Long Shrift

the perils of parenthood

We've been potty-training the boy. The other day, I was taking a shower and had him in the bathroom with me. He announced that he needed to go potty, then proceeded to do so: he pulled the little stool over to the toilet, climbed up, pulled his pants down, and sat down. I was so proud of this accomplishment that I failed to notice that he had forgotten to put the potty seat on the toilet, and he fell in when he sat down.

He recovered quickly, more surprised than anything else, got the potty seat in place, and finished without further incident.

As I climbed out of the shower, I told him how proud I was, and how he was such a big boy now. And I apologized. "I'm sorry, I should have seen that you forgot the potty seat."

His eyes were wide. "I fell in the potty."

"I know. The toilet seat is meant for people with big butts, and you just have a little butt."

He considered this for a moment, then looked at me with a quizzical expression. "Daddy?"

"Yes?"

"Do you have a big butt?"

"Well, yes... yes, I suppose I do."

Another pause. "Does Mommy have a big butt?"

Doom.

gone to ground

I used to grind my own coffee at home as I needed it, but this proved not to be tenable. Commercials love to portray people waking to the smell of fresh-brewed coffee, and then smiling at their husband/wife/domestic partner/spousal equivalent/one night stand/home invader/roommate as they walk into the kitchen. I have found that grinding coffee before dawn is not the way to endear yourself to anyone.

So I switched to buying ground coffee, and never looked back. Frankly, I'm not a coffee aficionado: I probably wouldn't be able to tell you if the coffee was Colombian or Brazilian, but I wouldn't be fooled if someone secretly replaced my coffee with Folger's crystals, OK?

Recently my wife read something in Real Simple magazine: I've been doing it all wrong. And the National Coffee Association agrees: it's best to store coffee in a cool, dark, dry place, and preferably in an airtight container.

This is also a heck of a lot simpler than what I've been doing.

the bear hunt

Understanding our toddler has gotten easier. A little more than two and a half now, Quinn speaks with a fair amount of clarity, although he still trips over r's, l's and, usually, his own name (pronounced 'win'). But sometimes he stumps us.

His parents are the most likely to figure out what he's trying to say, both from familiarity and context. The other day, when Quinn was particularly animated when he came home from day care. I was quite impressed with myself when I correctly deduced that Devon had hit Quinn with a book, and it took a few seconds to register that this wasn't a good thing. After a painstaking interrogation, it came out that Quinn had also hit Devon with a book, so that matter's resolved. This was a relief, as I suspect Devon's mom could snap me like a twig.

Part of the challenge, of course, is Quinn's penchant for surreal fabrications. The other day, there was a pink banjo on the roof of my car. His cousin Eric was purchased at Target. He saw a zebra at the State Fair shortly before being bitten by a goat.

Still, we can figure out just about everything he says. Except for the bear hunt.

The bear hunt appears to be both a journey and a destination; numerous things have happened both on and at the bear hunt. Quinn tends to stark, Hemingwayesque prose when he tells us about his day, but then he'll surprise us with a Tralfamadorian shift through time and space:

"How was your day today?"
"Good."
"What did you do today?"
"We played."
"That sounds like fun. What else did you do today?"
"We went swimming, and Brayden rode the bike on the bear hunt, and it was dark."

The bear hunt. Beer hut? Fair punt? Blaupunkt? Hair funk?

measuring what isn't there

I'm not a huge Radiohead fan, but when I heard that they were going to release their album In Rainbows exclusively online, and allow users to specify whatever price they want - including free - I was intrigued. I paid 3 pounds, which is something like $7.50 USD, because I wanted to vote with my wallet. I don't think of it as rewarding them for their artistry so much as for taking the risk. Of course, that's not a lot of risk if you're Radiohead, and you've got a few million pounds in the bank.

Forbes, which usually shows a fair amount of technological savvy, led a story with the headline "Free? Steal It Anyway," stating that more people stole the album than paid for it. There are a number of problems with that statement, as the folks on Slashdot are happy to point out: downloading from Radiohead's site was a clumsy process, and you had to fight a lot of traffic to get there. And it's not clear if it's stealing when Radiohead is giving the album away. And so on. But something bugged me about this paragraph:

On the first day that Radiohead's latest became available, around 240,000 users downloaded the album from copyright-infringing peer-to-peer BitTorrent sources, according to Big Champagne, a Los-Angeles-based company that tracks illegal downloading on the Internet. Over the following days, the file was downloaded about 100,000 more times each day—adding up to more than 500,000 total illegal downloads.

How, I wondered, could they be measuring downloads? Well, they can't.

Big Champagne is just feeding the hype about piracy. I'm so annoyed when the RIAA, not exactly a subjective source of information, talks about billions of dollars lost to piracy. Same goes for the Business Software Alliance and their reports of software piracy. (They even have a online process for reporting piracy; just look for the 'disgruntled employees click here' button.) How can you trust an estimate on piracy, especially from these people?

Years ago, I worked with a woman who was majoring in psychology, and she told me that she had read in a textbook that one out of every five males raised on a farm had had sex with a farm animal. I grew up on a dairy farm with four other males, and I don't recall seeing anyone heading towards the barn with a stepladder and a grin. (Maybe such debauchery is more common with smaller livestock, as attempting to have sex with a cow would have been a humbling experience.) My co-worker insisted that if it was in print, it must be true, which is why seeing Forbes fall for Big Champagne's flimflam bothers me all the more - people like my former co-worker will believe this, er, horse crap.

can't get there from here

My friend Pablo just came back from visiting his folks, who live about 90 minutes from the megalopolis. But like many places back East, the locals are used to driving everywhere, and for distances that Midwesterners like Pablo would consider butt-numbing.

Pablo was staying at a hotel about ten miles from his folks, which was a pleasant twenty minute drive down a meandering two-lane country road. His dad, Jorge, suggested he take the brand-new Route 9 highway instead, but this didn't seem right to Pablo. When he asked at the front desk for a map, the manager told him to avoid 9 because of construction, and in any case, the meandering road was the most direct route.

Jorge asked if Pablo had taken Route 9; Pablo explained that the manager had told him not to. There was a long pause, as Jorge fixed Pablo with a look of distracted annoyance. "The manager," he said at last. "A black woman?"

Pablo reeled. "What, you can tell by the directions that the person was black? Or are you saying that black people don't give good directions? Aren't we on the good side of the Mason-Dixon Line here?"

Jorge looked exasperated again, but now he was looking at a point above and behind Pablo, as if he was expecting one of his more intelligent sons to appear over the horizon any minute now. "Your mother and I went by your hotel yesterday to see if you were there, and we talked to the manager. I got the impression she didn't know the area very well."

"Er, OK, well. So... Route 9 isn't under construction?"

"No, it's open."

"But the way you suggested I go... is that shorter than the way I came?"

"Of course not, I just wanted you to see the new road."

indefinite parole

Driving in to work, a car cut in front of me so suddenly that I had to hit the brakes. Then the same driver switched back to its original lane. A minute later, it cut in front of me a second time. The driver - I realized it was a woman, as she passed me - flicked not one, but two cigarettes out the window in the space of perhaps a mile and a half. I should mention that this wasn't stop-and-go traffic - we were going about 50 mph.

I didn't honk, I didn't flip her off. I fumed, but then I thought to myself: maybe she's having a horrible day, maybe she's not normally this bad, maybe she's not mean but merely stupid. I was inwardly pleased by my maturity. She ended up taking the same exit as I did, and I pulled up behind her: all her machinations had netted her about 20 feet of distance. I caught a glance of her face in her side mirror, and realized driving and smoking weren't her only problems.

Hey, I can't be mature all the time.

And I ended up following her a few more blocks, then a right turn, then a left into the parking structure of the building where I work. Suddenly, I recognized her: she works at another company in the building. I had seen her shuffling to the smoking area on the deck. She always looks angry, and if she happens to be walking with someone else, she's always grousing about something.

The worst thing I'd ever be able to do to her would be to not hold the elevator for her. I won't bother; the karma police came for her some time ago.

antivirus, anti-existentialism

I've changed antivirus and firewall software a few times over the years. For the last several months, I've been using AVG, and I've been happy with it. But recently, I encountered this error message, and I'm not sure what to do.

Well, it only happened once, so maybe it was just a moment of weakness and not a cry for help.