Gentile Dreidel

A while back, the kids were asking about Hanukkah.  Apparently they had some friends that had dreidels in preparation for the Jewish celebration.  I didn’t really know much about Hanukkah aside from the dime store version.  

Anyhow, I figured in the spirit of…uh…learning more about Hanukkah, I’d do a little research on the holiday.  I told the kids about the Jews’ rededication of the temple in Jerusalem and how they only had one day’s worth of oil to burn in the lamp and how the oil lasted for 8 days.  All in all, it was pretty interesting.  They knew I was building a dreidel though so they were anxious to get to the game.

I don’t know if it is proper for a non-Jew to play this game so if we were out of line, someone let me know.  In the meantime, we had a lot of fun.  The dreidel has 4 sides, each with a Hebrew letter:  nun, gimel, hei, shin which form an acronym that stands for “a great miracle happened there”.  A cool thing that I learned is that in Israel, they change the letter shin to po which changes the acronym to “A great miracle happened here”.

So for the game, the letters are given these meanings:

• Nun - nisht - “nothing” - nothing happens and the next player spins
• Gimel - gants - “all” - the player takes the entire pot
• Hey - halb - “half” - the player takes half of the pot, rounding up if there is an odd number
• Shin - shtel ayn - “put in” - the player puts one marker in the pot

The game can be played with any of a number of markers including money and chocolate.  Since the kids are thin on money, and since I might feel bad taking their money, we decided to play with mini-M&Ms.  It really is a fun game to play.  Each player spins the dreidel and does what the dreidel letter signifies.  

 I think spinning the dreidel might be the Old Testament version of Monopoly though as it appears to be a very long game to play.  We played for 20 minutes or so and were no where near declaring a clear winner.  In other news, I can confirm that M&Ms will melt in your hand.

Anyhow, we learned a little about other people and had some fun playing a new game as well. Abigail asked me if we could play again this morning. We’ll need to stock up on M&Ms I guess!

Of course, no discussion of Hanukkah would be complete without Adam Sandler singing his Hanukkah song!

Browser Issues

There are tons of reports out that there is an Internet Explorer (probably the web browser you are using) exploit that allows hackers to take control of your computer, steal your passwords, take pictures of you as you trim your nose hairs and may even allow them to launch missles from silos in Nebraska.  Of course, there is always stuff going on out in the ether but this defect apparently impacts all versions of IE and there is not yet a fix.

I decided to take this as an opportunity to explore other browsers that are not currently suffering the problem.  I do not intend to bash Microsoft or IE.  Since they are the biggest player, it should not be a surprise that they get the most negative attention from the bad guys.  Still, since they have the spotlight, I think I will try to avoid some of the negative attention.

I have off and on used the Firefox browsers and the latest version mostly works pretty well.  However, firefox is also becoming more and more popular so I figure that they will soon be getting more attention from hackers as well.

I have also tried Google’s Chrome and the Opera browser by…Opera.  They are both very cool looking and sort of sexy and fringe-popular.  For now, I am planning to use chrome just because I have a chrome dome (bald is beautiful!), but I’d recommend that anyone who hasn’t tried one of these alternate browsers give one a shot.  Microsoft’s IE is still my favorite, but I don’t want to harrass any cows in the fields of Nebraska when the silo doors open.  Stuff just looks better in IE also.  There are many sites, this one included, that don’t look exactly right when viewed with non-IE browsers.  I know, people say that firefox et al.  render pages according to the standards and IE does not.  I dont really care much about the standards though, if a lot of sites I visit don’t look right.  I am using Wordpress and it handles a lot of the layout issues internally so how some of the layout details of this site work are out of my hands.

Anyhow, make sure your spyware and antivirus programs are up to date, consider checking out other browsers, and think about whether you want IE or any browser to save your passwords. Bad guys are out there and my virus issues of last week are still fresh in my mind!

Preemie no more

Nine years ago today Isaac was born.  It started as all babies do.  I’ll spare the details, but we found that Isaac was to be born on February 14, 2000.  Emily’s pregnancy progressed normally until the middle of December.  Isaac had always been a bundle of energy, even in the womb.  We called him popcorn before he was born since we didn’t find out his sex.  Anyhow, a few days before he was born, Emily noticed that he had stopped moving.  She waited a day and then another and still no movement.  We were new parents and didn’t know any better.  We decided we’d quell our new parent fears and she called the doctor who recommended that she go straight to the hospital.  She headed to the hospital and 2 1/2 hours later, Isaac was born.  He would not survive long enough to go through normal childbirth so they took him the hard way.  He was suffering liver and kidney failure as well as congestive heart failure.  We later found out that Emily had fifth disease, a common, typically childhood disease that is not terribly serious for kids, but very serious for unborn babies.  So, Isaac contracted it in utero which caused his loss of movement as he was dying.

So, the doctors delivered him and rushed him to the NICU at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, TN.  Baptist is a huge hospital in Nashville and is generally considered “the baby hospital”.  They have a fantastic NICU and a great staff.  Anyhow, since he was born 2 months early, and without advanced warning, he was not given steroids to prepare his lungs.  A typical NICU ventilator would have killed him.  Fortunately, he was put on a jet vent which puffs lots of little bursts of air into his lungs.  They also filled his lungs with some sort of liquid to ease his transition to the ouside world.

Because of his liver failure, the medications he was given processed through his system slower than expected so he didn’t not proceed as expected.  Initially, the doctors were not aware of this and suspected, instead, that he had suffered a brain hemmorage and was brain dead.  We kept faith through it all but feared the worst. 

I can’t really bear to relive all of the details, but slowly, Isaac started to wake up and to move.  And slowly he was transitioned off of the jet vent and placed on a regular ventilator.  Slowly, he was moved from a feeding tube to eating a few cc’s of milk at a time.  He pooped 8 days in to this ordeal!  It was only then that his body started to really heal. 

We still weren’t out of the woods.  Doctors recommended all sorts of treatments, one of which they warned us, would likely make him deaf.  Due to all of his issues, they warned us that he would likely have some mental disabilities as well.

So, here we are 9 years later.  From the boy we were told was brain dead, we have come so far.  From the 3  1/2 pound baby to the 5 foot tall, 90 pound eating machine who wears a size 8.5 men’s shoe, he has exceeded everyone’s expectations.  From the baby who would likely be mentally disabled, to the boy who has just started gifted classes, we remain astounded at how we have been blessed with and by this child!  He suffers only one of the afflictions the doctors warned of.  Isaac has moderate hearing loss for certain frequencies.

I love my little boy so much and he continues to delight me.  I had no idea, 9 years ago, that I could possibly love that kid more…but I do.

Gingerbread house - 2D

I really like ginger stuff.  My mom used to make gingerbread and lemon sauce (sounds iffy but it’s great!), I like gingersnaps more than just about any other cookie and I have explored medicinal uses for ginger brandy (uh…sure…medicinal uses).

When Momaw and Granddad invited us over to make gingerbread houses, I was likely more excited than the kids.  None of us has the patience to make a full-blown 3-D gingerbread house.  Patience runs so thin amongst us, in fact, that Isaac didn’t even have the patience to ice his gingerbread house.  He said he liked it as it was, though I think he really just hates crafty stuff that much.  Anyhow, Momaw found a simple recipe and a house cookie cutter so we were set to go. 

You can see that the kids used the flour with gusto and had it all over.  The very best part of this fun was that it was at Momaw and Granddad’s house!

We iced most of the cookies a little but we really were excited to get to the eating.  After only 24 hours, we have finished all of the cookies!  Yes, hibernation weight is coming along nicely!

Stuff that doesn’t suck

After yesterday’s post, I thought it would be nice to settle down and give a list of stuff that doesn’t suck:

1.  We got a bunch of snow the last few days…well, not really a bunch, but more than usual and it looked pretty.

2.  Said snow is now melting off my driveway so I don’t have to shovel!

3.  Even though it is 35 deg F outside, my solar furnace is pulling 63 deg F air from my floor and returning 90-100 degree air!

4.  My kids have been playing together all day…and actually apparently having fun!

5.  Emily has wrapped a bunch more presents and our under-tree area is looking very nice!

6.  We are making ginger bread people later today…one of my favorites!

7.  This blog has been getting spammed like crazy lately.  Wordpress has some blacklist features that allow me to block keywords, etc.  I also just changed my webserver configuration to block the spammers by IP address and the spam has gone to zero!  Wahoo web server blocks!

8.  We got the soil test back from the WV Ag Extension office and we don’t need to ammend the soil.  We’ve started a list of seeds to order…garden time must be near! 

9.  My computer virus problems at work are cleared up and my demo will still be done on time…and I won’t have to work all weekend on it!

10.  Everyone in our house is healthy…at the same time…and it’s winter!

Stuff that sucks

So yesterday really sucked.  This post is a vent as much as anything else…so, mostly, you should probably ignore me…

I design and write computer software for a living.  I am around computers all day.  You’d think I would be somewhat immune from viruses as I mostly understand how they work and how one gets them.  Still, somehow I got a really really nasty virus on my main development machine (i.e. my bread and butter) yesterday.  I spent all day and half the night chasing down and fixing the mess that it made.  Of course, I really need to be working on the demo of the new project on which I am working.  It is due Monday.  This is not the time to be jerking around with a virus.  I don’t hate much, but I hate computer viruses and the people who create them.

I love sauerkraut.  I had some last night for supper along with some Polish sausage.  I am starting my training for the New Year’s day kraut feast.  Anyhow, about 15 minutes after eating it last night, my throat started to swell and blister.  I guess I had some sort of an allergic reaction to the kraut.  I also drank a Mt Dew with supper but I doubt my reaction was to it.  Mt Dew makes up 22% of my blood so I don’t think I suffered an autoimmune reaction.  Anyhow, an hour or so later, my throat was fine.  I still love kraut and I hate the thought of being allergic.  I will certainly try it again and soon, but I will be cautious too!  I can’t really figure it out, but I’d rather not get a trip in the ambulance over eating kraut.  I read that the Dutch eat donuts for good luck on New Years’s day so I may have to call upon my Dutch ancestry (or make some up) and cash in my kraut for donuts.  That’s a tradition I can get behind!

We also got word that our house is indeed racing down the hill to the river.  A structural engineer recommended 6 helical piers be inserted under our house.  It may take 3-4 more depending on what they find.  “Gosh, that sounds expensive”, you might say.  “You are correct!”

Snowflakes!

I have mentioned before  that I love Instructables.com.  I was browsing the other evening when I came across a post about cutting intricate paper snowflakes (holy moley, sorry for all the links!)  I don’t think I was ever particularly good at cutting paper snowflakes but I thought I should pass along the frustration of cutting them to my kids.  I had barely finished describing what we needed to do when Isaac declined any further involvement…so, that leaves Abigail to drive to madness!

Typically, when I cut snowflakes, I just started in on the paper in my best Edward Scissorhands imitation.  Like most things, I had no plan or desired output.  It never occurred to me to plan ahead but the instructable changed my mind.  We decided to fold the paper as usual, but then draw a pattern ahead of time.  It made me think about what I wanted the end result to be.  Cool!

Abigail didn’t really get the excitement of “the edge”.  It’s the “mother-edge” I told her, the edge from which all snowflake life flows.  “Ok Dad, can I cut now?”  Ah, sweet…she’s feeling snowflake frustration!  Anyhow, she drew a number of shapes including some trapezoids and parallelograms to see what would happen.  As she unfolded her first snowflake, she began to understand the “edge from which all blessings flow”.

We decided to hang our snowflakes on the front door, but Mohinder, our cat, didn’t like them there…blocked his view I guess.  We had to raise them up so he couldn’t reach them. 

Anyhow, we are pretty proud of our work.  I expect that we’ll make one each night for awhile.  She loves to do arts and crafts projects and this is right up her alley!  I expect that it won’t be long until we learn to make paper-mache or 3-d origami-like ornaments or tissue paper ornaments, etc. 

Abigail is also pretty generous and wants to make enough so that we can give them to people for Christmas…I like the way she thinks!

Cookie tin banjo

I was browsing through some old Firefox books a while back when I came across some folks talking about making banjos and dulcimers.  In particular, one fella talked about making a cookie tin banjo.  I had 4 cookie tins in my office that I saved after we emptied them last Christmas which seemed perfect for the job.  So, since I had one insignificant piece of junk I needed, I felt compelled to find the rest and build a banjo!

For the neck of the banjo, I used an old piece of bamboo flooring which I glued to a pine 1×4.  The floorboard by itself was not thick enough to provide support where it enters into the cookie tin.  I am not exactly sure that it’s the right thickness now but it seems to fit in my hand ok.   I left the bamboo top squared off but I rounded the back (the pine part) off smooth so I could hold it easily.  Now, I know you are curious how I came up with the shape for the peg head…I traced two Mt Dew cans.  This part is important…you have to use Mt Dew to get the thing just right. 

The tail piece is a chunk of an extra slat from plantation blinds we installed last Summer.  I think there must be a proper way to do this but it seems that the only measurements that really matter are the distance from the bridge to the nut (basically, from the wooden peg on the face of the banjo to the point where the neck joins the peg head.  My length is 25 inches though there is some flexibility in that size.  The distance from the bridge to the 5th string which attaches to the side of the neck is 18 1/2 inches.  Just about everything else negotiable as far as I can tell from reading in Firefox 3.

The hardest thing for me to do was carve the tuning pegs.  I tried using steel thumsbcrew and eye bolts and regular screws but none of those things would hold the string tight enough to tune.  That left me with carving wooden pegs which hold their position by friction.    I bought square 1/4 poplar dowel rods and cut off 2.5 inch sections to carve the pegs.  I rouded the bottom 2/3 of the peg to fit in the hole.  The top part I left square so I could get a better grip on it for tuning.  It seems simple enough but it was a real drag to carve them round.  My hands are killing me from messing with those tiny pegs.  Anyhow, I drilled a small hole in each to catch the string and they seemed to tune and hold pretty well.

I have a chromatic tuner that I got to tune my violin.  I messed around a bit to get the tuning right for the banjo.  I think it is pretty close although the 4th string doesn’t sound right to me.  We’ll see.  It definitely has a banjo sound. 

So, the $6 Martin banjo strings are about the only money I have in this thing.  Gosh, if only I had any idea how to play a banjo!

Cinnamon applesauce ornaments

This works…you’ll never believe it, but it works.  We made cinnamon applesauce Christmas ornaments this weekend.  These ornaments are cool and they smell awesome!  We started with 1/2 cup of applesauce and added an equal amount of cinnamon.  At first, it mixed up pretty well and seemed right (whatever that is!) but we quickly found we needed more cinnamon.  We didn’t measure but I’d say we ended up with another 1/2 cup of cinnamon.  Anyhow, mix the two ingredients until they form a fairly dry, thick, clay-like consistency.  Roll them out between sheets of waxed paper until they are 1/4 inch thick.  Cut out shapes with cookie cutters and start them drying on a clean sheet of waxed paper.  We poked holes in them to run a string through for proper hanging.  Once they have dried about 24 hours, you can flip them and move them to a wire drying rack to finish.  I think ours will be dry tonight (48 hours).  Let me tell you, they smell awesome!  When I walk in the door at night, the cinnamon fills the air.  I sort of want to lick them but I know better…

Just so you know, they do not taste as good as they smell.  Isaac likes applesauce with cinnamon - a lot.  He reasoned (as I always do) that if a little is good, a lot must be awesome.  He tried some of the dough but quickly downed a bunch of water after eating a small bite (who am I to discourage a little first-hand experience?)  Before Isaac’s bite, Abigail decided she would wait on her brother’s experience before she tried the dough (who am I to push her into reckless behavior?)

As with many crafty things, Isaac was mainly in a hurry to get things done.  He did tough it out because it all smelled so good.  We discovered that appley cinnamon leaves a pretty good stain on your hands but it washes off pretty easily.  We also did a little science related to soil testing - Emily’s Dad is a civil engineer so he was able to rate the consistency of our dough compared to soil.  I think he mainly enjoyed slamming balls of dough onto the waxed paper to see how much it compacted!  It made a great cinnamon thump!

Charleston at night

We were driving around Charleston one night this weekend and we drove up on a hill that overlooks the city. Cities in general are not exactly pretty to me, but cities at night are pretty cool. So, we drove up on the hill and I tried to get some decent shots of Charleston with my old point and shoot camera. I was sort of surprised at how cool they turned out (if I do say so myself!  Oh yeah, and check out the color of the bridge in the first two pictures.  Charleston has installed a system that changes the color).  Emily is so funny - she didn’t want the kids to get out of the car for fear of the neighborhood dogs getting them. Captain America did stop his truck nearby to make sure we weren’t evil-doers.  He drove off once he saw me fumbling with my camera and tripod in the dark.  I guess he figured I was too clutzy to be much of a danger to the neighborhood.

Anyhow, to get from our house to the city, we have to take some pretty crazy, curvy, steep roads. My Dad absolutely does not like to ride with us. From atop the hills in WV, you can see a long ways but if you look down, you may find yourself grabbing on to something. Did you ever notice that freaky feeling that you can’t walk straight and that you might fall down at any moment when you are near the edge of something steep? I am mixed on whether that makes any sense, evolutionarily speaking. I mean, if it makes you take a step back, then it makes sense. However, if you instinctively wobble like a drunken sailor when you are near the edge of some deadly trench, I don’t think it works. Anyhow, living in WV is a surely a test of survival of the fittest. Emily is a native and claims that she is part mountain goat. I also think she is part mountain lion with a little dingo thrown in for good measure! 

As I have mentioned before, I like to star gaze a little but most places are not too great for the hobby due to all of the light pollution. These pictures are so full of light that it would seem impossible to see anything.  WV is helped a little by the mountains though. Light seems to stay in the valleys (I know it doesn’t really) so star gazing is pretty good, even close to the city.

So, in spite of Charleston being a city, it’s a pretty decent place to live!  Of course, the mountains limit your housing options - you can live down on a flat spot in the valley in the flood plain or you can live on the mountin top where you house has this crazy tendency to want to slip down the hill and then you have to call in numerous structural engineers who talk to you about getting a second job to pay for all of the work needed to halt the march of your house down to the flood plain…but more about that later after I get another “cold” that needs “my secret treatment”