Frickin' Groundhog!

I'm one of the few people in my sleepy little town who isn't a hunter. The first time I saw men walking down my road, shotguns over their shoulders, the former city slicker in me let out a little whimper of terror. Now we all just wear orange during hunting season...One adapts quickly to seeing strange things in rural New England.

Regardless, I think I could find it in my tree-hugging, fuzzy little heart to blow the brains out of Puxatony Phil. I'd give him something to be scared of. Something far worse than the poor grammar embodied in that last sentence or his chubby little shadow. I'd go full Clint Eastwood on his ass. "Do you feel lucky? Well do ya, Groundhog?" Just what could a .44 Magnum do to a groundhog? Hmmmm?

I shouldn't really be angry with Phil. He is, after all, merely a puppet of meteorologists who decided that we'd be having 6 more weeks of winter. Thanks, guys. The permafrost in my freaking yard and the snow once again falling from the sky weren't enough of a clue. Now you had to completely validate it with a bloody groundhog.

Do you realize that February 2nd actually marks only the halfway point of winter anyway? Ancient pagans celebrated the day as a time to start thinking about planting crops and a time when animals got up from hibernation for a quick pee break. Yay for the pagans!

I, on the other hand, have 6 more weeks of stopping leaks in my roof and breaking ice dams. I'd love to think about planting my garden, but the groundhogs would probably just eat all the damn vegetables anyway.

What did we ever do before coffee?

One has to wonder if life was even worth living. Seriously. I love my kids and my wife is great, but coffee...ahhhhhh. I bring this up because of a caffeine deprivation incident this morning. It's almost too painful to recall, but I think blogging about it might be cathartic.

We were, as usual running late for church this morning. We'd gotten out of the habit of going since our church switched to a 9:00 service and it's in the next town. However, the priest really came through for us when my wife's grandfather passed away a few months ago and it inspired us to make the effort.

That being said, I skipped a shower so that I'd have time to make myself a pot of coffee in my new Paula Deen Percolator. I know that perced coffee isn't as good for you as drip coffee, but this bad boy makes the most amazing 8 cups of coffee you've ever had. Here's a link to a review of the pot on walmart.com (I bought mine on clearance in the store). The person who wrote the review is an idiot who has obviously never used a percolator before. Ignore her review, find the pot cheap, and begin a journey into glorious, rich coffee.

The key, by the way, which this miserable excuse for a Walmart shopper has obviously not discovered, is to use a coarse grind with a percolator. RTFM, baby. Or just ask someone with half a clue.

I seem to have wandered off-topic, haven't I? Must be the Machine Head in the background - they always get me fired up. That, and stupid people who don't know how to make freakin' coffee.

So back to this morning. I poured my still-boiling coffee into a travel thermos. It's a slick little deal I got for Christmas with a great little pour top, stainless steel liner so I'm not drinking plastic, and a lid that acts as a nicely-sized cup. As we're zipping down our road, bumping over the ice and potholes, I asked my wife to pour me a cup. I could almost taste it. I knew it would be hot, but that was OK. 9:00am is pretty late for my first cup of coffee.

"It's not pouring," she said. I glanced over, horrified at this obstacle to a beautiful, pre-sermon cup of coffee and wondering just what the hell she might be talking about. Yet there she was, holding the thermos upside-down with the pour spout open and no life-giving coffee emerging from said spout. She was awfully nonchalant about this particular development, I thought. The priest is pretty engaging, but without coffee, Metallica could have been singing the sermon and I'm not sure I could stay conscious.

"Try it again," I encouraged her as calmly as I could, realizing that either the heat of the coffee must have either created a vacuum or my caffeine-deprived brain must have hallucinated her first unsuccessful attempt to pour me a cup of coffee.

Panic began to set in when her second attempt proved the vacuum theory. Again, trying to remain calm, I suggested that she just unscrew the top, bypassing the handy pour spout and releasing the vacuum. In her mind, her refusal due to particularly bumpy road conditions and a light-colored mauve blouse was completely reasonable. Right.

OK, time for Plan B. I dropped them off at the front door of the church, citing our lateness and the lack of parking spots. I drove around the block, finding a parkind spot and immediately poured a cup of that delicious brew. All it took was an extra twist of the screw top to release the vacuum. However, as I had already noted, the coffee was boiling when I poured it and it hadn't cooled substantially during the drive. That, of course, is the point of a thermos: to keep things hot. Damn our modern understanding of thermodynamics!

Fortunately, it was 20 degrees outside this morning, so all I had to do was let it sit in the car for 10 minutes and it would be gulpable. I walked into church as quietly as I could, joining my wife in the back and plotting just how I would get out to gulp down said cup of coffee.

I could claim the need for a bathroom break, but she knew I'd gone just before we left. Besides, the church door was incredibly squeaky due to the temperatures. There was no way to leave subtly and the priest had eyes like a hawk. I was in this for the whole hour. If only they gave us coffee during communion.

At every hallelujah, I thought "hallelujah for coffee!" I was pretty proud of myself for staying conscious, though. All in all, I made it through pretty well. Like I said, it's lucky that he gives a good sermon. It's also lucky that he made it quick today.

For some reason, though, as we were all filing out, my wife thought it would be a great time to have a conversation with Noah, trapping me in the pew. We were in the back row, for crying out loud! I was so close to that cup of coffee, thwarted again by my lovely Luddite. She's lucky she's so good looking.

The coffee was cold by the time we got to the car, but that was OK. All the better to drink you quickly and pour another cup, my dear. Do you think anyone would notice if I started carrying coffee in a hip flask? Or one of those hydration backpacks?

My kid really likes me

Noah, my generally snarky 16-year old, just got himself an account on ZDNet and gave me a thumbs up on a blog post. ZDNet has this weird system by which registered users can rate a post worthwhile (thumbs up) or not (thumbs down). Usually unless I write some sort of Mac Users are big Girly Men post, I'm pretty even on my thumbs up and thumbs down.

H0wever, my post today on a day in the life of my Classmate got some extra thumbs-downs. I can't imagine why as it was pretty benign, but to give my numbers a boost, he climbed the ZDNet comment wall and gave me a thumbs up. I'm now at -4, thanks to him.

How nice is that? It was quite the father-son bonding moment. Maybe tomorrow I'll teach him to drive a stick shift.

What is a Luddite?

My mom sent me an email yesterday asking me what a Luddite was, since she'd recently discovered this blog via my Twitter feed. To my wife's horror, my mom definitely keeps tabs on my life more via Twitter and by reading my ZDNet blog than by me actually corresponding with her. Of course, that's why she's a Luddite.

To answer my m0m's question, I gave her the current meaning of the word (someone who eschews the use of technology, sometimes because they believe it is damaging to our lives, but often because it's easier to reject something they don't understand) and then turned to Wikipedia for the historical meaning.

I had first heard of Luddites reading The Difference Engine (still reading it, by the way - it's among the several books that was set aside briefly so I could just blast through Slash), but I could hardly tell my mom to go check out this great piece of historical fiction about the Industrial Revolution in 19th century Britain. She looks at my Twitter feed because I don't call her enough and she lives in Seattle, not because she's anywhere near as geeky as I am.

Fortunately, Wikipedia had a picture of a Luddite worth sharing:
Nice looking guy, huh? Quite the fashion plate. It figures that they were largely textile manufacturers. Here's the important chunks of the Wikipedia definition:

The Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the early nineteenth century who protested—often by destroying mechanized looms—against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work.

The Luddite movement, which began in 1811, took its name from the fictive Ned Ludd [that's Ned in the picture]. For a short time the movement was so strong that it clashed in battles with the British Army. Measures taken by the government included a mass trial at York in 1812 that resulted in many executions and penal transportation.

Isn't Wikipedia great? I'm just glad my wife doesn't look like old Ned there.

Coraline

Gabriel loves to read, but sometimes I have to remind myself that he's only 6. We had been reading Coraline together (a brilliant book, directed at children, but worth a read at any age), but it got pretty scary, so we took a break.

He's taken up reading it again himself, so last night when I asked him what was happening in the chapter, he said, "She's in a closet."

"Why?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"Did her other mother put her there?"

"I think so..."

We went back and forth for a bit and, while he has no trouble telling me about what is happening in the Junie B. Jones books he reads, I think Neil Gaiman might be a little above his comprehension level. I guess we'll need to see the movie after we finish reading that one together.

On another Gaiman note, though, he just won the Newbery Medal for the Graveyard Book. Another kids' book on my list of must reads. He's on Twitter, by the way, but doesn't update nearly often enough.

Two words: Hand Sanitizer

I spent the day at one of our elementary schools rolling out a few pieces of software and really getting their mobile labs fully utilized. Of course, this meant spending the entire day in an elementary school. Elementary school is Old English for petri dish. Not only were there miniature people surrounding me today, but they were all coughing, sneezing, and picking their noses on the computers with which I was helping them.

The teachers had asked me before about the best way to clean the laptops before. Suddenly I understood why.

Then, after school, I talked with the teachers about the best headphones to get for the kids. Thinking of size and economy, I asked if the younger kids were all capable of wearing earbuds. One of the Kindergarten teachers looked at me and asked, "Have you seen the insides of their ears?"

We won't be ordering them earbuds. I was so happy to watch my wife clean Gabriel's ears in her normally thorough and efficient manner after his bath tonight. I will also be taking extra hand sanitizer with me tomorrow when I go back for day two of the innoculation...I mean, the rollout.

I have to get Classmates into our schools

I'll be writing a series of reviews on the convertible Intel Classmate this week. For right now, though, I'm sitting with Gabriel as he goes to sleep after reading a chapter of Coraline (he saw a preview today at Inkheart that said to read it before he saw it, so he decided to get back to it after taking a week's break). I'm actually typing this post on the mini-tablet and am really impressed.

I just did the handwriting recognition training and the little machine can even read my atrocious chicken scratch. So far, all I've really played with is ArtRage 2 - it's so cool that I can't wait to show our elementary art teacher.

This thing seriously kicks ass. Be blogging more tonight on ZDNet about it!