My blood will soon fill this bag.
What Supermassive Black Holes Have To Do With Thanksgiving
This past weekend, there was a parent-student program at NHL’s Hebrew school. We first spoke about the challenges and best techniques to teach our kids to be thankful. Most kids today are lucky enough that their main problems involve what toys they get for birthdays/holidays or whether or not they have the latest versions of the most popular electronic gadgets. Travel to a different country, however, and a kid might be worrying more about whether his latest meal will be today or tomorrow or whether his parents will be able to pay the doctors to treat his sick baby brother. Compared to those concerns, getting the latest iPhone seems pretty petty.
Sadly, the culture we live in is defined by consume-consume-consume. I wish I could say my boys are immune to it, but they aren’t. They have plenty of toys (some days it seems like too many toys – especially when they don’t clean up) and yet they constantly want more. We can’t exit any store without JSL asking for a new toy for him to open right now. The fact we never give in to these new toy cries doesn’t seem to deter JSL.
One parent mentioned having toys “disappear” only to reappear months later. We’ve used this cycle in and out strategy before. Perhaps we should employ it a bit more.
Later on, NHL and his class came into the room. We got to decorate a sheet and write in what NHL was thankful for. This is what NHL wrote down for what he was thankful for.
Did you catch that one right before the end? “Supermassive Black Holes.” In case you’re wondering, NHL got that from this page
Of this book:
This book lists scientifically accurate information about the objects in our universe. From the planets to black holes, from the Hubble Space telescope to space-time. Of course, the facts are simplified for kids and the illustrations are made to be fun to look at. Still, NHL has taken to this book and the page on supermassive black holes in particular.
It’s quite fun to watch him weave science and math into what seems to be otherwise unrelated projects. He’s really got the mind of a junior scientist and I’m going to love teaching him more and more about the world (and universe) around us.
Aloha Friday: Farewell, Netflix DVDs
After Netflix shot itself in the foot repeatedly, we began to reassess our subscription. I still think that both the streaming and mailed DVD offerings are nice. I like the immediacy of streaming and the depth of their DVD selection. However, given the recent price hike combined with economic circumstances, we just couldn’t keep both. In the end, we decided to keep streaming (for now) and get rid of our DVD queue. (We’ll just rely more on free DVD rentals from our local library.)
Although our DVD plan has ended, Netflix allows you to keep your DVDs out for a limited time before sending them back. Currently, we have Captain America: The First Avenger and one of the Batman: The Animated Series DVDs. By Saturday, we should be done with these and ready to send them back. Then, our mail will no longer see any of those little red envelopes. Part of me is really sad about this.
My Aloha Friday question for today is: Do you subscribe to a DVD rental service (either Netflix or some other? If Netflix, has the recent price increase made you change your subscription?
P.S. Happy 111111 Day. Or, if you know binary, Happy 63 Day!
P.P.S. If you haven’t already, go visit FollowerHQ and let me know what you think of my Twitter application.
Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.
Aloha #113
DVR With a Mind of Its Own
Our DVR has really changed how we watch TV. In the dark ages, aka the days of the VCR, if we wanted to record a show we needed to first find a VCR tape with enough space for the show. Then, we needed to set the time and day. After recording, when we wanted to watch our shows, we would need to remember which tapes held which shows and then would need to fast-forward to just the right spot to begin our show. If we completed a show in the middle of the tape, we often needed to wait for more shows before and after it to be watched before the tape could be reused. It was so inconvenient that we would often simply opt not to watch a show at all.
When we got the DVR, that all changed. We could pick a show to record from a listing, hit record and have it ready to go. We could even tell the DVR to record all new episodes of a particular show. When we were ready to watch, there was no tape-position-juggling. We just selected it from the list and we were watching it. When we were done, we could just hit delete and the space was available for new shows to record.
Recently, however, our DVR has developed a mind of its own. It started slowly, recording a rouge program here or there. It wasn’t consistent and, frankly, I thought it was NHL trying to record new shows to watch. Then, the DVR began recording old episodes of shows when we had told it to only record new episodes. Finally, it started branching out into completely new shows. The shows wouldn’t appear in any listing, but would wind up being recorded anyway.
I’m not too sure what our options are. Check that. I know exactly what our option is and I don’t like it. We’ve had DVRs go bad before and they were replaced. This is nice, but it means that we lose all of the recordings that we had before. Apparently, there is no way to transfer them from one box to another and no way to export them.
I’m not worried about the average recorded show, but there are some recordings on there that have sentimental value. Things that won’t ever be replayed, released on DVD or streamed via Roku. I’d rather not lose those if at all possible.
So, until we figure out a solution, it looks like we’ll have to put up with our crazy DVR.
Wii Bowling Revenge
On Saturday, while B was at a family function, NHL and JSL asked if they could play Nintendo Wii with me. I agreed and tried to think of a game that would be good for JSL to play. He doesn’t quite get the game controls all the time and this can frustrate him. That’s when I remembered Wii Bowling.
When we got our Nintendo Wii, back in 2007, Wii Sports was the first game we played. It was, after all, included with the console. I’ve loved bowling since I was a kid so I took to the bowling game right away. NHL, then 4 years old, had some initial difficulty with the controls but soon learned. Pretty soon, he was bowling scores that he couldn’t get in a real bowling ally with bumpers on!
Fast forward to Saturday. I located the Wii Sports disc and loaded up Wii Bowling. I explained to JSL how to bowl and off we went. JSL, understandably, had a lot of trouble. He got frustrated quite a few times, but kept at it. In the end, he bowled a 72. NHL, meanwhile, stunned me. While I bowled a respectable 113, NHL crushed me by bowling a 156!
That’s ok, though. The next day, we had a rematch. JSL didn’t fare as well, dropping to a 58. NHL also dropped to a 95. I, however, increased my score to a 173.
I don’t think I need to worry about being beaten by NHL just yet, but he’s improving rapidly. By this time next year, he might just be beating me regularly. And, if he is any guide, I don’t have many more years of being able to beat JSL. Five years from now, I might be posting about how we dusted off the old Nintendo Wii and both of my boys beat me at Wii Bowling.