Snap out of it

I've been feeling disconnected lately--and I need to snap out of it. I can't let work freak me out and I just have to take every day as it comes.

Things seem odd as the seasons transition and as work shifts from one phase to another. But I am the master of myself.

(Sorry for the public pep talk, but I wanted to remind myself that my blog was still out there.)


-- Posted From My iPhone (so, I apologize in advance for any typos I missed)

Grace's Invention Convention

I mentioned that one of the cool things to happen to us in the last few weeks since I posted was Grace's experience with the elementary school's Invention Convention competition.

Think of the Invention Convention as a junior Science Fair. The rules were to state a problem and devise a solution to fix that problem. In the end you have to come up with a model prototype of your solution. It is a method of getting kids to think about how to go through some of the steps of the Scientific Method. Along with the model, each participating student has to keep a log of their thought process and invention steps.

Grace decided that her problem was how to fix yourself some food if both of your parents were sick. To that end she considered describing a food-making robot to fix her some food . . . but soon realized that a robot was too complicated and mostly unnecessary. Eventually she decided that devising a simpler machine that could automatically make macaroni and cheese was more possible and easier to model.

She called it The Mac. I help prod her with though-provoking questions and guided her in realizing when she was going down a difficult path. I did NOT do her work for her, but helped out when she asked and gave her advice on some model-building questions. (I also used the hot glue gun when making the model so she wouldn't burn herself.

Here she is on the day of the presentation dinner. We had built the model for The Mac over the previous weekend, taking a shoe box that was spray-painted gold. We glued a plastic spoon on the ride to act as the lever that would open the back access panel of the model to push out the completed bowl of macaroni and cheese. (Remember that this was non-functional and only representing what could happen.)

Here is a look down into the insides of the model. The plastic bowl at the bottom is filled with blue tissue paper which represents the water the macaroni would boil in. Once cooked, the plastic swirly spoons on the sides of the bowl (mechanical levers) would lilt the cooking water & noodles into the device on top of the photo. This mesh netting would catch the completed noodles while another straw underneath siphons away the cooking liquid.

The the noodles would be tilted back into the first bowl to be combined with the melted cheese and mixed. (We couldn't get into a lot of these mechanical details on the model, but there were described in a step-by-step sequence by Grace in her Invention Log.)

She had to describe all of this to the judges and answer questions about her model and her process during the school day. That night there was a catered dinner for all of the participants' families. The school principal announced the winners in each grade level (K-2, 3-4, 5) as well as the overall winner that would continue on with their invention to the district competition.

Grace won for her age group and we were very, very proud of her. I really like how she took on this challenge and did so much of the work and thoughts on her own. 

What's the absolute youngest age at which donning a moustache is acceptable? Or, are moustaches acceptable at any age?

Well, first of all, (in order to rile you up) I'm going to question the use of the word "don" as a description for growing a mustache. Is that some sort of unconscious slap against Italian mafiosos? Or something else?

Now . . .

are mustaches acceptable at any age? I'm inclined to say NO, because I look craptastic with only a mustache. I certainly could never pull off the majesty of the most glorious mustache of the last few decades (http://www.popcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/tom-selleck-magnum-pi-c10102602.jpg).

But there are people (http://www.worldbeardchampionships.com/) who are always ready to grow a mustache . . . and judging by the intricacy of some of them, they must have started at a very young age.

But they are biased. And I am not.

Mustaches in the extremely young is disturbing (http://a2.vox.com/6a00c225267957604a00cdf7eb631a094f-500pi) and unsettling. But even mustaches in the appropriately aged can be poor choices as well (http://tribunanba.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/morrison.jpg).

I guess in the end, you have to give something a try and see if it works for you. And, just as importantly, see if it works for others. If they say "No way, dude!" then maybe you need to rethink your facial hair choice.

Because while I don't normally advocate marching exclusively to the drum of people other than yourself . . . a seedy mustache is a danger to everyone. And it is everyone's responsibility to maintain beauty in the world.

Anyway, that's my answer.

Thanks for asking.

Ask me anything

The last few weeks

I know that I have a few FAQ questions that are waiting to be answered, and I will do so (thanks for the submissions!), but the last few weeks have been unusually "interesting," so I thought I would actually generate some content of my own by describing what I've been up to.

First, Grace and I were in a car accident two weeks ago. It was on a Monday night and I was taking her to her Daisy Scouts meeting a few blocks down from our house at the local elementary school. Lynda, Sarah, and Hannah were already on their way to church for one of the weekly Lenten book discussion meetings. As Grace and I were leaving our neighborhood and turning left at the four-way stop onto Spring Road, the offending driver came barrelling right at me. I saw her coming right at me in the corner of my left eye and had just enough to to think that she wasn't even attempting to slow down for the stop sign facing her. I stomped on the gas and attempted to avoid her, but it was too late. She came straight through the sign and hit straight into the driver's side passenger door--right where Grace was sitting behind me. The station wagon spun about 180 degrees and we ended up in the middle of the intersection facing diagonally into the lane that she had just driven through.

In those brief few seconds, I heard Grace scream and then it was over. Once the car stopped, I turned around to see how Grace was doing. She was shouting something like "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!" but then she stopped and heard me as I asked if she was okay. She was.

I tried to get out of the car, but I couldn't open my door. I crawled out of the passenger's side front door and tried to open Grace's door. But it was already crushed and the top of the door was sticking out of its frame. I went back around to the other side of the car, opened the door, and crawled inside to get a good look at Grace. I immediately saw that she had a small bump in the corner of her left eye and the beginnings of a bruise that was running down a streak on the side of her face. But she wasnt bleeding and it seemed that she was mostly okay.

I got out to survey the damage and try to figure what to do. And there was another bystander who stepped up and helped me keep calm and make sure that things were stable. It was really nice to have complete strangers take time out to help. We waited for the police to come and I finally located the offending driver's car off to the side, parked on the side of the road past where the accident originally occurred. The driver was staying in her car--either because she was simply waiting, or because she was worried about whether Grace had been injured, or I don't know what. But throughout the entire process of turning in information and talking to the police she stayed away. (It was probably precautionary, but I didn't blame her for staying away. It wasn't because I was mad. I just didn't know what to say to her and I was more worried about Grace. She remained lucid and calm throughout and I stopped thinking that she was injured. But I made sure that the arriving EMTs took some time to ask her questions and make sure there weren't any concussion problems.

Once all the paperwork was done, the tow truck was there to take the car away for evaluation and the policeman drove Grace and I back down the block to the house. I kept an eye on her for the rest of the night to make sure that she didn't pass out or anything that might indicate some concussion symptoms.

And after that it was the ordinary bureaucracy of determining what to do with the damaged wagon (it was determined to be totaled by the other insurance agency), finding a replacement vehicle, and figuring out how to pay for it. Most of this was done during Holy (Easter) Week, helped mightily by Lynda's dad. (Her parents were visiting during that time.) By the start of this past week, we had settled on replacing the station wagon with another (newer) minivan, figuring that our current minivan (main car) will probably also need replacing in the next few years so we'd have another one ready to roll by then. It is a Chrysler Town & Country and has a few nice features that wasn't featured in the Dodge Grand Caravan that we bought from the Thompsons a few years back . . . but still retains all the features we liked about that van.

I enjoy the time spent getting used to a new car, the new buttons, features, radio presets, and such. It is a prototypical "male" time for me and I do my best to live up to the expectation. The only problem is that all cars today--especially the more complicated ones--have HUGE key fobs that instantly make your keys into a snarled mess that reminds me of how girls use to gussy up their keys back when they were in 6th grade. (Something I never did as a 6th grade girl.) But, such is the technological life.

*****

For the past two-and-a-half days, I 've been traveling (as you might have surmised from my Twitter and Facebook posts). It's unusual for me to do that, so I enjoyed the difference. But I am glad to be home and even more glad to have a day off at the end of the week to close our my kids Spring Break. Next Monday everything resets back to normal and I dive headlong in my new work project.

I hope I am able to resurface sometime before Christmas.

There's Finally a Dock to Turn iPhones Into Corded Desk Phones [Retromodo]

At lunch a few months ago, my work colleagues and I were talking about how cell phones provide one distinct disadvantage with regards to old, corded phones. When you were angry at someone during a phone call, you could slam a corded phone back into the cradle and get two bits of satisfaction: 1. the person on the other end got an ear-full of "SLAM" and 2.) you got the tactile feeling of dissipating your anger.

With a clamshell cell phone you can only close the phone like a locket, missing the essential force and sound of an angry hang up. And with a fancy smart phone like the iPhone? Well . . . you'll just shatter the face and you'll have to face the reality of $$$ wasted and anger management classes needed.

Well, my friends and I decided to fix that. We were going to develop an iPhone app that allowed you to push a button that sent a loud noise to the person on the other end, giving them that SLAM they so richly deserve and it would also use the vibration feature of the cell phone to give you the satisfactory tactile feedback that you want on your end.

Great idea, right?

Well, it looks like we waited too long and someone beat us to a similar idea.

(Click on the post title to be take to a linked story describing the Desk Phone iPhone dock.)

[h/t to Gizmodo.com]