Copyright ©1997-2008 Glenn Fleishman except as noted otherwise. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint, contact Glenn Fleishman at glenn at glennf.com. Photo © 2008 Laurence Chen; used with permission.
Copyright ©1997-2008 Glenn Fleishman except as noted otherwise. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint, contact Glenn Fleishman at glenn at glennf.com. Photo © 2008 Laurence Chen; used with permission.
Turning technology from mumbo-jumbo into rich tasty gumbo
Posted by Glennf at 12:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I'm back at the office today after 10 days of not really working very much. The days were filled with boys; the nights with a little TV, conversation with a woman, apparently my wife, whom I spend too little time talking with in normal day-to-day existence, and some minor programming tasks. While 10 days with teh fambly can be exhausting--the boys are rather demanding--it was a big hoot, and went well until the end, when Rex got a small cold and went into teething overdrive. He's doing better today.
The key to keeping the kids happy is to get out of the house, and Lynn and I took the boys individually and collectively to dozens of playgrounds and parks. The weekend before last, Lynn took Ben down to Hood River to visit her brother and his girlfriend, while I had Rex for about 2 1/2 days. We had fun, although it got a bit unrelenting towards the end!
On Monday, I actually took the day off, Ben was in childcare, and Rex was with Lynn for some time back with mommy. I saw Hellboy II; I liked it! On Tuesday, Lynn and I did a day date with Ben at school and Rex with a babysitter. We went to the Seattle Art Museum, had lunch, and saw Bottleshock with Alan Rickman. (A bit of a mish-mosh of a film, but still very enjoyable.)
Wednesday, my body said, whoa, and I collapsed a bit. I had a bug or something, and had to stay in bed late and then slept three hours in the middle of the day. The next day, I was able to give Lynn some relief, though, and she got out of the house on her own. I felt myself quite quickly. It might have been exhaustion, too, because I felt better so fast.
On Friday, we went to Bainbridge Island, visiting Fay Bainbridge Park briefly (twice) and Bloedel Reserve, a foundation-run former estate with quite lovely grounds, plantings, ponds, and buildings. It's marvelous and low key. Rex had his first ferry trip.
Saturday, we had friends over in the evening; Sunday, the Evergreen Fair; and yesterday, we split up a bit so Lynn and I could have some individual sanity before we resumed our normal schedule today.
Lynn and I have been married six years as of yesterday--the event is important, but not the precise date, so we had a very hectic day, and we'll celebrate soon.
Posted by Glennf at 1:58 PM | Comments (0)
Posted by Glennf at 11:09 AM | Comments (1)
Ben: The dung is on the plane! [after reading about dung beetles in a book]
Me: I don't think dung really needs to be on a plane.
Ben: The dung is flying the plane.
Me: But dung is an inanimate object. Like a rock. Can a rock fly a plane?
Ben: Yes! A rock can fly a plane!
Me: I would prefer not to fly that airline.
Posted by Glennf at 8:17 AM | TrackBack (0)
Rex has a new word: ding! I put a bell on my bike recently, something I've long resisted for its sheer nerd-a-liciousness. But the bike trails and streets are more crowded as folks shed cars for cycles, and I find myself calling out "passing" or "on your left/right" very often. Since everyone is obligated by a dictate from Apple to be wearing headsets while walking or running (and very ill-advisedly while biking), my voice doesn't carry far. The bell works nicely, and I think it's less irritating to people. They also seem to obey it more quickly than a voice alert.
Ben and I take the bus to his childcare most mornings these days. I load my bike on the bus, get on with Ben, and we take a short ride there, then I bike to work. It's a nice multi-modal combination that saves me driving around for 15 minutes near my office (some days) to find a parking space or breaking down and spending $7 to park for a day. That plus the saved gas and wear and tear outweighs the $1.75 for the bus for me (he rides free).
Rex and Lynn often walk down to the stop, which is about 200 feet from our front door. The other morning, Lynn was off and our weekly babysitter Taryn walked down with us, holding Rex. Ben was playing with the bell, and Rex said, distinctly, "Ding!" He now likes to say it in all circumstances. I think it's his third complete word: "Down" was first, then "train," a couple days ago, and now "ding!"
This morning, I needed to re-record my regular weekly KUOW-FM technology segment because of a double technology failure at the station. It's pretty rare that either their main systems or the backup (an in-studio mini-disc) fail, and sure enough, it happened. So I biked up to the U District, a couple blocks from Ben's child care, and then after recording was on my way down 45th towards my office.
As I'm passing through Wallingford, I see a bunch of kids with a few adults at a bus stop; some kind of summer program. The kids are making the universal sign to truckers of "pull your horn!" But the truckers, knowing urban law, aren't; they can get cited, and traffic was ugly, so they might not have been in any mood to honk.
I rang my little bell as I passed, and the pre-teens were pretty delighted. They cheered, said, "way to go, cycler!", and such like. I said, "The bell's the best I got!" I didn't expect such a positive response. It made my day.
Then I got to the office. A transformer in the building had blown. No power. I'd just sent back a couple of cell data modems to a carrier yesterday. ETA for repair was 5 to 20 hours. I called my friend Nancy, and cycle a few miles north where she works out of her house for a technology news service, taking an old laptop with me. I got a few things done, but the laptop was missing critical software I needed. By the time I had gotten it mostly in shape, the building manager texted that the power was back on. A bird had hit the transformer, and the utility was able to fix it quickly; they thought it was an underground cable at first.
So, lunch with Nancy, then a cycle that was mostly downhill at speeds fast enough that I was employing the brake liberally. A few hours of real work, and now, another bike ride home!
Posted by Glennf at 4:15 PM | Comments (0)
Posted by Glennf at 1:51 PM | Comments (0)
Rex has hand-foot-mouth disease, which produces sores in the mouth and throat, and on the soles of the feet and palms, plus fever, and he's pretty miserable. But we got through what we think are the worst couple days, and he's sleeping well now.
The boys' merger at night has gone beautifully, with two full weeks under our belt until last night, when Rex woke miserable at 8-something. Ben slept through it. Rex spent the night with us, and did sleep a 6-hour stretch (as did we).
H-F-M passes in under 7 days, and based on the symptoms tomorrow might be day 4 or 5, even. Poor guy. Jello and pudding is in his future--tomorrow!
I spent the evening with Rex while Lynn took Ben off for a haircut and dinner. Sort of like a mommy-date. You wind up in a close relationship with your kids (if you're lucky), so you do things that you normally do while dating: buy them dinner, hold them close, comfort them, laugh at stupid jokes together, go on long walks holding hands. I suppose that's part of the parental bond that kids who are raised in a loving way ultimately look for in their romantic partner: they take this agape and transmute it into eros.
Rex and I had a fine time. He ate frozen blueberries, and was covered in purple by the end, but had a decent meal. He was only unhappy about 20 percent of the time, which was a big drop from the 50 percent he was experiencing earlier today.
I put the family A/C unit, formerly mounted for the summer in the parental bedroom, into the kids' room. That's how much I love my children. We're slated to hit 90 by Sunday, and our house doesn't shed heat quickly at night. When we had our heating system replaced last year, we had a heat-pump coil installed alongside the gas furnace, as that lets us easily add a heat pump without having to have the furnace setup rebuilt.
It's a tricky situation, as you can save money in the winter with a heat pump in a mild climate like ours, and that can offset A/C in the summer. With 90 to 100 degree days seeming more typical in Seattle, and with our interest not in keeping the house at 72, but really cooling off the house from 90 to 80 at night, it might not be a vast expense. I just have a hard time living in the Northwest and thinking about home A/C.
Posted by Glennf at 7:45 PM | TrackBack (0)
So...Lynn and I decided Rex was old enough to not freaking sleep in our room any more at night. Don't get us wrong: He needed to be nearer to us during his months of ear infections. But we'd hit a stride with him. He was getting himself well back to sleep on the rare occasions that he was waking up. Ear infections seem to be past with ear tubes and better weather. He's sleeping til about 6.15 am, which is late morning in babyworld.
We'd tried to merge the boys in Ben's room (now redubbed Ben and Rex's room) several months ago. We had a couple decent nights and then two that just didn't work. We gave up until Rex was further along. We decided we had slept well enough that we could stand some midnight wakings, and we figured the boys might actually sooth each other.
The whole thing has gone far, far better than we anticipated, partly due to both kids' love for each and sweet natures.
The first night, we put Rex into his crib, where he often naps, and he was a little confused, but went to sleep right away. Half an hour later, we go in with Ben, and Rex wakes, disturbed and a little unhappy. I soothe him and put him back down, and Ben is in bed. But after a while, it's clear that Rex is too excited. Ben, on the other hand, has fallen deeply asleep. Lynn fetches Rex and he spends the night happily sleeping in our bedroom.
Night 2 was just awesome. Rex goes down. Passes out. Ben comes in, Rex doesn't wake. Both kids sleep til 6 am. I get Rex up and Ben sleeps another hour.
Night 3 was interesting. Rex never fell asleep when he was put down, and when Ben came in, he was pretty alert. The two guys talked pleasantly to each other for a while, and then Ben fell asleep even as Rex is hurling his new stuff animal (a border collie we named "Dubbly" after my brother-in-law's late, lamented Dolby) around the crib and saying, "Dog! Dog!" (Or rather, "Daw! Daw!")
We have a friend over for dessert, and our attention is split between said friend, amused by all this, and the baby monitors where we're seeing action. Finally, our friend says, I think things are quiet. And they are! Rex and Ben managed to put themselves to sleep even with the excitement, and they slept til 6.15 this morning.
When I heard them, Ben was singing (his normal way of waking up, how lovely), and Rex was just getting up. I shut the door to our bedroom, and got Rex up and suggested to Ben that he might go back asleep. Ben tried, but he was too excited that Rex is now sharing his room with him. Rex was, too.
Knock wood and make the sign of the evil eye, but we have two pretty great kids. Who could have hoped that they'd get along at this age so well? They might be more contentious later, and that's normal, but this is pretty cool indeed.
Lynn and I engaged in very adult activities in bed: talking and reading books.
Posted by Glennf at 9:46 AM | Comments (1)
My alma mater, Yale, tired of turning away qualified applicants, is boosting storage space, er, dormitories, um, residential colleges! They're building 2 more for a total of 14. Yale's colleges, each of which houses about 400 to 500 students, date back mostly to the 1930s, with the last two built in the 1960s. Old Campus houses about 80% of freshmen, in historic buildings, renovated every once in a while to put in central heating or insulation.
The new colleges will be ready by 2013, and increase enrollment by about 15 percent (from roughly 5,200 today). The alumni interviewing committee just sent out a flyer that said only about 8 percent of applicants were accepted in this year's pool, down more than a percent from last year, partly because of the change in financial aid increasing applicants. The committee wanted to let us know as alumni interviewers that a lot of great kids we met simply wouldn't be getting in--only 1 in 11 would be admitted!
I had the good and bad luck to be assigned to Ezra Stiles (think: Harry Potter's Sorting Hat without any of the subtlety as to why you were assigned into a particular college). Nothing per se wrong with the place, but we were ultima thule for the north end of campus, adjacent to Dixwell Avenue, and the projects, one of the most dangerous parts of New Haven, which was full of dangerous parts in those days (and reportedly enormously less so these days). The crack epidemic was rampant, and there were a lot, a lot, a lot of shootings.
Because Yale operates partly egalitarian, partly legacy, if you had a relative who was in a given college, like Berkeley or Jonathan Edwards, you'd have preference for that college on admission. You could also relatively easily transfer colleges if there were housing space following freshman year.
This meant that Ezra Stiles (named for enlightened former Yale head who practiced unity and peace) and Morse (named for famous Yalie and famous slaveholder Samuel F.B. Morse) were disproportionately full of first-generation Yalies. We were no ghetto of less-privileged folks (my family was probably technically poor when I applied to Yale), but it was a different mix. (One of my freshman year roommates--tiny private rooms in a suite of 6--was the son and great-nephew of Yalies.)
Morse and Ezra Stiles were designed by Eero Saarinen, a fabulous forward-thinking architect who designed a lot of great-looking modern buildings that turned out to be totally unsuitable for their purposes. Don't blame him. He died during the colleges' construction, and plans went awry, according to histories I read.
Heating was originally in pipes beneath the stone floors (designed to look like rough pathways even in rooms). That apparently failed within a couple of years. Baseboard heating was installed, which worked erratically, and sometimes made a lot of noise (in my sophomore year). The colleges need a massive renovation, which will happen. Yale has been renovated all the colleges over time, shuffling students for that year into a "swing" college, which apparently won't be used as one of the two new colleges.
The "birds' eye" shot above from Microsoft's Live.com shows how attractively conceived the two colleges were, each in a half moon with a tower (for density) anchoring each side. THe colleges weren't connected except at the kitchen, which was underground! You could walk through between the two if desired, but folks rarely did.
For some reason, I knew virtually no one in Morse College, even though at my 10th reunion I met a woman who has become one my dearest friends who was in Morse. In comparing notes, we wound up finding one person we both knew in common, even though we were both in the humanities.
I'm hoping the new colleges aren't quite as cutting edge in terms of features, but rather focus on being both attractive and functional.
My biggest disappointment as an undergraduate was the master and dean of my college. The master is in charge of student life; the dean, of academic life. The master, while not a bad fellow, was very out of tune with us (he made peculiar jokes about Asian students ancestors doing his laundry, but he didn't do so with any malice), and really bonded only well with the jocks. He was well known for not shutting down parties unless they got out of hand (cf., the Deca-dance).
The dean was aloof, icy, and irritable, and had a few favorites, while the rest of us were so much dross. She got married while I was an undergrad, and essentially lived off campus, even though the dean and master's roles involve them living term-time in the college. I didn't mind her absence. When I hit academic problems in freshman year, she was entirely unsympathetic. Later, a miscommunication with the registrar's office via her secretary almost led to me not graduating. She grudgingly helped out. (The Registrar, who I met with, was infinitely more helpful.)
I made a fair amount of my life within the college, and enjoyed my friends there. I always had someone to eat with, and there was only a slight amount of cliquishness. I made most of my life outside the college working in theater at times, and for the weekly newspaper all four years. It worked out just fine, lest I sound bitter.
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