We went out today to Swope park so that Enid could take some pictures of Ora 5 at 8 years old. We usually go to JC Penny's to get their pictures around their birthday so that we have a pictorial history of what they looked like each year. However, since Enid is very skilled with her camera, we decided to forgo the indoor portraits and let her take the pictures. The results are wonderful:

I was surfing the web using my iPod Touch when Ora 5 came and sat by me to watch. "Can you go to any website with that, Dad?""Yeah, I can go to any website I want on this.""What about Webkinz?""Um, no. Webkinz doesn't work because it uses Flash." (iPhones and iPod Touches can't display Flash.)"What about PBSKids.org?""Um, no. PBS Kids uses Flash too."Ora 5 then did his best Captain Kirk yelling at Kahn voice: "Curse You Flash!"

Occasionally on our drive home, we'll take a different street to get to our house; although it is longer the kids have taken to calling this the "shortcut" and they like the change in pace.As we drive home tonight, Ewan began chanting "hair-cut. hair-cut. hair-cut.""Do you want a haircut?" I inquired."Um-hmm.""But you just had a haircut.""hair-cut. hair-cut. hair-cut.""Do you mean 'shortcut?'""Yeah."

Ora 5 was asking about my pocket watch and complaining because he wanted one of his own, then asked: "Did you dad have a pocket watch?""No, my dad always wore a cheap $3 Walmart watch.""There were Walmarts back then?"

grandma and papa are here and dogs

We went to the KC Ethnic Enrichment Festival today. I took a wrong turn and had to go into Swope Park thru the main entrance instead of on Gregory. That would normally be okay, but a lot of people showed up and we were in bumper-to-bumper traffic for about 20 minutes as we tried to get into the park. It was a beautiful day and I overheard one guy saying that he had never seen so many people at the festival: "Usually it's 100° or ...

A few days, I posted about the Cash for Clunkers program being amazingly successful. I had put some initial numbers to it, but my estimates while intentionally conservative, were way too conservative. CNN is reporting that the average "clunker" being turned in gets 15.8 mpg and the average new car being bought is 25.4 mpg. I'm going to simplify my math a bit: If 250,000 cars were purchased, that means that we have improved the national mpg by 2,400,000 mpg. If the Senate passes the $2 billion extension that means we could take 7.2 million mpg off the road!

Since Ora 5 has a Nintendo DS with wireless capabilities and I have an iPod touch and I often have the church's multimedia laptop at home, I thought I would check prices for wireless routers. I was looking around Craigslist for a wireless router and could not find any with enough features for a price I was happy with. So found a vendor on Amazon.com selling a great wireless router for rock bottom prices.Ironically a co-worker just came back from a security conference where it was demonstrated how easy it is to break into a secure wireless network. ...

After Ora 5 saved to buy himself an iPod earlier this year he decided his next big purchase would be a Nintendo DS Lite. Today he got it. He saved $110 in less than 5 months and I took him to GameStop to buy a refurbed black DS Lite with Pokemon characters etched into the case.He's playing Kirby non-stop.

Ora's birthday was celebrated this weekend. He got some fun toys. Today gifts from Grandma and Gramdpa Caley arrived: The first 2 Hardy Boy books.Ora's friends got him interested in Hardy Boy books and he has already read the first 2 chapters of the first book.