This is a little test post to see if I transferred things over correctly and to let people know that Lauren isn’t dead.

If you notice anything that doesn’t work, please leave a comment.

Oh, if you notice that Lauren is dead, please call her mom. I’m kinda busy

Ever since high school Sam, Brad and I read, more or less, the same books. This was useful because paperback books could cost as much as $1.95 each and we certainly couldn’t afford to spend that much on books as often as we would like.

Before high school, I don’t remember ever buying a book (except books to play games: D&D, Star Fleet Battles, Car Wars…). All the books came from the library. In Concordia Missouri I can’t remember ever going into the library. I can’t remember if there was a library. But there was a book store, and there were always 3 shelves of Science Fiction and Fantasy books there.

My recollection is that I mostly purchased Science Fiction and Brad mostly purchased Fantasy, but that we all read all of them. Brad was a little paranoid about his books, and we had to learn to read with the book open no more than 40 degrees, lest we break the spine.

But none of that is what I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about taste. It seemed like we all read and enjoyed the same books back then. Not so much anymore. We still like some of the same books, but just because one of us likes a book is no guarantee that the others will.

I’m assuming that everyone’s tastes change over time. I know mine have. Back then my favorite authors were Piers Anthony, Anne McCaffery and Robert Heinlein (actually, I think Piers Anthony was Brad’s, and by some obscure rule, we can not have the same favorite author at any given time). Now I think that most everything that Piers Anthony has written is only fit for teen age boys, that Anne McCaffery  hasn’t written anything worth reading in 25 years and that Robert Heinlein is still The Man.

So, given that Brad and Sam’s taste in books have also changed, how can I tell which books to recommend/give/loan to them? Sam sent the Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne back with us when we were in Missouri over Christmas. I was reading something else (I can’t remember what) at the time, and so Lauren read them before me. She had some LOL moments, and seemed to enjoy them. I just finished reading them today (and finishing the main quest line in Skyrim — thanks MLK).

I liked them. They were witty, the world the author created was interesting and (this is increasingly important to me) internally consistent. I’m glad I read them, but I don’t know if Sam thinks they are the best books he’s read in a long time, or just a good read. I would like to know the answer to this, but I would like to know it because I understand his taste in books – not because I had to ask him. I want to know this, so that I know what books to send back to him. I also want to know this about Brad for similar reasons.

If you’re having trouble coming up with a comment for this post, Favorite Author(s) and why would be legit.

The EFF is a great organization, and if you use the Internet (which you do) and you’re not in China (which you are not) then you owe them already. Read about some of the legal cases that they have won, and tell me you don’t think the world is a better place because of what they are doing. If you can’t donate a lot, then donate a little to let them know you appreciate what they do.

She told me how to make it, “You use olive oil –you have olive oil, right?– and butter and you add some Italian seasoning and garlic powder –not garlic salt, garlic powder.”

I had to ask Lauren if we had any garlic powder (it turns out that we don’t) and she knew that something was up. Well, now we do have garlic powder (not garlic salt, or, heaven forbid, baking powder) and by completely guessing as the relative amount of each ingredient, I was, more or less, able to also make this toast/bread.

Here are the proportions that I used. Put about a third of a fourth of a pound of butter into one of those cute, little white Pyrex bowls that you got at an auction years ago. Next pour enough olive oil over it so that you’re about a quarter of the way up the side of the butter. Nuke* it until it is melty. Add what you think is about a spoonfull of garlic powder (…) to the butter/oil except you’re stiring with a fork instead of a spoon, so you’re really just pouring it in and hoping for the best. Sprinkle relatively liberally with Italian seasoning, but don’t put quite enough in, so that after you brush copious amounts onto your bread you decide to add some more, just to be safe.

Ask Lauren to do whatever it is that you do to bread to make it all toasty when you are dealing with bread that probably shouldn’t be put in the toaster and after a little while, you’ll have (again, more or less) really delicious I do not know the name of this bread, bread.

*That’s what we say at my mom and dad’s house for the verb microwave.

Now I think things are, more or less, working again. I’m pretty sure that there are some things that were on the sidebar of the old site that I’ve simply forgotten about, and there’s probably some other functionality that I forgot to put back as well. If you notice anything that’s missing, let me know.

I updated a lot of things, so I’m interested in knowing if the site seems faster or slower, and also if you feel more or less fulfilled for having visited it. I actually disabled a fair number of things that were supposed to make it faster, just to see what the new version was like by itself.

I really wanted to get a wooden back. Lauren even thought it would be cool, so I looked for a place that I could order one. Unfortunately, the one place I found a nice walnut back didn’t ship to our zip-code (I know, what’s up with that?).

I did find a nice one for $16.38. It took all of three days to make it to our zip-code. It came with instructions and a screwdriver. It was easy to take the back off, and I looked around a bit.

But what is that stuff around the camera?

This calls for a closer look. Note: this is the first time that I have been glad that Lauren likes to have a microscope around the house.

There were lots of little hairs, and they were only present around the camera assembly. I wondered for a bit if they were Steve Jobs’ hairs that were put into iPhones so that he could one day be cloned, but decided they were not quite the right color.

So I got out a little brush and a tweezer and began the removal process.

Once the hair was removed, it was quite easy to put the new back on.

Tomorrow I’ll be convincing 7th graders that I’m testing a prototype for the new iPhone5 for Apple.

Every dance at Lincoln Lutheran is like this. Well, the High School dances anyway. At the middle school dances the shoes tend to stay on, because the girls might have to beat you in dodgeball after they dance with you.

A few dances ago I wanted to see what it was like, so I took my shoes off too. It was sort of liberating.

For the past 8 years I’ve taught them how to play chess, but over the years that has gone from a full day to a half day, to this year, when we would only have 140 minutes. So we had to do something else.

We did a little ‘airplane building company’ simulation. Everyone started out with $200 and they could buy paper (a quarter sheet was $100), paperclips ($50 small and $100 large) , tape ($50 per inch) and a variety of other items. Then they built their plane, tested it in the hallway and brought it to the gym to fly it.

At the gym they could fly it for distance (each yard got them $100) or for hang time (each second earned them $100). They could only fly each plane once, so after they earned some money it was back to the store to buy more supplies. Lather, Rinse and Repeat as needed and soon you’d have enough money to buy a full size piece of paper ($700), a pair of scissors ($1000) or the plans to make a different sort of airplane ($400 – $2,400).

Everyone seemed to enjoy it, and the top 6 companies got prizes. We had two groups this year and we split them by gender. We’ve never done that before, and it seemed to work really well. There was also a prize for the Most Artistic planes. When the boys group was up, there were 3 entries; the girls had 20 entries.

I was a little surprised that the girls liked it so much, but Lauren pointed out that there was shopping involved.

Update: Here are the files:

• Handout and Balance Sheet (.docx)
• Signs (.docx)

Then we walked around the Old Market for a while. They were having their Farmer’s Market and the place was hoppin’. There was some boy playing Star Wars songs on his violin, a guy wailin’ on his sax, and a brave young girl just standing there and singing all by herself. (She was too close to the sax guy, so it was hard to hear her.)

After walking around, Lloyd decided he was hungry and bought us some breakfast burritos from a ‘stand’ that was really just a screened-in porch. I felt a little like we should have also got some free malaria vaccinations.

After eating, we managed to run into the only two people we know in Omaha – Mark and Beth from the uke group. They had very nice cameras and were out and about taking pictures. I had to shamefully discuss how we haven’t gone to uke group in years, but maybe life will settle down soon.

Next we went to one of the many antique stores. There is a rambling one that has a new feature: They set up a room with old wooden theater seats and they run movies all day – for free! Granted, it was Star Wars Episode 1, “A Slow, Painful Death”, as Lloyd subtitles it – but it was free! (We only watched a little.)

Next stop: Lloyd’s bookstore. I got a picture of him in his natural, yet dying, element.

That was about it for the day. Lloyd slept in the car while I walked around the snooty mall (where they had a shrine to Steve Jobs in front of the Apple store) then it was home to be nappin’ by 3:30!

A perfect day.

Matt Haden also posted a facebook photo.

When I got home after a meeting tonight, the lump on the sofa handed me an envelope covered with chicken scratches.

“I wrote you a post,” it mumbled.

“What’s this?” I asked as I sprayed it with Lysol.

“The things I’ve learned from daytime television.”

Well, after deciphering the scribbles, I’ve decided he’s right – this needs to be shared with the world.

Lots of people have structured settlements or annuities that they need to turn into cash.

Every insurance company is cheaper than every other.

There are many law firms ready to help me if I have any of a number of medical complications at no cost to me.

Gears of War 3 comes with its own special edition Playstation or maybe X-box.

Campbell’s Soup may be poured over potatoes.

AllState Insurance is affordable if you eat ramen noodles every night.

Alex Trebek and the AARP do not agree on where I should get my Medicare supplement plan.

There are probably raccoons in my attic.

The Waltons are on at least 4 times daily.

He needs to get back to school before his brain turns to mush.

Incidentally, not one toddler has told me how much he likes it yet.

I got rid of the food, and presumably the mouse moved on as well.

These were 66.7% off, so I had to buy them.

There’s another part that’s not pictures. It plugs into an outlet and you plug whatever you want into the outlet. Then the switch turns it on and off from (and here I’m just guessing) up to 5 miles away. I’m going to hook one up to a flaky piece of equipment at school that needs to be reset about twice a week. When it gets flaky you just need to send it to time-out for a bit, but if you don’t have that much time, you can also turn the power off and turn it back on. The problem is that it’s not exactly in an easily accessible location.

But I can put the switch anywhere…

Lauren views dishwashers as a way to get dishes clean. She has absolutely no sense of the truth and beauty that comes from a properly loaded dishwasher.

The dishwasher that came with our house must have been about 15 years old, and either dishes had changed in that time, or our dish use never coincided with the Average American Dishware that the people who design dishwashers used when designing dishwashers.

At any rate, loading the dishwasher properly was a passion of mine that Lauren just couldn’t get on board with. Not that I ever failed to blame her for that. Anyway, to make a long story pretty much the same length, I was dissatisfied with our dishwasher because of my inability to (a) solve the loading equation and (b) convince Lauren that my solution to the loading equation was better than her solution.  And Lauren was dissatisfied with our dishwasher because it would occasionally smell funny and need to have some bleach run through it.

Before we went to Lincoln I looked through a leading consumer magazine for likely brands and models. When I had it down to a few, I went to Sears.com (where America and I shop) and printed off the comparison of those models. Looking through roughly 6 pages of data, I came up with the following qualifications for our new dishwasher:

• Adjustable racks so as to fit largish pots and pans
• A fairly quick wash cycle
• Lots of different cycles for all of our dish washing needs
• Built in heating element so we didn’t have to set the water heater higher
• Food disposal, so I didn’t have to forget to empty the filter
• Power scrubbers, because who wouldn’t want those
• A quiet wash cycle, because our downstairs is basically one big room

This was Lauren’s list of qualifications for our new dishwasher:

• Does not smell funny

Our plan was to go to Home Depot, Schaeffer’s, Best Buy and Sears. We’d go in that order because (a) that’s the order that they come in and (b) We’ve purchased all of our major appliances for Sears since Circuit City (a) became a desolate crap hole of terrible customer service and (b) went out of business. [I do hereby solemnly swear that I will not use "(a) ... (b) ..." for the next week and a half.]

Well, that was the plan. But once we got to Schaeffer’s our salesman was so knowledgeable and helpful and not at all pushy or rushed that we just bought it from him. We got the Whirlpool GU3200XTX, but we didn’t have the truck with us, so we made arrangements to drop the old dishwasher off and pick up the new one next week.

Surprisingly enough it doesn’t have:

• Adjustable racks so as to fit largish pots and pans, because Lauren said that we wouldn’t ever take the time to adjust the racks anyway.
• A fairly quick wash cycle, because Lauren said that we have never sat around and waited for the dishwasher to get done.
• Lots of different cycles for all of our dish washing needs, because Lauren said that we only use two cycles on our dishwasher anyway: rinse and normal wash.
• Power scrubbers, because Lauren said that we’d do what we currently do when dishes don’t get clean –leave them in the dish washer.
• A quiet wash cycle, because Lauren said that our current dishwasher was just about as loud as you could get, and everything these days was quieter (and also took about an hour longer to wash than our old dishwasher).

 
Not surprisingly, it does not smell funny.

I was at school in the afternoon, and afternoon in the Summer is not exactly a productive time for me. Usually I make up for that by just heading home, but one recent afternoon I was feeling unproductive and it was only like 2:00pm. Luckily I had a fun little project I had been saving.

A quick trip to Ace hardware for supplies, to the school library to steal an amplifier, and a trip to the custodial storage closet for a ladder and I was in business.

The speakers went up surprisingly easy, and running the wire required only the normal amount of cussing. Now I’ve got 300 watts of sound piped through 12 speakers.

You might ask why I would need such a great sound system in a classroom. Well, I didn’t want any of our students to have to think too long or hard when anyone asked them who the rockinest teacher was. Also, it will mean that I don’t have to blast my desktop speakers when we show student’s projects to the whole class. Also, I am the rockinest teacher.

Our School Nutrition person was the vice-president of the Nebraska School Nutrition Association, and they had wanted a website for years and years. We broke the class up into a few different working groups and went to work. I think it turned out pretty nice:

As an added bonus, my principal came to observe the class when the students were meeting with their client to iron out some of the details of the website. It’s always good to have your principal watch when you’re not the focus of attention.

As an added added bonus, I have a lot of good pictures of food to look at when I’m hungry…

We drove all the way around and didn’t find out anything. Lots of houses had their back yard to the hill, but we couldn’t see any reason for the grassy knoll. We stopped a promising spot and walked up to the top. The trip up just kept getting stranger…

We followed that driveway out to the road, and this residential looking house is on the street. But there are no rooms in the house. Just large machines.

I would pass them around at school, but tell people not to write on them, because then no one else could try them. But someone always did. In desperation, I covered one with strips of tape. Lots and lots of strips of tape. I showed it to my sister and she said that dad had some wide tape in the basement.

I didn’t know that wide tape even existed. It seemed miraculous. I could cover a whole maze in 4 pieces of tape. I mounted them on pieces of cardboard and people would do them with grease pens and I could just wipe them off when they were done. Looking back on it, I should have found a page protector, but I don’t think I knew that those existed until 5th or 6th grade.

Anyway, a few months ago I thought about those mazes and decided to make a new one. I worked on it off and on for a day or two then it went into a pile of papers. I found it yesterday and finished it. If you click on the image it should take you to a pdf file. If you print the pdf file, please cover it in tape (skinny or wide, it doesn’t matter) and mount it on a piece of cardboard before you solve it. You know, for old time sake.

Start at “help” and end at “me”.

So, if you were waiting to see the final product before turning your blog website into a book, I would say that it’s easy enough, and turns out okay too. It’s not perfect. The automatic software isn’t the best at laying out pages, so there are some pages that are nearly empty, but there are not many of those. Things that I would do differently…

• Take more time on the dust jacket. I should have put a title on the cover as well as the spine.
• Better proof reading. I have two spelling mistakes on the inside front cover of the dust jacket. The only thing that everyone is sure to read.
• The Sommerer Family Website has a fair number of posts about how to use the website. I can’t imagine that those are going to be interesting in book form.

Now I have to decide whether to mail it to him or keep it until the family reunion that starts on the 1st of July. Oh, and you’re all invited to attend.