Author: Doug McCaughan

Father of 5. Juggler. Ticked off at blogger.com.
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Out to get me

Right Guard Deodorant

There is one deodorant that I cannot use. Anything by Right Guard breaks me out in a rash. Pretty much anything else is ok.

My wife and I had this discussion the other night. I ran out of deodorant two days ago. "What kind can you not use?" "Right Guard" "Isn’t that the one I always buy you?" "Yes, their marketing must be very good. Right Guard breaks me out in a rash for three days. Do not buy Right Guard." "Ok. Got it. Right Guard is evil." "That’s correct. I cannot use Right Guard but you always buy me Right Guard anyway." "What kind do you like?" "Gillette works well for me. But you can get me anything as long as it is not Right Guard." "Ok. Got it. Gillette, not Right Guard."

Today in my drawer in the bathroom — Right Guard.

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I hate filtering software

When I worked at The Learning Company we owned 85% of the filtering market with a product called Cyberpatrol. It was ineffective and inaccurate. Often the product blocked sites that should not be blocked while allowing sites that should be blocked to be seen, and children always found a way around the product.

Apparently, Websense has blocked Reality Me and Cathy as "Gambling" sites. What?! So I go to Websense and find that navigating their site is about as cryptic as their blocking of our sites. There is no way to look up what sites are blocked, no FAQ explaining how to appeal, and no way to send an email without being a customer. I find this kind of fascism on the web to be very disturbing. It would be like me opening a business in Knoxville only to find that one day my customer volume has suddenly dropped off without explanation. Then I receive a fax from a friend explaining that the city has removed the road leading up to my business because they had a rumor that my bookstore was actually a gambling establishment. No communication with me. No verifications. Just dug up the road!

I’ve now been on hold with Websense for 11 mintues. My dime. Lost productivity. And why? For someone else’s mistake. This is like when some firm has an accounting error and puts the onus on me, the customer, to disprove the accounting error (which has happened to me but I can’t remember the specific instance). I should bill for this time.

Update: Took 26 minutes just to get a email address to appeal to. About 15 minutes of that was the Websense employee explaining to me that the business using Websense needed to make an exception in the software for my site rather than having their proprietary database recategorize the site. This kind of idiocacy damages the functionality of the Internet as a whole.

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Determined

Evan has gone down for his morning nap and through the monitor I hear this (obviously the quote is what I assume Evan is thinking):

click click click click click “If I hold this thing still I won’t fall asleep”

Now for the visual. Evan prefers to sleep in his swing. He has learned that he can sit up, grab the mobile, and make it quit spinning.

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Blended Families and Lies

Back in January Kristy wrote that she’d like to see more blended families discuss the step part.

Being a step-parent is hard work. The dynamics of the family change almost daily. Dealing with step-parents, biological parents, kids related in all different combinations of blood and marriage… It is difficult. … I know of a few blended families that I read online … but … I don’t read a lot about the ’step’ part.

Like many of Philip’s posts, I thought Kristy’s an inspiration for writing material. Here it is the end of March and little to no references on Reality Me to step-parenting.

Writing about the step part is difficult for me because I don’t view the children as step children despite being their stepfather. I do not want others to think of my children as stepchildren and, despite the awkwardness, I even allow other people to address me with the wrong last name on occasion. We de-emphasize "step." I think it has come up in discussion with either Noah or Sarah once and we pointed out that Amy and Evan are their brother and sister, and technically, if a qualifier was necessary, they are halfsiblings not stepsiblings.

stepwife- The wife of one’s father and not one’s natural mother.

Beyond that technicality, dealing with the absentee parent in a blended family is difficult. One of our challenges is the lies told by biodad. His version of the events that led to the divorce are far different than Mom’s version. Sarah yesterday declared, "I don’t know who to believe." Biodad is a habitual liar. He is so good at it that I am certain he believes his own lies. It is not fair to the children to tell them conflicting stories. All they need to know is that Biodad and Mom could no longer be together. I’ve directly confronted him on this issue but either he disregards it or needs a reminder. The children do not deserve to have to deal with the stress caused by lies.

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Bizarre dream

Last night I had the strangest dream.

Some nondescript female convinced me to help her rob a federal reserve which happened to be located in a police department. Halfway through the robbery I realized I was wearing my graduating high school class t-shirt that cleared showed the school name along with all 674 names of people that graduated high school with me. I also wasn’t wearing a mask. I did my best to step beyond the view of the cameras that were everywhere and turned the shirt inside out. We took all the money, $3000 cash.

As we drove away I witnessed the locals driving their trash to one of my favoriate wilderness areas. Bulldozers cleared the land and moved the trash around.

Police everywhere were looking for us. I turned into a gravel drive and ditched the car. The area had a big land mover that was harvesting the mountain for fill dirt. We ran up a path to the top of the mountain (the girl faded from the dream). As I sat on top of the hill, I comtemplated what a mistake the robbery had been and the damage it did to my life. Next I was in the house of the landowner looking down the hill at a police officer interviewing neighbors. It was a very disconcerting feeling.

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Kids of Chaos

So our kids are watching Yours, Mine and Ours, which in itself is funny, and true to the story we have some drama with which to cope. Evan has been fighting a fever and needs to go to the doctor so Cathy has taken him to the pede leaving instructions with me to "not engage the kids" since "chores require supervision and homework requires supervision" so I am heading the advice and leaving the kids to work out their own issues while I program. They are doing well. Some quibbling. A little tattling. But mostly laughs. It’s a pleasure to listen to them even though I’d like to be playing with them.

I doubt the kids would believe me if I told them this movie they are enjoying is a remake of a movie from 1968 (and one that their mother and I really enjoyed watching while dating)

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Lost – Bangui connection

Heard a funny commercial on the radio today! "What’s the question on everyone’s mind? Is there a new episode of Lost tonight? YES!" Very funny.

So, want to see what the island of Lost is shaped like? Follow me. This ride is approximate 10 minutes long. You will need Google Earth installed on your computer.

  1. Let’s do some research. Go to Blingo (aka Google with prizes) and search for "Bangui"
  2. Choose the wikipedia link (shortcut)
  3. Now that we’ve learned a bit about Bangui, namely that it is a "commune or federal district in the Central African Republic," let’s return to Blingo and search for "Bangui Magnetic Anomaly" Peruse the links and gain a little background insight.
  4. Open Google Earth and search for "Bangui" which should put you in Africa
  5. While on Bangui in Google Earth, search for "4 8 15 16 23 42" (latitude 4° 8.15 longitude 16° 23.42)
  6. Put the check back on Bangui and zoom out to see that both searches are in the same region. The numbers are just left of Bangui where the meteor hit.
  7. Let’s find the antipode for the coordinates 4 8 15 16 23 42, that means the exact opposite place on the earth. Search for "-4 8 15 164 23 42" (180-16 = 164) As you zoom out you should start to recognize the spot as being a point between Australia and LA if you were 1000 miles off course.

BTW, The map picture in step 2 is what I conjecture the writers have based the shape of the island on. I think this trail touches on many potential sources for several of the story lines we have seen.

Nexus originally posted theory somewhere and reposted it on 4815162342.com. Click more to see the original post.

Continue reading Lost – Bangui connection

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The deadlines are here

So today is a very, very important day to me. I wanted to wake early but the sleep was necessary. In order to see this day through I planned it out by hours. 8-9 x would get done; 9-10 y will get done and so forth. Already I am behind because of factors I could not predict or plan for. There is much to be lost today.

New Lost tonight! If I can squeeze in the time, I have something juicy to post also!

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I quit watching Rocketboom…but I’m back

Since I discovered Rocketboom on September 27, 2005, I had not missed an episode until they changed formats to the wide screen hd format. After that I found the video so choppy and the sound so broken that I had to quit watching. Yesterday I tried again and was pleasantly surprised to find that every played smoothly. I don’t know if RB changed something or if my Quicktime upgrade fixed things or perhaps Comcast cleared up some noise on the line. I’m returning to my daily 3 minutes of Amanda Congdon.

Oh, I should clarify why I watch Rocketboom. A friend of mine said, "I don’t get what [Doug] sees in Rocketboom" and went on to conjecture that perhaps I was hot for Amanda. Actually, Amanda frequently reminds me of my sister so the whole being hot for her would be a bit yucky. I’m hot for Cathy. I find the Rocketboom format to be intriguing. It is not so long as to feel like I’ve wasted time. The stories are just the right length providing enough detail to be amusing or interesting without dragging on. When I want more, the story is linked to more detail and does not open in a new window (I often go to the story and still return to RB contrary to the fear of most designers that "if you send the user away from your site, you won’t get them back" which leads to popup windows or frames). The video is high quality and well edited. The stories are typically ahead of msm, digg (but not long ahead), and some of the other hot spots. Long and short, it is the content and the format of the program that grabs me.