Wonderful Wednesday Webcam Wackiness

It's no secret that I have a strange fascination with webcams. So friends and family probably weren't surprised when I told them about the one that I set up at home. Primarily it is used to keep an eye on Rece during the time period he's home after school, before I get home. He knows that it is there and can tell when it is on (the blue light on it turns on when it is active).

Aside from doing his chores when he gets home (which take less than 15 minutes or so to do), Rece has been told that he must do his homework in the living room on the sofa, which is where the webcam is set up to capture. I have informed him that his mother and I (and sometimes our friends, too) will be checking the cam to make sure he's doing his homework and not goofing off.

Of course we can't just sit at our jobs and stare at him to make sure he's staying on task, but we do check in from time to time. Occasionally we see him goofing off instead of doing his homework, and in some cases, we don't see him on the webcam at all - which is against the rules (except in regards to the aforementioned chores or when he goes to the can). At these moments we'll give him a call and remind him to get back on task.

The system seems to be working rather well now. In fact, it may be that Rece has become a bit too accustomed to the webcam being there to the point that he forgets about it completely. Why do I suspect this? Well, it may have something to do with what I caught him doing today.

While checking the webcam, I noticed that Rece wasn't doing his homework, despite having been home for over 45 minutes. Since chores and bathroom don't take him that long, I gave him a call. As it turns out, he was messing around with his hair to improve upon the style it was done in for the "Wacky Wednesday" theme at school today. I reminded him that playing around wasn't what he was supposed to be doing and that he had to "un-do" his hair, then get on to doing his homework. He acknowledged my directive and this was the result...

He did this while I was still waiting on the line. The sounds of struggle he must have been going through to remove the stuff he put in his hair were so funny, it was all I could do to keep from bursting into laughter. In fact, I did let out a few snickers, which garnered the attention of the two coworkers outside my office door. After the struggle, he returned to the sofa and started on his homework assignments.

About an hour later I checked back in on him, and was happy to see that he was on the sofa, doing his homework... wait... what the...

As you can see, he was up to his elbow doing something other than homework. This activity continuted for at least 2-3 minutes before I could stomach it no longer - I called him again. "That has got to be the most disgusting thing I've seen in a long time, dude!" I chided. "What? Oh... uh... sorry," he replied, as he glanced into the webcam, realizing what I must have meant. With a gentle reminder that he was still on the webcam and that searching for buried treasure wasn't part of his homework duties, he went back to work.

This entry was brought to you by Big Brother - he really is watching you.

No! Make it stop! NOOOO!

Stumbled upon this video on YouTube. I'm not quite sure if I should laugh my ass off or puke... or both.

This entry feels violated somehow.

A scorching case of basket ass

As odd as it may sound, it appears that Rece really enjoys going to the laundry mat. Ordinarily I do my laundry in the laundry room at my apartment complex, but last night I went to the local laundry mat with my friend Jennie (she needed to wash a large blanket/quilt/comforter/thing). Rece was with us and having himself a great time. He likes putting the quarters in the machines and starting up the dryers. He also likes playing in the rolling laundry carts quite a bit. Who would have thought a kid would like what most adults find to be dull and tiresome?

Rece was a little bummed when we eventually had to leave and asked if we could come back again sometime soon. I told him we would come back some day... and people call me strange...

This entry was accidentally thrown in with the load of reds.

Performancing, take two...

This is my second entry made using the Performancing extension for Firefox that I mentioned yesterday. While it seems to work just fine for creating new posts, it has given me trouble when I attempt to edit an existing post.

For my next trick, I'll attempt to insert a couple of images and see what this thing allows me to do with them. Here goes...

The above images should be right next to eachother, with a single space (I hit the spacebar) between them.

Ok, so the left image was inserted without any resizing. The image on the right was inserted and then resized within the Performancing screen (grab a corner). The really neat thing that I noticed right away was that the image size (in pixels) was displayed as I was resizing the image. That's a very handy tool!

I also made the image on the right a hyperlink. I was disappointed that it didn't offer a target option, so I was forced to go into the HTML edit mode and add the target="_blank" tag manually. In the editor there's a blue border around the hyperlinked image, but I don't see any border tags in HTML edit mode, so we'll see if that carries over after posting.

Alright, time to post this and see what happens...

This entry was done while bored at lunch.

Testing... 1, 2, 3...

This is my second attempt at posting to my blog using the Performancing extension for Firefox. It should allow me to post to my blog without having to actually log on to blogger/blogspot. It also has a few other blogging tools that I'll explore at a later date.

This entry took a couple of tries to post.

OMG, Firefly!

Last week I ordered Firefly: the Complete Series DVD set and Serenity DVD as a package deal on Amazon for just under $38. Sweet deal. Well this sweet deal turned out to be even better for me, since I'm apparently a late-comer to the entire Firefly/Serenity scene.

Back when Firefly first aired on TV, I remember catching most of one episode (I think it was the pilot) and liking it. For whatever reason I never managed to catch it again and as it turns out the series ended up getting cancelled. So last year I see these previews for this movie named Serenity and it looks pretty good. My son and I never got around to seeing it in the theaters, but we vowed to catch it when it came out on DVD.

Back in December Rece and I went to the video store and discovered that it had been released on video, so we rented it. HOLY COW! This movie turned out to be one of the best sci-fi flicks I've seen. I mean, it ranked right up there with Star Trek: The Next Generation, in my opinion. We loved it so much that we watched all the extras (except for the commentary) and I learned about the Firefly history of the show. NO WAY! It was at this point that I realized that I must buy not only the movie, Serenity, but the entire Firefly series on DVD. Money around the time was tight because of Christmas, and then Rece's science camp tuition, etc, so buying them was out of the question. This month my expendable income was back to usual, so I ordered the set after following a digg link to the deal on Amazon.

So far I've only had time to watch the first 2 DVDs of the series and I am thoroughly impressed! How this show ended up getting cancelled, I'll never know. I've seen som pretty crappy sci-fi shows go far longer than they should have, but this great show got canned. Go figure.

Anyhow, I'm about ready to go watch some more Firefly now. I just couldn't contain my excitement about the whole thing. If you're a sci-fi fan, then do yourself a favor and check it out for yourself!

This entry was boarded by reavers and never heard from again.

I'm rain

No surprise there!

You Are Rain

You can be warm and sexy. Or cold and unwelcoming. Either way, you slowly bring out the beauty around you. You are best known for: your touch Your dominant state: changing

What Type of Weather Are You?

Delete with caution

Found this interesting article about how a man is being sued for deleting information from his laptop by a company he worked for. It seems like a circular argument to me, so I'm having difficulty understanding how this is going to play out.

A company gives you a laptop for you to work on. You sign an agreement about not using it for personal business and also that you can delete information from the hard drive when you return it. You use it for personal business anyway, the company starts to suspect as much, you delete your personal business (and go so far as to permanently wipe it) from the computer, quit your job, and return the laptop. The company then attempts to recover evidence of your personal business from the hard drive, find that it's been wiped, then because they don't have the evidence that you used it for personal business, they sue you based on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, because you deleted possible evidence that they could have used against you - if it were even there at all. Hmm...

Part of it seems to be that the company wanted to get hold of some of his other business info/contacts, hoping to gain some knowledge to use for themselves. Anyhow, I thought it was an interesting read.

This entry was given a gag order, then it smirked, pulling out some handcuffs and a whip.

Good Night, and Good Luck

This past Friday we had a potluck lunch at work. It was themed off the Academy Awards Show, which was being held the following Sunday. Our staff was asked to bring in a dish and to come up with a name for it somehow derived from the list of Oscar nominees. As usual, I decided to bring my oriental cabbage salad, which has now become a regular dish at our company potlucks - if I don't bring it, people almost get upset with me!

I must have missed the part about naming my dish, so when I was asked at the last minute what my salad was to be called, I quickly came up with something. To accompany my salad on the buffet table, I made the following sign with the name on it...

(click image for larger version)

This entry was made possible by Nissin noodles!