Snow Tires

Sometimes you just need to marvel at what kids come up with.

My son was playing in the back after a recent storm with his wagon. Given the way the yard faces and the number of trees surrounding the yard we have something of a glacier there until the temp either gets so warm often enough (more likely) or direct light hits it (less likely). Kidlet is undaunted by the glacier. Running around the yard this was the result.

Now being the sort of kid he is, he looked at it and immediately said, "Snow tires!"

We live in a snowy area. I have never once in my life bought snow tires. We did put new tires on the truck about 2 years ago. To this day he still says that I have "new tires". The only place that I can even think that he's heard about "snow tires" is from the movie Cars. Luigi is either trying to sell the snow tires to Lightening McQueen or feed them to the tractors that are munching on his more valuable radials. Why Luigi even stocked snow tires in the desert is another story. Given that until Cars 2 came along Cars was his favorite movie, he'd watched it quite a bit. But 2 small lines in a movie about snow tires apparently made an impression.

Running around the back with the wagon is still a favorite activity regardless of the level of snow. Sometimes we get snow tires and sometimes we don't. He still says, "I like snow tires better than road tires." It's moments like these when your heart becomes so much larger than just an organ in your body.

Go on, my little guy, let's go make some snow tires.

The Little Man

I was sitting with my son last night in the rocking chair and this little poem popped into my head. I gave him a shortened version while "walking" my fingers up and down his arms.

The Little Man

There once was a little man about this high.
He loved to walk, but no one was really sure why.
He'd walk up one side and down the other.

He'd walk all the way home just to check on his mother.
He'd walk on the inside or the outside,
whether or not there was someone else beside.
Sometimes he'd reach the top,
and sometimes you wonder if he'd ever stop.
When he got to the bottom after all that down,
he'd keep on going back on up without a frown.
People all over town would start to talk,
But the little man just liked to walk.

Play date, anyone?

Sometimes you just have to do things for your kids. Sometimes it involves taking them places, or giving them toys, or in this case, spending an entire weekend devoted to building memories. Yep, we built a play-set.

So after Friday where I counted over a thousand hardware pieces and did a modicum of Vanna White-ing for my most cooperative spouse who did the lion's share of the work . . . . I chased toddler all weekend. A toddler who was most anxious to play on what was being constructed in our yard. A complete day of help from a most helpful uncle who could have been doing other things as he and his wife are expecting their first child this summer made all this doable during the weekend. Did I mention the fact that my husband worked almost non-stop for 3 days on this thing?!

It was all paid back in the smiles as the first playable items went up. Of course, being daddy, he put the safety stuff up long before the play stuff or the access to the play stuff. No matter what the choice of pain killer is tonight, hot water, back rub, or aspirin, know that a child is asleep in his room dreaming of playing on his playground.

Happy Birthday, Geocachers!

Did you know that in May of 2000 the "selective availability" was removed from the satellites of the Global Positioning System (GPS)? Then President Bill Clinton made an announcement that the United States would stop the intentional degradation of the GPS signals and made them available to the public. This was a surprise as the original commitment for removing the selective availability had been for 2006. The tech community went wild with ideas on how to use the "instant upgrade" on their GPS units. Needless to say, at this time, GPS units were not widely available and only a handful of real dedicated techies (aka geeks) had any idea what this meant.

The first geocache was placed on May 3, 2000 by Dave Ulmer near Beaver Creek, Oregon. He called the idea the "Great American GPS Stash Hunt" and posted the coordinates of the "stash" at N 45° 17.460 W 122° 24.800 on a GPS users' group on the internet. Simple idea: hide something, publish coordinates. Simple rules: take some stuff, leave some stuff. Within 3 days 2 other users had found the information and posted about their experience finding the "stash" on the internet. Others followed suit and people started hiding things in their area for others to find.

Within that first month, Mike Teague started collecting and documenting coordinates of hides around the world on his web page. A mailing list was created to discuss the activity. In September 2000 the term "geocache" started to be used more regularly than "GPS Stash Hunt" when Mike Teague handed off the maintenance of the list of hides to Jeremy Irish. Jeremy founded the Geocaching web site and created a web site and tools to help improve the ability of people to find caches near them. At the time the site was published, there were 75 known caches in world.*

As with anything new, someone told someone, who told someone else. Even the media got wind of the new phenomenon. People wondered if anyone would bother to find a cache if they hid it. The dedicated people who were involved in the early days encouraged people to hide new stuff. And you know what? Once it was hidden, other people went and found it. New caches are hidden every day all around the globe. Wherever you go, you can take a GPS with you and find a treasure trove of stuff left behind in some cool, and some really hot, places around the world.

There's GPS units in our cars now. There might be one in your phone. There are handheld devices galore that can give you an instant global fix on your position. Get the coordinates to something nearby and go find it. It is hide-and-seek for everyone! Kids love it. And you know what? When you look for caches to find on the website you can select an option to make the cache kid friendly, or family friendly, or pet friendly, or findable at night, or 24 hours a day, or under water, or . . . you get the idea. I gotta find me one of those under water ones . . . hmm.

The nifty thing about it, you can still go and find the spot where the original cache was. There's a plaque and everything. Or you can go and find stuff near you. Whatever you do, remember the rules: take stuff, leave stuff according to the cache type and preferences. And one more thing, be environment friendly. If you take it in, take it out with you. If you take along a plastic bag, you can pick up the other trash left behind there too. That is another cool thing about geocaching. They call it CITO: Cache In, Trash Out. Not only is it fun, it's good for the environment. Yea, I like that.

*Source for history of Geocaching adapted from http://www.geocaching.com/about/history.aspx. They said it much better than I could.

Oops

Some of the most memorable moments in life I gain from my son. There is joy in understanding, awe in accomplishment and magic in learning. One of my son's books is a whimsical exploration of learning how to dress oneself by Sandra Boynton called Blue Hat, Green Hat. For those of you without children, in the story the animals are learning what the items of clothing are called and where they go. The poor turkey however, can never seem to get the item in the right place. With the examples of the other animals putting the clothes on correctly, it makes my son giggle to see the turkey make mistakes. In fact, while pointing at the pictures he'll "read" the story to me. It is joyous fun for all involved. We had put the book on the bookshelf for a bit of time to read other favorites and hadn't seen the book in a while when we were getting him dressed the other morning. The shirt and pants went on correctly, but when we came to the socks, we started playing. Did the sock go on his head? No. Did it go on his lovey? No. Did it go on his knee? Nope. Did it go on his hand? He giggled. He grabbed the other sock and pulled it on the other hand. He looked up at me with the mischievous grin on his face and said quite clearly, "Oops!"

It is a wonder when kids do things on their own. I could see the complete knowledge of what he was doing and the absolute joy of understanding something in his upturned face. Moments like these are completely precious and fleeting. As a parent, I know they slip by sometimes so fast that you can hardly breathe. They are the moments you cherish. Some parents put them in memory books. Some parents tell family and friends. Some parents keep the memory in their heart and just treasure it for their own. This moment struck me. I had to take a few moments and write it down. Maybe someone else has moments like these with their children. This is what life is all about. And frankly, it should be.

Shop-a-what?

Are you a shopaholic? Do you live for the next sale, deal or bargain? I have a confession: I suck at shopping. If someone ever taught a course in this stuff for girls I missed it. I was probably down at the park playing basketball, baseball or hockey depending on the season. As I hit the teen years, I didn't spend much money on clothes, make up or nail polish. Nope, not me. By the time I hit high school, I needed go juice for that four wheeled ticket to freedom more than any pair of jeans.

I've never been much of a girly girl. More book oriented, sporty or techie would be much more descriptive of me. Don't get me wrong. I know how it's done and can play the game with the best of them. I just don't see the point in painting myself up every day for work. My geeky friends and colleagues know what I look like and respect me more for . . . *gasp* . . . my brain than my looks. I just don't see the point in using the stuff when it just wears away, smudges or washes off before I go to bed.

When it comes to clothes, I'm pretty lazy. I like comfort. I like durability. I like classic styles. Why spend $100 on a trendy pair of jeans that you wouldn't be caught dead wearing in 6 months? I can spend $20 on a pair I can wear for years and still look presentable. I'm not even going to talk (much) about what constitutes presentable for jeans in this day and age. If I can see your underwear or any part of your anatomy that shouldn't be showing: butt cracks, belly bulge, love handles, whatever . . . it's not presentable, but that's me.

What does all this have to do with shopping? Well, I shop like a guy. I know what I want I go in and buy it. End of story. I guess that's more hunting than shopping. I buy tech toys, gadgets, DVDs, books, and the like. I do some research, figure out what I want based on features, coolness or potential usefulness and only as an afterthought consider the cost. That is where my money goes. I've cut back A LOT in recent years, but there are times when I cannot resist the latest and greatest toy on the market. For instance, I have cell-phone envy. I'm in a tech world with a tech job. I see gadgets all the time and I want them because they are cool! Wow, you can check your email? Stock report? Traffic? And cook dinner with it? I have got to get me one of those!

Needless to say this means that I need to be aware of the money I spend. Tech toys can really add up fast. Especially in a world where as soon as you buy one something new comes out the next day. Now if I could just figure out how to have all of that and save for emergencies, the future and whatnot . . . I'd be in great shape. All I can say is that I'm working on it.

Manners Online

Web 2.0 was a major move forward in the Internet and allowing of more online interaction and community. There is no doubt that the way we've evolved to interact with each other has embraced the updates in technology. The technology will continue to evolve whether people like it or not. The question becomes: are we all so inured to criticism and feelings that our conduct online is considered appropriate? Have we completely abandoned the concept of manners?

People post things all the time. Personal, technical, opinion, public, anonymous or not: the topics are endless. Some discussions are very civil and stay on topic without degrading into personal attacks or vituperative remarks. Those are the exception rather than the rule, it seems.

No area or subject is immune to comment trolls as I call them. These are the people who take a valid topical discussion and bring in a personal attack that derail everything. Granted, everyone is entitled to their opinion.

My question is: has technology evolved to the point where individuals no longer care that another person is at the other end of the comment, post, article, thread, email, text message or whatever? Have we devolved to the point that manners are not important? We're more and more isolated by technology. Need to contact someone, send a text. Need to discuss details on a project, send an email. Want to comment on a product or technology, make a post on your blog or comment on someone else's blog. Even while we're in social settings, mobile phones and wireless devices keep us abreast of what's going on in the ether. Has someone you know answered a text or responded to an email while you're in their presence in the past week? I bet you have seen this.

Any online offering is subject to this behavior: games, newsgroups, blogs, shopping sites, reviews, etc. At what point do we say enough? Some people admit to being provocative and hostile on purpose. They don't care that others take what has been said personally. Follow up posts telling people not to be so sensitive are not helpful. What is written in text does not contain the nuances of feeling or tone that could make an innocuous message hurtful. Hurtful messages are hurtful regardless.

There are times when unplugging is the right thing to do. What happens when all the good people unplug and leave all the content to the trolls? Given the way technology and industry are going, I don't believe this is going to happen. More people would benefit from "Nettiquite" and better writing classes.