Reality Me

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  • Could you, would you save a life?

    Yesterday a 13 year old girl, Megan, on Sarah’s Bearden Middle School bus fell over with a heart attack. The girl beside the victom screamed. The bus stopped, students evacuated the bus, paramedics brought in a AED, rushed the girl away, and that’s all we know.

    Poor Sarah. Bomb threats, lock downs, and possibly death. Too much reality for a 12 year old. The sad thing is Sarah keeps everything locked inside of her and I can’t get anything but stoic, short answers from her. I was the same way at her age and it pains me because I know that keeping things bottled up can only last so long and eventually it all has to come out; the longer she waits, the harder it will be to deal with the bottled up emotions. I bet she thinks she is being strong; strength would be talking. At least she has caught blog fever and perhaps we can communicate that way. She shared more information about the incident in her blog than I could have dragged out of her with any other means.

    Taking advantage of the situation we had this dialog:

    Dad: "So Sarah, would you have liked to known CPR to be able help?"
    Sarah: "They taught us CPR at camp."
    Dad: "So did you try to help?"
    Sarah: "She didn’t need CPR. She needed those paddle thingys."
    Dad: "An AED? A defibrillator?"
    Dad takes a moment to explain CPR, the functions of the heart, lungs and brain, and why CPR saves lives until an AED can be brought on the scene.
    Sarah glazes over and tunes Dad out.
    Dad asks: "Would you like to be trained in CPR?"
    Sarah, exasperated: " I don’t want to learn that medical stuff!"
    Dad, starts to explain how she could have helped the girl today, or perhaps her grandparents or even parents.
    *Ring ring*
    Saved by the bell. The phone rings to end the conversation.

    I have to say I found the conversation a little disheartening. More people should be trained with the American Red Cross.

  • My Famous Wife

    Silenced and Pseudo-Instapundited in the same day.

  • Grouping UNIONed Data

    Calling all programmers. Soliciting your help! The following is a bunch of coding stuff. Click MORE to view post.

    (more…)

  • From the mouths of babes

    Granny: "Tommy, you don’t have to write phone messages down for your mother. You could instant message them to her."
    Tommy, dead serious: "How will she get them if she’s not here?"

  • From the mouths of babes

    Amy, sharply to Mom: "Don’t talk!"
    Dad, thankful to be in another room, doesn’t say a word.

  • Blingo March Freenzy continues!

    Yesterday Blingo gave away 14 $100 visa gift cards in an hour. On March 2 it was 100 movie tickets in 2 hours. No spam. No catches. Signup under someone and that someone wins too. More info.

  • Of Grasshoppers

    Student: I don’t have time.
    Master: Make time.

  • Buuzzzzzzzz

    Time to wake the doughnuts.

  • Make Smarter Children

    Today MSN has an article by Martha Brockenbrough titled Two Ways to Make a Kid Smarter. My pet peeve is the horrible eating habits my children exhibit and her first point in the article is "The body portion: Feed your child’s brain."

    …more protein, which kept them alert, energetic, and less prone to anemia, an iron deficiency that dulls thinking skills…if they’re not eating a lot of fish, or taking fish-oil supplements, then there might be an opportunity for some gains. Foods rich in omega-3 fats–such as salmon, fresh tuna, herring, and sardine–contain something called eicosapentaenoic acid, or EPA, do three things:

    1. boosts blood flow to the brain
    2. helps make hormones that boost brain function
    3. helps boost the immune system by acting as an anti-inflammatory agent

    The study on which this article is based showed results all parents would enjoy.

    kids who took fish-oil supplements, which contain omega-3, showed huge improvements in spelling, IQ, and reading. Even their behavior got better.

    Her second point is "The mind portion"

    The second reason their IQs soared was that their parents put more emphasis on schooling and were more literate themselves.

    As parents we must encourage school and help our children see school positively. We need to save our complaints about the teachers, the administration, and the failing education system for times when there are no small ears listening. We also need to continue to improve ourselves as adults. Make time in our hectic schedules to read (take a book into the bathroom, wake up 10 minutes early and read a chapter) and do a brain booster everyday. Our improvement does not have to be a solo activity. Play games with our children (chess, memory, chutes and ladders) and grow their minds as well as yours.

    especially when there is leisure time to read or do other brain-boosting activities. Also, people who work jobs that challenge their minds get smarter.

    Take time to engage your children.

    You need to make sure your little ones are engaging in conversations, practicing making observations, and organizing information in their minds, or they won’t be ready to get the most out of school.

    And socialize them.

    Kids also need to know how to get along with others–everything from sharing toys to taking turns.

    In a stressful day, I find nothing more relaxing than to take a few minute to get down on the floor with Evan and stack blocks for him to knock over, to read a book to Amy or figure out together how to build a bristle block house, to build a model engine with Noah, fight with Sarah, or play chess with Tommy. Oh. Yeah. Maybe I haven’t quite figured out how to interact with a 12 year old girl. These activities, minus the joke about fighting, are wonderfully relaxing, take very little time from our day, and mean so much to the children.

    Read the full article.

  • Malware Evilness

    HuntBar has got to be the worse thing I’ve ever encountered! It’s near impossible to remove and if I’m not mistaken it removes files as I install things. A service I extend to people is cleaning their machines of viruses and malware (spyware, adware, etc) but Huntbar has me questioning the sanity in this!

  • LOST – Hurley backstory coming

    Excellent!

    Garcia says Lost fans eager to learn more about Hurley’s backstory will be treated to another Hurley flashback episode this season that depicts his time in a mental institution. “The episode is really interesting,” he says. “[What happened to him while he was in the institution] was even a question I had.”

    I was lead to this by lost-tv.

  • Another Lost Theory

    Entertainment Weekly senior editor Jeff Jensen says he’s figured out Lost.

    1. THE ISLAND: It’s Alive!
    2. THE DHARMA INITIATIVE: Head Games
    3. THE HATCH: Human Testing
    4. THE NUMBERS: Those Damn Yankees!
    5. THE ANSWER TO ‘LOST’: The Island Is Haunted by a Powerful Psychic

    Thanks to Ray Camdem for the link.

  • Space port opens with first lauch in 24 days


    Excellent photography by KristyK

  • Lost Thought

    What if Libby, aka clinical psychologist, was the spy and her husband, let’s guess Henry Gale, are actually part of the psychology experiments on-going as part of the Dharma project. Dharma never ended. The Dharma scientists crash planes and ships to obtain new test subjects. Let’s pull it back in from far fetched conjecture. Back to Libby and Henry. Libby’s job is to psychologically evaluate the beach crew. Henry got caught checking on her or running a report back to The Others and now he starts some psychological warfare.

    When Sayid was questioning Henry, Henry tried to gain control over Sayid with references to "have you lost someone?" Sayid, with his own psychological training used Henry’s bait rather than being entrapped by it. I think Mr Eko, who applies his own brand of psychology, befuddled Henry Gale and scared him since Gale couldn’t assess Eko…of course, then there was the knife. We saw Henry Gale successfully get to Locke and we can guess how that is going to play out. I’d wager to say that next week we see Gale make a play on Jack.

    Henry Gale may be a prisoner but he’s going on the offensive.

    Remember the reasons for Dharma:

    According to a choppy ”orientation film” found in the hatch, Dharma founders Gerald and Karen DeGroot established a research facility on the island in the 1970s to conduct experiments in meteorology, zoology, electromagnetism, psychology, and parapsychology.

    We have seen zoology (polar bear, shark tagged with Dharma symbol…). We have seen meteorology ("you mean the freakish end of the world weather"). We have seen electromagnetism (suspected reason for crash, thumping wall in hatch, …). I think we’ve witnessed lots of psychology including the costumes of The Others. And parapsychology (the beast?). What if Henry Gale wasn’t just listening through the door but was using parapsychology to listen to their minds? What if the reason Henry Gale was so afraid of Mr Eko was not the knife but instead because he couldn’t read his mind or perhaps read it all too well!

    The Dharma medical facility looked as if it was emptied hastily. Perhaps Libby warned them that Claire was coming. Of course, if that was the case, why not don the costumes and scare her away? But if they didn’t want an encounter, quickly getting out could also explain why the costumes were forgotten.

  • A Rest Stop from Depression and Suicidal Thoughts

    Some interesting reading for people with depression and suicidal thoughts. Hmm. Good writing but at the end it notes that it is an exerpt from his book ergo marketing but still good info.