the wool and the word

In which Pipey delivers

2011-11-21T12:15:00.005-05:00

Remember when Neatnik blogged about our chickens and how my allergies meant we had to give away the chickens? Well, the hens are doing quite well. Emma and Ash are still living with Pipey and his wife and Emma has started laying already! Pipey delivered us a half dozen Emma-eggs this morning.

Neatnik has been suffering from a migraine for the past day and a half so she is home sick today. I made her a special lunch.

Lunch ala Emma

Apparently, Emma produces some very fine eggs because they were gone before I could even ask for a taste. I am hiding the remaining four eggs so that Number Guy and I get to sample the goods.

Sadly, Elle, Red, and Dee all grew up into fine roosters so Pipey couldn't keep them. He got three more hens and the roosters went to live at a new farm.

Sexist socks

2011-11-18T10:17:00.010-05:00

What is it with the clothing industry and sexism? Don't misunderstand me here. I'm fairly flexible about folks flashing their favorite fashions. Heck, I'm married to a guy who regularly dons a ~~skirt~~ kilt, but there are lines and then there are lines.

And a line has been crossed.

This is a screenshot from an email I received today. I once ordered a wool sweater from the company in question, so I will now receive marketing emails until the end of time.

Even if I should up and decide to move to the tropics, I suppose...

If I were to be selling athletic supporters, I'd put ads in mens magazines. Target demographic and all of that.

I can understand that an ad sporting a big, hairy, male foot in a cute, strappy summer sandal is not very likely to promote huge sales of said sandals to teenaged girls.

Although maybe in the transvestite demographic....

Ahem.

What I cannot understand is why men can buy socks labeled warm, warmer, and warmest but we women can only purchase pedicure-prim, aloe-infused socks.

What? Only guys go outside in the winter? Only strapping, strong, muscular men shovel snow? Only women are entitled to soft sole skin?

In which prof trek offers extra credit

2011-11-16T07:15:00.011-05:00

Programming students had an exam last night.

Posted this on the board:

if ( you.feeling() == AMBITIOUS && time != EXPIRED && you.writeFifthProgram() )
out.println("Earn extra credit.");

I am such a geek.

How to speak dragon?

2011-11-14T07:47:00.006-05:00

We visited with Neatnik's Great-Uncle iPhone and Great-Aunt Basket over the long weekend. Neatnik loves visiting them: getting there involves a multiple state drive and she gets to be entertained by a stand-in grandpa.

Neatnik has a bit of a fascination with dragons lately. She wants to read How to Speak Dragoneseand How to Train Your Dragonis currently her favorite movie.

Yesterday, Uncle iPhone introduced the child to Dragon NaturallySpeaking.When he told her that she could talk to the computer and it would type for her, her ears perked up. He set the hook as soon as he told her the name of the software. Check out what she spoke to the computer:

Hello, my name is Neatnik. Amazing, isn't it? Are you happy? Uncle iPhone, my friend, is over here. If what is your name? Is it really Dragon? Do you have dragon back. I said breast. No breath!

I'm using the DragonBar Premium. I think Uncle iPhone rules here, but I rule back home. I am now going to choose a new font.

DC will ever use DragonBar Premium? I said do you ever use DragonBar Premium? What is your favorite color? Do you like seeing? I said, do you like to sing? Why are you not working too well?

Aunt Basket, please come here, will you? 'Cause I want you here. Wait one second. I am sorry, but Aunt Basket is not available. I hope to see you soon.

Goodbye! Thank you for listening!

In which Neatnik earns extra credit

2011-11-07T16:48:00.003-05:00

Neatnik's teacher offers the students extra credit for projects that they do on the subjects of the stories in their reading textbook. Last week, they didn't read a story so there was no project but Neatnik looked ahead and reported back to me that they were scheduled to read Two Tickets to Freedomnext.

This got us to talking about the Underground Railroad and the quilt code. Some quilt researchers are certain that quilts were used as signals on the Railroad since the escaping slaves wouldn't have been educated, the written word was useless to them. Quilts, however, are made up of pictograms and those images have symbolic meanings.

Neatnik decided that she wanted to make a booklet of quilt blocks. She researched online and settled on ten quilt blocks to reproduce in mixed media. I got to teach her how to use my sewing machine, Liquid Thread,an X-Actoknife, a rotary cutter,and PowerPoint,and Neatnik got to practice her computer and ironing skills. My other major tasks were ruler holder and paper positioner - because I didn't really see the need for any bleeding, I held the paper still while Neatnik cut.

Seriously, though, Neatnik was amazingly focused on this project and she spent over 20 hours on it between the research, the typing, and the crafting parts. Then she came home from school today and told me about visiting National Geographic's Underground Railroad web site today.

I am so proud of how much she enjoys learning and creating!

WMBP - now with more circles

2011-11-02T09:04:00.004-04:00

In honor of All Souls Day, let's have a catching up type of Wednesday Morning Bullet Post.

In Mexico, November 2nd is also known as the

Sent this ecard to
Number Guy this AM.

Well, crud. There goes the idea of posting every day in November.

On the plus side, the pressure is now off.

I think I've become addicted to Thread Words.

It is still a free download so go get your copy now. I'll wait.

Well, it sure took you long enough to come back. I did warn you that it is addictive, right?

The little circles in the game are a good way to segue into the next bullet point: today is

Look for Circles Day

Wrote a note to Neatnik's teacher about Look for Circles Day.

She sent back a thank you note saying what a great idea and that the children's journal entry for today will be on circles. Can't wait to hear what Neatnik writes about circles.

Can you believe that Neatnik is now a Junior Girl Scout?

Her troop is spending a lot of time this year working on their aMUSE Journey. Today's meeting activity is making "Role Model" dolls from pipe cleaners, yarn, and

buttons!

Their troop leader is working towards her outdoor certification so that the girls can go camping. Neatnik is going to some of the workshops as well. In the first session, they will be making hamburgers over an open fire and learning about fire safety, so she will need a mess kit and dunk bag.

I had an aluminum mess kit as a kid and can I tell you how much those things suck?

If you didn't dry each item scrupulously as soon as you washed it, the aluminum pitted and everything tasted like it was wrapped in tin foil. Even if you did carefully wash and dry the cup, beverages all tasted like tin foil and when they served up that sticky bug juice, the cup was ruined for all eternity. The stupid pieces never nested and clipped together after the first time you opened it and the flimsy cutlery was a joke.

I got the supplies form for the first session and it clearly stated

"You may pre-order a mess kit (for $6 each) from council if you don’t want to make your own."

Make your own? Wicked brilliant!

We recently were at a community day fair where Neatnik got a

Nice, new blue plate

We have some plastic cups I got years ago at the grocery store for 50¢ each and small bowls which were three for a dollar at the Dollar$tore. A larger black bowl that originally held a pasta dish I scored for free on a promotion at the milk store rounded out the dishes requirement.

There are a variety of thrift store spoons and forks in the kitchen drawer but I'll need to locate a butter knife. They usually sell cutlery at two or three for a dollar.

Total cost for the mess kit will come to just over a buck. Thrifty, unique, and easily identifiable.

Why did the programmer die in the shower?

He followed the instructions
on the shampoo bottle.

How many circles are there in your life? Go forth and seek: after all, they are all around us.

In which trek drives by the blog

2011-10-20T21:05:00.003-04:00

October is flying by me! I've been amazingly busy this semester. I'm teaching three different courses, one of which is brand-new to me and another of which has an entirely revamped structure. Not a lot of spare moments on my hands. Just wanted to reassure the folks who asked that I really am still here.

Hoping to post for real again soon.

Maybe I should sign up for NaNoWriMo or something...

In which Neatnik discovers a dinosaur

2011-10-06T17:21:00.000-04:00

Archaeologist Neatnik and her research team uncovered the bones of a previously undiscovered dinosaur. This creature has been named Microtetraelmiodon (pronounced micro-tetra-el-me-o-don), meaning "small four footed tooth".

Microtetraelmiodon had four feet and was four feet tall and was basically cat-like in appearance. She lived during the Cretaceous period. Microtetraelmiodon was a plant-eater, specifically, she ate flowers. Although she lived in the jungle, she was a cave-dweller because she needed cover from other (larger) dinosaurs that might eat her. When under attack, Microtetraelmiodon's extra tail blades extended, helping her to fight off enemies.

Help me!

2011-10-03T13:31:00.005-04:00

I posted earlier this year about joining Lendle. Lendle just sent an email saying that they are having a contest to win a new Kindle Fireand a Kindle Touch 3G.If you would like to try to win one and help me try to win one at the same time, sign up for Lendle using my referral code KJ1TTICY.

Help me and help yourself at the same time: every person that signs up with my referral code earns me an entry. Everyone who signs up with my referral code earns an entry for themselves - and then they can get their own referral code and sign up other people.

Contest ends December 31st and wouldn't a new Kindle be a wonderful belated Christmas present?

Doe a deer

2011-09-26T14:33:00.001-04:00

I decided to do a short traipse through the local wildlife refuge during my walk this morning. There were two deer up ahead on the trail. I slowed my steps and continued on carefully not making eye contact. The larger deer trotted off the path and into the wood. The smaller deer stood and watched me pass within 10 feet of her.

-- IMMD

SMBP - EME

2011-09-24T07:01:00.003-04:00

Oh dear! It's been weeks, weeks, since I made a blog post! Guess I should get busy with an Early Saturday Morning Bullet Post...

Back to school has been a mite (read whole heck of a lot) busier than in previous years.

Fourth grade is one of those years where you notice the increase in the amount of homework and studying required.
Not that I am complaining, mind you.

I approve of homework. I assign it myself all the time.

Between the increased academic load and cross country practice and tae kwon do class and Girl Scouts, Neatnik is one busy kid.

Which means I am one busy Mommy.

Compound the grammar school business with the college business and I am one busy prof trek.

I mentioned back in August that we have upgraded to Windows 7and Office 2010.and that I invested in a new laptopbecause my old computer was struggling to meet the challenge.

All of that upgrading meant I needed to configure the new laptop, including backing up all of my old data and installing all of the software I need to support my classes.

It also meant working up new slides for lecture and learning the ins and outs of the upgraded Office suite and doing all the homework and lab assignments and practice tests for myself.

Yeah,busy. It would be less time consuming to devote myself to full-time preparation for the zombie apocalypse.

In between all of the preparations, I've been trying to get outside to log some mileage.

I wore a pair of my skinny jeans the other day!

Well, I was going to work on bullets until the rest of the household roused and since Neatnik just came bouncing down the stairs, it must be time for breakfast. Hope you have a drier weekend than we are.

Now with more lids

2011-09-08T15:07:00.002-04:00

I brought my camera on vacation. I packed Neatnik's camera, too. Even made sure to charge them both fully the day before we departed.

We didn't take a single picture. Never took the cameras out of the minivan.

I know, I know: bad blogger.

:: hangs head in shame ::

Today, however, I was inspired to take a picture to share with you.

About a year and a half ago, I posted about how I broke the lid to my teapot and had to order a new one. Last month, just before we left on vacation, I had a minor accident. I was taking my teapot out of the dishwasher and the hot, slightly wet lid slipped out of my fingers and fell onto the stainless steel door of the dishwasher, yielding three pretty yellow chunks of useless ceramic.

No sense in ordering a replacement teapot immediately since I wouldn't be at home to use it nor even to take receipt of it, so I waited until last week to order a new one.

While on the Upton Tea website, I mentioned to Number Guy that it would be really nice if I could buy just a replacement lid instead of a whole new teapot. After all, I already owned two identically sized and shaped teapots I bought from them.

Would you believe that my wish came true? Yep, Upton Tea sells replacements lids.

The patterned pot has been discontinued,
but the dark green lid works just fine.

Oh, yes, and on the packing slip there was a footnote indicating that the packing peanuts were not Styrofoam but were made of corn silk and it was perfectly acceptable to wash them down the drain.

Well, naturally, I had to try it. What fun!

In which trek travels

2011-08-30T18:36:00.002-04:00

We spent a lot of time in the minivan during the past two weeks: clan trek was on a road trip! We took our time driving down to Walt Disney World, spent almost a week there, and then took our time driving back home. While number guy was driving one afternoon towards the end of our extended excursion, I thought I should jot down all of the good ideas we had on this trip.

These are things that worked for us on our recent road trip. Anyone who employs these tips does so at their own risk. We assume no responsibility.

trek's road trip travel tips

Clothing. Even if you are absolutely, positively certain that you do not need long pants or a sweatshirt or a rain jacket, bring one of each anyway - just in case. Restaurants and movie theaters can be air conditioned down to arctic temperatures. You'll feel great when you first walk indoors after a time out in the blazing sunshine but by the end of dinner you will really wish you hadn't left that toasty warm sweatshirt back home on the top shelf of your closet. Also, if the weather should turn unexpectedly foul frigidly wet week, you will be warm even in shorts if you layer your wardrobe: rain gear over sweatshirt over tee shirt over tank top. The long pants will come in handy, too, if the family/friends ~~whose guest room you are mooching~~ with whom you are visiting on Tuesday night should happen to want to take you out to a nicer restaurant. Have at least one collared shirt in your suitcase to cover this possibility.

Towel. Toss a kitchen towel in your vehicle. Not only does it have a 101 uses, it will also mark you as truly hoopy frood. You might even want to grab two or three towels as long as you are in the kitchen.

Trash bag. Pack one or two plastic grocery store bags into your vehicle's map pockets or glove compartment to use for trash collection on the road. If you are driving a minivan or an SUV, see if you can loop one bag handle around the armrest of each of the front bucket seats: instant hanging trash can. Dispose of your trash at least daily or more frequently depending on how number of passengers, ickiness of said trash, and ambient temperature.

Fruit basket. Certain fruits, like apples and bananas, fare very well without refrigeration. Other fruits like peaches and nectarines also have a pretty good shelf life at room temperature. Load up a wicker basket with your fruits of choice. Remember to add a small cutting board, a knife, and a melon baller, too. The shotgun passenger gets conscripted to serve as the Fruit Sous Chef. One chop cuts an apple in half and then all your FSC needs to do is to remove the core from each half using the melon baller. Wipe off the knife and melon baller with the kitchen towel.

Cooler. Load up a small cooler with your favorite refreshing beverages and some ice before leaving home,. Individual soft drinks and fruit juices are really expensive on the road. Why pay $3.00 for a 20-ounce drink at an Interstate rest area vending machine when you can buy a six-pack of the same thing at your grocery store for less? A small cooler also provides you with food flexibility. You can bring your favorite brand of yogurt, for example, and not have to worry about local availability issues.

Fluids. Filling your tank with gasoline and being sure you get your oil changed before a big trip should go without saying. Now that that is handled, remember to monitor the fluids of the vehicle's passengers. Drink plenty of water. Remind the kid(s) to drink up as well. Yes, this means you will be making more frequent pit stops to deal with all of that water but this is okay. It is desirable, even. Accept this. It is not just healthier for your body, it is also safer for you and those with whom you are sharing the road. Tired drivers are more careless. Drivers who stop every hour or two to stretch their legs are more alert and safer. Change drivers every other pit stop, too.

Spoons. You'll need a spoon in order to eat your yogurt or applesauce or what have you. Cold cut sandwiches get old day after day.

Global Positioning System. If you do not have a GPS, get one and then familiarize yourself with its features. Our new one can locate points of interest near current location, near destination, and along route. This last one is the best: only those POIs ahead of you are displayed. If your vehicle has a power outlet in the back, hook the kid(s) in the backseat up with the old GPS. It is worth hours of entertainment and eliminates the "are we there yet?" refrain. Be sure to have the kid(s) mute the secondary GPS: there is nothing more distracting than that particular backseat driver.

Grocery stores. Everybody needs to eat. Let your GPS locate the nearest grocery store for you. Refill your fruit basket and cooler then swing by the deli department for a few slices of Virginia ham and lacy Swiss. Bakery departments are usually good about selling you a single roll. Ta da! Lunch on the go. We call these "car picnics". You eat healthier than the fast food options available on the Interstates and save your restaurant dollars for a nice dinner at the end of the day. Grocery stores also have clean bathrooms.

Club cards. Corollary to the grocery store tip, always, always, always ask for the club card key tags for the grocery store chains along your route. It can save you a lot of money. Don't chuck it when you get home, either, squirrel it away for the next road trip. We still have our Food Lion club card from our vacation in Ocean City, Maryland four years ago and Food Lions are all over the southeast. Oh, yeah: make sure you use your real home phone number so that they can look you up at the register if you forget your card.

Drug stores. Some drug store chains also have club cards. We needed something from the drug store one day, so I walked over to the Rite-Aid next door to our hotel. I happened to walk down the clearance aisle and there I scored a new lunch box for Neatnik for only $5 thanks to the club card savings.

Convenience stores. Certain convenience store chains can also be your friend. We discovered that all Wawa gas station/food store locations are built on the same blueprint: the bathrooms are always down the hall to the left side of the cash registers as you enter. Ladies' room is the first door on your left. Thank you to the nice young lady at the Wawa deli counter who did not charge me for the butter I needed for Neatnik's (leftover) roll.

Laundry basket(s). No, not for laundry. Ever noticed how when you go on a road trip you have things that you really don't want tumbling around the trunk or cabin of your car? A middling sized laundry basket is the answer to the clutter. We used one for corralling our spare foot gear, rain jackets, and baseball hats. A second basket held a Brita pitcher, an electric kettle, tea supplies, the kitchen towel, reading materials for the Neatnik, and the fruit basket rode on top.

Zip top bags. Tuck a few small zip top bags in with your kitchen items. You never know when one might come in handy.

Audiobooks. Some people really love audiobooks, others do not. We here at chez trek like to listen to books in the car if they are ones we have previously read in print. Harry Dresden accompanied us on our recent trips. Since these are not appropriate reading/listening material for the Neatnik, we bought a Y-connector for our headphones so the FSC and the driver can share the same mp3 player. The FSC can listen with two buds but the driver uses only one for safety reasons. Using the 'buds also means that the offspring in the backseat could use the integrated DVD player and wireless headphones at the same time.

Laundry. You aren't using the laundry baskets for laundry but you are still generating laundry. You really don't want to put the dirty clothes back into your suitcases with your clean clothes, so what is a hoopy frood on the road to do? Simple. Stuff your daily dirties into either plastic hotel laundry bags or grocery store bags and stow the resulting "laundry bubble" in your vehicle. You can pretty much tuck them into any unused gaps and spaces. This keeps the clutter in your hotel room down to a bare minimum and housekeeping will thank you for not leaving your unmentionables strewn all over the floor. Note: For the truly ~~OCD~~ organized, separate your bubbles by wash load. All the whites together, all the tee shirts together, etc. When you return home, all of your wash is already sorted for you and you can empty the bubbles directly into your washing machine. Another benefit here is that if you own only a few laundry baskets, you can simply leave your dirties in the bubble until you are ready to pitch them into the washer...tomorrow.

Medications. Many of us take medications on a daily basis. Even if you don't, you're probably taking a multivitamin. Before leaving home, get a seven-day pill organizer and fill it with your vitamins and medications. Our trip was longer than seven days, so we brought our meds in a dedicated tote bag which we only removed from the car for a refill on Friday evening. After restocking the pill organizers, this bag went back into the car.

Hotel hopping. Let's face facts here: if you are on a road trip, you are going to be staying in a different hotel every night. If you are lucky enough to have friends and/or family along your route, you might be able to save some money on lodgings, but you will still be sleeping in a different bed every night. Who wants to lug a full suitcase in and out of the car for each one night stay? Not me. Instead of unloading the whole car every night, we had a designated overnight bag. When we arrived at our destination du jour, we pulled out jammies and the next day's clothes from the suitcases and stuffed them into the overnight bag along with a few books. The only other stuff that had to come into the hotel was the toiletries kit and the laundry basket with the kitchen supplies. In the morning, we returned the jammies to the overnight bag, made the day's laundry bubble, and hit the road without stress. Another thing we did that eliminated the "oh, my gosh, I left something behind in the hotel" fear was to stage our checkout. We moved all of our stuff closer to the door as we readied it for departure. We also shut off the lights in the "clear zone". Nothing was allowed to move farther into a darkened part of the room. I have to say that this particular trick worked extremely well: we did not lose anything on this trip.

Consultations. Unless your have traveled your route frequently, chances are you don't know where things are on your journey. It is time to talk to the concierge and/or front desk staff. Face it, these people live within commuting distance of your hotel. There's a good chance that they know where to get good food. You are not limited to eating only at national chain tchotchke restaurants.

Refrigeration. Refrigeration in your rooms, while nice to have, is not universally mandatory. Sure, if you need to keep medications or breast milk cold, you need a refrigerator. Other than that, you can get by without a room fridge for a night. You already have a small cooler in the car keeping your potables potable. If your room is not equipped with refrigeration, don't despair and don't upgrade your room. Dispatch one member of your party to the ice machine and refresh your cooler's supply as soon as you arrive at your hotel room and also just before you check out in the morning. We were able to keep leftover cold cuts on ice just fine overnight.

Substitutions. If your final vacation destination is at an all-inclusive resort or a locale for which you have purchased a meal plan, ask what your meal options are at each and every dining facility. While we were at Disney, we had a Disney dining plan. We learned that three "snacks" could count as one "quick service" meal. Swapping in three snack items for a quick service meal allowed me to have fresh fruit cups for breakfast instead of eggs and bacon. If your dinner entrée comes with something you cannot eat or do not enjoy, ask your server if they could substitute steamed vegetables or fresh fruit. The worst they can say is "we do not have that." More likely, though, the restaurant will be able to accommodate your dietary needs.

Rude neighbors. After a long day of driving, all we want to do is toss our overnight bag on the floor, locate some nom-ables, and cash out for the night. What we do not need nor want are next door neighbors slamming doors, blasting their television, and generally making nuisances of themselves. Sadly, some people seem to think that they are the only ones in the hotel and treat the entire facility as if it were their own private rec room. We were first given a room overlooking one of the quiet pools at our Disney hotel. By the second night, the people in the pool were shouting so loudly that we requested a room change. Within half an hour, we were situated on the other side of the property, far from any of the pools, and instead of being stressed out about the noise, we all got a decent night's sleep. On the way home, we had a similar experience with the intoxicated next door neighbors. Despite requesting assistance from the front desk at 11:00, 11:30, 12:00, and 12:30, the neighbors still kept us up. The next morning the manager comped our room - and those of everyone else who had called to complain about the noise level and the nuisances were evicted.

Chat up. Other travelers can be a mighty useful resource. If you see someone else down in the lobby poring over a map, why not try chatting them up? You have common ground and maybe you can help each other out. We got an alternate route suggestion from a fellow hotel guest which took us off the Interstate and onto a state route. It may have been a little slower since there were some traffic lights, but we didn't cram four whole hours of driving into a tiny eight hour slot on the way home like we did on the outboung journey.

Remember. Above all, remember that you are on vacation. Relax. Unplug. Enjoy yourself and your family

Do you have road trip tips? Leave a comment and share them with us!

In which we see cetaceans

2011-08-11T12:31:00.000-04:00

On our honeymoon, Number Guy and I had the opportunity to swim with dolphins. It was an awesome experience. The week we staycantioned, I was casting about for cool day trip ideas and this one hit me like a flying mackerel in Seattle: whale watching.

I loaded up on the Bonineand off we went.

This boat was anchored near the dock.

A tired old lady but she had lots of character

We had a tough winter this year

We made our way down the channel,

One of many dead trees on the sand

into the harbor,

Two chicks hiding under mom and dad

and out about eleven miles off-shore where we saw a humpback whale. We were drifting in the middle of a school of fish and the whale was enjoying the buffet.

It really is a tail - camera wasn't zoomed
Nice search light picture, though

Up for air and then down for sushi

Munch and repeat

Waving good-bye

The bottlenose dolphins were out cavorting on our trip back to the dock but by that time I was really tired of the in-and-out with the camera bag, so I just watched them. They breached in pairs and trios and looked just like a group of kids on the school playground, making up a game just to entertain themselves.

FMBP - PBtS edition

2011-08-05T11:03:00.004-04:00

As Sheepie said the other day, August means it is time to begin to consider that the new school year is just around the corner. I suppose we could call this a Pre-Back-to-School Friday Morning Bullet Post...

In light of the ~~impending zombie invasion~~ the return of students to school, I've been busier this summer than in the past couple of years. We have revamped the curriculum and at the same time have upgraded from Windows Vistato Windows 7and from Office 2007to Office 2010.

I placed an order for a new laptoplast week.

There isn't anything "wrong" with my old computer except that it is a little old.

Which means that all the latest and greatest software which I need for work slogs right along with the same alacrity as the government budget approval process.

It's no wonder I needed a new computer: the new software packages are resource pigs and my old computer had only 4GB of RAM.

The new unit came yesterday and I am currently burning a set of initial recovery disks.

Hence all the time on my hands for blog posting.

Forty-one minutes into the process and still working on disk #1.

This may be a long bullet post...

After I get the new unit configured properly, I will refurbish the old one for the Neatnik.

Early birthday/Christmas present.

We had thought about buying a brand-new, low-end model for her but with the slowness I was enduring it just made more sense to upgrade/refurb.

Neatnik doesn't need all the bells and whistles nor will she be running the kind of software I am.

Plus, she gets a 17" monitor instead of one in the 15" range - which is what the low-end units all feature.

Oh, look, disk #1 just popped out. Hang on a second, need to insert disk #2.

Back to school also means going through the old equipment and clothing to see what needs replacing and what just needs a good and thorough cleaning.

Neatnik used the same backpack for kindergarten through the second grade. It was a smaller sized one so it fit her well and held everything she needed. Third graders at her school have a bit of a jump up in terms of backpack needs. They get more homework so they carry home more books and workbooks. I bought her a roller bag styled backpack thinking that this would be better for her back.

Wrong!

While she could roll the bag down the driveway and across the school parking lot, she still had to carry it in the hallways and the rolling frame is heavy and there's less storage capacity because of the frame.

This year we invested in a cute backpack I picked up at the Warehouse Club Store.

This thing can probably hold everything in her desk plus a full wardrobe and survival gear for a zombie apocalypse.

There's even a little mesh compartment on the shoulder strap for extra shotgun shells.

Oh, wait, they say that that's an "integrated cell phone pocket". Do they really think that a cell phone is going to be of any use when the undead overrun humanity?

The pack is very light, too. That will come in very handy for both school and when we need to beat a hasty retreat from the shambling horde.

Be right back, disk #2 is calling and disk #3 wants its turn.

I love the smell of black Sharpie.

The zipper on last year's lunch bag wasn't behaving well by the end of term so I bought a new one and then I realized that this new one is rather smaller than the old one. With nothing to lose, I popped the old lunch bag into the washing machine and do you know what? It came out great.

Now we have lunch bag options and Neatnik can bring the smaller one on half days or days when they have some treat planned at lunch.

Speaking of lunch bags, what does one send in them? Neatnik loves her Greek yogurt but I prefer buying it in the big containers.

Yesterday while I was at the grocery store, I saw these very cool one cup freezer containers.Ball calls them freezer containers and includes a recipe for making jam in the label but they are onto the whole portion management thing: the label mentions how these containers are great for leftovers, cereal, trail mix, etc.

And I only shelled out $3.69 for my set of five.

I've been clipping Box Tops but have only accumulated about 19 since the end of the school year.

The twenty boxes of KleenexI got on sale at the Warehouse Club Store will help.

Not only do we go through a lot of tissues at home, Neatnik's class seems to think that they grow on trees.

Which one could argue that they do, after a fashion - but they still ain't free, kids!

So, I suppose we are mostly ready for the new school year in terms of gear but that still leaves uniforms and the various bits and bobs that seem to be mandatory equipment for the fourth grade set. I think I'll go have a lie down to contemplate ~~the money sink~~ all of that while disk #4 burns...

In which trek reviews Ghost Story

2011-07-28T17:33:00.002-04:00

At long last, the four-month publication delay on Jim Butcher's Ghost Story,has ended. The thirteenth volume of The Dresden Files hit the shelves on Tuesday and, most importantly, it hit my mailbox on the release date.

I heard Jim read the first few chapters down in Williamsburg and read all of the first five chapters online over the past month or so and have been salivating ever since. Jim announced the delay back in January stating that if he met the original deadline we would have had a very half-assed book. Preferring to be known as an author who delivers full-assed novels, the release date was pushed back.

I am happy to report that Ghost Story is in full possession of two very generous butt cheeks.

Due to a very hectic schedule of my own on Tuesday, I didn't quite finish the whole book on the day it landed in my hot little hands. I did finish it within twenty-four hours of its arrival and seeing as how that circuit around the sun included an adequate number of horizontal hours, I'm calling it good.

Oh, wait. Sorry. You came here for a book review not a play-by-play on my reading it? Don't you want to know how much restraint I had to exercise at poolside on Tuesday afternoon when I was trying to read my new book, dang it and Neatnik's friend's dad kept engaging me in conversation about how his wife accidentally washed his Android phonethat morning? Aren't you the least bit interested in how many haircut minutes cut into my reading time? No? Are you sure? Oh, well, if you insist...

Be on the look out for random (possibly unannounced) spoilers...

To borrow a turn of phrase from the late (spoiler alert) Harry Dresden, Ghost Story was freaking awesome. When we last saw Harry, he had just been shot, fallen off the deck of the Water Beetle into the cold, dark waters of Lake Michigan, and was about to be hit by a train.

Ghost Story opens with Harry musing on the dichotomy between how difficult it is to create a life and how easy it is to end a life. Chapter One really sets the tone for the whole book. Harry spends quite a bit of time reflecting on events of his life and how his choices and actions have affected those around him and Jim uses Harry's reflections as a vehicle for providing the reader with a huge amount of information. Now we have a clearer picture of Harry's early lessons under Justin DuMorne and his actual encounter with He Who Walks Behind when Harry was sixteen years old.

I visited the Jim Butcher forum this morning and read a bit of a thread entitled "A little disappointed maybe...". The contention of the original poster is

"this book was more of a way for Butcher to reveal some of Harry's past, show how the world goes to shit without him and get him back alive then it was to move the story overall"

Why bring up a forum thread in a review? Ah, read my reply:

"I may be sticking my hand into a fire here, but the complaints I'm reading about Ghost Story being a holding pattern sort of book sound an awful lot like the people who moaned about too little action in the first half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The complaint there was that it was to tedious, all they did was hop around while debating horcrux locations to death.

The complaint here seems to be that there was too much reflection and introspection, too much back story and not enough story.

In both cases, I wondered if those complaining stopped a second to think that this is exactly the visceral reaction the authors intended to convey and that is the mark of good writing: that an author can make you feel.

For teenaged Potter, he was adrift and nearly directionless (find and destroy horcruxes) after Dumbledore's death. He needed to do a job but really had (seemingly) very little concrete information on which to act. For our boy Dresden, he is adrift and nearly directionless (find your murderer) after his own death. He needed to do a job and had (seemingly) very little concrete information on which to act.

In both books, the protagonist needed to reflect on what he already knew, to sift through memories and to process data previously acquired until a rational course of action could be determined. Once the protagonist was able to bring all of the pieces together into a coherent whole (HP after viewing Snape's memories, HD after reclaiming his own), then and only then the action could really take off and hurtle towards resolution (both HP's decision to return to his body brings about Voldemort's destruction and HD's decision to return to his body allows Jim to begin Cold Days and coincidentally to continue to make enough money to send The Boy to college <wink>). I think that if one were to reread the stories, one would notice that the really important action happens after the protagonist has processed thoughts and memories and random bits of information and come to a point where he realizes certain truths about himself and his situation which he was previously incapable of handling."

Ghost Story presents us with a Harry Dresden who is beginning to see things in a different light. For much of Harry's career, he flew into the fray pretty much by the seat of his pants. It wasn't until Turn Coat that he really began to strategize very carefully and to plan both his offense and defense with many layers. We have watched Harry become incrementally stronger magically for many years; now we begin to see Harry becoming even more formidable through his understanding of events and the repercussions and ramifications of his part in them.

All in all, a fantastic read. Might even be my favorite one to date. My only negative observation is that Catholics don't read the King James version of the Bible. Just saying.

PS - Hey, Jim, I love the first line of Cold Days. Need any more beta readers?

Ironing

2011-07-24T16:11:00.002-04:00

I don't like to iron. In fact, I didn't even own an iron until I got married.

Sometimes, however, you need an iron. When you sew things, you need to make sure that there are no wrinkles and you have to press seams so that there's no undue bulk.

Another time one needs to iron is when one's offspring is getting ready for a week of Vacation Bible School. This year, Neatnik is only going to be able to attend one week of VBS but that's okay because every church in the area is doing SonSurf Beach Blast.

I picked up the decal a week and a half ago and finally got around to ironing it this afternoon because

You have to iron it with a very hot iron for quite a while
to make it stay put and the edges to seal properly.

VBS starts tomorrow morning.

Ready for wearing with hours to spare.

Don't judge my timing: I don't like to iron and the air temperature has been in the triple digits for days.

As long as I had the iron out, though, I figured I'd do that Warrior cat logo like I promised Neatnik a while back. Wouldn't want to waste all of that iron heat, now, would we?

First, you have to print the reverse image you want on the transfer paper.

Make sure you have no sharp corners
or your image will flake and peel.

Then, you need to position the design(s) and iron the snot out of it (them).

Positioning can be a pain.
Watch your fingers!

I put the title logo on the back.

Be careful when working near the collar
so that the design doesn't develop wrinkles.

You need to wait a couple of minutes for the transfer and fabric to cool before you peel the backing from the design.

Didn't want to keep the website URL.

Looks pretty good, I think, and there was a bonus: the transfer paper envelope had a Box Top on it!

In which there are cocci

2011-07-19T20:58:00.006-04:00

I was collecting up some interesting things to share with the blog and then a minor disaster struck my minor. Today, we regale you with the Wednesday Night Bullet Post, now with more cocci...

Neatnik is sick.

Again.

For the second time this summer.

Okay, the last ailment was not exactly during the summer.

It was during the last week of school. She had a stomach bug and so graciously shared it with me.

But since the temperatures that week were rocking the mercury into summertime values, we are calling that week "summer".

Neatnik had a really rough night and she got up this morning with a very raspy voice, a cough, tender glands, swollen tonsils, and a nice little fever.

We scored our favorite doctor which sort of made up for the gagging during the swabbing.

Yep, you guessed it: strep throat again.

Bad year for strep locally.

Ran several laps through school this year.

Neatnik caught it each and every lap.

Almost like snatching the brass ring except with more snot.

Caring for a coughing, sneezing, feverish, and clingy child is tiring under the best of atmospheric conditions. Take that same child sporting the same set of symptoms in 98°F heat, add a side order of excessive humidity, and you experience a whole new level of physical and emotional drainage.

You'll just have to take it on faith and trust me on this one, though I can offer this one bit of additional proof: I'm going to bed now and it's only just 9 o'clock.

In which trek reviews Invasion

2011-07-14T15:47:00.001-04:00

I had the opportunity to review Invasion via NetGalley. This book is available in Kindleand hardcovereditions as well as in CDand Audible audiobook formats.

Colt McAlister's parents die in a head-on collision with a drunk driver - the problem is, the driver had just come from his doctor's office and the doctor swears that the man was not intoxicated nor even drinking at all. Is the doctor covering up for a favorite patient or did the guy slam a few shots right after leaving his appointment? Or maybe, just maybe, Colt's parents weren't victims of a random accident. Colt's mom, an investigative reporter, was just about to go public with a disturbing article about Trident Biotech. Was the "accident" a clever assassination and his dad's death merely a bit of unfortunate collateral damage?

Uprooted from San Diego, Colt moves to the Phoenix area to live with his paternal grandfather and things rapidly morph from merely odd to outright weird. Colt's new buddy, Oz, tells him that all of the Phantom Flyer comic book stories set during World War II are not just true history but that his Grandpa McAlister is the Phantom Flyer, a war hero who worked for a black ops organization known as CHAOS, a group still in existence today and which is headed by Oz's own father. The purpose of CHAOS? To prevent aliens from taking over the planet.

While I am not a comic book aficionado nor am I in the target demographic, I have to admit that Invasion delivers a swiftly moving story with a lot of action, tons of covert operations, and just a touch of teen romance. I do have to say, though, that there was one bit that did bother me about this story. Colt's childhood friend, Danielle, had a truly remarkable store of illicit technological toys and black hat hacker skills. Her character seemed to exist only to drive the plot. Other than that one complaint, I really enjoyed Invasion and am looking forward to the sequel, Alienation

WNBP - Now with more bugs

2011-07-13T19:53:00.001-04:00

I haven't got much but what I do have, I give you in the Wednesday Ngiht Bullet Post format...

Neatnik continues to enjoy day camp overall but there have been a few minor bugs to be worked out.

One of those bugs stung her today.

Literally.

She and another girl were standing by a bench and both were stung by hornets.

Ouch.

I had to sign my third first aid report this morning.

Camp's only been in session seven days.

Poor kid.

She really enjoyed yesterday's waterpark excursion.

Complained that they only got to be there for "about 20 minutes!"

They were there for three hours.

Yeah, she had a blast. Wants the family to go together.

I recently finished reading Falling to Piecesby Vannetta Chapman.

Someday, I will remember that her first name is not spelled Vanetta

It was a pre-release from NetGalley.

Which means that I can't post a review on Amazon yet.

I could read it on the go on my Kindle, though!

I really liked this book: it wasn't your typical, run-of-the-mill Amish fiction.

The protagonist wasn't Amish, for one thing.

For another, it was a real murder mystery.

Sort of like a cozy except with bonnets and suspenders instead of knitting or reading... though there was a quilt shop involved...

It is set in Shipshewana, Indiana, instead of in one of the Amish communities in Pennsylvania or Ohio.

Now I am reading another NetGalley pre-release except that Invasionby Jon S Lewis has already been released.

Timing. Sometimes mine is a little "off".

This is shaping up to be a good read although I do not think that I am really in the target demographic.

If world security depended upon my comic book knowledge, we'd all be doomed.

Fortunately for mankind, protagonist Colt is fluent in comic book lore.

Tomorrow is Pajama and Breakfast Day at camp so I need to get sorted out for that. Neatnik's group is to bring fruit so I am thinking apples and bananas. They are breakfast-y, right?

In which Neatnik day camps

2011-07-10T06:29:00.004-04:00

Summer is officially here: temperatures have soared all week and Neatnik's summer day camp started on Tuesday of last week. One of the benefits of being an only child is you don't have to share your parents' attention with siblings. One of the downsides to being an only child is you have no siblings with whom to ~~fight~~ play during the summer. The child needs the socialization and I need the time she is there to workout and to try to keep chez trek running smoothly.

Camp is administrated by the town and the park where it is run is just a wee bit under a mile from home. Every camp morning last week, Neatnik and I walked to camp. I signed her in with her counselor and then I walked home. At the end of the camp day, I walk to the park to collect her and we walk home together while she tells me about the games they played.

We shall stick to this arrangement for the summertime - as long as it is not raining, of course. Rainy days camp is held indoors at a local school gym. It is farther from home: even with umbrellas, walking over a mile in the rain isn't so much fun.

This past week, I was able to do additional walking on two days and a good bike ride on one. One of the ways I try to keep the fitness from becoming boring is to vary routes and try to dual purpose those routes. My two extra walking days this week involved a trip to Neatnik's school to drop off some paperwork and a rather circuitous trip to the library.

I finally got around to printing out my certificate for my summer reading club reward. It was a set of eight i-Clip punctuation bookmarks.They are small and secure with a punctuation mark on one side and an arrow on the other so you can put the bookmark along the side edge of the page to point at your exact spot.

There's been a lot of reading so far this summer. Neatnik's earned her next two blue stars for her tae kwon do pants. Before camp, she does her math workbook but after camp, in the car, and in the evenings it is all about the reading. I've even been able to borrow a few Kindle books for her on Lendle. Did I mention that I coughed up the cash to become a Patron? Yeah, I did. No more ads and I'm supposed to earn more as a Patron.

Except that I've not had any requests to lend this past week.

In which trek mini-reviews

2011-07-09T07:06:00.000-04:00

A few really funny bits from books along the way...

The Zombie Survival Guide,by Max Brooks was laugh out loud funny but more than that it was well-researched and the author clearly thought the scenarios through very carefully. I was impressed with how much attention Brooks spent on details.

On the very first page he effectively suspends disbelief by telling the reader that he is separating fact from fiction. Zombies are not created using black magic they are zombies because they were infected by the highly virulent Solanum virus which caused both their death and their reanimation as walking dead.

Inside these pages you learn the necessity for constant vigilance, good physical conditioning, and the double tap because, remember, "no place is safe, only safer."

# # #

A ten-year-old boy is trying to gross out the protagonist on page 205 of Disaster Status,by Candace Calvert:

"'Chicken guts, liver, kidney?'
She rolled her eyes. 'Nurse?'"

Enough said.

# # #

The amateur sleuth protagonist in Sweet Ginger Poison,by Robert Burton Robinson, is Virginia Lightley, known to all as Ginger, proprietress of Coreyville Coffee Cakes. Main character's name in the title of the book and in the name of one of the coffee cakes, I'm okay with that. I have to wonder, though, why the author had to come up with such lame names for some of the other characters: Navy Newcomb, Dan Foenapper.

I guess Robinson didn't know about this helpful site.

In which trek reviews Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic

2011-07-06T13:03:00.003-04:00

I requested several books from Lendle for vacation reading. Four books in a week was going to be perfectly doable and since the loans are two weeks long, if I fell behind I would still hvae a seven day cushion.

Of course, then I went and downloaded two NetGalley review copies at the same time and checked things out of the library and then I left Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholicfor last. Uh oh.

A two hundred page fiction book is a breeze that I can finish in no time at all. The same length non-fiction book takes me a bit longer. This book is taking me even longer than normal. On my walk with it this morning I realized exactly why it is taking so long.

Is it poorly written? Not at all. It is, in fact, riveting.

Is it an unenjoyable topic? Nope. It is about Catholic dogma and doctrine and I am loving it.

Am I being unreasonably interrupted when I try to read? Not really.

What is it, then? Actually, the book is doing more than making me think. It is making me pray. No joke.

I'll be tooling along and a particular passage will make me pause. I'll re-read it. Then I close my Kindle cover and ponder and mentally cross-reference and draw connections and wing a comment or two Upstairs. Then, and only then, I reopen the cover and resume reading.

Sometimes the Kindle falls asleep waiting for me.

It is taking longer than expected to finish this short book and I don't mind at all. Excuse me, wont' you? My loan expires on Saturday and I'm thinking that I might want to go re-read some sections.

In which trek reviews Moving Violation

2011-07-05T07:32:00.001-04:00

I borrowed Moving Violationby Melanie Jackson from a fellow Lendler. I was looking for a light, quick summer read and this seemed to fit the bill, despite some fairly critical reviews over on Amazon.

This is the first book in the Chloe Boston series. Chloe is a short, slight meter maid whose dearest dream is to make detective. Unfortunately, one of the requirements of the local police department is the ability to lift a 100 pound sandbag, which is pretty much impossible since Chloe can't deflect the scale's needle that much fully dressed, shod, and soaking wet.

Officer Boston is determined to prove to the new police chief that the ability to solve crimes does not depend on a brawny build so when a local real estate developer, Rupert Sellers, turns up dead at the skateboard park the same night her fellow parking violations officer, Jeffrey Little, disappears, Chloe feels there could be a link. Oh, yes, and the victim's wife claims that sixty-thousand dollars have gone missing as well. Shut out of the official investigation into Sellers' death and with no one else on the force concerned with Jeffrey's disappearance, Chloe launches her own investigation.

Jackson has created a protagonist with several odd quirks. The first one is her insistence on taking Blue, her 14-year-old dog, just about everywhere with her, including on her parking violation beat; a second is her ability to find lost items; and a third is ANALYTICO, which is what she calls her own personal logic language that she employs to find connections between pieces of data. I suppose this is meant to be cute or something but it comes across kind of flat to me. ANALYTICO seems to be a skewed corruption of the SQL database language. This example is taken from location 2378:

"RETRIEVE Jeffrey FROM FACT BASE. Next, EXTRACT Sellers as well."

Um, yes, well, moving right along.

The book itself is very short so not a lot of time invested. Simple, light summertime reading. Despite some plot weaknesses, the solutions to the three mysteries are somewhat clever. The remaining eight books in the series are even shorter, more along the lines of novellas than full-length novels. If not for some decidedly adult situations, I'd think that this was a book written for children Neatnik's age.

Happy

2011-07-04T11:13:00.001-04:00

Feathers on Fridays: Saturday edition

2011-07-02T09:18:00.002-04:00

Hi, this is Neatnik, guest blogging for Mommy again. We went to Pipey's place last Saturday to visit the chickens and Mommy took some pictures.

Their new coop is really big. It has three levels. The nesting area is in the back and it goes across the whole coop. They get to it from the ground by going up a long ramp. They have a roosting shelf that they seem to like. When one chicken goes on it, other ones join her. See?

Elle is in front right; Ash is middle left; and
Red is hiding in back

Ash and Elle switched and Red came out to say hello
Elle's a little camera shy

Daddy delivered the chickens to Pipey only a week before these pictures were taken. Now they look much more hennish. Elle is rounder and had much more white. Ash has some more white, too. I think Dee and Emma especially look hennish. Red looked basically the same to me - just a bit bigger.

Emma seems to like stalking bugs.

Emma: still the smallest
but she stands up for herself!

Pipey has a dog who really wanted to play with the chickens. She wasn't allowed in the coop but she kept running around trying to get a good look at them. The chickens just ignored her.

I think the chickens are happy at Pipey's place.

In which trek rejoices

2011-07-01T06:00:00.001-04:00

I have been waiting for this since I bought my Kindle! The New American Bible Revised Editionis now available in Kindle format and the cover art is charming. I purchased my copy Wednesday evening for just $5.99.

I read the preface to the new edition and the preface to the Pentateuch Thursday morning and then Neatnik and I read Genesis chapter 1 together.

The footnotes appear after the text of the chapter and things are nicely cross-linked.

This edition is lendable but that strikes me as kind of funny: I don't know anyone who has read the entire Bible, Genesis to Revelation, in two weeks or less.

In which trek reviews Confessions of a Mega Church Pastor

2011-06-30T07:20:00.002-04:00

I decided to pick up Confession of a Mega Church Pastorafter Lendle popped it up in their recommendations to me. This recommendation came after I'd read (and reviewed) Rome Sweet Home;so, a topical recommendation, I thought.

First, I must state that I did not like this book as much as the Hahns' tale. The Hahn's conversion journey was recounted in a he talks/she talks alternation. Hunt, speaking only for himself, has chosen to use an extended metaphor throughout the work. He likens the Catholic Church to an old house and talks about the various aspects of Catholicism as if each one was a room of the house: dining room, kitchen, basement, bedroom, family cemetery, and front porch. If the metaphor had been used to clearly illustrate the journey of the author, I would have liked it more.

The title and subtitle led me to think that this was a recounting of one man's spiritual journey from a place where he felt out of step to a place where he felt at home. The text, however, has less personal journey and more simplified apologetics.

Please understand, I do not object to apologetics. I think that it is a fascinating study and a necessary one for the defense of the faith. On picking up this book, though, I was looking for a retelling of an individual's journey, the challenges and the changes, the discerning of a path - more like Rome Sweet Home. I didn't find that here: what I found instead was a dialogue which justified the foregone conclusion - not a bad book - but not what I was expecting.

I cannot say that this is a bad book just that it is not what I was expecting to read at the moment. There are some very good ideas presented and sound Catholic doctrine but not really an intimate sharing of a spiritual journey.

WABP - now with more medication

2011-06-28T15:39:00.002-04:00

The trek family was supposed to go away on vacation this week. Note the operative phrase in that sentence: supposed to go. A Wednesday Afternoon Bullet Post seems the right way to talk about the supposed to go...

Dr PreciousMetal and I have maintained good control over my allergies and asthma this year. Between judiciously applied pharmaceuticals and immunotherapy, I've not had many bad days at all. Oh, okay, there's been the occasional bad air-quality day coinciding with high pollen or animal dander contact but nothing requiring the use of a rescue inhaler.

Until the chicken incident.

Last Saturday, Number Guy and Neatnik went out to mow the lawn. I like mowing the lawn but I am highly allergic to grass and the pollen counts have been quite high locally.

They came inside one by one afterwards and I sent them both straight to the showers. Still, I could smell the grass on them and my lungs began to complain with a deep cough follwed by a trailing wheeze. Despite the rescue inhaler, I was in some distress and put in a call to Dr PreciousMetal.

I also called our vacation destination to cancel: we were supposed to visit a new horse ranch for five days.

The pollen counts up in that area were reporting in 2 points higher than at home and I am also allergic to horses.

The ranch was quite nice about the eleventh hour cancellation and Dr PreciousMetal called in a prescription to suppress the insanity of my hyperactive immune system.

Methylprednisolone sucks, in case you were unaware of that little factoid.

And I've needed the rescue inhaler every day since then.

Sunday we were driven out of church by all of the incense - Corpus Christi - major feast day.

Went to a later mass at a different parish but the pulmonary damage was done.

Since we weren't going to be away from home, I cancelled my proctor and administered my own exams on Monday afternoon. My students were quite surprised and very sympathetic to my plight.

Of course, I also sounded as raspy as an 80-year old, two-pack a day nicotine addict.

I also brought them cookies.

Since the last chapter of the textbook was about tracking cookies, online privacy, and security, there were a lot of bad jokes during the pre-test review.

This is the first time I've brought a treat to a final but this class was very good. Fully half of them earned As and no one failed - a first.

While I was proctoring and submitting final grades, Number Guy took Neatnik out to lunch.

When I got home, I worked on the star patches. I think I did okay. Take a look-see:

Twenty achievement stars
Question of the day: can Neatnik grow faster than her need to pant leg length to accommodate her stars??

Saw some interesting cloud formations the other day. One both Number Guy and I thought looked like a hippo in a tutu.

Yesterday, grandma sent an early text message about a news article so Neatnik asked if she could visit for a while. This allowed Number Guy and I to catch a morning showing of X-Men: First Class.

Not a kid-friendly movie!

I loved it!

Number Guy said he had a bit of trouble getting into it since he knew it was a bit of a tragedy but then, he has read the comics and I simply enjoy the stories the movies have presented.

We both laughed at the scene when young Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr made contact with Logan.

We knew we had seen the actor playing Professor X in something else but we couldn't put a name to his face. Later, Number Guy looked it up: he was Mr Tumnus!

Cars 2 was playing this morning so we piled into the minivan early and zipped over. This was a fun family movie: Pixar goes Bond, amazing amount of realism in both the explosions and the architecture. A bit more enviromentalist than I would have liked but you can't have everything, I suppose.

The Muppets are coming back to the big screen in November.

Had a delicious cinnamon scone for breakfast. Picked it up a a tea shop after the movie.

Can you really call a meal eaten at 3:15pm breakfast?

Still trying to come up with good daytrip ideas for the remainder of the week.

Miniature golf, museums, and whale watching have all been bandied about chez trek since Sunday. Suggestions?

As long as we are home, we're going to take our newly minted green belt to tae kwon do class so this is a good place to stop and wish everyone a happy Wednesday.

In which Number Guy scrounges

2011-06-27T07:17:00.000-04:00

Some nights, Number Guy likes to scrounge around YouTube for interesting stuff. The other night he found a really awesome video involving stop action Legos and Johnny Horton's version of Jimmy Driftwood's Battle of New Orleans.

Check out the creatures in the background!

On stars and glue

2011-06-26T08:37:00.002-04:00

Neatnik's Brownie troop had their annual end of year party last week. Since they have all just finished the third grade, they "flew up" to Juniors. It is kind of bittersweet: I am proud of my daughter for sticking with scouts and love seeing her conquer new obstacles but at the same time I miss my tiny little baby girl who needed me for everything from diaper-wiping to shoe-tying.

Earned their wings

Our troop has been pretty active. Neatnik has earned about two dozen Try-It badges and the back of her vest is adorned with a plethora of activity patches. Sadly, her vest is the only one which has all of its patches, badges, and insignia affixed. Most of the other moms have tried to rely on ironing on the these items because the packaging says that they are iron on. Here's the catch, though: you can iron them on and they will stick for a while but eventually they fall off again.

I iron the emblems to the vest for positioning and then I machine stitch them for permanency. I haven't been so diligent about Neatnik's tae kwon do pants, though.

Her martial arts school issues little stars for certain kinds of achievements in and out of class. These include gold stars for good grades, silver stars for outstanding attendance, orange stars for community service, and blue stars for reading books. Every ten books earns a blue star. At the last graduation, Neatnik earned four blue stars, three orange stars, and one gold and silver star each.

At the party this week, the troop leader shared that someone at council turned her on to Patch Attach.It looks like your basic while all-purpose glue.You put the glue on the back of the patch, let it dry, then iron the patch to the fabric.

I plan to continue sewing the patches to the scout vest but those tae kwon do pants... You see, the stars are small and, well, star-shaped and they go on the outside leg of the pants. It is a pain to machine sew a patch to a tube and hand-sewing them is out of the question. Last time I tried, I punctured myself repeatedly with the eye of the needle because the ~~stupid~~ stars are so thick and tough to pierce.

The craft store was out of Patch Attach but they did have lots of Liquid Thread.The lady at the store assured me that it would work just as well. The packaging says that you can wash and dry and even dry clean the fabric and the glue will hold.

Neatnik had a belt promotion coming up really soon, so I bought a tube and affixed the nine outstanding stars to her pants.

That's a lot of stars!

I took no chances with the stars until the star application and her promotion. She wore her backup pants for the days before graduation.

Sadly, on graduation day, two stars fell off right onto the floor and several others showed signs of wanting to escape. Number Guy and I each sewed down one of her blue stars on Friday. He bent a needle and we had to chuck it: these are tough stars!

As of right now, Neatnik has five stars sewn down properly, five more that are somewhat glued to the pants, two which were glued down and fell off the pants and eight more new ones from graduation which need attention.

I am seriously considering purchasing some black black grosgrain ribbon,sewing the stars to it with the machine and then sewing the strip to the pants. Hand-sewing a straight line along the edge of the ribbon will be much less painful and much faster than sewing these ~~stupid~~ achievement stars to the canvas pants.

Comments, anyone?

In which trek reviews The Nasty Little Writing Book

2011-06-25T05:58:00.004-04:00

I borrowed The Nasty Little Writing Bookby Madelyne Simone Rovenhauer from a fellow Lendler this week. It looked like an interesting tongue-in-cheek treatise on the publishing industry and in some respects that is what it is.

Rovenhauer (a pseudonym) opens with a disclaimer tagged "READ THIS FIRST". She then goes on to say that this is a satirical work and not a plan for actually becoming a best-selling author. Her description of what you should do with your copy of the book if you do not agree to abide by the terms of the disclaimer are amusing.

In terms of a work of fiction, the book is kind of funny and the satire is decently well done. A number of times I found myself thinking that the author was cynically describing exactly the opposite of real life - such as when she describes the publishing industry as "just about as warm and fuzzy as anyone can stand" (location 258). Other times her descriptions of how a writer might dress or how he might get the daily work done very well matched descriptions of writing environments I have heard directly from a writer's own mouth. Of course, she contends that writers lie all the time so as to hide the glamor of their true lifestyle from the reader. One other plus for this book is that Rovenhauer is unafraid to use esoteric words in her prose: readers who like to expand their vocabulary may find themselves grateful for the built-in dictionary of the Kindle. Of course, any book that uses the word asthete five times in only 132 printed pages is suspect (locations 54, 743, 920, 167, and 1606).

Having praised the Kindle's features, I must now criticize the Kindle edition of this book: it is just one more instance of an ebook being substandard in both layout and editing.

In my Kindle for PC client, the layout of the text is pretty good. It looks like any standard book. In my Kindle Wi-Fi,however, it looks very poorly planned. Vertical spacing between section headings and paragraph text is missing, for instance.

I noticed very early on (location 116) that the word "often" was being presented as "of ten". The first time this happened, I chalked it up to a miss on the part of the editor. When it continued to occur, I became a bit frustrated. Searching the book for the word "often" yielded a mere three hits (locations 115, 288, and 753). Searching for the string literal "of ten" returned a whopping 25 hits, fairly evenly distributed throughout the text. This is not the only species of typographical error I noted, just the most egregious. Another consistent misspelling is "of her" which is regularly transformed into "other" (as in "skin other shoulder" at location 594).

Several times a comma was replaced with another character, either another letter or a non-alphabetic character. While a reader with any intelligence at all can figure out the intended word quickly, it still interrupts the flow of the narrative to have to stop intermittently to re-read a word or phrase in order to bring sense to the sentence. Punctuation seemed to be optional occasionally, too. In some places, one sentence's ending and another's beginning was indicated only by a capitalization of the next word - no periods, period.

As interesting as this book began, I have to say that I am glad I did not shell out any cash for it. Granted, the current price for the Kindle edition is only 99¢ but I am glad that I didn't pay even that much for it. Shame on the publisher for bringing such a substandard edition to Kindle.

Also available in hardcover,where one hopes fewer typographical errors dwell.

Feathers on Fridays: Second edition

2011-06-24T15:25:00.001-04:00

Hi, this is Neatnik, guest blogging for Mommy again. I was supposed to tell you all about our second week of owning chickens. Alas, we learned by last Friday night, that Mommy has extreme allergies to chickens! It started out with some itchiness and then she couldn't breathe after she handled them.

Wah-wah-WAH!

Daddy sent text messages to people we know who already have some chickens - but nobody could take more chicks. Then on Saturday morning, we got a phone call from the pipe major of Daddy's band. One of the chicken owners had forwarded Daddy's message to him. Pipey had a chicken coop in his yard already. All he needed was some chickens.

Mommy's Note: Pipey and his wife had been planning chicken ownership for two years and they had decided that five chickens was the perfect number for their yard. She said to him earlier last Friday that they should get chickens on Father's Day but he was hemming and hawing about still wanting to tweak the coop setup some. Then Number Guy's text message got forwarded to him - saying that there were five chickens in need of a new forever home. Yeah, it was meant to be.

Daddy delivered Elle, Emma, Dee, Ash, and Red to their new home right away. Daddy called their new home a chicken mansion.

Pipey says I can visit when I like but I haven't visited them yet. We are supposed to go over there tomorrow and I hope to take some pictures then.

I am glad they have a nice home, but I really am missing them, too.

Mostly about reading

2011-06-22T08:57:00.009-04:00

Not a creature is stirring here at chez trek on this second day of summer, except me, obviously. A good time for a Wednesday Morning Bullet Post. As soon as I grab my tea, that is...

Ah, tea!What a lovely thing. Piping hot with a splash of milk and a scant bit of sugar. Heaven on earth.

Since I sent in all the Box Tops before school closed, our little balsa wood collecting box is very empty. Wondering if I should launch another Boxtopapalooza this summer. Would a new contest garner more comments?

Neatnik's report card arrived in the mail yesterday. The children used to bring them home with them on the last day but now they mail them.

We are so very proud of our Neatnik: straight As for the last term and final averages. Way to go, my child!

Sadly, Number Guy was on a business trip yesterday. We are postponing academic celebration until Daddy is able to join us.

Speaking of terms, the summer term is almost finished. My students have only today's class and then finals on Monday.

As much as I enjoy this crop of students, I am ready for the school year to end. In past, I've not taught summer term and always had a few weeks between the end of my school year and the end of Neatnik's school year.

This year I did not and I missed it.

I was also planning to have the hardware from the Infamous Ankle Incident removed in May but now am putting that off until the fall.

Nobody needs limited mobility during the summer.

Did I happen to mention that one of my students came to the first class in a cast? Or that the same student showed up a few days later in a sling?? Or that two other students showed up in casts and bandages a few days after that???

Could this be contagious?

I am really enjoying Lendle. So far, I've borrowed 14 books and have three more queued to accept the loans. I've also loaned out 22 books and I convinced Abigail to sign up!

If you leave your Lendle handle/URL, I promise to visit you there.

Had a little issue with my Kindlethis weekend. The battery started draining like mad.

Kindle support recommended restarting the unit then recharging and seeing if that fixed the problem. They thought it might be a software glitch.

Didn't work. Was back on the horn with them on Monday. Got a guy who mumbled about indexing but wouldn't tell me what to do - just wanted to send an email. What if I had more questions?? I asked for a supervisor and he hung up on me.

Eventually got a supervisor who told me what needed doing and also sent written directions after the call. Said to leave the Kindle on the wall charger for 24 hours to complete the process.

I am in the middle of Antiques Bizarre,which is a Lendle loan, but I started a library bookwhile the Kindle was in hospital.

Didn't want to be chained to the wall.

Reminded me of when we were kids and the moms all had the loooooooong coiled telephone cordin the kitchen so that they could see down the hallway to where we were getting in trouble.

I'm pretty sure our phone cord stretched a good ten feet under all that strain.

The Kindle appears to be all charged up. I really hope this has fixed the battery drain problem as the Lendle loan is due on Saturday.

I had a heap of loans all come through at the same time so this is the last of a batch that had to be read immediately.

Unlike the library, there are no renewals on ebook loans.

Time out: I need to reheat my tea...

Ah, much better. Where was I? Doesn't matter, change of subject. That's what's so nice about a bullet post!

I signed Neatnik and myself up for the summer reading programs at the local library.

Personally, I think that the program's parameters are a very sad statement on literacy in America. The program runs from the beginning of June to the middle of August. I think there are about 72 days in the program. For the young ones, that works out to under seven minutes of reading a day. Adults would have to finish a book every 18 days.

I'm pretty certain that nobody reading this bullet is at all surprised that we have both achieved our goals in the first week. The bar, after all, was set very low.

Neatnik has read 68 69 new books this year, coinciding with completing her second summer reading incentive and I am planning to bring her to the book store to select her reward book.

Note to self #1: Check to see if the library has the Happy Meal incentives yet. I hate fast food, but allowing the child a Happy Meal as a treat a couple of times a summer? That I can do.

Even if I need to clothespin my nose shut while she noshes.

Note to self #2: Come up with new summer reading incentive ideas.

She is also keeping up very well with her math homework. The school sent home a math workbook this year. I have Neatnik doing two pages a day on weekdays and she get weekends off.

Note to self #3: Print out multiplication and division math fact pages for review.

I need to wrap up here: Neatnik just made her way down the stairs and said that her tummy hurts. Prescription for a generalized tummy hurts complaint: bit of reading on Mommy's lap therapy.

Happy Wednesday!

Updated Wednesday, June 22nd, 5:34pm If you'd like to torture yourself, the second chapter of Ghost Storyis posted here.

Cool factor

2011-06-18T12:59:00.002-04:00

Number Guy's car is getting kinda, well, not to put too fine an edge on it, old. It just passed its eleventh birthday and, like us humans, it isn't exactly the same unit that rolled off the assembly line anymore. Aside from the normal wear and tear of a car in its second decade of life, there some somewhat more major items requiring repair all of a sudden. For example, the front suspension is making some interesting clunking noises and when the door locks engage one hears a rather impressive grinding noise which rather resembles the sound of the starter protesting when one attempts to "start" an already running car.

This is the point at which one begins to wonder whether it would be better to repair the current vehicle or to invest in a new one. I know, it seems pretty much like a no-brainer. Old car facing major repair bills usually means replace me now. The thing is, his car has only about 52,000 miles on it. He uses it for getting to and from work and band practice. For family driving and long trips, we take the minivan, which has more comfortable child-seating arrangements and a DVD player.

On a whim, we went to visit a couple of dealerships this morning. Since we are very early in the data-gathering phase, not knowing for certain whether we are repairing or purchasing, we decided to go for the cool factor in our test drives. First up, the Mini Cooper.

This was quite the posh dealership. The franchisee itself is brand-new and the building was custom-built. The had complimentary bagels and coffee available and the paper towels in the bathroom were actually neatly folded microfiber napkins. No loud air dryers or cheap c-fold paper towels for them.

We took out a convertible and the sales guy climbed into the backseat next to the Neatnik and her booster seat. He spent the entire test drive backseat driving. Told us exactly where we were allowed to take the car on the test drive and described for us, in great detail, how a turn signal works. We were rather stressed by the time we returned to the car lot and I was glad to be away from there.

Final assessment of the car? You are paying for the Bond-esque cool factor and not much else.

Next up was a trip to the Jeep dealer. The salesman photocopied Number Guy's driver's license, slapped a temporary plate on the back, and said, "See ya soon". He even waved.

If you have ever driven a truck, you have an idea of how a Jeep feels. There's quite a bit of "play" in the steering wheel and you are really high up off the road. We tooled along a bit and then Number Guy pulled over on a residential side street so that we could execute a Chinese fire drill. While I was adjusting the seat, a guy in a red Jeep passed going the other way. He slowed way down, pointed at the window stickers and gave me the biggest grin and a thumbs up. It's a Jeep thing, I guess. Washed the sour taste from the Mini test drive right out of my mouth.

Final assessment of the Jeep? Loads of fun to drive and great if you want to go off-road but not very practical with respect to gas mileage. Yes, you are paying for cool factor here, too, but you get much more other stuff for your dollar. And way more cool.

Updated, Sunday, June 19th, 9:25am The Jeep sales guy called us later in the afternoon to personally thank us again for test driving.

Feathers on Fridays: First edition

2011-06-17T14:33:00.002-04:00

Hi, this is Neatnik, guest blogging for Mommy. We picked up five chickens on Wednesday evening. We have been working on naming them. Their blog names are: Elle, Emma, Dee, Red, and Ash.

From the day we got her, Elle has gotten faster and faster. She is black and white. Emma has "sparrow" feathers. She, Red, and Dee are mostly golden. Emma is my favorite chicken. Dee has buff-colored wings. Red has reddish wings. Ash is small, black, and has flecks of white.

In size order, they are: Elle > Red > Dee > Ash > Emma.

My jobs are to make sure they have clean water all the time, medicated chicken food , with grit, every morning, and scratch at night.

The girls - now with names!

Science project

2011-06-16T17:32:00.008-04:00

Meet Neatnik's summer science project: the girls

Sorry about the lawn mower in the background...

Come visit tomorrow: Neatnik will be guest blogging the first installment of Feathers on Fridays.

Hamsters and fishes and chickens, oh my!

2011-06-14T08:17:00.010-04:00

In honor of today being the last day of third grade, I thought we would have a nice little Tuesday Morning Bullet Post.

Yesterday's mail brought us another envelope of Box Tops for Education from a blog reader - thank you to all who have helped to support Neatnik's school!

Look for some School at Home posts over the coming weeks. I am not particularly thrilled with the summer reading list sent home from school but The Secret Gardenand Peter Pandid make an appearance on this year's list, so that's something.

I entered Neatnik's summer reading club minutes on the county library's web site yesterday. The goal for the entire summer is 480 minutes of reading. Neantik's got over 930 minutes logged since June 1st. The hours in the car this weekend sure helped.

:: sotto voce :: I knit on a sock for the Neatnik in the car on Sunday afternoon. Got half a leg finished. Just thought I should slip that in here unobtrusively since this is *supposed* to be "the wool and the word". That is all. Back to the "word" now...

Neatnik has already redeemed her Barnes & Noble summer reading incentive. She picked Braving the Lakeas her reward book. This is one of those decision-driven books and it has an online extra component. Nice.

She's halfway through her Borders incentive and has read 65 new books this year, including two loaned Kindle books from Lendle: The Pizza Mysteryand The Mystery of the Stolen Sword.

I've read over 100 new books this year but I know it would be more if I spent less time puttering around on Lendle. If you view my profile over there, you'd understand.

I am in the middle of two books: False Pretensesfrom the library and Moving Is Murderon Lendle.

False Pretenses begins a spin-off series following the last Sophie Trace novel, The Right Call.I like the author's style but in this book she has dueling dialects: Cajun and four-year-old lispy. I may not finish it; I really hate it when authors write a dropped "r" for little kids.

Moving Is Murder is starting out slowly but I am hoping that things pick up soonest. I would feel badly about not finishing a Lendle loan: after one loan, you cannot loan again and it would mean I didn't finish a book some other Lendler might have.

Lendle alerted me last time I placed a request. Said I have a lot of books on request and reminded me that I only have two weeks to read a book and maybe I wouldn't be able to read all the lends in the allotted time.

Go ahead and laugh; Number Guy laughed out loud when I mentioned that to him.

Besides, I am requesting for two readers: the Neatnik and I both. There are are more juvenile books available on Kindle than you might expect. Sadly, the Agency Model publishers seem to be the biggest offenders with respect to disabling lend privileges. Do they not realize that they are diminishing their returns this way?

I told my class about Lendle. One student in particular was interested. She owns a first-generation Kindle and signed up as soon as she got home from school. She also has told me that she is Catholic so I told her about Rome Sweet Homeafter class yesterday. She was way impressed and said she was going to order it from Amazon last night.

We currently have a pet hamster, Magellan, and an assortment of tropical fish. Magellan is a family pet but the fish are Number Guy's responsibility. We may be adding to our little menagerie soon: a local kindergarten teacher hatched a half dozen chicks in her classroom this month and they are ready to find a new home. Yup, we are looking into becoming backyard chicken farmers.

I was inspired by Jessie.

Spent some time last night with fellow parishioners who already have a little flock of Bantam hens. They sent us home with some fresh eggs and I scrambled them up this morning for Neatnik and Number Guy. She said they were the best eggs ever. Scheduled to pick up our chicks Wednesday.

The sun is shining at the moment but we are anticipating heavy storms later today, so I should probably end here and see if I can't enjoy the rays while they last. Uh, oh, between starting that sentence and finishing it, the sun went away and it is looking all dark and omnious now. The weather has been so bipolar lately.

In which trek reviews Rome Sweet Rome

2011-06-13T08:30:00.002-04:00

Quite some years ago, I'd heard about a guy by the name of Scott Hahn from a couple of people. They mentioned that he had been a virulent anti-Catholic Presbyterian minister who converted to Catholicism.

Last week, I requested Rome Sweet Homefrom a fellow Lendler. The loan came through and I downloaded it on Friday. I am so glad that I did.

Number Guy's bagpipe band had a weekend gig out of state so we all packed up and piled in and drove seven hours up mountains and down valleys, to our destination. As frustrating as the heavy traffic and delays were, they were nowhere near so annoying as Alice, who decided to come along on the trip. It's bad enough when she drops in unexpectedly at home, but to commandeer a weekend trip? Talk about pushy!

If Alice's joining us wasn't bad enough, the weather turned foul overnight. Torrential rains and a drop in temperature resulted in Number Guy hitching a ride from the hotel to the gig with another piper while Neatnik, Alice, and I zipped to the nearest mega-mart for long pants and sweatshirts. At least that went well: grabbed two full changes of clothes off the clearance rack for the Neatnik for just seventeen dollars.

Back at the hotel, Neatnik dragged Alice and I to the pool. I tried to get Alice to bug off while soaking in the hot tub for an hour. This did not work very well, sorry to say but it was warming. Afterwards, we dressed as warmly as we could and drove over to meet the band for lunch. With Neatnik fed and a break in the rains, I thought things might be looking up. Then the rains resumed and poor Neatnik started shivering. Back to the hotel and pool.

While Neatnik imitated a dolphin on speed, I read Rome Sweet Rome. It was riveting. The book is arranged in successive life segments. First Scott writes about what was going on in his life, then Kimberly responds with her own story in the same time interval.

Scott describes his childhood as nominally Protestant. In high school, he became serious about Scripture from his association with an organization called Young Life. He studied Martin Luther and John Calvin and became very anti-Catholic. He was convinced that the Roman Catholic Church was in error and worked diligently to pull Catholics away from teh Church to a purer Christianity. Kimberly's childhood was quite a bit different as she was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. Her family life revolved around church and church-based youth activities.

Somewhere during the early years of Scott and Kimberly's marriage, I decided Neatnik was sufficiently waterlogged and pulled her from the pool. We decamped to the lobby to wait for the soggy pipers to return, she playing on the computer and me reading.

When Number Guy reappeared, cold and soggy, my Kindle reminded me for the third time that it was tired and wished to cuddle up with some alternating current, please. I was in a quandary: Scott had just become a Roman Catholic and Kimberly was feeling lost and abandoned by all. I couldn't in good conscience abandon her - though I was still wishing that Alice would abandon me.

I put my Kindle on the charger in the minivan and downloaded the book to Neatnik's Kindle and kept going.

I finished Rome Sweet Rome in less than a day. I don't often opt for biographical or autobiographical works but this one, the story of a journey to find a spiritual home, drew me in completely. It was easy to identify with Scott's searching and studying at the same time as sympathizing with Kimberly's feelings of loneliness and abandonment.

Scott's writing voice and Kimberly's are definitely different and not merely the difference between a male and a female writer. His comes across more passionately; hers is more reserved but very erudite.

Scott describes the story as detective in the beginning, horror in the middle, and romance at the end. While I can see and understand his descriptions of the parts of the journey, I see the story as a whole as a tale of bravery. Takes a brave man to risk all and he nearly did.

The answers to his questions led Scott to resign from his (successful) pastorate and his teaching position. Protestant friends became cold and distant, perceiving Scott's conversion as a degeneration into heresy.

Stepping out in faith, despite the risks, paid off: eventually, Kimberly also converted to Catholicism and Scott took up a teaching position as Professor of Theology at Franciscan University (Steubenville, Ohio), one of the most Christ-centered Catholic universities in the country.

An excellent read.

In which trek is easily amused

2011-06-10T10:47:00.005-04:00

I was borrowing a book on Lendle today for the Neatnik. I put her Kindle down next to mine and they both went to sleep and you know how pets start to look like their people?

Very easily amused!

In which trek reviews Over the Edge

2011-06-09T09:47:00.000-04:00

I picked up Brandilyn Collins' Over the Edgethis week and once I started, I could not put it down - literally, not a figure of speech I could not put it down.

When I visit the library, I tend to make my way to the new releases bookshelf. This week, Over the Edge was there. I have read several of Collins' books in past and enjoyed them so it was natural to scoop it up and tote it home. Honestly, I didn't even read the back cover before I opened to the first page.

Although Brandilyn Collins is known as a Christian fiction author, this particular book was very light on the Christianity. It was, instead, very heavy on the suspense and medical research angles. An excellent read.

The stage is set in the prologue in which a camouflaged man enters Janessa McNeil's house as she and her 9-year old daughter, Lauren, sleep. He creeps into the master bedroom and as Jannie starts to awaken, he douses her with chloroform. Then he deposits three deer ticks, known to be carrying the Lyme spirochetes and three coinfectors, onto her head. Thus begins the denouement of his vendetta against her husband, Dr Brock McNeil, Lyme researcher. By deliberately infecting the doctor's wife, the assailant hopes to force the scientist into recanting his long-held position regarding chronic Lyme. Brock McNeil has been a leader of the camp that insists that there is no such thing as chronic Lyme and that a two to four week treatment with antibiotics is sufficient to cure the disease.

Living in a state that has had many cases of Lyme, I have known quite a few people who have contracted the disease, including a former pastor who eventually succumbed to complications of chronic Lyme at age 76. Despite all of this, I was unaware of the current controversy over treatment modalities and the denial of a large segment of the medical community to acknowledge the chronic Lyme. Over the Edge was very educational. I can't say that I will accept the author's position as unerring truth, I will say that I'm going to learn more about Lyme diagnosis and treatment: I once found a deer tick climbing up the front of my shirt.

Selected further reading on Lyme:

The Clinical Assessment, Treatment, and Prevention of Lyme Disease, Human Granulocytic Anaplasmosis, and Babesiosis: Clinical Practice Guidelines by the Infectious Diseases Society of America

Lyme Disease Association

In which Neatnik meets Ralph

2011-06-07T13:13:00.005-04:00

You know you are truly a parent when a living creature has peed on your shoe and barfed all over you in the middle of the night. A related indicator of parenthood occurred yesterday. Allow me to use this indicator to regale you with a Tuesday Afternoon Bullet Post...

Yesterday morning, I had a phone call from the school nurse.

It was not unexpected: Neatnik had complained of a bit of a tummy ache before school and didn't want much breakfast.

No fever, no barfing, so we sent her to school.

This summer term, she has been staying after school on Mondays. Thought she just didn't want to go to after care.

Got a call from the school just as I was writing the homework assignments on the board for my students: Neatnik barfed during recess.

She had asked the playground monitor to go inside to the bathroom and was rebuffed with the statement, "Recess is almost over. Wait."

So, my kid barfed all over the door mat.

Poetic justice.

I quickly called Number Guy and he picked her up.

My students were very sympathetic and understanding.

Probably helped that I let them go an hour early.

No, we didn't scrimp on the lessons.

Matter of fact, we finished yesterday's work and made in-roads on tomorrow's excessive workload.

Why, no, I didn't set the syllabus - the course coordinator did.

You can't send the child back to school until they are 24 hours fever- and barf-free.

The DVD playerand the Kindle are getting workouts.

She's feeling quite a lot better, the soupis staying down, and she even asked if she can go outside to practice bike riding.

Back to school tomorrow! As of 6pm tonight, the fever has returned - no school tomorrow.

I, on the other hand, have opted for a liquid diet today.

Use your imagination. I'm sure you'll put it together quickly enough.

Decided to sync my Kindle this morning. I've got over a dozen lends out on Lendle and I've borrowed a few ebooks, too.

I've earned a whopping 19 achievements and have 159 request "vouchers" available to me at the moment.

Kid with a new Christmas toy here.

At first, I thought that I would have to reassign my returned books to their proper collections but I did not: when the books are lent, the Kindle remembers the collections to which they belong and returns them to their appointed spots.

Just like in a library.

Sweet!

People complained vociferously on the discussion boards about Kindle books not having page numbers.

The reason behind the decision to use locations instead of page numbers was fueled by the need to sync content between devices and the fact that readers can change the font size on their display. An Androidor a ~~CrackBerry~~BlackBerryphone displays far fewer characters than a Kindle for PC clientdoes on a 17-inch desktop monitor.

Still, Amazon noted the complaints and has now implemented pages for Kindle.

Both page and location are now displayed when you press the Menu button.

I sent in 100 BoxTops for Education into school last week. Thank you to the two bloggers who sent me envelopes of BoxTops.

Maybe we'll reach our school goal this year!

Neatnik is now clamoring for me to pull out the board games and entertain her, so I guess this is as good a place to stop as any. Hope Ralph avoids your house this week.

On DRM and reader rights

2011-06-06T08:13:00.002-04:00

I came across the following post this morning and am republishing it per the original poster in it's entirety (emphasis, where applied, is mine):

The eBook User’s Bill of Rights is a statement of the basic freedoms that should be granted to all eBook users.

The eBook User’s Bill of Rights

Every eBook user should have the following rights:
the right to use eBooks under guidelines that favor access over proprietary limitations

the right to access eBooks on any technological platform, including the hardware and software the user chooses

the right to annotate, quote passages, print, and share eBook content within the spirit of fair use and copyright

the right of the first-sale doctrine extended to digital content, allowing the eBook owner the right to retain, archive, share, and re-sell purchased eBooks

I believe in the free market of information and ideas.

I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can flourish when their works are readily available on the widest range of media. I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can thrive when readers are given the maximum amount of freedom to access, annotate, and share with other readers, helping this content find new audiences and markets. I believe that eBook purchasers should enjoy the rights of the first-sale doctrine because eBooks are part of the greater cultural cornerstone of literacy, education, and information access.

Digital Rights Management (DRM), like a tariff, acts as a mechanism to inhibit this free exchange of ideas, literature, and information. Likewise, the current licensing arrangements mean that readers never possess ultimate control over their own personal reading material. These are not acceptable conditions for eBooks.

I am a reader. As a customer, I am entitled to be treated with respect and not as a potential criminal. As a consumer, I am entitled to make my own decisions about the eBooks that I buy or borrow.

I am concerned about the future of access to literature and information in eBooks. I ask readers, authors, publishers, retailers, librarians, software developers, and device manufacturers to support these eBook users’ rights.

The instructions at the bottom of that post included a directive to repost, retweet, and even to print and tack the Bill on neighborhood telephone poles. These are our rights, mine and yours. Will you help spread the word?

The original poster has placed this Bill of Rights in the Public Domain, per the Creative Commons "No Rights Reserved" policy, waiving all copyright protections.

On pedals and pushing

2011-06-05T21:49:00.006-04:00

Do you remember learning how to ride a bicycle without training wheels? I kinda do. I have a fuzzy memory of being over at my cousins' house and borrowing a neighborhood kid's bike and pedaling across the "lawn".

My aunt and uncle weren't too stressed about the "lawn" getting chewed up since it mostly consisted of ragged clumps of weeds interspersed with bare patches of dirt. Can't grow much grass under a canopy of scrub pines and maples and it had the bonus of teaching us how to maneuver around obstacles on the course.

Not too long after this, I got my own first-ever bicycle - a rusty garage sale special that my parents spray painted in a really gross mint green.

What can I say? It was the 1970s and we were pretty poor. The green was probably on sale.

Because no one else wanted it.

Fast forward to 2008...

We bought Neatnik a 14" bicycle with training wheels for Christmas. Remember the Christmas eve/morning scene in Yours, Mine and Ourswhen Henry Fonda is trying to assemble bicycles for the kids?

Enough said.

Over the next couple of years, we tried to teach Neatnik how to ride her bike. We went with the time-honored tradition of raising the wheels incrementally and then taking them off.

Once the wheels came off, the chiropractor's bill increased but, hey, the kid was learning how to ride a bike with one of us running alongside, shouting encouragement, and holding onto her neck/shoulder to keep her vertical.

Fast-forward to yesterday...

Yesterday, Number Guy had an all-day bagpipe competition but Neatnik had a fishing derby so I was the designated adult for that ~~fiasco~~ event. Nothing is an unmitigated disaster, I guess, since Neatnik won a door prize.

In the afternoon, we decided to work on the bike riding skills - first time of the season. On went the helmetand out came the insecurities.

Neatnik, it appears, is afraid of falling off her bicycle. If the bike tips, she doesn't correct her balance: she jumps off. Jumping off, of course, involves getting her feet tangled in the frame and a worse tumble than if she actually crashed.

We worked and worked and at one point, she was riding without me holding onto her. I shouted, "You're doing it! You're riding a bike!"

Then she entirely lost control of the bike, took her feet off the pedals, and crashed into me.

*** insert eye roll here ***

The remainder of the "lesson" was punctuated by shouts, tears, and "I can'ts".

Neatnik has grown quite a bit since we bought the bike so, in a flash of sudden inspiration, I thought that maybe the reason why she is having such trouble may be related to not fitting the bike anymore. We visited a few shops and sat on ~~four dozen~~ several different girls bicyclesand talked to bike shop pros for suggestions.

At the third shop, we struck pay dirt - not in bicycle acquisition but in teaching technique. He said that we should not buy new training wheels,like the last shop said. He suggested that we should take the pedals off.

Yep, you read that right: take the pedals off.

Here's the thing. When a person is trying to learn to ride a bike, they are trying to learn how to do a whole lot of things simultaneously - balancing, pedaling, turning, braking. He said that if we take off the pedals and have her "scoot" the bike, just like a ride-on toy,pushing off one foot at a time, she will build confidence and establish her balance.

Why didn't we think of this?

Probably because taking the pedals off the bike can be a royal pain in the arse, that's why.

We had never heard of this technique but when I got home this evening I Googled around a bit and found a nice write up about it on a UK web site and another one at the International Bike Fund site.

Number Guy and I dragged out the wrenches and I remembered why assembling this ~~beast~~ bike was so stressful: no two nuts require the same size wrench and the pedals needed a metric wrench we do not own. TazzDad, however, owns every tool known to mechanic kind so we were covered - and TazzMom said that she heard this very technique touted on the radio just last week.

This just has got to work: the pedals are off the bike; the seat is adjusted so that Neatnik's feet reach the ground flat-footed when she sits; and summer vacation is just around the corner.

Updates to follow.

PS - You can also buy glider bicyclesthat have no pedals, cranks, or chains. They have "highway pegs" where the learning child can prop their feet on a long glide, though.

In which trek reviews Summer Snow

2011-05-31T10:44:00.000-04:00

During a bout of insomnia last night, I finished up Summer Snowby Nicole Baart. As previously mentioned on the blog, this is the second of a three book set: After the Leaves Fall,Summer Snow, and Beneath the Night Treeand I (accidentally) read them out of order: Beneath the Night Tree, After the Leaves Fall, Summer Snow.

After the Leaves Fall covers a ten-year span in the life of Julia DeSmit, from the time her mother, Janice, leaves until her freshman year of college. Occasionally, time skipped a little disjointedly, but overall the action flowed well. Summer Snow follows the term of Julia's pregnancy, during which she must decide whether or not she is going to keep the baby or give the infant up for adoption.

If facing the possibility of being a young, unwed mother in a small Iowa town wasn't stress enough for Julia, Janice returns... with her five-year old son Simon, Julia's half-brother, in tow. Nellie, Julia's grandmother, insists that Janice and Simon stay with them, hoping that Julia and Janice might reconcile and heal the rift between them.

I enjoyed this selection though I felt there was a problem in the transition between it and the third volume. Beneath the Night Tree picks up five years after the conclusion of Summer Snow. At the end of the second book, certain relationships between characters are being established. Right from the beginning of the third book those relationships are represented entirely differently by the author, creating a dialectic shift in the interaction of the characters involved. Baart makes no attempt at all to explain why or how the change has taken place.

Taken alone or in combination with the first book, Summer Snow was good. Open issues and unsecured threads were tied together and there was a sense of resolution and hope at the end of this book. Viewing this as the second book of a three book set, I was left with the feeling that Beneath the Night Tree was a forced sequel, written in haste.

Given that I was operating in a fog of sleeplessness, I decided not to attempt to write this post in the middle of the night. I waited until this morning and reviewed the last couple of chapters. While the sense of disgruntlement can be attributed to the insomnia, the unexplained change in the personality of a major character still remains a flaw when seen during the daylight hours.

On ebooks and lending

2011-05-30T10:37:00.003-04:00

Hardcover and paperback books are really easy to lend. You give it to your spouse, send it to school with your child to go home to another kid's parent, you bring it with you to a Brownie meeting to hand off to another mom. Really straightforward and simple and you hope that the book comes home in the same condition you loaned it.

What about loaning your ebooks? Well, Barnes & Noble nook has had this functionality for quite some time and not too long ago, Amazon made lending between Kindles a reality.

If the people local to you have the same ereader and share your reading tastes, you're good but what if the people you know play for the other team? DRM rears its ugly head and smacks you down, that's what.

I got to thinking the other day, after reading a plea on the Kindle discussion board for a loan, "Ebook readers need the equivalent of a community bulletin board where they can tack up a virtual index card saying what books they are willing to loan out and what books they would like to borrow."

Yesterday I learned that there already exists such a mechanism: Lendle. You can register to be a Lendler for free or you can opt to be a Patron for a life-time membership donation of $25. Lendlers earn 50¢ per book they lend out; patrons earn $1.00 per lend. You earn more requests by putting books on your lendable shelf and by actually lending books to other Lendlers. Nothing is loaned out initially or automatically - it's sort of like maintaining a Goodreads book shelf but with lending enabled.

To request a book, you search the title and join the wait queue. To respond to a request, you loan the book from your Manage My Kindle page. Very simple.

I loaded up about 160 or so Kindle books which I am willing to lend which means I earned 70 request privileges. I applied two of them to next installments of serials I like and have the rest in reserve. The virtual TBR pile is groaning!

Four or five requests to borrow books arrived and I responded to all of them. This is a fast-moving community, though: I was beaten to the lend on all but one of them! no matter, one person is going to read a book I loaned out and that's pretty cool.

One thing potential Lendlers must note: this is only a mechanism for matching up someone who has a copy of the book and someone who wants to read it. Both parties are still bound to the DRM and lending rights established by Amazon and/or the publisher: one two-week lend per book. Lendlers also need to respect Lendle's terms of service and not request a second loan of a book. If you liked it enough to want to read it a second time, buy it.

Just to keep things fun and interesting, Lendle has a list of achievements you can earn: signing up makes you a Lendler; paying up makes you a Patron; uploading a profile image earns you an Avatar badge; and Good Samaritan status has multiple levels. Oops, you tried to lend a book but got beaten out? Horsehoes and Hand Grenades for you! Are you waiting for someone to lend you a book? Right On Queue! You can come visit me and see all my awesome Lendle achievements, if you like.

According to the FAQs, all purchase links from Lendle are Amazon Associate links. They have to make enough money to cover operations and I'm sure that the people running the show like eating, heat, air conditioning, and indoor plumbing, after all.

Want more information? Visit Lendle or the Lendle blog.

In which trek reviews After the Leaves Fall

2011-05-29T13:52:00.003-04:00

I enjoyed Beneath the Night Tree,by Nicole Baart enough that I immediately located the first book in the series, After the Leaves Fall.This is the beginning of Julia DeSmit's story.

Here the reader follows Julia from childhood to college. Mom, Janice, walked out on the family when Julia was nine and Julia and her father moved in with his parents on their farm. During her high school years, Julia developed a strong friendship with (and crush on) the next door neighbor boy, Thomas. Her father died when she was fifteen. Through all of her life, Julia's grandmother was unwavering in her support even, or maybe especially, when Julia returned home from her very difficult first semester of college.

Having started this series out of order, it is really tempting to drop some spoilers here. I won't but I will say that occasionaly the amount of time passing between chapters is a little bit ambiguous.

I read After the Leaves Fall very quickly and immediately started the second book, Summer Snow.

In which trek reviews Beneath the Night Tree

2011-05-28T14:11:00.003-04:00

How do you discover new authors? There are so many ways: you can request a recommendation from someone; you can track your favorite authors, waiting for the next book in an ongoing series; you can download free Kindlesamples from Amazon; or you can browse the new release shelves. That last is how I discovered Beneath the Night Tree,by Nicole Baart.

I didn't realize that this is the third volume in a series, since the cover merely stated "a novel by". Usually I do not like to read books out of sequence. Knowing that a particular character didn't "make" it to book three can be a bit frustrating. Beneath the Night Tree was a good enough read that I went back to find the first two book in the series so that I could read Julia DeSmit's history and to learn exactly how Julia got to where she was in her life.

There is enough history in the third volume that the reader has no trouble following the current story but not so much as to bog down the action nor to make reading the first two books without value.

Julia DeSmit is a young, unwed mother who lives with her paternal grandmother, Nellie, 5-year old son, and 10-year old half-brother. Her long-time boyfriend, Michael Vermeer, is in medical school and their relationship takes on a long-distance character while he is in residency. While the distance puts a strain on their relationship, Julia is committed to making it work when her son's father, Parker Holt, reenters her life, asking her whether or not he has a child. The reader knows from the back story provided that this man was the teaching assistant from an engineering class during her first semester of college and that he wanted her to have an abortion when she told him she was pregnant. While Julia is not very happy with the idea of being around Parker herself, she feels that he does have the right to get to know Daniel and, consequently, her Simon, whom she is raising. Over the course of the book, Julia realizes that, just as she has changed over the intervening years, so has Parker.

The action and conflict are driven by Parker's need to know Daniel, as an "old friend" of Julia's, Simon's fears that he is unwanted, both boys' need for an interested adult male in their lives, and Michael's jealously of Parker. While I foresaw the ultimate resolution of the story, it was neither contrived nor trite.

Overall an enjoyable read, enjoyable enough that I returned to the library to secure the two preceding volumes, After the Leaves Falland Summer Snow.

In which trek lists

2011-05-27T10:01:00.003-04:00

It's that time of the year again. The school year is winding down so now it is time to start thinking about summer reading. Not that Neatnik doesn't read during the school year, but the summer is a magical time. A time when we get to the library several times a week and the number of books soars.

It is also the time of summer reading incentive programs!

These are the ones I have located so far:

Barnes and Noble Read 8 books, get one free

Borders - Read 10 books, get one free

TD Bank - Read 10 books, get $10 deposited to your TD Bank Young Saver Account

Anyone aware of other programs which do not have local residency restrictions? Leave me a comment and I'll update the post for all to see.

Oh, and in past years, McDonald's has offered a free Happy Meal for reading five books. I don't like fast food but once a month in the summertime for good reading is a treat. Check your local library for the forms; they usually arrive iin late June.

On gender... or lack thereof

2011-05-26T08:17:00.000-04:00

I usually try to avoid news articles as blog fodder and yet this month I made an exception with the whole Camping fiasco and now I am making another.

There has been a story circulating the web over the past few days about a couple in Toronto who aren't telling the gender of their third child. I'm okay with that decision while the child is in utero; after all, learning the gender of your child before the birth is only (recently) possible due to advances in modern medicine and the invention of sonogram technology and plenty of parents tell their health care providers that they want to be surprised.

I already am surprised: little Storm's parents are not sharing the baby's gender and the kid is already four months old.

Only the parents, two older brothers (unschooled children ages 5 and 2), and the midwives who delivered the baby know what sort of tackle is hidden behind the diaper, no one else, not even the grandparents.

Both the grandparents and friends have expressed concern over this decision and fear that the child is being set up for lifelong ridicule and bullying.

Human beings have gender by definition. How much damage are these parents inflicting by trying to neuter their child through non-consensual social experimentation all in the name of their own political and ideological agendas?

Pinball wizard

2011-05-24T18:15:00.000-04:00

Way back when I was a teenager, video arcades were all the rage. There was one at the mall where I worked. It all started with Asteroids and grew explosively from there.

I spent way too many of my hard-earned quarters on such classics as Pac-Man and his lady friend, Centipede, Galaxian, Tetris, Gauntlet (loved the flying ostriches!), Dig Dug, Q*bert, Frogger... the list goes on. My favorite type of arcade entertainment of all, however, was always pinball machines.

My favorite type of pinball machines are the ones with multiple levels and chutes and multi-ball bonus rounds. Lots of lights, sounds, and activity. A good pinball machine has a lot of "action" in the flippers. You have to be able to catch the ball on the flippers and the machine shouldn't tilt with the slightest movement of your hands and body.

We recently learned that there is a pinball museum not too far from home. You pay one fee and engage in unlimited play on the machines. Each machine has a placard with its date of manufacture and a short description. We took Neatnik over the weekend.

Quite a few of the machines were antiques and their flippers had long since lost their responsiveness. One in particular, however, was vintage 2005 and it met all of my criteria for a good pinball machine.

I don't even like this show!

We stayed for an hour and I spent most of my playing time on that one machine.

My shoulder joints are still aching days later!

In which it is business as usual

2011-05-21T10:46:00.000-04:00

It is May 21st. I'm still here, accompanied by Neatnik and Number Guy. We haven't noticed any missing friends nor relatives. All of the vehicles on the roads have populated drivers - even the ones with the funny bumper stickers - and all of the people passing by on their daily constitutionals are moving at their accustomed pace - no shambling at all.

Glad I didn't waste time shopping for shotgun shells last night. Of course, not owning a shotgun, ammunition would have been a bit of a waste any way, I suppose.

Yet another doomsday prediction has come and gone - a non-event. Except for all of the parties.

We are going to a barbecue later today, which was dubbed a Judgment Day barbecue in the invite. This was merely our friends' tongue in cheek humor since it really is an early Memorial Day cookout: a compromise position so that they could honor their long-standing annual holiday get-together but still take advantage of the upcoming three-day weekend off from school and work to visit their kid at college. We'll miss the missing kid, but everyone else will be there and Number Guy assures me that my apple crisp contribution will be the hit of the dessert table.

# # #

I was at the local mall last night, walking a couple of laps, when I overheard an interesting conversation regarding the impending apocalypse. The young lady at the pretzel shop counter was asking her friend buying snacks what his opinion was. He felt the guy making the prediction was off his rocker. I observed in passing, "What part of 'you know not the day nor the hour' was unclear?" We all had a good laugh.

We parted ways and I continued my walk. I was still kind of chuckling to myself but then I got to thinking, "What about those poor souls who were convinced by Camping's ad campaign? How are they going to feel Sunday morning? Will they lose their faith in God?"

My sincere hope and prayer is that those who were seduced by a flawed mathematical manipulation of the scriptures will see that this old man stood on his soapbox and made a lot of noise, but that he's just a cult leader with an agenda. In fact, he's a cult leader with an awful lot of hubris. How can a civil engineer in 21st century America claim that he's put together a reliable prediction, down to the precise hour of an exact day, based on a seven thousand year timeline constructed from the books of the Old Testament?

Jesus himself said,

"But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."
- Matthew 24:36

Those same texts cited by Camping were read daily in the synagogues. Does Harold Camping really think that the date of the end of all things is really hidden in the books of the Bible and that Jesus himself wasn't smart enough to put all of the clues together?

Lead him not into temptation...

2011-05-20T17:16:00.002-04:00

There's been an awful lot of celery, lettuce, cucumber, and carrots consumed at chez trek the past month or so. And don't let's forget the apples, strawberries, and cantaloupes.

We have been eating so much rabbit food that this morning, when I had an itch behind my right ear, I tried to scratch it with my foot. I've been greeting the wild cottontails as if they were long lost relatives. "Hey, Frank! How are the wife and kids?"

It's all been worth it: Number Guy has lost over twenty pounds! Please leave him a congratulatory comment. He reads the blog and he'll be very much encouraged.

There has been one problem with this whole vegetables as primary victuals, though. I really enjoy baking and it wouldn't be at all right to bake stuff Number Guy can't have and leave it lying around the kitchen. If we had a bake sale scheduled at school or church, it might help. I could bake and take it away and that would scratch the "I need to bake" itch. Of course, then the delicious smell of warm cinnamon or ooey, gooey, melted chocolate would still linger in the air and I shouldn't be leading him into temptation.

Just to get my mind away from daydreams about baked goods, I walked to the library today and I saw this in one of the parking lots along my way.

To quote Harry Dresden in Dead Beat:
"I just stood there staring,
because while I've seen a lot of weird things,
I hadn't ever seen that."

Some days I am so thankful my cell phone has a built-in camera.

In which trek reviews Lie Down in Green Pastures

2011-05-18T08:19:00.004-04:00

Back in December, I reviewed the first volume of Debbie Viguie's Psalm 23 Mystery series, The Lord Is My Shepherd. I'd gotten my paperbackfor free during a limited-time promotional interval but it is also available in paperback and in Large Print.Since I enjoyed the inaugural installment, I checked out book two, I Shall Not Want, (also available in Kindle format,btw) out of the library and enjoyed it as well. Of course, I immediately scooped up the third volume, Lie Down in Green Pastures, when it was offered for free earlier this month.

Lie Down in Green Pastures is a bit of a double entendre: it is the third line of the twenty-third psalm but it is also the name of the camp where the teens from Cindy's church and Jeremiah's synagogue go on retreat. Perhaps a bit to "pat" and "clever" for some readers, but I always like me a nice, clean double entendre.

In a bit of a departure from tradition, this book opens with Jeremiah discovering the dead body and Cindy coming to his rescue. Jeremiah was rear-ended in front of Cindy's church by a man who had died while driving. Cindy, hearing the collision, ran outside to investigate and immediately called Mark, the detective she met in her homicide case. He and his partner, Paul, are inclined to think that this is a simple case of a guy having a heart attack behind the wheel until another dead body turns up and somebody makes a run at Cindy.

The action in Lie Down in Green Pastures moves quickly. Since I was reading it on my Kindle, I knew that when the murderer was arrested, I was only 70% done. Even allowing for next-book-first-peek chapter that is commonly found at the end, there were too many pages left. The second part of the book was clearly meant to draw the two protagonists closer together. Jeremiah and Cindy have been fighting a growing attraction since the opening of the series. The end of this book explores that attraction and sets the stage for additional developments in the next book. The reader also gets a glimpse of Jeremiah's mysterious past.

From the beginning of book two, Viguie has been dropping little hints and tidbits about Jeremiah's life was before his relocation to southern California. Publicly, he admits to being a native Israeli, but side conversations and peeks into his private thoughts indicate that there is more to his past than simply rabbinic training. Definitely look for more secrets to be revealed in later stories.

The Lord Is My Shepherd was a very well-edited Kindle edition. Lie Down In Green Pastures not so much. There were three typographical errors in the first paragraph of chapter one: "synagogue.His" instead of "synagogue. His" transitioning between two sentences and "offThursdays" and "offMondays" each missing the space between words. Errors of this sort were endemic throughout the text. While not annoying enough to quit reading a good story, but they did occur at least once on every page. The series uses a small graphic between paragraphs to indicate change of perspective or passage of time within a chapter. In the paperback and in the first volume's Kindle edition, this graphic is centered on the line. In this third book, it is left justified. Again, not irritating enough to quit reading but frustrating all the same.

While I would recommend this series and this book, unless you were quick enough to score a free copy on Kindle, I would say buy the paperback. The Kindle edition is $9.68 as of this typing and I feel that that is way too much to spend on a poorly edited ebook.

Almost there

2011-05-17T08:33:00.004-04:00

Growing up, the end of the spring term of the school year meant the beginning of summer vacation. We weren't quite dirt poor but we never had money for extras - like going away anywhere for vacation. Heck, we were so strapped that my mother sewed us those polyester stretch material pants - the kind with the crease sewn down the fronts - until I was in the fourth grade. After that, our jeans came from Sears Roebuck. Oh, how I lusted after a pair of Levi's jeans!That's what every other kid in the class wore. Even a pair of Wrangler'swould have been an improvement over the bell-bottom, red and white plaid pants immortalized in my sixth grade softball picture.

Happily, those days are far behind me, shut up in the dim recesses of my subconscious mind for the most part. :: tic-twitch ::

These days, summer does mean time to consider going places and doing things. Or it will once the first summer session term completes.

Yep, I am teaching summer school this year. The beginning of the summer session butts right up against graduation and the end of the spring semester and it is really weird.

The hallways are empty and they echo. The department office is empty and dark. The main computer lab, normally a hub of stress, panic and other student activity, is populated only by the lab assistants and they looked rather relieved. As for me, I thought it all felt kind of creepy. I found myself thinking, "Was that Camping guy in California sort of right after all? Was everyone else all raptured up?" I mean, seriously, being off by a day or a week over a seven thousand year calculation is within statistical significance, what with all of the fluctuations and slip in the changing of the calendar systems from Julian to Gregorian and adjusting for leap years and all of that.

I'm trying to keep things upbeat and light for my students. We are all in this six-week-long, crash course semester togeth... oh, wait, hang on a second.... -er. Yes, together: just checked my roster online and everybody is still on it, no harried visits to the registrar to drop the class yet.

Imagine trying to compress fifteen weeks of a weekly activity into just six. Let's say you normally do five 30-minute workouts a week. That's about the amount of time a student spends in a three credit class each week. Let's assume that your normal everyday activities like walking the dog, running up and down the stairs doing laundry, and hefting grocery bags from the car to the house account for the amount of time they spend on their homework.

Cramming all of that down to a six-week interval would mean you would have to do 2½ times as much shopping, laundry, and dog walking and you'd need up your workouts to 80 minutes each or swith to 55-minute workouts every day. Yeah.

It is going to be interesting around here for a while. The students have homework due every day this week which means that I have homework to grade every day.

"No rest for the wicked, Bob, and that means that we can't slack off either, or they'll outwork us."
- Harry Dresden, Proven Guilty

I'll try to come up for air periodically, though given that our air right now is actually a downpour of Biblical proportions, would someone please pass the gillyweed?

Reason, aim, fire

2011-05-12T11:40:00.001-04:00

Can I truly describe today's Thursday Morning Bullet post as random? Dictionary.com provides the following definition:

random -adjective
proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason,
or pattern: the random selection of numbers

Well, I do have an aim: to attempt to indicate that I am still thinking and breathing and otherwise operating as an intelligent life-form.

I also have a reason: having not been all that prolific on the blog of late, it is time to return to some semblance of normalcy.

What I do not have is a pattern.

At least, I do not think that I have one. If anyone out there can identify a definitive pattern in the bullets today, without resorting to feeding them into a supercomputer running pattern recognition software, please leave me a comment and submit your findings via email. After that, you should probably apply for a position within NASA.

There was a house fire several days ago about a mile and a half from chez trek. No idea what happened and it wasn't in the news.

Plywood nailed over windows makes a building look so sad.

Amazon had a huge list of free Kindle books yesterday. I "bought" several.
- One Deadly Sisteris a series opener featuring Philadelphia law student, Sandy Reid.
- A Plunder By Pilgrimsis a short story featuring Garrison Gage, a reclusive ex-detective. He also stars in The Gray and Guilty Sea.
- Perfect Crimeis about a San Francisco woman who manages to murder her cheating husband. She figures she got away with the perfect crime but then the doorbell rings.
- The Last Witchis the story of Aradia, a witch who moves to Salem, Massachusetts.
- The Thirteenth Unicornis a fantasy story aimed at younger readers. I think Neatnik might enjoy this one.

I acquired Debbie Viguie's first book in the Psalm 23 Mysteries Series, The Lord is My Shepherd,for free back in October. I liked it, so I checked the second volume, I Shall Not Want,out of the library.

Got the third book, Lie Down in Green Pastures,for free on May 3rd.

The limited-time free promotional list has been a great way for me to discover new authors.

Oh, speaking of third volumes in a series, remember the pair of books I reviewed in the Prescription for Trouble series? I saw the third book, Diagnosis Death,on the library's new release shelf.

I checked it out after reading the back cover. I'm about halfway through and Mabry's gotten better.

Wanted to take Neatnik to a theme park over the weekend.

I have discount coupons to make the ticket prices somewhat more bearable and I was on the phone with a hotel for a one-night stay before I thought to consult the weather bureau.

It's supposed to rain all weekend.

Harumph.

I might mention that it is gorgeously sunny right now.

Abigail is blogging again down in Key West. Tell her I sent you.

NumberGuy lost 18 pounds - yay for him!

Bridge partners say they found some of them.

I got a small, unmarked envelope in the mail earlier this week. It was full of Box Tops.

I logged into Ravelry this morning for the first time in months.

There were a few messages there which was really nice. One was from someone else who wants to send me Box Tops.

Maybe we'll finally make our school goal.

The spring semester is officially over.

Sort of.

I have one student who blew off the final in favor of going to work.

Also blew off the makeup exam appointment.

I briefly considered feeling sorry for this student but then I got busy prepping up for the compressed summer term course I am teaching and all of my school-related emotional energy was rerouted past my sympathy center.

One of my last students to finish the final final had to show me some work on her flash drive. She had a 8GB Kingston.I told her all about the new Kingston Data Traveler Locker+.

An old friend sent me an email this morning. Seems he is interested in some new business venture and wants me on-board.

Not sure what sort of ship this is. Waiting on a reply to my reply.

The joys of email-tag.

Sure hope he responds before next Saturday.

You know, May 21st.

Wonder if he got rapture insurance for his dog...

One wonders, however, if the people not taken up are all untrustowrthy, do you really want to trust your pets to them?

Neatnik still enjoys the Webkinz. The other day, she was playing online and whatever it was she was playing scared the daylights out of the pet.

No, I am not clear at all on the details.

She said that the pet was a 0% happiness so she took her to the spa and the happiness meter zoomed up to 100%.

Wish all of life's problems could be solved so easily, don't you?

Not counting water, tea is the most perfect beverage. Especially my preferred flavor/brand, Twinings English Breakfast Tea.

Helps make the allergy symptoms a little more bearable.

Everyone around me seems to be coughing, sneezing, sniffling, and scrubbing at their sore, swollen, bloodshot eyes.

Yes, me too.

I am not complaining.

Better living through pharmaceuticals!

And nasal lavage.

I use a straight bottle provided by Dr PreciousMetal.

I don't think I could use this particular model by Blue Rhino...

In which trek reviews James Potter

2011-05-10T07:14:00.000-04:00

Some fans of JK Rowling's Harry Potter series might be interested in reading G Norman Lippert's fan fiction series about James Sirius Potter, Harry's elder son. Lippert's web site branches to accommodate your Internet connection speed: Wizarding and Muggle versions are both available. The website is very slick, very professional. The stories themselves, however, well, judge for yourself.

I downloaded Kindle-friendly, DRM-free copies a while back and recently got around to reading the three of them in rapid succession. The pacing is pretty good - not much in the way of great swampy middle bogging one down, though, like most stories, there are some times when the author needs to provide the reader with a bit of information and the action slows a bit to allow the data to flow. It was interesting and fun to see how a total stranger envisioned Rowling's characters 19 years later. Lippert is also pretty good at coming up with logical explanations for why magic works in a particular way and why certain things cannot be accomplished magically.

What he is not so good at doing is coming up with his own plots. He freely admits that James Potter and the Hall of Elders Crossing is a retelling of That Hideous Strength,the third volume of CS Lewis' Space Trilogy.The second James Potter book, James Potter and the Curse of the Gatekeeper, is a revisitation of Rowling's second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.Book three, James Potter and the Vault of Destinies, opens as if it is going to be original and unique, as the action travels to the other side of the pond, but is is still pretty much a rehash of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Purists will probably not be pleased with Lippert's prose. I'm not sure if Lippert really has his own author's "voice", since he seems to be deliberately trying to emulate Rowling's. At the same time, he blatantly violates Rowling's canon on many points. Minor issues can be forgiven as a slip of the mind: even authors with paid, professional editors sometimes have glitches like that make it to the printing press. Major departures are harder to ignore. One of the most glaring in my mind was when he had Harry state that thestrals could not be employed as transportation in The Hall of Elders Crossing: "Thestrals can only carry one person, and none as heavy as Titus or myself." Um, yeah, right. So how exactly did Bill and Fleur and Kingsley and Hermione manage during the flight from Privet Drive?

Those who do not mind playing a little fast and loose with the established rules and who are currently double-jonesing for a Potter fix while waiting for the second half of Deathly Hallowsto reach the theaters might enjoy Lippert's speculation on what might happen a couple of decades have elapsed.

In which trek reviews the Kingston Data Traveler Locker+

2011-05-08T16:19:00.004-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I joined the BzzAgent Kingston Data Traveler Locker+Campaign. My free flash drive arrived and now that the semester is winding down I have a bit more time for fiddling with the techie toys, so I set it up today while the ham was roasting on the grill.

If you haven't tried cooking a ham this way, I really recommend it. For a spiral cut ham, drop it into a cast iron skillet and cook in closed grill at about 300°F for an hour and a half or so. For a ham with the skin still on it, you want to score through the skin so the fat renders out and place it on a grate over the cast iron skillet so that the fat dripping down doesn't cause flame up.

Seriously Good Eats: The Complete First Season.

Oh, wait, you wanted to read about the flash drive. Sorry, the scent of the roasting ham momentarily distracted me from the tech review.

Ahem.

Right, then.

First time you plug the Data Traveler Locker+ into your USB port, you have to set up the password protection. Once you do that, you have a nice, secure, encrypted partition for storing all of your personal information.

It's really easy, too. Take a look at the screen shots I took during the four step set up:

Step 1: Choose your language, partner

Step 2: Review the license agreement

Step 3: Pick a password

Not sure on the password? Check the

Rules of Engagement

Step 4: Enter your contact info

Format and set password

Ready to use!

Now you are logged in and all set to use your secure flash drive. Next time you insert it, you will have to login...

If you need info on your flash drive or online support or are simply ready to pull it and shut down for the night, click on the icon down in the systray...

Systray popup menu

Need more information? Visit the online user's manual.

Sweet, isn't it? Quick, simple setup process, easy to use: I am planning to store all of my grades and attendance records and such for the summer term on here and, yes, I am going to recommend it to my students because it is just that cool.

I wonder if that ham is ready yet??

FMBP - now with more bees

2011-05-06T07:46:00.002-04:00

Welcome to a Friday Morning Bullet Post, courtesy of the spring term.

We are nearly to the end of the spring semester and the workload has increased markedly around chez trek. My programming students took their final yesterday and so I now have well over 50 programs to compile run and evaluate.

I received an email approximately one hour after the end of the exam:

From: Somewhat Panicky Student
To: professor trek
========================================

Could you please let me know what my final average and the test grade is when you grade my final? Thank you!

No, I haven't replied, yet.

I'm battling against being buried in bytes.

Alliteration. Gotta love it.

For a bit more "b" alliteration, I've been busy bundling bunches of Box Tops for Education for the school.

At the grocery store yesterday, I made sure to buy the head of lettuce with the Green Giant logo on it specifically because it had a Box Top on it.

You see, it doesn't look like are going to make goal this year.

We just missed it last year, too.

Just trying to do my part.

Bug alert this week: a bee snuck into the house.

Sucked it up in the Dust Buster.

Not a powerful unit: bee survived and I released it outside.

Planning to order one of these: none of these.

Bugs won't stand a chance against that much horsepower.

Worked on some socks for Neatnik last night.

Second evening spent on sock knitting while Neatnik watched The Princess Diaries.

The first one was St. John in Exileon Easter Sunday.

See previous bullets regarding end of the semester.

John in Exile is an awesome movie, by the way. A one-man play starring Dean Jones.

Yes, I am fully aware that he was the star of the Herbie the Love Bugmovies. Forget all of that: he's fabulous as St John.

Wanted to celebrate the ending of the semester by going away for the weekend.

Kind of a last-minute decision.

Everyone else had the same idea at least two weeks ago and there are no hotels in any of the places I thought we'd like to visit this weekend.

Apparently Mother's Day weekend is a big travel weekend.

Who knew?

Oh, well, we'll go away another weekend.

Are you planning to go out to eat to celebrate Mother's Day on Sunday?

We aren't. If we'd been able to find a place to go for the weekend, we still would have been home for dinner on Sunday in any event.

We protest Mother's Day brunch, lunch, and dinner offerings at restaurants.

Too many bad experiences in past years: poor service, undercooked food, overcooked food, kids running wild, rushed seating, crowded dining rooms.

I figure we'll slap a steak on the grill.

How are you planning to celebrate moms this weekend? Whatever you do, I hope you enjoy yourself while you do it!

Rapture

2011-05-01T18:49:00.007-04:00

Text message received at chez trek today...

"You are cordially invited to a Judgment Day barbecue, Saturday Mat 21st at 1:00pm. If you can't make it because you've been taken up in the Rapture, be sure to put in a good word for us."

We should be sure to play a little Blondie

and maybe a bit of R.E.M., too.

Good deal

2011-04-30T09:09:00.004-04:00

Amazon is running Mother's Day promotions on both the Kindle DXand the Kindle 3G.If you purchase either Kindle ereader, you get a free $25 Amazon gift card, suitable for building up mom's ebook library.

PS - Also suitable for upcoming birthday gift-giving obligations.

PPS - If you want to buy yourself a Kindle for Mother's Day, I won't tell: even if you aren't a mom. :o)

Strings

2011-04-28T15:01:00.001-04:00

Neatnik had to come with me to a couple of classes recently. Her school's Easter break never coincides with the college's spring break so this is a recurring situation. Usually I have her pack a backpack full of activities. This Easter recess, her choices included her Kindle,a hardcover copy of Inkheartand a box of crayons.

I dropped my dry erase markerduring my programming class, so I swung by the office to cadge a new one, Neatnik in tow. The full-timers were having cake to celebrate the department chair's successful defense of his PhD thesis. We were invited to partake and so Neatnik noshed. I chatted about school schedules and classes, mentioning that Neatnik had just sat through a programming class. The boss asked Neatnik what she had learned in class that day.

My kid proceeded to inform the entire room that she learned all about Strings and how Java is a case-sensitive programming language and then absolutely correctly explained to the assembled instructors the example I used in class to illustrate string interning.

Every jaw at the table dropped.

Except mine, of course.

Yep, that's my eight-year-old.

Shutdown in 3...2...1...

2011-04-27T13:54:00.001-04:00

Government Powers Down SETI

I suppose it is time for us to implement an intergalactic answering machine: "Sorry, due to lack of funding, we can't come to the array right now. Please leave your message and we will get back to you as soon as additional funding becomes available. Try your call again sometime after the next presidential election..."

In which the end is nigh

2011-04-23T10:12:00.006-04:00

After one has been teaching for a few semesters, it becomes really easy to tell when the end of the semester is nigh. One does not need to consult a calendar, nor monitor meteorological events, nor read the tea leaves in the bottom of your favorite china cup. Even the bones will tell you nothing.

No, there is a very simple, infallible indicator that the end of the semester is no longer on the horizon but instead is rushing inexorably towards you like an oncoming locomotive:within the last three weeks of any semester, at the end of each and every class, at least one student approaches you, looking furtive and uncertain. The Student of the Day shifts his feet nervously and inquires after his grades.

You look them up in the Spreadsheet Where All Results Live. You are looking at a loooong column filled with 0s: homework assignments which were never submitted. The only items breaking up the march of little red goose eggs are the test scores. Usually those test scores reflect the temperatures experienced within the past three months but occasionally you have a SotD with straight A tests. These are the most annoying: it is obvious that these SotDs have the ability to earn an A but are just too lazy to do homework. You calmly inform the SotD that s/he is failing your class.

The SotD may have the nerve to look shocked upon receiving the news of his/her impending failure. Excuses are offered. These often include how many hours s/he works each week, the number of credits s/he is currently carrying, or the fact that his/her computer bricked two months ago. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list. We are talking about college students here: their creativity in crafting excuses for non-participation is exceeded only by the amount of time they invest in dreaming up said excuses. Perhaps if they spent all of that time on their homework assignments and studying for class...nevermind.

You point out all of the missing homework, assignments turned in late, and the (generally) poor test grades. SotD invariably asks if s/he can still manage to pull a passing grade in your class. You punch some numbers into the spreadsheet based on past performance then you repeat the process with the highest possible scores. You use this data to point out to the SotD that if s/he were to score top marks for every assignment between now and the end of the ~~time~~ semester, s/he will earn a solid D for the term.

And this is where the fun begins: the SotD asks you to come up with a special extra credit project that s/he can do to bring up his/her grade so that s/he can get a B in this class.

Say what?

2011-04-21T15:25:00.000-04:00

There are some things which programming professors can say to their students which might not go over as well in other disciplines. Last week's homework assignments weren't stellar. Well, more accurately, they were pretty pathetic, which is saying quite a bit considering that I went over the entire assignment in class and did everything but type the code for them. The parameters of the problem included adding up a series of numbers and arranging them in descending order. One fellow tried to develop his own custom design for data arrangement. Midway through the explanation of his algorithm, my mental editor copped a nap and I stated, "You really need to get your sort together."

In past, I have used a 4 GB USB flash driveto tote my data back and forth between work and home. Four gigs isn't all that much storage these days so this semester, I decided to invest in a 500GB external hard drive.This has worked out rather well but it does not fit in my pocket so when BzzAgent offered me the opportunity to join the Kingston Data Traveler Locker+BzzCampaign, I jumped on it.

This is a cool flash drive!

Have you ever lost the cap to your flash drive? They usually aren't tethered to the flash drive and even if they have a plastic loop for fastening to your keyring, how often do they break under normal usage? Kingston's DataTraveler Locker+ sports a swivel cover.

Have you ever had a flash drive just crash for no apparent reason? I sure have. Kingston's DataTraveler Locker+ comes with a five year guaranteed warranty and 24/7 customer support.

Have you ever lost a flash drive and worried that some nefarious someone now had access to some of your personal data? Happens to students at the college all the time. They forget their flash drives in class and someone else pockets them. Usually there isn't all that much personal information at risk, I suppose, but consider that these are college students who are writing research papers and how valuable a free term paper would be to a lazy classmate. Kingston's DataTraveler Locker+ has personal password protection: after ten unsuccessful attempts to access the data, it automatically reformats. Oh, yeah, it also features automatic hardware encryption.

I loved the reliability of my old Data Traveler but it is only 4GB. Kingston's newer, more advanced DataTraveler Locker+ comes in 8, 16, and 32GB sizes. A free 8GB model is winging its way to me courtesy of Kingston and BzzAgent. I'm really looking forward to giving this a good workout. Twice the storage, fits in my pocket, and is compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems.

Spring!

2011-04-18T08:39:00.006-04:00

Now that we are nearly a month past the vernal equinox, it seems that spring really is here. Let's look at the local spring flair in a Monday Morning Bullet Post.

Pollen counts are up...so are the allergy symptoms.

Tree pollen counts are very high right now. Red zone high.

Expecting a bit of rain
Tuesday and Wednesday...

Neatnik's teacher continues to send home pleas for donations of additional boxes of Kleenex.I sent in a 200-count box on the first day of school, another at the beginning of flu season, and a third last week. Now, if every parent in the class sent the same number of boxes, the class would have had over 100 boxes of tissues.

Either some people are not stepping up to the plate or the third grade suffers from incessant colds, flu, and allergy symptoms on a continuous basis. Yes, I know: it is the former. I still refuse to send a fourth box of tissues this year.

A significant fraction of my own students come to school sniffling and sneezing. Those are the ones who don't bother with the anti-allergy medications. The ones who, like me, believe in better living through pharmaceuticals shamble into class a lá Shaun of the Dead.Teaching is tough right now.

Everything all of a sudden is yellow.

I would almost be inclined to suspect that somebody has been slipping some digitalis tablets in with my daily vitamins if not for the fact that I am generally the designated assembler of the morning vitamins. I think I would have noticed an extra little round white tablet trying to masquerade as an antihistamine. Besides, the generic Claritinwe purchase is kind of football shaped, not round. Trust me: a retired pharmacist would notice that.

Besides that, I can count. I'd notice an increase in the pill population.

Since I am not digitalis toxic, I must accept the evidence of mine eyeballs and report that stuff is all turning yellow here. You can't swing a dead cat locally without hitting one of these three yellow things.

Forsythia vahl

Narcissus

Taraxacum officinale

Lots of houses are being put on the market.

It is a formula: put your house on the market in early spring so that you can sell it and buy a new one and get moved between the end of the current school year and the beginning of the next one.

Yesterday we noticed several Realtor's Open House signs. Just for fun, we visited three of them. The first one was a new construction. Four bedrooms in over 3500 square feet. Full basement. Two car garage. Lots of closets with built-in shelves. Kitchen hosted at least twice the cupboards and drawers of our house and you could easily have converted each of the master bedroom's walk-in closets into bedrooms in their own right. Ticket price? Just under a million. Next house.

The second house was very different. Built in the late 70s on a slab. Again, four bedrooms but these rooms were tiny and rather dark. If someone was cooking dinner and you wanted something from the fridge, you'd have to ask the chef to stop cooking so that you could open the refrigerator door. The back half of the garage had been repossessed as a home office effectively creating an attached shed with one-car garage door access. Price tag in the $320s.

House number three was very interesting. Ostensibly a four bedroom split-level, the master bedroom was on the uppermost floor in what would originally have been termed the "bonus" room by the builder. Large and with slightly sloped ceilings. The smallest bedroom would work fine as a storage area - maybe as a pantry - albeit a pantry half a flight of stairs up from the kitchen. Huge fenced yard and a completely dry basement. Owners asking $435k.

It may sound a bit strange, but it was a fun way to spend a few hours on a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon.

Taxes are due.

If you are an American and you haven't yet filed, today is the deadline. In order to make today a little less stressful, some merchants are offering free or discounted stuff. According to a news article I found on Yahoo, you can score a pair of Cinnabon minis this evening and a free kids meal at IHOP at dinner time. Don't like pancakes? I got an email from Chili's offering a free appetizer or dessert today. Can't do dinner today? Swing by Mickey D's for breakfast or lunch and score on their 2-for-1 offers. DirecTV subscribers get free HBO today.

I hope you are getting a refund from your favorite uncle this year instead of writing him a fat check. If you know of a tax day special, please post it in the comments and tell us what other signs of spring have you observed lately?

Disjoint and random

2011-04-15T18:44:00.001-04:00

Finally, an opportunity to sit down and to collect my thoughts! Lucky you: you get to read my Friday Evening Bullet Post on Disjoint and Random Topics!

Yet another price drop over at Amazon. Check out the WiFi Kindle with special offers and sponsored screensavers.This unit is $25 less expensive than the regular WiFi Kindlebut going for the discount means that
"[s]pecial offers and sponsored screensavers [will] display on the Kindle screensaver and on the bottom of the home screen"

I'm sticking with my full-price WiFi Kindle.

If you are in the market for a larger display screen, the Kindle DXis today's Deal of the Day - marked down $80. Hurry!

Last summer, I reviewed Revenge Served Cold.Today I note that it is available in Kindle format.A good read.

Hmm, I still haven't read the series opener, Piercing the Veil.

I really should order that.

So many books, no little time!

Did I mention that I had downloaded G Norman Lippert's free James Potter series?

Lippert plays around in Rowling's sandbox for the duration of three full-length novels. The central character is Harry's eldest son, James Sirius Potter. More on these later when I finish volume three and put together a review.

My computer literacy students had a practice test today. They need to demonstrate their proficiency with Microsoft Office Excel 2007in order to pass next week's exam. The practice test is intended to make the students familiar with the test environment, which is, admittedly, very persnickety. The practice test is just like the actual graded exam. All we do is use different data and reword and mix up the questions.

Most of the students finished quite quickly today. Oh, wait, allow me to rephrase that: they finished both quickly and accurately. Once they were done, I allowed them to leave. I mean, if they scored 98-100% on the practice test, they've pretty much got the material down.

One student attempted to ~~escape~~ leave an hour before the end of class. He wasn't the first student to stand up and to collect his things but he is not in the upper 50th percentile of students, if you get my drift.

Before he got to the door, I checked his score.

It wasn't there.

I asked him why he didn't submit his test.

He said that me he had five questions left and he was going to do them later.

I told him that he still had an hour of class time left and to sit down and to finish his work.

Neatnik's Brownie troop is going to see a musical play tonight.

I hate this musicalwith an intense and undying passion.

It's the amazingly unavoidable earworm potential.

Number Guy came to my rescue: he volunteered to escort the Neatnik!

My hero!

Sorting

2011-04-13T07:59:00.003-04:00

The weather on Monday afternoon was gorgeous here. Thermometers rose into July temperatures. The sun was shining and there was not a cloud in the cerulean sky. I blame said conditions on my short burst of spring cleaning.

I suppose it is fitting that while I was sorting out the laundry and the little fix-it projects around the house, my programming students were working on wrapping their heads around the selection sort and insertion sort algorithms. We coded them up in the Java programming language a couple of weeks ago in class. Never thought about implementing them in folk dances.

Educational entertainment*

* Not precisely accurate but gets the point across.

Black and white

2011-04-11T10:11:00.001-04:00

Number Guy noted the other day that I haven't blogged in a while. I knew that. What I did not fully realize was quite how long it had been. Time to ease back into the blogosphere with a short Monday Morning Bullet Post

It isn't that I didn't want to blog. I even recall thinking a few times, "Oh, wow, that would be good blog fodder." Problem was, by the time I sat down at the computer, I couldn't remember any of those things so maybe they weren't at that after all.

One thing that was noteworthy enough to remember after the fact was a one-liner from the Neatnik. We took a walk in the local mall last Friday after dinner. She asked if I could buy her a new pair of earrings. I told her "not today". She replied with, "You never buy me anything!"

After school, I bought her a Frosty as an atta-boy for keeping her room tidy all week long (with minimal reminding).

Two days prior, we shopped for shirts, socks, and a pair of funky casual shoes that she was just dying to have.

A week previously, I purchased a pile of new jeans since her pants were all too short.

Two week earlier, it was new school shoes and two pairs of sneakers to replace the ones purchased last cross country season.

But I never buy her anything!

This semester I am teaching an extra course and it is in the compressed term so only eleven weeks to teach fifteen weeks of material. Why, yes, I am busier than a one-armed paper-hanger in a windstorm.

Some of my students are very motivated this semester and some are not. No surprises there. Unfortunately, there haven't been any really funny emails this spring.

I've been trying to stick to the workout routine. Things were going great with the Leslie Sansone DVDsfor a good nine weeks.

Then my stupid sciatica flared. Enough said about that.

If the rain holds off, maybe I can take a walk outside today.

Between loads of laundry, that is.

So as not to leave the few loyal peeps who stuck with the blog during this most recent word drought, here's a picture of the cake I made over the weekend. We had a little something to celebrate and the honoree was very amused by it.

Black and white:
not just for cookies anymore

Ack, there goes the washing machine alarm...again. While I'm gone to make nice with the appliances, you'll leave me a comment, please, won't you?

On homework and formatting

2011-03-21T10:10:00.002-04:00

My students recently had an assignment to write about ereaders. They were supposed to discuss what effect Digital Rights Management has on ebooks and piracy and the ethics of tethering consumers to a particular ebook format based on their choice of ereader. While most of them did a pretty good job on it, quite a few seemed to come away from the assignment with the misconception that obe format had to be the "winner", that owning an ereader would mean that the consumer would somehow be restricted from ever reading a paper book again.

Does one format have to win?

In my opinion, the answer is no, not at all. This isn't a situation where a person has to swear off one format in favor of the other: the two formats can co-exist happily. According to the study referenced in the graphic linked above, eighty-five percent of ereader owners continue to purchase print books. The ebook readers I know personally have not decreased their usage of the local library systems, either. Quite a few of the librarians I know own ereaders.

What are some of the reasons why a person might own and ereader but also use the local library systems and/or purchase paper copies of books?
Ereaders are a great way to take your entire library on the go. You can vacation with dozens or hundreds of book options at your fingertips and the weight and displacement in your luggage is comparable to a single paperback.

While on that vacation, suppose you want to buy a new book? You can download sample chapters before plunking down the full purchase price. Suppose you really, really like that new book. Next, suppose that you have the opportunity to meet the author. Lots easier for that author to sign your hardcover or paperback copy.

Most places I find myself are very friendly to using an ereader: home, work, school, doctors' waiting rooms, checkout lines... Have you ever finished a book at the doctor's office? With my Kindle,I've always got something else ready to start - without having to juggle two physical books.

Sometimes, however, I like to read in places that might not be very friendly to high-tech electronics. How about reading while soaking in a hot bath. Accidentally dropping your favorite paperback into the soup runs you about ten bucks in replacement costs. I won't risk my $100+ ereader in the same environment. Long, hot baths might not be your thing but maybe you like to float on a raft in the pool or sit on the sand at the beach with a good book. Neither of those locales is very friendly to electronic readers either. Yes, I know I could buy one of thesebut still...

Not all books in print are available in ebook format. How many times have you discovered a new author but that "new" author has already written a long list of books in a series. Ebook technology is new. Many authors' backlists have not yet been made available electronically. Every other week someone posts a question on Amazon'sKindle discussion board about where the Harry Potterbooks are in the Kindle store. JK Rowling continues to resist the format and not a single Harry Potter book is (legally) available as an ebook. If you want to read JK's stuff you need to visit the library or possibly a rare book store.

I think mos people are like me in that they have read two kinds of books: those they fully intend to reread and those they do not. Have you ever read a book to gain some particular knowledge or because someone you know said "you really should read this"? If you are not sure that you are going to like a book enough to justify buying a copy, you can borrow one from the local library (or a friend) for free.

This is just a short list of some reasons why ereader owners continue to read and buy paper books. Ebooks need not spell doom for the print industry.

Think about this: when Gutenberg invented the printing press, books became much more freely and cheaply available. There were probably plenty of monks who were scandalized that a machine could print books faster and cheaper than they could transcribe them. I imagine that there were scriptoria all over Europe where the brothers wept and commiserated that mass-produced books were the first sign of a literary apocalypse, that books would become devalued once they were in the grubby hands of the common man.

For centuries, books were printed with hardcovers. Can't you just see the highly educated intelligensia of the 1930s howling that books were becoming devalued when paperbacks hit the shelves of the local five and dime stores?

Ereaders have entered the scene many years later but aren't they simply another evolution in the history of the written word?

In which trek is mathematical

2011-03-14T08:43:00.001-04:00

Just a drive-by blogging to wish everyone a very happy π Day!

Why not celebrate at dinner tonight? Maybe order a pizza π or pop a chicken pot π into the oven. Then, for those who do not observe Lent, deep-dish apple π á la mode.

Trapped!

2011-03-05T16:50:00.001-05:00

I've been sticking to the workout routine faithfully these past weeks. A week or so ago, I started bumping up the intensity of my walking DVD workouts by adding neoprene hand weights.Neatnik picked up my one pound weights and observed that they weighed hardly anything. I suggested that she pump them over her head half a dozen times or so... Funny how she passed on that particular option. She does agree that my two and three pound weights are more challenging.

While the walking workouts are good and can easily be boosted with the addition of the weights or the firm band,walk belt,or figure eight bands,I also signed up for some Zumba classes and am seriously considering asking Number Guy for a Wiifor my birthday.

One thing I noticed about my recent workouts, though, was my old athletic bras just weren't up to the challenge anymore: when one is jogging and jumping around, one really needs support.

I went shopping.

Turns out athletic bras sometimes come built into athletic tank tops. Who knew?

The other day, I was getting dressed so that I could tromp down to the basement for my daily workout and I got kind of stuck putting on my new topfor the first time. You see, the tanks with built-in bras aren't stitched together at the bra band. I asked Number Guy for a little help untwisting the two parts of the garment.

He helped to get me sorted out, observing at the same time, "This thing is totally booby trapped."

Price drop

2011-03-02T10:43:00.008-05:00

Attention all Kindle fans of The Dresden Files: following yesterday's release of Changesin paperback, the Kindle edition'sprice dropped to $8.99. Yay! Finally below my boycott price break.

If you are interested in reading the first chapter of Ghost Storywhich is scheduled for a July release, Penguin posted it here yesterday. Additional chapters will be posted over the coming weeks.

Oh, my: two posts in one day. Can you stand it??