Category: Daily Life

Ramblings, often stream of conscious, journaling the events of my life.

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Grub Master

I was in front of my computer roughly 17 hours yesterday. Most of that was actually typing code. I am a Assistant Scout Master for my son’s Boy Scout troop although lately I have passed on meetings and activities in lieu of working. I skipped Monday’s meeting only to find out my son volunteered to be the grub master for this weekend’s trip. The way our troop works is one scout buys all the food for his patrol and is reimbursed. The idea is that the patrol plans the meal then the scout works with an adult to calculate portions and costs and buy the appropriate supplies. It is a good activity for developing their planning skills. The grub master should check the food pantry in the scout room for existing supplies (which I’m certain my son did not do). Unfortunately my son did not check with my secretary to see if I had one iota of spare time for this activity. Since their trip begins at the church at 5:45 today, Noah gets home from school with little time between school and the church, and Cathy will be doing her weekly trip to the Kentucky border this afternoon, I find myself faced with taking my lunch hour now to do Noah’s shopping for him. I should add that I don’t even get to go on this trip! (I very badly need a camping trip) This weekend they get to go to a fishing camp, clean and debone their food, cook it, and choose to eat powerbars instead.

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Thank you!

I banged my head against a wall last night until it bled. I woke at 3:30am this morning to pound on the wall some more. I consulted peers on IRC. I Googled. I Blingo‘d. Finally I began to type my situation here.

On one of my projects, I am using a modal dialog to present forms to the user. These forms submit the user input to the server via ajax and depending upon the return from the server either present an error message or perform and action then close. The staple of a good programmer is code reuse. In my case, I have written a module to pop up the dialog box and, based upon a variable passed into the module, populate the dialog box with the correct form.

I proceeded to type an abbreviated, generic version of the code segment that was giving me grief. And as I neared the end, I saw my typo! Problem resolved. Life can move on. Now that’s a good use of a blog!

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Let’s talk about breasts

I have 5 finicky eaters and 3 pounds of thawed chicken breasts. I could go with my old fallback Cheat’s Coronation Chicken but really that doesn’t thrill 3 of the 7 of our clan. I’ve marinated bite sized pieces in olive oil and seasonings then cooked it over oil in a skillet and mixed it with flavored rice for a chicken and rice dish that goes over okay. Simply slathering it in BBQ sauce and grilling it with sides of vegetables gets eaten but seems boring to me. Maybe I need to shred it and make BBQ chicken sandwiches. What’s your favorite child friendly chicken dish?

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Knox County Schools – Your lack of creativity astounds me

Yesterday my middle schooler came home with a permission slip for a school field trip to Dollywood with a catch: The price is $43 and only the first 75 students to return a check and signed permission slip get to go. That’s not right! Additionally, the field trip will not allow the students on the water rides because Knox County Schools got all trippy after the death of a student at the waterfall 6 years ago. Yes that was a tragedy but we should have learned from the failings of supervision at that trip and continued water related activities but instead Knox County Schools decided bubble wrapping the children will protect them. Guess what? That won’t protect them either. I suppose Knox County Schools is assuming that of the 2.5 million visitors to Dollywood, our trip will be the one where highly inspected, super safety protected, engineered to simulate danger in the most cautionary way, equipment will fail at the same time all the trained and licensed lifeguards happen to be taking smoke breaks. It could happen! Denying water rides at a theme park? That’s not right! Can we make it better? What about not allowing digital cameras? Yes! Let’s prevent our children from the memorializing their time with their friends by not allowing them to take pictures. Granted, the school is afraid of being responsible for loss, theft or damage to a digital camera. Well guess what Sherlock! If I send a digital camera to school with my child and he loses it, that’s between him and me. I have an old digital camera sitting on my desk wasting away. If it got lost I’m out nothing. Of course, you want me to go buy an antique point and shoot disposable camera that is limited to 24 shots and cost an arm and a leg to print some thumbs over lenses. Brilliant! No wonder our children lag behind. Banning cameras? That’s not right! Eventually we will ban, regulated, lock up, and overprotect ourselves to being scared to death. What will you deny then? Don’t be scared or we’ll suspend you! Well guess what? That’s not right!

Oh, and today, my son brought home a permission slip for the band field trip. Guess where they’re going? Dollywood! (different day) That’s not right! For all the wonderful things we have in East TN, can our schools find nothing fun and mind expanding for our children? Oh, no, of course not; Knox County Schools is too worried about my digital camera. That’s not right!

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I need my batcave!

I love telecommuting! I’m a huge advocate of telecommuting. I think we will find great societal benefit to having a group paradigm shift and having at least half our workforce work from home. Imagine if suddenly companies only needed half (or less) of their existing infrastructure needs. Less electricity spent heating, cooling and lighting them. Fewer monolithic roads needed since fewer people are commuting. Who can telecommute? Accountants, lawyers, sales people, technical people, IT people, customer service, technical support, and so many more. Basically if you work from a desk, all your collaboration can be done online or in weekly onsite meetings. If you have to lay hands on materials like at an assembly line, then unfortunately that is more difficult to do remotely. Barack Obama encourages telecommuting and so does the US Patent Office. Ask your employer to let you work from home to save the environment, make you a happier more productive employee, save the company money, and spend more quality time with the family while simultaneously getting more work hours in for the boss.

Now, the downside! To be a successful telecommuter, you need a batcave; complete with a secret passage. The kids and animals cannot know about your batcave. Nor can the wife! It must be impossible to find. Now where’s my butler?!