davintosh

I thought it interesting to read about how Finland has just decreed broadband Internet access to be a human right. And they’re serious. Reading between the lines, perhaps the Fins are trying show just how important communicating via the Internet has become… I don’t know if Finland has a Bill of Rights similar to that of the US, but to me, elevating what is essentially a public utility to equal status with, say, the right to life, does more to diminish other truly legitimate human rights.

That made me think of a conversation I had last weekend with some family members; I was bemoaning the difficulty of talking with or exchanging email with my daughter Emily, who is spending some time in Gambia. She’s waiting to be granted access to their system, which sounds to be pretty minimal, with dialup Internet connectivity that’s as reliable as the country’s landline phone system, which isn’t. The relatives all seemed kind of amazed that getting Internet access wasn’t a higher priority there — “she should’ve been able to bring something with her to stay connected, right?”

Well, Gambia isn’t exactly the technological center of the universe. Things in the Third World run at a much different pace. People there don’t have Twitter or Facebook; they actually sit down and talk with each other to find out what’s going on in their lives. Mail (of the snail variety), complete with hand-written letters, is a welcome surprise, rather than a nuisance that’s tossed without being opened. Food is purchased for the day and prepared as needed, and people share cooking duties & meals to lighten each other’s loads and have some face time over a meal. When Yvonne & I went to Cameroon a few years ago I thought it was like stepping back in time a few decades. And in a lot of ways, it was nice. Very nice.

Here in the USA one gets the feeling that the world revolves around the Internet, and in some ways it does. Here. But the world is much too big a place to be encapsulated in an html or Flash wrapper, and there still are places in the world where people have never seen a computer, much less have access to one or to broadband Internet access. Here in the US most everyone is connected with their computers and Crackberries and iPhones and iPads and whatever, but do we really do any better at communicating with each other than the Third World?

This is my offering for Father’s Day. I heard it at a conference at my church this weekend, and as a former kid, former teen, and currently a dad, I found so much truth in this essay… I wish someone had explained this to me earlier in my career as a dad. Please read.

Children are Dogs. Teenagers are Cats.

You feed it, train it, boss it around. It puts its head on your knee and gazes at you as if you were a Rembrandt painting. It bounds indoors with enthusiasm when you call it.

Then around age 13, your adoring little puppy turns into a big old cat… When you tell it to come inside, it looks amazed, as if wondering who died and made you emperor. Instead of dogging your footsteps, it disappears.

You won’t see it again until it gets hungry… then it pauses on its sprint through the kitchen long enough to turn its nose up at whatever you’re serving.

When you reach out to ruffle its head, in that old affectionate gesture, it twists away from you, then gives you a blank stare, as if trying to remember where it has seen you before.

You, not realizing that the dog is now a cat, think something must be desperately wrong with it. It seems so antisocial, so distant, sort of depressed. It won’t go on family outings.

Since you’re the one who raised it, taught it to fetch and stay and sit on command, you assume that you did something wrong. Flooded with guilt and fear, you redouble your efforts to make your pet behave.

Only now you’re dealing with a cat, so everything that worked before now produces the opposite of the desired result. Call it, and it runs away. Tell it to sit, and it jumps on the counter. The more you go toward it, wringing your hands, the more it moves away.

Instead of continuing to act like a dog owner, you can learn to behave like a cat owner. Put a dish of food near the door, and let it come to you.

But remember that a cat needs your help and your affection too. Sit still, and it will come, seeking that warm, comforting lap it has not entirely forgotten. Be there to open the door for it.

One day your grown-up child will walk into the kitchen, give you a big kiss and say, “You’ve been on your feet all day. Let me get those dishes for you.”

Then you’ll realize your cat is a dog again.

Author unknown.

I remember going through the dog and cat stages in my early life, but unfortunately Dad’s Lucky Strikes killed him before I completed the metamorphosis back to dog. I was just starting to realize the well of wisdom he had long ago placed at my disposal. If only I could have a second chance at those years…

The one consolation I have is that although I can’t turn back the clock, I can choose now to be the Dad my kids need. Whether they are in the dog stage or the cat stage or returned to the dog stage. God willing I will live long enough to see the full transformation.

Several months ago I volunteered to host and maintain the website for the drumline that Ian was a member of… I had volunteered some time ago to help maintain the site that had been built several years prior by a guy in the Twin Cities; the site was running on Joomla but because it hadn’t been updated for a while, the site getting hacked a number of times. Between that and wanting deeper access to mail admin & whatnot, I pushed for the move and a site revamp. It’s now running on Wordpress, and in my opinion is a much better site for the change.

The problem now is keeping the content on the site updated. I met with the board last night, and found that because Ian decided not to join up this year, our family (including me, the webmaster) was dropped from some of the communications, so I was unaware of much that had changed recently. I keep up with the director as best as I can, but he’s a busy guy and a lot of stuff falls through the cracks. They’re a great bunch of people with great ideas for making the group work, but… Communication is a difficult thing in even the best organizations, much less a hodge-podge group of parent volunteers running a non-profit group on a shoestring budget

During the meeting last night I was asked for an update on the website, and all of a sudden I heard my buddy Deane Barker talking… Websites don’t write themselves. It’s all about content. When things don’t get updated the site gets stale, and when the site gets stale, people don’t stop by. I don’t remember all I said, but couldn’t help but think, “Good grief! That’s Deane talking!” I didn’t intend to scold or complain, but that may have been the way it came across because of the frustration I felt… just trying to convey my desire to do the job well, but not being able to do that without some cooperation and help.

At any rate, I think I got my point across, and I doubt I’ll be fired any time soon. I threw in some suggestions on how to consolidate the group’s communications – using a mailing list and some other online tools – but I could tell by the blank looks and the response the ideas weren’t well received. I’ve still got some work to do.

About this time last year I made a list of No-Year’s Resolutions*, so I thought this might be as good a time as any to review how I did on them.
* In case anybody missed the intended sarcasm, my No-Years Resolutions were an attempt at reverse psychologizing myself into actually improving instead of… well, the opposite.

My first one was to Gain weight. I’m thinking at least 40 pounds. Just more of me to love, right? I’d have to say I failed at this one, which is good; pretty much kept my head above water is all. I haven’t weighed in for a few weeks, but last time I checked I was still tipping the scale at about 235 or so, which is about where I was this time last year. The problem is that even though 235 isn’t ‘morbidly obese’ or anything, it’s still about 50lbs heavier than what I weighed when we were married, and it sure ain’t 50lbs of muscle. I get tired just thinking of hauling that much extra weight around wherever I go. Will 2010 be the year I finally hack off that spare tire? I sure hope so, and I’ll be giving it some concerted effort.

Next up, Not even think about exercising. I’d resolve to quit exercising, but I can’t very well stop if I’m not doing it in the first place. Total waste of time. Well, I thought about it, and did some, but nowhere near a regular exercise regime. Still need to work on this one. P90x? Maybe. Or maybe just haul my butt out of the recliner & get on the treadmill on a regular basis.

As for the Read less, and I’ll hide my Bible. Quiet time? Devotions? Spiritual disciplines? Who needs them? item, I’d have to say it was a draw. My Bible reading time & spiritual discipline has been at about the same low level for several years now. Not a good thing.

Watch more TV. I might even break down and get cable. From what people at work talk about, I’ve been missing some good stuff. Success here, I think. But that’s probably more an issue of not keeping track of my tube time. I didn’t buy cable, but I did break down & buy the digital converter box so the TV would at least continue to work. That’s given us a little more TV content to choose from, but I still end up kicking myself for staying up too late watching stoopid TV shows. Like My Name Is Earl… A little self-control? Please?

Procrastinate more. Then again, maybe I’ll wait & do that next year. I am happy to report that I don’t procrastinate any more. I don’t do it any less either, so I think it’s a draw on this one too. Or… heck; I’ll finish this one later.

Another failure; Take up a new habit: Maybe drinking. And smoking would be good too. And as long as I’m at it, I’ll start hitting the casinos. No smoking or gambling, but I did break down & buy a 4-pack of Guinness a while back, and paid a visit to Monks in October, but I’m not exactly a closet alcoholic.

An abject failure on this one! Spend more time at work. In 2009 I got five weeks of vacation time at work, and as of the last paycheck I had about 90 hours of PTO left until my anniversary in April. If I work it right, I may not even have any time left to cash out when this year’s allotment is rolled out!

Fail! Spend less time with the wife & kids. That only deepen any emotional attachment to them, which interferes with #7. I can say that I have spent more time with the family, and it has been good.

Well, this one could probably be considered something of a success; Take a vacation to someplace important: like to see the largest ball of twine. The only ‘vacation’ we took was to Kentucky to see Bryce’s graduation from Basic Training. We spent a little extra time there and visited Mammoth Cave, the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace Memorial, and the Coca-Cola Memorabilia Museum; none of which measure up (down?) to the largest ball of twine, but weren’t really high on the excitement meter. Yvonne pulled a week in Peru on a medical mission trip last summer, and plans to go back later this month, but I just hung out with the boys that week.

This one was another failure; Stop going home for lunch or bringing a sack lunch to work: We all need to do our part for stimulating the economy, and fast food restaurants play an important role in that, right? I didn’t keep count, but I know I spent a lot less money on fast food lunches in 2009.

And another failure; Quit giving money & time to charity. It’s time to let someone else develop character in that way. Gave way more to charity this year, plus I added a volunteer gig to hosting & maintaining the website for Groove Inc., even though Ian decided he didn’t want to participate in Groove at all this year. Oh well, they can use the help.

This one might be considered something of a success; hit the mark in a way… Sell my car and buy a mid-’70’s Camaro or Monte Carlo with a really loud stereo system, mag wheels, air shocks and wide tires in back. I’ll also need to grow a mullet to complete the image. No mullet, but I did manage to buy not one but two ‘80-something BMWs. Neither has an impressive stereo system nor mag wheels, but both do have alloy wheels, and the latter one has some pretty wide tires all around. The problem is that the earlier one had a lot of issues and needed a lot of work (and still does) which kept me from getting around to some home improvement projects… If I had it to do over again I’d probably have held out for an e28 in better shape, but I really like these cars, in spite of the little niggling problems with them! Did I say ‘no mullet’?

Fail. Shower and change clothes once a week, whether I need it or not. A guy has to do his part to to reduce water usage. In fact our household is using more water than ever, since Caleb reached the age where a daily shower is pretty much a necessity for the health and well being of those around him.

Fail here too. Cash out my 401k accounts. The markets are going nowhere fast, and just think of the fun I could have with all that money. Although I was sorely tempted to do just that on a number of occasions, and still think it might be a good idea. Not to have fun with the money, but maybe to use it to pay off our mortgage and invest in something that might actually appreciate and not be available for the Washington bureaucrats to eventually seize to bankroll Social Security, Medicare and the mess they’ll end up making with their health insurance reform legislation.

Success on this one I’m afraid. Stay up later still every night. Think of all the late-night TV and web browsing I can get done instead of sleeping. Most days at work I feel like I’m spinning wheels anyway, so showing up half asleep shouldn’t affect a thing productivity-wise. It’s not uncommon to find me dragging myself to bed between 1-2am, then back up at 6:15 to get a head start on getting the boys up for school. Part of the problem though is that if I go to bed earlier I end up getting up earlier, without much gain in sleep time. Not sure if what I have constitutes a sleep disorder or what… Maybe time to retire our 24 year old mattress and get something that won’t have me waking up with aching shoulders & hips multiple times a night.

So there it is. I can’t say the reverse psychology worked, but at least it was at least different (if not better) than the typical “I resolve to do better” type list. I could probably keep the same list for 2010 (is that “twenty-ten” or “two-thousand-ten”?) since I still have some work to do. Hmmm… Maybe I’ll decide on that later.

One of the coolest toys I remember from my younger days was the Hot Wheels Sizzlers. They were the size of regular Hot Wheels cars, but were made of plastic and had electric motors (like you’d find in slot cars) and batteries that would recharge in a minute or so using The Juice Machine — a gas pump-styled charging station — or the smaller charger that would clip to your belt.

The cars and the triple-wide black tracks were all the rage when they came out in 1969, but Mattel phased them out by 1976(?) Then a few years ago (2006?) just before Christmas I saw them again in the Target toy department! Tracks, cars, chargers, the whole works! The really cool thing was that Mattel had used the original graphics for the packaging and the original tooling to make the cars & track — it was like going back in time!

But being the procrastinator that I am, I waited too long to buy that Christmas season, and the opportunity to bless the kids with one of my boyhood toys was gone. I never gave it much thought after that, but then last weekend I went into one of the local Ace Hardware stores — they usually have a decent selection of oddball toys you don’t find at department stores — and there it was! One lone box with the Sizzlers Extended Eight racetrack inside!

$20.00 later, it was mine (to give to one of the boys, of course!) and I was on my way. But looking closer at the box I noticed that there’s only one car and the belt-clip charger inside; what good is a racetrack if there’s nobody to race against? So in the days following I started looking around for more cars. They are nowhere to be found locally. I even asked at Target, and the kid there said others had asked about them, but as far as he knew they hadn’t had them since that one year a while back.

Shopping online it’s possible to find them, but they don’t come cheap at all; Amazon has them but they start at $20 for just the car, and go up from there, some listing for $70! I’m unsure whether that’s for a 30-year-old original or one of the more recently built cars… A Google search will yield other websites that specialize in selling original Sizzlers to collectors, and some of them go for a lot of money.

So for this year, it’s just the track and one car, and I’ll keep an eye peeled for more Sizzlers to pop up in coming years.

One thing I did to make-do without multiple Sizzlers cars is buy a few Darda race cars; they are German-built wind-up cars that are really pretty incredible. You press down on the car and push it back & forth a few times to wind it, and when you let it go, it really flies! The cars can be purchased individually or with track packages, and the tracks are pretty incredible too, as they typically have a number of loops on them, sometimes stacked loops. And even more incredible is that these little cars can make the loops! We found out about them through a friend who babysat for us a number of years ago; she had several sets and a number of cars that her son had used, but didn’t play with much anymore. We borrowed them for a while, and I think I had more fun with them than the kids!

There’s only one store in Sioux Falls that sells them — Kidtopia — and thankfully they had plenty on hand. I bought one for each of the boys, knowing that the older boys will want to play too. I don’t know if the Darda cars will have the endurance of the Sizzlers, but they’ll have plenty of speed. Should be a fun toy mashup for Christmas!

A banner day for Ian. He just got his real driver’s license this weekend, and took his first solo drive tonight. And he brought the van back unscathed (at least on the body panels!)

Some days I feel really, really old. Then Caleb bounces into the room.

I got an email this morning from my sister, reminding me that it was 90 years ago today that Dad was born. That had totally slipped my mind today. Happy Birthday, Dad.

Dad’s been gone since 1987, but I still miss him. He died from lung cancer after having smoked for a lot of years. It was only a matter of months from the time he was diagnosed, but those were some hard months, and they went far too fast for all of us.

The photo above was taken back in 1984 or so; he had grown up on his Dad’s farm, and remembered the time his Dad brought home their first tractor. He didn’t remember the date, but figured he was 10 or 12, so that would put it at about 1930. Prior to that they used horses for everything. Amazing to think it was that recently when horsepower was just that; horse-power.

He had wanted for years to do some farming with horses, had picked up a lot of old horse drawn equipment at auctions and from friends, and it seemed he always had horses around. A couple of years after he retired, he put it all together to plant & cultivate about 38 acres of corn with a pair of Morgans. By the time he got done with cultivating — in the July heat — he realized that there was a good reason farmers put the horses out to pasture and used tractors instead; it was a lot of work. In the fall he had someone with a corn picker harvest the corn, but we went through & gleaned the leftovers from the field by hand, with the horses pulling the wagon. We did that a number of times when we were kids and Dad had his hobby farm near Shindler; it was a great way to pick up a lot of good feed corn for next to nothing.

So here’s to Dad; I wish my kids knew you better than they do through my stories about you. And I wish I knew you better than the previous 26 years allowed. Too bad I wasn’t smart enough to appreciate you before you were gone.

The big news today is that someone in Winner, SD, won the PowerBall Lottery, to the tune of $232.1 Million. Wow. That’s a pile o’money. When I heard about this on the radio this morning the announcer also mentioned something about the SD Lottery Commission having posted info about where the money they took in has been spent, so I decided to have a look.

According to the “Where The Money Goes” page on the SD Lottery website, since the Lottery was first instituted in 1987, the state has netted $1.7 billion (with a ‘B”) from lottery revenues. That’s $1.7 billion that has gone into worthy programs like Property Tax Reduction ($1.3 billion) and Capital Construction ($30 million), and another $389 million in the General Fund. But that $1.7 billion in revenue comprises only 26.2% of the total of all that has been spent on the lottery; since 1987, nearly $6.6 billion has been spent by people trying to earn a quick buck.

Of that $6.6 billion, 55.4% (about $3.6 billion) has gone back out in prizes, and 5.5% ($360 million) in commission payments to retailers, which is money that has stayed in the economy, doing the work that money should do in a thriving economy. So to net that $1.7 billion, a total of about $2.5 billion was siphoned away from the economy. That’s basically an additional tax of about $162 a year for every resident of the state of South Dakota. But it’s not an efficient method of taxing, because more than a third of the money that went to the state (around $850 million) went into running the SD Lottery system. I’d say that’s a lot of overhead for tax money. And that’s just the direct cost; assessing the full societal cost for the problems that state-sponsored gambling bring on and compound is difficult, but it’s surely much, much more than that.

The SD Lottery website boasts that, “The Lottery is a totally self-funded agency. No tax dollars are used for its operation.” which is more than a bit deceiving. Because the lottery is funded through it’s own sales, and people are not required to put money into the lottery, it’s technically not a tax. But I remain unconvinced that money spent on the lottery is not a tax, and I’m not alone. Back in 1732 Henry Fielding wrote the following:

A Lottery is a Taxation,
Upon all the Fools in Creation;
And Heav’n be prais’d,
It is easily rais’d,
Credulity’s always in Fashion;
For, Folly’s a Fund,
Will never lose Ground;
While Fools are so rife in the Nation.

Since the lottery is essentially an elective tax, some taxpayers (Fielding’s fools) are hit harder than others. Our family, for example, hasn’t put one red cent into the lottery, which means that since 1987 someone else has plugged more than $17,000 into the SD Lottery system on our behalf. There are a lot of other people who have avoided the lottery, which means others have ponied up a pile of money to make up the difference; much more than their $162 a year. And the problem is the people who tend to elect to pay this tax are those who can least afford it. Taxes that put a larger burden lower income folks are generally considered ‘regressive’, aren’t they?

While I have actually benefitted from having the lottery in South Dakota, I’ve always felt that the lottery is a poor way for any government to garner income. I don’t expect the lottery to go away any time soon; since being implemented, pulling the plug on the system has been on the ballot three times, and each time a majority voted to have it continue. And that’s too bad because all those millions of dollars could be better spent strengthening the real economy of the state, not filling up the economic trash bin.

Today is Mother’s Day, but for the last several years I’ve felt a little left out. My mom, Celeste Agnes Green Thornton passed away almost five years ago, just one short week after Mother’s Day.

The last few years that Mom was with us were difficult; Alzheimer’s Disease stole them from us. I first realized that Mom’s condition was getting the best of her when she forgot my birthday one year, something that had never happened before. At first I was I was quite put out by that, but as I came to understand it was only part of a larger pattern of forgetting things, some important, some not so important.

For a time it seemed she’d just forget things that had happened fairly recently, but could remember vividly things that had happened decades before. She’d forget where she was going at times and get lost driving around the city in which she had lived all her life; before long she forgot the names of our kids, and finally even our names. She had moments of lucidity, but as time went on, they became increasingly rare. In the end she had forgotten everything.

Visiting Mom was difficult and unpleasant those last couple of years. The kids didn’t enjoy it any more than I did, and I finally just stopped going. That last month of her life I had plenty of warnings from my siblings that Mom was sick, but I didn’t quite grasp how serious things were, and I failed to even pay her a visit that last Mother’s Day. She wouldn’t likely have been aware of it, but that’s not the point:

“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

Exodus 20:12

I missed a good teaching opportunity for my kids by neglecting that command, and set a bad example by not visiting Mom in spite of the difficulty her health condition presented. But even before that I don’t remember a time when I really showed Mom the respect she deserved, even after I became a Believer. The two of us had our difficulties & misunderstandings, and I was less than forgiving. And now it’s too late. I know that I’ve been forgiven for all that — even though I was most undeserving of forgiveness — and my sin washed away by the Blood of Christ but the impact of that will live on in my kids, and in my regrets.

So, if your mom and dad are still around, do yourself a favor; don’t neglect giving them the respect you ought. Even if it’s difficult, you owe it to them, to yourself, to your kids, and to God.

How’s this for obscure… On one of the rare occasions I sat down & watched an old, old re-run of the original Knight Rider (starring David Hasselhoff and the talking early-’80’s Trans Am with the funky strobe light), I happened to spot a set of monkey bars identical to the ones we’ve got in the back yard! That is the only time I have ever seen another set like that. Ever.

Our set is a little more weather-worn than the one in the TV show, which isn’t surprising considering they’ve been sitting out in the weather for about 50 years. The bars were purchased by my parents and have been part of growing up since before I can remember. I recall hearing from someone that they were bought when my eldest sister was little, but I doubt that’s true, as that would make them 60 years old, and counting. When Mom & Dad moved from the house on Walts in 1977 I think the monkey bars went to Dick & Dawn’s house, where they stayed until Yvonne & I bought our house on Norton in 1991 or so. We’ve had them ever since, and they’ve been a fixture in our kids’ backyard playtime.

That’s Caleb, at about 18 months old, after having climbed to the top of the monkey bars. That horizontal bar near the top of his head is about 8 feet off the ground. Enough to make any mom a little nervous.

Yes, 50-plus years does a number on the paint covering the bars, and on the metal underneath. The leg ends get rustier every year, and two have broken loose. I’ve been planning to replace some metal and repaint the bars for years — I even went so far as to buy a few rattle-cans of Rustoleum for the job — but it’s the colors that have delayed me for these many years. The bars were originally painted red, yellow and green, but with the years of fading plus the coat of white paint that Dick applied over everything at some point, I’m just not sure which bar was painted what color.

And then I saw this show, Knight Rider, Season 1, Episode 6, broacast on RTN. My first thought was, “YES! I can finally nail down the colors and get it painted!” Problem was that the set was only seen in one short transition shot in the show, spanning maybe three seconds in the frame, and not very clear. I dug around online looking for the video without much luck. I finally tracked down a copy through Google Video last night; the video is actually hosted by a Japanese YouTube knock-off called YouKu.com, and even has Japanese subtitles! Too cool! (link)

But even after looking through the video frame by frame, the colors aren’t clear enough to make any solid determination. So I guess, to paint the thing accurately I’ll have to go back to my original plan to do some judicious sanding in obscure areas that have maybe been spared the fading effects of the sun & hopefully see what the original colors were. Maybe it’ll get done before it ends up as a heap of iron oxide bits in the grass. Maybe…