Category Archives: uncategorized

Well, Jen and I completed our second session of training to be foster parents. We also discovered something interesting about our dog. A psychologist gave us some information on attachment disorder, which is very common in foster children. Makes sense, since many of these kids have been abused, neglected, and moved around.

So, it many ways it would follow that Jack may suffer from attachment disorder as well. He was abandoned, likely abused (I have no proof of this, but I believe he was abused for two reasons. First, when we first brought him home, he was sometimes very submissive, so submissive that I wondered if someone had beaten him. Second, I’ve lived with this dog for almost two years, and many weaker men would have definitely beaten him.), and adopted.

Here’s a partial list of symptoms, and how Jack fares in each category.

Superficially engaging and “charming” behavior

Yep. Everybody thinks he’s cute.

Lack of affection with parents on their terms (not cuddly)

Totally. He’d rather be at our feet. Even at night, we can’t get him to cuddle up with us.

Little eye contact with parents, on normal terms

Check.

Persistent nonsense questions and incessant chatter

Incessant chatter? You bet. Just spend a day with him.

Lying about the obvious (crazy lying)

I can’t prove this, but I have my suspicions.

Stealing

Just ask Gracie about this one.

Destructive behavior to self, others, and material things (accident prone)

He’s never, ever destructive to himself or others, but he’s been known to tear up a tennis ball or dog toy.

Abnormal eating patterns

Let’s see… eat grass, throw up, eat grass, throw up… yep.

No impulse controls (frequently acts hyperactive)

Check. Two checks, infacts.

Lags in learning

Well, he always seems surprised when his bark-activated citronella collar goes off when he barks.

Abnormal speech patterns

I’d vote yes on this one.

Poor peer relationships

He doesn’t have many dog friends.

Lack of cause-and-effect thinking

See note above about the citronella collar.

Lack of conscience

Well, in his defense, he is a dog.

Cruelty to animals

Probably.

Preoccupation with fire

Nope. He’s clear on this one.

Manipulative — plays adults against each other

Oh, yeah.

Dysregulated eating/sleeping/toileting patterns

Yes. This dog will crap four times during a thirty minute walk. That’s dysregulated.

David turns 40 tomorrow.

Granted, site I turned 30 this year, click also arguably a milestone, but my friend will always be older than I am.

Happy birthday, Dave!

A comment I found in a program I was debugging tonight:

//add the other crap here

Very descriptive, sovaldi Rhine. Note to self: you are now self-obfuscating.

😛

That squishing sound you hear is the sound of bugs in Frequency being squished. I’m almost ready for the 1.2 release. The big job left is real post editing, not the fake stuff I did in 1.1. I’ve already added some major goodness, with MetaWeblog and Movable Type support, and I’ve fixed some bugs from past versions (no, I don’t want to mention them here). The current beta expires on September 15, and I’d really like to have 1.2 released by then or shortly thereafter. I’m toying with the idea of a different HTML engine for previewing (Owen Yamauchi has done some fantastic work in this area; his HTML Field is astonishingly fast). Hopefully, this will be a minor change. If not, it will be put off until 1.3, along with some other planned goodies. After 1.3, I plan to dig in and start making progress on Frequency Pro.

RBGarage is back up! Woohoo!

Iraqis’ 10 tips to beat blackout heat: Without power — and hence without air conditioning — Iraqis have taken to climbing up stairs in the hot nights. Some install metal bed frames on rooftops, while others simply stretch out on thin mattresses. More gems await. Just click.

I suppose I need a haircut, although there’s no longer much hair to speak of. Last night, at dinner, Grace looked at me and said, “Daddy, you have baby hair.”

I thought she meant that all the hairs on my head were short, but as it turns out, she thinks I look like a baby with hair like this.

Baby hair.

This is the time of year when those of us in educational technology start to feel like the Dunkin’ Donuts guy: “Time to clone the iBooks…”

We well over 200 laptop computers in our offices right now. We need to update them and return them by Monday. Fun stuff.

In the meantime, I have about 30 brand new iBooks that need to be cloned and, by implication, 30 users that need training on Mac OS X (which is a fun training; I love it).

If updates are spotty over the next week or so, it’s just because it’s time to clone the iBooks.

From LAM Systems. Running great so far.

Yet, whenever I see Microsoft’s stupid “bliss” wallpaper, I expect the computer’s shutdown sound to be “Time for Teletubby Bye-Bye!”

It’s an eye-opening experience to walk into my four-year-old daughter’s bedroom to find her sitting at her big yellow plastic desk with her head in her hands, lamenting the amount of work she has to do.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, when I find her sitting there looking dejected.

“Daddy,” she says sadly. “I just have so much work to do. I just don’t know how I’m going to get it all done.”

Granted, her “work” consists mostly of cutting random shapes out of construction paper and drawing objects on them. Even so, it gave me a pretty clear glimpse of how she sees me, or at least the image I’m projecting at home.

So, tonight, the three of us went to see Steven Courtney in concert at a local church. He was great. We had a rather humbling experience afterward. Instead of charging admission, the church collected a love offering, giving people an opportunity to support Steven Courtney directly with what they feel is an appropriate amount (sidebar: we used to do this for some gigs in Anonymous Joe, and you never know just how much or little a love offering will bring in; if you want predictability, put it in your rider). We put $11 in the pot, because that’s the all cash we had on us.

This, while rather sad, seeing as how I make a pretty decent living and have in the past month bought a new car and a PowerBook for my wife, yet I rarely have two nickels to rub together, is not the humbling part. On the way, we passed his merchandise table. Grace wanted a video. Jen said, “Sorry, but Mommy and Daddy don’t have any money.” This was true; all of our cash, all $11 of it, went into the love offering.

Now, understand that this is not the church we attend. We were virtual strangers here. Also understand that we’re not particularly dressed up for the occasion. A kind woman must have overheard Jen telling Grace that we didn’t have any money and misunderstood. She turned to us, “Does she want a video?” she asked.

Jen, not really understanding yet what was happening, said, “Yeah, but we don’t have enough money.”

“I can buy her one,” the woman said. “I’m writing a check anyway, so we can just throw it in.”

At this point, I realized that this kind soul thought we were hurting for money, which we definitely aren’t, we just never have any cash on hand. We’re credit people. We politely declined, but it struck me how gracious this woman was. She didn’t know us, had never seen us, but within two seconds of learning (even mistakenly) that we were in need, she offered to help.

Wow. I wish I were more like that.