I’m sorry.  To the four people that read this blog, I know, I’ve let you down.

But maybe I’ll turn it around and start my random digressions (it might be another di-word) as there are plenty of good things going on to write about.

Like how I started WeightWatchers March 30,2010 and have lost 10.8 pounds as of last week. 

Or, like how I started walking, with the intent to jog. I’ve walked/jogged/treadmilled 24 miles in the last two months.

I’m still Editor-in-Chief-ing at LOSTblog, but have a bunch of awesome helpers to keep the blog fresh, they want to do a full series re-watch, so I’ll be part of that, but not every episode.

I’ve got 9+ months of recovery under my belt, with the end in sight of my Celebrate Recovery step study that’s been really helpful in my examining my life, my emotions and a fruitful productive output for my sometimes self-destructive side.

So I have some boring things to write about, that I must tell the internet.  So stay tuned!

Well before the worlds of tweets, facebooks status updates, and blog trackbacks, message boards were how I interacted with the masses of people that shared a common interest.

This community shared an interest in christian themes, but had a bit of disfunction running through it. A group of us split off and thanks to the husband of one of our members, started our own message board. Heady times before the onslaught of social media, to have an almost instant community of friends.

The message board still exists. Sometimes I even, post there. But largely the community has moved on. I moved on to blogging, and that has had it’s ebbs and flows. I still keep track of a few of my friends from The Pizza Parlor, as we called it. Some are now facebook friends or twitter followers. Many are just faded Yahoo! Messenger nicknames, always hidden because life moves on.

I look back now, fondly, at those sometimes unhealthy times of Internet absorbtion. Who I am today, was formed in the crucible of yesterday. I experienced 9/11 with the people on that bored, formed many opinions based on those interactions. Learned that while I could ‘turn off’ the computer, these people still lived and cared ( well maybe not Melissa, and I sometimes wonder about Wilbo ) about me.

Social networking is weird sometimes, I met my wife on a pre-Internet social network. We wrote letters back and forth using emoticons in 1993, while I was on deployment. Social networking is part of who I am.

Intrigued, I read more about Taylor, found his blog, and burned my two remaining Audible credits on two of his recordings.

Angie wants me to post, and though I’m unable to start into an appropriate meter, I thought I’d share this poem of Taylor’s.

Falling in love is like owning a dog
an epithalamion by Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

First of all, it’s a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you’re walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain’t no one going to mess with you.
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?

On cold winter nights, love is warm.
It lies between you and lives and breathes
and makes funny noises.
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.

Love doesn’t like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.

Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.

Love makes messes.
Love leaves you little surprises here and there.
Love needs lots of cleaning up after.
Sometimes you just want to get love fixed.
Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper
and swat love on the nose,
not so much to cause pain,
just to let love know Don’t you ever do that again!

Sometimes love just wants to go for a nice long walk.
Because love loves exercise.
It runs you around the block and leaves you panting.
It pulls you in several different directions at once,
or winds around and around you
until you’re all wound up and can’t move.

But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.

Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.

It might be better when he speaks it, than when you read it.

They end up having a big white board installed where the students can write what they’d like to learn this semester.  And it up having a high old time doing what every other college seems to do (i.e. party, drink, dance, play loud music…) and find out they learn something in the end. 

Quoting the movie’s climatic speech by Bartleby (Justin Long, aka I’m a Mac) during the fake schools accreditation hearing:

…But out of that desperation, something happened that was so amazing. Life was full of possibilities. A – and isn’t that what you ultimately want for us? As parents, I mean, is – is that, is possibilities. Well, we came here today to ask for your approval, and something just occurred to me. I don’t give a s#!t. Who cares about your approval? We don’t need your approval to tell us that what we did was real. ‘Cause there are so few truths in this world, that when you see one, you just know it. And I know that it is a truth that real learning took place at South Harmon. Whether you like it or not, it did. …

Pure dreck.. but in a fun and entertaining kinda way.

In a truth-is-stranger than fiction story, Yahoo News has this article:

Pitzer College this fall began offering what may be the first course about the video-sharing site. About 35 students meet in a classroom but work mostly online, where they view YouTube content and post their comments.

Class lessons also are posted and students are encouraged to post videos. One class member, for instance, posted a 1:36-minute video of himself juggling.

…

Jeez, where was this course, when I had to learn FORTRAN from Mech E?

No moreGrab your pencils
No moreGrab your books
No more teacher’sDon’t give your teacher dirty looks

Well we you’ve got no class
And we got no principlesWave ‘Hi’ to the Principal
And we<you’d got no better have innocence
We can’t evenYou’d better think of a word that rhymes

School’s out in for summer winter!
School’s out IN forever

(orig lyrics)

Now, if someone could please do something about the traffic, thanks.

back?  good.

I don’t want to know how much of our money each month goes to interest.  Not just mortgage interest, but credit card interest.  My lord, I think we could probably fund all of our children’s college through that Harvard Master’s they’re all gonna want if we just sunk what we pay in interest each month in the mattress.  Simply because we went pure and simple daffy crazy in 2005.  Sure we had a family vacation to end all family vacations, but we also refinanced/consolidated our credit card debt, then went and doubled if not trebled the credit debt we had.  *shakes head*

Seriously, our behavior reminds me of the movie Tin Cup, when in the final day of the US Open, tied, and needing a birdie to possible win, a safe par will force a playoff, Roy McAvoy goes for the green on a long par 4.  He hits it, only to have his ball roll back into the water hazard.  (we hit it, we had a plan to be credit card debt free like right then, but then rolled into some ‘necessities’)  He then proceeds to whale away at the pin from 300+ yards, when a drop and a pitch would have still put him in the playoff.  While he descends into pure selfish madness, threatening even his qualification for the following years tournament, the announcer says, “Someone tackle that guy!”

srsly.

There are a couple of slides in the FPU videos that bring this home, one is how much you’d accrue in wealth if you socked anything away at 18% interest.  I took the bait and admitted that saving anything at 18% interest is pretty much impossible to sustain, unless you invest in some pretty risky ventures and end up guessing right, and impossible to sustain for the long term.  Except that, as Dave Ramsey explained, that is pretty much the investment that banks make all the time, though they aren’t investing in a company, but in their own marketing of credit card debt to the public.  Think of how much interest you pay on your lowest interest card.  Then look at your savings, and consider if you had done the whole ‘save first, pay cash’ thing, how much larger that savings line could be.

So while we have made our zero based budget, and allotted for a $1000 emergency fund, and giving again (something we haven’t done during our descent into madness) to our church.  The line I’d like to keep track of, is what our monthly outlay to the interest line is, and watch that value decrease to zero over the next 2-3 years.  That should help us keep on track, I think, I hope.

This Friday/Saturday was Momma-goes-retreating weekend so I had the first half to myself.  I took the opportunity to abandon them.  Well not abandon them per se, but allow them to co-habitate for a while with another large group of kids while me and fellow bachelor for the night went and saw 300.  The payoff was that all 9 children/teens still had all their limbs attached when we got back a scant 2 hours later.  No bruises, or cuts.  There was a sliver that had to be excised, but some ice, a needle and a pair of tweezers made quick work of that.

Post movie madness, I took my brood of four to Wally World to shop for a present for the forty-fourth Pirate themed party of the year that Danny would attend in the morning.  While it was kinda dicey taking the somewhat tired four year old shopping at 9:30 PM, I was proud of my older boy taking said brother under his wing and helping him along.  In and out in 30 minutes wasn’t too hair pullingly bad.

Then morning drive to the pirate bay (20 minutes away) to attend the party, and having even the 12 year old join in the festivity with gusto (she brought her own pirate garb, and they all have their assigned pirate names, gratis multiple talk-like-a-pirate linkages).  I stole away with the non-invitees during the lunch/present/cake phase, to feed them from the TriplePlay KFC-Pizza Hut-Taco Bell mashup, and then got myself some life preserving Starbucks for the second half of the day.  They all played well, and again no puncture wounds or bruised pride.

Sunday after church was the biggest challenge, and the biggest pay off.  Four families from church decided to go to lunch together.  A table for 19 is a bit dicey at 12 PM in these parts, but we accepted a table for 6 and a table for 13 in the outer rim of the On The Boarded establishment.  On this occasion the table of six was actually the ‘kids table’ for the non-toddler set, and all four of my kids sat, actually. sat. at that table and set a good example for their younger compatriots.  Truth be told, they probably acted more polite than us brutes at the big boys table.  But somehow through the 2 hour ordeal they survived without any bruised eyes or egos.

So Huzzah, this whole parenting thing is reaching the payoff stage.  Now I need to find my rifle to clean and sword to polish for when the young men start stopping by to woo my gels.  They won’t be chased away, but they might swallow a bit hard.

UPDATE: Extra bonus footage of eldest gel performing at the 6th grade choir performance over at Sweet Bippy.

This series I’ve continued to read as I continued to prepare for my class and other limited teaching duties, and it provided a good anchor point to many of the themes in the lighter topics of TLYAW. The class I taught had a few ‘new’ Christians, and the perspective of Lordship, I believe, is an important tact to cover with newer converts, and always a good anchor to hit with more mature believers as well. I don’t consider it a coincidence in the timing of how things were written.
Anyhoo, this is a two-purpose post, one to get a Blogspotting link from Team Pyro, and the other fulfills my NaBloPoMo responsibilities for today.

If I’m lucky enough to be able to get a seat inside, I may try to live blog some of the event… if not… well this will be it.

I’m in!

UPDATE:  Here are some pictures of Anousheh Asari signing Lauren’s book and of her and Lauren. (click to embiggen)

Click the Read More button for the rest of my post.

Watching a video on her experience. Ansari, I thought the name was familar is the sponsor of the Ansari X-Prize. Watching her get spun in the g-force simulator, and getting dressed in her astronaut garb. Making food, and then zero-gravity training. Learning how to speak Russian. Photo-ops. etc…

Video of the launch, the lift off looks so smooth. Now pictures of her in space, in orbit, looking down on earth. Must say, zero-gravity makes it tough on the hairdo.

Some live video shots in zero grav… Angie would ralph.

Compared to the Apollo command module, the space station is like a palace! Tons of room. Getting a shot of the sleeping arrangements, and her sleeping bag. She has a window seat, next to her sleeping bag.

Making a radio call from the space station to Iran – do you want to speak in Farsi? Heh. Her favorite picture – Yuri Gagarin with a dove. She is proud of the title ‘Hottest Astronaut Ever!’ heh.. she has a great sense of humor.

Good in orbit fun. Water droplets and M&Ms… a space tredmill, and elastic workout… space shampoo. Housekeeping. etc…

Going back home, and entering the space craft for the return flight, and closing the hatch.

touchdown in the steepes of Russia… errr.. I think.

Welcome home from her husband. I guess they don’t let retuning astronauts move after getting back on earth… This isn’t the last peice of space for Anosheh, she wants to continue to work in the space industry.

She is on stage now, live, and excited to be here. Asking questions of the kids. I raised my hand when she asked, “Who wants to go to space when you grow up?”

Lauren got to ask a question, after her prepare remarks. She asked, “What did you expect to find when you got to the International Space Station?” Anousheh said that she didn’t expect to see any space aliens, but she had heard that the stars were brilliant and beautiful, she said, “It is like a black velvet background, with diamond dust sprinkled over it, itwas beautiful.”

Neat Q&A with the kids, she spread the questions out all over he place and was very gracious in answering the questions.

An Indian physicist puts a PC with a high speed internet connection in a wall in the slums and watches what happens. Based on the results, he talks about issues of digital divide, computer education and kids, the dynamics of the third world getting online.

more below the fold.

So the children living in the slums in India can teach themselves basic computer skills. Even to the point of using Microsoft Paint, and playing games at Disney.com or using the character map in Microsoft Word to spell, “I love India.” Amazing, really, but not unfounded, letting kids go wild on computers is something Xerox PARC* did back in the early days of the computers, and some of that research lead to graphical interfaces that the slum children in India are taking advantage of in this experience. Another usage of the “minimally invasive” was with middle-school aged kids.

Well, I tried another experiment. I went to a middle-class school and chose some ninth graders, two girls and two boys. I called their physics teacher in and asked him, “What are you going to teach these children next year at this time?” He mentioned viscosity. I asked him to write down five possible exam questions on the subject. I then took the four children and said, “Look here guys. I have a little problem for you.” They read the questions and said they didn’t understand them, it was Greek to them. So I said, “Here’s a terminal. I’ll give you two hours to find the answers.”

Then I did my usual thing: I closed the door and went off somewhere else.

They answered all five questions in two hours. The physics teacher checked the answers, and they were correct. That, of itself, doesn’t mean much. But I said to him, “Talk to the children and find out if they really learned something about this subject.” So he spent half an hour talking to them. He came out and said, “They don’t know everything about this subject or everything I would teach them. But they do know one hell of a lot about it. And they know a couple of things about it I didn’t know.”

Fascinating, but not surprising, the concept in the whole inner-tubes thing is that by design searching and linking can help to create knowledge. The idea that given two hours and a series of questions designed to be tested at the end of next year, shows that functionally literate kids can direct their own learning given a set of goals. Just a cool article to read, except when it came to this part:

Q: You say that only the children used the computer, not adults. What does this mean for adult education?

A: I’m not even going to suggest that we use this [technique] for adults. The only reaction we got from adults was, “What on earth is this for? Why is there no one here to teach us something? How are we ever going to use this?” I contend that by the time we are 16, we are taught to want teachers, taught that we cannot learn anything without teachers.

There are two points I’d like to make about the adults. One is that the adults asked the children to do things for them. For example, to read their horoscopes on the Hindi news sites. The second thing is the reaction of the women. I would ask them why they didn’t use [the computer], and they would say, “I don’t have enough brains to understand all this.” I would say, “What about your daughters?” And the answer was, “They have lots of brains.” So I said, “Do you think I should just remove this thing?” The answer was always, “No, no, no.” I asked why not. And they said, “Because it’s very good for the children.”

Now, if the mothers have realized that, I’m happy. I don’t care if they don’t come [to use the computer]. Because all we have to do is wait one generation. Not even that. In five years, a 13-year-old is going to be 18 and be an adult.

Emphasis is mine. The collarboration for adults, currently is that they’ve been ‘trained’ to expect a teacher to help them learn. The point made in the last paragraph is germane, in a generation, our kids will have grown up with a different paradigm, perhaps one like: “All I need to learn is a direction and the internet”

I’d also contend, that it isn’t a lack of ability in the adults, it is a social/cultural indocrination to learning that we were exposed to when we went to school. Something that if given a thought, we’d reject, but are comfortable enough with to embrace, because it is acceptable.

I’m reading the last volume of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cylce series of novels. It is an interesting look back at the beginning of the age of enlightenment particularly the beginning of the Royal Society in England and the life and times of Issac Newton. What I find tangential to what happened then, and what happened now, is a gentle pushback against the common forms of learning, to a more exploratory. Newton had no one to tell him about the workings of gravity, he theorized and developed his theories from his observations. Much like the children in India didn’t really have anyone to teach them about the inner workings of silicon based logic and microprocessors, but through their observations they can come up with their own, ‘functional literacy’ and learn more about this magical tool to which they’ve been exposed.

* I wrote Xerox PARC, based on a recollection of mine, but it is probably more correct to credit Constructionism, Jean Piget, Seymour Papert (and his development of the Logo computer language), Marvin Minsky, as well as the MIT Media Lab in this research.

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