Tired of the sock battle

I know this just MIGHT cause some of you to pass out so please take a seat (if, by some chance, you were standing at your computer or maybe using a public internet kiosk at a mall just to access my blog.) I'm actually going to write something of USE.

So here's the thing. I married into a family of 4. Three of those are children. Children apparently have some odd flaws. They are incapable of certain acts pertaining to footwear. They can't seem to sort socks, they can't seem to distinguish between their socks and those belonging to others and when they are GIVEN a PAIR of their OWN socks they can't seem to get them BOTH into the laundry basket for the same wash cycle.

All these things borne in mind and realizing that I really hate dealing with a huge basket of socks (ours has pretty much become a perpetual basket that stays in the kids room and they pull socks out as needed)I have come up with an idea.

Now this is not an entirely new idea. I've seen part of it employed before. The first part is easy. Use a laundry marker to put your child's initial on their socks. If it makes the kid feel better you can agree on a shape, smiley face, colored X or whatever. Now this helps to keep their own socks on their own feet. But it really doesn't help when it comes to them trying to find a pair that matches. So I have decided that when new socks are purchased not only will their initial go onto the sock but it will be followed by a number.

Zach will have two Z-1 socks and two Z-2 socks etc. This will solve a number of issues. Firstly, it will make sorting a breeze. You sort the letters and match the numbers and you're done. It also helps to eliminate orphan socks. When a sock becomes torn or stretched or blood stained you dispose of it and it's numeric pair. It can also be used as a pre wash incentive. You can line up the socks and tell at a glance which have a mate missing somewhere in the house and send your children on a search for just the missing ones.

So that's my future plan in a nut shell. I figure that I won't have to go much higher than a 24 on the numbering. That's a few packs of socks and by the time you've had to purchase a third or fourth pack of socks for your kid they had better have a good reason for needing them (meaning that the lower numbers will have been thrown out and can then be reused.)

Texting Addiction

So I got a wild hair and looked up texting addiction. This is because of viewing the usage history for my 14 year old since we allowed him to spend his allowance on unlimited texting. I found one article where the addicted person being interviewed said that they sometimes reached 5000 messages a month. Another article complained of a child running up a $600+ bill with texting (equaling over 12,000 messages).

Well here is a sad look into my child's life.

Between the 22nd of May and the 13th of June he has sent or received 14,066 text messages. That's in only 22 days. As I'm sure you're figuring out I'm obsessed with numbers. He's averaged 639 messages a day. I'll assume he sleeps 9 hours a night (I'm using yesterday as a gauge: he got up (started texting) at 9:10 and went to bed (stopped texting) at 11:48 so that is around 15 waking hour.) So 15 hours a day waking time for 22 days is 330 hours. That is 42.6 texts per waking hour.

Oh, and using yesterday as a guide I found that 47% of those are sent by him.

It is kind of scary to hear someone calling out that they are a texting addict with only 5000 texts per month (though I will admit they don't specify if that was total texts or only sent texts) when my child has SENT approximately 6,653 in only 22 days.

Now there is one ray of hope here. One tidbit that may indicate that he's not QUITE as addicted as he may seem. You see, many of his friends pay for their own cell plans and they have figured out that they can get an absolutely minimal minute plan with unlimited texting. That allows them to have conversations with multiple persons at one time and also allows them to converse in an unlimited fashion without using thousands of talking minutes and therefore having to pay massive amounts for a voice plan to cover those minutes.

Still, I think it's an addiction...but maybe that's just me.

UPDATE: As of the end of the billing cycle (5/22/09 to 6/22/09) he sent and received a total of 20953 text messages (677 per day average) Oh, and for any pot / kettle types out there...my total messaging for that month was 715 and my wife's was 235 and we both use instant messaging on our phones.

2 days of my life

It seems that the people in my house are incapable of operating the spring loaded toilet paper roller. At least none of them seem to want to. I have realized that living in a house with five people we go through a roll of toilet paper a day. And I have noticed that I am the only one who puts it on the roller. I have also registered the fact that it takes me 6 to 10 seconds to complete this task.

So assuming that this task takes 10 seconds every time (sometimes I drop the toilet paper and sometimes I have to go into the hall for a new roll so a high estimate isn't uncalled for). Now let's assume I'll live to be 80 years old. Having started this routine of mine at about 30 years of age when I married into my family we'll say I'll do this for 50 years. Now I know that the kids will eventually move out (probably) but at that point we'll probably change over to a more comfortable if slightly more expensive toilet paper and will use the smaller rolls. We will also probably use the bathroom more often as we will be getting older. As such I'll assume that I will continue to change the roll once a day.

In 50 years there will be 18,250 days. Ten seconds per day is 182,500 seconds spent changing toilet paper. That works out to 2 days 2 hours 41 minutes 40 seconds. So I'm going to spend over 2 full days of my life putting toilet paper on the roller.

Now if that's not a crappy deal I don't know what is. ;-)

Cameras and I

Should not be allowed to spend too much time together without adult supervision. As proof see below.

In today's economy you have to add a little extra to get things to sell. This house comes with it's owner.

Not sure about you but when I ask a blind kid what they did at camp this summer the one thing I don't expect to hear is "I learned to fire projectile weapons"

I hope they didn't really mean it.

There appears to be a man in a coat beating his fist against a window in the background. Why? We may never know. (Update: One of the people in the picture tried to convince me this was the reflection of the camera person holding the camera up. Of course, that would have to be a VERY warped as it could not have reflected someone back to themselves if they were standing at that angle. Also, why would someone taking a picture be holding the camera off to the side of their head to do so? I think there is something going on here they don't want us to know about...)

Da da, da da, da da, da da, BatDog!

Great new improvements for your convenience.

Whenever someone tells me what a great thing they're doing for me I tend to look extra hard for the hook that's going to make me their dinner. I got an email from Coca Cola a while back telling me they had "Great news: we've made big improvements." They also announced that this great news was that there were no more daily code limits. That is to say that you can enter as many codes per day as you want. There used to be a 10 code per day limit. They then go on to tell me that there is now a 120 point per week limit instead.

Now I saw the lack of glitter in this immediately. I even wrote to Coke and told them off for insulting me and they wrote back with a point rundown that SOLIDIFIED how badly they're limiting their players. Let us look at just a few of the comparisons. All of the products are this way.

20 oz bottles (the closest we'll come to a "deal") are 3 points each.

Old system you could do 10 per day. That equals 30 points per day. Seven days in a week means you could do 210 points per week.

New system limits you to 120 points per week. That is 17 points per day. That comes out to 1.7 codes per day limit.

12 pack of cans = 10 points

Old system let you do 100 points a day for a total of 700 points per week.

New system is 120 points per week. That's 12 codes per week. About 1.7 codes per day

24 pack "fridge pack" = 20 points

Old system let you do 200 points per day for a total of 1400 per week

New system is 120 points per week. That's 6 codes per week. About 0.85 codes per day

But it's all ok because they told us it's "Great news" and a "big improvement." So that makes it better for us.

Beware what you wish for

I have a teenager who is constantly saying things like "you never pay attention to me" and there is the broader "you should pay more attention." There are other choice phrases that he uses but they all lean towards his assertion that we as his parents and, indeed, all adults need to pay more attention to the world around them.

It seems the way of things that teenagers feel that adults don't pay enough attention to anything and don't know what we're doing or talking about most of the time. They are constantly telling us to pay more attention, get our "facts" straight and stop jumping to conclusions.

Well, most of us uneducated and oblivious adults know of the old quote "Beware what you wish for." That is profound wisdom which we try to give freely to our children and which they never seem to take to heart. Case in point is something that happened just yesterday. My wife and I had to go on a 6 hour trip so we left our 14 year old home watching our 8 year old. We gave them chores to do, rules to follow and a cell phone to use as a life line to their Grandfather if need be.

One rule was "do not play on the mattresses." The mattresses being some old bedding that we let them play with and which allows them to fly through the air and crash down with impunity. This is, however, a privilege that we feel is best enjoyed with adults in the immediate vicinity just in case someone bounces or lands awkwardly. (Have you ever noticed how awkward the word awkward looks?)

So off we go on our trip and everything goes fairly well. When we return home, however, we begin to "pay attention" to things. The first thing I notice is that two of our AA batteries are missing from the baggy in the kitchen. The kids were asleep by this time so I was intending to ask them what they had used the batteries for when they woke. The reason for the inquiry is that the only thing they have that requires batteries (and doesn't have a fresh set in it) is the teenager's Airsoft gun (which was off limits until the next ice age.) Then I notice that my digital camera is sitting on the kitchen table instead of being next to the computer. No big deal there, they play with it sometimes. Next, however, I sit by my computer and find the rechargeable batteries for the camera are next to the computer which clues me in to where those AA batteries might have gone.

I fire up the camera and find four pictures on it with the kids playing around in the house. That's ok too but those rechargeable batteries are good for about 60 pictures and there are only four on the camera which had to have its batteries changed. So, being the oblivious and uneducated adult that I am, I swiftly load up my file recovery software and aim it at the SD card. Thereupon I find a half dozen recoverable pictures of the neighbor and our 8 year old leaping through the air onto the mattresses which had been labeled off limits. Due to the most excellent embedding of EXIF data into JPEG images they retained the time and date of the image capture. And what's most precious in my opinion is that whilst his head was probably reeling with "I thought we deleted those pictures" the teenager's response was "Oh, that was Zach. I told them not to do that." Which, of course was a difficult statement for him to defend when we brought up the picture that had both his brother and the neighbor in it and pointed out that there was only one other person present who could have taken the picture.

Maybe now he won't desire so greatly for us to "pay attention." And maybe, just maybe, he'll spend the next few days at least wondering how many other things he does that we do notice and just chose not to react to.

I uh have a uh problem with the uh President

I knew a speech teacher once who had a cardinal rule. He absolutely did NOT allow "pause words" as he called them. He detested the unintelligent vocalizations made by people who had forgotten or lost track of what they were going to say. He would, in fact, tally up the number of times you said "er," "um," "uh," or any other similar sound and would take that many points off of your score for your presentation. He felt that should you lose your place or the flow of your speech that silence was preferable to anything else.

I must say that I agree with him on this point. It is distracting to me when I hear someone say "uh" over and over in their speech. I find that it detracts from the message as I fixate on the faltering as much as the speech.

I watched a news clip of President Obama today. It showed him in a fairly informal meeting discussing his economic stimulus plan. The clip was 1 minute 43 seconds long. I wasn't 20 seconds into it when I lost the flow of what he was saying and started fixating on the number of times he said "uh." You see, he said "uh" no less than 20 times in a 103 second clip. There were a couple where "uh" followed or preceeded "a" so I didn't count those and I may have missed one or two that piggybacked on one another. In the end, however, my tally came to 20.

That meant he said "uh" an average of once every 5 seconds.

Keep that in mind though over the next few months and I'll bet you it reduces drastically. He'll have some PR speech expert use a shock collar if necessary to break him of the habit.