Fartsauce

A Jocelyn request…

I had to take Ethan to his first t-ball practice a few days ago and Jocelyn had to come with us. Amy was at work and was going to stop by later on to pick her up.

Jocelyn was sitting on my lap and, of course, was getting cold (early spring practices are generally somewhat cold). I snuggled her up tight and was having a grand ol’ time just holding her. Then, she says to me “Daddy, I want you to do something”. “What, honey?” “I need you to have a talk with Spring, IT’S TOO COLD!”

I assured her I would. Anything for my little girl! Unless it’s giving away my beer.

Our new president and torture (and aliens…!?)

Of all the things that happened under our last president, I think it was the torture that pissed me off the most. Sure, there were plenty of other things that I didn’t like, either (how Iraq was handled, Katrina, etc.), but torturing prisoners and holding them indefinitely, no matter how despicable they might be or have been, without even the slightest attempt at a trial goes against everything this country was built on. Near the end, there were some pathetic motions made towards some shammified version of a trial, of course, but this shouldn’t have EVER been an issue in the first place.

Sometime between Obama being elected and the Inauguration, I said to my wife “if I were becoming President, the VERY first thing I’d do was stop the torture”. Of course, she wasn’t taking me seriously, as she told me “I don’t think so, the first thing you’d try and get them to do is show you the aliens and all the cool top secret shit!!”. Ok, she’s got me on the seeing of all the top secret shit.

I’m just glad that President Obama at least seems to be on the way to reversing the terrible acts that were perpetrated by the previous administration under the guise of “security”.

Apparently, Pookie bear ain’t purty enough!

I had to get up at 5 (AM!) to help with a site deployment. So, of course, at 5:30 (or so) I hear Jocelyn yelling for “mommy, MOMMY!” Mommy is sick, and I didn’t want her getting woken up early, so I run upstairs to make sure everything was ok.

I get up there, and of course she’s had some sort of “scary dream”. Here’s how the conversation went from there:

Me: “You have a lot of friends that can help you, would you like me to get your pookie bear to help you out?”

Jocelyn: “Yes, please”

“OK”

So, I grab her Pookie bear, who is OH SO FAR AWAY, a foot or so behind her. I try and place it in front of her, where her precious Pegasus is.

Jocelyn: “No daddy! That’s the beautiful area, and she’s NOT BEAUTIFUL!! I want my OTHER teddy bear”

The “other” teddy bear, in this case, is MY old teddy bear, the one given to me when I was about 6 months old. He/She (of course, when he was mine, he was a he, but now she’s a she for Jocelyn) was acceptable, albeit barely, to sit just outside of the “beautiful” section.

Ethan taking a survey!

I took these pictures sometime last week on one of the days I picked Ethan up from school. Jocelyn LOVES to do her “centers” at school. Since they don’t start on them until 4 or so, I usually bring Ethan home for a little while, then we get Jocelyn later. This was one of those days.

They had been working on surveys for quite awhile in school, so he decided he wanted to do one at home. Which was awesome, I’m all for it, considering all the issues we’re having with him in school. At least something is sinking in and it’s fun to see him so enthusiastic about it. It also helps that he LOVES math.

This survey would consist of going around the house and counting up all the smoke detectors and sprinkler heads. I grabbed a piece of paper, made a little table for him with two columns, and off we went! I decided to grab the camera (something I’m going to try and do more often) and see if I could get anything good. I don’t think they’re that great, but they’re OK.

Some Random pictures I’ve taken recently…

Don’t know how these will look, just messing around, I am, really. They all link to the appropriate smugmug gallery. Instead of actually writing stuff, I’ve decided I’m going to try and take more pictures and post them. Whether they be pictures of family or just random crap. I’ve lost track of how many hawks, raptors, etc. I’ve seen in the past few days and wish I had my camera with me. Maybe I’ll start carrying it around.

I don’t think I did very good adjusting these, to be honest, I need more practice. And I don’t like taking photos indoors :(.

GODDAMMIT, now you’ve gone and pissed me off, AND I have a final tomorrow! (prop 8)

This ad ran in the New York Times last Friday (12/5/2008) (I found out about it here: Human Rights Campaign). Go and read it, I actually want you too!

Done reading? If you voted yes on Prop 8, then you might just want to piss off. I was writing this up in an email to send to a mailing list I’m on, then it hit me. “Hey, this would make a good blog post!” (I have so few of those, some would argue *ahem* NONE)

I’m curious as to what violence they’re talking about. I haven’t heard of any, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I like the second to last paragraph. And by like, I mean “This shit pisses me off”:

“Let’s be clear: even the crudest anti-religious propaganda isn’t illegal, and may not constitutionally be outlawed. But it’s nevertheless wrong. It has no place in civilized society”

Sounds like “Religous liberty” (by the Becket institutes definition) certainly doesn’t mean “liberty FROM religion”, and a (admittedly) cursory search of their website seems to bear that out.

I’ll tell you what has no place in civilized society. Bigotry has no place in civilized society. Murdering someone because they’re different has no place in civilized society. Violence against people or groups (from any side) who disagree with you has no place in civilized society. Unthinkingly following a stupid book(s) has no place in civilized society. Saying that being “anti-religous” has no place in a civilized society, has no place in a civilized society.

I’ll tell you what DOES have a place in civilized society. Questioning authority. Questioning religion. Being tolerant. Letting anyone get married to whoever they want to. Questioning religion is not intolerant. Just don’t expect a good answer

You can have your religion all you want, as long as it doesn’t restrict someone elses rights. Voting yes on prop 8 crossed that line.

We REALLY WANT HER TO RUN

The situation: T-ball game, Jocelyn is on third base. Third base coach phone rings, answers it, then hangs up.

Jocelyn looks at him: “Was that my parents telling you to tell me to run?”

Something tells me astrology is crap…

So, I’m surfing my feeds today, and come across this: “Live Life” at Teen Skepchick (which was linked off skepchick.org feed). So, of course, I had to check out the article on MSN (Choosing the Right Major).

I’m an Aries, so let’s see what it says for me!

“I’m in charge” Aries will thrive in any occupation that permits advancement and promotion. You are an excellent promoter, and majoring in marketing would bode you well in public relations, sales, or just about any other direction you move. Here’s another inside tip: did you know that deep inside of every Aries is the soul of a hero? You would make an exceptional police officer, soldier, or fireman, and Aries does love a uniform. Check out the police academy or career military schools.

Also notice how general the description is. “…Or any other direction you move…”. It’s almost as if they make this stuff up completely out of the blue! I also wonder what we’d get if a different astrologist wrote about the same topic, but they didn’t know about this article. Probably get something completely different, like how Penn and Teller had 3 Feng Shui “experts” on Bullshit and they all came up with something completely different, and even contradicting each other at times (mentioned here, 3rd paragraph: Featured DVD – Penn & Teller).

Now, granted, the sample size is small (1), but you would think they’d at least get SOMETHING right!

You could do this for all the other signs as well, of course, but why multiply the stupid more than I already have?

I wonder how different computers would be…

If there was no longer a dividing line between hard disks and memory? IE, if you just had a big huge slab of memristors that could be both the RAM and Hard Drives at the same time.

Just a weird ass thought.

My next car will be…

Well, if my kids have their way, at least. And who am I to argue? This happened while driving the kids home from school on Friday.

So, after taking a turn onto rt 28, I see behind me an orange Lamborghini Murcielago, probably back about 300 yards or so, just coming out of the same right hand turn. It’s a 2-lane road, and I was the only car in front of him for probably a mile. Now, being somewhat of a car guy, I’m pretty sure this guy is going to stomp on it. Why did I think that? Because that’s exactly what I would do most of the time, especially if I was driving a Murcielago (or any other Lamborghini, for that matter).

So, I see his nose pick up a little bit as he starts accelerating. Then I tell the kids “Ok guys, look over here *pointed left* and watch this”.

Driver of Lambo did NOT disappoint. He goes FLYING past.

Me: “awesome!”

Ethan: “DUDE! THAT WAS SO SWEET!!!” (”dude” and “sweet” are two of Ethans new favorite words. maybe he and I should re-enact “Dude, where’s my car”)

Jocelyn: “WHOA!!”

There was much exclaiming and talk as he hit traffic and I caught up to him. I was able to pull up next to him at one of the lights and the kids got a real good close look at the thing. There was some argument (amongst the children) as to how many engines the Lambo had. First hypothesis was 3. Then Ethan suggested 16, and that’s what they finally settled on.

Then, Jocelyn dropped the bomb that I totally wish I could make true… “Daddy, when the engine in this car brakes (my STi), you should get one of those!”

Somehow, I don’t think an argument from a 4 year old will convince the wife that my next car should be a Lamborghini. Nor will said argument magically produce the money needed to purchase such a thing