Some Blog Site

Here is how it usually goes whenever I do the grocery shopping and getting some meat or cheese from the deli counter is on the list.

Deli Lady: How would you like that cut?
Me: Thin please.
(Deli Lady turns a dial to a random setting, cuts a sample slice, and holds it out for me to see.)
Deli Lady: How is that?
Me: That’s fine.

I don’t know if everyone’s definition of “thin slice” is different, or if she’s testing me, or if she doesn’t care about anything, but there seems to be no correlation between what I say and what I get.

And it doesn’t matter anyway, because no matter what she shows me, I’m going to say it’s fine. Because I don’t feel like interacting any more than necessary.

Which is also why I will accept her offer to eat the sample. Not because I actually want to, but because I know if I decline, there will be another round of interaction – something along the lines of “Are you sure?”

At night, there are usually a number of moths and other bugs fluttering against the screens. And one of the windows might have a frog too.

For some reason, the frogs like climbing our windows. That photo was taken from the kitchen, which is on the ground level. But I have also seen them on the windows upstairs, which is fascinating.

I don’t know why they like to climb our house. I should look at the outside of our house at night to see if the frogs concentrate on the windows or if the windows are but a subset of the frogs climbing all over our house.

During some recent travels, I came across this sign, posted on a gas pump:

Here’s a close-up of the section of interest:

Isn’t that the point of pre-paying – that it’s beforehand?

Recommended signage: “Please pay before pumping” or “Pre-pay only”

This post was brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department

During some recent travels, I came across this sign, posted on the door of my hotel room:

Here’s a close-up of the section of interest:

Some thoughts that came to mind:
“I’m glad it’s not actually a siren – it only sounds like one.”
“But if it’s not a siren, what is it?”
“What application could have the sign ‘Loud siren sounds like a fire alarm’?”
“Why not just ‘Fire alarm is a loud siren’?”

I finally got to experience being asked about socialization for a homeschooled child!

I was aware that the non-homeschooling crowds were concerned that homeschoolers don’t get enough socialization. But I had never experienced it first hand.

I suppose that’s a good sign that they bring up socialization, right? That means they concede that homeschooling has superior academic results.

But it’s yet another myth that must be debunked.

What happened was I met a former co-worker out and about and we were asking each other about kids and school and stuff. I mentioned the youngest was starting kindergarten and we were going to homeschool him but he would be attending a nearby Christian school for their one-day-a-week homeschool enrichment program.

My co-worker asked very quickly, “Oh, for socialization?” To which I replied, “No, for the teaching of the non-core subjects like art, music, foreign language, etc.” And the conversation continued in an unremarkable manner.

I was thinking, during the conversation, “have you not read Lord of the Flies?” That right there is an argument against schools being useful for socialization. The main lesson I remember from that story is don’t trust crowds of children. Or rather, applied to the topic of raising kids: placing an immature child with other immature children does not cause him to mature well.

If you want your child to grow into something, you need to expose him to the expected result. If you want him to grow to be a well-mannered adult, you should place him with polite adults. Not with rude children.

There are many more articles and discussions about socialization available, so I’m not going to dwell on it further. In summary: no, I don’t care about socialization. But I feel I have now been inducted into the homeschooling community by having been asked about it.

Poison Ivy:

No wait, that was a small box elder tree.

This is poison ivy:

As you can see, those two plants are hard to tell apart.

My philosophy is “better safe than sorry” so I pull out anything that resembles poison ivy.

This kills two birds with one stone, as I don’t like box elder trees anyway. They don’t cause a rash, but they’re just annoying in general.

So kill the plant – whether it’s poison ivy or box elder I’m glad to be rid of it.

I have an update to an old post about the trichotomy of features. This one pertains to technology.

I was thinking of any number of social media networks, but it could also apply to a smart phone app, or an internet-connected thermostat, or the remote start feature of your car. It seemed broad enough that I just called it “technology”.

It was prompted by the political discussions of liberty versus freedom in light of national security events. But the same concept extends to devices too.

For example, the fancy new thermostats can be controlled via a smart phone app. That feature is useful, but now your furnace can be controlled by someone in another country. So your security has gone down.

Or a social network that wants to give people freedom to interact, so it opens up its API. To protect people’s security, it doesn’t gather personal information from its users. Now it is not very useful, because it’s the information such as birthdays that enhances the usefulness of social networks.