Frenzied Daddy

O.W. really has hit the nail on the head amazingly well. I’ve learned not to follow people around, hoping they’d let drop some pearl of wisdom, that I could take and string on a necklace to wear, but if I was to stalk anyone (besides my lovely Wife), I’d be stalking her.

It’s no secret that she’s one of the people who encouraged me to start running. And gave me some lovely ideas on inspiring books to read, and gave me strokes for keeping it up. My wife gives me tons, but the semi-strangerness of O.W. is a nice touch.

And now she’s discussing running her business at night. She works for 8 hours, goes home and works for another 4-5. I’m doing about three hours a night on “outside projects.” She’s got a lot on her plate, and she’s excited about it; between working out, commuting, all the stuff that goes into our normal adult lives, and she’s doing it. There’s hope for me yet, although I don’t fancy myself much of a writer. Poet, yes, but I don’t think I could earn a living with poetry.

Went off to the beach this weekend; rented a yurt at South Beach (just south of Newport.) It was lovely; weather was nice, the yurt was nice. This yurt had a great wooden porch/deck and an awning over half of it. The beach was a little over half a mile away; I walked over five miles over the weekend. I walked so far in my new sandals that Sunday night my feet and ankle hurt (a lot) and today my ankle is sore but my feet are ok.

We showed up kind of late (10PM) on Friday, and found a big sign saying “No Yurts after 9PM” and a “closed” sign in the window of the alleged Hospitality Center. So we reluctantly turned around and headed back to Newport for a disappointing stay in a cheap dog-friendly hotel. How cheap? On returning from walking the hairy beasts, the child announced to me that we only had 13 television stations.

Seriously, it was “alright” for a one-night stay with the dogs, though Perrin whined at the door incessantly (I think he wanted to go to the beach). One of the smaller hotel rooms I’ve ever stayed in, and no tub, but somewhat bigger than the yurt, which also has no tub but was half the price. On our return to South Beach, we found a note taped to the door with my name on it- we could have gone on into our yurt Friday night. C’est la vie, I suppose.

Happy Birthday to Rachel and Keith.

No, this isn’t more about Iraq. I could go on for hours, but I’ll spare you this time.

Wardriving is, to put it simply, driving around with a wireless network detector (aka notebook with wireless pcmcia card, etc) and locating and documenting wireless networks, particularily ones without encryption. Some call it a sport. Yeah, it’s as much a sport as hanging out at a Greatful Dead concert hoping to get high off of wafting pot smoke. I consider it legal, borderline ethical, and a good jumping off point if you want to swim in some murky waters (if the house down the street has an unsecured wireless network, is it really ok to go sit in your car in front of their house and download your files?)

That being said, I was enflamed with curiousity after I learned that NetStumbler was released; it’s a windows program designed for wireless network access point-finding, either on your own property or someone else’s. Wardrivers like it because it also works with GPS recievers and will connect a particular access point with a particular location. I don’t have a GPS reciever.

So, I took it out on the bus, between downtown Vancouver and work (about 78th on Highway 99). And what I can say is “Citizens of Vancouver, secure your networks!”. I counted about 25 access points along Main street and Highway 99, well over half of which did not use encryption (hello, packet sniffer! hello, credit card numbers! good bye sweet sweet cash!). Now I’m sure that some of them are secured in other ways (Starbucks, for instance, has some sort of gatekeeper software. I don’t think they use WEP but I’m not positive). But to the six or so people with a linksys wireless router, a SSID of “linksys” and no WEP– you’re just asking for trouble. Special props to whomever has the WEP enabled link with the SSID of “53cur3W3P5t0R3″ – which, translated from “elite” is “secure wep store.”

Hmm. BD’s lost a leg.

I have to admit- this is not funny. BD’s always been the most conservative member of Doonesbury; I wonder where Trudeau is taking us with this next.. well is “step” the right word to use here?

Last night was the Elder’s Spring Concert. She had a great time; she went in a lovely long blue velvet gown and busied herself commanding the troops of singers. They sang many songs, from the traditional (“This little light of mine”) to the hilarious (“We are Saguaro Cacti” to the tune of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, which is usually reserved for suspenseful organ music.

This morning, the dog and I went for our run. It was the Border Collie’s turn. I think it’s a special hell for him, because he really hates the Gentle Leader, but really really loves running. However, today we had an extra level of hell. As we’re running along, he’s distracted by a shape in the road a block ahead of us. And then we realize; the nice weather means that there’s a cat up there. He loves cats; and this one’s meeting friends. We see a conglomerate of about four cats that scatter when we come trotting up. He’s so distracted by this that he tries to chase one (while I”m jogging) and smacks right into a fence post. Poor guy.

Ok, this week’s update.

I’ve started reading out loud in the evenings again. We’ve done a lot of reading out loud, usually in the car, but we almost always read Harry Potter out loud. It’s good for the kids. I’ve restarted reading the latest one- we stopped, I maintain, because Harry is a whining little snot. We’re back in the book, and I can’t remember it being this good. So, we’ll be reading a while.

And another thing. French Toast pop tarts are much better warmed but the traditional take the, uh, cake.

I got home tonight-started walking through the door- and the Wife threw her coat into my arms. “Great. Perfect timing. We have to take the Kid to the emergency room.” I set my satchel down (inside the house) and look at the Kid. She’s a little pale and blotchy (been crying), there’s blood on her pants, and there’s a cloth wadded up in her palm. “She cut herself. Do you have your Insurance cards?” Well, yes, I did- so we trundled everyone out to the car. Apparently the Kid was playing, and tripped, and fell onto the sidewalk, where she cut her hand open on something. And it’s bad enough to warrent an ER run.

A short call to the insurance later, while we’re en route to a hospital, and then we pull up to the hospital emergency room. A few minutes later (surprisingly quick), we’ve been checked in and are being seen by an RN. She diagnoses the kid properly; “Ahh, you cut your hand! That’s terrible. ”

A little later, we meet the doctor, who recommends stitches. The Wife and I glance at each other and sigh. Our baby’s first stitches. She starts to tell her story about stitches in her foot that make a bug pattern with the scar. I talk about the railroad tracks from my reconstructive surgury after I broke my ankle. Both the wife and I had bloody accidents at the kid’s age- me involving an icy hill and a runner sled, her involving a heavy shaving mug dropped on her foot in the shower.

To make a long story short- the kid had local anasthetic in her hand, but still screamed like a bain sidhe when the doctor did the sewing. We still can’t really decide how much of the screaming was fright and how much was pain, but the nurse put quite a bit of anasthetic into her hand. It’s really (really) hard to hold your kid down while she’s yelling that she “just wants to go home” and that it hurts. But we all made it through.

Less than ten minutes after the Doc was done with the stitches three, the Kid is announcing that Boys care about girls who have wounds, and won’t her two friends Porthos and Aramis (names changed to protect the innocent, and to highlight their relationship) be jealous of her now. A remarkably quick recovery.

I just added a link to Frazz. Here’s why. Even if it’s not true, Frazz is a good-hearted fun read. Thanks to William Bragg (fellow wordpress user) for the tip.