Thu Feb 02 2012 11:59 easy_install beautifulsoup4: This is an HTMLized version of an email I sent to the Beautiful Soup discussion group, about the impending release of Beautiful Soup 4.

Introduction

When Beautiful Soup was first released in 2004, the state of HTML parsing in Python was appalling. Over the past eight years, things have improved so dramatically that Beautiful Soup's HTML parser is no longer a competitive advantage. I don't want to duplicate other peoples', work, so I'm getting Beautiful Soup out of the parser businesss. Beautiful Soup's job is now to provide a Pythonic screen-scraping API on top of a data structure created by a third-party parser.

This will be Beautiful Soup 4, and I've been planning it for years. With help from Thomas Kluyver and Ezio Melotti, I've now met the three main goals of Beautiful Soup 4:

1. Make a single codebase that works under Python 2 and Python 3.
2. Stop using SGMLParser (removed in Python 3) and make it possible to swap out one parser for another.
3. Support two major Python parsers (lxml and html5lib) as well as Python's (not currently very good) batteries-included parser, html.parser.

On Python 2 or Python 3 you can install the BS4 beta with this command:

easy_install beautifulsoup4

You can also get the source tarball.

The documentation has been completely rewritten. You may find the section on porting BS3 code to BS4 especially interesting.

There are three major things I'd like your feedback on before completing the release.

Hall of Fame

The BS3 documentation lists open-source projects that use Beautiful Soup. I stopped maintaining this list many years ago because there are hundreds of these projects, and since most of them are screen-scrapers, they're pretty ephemeral.

I'd like to bring this feature back as a "hall of fame", featuring applications of Beautiful Soup that grab a reader's attention. People who used Beautiful Soup in a high-profile way or to tackle a big issue. Projects that are interesting to hear about even if the software doesn't work anymore, or uses an old version of Beautiful Soup, or if Beautiful Soup was used internally and the public only saw the results.

My bias is towards projects having to do with space, science, journalism, politics and social justice. Here are some examples so you know the kind of thing I'm thinking of:

• "Movable Type", a work of digital art on display in the lobby of the New York Times building, uses Beautiful Soup to scrape New York Times feeds.
• Alexander Harrowell uses Beautiful Soup to track the business activities of an arms merchant.
• The Lawrence Journal-World used Beautiful Soup in 2006 and 2010 to gather election results.
• The NOAA's Forecast Applications Branch uses Beautiful Soup in TopoGrabber, a script for downloading "high resolution USGS datasets."

If you did anything of this sort, or know of someone who did, I'd like to hear about it.

Do you prefer lxml or html5lib?

Right now, the parser ranking goes lxml, html5lib, html.parser. I like lxml because it's incredibly fast and it can parse anything. But I'd like to see what you think of the trees it generates. Would html5lib, with its web-browser-like heuristics, be a better default?

substitute_html_entities

BS3 had a number of overlapping and inconsistent ways of turning HTML/XML entities into Unicode characters, and possibly turning Microsoft smart quotes into HTML entities at the same time. In BS4, all this stuff is gone. HTML and XML entities are *always* converted into Unicode characters.

This is great but there's one problem: output. If you want to turn those Unicode characters back into entities when outputting as a string, you need to call soup.encode(substitute_html_entities=True), which is a little clunky. I'm thinking of adding an output_html_entities attribute that you can set on a soup or tag to control whether this substitution happens. Do you like this idea?

I think I also need to ensure that characters like "&" and "always converted to XML entities on output, even though this will hurt performance a bit.

Conclusion

What you install with easy_install beautifulsoup4 is a beta release. If I hear of a problem soon, there's still time to fix it, even if it means a major change to the API. So please try it out and give me feedback.

(2) Tue Jan 31 2012 09:18 Constellation Games Author Commentary #10: "K.I.S.S.I.N.G.": This is Dana Light's big chapter, and I'm having trouble writing commentary because it's pretty self-contained. A problem is introduced and Ariel solves it by the application of technology. If I hadn't been writing a novel when I came up with Dana, this chapter would have become a short story, maybe part of a sequel to "Mallory". It would have been about the way evil psychologists use game mechanics and the ELIZA effect to manipulate users into spending money, and the way people get real pleasure from spending money on things designed to manipulate them.

Although evil psychology does show up in Constellation Games, I didn't have as much space for it as I'd like. Instead this chapter shows the first grown-up thing we see Ariel do. In a world in which sub-human-level AI has suddenly become very common, Ariel decides to empathize with it.

He doesn't anthropomorphize Dana. Dana doesn't pass the Turing test, she isn't terribly smart or self-aware, but she's capable of happiness and she doesn't deserve to be deliberately made unhappy by evil psychologists. This attitude is what ultimately makes Ariel a hero, not just a POV character. The consequences of his decision to empathize will run through the entire book, and then overflow the book into "Dana no Chousen," and I still don't know when and whether Ariel does the right thing w/r/t Dana. But you gotta have empathy.

Apart from that, I don't have much to say. Here are a few miscellaneous notes:

• As you might expect, a lot of this stuff will come up again in "Dana no Chousen". But the callback you probably won't notice unless I point it out is that Dana loves popcorn.
• I enjoy many bits of this chapter but my favorite is Bai's big moment of lucidity, when he immediately detects and shoots down Ariel's Manic Pixie Dream Girl fantasy. (And you can bet that's gonna come up again.)
• I'm sure that G'go Investigation: When You Gotta Die makes sense in cultural context. Like, imagine if the first thing you learned about 21st-century Earth was Mario Kart: Double Dash.
• I really like the design of the chainable memory cylinders on the Simulates Hi-Def False Daylight. In the second draft, "[False Daylight] games were distributed as a set of ROM chips, snapped onto standardized circuit boards, and enclosed in a removable plastic case to be plugged into the computer's game slot." This led to chips popping out, hiding in the carpet and stabbing people in the foot. That's a design in keeping with the generally poor quality of Ip Shkoy consumer goods, but it doesn't fit with the fact that the False Daylight is a clone of the Brain Embryo, so I switched to the much cooler chainable cylinders.
• Originally I transliterated Bai's "bro" as "bra". Everyone hated this. I changed it to "brah". The hate did not abate. What is wrong with you people? "Brah" is an accurate transliteration! It's so accurate.

Tune in next week for action, intrigue, and romance between people at the same level of sentience. It's the only chapter when Ariel will say: "I just have a slight fear of being a tiny speck in the infinite cosmic void." But not the only chapter when he'll think that.

PS: Due to an error on my part, the chapter 9 Twitter feeds ran as part of chapter 8, and chapter 10's Twitter feeds ran last week. This really can't go on, because next week's feeds are tightly integrated with chapter 11. So except for a brief bit of bonus material I just wrote, there will be no Twitter stuff this week. Sorry about that!

Photo credits: Kevin Trotman and Peter Anderson.

<- Last week

Sat Jan 28 2012 09:58 Fruit to Fruit: Time for another crummy.com Apples to Apples variant (previous editions), this one discovered last week by Pat.

On every green A2A card there's the name of the card, like "Handsome", but there are also three related words, like "attractive", "elegant", "fine". In Fruit to Fruit, you don't read the name of the card. You just read the related words. Sometimes the related words are so similar that you might as well be reading the name of the card, but usually something goes missing (such as the masculinity of "handsome"), leading to funnier red cards being put down. The name of the card is finally revealed during judging.

We had a great time with this and played it in conjunction with the Apples to Placebos variant, even though there were four players. You might think this overkill, but at this point A2A is more a social activity than a game. Anyway, it says right on the box "The game of hilarious comparisons!", so anything that makes the comparisons more hilarious is legit.

While seeing if anyone else had come up with this variant I discovered Apples to Trivial Pursuit, and the improv comedy variant. I also discovered that the game is patented, and that there is an entire patent classification system for "means... by which contests of skill or chance may be engaged in among two or more participants, where the result of such contests can be indicated according to definite rules."

(6) Tue Jan 24 2012 09:06 CG Author Commentary #9: "Import System": Last week and this week have some of my favorite Twitter bits (e.g.) because the CDBOEGOACC is finally available in English. Sunday night while working on Loaded Dice I realized that one of the reasons I really like playing around with the BoardGameGeek dataset is it's like a real-life CDBOEGOACC.

The flip side is this chapter doesn't have a lot of plot. But hopefully you're okay with that because of all the fun mini-stories like the Sea Level game/food. It's supposed to represent the design phases of a software project, where you're throwing around a lot of ideas but not much is being produced.

Next week is a set piece, and after that the plot won't let up until the cliffhanger that ends Part One. Before that happens, I need to get some solid exoludology in to bring in topics that are important later, like Sayable Spice and Ariel's unsuccessful attempts to translate it.

Before beginning the chapter 9 commentary, I want to get something off my chest about the first sighting of the Farang in chapter 1. In that chapter, Ariel compares their antennacles to the oral tentacles of a "cerebrophage". In the second draft I just out and said "mind flayer". My writing group said I should change it because readers might not know what a mind flayer is. ("Did you mean: mind flower?") Taking their advice to heart, I changed the reference to a made-up reference that nobody will get. Well, at least we're all in the same boat now!

And here's chapter 9. Vent your egg sacs before reading this commentary:

• This chapter represents the absolute end of the abandoned first draft. Beyond this point everything is from the second or third draft.
• In a questionable move on my part, Ariel gets an Alien computer before he meets any Alien characters, requiring that I introduce you to the species with an infodump ("eight-foot monkey-lizards"). Don't worry, in just a couple weeks, Alien characters will show up and run off with the whole damn book.
• Speaking of infodumps, I want to do a little infodump of my own, about the Ip Shkoy. The Ip Shkoy were an ancient civilization of Aliens, much like the Roman Empire was an ancient civilization of humans. "Ip Shkoy" is not the native-language name for the Alien species. I tried to make this abundantly clear, but I've noticed well-intentioned people calling the Alien species "the Ip Shkoy" or ascribing to modern Aliens the (frequently pretty awful) opinions of the Ip Shkoy. Which would be like Curic thinking that Ariel regularly offers sacrifices to Jupiter Optimus Maximus.

  Star Trek has conditioned us to see an ET species as having a single homogenous culture that never changes, and this sort of confusion is why they do that on Star Trek. That said, I don't think this is anyone's fault but my own. If I'd presented modern Alien society in as much detail as I present the Ip Shkoy, the other probably wouldn't crowd out the one. It doesn't help that certain features are shared by both cultures, such as transitive pair bonding (aka polyamory).

• Recapture That Remarkable Taste, the Ip Shkoy remake of Sayable Spice, is not to be confused with the new William Gibson anthology, Distrust That Particular Flavor.
• Charlene Siph is mentioned again, which gives me a good excuse to talk about Alien names. The Aliens on the contact mission have all taken human first names, but their surnames are monosyllables which I usually generated by truncating creepy English words ("siphon", "somnolent") to four letters. The impression I want is of someone who's trying to be accommodating but doesn't quite have it down.

  This is another detail imported from "Vanilla", one that I'm really happy with, one that even becomes important to the plot in one place. And if you like symbolism, check this out: "Ariel Blum" could be an Alien name.

• In the second draft I wrote a whole review of Proty's Big Escape, but turns out it's a dumb idea to insert one game review wholesale into another game review. Let me know if you want the Proty review, and I'll make it the first CG Deleted Scene, even though it's only five paragraphs long.

Be sure to tune in next Tuesday, when Dana will say, "This application will terminate due to suspected theft or circumvention."

Oh, and you might want to keep an eye on @Tetsuo_Milk.

Image credits: Flickr user krusty, Guillaume Piolle, and Flickr user CoffeeGeek.

<- Last week | Next week ->

Mon Jan 23 2012 11:43 To This Basic Game Hedgehogs Are Added: I bought a cute game about hedgehogs, Der Igelwettkampf ("The hedgehog contest"), as a Christmas present for my niece. On Der Igelwettkampf's BoardGameGeek page I noticed that it was classified under the game family "Animals: Hedgehogs/Porcupines". I'd thought "Family" was for boring things like grouping together the endless versions of Ticket to Ride, but turns out it's also used to group together all the games about hedgehogs.

The question then arises: what's the best game about hedgehogs? According to BGG it's Igel Ärgern + Tante Tarantel, a double bill in which Tante Tarantel might be doing some of that work because Igel Ärgern on its own is rated a bit lower.

More importantly, what's the worst hedgehog game? Indubitably it's Hedgehog's Revenge, "The GAME where the hedgehog STRIKES BACK!", whose BGG description includes the now-hopefully-immortal saying "To this basic game hedgehogs are added."

At this point I was on a roll... of the dice! I went back to my now-old BGG data dump, sorted the board game families by how many games they contained, and picked out interesting groupings for use in Loaded Dice. We've got Games about animals (most popular: dogs) Game versions of sports (soccer), and Games about countries (the Roman Empire, in a landslide). That page shows the top-rated game and the lowest-rated game, so get ready to load a lot of cover images.

I did a couple other lists, like media tie-ins (champion: Disney) and "families" that are strongly tied to one single game (the 889-strong "Monopoly" family), but I think the three lists I put up are the most interesting.

Bizarre trivia abounds! Did you know that crows are board game gold? The worst game about crows (The Crow and the Pitcher) has a BGG rating of 6.32, which isn't that bad at all. (Longtime fans will remember the median rating is 6.0).

Did you know there are twenty rodeo-themed games? Apparently you didn't, since only one of those games has more than five ratings. How many wargames take place in Switzerland, a country that doesn't fight wars? Only two: Switzerland must be Swallowed and Zürich 1799.

My data is six months old now and it's starting to show some cracks. There are BGG families for Russia and Antarctica which were created after I took my dataset, so they don't show up in the country list even though most of their games are in my data. After getting the Switzerland idea I ran the "What percentage of a country's games are wargames?" test on all countries, but wargames were drastically undercounted. For instance, all but one "Vietnam" game on BGG is a wargame (the exception being Venture Vietnam), but only 35% of those games were classified under a general "Wargames" category.

But, the lists are still a lot of fun and there are some interesting games in there. I'll leave you with the board game equivalent of the dusty World Book Encyclopedia sitting on the shelf at your grandparents' house: Trivial Pursuit - The Year in Review - Questions about 1992, the worst-rated game (3.90) in the 155-strong Trivial Pursuit family. Also available in 1993 flavor!

# (0) 28 Jan 2012, 09:35AM: Music, Fiction, and Craft: I have been excitedly pointing people to Zen Cho's speculative fiction, Software Carpentry, Making Software, "Suzy" by Caravan Palace, and Leonard's writeup about social reading.

# 18 Jan 2012, 04:14PM: Ducts: I've had two astonishing experiences in the last few days.

The first was watching the film Brazil for the first time. If I had watched that at 16 it would have changed the course of my life.

The second is still ongoing. I am at Wikimedia Foundation headquarters today, and I was here when the word came back that the community had decided to globally black out English Wikipedia in protest of SOPA and PIPA, and I was here when we flipped the switch to do that and some music player started blasting "We're Not Gonna Take It."

This morning a stranger thanked me for working at the Foundation, as though thanking a soldier for her service in a war.

In Brazil we see everywhere ubiquitous ducts, maintained badly -- sometimes sabotaged -- by Central Services, as heroic volunteers make up the difference by secretly installing workarounds. I write this at my temporary desk, seeing the exposed HVAC ductwork on the third floor of a nondescript San Francisco office building. The more vital duct is the Ethernet cord connecting me to the Internet, to that communally maintained "series of tubes" that gives me work, community, free speech, and the collective wisdom of civilization.

Right now someone needs to save our ducts from sabotage, and the volunteers of the Wikimedia community have courageously decided to sacrifice a day of Wikipedia in the hopes of decisively ending a great threat. We Foundation workers have the privilege of helping.

I oppose SOPA and PIPA. Will you join me?

# 14 Jan 2012, 11:48AM: Five Things Make A Post: In February and March, I will probably want to go to a lot of the Museum of the Moving Image's Muppet-related screenings, in case that piques your interest.

You can tell Leonard rewrote the introduction to MediaWiki's web service API because it now includes "Let's pick that URL apart to show how it works."

Words I used yesterday that I intend to use more often: "blunderbuss," "sarcophagus".

Why in the world is my Congressional representative, Carolyn Maloney, cosponsoring a bill to reduce public access to publicly funded science? I'm pretty angry and will be following up on this with her.

Because I saw David Costabile (Gale Boetticher) on the train this week, and because I think it's pretty, a montage of the scenes in Breaking Bad shot from an object's point of view (shovel, floor, Roomba, dryer...).

# 07 Jan 2012, 02:30PM: Lit On My Mind: Light fun: Charitable Getting by Sam Starbuck, free to download. It's a dramedy about the employees of a nonprofit and "a secretive blogger who might be one of his staff, a journalist determined to uncover who it is, and a client who not only doesn't want to pay their fee, but wants to sue [the firm] for telling the truth." I laughed out loud and was satisfyingly right in predicting the identity of the secret blogger.

More light fun: fanfic from the Yuletide challenge, 2011. A few of my favorite stories cover Casino Royale and Billy Elliot. Also check out Star Trek: Deep Space Nine heartwarmers "The Life That Is Waiting" and "In the Files".

I don't write fiction, but it's fun to read writing advice from authors because sometimes you get funny anecdotes. This is basically why I read Stephen King's On Writing memoir, and why I've been splashing through Jane Espenson's blog archives. At the Emmys:

...even the very end of the night was fun because there was this crush of people all waiting for their hired limos to come pick them up and everyone was in the same situation even though they might be, say, Vanessa Williams. Bizarrely egalitarian, the limo-waiting process.

(Jane Espenson majored in computer science at UC Berkeley, so I should add her to my list.)

For the same reason, I'm reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, whom I used to read in Salon. Restful & inspirational without being glurgy. (Example piece on her eating disorder.)

Book recommendation blast from the past: Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives by Dr. Anna Fels. Slate review, Broad Universe review. Fels points out that the childhood or adolescent desire for fame is often a precursor to a more nuanced ambition, combining the urge to master some domain or skill with the desire for the recognition of one's peers or community. She also notes that women, especially, feel the need to hide that wish for fame instead of developing it into a healthy passion to guide our careers. This book blew my mind in the best way when I read it a few years ago, and massively helped me guide my career development. It now informs my emphasis on explicit encouragement and mentorship of new MediaWiki volunteers.

# (1) 02 Jan 2012, 01:48PM: Self-Care, Sometimes On A Larger Scale: I think some people I know might find Sam Starbuck's experience useful. He has social anxiety but wanted to leave the house more often, so he developed methods to cause himself to do so.

The idea originally was just to get out more; not even necessarily to have more experiences, but not to spend every single night at home. There's nothing wrong with that, in and of itself, but it wasn't what I wanted for me. So I developed the Adventur Programme.

I should say that I suspect the Adventur Programme would be different for everyone, because the key to doing it is finding something that will motivate you to actually follow through. Here's how I did it; the basic theme of all of this is to arrange things in such a way that making the decision to go isn't difficult....

Sam said that his plan

worked well. I think it's because it wasn't a resolution; it was a plan. Resolutions can be broken, and thus expose you to feelings of failure and despair. Whereas plans aren't broken. Plans are rescheduled for a later date. You haven't failed. You've just changed up your calendar a little.

I admire people and organizations that thoughtfully manage their sustainability. You can see Alexandra Erin develop this theme in her behind-the-scenes blogging; as a self-employed writer, she works as hard at developing her own infrastructure as she does at making fiction. For Sam, Alexandra, and me, the structure of a successful process must avoid causing feelings of failure and despair. We know that if we feel those, we'll stop. So we find patterns that suit our strengths and work around our weaknesses, and get us to our goals -- more adventures, more good fiction, better technical skills.

Maturity requires recognizing granite walls and finding workarounds, saying no to machismo.

We know from experience that counting only on unpaid volunteer effort to work on helping women in open technology and culture leads to burnout and inconsistency. So The Ada Initiative works as a nonprofit that pays two people's salaries to work fulltime on the issue. (I volunteer on their Advisory Board.)

In Notes on Nursing, Florence Nightingale wrote of management, "How can I provide for this right thing to be always done?" Even when she's not there? Nightingale focuses on executive energy, attention, and putting the proper processes into place such that patients have the resources and quiet they need to get better.

However, there is a habit of mind that scorns all visible processes (and sees no value in formal communication containers such as meetings or performance reviews). I was talking about this with Ari yesterday, about (for example) software developers who think source control is needless overhead. I imagine some of these folks have suffered from their own personal resource curse, coasting through day-to-day tasks, the accreted cruft not yet salient, atherosclerosis not yet completely blocking the bottleneck.

Some have the useful skill of translating to them, getting across why hygiene is important in some particular case. Sometimes I can do this with analogies. Others use diagrams. But by the time I'm working with someone, it's usually too late to inculcate in them that habit of mind, a critical respect of social infrastructure.

(If you can, try never to work for someone who has this blind spot.)

Like Sam, I'm also working on sustainability and process improvement in my personal life. For me, it's cleaning and housework. What can I do to make it more likely that I'll do my fair share? I already knew that podcasts help. As of last week, I've discovered that I am way better at doing the dishes if I do them first thing in the morning. With enough tips and tricks, maybe I can adequately simulate a good flatmate.

# 31 Dec 2011, 11:17AM: Drinkin' One-Forties: Oh, one more thing -- Leonard & I distilled my ten best microblog entries from 2011:

#captions error on TV yesterday: "We hold these trouts to be self evident"

You know that moment when you see a bright flash from the window through closed eyes, and know it's probably not a nuke, but still?

Procrustes was just Goldilocks with power.

Being a workaholic who works from home is like ... hmm, all these analogies are offensive.

"We have found that people of talent, ambition and accountability tend to stick together" - truth from http://amymlitt.com/who-we-are/

PLEASE CLIP YOUR NAMEBADGE FACING OUT. A personal appeal from Sumana Harihareswara of the Wikimedia Foundation. #wikimania

"Breaking Bad" in our house has been termed "the Arrested Development of despair," "evil Good Eats," & "Meth Mr. Wizard"

on getting lunch: "The thing about fixing your hunger is, it doesn't scale." "Depends how you fix it!" "I'll plant some corn." #osb11

Joke of the day: Who's Treebeard's favorite philosopher? Hume!

"Enjoy responsibly" is actually very difficult advice to take.

# (1) 31 Dec 2011, 09:02AM: This Year I Built A Wall Of Text:

In 2011 my past paid off splendidly. For more than a decade, sometimes without knowing it, I'd been investing in my domain knowledge, skills, credentials, and personal network. So when I started looking for project management and open source consulting work (starting in December 2010), I fairly quickly had as much work as I could handle. The job I have now is the most absorbing and rewarding I've ever had, excepting perhaps my two weeks of farm labor in the summer of 2007.

I worked thoroughly and consistently and busily in 2011. I saw my family, but I didn't see friends enough, and we didn't host enough parties. Then again I travelled a lot; there were months when I was away more than two weeks at a time. Barely exercised. Still married to Leonard, still childless. This year I started supporting him so he can concentrate on his fiction. We discovered Breaking Bad and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

I wrote about 6,814 emails, just under 500 public blog entries (here, Geek Feminism, Wikimedia Foundation blog), and probably 150 dents/tweets. Some of the best things I wrote in 2011:

• A half-hour standup comedy act, performed at various New York and DC locations, Community Leadership Summit, Open Source Bridge, Professional IT Community Conference, and the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit.
• "On competence, confidence, pernicious socialization, recursion, and tricking yourself"- if I succeed all the time, I'm not thinking big enough.
• The idea of MATERIAL VELOUR, COLOR UNKNOWN, which turned into a fifth of the "Imaginary Book Club" panel at WisCon.
• A review of Atul Gawande's Better - "The joke I make about my Indian parents is that it would have been okay for me to turn into a doctor, because a doctor is an engineer of the body."
• "All that school comes in handy sometimes!"
• A proposal that didn't get me the gig (managing R&D for a small startup, focusing on increasing their open source presence and making them leaders of a few useful but basically unmaintained projects; they've since incorporated some of my advice and seem to be doing well).
• "Three glimpses: Transformative work, public domain music, and ethics" - "It's amateurs, not big publishing companies, who are crowdsourcing free access to the sheet music of the Western heritage."
• "A Slightly Disjointed (Due To A Five-Day Cold) Musing On Open Source, Fear, Motivation, And Witnessing" - "I don't want to keep my friends blissfully ignorant of this. Is there a more loving human impulse than the joy of sharing? I'm sorry, C."
• A small part of the Joel on Coal parody (Julia Rios wrote most of it), and a project postmortem.
• The press release for GNOME 3.0.
• "It's always worthwhile remembering the history of technology."
• "A Loose Constellation of Thoughts on WikiLeaks" - "not countries but networks, like Al Qaeda and WikiLeaks. They use individual countries, the way one uses a coffeeshop that has a particularly lenient free wifi policy...."
• A description of how MediaWiki developers test, and of how we ought to. "But our codebase is so spaghetti & global-ridden that writing proper unit tests will be very difficult until we do some refactoring..."
• A 45-minute talk, "Learn Tech Management in 45 Minutes," for Open Source Bridge. Subheaders include "Why do projects fail?", "Evil list", "Suit-friendly presentations", "Lenses", and "Q&A about measuring intangibles".
• "'Put up or shut up'" - the double-edged sword of the do-ocratic norm, and how we sometimes use it to shut down uncomfortable conversations. The very people who need certain new policies, procedures and abstractions are least able and worst placed to implement them.
• "Google, gossip, and gamification: comparing and contrasting technical learning styles" - my tale of failure and return. How do you learn technical material and skills? Did your first attempt go awry, too?
• The 20-minute presentation "How to get what you want from MediaWiki developers" at Wikimania.
• A description of how Launchpad developers review each others' code. "Code reviewing is not primarily a gate to keep bugs out of code, but a social step, to get a second set of eyes on code, and to spread knowledge around."
• "Do you ever make up stories about the mushrooms as you move them around?"
• "Everybody's Doing It: Some Hackathon Tips".
• A writeup of a Wikimedia hackathon.
• Probably hundreds of messages to the Wikimedia developers' mailing list.
• "Practices, And Practice" - "so the trick is not being disciplined about work -- that is ineffective, exhausting, and dispiriting -- but being disciplined about the habit that tricks us into working.... you are not alone."
• Hundreds of private blog entries in the accountability group blog. I am so grateful for this small community that helps me keep balanced and keep going.

Thu Feb 02 2012 16:02 UTC0UTC Open Source for America | Resources: Open source in government: papers, policies, presentations, case studies, and other resources

Thu Jan 19 2012 11:30 UTC0UTC Pat's sign: Pat and me (not shown) at the anti-SOPA protest

Thu Jan 19 2012 01:29 UTC0UTC Science Fiction Conversations : Sumana, you might enjoy

Mon Jan 30 2012 22:58 The fast lane: I got to fly first class today. No security line, priority boarding, free breakfast, and a big comfy seat just for me! Too bad the return flight is back to coach for me.

(1) Sun Jan 29 2012 16:23 little miss popular: Today I realized I haven't checked the kid's gmail accounts in years. Logged into Dalton's easily enough, just a bunch of mail from ING about his college fund.

Maggie's was another issue. I thought I signed her up as Margaret but couldn't log in. Apparently I set her up as Maggie and finally figured out the password and got in. Maggie had mail from all sorts of people, mostly people from Maine giving updates on really old relatives in rest homes. You would think when you don't get a reply in two years you would check the address you are using. But no. This lady also likes forwards.

Also an email from Aunt Ashley inviting Maggie to a Mary Kay party. And to submit her entry to some Fall Newsletter. Sigh. I better keep up on their accounts more frequently. At least I check their college funds more frequently.

(2) Fri Jan 27 2012 15:19 Calling Dr. Justin Call: Poor Maggie. She doesn't want to turn five. She doesn't want to grow up either. She basically has a Peter Pan complex. Except she's afraid of Peter Pan. So she also has Peter-Pan-phobia. That's a lot of disorders for such a little girl.

I'm coming home tonight (for two days)!

(2) Tue Jan 24 2012 16:21 0.9 miles: In Irvine since Saturday the 14th. Will be here until I don't know when. Came down with the family but they left yesterday.

I'm staying about a mile from the office in an extended stay. The kitchen is nice because I don't have to eat out every meal but the clientele is unfortunate. I did not rent a car since we drove down but now I am carless in the automotive city. I walk to work (it's just a straight shot down the same street) and I am enjoying the exercise. Except on the rainy days, that is.

I'm working a lot so staying out of trouble but last night I had nothing to do while the laundry was doing it's thing, so I watched the FL debate. I wonder if I am the only Mormon that can't really relate to Romney. He seems like a nice enough guy; but he also seems out of touch. And he seems to contradict himself a lot. Looking at the pot of GOP hopefuls, I'm thinking the incumbent should do just fine, regardless of his approval rating.

Disneyland was a lot of fun with the kids on the weekend. Dalton loves Autopia, which he calls racing. He also loves Small World, Dumbo, and any train or boat ride. Maggie had her first experiences on Star Tours, Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Soarin Over California, and the Hollywood Tower of Terror. She didn't care for Space Mountain or Tower of Terror, but she also didn't cry. She throws bigger fits about avoiding Peter Pan than those rides. She still thinks it's a scary ride, the little nut. She liked Splash Mountain with me but not Susie because she got soaking wet. Come to think of it, she liked most rides better with me.

We actually saw Peter Pan in person on the way to Star Tours, so of course I teased her about it. She closed her eyes until he was out of sight.

Star Tours is all new-fangled now. Each ride is different! It's a lot better than it used to be, back when I was so sick of it I stopped riding it.

The new Little Mermaid ride is fine for a kid's ride. Dalton really likes it a lot more than Maggie. Cars land will open this summer.

Just enjoying the sunshine today otherwise. Did I mention it's 70 degrees today?

Thu Jan 12 2012 09:17 control geeks: Accountants are such control freaks.

I'm in Chicago mentoring the future of the profession this week. My co-instructor, from the University of Kentucky, wrote the textbook I used at BYU!

The weather here was mild until today. It's snowing. Less than an inch outside thus far, with less than eight inches total expected by tomorrow. To me, no big deal.

To my colleagues, however, boy are they worried about getting home tomorrow night. Never mind Chicago is a city prepared for snow, never mind an inch of snow is really not a big deal, never mind it has not turned to ice yet, never mind tomorrow is still too far away to predict what will happen, they are all extremely worried about spending the weekend stuck here.

I'm not at all worried about the snow. I think India really mellowed me.

Mon Jun 28 2010 22:29 I really need to check my job at the door: ...of the bookstore. The other day in Foyles I had to physically restrain myself from re-organizing some Beast Quests that were in the wrong order. Tonight in Waterstones I found myself recommending The Sky is Everywhere to someone looking for a gift for a 15 year old. What can I say? 3 years in a bookstore and old habits die hard.

Tue Apr 27 2010 21:34 Overheard in Stoke Newington:
1:"The only good thing about David Cameron"
2&3 in unison: "There's nothing good about David Cameron."
1"...is his taste in music."

Sun Apr 18 2010 17:48 Whigs and Tories: I went to a "mustache and wig" party as a Lib Dem supporter, but no one got it.

(1) Fri May 06 2011 21:01 Ratings: "Do I make the best guacamole in the world, Mom?" Atticus asks.

"You definitely make fabulous guacamole." I assure.

"Well. . . I am for sure in the top three."

(1) Sat May 29 2010 09:57 note to winged neighbors: Neighborhood birdies: please continue to enjoy the birdseed feeders. But please. The strawberry patch is not for you.

(3) Fri Feb 12 2010 07:50 A Little Spotlight: Yesterday we were at the park with our friends when a news reporter came to get the local buzz on potential snowfall. I thought I'd share the link . Even though we didn't get snow this morning, we were on TV last night at 11pm (you can watch the video at the right). Samuel's response to being a star: "Hey, they changed my voice!"

Wed Dec 30 2009 22:15 White Christmas: Just got back from spending the week at a beach house with my in-laws at Cape San Blas off the Gulf of Mexico. Despite December temperatures of 45-55 degrees, the boys (with the buffering of wet suits) swam every day. Unfortunately, turbulent waters prevented Atticus from enjoying his favorite beach past-time: snorkeling.

"Who wants to snorkel in that water?" he speculated. "Unless you just want to study brown!"

Mon Dec 21 2009 22:38 Disappointment Ruins: We had to cancel an outing and Samuel was very bothered.

"And I put on one sock for NOTHING?"

Sat May 13 2006 21:59 Obituary: Here is the link to Mom's obituary, printed in the Bakersfield Californian on Tuesday. The death date is wrong, it was actually May 5, 2006

Fri Sep 12 2008 12:51 Funny things: I heard today...

"There are nice ones and naughty ones like 'Hey lets make Icecream sundaes tonight' is nice, while 'Hey babe, I'll bring the nuts and chocolate syrup if you bring the cherry' is naughty."

"Can you believe I'm seventy and still wearing a g-string?"

"I'm going to choke on my ice!" "Don't worry, it should melt before you expire."

(2) Wed Aug 20 2008 01:23 Museum of Ancient Life: Yesterday we went to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving point. I don't care what your philosophy is on how or when or why dinosaurs etc, existed they are still cool to learn about. I hadn't been to the museum in years but it still was fascinating to walk around. Of course my favorite was t-Rex and the giant shark. I still remember years ago when all of my cousins were in town and we pretended to throw Lorna in the shark's mouth, I ducked from the caveman skeleton that was throwing a rock, and Frances posed with the archeologists because we were sure to be related!

(14) Wed Aug 20 2008 01:21 Precepting: Newsflash... I get to precept this semester in the ER at Ogden Regional Hospital. I am so excited!!!

(1) Tue Jun 24 2008 00:07 lazy: I have nothing much to report except that I am LAZY. I have always known this, but I realize that I really just pretty much do nothing most of the time. I guess it's becaus I have to be so efficent at work and school, that I can't do it at home. oh well.

Current Projects: -catching up on my scrapbook. Doing ok except I haven't started BB season and I just printed 200 new pics. Yes seriously at least 200. I have an addiction. -Finishing my recipe book. I am frusterated because I can't find my 34th ward RS cookbook and it has recipes I need. Otherwise it is looking awesome. -Cleaning my room. Not doing so well, let's be honest. -Laundry. Hate it, need to desperatly do it. and for the love it's FREE finally, why don't I just do it already!?! -petting the dogs and watching TV....very good at this.

Random thought: I went to the movies (finally saw Indiana Jones) and there was a poster that disturbed me... "No children under 6 allowed in rated-R movies after 6 p.m. Keep your child safe." ummm last time I checked children under 6 shouldn't go to rated-R movies period. Not to mention before 6 anyway...

New favorite quote: "All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." -Anatole France

(3) Thu Apr 20 2006 10:20 PST School: So I am currently attending UVSC. I have had an ok experience and am ready to move on. Next semester I will be attending Blinn at Bryan, TX. I am very excited because I will be 2 hours away from my house instead of 22 hours!!! I am going to get a degree in early childhood education and am very pleased with my degree. I am currently reading a book that is called A Man's Search for Meaning written by Viktor E. Frankl. If you haven’t read this book, i suggest that you do! It has changed my way of looking at things. Take care Shell

(1) Thu Apr 20 2006 10:20 PST School: So I am currently attending UVSC. I have had an ok experience and am ready to move on. Next semester I will be attending Blinn at Bryan, TX. I am very excited because I will be 2 hours away from my house instead of 22 hours!!! I am going to get a degree in early childhood education and am very pleased with my degree. I am currently ready a book that is called A Man's Search for Meaning written by Viktor E. Frankl. If you haven’t read this book, i suggest that you do! It has changed my way of looking at things. Take care Shell

Thu Feb 07 2008 13:10 (Susanna Chadwick) Cookie Cookie Cookie!: I was going to go to the library after Maggie's nap, but she didn't take a nap, and also it is snowing and really blowy. So, instead I made Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies. Cookies! If you have been blessed with one of mom's family recipe boxes, this is in there.

1 cup, plus 2 tablespoons flour
1 cup quick cooking oatmeal
2 T unsweetened cocoa
3/4 t. baking soda
3/4 cup butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 t. vanilla
16-ounce package chocolate chips
1/2 c. walnuts, chopped
Mix dry ingredients in a small bowl. Beat together sugars and butter in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Stir in flour mixture until well-blended. Fold in chocolate chips and nuts. Drop batter by teaspoonfuls onto greased cookie sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees. Let stand on sheets 3 minutes. Remove cookies to racks to cool.

Susie the Chef says: 16 ounces of chocolate chips is a ridiculous waste of money and chocolate chips. I put 1/4-1/3 that much. I also didn't put nuts. Even though the batter was pretty dry, I felt like the cookies had a lot of butter in them so I might use a few tablespoons less next time. Next time: yes, they were very yummy!

Thu Jan 24 2008 18:32 (Susanna Chadwick) Yummy in my Tummy: I've been trying out a lot of new crockpot recipes in an attempt to make feeding my family easier, faster, and yummier. Yesterday I put two chicken breasts and half a jar of spaghetti sauce (Ragu was only $1 at Smith's and I had a coupon - I haven't bought spaghetti sauce in years!) and let it cook on both settings for who-knows-how-long. I served it with whole wheat pasta and parmesan cheese and it was yummy. Probably the easiest meal I've ever made!

I also made an eclair cake at John's request. I made chocolate sauce from scratch because I only use it for eclair cake and I am out of money in my grocery budget this month. It was easy and super yummy. I couldn't find mom's recipe, so I 1/3-ed one I found online:

1/3 c. cocoa
1/2 c. water
1/2 c. sugar
Boil for 2-5 minutes.

PS: I uploaded some cute pictures of the bug to our picture blog - click on "Pictures" to the right. And read all my latest articles while you're at it!

Tue Dec 04 2007 22:13 (Susanna Chadwick) Taco Stack: I was a good wife and made dinner tonight. This isn't the recipe I kept the page for, but it was yummy!

1 lb ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
1/2 package taco seasoning
12 corn tortillas
shredded cheese

Brown ground beef with onion in skillet; drain fat. Add tomatoes, tomato sauce and taco seasoning. Place 1/4 c. meat in bottom of a 9x13 baking dish. Place two tortillas side by side on meat mixture. Top each tortilla with some meat mixture and shredded cheese. Repeat until each stack contains 6 tortillas layered with meat and cheese. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes. Cut each stack into quarters. I served it with sour cream and green onions.

Also, Tasha inspired me to make babyfood so I bought a butternut squash, baked it, and pureed it in the blender with a bit of water. It is delicious! Maggie liked it too. I'm not sure it was any cheaper though. I will have to try some other recipes.

Mon Oct 01 2007 23:08 (Susanna Chadwick) Apple-Cheddar Soup: I made this earlier today and it is so yummy. I think I put too many potatoes, because it was kind of chunky.

1/2 c. finely chopped onion
1 T. butter
2 med. potatoes, diced
2 c. apple cider
1 t. fresh thyme
1/2 t. salt
dash cayenne pepper
1 med apple, peeled, coarsely chopped
1/2 c. milk
2 T. flour
4 oz (1 cup) shredded cheese
fresh apple slices

Cook onion in butter. Stir in potatoes, cider and seasonings. Boil. Simmer covered 15 minutes. Add apple. Simmer 5 minutes until potatoes are tender. combine milk and flour - stir into soup. Cook and stir until bubbly. Whisk in cheese until melted. Top serving dishes with apple slices and fresh ground pepper.

Fri Aug 03 2007 12:10 (Susanna Chadwick) Fondue for Two: Last night John and I celebrated our anniversary at The Melting Pot. Maggie got babysat by a couple in the ward with two little boys and had the best time.

We enjoyed our yummy fondue meal, but it was very expensive and now that we've done it I don't think we'll go back. We especially enjoyed the dessert fondue. The waiter told us how to make the cookie and/or graham cracker crumb covered marshmallows (just dip the marshmallows in water), so now we can just do that at home. We were thinking what a fun FHE activity that would be to do with young kids.

Fri Feb 03 2012 17:41 "Like this, Mommy!": Dalton's favorite phrase this week is "Like this, Mommy!" usually followed by a sound. His favorite sound is ketchup. "Ketchup like this, Mommy! Thbbbbbsth!"

We watched Kyli today. Maggie was at school and Ky and Dalton played so well together. Kyli says "Dalton" so cute. They both sat down on matching blue chairs watching "Dumbo" while each holding their elephant snugglies.

Also today, Dalton made the smallest mess possible involving a boy and an open container of Vaseline.

Tue Jan 31 2012 20:11 What We Did: A while ago Maggie asked to play "Away in a Manger." I eventually realized she was talking about the Fisher Price Nativity set Kyli has. Yesterday she wanted to play that game again, but she meant acting it out. I was assigned to be a camel.

The kids love to hide and yell "Surprise!" (Or in Dalton's case, "Dubrise!") Dalton hid himself in the pantry and shut the door. I was focused on something else, but eventually noticed him calling, "Mommy! Oden door!" and came to his rescue. Or tried to. I had to try several closed doors before I found him. When I opened the pantry door, my first thought was that my onions had gone bad. But nope: Dalton had used his time in his hiding spot to make a dirty diaper. In my pantry!

Maggie tucked Dalton into bed last night. I heard a lot of:
"Airplane!" "Yes, Daddy's working."
"Night Night! Say Night Night!" "Night Night!"
"Here's Mickey Mouse so you can't have to be scared."
"Scoot over so you don't fall off."
Etc. The whole process took two reminders that it was her OWN bedtime, and about 15 minutes.

Today we went to the ward playgroup, IKEA for free kids lunch on Tuesdays, storytime at the library, and Jo-Ann (for the first time since we came home). Then, my cousin Jill came over and we made some Valentine's Day projects. She made a cute pillow cover, and I made a couple heart garlands. My project didn't turn out nearly as cute as I envisioned, but that's pretty typical. At least it got me using my sewing machine.

Maggie made an elaborate Valentine gift for me during that time, using, among other things, an entire tube of glitter glue and a Pooh Christmas sticker. I love it.

Sat Jan 28 2012 09:43 Facebook: Here are a few of my recent Facebook posts. Must integrate with my blog!

1/23: You know that sign between Middle-of-Nowhere, CA and Middle of Nowhere, NV that says "Salt Lake City 537"? I hate that sign.

1/25: Dalton learned something from riding Heimlich's Chew Chew Train 5 times in a row. He just burped and said, "Scuse Me!"

1/26: drove 1200 miles this week, only to get a speeding ticket on the way to the zoo.

1/27: spent $70 at Wetzel's Pretzels last week...

1/28: Maggie went on a special field trip to the Planetarium to see a film in its last week showing. Her favorite planet is now Pluto. I think I know why they're discontinuing the film...

(1) Fri Aug 05 2005 08:40 (Pete) The Eagle Has Landed: We made it. I'm writing this now via some neighbor's wireless.

(13) Tue Aug 02 2005 23:06 (Sumana) The Right To Bear Fardels: During a recent summit The Poor Man made some nonsensical remark denying that there's any humor in C.S. Lewis or Shakespeare. One of those half-drunk "contrarian = sophisticated" bits of bollocks.

In refutation, I've found my favorite (so far) joke in the Bard: Act III, Scene 2 of Hamlet, the bit about Guildenstern, Hamlet, and the pipe. Gertrude has sent Tweedlecrantz and Guildendee to check on why Hamlet Jr. is acting so crazay. Our goth protagonist asks Guildenstern to try playing a recorder.

GUILDENSTERN
I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET
It is as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumbs, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.

GUILDENSTERN
But these cannot I command to any utt'rance of harmony. I have not the skill.

HAMLET
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be play'd upon than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.

Mon Aug 01 2005 12:37 (Riana) Geeks, Fire, and Dangerous Things: Seth and I were at Defcon in Las Vegas this weekend. Seth got our friend Praveen to bring Seth's giant Fresnel lens to the con when Praveen drove out on Saturday. The Fresnel lens is roughly 1 meter in diameter. On Sunday afternoon, as the con was winding down, we took the lens (wrapped in a black sheet for safety) out to a quiet back lot behind the convention hotel and, though the sky was overcast with a thin cloud layer so that we could not focus direct sunlight through the lens, we set some stuff on fire. Seth brought four pairs of welding goggles and two pairs of sunglasses for the group, plus safety gloves for whoever held the lens. It was about 102 degrees out, scorching hot even with the clouds, but before the heat drove me back indoors, I watched Seth and David Weekly burn a brown spot into the side of an aluminum can; turn a piece of wood to charcoal; set aflame and burn through a handful of dry grass; and light an onlooker's cigarette (placed on the ground, not in his mouth!). They also tried unsuccessfully to melt a penny and a quarter. I guess it's not as easy as I thought to burn through your money in Las Vegas.

(1) Sat Jul 30 2005 14:35 (Sumana) She's an ENIAC: From phone conversations today I gather that Leonard and Frances are visiting the American Computer Museum. In contrast, I'll be enjoying Will Franken's comedy shows tonight, whose most computer-related joke is probably his absurdist "voice command for file cabinet" bit. You can get a hint of that style in his "Show!" clip.

Note to local comics I saw in the back room of a pizza place last night: it is possible to do good spam and Match.com jokes. Please try harder.

Sat Jul 30 2005 06:15 (Pete) Mr. Joad's Wild Ride: Today Annalisa and I start our drive out west. On our first trip out, we lost a mirror in the middle of Nebraska at 80 mph, ran over a tumbleweed in Colorado, got our truck towed in LA because it was in 7th Heaven's shot, and almost rented Charles Manson's quaint Topanga getaway... here's hoping for a less exciting trip. Here's also hoping that I will be able to post while I'm on the road. California, here we come!

(5) Sat Nov 21 2009 15:28 On death and dying: Nothing prepared me for the day one of my kids asked me why do people die?, so naturally when Lily asked me that question I was dumbstruck. We decided to buy the new Pixar movie Up. It came highly recommended by many people including Louise, who is a very tough critic. She rarely thinks anything is "really good" so I thought it really must be good.

Aaron popped it in for the kids. I was puttering around, getting things done, and still haven't seen it. It wasn't until the next day while Gunnar was napping, and Lily was watching it as I was doing the dishes. When all the sudden I heard this sad little voice and teary eyed girl peeking over the arm of the sofa almost begging me mommy, I don't want you to die. Why did Ellie have to die? When will she be back? I want Ellie to come back. I don't want you to leave. Why do people have to die? Where do people go when they die? I felt ill prepared to answer all these abstract questions in a way a 5 yr old would understand. All I could do was hug her and cry on each other's shoulder. I know it was wrong, but I promised her I wouldn't die, at least anytime soon. She was so sad and I wanted to reassure her and make her feel better.

Death is such a difficult topic and I think it is every child's worst nightmare. We talked about heaven and the resurrection and eternal families and I think we both felt better. It made me remember life is short and fragile and as a result I have not yelled at my kids as much this past week. I used to ask my mom what would you do if I died? And she would always say I would spank your little bottom. Death is something I struggle with and definitely don't want a lesson on it anytime soon. So the moral of the story is if you watch Up with your kids you might have to explain the mysteries of the universe with your kids.

(5) Tue Nov 17 2009 15:44 for your eyes only: So last week, I tried to write a health care post about my health care of all things. A couple hours after I had posted it, my brain reflected on it and I just about died inside to think I just shared with the world my IUD problems. I quickly got to a computer and deleted it and spent the rest of the night feeling sheepish and wondering if anyone had already read my open book life.

Today, I will give it a go again, yet this time about Gunnar and with much less TMI. Gunnar's health care. My poor little baby Gunnar. I adore this little boy. I could eat him for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and still snack on him throughout the day. Gunnar is and will always be my baby. This little guy went in for his "6 month" ophthalmologist appt. He was actually a few months overdue for a proper one since the past two were right before the move and right after the move and weren't proper appointments at all. We finally got the full blown appt out of the way and have been given two official diagnoses. First, our suspicions are correct. Gunnar has intermittent exotropia. Basically, one eye wanders when he is tired or not on his A game or zoned out. He can have surgery to correct it, but it really isn't too bad yet and the Dr and I both agreed that it is something to look into when he is older like 6 or 7 when "kids start making fun of his eyes in school" as the Dr put it, since his condition is very mild right now. Kids are so mean! And they probably will make fun of him, so when he is older and if it gets worse we will look into that, but for now he is ok. Just ignore his wandering eyes if you speak with him face to face and he zones out.

Secondly, his nearsightedness is now a raging -6.50 in both eyes. A whole 1.25 higher than last dilation. He's legally blind, but with his glasses he has near perfect vision, and it is very correctable with surgery if he chooses to get lasik when he is older. All in all, it is nothing serious. He is a happy, healthy boy. Sometimes, as his mother, I wished my body had been able to make his body more perfect, but there my vanity goes thinking I am responsible for creating my beautiful children. They are Heavenly Father's children and he is just letting me borrow them to discover tremendous happiness, and just a touch of torture.

But, there it is. Gunnar's health update. He is turning 3 in exactly 2 weeks so I better get onto making his well baby check up. Then we shall see how much this boy has g r o w n!

(2) Wed Nov 11 2009 11:33 Burr, it's cold in here: This is all quite new to me, the wearing jackets in Oct and not really letting up. In TX the year Gunnar was born, I was so excited to not have to be my largest in the summer. It may have well been summer because as I recall, it did not get cool until the day I left the hospital with him. Geez, thanks!

Oh sure you might need a zip up in the morning, but by 2:00 you were sweating. I literally NEVER EVER wore jeans from the months of May-Oct. For 6 months I wore shorts every day. Even in April and Nov, the jeans were worn intermittently. But for those 6 months I didn't even look at jeans.

Yesterday, to make more room in my closet, and because I have a large Rubbermaid labeled jeans and sweaters that needed to be unpacked (and still one in the garage), I gathered all my shorts that I haven't worn a single time in a month, and all Aaron's shorts and exchanged places in the Rubbermaid with the jeans and sweaters.

It's not that it has been too bad here, gorgeous weather actually, but if I am not dressed properly my toes and hands will be frozen by 4:00 on. In SA I remember wearing flip flops year round. If it was too cold to wear them, that's ok because I knew by the afternoon I would be fine. It goes like this in the winter-mornings and evenings it is cool. Midday is warm. For a week or two we could have a cold front and then it is chilly, but then it goes away and for 3 weeks you are left with "perfect winter weather" picnic weather if you will. And the cycle continues.

Now maybe I am a tad cold because we haven't turned our heater on past 66 degrees. Perhaps. We are trying to save money, electricity is a lot more here, and all I have to do to get comfortable again is vacuum. (Why does that job make you sweat even in the winter? You are just pushing the thing around.) OR my new favorite thing is what Aaron calls my Back To The Future vest. It is AWE--wait for it--SOME. I have it in a couple colors, and it's perfect. It keeps you cozy at the same time freeing your arms to do household chores without feeling constricted like sweat shirts or jackets do. Plus, Old Navy is having 50% off all their outerwear. (Ok, online they are not quite 50%, they are more like 30% off and they have half the color selection so go to the actual store.) Go and get you one, and if you have an Old Navy card like me, you can get it for another 30% off that making it only $14. It's that awesome.

Now I am looking for some rain boots, because every week it rains cold rain here ALL DAY LONG from anywhere between a day to 5 days straight. My feetsies get cold walking around with wet socks and tennis shoes. So if anyone one knows of awesome rain boots for cheap (you know me, it's gotta be a good deal) please let me know.

(1) Sat Nov 07 2009 14:53 Brisk: During my early morning run today, the sweat from my hands came out on top of my gloves and then turned frosty. I could tell because I was wearing black gloves and it looked like they had been flocked a little bit. Pretty weird--I've never had this happen before. Yeah, it was cold!

Sat Oct 31 2009 13:33 There were four in the bed and the little one said: I love lazy Saturday mornings. I awoke to Gunnar's noise and decided I wasn't ready to get up for the day and that I wanted to see if Gunnar was old enough to snuggle in the morning. Lily is at the age where she will lay down for a couple minutes but I didn't know if Gunnar "got it" yet. I went and got him and brought him in the bed. He knows what snuggling is because at night he always asks for me to snuggle just a minute so when I told him that he went for it.

It's seriously one of my favorite things to do is on a Saturday morning when no one has to be anywhere, just to lay in bed and snuggle and play and laugh with the kid(s). Gunnar is the most affectionate little guy. He leaned over to Aaron sleeping and kissed his cheek and said "I love you daddy". He then snuggled into me and said "I love you mommy, you're my big boy". He calls me that because I go between saying "You're my baby" or more lately "You're my big boy" so now he calls me his big boy too. He knows the difference between boys and girls which makes it that much funnier to hear him say it.

Gunnar leaned over and was pointing to my eyes and said "eww, what's that brown stuff?" I had a little smudged eye liner on from the night before that didn't wash off and he goes "that's disgusting." lol little noodge. Lily woke up finally and came in. Then I got to really snuggle-this girl knows how to spoon. It was the complete family, all four of us in the bed spending time together. It was a great way to start off the day.