I came home from work early on Halloween to help with Trick-or-Treating visitors, a curfew meant an early start for most kids. Avery was already dressed as Superman, and Diana had sprayed his hair into the trademark curl. Avery was very excited to tell me something: reaching up he patted his head, feeling teh slight stiffness of the hairspray, and announced “I have Grandma’s hair!”
We’re starting to get into a Halloween tradition with the pumpkins. This year wasn’t as elaborate as last year, but still fun. First, last year’s pumpkins:
That’s the Superman logo (of course) and Agatha Heterodyne. This year we used two store-bought patterns:
and three patterns I made up
Those are Ang from Avatar: The Last Airbender, which the kids love, Pikachu from Pokémon, and, of course, the cover of Action Comics 1, which introduced Superman.
A bit of a difficulty this week. I keep our wireless access unencrypted because it makes life easier for visiting friends and the kid’s video games. I figure the occasional external access isn’t that big a deal, but keep an eye on usage just to be sure. Oh, and I named the access point “Network Virus” to scare off the less technically adept.
Well, this week I noticed a lot of wireless activity. Logs showed it was one or two people with a Mac and another unidentified computer. Activity was pretty regular, and light. Normally not a problem since I don’t mind people who need a little access doing so, but there is always the worry of getting blamed for an illegal activity. At least the low packet rate suggested no file sharing going on.
So this lit a fire under my butt and I finally got around to putting a transparent proxy in (it’s only been on the drawing board for two years). So next time a wireless system connected I watched the logs. There was nothing untoward, but the sites visited suggested a technically savvy person (well, somewhat — Wired?).
Given that, I figured the hookup was probably a mistake. I renamed the network to “This is being logged” and used squid redirect to get the person’s attention. It didn’t seem to work (or may have been too subtle) since they logged in to check e*bay a few hours later (though there was evidence the two computers are the same person since five minutes after the PC logged out the Mac attached and tried the same address).
Now, I’m not trying to be a jerk. If this really is their only way to access the internet, I don’t want to block it. But at the same time, I’d really like to know who it is so that I can redirect the police if they show up at my door. At least a promise to not do anything illegal and an actual request to use the connection would be nice.
So, I’m not being subtle this time. Everything will be redirected here for a while (at least until the next time they connect) and based on the reaction I’ll either rest easy that the neighbors just need a hookup, or I’ll lock out wireless. I realize if the person is a total a*hole I’m opening myself up to attack, but I’m assuming it was just a simple piggyback and no harm was meant.
Chesta headed home today after a week-long visit. She had come up for the Eagle Scout ceremony (which both she and Diana described as amazing) and Victoria’s christening. This morning we sent the kids to school, I got a few pictures on the new camera, and then drove to the airport. Traffic was a bit slow but in general it went smoothly and we got there an hour and twenty minutes before take-off instead of the hour and a half that we were supposed to do.
No phone call yet, so I’m guessing it worked out anyway.
Today Diana came upstairs to get Victoria and she had rolled over. She did this once before, but it was obviously just a coincidence from random motion. This time she did it in the bassinet, which means she did it on purpose since there isn’t enough room to do it by accident.
This morning Victoria was baptized. The house was bedlam getting ready, then a great rush to church. We met Rachel and Tom, fresh off the plane, just as they arrived. The ceremony itself went well and Rachel taped it. Michael and Ruth Ann Sauter have been pretty excited about being the godparents, so I hope the actual ceremony wasn’t a let-down. Victoria was her usual good self and didn’t even whimper through the whole thing, she even smiled as grandpa took hold of her (not so much when he poured water over her head — but she did stick her hand in the bowl).
After the ceremony was a nice coffee hour with bagels and cake followed by a reception at my parent’s house. Claire was a bit upset she couldn’t play outside in her dress, she got over it. Both kids were happy to see Rachel, and It was nice seeing Tom again. It’s always fun to talk with him, but I worry I monopolize conversation — a bad habit from when I was a child and everyone ignored my attempts to talk, now I tend to be persistent even when people do listen.
After the party we helped clean up and relaxed a bit before Rachel and Tom headed back to Boston. Diana had promised the kids Aqua-Dots for being good, but unfortunately the toy store was closed before we headed home. I have to figure out how to get the program complete tomorrow and still have time to rush out and get some for them. I also have a strong suspicion they will not live up to the hype on T.V.
I told Avery that he didn’t have school tomorrow because of Columbus day, and he asked what that was. I explained about Columbus, and the queen of Spain, going to China and finding America by accident. I finished by saying he kept searching for China, but only discovered more of America*.
Avery put on his sad face “He didn’t discover me.”
“No,” I agreed, “that was a long time ago.”
Avery thought for a while and made a decision. “So tonight, when all the children go to sleep Columbus will come to their houses and discover them. And then tomorrow will be a holiday.”
* To all those who argue Columbus didn’t discover America because people already lived there, I’d like to point out this lovely little restaurant I discovered, even though the owner was quite aware of its location.
Last night was pretty tough on the whole family. Just as Diana and I were heading off to bed, Claire came downstairs and sat on the floor in the bathroom. When I asked her what was wrong she said she felt like throwing up. After loosing yet another throw of rock-paper-scissors I was on duty. An hour later I was still on duty, so Claire got a bowl just in case and went to bed.
She wanted a sippy, and when I returned she threw up over the bed and floor. I got the bowl under her and she went into the hall while I cleaned up (lots of paper towels and dragging both comforters to the laundry room).
At my prompting Claire went down to brush her teeth (always do this after vomiting — it can destroy your teeth) and threw up again in the toilet. An hour later she had thrown up two more times. That’s when Diana woke up again.
Claire went to bed and so did we. Then Avery came in twenty minutes later complaining about the noise. It was Claire throwing up for a fifth time. Frankly I’m amazed she had anything left, but a little of dinner did come up. At this point it was 1 A.M.
Avery woke me again at 2:15 asking what the name of the music in his head was. I couldn’t help.
He woke again at 3:00 complaining that he wanted his smell back. I don’t even think he knew what that was. I got back to sleep about 3:30 and told Diana I was pretty much finished. Diana says Avery and Claire managed to wake her up three times before she woke me up at 6:30 to feed Victoria.
So yeah, a bad night for everyone.
Had an emergency meeting with Claire’s principal today. He’s an old family friend, so it wasn’t a hostile one, but the problem was serious. The story was told to us by Claire, but confirmed by her classmate Genia.
Apparently the cafeteria had been acting up during lunch yesterday, and when dismissal was called, only Claire followed procedure. The person on duty decided to punish the whole cafeteria (130 children in second and third grade) by making them sit at recess for five minutes while Claire played in the playground.
I admitted to him the absurdity of parents coming in to complain that their child wasn’t unfairly punished, but he isn’t stupid and understood immediately why what happened was a horrible mistake. 130 angry children punished by being forced to watch our daughter play in the playground? As Diana said, it’s almost Lord of the Flies level of twisted. Who was getting punished?
Claire is still oblivious to what happened, and in a week or so we’ll see if it blows over or blows up, but either way we needed to find out what the #%$@# they were thinking.
Update: Apparently they weren’t thinking at all.
Diana heard back from the principal and it turns out Claire’s description was accurate. The aides actually thought they were rewarding Claire for her good behavior.
Once again it is confirmed: no good deed goes unpunished.
Last night was Avery’s open house at school. Noni watched the kids while we toured the school, met his teachers, and saw what he was doing. Some stuff was pretty well on target, and some seemed horribly below his current development. Hopefully they can keep the alphabet stuff interesting for a kid who already knows his phonics, especially since he’s known the alphabet for about two years at this point.
The teachers were nice, and since the BOCES school is actually based in a real school the facilities are great.