Tikkabik

Bonnie went to a treatment plan meeting to Robert's school on Monday. This was done as part of his six month anniversary at Baird, which runs a therapeutic program for behaviorally challenged boys as part of their curriculum. Baird's equivalent to an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) meeting in a general education school.

At the meeting was Charlotte Soucey -- she's part of Mashpee's special education department, and she's been mainly responsible for liaising between us and the Baird Center for Robert's placement there. She's the chief point of contact that Mashpee has with the school.

Our relationship hasn't been easy or without issues, but I've always gotten the impression that Charlotte wants to do right by us and do the right thing for Robert. And now she's leaving, and not by her choice, either.

Bonnie said, "See you at the next meeting" at the conclusion of the treatment meeting, and Charlotte replied, "No, you probably won't."

It turns out that Charlotte is being turned out in the street at the end of this academic year. Because her position has been eliminated.

She's being replaced with an assistant special education director. An assistant to Jane Beaudin, Mashpee's special education director, who, by the way, is presently operating in violation of state law as she doesn't have the proper accreditation, since she was unable to pass a basic literacy test as part of her state licensure.

This news comes only a few months after we learned that Ann Bradshaw, the superintendent of Mashpee schools, is hiring an assistant superintendent to help her with issues that, from the nature of the job description, sound like things she should be doing.

So, basically, someone in the school administration who is actually capable of effecting change and working with parents is being replaced by a manager. It's the Dilbert Principal at work. And totally par for course for our local school system.

Posted by flargh at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Just got back from the mechanic, who replaced my rear tires to the tune of $270. The van takes regular passenger tires (albeit awfully big ones), but that rusted waste of a rim the spare is mounted on had destroyed the lug nuts and studs it was mounted to. It's also managed to destroy itself -- there was so much rust inside that it loosened up when it was being used, and the lug holes managed to shift from being round to being oblong.

I have the spare mounted up underneath again -- I'll need to get a new rim from somewhere.

The problems I had before with the fuel pump aren't back, but that fuel pump isn't long for this world; the manager at the place I went to agreed that it's making a sick noise, so he's ordered a replacement part from the distributor which should be installed within the next week. Hopefully he can fix the fuel gauge problems at the same time.

Posted by flargh at 02:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I should have known that being driven 3,000+ miles in a week, the van would exact some sort of revenge: Its rear driver side tire is dead.

It just wasn't keeping air in itself any more, and I can see why -- riding it underinflated, as I had for a few miles in Georgia, wore it straight through to the steel belts.

So I changed the tire, and discovered in the process that the spare, while full-sized, is on a cheap rim that's rusted straight through. The rim's been strapped to the underside of the van for a decade now, so I shouldn't be surprised. Still, the convenience of not having to deal with a donut is useless if the rim the spare is riding on is garbage.

A day on that rusted rim and the lug nuts loosened up, unfortunately - now the tire is wobbly and I can't get the lug nuts tightened down enough. I'll have to get it replaced tomorrow, and I pray I can drive the van to the mechanic's without f'ing something up further.

Posted by flargh at 02:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So we returned from our Florida vacation early on Sunday morning and what do I find waiting for me? The 100GB replacement hard disk drive for my PowerBook G4. Before the trip got underway I'd scavenged a 40GB hard disk to replace the 80GB model the PowerBook was born with, so I had a working machine while I was on the road.

Today I finally got around to installing it, and I appreciate the extra 20GB of space, quieter operation and slightly faster performance (5400RPM, versus 4200RPM).

Of course, this morning Apple introduced the computer I've been waiting for -- the 17-inch MacBook Pro.

It is, in all respects, a hell of a sexy machine. Some people are complaining about the size, and want Apple to hurry up with a 12-inch MacBook model or a 12-inch Intel iBook already. Me, I like the desktop real estate and the comfier keyboard.

But my lust for the new hardware isn't overwhelming enough for me to want to retire the PowerBook yet -- so I'll enjoy the new hard disk drive, and the perverse pleasure I get from setting up a new machine (which I'm effectively doing, hard disk drive having been blanked and all). And wait. And bide my time. And wonder how long it will take for Apple to rev the new 17-inch.

Posted by flargh at 08:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We're back from Florida -- pulled into the driveway in the wee hours of Sunday morning, after a much-needed pit stop to recharge our batteries at Sue and Quinn's in Virginia.

We're all happy to be home, and happy to see Max, and he seems happy to see us. Grandma Marcia did a terrific job taking care of him -- in fact, he seems a bit bitter that we were slow with opening the windowshades and giving him fresh food and water this morning. I think she's spoiled him.

Florida was great, we had a great time -- I still have lots of photos to upload when I get the chance.

Our return trip was mostly uneventful, with a few notable exceptions. Somewhere around Georgia the Frickin' Van's rear driver-side tire developed a slow leak, so I've had to keep an eye on it since then -- it's been taking five or ten PSI of air at almost every fill-up, so I'll have to replace it as soon as possible. Those are the same tires we bought with the van when we picked it up a couple of years ago, so I suppose I should have expected them to go sooner or later.

After leaving Portsmouth around noon, we had driving, sometimes pounding, rain, all the way back from Virginia to about Lyme, Conn., which got progressively colder and more uncomfortable the farther north we were. We also had really bad traffic almost continuously from Richmond, Va., to about Baltimore, Md. or so -- enough so that by about 7 PM we'd decided we'd had enough and pulled over for dinner. As a result, we were about four hours later getting home than I anticipated -- it took us a good 12 1/2 hours or so to get from Mashpee to Portsmouth, and a good 16 1/2 to get back.

Driving from Mass. to Florida and back again certainly isn't for the faint-hearted, but I'd recommend doing it at least once if you ever get the chance -- it gives you a sense of scale of country, which is both larger and smaller than you expect. If I did it again, I'd like to take more time to show the kids the sights and sounds of the mid-Atlantic states -- two weeks, perhaps, with some time spent in D.C., exploring some of the historic sights on the Virginia and North Carolina coasts, and perhaps a night in Savannah, Ga.

Of course, finding the time to do that with all three of them in school is tough. So we'll see.

Posted by flargh at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Bonnie told me that my sister in law thought there was wireless Internet access in the clubhouse for the condo development -- she's right. It's a public access point. When I took the kids to the pool today Ed was kind enough to retrieve my laptop from the house -- it found and connected to the network right away.

I'm in the midst of uploading a few dozen files to my account on Flickr; they're all of our trip to the Naples Zoo yesterday.

Posted by flargh at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's Wednesday morning, and I'm in full-blown Internet withdrawal. There's no high speed Internet access at the condo, so I'm suffering with dialup connectivity and only sparse connections to check e-mail and post here.

The weather has been absolutely magnificent -- not a drop of rain since we got here. My father in law Ed tells me that April is a dry month in this part of Florida, so that's no great surprise. Temperatures have been in the mid-80s all week, and the humidity is present but not totally oppressive. This is the month a lot of seasonal residents flee for cooler pastures, but Ed's curious about how bad it really gets in July and August.

There's a tremendous amount of development in the Bonita Springs and Naples area -- shopping malls, office parks, condo developments and housing subdivisions have sprouted up like fungus. Residential property values have slipped a bit here, just as they have in a lot of other places, but residents here are confident that they'll rebound quickly. The climate, rate of growth and environment just seem naturally conducive to sustained expansion. Still, the days of real estate "flipping" -- buying a condo pre-construction then selling it without ever occupying it for a 200 or 300 percent return -- are probably over.

On Tuesday we got a late start -- hey, we are on vacation -- and spent the day at the Naples Zoo. It's a delightful place with panthers, tiger and lions, which made us a bit homesick for Max, who Grandma assures us is doing well. They also have a great primate exhibit with gibbons, lemurs and monkeys who live on islands in the middle of a man made lake (more of a pond, really) -- the zoo takes you around in a pontoon boat.

Got plenty of pictures at the zoo, and I'll upload them to Flickr when I get a high speed connection.

Today looks to be a low-key day. The kids want to go to the big swimming pool here at the condo development and also want to take the paddleboats here around the canal. Grandpa's planning a cookout later, with Bob's and my favorite: Baby back ribs.

Posted by flargh at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We arrived in Bonita Springs, Fla. safe and sound on Easter morning. We left Mashpee on Thursday, stopping for a night at Sue and Quinn's in Virginia (we all had a great time enjoying their hospitality and the company of their two sons and daughter, by the way).

The second leg of the drive was a real killer -- we left a bit later than we probably should, so it was evening before we passed into Georgia, and we had another five hours of driving after we hit the Florida state line (Bonita Springs in near Naples, so you have to drive almost the entire length of the state. And Florida is big).

Highlights on the ride down included our first Cracker Barrel experience and passing out for several hours at a Florida rest stop -- Bonnie and I were just in no condition to keep driving, which is why we got to Bonita Springs on Easter morning instead of the wee hours.

The condo where Judy and Ed spend their winters is absolutely gorgeous -- an end unit that's right across the street from a small pool the kids have already partaken of, and next door to a boathouse that some of the residence use for parties. Behind the boathouse is a lush garden of tropical flowers and several charcoal grilles shared by the residents.

It's pretty quiet in the development presently -- Ed tells me that the busy months are January through March. Then a lot of the residents flee for cooler temperatures throughout the summer. There are a lot of older folks in the development, but I've seen a few families with younger kids as well.

Easter was spent with family. Bonnie's aunt Jeanette and her husband, Joe, came over (they're here on vacation too). Ed and Judy made a great spread of turkey stew, baked ham and other stuff. Some of Ed's extended family -- cousins I hadn't seen in a few years -- arrived earlier in the day.

We should have the rest of the week pretty much to ourselves, with Grandpa Ed and Grandma Judy. Today we're taking the kids to the beach.

Posted by flargh at 08:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In a few hours we'll be heading down to Florida by way of the Frickin' Van.

Pray for us.

I've decided that when I get back, I'm going to post a gallery of photos of the Frickin Van to Flickr, so you can see this chariot of doom in all its glory.

Posted by flargh at 05:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Well, I'm finally set up with the PowerBook again. I had reassembled it after installing the new hard disk several hours ago, but ran into a glitch -- some of the keyboard keys wouldn't work. This sent me into a panic until I did some quick searches on the Internet and discovered that others who had had their PowerBooks serviced had similar problems. As it turns out, the delicate ribbon cable that connects the PowerBook's keyboard to the motherboard had somehow worked itself a bit loose -- enough so that certain keys worked, and others didn't.

So I had to disassemble the unit and put it back together again -- fortunately I've gotten the hang of it now, so I won't have as hard a time next time.

One other thing I'd wanted to do that I didn't have the opportunity to -- adjust the tension on the hinges. The PowerBook's screen has a tendency to flop open and doesn't hold its position very well -- I can see that the screws that hold the hinges in place are a little loose. Unfortunately, they're absolutely tiny -- Torx 6, it looks like, and the smallest I have is a Torx 8. So I'll need to take a run to an electronics store before I get another hard drive to pick up some tiny tools, too.

I've spent the last few hours reinstalling software and setting it up so my system is more or less back to where it was, at least with all my mission-critical applications and as much data as I had on my desktop computer.

Yeah, and 2GB of MAME ROMs.

Posted by flargh at 02:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I finally had some free time tonight so I put an old 2.5-inch hard disk mechanism I've been hanging onto into my 17-inch PowerBook. You may recall that I started having problems with it last week -- it would lock up and go very slow, then freeze, and finally couldn't boot at all. Sometimes it would show up in FireWire Target Disk Mode but I could never get any data off it before it locked up the bus.

Putting this ancient 40GB mechanism cured the PowerBook's ills -- it's booting and working like a champ. So I guess all I have to do is buy a new drive for it. Judging from the stock at NewEgg, It seems my choices are to either spend a moderate amount of money buying a drive that's the same capacity (80GB) but works a hell of a lot faster (7200RPM) or spend a lot of money buying a drive that's moderately bigger (100GB) and moderately faster (5400RPM).

Advice? Space was always at a premium with the old drive, but now that I've parted company with it, there's probably a lot of cruft I realistically don't need to reinstall.

Also, disassembling the 17-inch PowerBook is an incredible bitch. It's got the tiniest screws imaginable every which way, weird little ribbon cables that you have to hook your fingernails under to work loose, and is generally one of the most user-unfriendly systems I've had the displeasure of working on since my Bondi Blue iMac last needed an upgrade.

Also, the amount of vile stuff trapped in my keyboard was also unimaginable. Turning it over and shaking it a few times, I had the displeasure of seeing a steady blizzard of crumbs, skin flakes and God-knows-what-else fall to the floor. Using a tiny screwdriver and scraping delicately between the keys, I also managed to wedge loose some furballs that looks like they'd been hacked up by the cat.

Posted by flargh at 09:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How to tell when you're spending too much time in Windows XP on your iMac:

When you reboot into Mac OS X and then wonder why the Start menu isn't showing up when you move the cursor into the lower left corner of the screen.

Posted by flargh at 08:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This may be stating the obvious, but I'm glad that someone has finally spoken up about this. Almost every night on TV I see a new drug product being marketed for an obscure condition I've never heard of, or a product I've heard of being marketed for some new condition.

Posted by flargh at 07:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I set up my 20 inch Intel-based iMac with Boot Camp, Apple's software to let you run Windows XP on your Mac. Here are my thoughts:

Gaming is now awesome. The iMac isn't a hardcore game system by any stretch of the imagination, but it plays just about everything out there well enough.

What's more, it appears that DirectX 9 on XP is a hell of a lot more optimized than OpenGL is OS X is.

Having said that, Windows XP still sucks for the most part. The interface is nowhere near as refined as Mac OS X, viruses and spyware present a real problem to daily use (Counterspy has already snagged dozens of spyware intrusions on my Mac since I installed it last Wednesday) and running XP on a Mac just looks wrong. It's sort of like using a pig to put on lipstick, if that analogy makes any sense backwards.

Posted by flargh at 05:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So with Robert's problems receding into the distance, we can focus our attention on Emmeline. Last week I got an e-mail from her teacher advising me that they would be transitioning her into a general education classroom.

This is good news -- Emmeline has spent most of this academic year in her school's "resource center," which is where they put the behaviorally challenged kids on IEPs. It's been good to have the smaller class size, the teacher with special education training and the different approach, but it's also been very frustrating, as we haven't been clearly told how and when Emme would transition to a mainstream class. That's what her IEP says will happen, it was just a question of when.

So while I'm happy to hear that she's ready for the transition, I'm disappointed with the school (as usual) because the teacher has explained that Emmeline will be transitioned to a different academic class than the one she's been assigned to all year. This is the class she's gotten to know during special classes, recess and lunch.

When I questioned the placement to the different class, the response I essentially got back was, "Well, I think it's a better match."

To which I said, "That's fine and dandy, but any change you make to her academic placement can't be done arbitrarily -- we have to have a TEAM meeting, according to the terms of Emmeline's IEP, not to mention federal law (IDEA)."

I'm also confused that they decided to do this at the end of April -- two months before the academic year is done. It seems like bad timing.

I really can't get my head around this -- it's such a rookie move on their part to just arbitrarily tell me they're switching her placement, rather than calling a meeting. It's patently, obviously and offensively stupid and ignorant -- IDEA has been in place for almost 10 years, and it is unequivocal on this point: No change can be made to a child's placement without written notice.

This is really basic stuff, folks -- you'd no more expect a special ed department to do this than you would expect a cop to serve a minor alcohol.

So, at my behest, the teacher has tentatively scheduled a meeting on April 25 to go over the transition plan. We plan to have representation and support on our behalf, because God knows every time we've tried to do something like this in the past, we've ended up getting gang-banged by a room of 10 or 15 people from the Mashpee schools, and I don't expect this to be any different.

At this point, trusting them to do the right thing would just be an amateur, stupid move. I don't trust them as far as I can throw them, pure and simple. The amount of sheer arrogance, stupidity and ignorance on the part of the Mashpee Public School system's special ed department is absolutely astounding.

Posted by flargh at 04:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So Bonnie, Robert and I just got back from Falmouth Juvenile Court, and I'm pleased to report that we got the best possible outcome and the one our attorney was hoping for: Pre-trial probation for a period of one year. Presuming Robert keeps his nose clean, isn't arrested or summonsed to court, and doesn't receive any severe disciplinary action at school for the next year, this is the last we'll ever hear on this matter ever again. What's more, the records will be sealed and this won't come back to bite him in the future.

Short of an outright dismissal, which was very unlikely to happen anyway, this is the best possible outcome. There's no court trial, no calling of witnesses or cross-examination, and no more hassles involving the court in a matter that never should have gotten to court to begin with.

What it ultimately came down to is behind-the-scenes negotiation between our attorney, who specializes in special ed cases, and the district attorney. He made the case that Robert is part of an intact family, he's getting the help that he needs at the school he's going to, he's receiving counseling, and he's got help outside of school too -- in fact, representatives from two organizations were there to support us.

All this impressed the judge enough to limit the action they'll take to this pre-trial probation period. It's unsupervised, too, so he doesn't have to check in with a probation officer or anything like that -- as long as Robert behaves, he's all set.

Thank God.

Posted by flargh at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Something really bad happened to the PowerBook I was talking about the other day -- it isn't booting consistently and trying to run it in FireWire Target Disk Mode makes it freeze up quickly. Disk utilities tell me the hardware is okay, though -- so I'm not sure what the problem is exactly.

I do have an old PowerBook hard drive -- a 2.5 inch ATA drive -- that I'm going to try to transplant, to see if it is indeed the hard drive that's causing the problem. If it is, then all I need is a new drive. If it isn't, then the PowerBook itself -- which went out of warranty some time ago -- is hosed.

Stay tuned for details.

Posted by flargh at 02:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Listen, I owe you all a big apology. An instant message exchange with Cameron made me aware that MT was eating comments that weren't really spam -- it turns up that I'd turned up its aggression towards comments just a tad too high.

Looking back over my junk mail cache, I realize that it's trapped a good two dozen or more messages since mid-February, when I cranked it up higher to combat an onslaught of spam. So I went through as best I could and moved them back to where they belong, then cranked the setting down a couple of notches.

So, sorry about that. If I'd known before now, I would have done something about it before now. So shame on you for not speaking up earlier! (And thanks, Cameron!)

Posted by flargh at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm not a big fan of Wal-Mart, but I do find them useful on occasion when it comes to buying commodity items like laundry detergent or products I know I can't get cheaper without having to bargain-hunting. But after watching Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price I'm rethinking that, too. It's the first documentary I've seen in years that actually made me sick to watch.

Robert Greenwald does a fantastic job of assassinating just about every trace of Wal-Mart's character with this look at the retailer, from how they treat their employees to how they treat factory workers, the environment, their effects on the local towns and more.

But of all the extraordinary and egregious behavior that I saw in the film -- of all the small business owners that have been forced out of business, of all the "associates" (a euphemism for employee that drives me nuts) that have to go on welfare because they don't get paid enough, of all their union-busting activities, of all their environmental transgressions, of all the third-world laborers who work in subhuman conditions, one thing pissed me off more than anything: Corporate welfare.

It's the subsidies these sons of bitches get for setting up shop in a town or city that just galls me. Tax breaks, incentives, repayment of construction and building costs, and the like. Towns and cities just roll over with their legs spread and their tails wagging the second Wal-Mart tells them they're going to set up shop, and that's the end of it.

The other corporate welfare angle is something I mentioned in passing before -- that thousands upon thousands of Wal-Mart workers who are employed in part- or full-time jobs around the country are still paid so little that they have to go to state and federal agencies to get food assistance, medical aid and subsidized utilities.

Meanwhile, who takes up Forbes' 400 Richest Americans spots in positions 6 through 10? I'll give you a hint -- their last names are all "Walton."

Listen, I'm not averse to an entrepreneur succeeding in this country -- the last thing I'd ever want to see is United States reduced to a socialist environment like France where young people riot in the streets because they're not guaranteed lifetime employment -- but there's a point at which, to paraphrase Gordon Gecko from Wall Street, greed just ain't good anymore. It occurs to me that the Walton clan could skim just a fraction of the billions of their net worth -- so little that I doubt any of them would notice that it was gone -- and make the quality of lives of their "associates" an assload better.

Posted by flargh at 08:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I have a confession to make: I'm sharing a laptop and it's driving me up the wall.

I've had my PowerBook G4 for nigh on two years now, and it's pretty much become an extension of my body. I do 98 percent of my work on it, even though I'm not a road warrior in any sense of the word. But I really enjoy the household mobility it brings: Wireless networking and wireless phones mean that I can work from any corner of the house I wish, from the master bedroom to the family room to the kitchen to the living room.

In fact, I very rarely spend any substantive time in my office, as the piles of papers, boxes and unswept cobwebs can readily attest.

In the evenings, Bonnie and I like to relax with our favorite shows, and this season, there's been a veritable embarassment of riches in network and cable television programming. It seems like there's something on worth watching almost every night of the week, and on the rare night there isn't, I've got more than 30 percent of my DVR's hard drive space spoken for -- not to mention a steady stream of DVDs from Netflix and the local libraries to choose from.

So we spend almost every night after putting the kids to bed in front of the living room set, and it's been my custom for years to sit down with my laptop as we do.

Some time ago I realized that I was spending more time paying attention to the laptop than I was to what was on or what Bonnie was saying, so I'd park it with the power cord plugged in and try to be attentive.

Bonnie took this, I think, as a sign that I was done with the the PowerBook, so she's gotten into the the habit of signing herself in (I set up a separate account that she gets to through Fast User Switching) and visiting the Web sites she likes to go to on a regular basis.

Now, Bonnie has her own desktop Mac -- It's a "lampshade"-style iMac with 1GB of RAM, not a shabby system at all. But it's in the family room.

So almost every night now, I find myself without a laptop, and a jones to do some late-night work or catch up on some research, or just to have IMDB open so I can see whether that actress that I'm watching on Dark Kingdom was the same one in that episode of The Sopranos that I remember.

And I can't. Because I'm sharing a laptop.

Last night I told Bonnie that when her iMac is finally due for replacement, I'm not going to buy another desktop machine.

I'm pretty sure this is a practical example of why so many consumers have been getting laptops over the past couple of years. If nothing else, it reduces marital strife.

Oh by the way, I'm writing this from my desktop machine in my office.

Posted by flargh at 08:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)