Archive for March, 2010

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Not Mine Monday, March 2010 Edition

Mar

15

2010

In a shameless spoof of MckMama’s Not Me Monday, I am posting a Not Mine Monday. Head on over to her blog if you want to see what she has been doing, or not been doing, this week.

Note: Understanding this entry will require you to have a background in the Doodlebops. Readers with young children will probably not need any introduction, as the Doodlebops is a show about the Doodlebops. The Doodlebops are Deedee, Rooney, and Moe – a colorful cast of characters who sing and laugh and entertain children. Not unlike the Wiggles, the Teletubbies, etc (but with catchier songs).

One of their bits is a slapstick-type exchange between a puppet and Deedee. The puppet says he can’t hear Deedee because he has celery in his ears, and he actually does have celery in his ears.

Now on to the story . . .

  • At dinner one evening, Alpha was asking about the peas on his plate. I told him I couldn’t hear him because I had peas in my ears. He understood the joke and laughed. Beta did NOT think it would be funny to put the peas in his ears, literally. And he did NOT get a firm lecture on the proper use of food (ears, no; eyes, no; nose, no; on brother, no; mouth, yes).
  • At dinner the next evening, Alpha did NOT think it would be funny to say he couldn’t hear me because he had eggs in his ears (yes, we had breakfast for dinner – that is never a bad idea). And I did NOT look over and see Beta attempting to put scrambled eggs into his ears.
  • At the doctor’s office, to get Beta and Gamma tested for strep throat, we did NOT have to remind Alpha not to touch various items in the waiting room. Alpha did NOT then proceed to lick the glass right next to the main doorway.

    Okay, he was joking with us and he did keep his tongue from actually touching the glass. But it certainly looked like he was touching it from where we were sitting.

And a Not Me:

  • I did NOT procrastinate so long in setting my garage clock back last fall that it is now correct again, thanks to daylight savings time. Household maintenance is a high priority and I do NOT let minor things like that go.

On a related note: if I ever owned a store, I would call it “Daylight”. That way I could have an annual spring sale and get free advertising. Maybe in the fall too.

For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean.

Acts 17:20

Posted in Family | 5 Comments »

Birthday Present Advice

Mar

12

2010

I will save some of you guys out there some grief with this tip.

If your scrapbooking wife says she wants a personal trimmer, make sure you buy her one of these:

personal paper trimmer

Not one of these:

That’s all I have to say about that.

Also they shall not shave their heads, yet they shall not let their locks grow long; they shall only trim the hair of their heads.

Ezekiel 44:20

Posted in Mishaps | 2 Comments »

Football Winner Guesser Results – 2009

Mar

10

2010

I just realized that I never updated Some Blog Site readers on the results of my Some Fun Site project to create a football prediction method that is more accurate than the Isaacson-Tarbell Postulate (ITP).

The methods I created – More Points Wins and More Yards Wins – are more accurate. Their downside is they take slightly more work, as average margin of victory and average yardage differential are not as commonly reported or available as win-loss record is.

The 2009 NFL season is long gone, and here are the results of the various methods:

  • HTW: 57%
  • ITP: 61%
  • MPW: 66%
  • MYW: 67%

For the ideas behind the methods, please visit the Some Fun Site page.

I also noticed, during the course of playing around with the NFL statistics, that basing predictions on the previous year’s results was equally effective. ITP says to look at the team’s current record. That resulted in a 61% chance of correctly predicting the winner of a football game.

By simply using the previous year’s final record, instead of the in-progress record, you can increase the accuracy to 63%. MPW is not affected – using last year’s numbers results in the same accuracy (only one game difference). I did not calculate MYW based on last year’s numbers – that is left as an exercise for the reader.

But the noble man devises noble plans;And by noble plans he stands.

Isaiah 32:8

Posted in Sports | 1 Comment »

The Color of Milk

Mar

8

2010

A lady from church mentioned that she heard that cereals that change the color of the milk in the bowl are not good for you – you should not eat cereal that changes the color of the milk. That cereal is Bad Stuff – it probably has chemicals and unnatural ingredients and part of the Detroit Lions defense (no, it does not taste like victory).

That rule-o’-thumb could be a problem, because Cocoa Pebbles is a certified Good Cereal but it changes the color of the milk.

How do we resolve that conflict?

I’m glad you asked. The solution is to pour a bowl of Cocoa Pebbles and then pour chocolate milk into the bowl. Now the cereal will no longer change the color of the milk. For Trix or Boo Berry you could use strawberry milk.

You can have your cereal and eat it too.

So I was left alone and saw this great vision; yet no strength was left in me, for my natural color turned to a deathly pallor, and I retained no strength.

Daniel 10:8

Posted in Food | 2 Comments »

Friendship in the Time of Facebook

Mar

5

2010

Inspired by Beck (and with apologies to Arnold S. Lobel), I wondered what Frog and Toad’s relationship would be like if they had Facebook.

The Facebook status of Frog and Toad as Frog tries to wake Toad in the spring

I have taken the liberties in updating the Frog and Toad story to today’s society. Thus, the story ends a little more abruptly than it does in the book.

Toad's unfriending Frog on Facebook.

My suggestion to FB is that they should not let you unfriend someone so easily. If you do say you want to unfriend someone, FB should tell you to talk to them and work out whatever is bothering you. A cooling-off period, perhaps.

Likewise, FB should have different levels. Right now, everyone is a friend. You shouldn’t be able to call someone a Friend so easily. You should have Acquaintances and Friends – two different categories. Acquaintances could come and go, but Friends could not.

Of course, I’m not a FB user, so I won’t notice if they change their friending policies. But I do hope that people don’t treat other people the same way in real life as they do on Facebook. Because the friends in Facebook are just names on the computer screen, not real people, right?

A man of too many friends comes to ruin, But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Proverbs 18:24

Posted in Ponder | 7 Comments »

Family Conversations, Part 8

Mar

4

2010

For your entertainment today, here are a couple of scenes from our life.

Scene 1

The whole family is in the minivan, just starting a trip into town.

Wife: “Hey, do you think Gamma is over 20 lbs.?”
Some Guy: “Probably. We can weigh him when we get back home.”
“Because if he is, we can turn him around so he faces the front.”
loudly so that Alpha, who sits in the very back, can hear: “Then he would be able to see Momma but not Alpha anymore.”
“What do you think, Alpha? We can turn Gamma around…”
Alpha: “Does that mean his skull is closed?”
(husband and wife exchange confused stares for a second before laughing)
in an affirming voice: “Yes, I think so.”

We had not been discussing fontanels with him recently. We didn’t know he even knew about the soft spot on a baby’s head and that the skull needs to grow together. My first thought when he said that was that he wasn’t answering us and was talking to his brother about something they made with Legos (yes, there are skeletons from some of their sets). But then we realized he was concerned about Gamma’s growth and development, and it became quite funny.

Scene 2

The whole family is in the minivan, halfway to home from a trip into town.

Beta, out of the blue: “Momma, why do you wear glasses?”
Wife: “So I can see. Without glasses, everything looks blurry. Sometimes I wear contacts instead of glasses, but they do the same thing.”
Some Guy: “You should let him wear your glasses so he can see how things can look blurry.”
(worrying that the eyeglasses might be a little worse for the wear after the kids had them) “Even better, how about I let them wear my old glasses?”
“You have glasses?”
“I used to wear glasses. Then I got my eyes fixed. They zapped them with a laser and now I can see clearly.”
“Did your eyes smoke?”
(laughing, while recalling the smell of burning flesh during LASIK): “Yes, they did, a little bit”
(now worrying that the kids might think that eyeballs and lasers normally play well together) “The eye doctor used the laser very carefully. You should never look at a laser or let anyone shine a laser at your eyes, because most lasers will hurt your eyes and then you might not be able to see anymore.”

I think I got the point across, although it may have taken the fun out of the conversation.

The things you never considered before being a parent…

When discussing LASIK with people, you would assume they have enough common sense to know not to try laser eye surgery on their own. But how do people get that common sense in the first place? That’s part of the parents’ job – teaching children lessons as they go through life.

And yes, I still have my old glasses. They fit in the very broad category of Things With Sentimental Value that I like to save. And it’s fun to show people how bad my eyes were before LASIK.

But since I could not see because of the brightness of that light, I was led by the hand by those who were with me and came into Damascus.

Acts 22:11

Posted in Conversations | No Comments »

Olympic Winners, 2010

Mar

2

2010

Since there is some debate about the best way to measure who won the Olympics (correct answer: “We all did”), I thought I would prepare the results using several different methods so that various countries could claim to be the winners.

Most of the debate, at least here in the USA, centers around do only golds count (Canada won) or do all medals count (USA won). The seemingly official method is to count all medals, but there are some other ways.

Since there are too much data to put into one post, I’ll summarize the results in this post and also point to another page that contains the unsummarized data.

Summary: Korea won the 2010 Olympic games.

I prefer to normalize the Olympic rankings by athletes or, as they are sometimes called, delegates. How many contestants did a country send to win medals? And how many medals did they win? It’s more of an efficiency rating, but I think it is better than comparing medals to the general population.

Country Athletes / Point Rank
Korea KOR 0.92 1
Netherlands NED 1.31 2
Norway NOR 1.32 3

When one adjusts the points total by number of athletes sent to the Winter Olympics, South Korea is the winner. They were the only country to earn more than one point per athlete or, as I ranked them, less than one athlete per point.

For the complete data, please view the charts on the 2010 Olympics Results page.

An argument started among them as to which of them might be the greatest.

Luke 9:46

Posted in Sports | 3 Comments »

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