Flashing, the expansion pack

After reading more on the Apple vs everyone else debates, I realized that I probably need to define my usage of “flash” when griping about eBook readers.

I read very fast.  It’s just a talent.  I can’t paint my own toenails without making a huge mess and I have no athletic ability.  I don’t suck at math, but I can’t do complex stuff in my head the way my mom and sister can.  I’m just blessed in the language arts category.

By very fast, I mean around 120 to 150 pages an hour.  That means I turn a page every 20 or 30 seconds with real books.  With digital books, the pages aren’t as big, so I turn a page about every 10 seconds.

In all the eBook readers I’ve seen, when you turn a page the screen inverts the black and white text then turns completely black, then fades back in to the words on the next page.  It takes a little under a second to change screens.  Hence, my term “flash.” It has nothing to do with the program from Adobe.

As quickly as I read, I see a lot of page changes in a very short amount of time which to me is “flashing.” When I have a migraine, I can’t even read a magazine with glossy pages.  Even then, sometimes the glossy pages trigger a migraine so I’m not going to submit my brain to a “flash” every several seconds.

Until the technology gets better, I’d rather scroll down than change pages.  Even the reader on my cell phone (Samsung Moment) is better than the full sized eBook readers I’ve seen because it’s a constant, hi-def screen.

With the file sizes of eBooks being so incredibly small, there is room to improve the screen quality in the device itself.  The largest eBook file I have is 111,ooo KB with most averaging around 10,ooo to 15,ooo KB in a PDF format.  PDFs look great on the average computer screen, so why can’t the readers do the same?

A nice screen with a few buttons to turn pages and load books with a single USB port would be something I would drop a few hundred dollars on.  Until then, I’m not going to risk a migraine to have a slimmer way of reading a book.

make it work

I’m toying with the idea of going back to work full time and letting Shaun do a stint as stay at home Dad.  Or at least hire a nanny or something.

When I say toying with, that’s what I really mean.  I know that with the heart problem and the migraines, that I need a very flexible environment and I also know that I can do the best for our home and children by being here.

I just REALLY miss working.  Not only is it 10,000 times easier than this SAHM deal, I miss figuring out problems.  I’m one of those people who has a knack for making abnormal things fix what needs to be done.  I like instruction manuals because if you read them with a critical eye you can find the ways to… adapt it to your purpose.  There, that’s a nice way to say “open door.”  If there isn’t a manual, that’s ok too.  I’ll figure out how to break it into its parts given enough time.

Tim Gunn would say I make it work.

I just hacked a mop.  I’ve been painting my Circa discs with nail polish.  Later today I’m going to turn a computer desk into a table for my sewing machine.

I even scheduled laundry days for everyone and color coded the hampers (they’re really rubber bins from the garden department at walmart) to match their water bottles and their toy boxes.  They also match their junior Circa journals.  (Which the therapists promptly copied and started using for other kids they treat.)  And yes, when the kids are on a scorecard/reward system – those will match their colors too.

I miss feeling like I’ve done something worthwhile at the end of the day.  Well, on some days.  Other days I came home feeling like I was the captain of the good ship WTF.

Ok – I miss being able to say “I can provide a service that you aren’t going to find anywhere else.”

xkcd today says that the average internet user SAYS they have an IQ of 147 and has a 9″ penis. I may not have a penis, but my IQ is a bit higher than that.

I used to say “if you can teach it, I can learn it.”  Now I’m more likely to say “if you can build it, I can break it.”  Then again, I also say “if you need a better mousetrap, you may as well just start naming the mice and congratulate them on their upward evolution.”  You can either make the problem work for you or you can buy a cat.  I’m a big fan of making problems turn into assets.  “That’s not a defect, it’s an unexpected application!”

Then I get a call from the teacher saying that my child is screaming that if the teacher doesn’t make it so that she isn’t in trouble, then she’s going to make life living hell for everyone.  I can hear her screaming in the background at the top of her lungs.  And it’s good I’m only 5 minutes away from the school because I know how to fix her, too.

This is the part where people laugh and say “a good smack would fix her!” But no, my daughter is not an Apple nor does she suffer from chip creep.

I know how to make it work because her IQ is a little lower than mine but still higher than 90% of the people in her school.  I don’t talk to her like a child and I don’t dumb it down.  If she can manipulate you or out-think you, you’ve already lost the game.  I’m probably the only parent you’ll ever see saying to a 6 year old kid “I don’t appreciate you trying to manipulate your teachers.  You can’t change the past but you can stop making it worse.  Your part on the team is to take care of yourself and keep your brain turned on.  If it’s not smart – don’t do it.”

She has the mental capacity of a child twice her age.  I get pissed off when someone talks down to me and I don’t expect her reaction to be any different.  (And yes, we’re both Capricorns.)  It’s best that she learns objective and logical reasoning skills now.

OK – off the tangent.

Another problem I foresee with going back to work is that I don’t have a degree.  I have several certificates from several colleges.  I have some co-op experience at a different school.  I have a year of actual college down but I got REALLY bored with it.

I was one of those kids who was hired directly out of high school into a dotcom because of my “special” skills.  Financially, it was the right decision because I was smart enough to put a little in real estate and made some well-timed stock sales.  It’s enough to make it where we’re able to live off of one income as long as we’re frugal. It just meant that I turned down a scholarship (and it’s accompanying student loans) to take the road less traveled.

Not having a degree wasn’t a problem with my resume as long as I stayed with that company because I could bank on my reputation alone.  Now that I’m looking at jobs equivalent to what I did for that company, they require a BS or a BA.  Only one listing I saw said “or equivalent work experience.”  Now, if the company does their own hiring, it won’t matter but if they’re using a recruiter or head-hunter I’d be hard pressed to get an interview.

THEN, once I did do the initial interview, I’d probably decide that the company didn’t fit my “niche.”  I’ve tested the waters and applied to a few places since quitting and here’s how one of my interviews went:

Nice Lady: I need to be sure you know <name of certain retail book keeping software.>

Me:  I haven’t used that particular one before, but I do have extensive experience designing and reporting with many of the more complicated financial systems.  <I named a few that I’m sure she’d never heard of.>

NL:  But you’ll need to know how to enter the data from our invoices into this program.  You really need to be experienced.

Me:  By the time we speak again, I’ll have learned enough about it to make it do exactly what you need it to do.  I just have a knack for software.

NL:  I see that on your resume you have experience coordinating teams and schedules.

Me: I do.  I’ve coordinated a team of 34 people and designed reporting systems on several hundred team members that were hand delivered to all levels of management.

NL:  You will, if you get this job, need to greet people as they walk in and also handle the schedules for myself and my husband.  You’ll also keep the files orderly and handle invoices and incoming phone calls.

Me:  Ma’am, your ad said that you were looking for a coordinator and manager with experience in financial systems.  Isn’t that correct?

NL:  Yes…

Me:  It sounds to me that you’re looking for a receptionist.  If you need someone to create reporting systems or work out a specific problem then I’m your girl.  However, if you’re looking for someone to smile at customers and do basic data entry, you probably need a different applicant.

NL:  Um… ok… thank you for your honesty.

Me:  You’re welcome.

This was all over the phone, thank goodness.  I doubt she could have looked at me and been as polite.  All my tattoos cover up and I clean up very well, but I’ve been told that I’m rather intimidating when I’m talking.

I’m the secret agent girl. 😉  I walk in to a meeting, looking young and well-dressed, carrying my signature bomber jacket Circa and a few documents disguised as simple files.  I get mentally written off as a girl who got hired to do grunt work and be an art piece for the male and lesbian contingent.  Then I wait for a lull in the conversation of “power players” and I say something outrageous.  All eyes turn to me and I open the file to my supporting document and prove to everyone that I’m right and I am going to get what I want.

Smart managers know how to use that to their benefit.

Not so smart managers are either enlightened or pissed off.

Neither matters.

Because THAT is what makes work worth going to for me.  I’m not looking for money or acclaim or to climb the corporate ladder.  I could give less than a damn about a vertical promotion.  I love solving problems in interesting ways, making them work, and convincing people to support the solution.  My thrill is in creating harmony where there was none and in turning data into a language people can understand.

Drive

Yes, this is another post about my damn external hard drives.

One in particular – the one that has only 26G of info on it but is going to take me a lifetime to clean up the file structure.  This is what happens when you use a portable hard drive to bail you out in situations of inevitable computer fuckwaddery.  In business terms this is called a “clusterfuck.”  It’s not a good place because someone always ends up with a big toe up their butt.

When you know a computer is about to die – say it sounds like a Toyota with a bad belt (which sounds a lot like a sewing machine) – you should absolutely get all your valuable info onto a backup drive as quickly as possible.

You should however, not name it “shit to file” and then forget about it.  Because… then… years down the road you will have something that looks like:

shit to file 1

shit to file 2

mobile uploads

photos off the old computer 1

photos off the old computer 2

image backup from 2006

Q3 2007 Projects

aa – wallpapers

aa – anime

aa – anime 2

(Yes, I know it’s not alphabetical.  I don’t organize by file name in my head unless you tell me to.)

Here is the part where I whine about naming conventions and how if you don’t use them you end up with duplicate files and lost files.  This new keyboard squeaks though, so every time I hit the space bar it chirps.  So you just fill in the whining.  Deal?

This is the part where I say “if you follow my Flickr page, you’re going to see a ton of old and/or odd shit pop up while I work this drive out.”  Because, yes, it is my photo drive.  If it were my music drive you so totally wouldn’t get to benefit from that.

Music drives are EASY to form a file structure.  It goes BAND -> ALBUM -> TRACKS where ALBUM = Title of the CD [year].  I even have a music drive bibliography in Circa format that references where the CD is stored and which albums I don’t have yet.  (Shaun and I have an extensive collection of underground/independent Christian rock and metal.)  I also have notations of which ones still need to be converted to MP3s and backed up.

So, photo drive, why aren’t you cool like that?  Why do you have no obvious file structure?

is it plugged in?

The first rule of tech support:  is it plugged in?  Start at the wall and work your way out.

(Shouldn’t the first rule of tech support be not to talk about tech support?)

I should have remembered this.  It’s been forever since one of us makes this hair-brained move but it does happen.  See, it doesn’t matter how l33t you are, you’re going to eventually leave something unplugged.

This time, I was mad at the MyBooks for days because they wouldn’t connect to the old computer.  (The new one had a female adapter problem – none of the firewire or USB ports would work so we traded it for another new one that’s not set up yet.)  They always connected to the old one before!  They worked perfectly!  WTF?

Today I got out my favorite little LED flashlight and started at the wall, muttering about the first rule of tech support.

The power strip is plugged in to the wall.  Check.

The power cable is plugged in to both the power strip and the computer.  Check.

The switch on the back is turned on (our gamer system has a separate on/off switch on the back that overrides the front power button.)  Check.

The firewire is plugged into the MyBook. Check.

The firewire is plugged into the computer.  Check.  Wait – why is it wiggling?  The entire port is wiggling.

I took off the side and realized the problem.

The firewire card was not plugged in… at all.  It was in its little space just hanging around with no screw to anchor it, not even touching the slot its supposed to plug into.

Word for the wise:  If you’re going to take the side off your computer while it’s turned on AND it has a fan in the side panel, keep your hair out of the way.  Not only did I get my hair sucked into the fan while it was running, but it hit my thumb and THAT FUCKING HURT!  It’s just a bit of plastic running at a moderate RPM but it bruised the crap out of my thumb.

So everything is plugged back in and working now.  I can’t find the screw that’s supposed to anchor it, so it’s still a little floppy but at least it’s making contact.

Contact is good.  Now, I just need to find a screw!

The Crazy-Radar (cradar?)

Being that I have a diagnosable mental illness, I feel fairly certain that I can spot crazy people in a reasonable time span.  Being crazy is kind of like being part of an elite club with special decoder rings or something.  Normal people don’t pick up on the signs right away.

To catch up you noobs – I have obsessive compulsive disorder and I enjoy a relatively normal life due to medication.  Now – I said relatively.  That means I make a lot of allowances for the crazy in my life.  I have routines that make the crazy feel a little better while not really doing anyone any harm.  It’s just how I do it so that I’m not spreading crazy all over the neighborhood grocery store. This morning I was halfway convinced that my medication was evil, but I keep reminding myself that it’s better to take it and feel a little crappy than to be in the grips of The Routine.

(thesaurus.com isn’t giving me any good synonyms for being nuts, so I’ll make do.)

The internet is a treasure trove of the mentally ill.  Typical people can be found too and more and more are joining this virtual world.  Sometimes typical people even mistake crazy people for having all their ducks in a row.  Um, unless the person with ducks is OCD – then the ducks will be in strict formation.  Today, my husband is one of those people.

Being he lives with me, he’s pretty used to thinking things that are bonkers are absolutely normal.  He sent me a link to this blog basically saying  QFT! (quoted for truth) and when I looked, my crazy-radar redlined.  Honey, that person is a nut.  I’m talking cuckoo – like batshit crazy tinfoil hat nuts.  Sure, there’s room for him on the internet just like there’s room for me on the internet and I do respect his opinion.  Really, he has some good points.  It’s just most people think linearly instead of in a scatter dispersion pattern.  If you rant without connecting the dots, people are going to think you believe that the aliens are shitting in your Cheerios and the only way to keep the terrorists from reading your thoughts is to write them on your walls. People with atypical thought patterns see relationships in things that don’t have anything to do with the other.  The logical next step is that if you rant about things that have nothing to do with the other, people will consider you to be fucked up.

I see a lot of crazy people on the internet.  Not so many honest to God OCD people (it’s like a favorite for people who think having a mental illness may be cool) but you do see a lot of different flavors of unhinged.  It’s always hard to talk to them though because most flavors of nuts don’t know they’re nuts.  They honestly believe they’re normal and everyone is either like them, stupid, or unenlightened. You first have to identify the mental minefields then tread very carefully.  Otherwise, you’re one of them.

If you want to read a good book on paranoia – this one is great.

From one crazy blogger to another – if you want to blend in, start drawing thought maps.  It’s like a flowchart of ideas.  This way you can objectively look at a real object (the paper) and think “the price of tea in China really doesn’t have anything to do with that.”   I have to remind myself constantly to stay on topic.  I need a tattoo on my forearm of the tangent symbol.

Love Poetry to Excel

I’m building an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my lace inventory and love poetry dedicated to the program has been popping up in my head.  It goes like this:

Oh, Excel

How your name astounds me

To be based on excellence

Even though you’re a fucking bitch

If you were more user friendly

You would make good money as a whore

Um, that didn’t work so well, did it?

It’s always like this when I first start a spreadsheet.  It goes from “I hate your guts” in the beginning.  Then, when you’re in the middle of it actually being usable, you think “this is pretty cool.”  Afterwards, when you use it to analyze stuff and make graphs, you think “fucker, why won’t you work the same way two times in a row?!”

I better go ahead and build in the data validation coding so I don’t screw something up during the entry part so that the analytics part will work later on.  Fun, fun.  I used to do this for money… now I do it for free.  Damn.  Hopefully my lace will be easy to find when I need it.

Procrastinating

Procrastinating

or

Suddenly, I have 9000 other things to do

Last Sunday, my dad sent me home with a very simple request and two digital picture frames.  My job: to load them with pictures.  Simple, right?

This puts a project I have been avoiding since I left ATC in the forefront of my “things I do other than parenting.”  See, I was like the first person in the family to have a digital camera.  I actually have three on my desk at this very moment.  I have not been so lucky with computers – it seems like I get all the pics burned to disc or moved to a portable drive right before something really freaky happens to the computer.  It never kills the PC outright – it just turns everything in the memory banks into gobbledy-gook.

Fast forward through 7 or so different computers, and I have all the photos on a portable 500G MyBook, backed up onto another drive.  It’s just every folder has a name like “laptop photos” and is 7G big.  It’s a filing nightmare – and now that people actually want to see those photos – it’s a photo editing nightmare.

My project is to organize these photos, delete the duplicates, and then optimize each image.  I also have scanned photos I need to separate, file, and optimize.  My excuse for the scanned photos is that my scanner doesn’t like talking to my home network and will only work if you send it a request from the computer – instead of hitting the “scan” button on the scanner.

Last Sunday, my dad sent me home with a simple request.

This Sunday, I still have not gotten the frames out of the back of my car.  I’ve added some lace to a glasses case, then removed it because the glue looked funny behind the mesh part of the lace.  I’ve painted a paintbrush hot pink.  I’ve reorganized the shelves that hold my BookMooch inventory.  I’ve read Catherine Coulter’s new novel Knock Out.  I’ve played about 1000 levels of Bookworm on Shockwave.com. I’ve watched Season 3 and Season 4 of House twice each.  I’ve dreamed about my next tattoo and changed the blog settings on this blog.  I’ve thought about doing freelance analyst work.  Am I at 9000 yet?

I did download the photos off the Nikon camera, so hey, not a total loss!  I really like Nikon’s transfer software – it creates subfolders by date, so that if you haven’t downloaded in a month, it separates Easter from LJ’s birthday party.  It’s nifty stuff.

Now, I’m going to take a nap.  All this not doing what I’m supposed to is making me sleepy.

Spam

I checked my spam filter just now because I wondered if I was getting mostly trackbacks or stupid links on my blog posts.  I do weird stuff like that… it comes from being an analyst and hating having questions unanswered.

I had a spam from someone offering a DDoS for pay service.  The deal was you paid this guy to assassinate someone else’s site for x amount of hours for x amount of $.

My thoughts on it range from “pretty smooth move, shithead” to “it’s probably a scam to get people who use AOL to hand over their paypal info” to “how stupid do you have to be to PAY someone to do something you could do yourself with open-source software after 30 seconds on Google?”

Really, though, most people probably just see it and go “what’s a DDoS?”

Ill & Ranting

I had a post in my head earlier that didn’t sound like (read like) I was some over-caffeinated, sleep deprived asshat but wordpress was having a problem with their dashboards.  I guess it was a CSS error, or something wasn’t loading over the browser right but I’ve been out of the dotcom business for 2 years now and I really know just about jack about all of that.  I could have opened a browser other than Firefox and it probably would have worked but I’m a dork and like Firefox and I really didn’t give enough of a damn to do that.

Instead, I’m trying to find a spot for all these books I got recently.  I’m on a James Rollins kick and I ordered all of his books and read all but one.   It’s good stuff.  Really good stuff.  I love reading about scientific theory.

I read about 1 novel a day to keep my brain functioning, so I have about 30 books to find a home for.  All the bookshelves in my room are double shelved, the living room is slap full, and I’ve been trying to not put books in my daughter’s room.  She’s learning to sound out words and some of the titles I would rather she not ponder on.

I have been working on naming conventions on the digital TV shows on my Seagate drive.  It’s so much easier to pull the shows off of the DVD and have an entire season ready to go on the WDHD.  I’m about to load House Season 3 onto the drive and I finished naming the files the way I like them about half an hour ago.

Now for the ranting part:

I hate breeders.  Seriously… I can’t look at a social networking site or go to the grocery store without running into long drawn out rants about how so-and-so breastfed all 7 of her children until they were 5 years old and how no one respected that.  Or some 17 year old girl who is pregnant with her second child because she really thought the pull-out method would work this time.   I understand that the normal way to build a family is “the dirty way” but dammit – grrr, shit, argh and fuck.  Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Oh, but fucking like that will get me knocked up again.  I swear, all my bf has to do is look at me sideways and I’m preggers.  I thought for sure that if we did it while I was still breastfeeding I wouldn’t get knocked up again.  I know the doctor said not to get it on for at least 4 weeks after I gave birth but what does he know?  Getting pregnant before your 6 week check-up isn’t exactly what I had planned, but teehee, he just couldn’t hold out that long.  I just wish I hadn’t been pregnant every day for the last 3 years, I’m so tired of being pregnant, fat, and pregnant.  What’s a condom?  I asked my bf once but he told me not to worry about it – that they were too expensive anyways.

Gah!  Then I get asked “why couldn’t you get pregnant?”  Um, my husband only plays the back nine.  “what does that mean?”  Anal sex, honey.  “Ewwwww, why you gotta be so gross?”  Just to get you to go away. “So what was it – really?”  I didn’t drink enough champagne and crack cocktails during my cycle.  I mean, everyone knows champagne and crack will get you so knocked up.  “Haha, well, I’ll give you one of mine but you’ll want to give him back in a week.”  Ok, you do that, the birth-mom only has 3 days to change her mind in GA, so a week before  you decide you want him back works perfect.

I try – I really do – try to handle things with a sense of humor and it amazes me how nice I can be and people still get pissed off.  Even when I’m joking about MYSELF and MY FAMILY people get mad at me for being insensitive.  My youngest two were born in the same year and people always give you that sideways glance like “birth control fail?”  When I try to laugh it off and say they came pre-packaged or that I got a two for one deal, people say “are you always going to remind them that they’re adopted?”  Like adoption is some kind of dirty word like bastard and that the whole thing should be brushed under the rug and forgotten about.  And THEY know it – my kids aren’t dumb.  I’m only informing this 3rd party whose asked overly personal questions about the state of my vagina and uterus.  I mean seriously, would you ask a random stranger about if he enjoyed being circumcised or if he’d rather his mom and dad left him intact?

I mean, good Lord, people!  It’s amazing how much they look like me and yes, we did get them early on in their lives so hopefully they weren’t “damaged” too badly before they got a “good” home.  What?  Are you serious?  Oh… and “your kids are so well behaved for being adopted from foster care.”  How do you respond to that?  “Oh, thank you.  I noticed your little terrorists have very round heads after being squeezed through a vagina.”

Ok, I think my rant is over. Now it’s time to make lunch!

I have a pet, and I got it myself.

I don’t know whose great idea it was to give out “bug aquariums” with kids meals, but now each of my little sociopaths in training have one.  It’s not one of those ecologically friendly toys that look like colorful cricket cages that come with tongs and a tiny vaccuum powered thingy.   It’s a fully plastic “garden” with a clear dome that covers the little flat bottom.  It clicks closed like a makeup compact.

Not only does it look like the only bug it is capable of catching is the dead bug, it looks like any bug that did get caught would soon end up dead from suffocation.  It’s one of those toys you give your kids expecting them to catch a rock or at least promptly lose.  You never expect them to follow the directions and actually catch a live insect.

It’s only slightly less creepy than this.

My daughter, Alyssa, is particularly bad with pets.  I don’t know if it’s because she’s a tomboy or if she’s just that self-centered but she considers pets to be toys that don’t need foolish stuff like batteries.  She doesn’t realize they are ALIVE.  Our family is full of pets so we’ve been trying to teach her some compassion to the four-leggers and non-mamallian animals that live with us.

First, there was a fish named George.  George’s original name (from Alyssa) was Fish Piss.  After I got over that little bit of brain shock, we decided to name him after Curious George.   He had to move out of her room when she poured so much food in his bowl that the poor little guy couldn’t swim once the freeze-dried flakes puffed up.  The second time he had to move out (after much begging and pleading) was when she used the water from his bowl to supply her tea party. Repeat this scenario a couple more times before George bailed ship on his fishbowl and his corpse has never been located.

Teaching her compassion finally got laid by the roadside and now we’re just preaching “leave the animals alone.  Don’t interfere in their ecological setting.”  People ask the kids all the time “do you have pets?”  I don’t know why people talk to my kids, and I also don’t know why “do you have pets?” is such a common question.  It just is.

Ethan will start to talk about the cats and dogs.  Alyssa will yell over him “Mommy said I can’t have a pet because I’m mean to them.  She says maybe when I’m 6 we can try again.”  She’s really upset that I won’t provide her with an endless supply of living entertainment.

Back to the bug catcher.  I allowed her to keep it really because I was sick and Shaun took the kids out to eat and that’s what they came home with.  The next reason was that I didn’t consider the fact she’d catch something.

Cue Alyssa, proudly marching up to me like she’s just beat me at the world’s hardest game and she’s clutching the prize with a death grip.  “What you got?”  I asked.

“A pet.”

“What kind of pet?”

“It’s a fly.  I know you said you wouldn’t get me any more pets, so I went and got my OWN.”

“Is the fly alive?”

“I got my own pet and you have nothing to do with it.”

“Is the fly ALIVE?”  I’m trying to ignore the fact that she’s rubbing my face in the fact that mom’s have nothing to do with the raising of five year olds.

At this point Shaun, who has been examining it with a boy’s curiosity for all things trapped in tiny plastic cases declared that it was alive.

“Honey, do you know that bugs can’t live in there for long, right?”

No answer.

“The fly won’t live for long, baby.  Maybe we should take it outside and let it go.”

At this point, the soon to be insect coffin in clutched to her chest.  “No, he’s going to be my pet.”

She marched past me and set him on her shelf in a place of honor.  Shaun is so helpful at this point.  “If he dies, it’s ok.  We’ll just feed him to Ernie.  Ernie likes dead flies.”  Cue the chorus of EWWWWWs.

I have a feeling that I should be disturbed my daughter has a (possibly) dead fly in a plastic box in her room, but really I just want to teach her about Schrödinger’s cat. That would lead to nasty explanations of quantum mechanics and philosophy. I’m sure that her first words on the topic would be “this cannot be a quantum test because there’s a WINDOW into the box.  You can’t have an illustration of quantum potential when you can tell whether the fly is alive or dead.”

She, of course, would be right and have more ammo to feel superior to my old-school education.  The school year will be quite interesting with Singapore math and dual-immersion language studies.  She may very quickly surpass my skills.  I’ll just have to go old school and hack her computer terminal to play random Schoolhouse Rock videos.

I wonder if finding evidence of things that one can do with a dead fly will persuade her to flush it down the toilet and use the little aquarium the way it should be used – as a mold for the sand box.