First things first - I know you want to know what happened in flag football yesterday. On offense, M had a reception for a first down (first down is when the team crosses the midfield line.) On defense he had one tackle, and deflected a pass, which eventually ended up in the hands of one of his teammates for an interception.
K isn't playing flag football, but he'll soon be starting soccer. He'll have the same coach as last year, and most of the same kids will be on the team. We're expecting this to be the year they really gel and start clobbering the other teams.
One of K's pastimes of late has been watching YouTube videos of people unwrapping packages of Pokemon cards. Pokemon cards come in packs like baseball cards, so you usually don't know what you're going to get. K likes watching other people unwrap a pack, then hold up each card to the camera and read the card and its primary features out loud. I try to keep up with my kids' interests, but I have to admit that this is not particularly exciting for me.
We had grill pizzas again last night, and tried two of them with Naan bread, a traditional Indian bread, as the crust. It was good, but not as flavorful as we were expecting, and it was much more fragile than the Boboli crusts we used for the boys' pizzas.
A few links follow:
Antique typewriters. Functional works of art.
Some computer images are being auctioned here. Use the previous and next links on the left side of the page to see more items being auctioned - lots of neat things.
If you’re like me, you always take your service monkey with you on flights. Here’s what to expect when your monkey goes through security.
I like Edward Tufte, as some of you know. Here is an article he wrote about someone else's graphics, which are a lot of fun to look at.
News from Ann Arbor
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"Mmmmm - Grill Pizza"
Yesterday, we made pizza on the grill. We had never done it before, but we figured it wouldn't be too hard. We all made our own personal-sized pizza using Boboli pizza crusts, and they turned out really well. Let me know if you want the recipe.
Flag Football
M had another successful flag football game this morning. On defense, he had two tackles, knocked down a pass intended for the player behind him, and ran a runner from the other team out of bounds. On offense, he had a reception in the end zone to score an extra point for the team. (Extra points in flag football, by rule, are always pass plays. There is no kicking. Teams can decide to go for one or two extra points after a touchdown; the line of scrimmage for the two-point try is about twice the distance from the end zone as that of the one-point try.) M's team won, 14-6. They now have two wins and one loss.
Links
This is a video of a new jet that can take off and land vertically, like a helicopter, only much, much, cooler.
A video of Mark Twain taken by Thomas Edison. - there's no sound, and I will have to take the person's word for it that it's Mark Twain. Sure looks like him.
One of the oddest headlines I've ever seen: "Woman suffers broken teeth in assault during puppy sale at Days Inn, Pittsfield police say" Puppy sale?
I have a coworker who has a tiny lounge chair that he sits his cell phone in when it's recharging. It looks like it's relaxing. There are a lot of neat little stands and "chairs" for phones, but this is my favorite so far.
"Mmmmm - Grill Pizza"
Yesterday, we made pizza on the grill. We had never done it before, but we figured it wouldn't be too hard. We all made our own personal-sized pizza using Boboli pizza crusts, and they turned out really well. Let me know if you want the recipe.
Flag Football
M had another successful flag football game this morning. On defense, he had two tackles, knocked down a pass intended for the player behind him, and ran a runner from the other team out of bounds. On offense, he had a reception in the end zone to score an extra point for the team. (Extra points in flag football, by rule, are always pass plays. There is no kicking. Teams can decide to go for one or two extra points after a touchdown; the line of scrimmage for the two-point try is about twice the distance from the end zone as that of the one-point try.) M's team won, 14-6. They now have two wins and one loss.
Links
This is a video of a new jet that can take off and land vertically, like a helicopter, only much, much, cooler.
A video of Mark Twain taken by Thomas Edison. - there's no sound, and I will have to take the person's word for it that it's Mark Twain. Sure looks like him.
One of the oddest headlines I've ever seen: "Woman suffers broken teeth in assault during puppy sale at Days Inn, Pittsfield police say" Puppy sale?
I have a coworker who has a tiny lounge chair that he sits his cell phone in when it's recharging. It looks like it's relaxing. There are a lot of neat little stands and "chairs" for phones, but this is my favorite so far.
The Evolution of Cleanliness: Fish Crawls Out of Ocean, Sanitizes Rudimentary Legs
There have been a lot of changes in the way our company has provided materials for us to keep our hands clean. You can click on any of the pictures to see full-sized versions.
We used to have the old paper hand towel dispensers, the kind where all the towels are stuffed into a dispenser, and when you touched one, it would soak through to the one above it. So we got the newer kinds where you only touch the towel you are taking.
We still have some soap dispensers that require you to push a button to get soap out, but lately we've seen more automatic, motion-sensing dispensers. These are better because you don't have to worry about touching the previous person's hand germs.
Some people want to use hand sanitizer instead of soap, so that appeared one day. The sanitizer can dry your hands out if you use too much, and hand lotion appeared as well.
The next step in cleanliness was, naturally, a container in which to place your biohazard waste. Wait - what?
The sign says "Please discard sharps medical waste appropriately to reduce the chance of an accidental needle stick and possible transmission of infectious disease."
After seeing this, I've decided the safest place for me to use the bathroom is the T/A Truck Stop on Baker Road.
We used to have the old paper hand towel dispensers, the kind where all the towels are stuffed into a dispenser, and when you touched one, it would soak through to the one above it. So we got the newer kinds where you only touch the towel you are taking.
We still have some soap dispensers that require you to push a button to get soap out, but lately we've seen more automatic, motion-sensing dispensers. These are better because you don't have to worry about touching the previous person's hand germs.
Some people want to use hand sanitizer instead of soap, so that appeared one day. The sanitizer can dry your hands out if you use too much, and hand lotion appeared as well.
The next step in cleanliness was, naturally, a container in which to place your biohazard waste. Wait - what?
The sign says "Please discard sharps medical waste appropriately to reduce the chance of an accidental needle stick and possible transmission of infectious disease."
After seeing this, I've decided the safest place for me to use the bathroom is the T/A Truck Stop on Baker Road.
Weekend Update, March 14
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Not much to report this week, things have been very slow and steady. The boys had school off Monday, March 8, but J's school was open for business, so she went to work and I stayed home.
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We went to flag football yesterday, and last week's win was offset by a loss this week. M had a reception and two tackles to continue his solid season, but it wasn't enough to beat a team with a couple of very fast runners.
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I thought this Onion article was pretty funny. I enjoy jokes and comics about reading.
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One thing that's changing in schools from when I was growing up is their focus, or lack thereof, on handwriting. The kids learn cursive in second and third grade, but after that, they're really not required to use it if they don't want. It's been happening a lot in the US. The advent of computers is starting to make handwriting less important, but I think that standardized testing also has a hand in it. Since MEAP tests don't have a handwriting component, it's not studied at length and stressed by teachers. (Science is also downplayed until 5th or 6th grade, don't get me started on that.) They are learning lots of math, which is good, and they're doing research papers, lots of reading, and many other good things in school, so I'm willing to take the good with the bad. And I'm looking forward to the kids getting more science instruction - I think science, and the procedures and clear-thinking that science requires, is more important than the MEAP writers feel it is.
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Not much to report this week, things have been very slow and steady. The boys had school off Monday, March 8, but J's school was open for business, so she went to work and I stayed home.
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We went to flag football yesterday, and last week's win was offset by a loss this week. M had a reception and two tackles to continue his solid season, but it wasn't enough to beat a team with a couple of very fast runners.
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I thought this Onion article was pretty funny. I enjoy jokes and comics about reading.
------
One thing that's changing in schools from when I was growing up is their focus, or lack thereof, on handwriting. The kids learn cursive in second and third grade, but after that, they're really not required to use it if they don't want. It's been happening a lot in the US. The advent of computers is starting to make handwriting less important, but I think that standardized testing also has a hand in it. Since MEAP tests don't have a handwriting component, it's not studied at length and stressed by teachers. (Science is also downplayed until 5th or 6th grade, don't get me started on that.) They are learning lots of math, which is good, and they're doing research papers, lots of reading, and many other good things in school, so I'm willing to take the good with the bad. And I'm looking forward to the kids getting more science instruction - I think science, and the procedures and clear-thinking that science requires, is more important than the MEAP writers feel it is.
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Flag Football
M's first flag football game of the season was today. His team won with his help - he had an interception and a tackle. His coaches are the same as last year, along with several of his teammates. They won their game 14-0.
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Sometimes I'm reading a website with a lot of links on it that I want to visit, but I don't want to click a link, read the page, then hit the Back button and do it again for the next link.
To solve this problem, I right-click on each link I want to visit and choose "Open in New Tab". The browser will open the link in a different tab, leaving you on the page you're reading, and when you're ready to read the sites, you can click on the tabs one by one, read them, and close them when you're done. This technique will work well for the following links:
1) This is why engineers don't write recipe books.
2) This is a neat set of speakers installed inside a surplus army ammo box. We've seen those boxes at the surplus stores in the area, and I bet M would like to replace his store-bought iPod speakers with something like this.
3) We used to have a set of drawers similar to the ones shown on this site in our garage when I was growing up.
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Hope everyone's enjoying the warm weather! I have Monday off work, and I was considering taking the kids to Jackson to go sledding, but I doubt there will be any snow left on the hill.
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Sometimes I'm reading a website with a lot of links on it that I want to visit, but I don't want to click a link, read the page, then hit the Back button and do it again for the next link.
To solve this problem, I right-click on each link I want to visit and choose "Open in New Tab". The browser will open the link in a different tab, leaving you on the page you're reading, and when you're ready to read the sites, you can click on the tabs one by one, read them, and close them when you're done. This technique will work well for the following links:
1) This is why engineers don't write recipe books.
2) This is a neat set of speakers installed inside a surplus army ammo box. We've seen those boxes at the surplus stores in the area, and I bet M would like to replace his store-bought iPod speakers with something like this.
3) We used to have a set of drawers similar to the ones shown on this site in our garage when I was growing up.
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Hope everyone's enjoying the warm weather! I have Monday off work, and I was considering taking the kids to Jackson to go sledding, but I doubt there will be any snow left on the hill.
"Thunder and Lightning", by M
M wrote this song, including writing all the notes himself. This is his first song. Click on it to make it bigger.
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