Author Archives: brad

Read Day One here.

We woke up in Pocomoke and took showers of varying temperatures before enjoying our complimentary continental breakfast. We hit the road and headed south, and since we were still hungry, we stopped for breakfast someplace in Virginia. Maybe I shouldn’t have been wearing my Microsoft Office 2000 t-shirt, or maybe we just looked a bit too Yankee, because they put us in a room all by ourselves. We ordered their breakfast buffet. Mary wondered if it was all-you-can-eat. I told her I was pretty sure that’s why it was called a buffet. Jen asked the same question later, and got the same answer.

We headed south again, taking the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, which is really cool. We stopped at Seagull Pier out in the middle of the bay. Jen and I walked the length of the fishing pier with Grace and Dad.

We headed south again. Jen and I were checking out all the buildings, and we decided that you can tell a lot about a community by looking at its school.

We arrived in Corolla around 2:00, I guess, but we weren’t allowed in the house until 4:00, even though we had the keycard. Sam and Kevin (more friends of the family) were waiting there for us when we arrived. Mom and Mary took Jen, Grace, and me for a walk around the neighborhood, showing us the pool and how to get to the beach (about two and a half blocks away). There was a sign at the pool that said you needed a pass to get in. Mom said they never checked, so not to worry about it. There was a couple at the pool who quite obviously wanted to be alone. We left before long and went to the ocean. Grace and Jen went down to the water. Mom, Mary, and I stayed up on top of the dunes.

We really wanted to get in the house early, but the doors apparently had timers on them. We tried at 3:28 and couldn’t get in. I joked to my Dad that we’d get a nasty note from the real estate agents saying, “Our records indicate that you attempted entry at 3:28 PM. You will be charged accordingly.”

Clair and Mary Anne, Jen’s parents, arrived around then in their brand new VUE, which made me sick with jealousy. The VUE is the only car I’ve ever lusted after, but I did get to drive it.

Whoa! Check out Bob Stein’s VisiBone for a very cool web color tool. Makes it a snap to generate coordinating color sets.

Oh, boy. I just found a blog that speaks to me. It’s called Being Daddy. It’s great. I’ve added it to my list of daily reads.

We left from my parents’ house around 12:45 in the afternoon. Dad, Mom, and Mary (friend of the family) were in my Dad’s truck; Jen, Grace, and I were in the Saturn wagon. Shortly after we got into Delaware, my Dad stopped at some tiny grocery store/body shop (I kid you not) to buy some soda he thought he could only get there. He had stopped there some time before on his way back from a hunting trip and bought some Stewart’s Orange Cream Soda. Good stuff, I must say. He was a bit surprised when I told him that you could buy it at any grocery store at home. We stopped for lunch around 3:00 at the rest stop near Dover, DE, and ate sandwiches we had purchased from Trailer Village that morning. Grace convinced most of us to ride on the see saw with her.

We weren’t planning on driving all the way to North Carolina in one shot; we had reserved two motel rooms in Pocomoke City, MD. Before going to the motel, we headed into Ocean City, MD, for a few hours. Grace wanted to go on rides. She rode little boats and a little carousel. We all had dinner together at Dough Roller (best pizza on the MD boardwalk). The only bad part about dinner was the theme from Spongebob Squarepants playing incessantly from a game booth nearby. And I mean incessantly. As soon as it stopped, it started within two seconds. It was maddening. Now, my boss thinks that Spongebob is brilliant. I think it’s frickin’ annoying. My Dad thinks his name is Spongehead.

From there, we drove just under an hour to Pocomoke City. The motel had mosquitos the size of Mack trucks. Each one could easily draw a pint of blood from you in one shot. There were some French Canadians up the row from us, also commenting on the mosquitos. My Dad said to be careful, because there’s a lot of SPARS up there. I later found out that he meant SARS. The night passed quickly, marred only by a weird dream I had that involved me being blacklisted from a donut shop in Florida. That’s all I remember about that.

Check out Will Leshner’s KidzMail, a full featured email client for kids. Looks very cool. With many companies pumping out whatever junk they feel like, it’s good to see someone making a quality product for kids. Excellent job, Will!

There was an interesting discussion on Slashdot yesterday about ADHD. I know I’m evil, but so help me, this comment made me laugh out loud. This one was pretty good, too.

I do think that ADHD is over-diagnosed these days. When I was student teaching and subbing, I saw a lot of kids whose problem was lack of discipline. And I don’t mean self-discipline. I mean their parents weren’t being parents. They didn’t know how to control their kids, so they medicated them. One girl in the eighth grade English class that I student taught was diagnosed and medicated during my time there. She became a total zombie, and her friends kept encouraging her to go off her meds so she’s be herself again. It was really sad.

This is not to overlook the genuine cases out there. I know there are people who really suffer from a disorder and really need help. I just think we’re overdoing it a bit. Makes me think of the article in The Onion on Youthful Tendency Disorder sometimes.

I don’t usually read Fox News (I’m an MSNBC junkie), but my friend Josh forwarded me this link: Air Guitarists Rock Out for Championship Title: Donning a Samurai headscarf and red kimono — under which a Hello Kitty breastplate smiled — he leapt on stage and whipped up the crowd with his self-described “Asian fury” in a performance he called an homage to “Eddie Van Halen, Mozart and a little bit of Jimi.” These things really happen.

No Microsoft Knowledge Base Article ever made me as happy as this one.

MSNBC: Preliminary plans are underway for a Simon and Garfunkel reunion tour for the fall, for sale sources tell Billboard.com.

CNN, reporting on the first full year of Maine’s iBook initiative: One of the first things Favreau learned last fall was to sit in the back of the class instead of in front. That allows him to keep an eye on the screens to make sure kids aren’t surfing or playing games.

Dang. Wish I could have been in on that.