Punctuation day?

Apparently Sept 24 is a day to celebrate punctuation. How boring, but obviously since I'm posting about it, it has to be interesting to me in some way. In honor of the day, a September blog post at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had a quiz for finding punctuation mistakes.

I commented on the post that the punctuation mistake I see most often is the misuse of a comma to join two independent clauses with the same subject. I find it odd that I encounter it more than others because it's the most basic way to join two sentences. But I guess one has to remember that they need to not use it when the subjects are the same, but need to use it if the 2nd clause has a an understood "you" subject while the first does not.

That mistake doesn't bug me very much. The one mistake that most often bugs me is the misspelled possessive "its". It's my pet peeve because when I notice it, I realize I'm wasting my time dwelling on it.

That makes me wonder: are there any other exceptions in the English language with the use of punctuation?

The post pointed out that the correct way to use an apostrophe for a decade reference is to put it at the beginning, not before the s. For example: '80s is correct while 80's is not. I make that mistake all the time. Now I know better.

Recent batch of awesome videos at Cute Overload

In the past couple of days there have been several great heart-warming videos at Cute Overload:

• A story with pictures about how a guy helped a family of newly hatched ducklings make their way safely to a river in downtown Spokane.
• A team of people rehabilitating several sea lions by acting like the sea lions' parents
  
• A video of a guy singing a litter of puppies to sleep
  

On the search for a good movie review RSS feed

With two young children, I don't go out to see movies very often, let alone ones that I want to watch. And with there not being much time to watch movies at home either, I don't spend money renting movies and instead get them from the public library, so I can have the movie anywhere from 3 days to a week. With the entire Milwaukee County public library system at my disposal and searchable online, I can choose more than just what's available at my local branch. So with limited free time, and a fairly extensive collection available, how can I effectively plan which movies to watch?

I used to have a paper-based method for both movies & music, writing down titles of new releases with good reviews from Entertainment Weekly, to which I don't subscribe anymore, so that I could then keep track of things to watch & listen. For music this worked pretty well, because the library system was pretty good at ordering new & current music. But because of the delay in a movie being in the theater to when it actually comes out on video, I never did very well at keeping track of current movies to watch ("current" meaning within the last 2 years).

Having been using Google Reader now for a year or so, it finally dawned on me that if I had a good movie review feed, that I would be able to star new movies that I want to see, and then after doing this for 6 months to a year, I would be able to go back in my star archive for that feed in Google Reader and have a list of movies to request from the library.

So I started searching for movie review RSS feeds. At first EW's feed looked perfect--the title & score is in the post title. Unfortunately the feed contains many duplicate entries, which is unacceptable because it would annoy me to no end. So, I searched for more feeds, and each one I came across wasn't good because it didn't put the score in the post title or content--too inefficient to have to go to the original site to get the rating. After about 5 more minutes of searching, I found RogerEbert's which is not perfect, but ok--the movie title & score is in the post title, but the feed contains more than just movie reviews. It also has repeat entries in it, but not at the rate EW's does. Also better than EW's, it actually contains a little bit of the review in the post content.

Lastly another plug for Google Reader - their database contains posts from Ebert's feed all the way back to October 2005. So I can star movies I want to watch back a few years to when I stopped using my paper-based system.

Synchronizing Thunderbird Address Book to Palm

I maintain my master address book in Thunderbird (my personal email client). So, I would like to have it automatically pushed down to my phone, but I had problems getting the Palm sync extension for Thunderbird to work under TB v2 (always gave errors about not being able to open the Mozilla address book). Although I could spend the time trying to fix the sync code, I basically have given up on the sync extension and resigned to having to manually sync periodically.

The only import/export format in common between Palm Desktop and Thunderbird was CSV. I did a search and couldn't find any existing script to convert between the two, so I downloaded the Text::CSV perl module and started writing a script to read in a CSV-exported Thunderbird address book and save it with fields reordered per Palm Desktop's expectations. I had it half-way written when I discovered there's a un-indexed extension to Thunderbird that can export an address book in vCard format called More Functions for Address Book.

So I tried it out and found that it works fairly well. The caveats to this approach besides the manual aspect to it are:

1. Palm Desktop doesn't import birthday
2. The extension doesn't export anniversary
3. Palm Desktop imports duplicate cards as new entries, so have to delete all entries, and then import

I didn't test to see if the picture field gets synchronized or not.

The first two are not a big deal but the implications of #3 is that attributes associated with entries in my phone, like custom ring tones, are lost, which sucks because I'd like to take advantage of that feature of my phone. I may have to switch my mode of operation and have my phone/Palm Desktop be my master address book, but so far I'm resisting that because:

1. I don't want my address book to be controlled by proprietary software
2. I like Thunderbird's interface for managing address book cards better than Palm Desktop (although neither of them are great).

I also found out there's a method for defining a custom ordering for fields for CSV import in Palm Desktop, further eliminating the need to write a CSV converter script in the first place.

A few more pictures from England

Barbara Farrar who we stayed with for a few days in England, and helped tote us around a bit, just sent a few pictures. Enjoy!

Norah's spring of 2008 school pictures

Norah's Spring 2008 school pictures are her best yet.

Saturday, March 29 - Trip to England Day 8

The morning was filled with another hearty breakfast, running Norah down to the hairdresser, and delaying Dejaquan from wearing his tux as long as possible. Barbara was kind enough to put together a pack of non-staining snacks for the kids knowing the moment we sat in the car Dejaquan would complain about being hungry. Click went his seat belt and he said it just as we had predicted.

We got to the wedding 1/2 hour early, and as soon as the other young kids in the wedding party arrived, they hit it off with Norah & Dejaquan. Joe, the other ring bearer, just turned 6 two days prior and Emily, 8, loved taking charge of Norah. A few minutes before the wedding began, I took Norah back to the bridesmaids, and thought everything was okay until she through a fit that she didn't get to have a bouquet of flowers like the others (she got to carry a fancy light-up Tinkerbell magic wand). I somehow managed to console her enough to have her get in line with her wand just as they started marching down the aisle. (pictures)

Surprisingly, both kids were well behaved during the ceremony, Dejaquan only getting up twice, once following Joe who was being mischievous and once to have his tie fixed, and Norah once trying to get the other flower girl, a toddler/young preschooler, to sit down with her (who had been wondering around the whole time).

We found out later that at one point in the ceremony Dejaquan and Joe, sitting in the front row across the aisle from the bridesmaids, were making faces at them, causing the to laugh. Verity & Stuart thought that the bridesmaids were laughing at them, because they were sitting with their backs to the boys.

It was drizzling when the wedding finished, and Keith took us to the reception while Barbara delivered our luggage to the hotel, bless her heart. The reception was fabulous (pictures), and had a good time talking with the Joe & Emily's parents during dinner. We left while Stuart & Verity cut the cake, Barbara again being overgenerous running us to our hotel in the rain.

We had got the kids to leave without much fuss, promising them they could swim when we got there (7:30), but kids weren't allowed in the pool after 6pm (can you believe that?), so there was quite the melt-down in the hotel room. We compromised by letting them take a bath together (supervised). Norah was still sad about not getting to go swimming the next morning.

Friday, March 28 - Trip to England Day 7

I finally got to eat porridge for breakfast and it was delicious.

We went with Barbara in her car to Stoke-on-Trent to visit the potteries. First we went to Emma Bridgewater Pottery Cafe and let the kids paint their own cups. Then we went to the Gladstone Pottery Museum, ate in their tearoom and took the tour of the museum (pictures)--one of the last preserved working pottery factories from the 19th century. Both kids got to mold their own clay bowls on a flywheel, and Norah got to make a clay flower while Dejaquan made a vase on an electric wheel. We ran out of time and had to leave the tour without seeing the toilet exhibit.

Back in Cheadle Hulme, the Farar's made another fabulous dinner of shepherd's pie with vegetables, including a good portion of peas which was about the only thing Norah ate. We finished in time to get to the rehearsal right at 7pm when it was supposed to start, but we were the first ones there.

The wedding rehearsal went smoothly and quickly, then we headed over to Nuela's for the rehearsal party. Unfortunately, Sarah wasn't feeling well, so we left soon after it started. Sarah headed to bed and Barbara put together a quick snack for the kids. The kids watched the rest of the movie they had started watching earlier, and once it was over, Barbara & I played cards with the kids until they were tired enough to go bed.

Dilbert site's been revamped

What the heck is going on at dilbert.com! Strips are now shown in a lame flash widget, and the site is often giving me errors, not displaying hardly any content. It does say it's "beta", but it looks more like alpha quality to me. What if I want to view comics on my smart phone? The team that maintains that site apparently hasn't heard of KISS.

Thursday, March 27 - Trip to England Day 6

After having another wonderful full English breakfast at our guest house, we checked out and walked back to the wall around York and climbed it just for a bit, taking some pictures of it we didn't take the time to the day before.

Then we drove down to the other side of the city to Clifford's Tower, took some pictures and headed out of York to the southwest to take a scenic tour of some castle ruins. We saw the site at which the Pontefract Castle near Castleford was built and the remains of Sandal Castle near Wakefield.

We tried to find Wentworth Castle Gardens but the directions were too poor so we just gave up and drove across the northern part of the Peak District. Doing that wasn't easy because the glare from the sun made it difficult to see sometimes, the road was just one lane each way most of the time, and we didn't want to drive as fast as everyone else (all the time). Right when we were about to come to the beginning of the motorway near Manchester, traffic came to a standstill, but luckily we were able to wing it, going north to the next on-ramp to the motorway and got on without delay. We drove back to the Manchester airport again, entered the parking garage to return our rental car, but quickly exited after I realized I needed to fill up the car with petrol.

After we returned the car we took a taxi to Barbara and Keith Farar's where we had a lovely dinner. I then gave the kids their baths, and found that I was exhausted, falling asleep next to Norah after reading her a bedtime story.

Here is a Google maps route of the route we took over the past 3 days from Manchester to York and back

Wednesday, March 26 - Trip to England Day 5

Our guest house served a full English breakfast, then we took a taxi to the opposite side of the York city center to the National Railway Museum. The kids were asking the whole time while we were going through the museum when we could ride the ferris wheel, which we saved for the end. (pictures)

We then took a scenic boat tour of York, ate at Bettys Cafe Tea Rooms, and did some shopping in York's city center. We came upon a kid's trampoline in an open square, setup with harnesses so they could do flips in the air, although neither of them would even try doing that. They both enjoyed it and were begging to go do it again for the next two days.

York's city center is what I'd call one big open shopping mall. It's the sort of place the Bayshore Town Center at home is modeled after, but is so much better because vehicle access is extremely restricted. As we found out when we took our taxi, they use some sort of facial identification of the driver to grant access (I don't know if it automated or not). Shopping in York is a great experience and would highly recommend it for anyone traveling to England.

The kids each got to buy a toy from one of the local shops. Norah chose a Cinderella umbrella from the Disney Store and Dejaquan chose a set of medieval knight figures complete with weapons. We got some hot chocolate and coffee at Starbuck's across the way from the Minster (pictures) while we waited for the 5:15 choral service (a way to see the inside of the Minster for free).

The music was very well sung, and the views of the inside were magestic. The kids managed to entertain themselves separately through the whole thing without disturbing anyone, but a woman who was there by herself with her 3-going-on-4-year-old had to remove her daughter near the end. We walked around the church for a little bit but left when the kids got antsy.

On our way back to our guest house we came upon Little Italy and chose to eat there even though we had discussed taking food back to the guest house.

After taking the kids potty in the attic of this restaurant, I discovered after ordering our food that we were sitting right next to the same woman and child we had sat behind at the church. They had just finished eating when our food arrived, so Sarah offered a coloring activity book and crayons for them to use while they waited for their dessert.

Tuesday, March 25 - Trip to England Day 4

We left for Skipton after running to the bank to pull out the cash we needed to pay for our B&B in York (they don't take credit cards). All the practice driving with Stuart payed off because we got there without incident. We parked near the castle on the north end of the city center and ate at a tearoom on our walk up to the castle.

The castle tour was self-guided (pictures), so we spent a lot of energy keeping Dejaquan from jumping ahead too quickly. The castle was very interesting, seeing just how many rooms were equipped with arrow slits and how each room had its own fireplace to keep it warm. I don't know anything about English history, so the historical references in the displays in each room were insignificant to me.

We let each kid pick one thing from the gift shop. Norah chose a pen with a sliding thing in it and Dejaquan chose a knight figurine holding a sword. Of course as soon as we got back in the car, Dejaquan broke the sword trying to take it out of the knight's hand, and major disappointment ensued.

We drove to York, stopping once to let the kids have a run at a reservoir. We managed to drive into York without making any wrong turns and finding out guest house right away. After checking in I asked our hosts what would be a good restaurant to eat at with the kids, and they recommended Little Italy, giving me verbal directions on how to get there. Of course I didn't remember them right, so we ended up eating at an Indian restaurant, which turned out to serve very good food. The kids even enjoyed it.

Monday, March 24 - Trip to England Day 3

This was an adventurous day. We headed out with the kids in the rental car following Verity & Stuart to go to the Manchster Art Gallery. Although I had visited Japan & Australia earlier in my life, this was actually my first time driving in a country with a road system where you drive on the left side of the road. Accompanied by the width of the lanes also being much thinner than in the States, I unfortunately misjudged the distance between the edge of the car the side of the road and hit a curb, punching a hole in the front passenger tire. Verity & Stuart noticed we had pulled over, quickly stopped and came back to help.

One would think that you'd have exactly what you'd need to change a flat with a brand new rental car, but we found that it was missing both the jack and the locking wrench. So after calling the rental company, we ended up calling the AA (sort of like the US's AAA, but they have their own large fleet of tow/service vehicles). Verity and Sarah took the kids in the other car and headed on down to Manchester's city center while Stuart and I stayed to wait for AA.

The AA arrived within a minute of the time they had estimated in a text message they sent to Stuart's phone. The technician was a very kind and very eccentric old fellow who magically got the flat off and the spare on without the aid of the special locking nut (one of the nuts on each of the tires has a special shape to prevent tire theft).

I drove the car with Stuart's excellent tutoring to the school he and Verity work at then took a double decker bus into the city center (my first time on one of those), and we met up with the women & kids at the art gallery. We were only there for about an hour spending most of the time in the children's interactive exhibit (pictures).

We walked to Lincoln square where there is a statue of Abraham Lincoln, giving him tribute for a letter he wrote to the city of Manchester thanking them for the economic burden caused by their embargoing cotton trade with the Confederacy. After taking some pictures we then ate at a favorite oriental noodle restaurant of Verity & Stuart, which of course was excellent.

We took a cab back to our cars, then Stuart & I took Dejaquan & Norah with us back to Stockport while Verity & Sarah did some shopping. On the way back, I got to further practice driving with Stuart in the car and we stopped at a Matlin to buy a UK2US power converter. There was one on sale for £10, so I figured I actually saved money, with the cheapest one I could find at Radio Shack before coming over was $30.

Right when I pulled up to the curb at their home in Stockport, I realized it would be a good time to return the car for one with a working spare (and jack and proper tools). So I got more practice driving with Stuart in the car to & from the airport. I got to give Stuart credit for getting a good reimbursement on the cost of the rental car. I couldn't convince the desk clerk to compensate for the inconvenience caused by the lack of the jack and locking wheel. When I got back from shopping around the car rental companies for the best price on a 4-door automatic, he had managed to convince the clerk to give us a £20/day rebate, plus waive the fee for not filling up the tank.

That evening, Stuart & I went on a 4 mile run together (he's training for the London Marathon) while the kids ate dinner. After a shower, the adults ate while the kids watched The Monsters.

Saturday & Sunday, March 22 & 23 - Trip to England Days 1 & 2

Embassy Suites is pretty nice--we chose them for the pool and extended car parking for a better price than O'Hare's best extended parking rates. They also provide a complimentary full breakfast buffet with the room, so we ate that, then went swimming again until it was time to get ready to check out.

We took the shuttle to the airport, packed the kids coats in our checked luggage and checked in. We had plenty of time because our flight left at 5:30, and we were through security by 1:30. We first let the grumpy/anxious/impatient kids eat McDonald's one last time before sitting down for the long wait. The kids stayed fairly well entertained while we waited, but Dejaquan did keep asking about every 15 minutes how much longer until it was time to go.

Dejaquan sat next to I and Norah next to Sarah for the first couple hours of the flight, but they switched when it was time to go to sleep. I don't know why Dejaquan wanted to sleep next to Sarah, but I guess it was because he had gotten tired of me and just missed his mother. Norah then seemed to be full of energy when there was nothing to do with the lights out (she managed to find lots with which to entertain herself like opening and closing the window cover). After only about 15 minutes, Sarah had managed to put Dejaquan to sleep. So Sarah & I switched again and while I began to type this in with my thumbs on my phone, within 15 minutes again she had worked her magic on Norah.

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Near the end of the flight, breakfast was served at 4:30, 2 hours before the plane was scheduled to land, so I only managed to only get 1-2 hours of sleep. I think the kids managed to get 3-4 hours of sleep. Too bad at the time when breakfast was served the flight crew didn't know it would be delayed an hour due to needing to clear what was just an inch of snow off the runway. The pilot remarked that the airport must not be as used to dealing with snow as we are.

Bless their hearts, Verity & Stuart were still waiting for us outside baggage claim after having been there for over 1.5 hours waiting for us to land, get through customs and pick up our luggage. They said that the delay in the arrival time wasn't even posted until the expected time had came & went.

We rented a car, then had them drive us to their place where we got acclimated until it was time to go over to Verity's mum's for a traditional English Easter dinner. While Verity was at her Sunday morning church service, we took the kids to the local playground (pictures) where she met us and we had a short snowball fight before heading back. We played football on Stuart's Xbox until it was time to go.

We went to Verity's mum's house to join Nuela and Verity's friend (and wedding planner), Allison , for the rest of the day for a lovely Easter dinner of roast of lamb. We played games (mainly Connect Four, but I also taught Stuart how to play Othello), had an Easter egg hunt, and Stuart and Dejaquan played football in the backyard.

We ended the day back at Stuart & Verity's place, playing some more Xbox football and baths for the kids.

Friday, March 21 - Trip to England Day 0

Sarah, the kids, I got back from our trip to England today. With England just switching over to daylight saving time this morning, and the 6 hour timezone difference, it made today a long day. Anyway, I'm pleased to provide a day-by-day journal of our trip. I wrote entries for each day on my new Palm Centro (the successor to the Treo) I got just a couple days before we left. My Zire had died a few weeks ago and we decided now would make the most sense for me to get a mobile phone and have it with us on our trip--and it did prove to be helpful. Overall, I'm happy with the Centro, despite the lack of graffiti. It doesn't take too long to get used to the mini keyboard, and I suppose is faster to use than graffiti, although I never did master that.

I'll try to post an entry for each day, a day at a time. We took a decent amount of pictures. I'll try to download those and have them ready for each post. Although we didn't actually get to England on the first day of our trip, here it is, day zero: Friday, March 21:

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Left for Chicago to stay overnight at a hotel while Tim worked on gutting the bathroom in our house. Of course the weather refused to cooperate, and like it seams every year, we had one last final snow storm at the end of March. The snow was coming down fast making it hard for the plows to keep up so it took twice as long to get there as it normally would.

After we checked in at 5pm we took the kids swimming and they had fun. We grabbed some free popcorn and pretzels for a bed time snack and ordered in room service, which actually turned out to be pretty good food (the dinner, not the popcorn--the kids ate that). Since the kids had naps on the way down, it took them a while to go to sleep. This seemed to be a theme for most

Trip planning using Google Maps

What has my family been up to so far this year?

Dejaquan started taking boys gymnastics lessons once a week on Jan 24 at the Wisconsin Gymnastics Academy in Brown Deer (Whitefish Bay's gymnastics program is only geared towards girls). Sarah takes him to there after school each week. Norah started taking swimming lessons once a week on Jan 16. It's the introductory thing where each parent gets in the pool with their child. Norah is slowly getting more comfortable in the water because of it. She no longer has to have a washcloth on her face in the bath now when I wash her hair.

We are getting close to having our trip to England this spring all planned out. We'll be staying in Manchester the first couple days, then traveling about Yorkshire, visiting mostly castles, the east coast, and the Minster in York for a couple days. It's the two days right before our friends ' wedding at the end of our trip that we haven't solidified on. Tentatively we'll be visiting the potteries near Stoke-on-Trent, which is apparently not a very popular tourist area. Here's our planned trip ala Google Maps

Other miscellaneous musings: I got a used PS2 with some games a few weeks ago, and Dejaquan's really enjoyed playing ssX3, a downhill snowboarding game. We got out the Lego picturing making set tonight and Norah played with it for almost 2 hours. Sarah told me we can't let her play with it much because it would be a great item to take with us on the train on our trip out to Oregon this summer. A couple weekends ago we rearranged a few rooms in the house: switched the location of the fridge and table in the kitchen, moved the entertainment center into the front room, and redid the furniture layout a little in the living room for the first time since we got the entertainment center over 5 years ago. Sarah even wallpapered a wall and painted the other walls in the front room. While we're on our trip to England, we're having our (only) bathroom redone, so even it is getting simplified, too.

Norah's going to turn 4 in less than 2 weeks. Now that she's getting out of what I consider the terrible 3's, I need to remember what Sarah has encouraged me to do: be more empathetic and not so strict. It's a struggle figuring out how to get my children to accomplish what I feel they need to in order to stay healthy (brushing teeth, going to bed on time, etc) while keeping everyone happy.

Computer related: at work & at home, I've played with using Greasemonkey to remember passwords, as well as to allow broken javascript code from an internal webapp that only works on IE to also work with Firefox. I'm also now managing our personal finances with jGnash. Very easy to use. Just this past Friday I setup an RSS feed for some of our subversion repositories (I hate managing which source code repositories to send automatic emails from--RSS provides much more control in that anyone can choose to get updates--with an RSS feed instead of automated emails, you can't call them "spam" anymore). I hate having to use Windows & Outlook at work, but at least there's a good RSS plugin I finally found for Outlook: Blogbot

One last thing (a gripe): My Chemical Romance's 2006 album, The Black Parade was my favorite album of 2007. And close runner up was Muse's, Black Holes and Revelations also released in 2006. Too bad they ware released too close to the 2007 Grammy's to be eligible for this year's Grammy's. Awesome artsy alt-rock.