tuesday or Thursday.

The building I work in is a secure building, meaning that there is a guard shack to get onto the property and a guarded outer lobby before you get into the soft, chewy parts of the building. Since the 1st day logistics team was AWOL I had to wait until a real employee (not a contractor) could come to let me in. I'm a contractor and even though my (new) firm has a boatload of people working in the building, none of them could escort me past the sentries because they're all contractors, too. But I did eventually get in.

Once inside I began the typical new hire game of "hurry up and wait". Except there was no apparent hurry. In fairly short order they did figure out my seating assignment, but my login and phone aren't working yet. Someone printed out a bunch of stuff for me to read and I sat down to, well, read.

ZZZZZzzzzzz. <snort!>

Oops. Sorry, I must've dozed off. My cube is in a very quiet area. It is in a single-file row, so there are hallways / aisles to the east and west and adjacent cubes to the north and south. The north cube is empty. Two of the three closest cubes across the east aisle are empty. There are no cubes across the west aisle. The cubes around me are occupied by introverted programmers. They don't call anyone. No one calls them. They don't socialize much (that's how you know they're introverts). You can't play music without headphones. There is no piped in music. The keyboards are pretty quiet. The HVAC system makes a soft sound. The lighting is dim — they must expect you to use the task lighting in your cube, but only one of my task lights is working.

In other words, it's dark and quiet. And I'm reading very dry material with which I can't really do anything.

Thank goodness for caffeine.

I'm told that my login might work tomorrow. I sure hope so because I finished all the reading today.

The Real Father Is ...

I'll probably get sued by all the media companies who are making a mint off this whole "whose the daddy" bizness with Anna Nicole Smith's baby, but the truth must come out (and it will make you free) even if it means that the media frenzy must come to an end.

The sad part is that I only figured it out this morning while I was lying in bed and fondly recalling the wild activities that took place last night (Valentine's Day). But context is often the key to recognizing relationships between things — or people — so I shouldn't be too hard on myself.

Anyway, I have a friend who is not only a big ANS fan, but is also a spy with the NSA. You remember them? When you're talking on the phone and think you hear someone else on the extension but you know it can't be true because neither you nor the person you're calling has an extension (i.e. you're both on cell phones) — that's the NSA.

Anyway, when it came time to tap the phone of Ms. Smith, I have no doubt that my friend would have been shouldering his way to the front of the line. And once he was on the job he'd want to make sure it was done right so he'd put in multiple taps, including some inside her house / condo / hotel room. Then, being the international man of mystery that he is, Ms. Smith would be overcome with desire and would end up in the sack with him.

Yes, this would happen even though my friend would be wearing some clever disguise. There's just something about the aura of international men of mystery that shines through any disguise and makes almost all women (and some men) lose all inhibitions.

So there you have it. My friend is, in all likelihood, the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby! The sad thing is that I cannot reveal the identity of my friend without being thrown in jail, tagged forever by all the president's men as an evil-doer. So poor little Danilynne will never meet her real father and he will never know the joy of raising a trust fund baby.

Ah, well, "'tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all". Surely those words will be comfort to many this day after Valentine's Day. On the other hand, for many others the phrase "yes, we have the morning after pill" will be more comforting.

Pine Wood Derby - Video!

Back on Candlemas I blogged about my kids' first experience with the Pine Wood Derby.

I actually took video using my in-laws' digital camera and wanted to post that video in my blog. But it turned out that neither Windows Movie Maker nor the version of Muvee bundled with our HP computers could read the .mov formatted videos produced by the camera. Muvee did offer me a special price to upgrade to a full-featured version that could grok the format, but I am a miser these days.

Then I read a news item in a tech rag about free on-line movie editing sites and decided to try it out. So what you see below is thanks to eyespot.com.



Hope you like it.

Deal or No Deal?

Me:    "Hi, my name is William-Bob and I drive a
        gas guzzler."
Crowd: "Hi, William-Bob."

I bought my gas guzzler in the days of cheap gasoline and telecommuting. It is rapidly approaching 7 years of age and just passed 192,000 furlongs on the odometer (24,000 miles to you Philistines). It is actually classified by the feds as an LEV (Low Emission Vehicle) and the Republic of Texas came this close to passing a law at the turn of the millennium that would have given me a rebate for purchasing an LEV!

It is a crew cab three-quarter ton pickup truck that averages 80 furlongs per gallon in mixed city and highway driving. Since I've measured it getting 136 furlongs per gallon on the interstate (at 560 fph) I shudder to think what the city figure is.

All this comes to mind because my next job will most likely include a commute. One possible employer is 352 furlongs from my house, so you can imagine my new-found concern about fuel efficiency.

The problem is two-fold: first, my truck is paid for; and second, I would probably be lucky to get $10,000 for it. Actually, my problems go deeper than that. Whatever I buy now will probably become 1 of 2's car when he starts to drive a few years from now, so I don't want to skimp on safety features like stability control and air-bags all the way around. That severely limits the used car selection and results in higher prices, which also means financing. A $250 car payment would be low for a decent new vehicle.

So how much money could I save on gasoline if I trade the Fuel-ossiraptor in for something a little less thirsty?

According to the napkin spreadsheet, my F-250 would use about 8.8 gallons per day if I got stuck in enough traffic each way each day. By contrast, a Toyota Corolla might use as little as 2.2 gallons each day if I managed to avoid rush hour. That's a very extreme comparison, but it serves to show the limits of savings potential.

That 6.6 gallon per day differential equates to $19.80 per day if gasoline is $3/gal. If there are 4.33 weeks per month and 5 commute days per week that comes to $428.67 per month savings by trading in. Not bad. But if gas sells in the neighborhood of $2, as it has recently, then the savings is only $285.78, which doesn't leave much wiggle room for the car payment.

And, of course, that was an awfully unfair comparison. If I assume the same commuting environment for the truck as for the car, then the fuel use of the truck drops to 5.17 gallons and the $3 gas savings goes down to $192.90 per month, with the $2 gas savings coming in at a paltry $128.60 per month.

In fact, the true comparison has to factor in that I don't really want something as small as a Corolla. Substitute a Camry (33 mpg) or a RAV4 (30 mpg) and the gasoline savings continue to drop.

Those savings would still be okay if I could trade vehicles straight up. But when you add in car payments there's a really good chance that trading in the battle tank will end up costing me more money than keeping it — maybe to the tune of a couple hundred per month.

So do I buy a new vehicle or not?

Gravitational Drive

I know I've been slow, but trust me, I have a really lame reason! The issue at hand is my procrastination in posting about my kids' first Pine Wood Derby race.

If you'll remember, they both decided to join Cub Scouts this year. And if you're in Cub Scouts then you have to enter the Pine Wood Derby. I remember one Pine Wood Derby car from my own youth. I don't remember actually racing it, but I remember the car. Sort of. What I remember may not bear much resemblance to the truth, but I remember it well!

Back then the PWD car kit had a notch already made for the driver's seat. In profile it looked something like this (in ASCII art):

+-----------+   +-------+
|           |   |       |
|           +---+       |
+-+               +-+   |
  +---------------+ +---+

I show a couple of other notches on the bottom. I think that you glued some sort of axle housing into these notches. The idea was that the front of the car was on the left (in my drawing) and the rear was on the right.

PWD racetracks come in various configurations, but I think the most common one is an immediate slope from the starting line going into a long straightaway to the finish. Like so:

\
 \
  \
   \
    \__________________________________________________

Of course, the slope isn't quite that severe and the transition to the straightaway is more fluid.

Way back when, the cars must have been held at the starting line by something the wheels rested on, because my dear old Dad, an engineer, figured out that if we reversed the design of my car, so that the front was on the right of my drawing, then we could get almost a full inch head start on the other cars. Unfortunately, the race organizers were not cowed by the brilliance of my father and they insisted on racing my car backwards, in the traditional orientation.

I mention all this because my experience as a Dad of Pine Wood Derby racers is very different from my childhood recollections. First of all, there is no longer a notch pre-cut for the "driver". It actually makes reference to this in the directions which come with the kit, so I know that this part of my memory is not flawed. But instead of a big notch for some axle assembly, there is merely a pair of cuts for the axles (nails) to be pushed/hammered into. And the cars are held in place at the starting line by a peg in front of each position. So it really doesn't matter where you put your wheels or which end is your front — your car is held in-line with all the other cars.

And the rules specifically forbid you notching your front to allow it to extend forward of the peg!

So my children both entered cars, shown here with the awards they won:

The orange car on the left belongs to 1 of 2 and is the external fuel tank of the Space Shuttle (notice the NASA emblem). The red and white striped car on the right is 2 of 2's and is a stick of Fruit Stripe Gum, complete with Yipes, the gum's zebra mascot.

Actually, the zebra on the car is named Zak and was obtained from Vacation Bible School a couple of summers ago (they had a safari theme and we got a zebra, an elephant, a lion, a giraffe, and a bird of some sort). And Zak/Yipes had a rough first race: when the car hit the foam at the end of the track, Zak was ejected from the vehicle and left for dead on the track. 2 of 2 had to run up and rescue him before they started the second heat.

Speaking of heats, they have a lot! Cub Scouts are divided by grade into dens: Tigers (1st grade), Wolves, Bears, Webelos I, and Webelos II. Each den competes separately and there are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners in each den. They also have a siblings category for brothers and sisters of Cub Scouts and a parents category for the adults. The siblings raced first, I assume it was to shake out any bugs in the track management system.

It's all computerized, including electronic timing down to thousandths of a second! We have four lanes on our track and each car races on each lane. If only four cars are entered (as was the case for the bears) then there are four heats with each car racing once on each lane. Points are awarded in each heat (1 point for 1st, 2 for 2nd, etc.) and the car with the fewest total points wins. If there are more than 4 cars then there are more heats with cars racing against different mixes of competitors as well as on different lanes. I think most dens had twenty (20!) races before they could declare the winners.

It was a long night.

So about those awards:

• the medal between the cars was given to 2 of 2 for participating in the race (i.e. he didn't place in the top three)
• the trophy behind the rocket fuel tank is the third place trophy won by 1 of 2's car
• the trophy behind the Fruit Stripe Gum is second place for Most Imaginative Design

Next year we plan to actually try to make our cars fast by prepping the axles and wheels better and by making sure we are as close as possible to the 5 ounce weight limit.

Fusion Power Here At Last!

More than 60 years after the first public demonstration of fission power comes Fusion Power, and you can hold it in your hand!

Well, to be completely truthful, what I'm holding in my hand is the un-powered version of Fusion, but it comes with a $1 coupon for the powered one.

Aside #mc²: I wonder if physicists use Fusion.

I am, of course, talking about the Fusion razor by Gilette. They sent me one in the mail along with a selection of coupons for blades, the battery powered version, and shaving creme.

The battery powered one vibrates, which supposedly "enhances" the shaving experience. One can't help but wonder where they're shaving! Do they have a version for women, perhaps with a bigger handle?

Anyway, the Fusion razor is the latest salvo in the shaving arms race. It has no less than six (yes, 6) blades. Five of these blades are lined up to give you an extremely close shave while the 6^th is positioned on the top edge to help you get those "tricky areas". Again one must ask just where they're shaving!

After thinking about it, I'm sort of surprised that Norelco hasn't touted the number of blades in their electric shavers. Each of those round thingees must have 20 or more blades and there are at least two of them (and often three) in each razor. Remington, which uses a different technology, probably has thirty or so blades in their products.

Then again, the knock on 'lectric shavers is that they don't shave as close as a "blade", in spite of their vastly superior number of cutting surfaces. Is there a number of surfaces beyond which the efficacy is reduced?

Note to self: Write up research grant application to investigate limits of increasing number of blades in razor. Should be worth a few million of taxpayer money.

Skillz Te$t

Today I had my the second interview "test" of my life. 17 years ago I had applied for a job at Convex and one of the interviews was with a group of programmers who spent an hour or so grilling me on everything I claimed on my resume. I had to write programs or functions in C, sed, and awk, evaluate the order of computation for an algorithm, and other computer gymnastics. I guess I passed because I was offered the job (which I turned down).

Today's interview was a screening interview for a consulting company. But it wasn't conducted by anyone at the company that might hire me. It turns out that there is at least one company whose major business is conducting technical interviews. They questioned me on AIX/Unix, project management, SDLC, leadership, SQL, C, Perl, and Korn shell programming. It was a bit nerve-racking.

I was surprisingly nervous the instant the phone rang. I didn't have a really good handle on what they might be testing me on because I've never seen a job description for the position. Plus, I've never done a technical interview on the phone, or at least not one that had been advertised as a "test". So I think it was all just so different that it was a bit discombobulating.

I think I did okay, though I stumbled on a couple of (hopefully minor) questions. The interviewer will send a report within a couple of hours and I hope to hear from the potential employer in a few days.

Update — 23 January:
I just got a call from the (in-house) recruiter and I passed the test. I have an interview next week.

The Great North Texas Blizzard of 2007

This closed schools across the DFW metroplex. To be fair, that's ice pellets, which can be tricky to drive on. Indeed, the traffic reports on the radio are very short: "accident every 100 yards on all highways and major surface streets."

But still, it lacks the visual impact of the recent snowstorms in Colorado.

Fraud! Chicanery!

If you think that public school is full of thugs and other ne'er-do-wells, well, I think you're right. And now I know why! It's because they teach kids to be dishonest.

I know, I didn't believe it at first, either. But today 1 of 2 came home and told us that he had to forge an old letter. He was to make it look as if written on parchment and singed in some fire long ago. His teacher gave him manila paper to write on. He had to use black ink and write like a girl. Then he had to crumple it up and burn it.

Here's the result:



I'm aghast!

Wheeeeeeee!

It was a very Nintendo Christmas this year. No, we didn't get a Wii (whatever made you think we might've?), but we did get a couple of Nintendo DS Lites — one for each of the young-uns.

Full Disclosure: The handheld gaming devices and accessories were gifts from the grandparents — both sets. In other words, my parents and 6/10ths parents went together to buy them.

The game players are definitely the top gifts of the year. They even discovered the wireless IM feature and used it when they were supposed to be sleeping last night.

That wireless capability is actually kind of cool. You can buy one copy of Mario Kart and when one starts the game he chooses multiplayer/simple and then the other kid can connect wirelessly to the game. It transmits the game through the "ether" and then they race each other.

At first, 1 of 2 won every time. But 2 of 2 started to get the hang of steering and also enjoyed doing goofy things, like driving off of bridges into the water. By being silly he discovered some "shortcuts" and started winning consistently. 1 of 2 was convinced that the computer was driving for him because "no one can steer that smooth!" I had them switch consoles and race. 2 of 2 still won, even though 1 of 2 now had the computer assisted car. That just made him madder. We told him that he needed to figure out why 2 was winning and copy his techniques. By the end of the evening, 1 was more competitive.

Another case of fratricide avoided.

Chicks Dig Scars

Chicks Dig Scars. That's what I'm telling 1 of 2 to console him over his injuries.

Sunday, in the middle of the first quarter of the Cowboys / Giants game, 1 of 2 decided to go bike riding in front of our house. His helmet wasn't fitting properly (he'd managed to release the clamps holding the straps). So I spent a few minutes getting it all adjusted again. Good thing, too, because he wasn't out there more than 5 minutes before he showed up inside again in extreme pain.

I'm not sure of all the details, but he was going relatively fast when he lost control and hurtled to the pavement. 6/10ths (my better half) saw him hit the ground and slide, face down. He bruised and scraped his left knee (and tore a hole in his new pants), scraped the knuckles of his left hand, and scraped his nose and upper lip (and cracked his bike helmet).

We put bandages on his knee and fingers but the scrape on his nose started right between the eyes and goes down to the tip. We figured that it was just too hard to bandage — the small bandages wouldn't cover the scrape and the big ones wouldn't fit between his eyes. So we just cleaned it and let it scab over.

He looks pretty bad and is getting a lot of grief at school. But I keep promising him that scars give a guy a certain, I don't know what exactly, but a certain je ne sais quoi that the girls seem to be attracted to.

Aside #1: I do know that "je ne sais quoi" means "I don't know what". But 1 of 2 doesn't so it works.

In the meantime he's taking a lot of oral analgesics.

Aside #2: I love the way that sounds — oral analgesics. And yes, I tell them that the termometer is a rectal one, just to see their reaction. Still works after all these years!

Another bonus is that we get to avoid posing for any more Christmas pictures this year!

Tree Houses

Long time no post. By the time I'm done with work these days I'm just too tired to post. The odd thing about that statement is that I don't have a job! Except to find a new job. And it's a lot of work.

Anyway, a week ago, right after Thanksgiving, my wife took her three boys to the Dallas Arboretum to see the Tree House exhibit. I think it was the last weekend, so I'm sorry if this post makes you want to go see it. (HA!)

Anyway, the first thing to keep in mind is that no trees were harmed by this exhibit. I can understand the requirement. But what I don't understand is why they let artists design the tree houses, and I can assure you that they were artistic. That's not a good thing.

For starters, one requirement for any "tree house" design ought to be that you could put it up in a tree. Only two of the thirteen "tree houses" had obvious tree potential. One other "tree house", while lacking any resemblance to something you could put in a tree, managed to include some structural elements (large PVC piping) that that could clearly have been used to support elevated tree houses so that no damage would have been done to the trees.

Instead, we were treated to very artistic designs on the ground that not only had no potential to exist in a tree, but looked like they would be absolutely no fun to play or spend time in!

I'm sorry, but a tree house is, first and foremost, a play structure. It is secondarily a clubhouse. If you build a structure that cannot be placed in a tree, cannot be used as a play structure, and cannot serve as a clubhouse — well, you darned well better not call it a tree house!

Camping

We survived our first Cub Scout camp-out. In case you don't remember, my idea of roughing it is staying at a hotel that doesn't have room service after midnight. So the idea of me camping in anything, even the famous Madden Bus, is a bit of a snort.

But I'm a dad, and you've just gotta do what you've gotta do.

This is actually my second campout with the kids. By the time they're adults I may even figure out if camp out is one word, two words, or hyphenated. The first campout was at the Arbor Hills Nature Preserve in Plano. That was a special one night, no cooking, planned activities for the kids, family camping event sponsored by the City of Plano Parks and Rec department. We got through with a tent, the kids' two sleeping bags unzipped and laid out on top of rented sleeping pads, and some sheets and pillows.

This time there were two cooking opportunities and the weather was going to be colder, so we needed to buy some gear.

• Coleman 2-burner camp stove
• several 16.4 oz. cans of propane
• 2 more sleeping bags
• queen size inflatable air mattress for mom and dad
• small folding table

We decided to use normal pots and cooking utensils along with paper plates and plastic table-ware. The planned menu was:

• Dinner
• hot dogs
• Cheetos
• grapes
• Breakfast
• scrambled eggs
• sausage
• tortillas

The camp-site was Hidden Cove Park in Frisco, on Lake Lewisville. We got there about 4 p.m. and quickly set up the tent (in spite of the broken pole), including the air mattress, and the cooking stuff. The cub-master had arranged for stew, but I knew that it was risking a night of whining if they didn't like it. Turns out they also provided hot dogs (which wasn't advertised). But of course, their hot dogs were grilled and my kids don't like the "brown stuff" that grilling leaves on dogs. So it's a good thing we brought our own and were prepared to boil them.

The wind was pretty heavy and as night fell it got much cooler. By the time the pack meeting was over we were ready to retreat to the comfort of our sleeping bags. That was when the lack of proper planning became most evident. Our tent is a 7' x 9' dome chosen for the kids to use in our game room. I'm not sure how they measured 7 x 9 because none of my rulers confirm it. Plus, like most domed tents the sides make about a 60° angle with the floor, so you can't really use all of the floor space anyway. The queen-sized mattress took up most of the tent. Our plan of having the wife and me on the bed and the kids on the floor quickly fell apart and 2 of 2, the smaller one, joined us on the bed.

2 of 2 fell asleep immediately, so he couldn't be too uncomfortable, but from the complaints in the morning it seems that 1 of 2 was the only one who got a truly good night's sleep.

By the time it was light I was ready to leave. The temperature had fallen into the 30's and the wind was still pretty brisk. I didn't have any gloves, had slept very poorly (pinned against the side of the tent and unable to move), and lacked any desire to fire up the camp stove and cook breakfast. So we broke camp very quickly. Didn't bother folding or rolling anything. Just picked it up in whatever wad I could, threw it into the back of the minivan, and left the rest of the campers to choke on our exhaust.

Then we got stuck at the gate, which didn't open for another 10 minutes.

We ate breakfast at La Madeleine in Plano.

Next purchase: a bigger tent. And a hat to sleep in.

Ewwww!

I just looked at my blog to see how long it had been since my last post (I know it's been a while) and was somewhat distressed to see that the advert placed by the Googleplex said

Eliminate Pubic Hair
Want that smooth clean look & feel Eliminate pubic hair guaranteed

Aren't these ads supposed to be context sensitive? If so, I can't imagine what I did to trigger this ad. Was it something I wrote in my blog? Or does surfing Yahoo and Consumer Reports and car company web sites somehow correlate with shaving your privates?

No, wait -- I think I know what did it: my posts about Merkins! Google is smarter than I look!