My So Called Life

Technology is out to get me

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I may have mentioned a little problem I had a while back with AT&T and a certain pay per view charge.  Well someone is up to their old tricks again because we received a notice in the mail that we signed up for Cinemax!  Now, it is possible that Evie has somehow ordered these things, however, there are a couple of glitches in that theory.  1) Cinemax was ordered while she was on vacation in MI and 2) if she is ordering them she has a very particular taste.  So far the things ordered are WWE Smackdown, the movie Spiderman, a *ahem* pornographic movie and Skin-a-max.  Do those sound like the viewing preferences of my sweet baby girl?  Despite their insistence, there is obviously something more going on here, although I can see why they suspect me.  It’s a frame job I tell ya!

Luckily the guy I talked to this time was super nice and quickly put everything in order.  I don’t understand why they couldn’t be like that the last time I talked to them.  Apparently it is easy to remove Cinemax but hard to remove a pay-per-view.  I also came to learn there were notes in my file based on my previous…uh…disagreement with them.  Whatever.  Just cancel anything that I could possibly order and leave me alone!

I have also been having some problems with my DSL modem.  Long story short it just stopped working when we got back from vacation.  Eventually I learned how to get it to work in 5 minute spurts.  After several calls to tech support and online searches, I discovered that it was overheating.  Removing the casing and exposing the bare circuit board wasn’t enough, but throw in a box fan blowing on it and voila!  Internet!  This was obviously not a viable long term solution and I had some vague notions about somehow buying a heat sink and attaching that, but I just broke down and bought a new modem.  The thing is, this is now my 3rd modem in about 2 years and they are like $70 a pop (although my first one was free from AT&T and the second one was a replacement when the 1st was still under warranty).  Still, I don’t have a good feeling that this one is going to last.  And there are surprisingly few choices.  AT&T basically just offers the one.

So we’re up and running full time again (as of today) and hopefully this will last for many years to come!

Thanksgiving update is in there somewhere

/ Shane / 1 Comment

So, I haven’t really given a life update in a while, so I’m going to throw a bunch of stuff in here.

The Saturday a week before Thanksgiving, we participated in a parenting first: taking our child to the emergency room.  It wasn’t really an emergency per say, but Evie was showing a lot of signs of an ear infection which she had just gotten over (so we thought) and we were supposed to leave that day for a week of vacation.  I thought this was a rite of passage because when I was little we had to go to the emergency room like a million times (mostly due to ear infections), but Sara said they didn’t go very often when she was little.  Anyway, it took a while but everybody was nice and it wasn’t the horror story I was envisioning.  The doctor said the ears were a little pink but she couldn’t say for certain that she had an ear infection.  Luckily they gave us the antibiotic anyway since her eardrum ruptured less than 24 hours later!  They also gave us a handy sheet with information on it such as how to say some of the tougher medical words (in FECT shun in case you were wondering).  The second antibiotic gave her bad diarrhea for a week (“thanks dad!” – future Evie) but seemed to clear things up.  However, at her follow up it looks like there still may be a problem, we were referred to an Ear Nose and Throat doctor.  The result of that appointment was yet another round of antibiotics and the possibility of tubes in her ears come January.  Everyone in my family has ear trouble.  Apparently we have small ear canals which makes fluid sit longer which is a breeding ground for bacteria.  So it looks like she has a legacy to live up to, unfortunately! 😦  

So we went to MI where I deposited Sara and Evie for the week before coming back to work (hence the temporary bachelor-hood).  I thought I would have lots of time to relax, but I had quite a list of things to do, so it went pretty fast.  I did catch up on a lot of sleep though.  While she was gone, Sara got her haircut really short and donated it to Beautiful Lengths.  She’s super cute. 🙂

I caught back up to them at my mom’s house where everybody (including Sara’s family) came for Thanksgiving.  Good times, good eats, and Evie learned a new religion:

We also managed to hit up my dad’s, where Sara collected many sticks and pine cones which can be hard to come by in Chicago, and Science Central.  Science Central suffered an unfair comparison since we had just recently been to the Please Touch Museum, but it was actually a pretty good time.  We spent longer there than we expected to.

Evie tried her first taste of bacon, which was a momentous occasion!  She liked it of course.  She also tried something else:

You probably can’t tell from this picture, but she really liked that as well.

Although she is still sleeping through the night, she has had some setbacks after vacation.  She has woken up once a couple of nights and also seems to have decided that 4 a.m. is a pretty good time to get up.  Although we don’t let her get out of her crib until 5:30, sometimes she just stays awake and plays or cries.  Which means I am back to sleeping on the floor sometimes.  Hopefully we are done with that and back on track though after just a few nights.  Last night she slept until 5:30 (whoever thought I would be happy to “sleep in” until 5:30?!)

She knows well over 200 words now and she’s making 3 word sentences.  She is especially into Christmas words at the moment like pistmas tree, santa, snowman, angel, reindeer, snowflake, sled, etc.  She can recognize about 6 colors; blue, green, pink, orange, purple and brown but she doesn’t always get those right.  She can “read” (i.e. recognize) about 6 written words; stop, zoo, Evie, mommy, daddy and taxi.  That part is the most amazing to me.  I know that she’s not really reading per say, but it still seems like you aught not to be able to recognize words by 16 months.  The doctor said she is speaking somewhere between a 2 year old and a 3 year old level.  

I try not to brag about my daughter or get too excited about things, especially since I don’t have any frame of reference about how much a kid is supposed to be doing, but I suppose writting all of that on my blog is bragging a *little* bit. 🙂

Some people are a disgrace to the human race

/ Shane / 1 Comment

It would be hard to find a more loathsome, disgusting and tragic story than this one.

To summarize: An employee was opening the front door to a Walmart in New York when the hundreds of people, waiting outside for Black Friday sales, forced the door open and TRAMPLED THE MAN TO DEATH.

To save a few bucks on something you probably didn’t even need.  And the guy was opening the door anyway, so you saved yourself, what, 10 seconds?  Were you buying that as a present for someone?  Do you think they want it now?

I understand the mob mentality makes people do things they wouldn’t normally do because responsibility is diffused.  But this morning you people know who you are.  You know you were at that Walmart and you remember breaking the door.  You remember pushing and shoving and maybe you stepped on something that didn’t feel like the floor.  Maybe you saw someone lying there and thought, “Someone should help that man!”  You were part of the crowd then, but today you know that someone is dead.  Even though you didn’t do the right thing then, do the right thing now and turn yourself in so this guy’s family can have some peace.

Merry Christmas.

The Bachelor Lifestyle

/ Shane / 4 Comments

How can you tell Sara and Evie aren’t here?  Because I just ate four steaks for dinner.

Four.

The Great Climate Debate

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Yesterday my work hosted something called the “Great Climate Debate” in which a notable in the field of climate study from each of the opposing viewpoints (Global Warming is man-made vs. it is a natural phenomenon that we can’t control) was able to express his views.  The debate itself wasn’t what I expected exactly; there wasn’t really any back and forth and the issues argued were very scientific and subtle.  Also, both sides had some slight flaws in their arguments such as taking particular ranges of time that supported their arguments, but not examining the entire timeline altogether.  But I did learn a thing or two and I am grateful that I work at a place that would sponsor such a thing.

One interesting thing is that the “natural phenomenon” guy agreed that the globe was warming and even agreed that humans were causing at least some part of that.  He was only arguing that our contribution was very small and didn’t impact it much.  So the actual disagreement was only about the degree to which we are affecting the climate.  I’m not sure everybody gets that, I think there are general lay-people still believe that the climate is not warming.  But even this guy, who had incredible credentials, is at the forefront of this movement, and who is rabid in his belief, agrees global warming exists and we are causing at least part of it.

For his part, one interesting point that he made was about the self-regulating abilities of Earth.  For example, as the temperature rises more humidity goes in the air causing the greenhouse effect.  But it also causes the creation of clouds and clouds actually help reflect radiation from the sun back into space.  So the Earth is heating to some degree from the greenhouse effect, but also at the same time cooling to some degree from the loss of energy from the sun which is no longer making it to the surface of the Earth.  It was also interesting to think about the fact that the Earth was warmer at the time of the dinosaurs than most climate modelers predict it will be due to our global warming.

The most interesting issue that came up was political.  The question came up, “Is global warming even a bad thing?”  Well, it turns out that for countries in our position of the globe (“our” meaning the U.S. but also Europe, Russia, etc.) global warming would actually be better for our crops, etc. and would probably increase our GDP.  But for other countries (especially Africa) it would be devastating.  So the people who are causing most of the greenhouse gas emissions actually stand to benefit from it and the people in the 3rd world (predictably) would be the big losers.

At the end of the day I have to reject the argument of the “natural phenomenon” guy, but not necessarily because he is wrong.  He could be right.  But his argument was, well the other guys with their fancy models aren’t correct, so therefore the opposite must be true.  Not so!  That doesn’t logically hold.  Their position could still be correct, even if they can’t prove it.

Anyway, my position on it is the same as my positions on many things: this argument is irrelevant.  Whether our pollution is causing global warming or not, I think we all know we shouldn’t be polluting.  So we should stop polluting based on its own merits whether it causes global warming or not.  It kind of reminds me back when people used to argue about whether smoking causes cancer or not.  Who cares?  It does a lot of other bad things and you know you shouldn’t be smoking!  So if there is even a chance global warming is caused by us, that is just one more reason on top of all the other reasons to stop polluting.  And if that is the final straw that makes someone stop doing it, then great!