)
I’m so glad that the Internet allows such rapid intercontinental communication. Imagine a world where one’s inbox would not be regularly populated by the decades-old and now primarily e-mail based Nigerian Money Scam, and the like. Horrible!
Why God Gives Children Mothers
[doug]I don’t think I’m a bad parent, but recent experience has shown me that, without mothers, most children would never live to see their third birthday. Let me explain a couple of incidents that happened with NaNi this week:
Incident 1: I took all the kids, including Naomi (NaNi), Mother’s Day shopping at Wal*Mart Saturday night. The trip actually went pretty well, and the boys’ behavior was not-as-bad-as-usual-while-shopping. On the way out to the car, we started down a small incline, and NaNi’s car seat (with her inside), flipped off of the shopping cart, and she landed face-down (but without a scratch, because she was securely fastened in a 5-point safety harness) on the mulch in an island we were adjacent to.
In the moment afterward, the entire cart flipped over, dumping David, who was riding it, and our merchandise to the ground. No one was harmed, although NaNi cried for about 60 seconds.
Now, I was certain that I had attached NaNi’s seat to the shopping cart—but Nichelle (a Mom), wouldn’t have stopped there: She would have attached the seat, listened for the click of the latch attaching, tried to pull the seat off to verify it was secured, asked 3 people to try the same, and probably avoided the slightest incline when navigating back to the car.
Incident 2: Last night, I was watching the kids while Nichelle went to ladies’ Bible study and then grocery shopping. When Nichelle got home, NaNi spit up, and Nichelle asked me, “How is it that NaNi was eating brown paper?†(Oddly enough, I didn’t get “The Look,†which husbands and children everywhere fear.) Somehow the little weaselette had torn a 1-inch long piece of cardboard off a big box David was playing with, and swallowed it. She did this while being watched by me, and in the presence of both David and Isaac!
You may now go about the process of organizing the lynch mob …
88 Miles Per Hour!
My yaar Mark Sohmer sent me this link. The link went down for a while, but is now back up. I’ve been trying to convince Kevin “Doc Brown†Ilsen to buy this, since he is one of the few people I know who can afford it, and knowing someone who owns one of these is probably the closest I’m ever going to get to owning one, but I don’t think he’s very willing enough to waste money on such an effort.
Naomi’s First BLOG Entry
I have no idea what it means, but here it is:
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Construction of a [Lego] Star Destroyer
I have finally started construction on the Lego Star Destroyer (the “Holy Grail†of Lego) set that Nichelle gave me as an anniversary gift this year.
Click on the image for some photo documentation (and fun) of the project. Woo-hoo!
Geeks Rule!
[isaac]Isaac, now almost 9 years old, has taken up the motto, “Geeks rule!” How it happened was like this: One night at supper John called Isaac a geek, which gave me the opportunity to explain that, in our family, geek is a compliment.
[john]I went on to point out to John that most of what he enjoys in life he owes to geekdom:
- The computer you like to use: Invented by geeks.
- The games you like to play? Written by geeks.
- The chat software you can’t live without? Also written by geeks.
- The switching system that lets you talk to your friends on the telephone? Developed by geeks.
- The standard of living we enjoy? Paid for by my own geekdom.
Isaac quickly caught on to the fact that geeks are doing the cool things in the world, and is now proud to be called one. He told me that he now prefers to say negative, instead of no, because it’s more precise.
Geeks rule!
And Now for a Word from … Nichelle—Not!
Last night when I got home from work Nichelle could barely open her mouth, because her TMJ was acting up.
Her description of the problem was perfect, though: “It’s awful—I can’t yell at the kids.”
Nada
Nada is now what happens when we turn the key on our 1994 Buick Century Wagon. It’s got about 160,000 miles on it, and has served us extremely reliably, and we aren’t quite ready to say goodbye to it. AAA is coming by later to deliver the car to our new mechanic.
At work on Friday just before leaving a great thing happened! I was modifying our demo application, and we needed to pass a parameter for a specific localization file to the right module. I coded it, cycled the server, and it worked, all in less than 5 minutes. Struts has not always been so easy, but it’s getting easier.
Naomi turned 5 months old this weekend. She is babbling more, and able to roll over now, and wants to get her hands into everything from what we’re eating for dinner to the computer keyboard. With 3 brothers, I predict her first words will be, “Mom, he’s bothering me.â€
What Is the Deal with Our Foreign Policy?
[nuke][doug]I am not normally very critical of the US government, especially having traveled a little and seeing what life in other countries is like. However, the official reactions to the pardon of Dr. AQ Khan have me completely flabbergasted.
For the record, these faults existed long before the Bush administration—in fact, there have been few times in US history when a clear foreign policy was applied consistently. Let me make a few points to illustrate why we desperately need a consistent foreign policy:
- We know that Saddam Hussein was completely evil. If he did not succeed in building weapons of mass destruction, he certainly wanted to. He is by many estimates responsible for the death of 3 million people in the past two decades. Getting rid of him was a good thing, even if some of our intelligence was bad, and the road ahead for Iraq is not going to be an easy one. But, if we apply the “threat to us, threat to others†rules to other countries, we have to overthrow the governments of North Korea (threatens Japan and South Korea; may have the capability to hit us with Nukes), Pakistan (threatens India; created a global black market for nuclear technology), and China (threatens Taiwan; helped distribute nuclear weapons technology; directly aided Communist Korea and Viet Naam in the past).
- What about the “evil dictator†rule?If we follow this, we need to eliminate Fidel Castro in our own back yard, the Saudi royal family, several African leaders, the current rulers in Haiti after the coup, etc.
So, why are we making a deal with the devil (despite claims to the contrary) in Pakistan? I will have to get back to this later.
This ’n That
Just a few quick bullet items:
- President Bush had some great lines in his speech last night. Here are my two favorites:
- “The other party’s nomination battle is still playing out. The candidates are an interesting group with diverse opinions. They’re for tax cuts and against them. They’re for NAFTA and against NAFTA. They’re for the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act. They’re in favor of liberating Iraq, and opposed to it. And that’s just one senator from Massachusetts.â€
- “They now agree that the world is better off with Saddam out of power. They just didn't support removing Saddam from power. Maybe they were hoping he would lose the next Iraqi election.â€