No. 72

This is a re-post of NO. 72 at Rachel's request. Enjoy the story. There should be a drawing up soon.

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I am No. 72. That is my name, and I don't see why you don't like that. That is the name that I was given when I was created, because I was the 72^nd experiment. I was created in Wash Town Dec, in building EXP. I was the last stable experiment. I speak in past tense because Kill tells me that that part of my life is behind me now. He also tells me that his name is not Kill. I don't believe him.

I remember No. 73 quite vividly. He was strong, handsome, and destined to be my mate. Until he went crazy. He was having a sunning on the top floor, and I was in the back lab doing water tests. All I remember is seeing the creators and teachers running around and that there was a lot of red light. I did not hear anything because of the water tests. Then the internal bleeding started.

The creators told me that internal bleeding is what happens when I do a water test for too long. My lungs find it impossible to take anymore oxygen out of the water at that point, and I start to internal bleeding. Internal bleeding is what happened when the lights turned red and people were running around. Then the glass burst, and everything was broken. I went to what was the weapons artillery, and I took a revolver, sufficient ammo, and some essentials to live.

I walked out onto green strings, testing if they were hazardous, and I lost my balance. It was too bright out there, blindingly bright. This must be the bad place that the teachers were telling me that I would go to someday to help in a bad thing called wer, or wa er. As I walked down the blackness, I noticed a small building with 72 written on the outside. This must be the place just for me that the teachers said that I would go to in the wa er.

When I went in, many men grabbed me, and there was more running around. I thought this was a training pro, so I fought back. Kill tells me that the Poli thought I was a bad person. Kill is one of the Poli. After a while, the Poli overpowered me because there were too many of them. I was put in a small room that was painted gray, and had bars on the front. Thinking that this was another training, I went through the bars. Kill tells me that I shouldn't have done that.

Geek Humor

I ran across xkcd a few weeks ago. It describes itself as a webcomic of romance,
sarcasm, math, and language. It is can be touching, sad and VERY funny.

Here are some examples:

You can find them all here: http://xkcd.com. They you can view all of the previous ones as well. Keep in mind that some of the humour is on the adult side of things.

Cool

Part One
A couple of years ago when picking up Rachel at Sunday School, I had the temerity to go in to let Rachel know I was there. On the way home she matter of factly said that it was just not cool to be seen with her parents any longer. When a kid is seven or eight, parents are still ok, but at her age parents are just not cool.

When I asked if there was anything that I could do about the situation, she said with all the patience of a wise man to a new pupil, "No". Well, what if I had a Rock & Roll Band? Would that help? The reply was eyes rolling to heaven and a look that told me that I probably couldn't do anything that would cause her greater embarrassment and a "No".

I've tried to lay low.

Part B
A couple of months ago we saw a motorcycle in the parking lot while at the grocery store. Rachel asked me when I was going to get another one. She then explained that it would certainly raise my cool factor if I had a bike again. Nothing like a little motivation.

GR8 Date!

Rachel's Bat Mitzvah will be June 28, 2008.

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Lot's and Lot's to do. Mostly for Rachel.

First Impressions

Rachel started Seventh Grade on August 27th. Here are her first impressions of her teachers.

• Dance - Ms. Monroe: Seems very nice, but I don't think I should get on her bad side.
• Homeroom - Ms. Pearson: I don't talk to her much, so I don't know.
• Math - Mrs. Huckstep: From what I've heard, she is the nice Algebra teacher.
• CTE - Mr. Cuevas: When the heck is he going to take the bags of the computers?
• Science - Mr. Grumander: Insulting at times, but overall a good guy.
• English - Ms. Putnam: Is as funny as Jack the Monkey. (and he's hilarious)
• Keyboarding - Mr. Gamero: I knew enough on Friday to do quite well.
• French - Ms. Reynolds: She lets us eat, drink and chew gum.
  

Haiku

During the last two weeks of the summer I asked Rachel to try to write a short paragraph or poem each day. Just to get her used to thinking and putting pencil to paper before school stated. A Seventh Grader this year. Hooo Boy!

This is what she came up with.

Nail Polish
Nail Polish.
Why that? If just learning English you'd
think it's from Poland.

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I can't write on an
empty stomach. But I must.
Idiot humans.

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Mmm, mmm, chocolate.
I need to have chocolate.
Yummy chocolate.

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Fruity chocolate,
and now there's vanilla too!
Drum roll please... Pop Tarts!

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TV
Oh entertainment!
What would earth be without you?
Not what it is now!

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Uggh! I hate Salad
It's something I'd do without.
I'd take a V8.

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Little paper fan.
put together with staples.
it doesn't cool me off.

Eric

Uncle Eric passed away on April 18th. Our hearts and prayers go to Lee, Lloyd, Dean and all his family and friends.

Dean and Lloyd told me how it was growing up as his sons. They are blessed that he was healthy and active until just before he passed.

He was a good man and is missed.

Geography Bee

This past December, Rachel took part in her schools Geography Bee. It is sponsored by National Geographic. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geographybee/

This was the second year she participated and was determined to do well. The competition is open to the 4th to 8th grades. The previous year she place 2nd.
She studied between her regular assignments with Judy helping and quizzing her. This year she placed FIRST, beating her classmate that previously bested her. The picture shows Rachel after winning at her school with her best friend Corinne.

In January she had to take a written exam and in March was notified that she was one of one hundred kids from around the state to go to the State wide competition. The State Geography Bee was held at the end of March. They told us that only one in 1000 students that took part in the school bee got this far.

The State Competition took place at the end of March. All of the state competitions took place on the same day all around the country. They were all asked the same questions. The one hundred competitors in our group were divided into groups of 20 and then each group went into separate rooms. Each student was given a number and then asked their questions in turn. There were eight rounds. That is each kid was asked a different question for round one, then another set for round two and so on. The questions were hard. You can see sample questions here: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geographybee/sample_questions.html or take the daily quiz: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geobee/today.html. There is a new quiz everyday.

No one in our group of twenty answered more than six of the eight questions correctly. Rachel fell into the middle of group with four correct answers. Not enough to move to the next level, but she had a good time and when asked if she wanted do this again next year, she answered with a resounding "You Bet"!

Sad

At the beginning of March, Uncle Eric suffered a severe seizure. I understand that he is in very serious condition and is as comfortable as possible. We offer our hope, love and support to Aunt Lee, Lloyd, Dean and their families.

Envy...

With all the attention that Judy's car's have been getting, my little Nissan was apparently feeling neglected. So, on my way home Friday night it demanded my attention in the form of a broken clutch cable. Thinking that I had a very good relationship with the Nissan, I was surprised to find myself having to coax her home in second gear. Some TLC and a new cable has us purring down the road. Relationships do take time and maintenance to work well. It runs faster and jumps higher too...

Cars...

A form of transportation. They get us from point to point. In our culture, we have, at some level, a relationship with our cars. Is your car reliable? If you are in a relationship, it should be one you can count on. Judy's old Mercury developed a rather odd attraction to a large rock that was rolling across I-215 a few weeks ago. It was a very, very short relationship. The Merc. was broken hearted. Well, the transmission case was cracked. The Merc. was left feeling awful. It also caused a major rift in our relationship with the car, as leaky transmissions are very messy and tend not to be reliable. So we have started a new association with the 2000 Mazda 626 pictured. We will let you know how this new connection progresses.

Weather
This past January had 3 consecutive weeks of below freezing temperatures. The second coldest on record. As cold as January was, the first two weeks of February was warm. We had days that got to 50°'s. The picture of Judy and her Mazda is from February 17th. We woke up to six inches of snow this morning. For those keeping track, Winter is back.

Frivolity

Sometimes I run across interesting things on the way to other things.

Everybody has or has had shoes. They do so much for us and unless they wear out or go out of fashion, we don't really think about them too much. We think about shoe laces even less, unless they break or come undone at the most in opportune time. That brings us to Ian's Shoelace Site. Some things I didn't know about shoe laces:

1. On an average shoe with six pairs of eyelets there are almost 2 trillion ways to feed a shoelace through those 12 eyelets.
2. The plastic tip in the end of your shoelace is called an "aglet". You can also learn how to repair them.
3. There are more than one way to tie a shoe. Ian lists at least seventeen shoelace knots, including a "Halloween" knot that looks like a small hangman's noose. The different knots are rated on a scale of 1 to 5 stars.

So, have some fun, learn something and visit "Ian's Shoe Lace Site" - http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/index.htm

EKC

There have been many changes in photography and imaging over the years. Kodak, the former 900 pound gorilla in the US photography market has been downsizing and selling off divisions. In the 80's and 90's I used to wonder why the premier Photo Manipulating software was made by Adobe and Aldus and not by Kodak. They have moved far too slowly trying to figure out how to make a profit in the digital world.

This month Kodak announced some new inkjet printers that just might enable them to make up some of it's lost photographic revenue. The standard practice in the printer industry is to sell the printers for little or no profit and make money on the ink cartridges. What makes Kodak's printers different from the printers currently on the market? The print head is built in to the printer instead of the ink cartridge. This means that the ink cartridges will be about ½ the cost of current cartridges with the same amount of ink. The printers will cost about $50 more than current models with the same features, but you won't feel like you're being robbed when you need to buy more ink. I may buy one when they come out this spring and will let you know what I think. You can find out a bit more here if you're interested:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128730-c,inkjet/article.html
and
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0702/07020601kodakallinoneprinters.asp

Says You!

A few weeks ago the Public Radio program "Says You!" came to town to record a couple of shows for later broadcast. So Judy, Rachel and I went downtown to the Public Library Auditorium to see the shows. While we were waiting for the show to start a fellow started talking to Judy. He identified himself as Phil Solkin a writer with the show. Phil said that they like to have young people help keep score on stage... That's about as far as he got as Rachel said "YES!". So not only did we get to see a very funny radio program, we had the added pleasure of watching Rachel on stage keeping score for her team. I must say that she was much better than the other team's score keeper. She added a certain panache to her performance.

The show should be broadcast on NPR this Saturday February 10th. Check your with your local NPR for Broadcast times and perhaps you can "hear" us on the radio.

Then & Now

Two photographs. Then is a self portrait assignment from school. Now was taken a few days ago. Then and now were both taken in the winter. Then was taken with a Miranda Sensorex on Tri-X and probably processed in D-76. Now was taken with an Agfa CL-30 point and shoot. Both Then and Now were cropped using "The Gimp" photo editing software. There is a bit of a difference between the two.

The photographic industry has changed quite a bit as well.

1. Agfa sold its consumer photographic division in 2004. It filed for bankruptcy with in a year.
   
2. Kodak has sold it's medical imaging department. They don't manufacture any black and white photographic paper any longer.
3. Kodak, Minolta, Nikon and others have stopped making conventional film cameras.
4. For those who still like to get their hands into film and chemistry, there is the Analog Photography Users Group.

I'm not complaining, just listing some changes. Digital photography and printing has come a long way in the last 10 years.

We can't go back to Then and Now is a moving target. Keep Then with you while you navigate Now...

Books

The library and book stores are two of our favorite places. I have always liked reading and spend hours reading in the days before family and child. Rachel or Rai as she likes to be called, has become an insatiable reader. She just told me that one of her ambitions is to go to the Library of Congress because they have "every book ever published in the United States".

I've added a list of some of our favorite books. Most of the are links to more info about the books or a review. They are listed alphabetically. Rai and I have read many of these together. I'll be adding to this list regularly. Who knows perhaps a review will appear here as well.

Homework

Rachel doesn’t like homework. When I tell her that I understand about her dislike, she has said many times that if I understand, then I shouldn’t make her do it. In December she brought home some extra credit math homework. But there was a twist. This was an assignment for one of her parents to do. She gave it to Judy to complete. I got to sit back and watch the role reversal. There were nine problems. Here are two:

Instructions
Solve the inequality and graph your solution

1. 3b – 6 > 7(b + 2)
2. A video game system costs $185 and one video game costs $14.95. You can spend no more than $280 on the system and games. What is the greatest number of games you can buy?
   

Above is the grade Judy received…

The Beginning

Our Blog...

Well, well, well. It's the 15th day of 1st month of the 7th year of the 21st century and it's probably about time that we have a family blog.

So this is the place to find out all the goings on with Peter, Judy and Rachel.

What you'll find here...
This is a place for family things, opinions and comments. You may find pictures and stories of other parts of our family as well.

• Our nephew Adam recently was honored with his school's 10th Grade Leadership award. This is the second time he has won the leadership award.
  

• David & Anne bought a new house with wild turkeys in the back yard. (No not the ones that come in bottles.)

• I just returned from a quick trip to North Reading for Aaron's Bar Mitzvah. This was a good visit, but too short. I did get to visit with Sandie and Neil and Marc and Stephanie who were also there for the occasion. With any kind of luck there will be pictures up here soon.

The Weather
There are some in our family whose conversations always seem to turn to the weather. Well, it's been cold here. High today was 17° F, with a low of about 5° F. The normal for this time for year is a high of 37° F and a low of 17° F. So while we're used to having winter, it's a bit colder than usual. It is predicted that it should warm up by this coming weekend.