Little Miss Muffett

When I was in college my friends and I liked Andrew "Dice" Clay's nursery rhymes a lot. He took nursery rhymes and basically made 'em offensive, surprising and funny. A genius combination for us college-age kids.

Here's the least offensive one I could find:

Little Miss Muffet
sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her
And said, "Hey, what's in the bowl, bitch?"

I took a calligraphy class my sophomore year. One of our assignments was to write a nursery rhyme in calligraphy on a big poster-sized piece of paper. So I did that, but wanted to do more. You can see where this is going, right?

I carefully wrote out all the letters and words of the above-mentioned Miss Muffet variation. It's slow work doing calligraphy, especially when you're a beginner. It's all one letter at a time. I got distracted when I was just finishing the 2nd to last word, "Bowl." I was one word away from finishing my masterpiece. I thought it wold get some laughs from my friends. So I looked away, got back to work, and realized I had made a mistake:

...
Who sat down beside her
And said, "Hey, what's in the bowl,
bo

I had started writing the word "bowl" again. Ugh.

I figured I might as well finish it, even if it was ruined. I don't remember who walked in next and saw the finished product. But as it turned out, the phrase "Bo bitch" became pretty popular in my group of friends. Like "Hey, what's up bo bitch!?"

I'm sure I could still get a laugh out of them today.

Smiling Ari

At the mall...

Reading is fundamental

I couldn't believe this whole cute bookreading thing wasn't staged.

Experimental Headgear

Ice Cream Cone

Jonah has an ice cream cone in Pennsylvania with Grandpa and Mommy & Daddy

Babies, rats, new air conditioner

Jonah is almost three. Ari will be five months old in a few days. Jonah is like a grown-up now. We come home from work and he asks "So.... How was your day?" It's wild. Ari still barfs on everyone and everything. Well, that's not totally fair. If you're under one year old I think we call it "spitting up."

Kelly talked me into getting central air conditioning in our house. Or as we call it "AirCon*." It seemed like a waste of money even though I'm always the first to complain about how hot it is.

So the installers came and everything went smoothly. Until the next hot day when we closed all the windows and fired it up and the air that came out of the vents was luke warm. And stinky. Although the air conditioner was working beautifully, so was the furnace. It only took us two weeks and three more visits from the AirCon company to fix things so the furnace and AirCon could operate independently.

I'm still not sure the AirCon was a good investment. But it was pretty gratifying to use it in the past week or two where the high temperatures were ~105 degrees in San Jose. I was very glad we got it.

Oh yeah. The stinky smell turned out to be a dead rat in the filter. Good times. I'll post a picture of Kelly showing it off later.

* All the hotels in Mexico advertised Air Conditioning as "AirCon." Is that a European thing? A Mexico thing?

It's here!

I gave up on the Slingbox package arriving. I took a shower and after I got dressed and opened the curtains to our bedroom I saw a white pickup truck out front. Weird. Nobody parks in front of our house. I could see our porch out the window and saw a package... from Amazon!

Maybe the driver put my package somewhere weird yesterday? At someone else's house? And then returned in his pickup truck today to find it?

Either way I'm busy hookin' up my Slingbox and playing the software update game. Yay1

Slingbox

I ordered a Slingbox from Amazon.com and FedEx says they delivered it today. I don't have any way to know if that's true, because when I got home there was no package.

Ugh.

I'm hoping that tomorrow the driver suddenly remembers how he hid it under our house or something. But I have a feeling that's not gonna happen. The best guess I've got is that some hooligan kids in the neighborhood stole the package. They probably saw Kelly leave and then the FedEx truck arrive a little while later. (Note: FedEx says they delivered it at 12:21pm. Kelly says she left at 12:30pm or later. So theoretically she was here. Maybe the driver took my box? Reported the wrong delivery time?)

Anyway, from what I've read the Slingbox is really cool. You hook it up to your cable box/TiVo/DVR/whatever and to the internet via an ethernet cable. It also has an IR (Infra-red) blaster so that it can send remote control commands to whatever it's hooked up to.

Once you have the box hooked up you can use the software to watch the video comin' out of whatever sources it's hooked up to. That means you can watch on your computer somewhere else in your house... or from anywhere that you have an internet connection. Say you're on vacation (and of course you brought your computer) and realize you need to watch the local news in your home town. Or need some Teletubbies shows to play for your 2 1/2 year-old. Or if you need to set up some new recordings on your DVR... Just fire up the Sling software and watch your TV shows, program your DVR etc

Now if you never leave your house this might not be the product for you. But I'm hoping, if I ever get it, that it's going to be pretty dang cool for me. :-)

I'm going to call the local FedEx tomorrow morning. I have a feeling they're going to tell me I'm out $220. The extra crappy thing is that FedEx lost a package of mine a week ago. I guess the good news there is that it was "lost" before it arrived at my house. So I was able to get a replacement from the place I ordered from.

OK. I'm sleepy. It's Kelly's birthday tomorrow. Kelly, Dan and Jonah are visiting Joe & Mary (& Mira & Lyra). I'm hoping they're bring back a chicken (live). Also. Ants.

Old story from December 13, 2004

monday 12/13/04 - i watched jonah on the 7th night of chanukah. we did some runnin' around, playing with blocks, looking at the fan, reading books and he was gettin' kinda cranky. then boom he busts out with the "bath" sign. and i say "uh, you want a bath?" ('cause i don't normally give him baths. confidentially speaking i'm kind of scared of the water and swimming in general and being in charge of the baby in the tub kinda freaks me out. a little.) and he replies "Bath" sign! so i say "ok, let's give you a bath.

we practice some numbers in the bath and he plays with all the cups and empties them. they have holes in the bottoms. there's a plastic pot for a plant. kelly broke the base off so it's like the giant version of the little ones. eventually, and this has never happened with me, jonah gives the "all-done" sign. and i ask "all done?" because i don't believe it. almost every time i've ever pulled him out of the tub he cries. so he says "all-done" and i pick him up and he thinks it's all pretty nice and funny.

he points at the lotion and makes like he wants it. i dry him off and lie him down. no crying. he tries to reach for the lotion next to the bed i'm changing him on. i say "ok, you want lotion?" normally kelly lotions him all up and he likes it and it makes him laugh hysterically. so i do my best and he laughs a little and likes it. and although i normally also have a fear of lotion (yech!) it's ok with the baby. i go back to putting on his diaper and he rubs his hands together like i did after i squirted the lotion on. he wants more lotion! heh. so i re-lotioned him but i think the problem was i didn't get under his neck and make him super laugh.

i dressed him, with his shirt on backwards. huh, i wondered why it was so hard to get it on. ha. and then kelly called from outside! we waved from the window upstairs and she waved a new blue spatula she got me for chanukah.

A quick update

This post is dedicated to Alison :-)

Kelly and I have been super busy with work lately. Our nephew Dan and his girlfriend, Kristen, came to visit. We're hoping they'll move out to California. Specifically... somewhere close. Now there are a lot of great reasons for them to move out, but a big one for me is that I can play board games with them.

We played this game, Raj, which was a lot of fun. I bought it on eBay for $3. It's a really simple auction game for 2-5 players.

We played another auction game called For Sale which was also a lot of fun.

Awwww. The picture link is broken and I need to go.

Jonah keeps getting cuter day by day. He likes to play "Google Firetruck." I sit in the chair, he brings a pillow, sits on my lap, we put the pillow on top and then the laptop on top of that. Then we go to Google Image Search and search for "firetruck" or whatever thing he wants to see. I highly recommend it for anyone with a 2 year old. Note: When Jonah says "Firetruck" it sounds more like "fih-fye-fr tuh-tr-truck."

Oh yeah, one more thing. He's been telling stories to us about daycare. Now he's only two so he's not a fabulous story teller yet. So they're things like "Finn bite ear." And we ask "Did Finn bite your ear? Who's ear did Finn bite?" And he'll say "Yes" to most questions. I was convinced Finn bit Jonah's ear but the official report is that Finn bit Anthony's ear. We also learned that they take their shoes off when they nap at daycare. And Jonah sleeps on a green bed and has a red blanket!

I've got to go. OKSEEYABYE!

Uh, hi, how's it going?

Sorry it's been so long since I've written anything. The news here is that I started working at Apple in April of 2005. Also. We have chickens. We had 5 hens. But then one turned out to be a rooster. He is no more.

In other news, check out this guy's lego robot that solves rubik's cubes.

Wait. There's more news. Jonah is 2 years old now. He's 95th percentile height and weight. I think he'll be taller than Kelly and I soon. When he's sleeping he likes to snug his head up against the edge of the crib. But a lot of the time this makes him too hot. I refer to this as "head sweaty." This happened earlier tonight. What I do in cases like this is grab his feet and slide his all body away from the edge. It makes me laugh thinking about it.

Kelly is good and I'm good and Jonah is good. Maybe we'll make pancakes tomorrow morning with the eggs from our chickens!

Eric Snider's Blackjack

I finally finished my Blackjack game for Palm OS devices. It's the best looking Sniderware game yet. Karen Paluska did all the artwork except for the cards and the casino shoe (That weird thing that holds the cards).

Anyway, if you want Jonah to go to college then please buy a couple copies. :-) If you're not sure yet then download the free 7-day trial. It's fun. You'll see.

Other Sniderware Games

On the off chance you haven't already played the other Sniderware games...

Eric Snider's Solitaire - 10 games, lots of backgrounds and you can even throw the cards!

Eric Snider's Video Poker - Your choice of Jacks or Better and Deuces Wild. Detailed statistics, cool animation and more.

Back from Jolly (Merry?) old(e) England

It's 2:29pm. We're in an MLM (Multi-level marketing?) shuttle van going to San Jose from SFO airport.

We found the van at 2:15pm and waited for more passengers. :-) The good news is that the driver says the tire with a leak will probably make it to San Jose where we live. A college kid pointed out the leak.

2:44 dropped off first passengers. 2 more and then us.

4:18pm OK, we're home. We got here at 3:45pm. There are diapers out front and mail. The diapers were supposedly on hold. Nice. The newspaper and the vegetable delivery were both held successfully though. So 2 out of 3 is pretty good. I can type now instead of using graffiti on my Palm OS device. Jonah is very sleepy but hasn't gone to sleep yet. I guess the cats are glad we're home. But I can't say they were excited.

Also. Jonah officially says his first word now. "Agua" Kind of like "Ahhhhwaaaah". He's going to speak Spanish with a Peruvian accent!

I better see what Kelly and Jonah are doing so they'll keep loving me!

OK, everything is good. I went out to get groceries so we won't starve. And especially so there's milk for Jonah.

I'm gonna go watch TV and program. I've gotta add 5-way keypad control to Blackjack for Palm OS so people can play on their Treo cell phones without using a stylus.

p.s. We stayed with Dan & Allison (& Alex & Emily) at their house and it was great!

I made a Dutch baby. Literally.

So there's a type of pancake called a "Dutch Baby." Look, I don't know why it's called that. It's got nothing to do with babies. Apparently the Dutch brought the recipe to America, but American pancake chefs weren't keen about the competition. So there was a law where serving or making foreign pancakes became illegal. Just like prohibition. So you'd go to a pancake speakeasy and order what was referred to as a "Dutch Baby." That way anyone listening wouldn't know you were ordering a foreign pancake.

Anyway, I've been making nearly every kind of pancake described in Joy of Cooking in the past couple months. Most of 'em are really good. (Cottage cheese pancakes are our favorite, but they're not as fast to make as this one.) By the way if you don't have Joy of Cooking it's awesome. It covers everything you'd want to know about cooking in detail. Say you want to make a cake, or cook an artichoke, or skin a squirrel. It's all in there. (Note: The squirrel skinnin' directions, with illustrations, are only in the older versions).

I've made this so many times I've memorized the recipe. It's easy. Here's how you can make a Dutch Baby too...

Ingredients:

• 1/2 Cup Flour
• 1/2 Cup Milk
• 1/4 Cup Sugar
• 2 Eggs (room temperature)
• 4 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter (1/2 a stick) DO NOT USE BUTTER THAT HAS SALT IN IT It'll be SUPER salty tasting. Also. Feel free to use less butter. I've been making these with 2 Tablespoons of UNSALTED butter and that works great.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Mix the flour, milk, sugar and eggs together with a whisk in a medium-sized bowl until smooth. Melt the butter in an iron skillet over medium heat. Tilt the pan so the butter coats the bottom and sides. Pour the batter into the pan and cook for 1 minute. Then bake for 12-15 minutes until the top is golden brown.

It's surprising how much it gains in volume once it's done. It'll start deflating as soon as you take it out of the oven. So serve it right away. Sprinkle powdered sugar on top or serve with some kind of really good jam. Serves 2 in our house...

Why it's good to have a back-up snuggly

Jonah's favorite thing, his snuggly, is "Cow." He loves Cow.

Cow is a wind-up musical box sort-of-stuffed animal. She (it?) was a gift from Timmer and Alisa. Beautifully it plays "Mary Had a Little Lamb" instead of say... a song that has something to do with cows.

The thing about Cow is that there is only one. (Sort of a Highlander movie reference for you geeks out there.) We've looked for a back-up online but to no avail. So we don't have a backup Cow if something goes wrong. For example if the nanny decided to throw Cow in the washing machine and dryer we would be out of luck...

I know what you're wondering. What happens to a music box when it's gone through the wash? Right. I know, because I've seen it twice now. What happens is that the music box stops working. And if it's inside a stuffed animal then you have to do stuffed animal surgery to extract it, repair it, and then sew it all up.

Sure, sure, why not explain to the nanny something like "Hey, don't ever wash Cow again. Ever." I thought I had, but her English isn't great, and my Spanish isn't as good as I thought. But also she really likes to keep things clean. And Cow does get pretty grubby over time. So the 2nd time she didn't put Cow in the washer. Kelly figured out later that, in fact, she had hand-washed Cow. But she put Cow in the dryer. Yeah, that was plenty enough centripetal force to screw up the music box again.

When Jonah was younger he didn't notice when we fixed Cow. Or maybe he was napping? But this time he was right there. And let me tell you, he did not like to see me cutting Cow open. Our nanny tried to distract him but mostly he cried the whole time. That's a lot of pressure when you're doing surgery. You know, when the family member is right next to you crying and grabbing at the patient.

My advice to anyone who wrangles babies is that you want to have two (2) of whatever weird toy your baby loves. Just in case. And it's good to rotate between them because the babies are smart. And have secret baby senses. And if you try to replace their well worn bear with a brand new one they will cry. And blame you. And wonder if you're smoking crack because it's so obviously not their bear.

I signed up for freeipods.com

I reread the Wired Magazine article and decided to give it a shot. So I signed up for freeipods.com.

After giving them my name and email address they put me through a "short survey." It was 20 yes/no questions like "Do you want to answer surveys for money?" and "Would you like a FREE phone from T-Mobile?" "Are you SURE you don't want to answer surveys for money?" I clicked "No" 20 times and was done.

Then I signed up for the Sunday New York Times for $3.90 a week. Theoretically I'll cancel it in a couple days once I get credit on freeipods.com. It looks like the deal is that you have to sign up for one of the offers (of about 10) and you need to refer 5 people to the site who also complete their first offer.

If you want to give it a shot, you can sign up here and know you're helpin' me out. It's important to turn off pop-up blockers when you do stuff with their web site. Also... you may want to create a throw away email address to use with them. I didn't, but maybe I should have in case they send spam that gets through Yahoo's spam filter.

Free iPod?

So is it wrong if I'm considering trying out this whole www.freeipods.com thing?

Here's a Wired Magazine article about it. The basic deal is if you sign up for a promotion (like subscribe to Blockbuster's DVD rental-by-mail) and sign up 5 more people on freeipods.com you get a free iPod. Apparently the companies with the promotions pay high enough bounties to the people who run freeipods.com that it ends up being worthwhile for them. Plus there is a lot of publicity about it just because the whole thing sounds so crazy.

I voted

Weeks ago Kelly and I signed up to permanently be absentee voters. So we can just vote at home and mail it in. Kelly's ballot never came. But she helped me go over the issues while I filled mine out.

At one point we were talking about some local voting item, say #67. And she looked it up in our voting guide and started to say "67 Yes..." so I marked in Yes. Whoops. She was just reading the beginning of a paragraph like this:

What voting on #67 means:

• 67 Yes - This means you are voting for something that is really very bad. You should not vote yes on this unless you are a bad person.
• 67 No - This is the right way to vote. If you have even a shred of decency then you should vote "No."

What? You voted "Yes?"
Well, yeah, you said to.
No! I was just starting to read it...

So yesterday we drove to the registrar of voters here. You're supposed to get a replacement ballot if you mess yours up. Once they called my number I asked for a new ballot. The lady said "Here" and gave me a white-out tape thing to correct my ballot. Even though the instructions specifically said not to do that. Great. They told me they were low on ballots so they changed the rule. Or at least that lady did, I guess.

I hope my vote gets counted. We're in California so no matter what Kerry will win here, but I'd like to think my votes for all the other things will get counted too. Those local things are bound to have a bigger effect on me than who the President is.

My prediction:

Three states will be so close that there will be recounts and it will drag out for 3 weeks.

Don't forget to vote!

The Kingdom of Loathing - Review

I've been playing an online role-playing game the last couple of weeks. It's called The Kingdom of Loathing. It's free. And it's really weird. But also super funny. The graphics are in a hand drawn stick figure style. This game helps prove something that I believe in... Games can be fun without super fancy graphics.

Accordion Thief? Seal Clubber?

Basically you create a character by picking your character's class and then you get right to the playing. The classes include Accordion Thief, Disco Bandit, Seal Clubber and three others. My character "weasel" is a Pastamancer. Yes. Yes. That's right. He is wily in the ways of pasta sorcery. You can see him here wielding a deadly pasta fork.

Once you have your character you click on icons to adventure in various places (Mountains, Plains, Town). There's a tutorial to teach you the basics when you first start playing. You never know what you'll find in a new place. But there are puzzles to be solved and lots of adventures to be had.

But is it fun?

It's goofy and weird and it's a lot of fun.

• The artwork is funny
• The user interface is easy
• After two weeks I'm still turning up new things each time I play
• The battles make me laugh
• It's free

There's always that fun of discovery. And the things that come up in the game are so crazy and goofy that the discovery is that much more fun.

Orcs and Dragons are Boring

In other games you might run into a Orc or Dragon. Y'know, things you've heard of before. "Ooh, I'm fighting an orc now. Weren't those the ugly guys in that Lord of the Rings movie?" Big deal. They have 'em in every movie these days, don't they? Now in Kingdom of Loathing all bets are off. You never know what you're going to fight. Maybe a WereTaco, maybe a scary clown. You never know. Here's an example:

You're fighting a Knob Goblin Chef This is one of the chefs of Cobb's Knob. He may look harmless, but he wields a mean ladle. He spatulas you in the throat. Oof! Ugh!

MEAT!

The currency in Loathing is not gold as in many role-playing games. Nope. In Loathing it's meat. So you use your hard-earned meat to buy things. There's also a whole world of meat-smithing that I've only just discovered. With a little know-how and some meat you can create all kinds of things. Like meat armor and weapons! YES!

Kingdom of Loathing is fun. And it's free. So check it out.

Devil Gate!?

We live near a school that has a kind of crazy/cool looking piece of artwork in the front. I always jokingly refer to it as the "Devil Gate." (See picture on right)

I always wondered if the neighbors got riled up when it was first built and then accused the artists of being demon worshippers or something. As it turns out it's called "Spirit Gate" and the artists worked closely with students, neighborhood groups etc when designing it. So as far as I know no one got mad about it. That's pretty cool. Although the idea that everyone would get worked up over this piece of artwork does make me laugh.

I still think it looks like what you'd get if you hired someone to make you a "Devil Gate" but it's pretty neat.