Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time

A 10 year old was arrested and charged with felony weapons possession on school grounds because she brought a knife to school to cut her lunch. (link to article, via Digg). I love the headline “Student Arrested After Cutting Food with Knife”.

I wonder what their definition of weapon is, because surely intent must come into play especially in the case of items that have a more mundane use. One could argue that a fork or a pen could be used as a weapon as well, which would certainly make for an interesting school. But if the person is eating or writing respectively then that is different than if they are going around stabbing people. Hell, even your hands can be a weapon. A gun is different, since it has no other purpose but as a weapon. But a knife that was being used solely for cutting food? I’m surprised they didn’t tase the little girl into submission since she was such a threat….

I haven’t uploaded any pictures in a while, so there are 14 new ones up on my Flickr. Here are a few:

Last week Gillian got to see Santa again while Bella was at a school function. Who knew Santa wore PhotoGray glasses?

She also got to ride on the Christmas train, which was the most creative winter use of a lawn tractor and recycling barrels with wheels I’d seen:

Last night we went to the Carousel farms to get our tree and Bella and Gilli got to ride the carousel. (No camera that day, just blurry camera phone pictures that we don’t know how to get off of the phone) Here’s the tree, it didn’t look that tall outside…

Earlier this week Bella’s front tooth fell out. The picture is kind of gross, so here’s one in front of the tree that you can kind of see the gap in her smile.

Here’s a nicer shot of the girls in front of the tree, with Gillian not sticking her tongue out.

I just love Gillian’s expression in this shot:

Happy Holidays from Cheese Log!

Click the image below to sign up for Amie Street and get a $5 gift card.

Web browser company Opera has filed another antitrust complaint against Microsoft with the EU (press release link). They claim that Microsoft is a monopoly for bundling Internet Explorer to their Windows Operating System. The fact that people still consider Microsoft a monopoly when there is an even bigger monopoly to deal with just blows my mind. Microsoft makes Operating Systems and Software. Some of the software is bundled with the OS, like Internet Explorer is. However, if I don’t like IE I can freely run Mozilla Firefox or Opera or any other browser I care to. If I don’t like Windows I can install Linux. If I don’t like the price from Dell I can buy from Toshiba or HP or a host of other brands or I can even purchase the parts separately and build my own computer as I see fit.

I want to know where is the outrage against the true monopoly, Apple Inc. You can only buy your computer from Apple, with hardware they decide you can have. It comes loaded with the Apple OS, which also has a ton of bundled software including a web browser. If you don’t like the price Apple sets, too bad. You can’t go anywhere else. If you buy an iPod you can only use iTunes. You even need to use iTunes to set up your iPhone. I should be able to buy a phone and not have it tied to a specific piece of software, just like my portable music player should be software neutral. Apple is also guilty of misleading consumers. People are led to believe that they need an Apple computer to use an iPod or to make a podcast or do video editing or a host of other tasks that are easily done on a Windows PC for less cost.

It will be a happy day when the Apple monopoly is challenged. Until then maybe Microsoft should paraphrase that taser guy. I bet a “Don’t sue me, bro!!” campaign would be quite popular.

I just read (via Reuters) that Bush once again vetoed health care for children. The audacity of this man is stunning. At the very least you’d think he would want these kids to grow up healthy so they can join the military to fight his unjust wars. At least his days are numbered:

I finished reading Tough Liberal and that was an excellent book. In addition to my growing interest in unionism, this book was very appealing from a history standpoint as well. Not only is it the story of a man, but it is also very interesting to gain the historical perspective of events as well. I was particularly interested in the discussion of how the extreme left not only usurped the term “liberal” but also the whole Democratic party. Politics and union activism are becoming quite interesting to me. Often what I learn is not only interesting, but frustrating. It seems so difficult to see any significant changes realized, but perhaps through perseverance and solidarity small groups of people can make a difference.

Burning Bright

In case you might miss it the moral of the story is laid out for us in painstaking detail. I remember now why I felt this was a long book. It was not a page-turner for me. I suppose having the hobos at the end recap the lesson was just a bit too much for me. I finished the book, but only because I challenged myself to. Ouch. That is really critical of “one of the most important books of our time” as the caption on the cover tells me. I’m not sure what it was about the book that made me so disinterested. I like reading in general. I like sci-fi/futuristic settings. I don’t like censorship. But ugh. I can’t even bring myself to write about anything other than how much I disliked it. My favorite part of the book was the afterword, which while still being preachy was at least mildly entertaining. I am sorry that I wasn’t able to make any of the “official” events surrounding the big read. I enjoy lively debates, and if one was held I would have liked to attend/participate. Maybe next time.

Some of the best parts of Amazon are the customer reviews. Here are 2, one I just found (via Digg) and one that has been around for quite a while.

Review of a pen

A children’s book or networking manual?

One way (other than blogging of course) to waste time is to watch You Tube videos. So what comes up when you search for SUNY Fredonia? (link)

An official looking promotional video:

A trumpet player waking up a boxer-clad student:

Someone trespassing in a kitchen:

An amusing song/video from a student:

I read an interesting post at Zen Habits (link) about what do you do with the left over hours in your day once you are done doing the things you normally do. It sounded to me like the author was talking about “me” time as opposed to family time so I focused on the time after everyone else is in bed since I tend to be more of a night-owl. Depending on when I go to bed I can have between 0 and 2.5 hours of left over time on an average work day. I use this time to relax, usually by either reading books, playing computer games, or online stuff (catching up on my RSS feeds, blogging, etc.) How about you?