Author: LegoDoug

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Elementary School Children and Civil Liberty

Last week in the Junior Church class Nichelle and I teach, we began a lesson on the life of Josiah, who was the king of Judah. Josiah became king when he was eight years old, and was one of the better kings of that period.

To introduce the topic, I used two discussion topics, to get the kids thinking about the idea of the power and responsibility of running a kingdom.

The first question was, “What would you do if you were given a billion dollars?” The answers were interesting. Only about half were completely selfish. One of the younger girls said she would buy a new bicycle, so I went on to try to illustrate just how large a sum a billion dollars is.

The next question, meant to elaborate on the first, was, “What would you do if you were the absolute dictator of a country like the United States? What kind of laws might you enact?” The answers to this one were more interesting.

Top of the list for most of the kids was outlawing smoking and outlawing drinking alcohol. After that, most of the suggestions included personal security, such as “putting cameras everywhere,” allowing children to become police officers, creating anti-terrorist robots, or police robots that would be everywhere “to prevent people from stealing.”

To them there was no concept of civil liberty or Libertarianism, it was just, “If it’s wrong, we’ll get rid of it.”

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An Engaging Christmas

Well, I promised you Christmas news, and this year there’s plenty. I’ll start with the big ones.

We had two engagements in the family announced at Christmastime.

My brother Paul John surprised his now-fiancée Crystal Hughes, who expected a digital camera, with an engagement ring. When they phoned us on Christmas day, I explained that a digital camera would at least have been useful, but Crystal seems very happy with the deal, and we all share in her excitement, although it would seem to be one of the signs of the Apocalypse.


A rare photo of Hell on the day my brother became engaged.

When my sister Joyce arrived to visit us this Christmas, we learned that my Mom had become engaged to long-time neighbor and friend George Fortini. Mom turned 80 in September. Let me explain a bit.

First of all, we called Mom and chided her: “What?! You didn’t tell the whole family yet? The next time you get engaged you’d better call all of us!” Mom explained that she was working on it, but she didn’t want to eclipse Paul and Crystal’s news. (Mom was one of the few people who knew about that before Christmas.)

Dad went home to be with the Lord at Christmastime three years ago, after almost 60 years of marriage to my Mom. The same week, Ellen, the wife of their close friend and next-door-neighbor, George passed away. (Oft have we teased Mom about that “coincidence” in timing.)

George and Mom started hanging out together more and more. Mom was very concerned about what the rest of us thought about that, despite our constant assurances that we were very happy for them both. I did tease her, “You know, Mom, you can’t marry him because he’s not a believer.” I also gave Mom a lecture on the dangers of dating in a Postmodernist society. Behavioral standards have changed a bit since 1945, the last time Mom was “on the market.” She assured me I had nothing to worry about.

Not long after that, George trusted Christ as Savior. Mom, perhaps underestimating the power of the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, declared, “George is saved, but he will never abandon his Catholicism.” A few weeks later George was regularly attending services at Heritage Baptist Church with my Mom.

On the Thursday before Christmas, George proposed marriage to my Mom, and she accepted. She was so giddy (I wish you could have heard the excitement in her voice), that she forgot about a weekly appointment for one of the “old ladies” for whom Mom drives.


Yes, my Mom is indeed of sound mind.

Mom and George have not yet set a wedding date, as they are working out legal and “estate” details. Maybe they’ll do a double wedding, although Paul John has been talking about a Hillbilly wedding ceremony …

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Merry Christmas!

Lots of Christmas news today, but I’ll save it for later. Here are a couple of photos, one an outtake from our family photo shoot, another showing how Geek boy Isaac dresses for school this season.

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My Insane Wife

So, what were Nichelle and I doing (at her insistence) last night, outside in the freezing cold, at midnight?

Hanging Christmas lights, of course. Doesn’t everyone do them at midnight?

I must reiterate, though, it is great to have her feeling so well again!

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Educational Update

Isaac and David both earned highest honors for their first quarter. That means they get a $1/week raise in their allowances, which will now compensate for the $1/week they contribute toward our World of WarCraft subscription. David has become very proficient in handwriting, which is always difficult for a lefty; there’s a huge improvement over last year. Congratulations to them both, the weasels!

Last night I took the second of two “midterms”—our single major exams—for my Boston University graduate courses. I got a stinking “B” on my first exam, in “Object-Oriented Analysis and Design.” I think I did better on the Software Engineering exam yesterday.

Both classes have projects due within a couple of weeks. The Software Engineering course is a group project with three of my co-workers, and we’re building, using Ruby on Rails, a Web-based calendar that is idea for families and small organizations. This is a program I’ve always wanted to put together, and it will be fun finishing it up. So far we’ve learned that Rails is amazing in putting together the data connectivity and display pieces virtually automatically.

In OOAD, I am having a blast designing a simulator of a Star Trek transporter, including replicating the Enterpise D transporter control panel. For this I’m uisng Adobe’s Flex Builder 2, at the suggestion of co-worker RaviShekhar Gopalan, to create my application programmatically for Flash. Although far from finished (I should be “mostly done” by Monday), I’ve published my incomplete-but-working project to http://transporter.wilcoxfamily.net/ . There are some fun hidden features (and I’ll be adding several more), although the simulation/demonstration code isn’t in there yet. I fell victim a bit to a common programmer’s overconfidence: “If I know one object-oriented language, then I can learn another one in minutes!” I’ve figured out just about everything I need to do in Flex (I have one more technical problem to solve, and it’s a small one), but I’m my no means a master yet. You can also take a peek at the PowerPoint presentation I gave to the class for that project. (Can you spot the big omission from my Domain Diagram? It’s a real forehead-slapper!)

(It’s been determined that I will get real credit for the courses I am taking, but that I cannot get my Certificate in Software Engineering, because I don’t have a baccalaureate. I will investigate, after the next two courses are done in the spring, what it would take to convert these credits into undergraduate credits and fill in the missing pieces to get a B.S. in computer science.)

John (we still hear from him occasionally) has been telling people for a while that he is enrolled in a GED review course at Massasoit, but if he is, he’s taking on days it isn’t offered, at times of the day it isn’t offered, with an instructor who isn’t teaching it, using a textbook that isn’t part of the course, and getting a ride from people who claim they aren’t giving him a ride to the class.

And NaNi continues to learn letter recognition and writing from Nichelle, although the impending holidays have cut down on the teaching schedule a bit. Naomi can spot capital As anywhere, and writes them perfectly, except for tending to draw them upside-down.

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Meal Dumpling: An Old New England Thanksgiving Treat

Thanksgiving with the Wilcox family always brings a traditional New England recipe to the table. It’s absolutely delicious, especially with some turkey gravy, but can also make an excellent breakfast (with some sugar) or a delightful addition to those turkey-and-stuffing sandwiches.

Meal Dumpling

  • white corn meal (you can use white grits if you can’t get white corn meal); amount varies slightly—see the cooking instructions
  • 3 cups water
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 teaspoon salt

Bring the water, milk, and salt almost to a boil in the top of a double-boiler. (Did you know that the Spanish word for a double-boiler is a baña Maria. What a fascinating glimpse into the culture!)

Under very low heat, pour in the corn meal until it thickens. Don’t get it too thick. My sister claims it should be “slightly thicker than Cream of Wheat.”

Leave the mixture steaming for 3 hours.

Let set out to dry for 1/2 hour.

Amaze your family or become the most popular guest at your next Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner!

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Geekier than Thou—Stardate 2006.1028


And you thought your family was geeky? Left to right are Isaac, as Lieutenant Commander Data; Doug as Chief Engineer Wilcox, stationed on the USS Reliant; Naomi as her favorite Star Trek character, Princess Leia (yes, we know); Nichelle as Chief Medical Officer also aboard the Reliant, and David as Ensign Monroe, leader of the Elite Force on board the USS Voyager.

Yesterday we attended Phoebe Dunn’s thirteenth birthday party. Now, the Dunn family is slightly fond of Star Trek, and the only serious contenders in our immediate circle for being Geekier than the Wilcoxes. Phoebe wanted a Star Trek themed party, and her mom put it together wonderfully.


I look great in this uniform. Chief Engineer Wilcox, reporting.

Over half of the attendees were in costume. Nichelle whipped up great stuff for Naomi, who insisted on being her favorite Trek character, Princess Leia Organa. Phoebe and her brother Chas were Klingons (“old school” without the forehead ridges). Their mom Trish was an Andorian female. Their father Charlie, who took these wonderful photos, was the classic redshirt who dies on an away mission. Nichelle looked fabulous in a Starfleet medical uniform, complete with medical tricorder, that arrived literally an hour before we needed it, courtesy (like our uniforms) of eBay.


Trish Dunn as an Andorian female.

Trish Dunn made great Trek-themed snacks, or relabeled existing ones. We drank roctagina, and Klingon blood wine, and snacked on candied tribbles and targ-on-a-stick. Delicious!


David as Ensign Monroe, leader of the Elite Force serving on the USS Voyager. He appears to be eating some of that wonderful targ-on-a-stick.

Nichelle made David’s costume, based on the character Ensign Monroe in the Star Trek Voyager Elite Force video game. It came out great. David provided expert design advice, and was wearing the costume again this afternoon.


Isaac as Lieutenant Commander Data.

Isaac wore a uniform I used to be able to fit into in my academy days (we presume Data is now in a command position, as he’s wearing a burgundy uniform).


NaNi smiles as she hold up a tribble she “caught.”

One of the games for the younger kids was a tribble hunt. They had a ball finding these creatures.


NaNi hugs the birthday girl, Phoebe.

We also played a homemade Trek-ized version of Win, Lose, or Draw. Phoebe had made the topics, and they came in two flavors: “painfully easy” and “so-hard-a-Vulcan-would-be-stumped.”

I tried to stay in character and told stories from engineering, like about the time we convinced a cadet that we really did cook “hot dogs” in the dilithium matrix as a rite of passage on the Reliant, and got him to try it just as the Captain showed up for a “suprise” inspection. Then there was the transferee from the Enterprise we sealed in the Jeffries tube, and tweaked the environmental controls so they matched the conditions of a Borg cube. That was a bit ruthless, but he got though counseling just fine.


Doug and Nichelle as Lieutenants serving on the USS Reliant.

It was a great day. The Dunns hope to repeat this at least once a year.

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IE7 Doesn’t Like gzip Compression

Geek Version:

(See the Non-Geek Version below, as well as the Blonde Version.)

It seems that Internet Explorer 7 doesn’t like gzip compression being served up from at least some Web servers.

For a week or more, I’ve been aware that getting to our BLOG using IE7 was impossible. (Bob Richardson first pointed it out to me.) More specifically, one could get to the BLOG, but it would nearly immediately disappear with the “Internet Explorer could not display the webpage” being displayed instead.


The Wilcox Family BLOG, before today, as viewed by Internet Explorer 7.

I hunted off and on for the past week, using a computer at work we have at the office running the prerelease version of Windows Vista (which is amazing, for the record). I removed pieces of the BLOG, checked for logs that would tell me the problem, but was completely unsuccessful. I could take off every piece of the BLOG, and just display some text via PHP, and the problem would still occur; but, if I saved the HTML to a plain file and served that from my Web server, everything would work fine, which seemed ridiculous, as the HTML delivered was exactly the same.

While we were waiting for a server restart, I explained all this to my co-worker RaviShekhar, and he said, “Have you looked at the headers?” So I took a peek. The header from the BLOG that failed in IE 7 looked (retrieved via Firefox) like this:

Response Headers - http://blog.wilcoxfamily.net/

Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, 
   post-check=0, pre-check=0
Connection: close
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 20:22:53 GMT
Pragma: no-cache
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Encoding: gzip
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.11-dev, ASP.NET
X-Pingback: http://blog.wilcoxfamily.net/xmlrpc.php

200 OK

And the one from a nearly identical BLOG that worked fine looked like this:

Response Headers - http://robots.wilcoxfamily.net/

Connection: close
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 20:23:27 GMTm 
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET, PHP/4.3.11-dev
X-Pingback: http://robots.wilcoxfamily.net/xmlrpc.php

200 OK

One obvious difference is the gzip compression. What happens is this: Certain Web servers, to save bandwidth and improve speed, will compress the data that is sent out to the browser. The browser uncompresses the data when it receives it. This allows more information, especially blocks of text, to be sent more quickly.

But what if a browser can’t support the compression? Well, the browser is supposed to communicate with the Web server, and say what it will actually accept, and this is communicated in the request header. So, a browser should only be sent gzip-compressed information if it sends a code to the server that says it accepts gzip.

I don’t yet have the header information that IE7 is sending to the server, but I think it’s sending an “accepts gzip” when either it doesn’t accept it, or there’s something wrong with the uncompression algorithm.

At any rate, turning off the gzip compression on the BLOG lets me visit it using glorious IE 7 (which isn’t bad at all).

To be continued (when I have time to investigate the request headers) …

Non-Geek Version:

The latest version of Internet Explorer, just released by Microsoft, would not display the Wilcox Family BLOG for more than a fraction of a second.

After much investigation, and some helpful suggestions, I found the cause of the problem, and changed the BLOG settings to work around it.

Blonde Version:

It took our blonde site visitors a week to realize that “Internet Explorer could not display the webpage” wasn’t a new BLOG entry; so, no harm done.

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Congressman Mark Foley: Pedophile

Congressman Mark Foley is unquestionably a homosexual pedophile.

I’ve just finished reading the transcript of one of Mark Foley’s instant messenger conversation with a former Congressional page. (There are a few more excerpts from a different conversation here on CNN.)

While such communication has been repeatedly labeled “inappropriate,” in the media, reading the transcript makes it clear that it was way beyond inappropriate, and clearly typical of a predatory pedophile. What hasn’t happened yet (as far as we know) is Foley being caught having an active sexual relationship with a minor, but that doesn’t change the definition of pedophile. He is guilty (assuming these transcripts are genuine) of using his instant message communications to sexually exploit/sexually harass teens for his own sexual gratification.

As detailed in the transcript linked above, Foley discusses with a minor various sexual acts, including masturbation and manual penile stimulation by another individual, talks about wanting to slip the minor’s shorts off him and “gram the one-eyed snake,” [sic; grab was mistyped as gram] then goes on to request that the minor remind him of the length the boy’s erect penis, which had been communicated to Foley before.

We should not tolerate this evil, nor be afraid to name it for what it is.

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Mommy’s Feeling Better!

This shows what it is like for us to have Nichelle feeling better.

For the record, this photo is what I said Nichelle should post to accompany her description of her health. I think the only reason she didn’t actually post the photo is that she wanted to play World of WarCraft.