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My boss Jim has been without power for the past couple of days thanks to Hurricane Juan. I feel bad for him and his family -- they're saying two to seven days to restore power, whacked with winds of 140MPH.
So in the interim, I'm staying busy as I usually do with lots of productive work.
Bob's had a lot of dad-supervised time with other boys this weekend, which is actually a bit unusual. He's not exactly isolated, but we all have really busy schedules around here so he hasn't had a lot of leisure time to just hang around with other boys his age.
A friend of his from the bus and his older brother invited themselves over on Saturday, and hung out for most of the afternoon. They played video games for a little while before I kicked them out of the house. Then I found them whacking each other with plastic wiffle bats in the back yard -- ostensibly "swordplay," according to the kids. I decided to take them for a walk and we went down the pond (Bob was dragged kicking and screaming -- walking the neighborhood ain't his thing).
We saw a baby snapping turtle about the size of a half-dollar piece, then we explored the cranberry bog next to our subdivision and the boys spent the next hour or two catching (and releasing) frogs. All of them had an awesome time. At least that's what they told me, and I have no reason to not believe them.
This afternoon it's more of the same -- our friend and neighbor from up the street dropped her two older boys to play with Bob and they've spent most of the day playing video games. Sure, it rots their brain. I don't care. He deserves to have mindless fun every once in a while.
It looks like that glass ceiling should finally be broken in about 125,000 years:
One by one, Y chromosomes will disappear, eliminated by the relentless onslaught of irreparable mutation, until only one is left. When that chromosome finally succumbs, men will become extinct.
I like quiet toys. I know it sound strange, because I'm obviously a gadget junkie and an electronics h00r, but I really do prefer quiet toys, especially when my kids play with them. Plush animals, for example. Board puzzles.
It's cosmic irony, then, that my friends and family constantly conspire against me to buy noisy, annoying toys for my children.
Possible the most egregious of these sins is the book that makes noise, which I am convinced was spawned by Satan himself. These look like normal books, except down the side there are buttons, and when pressed, these buttons activate some sort of sound effect, vocal sample or music -- usually pushed through the tinniest, most annoying speaker that the bookmaker could possibly find to use.
I have been known to rip these devices off the sides of books that my children have. I have been known to stomp noisy toys back into their constituent elements when they won't shut up.
I hate toys that make noise.
Bob: "Daddy, what are those birds? Are they turkeys?"
Me: "No, they're pheasants."
Bob: "Pheasants? They look kinda like little turkeys."
Me: "Yeah, a little bit."
Bob: "Do they sound like turkeys?"
Me: "No, they don't go gobble-gobble. They make a more trilling sound."
James: "And some birds say 'mine mine mine!'"
This is just one more reason why Martha Stewart kicks all sorts of ass.
Someone at McDonald's Corp.'s marketing department needs a bat upside the head. These "Mangia Mangia" ads are grotesque and insulting.
The fast food chain is pushing their chicken parmesan sandwich and chicken caesar salad. Apparently anything with parmesan cheese qualifies as "Italian" to them, even though the fucking caesar salad was invented at a hotel in Tijuana, Mexico eighty years ago (and named after its inventor, a chef named Caesar Cardini, not Emperor Julius).
Anyway, the ad has this happy-italians-doing-the-chicken-dance jig music playing in the background, and this prune-faced old italian woman staring out the window of some terra cotta framework holding a basket of tomatoes.
Cue a voice actor forcing a lame Brooklynese accent who shouts out a warm goombah "Hey" greeting inviting people to try the sandwiches. It's cheesier than the parmesan they're using, that's for sure. Then the last insult: They dub in a voiceover for the nona in the window, "Hey, Micka-donald's-ah. Is-ah that an Italian-ah name-ah?"
You know, I could be totally wrong, but I sincerely doubt that McDonald's would have some bug-eyed fat black Aunt Jemimah-style mammy smacking her lips and telling everybody about how good their pancakes are, or some sombrero-clad walrus moustached bandito telling the audience about how great those breakfast burritos are. Why they feel that it's okay to cast racial insults at Italians is totally beyond my ken.
Then again, it's McDonald's.
Every so often (rarely), Apple does something so incredibly bone-headed I have to just shake my head. Today is one of those days.
Apple released an update to Mac OS X v10.2.8. The update apparently kills Ethernet networking for some users. I saw this problem manifest itself on Bonnie's Mac.
There are a few ways to recover from this problem. One is to reboot into Mac OS 9 (presuming you still have it installed), download an old Ethernet.kext file from the Internet (once you've discovered what the problem is, how to correct it, and learned where such a file can be found), and install it in place of the updated one.
Another is to find a computer elsewhere in your environment that hasn't been updated, and copy the Ethernet.kext file over to it (by using CD-Rs, for example).
Anyway you slice it, it's a royal pain in the ass, and I'm sure some QA gnome somewhere is going to have his or her ass Steved over this little imbroglio.
Two deadly sins down, five more to go. Come to think of it, I've got a good handle on wrath and lust too.
This just pisses me off. Fat pigs whining about workplace discrimination and demanding coverage under the ADA.
Yeah, fat people get picked on at work. Ugly and smelly people do too. You know why? Most people in this world -- including those people at work -- are fucking stupid imbeciles, and having nothing else to do with their time. Life isn't fair, so let's pass a law. Waaaah.
Speaking of passing a law, that article said that there's some momentum to get the Americans with Disabilities Act amended to make obesity an impairment under the law, as well. That's great: Let's legally absolve fat people of any personal responsibility for how they got that way.
Don't like being passed over for a promotion because the boss is afraid you're going to have a stroke? I've got a better idea: put down the steak and cheese sub and take a walk around the block, tubba.
As a fat person myself, I have absolutely no illusions about how I came to be this way: I may indeed have some genetic markers that predispose me to having a slow metabolism, but I'm fat because I like to eat and don't like to exercise, plain and simple.
So I'm about three weeks overdue on getting the Aerostar inspected because I knew it wouldn't pass -- a taillight blew out over the summer, and it wasn't a problem with the bulb, but rather the electrical stuff that made the bulb work.
It was just a matter of time, logistics and financing to get the wiring fixed, at the local Ford dealership -- they usually run about a week or two backlog, so after I procrastinated as long as I could, I made an appointment to bring it in last Friday.
The guy who fixed it tells me that the wiring has been patched to work, but he's not guaranteeing how long the patch will hold -- could be a week, could be forever. Replacing the harness itself that delivers electricity to that part of the van is apparently a time-consuming affair that will cost hundreds to fix after all is said and done.
All this reminds me that I only need one more winter out of the van -- next Spring Bonnie and I plan to replace it with my sister-in-law's conversion van, which recently had a rebuilt engine and transmission installed. So I'm resigned to making do with what I have to until then.
I brought the van to my regular guy on Saturday afternoon for a quick oil change and a lookover, when he told me that the muffler has rotted out (which explains why the van is so noisy and throaty lately). As it turns out a weld seam on the bottom of the muffler has cracked and opened up, so there's a foot-long gash along the bottom of it that's dumping exhaust out. It'll cost another couple hundred to replace, because I have to have everything replaced from a flange forward of the muffler on back.
I don't mind that I have to get the work done, specifically -- if it's the last significant repair I have to make to the van before we retire it, I'll be happy. My problem is that the muffler has to get fixed before I get it inspected, and I'm already running on borrowed time. Bah.
Like any such list, GameSpy's recently posted 25 Overrated Games of All Time is likely to be (and has already been) met with vociferous dissent, and I definitely don't like the inclusion of at least a few games on their list, like Dungeon Siege, Super Mario Sunshine, Black & White and Donkey Kong Country, for example.
But for the post part, it's a solid list. American McGee's Alice, for example -- you really have to love the chutzpah of sticking your name in front of the game (like John Carpenter's Vampires. It seems you're doomed to the B-list).
The Boston Globe's Sunday edition today has a piece penned by Geoff Edgers called "The Atari comeback." It talks about the return of Atari 2600 "homebrew" games, Activision compilations published for new consoles and computers, and even JAKKS Pacific's Atari 2600 joystick, which Bonnie and the kids got me for a birthday present last year.
A game designer interviewed for the piece notes that "the design was so primitive...[game developers had to] work and refine gameplay." His point is, old video games looked like crap, so gameplay became of paramount importance.
That's true, to a certain extent, but I don't think that's all of it. There's no question that at least a few old-school video game designers honed their skills to a fine art, but I think that you can count them on a couple of hands. Nostalgia is a big part of the draw for many of us to download MacMAME or to pick up anthologies of classic Atari 2600 games -- relieving the days of our youth with skinny leather ties and shoulder pad-enhanced jackets. The games are primitive, both in their look and their play.
The thing is, I think that gameplay has come a long way in the decades since the 2600 made its debut.
Anyone who's spent more than a few minutes with a modern platformer or strategy game can readily attest to their relative depth and breadth compared to, say, Pitfall or Yar's Revenge. The wonderful thing about those olde games, however, is instant gratification.
You're in and you're out in five or ten minutes, you get the high score or whatever, and you start over again. Comparatively, the games that I'm buying for my PS2 and GameCube take hours to play through. Hell, Bob's still playing through Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast, and hasn't unlocked everything yet.
There are at least a few game companies that make an effort to recapture the fun of those older games with updated graphics and gameplay. The most recent example of that which comes to mind is ThinkTanks from Bravetree and GarageGames. Just a fabulous little 3D action game which takes what's popular about online arena games like Unreal Tournament and mixes them with gameplay that's more reminiscent of Combat for the Atari 2600.
I'm happy to see this design theory make a full circle and come back into play. I don't expect it'll be a new trend or anything more than a curiosity, but it makes my heart warm to see game designers who have the same sort of love for these old games that so many of us of a certain age do.
That's Bob's new nickname for Emme. It's a desperately clever play on words for an eight-year-old and scathingly scatalogical to boot. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree, if I do say so.
Jun and Alison are both a pair of hosebeasts. Now that Robert and Erika are out of the Big Brother house, I have absolutely no interest in Big Brother 4 anymore.
And to add insult to injury, I have to wait til my anniversary until the fall season of The O.C. starts.
Oh well. More time to write the screenplay.
Do you have what it takes to be on Big Brother 5, asks a query on the CBS site. I'd sooner have my own open abdominal surgery broadcast. Good lord, you have to be desperate for attention to be on these shows.
You know the drill.
1. Who is your favorite singer/musician? Why?
Oh, for the love of god. I can't possibly answer this. I love a lot of different singers and musicians for a lot of different reasons, depending on my mood.
2. What one singer/musician can you not stand? Why?
This list is equally long, for largely the same reasons.
3. If your favorite singer wasn't in the music business, do you think you would still like him/her as a person?
I listen to music, I don't pay attention to personal shit. So I have no way of answering this question.
4. Have you been to any concerts? If yes, who put on the best show?
Probably the most consistent fun I've had at live shows is They Might Be Giants. Doesn't matter about the venue, large or small -- they always make me laugh.
5. What are your thoughts on downloading free music online vs. purchasing albums? Do you feel the RIAA is right in its pursuit to stop people from dowloading free music?
Stealing is wrong, any way you slice it, but I take a practical approach to it: I really don't have a problem with someone downloading music if it's to listen to it to decide whether or not they like it enough to buy it themselves, as long as that's the end-goal. To that end, I see it as the moral equivalent of borrowing your friends' CDs to make sure you really want that Wayne Newton collection before you buy it yourself.
Should the RIAA be subpoenaing and suing people to stop them? Probably not. I see it as a high-publicity but probably ultimately ineffective way to manage the situation. The public already views the RIAA as the gestapo end of a corrupt business, and having them sue 12 year olds living in housing projects for stealing music isn't going to help that public image.
Nope. The horse is already out of the barn -- no sense in closing the doors now. The more the RIAA does to support the efforts of companies trying to legitimize commercial music downloading (like the iTunes Music Store), the better.
Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software is in the midst of office construction, and it's given him the opportunity to compare and contrast the processes of building and software development:
"The software industry needs to become more like the mature trades with predictable schedules and budgets."
Well, what I've learned from my first large construction project is that this is hogwash. The building industry doesn't know how to do anything on schedule or on budget, either.
Preach the word, Brother Joel. Preach on.
This guy needs his own video game.
I wonder if anyone's called him to cut David Blaine down yet?
Bob's established himself as a fan of alternative stuff like They Might Be Giants. Emme's more into Carole King. James, he's got a taste for punk rock.
There's something really funny about a three year old dancing around the living room singing The Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop" to himself.
I think James picked it up from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 on the Gamecube, which I've found myself playing more of lately for some reason. But every so often, even when the game's not playing, you'll find James somewhere in the house singing to himself:
Theyoo pie-wing in de back seat
Theyoo genewating steam heat
Puwsating to de back beat
De Bwitzkweig Bop
Hey, ho, yet's go...
He likes the Dropkick Murphys, too.
For this recent trip to Austin I took American Airlines, mainly because my travel agent told me that they fly regular airplanes (Boeing Super 80s) out of Chicago instead of the tiny regional jets that United uses.
I fly United as a force of habit. When I first started with Mac Publishing LLC, they booked us on United and United gave new frequent flyer accounts a free year or two of "Premier" membership, which granted me access to early boarding and extra room in coach (United calls that front section "Economy Plus"). Those golden days are over, though, and I may switch to American for a couple of simple reasons that show they're paying attention to customers:
a) American gives you six extra inches of legroom throughout coach. Flying coach is still uncomfortable for someone of my size even with the extra room, but it's a hell of a lot less uncomfortable that the deep vein thrombosis-inducing human origami required on most airlines.
b) You can print out your boarding pass from a Mac or PC within 12 hours of your flight, saving you from ever having to go to a skycap or ticket counter when you get to the airport. While this wasn't a big deal for me this time around, because Austin/Bergstrom was pretty quiet, it did shave a few minutes off my entry to the terminal -- and what's more, this could be a lifesaver for those days I'm flying through SFO, LAX, Logan or another hideously busy airport.
The only real differences I noticed in terms of the quality of service was that American's Super 80s don't have any in-flight entertainment -- most of United's jets have TVs or pop-down video screens showing recycled prime-time dreck, and offer you your choice of a few channels of canned music on the in-flight music system. As you can tell, I'm ambivalent about this. Ever since my PowerBook gained a DVD player and iTunes, I've been more interested in listening to or watching what I bring with me anyway. Also, American's a bit skimpy on in-flight meals, too, but airplane food ain't nothin' to write home about under any circumstances.
Time for another Friday Five, a couple of days late thanks to my Austin trip.
1. Is the name you have now the same name that's on your birth certificate? If not, what's changed?
Yep, it's the same
2. If you could change your name (first, middle and/or last), what would it be?
I can't think of any changes offhand.
3. Why were you named what you were? (Is there a story behind it? Who specifically was responsible for naming you?)
Damned if I know. Ask my mom. I know that my middle name -- Andrew -- was for someone in my great-grandmother's family. And since I wasn't egotistical enough to name my first-born after myself, I gave him my middle name instead (a fact he just recently discovered).
4. Are there any names you really hate or love? What are they and why?
Names I particularly hate include Caitlin, Jordan, Taylor and Ashley. They're all too goddamned trendy. Emma's trendy too, but I feel like Bonnie and I have avoided the curse by giving her a really unusual (albeit traditional) spelling: Emmeline.
5. Is the analysis of your name at kabalarians.com / triggur.org / astroexpert accurate? How or how isn't it?
All a bunch of bullshit. Though Triggur.org is probably closest to the truth. ;)
CBS News Sunday Morning ran a piece this past weekend about batter-fried Twinkies, and since then, I admit that I've been obsessed. It sounds so vile, so artery-hardening, and yet, so, so delectable.
I come from a land where batter-fried is an adjective most often associated with seafood and occasionally onion rings, but the idea of batter-frying mass produced pastry is, as far as I can tell, relatively unknown. I've been to plenty of county fairs, and about the most exotic we get around here is just simple fried dough -- funnel cakes aren't even that common. I guess the venerable corn dog counts, too -- though I think my first taste of corn batter-fried frankfurter came out in Seattle, Wash., not here in New England.
In my brief bit of research I've discovered that other folks in other exotic lands like Scotland and Arkansas batter-fry a whole wealth of objects. The Scots are generally credited with inventing the confection known as the batter-fried Mars bar. God bless 'em. And midwesterners -- in addition to Twinkies -- have been known to batter-fry Oreos and Snickers bars too. Oreos, for God's sake.
One radio show duo actually made an interesting stunt of batter-frying different things and eating them; white castle hamburgers (belly-bombers) and chocolate chip cookie dough apparently didn't work out so well, but Smuckers Uncrustables and bologna turned out to be big hits.
My pancreas and gall-bladder are both threatening to cut off the blood supply to my colon if I ever dream of eating these deep-fried nightmares, but it certainly is appealing junk-food for thought.
Tomorrow I'm going to Austin, Texas for a few days to catch up with the folks from Aspyr Media. They're holding AspyrWorld, which they did once before, a few years ago. It's ostensibly a dog-and-pony show they do to show off their past accomplishments and trumpet new announcements and so on.
Things have changed a lot for them since the last time they did this show. They've lost some people, they've gained a lot of new ones, and they've broadened their product line to more than just Mac games: They're doing PC and Game Boy Advance titles now, and they're going to be expanding their horizons again, soon.
I'm really looking forward to seeing those folks and other people who have been invited to this thing, because I consider a lot of them close friends. Austin's a great town to have a good time in, too, but AspyrWorld has a more personal significance too.
It's exciting for me, because in many ways my career has paralleled what's happened at Aspyr. When we started working together, they were just a bootstrap organization operating out of the home office of the company's president, while I was doing Tikkabik as an online gaming resource during free moments in between my duties as an IT guy for a local newspaper chain.
Pretty soon I'd switch to doing online game news full-time and Aspyr would grow in leaps and bounds as well -- moving and picking up a lot of momentum in the process.
Now I've diversified, and while a lot of people still think of me as "the game guy" (mainly because of the Macworld column and my weekly bits on Your Mac Life), I do a lot more than that, and Aspyr's perspective has been similarly extended to markets other than Mac games.
My feelings on this are bittersweet.
I wish the Mac game market had grown like we all hoped it would when we got started doing this job. But it hasn't. Apple's marketshare hasn't grown significantly, and while there's a lot more games available than there ever used to be and a lot more of a clearly defined market, I can't say with any reasonable sense of assurance that the market is actually *better* now than it was nine years ago, when I first started Tikkabik. In many ways, it's diminished.
Part of that is because of a basic evolution in the video game market. Since I first got the Tikkabik domain, computer games have gone from a primary to a secondary market. When I first started this site, most people were still playing 16-bit games: A lot of side-scrollers and 2D fun, but not a lot of depth. PC gamers, meanwhile, were playing detailed flight simulations, in-depth role playing games and strategy titles that just couldn't be duplicated on the console.
While there are still some standout games and genres that come out on the PC first and play best on the PC, game console makers have largely caught up or surpassed PC makers when it comes to making a system that's fun to play a diverse amount of games on. That's shifted the entire momentum of game development from computers to consoles, and it means that the Mac is even more marginalized, because we've always, always been dependent on feeding from the trough of PC games to sate our gaming appetite.
Aspyr figured this out a while ago, and this year we've seen them option PC and Mac licenses for several console titles. Some impatient gamers have criticized Aspyr's choices here, and while I can't say that I was overwhelmed either, I think that those same critics haven't heeded the "it takes money to make money" idea. The smartest, safest way to make more money, of course, is to spend a little to make a little more. Aspyr couldn't very well have been expected to bet the farm on one hot console-to-computer conversion if they can hedge their bets on three or four more modest efforts.
So, I'm hoping that on Wednesday and Thursday, I'll hear about some hot new titles coming down the pike and maybe some info about some new partnerships. I'm also looking forward to spending some time with friends and having some barbeque. I trust I won't be disappointed.
As a dyed-in-the-wool Mac users, I live a sheltered life largely free of troubles like worms, viruses, trojan horses and the like. I'm certainly impacted by them -- my deleted items e-mail folder chock-full of "My Details," "Your Details," "Wicked Screensaver" and the like, all culled to the wastebin thanks to a rules filter of my own creation. But in terms of actual infection, I really don't have to worry that much -- the Mac has never been much of a magnet for virus authors, and Mac OS X even less so.
Security through obscurity has been offered as one explanation -- with few enough Mac users out there, it's said, virus writers don't have much of a reason -- or much experience -- writing code that can affect Macs. Others offer the innate security of Unix-based systems (like Mac OS X) as another reason. I suspect that the truth lies somewhere between these rationales.
The Boston Globe ran an article about the issue of virus protection, and tapped on yet another explanation of why Windows users are so affected by this issue: Because it's so damn tough (and, in some cases, expensive) to keep your system up-to-date with all the patches and security you need to.
Not only do you get conflicting, weird, and unfriendly messages when you try to apply patches, but you have to pay companies like Symantec subscription-based fees to keep your virus protection software current. It's enough to make many casual users shirk their responsibilities. I suspect that small businesses are probably a bit better about this: I can't imagine a more ignominious way to piss off your clientele than to send them worm-infected e-mail, except maybe to lose control of bodily functions on them in a face-to-face meeting.
The inconvenience of upgrading has largely been my (admittedly limited) experience with PC use too. The last time I had a PC, I spent much of the first four or five hours of use downloading and applying system patches to Windows XP -- through a broadband Internet connection. This was a huge contrast to the relatively quick and painless series of high-speed upgrades managed through my Mac OS X v10.2-equipped Mac, which took all of about 20 minutes to apply.
The worst, however, was the limited-time version of Symantec's anti-virus protection software that was included. Every time I booted the system I was reminded that I only had a few days to register and pay for the subscription before my anti-virus software would deactivate itself. I hated the idea of being held hostage this way, and never ended up buying the upgrade, obviously.
By comparison, Mac users have it pretty easy -- not only do we have only an infinitesimal fraction of Mac-native viruses and related problems to worry about, but virus protection software is pretty cheap and easy to come by. I use Virex, which I got for free as part of my $99 annual .Mac membership, and it upgrades itself every month without asking for another dime. There are other Mac-based virus software packages that similarly ask for one registration fee up front but don't charge you again.
No scary messages for any of this stuff either. The Apple-made system updates only come one way -- through the Software Update system preference pane -- so you can trust their pedigree with reasonable assurance.
My kids' sense of humor and comic timing cracks me up sometimes.
Last night James decided to lie with me on the couch. Before too long he'd slid between me and the couch's back, and he was doing everything he could to push me off. Bonnie saw me looking uncomfortable and asked me sarcastically, "Is he giving you enough space?"
"Yeah," James answered. "I have enough space."
This morning Bob and Emme were horsing around on the couch and tickling each other when Emme passed some wind accidentally. Bob's new nickname for her is "the Queen of Farts," which I think is clever for an eight year old.
1. What housekeeping chore(s) do you hate doing the most?
Taking the trash to the dump, especially after the raccoons have been in it. A foul, loathsome task. But I'm too cheap to pay a trash company every month to haul the stuff themselves.
2. Are there any that you like or don't mind doing?
I like making dinner for everyone, usually.
3. Do you have a routine throughout the week or just clean as it's needed?
Bonnie does the bulk of the housecleaning herself, since my work hours are a bit unusual. With three kids with horrible table manners stomping around the house, it's mandatory to vacuum and mop the kitchen floor almost every day.
4. Do you have any odd cleaning/housekeeping quirks or rules?
We almost never dust, and it shows.
5. What was the last thing you cleaned?
The bathroom mirrors.
A federal judge has exercised common sense by once again chucking out that absolutely ridiculous lawsuit against McDonald's.
It's rare that a game will evoke any sort of emotional response, unless you count ennui. That was one of the great things about reviewing Bloodrayne. I tangibly detested the experience so much, the muse really spoke to me. I got some great feedback from that review, and heartily encourage Mac game makers to continue to make crap so I can occasionally let loose with a barrage of sardonic wit in print now and again.
That's why I'm just scratching my head at this news. Did these morons learn NOTHING from the mediocre pile of poop that was Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life?
I'd just finished chapter five of The Austere Academy, the fifth installment of Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events." We have a rule here -- if someone's reading, other people need to be quiet.
"Daddy, do we have to go to bed wight now?" James asked
"No, you can stay up for a few more minutes."
"A yittle bit?" he asked.
"Sure James, a yittle bit."
"Daddy?"
"Yeah, James."
"Can we make noise?" he asked.
"Sure, James, a yittle bit."
"A yittle bit? Da dee dee dee, da dee dee dee," he began to sing as he marched around the living room in circles.
Once again the Bush administration shows its adept handling of foreign relations. (Thanks, Colin)
With the except of the year we home-schooled Bob, we've basically gone through a ritual with our kids for four years, beginning in September: Bringing them to the bus.
It's required in our town that kids in Kindergarten, first and second grades -- all of whom are segregated to their own school -- be accompanied to and from the bus stop by a parent or family member. Some kids on the routes have older brothers or sisters, grandparents or other family members meet them at the stop every day, but since Bob is our oldest, it's always been one of us that brings him there and picks him up. In fact, the principal of the school tells parents in an assembly every fall that the bus drivers aren't supposed to let the little ones off the bus unless someone is there to take responsibility for them.
Well, Bob's in third grade this year, and that means he's going to the town's second elementary school, which will take him through sixth grade (then he goes to the high school for grades 7-12). That means a different bus route and a different routine. Starting in third grade, kids can walk to the bus stop themselves.
It's thrown me for a loop the last couple of days, watching him go out the door and come back in on his own, and it's reminded me of how fast the kids grow up. Bob and Emme are now in different schools, and that suits him just fine, as he finds his little sister to be a bratty menace and a source of endless stress.
It also made Bonnie and me do some quick math: When James, who starts pre-school next week, is Kindergarten-aged, Emme (who just started first grade yesterday) will already be in the other school. And by the time James reaches that second elementary school, Emme will have moved on to the high school.
I guess I better start saving for the kids' college education one of these days.
Dear woman who answers the phone at the doctor's billing office:
You're a bitch. No, seriously, you're a complete fucking bitch.
From the moment you sighed with mock exasperation after I told you'd I'd received an erroneous bill asking for almost $400 and adopted a sarcastic, snide tone of voice to get more information from me, I knew you were a bitch.
See, when you talked with my wife a month ago, she made it clear to you that you'd billed our insurance company wrong the first time, and that's why you didn't get paid the right amount. Your doctor isn't part of our network, but if you'd simply followed the insurance company's instructions correctly the first time, he would have gotten what he was owed regardless.
Instead, you chose to fuck with us and bill us again. You decided that the easier route was to ask me for the money. There are only two problems with that: A) I'm cheap and I won't pay your fucking bill. B) My wife used to work for an HMO in the claims department, and she knows what sort of stupid, incompetent assholes happen to work in doctors' billing offices.
You came up with a half-assed explanation of how that bill was my deductible, despite the fact that the information you input into the system after you talked with Cigna reflected differently, even repeating it back to me. You either thought I was too stupid to understand what was being said to me, or you yourself are too mentally handicapped to comprehend.
I bet a lot of people just pay their bills to get you out of their lives. After all, you have a personality that's the psychic equivalent of nails scraping across a chalkboard. After five or ten minutes of arguing the point with you, I would have belted back a few fingers of scotch, if I was a drinking man.
So, when I explained to you that you needed to resubmit the bill, and told you point-blank we went through this a month ago, you told me that I was wrong and suggested that I had an attitude problem. That's when I knew that you weren't just a stupid bitch, but an arrogant one too.
I got satisfaction a few minutes later when my insurance company told me that you'd been paid, and that a check number would be available tomorrow. Turns out you took my wife's advice the first time and resubmitted to the insurance company, even though you're too much of a shrew to admit it.
Oh, you're a coward too -- because you made someone else call me back to confirm that I was indeed correct to begin with, and that you'd been paid.
Harpy. I hope you get yours in Hell.
