Reality Me

Category: Daily Life

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

  • Parallel Parking Tip

    Do you have trouble parallel parking? If you have a good hand brake and front wheel drive like this Honda Civic then you too can parallel park perfectly everytime! Or you could do it like they do in Japan. My favorite is the Mini-Cooper sliding into the space.

    I went to 9th and 10th grade in Medford, New Jersey. I went to 11th and 12th in Germantown, TN. Because of the differing state laws on when you could get a driver’s permit, I missed out on driver’s ed and instead had private lessons. Johnny “Dr. Fever” Caravella pulls up to my house in a beat up Nova. To learn to parallel park we drove to Memphis State University where I practiced until we bumped into one of the cars then we would pull ahead to find another spot until we bumped into those cars and repeated the process. Eventually, I became pretty good at parallel parking.

  • Dad Taxi

    Apparently I’m driving a child to school today. I’d give a limb to get her to care enough to discuss these plans with me the night before. Had I known I was going to be in the car a half an hour this morning I would have woken half an hour earlier.

  • Choosing your battles

    It really bothers me to see the children sleep in their clothes. The teenagers are particularly bad about this. Jeans bother me the most as they can be tight fitting; however, I feel a bit hypocritical in that statement because when I go camping I might sleep in jeans (rarely, since cotton holds moisture against the skin it’s a bad formula with the chill night air) and I can recall sleeping or cat napping at friend’s houses still clothed.

    I have tried to fight this battle and I just don’t think it is worth it. I feel strongly they would be more comfortable and sleep better in appropriate sleepware. Maybe I need to purchase them some new sleepware or fine some other incentive to help them. But I think the best thing is to walk away from this battle.

  • BRrrriiinnnggg clanga lang lang lang…

    Time to wake the doughnuts!

  • Oh the agony

    Pain is listening to an over tired infant cry himself to sleep.

  • Breathe

    Oh this week is going to be beyond difficult…

  • I was thinking Jag but…

    So, I was thinking that I need a car to impress at sales meetings. I was thinking Jaguar with leather seat et al. You know, traditional, dress to impress type car. But now! I think I want one of these! Impressive, fugly but memorable, and connected to the Internet.

    Thanks to 10,000 Monkies for the pointer.

  • Here Comes The Rain Again

    Storms are here. There is no way we are making it through this one and keeping the power up.

    I wish I had that screened in porch I’ve been promising the wife for so long so we could sit out and watch the show.

  • Up in smoke

    Ah! My last piece of concentration is lit. My last stick of Satya Sai Baba Nag Champa Agarbatti is burning down. May we never go to war with Bangalore!

    In a vaguely related topic, I heard on NPR this morning that our politicans put legalization of marijuana on the table as a possible tax revenue to help pay for health care.

  • What is blogging?

    Is it me, or has blogging become about cheap attempts to get linked to from Michael, Laurence, and Glenn?

  • Time to close a window – Calendar Apps

    This window has 21 tabs open. I pretty much am disenchanted with most of the CRM software out there like Act! and Goldmine and equally as disappointed in most calendar software including Yahoo Groups‘ calendars. Lately, I have been trying Hipcal out but have not been knocked off my feet yet. Everyone probably has heard by now that Google has released its much anticipated Web 2.0 Google Calendar. I’ve had this tab open since the day it came out so I could review it and give feedback. I have neither a review and the only feedback is that it looks like all the rest with perhaps the exception of better calendar sharing opportunities (and spam opportunities).

    Btw, for those wondering, "what is web 2.0?" It is just a buzz word for webpages/sites that refresh or load information behind the scenes so you don’t have to watch the page reload.

  • ding ding ding ding

    Time to wake the doughnuts.

  • Time to close a window – Advertising Revenue Research


    I’m about to put up a forum/discussion group on one of my domains. As much as I hate obnoxious advertising, monetizing a website really does help the publisher cover hosting costs et al. Google’s Adsense won’t work in the forum environment I am considering as per their TOS since I am thinking about having only registered users in the forums. I have reviewed Vibrant Media’s IntelliTXT and am rather impressed with it’s subtleness, distinction from hyperlinks yet acting like hyperlinks, and ability to aptly match an advertisement with the user’s entry.

    The Firefox extension Adblock does stop both Adsense and Vibrant Media but I still think it is worth trying. In the least, this window with one tab has been open for weeks and needs to close.

  • Workin’

    I avoided the sirens song and am happily banging keys.

  • From the mouths of babes

    Dad: "How were your TCAPs?"
    Sarah: "Boring!"
    Dad: "I know they were boring. How did you do?"
    Sarah: "I don’t know. They don’t tell us."
    Dad: "How do you feel like you did? Good. Bad. Questions were hard. Made you think."
    Sarah: "I don’t know"
    Dad: WWASD

    Mom: "Noah, can Granny and Granddaddy come to your graduation?"
    Noah, confused: "Did they come to graduation?"
    Mom: "Can they come to graduation?"
    Noah, still confused: "We haven’t had graduation yet."
    Mom: "CAN!"
    Noah: *blink* *blink*
    Dad: "Noah. _Can_ Granny and Granddaddy come to graduation?"
    Noah: "I don’t know if they can."
    Dad, shouting: "Do you want them to come?!"
    Dad, regrouping: WWASD WWASD…