Insight

For those of you without teen boys, there is a big cost for insuring them to drive. Son hovers around a B average. If he can maintain a B average, the cost to add him to our insurance is $X. If he does not maintain a B average (3.0 on an unweighted 4.0 scale), our annual cost is $X+$300. That is just the difference in cost for his grades.

Oy.

I Learned Something

I learned that the Emergency Broadcast System from the National Weather Service can interrupt your Netflix streaming video. Fascinating.

Closer and Closer

Son has an in-car driving session today, and then another Wednesday. After that, he can take his exam to be a licensed driver.

Not really my little boy any more.

BiMonSciFiCon

We went to the big gaming convention in town yesterday. It was a lot like going to the Renaissance Festival, except we didn't have to contend with direct sunlight.

Goin' to the Chapel

Hooray for New York! They passed a bill to provide access for same-sex couples to get married in the state.

Foto Phriday - More Underlines

If you are not in the Coffee Club, GET OUT.

Trip Part II

Our trip will best be described by this bit of playground doggerel.

I see London!
I see France!
I see [name here]'s
Underpants!

Preparing for the Trip

We're preparing for our summer vacation. The travel agent was very helpful today.

Huntsman

John Huntsman just makes me think of The Huntsman, the parody superhero from the 1990s teevee show Freakazoid. Here's the intro.

Happy Solstice!

To those who were paying attention, happy summer solstice!

The Boss is Back

Boss went on vacation all last week, but he came back, tanner and happier, this morning.

Son IN SPACE

Eggbert Terwilliger was reading a magazine article that mentioned that two of the most difficult groups into which to gain membership are Presidents of the United States and astronauts. As of today, Son has touched members of both of those groups.

Pic-a-nic

We went to the adoption picnic today. They had two big trailers with video games in them. Guess where all the kids went.

Foto Phriday - Spun Edition

Spinning to infinity.

Boy Is Back

Son returned from his 2011 Grandparents Tour.

Results:

• He's built a cabinet for his arcade machine.
• A dog ate his retainer.
• He has a scruffy chin beard that he thinks is cool, but which he will soon shave off.

Song Title

From a conversation at work is a new song title I'd love to see produced.

I've Almost Forgotten my Misery

Grand Old Flag

Happy Flag Day, everyone! This flag flies over a car dealership near my home. It's hard to tell from the picture, but this flag is probably as big as a house.



Click to embiggen.

Anti Social Media

When we were at the Greek restaurant, I noticed something funny. The place is a small hole in the wall; there are maybe seats for 20 people, sitting cheek by jowl. The place is never full, though, from what I've observed. They do appear to offer catering services with a limited menu.

The funny thing is that they point out that you can follow them on Twitter and Facebook. Is that really necessary to follow a mom-and-pop Greek restaurant?

Baldo pointed out that they probably didn't tweet all that much.

I replied that Twitter probably has some upper limit on how many entities you can follow, like 2-to-the-32 (~4 billion), and that this restaurant would take up one of those valuable slots.

The Genes

I've been bitten by the genealogy bug. The family history is interesting as far as it goes back, but I think to get any further back than colonial times, I'd need to go to Europe. Since my most recent ancestor that was not Bruce Springsteened was

me → mother → grandmother → great-grandmother → great-great-grandfather,

I'd need to have a lot of luck finding birth records or relations in Bavaria or whatever.

We have records of almost everyone who was born in the United States back to the late 1700s, so my contribution so far is entering everything into "the computer." Maybe I'll be able to do some first-hand research soon, though. There are records of people dying in Remote Smaller Town, Midwest State with no dates of death. If they were buried in one of the two cemeteries in that town, which is about a 2-hour drive from Small Town, I may find gravestones with dates on them.

As I look at family records, there are a LOT of (late) people from Remote Smaller Town that are related to me. On Google Maps, the town is only about two roads by two roads. I probably have fifty cousins there that I don't even know.

Sunshine Saturday

I ended up at a Greek restaurant with Baldo and Geekina McNerdy and Mandy, and I had the Monster Spicy Gyro. It wasn't extremely hot, but it had that kind of spice that adds up. My belly is going all Jabberwocky this evening.

Burble. Burble.

Foto Phriday - It Was Like That When I Found It

I swear I didn't make any changes to this trash can. This was outside the cafeteria at work.



Click to embiggen.

Zompocalypse

I saw one of those programmable traffic signs this morning sitting in the road on the way to work flashing the message "CAUTION: ZOMBIES". Since I was driving, I did not have enough hands free to operate my camera.

More Observations on Jail

Maybe it's just me, but when I click on some of the mug shots on this site I just found, and I see people who look like they're in their fifties but are younger than me (40), I just have to be thankful that life hasn't treated me that badly.

El Presidente

I have just been elected president of our corporate chorus. I think I'll make myself a sash.

Thesaurus Chorus

I saw a woman today who was wearing a very nice outfit that incorporated both purple and orange. I think she was trying very hard not to rhyme.

Do Not Pass Go

I found a web site the other day that purportedly lists mug shots of everyone who is in jail in our lovely state. This site is formatted so that there are five rows of four pictures on each page, and there are a few pages shy of three thousand pages.

Over the weekend, I started clicking, and I just kept clicking. It's tragicomic. Oddly, that word does not activate my little red squigglies to indicate a misspelling. "Squigglies" does activate them.

O Sibili

I really want to attend a local stop on Sarah Palin's bus tour. I'd hold up this sign at try to get her to read it aloud.

The Power Pilfer

Yesterday, I had to travel to another building. I sat at an empty desk for a while to process my e-mail. After a bit, the battery on my laptop started to drain. I searched my bag for my charger, and discovered that I'd left it at my regular desk, so I moved to the next desk over, which belonged to my friend Ina. Ina was out for the day.

I sat there for about twenty minutes to charge, and then I got up to leave. A woman named Kim from down the row, who should have recognized me, walked passed then turned and asked in a suspicious voice, "Do you need something from Ina's desk."

I replied, "I needed to power my laptop. My battery was dead."

She stared at me for a moment, then said, "Hm." She stalked away.

I thought I'd stir the pot a little, so I wrote a note and left it on Ina's keyboard.

Dear Ina,

I sat at your desk and stole some electrons from your power cord.

GDad

Then I texted Ina and told her about the situation. She virtually laughed across the text connection and told me that this behavior was exactly what she would expect from Kim, and that she would certainly share my shameful confession note with Kim on Monday.

The Coffee Conundrum

I joined the Coffee Club at work. In order to join, you bring in a can of coffee, and then you can drink coffee from the team coffee maker until it's your turn to bring more coffee. The rotation is usually a couple of months.

Last Thursday, while I was out, the can of coffee ran out. On Friday, when I returned, I opened the new can. The plastic scoop that had been moved from can to can in the past was missing. Evidently, the person who used the last of the previous can had left it in the can and had thrown it away. I noticed a pack of Dixie cups in the cabinet, so I put one in the can as a substitute scoop.

Of course Monday was a holiday, so on Tuesday, the mother hen of our part of the floor (also the coffee maker owner) came over to make a fresh pot at about 8:30. She opened the can and pulled back in horror. "Where is The Scoop?"

I told her that it was missing when I came back to work on Friday. She asked if I had been the one to put the Dixie cup in the fresh can. I told her that I had, and she looked at me suspiciously. Then she turned back to the can and asked, "Now how am I supposed to measure the coffee?"

I told her that I had used two cups to measure the coffee for the pots I had made, but she didn't look like she wanted to believe me. She measured some, then said, "This doesn't look right." She is a senior developer in IT.

I decided I'd just shut up.

Son and Sophomorism

Son's last day of being a high school sophomore is today. He's pretty excited.

In thanks for the demonstration last week, the IT Fundamentals teacher gave Son a gift card to Tim Horton's. Son is going to use it to buy donuts for his class today. I thought it was pretty thoughtful. Of course, I'm buying breakfast and picking up any extra cost, so maybe it's not quite as thoughtful as all that.

Under the Sun

In the dearth of good summer programming, we watched a couple of episodes of Urban Legends. This is a blatant ripoff of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, but it's Canadian, so we'll cut it some slack for being original somewhere else.

The odd little coincidence was that when we jumped back to live teevee from the recorded episodes on the TiVo, we heard Jonathan Frakes narrating some show on the History Channel.