So it has been, what, 8 weeks since Daylight Savings Time started? And 5 weeks when Daylight Savings Time would have started had Congress not chosen to mess with an already working system? So why is there *any* excuse for people not to have figured out what time it is yet? Nonetheless, I daily get at least one email from someone whose computer clock is off by an hour. What - you don't really care what time it is? How many appointments have you missed? Dates, meetings, school buses, ???? Come on people! Get with the program! Fix the time on your computers already!

So I'm trying to figure out why my mulch calculations are off this year....

Saturday, I had 60 cubic feet (a little more than 2 cubic yards) of mulch delivered to my house so I could tidy up the flower beds, around the trees, and create a new flower bed in the back yard. I calculated 60 cubic feet based on the fact that last year, I used 45 cubic feet and it was just right, but that this year, I had one less tree to mulch around (the county took the tree out - BGE installed the street light too close to the tree and the tree got to leave [no pun intended]), which should have meant 3 cubic feet less, and the area of the new flower bed was about the size of the side flower bed, which takes generally about 12 cubic feet. Net gain of 9 cubic feet, so adding 15 cubic feet should have been plenty, right? Wrong. I'm going to be short at least 12 cubic feet.

Another cubic yard over last year...

My math has got to be faulty somewhere. Probably the same reason the yard isn't greening up - I probably have a fertilizer miscalculation....

http://abcnews.go.com/US/VATech/story?id=3059025&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

I totally sympathize with the students and families here. Tragedy to be sure, but I'd surely believe there's a lot of insensitivity (even though probably unintentional) here.

As far as horrific stories go in this tragedy:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1611998,00.html?xid=site-cnn-partner

Speechless.

Apple some weeks back released 10.4.9 of OS X and with it, iSync version 2.4.

At the time, I failed to notice that the Nokia 6131, which is the Euro/Asia version of the Nokia 6126 that I have, gained support in the new iSync.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060915154526806 pointed this out to me today, and I removed my old hacks and implemented this one. What an improvement. Mainly, my addresses are now synced into the address field as they should, and not into the notes field! Woo Hoo! Tiny little things that really make your day.

So last month, I wrote about Andrew winning First Place for his school science project. Some have asked about the background of the project.

First, here's a picture.



The marketing name was "Making Fluffy Buns Bigger". The engineering name of the project is really more like "The Effect of Baking Soda on Biscuits". Andrew got the idea (with a little help from mom and dad) from an episode of Pinky Dinky Doo. This show happens to be a favorite of both Andrew and Declan. There's an episode where main character Pinky gets help from her family who inadvertently add too much baking soda to a batch of "Fluffy Buns" and makes the batch rise so big, it blows the roof off the house. Andrew's science experiment tried to demonstrate the premise behind that show (no, we didn't blow the roof off the house).

Andrew did do quite a bit of the work himself. He helped mix the biscuits, he typed in all the text into the computer, chose the colors, and helped paste the slides up on the display board. Of course mom and dad helped a lot with the actual baking, formatting the slides, and buying the materials.

Interestingly enough, at the Science Fair, it was kind of obvious where and how much parents had helped their kids. Some projects really were clearly "okay, mom and dad came up with the idea and told the child what to say". Others you could tell had a lot more creative thought from the kids.

The "marketing name" really did help - Zandra and I didn't know but part of the scoring was actually based on the title. From one of the judges, "oh, that was a great title. Everyone went around saying, 'Everyone needs more fluffy buns.'" Apparently, the phrase kind of struck a chord among the judges. Advantage Andrew.

The only disappointment is that only projects from the 3rd grade or higher get to go on to the County Science Fair. The pressure is on for Andrew (and parents) to think of another creative topic for next year. Maybe we need to watch more Pinky Dinky Doo....

There's been not a lot of blogging going on by me in the last couple of weeks. First reason is this really inexplicable (so far) stomach ailment I've had. The result is essentially bad cases of gas, but the gas causes an excrutiating amount of pain sometimes - making it difficult to want to do anything other than curl up in a ball. So far, all tests negative but things have been getting better over the last few days.

We've also been on the road - we spent part of the Easter holiday with relatives in California. Issues beyond our control resulted in me having to fly back out yesterday to go get Declan our youngest and bring him back today. Nothing like one lap around the country in 24 hours with the second half being with Declan. Fortunately, it seems like guys hefting lots of luggage and infant children get a lot of sympathy from folks. Never had so many people offer to help me with bags, etc.

Some have asked about the Fluffy Buns from Andrew's Science Fair project. That should be the next blog entry.