Soccer Malpractice

Summer soccer season is in full swing, and Brandon was saved from team-less-ness by a Dad who couldn't say no. After hearing that the little guy might not get to play, I called the sports director at the YMCA who confirmed that, yes, in fact, all the teams in his division were full. Then I learned how most parents become coaches: "I might be able to find him a spot if you'd be willing to coach." Not exactly the magic words (does it sound a little like extortion to you too?), but if it means my kid gets to channel his energy in a way that doesn't involve beating his sister up with a Batman sword, I'm game.

Since I teach kids in Brandon's age group (3-5) at church (but only 6 of them, and in an enclosed area), I had some inklings as to how this might go. The days leading up to the first practice were a crescendo of angst until I found myself surrounded by 14 busy kids who, like me, really had only a vague idea about what we were supposed to be doing.

I should mention that I played soccer for 12 years, and I even coached a 10-and-under team before. I've known the rules for as long as I can remember, and the U-10 kids I coached had been playing for 4 years before I even met them. Besides the casual questions and informal kicking-around we've done as a family in the backyard, I never really thought about how to explain the game of soccer to people, let alone short people with the combined attention span of a -- "I hear a police car!"

But I didn't even get to soccer hardly. Instead, I was trying to think of new ways to say "get into a circle" or "get into 2 straight lines". Finally, I resorted to the photographer technique by moving my little action figure soccer kids: "You. Stand right here. Good. Don't move. Now you. Stand right here. Don't move. Nobody move. I will move you. Okay, you (etc...)". Once I got them all in line, I was almost tempted to prompt: "Say cheese!" And in retrospect, I shoud have really taken a picture. Proof that I had actually accomplished something in our first practice, never mind how un-soccer-like it was. (note to self: more moving around with the ball, less standing around without it).

Despite the train wreck, we did manage to clock 41 full minutes of soccer (and coaching) practice, if you count the 10+ minutes of "water breaks". After the dust settled, a few of the parents (probably the ones who could say no) offered their obligatory, but still much appreciated, "Thanks, Coach!"

And then there's the first game... Time to get pumped up!

survivor - eye of the tiger

Al Gore vs. The Unabomber

Somebody came up with a quiz to see if you can tell the difference between the writing of Al Gore and the Unabomber Manifesto. I didn't do any better than pure chance, but that's probably a reflection of how much I know about both. How did you do?

Now for the bonus question: Is this a swipe at Al Gore? Or sympathy for the Unabomber? Either way, it's a kinda funny ... and a little eerie.

Music Reviews: MASHUP MANIA!

I love music, and I have my favorites. But even with 25 gigabytes of music archives, I still manage to get bored with it all sometimes. So I started listening to TOP 40 radio again (online radio, anyway), which immediately required cataloging the songs my kids would not ever be allowed to listen to (and I am really starting to sound like my dad!). It didn't take long for me to figure out the up-and-coming top 5 songs, because I got to hear them played at least once-per-hour on virtually any online top 40 station. So guess what. I got bored with top 40 radio, but now that I've listened to it for a couple of weeks straight, I'm good for another 6 months.

Usually, after my mainstream music binges, I withdraw on a quest to find the best music-you've-never-heard. Most recently, I've re-discovered the Mashups scene: for people who don't enjoy a good song. They enjoy 2 (or more) good songs at the same time! Basically, mashup magicians throw a couple of pop (or classic) tracks into a blender to make entirely new musical flavors.

Anyway, here's are a few good ones (hope the links work)

1. Boulevard of Broken Songs (Oasis vs. Green Day)
2. Get This Party Started (Pink vs. ELO)
3. Are You Gonna Be My Animal? (Muppets vs. Jet)

What will your verse be?

O ME! O life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew'd,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring-What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.
That you are here-that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

We're Sorry: Telephone Company Apologies

One of my more quirky pastimes is a little game called "phone scanning". It's sort of like radio frequency scanning for interesting police/fire/ambulance traffic, which is probably only slightly less nerdy than phone scanning. So if you're still not with me, it's also a lot like surfing the net or channel surfing.

Anyway, the point is that some people like searching for cool web pages, I like to search for cool phone numbers. In the U.S., phone numbers are 10 digits NXX-PRE-XXXX. The first 3 numbers (NXX) make up the area code; the next 3 (PRE) are the local exchange or prefix; and the last 4 digits are technically referred to as "therestofthenumber". Now with 10000 numbers per prefix, your thinking "what a waste of time". And I would say something like "too-shay". I would also say that phone companies have made it pretty easy to find interesting phone numbers because they set aside a block of numbers in each exchange. This is usually in the first or last 100 number of an exchange (0000-0100 or 9900-9999).

So what can you find? Mostly telephone company apologies (Doo-Daa-Dee! We're sorry! Blablabla...). Great to give to people you don't really want to have your number (think webpages and "super saver" shopper card applications). There are also some telco test numbers that can be used to test homemade telephone interface equipment, like phone patches. But mostly they're just for "gee isn't that cool". Without further ado, here are some of the lastest finds (*** are my favs).

509-946-0040 - "Due to telephone company facility trouble..."
509-946-0017 - ***"Your line has been temporarily disconnected..."
509-946-0041 - "Your call did not go through"
509-946-0013 - "We cannot process your custom calling request..."
509-946-0043 - ***"The call you have made requires a coin deposit..."
509-946-0074 - "Your presubscribed or dialed long distance company no longer..."
509-946-0072 - "It is not necessary to dial a 1 or 0..."
509-946-0075 - "A long distance company access code is required..."
509-946-0032 - 1000 Hz test tone
817-284-7847 - 300-3000 Hz tone sweep (thanks to AOH)

Science Project: Rocketry

Fran and Ammon stopped by for a few days and we had a great time launching Ammon's new rocket a few times. If you're like me, you're wondering "How fast does a model rocket go, anyway?"

Take a look at it in action:



This is from about 25 yards away. We don't get to see the whole flight, but we get enough of it to estimate its terminal velocity. Using a program out of Kenyon College, I tracked its motion frame-by-frame.

I calibrated the distances in the video with the height of my brother-in-law. Ammon is ~68 inches tall, which makes him about 13 pixels tall at 25 yards.

The green "plusses" in the frame on the right are the data points I used to figure out the terminal velocity of the rocket:

A couple of conclusions from this:
1. That max speed is 38 meters per second, or about 90 miles an hour!
2. Think I'm just too white and nerdy.

Book Report: Punished by Rewards

I haven't written a book report in a long time, but I've been reading a lot lately, and sometimes it's hard to process and internalize a good book without doing something with it. So indulge me and if you actually read the book, let me know what you think!

Why we do what we do is complicated. How we get people to do what we want them to do is a lot less complicated. People with kids know that one way to get what you want out of them: reward them for good behavior and punish them for bad. But does this approach actually work? Alfie Kohn challenges this conventional wisdom about motivation at home, in school, and in the workplace in his 1993 book “Punished by Rewards”.

In dealing with my kids, I’ve thought about punishment and spanking in particular, and I’ve never personally been able to justify physical violence disguised as teaching. Rewards, on the other hand, are just the opposite, right? Instead of focusing on bad behavior, rewards put the emphasis on good behavior and encourage it with incentives. But Kohn points out that ultimately punishments and rewards are not opposites because they are both used to manipulate behavior artificially. This idea has sort of an ominous “Brave New World” feel to it, that the way to make people “good” is to manipulate them into doing what you want. The problem with this is that when I’m not around to manipulate anymore, then who’s going to keep them in line. Really, at the end of the day I don’t want my kids doing things or not doing things because something artificial will happen to them, good or bad.

Even more important, using rewards starts looking at things kids want not in terms of how much they enjoy them, but how they can be exploited as rewards. And I don’t want to make things that my kids are entitled to (like my love and attention, for example) to be dangled in front of their faces and made conditional “rewards” for good behavior. Ultimately, I want them to be good people because it’s the right thing to do, and because they’ll be happy.

But what really put me over the edge with rewards is that there is dramatic evidence, and lots of it, that using external (extrinsic, they call them) motivators has a lot of negative side effects, such as killing creativity and genuine interest. In one example, young writers who spent 5 minutes thinking about the kind of rewards they were promised for their work produced less creative work than students not encouraged to think about these things. In another study, 51 preschoolers were given magic markers to draw pictures. Some were told that if they drew pictures they would get a special certificate decorated with a red ribbon and a gold star. After a week or two, those given the incentive were less interested than the other kids. What’s more, these observations aren’t limited to kids. College students and workers in the workplace are subject to similar effects when controlled by external rewards, including grades and financial incentives.

There are a few things that rubbed me the wrong way about the book, like lumping “positive reinforcement” style parents in with totalitarian punisher-parents. I'm still convinced that using rewards to influence behavior is a lot better than beating your kids into submission (a sad situation for everyone involved), even though both only give you temporary obedience. And his unrelenting disapproval of rewards and punishment made me sure that this guy has never potty-trained a 3-year-old or seen a kid smack another kid for no obvious reason. This made me skeptical of any advice he had about parenting small children. But my measure of a good book isn’t how much I agree with it, but how much it makes me think. Clearly there are times that rewards and punishments are appropriate, but the in-your-face artificial consequences world we have a tendency to create puts emphasis on administering "consequences" (good or bad) and less on learning to make good choices. This book made me think a lot about how we motivate people (or create conditions that foster authentic motivation), and how we motivate ourselves.

Brandon on Manhood

Brandon asked me today if I'd cut his hair. He says it's getting long like Kelsie's. I can understand that. He's a boy and he shouldn't have girl hair. But Brandon corrected me:

"I'm not a BOY!" he said.

"Oh? What are you then..." (please don't say a little girl...)

"I'm a MAN!" he bragged.

"You're a man?"

"Yeah! I'm a man!" he confirmed, so pleased that I was starting to understand.

"When did you become a man?" I asked, truly interested.

"When we had the baby, then I'm a man."

There you have it. Having a baby makes a man out of you...and your son.

And so Brandon and I had our first man-to-man talk.

Things that go "bump" in the night.

I came across a video this past week describing how to make a little toy called a "bump key." It's supposed to be a super lock pick that opens any lock that it fits into. I'm pretty skeptical about these kind of things, so I had to try it out. I mean, if this is for real, then I'm going to have to do more than remember to lock the doors at night.

After making 3 of these, I finally got one to work. I think it's time to install some chain locks...

Ringtone Junky

Ronni and I "upgraded" our cellphone plan to 2 phones and 1000 anytime minutes (only 200 of which get used...). The important thing to remember is that we have two phones: Ronni's phone, and the "experimental" phone.

Nokia does't have hardly ANY documentation about all the cool things you can do with the 6101 (or 6103 or any other phone, really), so I had to play "phone hacker" with it.

What Nokia doesn't tell you is that you can send MORE than just pictures to your phone. Supposedy, you can also send midi ringtone files (*.mid) and MP3's! This past weekend, I figured out how to do it. We've got T-Mobile, so if you've got something different, you'll need to figure out how to send yourself email messages to your phone. Check your provider's FAQ on their website for help. For T-Mobile and a Nokia 6101 or 6103:

1. Compose an email to yourself (PHONENUMBER@tmomail.net).
2. Attach the files you want to send (*.gif, *.mp3, *.mid).
- keep the attachments down to 1 or 2, and the total email size <100kb. You can send up to 300kb messages, but the longer the message is, the lower the chance of it actually getting sent to your phone.
3. Wait for message (could take up to an hour. Anything longer than that, and you'd better try again).
4. When it comes, open it and then click "options" (left button).
5. For *.mp3's:
select "Objects"
select and open the file you sent yourself
select "options" and then "Save"
save the file in the "Tones" directory
6. For *.mid:
click "options"
select "save sound clip"
save it in the "Tones" directory

If all went well, you should be able to set your own ringtone. You can also send yourself any picture file <300k to set as a background.

Okay... So it sounds lke a lot of work, but now you can import your OWN unique ringtones, instead of the videogame music the phone comes with. Also, it only costs a quarter to send a multimedia message, instead of $2.99 for each lame ringtone from t-zones.

Some other tips:
* remember to keep attachments <100k (for t-mobile anyway).
* compatiblity is a fuzzy issue. Sometimes even small files won't work (it gives you a corrupt file error). I'm working on some ways around this. For right now, if one file doesn't work, just try another one...
* For regular *.mid files of your favorite music, check out free-midi or Attilla's Punk Rock MIDI.
* Email me or leave comments with questions.

"Little boys should never be made to go to bed. They always wake up a day older."

My 3-year-old son had a hard time sitting with his Primary class at church on Sunday. I was right in the middle of one of my best "you can do it" speeches encouraging him to hold back the tears and sit by his teacher, when he tells me (in between sobs) the one thing I coudn't resist: "Dad (sob) I have to sit by you (sob) because I...love...you...so...much..."

Yep, he sat by me. The CIA should use this kid to break captured spies, because there is no resisting a kid like that!

Night of the Comet

This past weekend, we caught a glimpse of Comet McNaught. I actually captured a picture with our Kodak Easyshare:


You can't really see it there, but we did. Fortunately, our 3.1 megapixel camera was able to catch something even *we* couldn't see. Zooming in, I was surprised to see not one, but *3* distinct comets. See for yourself:


We are not alone! Wow!

Redd Kross: Is there anybody out there?

So 13 milion people have a blog, and 39 million people say that they read blogs. That's an average of 3 readers per blog. That's also highy optimistic, I think.

My first punk rock album was a copy of a copy of a copy of "Posh Hits" featuring the destructive guitar stylings of The Black Nuns, TSOL, Dead Kennedy's, Black Flag, and one of my personal favorites Red Cross, who had to change their name to Redd Kross after a company that claims to save lives sued the teenagers who pretty much invented surf punk. Anyway, check out the interview (and some GREAT music) with Steven McDonald. Annette's Got the Hits! Their later stuff is very different, getting into a post-Nirvana sound in Jimmy's Fantasy. Steve McDonald, the bassist, went on to record much-needed bass tracks for the White Stripes and released Redd Blood Cells on the internet. I'm still trying to track down the original mp3's. Let me know where to find them!

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately...

I haven't finished the Old Testament, but I finally finished Walden. I got it for Christmas last year, and I've slowly been plugging along. It got a lot easier once I decided to skip all the Winter and Spring chapters (snore!). Now I need to find a way to suck the marrow out of life.

Yesterday I watched other people live their dreams on TV. It was the Biggest Loser finale. So maybe it was more of other people reclaiming their dreams rather than living them. It was really inspiring to see these people so focused and driven towards something that would change their lives forever. Not everyone can lose 50% of their body weight to change their life in a good way, but it made me think what ONE thing I could change about my life to be a better person.

And maybe the real question is, if I knew what that ONE thing is that would change my life for the better, would I have the courage and will to do it? Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure it's not reading the whole old testament.

What's the Point?

Every once in a while I get a little philosophical. Not in an Aristotle vs. Socrates way, since I'm not intellectually inclined enough to even tell the difference between the two. No, this philisophical brooding is more in a "What's the point?" kinda way. Don't get me wrong. I have definite purpose and meaning in my life. Maybe it's the vision of that eternal goal that makes the day-to-day things seem so mundane. I can capture the big picture, but connecting the dots between the little things and what really matters in life that I sometimes don't get.

I mean, what in the world does doing the dishes have to do with self-actualization anyway? And when you add picking up after the kids (or worse, trying to get them to pick up after themselves), taking out the trash, and clearing off that clutter-sink that we sometimes call a "counter-top", it can get hard to see which part of Paradise these things contribute to.

Maybe its an acute case of abrupt acuity, the unpleasant side-effect from watching too much TV, and now I'm compensating for the braincells I lost by making the rest of them work harder. More likely (and less self-incriminatingly), my pensive preoccupation is because my life is in a transition state, which is probably the most exciting (and painful, if your a molecule) part of a reaction coordinate: it only lasts for an instant, but that's where all the action is! Either way, I don't feel like I've earned my sleep, so I'm up past my bedtime pondering the mysteries of the mundane and the life clutter that needs to be put back neatly on the shelf of eternal perspective.

The obvious answer is that some of these seemingly menial bothers are building perhaps the most important Paradise of all: the one I'm living in right now. But nobody wants to live in a landfill, so building my heaven on earth is going to require, among other things, loading the dishwasher, teaching the kids to clean-up after themselves, cooking meals ... and occasionally watching a little TV.

MUSIC

I was about to write about how much I get sick of listening to the same 10 songs on the radio. Truth is, I haven't actually listened to top 40 radio for a long time. Usually, I listen to CDs. I get to listen to what I want, when I want. Here are a couple of my current favorite bands (in no particular order):

1. Tegan and Sara
2. Johnny Cash
3. The Format
4. New Order
5. Styx
6. Reel Big Fish
7. Descendents
8. Weezer
9. They Might Be Giants
10. The Best of Bootie

He's on his way to the store...

H-Street sponsored a guy named Matt Hensley who was a star of the late 80s video "Shackle Me Not!" Old school street skating at its best! What's he up to now?

TINA YOU FAT LARD!

I got a job. In the relocation package it says that they will pay to move 2 household pets, but not non-household animals such as "horses, sheep, pigs, llamas, etc."

Llamas? I can't help but think that someone, at some point, has actually tried to have this company pay to move their llamas. Who has llamas anyway?

to many flanks in your analogies

Quick story about the name of the blog. It's more of an aspiration than a declaration. It comes from a fIREHOSE song I first heard on a skate video from nineteen eighty something. Yeah, I was/am a skater. Not professionally. I saw Hokus Pokus by H-street in the early nineties and was blown away ... in a bad way. When I saw what they could do, I realized I'd never be a professional skateboarder, and decided I'd better learn some skills. I also liked lighting things on fire, which led me to chemistry. I took a couple of chemistry classes in high school. I really liked it, and I was good at it, which was a nice combination. Secretly, I was motivated by a desire to light things on fire faster and in more creative ways.

Fast forward a few years, and I was able to avoid a life of crime and do something positive with my life. I told my high school chem teacher I was going to study chemistry in graduate school and he tried to talk me out of it. "You don't want to be a chemist. You wanna do something else, like be a helicopter pilot!" So much for encouragement. After a couple of years of grad school, I was wishing I took his advice. But I plugged through it, got a few publications and some letters after my name, and now I'm looking for a job.

I left something out. Family. I got married. Best thing I've ever done. And I have two kids. They're great. If you have kids, you know what I mean. A lot of trouble and headache, but a lot of fun and family just has a way of bringing you back to earth and reminding you what's important in life.

The long and short of it is: life is good. Did american eagle actually trademark that sentence? Gotta go to bed or life is NOT going to be good tomorrow!