They’re unretouched, they’re great examples of how difficult it is to get six people to look good at the same instant of time, and they’re here, at the Wilcox Family Photo page.
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!
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€
New Arrivals at the Wilcox Home
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No, we’re not having another baby.
For a long time, Isaac has been begging for a second pet. He has had his crested gecko, Kim, for quite a while now, and has done a good job of taking care of it, and has wanted a snake. (Nichelle just bought a juvenile corn snake, named Jaden, but I do not yet have any good pictures of it, although there are a few on my friend Mark Sohmer’s BLOG.)
I told Isaac if he saved up half the money for his new pet, I would chip in the other half, figuring it would take a while for him to save the $60 or so he would need for his half payment on a decent pet snake. Well, we stopped at the reptile store, R.J.’s Exotics, on the way home from church, and Isaac fell in love with a Pink Zebra tarantula, which was only $30, of which Isaac already had saved $15. He named it Chandan, which was on our list of gender-neutral names.
David has been begging for a pet, too, and the store gave him a couple of goldfish (they raise them as feeders) for free. He is thrilled to finally have pets of his own, and named them Luke and Kyle. (Luke Skywalker and Kyle Katarn are characters in the Star Wars Jedi Knight series of games.)
I have to admit, this tarantula is pretty cool.
Lessons in Rocketeering
[doug]This should also satisfy those of you who want pictures of our new house.(Well, not really, but there’s a picture of part of one room.) If you are planning to sell your house, then Sell your house quickly with Bonnie Buys Houses Fast which will help you in selling your property quickly and at good rates.
Phil Luchon gave “The Boys†(which includes me) an Estes complete model rocket kit for Christmas. We got permission from Pastor Miller to use the church ball field for launching (try that in Brockton!), and got two flights up on Saturday. The first photo above shows David when it was his turn to launch. John missed out until the next day due to what I thought was bad batteries, but turned out to be a dud engine. So, I bought fresh batteries, and some extra rocket engines, and we planned to have another try at it on Sunday.
Sunday included the regular church service, a pot luck feast (dinner is too small a term for it), and an early afternoon service. We had a guest speaker, a pastor from Arkansas who is being interviewed to become principal for the Christian School. There was a lot of teasing about the weather and his accent—Pastor Miller has a great sense of humor, and both services were a lot of fun, while being spiritually fulfilling as well. Bryan Harrington may be interested to learn that his Temperature Conversion Chart got read from the pulpit.
After the afternoon service, we went back out to launch the rocket again. After discovering that the engine, not the ignitor or batteries were to blame, John got as near flawless a launch off as we’d seen so far. Then I decided to put in a size B engine….
The flight was spectacular. The B engine took off with enough power to send the rocket at least a couple of hundred feet into the air (we haven’t done the triganometry on any of our flights yet), leaving us cheering, “Wow!†and gazing awestruck at the power demonstrated by the rocket’s flight. (The blast was hot enough to mis-shape the steel splash plate where the engine fired.)
Unfortunately, the chute deployed at an altitude high enough to carry the rocket about 100 feet downwind, just enough to get tangled in the top of a tree at the edge of the church property. Despite John’s bravery (see the second image above), he couldn’t get a decent grip on the branch it was on, so the nose cone and parachute are still up in the tree, until we return with some rope or a saw. Thankfully, we shook the body of the rocket (which is not weather-resistant) loose, and that is safely at home.
That evening the church hosted a SuperBowl get-together, at which I dropped John off, while David, Isaac, and I built with Lego. (See the third photo above.) You can see that our new family room has more than enough space to spread the Lego boxes out while we build. The pinball machine and pellet stove are in the background, as are sundry other items that have yet to be unpacked. Nichelle is going to kill me when she sees which photo I’ve posted, but the fun is worth it.
While I was at it, I put up a newer photo of Naomi, for her many fans.
Our Trip to Boston’s Museum of Science
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On Friday, October 3, I Took Isaac and David, and Isaac's best friend Nda (En-dah) (John opted out) to the Museum of Science on Friday (I took a half day off, and picked Isaac up from school, and we went by subway). We had a great time. The digital camera I bought lets me get low-light and other kinds of photos I could never capture before.
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It’s funny, because you never know what will really interest the kids. David now wants to go back (he asks approximately every day now). For some reason a 2300-year-old mummy in the life sciences section fascinated him. Later, he was a little mad that they put a sign up asking people not to sit in or stand in the tyrannosaur footprint.
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One very cool new exhibit was sponsored by Microsoft – it's a mock-up of the “cockpit†of the Wright Flyer, linked to a huge projection screen and M$ Flight Simulator 2004. The Wright Flyer was very difficult to fly – not so bad climbing and leveling off (although it would stall very easily), but banking (by weight-shifting) was usually disastrous for us. Friday afternoons and evenings the museum is mostly empty, so we all had plenty of chances to try it.
Dungeon Seiges the Wilcox Family
After hearing Phil Luchon tell as about half a million times, “You have to buy Dungeon Seige,†I finally picked up a copy of this $30 gem. It’s a role-playing game with an emphasis on action done by Microsoft and Gas Powered Games. David and Isaac beg to play it every day (and lament the fact that, unless they supplement their computer time with educational activities, they only get an hour of game time per day). A few screen shots are below.
Family News Update
Well, it’s about time I updated a few family items; Nichelle can add her 2¢ later.
- Isaac’s last day of school (second grade) was yesterday. He cried because it was over. He does much better in elementary school than I did.
- Work at Kronos has been great, and a wonderful opportunity to daily improve my Java skills. One colleague pointed out that our team seems to have “the right amount of fun.â€
- My father’s health has actually improved (this was not expected)! He was able to walk into and out of church a couple of weeks ago, and the congregation appauded when he came in. This is a big difference from how he was doing at Christmas.
- Nichelle’s pregnancy is halfway through, and she finally has another ultrasound scheduled for June 16, which should be the gender-determining one. (If this child is a boy, I’ll post a link to the e-bay auction soon.) If it’s a girl, we still need to pick a middle name. I’ll probably create an online submission form for suggestions. (Kherna Yoyo continues to insist the middle name should be Kherna.)
- We are still working on our move to Nashua. The cosmetics on our current house are nearly done. I have a minor plumbing problem to correct, but the greenboard for the new bathroom ceiling is up. Nichelle is (as usual) doing her masterful job of spackling, patching, and painting. We do not yet have a house picked out in Nashua or Hudson, but we find reasonable listings every day. We continue to pray for God’s guidance in this.
- The Mexico missions trip is back on after a one-year absence. I am going alone (sniff), but am looking forward to continuing to help with the church and children’s home in Constitución, as well as reimmersing myself in the culture. (I will be keeping The Missions Trip Site updated starting in a week or two, and will be porting the BLOG software to it, so I can do live updates from the trip. I read an excellent biography on Benito Juarez, the orphan-who-became-president. His story rivals that of Lincoln in some ways. I’d like to re-read the book before we leave, and take some notes.
The Amazing Geckoman
Scientists in the UK have created a sticky tape which works in the same way as gecko feet.
Co-worker Brian Cortez sent me this link from the BBC, about a tape that has been developed that works using microscopic hairs, just like a gecko’s feet. (Isaac owns a New Caledonian crested gecko, and they are amazing climbers.)
There are still significant technical challenges to overcome before this can be mass-produced, but Brian suggested this likely scenario at the WIlcox house:
I can see the toy manufacturers drooling over this one. Imagine being able to sell a set of real “Spiderman†gloves! I can also imagine you as a parent telling your son Isaac to get off the ceiling … it’s dinner time. 🙂
24
[tv]Nichelle here: I noticed my husband has failed to mention the rather noisy incident that happened the other night. Well, I'll be nice and fill you all in. Well, Doug and I were recently introduced to a fairly new show, which is now in the second season, called 24 w/ Keiffer Sutherland. Well, the show is very addicting and extremely intense. We love it.
Well, back to the noise, which made me heave myself off the couch and bolt upstairs to find Isaac on the floor crying. He fell out of his top bunk. Well, Doug eventually made it upstairs to see what happened. I was later informed that he was trying to figure out what to do. He could only see himself needing to take a child to the hospital and missing the last half of the episode. The funny thing is we have the whole first season on DVD!!!! He only needed to pause for a moment, but I did mention that the show is really intense…LOL Well, Isaac did hurt himself, but nothing to take him to the hospital. He's fine now. Oh, we haven't yet finished the episode, but we did get another friend hooked on the show, by showing him the first two episodes.