Crackers, part II

I previously reported our children's attempts to crack our home computer password in order to play video games at 6am on weekdays.  Since then, on the weekends I've set the password to be the answer to a math problem in the hint text.  This doesn't really stop them from getting up at 5am to play, but while there are good controls on Vista and beyond, our desktop runs XP, where the parental controls are a little more crude.

But then I got tired of changing the password back and forth on the main account, and decided they didn't really need access to the account that has admin privileges (not that they know what to do with that, yet), so we finally created a second account on the box.  The problem: Steam won't run unless you have write privileges to the directory.  I read several unhelpful forum threads that indicated either no workaround or a complicated one, before stumbling across a link to Moving a Steam Installation and Games.  Perfect!  It can go somewhere under the "All users" directory or, better yet, to the external hard drive (which is 1TB, vs. 145GB on the main computer) -- and 30GB suddenly freed up.  w00t.  Now we'll just have to see if the gaming experience running across the USB connection is acceptable.

Crackers

We had a minor issue to deal with recently, when the kids figured out that since they know how to turn on the home computer and start up their favorite games, they could get up earlier and earlier in the morning and play until mommy and daddy woke up.  They'd be cranky in the afternoon sometimes, which is more-or-less fine during the summer, but would be a problem once school started, so I put a very simple password on the computer.  

The other day we came downstairs to get the kids breakfast and make lunchboxes, and found a piece of paper next to the computer with cowsnocats, cowsascats, as dog no caps written on it.  This was bewildering, until I remembered that the password hint was "a's dog no caps".  I'm sorely tempted now to put a numeric password with a math problem as the hint, at least on the weekends.

Anniversaries

We just hit 10 years living at our current address -- it was the day Irene hit VT, and while there wasn't much at all in Burlington beyond some wind and rain (no flooding, no power loss) we were still distracted enough to have forgotten about having a minor celebration of the date.  Also, technically, I didn't start living here for another four weeks, because I was finishing development work on SPSS 11 before moving.  

Farmer Deathwatch

My kids love Star Wars and Legos, and just had their birthdays, so naturally each is now in possession of a Mandalorian Battle Pack. And, because they're 4 and 7, the pieces are hopelessly mixed up with pieces of other sets.  While sitting on the floor and looking through minifigures with them the other day, I noticed the distinctive Mandalorian helmet on a guy and immediately picked him up to play with, because the Mandalorians are inherently cool...


Then I noticed the body:

And in that moment, the legend of Farmer Deathwatch was born.

Traveling through hyperspace on a camel ain't like dusting crops, boy!  Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?

Dead shrub

I don't really like to destroy the vegetation in our yard-- check that.  I *love* getting out the tools and working on removing dead/dying bushes.  But it's sad to see them go.  We had a large bush that used to produce these beautiful white puffball flowers in June, but a few years ago it got some kind of fungus that kills all the leaves every spring (picture below from 3 years ago; sadly, I have no pictures of it in bloom).  The bush would gamely produce more leaves, but these too quickly brown and die.  It's sad, but that bush is in one of the few sunny spots in the yard, so we finally decided it had to go.




After a call to Dig Safe and the requisite waiting period (turns out only the water line runs right under that spot, but the water department claimed the pipes are 5 feet under, so no problem), out came the lopper, 36" bow saw, maul, shovel, and pick, and soon:

Our neighbors have raspberry shoots they're willing to donate to the open spot.  I'm thinking some easily accessible August raspberries will be awesome with two kids.

I Can't Quit U, Spidey

I know the condition of this photo makes it look like me and Spiderman had a domestic squabble in which I tore his masked face out of all images of us, followed by a reconciliation in which I tried to mend the damage with scotch tape, but in reality this is the result of having an inquisitive 2.75-year-old for whom nothing is out of reach because he climbs on anything... 

... whoa, just like Spiderman.  Let's just make up and pretend the Tobey Maguire movies never happened, okay?

Reducing Landfill

Connor now has a bed for his mattress and the box spring was superfluous.  We listed it on freecycle, but got no bites.  It looked like the box spring was headed for the trash dump (we haul our trash to the city drop-off because the drop is about a mile from Finn's school, and it costs about $10-15 less per month than contracting to have it hauled.  more on that another day), and because the trash drop-off charges $0.13 per pound, I was a little grumbly at the thought of paying $4 to dispose of our box spring (I'm wild-assed guessing that the box spring weighs ~30lbs). 

But then I realized, hey, most of the weight in here is untreated wood and metal!  The metal can be dumped for free at the city drop-off in the scrap metal bin, and the untreated wood can be dumped for free at the McNeil generating plant (and I'll be driving by McNeil in order to dump off yard waste at the city compost project soon, anyways).  Woo-hee!  Well... it took almost 20 minutes to disassemble it, which means I "paid myself" roughly $12/hour to do the job.  Not exactly my going rate, but sometimes you just gotta do the "right thing".

Here it is in its component parts.  The random stuff that I had to pay to dump appeared to be <2lbs at the city drop-off:

Velomobile Envy

Last week was the Human Powered Vehicle (HPV) Bikefest in Burlington, and because it was in City Hall Park next to the farmer's market, we managed to get to the Bike Expo on Saturday and see some velomobiles up close, and they are coooool, especially the Go-One.

Unfortunately, while a velomobile might have made a lot of sense for me 10 years ago, especially while I was living in Evanston and commuting in to Chicago, it's a harder sell now that I have two kids and am telecommuting.  Most of my biking is to take Finn to school, and so what I really need is a "family" velomobile, and the multiperson velomobiles I've seen are not really ready for family use in VT.   Oh, I could probably hook up the trailer to the velomobile, but doesn't that defeat the cool factor?  :-)  And... it doesn't help when the Go-One costs $8000+.  They have a lot of great ideas for how to ameliorate that cost, but they don't really apply to our situation.

So... the kids will be out of college when I'm 57, so maybe I can look forward to settling my veloenvy then... but actually, maybe Connor would be interested in a velomobile as a car** alternative when he's 15 -- neither he nor his friends will have driver's licenses, and a velomobile will be almost as fast around town.  And maybe in 10 years the cost of a good all-weather velomobile will have come down to $2000.

** A Vespa might be another acceptable around-town car alternative.  We'll see.

Take that, Camden, NJ!

Burlington, VT was named the best place to raise a family in the U.S. by "Children's Health Magazine", thus reaffirming Sarah's research back in 2001... though one can help think that the list is suspect if Fargo is #3.  Maybe they've destroyed all the wood chippers.




My favorite part is how the Free Press says the magazine was looking for "the kind of place where a child can slip on her rubber boots, grab her colorful umbrella, and play on the quiet, tree-lined street outside her home without worry."  This is, in fact, precisely how we like to spend rainy days (colorful umbrella not pictured).

Notes on Disney World, part 1

We recently spent a week at the Contemporary (arriving the day of the monorail accident) and visiting the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and the Animal Kingdom. I haven't been to a Disney theme park since 1988 (Disney World; I remember going to Epcot and the Journey into Imagination and eating at the Biergarten, but while there's video footage of us at the Magic Kingdom, I have no memory of it. Besides, most of my experience was with Disneyland), and so there was a lot of "new" stuff to experience, especially with a 2- and 5-year-old in tow.

The Contemporary has held up well, and I was impressed with the Contempo Cafe as a place to get a quick breakfast and be off to the theme parks. It's still cool that the monorail goes through the building, though less cool that only one monorail track stops at the Contemporary. To get to the Magic Kingdom, you have to wait for the next car and take it through stops at the Transportation and Ticket Center (TTC), Polynesian, and Grand Floridian before you get to the Magic Kingdom. Leaving the Magic Kingdom, the Contemporary is the first stop, but in order to get to the monorail, you have to walk back out through the baggage check station at the entrance and through all the people coming in. By contrast, the monorail that now simply shuttles from the TTC to the Magic Kingdom (essentially it's for daytrippers to the park or people staying at off-site hotels) is easily accessible upon exiting from the Magic Kingdom. Moreover, that monorail has quicker access to the Epcot monorail at the TTC -- you simply get off and walk directly to the Epcot monorail while the people on the "resort" monorail need to go down an exit ramp, around the the structure, and up the entrance ramp to the Epcot monorail. This doesn't seem to me to be the best way to take care of the resort guests.

That was a longer gripe than I intended. We really did have a great time! Hopefully more on the "good stuff" tomorrow.

Sarah's other contribution to National Poetry Month

You grew on me

            like lichen.

Now you've scraped yourself away.

Good riddance.

(I hope this isn't in reference to me.)

Sarah's contribution to National Poetry Month

You were warm

You went away

Now it's cold.

Recited in response to my surprise that she rolled back under the covers after admitting it was time to get up.

I subscribe to the "Motherlode" blog  via Google Reader, and was interested in "Paying Kids to Be Good".  There was a fair amount of confusion on the comments board about how Lisa Belkin's reward system worked; some immediately understood that it was set up like the Prisoner's Dilemma, while at least one seemed to be under the impression that it went: children misbehave -> parent offers bribe, so that the children would misbehave any time they

wanted a bribe.  So much for the reading comprehension skills of the internet public.

There was also an ongoing debate about reward vs. punishment for dealing with misbehaving children on the comments board; however, you can set up this system so that it's either reward *or* punishment, like so:

Punishment. The child's weekly allowance is $10.  For each day either child misbehaves, they each lose $0.50.  For each day the child misbehaves more than their sibling, they lose an additional $0.50.

Reward.  The child's weekly allowance is $3.  For each day the child misbehaves less than their sibling, they get $0.50.  For each day neither child misbehaves, they each get another $0.50.

The same behavior in a given week leads to the same allowance, and it seems to me that the one the children respond to best is situation-dependent.

Connor went to preschool today as the Witch King of Angmar...

...entirely on his own initiative (he was originally going to be Edward Teach).  Sure, he looks more like a hobbit, but you can imagine how proud we are of him.  :-)

We've been reading pieces of the Lord of the Rings to him, and he likes the Black Riders. This was after two consecutive years of Max, King of the Wild Things. In 2005, he was Sunny Baudelaire (Sarah was Violet and I was Klaus) disguised as Chabo the Wolf Baby. That, I think, was even geekier than the Witch King, but being Lord of the Nazgul was his idea.

Kitty lost & found

Monday evening, we couldn't find Kitty (Connor's lovey) at bedtime, and we realized we hadn't seen Kitty in a while -- we didn't think Kitty had gone to school that morning, and the last time we were sure we'd seen Kitty was Saturday afternoon when we took a walk to the gazebo in the park. Tuesday, while Connor is at school, we look all over the house and can't find Kitty. That afternoon I walk to the gazebo (it had been raining all day) and can't find Kitty. We ask Connor if he's seen Kitty, and he says Calico can hear Kitty crying. Sarah is starting to get upset, and spends Wednesday walking along our path to the park, going to every place we went to over the weekend (Borders, the library, the farmer's market), called Parks & Recreation, and sent a message to the neighborhood e-mail forum. I tell Connor that Kitty has gone to visit Calico for a while. By this afternoon, we're pretty sure we're not going to see Kitty again, but it hasn't really hit Connor yet. And then... we set Connor up watch some Planet Earth, and we leave the room for a couple of minutes, and when Sarah checks in on him, Kitty is sitting in his lap. We ask, "Where did you find Kitty?" "Calico brought him back." "Was he under the couch?" "Yeah, Calico brought him back." Wait a minute, we looked under the couch. "Was he in that box?" "Yeah." Oh, okay, we're not getting a straight answer on this one. We're just happy Kitty's back.

Failures to communicate

Connor and Sarah just had this conversation. This is all we could reconstruct----wish we had a transcript b/c it was far funnier in real life...

Connor: Mommy, help me figure it out.

Sarah: What do want me to help you figure out?

Connor: Help me figure it out!

Sarah: What are you confused about?

Connor: What you were talking about.

Sarah: I'm a little confused, Connor. What would you like me to help you understand? Can you explain to me what you're confused about?

Connor: You just keep talking and talking and I can't hear what you were saying when you are talking.

Sarah: Connor, I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Connor: Tell me what it is.

Sarah: What's "it," Connor?

Connor: You keep saying that! You help me figure it out! I don't know what you mean.

Sarah: I don't know what you mean.

Connor: What you were telling me about it. You keep talking and talking and I lost track and you figure it out.

Lake Effects

We went down to "the beach" by the lake at Leddy Park after nap today, only there wasn't any beach because the lake level is /so/ high that the water had come up to the hillside and covered all but a little bit of sand. You couldn't even walk down the shore. Needless to say, that spoiled a bit of our plans to play in the sand today, but we managed to have fun nevertheless. What was particularly interesting was how the days have been fairly hot here, but as soon as we got past the ice rink, we were hit with cold winds off the lake. Very brisk. So our visit to "the beach" wasn't as long as we expected; however, the Cremee window at the bagel shop was open, so we stopped by there on the way home because we had time. Then me 'n Connor ate corn on the cob (that we'd picked up at the grocery store this morning) outside on the bench as the sun is starting to make its way down.

This was also the day that we spent the morning getting Connor a haircut and going to the post office downtown to apply for their passports, in case we want to go to Montreal this summer and for when we go to Vancouver in 2010 for the Joint Statistical Meetings. It was only a little over an hour in and out of the post office, but that's a real long time with two kids under 4.

Cut hair at home and SAVE

About two years ago my father-in-law gave me a vintage 14-piece barber kit from Sears, and I haven't been in a barbershop since. You can see some of the latest results here. Not bad, eh?

the continuing adventures of "Specto Caveman"

A couple weeks ago...

Sarah (to Alex): Who or what is "Specto Caveman"?

Alex: I dunno what you're talking about.

Sarah: Connor's been playing games all afternoon involving him, or it, or whatever it is.

Alex: Must be a daycare thing. I'll ask about it tomorrow.

(that night, we have some time after dinner before bedtime and offer Connor a 1/2 hour of Planet Earth if we get the living room cleaned up)

Alex: Do you want to watch "Fresh Water" with the piranhas?

Connor: Yes, and the Specto Caveman!

Alex: Specto Caveman, specto caveman, aha -- spectacled caiman!!

Sarah & Alex: Ohhhhh...

Still learning...

We took our 3-year-old, Connor, to an "organized" playgroup with native Chinese speakers yesterday to see if he would have fun. Sort of, it was okay, he actually said his name aloud to the group and seemed comfortable clapping and singing in Mandarin. We'll be back there next week to give it another try.

Today we went to an "organized" pre-school soccer group to see if he would have fun. About halfway in to the 40-minute session, he sat on the side while other ran around and kicked soccer balls. No fun, but we'll be back there next week to give it another try, since one of his buddies is also going.

After soccer, we went with a friend to Mount Philo, a local 980' hill, and walked the trail (carrying Connor part of the way in a child carrier backpack) to the summit. After a little picnic, we met an ornithologist who was watching hawks migrating south. He had cool binoculars, and Connor loved looking for birds in the sky (even though he didn't get to use the binoculars), and the ornithologist was happy to talk to us and point out turkey vultures and kestrels (and some other flying things, like dragonflies and swallowtail butterflies :-). We didn't see very many while we were there, he explained to his enraptored audience, because the winds were blowing out of the south, so it was bad weather for winter migrating. After looking for more birds (and the ornithologist was impressed with the fact that Connor found one before he saw it!), and sighting a couple of pirate ships on the lake, we went back down the hill and back home.

So what we've discovered again today is that the best thing to do is to simply go hang out where cool people are and not worry too much about "organizing" fun and learning.