Kid's Board Game Win

For our youngest boy's 4th birthday, the six-year-old picked out a board game for his brother. He thought long and hard over which game would be most enjoyable, spending several minutes in each aisle of the store comparing toys and games. Then he saw a game that really piqued his interest: "Well," he said, "Simon does like monkeys, and he really likes other animals too." I flipped the box over, smiled, and described the contents to him:So... it's a board game placed in a zoo, where at certain points of the game the players put on animal masks and play hide-and-seek. That decided it, and Daniel could barely wait for the birthday party to show and explain the game to his little brother. The game really does play well, with mechanics simple enough for 6- and 4-year-olds to play together alone when they want. If you have any animal-loving kids, I would heartily recommend this game.

Tabbing with IntelliPoint mouse button

So I'm a lazy bum, but I need to use the Tab key quite a bit. (And why on God's green Earth can't manufacturers make a keypad with both a backspace and tab key on it? I can't be the only one who does numeric data entry in Excel, can I?) I'm using a Microsoft Trackball Explorer (which I am very disappointed is off the market nowadays, because it fits my hand very well) and I decided to configure one of the buttons (specifically the "Top left button") to pass a Tab keystroke.

There's no IntelliPoint command on the list to pass a Tab, but there is one to pass a specific keystroke. Of course, that won't allow me to tell it to pass a Tab command. Grr...

Maybe this is already obvious to you, but it felt like an inspiration to me: I set up the button to queue a Macro, created a macro (named "Tab" of course), and inserted the special action "Tab" into the macro. Save, OK, and an Apply later, and the button on my trackball passes the Tab command perfectly.

Hooray! (And this felt far better than the only results I could track down via Google, all of which involved hacking the registry.)

Parenting: School Misinformation

So, my oldest boy (now six) has started Kindergarten. Actually, I'm amazed at how many people have said "I wish my parents had kept me back a year." He is attending class at Harvest Valley Elementary, which actually seems a good-sized school in the Romoland School District. (Frankly, I'm amazed there are enough kids in the area to support one school, let alone the four in the district.)

Getting him registered for Kindergarten was more tricky than I'd expected; in retrospect it makes perfect sense, but at no time does the district or school reach out to you first. They are totally ignorant of the existence of your child prior to initial school registration... so much for "Big Brother is Watching" or having your kid "forced" to go to school, I guess.

I was dismayed though, with the little information I had once the registration process was complete. I had located the school website on my own, which is where I found the registration paperwork in the first place. At no other time have I heard the school website mentioned. After getting the registration paperwork filed, I was given two single sheet letters, one telling me about the (apparently new) Principal, and the other indicating that school started the following Tuesday, and that Kindergarten orientation was Wednesday night.

Okay, orientation, that sounds good... except that orientation did not include any information on which teacher my child would have, the room he would be in, any of the specifics I had expected. I was informed of the detailed list of critical information my child would have to demonstrate competency over by the end of the year, including a 41 word vocabulary list and lengthy lists of vaguely worded objectives. As much as I appreciate details on what will be expected academically, this part of the process felt unsatisfactory to me.

Well, on Friday a postcard arrived, indicating who my boys teacher and room would be, and reminding that class started on Tuesday at 8. That was, predictably, an emotional morning; first kid off to school for the first time. At that time, there was no chance to see much of anything in the school or classroom, and no time to speak with the instructor. It was much too hectic an environment for thinking, let alone talking. Apparently it was also too hectic an environment to mention when class let out, as that was not mentioned, nor was it listed in the packet of papers from the school. One message to the school office resulted in two calls back, one saying that class ended at 10:30, the other at noon. (Turns out the latter was correct.)

That morning I was given a large packet of paperwork, with many fields to sign and date. I did not expect that, as a parent of a Kindergarten child, I would have to indicate the terms under which a 3rd through 5th grader might be expelled for sexual harassment. (Take a moment, and think about that last clause. Yeah.) The next day saw an even thicker packet of information, finally giving details like a map of the school and calendar. (Finally I had written confirmation that the day runs from 8 to 12.) I was surprised to note that virtually every Wednesday was a minimum day, at Harvest Valley. That doesn't matter for the Kindergarten classes, but will sure matter for next year.

So, perusing the web site I saw that Back to School Night will be on a Thursday at 5:30. Okay, so I'll have to arrange to get off work early, no problem... until dropping off the boy this morning I saw the sign outside the school office saying that Back to School Night starts at 5 PM.

I really don't know which is worse: The school giving no information, or the school giving conflicting information. I also have to wonder if Palomar College (where I work in Academic Technology) gives their incoming students a similarly troubling first experience. I hope not, but I expect so.

Fire near Temecula, Twitter a mixed blessing

So the De Luz fire headed straight for Temecula; I can understand that, it's a nice place to visit. My first touch on the existence of that fire was at work, when a co-worker's wife called from Fallbrook about the smoke there.

Huh, fire near Temecula, which will likely impact my commute home. So I decided to find some information online about this fire; that was at around 4:30 PM. There was an hour old news article that came up on Google, and no real results from a Google blog search. Hmmm, I thought, what about Twitter?

As a matter of fact, the information I found with a search on Twitter for "temecula fire" was fairly helpful; so much so that I saved the search term since I just knew it would be useful later.

Now, if you're looking for news on the fire itself and somehow got to this post, I would suggest you check the info now up on The Californian. Although, I couldn't help but be struck by how well this fire was handled, especially in light of the recent "minimizing" of the local firefighters due to budget constraints, as reported by The Press-Enterprise.

My big gripe in this is about how puerile folks got on Twitter. When I later went back, and looked for results on "temecula fire" on Twitter, a bunch of fools had decided it would be great fun to post links to, well, adult content under the guise of info links. I realize that wanting responsibility in Twitter use is as futile as expecting good spelling from YouTube comments... but it ticked me off.

So, bottom line, good job points to slimly budgeted firefighters, and shame points to tweeting twits.

Twitter and Windows Mobile

I recently bought a new cell phone, the HTC Touch Pro. Yeah, yeah, I know the Touch Pro 2 is out soon... but I care more about "now" than "soon." Plus, my old PPC 6700 was having issues.

Anyway, I do like the phone. My sister-in-law mentioned she was surprised that I didn't hold out for the Palm Pre, but I am partial to Windows Mobile. The Touch Pro will be my fourth Windows Mobile (or Pocket PC, same difference really) device, so I just don't feel like learning something totally new.

Anyway, I've also recently been getting into using Twitter. (http://twitter.com/DavidTheGray if you're interested.) So I found myself wanting a good app for tweeting, and almost everyone said good things about Twikini. I like the app quite a bit, although I am having issues with the GPS location feature. (Likely this is just issues with the Touch Pro, and not Twikini at all.)

If you're using Windows Mobile, and haven't seen Twikini...

...it looks something like that. Actually, that is the color theme I use... it looks fairly good even in full sunlight on the Touch Pro screen. (Well, as good as anything can on a reflective screen in sunlight.)

Since I'm not always tweeting via the phone, on my Windows Vista computers I've also been using the Twadget sidebar gadget. It's not great, but has worked out better than every other sidebar gadget I've tried. Oh, and for anyone with a Kindle... just use the "Experimental" web browser and you can tweet just fine. However, I'm finding that if I'm not just sitting in front of a computer, Twikini works best.