Staaahrt Sorting Legos, Sorting Legos (Part II)

(Continued from Part I)

As you stare at the larger than expected task in front of you, you might get a little disheartened. I know it looks imposing. But, like they say, "Man, this is gonna suck".

No... Wait... They say "How do you eat an elephant sandwich?  One bite at a time."

Yep. That's better.

Before we start, a disclaimer : this method worked for us but may not work out so great for you.  There are as many ways to do this job as there are little plastic pieces you are trying to sort.  That said, I hope you find something here that helps out a little. 

Now, this is going to be a multi-day project (assuming you have other things more pressing in your life than performing this nearly pointless task) so you will need a work area that won't be disturbed while you answer the phone, use the restroom, Faceblog your Tweetselfies, or whatever. If that's not practical because you live in a 100 square foot apartment with your fourteen cats or something then use one-gallon Ziplock bags to store everything as the project grinds on.

Gather all the Legos and Lego-related paperwork you can find, leaving all the stuff your kid wants assembled intact. Just because you think the secret agent alien gun trap zombie factory he hasn’t touched in months is just a jumble of random blocks, it's his jumble of random blocks. Respect it. Feel free to remove all the things that are not Legos (Trashies, Squinky-Zinkies, Hot Wheels cars, etc.) and put them someplace else, though. Any questions about what stays and what goes? Ask your kids. They know.

Now count out the instruction manuals, minifig sheets, Ninjago cards and any other paperwork that you've kept (or can find).  This will give you an idea of how many 3-ring binders and transparent binder sleeves you will need. Sort the paperwork as needed (some kits have more than one manual) and put one kit's-worth of documents into each sleeve. This is a good place to put (ugh...) Ninjago cards and minifig sheets, too. Don't make the binders so big little hands can't move them around. I found that three-inch binders will hold roughly 30 sets of manuals comfortably. 

Pro Tip: Don’t put the binders on the shelf upside down. Not that this has ever resulted in accidentally dumping all the manuals and stuff into a sad little pile on the floor or anything.  Not even once.  Or three times… in a row…

Sort the black, grey, and white pieces into a pile. Typically, these will far outnumber any other colors in your kid's collection, so this is a good metric for how many and what size bins you will ultimately need.  

Get yourself a small number of plastic, see-through containers. Don't overdo it and don't commit to a particular size just yet. Tupperware or similar works great - just make sure the lids (oh, yeah, you need lids to prevent the pic in the upper left from happening - thanks Mr. Kitty-Cat!) are tight but not too tight for little fingers. My son ended up Rip Taylor-ing hundreds of Lego studs all over the room when the lid of the container he was muscling open finally popped free. Not his fault - just a typical "dumb dad" mistake. I sanded the lids a bit so, now, no worries.

Now that you’ve “sorted” the black, white, and grey pieces, you might be thinking to yourself that the job would go quicker if the whole family helped. In fact, you twisted, misguided sociopath, you might even think that this would be some sort of bonding experience. Yeah... While that looks like an iffy-at-best idea on paper that’s super wrong. Think: are you the only one that wants to get this done? Do the number of people in your house who couldn't give a rat's behind if this Sissyphian chore ever gets accomplished outnumber you?  Also, how much time will you actually be saving?  There you are, constantly halting your Great Work having to stop people from ”misfiling" the pieces, having to answer questions about where certain things go, debating the answer to that question, stopping to sweep up shattered whiskey bottle fragments, answering the door and trying to explain to the cops that the neighbors must have heard the TV or something, begging CPS to return your child, etc, etc…

Oh, yeah... The bins... The bins should be transparent and be a maximum of a few inches deep. This makes rooting around a lot easier and you can lift the container up over your head to see the littler stuff hiding on the bottom, too. 

The groupings I chose for this effort were based on the distribution of bricks. I didn't want too many in one bin, but having a bin for every shade (white, cream, glow-in-the-dark white, light grey, dark grey, black, silver...) would be an equally bad storage issue, at least for the order of magnitude of Legos my kid has. If, God please please forbid, the order of magnitude changes I might need to subdivide the main groups further. But, for now, here they are:

Regular Bricks

• Whites, greys, blacks, silvers
• Reds, browns, oranges, golds
• Greens, yellows

Each of these enormous piles were broken down by the number of bumps they had on their primary surface, NOT by size. This decision was key to getting the job done in a way that used enough bins to be useful but not so many as to require infinity minus one of them to do the job. It was an arbitrary decision but a useful one - questions about what went where simply vanished. The bins for these are 0-1 bumps, 2 bumps, 3 bumps, 4 bumps, 5-8 bumps, and 9+ bumps (see pic). All the "tiny" pieces were set aside, as were the "grid" pieces - more on that later. The "3 bump" bins are way underpopulated but since neither I nor my kid can't seem to NOT pick the same one up numerous times when looking for a 2 or 4 bump piece, the bin stays.

Note: there were not enough Legos in this category to justify subdividing the blues and purples further. Thank Jeebus. 

Translucent pieces - Not car windshields or windows or doors though. At the boy’s request, things that were “cool glow-y” (neon) got a separate container.

Tiny Thingies - We call them “buttons”. These are where all the studs, little sloped pieces, and little flat pieces live. They are sorted by color like the bins are. At the boy's request the neon pieces and pastel pieces (marked ???) have their own homes. In case you are wondering why there are three whole cups of red translucent tiny things, uh, dad went a little crazy with the cheeze whiz filling the nooks and crannies of a cup at the Lego store once (they charged by volume, not weight), and now we have a bajillion of these. Hooray. 

Car/vehicle parts - Wheels, bikes, hubs, tires, steering wheels, and control sticks.

Screens and Chairs - Can't ever seem to find these when they are needed so they get their own space. 

Plant and Animal Parts - Sounds grizzly, I know, but it makes sense. Man, there are a lot of eyeball pieces. But, like the chairs, they can't be found when they are needed so they get their own space. 

Machine Parts and Flat Parts - All machine-y looking bits like gears, props, and stuff like that go here. There were enough of these to justify two bins: one for black, grey, and white pieces, and another for red, orange, and brown.  Also, the red machine bin has all the grid pieces of that color in it.

Special Stuff - Hey, man... there's just ain't no categorizing some stuff, you know? Light bricks, chains, ropes, boat hulls, spider webs, railroad tracks... They're all here.

Ladders, Walls, Gates - Also contains fences, stairs, and black, white, and grey grid pieces.

Doors and Windows - Doors and windows.  Also railings. 

Minifigs - Hey, as long as they have a head, a torso, legs, both arms, both hands, and a hat or hair chalk that up as a "w" and move on. It really doesn't matter if they are horribly mismatched - please trust me on this. A Minotaur head on Lex Luthor's body is fine. Also, don't worry about where the waitress's ice cream sundae is or whatever. We will deal with it in the next group.

Pro Tip: Weapons outnumber the minifigs by a shocking amount in my child's collection for some reason. Keeping the weapons in separate containers as described should thwart a violent, bloody uprising in the event the minifigs turn real and demand revenge for the countless decapitations, dismemberments, and other indignities they've had to endure while under your roof.

  

Minifig Stuff

• Ranged weapons and dynamite - yes, there is enough dynamite to warrant mentioning it. Yikes. 
• Melee weapons (mainly swords) and light sabers 
• Spears, ranged weapons, more swords, shields
• Food and small animals
• Police and spy stuff
• Tools
• Containers, science, magic
• Other hand held or minifig specific stuff

Here is the most important box of all:

To Be Sorted

It is where the child can cram all of the Legos after playtime is over.  It is unsorted. It is meant to be that way. Unless you want to punish your kid or raise a serial killer or something then by all means force them to burn three-quarters of their playtime re-binning little plastic bits in the approved way.   Your kid is not the one reading this. You are the one who wanted these sorted. You need this bin. When the random bin fills or when you are bored or if you feel like multitasking while Oprah is on or while ODU is totally getting their behinds handed to them by Middle Tennessee (Really?!?! An interception on the very first play?!?! Jeez...), grab a handful and get to it, I guess.

Labels were made and the pic on the left is the end result.  We now have a manageable selection that is easy to get to, can be brought out as needed, and, most importantly, quickly and neatly put away when it isn’t.

For now…

Like I said, I know that everyone's situation will be unique, and this is not meant to be a catch-all. This one solution works for us and, if it doesn't completely work for you or your child(ren) then I hope you can at least use parts of this strategy as a guideline. 

I wish you the best of luck!

Staaahrt Sorting Legos, Sorting Legos... (Part I)

If you are reading this, you have done your warm-up stretches, grabbed a bottle of Gatorade, and cheerfully began your brisk power-walk down the path to madness.  

Good for you!  

By now, you have looked at the dresser drawers and/or bags and/or bins and/or boxes crammed with thousands upon thousands of little plastic bricks and decided “there must be a better way”.  

Maybe you even started the process of sorting them by color before coming to the stark realizations that a) this is really tedious b) holy cow, there are a lot of different shades of color c) there are about a million times as many black, white, and grey pieces as there are light blue and dark blue pieces what’s up with that d) hey, what do I do with the translucent pieces e) does… does this hinge-y thing that is part red and part grey go in the red pile or the grey pile f) does the little computer monitor go in the white pile or in the minifig pile and g) SCREW IT, HALF THE FUN IS DIGGING THROUGH THE BOX ANYWAY I’M GETTING A BEER (sweeps Legos onto floor in disgust).

You are probably not reading this if:

1. Your kid/kids has/have less than 5,000 Legos.  It is not a real-estate issue (yet) so the idea of sorting them has probably never come up.  I know it sounds like an enormous, unrealistic number but that is actually only a few kits a year for a few years… Birthday parties get a little ridiculous once the moms know/hear/suspect/assume a certain kid likes Legos.  You can pretty much pre-fill-in the Thank You cards a week before the event.  Not a complaint, btw – just an observation.
2. Your kid has never politely and meekly asked you to help him/her find “You know, that one grey piece that looks like a small triangle with the tip cut off” in a bin of random Legos that is about the size of a Chuck E Cheese ball pit. 
3. You have OCD.  (You are too busy sorting Legos to read this).
4. You are an Adult Fan of LEGO (AFOL – yep, that’s a thing).  This article is not for you, dude.   
5. You stopped reading after the title of this post since I use the word “Legos” instead of the “proper” terms “LEGO” or “LEGO bricks”.  Why do I make the conscious choice to use this (apparently) unforgivable grammatical error?  First, because if I tell my kid to “Pick up your LEGO” the six-year-old will pick up exactly one brick and just stare at me awaiting further instructions.  Second, if I slowly and carefully explain to him that the term LEGO refers to the material (like wood) and is therefore technically plural already I would pretty much be signing a death warrant for him once he starts parroting this pedantic nonsense to his classmates. Third, it sounds better to my ears, so it stays.
6. You actually, sincerely believe that “half the fun is digging through the box anyway”.  Half?  Really? That seems high… But, hey, you’re the boss…
7. You super-enjoy the grindy, clattery sound of Number 6 above for hours on end since your response to Number 2 above is “Tough.  Use something else.”
8. You don’t own pets that find Legos irresistibly delicious (dogs) or delightfully smash-y and chase-y (cats).
9. You force your child to keep assembled kits assembled forever and always as per the approved directions.  You, sir, are a monster.

“Wait,” you might say, “That’s a great list and all but how do I know if my kid has less than 5,000 Legos or not?  There’s no way I’m counting all these things and I just want an estimate anyway.”

Again, good for you!  You are a well-adjusted person.  Well, for someone who is considering sorting Legos, anyway…

It couldn’t be simpler to estimate the number of Legos in your kid’s collection!  All you need is a scale, the density of the plastic Legos are made from…um, the packing factor of the Legos... Hmm… I guess you could derive that last one by filling the Lego-filled container with a known volume of water… but then the stickers would get ruined and that’s a lot of water anyway… Not sure a typical household scale that can measure 10 pounds has the precision required here… Maybe you could put them in a vacuum chamber or something and suck all the air out and derive the packing factor that way, but you would still need a really accurate scale for that… Oh, yeah, and a vacuum chamber and vacuum pump…

Ok, forget that… How about this: you sort the pieces into piles based on size, grab a representative volume (like a cupful or something) of each size, smoosh them down good, weigh the cupfuls, count the number of pieces in each cupful, then weigh the whole shebang making use of the density of plastic and the weighted average of the derived packing factors… But some pieces are kinda big and the error bars on this estimate start to get a lot out of control the smaller the number of bricks you have per cupful and here we are back to counting hundreds and hundreds of basically pre-sorted bricks anyway… 

Maaannnn…

Once the number of Legos gets to this “uh, look, nerd-o, just forget I asked” stage, here are a couple rules of thumb to get the “good enough” answer you want assuming your kid gets kits as Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, in-law “just cuz” gifts, or buys them with their own allowance.  If you are the dad from the Lego Movie or something then this estimate will not suit you whatsoever.  Not that you would choose to spend the time away from tweaking your near-perfect Lego scale reproduction of the Shotz Brewery from Laverne and Shirley to care…  

Based on info from the Lego site, I put together a list of all the City-themed kits for sale looking at the number of pieces in each kit and number of minifigs in each kit.  Assuming those 60 or so items make up a representative sample of all the kit offerings from the Lego company, it seems the average number of pieces per kit is about 330 and the number of minifigs per kit (not including dogs and sharks and stuff) is about 3.25.

I know you are but what am I?

So… if you have kept all of the manuals you can just count those and multiply that number by 330 and there you go.  Alternatively, I guess, you can look up each of the kits online by using the manuals and get the real numbers that way… But what if you don’t have all the manuals conveniently bound in one place ripe for the counting?  

Well, another way to estimate using the numbers above is to count the minifigs (just people and monsters – no animals) and multiply by 100.  My thinking here is, barring extreme circumstances, the kits with zero minifigs in a child’s collection will kinda-sorta balance with the non-kit packages that have just a minifig in them. 

Assuming my assumptions are good enough (both the estimates above jive with each other shockingly well for my kid’s collection), the estimates should be within 7% of the actual total.  Even if it’s actually 10% off, the time saved to get your “good enough” answer (a few minutes vs. a few days for 25,000 Legos) is certainly worth it.

Another fun fact: the average cost per Lego in kit form from the Lego site is about 15 cents (higher than the 10 cents or so in stores).  Again using the numbers above, you can make the decision on whether or not you should immediately upgrade your home’s security system or start inquiries as to which universities will accept little plastic bricks as tuition payment ten or so years from now.

Hey, this post was supposed to help with sorting Legos, not counting them!  Let’s get back on track.

(To be continued…)

Sail On, Silver Girl

Thanks for all the Happy.

Thanks for all the Joy.

You will be missed, sis.

Victim Man!

About three months ago, my then-five-year old proudly showed me his new creation.  That’s it there on the left.  So, in this particular “bite-your-cheek-and-try-not-to-laugh” moment (there are lots) I needed to find out what Victim Man was all about.  I mean, there he is all splayed out with a look of utter anguish on his face and what appeared to me to be tire tread marks across his torso.

Worst…  Superhero…  Ever.

After careful questioning, however, it turns out that the boy was trying to make a crime fighter  that was a total badass.  He wasn’t 100% clear on the definition of the word “victim” but he knew the word kinda sorta meant “someone who is defeated by someone else”, therefore Victim Man defeats everyone he comes across.

Meh… makes sense.  

I like my interpretation better, though.  Enjoy!

Highly-Focused Yet Nearly-Baseless Hate

I write this short article to fill what I see as a glaring hole in the Internet.  I know I am not the first person to search for the words that ultimately brought you here.  You aren't alone, friend. I feel your pain all too well.  Here it is:

"I hate the Superkids".  There it is. The phrase that Google thinks no one has ever expressed before this moment, apparently.  Once the bots get here there should be no more of this "No results found" nonsense. 

If the last two paragraphs are just gibberish to you, consider yourself blessed and feel free to move on to the next article. The rest of us are just gonna hang here for a bit. 

Like most hate, it's not based in logic.   I mean, how can anyone legitimately hate a clearly effective phonics-based mechanism that is designed to help kids enjoy their path toward literacy?  I don't know.  There's just... something there. But if I had to rank the level of hatred, I would put it somewhere above my hatred of the CarFax fox but below that of the original USell guy. Maybe on par with that of Sid the Science Kid and his classmates at the Montessori School for the Hyperactive, Lumpy, and Oddly Hued. 

Yeah, that's about right. 

Jeez, I... I hate a lot of things. I'm sure that's a healthy sign...

With the Superkids it's a photo finish between what I hate most: the androgynous style of the art or the other-worldly naming conventions of the gang members. There are somewhere between, like, ten and fifteen hundred of these...um...kids and their pets every one of which is absolutely special, uniquely skilled, and yet totally interchangeable and forgettable. Kids apparently have no problem figuring it all out and keeping it straight but all of the parents I have talked to have at least some difficulty. Is this Tac or Toc? Is Ettabetta a girl? Is this kid seriously named Icky? Wait... "Fast Cat" is not the cat?

Definitely making it into the top ten of my grievances with these characters is the bipolar nature of their emotional responses to anything that happens to them. Every event is a cause for ticker-tape-parade-level celebration (finding a lost mitten) or bottomless grief (being the "rotten egg" because you are last to jump in the pond).  Cripes, find a center, would you? I mean, while I was writing this I discovered that the apple in my lunch was unexpectedly juicy and sweet but I also noticed a typo in a test procedure I wrote, but I'm not going to respond by doing a few cartwheels of joy immediately  followed by offing myself with my stapler in a fit of suicidal depression. 

Everything in their whole world is "fantastic" or it is a "flop" - there is no middle ground.  I mean, how can a small wooden desk be "fantastic"? In my life I have built a number of desks, and not one of them has ever been described as "fantastic".  "Well-built", sure. "Adequate", closer to the mark. "Interesting", uhh... nope. I'm pretty sure a desk would need to be crafted out of materials not normally found in this dimension or it would need to be known for its ability to slay dragons to earn the title "fantastic".  

And who besides movie critics describes something as a "flop" in normal conversation?  "Tac  tries a handstand. The handstand is a flop." Pfft. Frankly I would rather have my (then) five-year-old read "Tac tries a handstand. As you can see, Tac kind of sucks at handstands."

Finally are the after-the-book questions that don't test reading comprehension as much as they test my ability to resist reading them in the most sarcastic tone imaginable. For example, I try to not say things like "As if you could possibly give half a rat's behind, do you think the clubhouse is a good place for the stuffed lion?" Here's another: "(Heavy sigh) After what's-her-face gets a letter from whosits, how do you know she is happy? It couldn't possibly be the fact she is smiling rapturously and hugging her friend, so it must be something we're missing... (rolls eyes)".

But, hey, like I said, I can't argue with the method. Teaching a kid to do something "simple" like reading, riding a bike, swimming, tying a shoe or any of the other things we all "just do"  is really challenging. And maybe... Just maybe... if the Superkids were around when I was growing up people wouldn't have to deal with grammar and spelling errors littering every single thing I write like shattered cinder blocks strewn all over a bike path.  

Peaches

I was grilling out a few weeks back listening to iTunes Radio attempt to converge on a solution you the question "Who exactly are you, SnowUrchin, musically speaking?" I was about to get up and check on the burgers when all of a sudden a few chords transported me to a long since demolished college bar. There I stood with a fifty-cent Natural Light draft in one hand and a pool cue in the other. Just audible above the people noise of the crowded hole-in-the-wall were some cheap speakers blaring "Peaches" by The Presidents of the United States of America. 

A half-second later I poofed back to my deck and grinned. I grabbed my tongs and dealt with the food and I was shocked to discover I still remembered the music and most of the words - I mean it's not like I really liked the nonsensical song in any more than a vaguely ironic way.  After dinner I looked up the song and discovered (in the Content section) the most soberly written and thorough description of music lyrics I have ever seen.    

Other songs I have looked up - Sussudio, Iko Iko, Angela, Red Red Wine - have had your typical fuzzy artist-y non-answer "well, you know, it's sort of like this but maybe not..." feel to it.  That's what made this description so great... 

Well, to me, anyway...

If you know the song look it up and appreciate the care and complete lack of whimsy the author took in nailing down the details of the description. While you go off and do that, I’ll be completing my Master’s thesis outlining the 19th century historical origins of the animosity between Triangle Man and Particle Man.

FCOL Just Post Something!

I woke up this morning to discover that I had an email from a stranger in my inbox (fun!).  The person described the problems they were having reading some of the posts in my blog and posited that some browser-related issue could be causing the problem.  I thought about it for a moment and then I realized that OH MY GOD I HAVE A BLOG I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THAT THINK THINK THINK WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME I PUT SOMETHING OUT THERE WITH SOME MEAT IN IT OH MY GOD ITS BEEN MONTHS OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!!!

Um, no.  That’s not what happened.  Not exactly.

At least once a week I would walk to (not actually into, mind you… just passin’ by, see) my office, stop, stare at the laptop for a bit, go “Meh.  Tomorrow, I’ll write something, I swear”, then continue on my merry way.  Same thing goes for my encounters with my tablet.  Also my phone. And my various journals and sketchpads I have scattered about the house. And the notebook I carry around with me at work.

It’s not like I don’t have anything that I could fill up a page with.  Heck, these last few paragraphs took me five minutes and basically say nothing but just look at how much space they take up!

And making clever use of white space fills up the page even faster!  Like this!

Look at me go!

“But where’s the beef?”, as the kids say nowadays.  

It’s been so long let’s just throw together a highlights reel of sorts and push it out there.  (Deep breath).  Humblebrag… Engage!

Fitness: Crossed over 25,000 calorie mark in YourShape Fitness Evolved 2012 for the Xbox a while back (not sure if I mentioned this or not in an earlier post).  I would probably be closer to 35,000 by now but I have been riding my bike in the mornings before work and switched to The Biggest Loser Ultimate Workout for a month just to mix it up a bit.  The Biggest Loser software is just about the worst exercise software I have ever used.  I had a huge article all outlined comparing these two and the Nike one but it just fell apart.  Short story: You want a good workout where you beg your TV to stop killing you, go with Nike.  If you want to burn calories and be guilt-rewarded into doing so, go with YourShape.  If you want to kick yourself for spending $13.49 on a pre-owned copy of The Biggest Loser instead of just setting fire to the cash in your driveway, go ahead and do that then.

Kid: He’s six!  He is taking tennis lessons, he has learned to roller skate, and he can swim the entire length of the neighborhood pool unassisted.  Full disclosure: the tennis balls are often (but not always) within one steradian of where he is aiming, his skating technique is defined mainly by a panicky and desperate grab at anything within arm’s length, and his dives into the pool would be immeasurably more graceful if I simply picked him up when he wasn't expecting it and chucked him in overhand.  After all, he’s six!

Travel: Took the family to the Bahamas, specifically to the Atlantis Resort.  It rocked.  As we approached the island and the sea turned from slate grey to translucent blue the boy asked if we were going to land on the beach or at the airport.  I said the airport because we have to go through customs and besides I didn’t feel like dealing with The Others anyway.  On the shuttle ride from the airport to the hotel my wife learned why I was so against her idea of “spending a day walking around outside the resort” (the shuttle’s windows were the fancy “seein’-through” kind, not the rose-colored kind, you dig?).   If you are wondering if I did that water-slide shark aquarium ride the answer is “Hell yeah!  Six times!  No lines, baby!” As long as you went to the rides when no cruise ships had just pulled in the only lines were those to have your swim trunks professionally extracted from your large intestine after “conquering” some of the more treacherous drops.  The food was awesome (I love conch!) but expensive, but the beach was even awesomer and totally free, so it’s all good.  

Music: I am still learning to play guitar but I really don’t fire up the Rocksmith software very often anymore except to play the practice games with the boy.  I bought him a 3/4 size electric (an all-black Laguna) a while back and he can play (slooowly) the first 36 notes of Welcome to the Black Parade from memory (read: from a sticky-note cheat sheet).   A co-worker asked me this week if I would be interested in a mini Strat Squire and I said I’d look at it.  It was a gross mess with broken strings and corrosion everywhere but it cleaned up nice and with the new strings i slapped on it sounds a little better than the Laguna.  It’s not perfect - it’s a little buzzy and the TONE knob seems to be there just for looks but at $40 with a strap and a cable I think I’ll take it.  It fits the boy’s hands better than the Laguna and the color matches my bass… Oh, yeah, speaking of that, this week I learned “Down on the Corner” by CCR.  Super easy and fun to play.

Books: Read William R. Forstchen’s Pillar to the Sky and Neve Maslakovic’s The Runestone Incident.  Pillars to the Sky was fine.  I found the first 133 pages a drag but then the story took off and it ended up being very exciting - I am glad I took a co-worker’s recommendation on this one.  It ended appropriately anchored in reality.  If you have a physics background pop some Eyerollsatol and just enjoy the ride.  I favor time travel stories so The Runestone Incident held no flaws for me…  But, hey, let me nit-pick to death the Pillar to the Sky book cuz of physics, right?  I kind of wish the female protagonist (Julia) in the series was a little more powerful and a little less self-deprecating.  I don't know… give her a gun or something.  Again, good book.  Give them both a go.

Booze: I bought a bottle of Laphroaig 10 about a month ago to congratulate myself on a job well done for… something… I don’t remember.  I throw myself so many ticker-tape parades they all kinda blur together, you know?  Anyway, to say that this Scotch is “smoky” doesn’t do the flavor justice.  I would say (and this is just my philistine opinion, mind you) that this is sort of like drinking a shot of Jack Daniels though a burning sofa cushion.  One time two decades ago (yikes!) I was in a bar and I accidentally took a swig from a half-beer that someone had put a cigarette out in.  I would rather finish that beer than have another glass of Laphroaig.  To repeat, this is just, like, my opinion, man.

Ok, then.  That should do it.  I've got two posts ready to go in the queue and according to the last 1,000 pics I have on my phone I have a lot more to say but let's call it a night for now.  Time to go watch Phineas and Ferb before the little one goes off to bed.  

Night, y’all!

Please Stand By

Normal transmissions will resume next week.

The Kind of Change I Can Believe In

A few years back I purged my library and donated everything I saw no future use for to CHKD.  I am glad I did it, the wife is glad I did it, and the load-bearing members of my home positively rejoiced that they needn't be troubled anymore by a literal ton (jeez…) of literary garbage pressing down on them.

I am even happier, though, that I had the foresight to keep my Calvin and Hobbes collection.  Over the past couple of months our five-year-old has been going through them and really enjoys the cartoons (well, the ones he can puzzle out, anyway), and he is over the moon that he and Calvin are nearly the same age.  He reads the books in the truck on the way in to school and he is finishing up the fourth one in the series now, I think.

One thing he loves is the Transmogrifier (oh, go to hell, spell-check… it’s a word) whether it was the cardboard box version or the portable gun version.  It was only a matter of time before he made his own.  His is cat sized, of course.

 

If you are stumped about the tag on the middle left hand side of the box, don’t feel bad - I had to phone a friend for that one, too.  I’m like “Why would he want to turn the cat into a Led Zeppelin album or that one gibberish-y mid-80s Phil Collins song I now have stuck in my head”?  I really don’t care if that last sentence means absolutely nothing to you.  It’s not all about you, you know.  The sentence stays.

Some people…

In any case, it’s supposed to say “zombie”.  The huge black dot at the end is his way of covering up a mistake with a period.

Please. Allow me.

I was thinking the other day about a phrase my father used to use when I was a kid.  When he was about to attempt something he thought was particularly amazing, he would say “you will notice that at no time does my hand leave my wrist”.  Since he was not one for coining phrases, I was curious as to where he got it.  I asked Google, and Google told me that Yahoo Answers had this unrelated entry:

Yikes! How do you answer that one? I came up with these five things.  I am open to further suggestions.

1. Consider setting up an appointment with your doctor. He/she may be able to give you advice on convenient fracture points. While you are there, a simple blood test will be able to tell if you suffer from acute X-manism whose symptoms include above normal bone density or rapid bioregeneration. 
2. What are you hitting it with? If you are trying to punch it or karate chop it broken, you might be doing it wrong.  In the past I have had to have a friend or neighbor shatter my stubborn ulna using the blunt end of a standard garden maul. Hope this helps!
3. This is not a forum for med students to get people to do their homework for them. Study harder!  :(
4. Have you tried reckless horseplay with friends on a trampoline even though your mom told to to be careful, like, a million times? That usually does it, but you might run the risk of cracking your skull wide open or putting out an eye as well.  
5. Go full-on After School Special. Win yourself a football scholarship to Stately State then brag to all your friends about how awesome of a quarterback you are. Allow your personality to change for the worse and really alienate all of your former buddies. When they complain, tell them they are just jealous and let them know that, while they are spending the rest of their lives pouring pig iron in the old mill, your picture will be plastered all over Wheaties boxes. After the universe breaks your throwing arm as payment for your hubris (losing you your one chance to make it big) you can crawl back to your old acquaintances and beg them for forgiveness... And maybe, just maybe, you’ll learn a job at the mill isn't such a bad life after all as long as you have friends.

Anyway, after a little more searching I found out the real answer was most likely from the movie Cat’s Eye.  Since that Stephen King flick came out in 1984 I must be misremembering the timeframe by a good five years or so or I am missing an earlier reference.  Hmph.  So it goes.  

I wish the arm-breaking guy the best in his endeavors.  Also, nice job on the ad placement, whoever.  Well done.