Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Jay: Speaking of Pandora
My grandmother sent home some sugary cereal the girls loved. I dubbed it Pandora Crunch. Speaking of Pandora…
Sadie’s computer got a working sound card and CD drive, so she’s been playing with Magic Schoolbus Explores the Solar System for a couple days, while Valerie looks on. Today things got sufficiently vicious that it became clear Valerie needs an upgrade.
Which I was kind of expecting, but hoping to avoid for now. Oops.
Jay: Just to Be Clear
I didn’t write about something that didn’t happen that made nobody unhappy, so nobody should keep searching for the topic and coming here expecting to learn anything that they shouldn’t know about nothing at all. I can’t control the speed at which the search sites that are figments of your imagination might clear what I never said about what didn’t happen from their results you’re not seeing and their invisible cache that’s not at all annoying in its tenacity.
Move along.
Jay: This and That
The gout is a lot better. Yay! The kids hurt my left knee to a surprisingly painful degree. Boo, hiss!
Discussing the possibility of some cool writing work in an area of interest.
Today I need to go back over my US taxes and finalize the forms (there’s always a copy of one or more that gets miswritten and crossed out or such), then do the MA taxes. While I’m at it I should probably make the partnership tax forms ready to mail eventually and put them somewhere safe. None of this will actually go out until it must, after all, but I needed the info for the former partners, and my own for other purposes. While I’m at it, I also need to file a couple quarters of “nothing to see here” zero sales tax returns and mark the last one final.
It’s American Idol night, so let’s hope bedtime goes better tonight. Sadie’s been a mess in that regard, and Valerie is two. Speaking of which, Sadie is now on her third of three dry nights. Apparently there will be no more diapers for her, which is great because we were down to one or two and that $7 buys a lot of milk. Okay, very little milk, at $4 a gallon, but still. That probably means the farmers get about a quarter a gallon, the stores get about a quarter a gallon, and the rest goes to transport, processing, packaging, and profit for the milk companies that are the self-designated sole profitees in the sorry supply chain. Kind of like the insurance companies of dairy. But I digress, and have not actually researched.
Yesterday was eaten by the bears of redaction. At least I learned a thing or two about .htaccess and robots.txt, the latter of which I had never yet used in almost eleven years of working on web sites. Heck, it’s been so long, I say “web site” instead of “website.” I’ve never been so impatient for Google to crawl on through and update itself. Darn cache transactions.
What else?
Sadie may have developed a food reaction to tomatoes or something else in common to my chili and my red sauce. Yay. Both also contain red pepper, garlic, maybe a couple other things at least in trace amounts. I just realized I used no oregano in the red sauce, but then there’s some in the Italian seasoning. Well, there’s also beef, but who would react to that? Not a thrilling development, if it’s more than coincidence.
There are other odds and ends to do. We started working on planning blog maintenance services yesterday, but we have kids and relatives. I have to return to my resume, retweak my LinkedIn profile, maybe post a couple more things. And right, it’s time for Carnival of the Capitalists over at Bizosphere. Maybe I can do that in the time it takes to cook a chicken later. Not many entries, but I have a few things I can add and call it a small edition.
I have an idea for selling a domain name more effectively, which should take an hour or two up front and a few minutes a day to pull off after that. That might be something to work on late at night when the kids are done with me and I’m drooling on the keyboard wondering didn’t I have things to get done or something.
Okay, off to it. If I start somewhere, inertia will favor momentum over rest. Heck, as restful as it may seem, even typing up a post like this serves to ramp up momentum.
Jay: Happy Birthday
To my cousin Joyce.
Jay: Happy Birthday
To blogger Pat of Brainster, who is 53 today.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Jay: Location is Everything
In some ways we love Massachusetts more than you would expect. Especially this part of it, between it being pleasantly purple and being in one of the most “southern” climate zones that cut through the state. It always fascinated me that the seed catalogs showed, if I recall correctly, five climate bands going through Massachusetts. Not a surprise, based on the actual weather variations. The one I was in growing up in (not sure I’m allowed to say what town that was), which is probably this same one, dove surprisingly deep into the south. The taxes aren’t as absurd as generally reputed. The dominance of democrats in the state is of an odd sort, almost like the politicians of the one party are of multiple parties, and it’s just that you have to claim to be a democrat to have any chance to get elected.
However, there are various reasons we might like to leave eventually. It’ll take some time to work around to it, and it might not happen if we get sufficiently entrenched in a “tied to location” sort of way again, as I was with the old business. Which may be fine, if it’s worth my while.
We’re relatively open to the many available options, but there are certain preferences and requirements to consider…
No offense to some of you, but we’ve been increasingly interested in living not-so-close to so many relatives. An exception would be Wayne, which makes Ohio, Indiana or Kentucky sound more intriguing than any of them might otherwise. Except Ohio is an especially high tax state, and they arrested and created a living hell for an old friend of mine for legally carrying a gun through the state.
Obviously the lower the taxes, the better.
Obviously the closer to “hey, we read the 2nd Amendment with the reading comprehension of a 1st grader and didn’t ignore it” the state is, the better.
Low cost of living would be helpful, at least in proportion to available income.
Though obviously if it’s low but nobody can find work, that’s kind of bad, depending on…
Ease and cost of getting solid broadband is vital, especially to the degree there’s not local work and you have to do all the more online, not to mention it’s good in connection with…
Home schooling. This is perhaps the single biggest factor, not having a hassle about that, since we are ever more sure we just can’t inflict the insane system on these kids.
Availability of reasonably priced rental housing of adequate size would probably be helpful. Not like we’d be moving there and walking into a house purchase. We have a lot of recovering and houses have a lot of market adjustment to go before that’ll happen. Plus it’s healthy for there to be rental housing, and a range of available options, rather than a monolithic landscape of houses of a certain size.
Religion is fine if it’s your thing. We’ve been known to have friends and get along well with people who swing that way. However, even if it’s a substantially or monolithically religious area, it should never be uncomfortable or oppressive for those of us who don’t partake.
Despite the school system seeming crazy, this is one of the more libertarian-leaning parts of the state. If we can’t get a state like that, the least we’d prefer is another local area along those lines.
I’ve probably forgotten something, as it’s taken me much of the day off and on to peck this out. I guess distance from family could be a factor in terms of starting distance. For instance, it’d be kind of silly to move to Rhode Island and be essentially as handy to the psychic locusts as we are now. I also meant to note that in general warmer is better than colder, and I wouldn’t rush to move somewhere that requires snow to be removed from a roof lest it collapse more than, say, as a once in a lifetime anomaly.
People we know in the area, but who are low stress, would certainly be a bonus enticement.
We’ve thought about Texas over the years, which is about as easy as it gets for homeschooling, as I understand it. It would triangulate to about the maximum distance from both sides, even as we could tout it as offering equality of access and being fairer. We’ve thought about Alabama, in part because of how much Deb liked the Gulf Coast area in the past. South Carolina seems to be the current fad, and I can see that. Kentucky strikes me as an interesting possibility, mentioned earlier. Not sure all the details of how those states really would be for the main goals.
Oh! Forgot one of my key points and almost posted without it. The whole health insurance thing. RomneyCare has to go. Getting rid of it personally by moving would be great, assuming it hasn’t gone national by then. If it hasn’t, we’d still be paying some attention to how difficult it might be to get individual coverage in a given state, at what cost and with what gotcha regarding anything that could be called a preexisting condition.
Thoughts? Where would you move, if you felt free to do so?
Jay: Damn Gout
Even when it subsides, it’s pretty painful. Not helped by the ingrown toenail problem and the split dry skin in heels and big toe problem.
Jay: Happy Birthday
To blogger Andrew Corey, who apparently turns 30 today.
Jay: Happy Birthday
To my childhood friend and fellow rock hound at the time, Tara Bamford, who was a year ahead of me and therefore presumably is 48 today.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Jay: Sadie Explores the Solar System
Yesterday afternoon I replaced a dead sound card and CD drive in Sadie’s otherwise working computer and set her up with speakers and a sound theme.
This morning I gave her a choice of three Magic School Bus CDs, and she picked solar system over earth and ocean. I installed it and then joked that she’d come out of her room when she got hungry.
Joke? Heh. It wasn’t too far off from what actually happened. Didn’t even matter that Valerie rebooted the computer early in the day, because Sadie knows how to locate and run something like that. Even if I hadn’t left a shortcut on the desktop. She’s been doing a lot of exploring the Start menu, so the other day Deb went in and found she had her computer and Valerie’s both defragmenting.
Right now she’s in a part where you pick a planet, cut it open giant scissors, and click on the cross section on each part. “Rocky mantle” is says, crumbling away. “Liquid core” it says, breaking the core into a frying pan. Cute.
She’s been out here now and then, and they each devoured 1.5 hot dogs and some fruit for lunch, but mostly it’s been very very quiet. Especially since Valerie has as often as not hung out with her, watching.
Side note: If you are thinking of buying or handing down games or educational software, the kids have 98 on an AMD 400 with half a 13 GB drive free and 95.0 on a P200 with a few hundred MB of a 1 GB C drive, and more on a second drive I put in, which holds some DOS games. Anything that requires newer would have to be run on one of ours or would involve my giving them different/additional machines.
Other side note: Suggestions for educational software of this ilk are welcome.
Jay: Mark the Calendar
Last night Sadie decided she was ready to wear panties overnight and shed the diaper.
We let her do so, assuming it would be a few days before she got the hang of it, if then - she’s a deep sleeper.
She made it through the night! Go Sadie!
We can usually rely on her judgment when she declares herself ready for something, and here she’s vindicated once more.
Jay: Happy Birthday
To blogger Dane Carlson.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Jay: A Start At Picture Catch-Up
There are tons more where these came from, but here are some recent pictures of the twerps.
This is part of the cake they had for Valerie at grandma’s house. The science fiction theme was great, but the decorations, while made of sugar, are best not eaten by little girls. Just sayin…
Jay: Gout Sucks
There is no other pain that has ever made me walk around feeling nauseated. It’s like having a more extensively painful ingrown toenail, and has the same kind of target painted on it. Each one of the girls ended up stomping on the side of my foot, right where the locus of pain is in the ball near the big toe, making me scream. They also want to sit not on my lap, but specifically on that leg. Not that the other one is unaffected at all - this morning it’s gotten into the left knee more than it got into the right all day yesterday.
Once I was awake enough this morning, there was no going back to sleep because, ohmygod, the foot was touching something. That position? Still touching. The other position? Ouch. This way? Nope.
Not that I can be all that awake, considering I typed “Yjay” instead of “That” in the prior paragraph.
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