Opening Christmas presents

First look at number 2

Maria is so wonderful we decided to have another.

The Great Pumpkin Patch

On Saturday, we went to the Great Pumpkin Patch in Arthur. Pumpkins, squash, and cucurbits everywhere. And cute furry animals.

Little straw bales. I imagine a tiny baler being driven by a lawn tractor making these bales.

A portion of the Wall O' Squash.

The finger-eating goat seemed more interested in the grass than Maria's fingers.

A wagon load of squash, and a Maria, too!

Read those warning labels carefully

The kids are running wild and you're trying to get them stand still for just a fraction of a second so you can dress them, feed them, fix their hair, etc. At times the following device seems tempting.

But alas, look more closely at the warning label...

An infinite number of sumo-posed Marias in curlers

How's that for the surreal phrase of the day?
And not just a phrase.
There's a picture aptly described by the phrase.

Cute Maria pictures on other blogs

Those of you reading this blog for Maria pictures (and you know you are), check out Jaime's blog entry titled Social Butterflies. Maria shows up near the end of the entry.

Little red wagon

My parents saw some wagons in Farm and Fleet, and thought Maria would enjoy having one. Rather than shipping one down, they sent us money, and we went to the Farm and Fleet here and bought one.

Behold, the wagon:

Run, Leo, run!

Disclaimer: Sue is visiting a friend in Seattle. All wardrobe decisions were made be Mark, and are solely his responsibility.

Facebook

I recently created a facebook account. If your a reader of this blog, and have a facebook account, search for me there. (I'm too lazy to create a link, and more importantly, I don't really want to - I want google to have to guess at the connection). If you don't have a facebook account, and don't know what it is - imagine the web redesigned by the marketing department (or at least the part of the marketing department responsible for collecting demographic information). And there's something about social networking (versus all the anti-social networking sites out there) Thoughts from short usage

• The CAPTCHA's required before creating a friend request are pretty inscrutable. I am even more firmly certain that the first Artificial Intelligence will arise as a result of spam/anti-spam escalating warfare. (Although, according to a recent Defcon talk, current CAPTCHA's aren't implemented as well as they could be, so the technology required to beat them is still not that sophisticated)
• The applications built on the platform are enticing, but what access do they provide to the personal data entered into the system? The developer TOS say the API doesn't allow access to contact info, but everything else is fair game. Hmmmm.

Food blog for local folks

For those readers in the Champaign-Urbana area who like to eat, check out this blog - Champaign Taste. It offers restaurant reviews and info on new places opening.

Maria walking

No tricks, no stunts, no wires, no fingers!

Sue has more commentary and photos

Making decisions

From researchers in the Netherlands comes this paper on decision making.

It's a rather interesting read (and the anecdote about a Dutch researcher's encounter with the cereal aisle in an American supermarket is hilarious. Well, at least by research-paper standards.)

The point is that our conscious attention is very limited and we cannot simultaneously focus on all the variables in a complex decision. However, it appears our unconscious is not quite so limited, and can perform more complex weightings of many factors. (The paper describes several experiments designed to tease out the parameters of how this works.)

It's really interesting to see concrete confirmation of advice from various people ( and personal experience) that letting a decision rest (or sleeping on it, or however you want to describe it) does help, and aids in drawing out the relevant factors. (Found via this blog entry focusing on the house-buying example in the paper.)

The Sprinklers of Summer

A lawn sprinkler is a great way to handle hot summer afternoons.

No running water

The water pump broke the other night.

To make matters worse, the outhouse was out of order as well.

I suggested that Sue could tell people she visited her in-laws in northern Wisconsin, and they had no running water. (Omitting the fact that the pump was fixed the next morning, so it was only about 12 hours or so without running water).

Dad and I dissembled the old pump to see what it looked like (During the previous weeks, there had been bits of plastic coming through the water system that indicated the pump was failing.)

Some pictures of the impellers inside the pump. The side view is from one that broke while taking the pump apart. Finally, a chipped impeller that is likely the source of the problem.

Putting Maria to work

I haven't been the only one put to work on the farm. Here's Maria carrying a bucket after feeding the calves.

Visiting the farm

We're visiting the farm this week (Grandma and Grandpa are very excited to have Maria around) One of my father's favorite phrases has been "reconnect me with my roots". So far, this reconnecting has involved unloading hay, raking hay, and baling hay. And that's just the first day. My "pansy programmer hands" (my phrase, not his) are sore today.

But it hasn't been all work. Here's a picture of Maria with Grandpa and Uncle Chip. Sue was bothered that I kept calling the dog "uncle", until she realized (and pointed out with relish) that he's on my side of the family.

Life goals and lolcats

I have a new life goal (note, that's "a", as in "one of many", not "the central organizing principle") - to get a lolcat picture on the front page of icanhascheezburger.com.

Here's the first couple of attempts. Clicking on the picture will take you to a page that lets you comment and rate the image.

moar funny pictures

Remodeling the bathroom

We're remodeling one of the bathrooms in our house. Workers are coming tomorrow to put new tile on the floor (One lesson from the last tiling project - hire someone to do it)

Yesterday, we removed the old toilet, sink and vanity. If you remember the hot tub, you should see what's coming next.

Yes, that's right ... bathroom set on blocks in the yard!

Hairstyles of the young and cute

Maria's hair has been getting longer and was hanging down into her eyes. The following conversion ensued:

Mark: Why don't we cut it?
Sue: Then she'll have a mullet
Mark: <silence>

What could I say? Sue had played the trump card, the nuclear option of hairstyle arguments. There was no responding.

(Although in reality, I probably made some smart-alec comment like "What's wrong with a mullet?)

Sue's solution is a tuft on top, fastened with a teensy-tiny rubber band. It's reminiscent of Pebbles (from the Flintstones).

The Selfish Gene

I recently read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. It's a look at evolution from the perspective of the gene as the unit of replication and natural selection (rather than treating the individual organism as the fundamental unit).

Near the beginning of the book, there is this statement discussing possible moral take-aways of the book:

I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things evolved. I am not saying how we humans morally ought to behave. [...] My own feeling is that a human society based simply on the gene's law of universal ruthless selfishness would be a very nasty society in which to live.

And he goes on to emphasize that in building a society we wish to live in, we must teach the desired traits (generosity, altruism, etc.), since they will not be hard-wired by biology.

This is an example of an appropriate attitude towards evolution. Christians ought to learn from this atheist. Unfortunately, many easily-heard voices in the evangelical Christian community proclaim the "evils" of evolution and attack the science. This leads to a number of problems:

1. It wastes energy and resources tackling the wrong challenge. The real challenge is working out an understanding of what the general revelation of science tells us about the nature of God.
2. The Christian community (needlessly) appears backwards in it's views on science
3. It creates unnecessary barriers to belief (and offers good reasons to dis-believe.)

In a future post I will discuss why there is resistance to this viewpoint among evangelical Christians.

Sights on the return trip

At a rest stop in Virginia, there was this helpful section for the pets:

Also in Virginia, there was a set of old buildings next to the gas station. From this angle, it looks like a dire warning should one decide to go past the church.

But, it turns out to only be an old gas station.

Eating ice cream again

We returned once again to our favorite ice cream place (for the final time this trip. Sigh. We're leaving Saturday morning.) Sue tried a milder flavor (strawberry) and a new feeding technique (use the tasting stick to feed small bites so the cold doesn't overwhelm her), and it appeared to work. Maria ate some ice cream, and she liked it!