Cooking With Evy

"Dada!"  Although I had barely gotten the door closed behind me, my 21 month old daughter was eagerly beckoning to me.  She and my wife were sitting on the bench at the kitchen table.  Actually, she was standing on the bench.

My wife looked wryly at me and said "Welcome to cooking with Evy."  I was a bit confused, but I approached the table for further instructions.

"Dada, nee" she said emphatically while patting the bench next to her.  In case you don't speak Holbrook vernacular, nee clearly means "sit".  I did.  It was then that I realized what I had walked into. 

The child had a frying pan on the kitchen table, and she was making good use of it for "cooking" a scone that she rescued from my wife's purse while snooping.  The poor scone had seen better days.  It was freshly salted and peppered (did I mention that it was a blueberry scone?), and some water had been splashed on it for good measure.

While I looked on in fascination, she used a spatula to shuffle the goopy mess around the pan.  Apparently she had commandeered the scone, then she liberated the frying pan from a cupboard and arranged them on the table.  Finally, she was forced to ask her mother for the spatula.

"Dada!"  My attention refocused on the poor scone.  She was pointing at it.  Clearly she intended for me to try her delicious creation.  There was no way I was eating even a little bit of soggy, salted, peppery scone.

"Why don't I let you have the first bite?" I asked, while turning the offer back to her.  She laughed maniacally at me.  Clearly that was out of the question.  In fact, I could tell by her laughing that her serious insistence that I try the scone was a rouse.  She had already tried it, and she was just trying to find another sucker to suffer through it with her.

A Cornucopia Of Father's Day Goodness

What an awesome weekend!  When you're in school, and working full time, it is amazing what a psychological drag school can be.  My current class isn't difficult, but it is ever-present.  Friday I took the day off from work and wrote my final paper.  The rest of the weekend was correspondingly so much nicer!

On Sunday, I got the royal treatment.  Pancakes for breakfast, corned beef for dinner, a canoe trip, and a bike ride with my two favorite ladies.  They also picked up the Sports Illustrated Wings\Stanley Cup magazine and the coolest book ever (perhaps).

The Boy Mechanic Makes Toys actually has plans for making a toy steam engine.  Yes, it actually uses steam.  The book also contains detailed plans for making an ice boat.  Not a miniature one, a full sized one.  When Evelyn gets just a bit bigger, we are going to have way too much fun with the book.

As if that weren't enough, Aimee made time for me to tinker last night as well.  I drilled the 144 holes for one of my new projects, finished a circuit design, and printed the circuit.  Twice, actually.  While waiting for the printing process to finish I also connected my recently assembled Hobby CNC Driver Board to one of my stepper motors.  When I turned on the power, the motor tensed up.  It was a shock.  Nothing ever works the first time.  So I plugged the board into my computer.  After rooting about for the right software, I finally dredged it up and tried it out.  After some mild swearing I realized that I was pushing the wrong button.  The board worked perfectly on one axis, and I suspect the other two will also work just fine.

To top it all off, we even got to bed at a mostly reasonable hour and had time to read.  A completely perfect day!

DevTeach 2008, Toronto!

Yesterday was the first day of DevTeach 08.  Actually, it was the pre-conference.  The session I did was really great, although it was very long and dense.  The instructor had planned an 11 hour session and had to compact it down to only 8 hours.

When I arrived yesterday morning for the session, I came down the escalator to the conference level.  There was a great spread of coffee, rolls, donuts, and juice.  The first thing I noticed was that everyone hovering around the food tables was wearing a suit.  Then I noticed the fellow shooing the hungry geeks away from the table.  Apparently there was a law firm conference yesterday.  The contrast of processionals made me smile.

It's all about the service

Last evening we had dinner at a nice restaurant.  We wouldn't have stopped, except the hostess was outside and she flagged us down to chat with Evelyn.  After wandering back and forth a bit, we came back to the restaurant because she was so nice.  The hostess and waiter were both saints, which is a good thing because Evelyn was far too tired last night.

Is this good?

The obvious question is "If your short attention span prevents you from swiping a credit card, should you be driving?"

Maybe if we raised the bar, instead of lowering it, attention spans would be climbing instead of declining.  Practice does make perfect, after all.

A Lesson On Fairness

For the past couple of weeks I've been taking a business writing class.  Since the class began, I've been really frustrated.  Instructors in the past have spoiled me by returning assignments within a day or two with very complete feedback.  This instructor has a different, more ethereal style.  This afternoon I received an assignment back and promptly complained about my grade.  Worse yet, I actually opened Excel and figured out what the grades for the class must be based on my grade, the number of students, and the class average.  Guess what?  I probably didn't get the grade I should have.

Guess what else?  My perspective is seriously skewed in the wrong direction.  As I laid in bed a few moments ago, fuming, something popped into my head.  This morning I visited the Easter service at a facility for young people who have made some bad choices, and had run-ins with the law.  The pastor looked over the assembly of rough and tumble youngsters and declared "Guess what?  Life isn't fair."  He's right, of course.  Sir Isaac Newton never discovered the "Universal Law of Fairness" because there isn't one.

The chance that I will fail this course is slim.  If I manage only 50% on the remaining assignments, I should pass.  My current cumulative GPA is 3.95, so one stinker grade won't kill me.  I've got a great career, a family, a home, health, and happiness (most of the time).

Meanwhile, I sat amongst 100 or so rightfully angry young men this morning.  Men who do not know fairness.  They do not have prospects for rewarding careers.  Many do not have families, homes, or happiness.  Most of them will not attend college at all, let alone twice.  Their lot has been unfair, and their prospects don't look good either.

So, about that fairness.  Perhaps I'm long overdue for a dose of the unfair.  Perhaps I should remind myself that twenty minutes from here there are a couple hundred young men who would gladly trade their version of unfair for mine.

A Missed Opportunity

Tuesdays I have lunch with a young man at a local school.  Since the beginning of the year, we've missed quite a few lunches.  Some days he has a difficult time staying in school the entire day.  It has been frustrating from time to time to show up at the school, only to find that he just left.

Today I arrived at the school and gave the secretary a quizzical glance.  He smiled and told me that my lunch partner was in school.  Excellent.  I signed in and started trekking up the hall, only to nearly stumble over the gentleman I was en route to visit.  He shuffled by and explained that he was going home.

I walked to the office with him, chatted a bit, signed out, and left.  At the time, it felt a bit awkward to talk to him in the office with all the hubbub off the office going on.  On my way back to the office, I realized that I failed to recognize an opportunity.  Instead of leaving, I should have sat in the office and waited.  At the very least, it might have cheered my dejected lunch partner a bit.  More importantly, he would have realized that my evaluation of him isn't tied directly to his school performance.

Just Say No to Brand Molestation

When I'm in the mood for a soft drink, I want a Coca-Cola.  People who work at chain restaurants are uniformly afflicted with a disease which causes them to ask a silly question sometimes when I request my soft drink of choice.  "Pepsi?"  No.  A Pepsi is not an acceptable substitute for a Coca-Cola.  Bring me a water for which I will not pay.

The reason so many restaurants offer only Coke or Pepsi is that these enormous companies have excellent marketing departments.  They cut fantastic deals with restaurants, granting them exclusive access.  Sometimes...they own the restaurants.  Smart, but annoying for consumers.  We're basically held hostage, molested, by these huge brands.

FedEx regularly pulls a similar routine on me.  Sometimes I order products from companies which suffer from acute idiotitis.  The symptoms of this affliction include, among other things, the complete inability to tell the difference between a respectable shipping company and an incredibly shoddy one.  FedEx falls in the latter group.

Several years ago, I ordered a lot of products through the mail.  FedEx visited my house so often that I signed a slip indicating that I no longer wanted to be bothered signing for deliveries.  The reason is quite simple.  In order to afford products, I have to work.  If I'm working, I can't sit at home on my duff waiting for FedEx to show up so I can write "X" on the signature line.

It worked.  For a while.  For some reason, FedEx offers a completely counterintuitive, asinine service to shippers.  They can request that I have to sign for packages no matter what.  Since I'm paying the bill, that makes me really angry.  Literally every time someone uses this crappy shipping company, I end up with a signature slip taped to my door.  This inevitably adds another day onto the delivery time.  Does it make sense that the end consumer can do nothing about this?  No, but that's what brand molestation is all about.  Taking choice away from the consumers.

Go Brown.