Some Blog Site

There was a new font released at Font Grill over the weekend.

It’s called Font13 and it mixes up the letters according to the age-old encryption technique of Rotate-13. It might not be the most practical font, but you never know when someone might have need of it.

For those unfamiliar with rot-13, you could look it up on the internet.

But since you’re already here: remember those old plastic label makers? with the circle of 26 letters that you’d spin around and then press the thing to make the letter you wanted? Pretend the circle thingy was wrong – like someone spun the disc halfway around and the letter is showed was not the letter it made. That’s rot13 – press ‘A’ and get ‘N’, press ‘B’ and get ‘O’, press ‘C’ and get ‘P’, etc.

The font’s a little late for April Fool’s Day, but there’s always next year. Hint: install it on someone else’s computer and set it to the default font for their web browser. Or as the font for Windows’ active window text or menu text or anything else in Display Properties – Appearance – Advanced.

Go view the font page.

In case you’re interested in my child’s schoolwork:

100 Days

There was a big celebration of making it through 100 days of school. Here is one of the items from that time:

I like that he wants 100 books and 100 carrots. How many kids would say that?

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We were on our way somewhere the other week (how’s that for vague?) and we were behind a Mini Cooper.

We don’t watch TV news. Nor do we have satellite or cable or anything else fancy. So I don’t know much about Anderson Cooper. I couldn’t even pick him out of a lineup. It was nice of him to have his car personalized so I could tell when he drove by.

Let me set the background by saying that the last time the kids had a week off school, a couple of them got the flu. My wife had activities planned throughout that week that she had to cancel, since most of the activities involved seeing other families. So instead of a fun week of doing stuff, my wife had the joy of staying at home with sick kids.

That was months ago. Today is the first day of the next school break. Of course we were wondering if anything would happen to prevent this week’s lot of planned activities.

Sure enough, Beta woke up Sunday morning looking like this:

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Potty training – not what you think it is.

Our toilet must have already been trained when we bought it, because it always obeys. So we never had to go through potty training.

We’ve taught two boys to use the potty. Third one should be starting soon. That’s child-training, right?

Here are a couple random conversations that occurred around here recently:

A Careful 5-Year-Old

Me: Be careful, you just hit your brother on the head!
Beta: Yes, but I didn’t poke his eye!

At least he knows what’s important. But where does he learn such things?

Countdown

Beta: What day is tomorrow?
Me: Tuesday.
Beta: And the next day?
Me: Wednesday.
Beta: And the next day?
Me: Thursday.
Beta: Yea! Three more days until Wipeout!

The kids are big Wipeout fans. They were so excited to learn that Winter Wipeout was changing to Spring Wipeout. But then Alpha’s school complicated things:

Challenge

Alpha: The 4th-grade class challenged the school to a week without TV.
Me: That means no Wipeout…
Alpha: Well, we don’t have to do it.

Challenge? That sounds optional. At least I won’t worry about his being tempted by dares when he’s older.

My kids went through a relatively quick Dora the Explorer phase. Their Star Wars phase has lasted much longer. But Dora is innocent enough, although they repeat things so much that I cannot forget them now. For example, to get to the end, we need to find forest, cornfield, tallest mountain!

Anyway, I noticed one marketing partnership that has not been realized yet. Ford has created limited-edition vehicles in partnership with Harley Davidson, and a concept truck with Tonka, but why nothing with Nickelodeon?

Today we’re going on an adventure! To get there safely, we need to travel in our Ford Explorer. Can you help me? To start the SUV, you need to say arrancar. Ready?
Arrancar.
Arrancar!
Arrancar!!!

You did it! You did it! You figured it out!

Boots is in the back, buckled safely in his car seat.
Swiper is on the other side of the vehicle, stealing the rims.