Musing, Muttering, Meandering Through Life

I woke up at 4am, no idea why, if anyone does know, please fill me in. Anyway, I decided to catch up on the world around me so I fired up my FriendFeed and started browsing.

FriendFeed is a wonderful aggregation service that simplifies keeping in touch with friends and family. FriendFeed lets you publish the data from your blog, social network sites, photos, and other places for others to see without them having to visit each site individually. It also has an interesting twist in that you can create Imaginary Friends where you put in the services you want to watch even if the person doesn’t have a FriendFeed account.

While catching up on my brother Michael’s feed I stumbled upon two separate pictures of my niece and nephew that had to be mashed. Enjoy.

The Disappointed Princess

Some days it all comes together like a Seinfeld episode; you don’t know why your seeing what you’re seeing, but you hope it leads somewhere. Today was one of those days on Twitter. It started innocently with a single tweet and ended up with me laughing uncontrollably. Maybe it’s because it was Friday or possibly because I like slapstick humor, or most probably I’m a little further off the beaten path than I think. Anyway …

@Natallini was putting off mowing the yard. Feeling all considerate, it is a Friday after all I, suggested a Tyvek suit or a cabana boy.

If she just wanted to stay clean, then the suit should work great.
With a handsome cabana boy to work the mower, she could sit on the porch and have her favorite beverage.

Then she was attacked in her own home, by vicious little creatures.

For those of you fortunate enough to have never encountered the painful little creatures, count yourself lucky. The rest of you understand the primitive need to squish them all. If you’d like to know more about fire ants check out the Wikipedia article on Fire Ants If you’d like to see them in action, there is a short video below.

Then we had a slight burst of misunderstanding between me @donthorp, @Natallini, and @eeUS

And then the Serendipitous tweet.

Trust me we’re getting there. My first thought, obviously, was Google. Surely someone out there has fire ant proof suits; but sadly, I couldn’t find one. I did find a patent entitled Insect resistant geotextile. For the very curious among you it’s actually interesting how they tested for insect resistance, so give it a quick scan. The connection to this story is provided in the following quote.

EXAMPLE I

[0034] An extruded nonwoven, such as Tyvek® was used to form a bag which was sealed to prevent the ants escape. The ants penetrated the extruded nonwoven within two (2) hours.

Although it only gives her a two hour window to escape, that should be sufficient if she also tapes the cuffs.

Now you’re wondering why Grizzlies. Occasionally we’re granted a Google gift during a search that provides fodder for posts such as this. I originally searched for ant proof suit. Lost in the search euphoria, I didn’t save the set of keywords brought me to this, but here is the video that brought the laughter.

There is just something about the testing of that grizzly proof suit that brought me to tears. My first thought was, “That’s a whole lot of Mondays”.

Some of you may have recognized the source immediately, but I had to research to discover that the footage comes from a movie, available on Amazon, entitled Project Grizzly by Troy Hurtubise. It documents “Hurtubise’s diligent work to improve his homemade “grizzly-proof” suit of armour, his efforts to test its resilience, and his forays into the Rockies to track down the grizzlies he dreams of meeting.”

I really don’t know if the grizzly suit is fire ant proof or not, but I’m convinced that the testing of the suit for use with fire ants would provide hours of painful video.

The shower has been draining slowly for a few days. On her way to work this morning, Laura called to remind me to pour Drano down the shower drain. Having a little extra energy this morning, I decided to go the extra mile and see if I could clean it by hand before using chemicals. That way, the Drano would be much more effective and have much less work to do.

Click for Larger Image

I’ve wondered for years how the drain cover stays in place, but I never bothered to actually look. On close inspection there seemed to be four tabs holding it in place, so a little pressure and it popped right out. If you look closely, you’ll see a little bump on the tab that helps keep it below the rim.

After successfully pulling the cover off, I peered into the drain and was greeted by a glob of stuff that honestly, was probably alive. Reaching in the drain, I SLOWLY pulled and pulled and pulled, until finally with a soft plop, an ENTIRE ponytail looking creature was resting peacefully on the shower floor. Thankfully, it didn’t spring to life and attack.

For the squeamish among you, I won’t embed the pictures, but for the rest of you crazy people, head over to my SmugMug Gallery Drain Life.

Off and on all summer, we’ve been trying to figure out how to get Alex to school. He is attending The American University in Washington, DC and will be majoring in International Studies.

We had several options:

1. Drive and tour the eastern part of the US
2. Drive one-way and fly home
3. Have the Family fly out carrying some of his bags and have a mini-vacation in DC
4. Put Alex on the plane and say have fun

The last option may seem a little harsh for sending your child off to college, but we’ve had a couple of years to prepare. Alex attended the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science (TAMS) at the University of North Texas for his last two years of High School. The program is a residence program where kids can take college courses and earn their High School degree. This period allowed all of us to adjust to him being away from home, but not so far that we couldn’t meet up on a whim.

Soon after he graduated, we put him on a plane for summer school in Guadalajara, Jalisco Mexico at the Universidad de Guadalajara CEPE. He took a couple of courses and was able to tour the region where he took many interesting photos. All of Alex’s photos are available on his SmugMug account. He may have visited other places, but I do know he went to Puerto Vallarta, Guanajuato, and Zapopan a suburb of Guadalajara. One of the messages from him during the trip informed us that Guanajuato would be a great place for us to live if we ever do decide to retire in Mexico.

After he came back from Mexico, he hung out with us for a while before taking a driving tour of the Western US. I have yet to go through all of the photos of ‘Road Trip 08′, but it looks like they had a great time. The trip started in Jackson Hole, WY where his friend Laura picked him up from the airport and ended in Corpus Christi, TX at Laura’s house.

Alex came back in time to get off the bus from Corpus to help us load a U-Haul trailer full of stuff to transport to Tulsa where we exchanged it for other stuff, to bring back to Texas. I found out that he’d had maybe one hour of sleep since leaving Corpus after he learned of the Canadian bus incident; after the trip had started. He helped us prepare for the garage sale before packing his things for school. He had whittled things down before he left for Mexico, but he was able to make another pass through to provide more fodder for the sale.

I’ve been telling a good friend of mine for weeks, that we were probably going to just send Alex to school because he didn’t have enough stuff for us to need to drive. Here’s the proof.

His total belongings amounted to:

1. 3 boxes shipped via UPS ($88 ground, 2 day air was $425, um no thanks)
2. backpack (not shown)
3. 2 bags with him on the plane ($40 in excess baggage fees)

Sorry for the poor images (silly camera on phone), but I think it shows that it really was minimal.

So this morning at 5:30 AM, Alex and I headed to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport so that he could catch his 7:20 AM plane to DC. We walked in, I paid for the extra baggage, $40, gave him a hug and headed back to open the garage sale.

When I got home, I realized he had forgotten the tracking information for the boxes. So I typed them up and shipped him a quick email. Then to let me know when they arrived, I added them to TrackThis so that I would be notified on my Twitter account when the packages arrived.

A few hours later, at approximately 10:00 AM CDT, I sent this tweet.

At 10:10 AM CDT, I received this text from Alex

Just touched down

At 11:36 AM CDT, he announced his arrival at his room, which he’s sharing with two others.

…only two desks.

At 1:46 PM CDT, I knew everything was ok, because I was informed I owed him money.

School supplies were 50 … showers are good..better than our house

At 1:53 PM CDT, I received an email, that told me that he was settled in and rarin to go.

… edited …
Now I’m off to look into getting my iphone (:

Hopefully soon, I’ll get the text or phone call from said iPhone to prove that everything turned out as expected. Otherwise, he’ll need money at some point, then I’ll hear from him.

One of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older is that I try and convert as many things to habits as possible so that I’m not continuously making small decisions. Conventions help make habits efficient. For example, in our house, coffee cups are stored upside down in the cupboard. Habits are also suppose to make pre-caffeine rituals safer, because, let’s face it, anything pre-caffeine for most of us is just outright dangerous.

We don’t brew pots of coffee in our house because Laura and I are the only coffee drinkers and we prefer slightly different coffee. For years now, we’ve used the Flavia beverage system which produces reasonable coffee by the cup. The designers of this system must have had to use their own product in a pre-caffeinated state because it does have a nifty feature, the overflow reservoir.

Good product design helps minimize the damage when habit and convention fail.

Making coffee in the morning is a habit with several simple steps:

1. Open door of Flavia to inform it to heat the water.
2. Select your coffee-pack from the carousel. My favorite, Intense Dark Roast.
3. Insert coffee-pack into machine, close door.
4. Select mug, invert, and place on brewing platform under dispenser.
5. Push brew button
6. Wait 15 seconds or so
7. Open door, remove used coffee-pack, and dispose in trash
8. Close door, take coffee in cup somewhere safe to drink

Product Safety Note: Performing any task without caffeine is not recommended.

Imagine you have house guests sleeping on the couch and you don’t want to wake them up by turning on the lights. Also consider that you might have ruined your night vision by checking email, twitter, or some other service before remembering coffee. Let’s see how this goes.

• Step 1, check
• Step 2, wait, can’t see, ah, use blue LEDs on top of coffee maker to read labels, check
• Step 3, check, easily done by touch
• Step 4, check, coffee cups are right above coffee maker, easily done by touch, with some help from blue LEDs
• Step 5, check, button is illuminated, and we know it’s location by heart
• Step 6, check, we know noise machine makes when coffee has finished brewing, it’s Pavlovian
• Step 7, check, easily performed by touch
• Step 8, check, WAIT, WTH, sound of coffee splashing on floor, instigate corrective action ASAP

So, at this point, I … oops, YOU, go into damage recovery mode grab paper towels and start cleaning up the floor and the counter, by touch of course. Your brain registers that you spilled coffee, but there is not enough to account for all of the liquid that’s suppose to be in the cup. Slowing down, you reach over to the coffee cup, and, by touch, conclude that you put the cup on the beverage platform upside down. Convention and habit FAIL. That’s also when you remember that there is a small reservoir on the beverage platform and thank the designers.

New habit, when making coffee in the dark, check cup orientation, by touch before Step 5.

I have to admit, I was part of the problem, but it is very hard to resist coming to the aid of another parent when challenged by a teenager. I woke up this morning and saw this tweet which I’ve edited to remove the actual phone number.

T+0h leolaporte My son Hank doesn’t believe I have so many followers. He says text him if you follow me here. 707 XXX-YYYY. Let’s see how many msgs he gets.

Not long after, this tweet appeared.

T+0h leolaporte OK that was a really bad idea.

I woke up in this period and couldn’t help but send my own text message to poor Hank. Telling him in fact that I did follow his dad on twitter.

Several hours later.

T+10h leolaporte Boy it sure is hard deleting old tweets. Pownce and Jaiku delete them right away. Guess Hank’s phone will be unusable today.

The damage assessment will come.

T+11h leolaporte I won’t know the total number of text messages Hank received until I get the bill, but it was in the thousands. He had to turn off the phone

And finally,

T+11h leolaporte I DDoSed my own son.

While it may be a little extreme you can’t help but cheer just a little. How many times are parents challenged with no real way to prove a child wrong. Will it prevent Hank from challenging Dad in the future, probably not, he is a teenager after all. Will it make him think twice, just maybe.

Oh and the score in the title, the number of Twitter users following Leo that had the opportunity to send a nice encouraging text to Hank.

My daughter and her friend Elana have alter egos — Sasha and Svetlana. For weeks they’ve been talking about recording videos about their “adventures”. For some reason, tonight was the night for filming episode 1, “Sasha and Svetlana - Cooking Like Soviets in Your Kitchen”.

I’m always amazed at their creativity and ability to work on a shoestring. Oh, and Alex stars as “Vladimir”, he’s critical to the film.

Children are the spice of life.

While attending my youngest sister’s baby shower in Tulsa, Allison was able to capture this priceless video of my nephew trying to say “bridge”.

It’s hard to imagine anyone approving this product, but then again, it happened. How many children are going to scream at the site of Sponge Bob in the future. To help complete the traumatization of America, they should also release a Krusty the Clown probe as well.

Found on Boing Boing

It was a YouTube morning.

For all you nerds out there

• 1-900-NERD-GIRL
• Star Wars according to a 3 year old

In celebration of Jimmy Kimmel’s 5th year on the air, his girlfriend gave him this video

• Sarah Silverman “I’m F**king Matt Damon” on Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy returns the favor in

• Jimmy Kimmel’s “I’m F*cking Ben Affleck”

On the weird side and soccer related

• The Jeannie Tate Show - Rob Riggle.

And finally in the priceless but lacking taste (couldn’t use the single word for lacking taste) department

• MasturDate - NSFW
• Sh*tfaced Shannon O’Malley’s Anti-Sobriety Kit - NSFW