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First Day of School

Today was Trevor's first day of second grade. It poured rain from Katrina all day and he had to wait for his very first bus ride in a raincoat.

When the bus arrived, he bounded aboard without even waiting for me to finish asking if it was the right one. He was grinning ear to ear and waving frantically out the window as it pulled away.

He is so not my kid. I used to dread the first day of school each year—and, more often than not, I made sure to throw up both at home before getting on the bus and when I arrived at school. The school janitors loved me.

Trevor's Digial Camera

He likes it...

Dumbed-Down Digitals

Trevor also received a kids digital camera for his aforementioned birthday. I'm always wary of these entry-level cameras because they tend to make it hard to play with the image files outside of their proprietary softare. I once had a camera that would only make images in some never-before-heard-of file format which could not be converted to anything resembling and editable file. That camera has been banished to the kitchen junk drawer.

I was pleased to find that the kiddie camera spits out plain old .jpg files -- good for anything. The photo quality is a little grainy, but hey, he's seven. Nothing so horrible that I can't Photoshop it a bit:

And it comes with kid-friendly download/edit software as well as a slideshow-maker and games which make jigsaw puzzles out of your pictures. Not bad.

Man's Best Friend

Today is Trevor's 7th birthday, and what better present to get for the growing boy than his own labrador retriever?

No, we didn't really get Trevor a dog. We did however pick up the newest release for the Nintendo DS - Nintendogs

In this game, you get a virtual dog to raise as your own. The dog needs to be fed, walked, trained and even have it's belly scratched. By using the microphone, the dog can hear your commands, get used to your voice and respond appropriately. If you call the dog with the wrong tone of voice, it won't respond. By using the stylus, you can pet your dog, scratch its ears, shake hands and play frisbee. After training your pet, you can enter them into contests and with the prize money buy fun squeaky toys, move into a bigger house or upgrade his food.

Also, with the wi-fi capabilities of the DS you can bring your dog over a friends "house" and let them play as long as their DS is nearby. There are three versions of the game, each holding 6 breeds but if you play wirelessly with others who own one of the other two versions you can get all 18 breeds.

Trevor has been teaching his new dog "Penny" to roll over, and a few minutes ago I caught Tara playing frisbee with the dog. Too weird.

Little Lattes

It used to be, during the school year, that about once a week I dropped Trevor off at his school, drove toward work and stopped at Starbucks for a tea. During the summer, Trevor's camp is past the Starbucks, so I haven't made a stop since the Spring. But today, the wind had that hint of Fall coolness in it and I was in the mood for some hot tea again.

Since Trevor was with me, I offered him a hot chocolate and told him to put it away at camp until snack time. We arrived at camp and I asked one of the counselors where he could put his cup until snack. She pointed to a side wall and said, "He can have it now if he stays over here, but has to leave it with the others if he plays in the gym." I looked at where she was pointing... there was a row of little kid-sized Starbucks cups. Lattes and Frappucinos all lined up against the wall next to the backpacks. Sheesh.

Hey mouse!

How is it that a mouse -- arguably pretty low on the brain-size ladder -- knows just when a professional woman's husband will be away on business, so that aforementioned professional woman will dance around the kitchen making little screamy sounds as the mouse -- it's back legs stuck to a sticky glue trap, which the professional woman smugly set up earlier this evening -- drags itself under the electric stove, knowing full well that professional woman cannot (and will not) move the stove alone, especially when there's a half-stuck mouse under there.

Even if you get away, mouse, your hind legs will forever be stuck to that glue trap, which turned out to be too small to stop you from running away, but I was in a hurry and the store was out of the big ones.

But in the end, I have won, mouse. In the best case scenario, your friends will laugh as you watch them on swingsets and merry-go-rounds as you sit in your specially-constructed mouse stroller, sip nutrients through a feeding tube and form mechanical sentences with little puffs of air that are turned into sound by a computer and you will forever sound like a little furry Steven Hawking.

Or you will die and rot under my stove.

Even Better Quote...

This afternoon I was talking to a gentleman from the UK, who said the following...

"I about as useful to you as a chocolate teapot"

Mind you, I was having a business conversation with him at the time and after he said that, I cracked up. Thankfully, he thought it was pretty funny too.

Best Quote of the Day

I was reading this article and came across this quote:

"As long as you're not tempted to open up a carcass, you're not in danger."

Awesome.

Warioware Twisted

Tonight we picked up the newest release from Nintendo for the GameBoy Advance system. It is called Warioware Twisted and it is awesome.

As with all the other Warioware games, this employs a host of ridiculous mini-games, with a wide variety of animation styles. The catch here is that they installed what they call a "gyro-sensor" into the game cartridge itself. While you use the buttons (only a little) you primarily play the game by twisting and turning the Game-Boy this way and that to make things happen.

The earlier release this summer in this franchise was the game, Warioware Touched for the Nintendo DS. This was a cool game where all of the controls are based on using the stylus and touch pad, but no where near as interesting as twisting and turning the Game-Boy to get things moving.

**********

I originally wrote this post back in June when the game first came out. The game still rocks, but we finished it in like 4-5 hours. Even Tara got in on the fun and plays the game from time to time. It would be great if in the next version, there was more to do and more characters to unlock, so that you could play it for a longer period of time.

We also nabbed Yoshi Topsy Turvy from Gamefly, and this one is pretty good as well. Again, it has the gyro-sensor but this time they were able to slim down the cartridge so that it is almost the same size as a normal GBA game. I really like the fact that Nintendo came up with a new idea for adding layers to the gameplay without having to create a new system for me to purchase. Now they can create a whole new type of gaming for all of their current franchises.

Rebuild has been queued

Today being a rainy Sunday, seemed like a good time to catch up on some much needed housework and chilling out. While I am doing laundry, Tara has taken on the monumental task of cleaning Trevor's room.

This task starts off with Tara walking past Trevor and I (playing Alien Hominid on the GC) with a large plastic garbage bag. Trevor looks at me and then asks Tara "Mom, what are you doing with that garbage bag?"

Tara replies "I am going to clean your room"

"Nooooooooooooooooo......." fades away into the distance as Trevor chases Tara down the hallway, and the Gamecube controller falls with a thud onto the carpet.

After some compromise, Trevor agrees to let Tara clean out some of the more cluttered areas, specifically his "junk boxes". These wooden crates are filled with all the things a 6 year old boy could ever want. As Tara is going through them, I came in with laundry and the two of us chuckled over the treasures we found

Along with the normal "boy things" that we found there, we also found the following

- Various whistling things such as pitch pipes, a recorder, metal and plastic coach whistles
- A Christmas Elf (the movie) chess set from Burger King with 32 grinning Will Ferrel-head pieces
- Bouncy balls of every shape and size
- A ninja star made out of popsicle sticks
- Carabeaners with and without compasses
- Compasses, with and without carabeaners
- Marbles, buttons and erasers of all sizes
- A meteor
- A sleigh bell
- Pipe cleaner octopus
- Tiny Treasure chest
- Luggage locks (he doesn't have his own luggage or travel)
- Shabbat candles
- 7 Dreidels (we are not Jewish)

Oh to be 6.

Shuttle Shuffle

I was intrigued when I read this on the CNN ticker this evening....

NASA grounds shuttle fleet

Aren't there only 2 shuttles? Can you really call 2 a fleet?

fleet - (noun)
- A number of warships operating together under one command.
- A group of vessels or vehicles, such as taxicabs or fishing boats, owned or operated as a unit.

Apparently I have a fleet of cars then.

Hypochondriacs with Headaches

Thumbs down to Tylenol for their recent fear-mongering anti-aspirin commercial. The ad is a closeup of a woman who explains that she has been using aspirin for her headaches and hasn't ever had the stomach problems associated with aspirin, so she felt it was safe.

But...

She goes on to say she recently learned that even if you don't feel any problems, you can be doing serious damage to your

stomach just by using aspiring.

She looks horrified... she didn't know!
Now she uses Tylenol... and she's safe.

Way to go Tylenol, for courting the hypochondriac aspirin user demographic.

Candy Powered Robots

I have been talking to Trevor for the last few days about building a real robot that can do chores for you. He is really into the idea of building it for ourselves instead of buying one from a store. (Also, Daddy isn't interested in buying a robot from the stor) He first wanted to make it a "Candy Powered" robot.

I asked him, "Do you know anything else that uses candy as a power source?"

He said "No. What other power sources are there?"

I said "What about batteries?"

He said "Yeah, batteries. Let's go with that idea, good job Dad."

Third world countries take note. Stop using Mars bars to power your vehicles and nuclear power plants. Also, I am available as a consultant to large manufacturing facilities who are having a hard time fitting Hershey kisses into their outlets.