Dump Truck Day

What's the process for reevaluating the accreditation of a School of Music? Like, hypothetically, the one that graduated this composer?

Maia's Art Day

Notable artwork from September - October

The cat is friends with the bird. It flies out of the tree to make friends with the squirrel. The mouse is scared.

Here are some mazes that Maia made in September. She wanted Rebecca and I to compete in a speed mazing competition. In the upper right one, you have to get the carrot through the bunny and into the toilet.

This is a set of switchback trails leading up Bunny Mountain, while airplanes fly overheard.

Maia drew this in kindergarten for a "What I Did This Summer" assignment. Clockwise, she swam in her cousins' pool, made popsicles, played soccer with the neighbours, and pet a cat. The art teacher deemed it wall-worthy so it did not come home for several weeks.

Vote BU 2022

If elected, I promise to enact the following changes in our society and daily way of life.

1. All dishwasher soap must come with its own built-in Rinse Agent.


2. LinkedIn users will be banned if they put a double line break between every single sentence in their post.


3. Alexa will no longer be able to tell you about all of the amazing additional skills she can do.


4. High efficiency washing machines will actually show the correct time remaining instead of staying at the 1 minute mark for 20 extra minutes.


5. Restaurants will no longer be allowed to call their tiniest orange juice "regular-sized".


6. All bagging area errors in self-checkout lines will be eliminated.


7. Firefox will update when you're all done and you close it, instead of when you actually need to open it.


8. Only 5% of the pieces in Lego kits can be unique -- all the rest must be standard blocks that can be reused in other creative contexts.


9. There will be no more covers or mashups of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".


10. Trying to select the last line in a Word table cell will no longer select the entire table.

Invention Day: The Pedt Saver, Part II

I first introduced the idea for the Pedt Saver 8 years ago when I had two cats that destroyed the circulation in my feet every night. Now I have zero cats on my feet because one died in 2017 and the other has been exiled to the basement each night because she's deaf and is too loud for a two-child household. Still, I was having sore feet issues from the natural cover weight at the corner of the bed, so I resurrected the idea.

I looked online and realized that this type of device already existed, but at price points over $100. You can charge a lot when you classify your device as a health-related device. Unwilling to spend that much money, I went the cheap route instead and got $10 worth of PVC pipes and fittings at Home Depot.

I diverged from the original plan slightly -- there is no adjustable setting because my feet do not expand and contract based on the position of the moon, and the bar goes straight up instead of crossing over the top of my feet.

I've used the Pedt Saver for three nights now and it's very pleasant -- like having a personal yurt for my extremities. I'll have to see if the air pocket gets too cold in the winter (especially since the device raises the covers off the edge, allowing some airflow) but I'm satisfied by my minimal ingenuity so far!

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Mario Kart Live (Switch):
This (too expensive) Augmented Reality game allows you to set up a Mario Kart course with a physical car in your house and then play it on your Switch. The novelty value is very high although the replayability seems pretty low. Maia loves setting up courses and then introducing other hazards (like Ian the Giant standing in the way) and the AR works pretty smoothly. It's fun seeing Mario driving around your living room (and it works on both floor and carpet). However, after you've done it a few times, there's not much more you can do. There are only 4 gates for each course so you're essentially constrained to a circle or a figure 8, and the signal from the Switch to the car is so weak that you really have to be within 10 feet of the car at all times -- this means that your course works best in a single room rather than all over the house. Recently, we spend more time just playing in "Explore" mode and driving around the basement rather than setting up a full course.

Final Grade: B-

Idlewild (R):
This Outkast musical slipped under my radar at release. I used to love Moulin Rouge back then but hated Chicago, so maybe I was just burnt out on musical movies. The plot is cookie-cutter but the raps and artistic flourishes are a lot of fun.

Final Grade: B-

Memory (R):
This suspense movie is about a hit man with a moral code who's also in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. Other than the characters played by Guy Pearce and Liam Neeson, everyone is a flat caricature with bad dialogue. The movie is fine, not amazing.

Final Grade: C+

Mindf*ck by Christopher Wylie:
This book, written by the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, describes how social media algorithms can be (and were) manipulated and exploited in the run up to Brexit and the 2016 US Election. The author presents a pretty approachable narrative and shows how PsyOps and Russian Intelligence may have put a finger on the scale just enough to alter the outcomes. The book sometimes drags, especially when the author is describing the places and people involved (like flavor text in a fantasy novel) but otherwise, it's highly quotable and full of great insights.

Final Grade: B

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month

6:21 AM: Showered and ready for the weekend.

6:38 AM: Good morning!

6:42 AM: Ready for the neighbourhood walk / trash pick-up and obsessed with the moon.

7:19 AM: Reading 10 consecutive books until Rebecca wakes up.

7:59 AM: Bagel for breakfast.

9:00 AM: Off to Riverbend Park for a hike with Marc. (Maia is at the grandparents this weekend).

10:34 AM: Power-washing the sidewalk around our house, part 2 of 3.

11:31 AM: Treadmill time while watching The Peripheral.

12:18 PM: Ham sandwich for lunch while rereading Warhost of Vastmark.

4:24 PM: Up late from an afternoon nap.

5:17 PM: Dinner at Ford's Fish Shack.

6:33 PM: Getting ready for bed.

Maia's 12 of 12

Maia's perspective on life (pictures taken between October 2022 and November 2022)

"Do you want to see my nightlight change color?"

Post-Dinnner Antics

"Can I show you this candle?"

Other posts in this series: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII | Part IX | Part X | Part XI

Reunion Day

20 years out of Florida State Music and still alive!

Easy Photos Day

A few photos from an early Thanksgiving dinner we had over the weekend.

Time-lapsed Blogography Day: Twenty Seven Years Ago Today

Twenty-seven years ago today, on November 23, 1995, I was a senior in high school and it was Thanksgiving Day. I spent most of the day trying to get the newly-released Windows 95 installed on our family computer because Disc 2 had some random corrupted sectors. Staring at the computer screen all day gave me a migraine headache.

When not battling the Windows installer, I was practicing the high range on my trumpet and hitting solid high E-flats. The Es were nonexistent and I had the long-range plan of hitting high G by the end of the school year. Ultimately, I never practiced consistently enough to have a solid high G.

Later in the afternoon, I walked up the street to feed a chihuahua named Rusty while his owners were out of town. I used to bring him back to my house but he'd just pee all over the carpet and bark nonstop.

I didn't write anything about dinner itself, so I presume it was a nuclear family affair (Ellen was home from UVa) with a much-too-large turkey, stuffing full of raisins, spiced pears, rolls, and sweet potatoes.

Thanksgiving Day

Counting Day

Ian is in a counting spree these days, and kind of sort of got to 20 when counting the metal rivets on a fancy chair.

Here, he is doing a census:

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2022 album.

• Events
  • Rebecca taught Yoga Anatomy at Easy Day on S 11/5. Date Night at Old Ox Brewery in the evening.
  
  
  • Voted on T 11/8.
  
  
  • Maia went to my parents for the weekend, F 11/11 - S 11/13.
  
  
  • Rebecca and Ian went on a hike with Marc at Riverbend Park on S 11/12. Dinner at Ford's Fish Shack.
  
  
  • Went to the HOA meeting on W 11/16 and was voted up to Vice President.
  
  
  • Mike (of Mike and Chompy) stopped in for a brief visit with us and Kathy before flying home on F 11/18.
  
  
  • Rebecca taught Yoga Anatomy at Easy Day on S 11/19 while the rest of us went to my parents' house for a visit.
  
  
  • Had to miss Friendsgiving at Tammy's house because Maia had a cold, so we had my parents over for early Thanksgiving dinner instead on S 11/20.
  
  
  • Thanksgiving in Taylorstown with the Whitmer clan on H 11/24.
  
  
  • Dinner with Tammy & Patrick (Siam Spice) on F 11/25.
  
  
  • Celebrated Char's birthday at the Goodwin House on S 11/26.
  
  
  • Started the multi-day process of Christmas decorating on S 11/27.
  
  
  • Family dinner at Cafesano on T 11/29.


• Projects
  • Practiced coding in preparation for Advent of Code. Never did get around to getting Kotlin to a fluent state.


• Consumerism
  • Studiously playing Overwatch 2.
  
  
  • Watched several decent shows, but no big standouts.
  
  
  • No new music or books this month.
  
  

November's Final Grade: A-, Still pleasant, but less warmth.