Am I Blog Enough For You?

I was deleting some comment spam and decided to post some pictures that I’ve been meaning to post for a while…

Fig 1. Robot Boy

M. as a robot. Notice that I gave him a volume knob and an on/off switch. Two modifications that I would make to kids if only they were as easy to mod as iPhones.

Fig 2. Girl and Pizza

Over the summer S. developed a bit of a belly. Diana and I would occasionally fret over it while she was out of hearing range. Then one day she proudly lifted her shirt and proudly said, “Check out my Grampa belly!”

When we took S. to her 7th birthday appointment, the doctor wasn’t too happy about the Grampa belly. The doctor was showing her reasonable portions. One of the reasonable portions was half of a bagel. She proudly told the doctor that she ate two whole bagels Sunday morning. So I got in trouble because I’m the one who took her.

Not that S. isn’t in great shape. She was in swim team all summer and she would ride to work with me in the mornings sometimes. She would go 6 miles keeping up with me and not even be winded when we arrived at work. So her stamina is good, but not her Grampa belly.

I remember being really impressed by my Grampa’s huge belly. I also have a very clear memory of walking in on him drying off after a shower. He was fatter than my dad. I must have been 4 or 5.

Fig 3. Boy and Pizza

M. imitated S. eating the pizza earlier but he burned his mouth and started crying. So we waited a while and took the picture again.

Fig 4. From L to R: Stinkles, Girl

This is our new cat, Friskers. I tried to name him Stinkles, but it didn’t take. Then I tried to name him Lolcat, but that didn’t take either. So he is Friskers. He is an excellent tree climber. He has been up in every tree in our yard. The first time he did this, he slipped and was hanging like that cat in the “Hang in there, baby” poster. D. made me get up on a ladder and rescue him. So now I know that my life is worth approximately one kitten life.

Last Tuesday I took Diana to the Elysium Tonsillectomy And Auto Repair Center to get Diana a tonsillectomy and get the oil changed in my convertible. Both were a major success. We arrived at 7 a.m. and were back home at 10 a.m. I’ve been working from home until today, so that I can nurse her and parent the kids.

It turns out that adults take ten to fourteen days to recover from a tonsillectomy. I’m not quite sure why this is, but I do know that after the operation raw muscle tissue is exposed to the air. Diana mainly slept at first, so nursing mainly involved giving various medicines at the right times. A few days after that nursing mainly involved making her go back to bed, drugging her with codeine if necessary.

Before the operation I went shopping for tonsillectomy food for Diana and regular (Midwest) food for the kids and me. I didn’t know exactly what to get, so I made a few mistakes: frozen lemonade popsicles (too acidic), tomato soup (too acidic), mocha chip light gelato (little chocolate chips), cheese (what was I thinking?). The Midwest food I got for the kids and me was all perfect: bologna, sandwich-sliced pickles, regular potato chips (not the weird gourmet ones or the ridiculous baked ones), bread and butter pickles, regular oatmeal (the good brown sugar and maple kind). One major overlapping food that was both Midwestern and tonsillectomy-approved: Cream of Wheat.

Through painstaking trial and error I arrived at this set of tonsillectomy-approved food for the discerning vegetarian: Cream of Wheat, rainbow sherbet, mango sorbet, fresh and mushy brownies, vegetable broth, Slurpees from 7-11, Diet 7-Up with ice chips, and vegetarian ramen.

The ramen comes from Whole Foods by the way, which shows how much I love my wife because I don’t like going there. It’s all cramped and everyone there is morally superior to me. But I didn’t mind it so much this time because (1) I was on a mission of mercy and (2) I brought my son, who I let put random food in the cart. Matt’s random food list: chocolate cupcakes, cheesy bread sticks, one apple, brie, and a can of ravioli.

Aside: I have a rule that if I pick a cart with an old shopping list in it that I have to buy everything on the list. (This is somehow related to my collection of pictures that I found on the ground.) I don’t go shopping that often, so I’ve only had to follow the rule a few times. The main thing I have noticed about shopping lists with no context is that they are very vague. It will just say something like “pickles,” which could mean anything on 5 shelves in a space about two feet wide. In that case I try to get the version of the item that would most likely be the illustration of that word in a children’s book. We philosophers refer to this as the “Platonic ideal.” For pickles, this would be a big jar of deli pickles. For bread, I would buy a baguette (and if it were possible, a bike with a basket and a full-scale model of the Eiffel Tower to ride in front of).

I was going to mention a bunch of books that I recently bought with my birthday money but I don’t have time. (Did I mention that I turned 40????????? Well I just did, so kiss my 40-year-old butt!!!!!!!!!!11) Since “books” is already in the title, I will briefly mention two books: I just finished reading Founders At Work, which is a collection of interviews with founders of tech start ups. It’s strange to think that people exist with that much drive. At the age that these people were selling their companies for millions of dollars, I was watching TV trying to remember which beer can I had peed into. I think a good subtitle for Founders At Work would be “Founders At Work: What Was That Sound? Only The Starting Gun Ten Fucking Years Ago.”

The book that I am reading right now is Ideas: From Fire To Freud. This is the perfect book for us philosophers, and I’m trying to limit myself to just one chapter per night. I don’t know why, but lately I am crazy for summary histories and overviews of civilization. Somehow it’s scratching a brain-itch that I’ve had since I was a surly teenager. It also helps me understand why I find things like Whole Foods so annoying.

All pictures are copyright TNemet 2007. All rights reserved. No rights for you, okay?

Here is a picture of Ohio that I took on vacation:

Figure 1. A picture of Ohio that I took on vacation.

What is this thing on this island?

Figure 2. A thing on this island.

Giant bacteria!!!! Look out!

Figure 3. Giant bacteria.

If you are ever in Tupelo, enjoy a nice meal at McDonalds.

Figure 4. The best McDonalds in the world.

It’s time to upgrade WordPress, mainly for the anti-spam functionality that seems to work pretty well for the KFJC review site I created.

I’m turning off comments due to all the bitch ass fuck got ham blog spam I’ve been getting for the past several months. I need to roll up my sleeves and upgrade this bitch, but not now.

I forgot to mention…

8. Locks of love.

S. donated her long flowing hair to Locks of Love a few weeks ago. A neighbor across the street donated her hair, and S. wanted to do it too. Now she has short hair, and our family suddenly has 20 free hours a week where we don’t have to wash, condition, comb, braid, de-tangle, etc. We spend it watching more TV.

Before:

From Locks of Love

After:

From Locks of Love

There are a few more pictures other pictures in that album, too.

I’m working from work today and cleaning my desk (physical and desktop). A few things I need to clean out before I throw away…

1. Random pictures from myspace.com profiles

Three pictures that made me laugh and then right click->Save Image As…

I had to convert them to jpgs to upload them to my blog. That sucks. The wrist one was animated as a .gif, which made it even more appalling.

I was told by a 19-year-old that, “Myspace is dead. Everyone is on Facebook.” She’s not even in college, though. Don’t you have to be in college to get on Facebook? I think I may end my journey through Socialnetworkingland at Myspace and not go on to Facebook. I’ve done Friendster, Orkut, Myspace, Classmates.com, and probably others I can’t remember. They are all kind of pointless and not in a good way.

2. My (new) hatred of Sony

I still totally want a Sony Reader, but I really hate Sony right now.

Short version: Our computer has been dead for almost a month now. I’ve spend at least $200 and countless hours unsuccessfully trying to revive it. It turns out I have no access to the fucking license that I fucking bought with the computer.

Slightly less short version: The computer (Vaio PCV-RZ50CG) ships with a 250GB hard drive which is partitioned into a hidden recovery partition, a very small (12G) NTFS partition for C:, and the rest in a roomy partition for D:. I needed to enlarge C: or else the computer couldn’t run any more, so I bought some partition moving software to do this. It worked great, so I decided to defrag C: since I finally had enough free space for the first time in over a year to defrag it. After that it would no longer reboot. It didn’t recognize the drive. The C: partition was gone. Since I’m an idiot I didn’t make recovery CDs when I first booted it up. (Apparently PCs no longer come with recovery disks. You have to burn them yourselves.) At this point I tried everything I could think of — FreeDOS, XP recovery floppies, more partition software, Ubuntu Live CD, Bootable floppy from another PC… Nothing worked, so I had to buy the recovery disks on-line for $50 as recommended by Sony support. After assuring me that these were the right kind, it turns out that they aren’t the right kind and the right kind aren’t available. I considered buying an OEM version of Windows XP MCE (it’s not available retail) to install, but I read on the forums that the Sony-specific drivers won’t install with it. At this point I have two options: (1) Take it to a Sony service center and pay $280 to have them reimage the drive or (2) Install Ubuntu on the Vaio and buy a new PC. I’d rather buy a Mac, but we have a lot of software that is currently Windows-only.

What makes this even more painful is that Santa brought me a 24″ Dell monitor, and I want to set it up in my office. Right now it would only be able to show “NTLDR not found.”

The part that kills me about this is that I fucking paid for the fucking Windows license and I have no access to it. Even if I made the recovery disks right when I got the computer, it still wouldn’t have an actual installable copy of XP MCE. If the support guy is right (50/50 chance — same as a monkey) and I have the right version, I would still be right where I am anyway.

Good things about the experience: I know a lot more about partitions, the Linux NTFS project, Microsoft’s OEM licensing model, and Sony’s generally shameful history with DRM schemes (like this and this).

I still want a Sony Reader, though.

3. S. to me: I hate you daddy.

I got another cute card from Stephanie that says “I hate you, Dad.” It’s complete with a picture of a heart with an X through it. I normally would scan it in and post it, but my bitch ass Sony Vaio is down. What caused her to slide this under her door? I was helping her practice piano, and she wasn’t paying attention. Finally she wound up a music box/teddy bear and put it on the piano next to me. I sent her to her room. There should be a law against anyone trying to teach their own child how to play an instrument.

Good things about the experience: 1. I feel I have more insight into both Beethoven’s and Mozart’s relationships with their father. 2. It’s healthy that S. channeled her aggressions into making some art rather than drawing all over the wall and then peeing on it like a certain other child of mine did. 3. We made up in the morning.

4. Dream

I had a strange dream the other night. Sparkle’s younger sister and I were doing a special Christmas radio show together at KFJC. We were mixing Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas with random Throbbing Gristle tracks, and we called it A Throbbing Guaraldi Christmas. I remember this very clearly down to seeing the album covers next to the turntables. Very strange, but not a bad idea. What does it all mean?

5. CDs for Xmas.

I gotted a lot of CDs for Xmas, so I will list them here:
-Tom Waits: Orphans
-Christopher O’Riley: True Love Waits (Radiohead songs done on solo piano. Knives Out is my current favorite.)
-Southern Funkin’: Louisiana Funk & Soul 1967 – 1979 (From when I was born until when I was 12.)
-DJ Nu Mark: Hands On (One of the DJs in Jurassic 5.)
-Easy Star All-Stars: Radiodread (A reggae version of OK Computer, similar to their reggae version of Dark Side Of The Moon.)

6. Why can’t I name them all Tyler?

I used to live in Noe Valley pre-kids and I know people with kids named Tyler. But this made me laugh out loud. Between D. and me, “Why can’t I name them all Tyler?” is our secret code for pointing out obnoxious parents.

7. Christmas song

Does anyone remember “Christmas Wrapping” by The Waitresses? That’s the only Christmas song that I really like. We had the god-awful Sirius Christmas channel on in our house in the weeks running up to the holiday. One night after D. went to bed S. begged me to turn it off. “I want music with drums and guitar,” she told me. I was so proud. I also like “Merry Muthafuckin’ Xmas” by Easy-E. (“Come over here and sit on Santa’s face…”)

Testing out Picasaweb with some pictures of Matthew after the San Jose Grand Prix cracking up with his friend, Nicholas.

From Phone – Photos

From Phone – Photos

From Phone – Photos

From Phone – Photos

From Phone – Photos

From Phone – Photos

That worked pretty well. Much more intuitive for posting photos than the WordPress plug in that I’m using. It’s still a pain to get pictures from my phone into Picasaweb, though. I have to copy them to my flash card, delete them from my Treo 650, put the flash card in a little USB adapter thingie, import them with iPhoto, and then export them to Picasaweb using the Google plugin.

Fig 1. Steph and Michelle at the first grade breakfast.

tic tac toe
that’s the way uh-huh uh-huh
I like it uh-huh uh-huh
you got yours
I got mine
peace
punch
Captain Crunch
break the wall
waterfall
do you think you got it all?
you don’t
I do
so poof with the attitude
bang bang
choo choo choo
gladieaux freeze

Damn I’m getting a lot of comment spam on my blog lately. It’s not like I’ve been posting or anything, so I don’t really deserve it. I norel the links anyway, so it’s not like they do anything but remind me that I’m running low on porn.

I’m in bed trying to figure out how to vote in Tuesday’s election. Apparently the Democrats are going to win everything. It figures that now that I’m rich again they are going to raise taxes. I have an absentee ballot, so my vote won’t get there until after the winner has already been declared. But I’ll feel bad if I don’t do something.

Republicans are already shipping in homosexual male prostitutes to console them for when they lose control of the House. What’s up with that? Haggart and Foley — these guys have the same basic psychology as serial killers, it just manifests itself a little differently.

In election-related news, we changed our cat’s name from G.G. to G.G. Bustamante. I think it has a nice ring to it. Today G.G. Bustamante peed on a laundry basket filled with freshly washed and folded laundry. Diana is psychoanalyzing her in hopes of finding out why.

Matthew keeps asking where Halloween went. It’s strange, and I don’t like it. He might be referring to the candy, which is somewhere that he cannot reach it. Or he might be referring to his costume (fireman again), which is packed away. I continue to explain that Halloween is one night a year, and it will be back again next year. I also explain that Halloween is like Christmas for gay people, which is like Republicans and evangelicals enjoy it so much.

Now I must do my civic duty and cancel out some reasonable person’s vote…