...Except for Bunnies

So, I pretty much watch everything Alton Brown does.  I even watch Iron Chef America from time to time for his commentary -- which, I know, is probably not his and is probably fed to him, but whatever.

Last year, he did a four part travelogue called Feasting on Asphalt, where he and a small crew traveled for a month from his home near Atlanta to Los Angeles, using back roads whenever possible.  He stopped at "road food" places along the way and was generally insane (especially when he tried to make coffee at the top of a mountain).  It was fun, but too short.

Fun was, seemingly, had by all -- though of course turning a month-long trip into a 4 hour (minus commercials) show leaves a lot out.

However, in the fourth episode, near Las Vegas, Alton loses control of his motorcycle and smashes his shoulder.  He claims to have swerved to avoid a bunny rabbit.

But the best part is a classic example of the weird things people focus on while injured.  Alton is laying in the gravel with a bottle of what looks like Gatorade under one side and his motorcycle on top of him.

He mutters about being in pain, then exclaims, "That's my mirror!"  He tries to reach for it.

One of his crew says, "Alton, don't worry about your stinkin' mirror."

He hands it to someone.  "Aww, my mirror broke off.  Here, someone take care of it."

Heh.

So, Anya was right -- it was the bunnies.  :-)

(Actually, given the nerd Alton clearly is (he's done takeoffs of everything from Gollum to calling...something "edible tribbles), I'm surprised he didn't make that reference himself.)

Anyhow, Feasting on Asphalt 2 starts tomorrow; this time, Alton is tracing his way up the Mississippi.  He claims to have suffered no injuries except an expanding waistline (heh heh); no bunnies this time.  And -- it's six parts long instead of four!  Yay.  :-)

Meanwhile, I am currently transferring all the contents of my mother's PC (the subject of my CAPSLOCK OF RAGE that got deleted last week) so that I can reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows.  I have never done that before.  Wish me luck.

Oh -- and, in another entirely unrelated note, a few weeks ago, on a whim, I bought Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising -- a fairly famous piece of young adult science fiction.  I was halfway through it when I saw Order of the Phoenix, which had a preview for the movie they recently made of the cycle (I guess it's a 5-book thing which I -- predictably -- read volume 2 of).  

The book was...meh...all right.  I liked the hints of Arthurian legend in it, and it might have made more sense if I'd read volume 1, but it was...meh.

The preview for the movie?

Well, it bears about as much relationship with the book I read as your average Disney movie has with...well, whatever story it's trying to retell (can we say Zeus and Hera as tragically doting parents?).

Patrick packed up all his technology (laptop -- my faithful, 6-year-old ibook -- cell phone, shuffle, headphones, iPod, digital camera, etc.) for Disney World tonight -- he's finally beginning to get excited.  I think the flight still freaks him out, but that's why I'm buying a bottle of Unisom. :-)

And, in one last bit of news, I went to get my hair trimmed today.  They did a much better job this time making the back the way I wanted it, but they continue to refuse to cut the top the way I'd like.  Oh well.  We'll get there eventually.

And Also

The casual use of the word "retarded" (and its variations)  as a put down (e.g., "just don't say anything retarded like ____") is one of the reasons people like my brother are not treated as full members of society.

It equates intellectual disability with inferiority.

The two are not the same.

...as a matter of fact, just don't use that word at all, okay?

(Yes, this was prompted by something online -- something linked to by fandom_wank.  No, I'm not going to link to it directly, because it was all kinds of offensive, and I'm going to pretend I didn't read it in the first place.)

Shaking Head

I seriously want to email something like this to the whole Internet.

Who's = who is.

Always.  Forever.

Whose = possessive.

Correct:

Who's coming to dinner? = Who is coming to dinner? = Correct

Whose shoes are those? = Who owns those shoes? = Correct

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong:

Who's shoes are those? = Who is shoes are those = NO NO NO

Whose going to cook dinner? = Who owns going to cook dinner? = NO NO NO

In short, if you can't substitute "who is" and having it make sense, use whose.

Eesh.

A Boring Month

So halfway through the year last year, I changed the way my class does journals. Instead of using the various books of writing prompts I'd found -- but which were difficult to simplify while keeping a variety of topics -- I switched to a This Day In History type of thing, prompted by finding this website in one of our district's 4th grade social studies books.

The best thing is that even if I repeat a question, the event that prompted the question is different, so I don't feel quite so bad about asking what someone's favorite TV show is over and over. ;-)

Anyhow, I've been slowly working on adapting Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and making the first groups of journals for the coming school year.

And aside from a few interesting things -- and one, of course, very interesting and notorious thing -- very little interesting happened in the month of September. One of the journal prompts is actually that there was an earthquake in Mexico City.

Yeesh.

By the way -- the reason I chose Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the first book is so that I can do one of the pre-adapted books later in the year when I'm more stressed and burned out. ;-) It's going well...I'm about a third done -- I haven't done anything but type the chapters (I haven't done any of the questions or sequencing yet) because I don't quite know how the class's academic abilities will sort themselves out. So I'll probably only do a few days' worth, and then adjust up or down as necessary.

TMI -- You Have Been Warned

An open thank you to my reproductive system for, for once, being exactly on time and thus giving me one less thing to worry about for Disney World (less than a week!).

However.

Ow.

Whoops, and About Audiences

I failed to notice that my last post was my 200th.  Whoops.

You know, when you learn how to write in junior high and high school, they tell you write to your audience.  Write to your audience.  Always write to your audience.

The funny thing about blogging -- and about blogging about such eclectic topics as I do -- is that it's quite likely you have a variety of audiences.  Most people I know in real life, for instance, have very little interest in my fannish endeavors, while people who come here from my website are probably more interested in my fics and vids than in my day-to-day experiences teaching.

Then, there are the people whose blogs I have commented on, who click that link and come here.  Kristina, for instance, of autismvox, has commented occasionally. 

To my knowledge, none of my family members read this blog -- and given the Drama going on now, I rather hope they don't.  But if they did, they...well, they might be interested in my Harry Potter reviews.  Very few of them actually understand what I do, and even fewer of them are interested in fandom-type things.

This was prompted when I came to the somewhat staggering realization that out of everyone who has read my rant on my family's current drama, only Amie (I love that you're commenting now, by the way) can really, truly appreciate the depths of Drama to which my family can descend, having been subjected to it on more than one occasion.

The moral of this is -- I know that for any one of you, a given percentage of my posts mean absolutely nothing to you.  All I can say is...don't feel obligated to read the ones that don't.  :-)

Current drama update:  My mother neglected to ask M if he wanted his job back, and he may either (1) not take the offer my mom wrangled (the details of which I didn't ask about, but involves staying only through October) or (2) refuse to help train his replacement.

Also for those of you who don't know M, the latter is not maliciousness.  It's just that M has the emotional intelligence of a 7 year old, and is being whiny and petulant.

Now my mother is freaked that M will make her look bad.  (1)  Duh.  (2)  Should've thought of that first.  (3)  Double duh.

Ironically, when my dad's mom was alive, this would have all been nothing.   She took drama and wank to stratospheric levels.  Until someone involved in this whole mess is yelled at for not wanting to cross a busy street against traffic, this is really minor.  I guess it's just that we're all out of practice.  ;-)

Head, Meet Wall

Wank has indeed erupted.

I am taking my own advice and keeping my big mouth shut.

But here, in cyberspace, I just have to say this: While it was nice for my mother to talk "till [she] was blue in the face" to D. about M., it was not her job. She is not M's direct supervisor. She is not in charge of hiring people. She should not risking D's goodwill for her by sticking her neck out for M.

That's my grandpa's job. He's the closest thing M has to a supervisor. He's the one that hired him back when he was 13 (he's five years older than me). He's the one who trained him, who taught him, and who turned a blind eye all these years to the things M needs help with.

My aunt led a...high-risk lifestyle, shall we say, when she was married to my cousins' father. I strongly suspect both of them have traces of Fetal Alcohol Effect (not full-blown Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, but similar). M has no concept of consequence. A does not lead to B in his brain. It just doesn't. But M was always "the smart one" of all of us cousins (despite nearly failing high school math and the fact that I graduated with a 4.something GPA, but that's a favoritism rant for another day) and my grandpa just doesn't believe that this is not something M can change.

All that is really beside the point. What is the point is that this is not my mom's job, and D is not somebody that you should actively try to tick off. M did a dumb thing and while it's admirable to try and help him keep his job, my mom is almost 60 and never saved for retirement. She figures she will have to work until she's at least 75 to have enough saved to live comfortably. She is playing with fire.

Also -- and totally unrelated -- Writing With Symbols hates me. It's crashed 3 times on the same journal entry. So I suppose it either hates me, or Francis Scott Key....

Insane Giggle

So, I could explain how I found this -- or, rather, why I'm reading fandom_wank at 1:15 in the morning.  But I just gotta share, even though Cat will probably be my only loyal reader to get this.

People are chatting about some Buffy fan that is upset over...aww, it doesn't matter.  What made me laugh until I wheezed was this:  people listing various other things that Buffy fans have argued over, and mention that Ben is Glory.

Three or four comments down, some random user says:

Wait a minute...

Ben is Glory?!

And I cackled like the insane person I am.

Ben is Glory?!

Heh heh heh.

What is it About Summer?

A few weeks ago, I realized that it's the (gulp) ninth anniversary of the Summer o' Drama.

Which can only be truly appreciated by those who lived through it. The thought of the POKmobile still sends chills up and down my spine sometimes, and I often keep half an eye out for it as I drive around school. This, of course, means that the ninth anniversary of the You Didn't Know I Cried Myself to Sleep Locked in My Room Alone Drama is nigh as well.

Anyhow, it seems like the summer months invite drama -- or, in fandom terms, wank.

Wank is brewing in my family right now, and I find myself with a distinct feeling of "meh."

My grandfather started an electronics company in the 1960s with a friend and named it after both their wives. Wank ensued, and I never met the friend -- or the wife for whom the company was half named.

By the 1990s, the comany was struggling. They sold the consistently profitable part of the business (a calibration and repair lab -- all electronics test equipment requires yearly or better calibration). They hired an engineer to help them design a fabulous New Unit that would save the company.

While the new engineer did have a core of goodness (after the '94 earthquake, he drove all the way up from San Diego and brought us -- who had been living on bread, crackers, and the supplies from my dad's office's 'vending machine' (a box with a "please pay for your stuff" coffee can) McDonald's in Anaheim) and while he did tell good stories about his other job as a Disney Imagineer (there was a reason I never rode Rocket Rods, suffice it to say), he was a big blowhard who never accomplished anything.

By 2000, my grandpa was actively seeking people to buy the company. He eventually sold it to a company back east owned by a friend of his. The fabulous New Unit did not yet exist, but it was Only Weeks Away.

(Let the random capitalization assure you that these were oft-repeated mantras.)

Things started out well, but the company back east soon decided that the New Unit was not Only Weeks Away and hired an engineer to help.

That was an unqualified disaster. He was, also, a big blowhard who never met self-imposed deadlines and loved to make himself sound more important than he was.

When my grandpa decided to semi-retire, the company back east asked him his opinion about hiring the engineer as general manager.

And, in a move that still baffles me, my grandpa said he'd be fine.

Thus putting all that happened afterwards in the category of: "You made your bed, now for frell's sake just shut up and lie in it."

That was two (I think) years ago. The Fabulous New Unit remains Only Weeks Away! The manager is actively looking for new jobs on the one hand while having fun engaging in power plays with the office back east and also looking for a completely pointless new location for the business so his office will have a frelling window.

Meanwhile, he's convinced that just because he's a smarmy politician, so is everybody else. Because he's a Ferengi in disguise and only interested in money and glory, so must everybody else be.

Okay, so I'm slightly more irked than "meh" but go with me here.

We must now backtrack to fill in the other gap in the story: my oldest cousin.

My oldest cousin has...well, issues. He's just not able to work unsupervised. He gets easily frustrated and while he's good at starting projects, his follow-through is not great, and as soon as something goes wrong, he'd rather start another project. Don't get me wrong -- he's a nice guy, and he's been faithfully helping out my grandpa's business since he was doing it for chump change at the age of 13.

(I think it was a rite of passage for my cousins and myself to attempt to do an inventory of the place, which was like Sisyphus rolling his stone uphill, because nobody kept track of what they took out of the bins, and the inventory was incorrect within hours of you starting.)

Anyhow, he got other seasonal jobs here and there but was never able to keep them for a variety of reasons. When my grandpa was more involved and kept on him better, he actually did a good job. He does do a good job when someone keeps on top of him. But left to his own devices...not so much.

The problem is the manager has become convinced that my cousin, like him, is a smarmy politician who is deliberately trying to Sabotage the Fabulous New Unit which is Only Weeks Away.

My cousin may be a lot of things, but for one thing, he's not socially aware enough of anything to do that.

He's also been known to fudge his timesheet...which he did for this past weekend. He filled it out Friday or Saturday intending to come in on Sunday and never came, then talked around that fact and made it sound like he had been.

So my mom announces in this grave voice that M is probably fired.

And I'm left with three very conflicting feelings, which combine to a self-preservatory "meh."

1. Dude, how dumb can you be? You know he's out to get you and you do something that boneheaded?

2. And we're shocked by this because...?

3. You all hired the idiot manager in the first place. You had the opportunity to be rid of him and chose not to. You made your bed, and all that.

I can imagine that the whole family is poised to erupt in wank. None of it will be M's fault -- while some of it unquestionably is. People will wring their hands about how the new manager could do this -- forgetting that this has been coming for a while. People will wonder how he could actually fire M -- except that everybody -- my mom included -- knew that M can't work unsupervised and no one got off their butts to...I dunno...supervise him.

One thing the Summer o' Drama taught me, though -- is to rant about it on my blog and keep my big fat mouth shut. :-)

Nerd Squee

That rocks.  The person who drew it rocks.  'Nuff said.  :-)

Murphy's Law

The week o' Murphy's Law ended yesterday when I was stuck in a colossal traffic jam (11 miles in 2.75 hours) and then proceeded to try to break the middle finger of my left hand.

Because typing sucks, more on that later.

Instead, a grammar rant:

Cliche is a noun.  It refers to "a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought."

Cliched is an adjective.  It describes something that is overused.

In other words...

Correct:

1. The jokes in the last episode of The Simpsons were tired and predictable, to the point of becoming cliches.  D'oh!
2. So many people imitated Lucille Ball's style that it became cliched.

Incorrect (oh, so incorrect that it makes me weep for the English language):

1. Apple's style is becoming a bit cliche.  (Quoted from macrumors.com.)  You meant cliched, as you're describing the style.

Also?  "Nitsche" is not the term you were looking for when describing a small, particular market/audience/fandom.  You meant niche.

Eek.

Opinions Please

As the date of our departure to Disney World approaches (a week from Tuesday evening), I have been seriously pondering something.

Having no particular interest in surly, exhausted Patrick, nor in carrying my linebacker-built brother to the nearest First Aid station, I lobbied long and hard for at least renting him a wheelchair -- Florida in August is going to suck, climate wise, and thyroid medication or no, he's going to have Issues.

Eventually, we (my mom and I) decided that having our own would be much easier, if a bit more expensive in the outset.  So it's all folded up and ready to go in the garage; it just needs a bungee cord to make sure it stays folded in the luggage compartment.

Which brings me to my dilemma.

In all the years he's been going to Disneyland, the expectation of Patrick (begun by my parents and reinforced by me as he got older) is that he is expected to follow the rules there like any other kid.  Disneyland, I believe, is directly responsible for his patience with lines and crowds (unlike his girlfriend, Chaline).  He is expected to order himself, to walk by himself (I hate seeing adults with disabilities holding someone's hand unless it's an expression of affection), and wait in line just like everybody else, because he can.

He even knows where the companion restrooms are, in the unlikely event that he needs assistance in the restroom.  While CA law allows an attendant of the opposite gender to accompany a person with disabilities into their restroom, he has never been comfortable with this, and is far too old to do the reverse.

Y'see, over the years, it's become more and more common to see groups of kids (usually teenagers) rent a wheelchair which they rotate amongst themselves, so as to use the accessible queue.  Disneyland has responded over the years by enlarging the regular queue, so that most people using wheelchairs must (get to, as some lines are amusing themselves) wait in line with everybody else.

It irks me to see people taking advantage of the (greatly appreciated) strides Disney has made in accessibility.  We've had unfailingly positive experiences with cast members, but I worry that that will change as people grow more resentful of people without visible disabilities using accessible queue areas.

Where am I going with this?

Simple.  

I'm having a dilemma about what to prepare Patrick for.

Should I tell him he'll be able to ride around the park but still be expected to stand in line (if it's indoors -- we're already getting a Guest Assistance Card that says he doesn't have to stand in line in the heat and sun)?

Should I tell him that he'll be able to ride around and use the accessible queue at certain times of day (e.g. until the sun goes down)?

Should I ignore my own sense of he-should-do-what-he-can and simplify everything (and possible cut down our time in lines substantially) and just tell him that if there's an accessible queue, we'll use it?

Any other ideas?  I'm inclined to go with option 2, myself, but that might be needlessly complicated.

Note to Wood Ranch

That table you sat me, Patrick, my mom, my two cousins, my aunt, and my uncle at tonight?  That table might hold seven very friendly skinny people.

Note the "might."

Note the "very friendly."

Note the "skinny."

While it was very nice of my aunt and uncle to take us all out to dinner for my mom's birthday, that was not a nice thing to do to my generally prickly sense of personal space.

GRRRRR!

Well, the good news is that Blogger ate my 3 page long CAPSLOCK OF RAGE about why I HATE WINDOWS!  (I'm normally fairly magnanimous on the subject of OSs.)

The bad news is BLOGGER ATE MY POST!

What to Call a Remake of a Remake?

I loved Escape to Witch Mountain as a child.  I even have the book -- which, in true Disney fashion, has little in common with the film.

Most people probably won't remember that the Disney Channel (or ABC -- I forget which) did a remake of the movie in the 90s sometime, which bore even less resemblance to the original, but which was a cute movie.

Apparently, they're at it again.

Another Non-Spoilery Comment

Having had time to reflect, the casualty that bothers me most is the one that's buried on the cliffs by the sea.

This surprises no one more than myself.

Also -- if you want to take anything from this book, it's the power of a little kindness.

Edit:  There are now spoilers in the comments.  You have been warned.

No Spoilers Here

Having just finished a marathon reading session in which I read 2/3 of Order of the Phoenix (I started re-reading it after seeing the movie but had only managed about 1/3 as of yesterday afternoon), all of Half-Blood Prince, and all of Deathly Hallows (phew), let me just say:

That was singularly satisfying.

And...it's nice to be right about a few things.

The Night Before

So, my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows arrives tomorrow.  I have not read any spoilers.  I may even convince myself not to glance at the last page and see what the last word is now that it's not "scar."

I may post non-spoilery reactions after I read it (it took me about 14ish hours to read Order of the Phoenix, so I expect to be done by tomorrow night) but it'll be a while before I do a full review -- not only 'cause I want to digest it, but because I'd kinda like to re-read the whole series and get it in perspective before I either praise or condemn it.

In other news, it was the last day of summer school today, which is always a weird, bittersweet, anti-climactic thing.  The whole school year builds to culmination; we have the whole ceremony, R's mom even smiles at me, and so forth.  Then the kids come back for four weeks, only to just quietly get on their busses on the last day and go home.  It's...weird.

Karma

Hopefully, I earned some karma this afternoon.

It was my last day to do my home teaching assignment; I was planning on having A. try out a label maker (his writing, which was always slow, laborious, large, and difficult to read, is probably the area that has suffered the most with him being out of school -- pretty much ONLY his name is legible now, and that's iffy) to ease some of the back to school stress (in other words, practice writing some of the time but not to his "that's it; I'm over this" stage), and assess him on his IEP goals.

I got in the car to leave, and I got a text message saying they wouldn't be there.  Technically, all I had to do was fill out his IEP pages and mail them, but I offered to stop by and assess him personally one day next week.

Why?

Well -- assuming he makes it back to school in the fall, it will be only a matter of time before there's Drama.  He's just that kind of kid.  He will also have a new aide and a new inclusion support teacher -- and the latter won't be at school everyday.  This means I will be first on mom's hit list if something goes sour.

So I figure that the more goodwill I can build up with her now, the better for me later.

In other news, 3rd-grade A. (the one with the Mighty Mo) had his first real meltdown of the summer.  I got up to move him away from the table and he grinned -- he grinned! -- and started to move his chair.

Oh, no, buster, no way is that going to work.  

So I spent a few minutes getting punched in the arm (and drooled on a bit -- he was trying to spit at me -- he has been watching R get moved aside or ignored for it, but R is doing it for attention, not escape) but doesn't have the oral motor skills to do so...heh heh).  Once he saw that he'd done no more than drool on my leg, he tried to tell me I needed to go home to change clothes.

I'll give him credit for creativity, at least.

And in other news, our summer school office manager is convinced that Miss T. -- who was out today; I suspect due to registration issues she was talking about yesterday -- just likes to take Thursdays off.  Not that it really matters since she'll probably not be working for the district by next summer (she plans to student teach in the spring), but I defended her anyway.

Random Pet Peeve

Epi.  Piccie.  Linky.

Honestly -- can't you just say (type) "episode," "picture" (I'd accept "pic"), or "link?"  In the last one, it's not even an abbreviation.

Eesh.

In the News

This article on Yahoo! News discusses a lawsuit filed against Germany by the children of Holocaust survivors, citing their own pain and suffering -- caused, in effect, by their parents' experiences during the Holocaust.

I may or may not have said this before on this blog, but I've long had a morbid fascination for the Holocaust.  There's a macabre part of me that wants to explore how -- and why -- humanity could descend into such madness.  There's the cynical part of me that sees it simply as an extension of the prejudices that existed then -- and still exist now.

And there's part of me -- the nascent activist in me, I suspect -- that simply wishes to honor those who died (much to one of my professor's chagrin in college, I include in that all groups targeted by the Nazis, included gypsies, the LGBT community, and those with disabilities) by learning as much about it as I can.

In any event, the gist is, the Holocaust so traumatized their parents that their parents passed on that trauma to them.

I'm of two minds about this.  (By the way -- I have no good answer.  This is mostly a thought experiment.)

The first is this: while there's no doubt that surviving the Holocaust must have affected survivors -- and therefore more than likely impacted their interactions with their children, either those born during the Holocaust itself or after -- at some point, the blame must stop.  People must go on with their lives.  If the kids of Holocaust survivors are proven, indeed, to have suffered grave psychological damage because of their parents' trauma -- can't their kids (won't their kids, given today's litigious society) therefore claim that they are harmed by their parents' trauma, which was caused by their parents' trauma?

When would it end?  And at what point do you say: very few, if any, German officials currently in power had anything to do with the Holocaust?  Do you draw the line with those drafted into the Luftwaffe in the last 6 months of the war?  People who participated in the (mandatory) Hitler Youth?  Do you draw the line the child who was 5 when the war ended but who learned to read by reading Nazi propaganda?

At what point do you say: the people who caused the Holocaust are gone, and to hold Germany as it exists now responsible is, at best, excessive?

But then there's the part of me that answers that exact question with this: the Holocaust was an event unmatched in human history (though Dharfur, Rwanda, and Yugoslavia among others have tried to resurrect it).  It was barbaric, and savage, and quite possibly did damage its victims to the point that it damaged its victims' children -- even those born after the concentration camps closed their doors.

If you'll pardon a foray into nerddom, may I suggest the (1990s) Outer Limits episode "Tribunal" as an exploration of the burden carried by survivors' children.  In this case, the main character's father lost his first wife and child in the Holocaust; a large part of the story deals with his mixed feelings towards his father and the grief that still haunts him.

It's stunning in its simplicity -- yes, there is a sci-fi component, but the major drama is the Holocaust survivor's son's -- and when the screen fades to black, you see why.  A dedication plaque comes up with the following:

"To my father who survived Auschwitz, and to his wife and daughter who did not."  -- Sam Egan, Executive Producer

The thing is -- and the reason I have no good answer for the questions I've posed here -- there's no good answer for this question.  The Holocaust continues to haunt its survivors.  It continues to haunt those affected by it.

It would make good sense to at least allow some sort of compensation to the victims' children who filed the lawsuit.

But I have another worry:  people, as a whole, are not good at common sense.

People, as a whole, are greedy.

People, as a whole, succumb to the slippery slope.

So I suppose my worry is: if you grant compensation to this group of survivors' children, what about children of survivors of the Titanic?  Of the Battle of Britain?  Of Pearl Harbor?  Of Dharfur?  Of Yugoslavia?  Of Rwanda?  Of Tiannamen Square?  Of Vietnam vets?

Where would it end?

What about children of children of alcoholics?  What about the children of children of abusive parents?

You could travel down that road forever.

And that's not even taking into account who should be held responsible.  For the Titanic -- the family of the captain?  The descendants of the owners of the White Star line?  For Vietnam vets -- the US armed forces?  The generals that directed the war?

As I said -- there's no good answer.  But it's an interesting moral puzzle.

A Creative "Power" Pun Goes Here

So I said in my Order of the Phoenix review below that you should come back for my DWP adventures.

BTW, Cat, the movie actually wasn't that crowded -- it was in one of the huge (but not IMAX) screens and I would say a good 50 to 100 seats were left open.  I'm still going again (even if I can't get Patrick to come with; the Sirius stuff was hard on him) to see it in IMAX.

Anyway, I have a bad habit on weekends of sleeping in too late and then having trouble going to bed Saturday and Sunday night.  I tried to go to bed early last night in preparation for going to see OotP this morning, but no dice.  Then, around 2:00 or so -- I'd been attempting to sleep for about 1 1/2 hours -- my window air conditioner started to make weird noises.

I keep it set fairly cool at night; I can't sleep unless I'm 'swaddled,' so to speak, in blankets.  I suppose a deep pressure vest would be a good idea for me, if they made any that fit me.

Anyhow, I figured it'd just frozen -- window ACs do that sometime -- so, since it was fairly cool, I turned it off and didn't think much more about it.  I figured I'd wake up if I got hot and turn it back on.

Well...about 5:30, a strange sound -- silence -- jolts me right awake.

The power's out.

I peer outside.

Not just us.

I look up the DWP hotline on my iPhone (yay for EDGE, even if it is slow) and report the outage; 2 others have already done so.

So, I wet a washcloth, put it over my head, and try to sleep.  I toss and turn, dozing and waking up, and finally give up about 10:30 -- nearly 5 hours since the outage was reported.

I get ready to go to lunch and the movie.  By 11:00, still no power.  The DWP is going from manhole cover to manhole cover (our utilities are all underground) to try to figure out what's wrong.

By 12:00, the power's back on.

The DWP hotline, which I'd called during lunch just out of morbid curiosity, was still set at 7:30 a.m. and didn't record any outages at all.

Which brings me to a point: given the technological development of the last couple of decades, couldn't major utility hubs have a 10 minute generator so that they can phone home and say, "Help!  A transformer blew!" or "Help!  Something overloaded me!" or even "Help!  Error!  Error!  Error!"

In other words, the utility version of a kernel panic or the Blue Screen of Doom.

'Cause, you know, if we were in a less affluent area (where people, say, wouldn't have internet connected cell phones with which to look up the hotline number) and people couldn't report the outage right away -- that would have sucked.

So now I'm sitting her contemplating re-reading Order of the Phoenix ('cause I think I remember a couple of other things that weren't in the book) and silently blessing my AC.

Oh, and Cat -- I've had Deathly Hallows pre-ordered since the day Amazon announced it.  So I'll be reading next Saturday too.  Once you have a chance to see OotP, I'd be curious to hear your reaction to my review.  :-)

Order of the Phoenix Review

Come back later for my adventures with the DWP.

Go back now if you don't want to be spoiled.

I'm serious.

No pun intended.

Also, I have at least one theory related to Deathly Hallows that stems directly from this movie, and things I've read about it.  You are thus doubly forewarned.

Before going too in depth, let me just say something: unscientifically comparing my copies of Order of the Phoenix and The Lord of the Rings reveals that the two are more or less the same size.  LotR was made into three 3-hour movies and still took flack for leaving out Tom Bombadil and the Scouring of the Shire, among other things.  Order of the Phoenix was made into one 2 3/4 hour long movie.  Stuff had to be sacrificed.

All in all, I think they did a reasonably good job deciding what to keep and what to sacrifice.

For the record, the major plot points that I can recall and pinpoint as being sacrificed are, in no particular order:

• Weasley is Our King: Quidditch
• Ron and Hermione being Prefects (note that they may have obliquely referred to this for just a tiny moment)
• Percy (also obliquely referred to by having him show up twice with Crouch)
• Most of Kreacher's storyline (see below)
• Luna's role in the Quibbler is much reduced here
• Meeting Neville's parents (who are referred to but not shown)
• Firenze teaching Divination

Things that were abbreviated or shortened:

• The Weasleys' Revolt (though what it shown is awesome)
• Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes
• Harry's angst at the beginning
• Grawp
• The Torture of Professor Trelawney
• Sirius chafing at his enforced confinement at Grimmauld Place
• Harry and Cho
• Mrs. Figg being a squib and looking out for Harry all along

Things that seem to me to be different than in the book:

• I don't recall Cho being the one to betray Dumbledore's Army, even under Veritaserum
• Likewise, I don't recall Filch camping out in front of the Room of Requirement waiting for the DA to leave

Things that rocked:

• Professor McGonagall:  "Oh, there are quite a few things I would like to say to you, Sybil!"
• The Weasleys' Revolt.  Just 'cause.
• Fred and George comforting the boy that was in detention.
• Believe it or not, the Occlumency lessons.  I liked the visuals.
• The thestrals.  How cool are they?  I would just liked to have seen the others' faces after flying to London on animals they couldn't see.
• Ginny destroying the Department of Mysteries with one spell.  Heh.
• Hermione flattening Ron, and the twins betting on it.
• The poster of Fudge getting shredded during Voldemort and Dumbledore's battle.  I just liked the symbolism.
• Harry's angst.  I defended it when the book came out, and I defend it now.  The kid had been through a lot and was entirely entitled to be cranky.
• The acting, especially from the Trio.  While still not Oscar-quality actors, they improve with each film.  In this one, Emma Watson seemed to show the most improvement.

Things that were okay:

• Sidestepping showing Neville's parents by having Sirius and Neville both speak about it.
• Luna.  The actress was good, but not great.
• The visual effects.  Some were awesome, some not so much.  I particularly liked the Veil; I particularly disliked the obvious replacement of Emma Watson with a CGI'd image when Grawp picked her up.
• Mr. and Mrs. Weasley.  "Daddy's home?"  Mwuah?  But on the other hand, the enduring affection they have for Harry -- off-screen, you can hear Mrs. Weasley saying something like "he's like one of our own" -- is lovely.
• Dumbledore.  I just can't buy the new Dumbledore.  He's too...forceful.  At least he didn't grab any kids this time.
• The Snape-James incident...the point of that was what it taught Harry, and that got left out entirely.

Things I didn't like:

• Bellatrix.  I admit that this is the first Harry Potter movie I've seen without re-reading the book, but I don't recall her being so over-the-top crazy.  I recall her more as being...well...quietly, scarily crazy.
• Shunting McGonagall off to the side...I really didn't like that they didn't show her part in the Wesleys' Rebellion.  But given that I recall production stills show her sitting, exhausted, in a wheelchair, perhaps she couldn't handle more than her role was.

Overall, I thought this was a very successful film, though it takes the film franchise further from the story in the books, particularly in regards to secondary characters.  Ron, especially, has suffered from the parts that have been dropped.  But, like Lord of the Rings, these films are creating a universe separate from that created in the book.

They're related, certainly, and they tell the same essential story, but the narrative is focused on Harry and Voldemort almost exclusively.  While the books are written from Harry's point of view, their focus is broader.

But that brings me to a point of speculation.  Sci-Fi Wire had an article a while back that said that while J.K. Rowling isn't greatly involved in the movies, she does offer suggestions and information, including a sketch of the family tree in Grimmauld Place, and suggesting that they not remove a character from Order of the Phoenix because they would have trouble when they made the film version of Deathly Hallows.

My suspicion, based on how little both are in the film, is that the character is either Kreacher or Percy.

Kreacher is suspect, of course, because of the Black family's history as Dark Wizards, and because he has already betrayed the Order of the Phoenix once.  I can envision many roles for Kreacher to take in Deathly Hallows; of course, I won't know for a week.  But the fact that house elves are powerfully magical makes him a suspect.

The other is Percy.  Percy is shown very little in the film, and the drama with his family is largely ignored.  Unfortunately, I don't see his story ending well: he seems solely focused on procuring power.  He's also seemed to be very suggestible and not very savvy.  When Percy is shown in the film, he's acting directly against Harry, and is always shown with Fudge and members of the Ministry.

It could be that Percy plays a prominent role in the last book -- and therefore film -- and that J.K. Rowling felt that it was important that his shift in attitude at least be briefly addressed.

Ironically, despite the almost ritual reports now of people complaining that Order of the Phoenix is just getting too dark (there was even a Yahoo! headline a few days ago to that effect), I found it less intense and certainly less scary than Goblet of Fire.  The scene in the graveyard in the latter was so well-done, and the atmosphere itself so frightening, that it outdoes the Department of Mysteries in my mind.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was a good book that moved the plot of the larger story along, but it lacked the introspection of Prisoner of Azkaban or long-awaited answers of Half-Blood Prince.  It's a good, but not great, book.

I'd say the same of the film.  It's a film that had to happen to progress the story into the coming climax.  It's good, but not great.

I'd say, ultimately, give it a 6 or a 7 out of 10.  I may change my mind after seeing the Department of Mysteries stuff in 3D (the IMAX theaters were sold out).

Phoenix Rising

Just a fair warning:

I am going to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix tomorrow.  Therefore, my next entry will probably be a spoiler-laden review.

If you care, and are avoiding spoilers, give me a day or to and come back then.

The Storm of the Century!

There's an episode of Dharma and Greg where Greg takes over Dharma's pirate radio station.

(Just go with me on this.)

He really gets into it, and at one point in an intro for a record, says, (paraphrased), "To the weathermen out there:  this is San Francisco.  It rains from time to time here.  You don't have to stand outside or take video: we know what rain looks like.  And do it from a weather desk, not from Storm Watch Central.  Oh, and we have 98 years to go.  Let's not be hasty and call something the 'storm of the century.'"

(To preface this, I did not go looking for this quote; it showed up as a new article in one of my general Mac news RSS feeds.)

A Macworld article says in its first line: "Apple's iPhone could emerge as the most succesful product introduction of the 21st century, new research suggests."

I love my iPhone, Moya.

But it's 2007.  We have 93 years to go.  Let's not be hasty, hm?

In Which I Prove Again That I'm a Nerd

I could complain about the 1/2 hour long rant I got before (or rather, the first half hour of) my home-teaching job today about the blended family dramas going on between A. and A.  Or the fifteen more minutes of it afterwards -- which included some of the drama with the oldest daughter too.

Of course, just like practicing social skills and self-control skills now that A. will need when he comes back to school in the fall -- assuming his immune system is robust enough -- building a good relationship with mom will help in the fall the first day A. has issues and the inclusion support person is not available.

I could also complain about my rampaging writer's block which has stalled three stories at the nearly completed stage and has rendered the most vivid mental images I have had in a long time a jumbled mishmash of words that won't even resolve into script format -- which I do sometimes if the dialogue (my weakest point) is actually really flowing.

Or I could stress about whether Miss T. will be at school tomorrow, because although Miss C. and I muddled along -- and although we eventually got a sub (at 10:15 -- and said sub had only ever worked with kids in the resource program at the middle school) -- keeping a lid on R (who has responded well to both a change in bus driver and positive behavior support plan Miss T. wrote for a class), who suddenly not only had to deal with sharing my attention -- which has been hard for him anyway -- he had to share it with about 5 other kids, because Miss C....

...well, because of Miss C.

Or, of course, I could berate myself again for not writing to two friends who've found my blog recently -- but summarizing my recent life is complicated at best.

I could worry about all of these things, but instead I am going to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am a total nerd.

When I first set up my iPhone (sorry Cat) I had to find a name for it. All of my other iPods have had singularly uncreative names like "My iPod" or "My New iPod" or "2nd Generation Shuffle."

I was inspired by a few blogs I read online to find a better name for my new iPhone: it is now named Moya, after the ship on Farscape.  I have also renamed my 2nd generation shuffle to Talyn, after another ship on Farscape.  I considered Enterprise, but I'm just in a Farscapey mood -- which suggests that my main, large iPod (named, get this, "5th Gen iPod") will probably become Lo'La, which is the last remaining Good Guy ship (unless I go for the generic Prowler or Module).

I have just named electronic devices after sci-fi ships.

Like, officially, as in the registered name that shows up when they appear on my desktop -- not as in a semi-affectionate nickname, such as my old computer Sparky (thus named after a cranky artificial personality on Babylon 5 -- as you can imagine, Sparky has Issues).

Can we get a chorus of "I'm a Nerd"?

Weird Commercial

So, ATT has this commercial where the tagline is something on the line of "your world is wireless."

That's not what's weird.

What's weird is -- they showed a bunch of people on a plane using wireless.

Unless I missed a memo, having your cell phone on during an airplane flight is a big no-no.

Wonder if that counts as false advertising?

I Give It A Week

You know, if you want hackers to leave your DRM alone -- don't go saying the DRM will take 10 years to break.

That's like telling Captain Kirk that your ship could beat the Enterprise in a race.  Just sayin'.

So, you know, Sony -- dumb move.  Way to challenge the hackers, y'know?

Anti-intutive?

The word, my friend, is "counterintuitive."

Counter = opposite to.

From dictionary.com:
–adverb
1. in the wrong way; contrary to the right course; in the reverse or opposite direction.
2. contrary; in opposition (usually prec. by run or go): to run counter to the rules.
–adjective
3. opposite; opposed; contrary.
–noun
4. something that is opposite or contrary to something else.

Intuitive = your intuition.

Counterintuitive = the opposite of what your intuition would say.

From dictionary.com:

coun·ter·in·tu·i·tive 
adj. Contrary to what intuition or common sense would indicate: "Scientists made clear what may at first seem counterintuitive, that the capacity to be pleasant toward a fellow creature is ... hard work"

No results found for anti-intuitive.

In other words:  It is intuitive that the sample calculations are on the sample calculations page.  It is counterintuitive that the results graphs are in the table of contents.  Anti-intuitive is not a word.

Sigh.

Website Update

For what it's worth -- I know many of you who I know in real life aren't interested in my fannish endeavors -- I have updated my website. While I've changed how I present my videos, the main update here is a new story, "What You Don't Know."

The story is set sometime shortly after the Stargate SG-1 series finale, "Unending." As such, it contains spoilers for that episode. If you haven't seen it -- and care about such things -- you probably don't want to read yet.

Oddly enough, Teal'c's voice was more of a challenge than Jack's -- for Jack, I just had to challenge my inner snarkiness. For Teal'c, though, I found it hard to mimic his stilted, overly-formal way of speaking without making it ridiculous.

One of the pairings is canon; the other is not, but hinted at.

My favorite section:

"But...Mitchell!  He's -- he's a weenie."

Teal'c was fairly certain that Jack wasn't speaking of a hot dog -- which was his only reference for the word -- especially given the scornful tone to his voice, but he found nothing to say in response.

Fun Time Waster

Wikiquote rocks.

I'm currently reading 10 seasons of Stargate SG-1 quotes, when I really should be doing something productive.

Nerd Squee

Hello from Moya, my new iPhone.

Edited to add: I just saw that a few recent comments weren't emailed to me -- among them, Stacey's. If you see this before I get a chance to email you (I'm in nerd heaven, playing with my new toy), I'll email you soonish.

D'Oh

I clicked on my blogger profile for the first time in forever, and there's one setting that I didn't change back after I switched to the "new" (a.k.a. Google) blogger -- my profile said I was a 'he.'

So let me take a moment to assure you that when I complain about my none-too-friendly reproductive system (which is finally quiet for the next 28 days -- just in time for Disney World, of course), I assure you it's as a girl.

Just wanted be clear about that, there.

A Good Rant

An MSNBC newsperson has a fun 10-minute long rant about the commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence.  Be sure to watch the video.  I agree with him -- but the rant itself is...impressive.  :-)

It's the Little Things

Much was made a few weeks ago of the fact that Apple released its Safari browser (my browser of choice) for Windows as a beta (pre-release) download.

But while that's a momentous change (which my PC doesn't seem to like; I can't get it to work on my PC), of all the small changes I've found in Safari 3, these are the two I like best:

• "Merge all windows."  I am a tab fiend; I am constantly opening new tabs, especially when doing google searches or checking all my RSS feeds -- I start from the main page and open up tabs from there.  But sometimes a site will automatically open up a new window; in the past, I'd have to close that window and re-open it as a tab.  Now, I just click Window | Merge All Windows, and voila -- all my open windows are tabs in one main window.

• "Make text normal size."  My eyesight is really bad; rarely do I browse the net at the normal text size.  In fact, one of the first things I do on any text-laden site (e.g. a long blog entry) is bump the size up three or four times.  But there are some sites whose layout gets all screwed up if things are too big, and rather than bumping the size down, I just click apple-0 (or View | Make Text Normal Size) and things are good to go.

One More Disney World Purchase Down

Just ordered a transport chair (a wheelchair with 4 small wheels -- and hand brakes!) for Patrick for Disney World, because it's becoming very clear that while his thyroid medication helped initially, therapeutic levels have not yet been reached.  So the climate concerns we had about Orlando in August are all still valid.

Plus, pushing him and his girlfriend around the other night actually took a lot of strain off my aching ankle -- I'd stumbled during our APE lesson on Friday -- so having something to stabilize me and prevent me from being boneheaded and clumsy and attempt to break my ankle again will be good.

And, yes, we could have rented one, but there are advantages to having your own, not the least of which will be not having to pay the daily deposit at Disney only to have it re-credited to your account.  (Also, Disney's are old, decrepit, and poorly balanced, which makes pushing a larger gentleman uncomfortable.  Plus, the hand brakes will be very useful -- having spent about 45 minutes keeping Chaline from rolling down various ramps the other night.)

I noticed when Patrick took a few turns in Chaline's transport chair (she's had one ever since she had brain surgery a few years ago) that his whole demeanor changed.  We'd gotten there at the height of the day's crowd, and had to maneuver through some pretty intense mobs.

It's long been my opinion that one of the things that sends Patrick into overload and wanting to go home is his poor eyesight -- his left eye is very lazy, and has a reduced field of vision.  As near as his optometrist can tell, he essentially ignores the input from that eye because it's so confusing.  This means that he's essentially blind in one eye -- and therefore has no depth perception.

Imagine a mob of people in front of you -- a see of faces -- that your already-slow-to-process-things brain has to turn into meaningful information so you don't bump into people.  (This is exacerbated from spending 5 years in high school being yelled at for bumping into people you couldn't see in the first place.)

Imagine, also, that because you have no depth perception, you have no real reliable way to tell how far away these people are.  Someone whose brain processes things faster may be able to take cues from relative size (e.g., that guy is getting smaller, so he must be moving away from me), but your brain just doesn't work that fast.

When Chaline offered him a turn to sit down, a whole load of tension went out of his body -- he became more communicative, for one thing (he was tired and not talkative), and he just seemed happier.  And this was at Disneyland, which he could probably navigate blindfolded.

It's my hope that being able to wheel it, at least part of the day, will relieve a lot of that "oh, my God, who are are all those people, where are they, and are they going to run me over" thing.

It also eliminates my lingering concern over whether they will give him a Guest Assistance Card.  My mom was assured on the phone that they would -- specifically, that if she went in with him and asked for a card that requested that he not wait in the outside portions of the queue for health reasons -- grant one without question, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

A lot of this trip is being planned with Patrick's stamina -- both physical and mental -- in mind.

I was 7 the first time we went, and we ended up missing a day in the parks because I was just too exhausted.  We planned this in, when we went when I was 12, and Patrick was just kind of along for the ride then.

We're planning to upgrade our 8 day tickets to annual passes (somewhere around $150 more) so that if Patrick just can't make it one day, we're not feeling like we're wasting money by not using a day's admission -- the Magic Your Way packages don't allow for what we did last time, which was stay 8 days but only go in the parks 7.

The idea is to fly this summer, then drive back before the annual passes expire for a few more days -- using the lack of expense for tickets and the fact that we won't have to ship them to buy souvenirs, since Patrick will want mostly books.  We'll probably also stay somewhere much cheaper, since we'll have a car and not be reliant on Disney transportation to get Patrick back to a hotel if he is having heat exhaustion issues.

When we went before, when Patrick was 3, it obviously wasn't as much of a concern.  We had strollers, his ticket was still free ('cause he looked 2), and until I got my 2nd degree sunburn, my friend Amie and I could always carry him if he got tuckered.

Post sunburn, even wearing clothes hurt, so Amie (bless her) did most of the 'heavy lifting.'

Today, of course, I can still lift him, but only for about 2 seconds.

He has the issues with dehydration and heat, which is one of the reasons I sprang for the Contemporary Resort (aside from the fact that I have always wanted to stay there) --  we all assume that we will spend most of our time at EPCOT (for me) and the Magic Kingdom (for Patrick).

Our mom will probably go to Animal Kingdom one day without us; while Patrick (who's not a zoo type) will be content to ride a few rides and maybe see Festival of the Lion King, she will want to do the early morning safari and really walk around the animal exhibits.

And MGM Studios only has a few rides -- he's not into shows -- but we'll probably make a couple extra stops to eat there.  (He's a big I Love Lucy fan, and wants to eat the the Hollywood Brown Derby, and I'm a nerd, and want to eat at the Sci-Fi Drive in restaurant.)

We're also staying on the concierge level (when you're paying what the Contemporary costs, what's 30 more a day, when they feed you 2 meals and 2 snacks a day?) so that we can have a microwave and fridge in the room, which we'd otherwise have to pay for -- because he needs a steady supply of liquids to replenish the buckets of...well, you know.

If anyone who has read this far is interested in other Disney World planning information for people with disabilities or other special needs, I highly recommend the PassPorter's Walt Disney World For Your Special Needs Guidebook.  Far beyond the standard mobility information, DHH information, and information in Braille and tactile guidebooks that Disney itself provides, this covers ADHD, the autism spectrum, traveling while ill (e.g. Make A Wish), intellectual disabilities, and even information for people of large size.

As the trip approaches, I'll probably talk some more about the special planning (e.g. how to get a young man who finds bass painful onto a plane where the engine thruuuuummmms for 5 hours straight) that I've been spearheading to make this trip as fun for Patrick as possible.

'Cause, you know, the more fun he has, the more he'll tolerate me wandering World Showcase (which I found only mildly interesting last time, and which I'm really excited to explore)!  :-)

Multitouch

You'd think I'd have learned.

You'd think I'd know what happens when you get over-involved nerds all in one place.

It goes beyond not pleasing some people.  You can't please anyone.

So why am I browsing macrumors.com?  Well...I dunno.

In a few threads, they have been talking about speculated updates to both the iMac and MacBook product lines -- with people thinking that both lines would become touch screen interface (multitouch) a la the iPhone.

As usual, the folks commenting are very polarized.  Some think it's a revolution of computing -- as revolutionary as the mouse was originally.  Some think that a purely touch interface would be tiring to use (it probably would be).

But as someone who has used a touch screen (granted, not exclusively, and not as elegant as multitouch), I can see its uses.

See -- one of the computers in my class was donated by the Amanda McPherson Foundation and has a touch screen.  It's been invaluable for one of my students, who does not understand how to use a mouse -- nor does she have the fine motor capability to do so.

Having a touch screen enables her to interact directly with the computer.  It allows me to make activities for her with ChooseIt Maker 2 to practice classroom vocabulary words and other receptive vocabulary.  Without a touch screen, she would also have to understand how to use a single switch in scanning mode.

Having a touch screen also allows me to use SwitchIt Maker 2 to adapt the books we read in class (which are already adapted, but that's a story for another day) into cause and effect computer games for her, so that she can be involved in what we do.

With a touch screen, she can make choices in Switching On American History and learn important computer skills (choosing a picture), as well as participate in age-appropriate general education curriculum (she's entering 5th grade next year).

With a touch screen, she can use Teach Me to Talk to practice her expressive vocabulary in a low-stress environment, where speech seems to come easiest to her.

Now, I realize this I'm talking about a niche market here.  The student I'm describing has significant cognitive challenges due to Down syndrome.  It's my gut feeling that she also has autism.  She has very little verbal communication (though, boy, is she an effective communicator!) and challenges with eye-hand coordination (except when she's throwing masking tape at me) and fine motor skills.

But as far as I'm concerned, the more common touch screens become, the more accessible computers will become as well.

(And, I have to admit, when I'm setting something up on the computer that E. uses, I often eschew the mouse and use the touch screen myself.  Not exclusively, certainly -- especially when precision and/or multiple clicks are involved -- but it's convenient and easy.)

And, boy, did that turn into a book that I didn't intend to write.  Hm.

(By the way, there's a green dot next to the Simi Apple store.....)

Another Grammar Lesson

Namely, [sic].

You put [sic] within a quotation to show that you know the thing you're quoting has some sort of grammatical error or unusual usage.

So:  "The dog was seen eating it's [sic] dinner."

The [sic] indicates that, yes, I know, it should be its, but the rules of quoting someone mean I'm not at liberty just to change their wording.  My options, therefore, are adding [sic], or using an ellipsis and brackets, thusly:  "The dog was seen eating . . . [its] dinner."

In the first, I just admitted that I saw the mistake but that it was not mine; in the second, I used an ellipsis to indicate an omission (granted, only one word) and used the brackets to re-orient my readers.

This is prompted by this quote, from Peter David's post on Bush's commuting Scooter Libby's sentence (which is a rant for another day, but for the record -- how smarmy can you get?):  "George Tenet provides faulty intel on Iraq?  Medal.  Horrible treatment of detainees at Abu Ghirav (Sic)?"

Okay, I appreciate that you don't know how to spell Abu Ghraib -- of course, a simple google search would probably have netted you the answer.  (I used "Abu Graib prison Iraq" and it popped up the spelling correction right away.)

But in Internet parlance, you did not mean "(Sic)."  You likely meant (sp?).  You were not quoting someone else; therefore, you may not use [sic].

I know I'm a grammar nerd; I also know that, given that I started elementary school in the early 80s -- in the age of Whole Language and new math -- I was fortunate to go to a private school where the teachers were distinctly "old school" in their teaching approach -- phonics, direct grammar instruction.  I remember having to re-do an assignment in 3rd or 4th grade in which I used their, they're, and there incorrectly.

But, gosh, what on Earth is happening to the English language?

By the way -- i.e. means "that is," while e.g. means "for example."  The two are not interchangeable.

1.  I have a headache; i.e, my head hurts really badly. -->  I have a headache; that is, my head hurts really badly.

2.  J. has lots of good rote skills; e.g., she can add, subtract, multiply, count by 5s and 10s.  -->  J. has lots of good rote skills; for example, yadda yadda yadda.

Hmph

I do not have an iPhone...but it's not for lack of trying.

See my earlier post about falling in love with the device within a few minutes of playing with it.  I tried really hard to talk myself out of it, but finally reviewed the additional money I will make by home teaching 3 hours a week this summer...and decided I could swing it.

So I checked the iPhone availability website, which showed a nice green dot next to the Northridge mall.

Yeah...

...the green dot lied.

And now, there are red dots next to all Apple stores in California, except 2 stores in San Francisco.

Oh well...nice to have enforced impulse control.

Meanwhile, for those of you who think I'm weird for not liking peanut butter cups, you'll be pleased to note that I love eating peanut butter sandwiches with chocolate milk.

Tune In

I don't talk about it much, but when my mom's family moved to the Valley in the late 1950s (from the duplex they'd lived in on Washington Blvd. since moving from Pennsylvania in 1955), both she and my aunt had small parts in several TV shows, among them Wagon Train and Leave it to Beaver.

My mom's current boss is very fascinated by this; me, not so much.  Perhaps that comes from having supported an actress's son in an inclusive environment and getting to know her just as M's mom.  And, by extension, realizing that celebrities are Just People too.  Or seeing her excitement when her show as on hiatus for the summer and she could actually pick up and drop off M at school, and realizing that acting, like everything else, is a job -- and a hard one at that.

Or perhaps it's because I've only ever seen one of my mom's episodes.

If you tune into TV Land next Saturday, you'll see the Leave it to Beaver episode where Beaver sneaks out to a movie theater and, in true sitcom form, promptly wins a bike -- which, of course, it hard to explain if you were supposed to be grounded.

In the movie theater scene, my mom is the blonde behind Beaver who is eating popcorn.  She would have been between 9 and 10 at the time of filming.

I'm not a huge Leave it to Beaver fan (nor do I enjoy Wagon Train or (I think) Gunsmoke) so I probably won't watch, but I figured it was worth mentioning.

Well...THAT Was a Mistake

So, loyal readers will know that I've been drooling over an iPhone since the commercials and videos started that last marketing push a couple of weeks ago.;div>

I told myself, "You don't need a 'Smart Phone' -- you barely text and never use the internet on your phone."

I told myself, "The keyboard can't be that easy to use; if for no other reason than you've got great big blunt fingertips that the average iPhone user doesn't."

I told myself, "You already have a shuffle for small playlists, and you have a 5 gen iPod that plays video.  You don't need to have pretty, full-screen landscape video."

I told myself, "You have lousy eyesight.  Surely reading a web page would be difficult, and the text would blur if you zoom in."

I told myself, "That finger-flicking scroll thing would be annoying; you'd be overshooting things all the time.  Ditto the 'pinch' zooming."

I was at the Northridge mall tonight, and after five minutes of playing with the thing, the only thing that saved my bank account (which I'm supposed to be bulking up for Disney World) a huge hit was the fact that they were sold out.

The thing is gorgeous.

I had no trouble typing.  When you zoom in on a web page, the text is crystal clear -- and that was in portrait mode; the phone was nearly out of batteries and needed to be docked to work.  You can control the amount of zoom by holding your fingers on the screen.

I don't think I can convey how pretty it is.

Scrolling through your music library is painless.  Flicking is very intuitive, and you can tap in the middle of a flicked scroll to stop it from scrolling.  Cover flow for the playlists...meh.  But the fact that you can click and see other songs on the same album, without backing out of your playlist and into one of the music browsing modes?  So cool.

I was so enthralled, I forgot to check out google maps, but youtube loaded nicely.  The video was...meh -- but it turned out that I'd been using EDGE the whole time, so the video was very highly compressed.

How did I discover that?  I went into setting to turn off wifi (all Apple stores have wifi) to see how bad EDGE really is -- and it turned out I'd been using it the whole time!

This is going to be a very hard to resist toy, especially because of Google maps.  I can't tell you the number of times I've been driving somewhere and trying to figure out where the nearest X was.  I remember actually trying to do that two phones ago, when I didn't have a data plan at all but was desperate, knowing that I'd pay through the roof for looking up whatever it was, and I gave up in frustration.

On an ironic note, however, people are sheep.

When you go to Disneyland a lot, you'll notice things like: people line up in waits 5 or 6 trams long when often at closing, they are loading at both stops -- but people see the huge mass of people and assume that's where they should be.

At the Apple store, the table that normally held the...mm...nanos, I think, was given over to the iPhones.  There was a huge crowd of people all gathered around the table, clearly waiting impatiently for their turn to play with the iPhone.

If they'd looked two feet behind them, they'd have seen that every iMac on display had an iPhone next to it.  So I stood over there and played for a good 5 minutes, and didn't feel the least bit pressured.

By the way -- the simple, classicly Apple layout makes this device very good for tech novices -- but it occurred to me right away that there's another population this phone would be good for: folks with intellectual disabilities.

Everything is so visual and obvious -- click the picture of a phone to make a call.  You can attach pictures to address book entries.  If you get confused, click the one physical button on the bottom to go back to the main screen.  Nifty.

Say What?

When you surf the Internet a lot, you tend to see some pretty...err...interesting...grammatical mistakes.  While they still irk me, I more or less expect them.

This, however, was a new one:

"To spite what some people are saying."

This is one of two things.  It could be someone using voice recognition software and not catching a transcription error.

Or, more worryingly, it's someone who doesn't know the word "despite."

Opportunity

Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars 3 1/2 years ago.  They were supposed to last 90 days.

NASA decided to send Opportunity into a deep impact crater.  Like NEAR Shoemaker, a probe that was landed on Eros after a successful mission -- thus becoming the first man-made object to land on an asteroid -- NASA basically decided that since Opportunity has long-since outlived its original mission, the risk that it won't have the power or maneuvering capability to get back out of the crater is worth the risk.

So here's to little Opportunity, the rover that could.  If this proves to be the end of your mission, we'll miss you...but something tells me it won't be.

In other news -- we had our first APE lesson today.  It started out promisingly enough.  They paired us with the two classes that have potential future classmates for A., and although we started with rhythm sticks (bleh) it was at least to a contemporary country song.

Then, in a room full of mostly 5th and 6th graders with learning disabilities, they started a song called "Texas Lonestar," which included -- among other things -- howling at the sky.  Miss T. tried her best to get me in trouble with (amusing and appropriate) snarky comments; the other kids looked either bored or astounded, and poor A. looked at everyone like they were crazy.

Miss C., on the other hand, cheerfully sang along ('cause, you know, supposed to be doing circle time and "Itsy Bitsy Spider").  Afterwards, I jokingly told Miss T. that she was going to get me in trouble, and that if she thought that was bad, she should have seen (now 7th grade) C. and/or (now 8th grade) RL when the OTs would come in and make the kids sing "Tap, Tap, Tap" (a Handwriting Without Tears song).

Miss C., confused, says, "Our OTs sing that here...."

"I told our not to," I said.  "These guys are mostly 10 and 11...it's just not appropriate."

If looks could kill, I would now be 12 feet under.  Sigh.  It's been a few years since I had to fight that battle with Miss K., who thought that letting a 6th grader take a nap cuddled in her lap was appropriate.

But I got the best bookend for the story.  After cooking today, I told the kids it was time to clean up.  M (I think) started singing the Barney (blech!) clean up song, so R. (sixth grade) started singing along.  Before I could say anything (I usually just say, "you guys are too big for that song"), A. pipes up with, "You aren't a baby, M!  That song is for babies.  You're too old for that song."

You go, girl.  :-)

Meanwhile, both little A. (the one who is the size of a 7-year-old) and little J. (ditto) have raging crushes on Patrick....

More Randomness

Randomness Number 1:  R. story for the day.

We are reading a poetry book this summer; after Little House, I just didn't have the wherewithal to adapt another book from scratch (despite some very good suggestions from both (!!) fourth grade teachers -- the weekly Starbucks runs, while they sucked for me as I don't drink coffee or tea, certainly paid off in the camaraderie department).  Add to that the fact that my program specialist wanted me to attend a training the first two days of summer school (I ended up not going because she couldn't guarantee I'd have any of my aides), and 17 days just wasn't worth it.

Anyhow, before each poem, we're reading a (very) abridged and abbreviated summary of that historical time period (I chose a poem about the Pilgrims, "Paul Revere's Ride," The Gettysburg Address (which was in our poetry book, so there :-p), We Shall Overcome, one other one, and "Hope Eyrie," in honor of the anniversary of the moon landing being the last day of summer school).

So we started the section on the Revolutionary War today.  In the text I gave the kids, I wrote, "The English were not nice to the colonies."  Most of the kids have very simple multiple choice questions, but R, J, and A have harder short answer questions.

One was, "How did the English treat the colonies."

A. got it right away.  (She would.  Hence the move to a more challenging class next year.)

J. got it after I showed her the paragraph the answer was in, with a little verbal prompting.  (She promptly burst into PMS tears, by the way.)

R...not so much.  We eventually got to the point where I was saying, "R., it says the English were not nice.  If someone is not nice, they are mmmmm...?"

Back and forth we went.  Right through snack time.  I will abbreviate the whole thing here to a simple: "YEEEAAARRRGGGHHH!!"

Later today, he had to finish that one question before he got a break.

I say, "Now, R., remember, it says the English were not nice.  Someone who is not nice is -- "

"Mean!" he says, immediately and cheerfully.

Le sigh.

Randomness Number 2:  Frivolous Purchases

Every year for (everybody's) birthdays, my grandfather gives people money.  Always $60.

This year, he must have forgotten to get cash, because my card was full of 10s, 5s, 1s, and even a $2 bill.

I used that money to buy season 1 of BBC's Robin Hood...which is in no way historically accurate, but oh well.  It's funny and I like it.  I didn't like it enough to buy it myself, but with birthday money, it's okay.  (I know, I know, it's all in the same account, but whatever.)

Randomness Number 3: The Disappearing Dock

The shuffle dock is nowhere to be found.  I have been eyeing this travel dock for the trip to Disney World, 'cause it doesn't have a wire to break, snap, get tripped over, etc.) and decided to take the plunge.

Therefore, because my life works this way, I will be shortly locating my shuffle dock.

Randomness #4: Gadget Love

I really want an iPhone.  Especially now that there's a rumor that AT&T is upgrading their EDGE network (apparently, download speeds improved significantly this evening, the day before the launch of a product whose main drawback in reviews has been the slow connectivity of AT&T's network).

I really, really want one.  I have no reason to...I'm, at best, an occasional cell phone user.  But it's so pretty....

Randomness #5:  People Drama

On the aide front, the instant ambivalence is shifting into pretty intense dislike...on both sides.  Apparently, I am included in the other aide's animosity.  This does not surprise me in the least; the last time she worked with me, I was fried, burned out, and stressed over that summer's IEP drama with yet another R.  My heart was not in it, and I was constantly freaked that if I pushed A. just a little too far, he'd flip out and have a major meltdown like the one he did on the second day of school.

(Typing this now, I remember that she Really Didn't Like Being Spit On then...too bad that's R's favorite new thing...'cause, you know, now that we stopped screeching "Pee pee!" we have to replace that fun behavior.)

I was pretty motivated coming into summer school this summer.  I'd had a good year, I was in a good place...so we're working -- we're doing journals, adapted books, News-2-You, etc.  In other words, lots of things she thinks are a waste of time, because we should be having circle time and singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider."

Ah well.  One week down, almost, and R's mom never did yell at me (though apparently she ranted to a lady T. is taking a class with, but oh well).  Tomorrow's an easy day, with APE, cooking (snow cones, this week) and scheduled games time (SpiderMan memory, Cariboo, and Trouble).

Karma Redux

Well, that's better -- I didn't have to pay a thing to get my car fixed again, because it was a faulty part to begin with.  This is why I love my mechanic: he's trustworthy, for one, and for another, if he messes up, he fixes it.  I didn't even have to pay for labor.  :-)

Which means that I can afford to replace my wireless router.  I'm thinking of going with an Airport Extreme, in the hopes that someday I'll be able to afford an HD TV with which to use an Apple TV.

Karma

I apparently earned a bit of bad karma lately.

Either that, or I'm earning some good karma for some future date.

My car is back in the shop about six weeks after I spent $700 fixing it.  Same warning lights this time.

And now, my wireless router is randomly turning off.  Apparently, something is wrong with the wire, because if I jiggle it and prop it up around the antenna, it stays on, but if the wire moves at all, it turns off.

Those Darned Neutrinos

So, just as I finished typing out my rant about the misadventures of today, I was getting ready to go to a fundraiser for the condition that the kid I do home teaching for has...

...okay, that sentence went all kinds of grammatically bad places.

Anyhow, just as I finished, I went to turn on my car, only to see the battery light and brake light on again.

Grrr.

On the plus side, my new fan came.  Yay.  I've had one like this before -- it blows lots more air, but it's way quieter than my old one (which was an emergency WalMart purchase when the other one I had like my new one got knocked over) and the dual blades eliminate that annoying dead air syndrome in the center, which, 'cause I've got my bed on risers, was at just the wrong height.

And considering that I'm incapable of forming real sentences...night.