What is making you happy right now

[Khendraja'aro]

Liked that one:

In light of your failure to financially manage yourselves and inability to effectively govern yourselves responsibly, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. (You should look up ‘revocation’ in the Oxford English Dictionary.)
Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).
Your new Prime Minister, David William Donald Cameron, will appoint a Governor for the former United States of America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated sometime next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

[Khendraja'aro]

So, my ISP rolled out IPv6. During the last two weeks I noticed connection issues during the day - massive lag spikes, disconnections and whole areas of the net not reachable.

However, I also discovered that only sites with a dual stack of IPv6 and IPv4 were making problems. Sites with IPv4 worked fine.

Thus I discovered that when I pinged Google through IPv6 that the site was unreachable - either my router or the server directly behind my modem-router simply swallowed all packets. After a reset it would work again. During that time, I was able to ping Google through IPv4, however.

So I called my ISP and asked for my connection to be reverted to IPv4 only. They just did that and now my connection is flying again - seriously, before the sites were loading fast but connecting took its sweet time. Now? I type in an adress and off we go.

[Ominous Gamer]

I'm conflicted on this, but still...

We got our youngest daughter into a preschool. The largest full day preschool in Florida. Voted and rated one of the best schools in the area/state. Waiting lists months long, smart boards, CDA teachers and assistants, yoga, tennis, tumbling classes. This place is crazy impressive.

Its a private school, Jewish connections. The families there are old, connected and fucking rich; like parents paying to have hot lunches delivered to their kids instead of packing food. Tuition is a grand a month (thankfully not for us). Kids are dropped off and picked up by nannies or trophy wives. Parents take turns throwing friday pizza parties.

Its going to be surreal having scarlett rub elbows with this crowd.

[GGT]

Why would you want your daughter to attend a school that you paint so badly?

[Ominous Gamer]

Its the clientele that own that picture. The school and teachers are as I said "crazy impressive." This school, and its consolidated collection of wealth, power, and success is the type of place I rail against in our public school/funding threads.

and yet they extended an invitation to my family, largely because of our connections (irony?), and i can't turn it down. I'm just going to shut up and ride it out.

[GGT]

Seriously, though. Your daughter sounds bright and precocious and the kind of child that would thrive with full-day preschool, even though your wife is a stay-home mom, and provides child care services to other peoples' kids.

You added some bullet words in your post, related to religion and income. Sounds like a JCC endeavor....but why couldn't it also be a YMCA/YWCA, Catholic or Protestant church, or Montessori option? Doesn't * Florida * have those things?

[Ominous Gamer]

Brandy does the job thing now. Part of the reason we came into this opportunity.

There are plenty of places that offer preschool/VPK/headstart services. Very few of them in a school setting. Which is why Scarlett wasn't yet enrolled in a different church or YMCA location. She was on the list for a public school for next year.

Only a handful of the students of the school she will be attending are in Jewish families.

[GGT]

Ah, yeah it makes a difference when both parents are working. It's surprising that few Preschools have a "school setting", in a state as large as Florida, or maybe I don't know what you meant by that.

Does the place get state or federal funding, or will your tuition be 'subsidized' by the wealthy families or some kind of trust fund? Just curious.

[Ominous Gamer]

Im assuming its the wealthy families, but we didn't pry. We both work with people who are connected to the school, but it was the director who approached us and offered to see if Scarlett was qualified.

on a different note, read this in the guardian today
Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming

[GGT]

Im assuming its the wealthy families, but we didn't pry. We both work with people who are connected to the school, but it was the director who approached us and offered to see if Scarlett was qualified.

Qualified how? By some sort of IQ test for 5 year olds....or by family income? I wouldn't call it "prying" to ask the school how they base their admissions or tuitions.

[Ominous Gamer]

More of an interview/test run between her, the teachers, and the director. Make sure she was mentally and socially able to integrate into the classroom a full quarter into the school year.
I have no idea how much was standard ass kissing and how much was truth, but she blew them away with her social skills and ability to ability to hold a conversation.

tuition is rate flat, or supposed to be . We're paying half the part time rate, which makes it only slightly more than a daycare would charge. No idea how many families are accept at that.


Murphy's Law. I pay the car off in 2 days, and that money is now earmarked for this.

[wiggin]

[BalticSailor]

NSFW-ish, at least the video.
http://amandapalmer.net/blog/20130713/

[Echovirus]

NSFW-ish, at least the video.
http://amandapalmer.net/blog/20130713/

I remember watching that on YouTube. Absolutely hilarious.

[GGT]

The Amazing Rabbis Singing Simon and Garfunkel

Good stuff.

I'm happy that my son had a good gig tonight (stand up comedy) and came home beaming. There was a young woman that flirted with him before he took the stage, then started to heckle him during his performance. He figured out a way to incorporate her increasing drunkenness, without humiliating her, or changing his entire act. Mastering that kind of audience 'crowd control' is apparently harder than writing or telling jokes.

[RandBlade]

I'm conflicted on this, but still...

We got our youngest daughter into a preschool. The largest full day preschool in Florida. Voted and rated one of the best schools in the area/state. Waiting lists months long, smart boards, CDA teachers and assistants, yoga, tennis, tumbling classes. This place is crazy impressive.

Its a private school, Jewish connections. The families there are old, connected and fucking rich; like parents paying to have hot lunches delivered to their kids instead of packing food. Tuition is a grand a month (thankfully not for us). Kids are dropped off and picked up by nannies or trophy wives. Parents take turns throwing friday pizza parties.

Its going to be surreal having scarlett rub elbows with this crowd.

Why would you want your daughter to attend a school that you paint so badly?

Wait, what!?

Yoga, tennis, tumbling classes, seriously impressive etc ... how is that painted badly? Sounds amazing and happy your daughter can go there Minous

Some parents may be eccentric but that will be the same in any (pre-)school. Only thing that varies is the type of eccentricity and there are worse types of eccentricity that you can rub against than nannies.

[Aimless]

When I was a little boy, I really wanted to be a pilot. As dreams go, it wasn't a lasting or particularly important one, but, every once in a while, it comes back to haunt me and I think, "Man it'd be nice to be able to fly." I'm near-sighted, have astigmatism, am afraid of heights and of going too fast, and I have recently become reacquainted with the motion-sickness that used to plague me as a child.

Yesterday a colleague and his gf took me and the missus up in a tiny plane for a short flight over the coastline and it was SO NICE. You could really feel everything, really feel like you were high up in the sky surrounded by nothing but a great deal of space, feel the effect of the wind etc. We stayed somewhere around 2000ft, and maybe around 115mph on average. I got a little woozy towards the end but other than that it was very lovely there wasn't too much turbulence, and what little there was was manageable. No advanced maneuvers thankfully We got to help get the plane in order and then put it away, learned a few very basic things about taking off and landing and aircraft maintenance, and the missus got to steer the plane for a little while.

I feel like we don't try out new things nearly as often as we'd really like. Think it might be time to go through the many vouchers we've gotten over the past year for various fun "experiences"

[Khendraja'aro]

Yeah, one of my physics tutors once took me up in his tiny plane, too. Had a bit more turbulence, though, and the wind shear on the runway meant that we had to land at a 45 degree angle to the runway. Very disconcerting.

[Ominous Gamer]

Wait, what!?

Yoga, tennis, tumbling classes, seriously impressive etc ... how is that painted badly? Sounds amazing and happy your daughter can go there Minous

Some parents may be eccentric but that will be the same in any (pre-)school. Only thing that varies is the type of eccentricity and there are worse types of eccentricity that you can rub against than nannies.

I'm not painting the school badly, I'm commenting on the fact of so much wealth concentrated in the hands of so few, and further concentrated on the kids. This isn't about people being eccentric (although the trophy wives [and 1 husband so far] aren't exactly hard to point out), at 4 years old most children haven't knowingly fell into that privileged and pampered mindset. The nannies are a symptom, not a cause; we've only heard a few kids bust out lines like "you can't tell me what to do!"

But you can't ignore the huge gulf between the haves and the have-nots, I've never seen it at such extremes in person. Daughter's already been asked if she will be going to the Halloween party at the Yacht Club As a have-not, being around such taken for granted wealth at a young age can cause social and mental development issues down the road if its not properly addressed.

[Enoch the Red]

I'm not painting the school badly, I'm commenting on the fact of so much wealth concentrated in the hands of so few, and further concentrated on the kids. This isn't about people being eccentric (although the trophy wives aren't exactly hard to point out), at 4 years old most children haven't knowingly fell into that privileged and pampered mindset. The nannies are a symptom, not a cause; we've only heard a few kids bust out lines like "you can't tell me what to do"

Erm, I don't think you have to go to the most elite, expensive schools to find kids who say, "You can't tell me what to do!"

[Ominous Gamer]

hehe, nope not at all, but this is the first time I've heard it from children this young. Usually takes years of nanny or stand-offish raising before they catch that type of attitude.

[Flixy]

Someone made a N64 emulator for raspberry pi - it doesn't work for many games but Mario kart works well! Plus my controllers came back from repair, so that'll be fun to play when I have people over

[GGT]

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...ed=0CC0Q9QEwAA

wow, didn't realize that had so much 'code'....but it make me laugh.

[Aimless]

OMG OMG OMG

I've had a few fun but extremely tough weeks on the ward but now it feels like most investigations are falling into place, we've got a handle on the situation, and I can relax a little

AND

the wedding video is finally almost ready

We got to relive the day a little through the trailer... if I may, please let me humbly present

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf5ULwN7mLQ

Anyone know what the song is? I didn't like it at first but it's really grown on me

[Ominous Gamer]

Martin Halla - Illuminate The Sky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NFv_Ak4fyM

and that wedding was way more culture than I was expecting

[Lewkowski]

8 days off of work is making me happy.

[RandBlade]

Just heard they're making a Gotham TV Series set pre-Batman and centring on Gordon. That sounds cool!

[Hazir]

Just made pumpkin soup for the very first time in my life. And it turned out delicious

[GGT]

Nutmeg, cinnamon, brown sugar, allspice, pumpkin -- great flavors mixed with dairy. Was your soup served hot or cold? I love cold pumpkin pie, but wouldn't touch a cold pumpkin soup...no matter what the foodies say!

[Ominous Gamer]

I just got a check from EA for $163 concerning the Pecover Vs Electronic Arts settlement (EA's monopoly on sports titles)