I spent a great day yesterday with my eldest grandchild, Bob, aka Robert/Robby but never Bobby.
Bob is 8 and in third grade and bored with school, especially math, which he says is a rehash of things he studied two years ago when his Mom home schooled him.
He and his sister Emmeline may be “chips off the old/very old” when it comes to Mathematics. They both enjoy it and get good grades. Emme by the way is the same child who was praised recently in her father’s blog for her mastery of fractions: “If you eat six eighths of a pizza, you’re a pig.”
Offshoring, Redux
A new evil associated with offshoring: data entry of financial AND medical records is being offshored not only to “legitimate” IT firms, but even to prisons!
Doesn’t that cause your heart to palpitate, knowing that your financial records might be available to folks who are in prison, both in this country and abroad.
Furthermore, even in “legitimate” IT environments, there is no enforcement of US privacy laws that would otherwise apply to the most sensitive information.
But Why?
So, Bush did an end run around the Democratic caucus and appointed Charles Pickering, Sr., to federal appeals court.
Unless Pickering is confirmed by the full Senate – deemed “unlikely” by the New York Times, his appointment will expire in October, at which point, he will be forced to retire from the bench.
The Apprentice
Okay, Reality TV has got me hooked.
I escaped addiction to Survivor, Fear Factor, and the self-perpetuating bachelor/ectomorphic bachelorette make-out marathons, but this NBC show featuring Donald Trump is my new prime time guilty pleasure.
January, Actually
My son, Peter, has been churning out news articles for MacCentral from Appleland, and meanwhile, I’ve been chained to the oar writing my first big commercial Microsoft .NET application.
Friday Five
It’s that time again, ladies and gents!
The Life We Wanted
I’ve become convinced of it: many of us are not living the lives that we expected or prepared for.
Dutifully cognizant of our blessings, few of us are particularly miserable, but we’re not stand-up-and-cheer happy, either.
Great Expectations, Random Walks
With Christmas gone and New Year’s on the horizon, almost no one in my immediate circle is really happy.
I will spare you the usual self-flagellation about how Americans and other citizens of developed countries don’t appreciate how truly privileged we are.
It seems with our hot running water and relative freedom of speech, though, comes the burden of expectations which in this day and age, few of us can hope to fulfill.
Friday Five
Made it through Christmas! Very happy that it’s time for the Friday Five.
Okey Dokey
The other day, I saw a person standing outside a municipal building in Falmouth and didn’t recognize that it was my son. Duh.
In my own defense, rarely do I see Flargh-boy in actual daylight, so I’ve probably forgotten what he looks like in a “normal” setting. He is usually sitting down, in the middle of Kristalnacht-like chaos, dressed in pajama bottoms and a t-shirt, staring at a computer screen.
I am also used to seeing him while his chi is being mangled by one or more shrieking or sulking children. These are by the way highly intelligent, creative children who nonetheless do not grasp that they live in a house with multiple floors, multiple rooms and a large fenced-in yard and, thus, do not have to share the same space as Daddy.
But I digress: given my recent experience, I can somewhat relate to the parents who thought they’d buried their son, Kevin Wickoff, an inmate who’d committed suicide at the Lexington, Oklahoma, Assessment and Reception Center. They thought they buried him – until they got a phonecall from none other than Kevin himself right after his funeral.