Some Blog Site

I have seen a few articles that noted the trend of criminals who steal cars and use the GPS to drive to the victim’s house, knowing that the victim is not at home. The garage door opener left in the car provides the means for the thieves to enter the residence for the robbery.

Since we don’t have a GPS or a garage door opener, I can consider this situation somewhat objectively. The recommendations of the various writers was to leave the “Home” button of the GPS unprogrammed or to set it to a nearby intersection or local business but not your actual home address.

That’s no fun.

I say set your GPS Home location to the closest police station.

You leave your event (football game, concert, etc.) and get that sinking feeling as you begin to think your car is stolen. Simply call the police station (you do have the police station’s number in your cell phone, don’t you? And no, 911 is not their number.) and ask if they see a such-and-such car in their parking lot. No, you don’t say “such-and-such” – you need to replace that phrase with the make and model and color of your vehicle.

Of course, the savvy burglar might realize what is happening and figure you swapped your Home and Police Station entries. So don’t make it too easy and enter your home address under the title of “Police Station”. Make it “Church” or “Doberman Breeder” or something else.

New Webpage Announcement: You can now generate your own word-find puzzles at Some Fun Site.

Background Information: I always liked it in school when the teacher would want to fill some time and gave us the word find-type puzzles. So, many years later, I made a computer program (VB, for Windows 3.1) that would make a puzzle based on words that the user provided. It randomly picked layouts and directions and tried to fit the words in the given size.

Now, about a decade after I made that program, I finally ported the word search code over to a web page. There are some things to be tweaked, such as setting up a decent print page or providing better error handling if the person types too many words for the size of the puzzle.

In case you can’t tell, Some Fun Site is a close relative (cousin, I think) of Some Blog Site.

In cooperation with LaanyKidsMom, here is my entry for this week.

Where did I find joy this week?

Kindergarten Valentine’s Day parties
I got to attend my son’s class party, the type where everyone gives harmless cards to everyone else and they’re happy because they got some candy. And they make crafts with glue and stickers and stuff.

Pick six! PICK SIX!!
No, I am not talking about the local lottery numbers. The 4th quarter of the Super Bowl brought me joy this week. It was fun to watch, although my favorite Super Bowl play is still Mike Jones’ tackle to keep the Titans from beating the Rams.

One More
The last thing that brought me joy this week (there were many more things that brought me joy, so this isn’t really the last thing that brought me joy, it’s just the last item I’m going to mention in this blog post) was my nephew was born. It was a few days early, which was odd because the C-section had been scheduled for next week.

New nephews and nieces are always nice to have, but my favorite part was his name. No, for the sake of his privacy I am not going to list his name here. Plus most of you readers are family so you already know the name. Non-family readers may email me if they are curious.

Our church has an AWANA program, which is a weekly program for children and it involves games and Bible teaching and stuff. Every so often, we will have a special night instead of the usual program. These are planned at the beginning of the school year – hayride and bonfire one night in the fall, grand prix races one night in the spring, a night of caroling just before Christmas, and a sledding night in mid-winter.

Because the nature of weather is to be unpredictable, especially 5 months ahead of time, we always plan a sledding night and then a back-up sledding night in case there is no snow on the first night. Two weeks ago, when we were supposed to have our sledding night, there wasn’t really any snow. So we had a regular AWANA program and told the kids the sledding night would be this day.

And then, last week after he reminded the kids that the next week would be sledding, the guy in charge gave the closing prayer. Yes, he prayed that we would have lots of snow for sledding.

And lo, the snow fell in great abundance.

We got plenty of snow, and it all came the day before and day of the sledding trip. Perfect. But there is a rule that we follow – if school is closed there is no AWANA that night. It’s easy for the kids to remember, it’s easy for the parents to remember, and it makes sense that if roads are too bad for getting to school then they are too bad for getting to church. Keeps the kids safe.

School was canceled today. Too much snow.

So there’s no AWANA tonight. Too much snow.

Which means we can’t go sledding because there’s too much snow.

Maybe I’ll spend some quality time at home with the kids since we’re not taking them to church tonight. I think we’ll go sledding.

The Game

• I do have some friends who are Colts fans (hi Paul), so I am sure they are not happy about the result. But sports are about cheering for a given team, which implies that you cheer against the other team. As it has worked out, He Who Must Not Be Named is the quarterback for the Colts. So I must root against them. If they had a different quarterback, I might have been rooting for them. So don’t take it personally, Colts fans, that I cheered for the Saints.
• Yes, I do also root against the Giants.
• Based on that, the Superbowl was fun to watch. I saw the first quarter and much of the second quarter. I missed halftime and the third quarter. But I got to see the fourth quarter. Apparently, I should have missed the first quarter and watched the third.
• If I don’t have a vested interest in the game, I pull for the more fun team. If you run a fake punt, you’re good in my book. That’s why I have liked Boise St. By that measure, the Saints came out ahead. Even though they didn’t run any fakes, they did have the onside kick and they did go for it on fourth and goal. I watch football to be entertained. Therefore, I like the team that provides more entertainment – the Saints.
• The Colts weren’t all bad though. I was pleasantly impressed that they did not use their timeouts at the end of the game. There are few things more annoying in a sporting event than to have the losing team call their timeouts (or, in the case of basketball, purposely foul) when it is hopeless. The Colts had two timeouts remaining, I think, and the Saints had possession with 45 seconds left. The Colts could have made the Saints do three kneel-downs instead of just one, but that would have accomplished nothing other than prolong the agony.

The Ads

A few random conversations this time, starring Beta. And with a special guest appearance by cousin O.

• My son held out the empty cardboard toilet-paper tube so that I could throw it away. Unfortunately, we fumbled the hand-off and the tube tumbled into the toilet bowl. Also unfortunately, this was as he was finishing the reason he was in the bathroom in the first place.

  I announced my dissatisfaction with the circumstances with an exclamation of “Aaagh!” My wife heard the noise and asked what was going on. I replied that I had to fish the cardboard tube out of the potty; we certainly couldn’t just flush it. To which Beta responded, in a mix of bewilderment and amusement, “You’re going fishing in the potty?“

• Beta (meaning that he can see well in the dark): I have good eyes at night
  O: I have good eyes at night too, because I’m a princess

  She matched his bet and then played the royalty card. It’s hard to argue with royalty, unless you know that she’s only a princess because she has a princessy dress.

• We took a trip to the local nursing home so the kids’ Sunday School classes could sing to the residents. Beta did not enjoy the trip, and he told me so when we got back into the minivan.
  Nursing homes are not fun.
  Why not?
  They don’t have Legos or TV. That’s what we like.

A couple years ago, I mentioned that a company will turn your remains into diamonds, for a small fee of course. I just recently realized that concept is not new. In fact, we have footage and photos of the early attempts at this.

The company takes the carbon, usually from your cremation ashes, compresses it under high heat and pressure just like the earth did for real diamonds, and in a few months you get a diamond.

The carbon is the key. It’s a basic ingredient for life, and it’s the sole ingredient for diamonds. How better to preserve your memory than by using your carbon?

As you can see, the trial-and-error experimentation that they used to develop this whole process had some undesirable side effects. But eventually they got it right. Even though it took a long time. And was in a galaxy far, far away.