Bassoon

E played her bassoon at the band fund raiser yesterday.  Lot of cool performances.  This isn't the actual graded competition, but that's coming soon.



And a video...because it's better with actual bassoon...

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

Last night Kyle, Eryn, and I went to see The 36th Chamber of Shaolin at the Trylon as part of their Shaw Brothers series.  I asked them to do a Shaw Brother series back when they were looking for showing input, but I think this is entirely attributable to one of the staff who's a fan. 

Eryn and I went to Northbound Smokehouse and Brewpub for dinner first.  She'd never been there and her opinion is the wing skin is a little more jerky-like.  Which I prefer.  But she does not.  So Buster's is still her optimal hang out in that area.  I told her next time we should try the Howe.

The movie was great.  I hadn't watched this particular one, although I've seen a lot of Shaw Brothers via Netflix.  It had a bit of a Game of Death feel to it with "levels" and Game of Death predates it by 6 years (1972 versus 1978), so maybe there's some pollination.  However, unlike Game of Death, the main character San Te isn't fighting enemies as he advances, he's learning specific Shaolin fighting skills and toughing up parts of his body.  Every time he makes use of his tougher noggin skills in actual combat the film focuses in on it, sometimes even in bit of slow mo, so you realize he's using something he learned.  Kyle called it the longest training montage ever in a movie, and that's a good summary.  80% training montage followed by 15% showing students the benefits of his training montage, followed by 5% using his training to defeat some bad people (although leaving the killing up to his students, one who wants to hack a guy with a sword 1000 times, but sort of wears out after a dozen).

Data Science Essentials in Python

I was looking for a programming book my daughter and I could work on together, so we're going to tackle the one I got in 2016 that I had to forgo in March when things started to fall apart: Dmitry Zinoviev's Data Science Essentials in Python published by Pragmatic Programmer.  I made it through a few of the use cases and I think it will be a good book for daddy/daughter coding time.  Not to mention I can piggy back off some of it for Python for kids revamping for next summer which I just haven't found time to rewrite although it desperately needs it to make it more hands on, even though the focus is Python + Turtle so there's graphical feedback.

It's strange, but there are no reviews on Amazon.  I made it through the first few chapters Q1 2016 and I remember it being basic, but beyond simple Python, and the examples required quite a bit of thinking and independent research (parsers, etc), making it a great little textbook.  I'm hoping it'll spur some conversation while we code because that's really what most (collaborative) coding is about in my experience.  Yesterday, "What is Data Science."  Today, "Hello ."

Camp Innovation

Eryn's been in camp for two weeks in a row.  She spent one week at my workplace for a corporate-sited Camp Innovation.  I don't know what was going on in my head. I thought it was a girls' only coding camp.  I suspect I got my camps all mixed up.  So she was a bit disappointed that was NOT what it was.  But she had fun anyway.  A lot of kids she knew were there from school, and she met the kids of some of my other coworkers, including one who has a shared passion for Five Nights at Freddy's.  Her project was FNaF focused and was a box that allowed you to take a one-question quiz and it would play theme music using the basic-driven processing board they were given.  So there was some coding, just not along the lines of Java or Ruby.

Here are kids.  I had a chance to talk to some of them during a panel where we talked about what it was like to work in technology.  I talked to them about the meaning of the word "done" and how getting agreement on things was an important part of technology projects.  My example was to talk to their parents about what "done" meant in the context of their chores to them, to their friends, and to different adults.  I suspected no one would agree.  So imagine what it's like with a project with hundreds of people.

One of them (sibling of one of Eryn's schoolmates) made a Tardis nighlight that would come on when the sensor detected the lights were out (waving your hand over it, for instance).  Very neat.  A lot of cars.  And one kid wrote a program for presenting a series of numbers and you had to guess the next one.  It would have been more interesting if he could have presented multiple series, but he had the direction right.


Here's Eryn explaining her project to a parent and to my skip boss.  The piece of paper is to magnify the soundtrack.  Amusingly, only one of her buttons - the correct choice - was wired up.  I thought at first that her program would evaluate yes or no, but that would have simply been wasted effort for her scope.  Easier not to wire them in the first place.  That's a good lesson for me and my software teams.


And here she with her FNaF box, all smiles after a week of Innovation, Caribou in the mornings, and slowing fermenting children (a lot of sweat being generated in that room).

Ramen

Tuesday was the laser tag and ramen stage of Eryn's spring staycation.  We went over to Grand Slam and I read David Duchovny's book about cows while she spent three hours laser tagging, using the batting cage, and playing skee ball.  The place was absolutely mobbed with children and I swear the smelliest ones (including one smelly father) felt it necessary to sit in my space.

Here's Eryn hitting some balls.


Not the best form, but she connected with a lot of them.  So good hand-eye coordination.  That wasn't always the case.


Afterwards, we drove up into Minneapolis to enjoy some Ramen (Dramen - half and half, black and pork) at United Noodles.  Best part about not showing up until closer to 3:00 p.m. is there was no line to speak of.  We got our bowl immediately.  I ate 95% broth and 5% noodles.  She ate 95% noodles and 5% broth.  We were both happy.  I took my Firefly hoodie off in advance to avoid any ramen splatter.  I learned something important last time.


I didn't have a picture of Eryn with her noodles, but I do have an older picture at United.  I'll admit to it, because that's obviously not dramen (1/2 and 1/2) in the bowl.


We also picked up some microwave/stoptop ramen that won't burn my mouth with the spices and a package of green tea Kit Kats.  Damn things cost $8.99 a bag.  Green gold.


And then we spun by Coastal just because I've always meant to go and never have (and it gave us a chance to put down the top on the car).  Seems like an obvious place to go for crab legs and sushi-quality fish, although we weren't in the market for anything at the time.

So much damn work...and Eryn plays soccer at age 9

I have a handycam that's as old as my daughter.  A little older because we bought it to film her, so it's easy to determine an age.  That makes it old tech with it's hi8 tapes and firewire and subpar USB that records video but not sound, which I could probably fix with multiple wires, but that seems fraught with all sorts of other issues.  There was a time, many many years ago - more than half a decade - when the firewire worked and I copied over some of the videos directly.  But now the firewire doesn't work and, as near as I can tell, it's that it simply refuses to work with the "newer" version of Windows XP on the similarly old desktop machine and the Win7 laptop doesn't support firewire at all (without a converter).  I thought perhaps it was just the firewire or me, but there's a lot of noise out there about SP2 for XP shutting down firewire for folks.  So how to get videos off the two dozen tapes of Eryn we have and onto the web or at least somewhere we can store them as we don't know how long the tapes will last.

My process.

1.) Hook up the handycam to the DVD-R recorder.  Fortunately the DVD recorder has an HDMI connection and I have piles of DVDs I intend never to use.

2.) Replace the battery in the remote because the DVD recorder is unusable without a remote.  2b.) determine that the appropriately-company-labeled remote you put a new CR 2025 battery into is NOT the correct remote.  It's the remote for a very old portable DVD player that no longer exists or that's squirreled away somewhere.  Find the right remote.  It never needed a new battery.

3.) Hook up the handycam to the DVD recorder and hook up the DVD recorder to the TV for visual detail.  Play and record at real time.  15 minutes for this video.  An hour for most of them.

4.) Finalize the DVD.  Have to look up how to do it because it involves pushing stop, then up or down, then finding finalize.  If it's not finalized, it doesn't seem to work in a PC drive.

5.) Haul the DVD with the .VOB files on it upstairs to the Win7 laptop.  I could haul the laptop down, but it too is showing it's age and the battery is all but gone.  Still, I might do that going forward to save the walking involved.  Who wants to walk up and down the stairs?

6.) Drag the .VOB file/s into Windows Live Movie Maker.

7.) If there's only a 15 minute file all about one topic, then it's not so bad.  The resulting WMV is huge - I did HD first and it was a gig and climbing at 50% - about 550 megs for 15 minutes, but it's all one process and you can walk away and do something else.  If it's a LOT of clips, then you have two options.  a.) start and stop the DVD recorder + camcorder as they're running to generate multiple VOB files.  Or b.) Once the file is in Moviemaker cut and paste and edit repeatedly to generate multiple clips.

8.) When it's edited and the WMV is generated, upload to somewhere.  Don't keep 24 tapes x 2 gigs on the laptop - that starts to get a little full.  The system is screaming for remote backup or backup to an array.  Or, and I feel this is the right way to go, a new desktop with 2 gigs off storage so I can centralize, decommission, and back up from one location.

9.) Review the details on Youtube after 2 hours of uploading for one file.  I did learn when I put times in the YouTube description, such as 14:00, it'll autolink to those times.  My wife made this video and at 15 minutes, there are only really three places Eryn has a big part, one of them right at the end (about minutes 14 when she's scored against).

Daddy Daughter Work Week

Eryn is at work this week for an Eagan TV class in the basement. We hang out in the morning and eat donuts from the treat list box, drink coffee and coffee-like cooler drinks, and she reads while I try to make it through the 80 pieces of email I get between 6:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.  She also drew me this parade of cats on one of my white boards.

During standup, one of my leads told me he saw her in the entry way and said hi.  And then he added, and Diane's daughter.  And then he added, well not just her, all the little girls, together.  And then he stopped to ponder what he was saying and said, "Now I sound like some sort of predator.  I'm just going to shut up."

Acting Class

Eryn's acting class is closing in on being over.  She's been at the Children's Theater Company taking a Percy Jackson-based class.  They've been learning to deliver monologues and lines from the book.  It's aimed at 3-5th graders, so I think it may be a bit on the young side for her, but a good way to get her toes wet.  The next class is aimed at 6-8th graders and focuses on tools of acting, so she's going to have to buckle down a bit.  If she's serious about acting, then by next summer (not the upcoming one, 2015) she should be capable of auditioning.

Thursday lessons have been a good daddy-daughter time.  I get out of work an hour early (dubious - it's still after 8.5 hours - it's just not keeping to "core hours") to pick her up at school, catch a Slim 5 at Jimmy John's sandwiches, and then get to the MIA to hang for a little while over a cup of coffee before class.  I get a lot of reading done while she's in class, at least when the other parents aren't snoring loudly in the parents' lounge.

During one class, they took them all backstage to see how they handle getting people around, accommodating live music, raising parts of the stage, etc.



I spent the time wandering around taking some photos.  If you've been back stage once, you've been backstage a million times.  I'm not sure a professional would agree - but I don't have the background to appreciate the subtleties.  Still, a much better rope setup than in my high school.


How to act like a toy solider.  Just try to find a class that has that sort of versatility.

Eagan TV

Eryn is at local access cable television camp this week.  Yes, that's a thing.  And it's not hosted by Viva and Jerry.  It's with Eagan TV and they spend the week writing scripts, acting, learning to use the professional cameras, and learning the tricks of good filming.  Eryn is doing something that involves a gold jelly bean, a Nerf sword, someone turning into a hotdog, and ninjas.  I think.

It's been fun having her at my workplace, as the cable tv folks operate out of donated space in our lower level.  She and I have coffee together in the morning (Snow Drift blended drink for her, white chocolate, no whip) and hang out while I work before she starts class.  When I was walking across the skyway that connects two of our buildings, they were outside practicing posing.  Eryn's in the red shirt near the tree.  Tomorrow they all get interviewed and film interviews with other classmates.  She's been having a great time.

Helen Keller

Mostly for the folks in case they haven't seen it.  Eryn as Helen Keller.



Image what would it would be like to be blind and deaf. My name is Helen Keller and I have not been able to see or hear nearly my entire life.  I was born June 27, 1880, in a town in Northern Alabama called Tuscumbia.

The Wax Museum Walk showing all the characters in the event.

Eryn and I go to Denver and Sidney...Her Report, 2 Years Later

I found this on my iPad today when I was taking notes.  I noticed there were a few things that were something like 767 days old.  That's weird to see.  Makes it seem like it happened forever ago.  One of the documents was Eryn's homework for her teacher explaining what we had done on our vacation to Denver and then driving her Great Grandma back to Sidney.  She did a pretty good job for typing on an iPad on a train in the middle of the night with an ear ache when she was barely eight.

Five days ago,my Dad and I flew to Denver,Colorado.  We met my grandma, grandpa and great grandma at the hotel La Quinta once we got in Denver.  We took a shuttle to get to get to the hotel.  I walked my great grandma's dog and after we went to Oskar Blues for lunch.  After that my Dad tried to go on a beer tour at a place called the tasty weasel but you could not go on tours on Easter.  The next day my dad got to go on the beer tour  at Great Divide.  I liked to watch the bottling machine then we went to Casa Bonita for lunch. I got a flasher when we where there.  We also saw divers at Casa Bonita. 

The next day we said bye to my grandma and grandpa we drove, and drove stopped for lunch drove some more and got to Hot Springs.  For dinner we went to All Star and the wings were the best ever!  We got a room at a Best Western and I got to swim!  The next day we went to the Mammoth Site.  We saw mammoth bones,tusks,and teeth. 

We also saw a sink hole inside the building.  I got a stuffed mammoth there and then we drove lots more and got to Medora.  I got a dragon in Medora.  We stayed at the Badlands hotel.  They had a really cool mini golf course that unfortunately I did not get to play on.the next day we got to sidney,montana and to my great grandma's trailer.  Later we set up my great grandma's garden.  We slept in her fold-out bed and then at five p.m. We went to the train station and my great grandma drove back to her trailer.we got in our sleeper car at seven,had dinner with another family,and then went back to our car.   

I played with Ipad for little while then went to bed,woke up in the middle of the night with an earache,went to the bathroom,my dad and I went to the View car, went back to our car,and went to sleep.  When I woke up my ear was all better and we went to breakfast with another person and then we went back to our car,got our stuff,and got off the train in st.paul.

Then and Now - Daddy Daughter Dance

I went to the Eagan Daddy Daughter Dance on Friday night.  This year, Eryn and I volunteered and took charge of the coloring station, setting out various drawings to color, welcoming girls and their fathers to the station, and making sure crayons were available.  We also did some dancing, coloring of our own, and had our picture taken.  Being volunteers meant we ran later than in past years and helped to clean up the tables and mess, but Eryn is older, so she managed just fine.  After the dance, we replaced the Daddy Daughter Dance photo on the fridge.  I thought it was the picture from last year at first, but turns out it's the picture from 2010.

Here's the 2010 version.  Eryn much younger.  Me much heavier.  Last year I had to ditch that suit and find a new one that was significantly smaller.  Eryn loved that cloth flower - she still points them out when she sees them in stores, as recently as last week when we saw them in the fruit and vegetable area at Cub Foods.

And here we are this year.  I'm getting shorter.  And thinner.  And wrinklier.  And balder.  It's a year for superlatives.  Apparently I'm getting shorter as well, or else Eryn is a bit older.

Why does the British navy have glass bottomed battleships?

So they can see the German aircraft carrier.  It's not looking good for Germany in the Med.  Particularly with every ally on the board hanging out there in some capacity.  If I was a Libyan fighter pilot, I'd be very nervous right about now.  It doesn't look nearly so fortuitous for the allies on the other side of the world.  The navies are gone for the most part, so the US can't back  up the USSR, which has a fairly empty Eastern front.  Going to be a while before things shift that direction, but the Japanese will be land-bound for a while, at least in any significant concentration.

Axis and Allies

Eryn asked me to get out the Axis and Allies game from the closet.  No winner yet.  We played a single round/iteration today.  She told me she wanted to be Germany and Japan.  It's a good opportunity for some World War II history, although so far Japan has waited for the US to come to them and Germany is doing likewise with the USSR and UK.  I think that's going to work fine for Japan, particularly given the amazing number of sixes I seem capable of rolling and Japan's first round acquisition of super subs.  But I have the strong feeling the Nazis will be eating a lot of borscht in a round or two unless they pull a surprise out of their pointy hats.  I wonder if this will change how they perceive of themselves as baddies (Mitchell and Webb).

We're playing the original version and not the Xeno World at War version which I'm more used to, if you consider "used to" to mean that's the version I played 20 years ago.  A few things trip me up, like not being able to place troops anywhere up to the value of the territory, and how battleships sink after just one hit.

Eryn pondering the board.  The picture is from her new room. Pretty cool that she has enough space to set up a gaming table.


Counting her IPC prior to the horrible attack on Japanese ships by the imperialist Americans.  In their defense, she will attack China first.  They didn't achieve much other than a mutual annihilation of boats, but their focus is shipping bombers to London and aiding in the pincer movement to crush Germany.  So things can coast a little for a while in the East.  Sorry, Ming.  You'll have to rely on the Russians, though they don't seem keen to push outside their own borders.


And this is for Kyle.  This isn't staged.  She did manage to keep it through the round which is more than Bill ever managed to do.  I think she'd have kept it even if I wasn't rusty.  I took the bomber out, so there may be a chance to shut it down next round.  It may be a target for the American planes.

Passing the torch (for the tree)

This year Eryn decided she was in charge of setting up the Christmas tree.  She's familiar with the color coding scheme involved in our fauxvergreen, and she's plenty tall, so she didn't want any help. As a bonus, she's much more conscientious about bending the ends of the fronds so they're fluffed out and ornament ready.

Level one!


Getting taller.  The glasses had to come off.


The top!  She does still need the step stool.


The tree.  Not yet finalized.  I'm sure my shoddy lighting work is evident in this picture when you check out all the non-lighted gaps.  Our old lights are slowly burning out and I'm too lazy to fix them by investigating them one at a time, so I moved to some LED lights last night but didn't get enough.  Two strands was at least one strand short, maybe more.  And I still have to remove the old lights.  Some rework is necessary.  But I'm on agile projects, so this is just Iteration 0.

That large package is the very first Christmas present under the tree.  I ordered it early, so now Eryn has to look at it for a month.  It's driving her a bit nuts.

Here's Eryn at work:
and stage 2...

St. Paul T-Shirt and Assholes

I was worried I'd already posted this, but maybe just on Facebook.  Eryn in her St. Paul Police Department t-shirt that I bought from the son of a friend/co-worker.  I guess I can consider the cop a friend, or at least an acquaintance, as I've been to lunch and paintball at his father's island.  The logo might need a little explaining, it means "one ass on the (thin blue) line".  We felt it was still school appropriate, as no one was going to understand it unless they'd read Breakfast of Champions, added here in case you're unfamiliar with the reference:

So yes, in this post there are two pictures of assholes and a picture of my daughter being super cute.

Eryn's Jacket

For my mother.  LissyJo modeling Eryn's new jacket.  The fight between her and my niece over handmedowns that started with the Minnesota Roller Girls t-shirt is apparently going to ramp up considerably for a few years.

Guitar Mash Up

Eryn told her teacher she wanted to play Fun's Some Nights in guitar lessons.


He listened to about 20 seconds and then played Simon and Garfunkel's Cecilia for her.  If your timing is good when you play them both simultaneously, it's a bit hard to tell which one has the foreground.

Who Says

Yesterday, after getting back from St. Peter, we rushed through the burrito line at Chipotle and hurried to The Garage in Burnsville by 7:00 p.m. for Eryn's guitar gig.  When we got there, the parking lot was empty.  We didn't have the details with us so, after testing the door, we drove back home to see what was wrong, assuming we had the wrong location or wrong day.  Instead, we had the wrong time.  I'd told my wife we needed to be back before 7:00 so we could go, but it was practice on Friday at 7:00, the actual performance was at 3:00 p.m.  I felt awful.  If possible, worse so than missing her birthday because I was in a coma.  She looked so sad. It's about the only event I haven't entered into my phone calendar since...I don't know since when. I entered everything into my calendar. And you might think entering 7:00 p.m. into my calendar wouldn't have fixed anything, but it would have forced me to read a bit more carefully.

We went out for ice cream at Ring Mountain to distract her, and it worked a bit, although she was still disappointed. She did sit down and belted out the tune she's been practicing for the last month, "Who Says" by Selena Gomez. I said I wanted to put it online so her cousins could see her play.  Eryn says she wants some voice lessons, but she's doing a great job actually belting out the song and getting some voice behind it, and she gets better as she warms up and relaxes. She's not shirking and mumbling. And it was a performance for guitar, and she's doing great there. I really enjoy watching her fingers as she plays. I'm not very good with a guitar, and I'm jealous of her strumming and how fast she can flip between chords.

I told her that at least she has an easy song to practice for her next performance.

Serial Killer in Training?

I'm not sure what Eryn's up to with all the modeling clay upstairs, but it looks disturbingly like some collection you'd see in an episode of Dexter.  Trophy fingers.