Hayden has been a big fan of Transformers ever since his older cousin had a Transformers birthday party. There he learned all about Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, who are the only Transformers he still knows to date.

We’ve since picked out a few small versions of the above Autobots, for our toy collection. Not full on transforming robots since those were a bit above him at the time, but useful enough to be featured in Hayden’s robot stories.

This past weekend in an attempt to destroy his future sex life (says the guy with several Transformers T-shirts and a 20 year anniversary Optimus Prime. High school’s going to be rough buddy!) I took Hayden to the Transformer’s convention, known as BotCon, which just happened to be located nearby this year.

I learned a lot of things from my first BotCon. First of all, and this is probably true of any sort of fanboyish activity, everyone shows up for when the doors open. It took Hayden and I 40 minutes to get in the door. Miraculously Hayden was patient for the whole ordeal. However, from 20 minutes after we got in and on, there was no line.

The next thing I learned is that the BMI of the average BotCon attendee is…alarming. I don’t want to be judgmental, but it was very eye-opening.

The event was very packed, but everyone was very nice. There were tons of families, a number of vendors selling new and old Transformers (plus one open box of GoBots, wtf?), advertisements, and some artists from Hasbro drawing sketches of characters from the new cartoon.

Hayden wound up getting a personalized sketch of Bumblebee and the big boy versions of Bumblebee and Evac, whereas the other boy in the group got a Grimlock (he’s my favorite).

Part of my night-time ritual with Hayden is cuddling in bed and counting for him.

He answers my question, “How high should I count tonight?” with a variety of responses. Sometimes, I get a number (it has increased each evening… 20 one night, fifty the next, 100 is his max, as I’m not sure he knows that there can be two hundred).

Sometimes, I get a noun… I’ve counted to broom (it comes after thirty) and waterbowl (after fifty).

Tonight I counted to flibbermajug. It comes after ninety.

Earthfall

Nafai’s group finds Earth and more of the never-ending conflict among themselves, as well as more of the mysteries of the Keeper of the Earth.

This is a fairly preachy book, and though the characters are written well, I couldn’t bring myself to love it as much as others in my OSC library. Yes, the concept is interesting… humans 40 million years in the future, returning to Earth, meeting the sentient creatures who have developed in their absence… how does the knowledge that a computer is one of the higher powers in your life make you feel about the unknown power above that? How do slighted people hold on to their anger, causing an ever-present rift in the community?

But it still didn’t sit perfectly with me. Eh.

Kris and I got a date night thanks to Parents’ Night Out at daycare today. We decided to meet after work at Half Price Books. It took a few extra minutes for Kris to get there, and I already had a couple of books in my pile. In the end, I came away with seven new-to-me books (Lady Oracle, The Wreckage of Agathon, Otherness, The Machineries of Joy, The Secret Fruit of Peter Paddington, All the Names, and Death Gets a Time Out. - Atwood I don’t own, Gardner I don’t own, suggested author for those who like OSC, Bradbury I don’t own, clearance shelf, Saramago I don’t own, clearance shelf with the first paragraph about brinner). Kris came away with one. We spent appromixately the same dollar figure.

Kris argues that with the amount of room my books are taking up in living quarters, the size of our next home will need to be adjusted, and therefore, I spent more.

Then, we went to dinner at bd’s Mongolian Grill (beware the sounds of the site). We got there early for our reservation, and got pretty fast service. Both of our first dishes were the best (lamb stir-fry… *drool*), but it was fun to get a crawfish stirfry, too.

Then we went to pick up the boys, both of whom were happy to see us, one of whom wanted to stay at his school longer. I came home with Gabe, got to chat with my mom while Gabe ate, and have already gotten to enter my new books onto librarything.

Now, I think I’ll see if Kris wants to play some RockBand.

To kill time on a call in meeting I decided to deploy my new zombie playthings on my desk. While reorganizing to fit them in I realized that I had 3 foam people branded with the name of my employer and various slogans.

So, naturally I armed them with unfolded paper clips and pushpins and surrounded them with the zombies. To be nice I gave them an arsenal of paper clips to draw upon, though I can’t imagine they’ll last long enough to use the extra ammo.

(Corporate logo ’shopped out to save my job)

This is perfect because it can serve as entertainment and social commentary. To my coworkers the zombies can symbolize corporate greed off shoring our skills to the point where our brains are diminished, and to management the zombies represent our competition or something.

The Ships of Earth

OSC rocks the character world, and I understand that it was the middle of a series. He needed to solidify the paths of the character development, but there wasn’t enough of a mix for me in this.

However, the concept of a computer/God/human relationship trinity is enough to keep me going. The characters know that their most ultimate power is a program. They know that it is man-made… and yet, they can’t let go of their traditions such as referencing it as He or She (depending on the gender of the speaker… men think of the Oversoul as male, women as females).

It’s a bit rare for me to feel only “eh” about a OSC book. I didn’t hate it. I didn’t love it. I’m glad I’m reading the series, but I wonder how necessary it was for this to be a full book.

I don’t think I’m alone in enjoying the brownies that are cut from the edges. They are both less messy and more delicious. Now thanks to the creative geniuses at ThinkGeek no one needs to fight about who gets the edge brownies again.

Behold; The All Edges Brownie Pan!

Finally, we need not dread dessert again.

Seriously though, I want one. I wonder if the available brownie surface area is the same as a standard pan so that standard cooking times still apply.

The site is upgraded and should hopefully be secure now.

Since I had to redo my gallery code I improved it. The old ones still work, but it would have been a pain to write the code to add new ones all over again and integrate it into WordPress.

Luckily with some of the new features in WordPress 2.5 I was able to use somebody else’s gallery code (Smooth Gallery) with some minor modifications.

I upgraded the most recent gallery to use the new code. Take a look and let me know what you think. You’ll be able to leave comments on the gallery or individual pictures now.

Now if I upgrade again I’ll only have to change one function in one class in WordPress, so I’ll be able to stay on top of security updates.

Ralph S. Mouse is a nice break from the other young reader novels that I have been picking up for nursing time with my infant. It isn’t all that consuming, and there were a few moments I found that I was at least chuckling internally.

I might be a fairly strict parent when it comes to words my small children can use, but I found myself cringing as much as chuckling. While there were certainly no words that I wouldn’t say in front of my grandparents, there were uses of other words that I found myself editing. Yes, Cleary grasped how children (and mice?) speak, but in a book attempting to teach lessons, words such as stupid to describe another person seemed out of place.

My coworkers are currently over in India training some new offshore engineers. They’ve sent back a number of pictures, but this one really stuck out.

Also, happy National High Five Day.

Hayden and I have already celebrated.