Judy and her progeny stopped by last week to show my wife some makeup. I cooked a gumbo that came out okay, but Judy's two girls wouldn't touch it. Unless you grow up with gumbo, kids don't generally want any. Luckily, the wife knew this and cooked some Mac and Cheese which the two girls scarfed down. Apparently, Judy doesn't feed her kids. ;)

The visit was very nice and it was good to see Judy again after so many years. Heck, she hasn't seen me since way before I cut off my hair!

If you rather read this site using an RSS reader (maybe to avoid being obvious you're surfing the web at work), you can easily connect with the following feed: feed:// merlisk.com /mikesrants/ backend geeklog.rss" (without the spaces. I had to put those in to get the article to post the URL directly.)

Don't know what RSS means? See here: www.whatisrss.com

Each Thanksgiving, we head to my Uncle Buddy's farm in east Texas. There are rolling hills, actual trees, cows, and The Gator. "The Gator" is 4 wheeled motorized cart that my uncle uses to get around the farm. But, come Thanksgiving, it's transformed into the kids' vehicle of choice for riding everywhere and, in general, being a kid. This last part is where I come in.

I took my youngest son and three other kids on a romp (an adult must always ride with them and I mostly qualify). We went far back into the pastures, across a bridge over the creek and tried to get into the 'back acreage' so that I could take some cool pics of trees and animals and such. But, when I tried to get across a muddy crossing, I found out that The Gator is actually a two-wheeled drive and not a four-wheeled drive, and I got firmly stuck. We all had to hike it back (about 2 miles uphill) to get my Uncle Buddy to get out the tractor to free The Gator.

Of course, had I just paid attention to the same youngest son's toy Gator at home, I would have noticed that it clearly says 4x2 on the side. This has left a firm impression in my son's memory now. He demands to see pictures of the "stuck in the mud" tractor. Heh.

See the pictures after hitting 'read more'.

Apparently, homes aren't built soundly enough that a towel rack can't stand a child playing monkey bars on it. But, that didn't deter one of our kids from testing our front bathroom towel rack. The towel rack lost.

It stood for over a month before I got around to patch things up. I used a product that I found online at www.DrywallPlugIt.com You basically cut the hole to the size of the plug, spackle liberally, smooth, dry, texture, and voila! The hole is plugged. Supposedly, it'll even hold the towel rack now, but we're foregoing that option until the kids are older.

Monkeys - 1, Towel Rack - 0

Hit read more below to see the repaired hole that may eventually be painted.

This week I'm taking a class at home over the Internet. So far, it's is okay but not perfect. It's hard hiding from my youngest son. My wife and I have a system where I call her on her cell phone to tell her I have to pee. She then takes my youngest to the back room or keeps him occupied while I go. Should he realize that I'm actually at home, it would be shrieking and crying all day (and pounding on the office door.)

I've included a pic of my haphazard backup class 'cubicle', complete with my class name card. I say haphazard because it's my backup arrangement. On Monday, I worked via a Windows VM on my Mac until a patch screwed up the Windows side. Bah! Of course, I can't fix it because all of the rebooting would let someone know that I'm home...

But, this month at least, FiOS has paid for itself just in gas savings.

(Hit Read more to see the image.)

I haven’t been in school for years. I graduated from my master’s degree in 1997 (I think) and haven’t had much call for higher order math in my career. Occasionally, I come across a problem that I have to crank out a few complex formulas, but they’re few and far between. For instance, I was asked to take the derivatives of a few formulas for a friend of mine in the oil business. Apparently, such formulas tell them how much oil is left in a well and how fast it’ll be emptied and such. It was nice dusting off the old Calculus book. But, possibly the last place one would think that I would use some higher math functions would be when reading a children’s book to my youngest kid.

My youngest son has several books on counting – a Clifford book that walks through counting ten little puppies from one to ten, a fish eye book counting from one to ten fish, a book on ten ladybugs, etc. I bet he has at least dozen of this type of books. And, for each book, I count: 1 little ladybug, 1-2 little ladybugs, 1-2-3 little ladybugs, 1-2-3-4 little ladybugs, etc., until I get to ten of whatever we’re counting.

So, how many ladybugs/dogs/caterpillars/fish/whatever do I count per book? That’s where the math comes in. Basically, the answer is: 1+2+3+…+10 or, using a formula, Sigma(i) where i=1 to 10. This formula, using some fancy math, equates to n*(n+1)/2 for all values of i. So, for ten items, it’s 10*(10+1)/2 or 10*11/2 or 55 items. So for every single counting book that my child owns and for every time I read each of those books, I count out a total of 55 items. You can see why this gets tiresome after a while.

And, to think that the Bob the Builder book has 20 things to count. That’s 20*21/2 or 210 things to count! I just refuse to read that book.

One of the oddest transformations from being a non-parent to a parent is one of knowingly and repeatedly and oft unconsciously peppering your language with euphemisms. Such valid and popular fun words as "fart" becomes "toot." I can no longer go "pee". Rather, I go "tinkle." I don't go "number two" or "hit the head", but now I "go poop." It's an amazing, slow process by which this happens. I didn't realize it even happened until just recently - and my oldest is 6 years old. It's like waking up one day and realizing that the wife has slowly and systematically replaced all of my old furniture and all of *my* space in the house with "our" furniture and kid's clothes. It's rather shocking. And quite normal, judging by the comments of my friends.

This leads me to my youngest, now 2.5 years old. He's quite conscious now of when he's "poopy" and will readily admit it so that we can change him. Cutely, he often hides in the closet in the morning until he's finished then comes to tell us. This is rather a surprise when I go change to go to work and get hit full force with the full bouquet of toddler "poop."

The other evening when my wife was preparing him for bed, he "tooted" an awful fragrance. He flatly denied he was "poopy." He struggled to find the words and eventually settled on "poop burp." And, I now have a new euphemism in my vocabulary.

Obama was voted president of the US last night. Although I voted for McCain (but I don't like Palin), I want to come out and say that I don't think Obama will break the US except in one area. Here's why:

Short Term
- Most of the world is more liberal than America. Even our Democratic party is to the right of Europe, Canada, and all of Central America. Relations-wise, an Obama presidency will hopefully allow for more cooperation with our allies. This is important as we're quite strained militarily. And, frankly, the US having 51% of all combined military spending in the world is untenable.
- The bad news is that Obama will probably release the US to paying for abortions again. We already have 1.3 million abortions a year. It'll only increase now.

Long Term
- The US economy is in dire straights. We're spending more than we should. We've repeatedly enacted foolish tax cuts. We've outsourced our manufacturing base. We're becoming more protectionist in our trade. Obama will inherit all of this. His large more socialist spending policies will be constrained by an inability to pay for them. I'm hoping that the Blue Dog Democrats will reign in spending. Or, if we go into a deep recession, I hope, at least, that they'll force Obama to spending more wisely such as in infrastructure building projects and not stupid tax rebates.
- I'm very proud that tons of people showed up to vote. I'm encouraged by this. I also think that, long term, they will stay active in politics and slowly shift to being more conservative. This will bode well for America.

Apparently, this was my weekend to do plumbing. On Saturday, I had to fix the master bathroom's toilet. The shaft thingie was leaking. (Thingie is an official plumbing word, I've heard.) After that was done (with just two trips to the store), I notice that the floater isn't sealing the hole well. Well, that'll be another trip...

Then, on Sunday, the front bathroom's sink stops up - totally. It's been threatening for some time, but with some coaxing and Drano, I staved it off. But now, after the wife decided to clean dirt encrusted kids shoes in the sink, it was gone for good. I had to remove the trap and scrape out 14 years of...well, I've no idea what that stuff was. It was black and slimy - like eons-old banana pudding from hell. But, once that was out and I put the sink back together (with only two curse words!), the sink flowed like it was 1999. Literally.

I recently bought a Dry Wall Plug. Of course, when I say recently, I mean that I bought it this summer and just today repaired the gaping hole in our front bathroom from a ripped-out towel hanger that one of boys mistook for a monkey bar.

I'll have to post pictures when it's done. Supposedly, it'll seal the plug with the same strength as the original wall. Riiiight. But, I'm hoping it'll be close! Now comes the hard part - sanding, texturing, and painting. There's really no hope of matching 10 year-old existing white paint, but if it comes close, then I'll be happy.