Okay, so this morning me and the kids determined the maximum occupancy of one king size bed to be six. Me, one 8 year old, one 6 year old, one 4 year old, one 1 year old, and one puppy. Doesn't leave much room for movement or comfort, but it is conducive to a lot of tickling. We had fun, the kids got a kick out of it, Little Bit thought she was in heaven, and even Devon tried jumping on the bed. It was great.

Yesterday, I was making Peanut Butter and Nutella sandwiches for the kids. Good stuff, everyone should eat chocolate-hazelnut spread, it's good for you ;) Anyway, me and Andrew had the following conversation:

Wasn't quite sure where to take the conversation from there, to Just Say No or something similar or just to leave it alone as one of what I'm sure will be many Freudian Slips.

Labels: Family

¶ 11:51 AM 0 comments

One of the thing's Andrew wanted for his birthday was a robot. This was initially slightly confusing as he said something about wanting to do what Dad did, and I don't do anything with robots. Programming yes, robots no. Anyway, it turned out he did want a robot, a "real" robot. So we found the Astronaut (finished product pictured at right.) It was a fun adventure getting it assembled with Andy, and here's what I learned.

• Optional tools are not really Optional.
  Kind of like optional books in a college course, you better have them or else. Ever tried fitting your fingers into a crevice that is less than half an inch wide and about that deep? Long nose pliers were a must.
• Help from a 7 year old is very dedicated, even when it shouldn't be
  Poor Andy really couldn't do much putting this together, we didn't notice when we bought the robot that it's recommended for 8+ (and I'd personally lean to the + side after assembling this. So putting it together became more of a lesson in patience for the both of us as I tried to guide him and he tried to hold a nut with the needle nosed pliers while I attempted to insert the screw, or vice-versa. He tried very hard, and kept trying up until I sent him to bed as it was pushing 9PM. He really tried hard to be helpful.
• I need better tools!
• Nothing is as fun as being finished
  

All in all this was a fun adventure.

Labels: Family

¶ 9:30 PM 0 comments

So as of late I've been looking at what I am actually going to do given that I graduate in under a year. Life seems different from this end of the educational journey. While I have no immediate plans after graduating I am looking into the JET Programme as a possibility. I promised Jenny no major moves until she graduates so she has the chance to finish her degree without having to go through a while credit transferring crisis. Another distinct possibility is law school, but again I'd have to wait. I start subbing in the local school districts, but I really haven't looked into anything too much.

Anyway, after Jen graduates we're talking about moving east. Neither of us has really had any exposure to that general area, other than my time in Kentucky, and figured it might be a nice change. We've talked about Virginia, for no real reason, just seemed like a place to talk about. According to Wikipedia, Virginia is ranked highly for their public education system. NEA has them ranked 20th for average teacher's salary. *shrug* All better than Idaho ;)

For a completely different story. I managed to destroy 200G of data on a hard drive when I tried to move it from an NTFS partition to a UFS partitioned disk. So I've been running Runtime's GetDataBack and HDHost on a Bart's PE disc trying to resurrect as much of it as possible. It'll finish up the scan in 7 hours it says, it started at 2AM. *sigh* That's what I get for trying to move that much data around anyway. Should've copied it and then deleted the original :P

Update: So the 7 hours game and went and it seems to be doing a new scan now. Looks to be an additional 17 hours! w00t!

Labels: Family

¶ 8:50 PM 2 comments

It's hard to look over my past at times. I'm not the same person that I used to be in many ways. As a continuously evolving being, I'm never the same person I was when I decide to look back at my life.

It all started with my little program to import exported data into Blogger. Merely by its creation I necessitated a look into my past, as I've written about it on my various blogs and websites going back to December 7, 2000. First off, it's scary to think that I have records going back that far, but I do ;-) Mostly thanks to the wonder that is the Internet Archive. They filled in most of the early missing stuff, but unfortunately I don't think I'll ever get it all back. Anyway, I read over some of the things that I wrote and wonder to myself what I was thinking at the time. So now I have a dilemma. Do I post it all and hope people can sort out the truth for themselves, or do I not. Do I move forward without looking back (any more than I already have I guess.)

On a lighter note, here's Devon, playing in one of his favorite places, the dog's kennel. Yep, he knows how to open the door all by himself and manages to climb right in and play with anything or nothing (as is the case here.) Gotta keep the kid enterainted somehow I guess ;)

Labels: Computers

¶ 12:08 AM 0 comments

This is a message that I got on my voicemail a little while back. It's been sitting there as up until today I hadn't really found a way to get it off my voicemail and into a digital format. Today, after some searching, I found GotVoice and signed up for their free/lite plan. That did the trick.

Anyway, I don't really think this piece needs any particular introduction other than to say that Andrew is 6 (will be 7 on the 13th of this month) and in 1st grade. The good part starts at about 20 seconds. In case you listen to the whole thing:
• Totorica was previously the Music/Choir director at Borah High School which 5 of my younger brothers attended and 4 of them took various choir classes from him.
• Andrew did freestyle wrestling last year and talks about doing it again, he is not talking WWF here people ;)
• Weiner is the body part that Totorica reports Andrew having threatened to kick the other pupil in, it got distorted by GotVoice

Yes, we had a nice long talk with Andrew about that, but is it sad that I had a hard time keeping a straight face while listening to the voicemail? I was actually shocked that the other kid got suspended. I remember doing stuff like that in elementary school and no one ever got suspended for it. I do not know if there was previous disciplinary action with the student involved and didn't feel that it was my place to ask.

Labels: Family

¶ 3:37 AM 1 comments

I'm a little miffed. It seems I only got a B+ in my America Sees Red seminar class. I'm going to stop by BSU today and grab my final paper and see how I did on that. The instructor told me that our last paper could really make our grade. I thought I had done pretty well on it too. My grades in that class were impoving each time, from a C- on the first paper to a C on the second and an A on the third. I really thought I had duplicated what got me the A on the third paper, but to get a B+ instead of an A in the class, I must not have done as well as I thought.

From the chart at left you'll notice that I did not break the 3.0 mark for my cumulative. I was really hoping that this would be the semester, but alas, it is not to be. It's actually a lot more depressing than I thought it would be that I didn't make the cut in that class. I so thought I would get the A that now even a B+, which I normally would be extatic about, is a stark reality. Anyone looking at my GPA chart would know that I'm not a perfect student, but I do try. As you can tell from the orange line (which excludes my Fall 2002 semester) my perfomance overall hasn't been too bad, but one bad semester will really bring you down.

The good news is that I only have 3 semesters left, counting the summer semester. Fall 2008 will be full-time student teaching, worth 16 credits, so really only next semester will have classroom instruction. Signed up for classes already, it's amazing that I only had 12 credits left to take to finish both my major and minor. I'll be taking:
• Intermediate Japanese II
• Teaching Experience II
• Teaching Secondary Social Studies
• Content Literacy for Secondary Students
Also going to be helping Jenny a bit with her Educational Technologies course. Pretty heavy load all in all I guess.

Labels: School

¶ 12:45 PM 0 comments

So after a not-so-lovely car ride from Eagle Mountain to Boise, I realized that car rides blow. There's really nothing else to it, spending 4 hours (no officer, I don't speed) in a '98 Plymouth Grand Voyager with a cranky 1 year old who is missing his nap, a way to energetic 4 year old who entertains himself by teasing the baby, the getting-better-at-not-driving-dad-up-the-wall-while-dad-drives 6 year old, a usually good behaved 8 year old, and a tired wife equals not a lot of fun. Makes me wonder how my parents made the drive from Hopkinsville, Kentucky to Fairbanks, Alaska by way of Boise Idaho and Yellowstone National Park if I recall correctly [editor. I have since been corrected and informed that we did not go through Yellowston on this trip], without throwing one of us out the freaking window. We spent 7 days on that drive I think, and the 5 hours I did today were about too much. And in case you are wondering I do realize I just added an hour to the driving time, that's because the more I think about it, the longer it seems ;-)

Today's events went something as follows:
1:00AM - Bedtime for Me and Jen following New Years Eve
6:00AM - Caleb wakes up and decides to crawl into the double bed me and Jen are sharing, I become wedge shaped
7:00AM - Elijah wakes up and presumably wakes Andrew up and they go into the Living Room to play Xbox, I forgot to tell them I had already packed it up last night. They watch cartoons instead. I attempt to move Caleb back into his sleeping bag.
7:15AM - Caleb gets out of his sleeping bag and joins the other 2 in the living room. Decides it would be a bad idea to sneak back into mom & dad's be or to bug grandma and grandpa (something he had apparently been doing all week...)
8:00AM - Devin wakes up, Jenny gets him up.
8:05AM - Jenny decides it's unfair that she is the only one awake and literally pounces on the bed to wake me up. I beg and plead for 30 more minutes to no avail. I hide under the covers. Jenny relents and goes to give Devin a bath or breakfast or something (I was tired) telling me to get out of bed as she leaves the room.
8:10AM - Kids decide to play hide and seek as apparently TV is not the great babysitter people say it is. They seek their way right into the 100 sq. ft. room I'm sleeping in instead of the 2000 other sq. ft available. No abounds. I realize I will get no more sleep but refuse to leave the warm of the bed.
8:15AM - Jen is deadly serious, I worm my way out of the last inch of covers she has left me after prying the other 3 blankets from my clutches. Head to bathroom to take a shower.
8:20AM - No hot water. Get out of shower, start packing van. Freeze self in the -1000 degree cold (supposedly it was 10F but I think it lies!) attempting to back 2.5 times the amount of stuff we brought to Utah
9:00AM - Notice almost finished packing van, tell children to get shoes, socks & coats on. Realize two are still in PJs. Tell them to get dressed with the clothes we picked out yesterday.
9:15AM - "Remind" children that they were suppose to get shoes, socks & coats on. Last stage of shoving the crap wherever it will fit.
9:30AM - Done packing. Starting to haul children to car one by one after they make the rounds of hugs and kisses to the family.
9:45AM - Everyone is buckled and we are off! To McDonalds... Jen and I forgot breakfast....

Finally got to Boise at about 4:30. McDonalds took an hour cause they were slammed.. Who woulda thunk that many people ate breakfast? Also made a stop in Brigham City to see Jen's sister and a stop in Burley for gas/pit stop.

Next time on the Exciting Adventures of Brian, work! Not really, not usually as exciting ;)

Labels: Family, Rants

¶ 9:27 PM 0 comments