Coming Up On Level 3

Does anybody else get the feeling that raising a child is like playing an MMORPG? Not exactly like it, but you gotta admit there are some striking similarities. It seems like to level up at one of these role-playing games, first you have to get the gem from this place, but to get the gem first you have to get the map from this other place, but to get the map you have to go defeat the ogre in this other place. And on and on and on.

I feel like I'm just trying to level up my children until I reach the ultimate goal of producing a functioning member of society. But to get there I have to go through grueling hours of all the little details that have to be accomplished to get to a particular goal, like learning to walk, or speak, or use the bathroom. Of course to walk they first have to roll over. Then they have to start crawling. Then pulling up on furniture. And on and on and on.

I find that in the games I've played, I didn't necessarily want to beat the game, or be the best, or have the highest rating. I would set myself a slightly lower goal and try really hard to accomplish that, like getting in the top 10,000 on the leaderboard or something. The same is true of raising a child. Don't get me wrong, if I can manage to produce the first female president then woohoo, but at the moment I'm just interested in having a conversation with my toddler that actually makes sense.

Misty Water-Colored Memories

I wouldn't classify this as a Great Idea, but it is a bit of a quandary that's been bouncing around my skull for a while now. We make assumptions about how everyone in the world perceives the world. Specifically we assume that everyone views color the same way we do. In other words the way I see the color we call red is the same way you see the color we call red.

There really is no basis for that belief. We already know that there are people in this world that have different interpretations of light waves than the norm. We label these people "colorblind". What if there was another subsection of people who could perceive all the colors, but for some reason their brain didn't process them the same?

They could potentially see the color red, but their brain perceives it as what I would call the color blue, were I to look through their eyes. They of course would be raised from infancy to identify that color by the title "red", thereby integrating them into society and no one being the wiser to the difference in their brain.

Now what if there was some truth to the belief that colors play an unconscious role in our moods, like red causing anger, yellow happiness, blue depression, etc. So if this person who is being shown red is actually seeing what the rest of us would call blue, would they get depressed by the color "red"? Would they get angry when shown yellow?

The point is if it's possible for the brain to be wired in such a way as to misinterpret colors, then isn't also possible that those misinterpretations can lead to unnatural aggression, if every time the sky is clear they are angry? Or perhaps someone could be depressed by sunshine. They may be imperceptible and only play a minor role in our overall makeup.

Technologeeeeee!!!!

So after 3 years of being tied to my desk, my company is finally getting me a laptop. Can you say working from home? I knew you could.

The argument has been made among friends that by having this available at my home I'll be expected to work in my free time, but what they don't realize is I barely do any work in my work time, so the odds of that are slim.

It will be nice to have a second laptop when I go back to school. It happened a couple of times that I needed the computer and my wife was editing or doing something equally time consuming and there was a small scuffle over it. Hopefully such confrontations will be eliminated. Of course I could have just shelled out the $200 for a notebook, but I'm nothing if not stingy. that's not really true, I think it's just that I rarely find justification for spending money on myself.

Of course it will probably have the same if not more restrictions on it, so I still won't have Angry Birds available while I work.

What a Great Idea #13

I had an idea for how to get to other heavenly bodies (moon, Mars) faster. The biggest problem we have is getting all the stuff necessary to sustain life to the place we want to sustain life, along with the life we want to sustain. So why not send the stuff first? Just get a big block of ice (like a couple of tons worth) and put a big honkin' rocket under it, and hit launch?

I mean, you don't really even have to put retro rockets or stabilizers on it. So what if it crashes? as long as you send it somewhere that the sun won't hit, it will stay ice. Same with the frozen TV dinners the astronauts eat. Although you would probably want them to land nicely. I don't know about you, but I would hate for the peas to get mixed in with the cherry crumble.

I'm definitely one of those people who prefers that the different types of food on my plate don't touch each other. I mean, the point of having mashed potatoes with gravy is to taste mashed potatoes and gravy. But that doesn't mean I want to see what gravy and fruit salad tastes like. You gotta keep 'em separated.

Back on point, once you got the food and water on planet, start sending buildings. Modules of pre-fab housing and what not. As it is everything is automated now a days, so they could probably come up with something that assembled itself. By the time humans got back to the moon there would already be a little city waiting for them.

Heck, for that matter why don't we send a robot to the moon that can build a runway? Then we could take the shuttle to the moon, land it, and take off again. It can't be that hard to build a robot that can level dirt. All you really need is a flat stretch of ground to land a plane. Obviously the shuttle would need to be modified since it was only built for Earth-orbit, but all I'm saying is it can't be that hard.

Only Fools Rush In

So some dear friends of ours invited us to their super awesome community swimming pool (which is much nicer than ours) for the fourth and we happily accepted. I was excited to take my oldest daughter because it had been quite a while since she had been in a swimming pool. She had enjoyed the ocean after a little convincing, but wasn't a fan of the lake we visited. Essentially I was still on the fence as to whether or not she is afraid of the water. I am no longer on the fence.

She was terrified. It was ridiculous. Their pool complex has a great kiddie pool with turtles and frogs and whatnot, and the entrance to the pool is a sloping tile path made up to look like the beach, so you don't even have to go down steps to get into the water. No sooner did the water start to lap at my daughter's feet did she let out an ear-piercing scream. I was a little surprised by that, since she had been in deeper water in the bathtub and seemed to enjoy bath time immensely.

And she couldn't have been safer. I got her the water wings for her arms and the little pink inner tube to go around her. Now you may say that's a bit of overkill, but it turned out to be just right, since I found out through experimentation that she couldn't use the wings properly to support her weight and keep her face out of the water, and taking off the wings and just using the ring would have resulted in her slipping right through it. I didn't test that particular theory, but I felt confident in it.

As a result of her overwhelming trepidation she spent the entire time clinging desperately to me, all the while loudly proclaiming that she wanted her mommy and she needed to get out. Now you may think I'm a bad dad for forcing my 2 1/2 yr old to face her fears, but you don't know about the times she was distracted from that fact that she was surrounded by tens of thousands of gallons of water.

For instance when the pool operators came around with free little rubber duckies (cuz that pool is awesome) that you could fill with water and they would shoot it out their mouths. She took great delight in spraying me with water or getting sprayed herself, all while perched on my knee. And when I would move quickly through the water, or spin around while holding her, her face would light up and she would even occasionally smile.

Some of my fondest memories are of playing in the swimming pool as a child, and I want nothing more than for her to have that same joy at swimming, but I know if I push her too much she'll just end up hating it. Does anybody know how to convince you child that swimming is fun without scarring them for life? Any help would be appreciated.

What A Great Idea #12

So I was thinking to myself, people like to tan, but one of the many drawbacks is it takes a while. Another is that it's hard to maintain the privacy necessary to get a good, all-over tan (if you know what I mean). Well here's the solution. It's called Sun-Up.

Sun-up is a panel or group of panels measuring 6 feet by 3 feet that you place around the area you want to do your tanning. The biggest benefit is that they catch the rays that you miss, and redirect them back to you, which cuts your tan time in half. They come on legs that can be adjusted to perfectly catch the sun and direct it back to you. They are tall enough to block out nosy neighbors or, if you're in a hotel, can be set up on the balcony to provide a privacy screen that really cooks.

Now you may be asking yourself, why would I want to lug around 6ftx3ft panels on my vacation? The answer is you don't have to, because Sun-Up is completely collapsible. The 6ft tubes that make up the sides of each panel can be separated from the top and bottom and folded in half, and the top and bottom are used to roll up the reflective Mylar sheet in the center to prevent creases or crumpling. All in all each panel ends up being only 3ft long and only a few inches wide.

By using hollow tubing and Mylar, the overall weight of each panel is kept relatively low, while the feet have a variety of hooks, pegs, and holes that can be used to strap or pin them down to prevent them from falling over or blowing away. Of course with such a thin material the Mylar will be reinforced at the ends where it connects to the frame, and elastic will be used to allow for movement and prevent tearing.