Some Blog Site

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.

As a parent, I sometimes find that kids respond better to certain things than others.

For instance, if you want them to leave what they’re doing and come to you, you could try saying “Come here”.

But his response time may vary depending on his mood and how interesting he thinks whatever you have for him is.

If you want an instant reaction and have the kids right by your side immediately, try saying aloud but not directly to him: “Cool! Look what I found!”

Of course, you had better have something worth showing. Otherwise you’ll be the parent who cried wolf and they’ll ignore you.

Similarly, no boy can resist going to see what it is when someone says “Ewwww! Gross!” So keep that phrase handy, possibly when you want them to clean something.

The last phrase works best on younger boys, say about ages 4 to 7. It is “On your mark, get set, go!” For example, it is time for dinner and they are not showing much interest in making their way to the kitchen. Go to them, challenge them to a race to the kitchen, then say the magic phrase. I find it’s best to start saying it before they can finish their answer to the challenge. If you can get to the word “Go!” before they have completely processed the request, they can’t help but compete.

Any other good phrases that help get your kids’ attention?

Of course, if your kids are ignoring all your normal commands and requests, you have deeper problems than some fun phrases can fix.

At work, everyone has small whiteboards that they put at their desk or office wall. The most common usage is to write a note for visitors to see if you’re not at your desk, mainly vacation days and such.

I like to put “On vacation – back tomorrow” if I’m gone for one day or “On vacation – back next week” if I’m taking a week off.

The beauty of that is if I decide to take another day off, I don’t need to do anything – the sign is still correct.

But someone at work thinks that’s not a good idea. Every time I come back from vacation, the actual date of my anticipated return is written on my whiteboard.

Next time, I’m writing “Back later”.

In recognition of Father’s Day, I put together a list of titles for the roles that dads have.

• CTO – Chief Turner Offer (of the light switches)
• CQC – Cookie Quality Checker (need to make sure they’re safe for everybody)
• GTO – Garbage Taker Outer (no one else has accepted this promotion yet)
• CFF – Chief Food Finisher (do not let a perfectly good half a steak go to waste)
• CDC – Chief Door Closer (working closely with the CTO)

I’d like to add the title CEO after my name, but I haven’t found a good acronym for it yet. Any suggestions?