Psychotomy

Seriously, who’s in charge over there?  Ferrets with ADD?

One of the Metro stations I go through every day (it’s cold outside, dammit) has three side-by-side adboards with the SAME Ford ad.

Actually, that’s not so bad.  There are 8 at the other station that always seem to be sold as a set; most people put up two or three different ads, but one appearing three times isn’t uncommon.  Still, 3 of 3?

My big issue here is that they ads are “No. XX in a series.”  Actually, even that.  Frankly, I’d've done A, +1 and +2 or something, but whatever.

No, the ISSUE here is that they update the ad twice a day.  In the morning when I come in it’s No 23 in a Series.  When I leave it’s No 24.  The next morning, 25.  Seriously?  Twice a day you’re paying for someone to change the ad?  SERIOUSLY?  because there HAS to be a fee for changing the sign.  Even if you’ve gotten the space for six weeks or something, there’s got to be some fee.  And twice a day, the damn glue will still be setting by the time you smear the next one over.

Come ON people.  You needed funding because your business model wasn’t working.  so what do you do?  you manage to find something even WORSE???

Posted in: general by attriel /
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So, I’ve determined that the reason DK doesn’t use more than mono-sounds is the fact that he doesn’t cognitively recognize the necessity of more.  Because he CAN, in fact, do longer words.  He simply DOES NOT.

My confirmation came today when he looked at the word octopus, sounded it out, and then said Oct.  With some prodding he went to Octo.  But an hour earlier he’d asked for “caysadiya” (which, frankly, is how quesadilla would look if he tried to spell it).  So obviously he CAN use longer words.  And he can recognize that there’s more word.  But he doesn’t feel the need to enunciate it because he doesn’t have any other words that start octo.

So, I guess we need to introduce him to more words so he’ll get more collisions, in which case he’d naturally end up using full words.

Also, do normal people refer to them as hash collisions?  I wonder what a pediatrician or ped-speech would call it …

Posted in: DK by attriel /
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So, I am apparently an evil dad.  Today I decided we really needed to take down the xmas tree, so I started pulling down ornaments.  And DK started grabbing them and trying to put them back up :o

By the time I was taking down the lights, Pi had a piece of wrapping paper in her hand and just kept turning it over and looking at it, like ‘wait, what’s happening?  I liked the presents thing :(‘

Apparently after Xmas comes Evil.  And I am the embodiment of all that is evil :/

Posted in: DK, PI, general by attriel /
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So, apparently China, having been banned from using Lead in their exported toys, have switched to use Cadmium.  Which apparently they’ve been using locally for a while, and it’s cheaper than lead.  It’s also apparently more toxic (lead shows up as #2 in priority vs #7 on this list from the CDC, but it looks like the ranking is weighted by frequency of appearance, making more common lead rank high)

And, as the article below quotes, a number of companies are stating that “yeah, it’s toxic, but it’s not regulated.  *pbbbt*”  Well, OK, maybe not in those EXACT words, but dammit people!  Come on!

Washington Post Article

Posted in: general by attriel / Tags: CPSIA

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So, this is actually from August, I kept not finding a good citation for it; still can’t, so I’m taking what I can get.

In August, the CPSC voted (UNANIMOUSLY?? 3-0?  Do 3 people even get to count as unanimous?) to allow Mattel to do their own CPSIA product testing.  This is after the CPSIA was created largely due to the large number of toxic and dangerous recalls that Mattel made in 07.

Center for Environmental Health

SF Examiner

(I can find no evidence that Hasbro has succesfully end-run the legislation; so it looks like only Mattel has the Free-And-Clear card)

Posted in: general by attriel / Tags: CPSIA

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Well, no, not really.  My laundry machine appears to have decided to develop a hole.  a large hole.

Initially I discovered the floor was wet, and I assumed the drain tub clogged and overflowed.  So I took my hanger-snake and dredged it some, but not near enough to have caused that kind of overflow.  So I threw drain cleaner down it, even though that almost never helps.  Then I turned the washer back on to drain some more and it was draining GREAT.  Problem solved.

Then last night I went to carpet-shampoo-er dry out the carpets, and I threw in a load of laundry while I worked, figuring I have a bunch of stuff that needs washing, even more after it flooded the stuff that was there. (it was dirty before, but now it was REALLY dirty, plus all the towels I tried to mop it up with initially)

After an hour and a half, kiir comes to see how I’m doing, and I’m noticing that things aren’t getting much better and I decide to break off for the night, because I swear it WAS getting better earlier.  So I go to swap the laundry before going up, and uh … there’s 1.5″ of water standing in the laundry area … and the clothes in the washer are really wet …, wtf?

So I partially refill the machine so I can run it on spin to see whats leaking.  And as I look in, I can see the water level … uh … going down … while it’s off … wait just a damned minute!

So today I stayed home and vac’d up the floor and carpets (carpet is starting to smell at this point, going to need to do some real shampooing once I get it tolerably dry)

Pulled it out, and the back, where all the hoses connect, is perfectly dry and still has all the dust that 9 years in the house has given it.  So it’s leaking from the inside out the bottom.  GREAAAAT.

We have an appt with a place to come out and take a look this weekend, give us an estimate at least.  Because decent washing machines?  are apparently in the 700-1000$ range!

Posted in: house by attriel /
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Soooo … when last we heard, I had gotten my psych appt.  Well, thursday before the appt, apparently he had a dr’s appt to go to in the orning, so they had to move all his appts to the afternoon.  I called friday, left a message and told them to call me back at the office with when my appt was going to be.  Apparently they called me ~10am monday …

Anyway, got my scrip, left.  Filled it last week.  Noticed the other day that it’s for the wrong dosage.  so i’m currently on half dosage.  Called the pharmacy today, and they checked and the scrip has the dosage they filled.  and that (understandably, I suppose) ends their interest.  So I called the doc’s office, told them what had happened.  They said hold on, were gone for a loooong time and came back to tell me that doc’s only in on monday’s.  I know that, so moving on.

Then they go again to check my file (seriously?  you didn’t know before that he wasn’t in?  you must be filling in, I’d not expect that was a secret from the receptionist) and tell me that my file says I’m supposed to be on the dosage he wrote.

“Seriously?  I’ve been on Y for six, nine months now”

She acknowledged that the fax’d in scrip from last month was for Y not X, then said they’d leave a note for doc for when he comes in Monday.  She didn’t ask for any information from me, like where to contact me or the pharmacy to send the correction to …

If he weren’t planning on retiring, I’d be more inclined to report him to the state board.  As it is, looking at it, it seems kindof rude to nail him to the wall when he’s retiring.

Of course, that’s if he’s really retiring.  He’s taking a three-month sabbatical to visit family out of country (“while some of them remain”), and when he gets back he might, or might not, retire.  :o

Posted in: general by attriel /
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So, after the Disney trip I quit drinking caffeinated sodas.  Don’t get me wrong, that means I’ve been drinking 2 or 3 root beers a day, but that’s way down from 6-8 diet sodas.  One problem at a time.  Thanksgiving week was my third week off; I made sure to start early enough that I wasn’t in early withdrawal for the drive :o

At kiir’s grandmother’s xmas part, I had a headache, so i had my first caffeinated drink.  No one had excedrin, which is what I usually take, which has caffeine in it.  So aspirin and a coke, very similiar.

One day at the office I had tried my cherry coke zero, and discovered that I HATE cherry coke.  OMG.  put the rest of the pack (only about 4 cans) in the shared kitchen.  They vanished, so someone must’ve taken them.

Yesterday DK brought me a pair of diet dr peppers.  Which was always funny, and usually timely, when he used to do it occasionally.  This morning I had a headache again, so I opened one up.  It turns out I can’t stand aspartame.  Doesn’t just have a bad aftertaste, the actual taste was pretty foul.  At least, I presume it’s the aspartame.  Kindof a nuisance if I suddenly don’t like DrP anymore either :o

Vanilla Coke tasted a little funny, but I don’t know that wasn’t just the aftertaste from the diet doc.  It wasn’t so bad I couldn’t drink it, which was an improvement at any rate.

Apparently in my pursuit for constant caffeine, I drank things I really don’t like :o  At least I never stooped to coffee!

Posted in: fitness by attriel /
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So, it’s been two weeks, and I just did my test.  45 situps today, waaay up from 15!!!  This week I determined that I wasn’t doing them quite right, I think I was lifting myself too far and using the wrong muscle groups :/

Friday’s situps were also done with the assistance of DK and Pi.  She’d crawl around my legs and occasionally stand using my stomach or arms for support.  It gets hard to do situps when you have to keep your arms from moving :o  DK spent one iteration sitting on my upper chest.  In case I needed more resistance than my own body weight :o  He spent two others sitting on my stomach.  The first iteration he kept trying to help me up, since I was obviously having trouble with it :o

Haven’t been doing squats, having enough trouble remembering to keep the situps in the loop.  May do squats after situps, although i plan to try keeping situps in a regular routine.  They’ve almost gotta be good for my health, weight, back, or whatever :o

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So, still only 15 situps, but watching Kiir hammer out 45, I noticed her breathing.  I’m not sure I was breathing.  I’m pretty confident I wasn’t breathing PROPERLY :o

So I may try one more time tonight and start tomorrow without the 24-48 pause.  Of course, every two weeks they have a test, so I’m not sure how you do 3 days and a test with 24 between any two …

OTOH, I threw up 60 squats when I tried last night.  I think I could have done more, but I needed to do something else and had to stop :o

Posted in: fitness by attriel /
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