Les Bonnes Choses

Saturdays are my usual days to gidderdun. Not so tomorrow, when I will be at the downtown campus scanning participants for the first time since the beginning of December. That means that the weekly task of mopping 1900 square feet of floor will go undone -- that is, unless Jude offers to do it. I have managed to persuade my oldest son that washing the floor is fun. It would be, too, if only we had the mopping zamboni that I have invented during those countless hours pushing a mop around the house since we moved here.

And when I finish scanning tomorrow evening, I get to return to a hot meal, just like I would have come to expect if only it were fifty years ago, before the ladies got all uppity. Frankly, I don't know what the big deal was. Cooking can be quite enjoyable if you have the right tools. I think the sexual revolution could have been avoided if All-Clad cookware was available in the '60s.

Sorry, the preceding paragraph was just an experiment. I'm testing different vectors for inducing a stroke in my aunts Kathy and Sandra, and a few other people who I know will read this. I haven't figured out a placebo condition yet.

Update: only coincidentally related to the entry title, I just discovered that Rock Band is available for the Wii. You may remember how I felt about it last year (or maybe it was in '08? I couldn't find the entry where I wrote about rocking out in Toys 'R Us, so you'll have to go back and read two years' worth of entries to learn more). I will go to bed now, and hope that the feeling passes; otherwise, I may have another money sink on my hands (to go along with my high-end cookware fetish).

France is on its way to transitioning from a democracy to a hypocracy, as, according to this story from CBC today:

The panel's report also recommends modifying rules governing foreigners residing in France or seeking asylum, to ensure refusal of a resident card to those who "manifest a radical practice of their religion."

You mean, like devout Catholics?

To begin, Jude gets a Flintstone multivitamin most mornings. When I was a kid, The Flintstones were still on the air (in syndication, at least), and the chewable multivitamin was a crunchy tablet in the shape of characters from the program. They still make the multivitamin, though it is now a gummy-like gelatin shape, and I'd be surprised if kids know what the heck The Flintstones are because I haven't seen any trace of the program in my channel listings for some while now. I imagine the factory where the vitamins are made might be in some kind of ghost town, like from a sci-fi movie: the townspeople evacuated 15 years ago, and the automated factory keeps spitting out the vitamins 24-7, tracking ingredient inventories with FoxPro and sending and receiving shipments through some local company who doesn't ask questions because their account is paid up through 2112.

I digressed.

I mention the gummy multivitamin because he gets one each day, and you need to know that to make sense of what I am about to relate.

A couple of weeks ago, Rebecca returned from a shopping outing with a tree skirt. I have no idea why she bought it, other than it was priced to go. I have told her many times that this is not sufficient reason to make a purchase; a bowl of excrement can be "priced to go," but that doesn't make it a good buy. Nonetheless, we have a new tree skirt. When Jude found this tree skirt, he said it looked like what the guy wears at the front of the church. I have already made an account of some of Jude's ideas about church, so it seems that this domain provides lots of fodder for his imagination. Yesterday, Rebecca returned from Ikea with a pile of round rubber coasters. Jude called them "Jellies," which made absolutely no sense at first. But as he continued to talk, we realized he was referring to the communion wafers which, like gummy multivitamins, you are only allowed one of at a time.

I don't know whether this was a result of Rebecca's encouragement, or if Jude has taken it upon himself to blaspheme, but I present without further ado, why my oldest son will be going to hell.

Yes, that is a tree skirt he's wearing. It doesn't look that bad, actually, so maybe the church has some more money-saving options.

This one's mostly a core dump. I edited it so that it didn't come off as a 'my child is better than yours' kind of post. I mean, he is, but rubbing it in is just poor sportsmanship. Yes, child rearing is a sport. See you in London, 2012.

We recently contacted the Gentner lab (note: if you google "dedre", Gentner is google's #1 suggested completion - she must be like Madonna or something). Some consent forms appeared in Jude's mailbox at the preschool. I like her work, and figured that, rather than have Jude get pulled out of class at school, maybe he could participate on campus. I did hint that he's kind of a weirdo, however, and therefore might be a bit of an outlier:

Some time in his second year, I helped him gain the concept of 'toe fluff' (the lint appearing between your toes when you remove your socks). It concerns him. He can often be found before a bath using a Q-tip to meticulously clean between his toes because he finds toe fluff in his bath water distressing.

Like most kids his age, I'm sure, he's always asking "why?". Being a science geek, I can and do tell him the correct answer. So now he's got some ideas in his head about the vestibular system, and can explain that soap kills germs by destroying the phospholipid bilayer (and thus, all soap is antibacterial).

I have no idea how any of this might apply to his analogical reasoning, but he should come with fine print: "results not typical".

Sorry, Dedre.

We're finally giving in. Sort of. I'm not a big video game person. It's not that I don't find them fun; I have fond memories of summers spent playing Astrosmash and B-17 Bomber on my uncle Dave's Intellivision. However, I also found that it was far easier decision to use my laptop to destroy bad guys than to pen my CS honours thesis back in the day. To avoid frittering away my money on things I don't really need or want, one principle to which I firmly adhere is that, if I think I want something, I should, as my dad says, "lay down until the feeling passes." However, there has been talk of getting a Wii Fit for some while now, so I think it's safe to say that it would not be an impulse purchase. Monsieur Jude keeps talking about getting a video game, "just like [his cousin] Thomas," (even at this very moment, he is playing with his toy cars, and some blocks as a "mo-control and a video game") and Rebecca is (I think) interested in using the Wii fit as an alternative to the gym, which involves both planning and public showers.

Not known for its first person shooters, the Wii instead has many family oriented games, which is a plus. There's the modest potential of the Wii Fit as a health benefit. And then there's the nostalgia of the rebooted Mario Bros. dynasty. Not all Wii offerings are winners, however. As you may know, I like to cook, and Rebecca likes to entertain. For that reason, when the television is on, if it is not tuned into Nick Jr., it is usually tuned into the Food Network. There, I have seen advertised a Wii game called Cook or Be Cooked. The game requires the player to use the Wii controller to chop, flip, fry, and otherwise do the actions involved in cooking a meal. The holy grail in video game design is to achieve total immersion in the game. Piles of money and manpower have been thrown at the task of making games as realistic as possible. Photorealistic renderings of skyscapes, rumble controllers and 5.1 surround sound go some of the distance, but the experience of virtual reality remains beyond the capabilities of the most advanced hardware programmed by the cleverest engineers. However, if it's chopping, frying and stirring that you're into, the technology for a fully immersive experience does exist. It's called put down the damn Wii controller and go make dinner because it's 7:30 and your kids are eating the peanut butter out of the container.

I just watched a segment on How It's Made describing how they make Trailers. In one step, they put it in a specially designed room to simulate how it holds up in a hurricane. Curiously, they do not perform the more relevant test of seeing how it holds up in a tornado.

This is absolutely brilliant. The fearmongerers have lots of wares to peddle. One such trinket is an irrational fear of cell phones. Now, don't get me wrong: those things are dangerous, but mostly because people use them when they should be directing all attention at keeping their cars from hitting stuff, and whether hands-free or not, planning your night out over the phone impairs you.

Aside: I'm going to go a step further and suggest that it's not the phone per se that's the problem, it's that your attention is not on your surroundings; I imagine that a phone conversation in which you are describing the traffic around you might even improve your driving.

Anyways, that's not the cell phone danger that prompted this post. Instead, I wanted to make fun of the tin-foil hat wearing spazzes who insist, based on an irrational fear of things ethereal, that cell phone use exposes you to dangerous radiation, putting you at risk for tumours and the like. Well, it turns out that a bunch of researchers found that it doesn't. In fact, it apparently might be beneficial.

Now, the thought of providing iPhones to nursing home patients with alzheimers is provocative. The GPS capabilities on them could certainly come in handy should one of them escape. On the downside, I'm not sure that the general public wants to make it easier to hear the musings of a demented person. And, the other big downside I can see (which I mention just to see if I can bait any more internet perverts), is that we might run into the problem of some of the friskier nursing home patients sexting each other.

That's right. Nursing home patients sexting. Never before have these words been strung together in the English language. You saw it first here, folks.

This is the inaugural blog post from my new laptop. I didn't expect to be making this post so soon, as the availability for the model on the Lenovo website was listed as back-ordered by 4 weeks, and my receipt, generated on boxing day, listed an estimated ship date of February 2. Imagine my surprise when I received an email on December 28th indicating that my order had shipped. I can only assume that the guy responsible for programming throughput estimation for Microsoft was involved.



It occurred to me as I was preparing to leave for the Christmas break that, as I have peppered my blog with clues about my whereabouts, it would actually be pretty stupid to advertise the fact that the house would be empty for half a month. Now I'm going to have to go back through my blog entries and obfuscate my address, where I am currently staying, carefully avoiding all the booby traps that I have set all around the property. Except for when I go to the butcher to get a side of beef that I use to feed three armored tigers that we keep in the house.



So le petit monsieur did his first real crawly bits this afternoon, which is something to write home about. Being lazy, I decided I could mention it in a blog entry which is likely to be read back at home, thereby killing two birds with one stone.

About an hour into the new year, I was asked if I had made any resolutions. In light of recent events, it appears that air travel is going to be even more inconvenient for the foreseeable future (readers whose initials are not HM should recall that I wrote about reactive security measures just a few short weeks ago). As I really hope to find myself interviewing for jobs in 2010, I can't see how I can possibly avoid the new measures to be imposed on flights over US airspace -- measures that are going to greatly change the way I fly. For one thing, I have gotten in the habit of packing lightly and bringing everything in carry on luggage. This ensures that my clothes arrive with me and that I don't have to spend any longer in the airport than is absolutely required. I'm not sure, but I also suspect that this also spells the end of listening to my mp3 player, solving sudoku puzzles and reading on the flight. Flights are going to be like the 3rd grade when the teacher got fed up with a rowdy class and told everyone to just sit there with their heads on their desks until the recess bell.

What does this have to do with the new year and my new year's resolution? Well, it seems that the TSA has forced my hand. By all accounts, full body scanners are going to be popping up everywhere. While they don't use X-rays, they do allow the scanner to see underneath my clothing, as in the individual pictured below, who looks like perhaps he takes Fallout just a little too seriously:



Because these body scans penetrate clothing, I'm going to have to make it my new year's resolution to get into better shape. I'm also going to sift through my spam folder for those male enhancement emails that I have been deleting up until now.