It’s Camp Time

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Well, summer camp season officially dawned for us this morning.  Celeste and I got up at 5:00 to roust our oldest child Michael from bed so we could drive him to Appalachian State University for a four day camp that focuses on forensic science.  Essentially it’s a "CSI" camp, and after seeing the agenda I’m highly jealous that I don’t get to spend four days at App State studying fingerprints, DNA extraction, arson, etc.

Actually, there’s another very good reason I’m jealous of Michael.  You see when I went to camp it was pretty much all guys.  I went to Wes Unseld’s basketball camp for a week when I was 12 and it was all guys.  I went to Camp Minnehaha in the mountains of West Virginia for a month one summer in my early teen years and it was all guys.  So we’re pulling away from the dorm that Michael’s staying in and what do we see but a boatload of cheerleaders crossing the street on their way to the big athletic field house that happens to be next door to Michael’s dorm.  Michael’s camp coincides with a cheerleader camp!  The boy is 15?!  I’m thinking that DNA extraction might be the last thing he’s thinking about studying.

On the flip side, he’s staying in a dorm room that if I’m any judge is about 25 years old.  No AC, although up in the mountains I don’t think it will be that big a deal, but it still has that old dorm smell.  Think high school football player’s locker at the end of the season and add a touch of river mud and you’ll be close.

Next week our middle child, Erin, leaves for a week long camp that is exactly five minutes from our house.  Not sure if that actually counts as "going to camp" but she’ll be out from under our roof so I guess it should.  Then in the third week of July all three kids will be heading to Laurel Ridge with our church youth group for mission camp.  Who do you think is having a party that week?

links for 2008-06-24

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links for 2008-06-21

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links for 2008-06-20

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Pedal Powered Tennis Ball Launcher

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Some smart people invented a tennis ball launcher that’s powered by pedaling a bicycle.  This speaks to me on so many levels, including my love of tennis, the great deal of time I’ve spent on stationary bikes recently and my love of gadgetry (although I myself struggle to even put together IKEA furniture).  Readers of this blog may remember that I partially tore my LCL about six weeks ago and part of my rehab is pedaling my butt off on a stationary bike.  Well with this gadget I could satisfy my rehab requirements while getting back on the tennis court sooner than planned.  If only I had even an ounce of engineering acumen I’d give this a go.  Here’s the video:


Pedal Powered Tennis – Ball Launcher – video powered by Metacafe

89 and Doin’ Fine

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Ggand89cake
Last night we drove on down to Davidson County where my Grandmother, known to all as GG, is now living in an assisted living facility.  My Aunts put on a surprise party for her to celebrate her 89th birthday and I think she was tickled pink. 

She’s in great health at 89 as evidenced by the fact that she blew all those candles out in one breath.  Losing a great percentage of her eyesight a couple of years back has caused her to change her lifestyle as you might expect, but she soldiers on.  Every year for at least the last 15 she’s thanked everyone for celebrating her "last" birthday with her.  She comes from a long line of women who live longer than Methuselah so we figure we’re going to have her around for at least another 15 years.

Ever since she moved into her current digs GG has complained about the food, but I’ve been informed by my Aunts that despite those complaints she’s managed to put on about 15 pounds (which is a good thing, btw).  She also claims homesickness.  Sounds just like a college freshman doesn’t it?  She really is young at heart.

Happy Birthday GG! 

Just Capitol (Words)

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Don’t have the patience to follow the goings-on on Capitol Hill?  Wouldn’t be caught dead watching C-Span?  Well, here’s the simplest way in the world to know what the hot button issue of the day is, and it will take you all of 5 seconds to use.  It’s CapitolWords, a site that scans the Congressional Record and tallies up all the words used the previous day and then provides the one word used the most.  Today it’s "oil".  Cool thing is it goes all the way back to 2000 so you can see the words that were hottest for the last eight years.

These are the words for the 13 session days of June reported so far:
energy, energy, energy, energy, energy, bush, energy, oil, energy, caribbean, tax, health, oil.  Nine out of thirteen are either energy or oil.  Go figure.

Hat tip to bookofjoe for the lead.

I Loves Me a Good Debate on Illegal Immigration

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I thought I got a lot of comments here for my post Random Stop? until I saw the debate that it provoked on the Chatham County BBS (thanks to Esbee for the tip).  The site’s administrator Gene Galin posted my piece on the BB and it provoked a whole bunch of comments, and I think it’s a good debate that provides a look into the various viewpoints on illegal immigration and how we as a society are dealing with it. 

Some of the comments pointed out that I was probably in Alamance County and not Chatham County and I think they’re right.  I’m not real familiar with that area but I do know where I was in relation to I-40 and upon further inspection it does seem I was in Alamance.  The importance of that detail in the overall debate was highlighted in a post by "belle" that references an article in the Raleigh News & Observer pointing out that Alamance County’s sheriff has been involved longer than any other sheriff in North Carolina in the federal program that provides funding for identifying illegal immigrants that have been arrested for other crimes.  Alamance has had 434 illegal immigrants deported, 64 of whom had been arrested for felonies and 302 for traffic stops.

One of the main questions in my original post was whether or not the feds meant for these funds to be used in this way.  Typically the federal government has not looked kindly on state and local agencies infringing on their territory and I was wondering if the folks at ICE would be happy with this kind of operation.

A second issue that I didn’t articulate well, but came out in the comments, is whether or not it’s a good idea to have traffic stops to identify illegal aliens.  The problem is that there are plenty of Hispanic folks in this country who are here legally and it’s not fair to them to be pulled over and have their residency status checked.  The point is that if you’re going to pull over Hispanics to check status, then you should pull over everyone since there are plenty of illegal immigrants from non-Hispanic countries. 

The police routinely set up roadblocks for a variety of reasons.  Drunk driving checkpoints on New Years Eve, checks of inspection stickers, checks of registration, etc.  No one likes them but I think we all understand them and live with them because we’re all subjected to them.  In my original post I wrote that you could very well say that the checkpoint I drove through was set up for that purpose, and maybe it was.  What seemed off to me was that there were lots of cars pulled to the side when we passed and they were all driven by Hispanics.  It also seemed strange that the sheriff barely glanced at my ID, in fact he never even got close enough to take it out of my hand, and that he didn’t appear to look at my stickers or plates.  I suspect that if I hadn’t been a middle aged white guy with a family, but rather had been a middle aged Hispanic guy with a family I would have been scrutinized much more carefully. 

Lots of issues here that are important: illegal immigration, due process, civil rights and state rights among them.  No easy answers, but then there never are for the truly important things in life.

Ah, Kharma

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Last time I typed and you read I was sitting in O’Hare waiting for my flight home.  I must say that I had an exceptional run of good travel luck over the last 10 days.  I had two business trips, one to San Diego and one to Chicago.  In all I had six flights and in all that only two delays, the longest being about one hour.  On the red eye home from California I had a young mother with a 7-month old baby in her lap sitting next to me and the baby slept the entire trip.  Last night I was crammed into my seat next to a rather large person overflowing from the seat next to mine when the stewardess asked me if I’d like to move three rows back to one of the two empty seats on the whole flight, the other empty seat being the one offered to me.  It’s been years since I’ve been this lucky.

So it should have come as no surprise when I walked in my door last night at 11:30 to find our refrigerator pulled away from the wall and lots of towels on the floor.  It seems that while Celeste and the kids were at the kids’ swim meet last night the water line to the ice maker/water dispenser in the refrigerator had a blow out.  Celeste came home to find water coming out of our basement ceiling and running down the wall just outside our storage closet.  Keep in mind that the drop down ceiling and wall were just added to our basement three months ago when we had it finished.  In other words it’s all brand new.

Shaking my head I made my way back to the bedroom to find Celeste sucking down a glass of red wine.  She took one look at me and said, "I think I need to get drunk."  This from a woman who’s had one too many drinks maybe two times in the 18 years I’ve known her.  She didn’t proceed to get drunk, but she definitely bent my ear about the piece-of-**** refrigerator we bought when we moved here four years ago.

Can’t say I’d argue with her on that point.  The auger that moves the ice from the ice maker to the ice dispenser broke exactly one day after the warranty expired.  Then the motor in the ice maker started making horrific noises so I decided to fix the whole shebang.  I got the motor fixed (see here), but never the auger. It really is a piece of crap.

Funny thing is that the seminar I just attended in Chicago featured two speakers one who works for Whirlpool.  Guess which company manufactured our piece-of-**** refrigerator?  When I get a chance I’m going to type a nice email to send him with some not-so-objective feedback on at least one of his company’s products.

Kharma’s a funny thing isn’t it?