HerdingChaos

Tonight while driving back from the baseball game Andrew was singing along with KT Tunstall’s Black Horse & The Cherry Tree.

Andrew sang, “Well my heart knows me better than I know myself.. So I’m gonna let it do all the toppings”

Just thought it was cute. I think he had ice cream on the brain.

Last night I downloaded the trial/demo for F.E.A.R. It is a first person shooter that has been out a while. While I was playing the game for the first time, in the dark, in a quiet house, I scared the everlivin’ crap out of myself. This game is spooky and it totally got me a couple of times.

We were out today getting lunch and doing some general shopping. I ran to Best Buy and left the fam in the car while I ducked in to buy the game. I was going to get the DVD version, but all they had was the CD version. No big deal. I buy the game and use my 12% off coupon that Becky found in the mail.

We get home and after playing with the kids a bit and installing all the stuff we bought at Home Depot I decided to start the install of the game. I was not planning on playing it until the kids went to bed, but I did not want to spend my precious no-kid-time waiting for the 5 CD install to finish.

Well, probably because of some stupid copy protection Disk 2 has a read error of a very strange type. I looked online and sure enough there are about a gabillizion people with the exact same problem on the exact same file. So tomorrow I will try and exchange of the media. I already sent a problem report to the game company. *sigh*

If I downloaded a cracked version on a bitttorrent network I bet it would work fine…. The whole “treat everyone like a criminal” mentality that has infected all of the entertainment industry is pissing me off. I don’t download movies from the net. In fact I have a bunch of cheap DVD’s I bought at Sam’s Club yesterday sitting in the next room. Does anyone else (that is not downloading movies) get a little offended that there is a “pirating is stealing commercial” at the front of most DVD’s? And you cannot skip over them (well, unless you hack your DVD player). Between coding anti-piracy crap on the DVD’s so you cannot skip it, and making many games refuse to run if you have CD burning software or virtual drive software loaded is nothing short of calling me a criminal right after I have given them money. I bet none of the people who download movies on the net have to watch that anti-pirate commercial. Simple rule of selling to the consumer: If you degrade the customer experience and there is an alternative, then you will lose.

Last night we were late getting started with our nightly family walk around the neighborhood. I worked a bit late and the kids all needed baths, so we didn’t leave the house until close to 9pm.

The walk we take is around 1.7 miles and is just a big loop through the not-very-busy neighborhood streets. Normally we take a double stroller and Loren rides most of the way and the other two kids sometimes ride and sometimes walk.

Last night it was already starting to get dark when we left. Loren wanted to walk as soon as we left the house and we let her. Loren is a pretty slow walker but she did a great job and ended up walking around 1.5 miles. By this time it was quite dark since 1.5 miles took her around 50 min. Around the time we put Loren into the stroller I almost ran over a toad with the stroller.

Andrew picked up said toad and it pooped on him. Then both he and Tracy pet the toad and in general had a good time. Becky wanted to show Loren the toad so she picked it up and the toad peed on her. After yelling “Ewwwwwww” Bec put the toad in the second seat of the double stroller and let Loren touch it. Everytime Loren touched the top of the toad she would scream-giggle-shake. The scream-giggle-shake is difficult to describe without a video, but needless to say she really had a fun time playing with her first toad. Loren’s reaction was then providing entertainment for the rest of the family.

This whole time the dog was not sure what to do with the toad. There was a close call. We had finished playing with the toad and placed him in the grass on the side of the road to which he was headed. We were securing the kids back in the stroller and did not realize that the dog’s leash gave him enough distance for him to get to the toad. I shined the flashlight on the toad and the dog was standing very still with his nose on the toad and he looked like he might eat the poor thing at any second. But we were lucky and he decided to leave it alone.

While I was out on vacation the scooter dealer called and said they could not reproduce the problem I had. Once I got back from vacation I went a picked it up. It rained the next few days, and then I flew out to San Jose for work. Yesterday was the first time I was able to ride it since I got it back from the dealer. The dealer was right and the problem is not there anymore. However, I think the top speed dropped 2 mph. I am not sure if the speed will come back up after I ride a few times and the batteries get a few cycles on them, but I rode to work and back on Friday and everything was fine. I guess it could be I gained enough weight on vacation that it dropped the top speed 2 mph…

I am not sure how long it has been but I am sure it is well over a year since we moved the office to the front room and left the downstairs master bedroom open for the kids playroom. When I moved all my computers I had this grand plan of everything having a place and everything looking neat (the wires mostly). I bought a spool of Velcro to tie up the wires and installed some new shelves in the new office. Well, tonight I finally cleaned the stack of crap that I never really found a place in the new office. I threw most of it out. I found the spool of Velcro and I am contemplating actually cleaning up the wires now that I can see them again.

I feel a nice sense of accomplishment for getting all the crap cleaned up. It only took me a few hours and now I wish I had spent the time to do it a year or more ago.

We have seats at the local AAA ball club along the third base line for all of the Friday night home games. My parents have the same package and they are one row in front of us.
Two weeks ago Andrew and Tracy and my dad went to the rock climbing wall. Andrew climbed a few feet up and came back down. Tracy was not allowed to go because she was wearing a dress. Dad told her to make sure and have shorts on for the next game.

All this week Tracy kept telling us that she had to wear shorts to the game. We dressed her in shorts and around the 7th inning dad took the kids over to the wall. Tracy started climbing and from our seats we could see her going up. She went all the way to the top and rang the bell!! She’s only 4! Dad has a picture from his phone, I will try and get a copy of it and post it here.

So tonight on the way to a friend’s house the scooter started acting flaky. It would only go 14 mph and the throttle control was acting strange. I have loaded it in a truck for a trip to the dealer tomorrow but I am really bummed. It only has 130 miles on it.

Today Tracy was playing with a viewmaster when I got home. She was flipping the disks in and out and one of the disks had a huge picture of Dora on it. Loren saw Dora and got all excited and said “DDDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” as she pointed to the disk. I borrowed the viewmaster from Tracy and popped in the Dora disk. Then I chose the frame that showed Dora the clearest in the viewmaster. Then I held the viewmaster up to her eyes. She got excited when she saw Dora and kind of jumped. Then she moved her hands up and pushed the viewmaster to the side and looked around for Dora. She did this several times. It was very cute.

I subscribe to MAKE magazine and I love it. In Vol 5 they had an article about how to make your own electric car by using an old econo-box from a junkyard and replacing the engine with a forklift electric motor, batteries, and a controller/charger. Building my own electric car sounded like fun, but I don’t really have the time or the money ($5000 for a good set of batteries and the charger/controller). But I did enjoy looking around a bit on line at the electric vehicle enthusiasts.

While poking around I ran across electric bikes, electric scooters and electric mopeds. I didn’t really think I wanted one but I thought it might be fun to look at a few. I found a local dealer for electric bikes/scooter/mopeds and decided to take a lunch break and check it out.

I rode about 5 different types bikes and when I rode the eGo Cycle 2 LX I really enjoyed myself. It will go around 20 miles at 24 mph with each charge. Then I started thinking about my commute and most of the trips I currently take by car. I only work around 5.5 miles from home, my brother lives around 2.5 miles away, many of my friends live within 5-6 miles, and I had a total blast riding the scooter. So I bought one. I have been riding it to work since I got it. I have also gone to my brother’s place a few times, shopping at Wal-mart, to visit a friend a few times, shopping at the local bike shop, and out to the corner store. I have put around 100 miles on it already and I have only had it for around 7 days (that I have been in town).

I have only driven my convertible to the airport since I got the scooter. I am thinking about selling the convertible. Charging the bike cost around 8 cents if it is fully drained. If I do sell the convertible, then I figure I will save around $40-50 bucks a month in gas, insurance, registration, and service for the car.

The Harley riders that pull up behind me at lights laugh at me. Some of the people at work laugh, and some think it is cool. I don’t really care what they think. I know I am a nerd and I am okay with that. I enjoy riding to work and being outside. The scooter is very quiet so the only noise I hear is the wind at I cut through it at a staggering 24mph.

Loren has broken both arms at separate times. The right arm first above the elbow and then the left across both the ulna and radius. We will not be getting the parents of the year award. Actually, I am a bit surprised CPS has not been by to ask a few questions. Both of the breaks happened because she fell from someplace that she climbed onto. Our current theory is that she sees the older kids doing things and wants to keep up. I really don’t care about the reason… I just want her to stop falling and hurting herself. I felt like I was going to throw up both times that I found out she had broken her arm. I think her broken arm is bothering mom and dad more than her. She seems totally fine most of the day. At night she is a bit more restless, but that could be the cast, or teeth, or gas or God knows what else. The real bummer is that she broke them about a month apart and she is still in the cast for the second arm. I suppose it could have been worse and they both could have been in casts at the same time.

We did buy a cast water bag vacuum thingie. It allows Loren to swim and play in the bath and keep her cast dry. It is a bit of a pain because you have to keep a close eye on her bag to make sure the vacuum is holding, but it beats trying to hold her back from a bath or swimming.