Frenzied Daddy

Or daughter, actually. I was demanding (I’m such an evil father) that Miss B actually practice her clarinet this week while she’s home from school. She played around a bit, and then when I told her she had another ten minutes to go, she sighed and began playing a solitary note.

She said it was an “E.” I don’t really know.

She played it loud and long, hoping I’d tell her to stop (and then she’d get to stop practicing). But I put my head down and ignored her until she got bored of the E and moved to a low C. I ran to the window to see if the fog was rolling in.

Just a brief, traditional, update– it being Thanksgiving, and my belly’s stuffed with twice baked potatoes, turkey and punkin pie.

I’m grateful that we’re all here and healthy.
I’m grateful that we have a house with a roof and no major leaks.
… that we’re still more-or-less gainfully employed
… that the tax bills are almost paid off
… that my wife hasn’t left me
… that the cars aren’t broke
… that the oven hasn’t exploded

… that you’re here reading this

This would be a good post to spin into a story. But these are primarily the interesting factoids.

I was coming home from taking miss B over to a friend’s house and there was this … bird in the road. As I went around it, I caught a glimpse of it and realized; this was no ordinary bird. And oddly, it was sitting in the road, feet from traffic, not moving. There was a break in the blackberry bushes a little ahead, I pulled over and walked back to it.

As I walked back to it, I could see a couple of guys on the other side of this five-lane section of Columbia Boulevard. (This is approximately where we were) They were standing on the hill by the road, staring at this bird. Chicken? I’ll call it a chicken. I don’t really know what kind of bird it is. It occurred to me that they might not be idle strangers and I called to them; “Hey, is this your bird?” (nod). “Is it vicious?” (nod) Will it bite me? (nod).

I’m not sure they understood me, but I could envision myself on America’s Funniest Videos. It wasn’t a pretty vision. It occurred to me that it was probably hurt. I mean it was just sitting there with traffic on one side and me on the other. Then I saw its little foot behind it; yeah definitely probably hurt. I walked up to it and it made a funny growly noise so I shouted “well, get out of the road” and waved my arms. It hopped up to one foot and flapped its wings and moved over about half a lane. The oncoming car swerved and missed us. I finally shooed it to the center lane by waving and hollering and hopping. The chicken was hobbling pretty well by the time it got there, favoring its drumstick.

The oncoming cars slowed down, and an oil delivery truck (don’t know what company it was, guy, but thanks for stopping) actually stopped quite a ways back. I got it shooed over to the grassy hill and the guys grabbed it and put it inside a fence. There was probably a trick to grabbing it because he was holding on behind the wings and held it at arms length pointed away from his face.

No, not me, thankfully. Nor Ms B. No, I’m talking about this movie. It’s about a guy who has to go to India and train his replacement, the call center manager.

It was a good movie. It was kind of quirky like Lars and the Real Girl, but absolutely not in the same way.

There’s a scene where the protagonist (Todd, who has to keep correcting the pronounciation “Toad”) says something completely idiomatic (“A schmuck who sells kitch to rednecks”) and the expression on the face of his Indian listener goes from happy to confused and he asks for explanations of the unusual words. It exactly parallels my discussions with programmers from Chennai and slipping in idioms. Like him saying “Thanks for helping me” and me saying “you betcha” … And then Todd’s listener and my listener having the same “thank you for helping me understand” attitude.

Good movie; check it out.

On the actual discussion of outsourcing; I think it’s here to stay, I’m not thrilled about it, but it just means I have to find ways to make myself irreplaceable. And that’s it in a nutshell.

FusionFall is out, and Miss B (the DQ, Miss Smart Aleck, The Resident Four Pointer, She-Who-Is-On-The-Honor-Roll), is very excited. It’s not a free game, but it is “inexpensive.” It’s about six bucks a month; it’s less than one rental at the video game rental store, it’s less than half the price of Everquest, it’s one (adult) serving when we eat fast food. She did play it during the free open beta, and enjoyed it.

During the recent budgetary crisis, I discontinued her allowance. It was only $2.00 a week, but it would cover a basic FusionFall subscription.

Something that one of the morning DJs said has kind of stuck with me all day. The station I was listening to is supporting a program that does mentorships for kids from pre-K through high school, getting them out of a cycle of poverty. One of the DJs spoke up and said that when he left home (as a teenager), he had an unofficial mentor who taught him things like how to get the electricity turned on when you rented an apartment, how to balance a checkbook, how to open a checking account. These were something his dad (or mom, but he only mentioned his dad) didn’t teach him.

It’s something my dad didn’t really teach me either. Not directly, anyway- I did see him with a huge ledger sheet doing his budget.

So I was wondering about teaching Miss B “how to open a checking account” and “how to balance it.” When should she learn that? I’ve been mulling over, at her next birthday (Jan 4), that she’ll be 12. I could take her to the credit union and help her open a checking account, and organize a deposit for it once a month for the balance of her allowance, and she could pay for, say, fusionfall, out of it. Is twelve the right age to start that, or should I wait?

And yes, I know that opening the account might take significantly more than her allowance.

The DQ, smart cookie, got herself straight As! She’s carrying a 4.0 lifetime average!

… but no pressure.

Yeah, I’m a little proud of her

Monty Python’s YouTube Channel.

For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It’s time for us to take matters into our own hands.

Amazing.

You might be surprised to learn that the first time I saw a Monty Python movie, I walked out. I was a freshman in high school and took myself a mite too seriously. They were playing the Holy Grail at a school retreat and all the other kids were sitting around cracking up. But I thought it was insipid. I mean, you’ve got a guy “galloping” around with a sidekick clopping two coconuts together.

Yeah, I’m still bemused about that.

Anyway, Monty Python is releasing their entire body of work on Youtube. They just ask that you click the ads and make the purchases.

“Daddy, can I have my bath, and take my dollies? You can bring the laptop upstairs.” Someone has to keep an eye on the smaller kids in the bathtub (The TT is 4 and she might drown! ). So, yup, I ran her bath, turned on the laptop, started getting back into the project I was working on for work, when the hot water ran out and I went to turn it off.

And turn, and turn and turn and OH MY GOSH it’s not turning off!

I ran downstairs to shut it off at the hot water heater. “Daddy,” she called, “it turned off by itself!”

Luckily, I’ve replaced that washer in the tub often enough that I can pull the faucet apart fairly easily. I know what parts come off and what order. Of course the washer was wrecked – it’s been dripping for a while but the five minutes that it would have taken were spent on the stupid computer. But that usually causes a drip, not an inability to turn off the water. I played with the parts a while and discovered that the valve stem, for lack of a better word, was stripped. So off to Home Depot I went at eight at night. I bought the part (had to match it up against the one I removed, and it turned out to be the cheapest valve stem at $10!) and reinstalled it — it took about five minutes to put the faucet back together.

The faucet is a familiar task. It’s kind of like when we had the oil furnace and I’d have to replace the oil furnace’s spray nozzle filter thing. It was a little gold filter that basically screwed onto a pipe between the oil tank and the furnace. Without it, the furnace wouldn’t run and the house would get cold. Without being able to turn on and off the water (especially off), the morning showers would be cold. But because I’ve done it before I had the tools and more importantly the knowledge on how to fix the problem.

I don’t feel “manly” very often but fixing the faucet sure felt manly.

I try to buy at least one pomegranate every year, and at least one box of mandarin oranges. The rule on the mandarins is that you can eat as many as you like. Good fiber and easy to peel. And they taste great. Actually, I keep buying the boxes as long as the oranges don’t wind up moldy and in the compost heap (4 bucks a box is too much to pay for compost).