Single parents are amazing.

I took five little kids sledding today all by myself. It was not too hard, really, once the kids all figured out that it was their responsibility to figure out how to play without arguing or fighting, and toys that cause arguments are obviously bad toys, so they need to stay by me. And you know what? It warms my heart that Houston and Katrina are such enthusiastic jump-goer-over-ers. Or whatever.

So then, a few hours later and after a few more pounds of knowledge were absorbed by my head* i took our three kids shopping. I got hundreds of nickels worth of groceries, and five full WIC coupons worth of essentials, so my cart was FULL. Seriously full. We're talking six gallons of milk, seven cans of juice, blah blah. And the only way to check out for a full carted group like us was the self-checkout areas.
*I'm reading The Chicago Manual of Style 15th Ed. -- it's like five or six college courses in one. And i'm pretty sure it would proscribe my usage of "jump-goer-over-ers".

So there i am trying to get this done in a timely manner, trying to keep Houston and Katrina involved and in my sight, when suddenly Houston is gone. I told Katrina to step out so she can see around, and she found him over by the can return area, playing with a sink. She kind of wandered over there, and since i could still see them, and i couldn't leave Zane in the cart by himself, and i couldn't take a cart half full of unpaid-for groceries past the checkout area... so i left them to play at the sink.

Then, after finishing getting all my stuff checked out, i went over to the sink area to retrieve my children. I said "Okay Katrina, let's go." Katrina says "One more", and i'm thinking "one more what?" and then i see what they've been doing. They had found about seven pop bottle screw lids, and were filling them with water and drinking out of them. As i grimace and force images of herpes and Flu Like Symptoms from my mind with thoughts of the astonishing powers of healthy children's immune systems, Katrina tries to drink the rest of her "cups" of water, and i say gently, "No, Katrina, we have to throw those away. They're kind of dirty."

Light bulbs

Today i caught myself talking about flourescent light bulbs to one of the kids at work. I find it fascinating how they work -- they're a glass tube filled with some kind of gas that gives off ultraviolet light (the kind that blacklights emit) when electricity is zapped through it. There's electrodes on each end, and there's a coating on the inside of the glass tube that gets all excited and shines white (whitish, really, with greenish and ultravioletish overtones) light when hit by ultraviolet light.

So this kid who's between the ages of 14 and 17 (i'm actually not sure, but if i did remember, i wouldn't be allowed to say) was looking at me with this kind of blank expression. It was sweet. That's the same look i get from Houston sometimes. But Houston does know how incandescent light bulbs work, with the tungsten filament and electricity getting it so hot that it makes light... And Houston can tell you what the wire inside a light bulb is called, why it lights up, but probably not that it's made of tungsten.

But is that knowledge important? That's one of the questions Karen is asking when thinking about homeschooling. Is just any old knowledge -- like the fact that insects and spiders have exoskeletons and mammals have endoskeletons and worms don't have any kind of skeleton -- good enough? Or should we be teaching the same stuff they teach in kindergarden and early gradeschool? Like... um... letters and colors and basic number concepts? But wait, Houston already knows all that. I caught myself thinking about teaching Houston about parabolas. I am reading Gravity's Rainbow, after all... nearly done!!!

Phoebe visited!

My sister! With her stunningly trendy hair and smart fashion sense! Mum came too! Yay! We get along well, and thanks to the whole Age of Information thing, we don't feel all that disconnected. Phoebe said that it's really cool to see the kids in real life -- living in England, she usually just sees pictures and little video clips. Something notable about this visit: when Phoebe walked up to the front door, i was dressed in black tight leggings with yellow boxer shorts over them, a long white T shirt, a green plastic dollar store wig, and a black mask and a cape. Oh, and knee socks. Of course, i opened the door with an enthusiastic PHOEBE!!! and she simply smiled and returned the greeting. Perhaps, behind her stylish lenses, her eyes betrayed a slight moment of surprise. Surprise, or perhaps vague confusion. I was dressed like that because my Young Life leader, Sara and i were filming a little skit thing.

After we were done with the skit filming and a nice cup of Guatemalan free trade coffee, we went out for Tex-Mex food, got our fix of consumerism shopping for a coat for Phoebe, we talked, we came home, they left. I really like my family. I'm so glad i've got them.

I have to mention the snow. It's completely perfect weather for snowman making. The show has been falling gently but steadily, and it's a scant degree or two below freezing, so the snow is eager to pack, form snowballs, and sculpt. Of course, i'm busy with this and that, so we haven't gotten outside to do anything with it. I'm sad, because i think it's all going to thaw before i get around to playing properly in it. :( Tomorrow.

What's God like?

The other day i was talking to one of my friends about death and sin and humanity's role in the whole deal. I posited that dinosaurs were killing each other long before sin entered the world through Adam and Eve, and my buddy said that he believes that dinosaurs and humans coexisted.

I'm faced with this belief from a great many people who are earnest, loving, Christian people, and i'm not at all willing to engage in a discussion about this belief, because it Really Doesn't Matter. But if you look at where the idea came from, and where it logically leads, i find it problematic. The Bible tells us about a bunch of stuff, creation, early humans, and if we take the whole lump to be strictly literal, we come to the conclusion, as scholars have, that the universe is between six and ten thousand years old. But the universe tells us that it's more like 15 to 20 billion years old, that's how old the universe looks.... oh crap My whole argument has been made on this page, which i just now found. Rats. Basically what it says is that the universe sure looks ancient, and if it's not, then God has fed us incorrect information. That would make God deceptive.

Then more recently, Keith and i were talking about how much of reality we can know exists. Descartes came to his famous conclusion that the only thing he can prove (to himself) is that since he thinks, he exists. He then goes on to explain how he accepts what reality he observes, including the physical world, the independent consciousness of others, and so on, based on the fact that God must be good, and not a deceiver.

Right on, René!

Stuff i'm doing

Well, today i slept in (thank you again, Karen!), checked my email on my new gorgeous monitor, read more of the Chicago Manual of Style, which is spectacularly boring, but is a must-read for aspiring copyeditors... and then worked on the holes in our wall. I wonder how well drywall stands up to one hundred eight years of wear and tear. The nicest old homes have actual thick plaster walls, which is how our bathroom is. And our bathroom walls are really smooth and nice, even though it too could stand some new paint. Our current walls are mostly lath with this sandy mud and horse hair mixture slathered on with a thin layer of something smoother which is then covered by paint.

Our house walls were built with 2x4s which actually measure two inches by four inches (current two by fours are actually one and three fourths by three and three fourths), and then they took one inch thick strips of wood and nailed them horizontally to the upright 2x4s with little quarter inch gaps between. Then they took the sandy muddy horsehair stuff and squished it all into the wall. Whatever mud squished between the quarter inch gaps between the strips of wood is supposed to support the whole face of the wall. Whatever holes in our walls come about when the bits squished between the lath break off from the rest of the mud like stuff because of, well, moisture? constant minor wall vibrations, like wind shaking the house or people bumping into them? So part of the wall surface weakens and crumbles.

Houston was really cute helping me. There's a picture on Karen's weblog of part of his handiwork.

And then, i went to work, where i nearly fell asleep while i was doing really good counseling with this one kid (whose social skills are bad enough that he wouldn't pick up on the apparent disrespect of falling asleep while talking to someone), which means i need to get more sleep. So i'm off to bed as soon as i can.

Yay!

It's my birthday! :O)

So, Karen and i went on a DATE! A date!!! Like, by ourselves! After getting out of the movie The Number 23, Karen and i sat in the restaurant in a tiny booth made for two people (huh? where's the diaper bag gonna go? we need a high chair!) i thought of how self centered i had been waaay back before we had kids. It's not that i was a self centered, narcissistic jerk, but (as i told Karen) i don't spend nearly as much time thinking about myself anymore. I'd guess i think about myself only about half of the time now. The other half i spend thinking about my family or friends. Well... i also think about machines, science, philosophy, religion, computers, God... stuff like that. I'm not sure where that fits in. But my point: back before we had kids, i probably spent at least three quarters of the time not thinking about other people, but thinking about me, stuff, nontangibles, or God.

My dad said one time that generally, becoming a parent is the final step to really growing up. I think i agree, and you know what? Being a grown up is pretty sweet.

Okay, the movie 23: good! A non-comedic, but tenderly rendered role for Jim Carey. This movie had Karen surprised very much, which is to say that it's very surprising. Usually Karen can finish the general plot of movies halfway through. She's really good at it. But another thing about it is that it's a movie which showcases the power of relationship, the power of love. I think, prompted by conversations with Keith, that relationships are eternal, which is why when a relationship ends for whatever reason, it can feel so wrong, so painful.

And finally, i got a super nice 20" LCD monitor for my birthday. It looks so amazing. It's big. And pretty. And i'm going to watch a TV show on it now. Or edit images! Happy!

Emo! Again!

We got to see Emo Philips today, and this time he totally signed my copy of UHF, which was, i believe, the first movie he was in. He's so funny, and totally clean besides the outrageously inappropriate situations he conjures up with just the slightest twist of the joke at the end. But without resorting to dirty language. I love it! So, Emo's awesome! My camera, on the other hand, is broken, and is beyond the warrantee, so i guess i'll be trying to fix it myself. Yay.

So, Emo... if you watch the videos hosted on that website, you'll notice his very odd mannerisms and the bizarre page boy haircut. Well, he's over fifty now, so he's got gray hair and stuff, (Karen will post a picture) but he's totally funny. I tried to count the jokes i'd heard before -- and i've heard a LOT of his material -- and only counted five? Everything else was fresh to me. Also, his jokes come at a much more frenetic pace. And he's not just fast, he's quick! Responses to the audience were instantaneous and clever. You don't do quirky intelligent stand up for 25 years without getting good at comebacks to whatever the audience has to dish out.

Best part: we talked to him, he signed the movie, and he took a DVD of Juanito's Dream, the very short video i did with Mum and my brothers which is totally based on one of Emo's jokes. He has my email address... so my rocket trip to fame and wealth can start now. Or ..... ... now. ...Now?....

Emer-what?

Okay, so i WAS gonna wax all eloquent about the Emergent or Emerging Church, but then i typed "emergent church wikipedia" into my Firefox address bar, and up comes this awesome entry which kind of destroys my arrogance that i have anything new to say. Seriously, i'm almost 35, you'd think i'd figure out that i'm not going to come up with any new thoughts.

But it's seemed like nobody had a coherent answer for what the "Emerging Church" is, and i suppose that's partly because of the very nature of the "movement" -- the movement is not well organized, and seeks to avoid being encumbered by organizations. It's also interesting that we're completely wrapped up in one of the archetypal churches on the Emerging tip. Mars Hill Bible Church. We've been going there since it started (Karen went to the first service, and we went together to the second) so like the frog who doesn't realize that the water's heating up until he's cooked, we've seen the church become this monstrous entity with parking lot traffic jams and huge crowds of anonymous people we've never even seen before. I just hope we're not cooked.

But in response to watching Jesus Camp with Karen, i've been thinking about what makes us different from "Those People" -- namely fundamentalist evangelicals of the Pentecostal variety. And what's really coming to mind is that i make great efforts to live authentically. I get the massive vibe from some of the people in that movie that they're playing along, they're acting perfect because they think they're the only ones who aren't perfect. Particularly ironic was the moments Ted Haggard of "meth-fueled gay sex" fame as he was condemning homosexuality and exhorting the camera to REPENT!!! He even mentioned something like "they'll say 'If you don't pay me fifty thousand dollars I'll tell your wife!'".

Authenticity is an Emerging thing. Also: an understanding that worship and spirituality are inescapably linked to our cultural framework. It's impossible to extricate my beliefs from my culture, but at least i can recognize that if somebody disagrees with me, even if it feels like i'm being attacked, i can try to understand their cultural framework, and perhaps see that the "attack" is just a clash of cultural viewpoints. I saw one today, when one of my fellow staff was holding the kids accountable for wearing hats in Wedgwood's chapel -- culturally i understand his point of view, but it was for a party, and i've not grown up with the sense of hats being disrespectful to God.

Recognizing stuff.

I think something's wrong with me. At least i think i'm weird. But i still want to brag. Okay, so i was looking up this one show about hip-hop and, um, masculinity and homophobia and something else, and i saw that little ad. I was like, "Hey, that's one of those old Volvo sports cars", so of course i had to look it up and sure enough, it's a Volvo 1800. Okay; what in the world? Those are by no means common cars -- i don't think i've seen one in real life MAYBE since we lived in Texas back in 1995.

Sometimes i play games with myself and while driving, stare straight ahead and use my peripheral vision to try to tell the make and model of cars that pass me before their right next to me. It's quite odd the things which i notice - shapes of headlights is one of the biggest indicators. Fender folds, trim, proportions, wheel sizes, windsheild shape... even undercarraige features can provide cues.

And then, there was this one time in Korea where everybody was saying how Korean women tend to look very similar, especially girls who look like "Miss Shin". My caucasian coworkers were saying "I think i see Miss Shin all over the place!" and i was like *smile and nod* but then a couple months after she quit because our boss was a psycho lunatic with the social graces of a spastic colon... anyway, a couple months later we were walking down the street and i thought "Hey, is that Miss Shin?" and eventually i saw that it was her, so we stopped and talked to her and stuff. It was nice.

So that part of the brain which recognizes things must be really well developed in my brain. I should get a job as a professional recognizer.

It's railing, it's pouring...

Uh, to clarify the post title, "It's railing" is a reference to the fact that i FINALLY made the railing for our upstairs! Things are going to be boring around here, now, since no longer do we get to live with the exciting risk of tumbles down the unprotected stairwell. Heh... now that there's a railing i feel confident enough in the (relative) safety of our house make this joke: "I heard that stairs were involved in the majority of household injuries. So i'm going to tear ours out and use ladders to get upstairs." Har har.

Besides that... um... well, i bought a fifteen foot long handrail, also for the stairs, and since i have a little KIA Rio, there's obviously no room for it, so i tied it to the door post and mirror and drove home feeling like i was jousting the whole way. It was pretty sweet. "Get thee up, noble steed!"
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Last one

He's big, rotund, and silly.

Three things: It's JJ's birthday! He's my brother who's the head cook for a health food, and he's smart, funny, loving and tall! I think most of us Moore kids are at least three of those four... So happy birthday, JJ!

It was Katrina's birthday party today at Karen's parent's house. Karen did a great job planning the party for way back last Monday, you know, the day where Karen's antibodies started their Surge against General Peter Pan's Operation Upstream Salmonella Invasion. So she was done planning way early! Katrina was obviously happy with having the Birthday Song sung to her again, and got some really cute furniture type toys for presents. Karen mentioned in her weblog that Houston won the clothes pin drop with score of one, which is totally true, but she forgot somehow to mention that i sunk five of six clothespins! Hey, why don't i get props?

Okay, last thing. Chevrolet redesigned their Impala for 2007. Wow, it's mind blowingly boring. And how about the all new for 2006 Ford Five Hundred? Once you get past the stunningly unimaginative name (i think it's a throwback to a previous model? Like Chrysler did five years ago with the 300M?) you come to styling i heard described as coma inducing. I look at both of those cars, and come to the inescapable impression that they've just now, twelve years late, come out with something that looks like a 1995 Honda Accord. And the Accord has never been a particularly beautiful car. Honda tends to be about precise, advanced engineering, not showy body work. Maybe Ford and GM have decided that their cars are so bad that even if people want one, they don't want to be seen in one. Sad.

Another drawing

Here's the drawing i did in the training. It's not as carefully colored, but that's cause it's late, and i want to go to bed.

Because you know that thing in the Bible which says something like "it's really nice to rest after a hard day's work"? Well, i think a better translation would be "Sitting down at your computer to browse the net after taking a shower to wash off hours worth of sawdust and grime is really nice." Except they didn't have the internet back when they were writing the Bible. How did they manage??? Seriously though, i wish the apostles had kept weblogs.

Oh yeah! And Katrina used the potty all day today!!! This is Very Good! She might end up being potty trained within next week! Amazing.

Racing alien!

:)

That's possibly what's going to be on the invitations to Houston's birthday party. Ain't it cute? If you (your kids, really, we're letting Houston do the guest list this year, so no grown ups are going to get invited as such, but... we ain't gonna kick anyone out) are among the elect, you will be seeing one of these, or one like it, in the mail soon. See, i drew three cute pictures, and this one is my favorite.

Pencil!!!! Who know drawing with pencil would be so cool!??!? I was forced to draw with pencil in yesterday's training, not because it was boring -- not like some trainings i've been through where i've actually attempted to fall asleep to avoid more agony, or where i drew the world famous I Got a Bunny pictures -- but because i think and listen better when my hands are busy. It's an ADD thing, probably. Drawing and caffeine were my Ritalin(R).

So... today i went shopping with the kids. Remember how i used to go on long walks all summer? Since it's so stupid cold, i realized that i really miss walking, so i thought of my trip to the store today as kind of a walk. So i walked and walked and walked, up and down each aisle, prompting Houston and Katrina to say "Why are you walking so fast?" and onlookers to grin or something. But i got to spend a nice long time out with my kids, giving Karen the house to herself for a couple hours. Mmm, alone time. I think i'll be "shopping" more often with the kids. When we're walking briskly, Houston and Katrina have less desire to bail out of the cart (i always get a cart with a plastic car mounted to the front, like, a "fire truck" or "taxi" (they're identical moldings, just different colors of polyethylene (anyone else think it's so cool that "hydrocarbon" and "carbohydrate" are both fuels? For engine and biological organism, respectively?)) when i walk fast. And when i start nesting parenthetical phrases, it's time to go to bed.

Institutional racism?

I've gone on and on on my weblog about racism, right? And the whole thing how it's not institutionalized (unless you can call "culture" an institution) and stuff. Well, just like my position on moral relativism has been changing, so have my thoughts about racism.

I've been skeptical of the idea of institutional racism. The idea that there's a kind of network or system in place to repress minorities seems a lot like a weak conspiracy theory invented by paranoid people looking for a safer excuse for situations that are more accurately the result of sin. My favorite theory explaining the situation minorities face in America is one of culture. Culture -- that artifice of shared values and norms, created by groups of individual people, which tends to follow racial lines and nearly predestines people towards wealth or poverty, fidelity or promiscuity, trust or suspicion, crime or innocence.

But maybe my ideas are changing. Let's play Paranoid Hypotheticals for a second. If you wanted to disenfranchise a whole subculture, but you had to make it look like you're actually helping people, what would you do? Let's figure out how to get their kids to grow up in unstable home situations, where they'll fail to form proper attachments and learn to mistrust authority. Ooh, let's get their fathers locked up in prison. Hmmm... we gotta figure out some way -- i know, we'll make some cheap, accessible drug that mostly poor people in the inner city use much more punishable than... aha! Crack! Crack crimes will get people locked up for years, while pure cocaine crimes will get probation.

That's what happened in the mid eighties. Mister Paranoid Hypothetical is probably not full on correct about the motivations, but it is interesting for me to think about the subtle ways in which lawmakers could, theoretically, bring about vast and negative social and cultural changes, with widespread public support. For instance, the instability in Iraq is killing hundreds of people per week in Baghdad. That situation is having vast negative consequences for the kids (and others) who are living there. And that was brought about by government choices, with widespread public support. Does government always mess it up?

Fourteenth!

Valentine's day! Expressed commonly as Valentime's day... don't people read? And you know, i love Karen more than anything, but it's kind of hard to express my love in a super special way. Buying flowers or chocolate? Well, i buy chocolate for Karen, like, all the time. And her tastes are not hard or expensive to indulge - get her a brick of Hershey's and she's pleased as a gallon of milk in the fridge. Flowers... you know, i should buy flowers more often than i do. I haven't bought her flowers since 1995. Since the 1900's. Dang.

We took Valentine's cards to a nursing home today, where Katrina and Houston handed them out to the elderly. It's so cool to watch the very old and the very young interact. Both parties bring their own brand of cluelessness to the table. Little kids like ours trust anyone (with our encouragement) and oldsters utterly trust children. And you know, old people get to be so different, so individual! There's a lifetime of experiences and stories shaping who these people are. I wish i could get to know some of them. Except, you know, that would take time and investment and crap. Maybe in the summer we can walk down there once a week or something.

And then, after work, Karen and i talked about this book she's reading about reproductive technology, and did you know that if you attempt or succeed in making a human-other animal embryo, the penalty is up to ten years in prison? Huh? And did you know that somebody in Australia tried putting a human embryo into a sheep's uterus? Wow. Oh, and the first successful trans-species gestation was of a gaur, which is a huge wild cattle type animal. Lives in India. Endangered. So anyway, they implanted gaur DNA into a blanked cow egg, implanted the resulting embryo into a cow, and a baby gaur was born They named him Noah. The first trans-species gestation! The first clone of an endangered species! SWEET! And then, two days later, Noah died of diarrhea. D'oh!!!

She's Three!!!

My little girl is three! Aww! I'm so happy she's mine! In a strictly non-chattel way, of course. Like, i don't own her.

What amazes me about Katrina is that she's been able to capture our hearts in such a gripping way. I mean, obviously she's going to be dear to us -- everybody loves their kids, and daddies love their daughters -- but Katrina's so sweet and tender, and so funny, and loving, and... well i'll quit with the adjectives now. Except maybe another one: she's so pretty! Her hair! Karen said that this morning right after Katrina got up she looked like she's spent hours with a hairstylist getting a cut and style. In the eternal conflict between the bob and the shag, i'd have to say that for little girls i much prefer the bob. So cute! For grownups, it depends on the individual style and stuff... But for Katrina, her little shag is just adorable! And it's never been cut.

Katrina still says words her own way. The classics are "Few-vee" and "Flap". That's "movie" and "lap". Oh, and she sometimes says the /r/ sound like Bjork does. Like "years". But Katrina (like Bjork also, i suppose) has really good pitch. And the cute little voice! And of course, i don't think she's ever said "Katrina", it's ALWAYS "Kay-Teena". I think that's from "K is for Katrina".

She's dexterous. My inner chauvinist expects Houston to be better at assembling machines or operating devices, but that's not really the case. She's picked up a lot of Houston's preferences, like playing with cars and pretending to shoot guns. But she's firmly into her gender role as the caretaker of her baby dolls They're named Baby, and New Baby. I don't know if she's taken to her American Girl baby doll yet... but almost all her toy little girls are named Kay-Teena. Maybe she'll be a narcissist like me.

And my favorite thing she does? She'll come up to me wherever i am, reading, on my computer, sitting in a chair, or even pushing her in a shopping cart through the store, and she'll gaze at me and carefully, tenderly stroke my cheek and say "I love you, Daddy."
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Copy Ninja

Oooh kay, so here's my latest doomed-to-failure entrepreneurial venture: Copy Editing!!! Oh yeah, i've entered the high stakes, fast paced arena of copy editing! Blame nepotism: my sister Doctor Phoebe Moore is having her dissertation published, and probably due to some data error which could have been circumvented (sorry about all the big words - Phoebe's book is full of them, along with inscrutable sentence structure and totally indecipherable concepts of international political and economic relations*) by using my little Robocopy tool i wrote about last week, she lost the manuscript and only had a copy-ready version of the book. Which i've been editing to turn it into a real document again. Seriously people, back up that data!

Well, as long as i'm deleting unnecessary line ends and adding proper formatting, i may as well read the book and check for typos! Turns out i can do it. The book is basically about how the power holding elite of South Korea has worked to keep itself in power by manipulating the nation's workers. And the context, historical and geographical, and relating it all to this really smart Marxist thinker named Gramsci. I think Phoebe had or has a crush on Gramsci. Too bad he died, at the young age of 46, way back in 1937. In Rome.

Besides that, Karen is totally not feeling well today. She's a conglomeration of nausea, fever, aches and pains. So i watched the kids all day, all by myself. A few notes to fathers who might want to undertake this:

• Movies are good, but try to limit the watching time to less than or equal to the amount of hours between get-up-time and go-to-bed-time.
  
• Two young kids can eat nearly a whole box of Nilla Wafers by themselves, while also splashing milk on every surface in a room.
  
• While it may seem callus, wearing noise isolating headphones and listening to something groovy and downtempo can make changing a cranky, hungry infant's diaper amazingly less stressful.
  
• Paradoxically, kids who've eaten nearly half a box of Nilla Wafers will still allow themselves to be bribed by M&M's.
  
• If your hoarse, achy wife is in bed upstairs and you're downstairs taking care of noisy kids, give the wife a cell phone so she can call you and order food service.
  
• Infants are needy. Carrying them around hooked in one arm is a nice workout for those biceps you're developing.

Okay, so i've already said this about Lawn Ninja and Video Ninja, but if you or anyone you know is publishing a book, i will do copy editing and proofreading for them. Phoebe says that if you can get work, it pays really well.

*After the jump, behold a random sample of copy from Phoebe's book, Globalisation and Labour Struggle in Asia.
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My son, the Calvinist.

Today Houston asked, "Daddy? Why does God make some people who aren't going to love Him?"

My answer, after ten minutes of conversation: "That's an awesome question, Houston. Lots of grown ups talk about that, and they don't agree."

More about data

Okay, sorry about yesterday's post. I tried SO HARD to make it really easy to understand. I guess it is a complex topic. Basically: hard drives fail, so keep your important data saved in at least two physically separate places.

Anyway, Zane was staring at Lady Miss Keir again, as she sang and danced to Groove is in the Heart, and Houston thought it was pretty funny how he was staring. So he copied Zane for the benefit of the camera. So now here's a conversation i had with Houston.

Houston -- (patting the computer next to my desk) Is this the computer you don't use anymore?
Me -- No. That's the computer that our weblogs are on.
H -- (confused) The weblogs are inside it?
Me -- Well, yes. If people want to look at my weblog or your weblog or Momma or Auntie Beth's weblog, that computer kind of shows it to them.
H -- So if we took it all apart we'd see the weblogs?
Me -- No, the weblogs are stored on computer parts. Does this sound card look like a weblog? Or this RAM module?
H -- Noooo!!!
Me -- Okay, look at this memory card. Can you see the picture of you i took? Look really closely.
H -- (staring) Um... (staring) no.
Me -- Well, if i tell the computer to look in the right place, we can look at the picture. What is it?
H -- It's me!
Me -- Okay, look at this. If i zoom in really really close, it becomes a bunch of colored squares. What's that?
H -- Colored squares. Pink and brown and gray and dark gray.
Me -- But if i zoom out, what is it?
H -- My eye!!!
Me -- Each color square has three numbers, one for red, one for green and one for blue. This one way up here is... uh... red 145, green 40 and red 62.
H -- (slightly blank look)
Me -- So if i told the computer three numbers for each square, over and over, eventually, the colored squares would become a picture!
H -- You would tell the computer by talking to it?
Me -- No, that would take too long. There's four million squares on that picture. That's so so so many!
H -- So if you did tell the computer that, I would never get to play computer games!!!

:) I love my kids.

You got dang fine data, better back that stuff up.

Okay, so today was a good day, wherein i went to work for a meeting, came home, went to The Bagel Store to eat bagels with my kids (Houston - I want a [blue]berry bagel and a [Asiago] cheese bagel and an apple crunch bagel and an everything bagel try to remember Daddy! Katrina - My wanna cheese bagel and a berry bagel and a apple bagel but my not wanna spice [everything] bagel! They get those bagels suitably split into fractions... they're, like, connoisseurs) and then sit at my computer with Zane asleep on my lap until i had to go to work again, where it was totally fine.

Right. So i'm writing this post in response to my recent efforts to find an efficient, reliable way to keep our valuable data properly and safely backed up. So listen carefully: hard drives fail. Listen carefully again, although this phrase contains ten more words than the last one: data you don't have backed up is data you don't want to keep. Seriously. Hard drives contain up to four aluminum or glass disks coated with a microscopically thin layer of iron oxide, and they spin at perhaps 7,500rpm, at which speed most engines would fly apart. Then there's these little heads, suspended on springy spindly arms, and they fly on another microscopically thin layer of air above and below the disks' surfaces, and whack all around in there magnetizing microscopically tiny areas of those disks into patterns which, when read back, represent ones and zeroes and combine to make up data! It's crazy that the whole system even works, let alone is reliable.

But the basic rule still applies: hard drives fail. There's lots of moving parts, lots of microscopic tolerances, not to mention the actual electronics which control the drive, and then talking about user error or bad software which could delete your data adds another layer of complexity.

So here's a couple solutions.

1. Use web based email, and email copies of important documents (tax returns, your resume, homework) to yourself. Gmail gives you almost three gigabytes of space - that's a LOT.
2. Get a thumb drive to keep yet another copy of important documents. This one you can take with you (although with email you can get your data from anywhere you've got internet access).

Okay, but what about home movies? Pictures? Karen and i have over 100 gigabytes of pictures and video clips. That's, um, a LOT. Way more than you would want to be uploading to your web based email accounts, even if you could find one which would store them. Flickr works great, but for unlimited access, you need to pay a membership fee... and if Flickr ever goes belly up, so do your pictures.

So what you need is at least two hard drives in your computer, or perhaps two computers networked together, and some way to copy the files, keeping the data safe on two physically separate hard drives. Then, when (not if, when) one of your computer hard drives dies, with graceful read errors and scrambled data, frightening clicks and pops, or horrifying screeching sounds, your valuable data will be saved. Now, some catastrophes like a fire or flood or theft could destroy both hard drives at once, so if you're really serious about your data, made CDs or DVDs of everything and store them in a fireproof safe at, say, your in-laws house.

So (i'm very proud of this part) i cobbled together a little tool which allows anyone to do what i've been going on about. You may download it here. It's got a couple freely available tools along with script files i wrote, along with careful documentation to make them very easy to customize for your specific needs... (sounds intimidating, but try it! You'll like it!) so then you're all set! All you gotta do is unzip the folder to somewhere on your computer, edit the backup.bat and purge.bat files*, replacing the generic paths like "C:\My Pictures" to whatever you need for your computer, and then set the file backup.bat file to run every night and the purge.bat file every month. Or, if the geeky Task Scheduler tool in WinXP is too difficult to figure out (you need a password on your account, which most normal people don't have) you can put the backup.bat file in the startup folder in your start menu (again, geeky, but less so) and it'll run every time you start your computer up. You can run the .bat files from wherever the unzipped folder sits, they'll do their thing quickly and accurately!

*A .bat file is a list of commands which will be executed in order. You edit them using Notepad or whatever.

Oh boy, this all seems to sound so complicated. Sorry. If you know me in real life and live close enough, i'll totally set your computer up to do this for free. It's quite simple and you really could do it yourself i promise, but some people get all irrationally panicked by opening up their computers or editing .bat files... :) I understand. I get irrationally panicked when Karen asks me to help her sort pictures.

Oh yeah, and if you have a laptop or small computer, there won't be room for two hard drives, so you'll need an external hard drive which you shouldn't leave plugged in all the time, so you'll need to run the .bat files every time you want to do the daily or monthly backups.

My camera is home!!!

I miss it! So i took a bunch of pictures of the Houston and Katrina, uh, myself, of course.

And i was so excited to have new pictures, i spent a little over an hour fixing up that picture, so now my whole day must be summed up in one sentence! Here it is:

It's cold, but we had fun anyway, and then Karen took everyone to the doctor's office so Zane could get shots while i leapt about like a doofus cleaning the house, and after everyone came back Houston decided Rice-a-Roni mixed with scrambled egg was so disgusting he needed to keep eating more and more to make sure it was the most abhorrent culinary savagery ever unleashed on tastebuds, and after Katrina went to bed i went to Beth's house to make sure it wasn't rubble, and while it is standing and warm, her snow shovel is now broken because i'm a crazy shovel and rake handle breaker - that's the fifth one since summer - so i drove over and over the unshoveled driveway with my KIA, which gets much better ice traction when going backwards, so now i'm going to bed.

Laziest Sunday Ever

Here's the video of another lazy Sunday... but ours was lazy because church was canceled, it was bitterly cold (minus 7 Fahrenheit as i type, -22 for Celsius types), and we didn't hardly leave the house. Mmm, laziness. Wow. That's cold.

Sledding!!! Car show!!!

(still no camera)

We were planning on spending tonight at a hotel with Karen's family, mostly to swim and play board games and see Karen's brother Jim's apartment. But those plans fell through when they, you know, shut down the freeway. Yeah, there's this snow storm thing that's clogging the arteries of automotive lifeblood more than a trans fat taco. Uh, what was that?

So instead, we went sledding, which involved pulling a train of sleds carrying Houston and Katrina and my snowboard down to the little park we sled at, and then i managed to go down the hill TWICE which is as much snowboarding as i did all last year... and it's really weird to snowboard at slow speeds in such heavy powder (over a foot of powder) since i couldn't even see my board. Houston has really gotten into sledding - he was intentionally falling off the tube half way down the hill and rolling in the snow. He was totally maintenance free too, besides "Houston! Go get your hat!!!" And then Katrina fell down once or twice, and her hand got really cold, which combined with her weird mood thing where she can't even function unless she gets exactly what she wants (i almost tied her to the snow tube so i could drag everyone home). So finally Katrina decided to walk home, wailing the whole way, and was nigh inconsolable (says Karen) when we did get home until she was warm.

Then later we went to the big annual car show, where we saw all the cars we could stand, and Katrina went up to a booth where you had to say "I want one, from 105.7" to get a little boxing robot toy, but she said it way too quietly. So i said "Louder, honey" and she said "I love you" to the guy. He said "Well, that's close enough for me!" And... heh... the a certain Chevrolet stand was playing a song which sounded extremely like in instrumental version of "American Idiot", which i thought particularly apropos. Yeah, and the Chevy Aveo, which is a rebadged and re-engined Korean Daewoo car, which is neat because Korea Number One!!! But the interior? Bare bones basic, cheap plastic knobs, no frills, except there's this fake burl-wood-print plastic thing running through the doors and dashboard. Like... they're fooling anyone? I've thought for a while that GM has nothing but aloof disdain for their customers. That's why they foist off such monstrosities as the Avalanche on the public. And the Aztek - people who actually own them like them, but seriously, the first time i saw one i actually goggled my eyes and laughed at the pure hideousness.

My Hair!!!

Of all the days i wish i had a camera. Okay, Karen said i could use hers. That's why there's a picture up there... and it doesn't look to me as bad as i thought.

See, one of my favorite coworkers, Rashard, had his last shift of regular employment today, so last night we went to a sports bar to celebrate/yell at him in anger for being such a butt head and leaving. He has been a cornerstone of stability for the unit where i used to work, always being one of the most supportive, caring people to talk to.

So anyway, i stuck around until nearly one in the morning totally by accident. You know, when people are pouring their hearts out, it's a little awkward to look at your watch and say "Gosh, look at the time! Gotta go!!!" Especially when it's my hero coworker Michelle - she's bearing some of the worst repercussions of the problems i wrote about earlier this week. But i guess "Ooh, i told my wife i'd be home one and three quarters hours ago" would have been a graceful exit.

But anyway, as sports bars around the nation (in states where smoking in business establishments is allowed) reek of stale smoke, so i reeked of stale smoke. So i took a shower. And slept with wet hair. Which made my dreadlocks utterly flat on one side, and sticking up horribly on the top, and probably just dumb looking everywhere else.

Sigh. It takes great commitment (from Karen mostly - she's the one who has to kiss me and look at me) to tolerate a hairstyle which has whole bad hair YEARS.

A story

So here's a story. I have some extra computer hardware which is mostly kind of junk, but people Out There go nuts if you offer to give them computer hardware of any description, and once you let the freecycle community know you've got anything, they descend on your mailbox with frantic pleas of desperation and tricks like emails which say "I'm about to head out to pick it up - where's your house again?" Gosh, the jerks.

So, i've been collecting names of people who build computers for poor people or whatever, and so i ended up exchanging emails with this guy, and a while down the list, he called me "hon". I wrote back saying "I'm a dude, but Juanito sounds like a girl's name - i get that alot." He was like "LOL I had no idea! ...but I'm gay, so either way, I'm good." So i was like "Oh. A benefit of being gay i hadn't considered..." And yet he's a computer hardware enthusiast, with some really amazing case mods that he's done. That machine thing up there is part of a watercooling rig he's got in progress. I... uh... well... a hardware enthusiast? A gamer? Gamers and hardware geeks are generally more on the homophobic tip of the spectrum, in my experience.

And it occurs to me that as far as i know, i've never had a gay friend. I suppose that'll change now!