Pauls Rants & Revelations

Well, its finally done. The tree house is completed, the ladder is up, and the trap door is swinging open. I will gather the pictures and post them as soon as I find the USB cable for the camera.

This project was a beast to say the least. My wife helped me with the last bits; mostly helping heft the walls into place on the platform and general helpy type stuff. Thanks for that honey!

My kids are over the moon about it, so that alone makes all the hard work worth it.

I’m tired from all that work, so I am going to make this a bit shorter then it really deserves, but if you ever want to build a tree house for your kids… call someone else. I’m busy.

Cheers

So this weekend we (that is to say, I) started on our kids tree house. I ordered the lumber and it was delivered last Tuesday and we were all set to go. Then on Thursday while were out to dinner, my wife goes over how I’m building it again.

Her thing was that she couldn’t see all the builer-y type things that I was talking about. So we drew it out again; and its a good thing we did. I was adding full walls to the treehouse and she reminded me that were going with half walls to make it more fort like. This was fine with me because my only condition was that it actually be in a tree.

Anyways, after some more sketching we had our plan. That is to say, she said “build this” and I said “O.K.”. Here now are some pics for your enjoyment.

I got wood.

A sturdy Cedar tree.

And so it begins.

First brace in place.

Some more progress.

Joists are all in now. Heavy stuff.

Starting on the floor.

Thats what I have so far accomplished over the weekend. I was also able to finish tacking down the floor but got rained out before I got a chance to trim the ends. Next steps are starting on the walls and roof rafters which should go pretty smoothly. I’ll post more pics when the sun comes out again.

So what do you think? Pretty cool, huh?

You know, sometimes I forget some of the more awesome things about being a parent.

A lot of times, parents get so bogged down with the meal preparation, clothes buying, teeth brushing, tucking in, story reading, bath time, dinner times, school time, that they forget one very important fact.

Having kids is, without a doubt, the greatest possible excuse you could ask for to act like a kid. I mean, how else would it be perfectly acceptable for a 30 year old to play video games in the middle of the day? Or go and poke things with sticks? Or, on occasion, enjoy a tea party with ten or twelve of your daughters closest stuffed animals?

I don’t mean to sound maudlin, but when I think about it (and forget the troubles of the day), its actually like being able to have a second, better childhood.

What brought this on, you ask? My kids tree house, I respond.

Yes, I am building, with my own hands (and many a power tool) an actual tree house in an actual tree. This fact surprises people more than anything, since kids could fall out or throw things or whatever. But anyone who had a tree house growing up will tell you that it was awesome.

When my wife first threw this idea out there, I was dreading it a bit. The time investment, the cost, the prep, the actual construction, and eventual destruction (kids grow out of these things apparently) were a lot to handle for this cowboy. Now though, after my wife and I worked through the issues and the costs and are finally getting ready to build it, I am actually pretty excited about it. I mean, I didn’t have a tree house when I was a kid. The only trees around my home in California had oranges or avocados in them, and the owners got pissed when you started climbing them.

But in Oregon, where trees are not only plentiful but downright loved, a tree house seems perfectly fitting in my little suburban neighborhood.

So the next few posts will be mostly me building this thing, which starts this weekend. I have the tree prepped, the lumber sitting in the yard, and an excited 8-year-old who is now more excited since he can see that its actually happening.

But to bring things around to a close here, let me say this: Go climb a tree. Go swing on a branch, or slide down a slide. If you have a kid, go do it with them. If not, borrow a kid (preferably with the parents permission) and just go and play. You may be surprised at how much fun you, as an adult, can have playing tag or poking things with sticks.

Cheers

So what did you do for a New Years Resolution…?

…

I thought as much. I didn’t think of anything either. It seems that, the older I get, the more pessimistic I get about making them. The last few I have made seemed to fail within a month, so I guess I just stopped making them.

Perhaps, in the grand scope of things, these silly attempts to better ourselves through a significant, annual event are supposed to fail. I mean, if we were really meaning to stop doing this or start doing that, wouldn’t we be motivated enough, if the cause was important enough, to just start doing it as soon as possible?

I personally, do not need an event like that to start or stop something if its important. But in the spirit of things, my New Years resolution will be to post more entries on my blog. What’s yours gong to be? Go on a diet to fit in that bikini (dudes need not respond if this is your goal)?

Will my resolution actually happen? Maybe. Possibly. Stay tuned to see if it does.

Cheers

You know, I always find it weird when a family member contacts me via MySpace, Facebook or Twitter asking to friend them. I mean, I seemed to be the technically inclined one in the family; messing with computers, taking apart toasters, etc., so its a surprise to see, say, my 10 year younger cousin on Facebook (who I rocked to sleep a few times, which is also weird to a 10 year old).

It is a bit nice to connect with my sisters and my mom though (if she did the whole social thing), but for the rest of the extended family… I would have to say that its weird.

Perhaps I should have talked to them more than once a decade. Oh well.

Cheers

Here is a happy story about the customer service folks. They get a lot of bad press, but these folks are really quite amazing.

I know that a lot of people like Popcap games. They are fun. Ridiculously fun. One of their more fun games is called Peggle. My whole family played it and they loved it.

A few days ago I noticed that they had a version of Peggle for iPhone. I though ‘finally, my 3 hand-writen letters a day produced something’. I checked the requirements and from what it said I could play it on the iPhone. I quicky clicked the Buy link in iTunes and plugged in my phone to sync.

Now, I was checking the apps and noticed something not sweet. The version was for the iPod (video and nano-video) but not for the iPhone or Touch. Go back to the app store page and in small print it said “Not compatible with iPhone/Touch”.

Begin short-lived temper tantrum.

I immediatley contacted Apple who in turn said “we do not offer charge reversals for mis-bought products”. So I contacted Popcap to inform them of the problem I now had. The requirements for their software were pretty clear in saying that it would run on the iPhone. Going back to the site I realized that it was a blanked statement for all of their mobile software.

So I sent their CSR gurus an email explaining the whole deal and asked them to please update their requirements boxes as I cant be the only person to make this mistake.

The got back to me the next day (surprisingly) and said they were sorry for Apples response, and offered me a coupon for their games. They also asked for my mailing address which was kinda weird.

I sent them my address and thanked them for the coupon and told them that I appreciate them changing their website. All is now right in the world.

Skip to the following Saturday. I return home to find a UPS note on my door. I go get my package and was again surprised as it was from Popcap. A smallish box with something soft inside is what I guessed from the vigorous shaking I did.

I open it up and was delighted by what was inside.

Lots of fun stuff

Inside was 5 cute Chuzzles, a stuffed Splork (a character from Peggle), bookmarks for their Bookworm Adventure game, some pens, a branded cap, and a set of Peggle character card.

Now, most would say that this wasn’t a great lot of stuff. But I say this is fucking fantastic! Not only are they neat little things (my kids loved the Chuzzles), but I was greatly heartened by the fact that someone cared about their customers to this extent that they put together a “customer love” box. I was seriously pondering graciously returning it with an appreciative note (the original charge was only $4.99 after all), but these things are neat (plus the cat already chewed on a chuzzle).

In short, a great deal of thanks to the customer service department (Dana in particular who wrote me the follow up) of Popcap Games. This is one of the few companies that really try to make its customers happy as best they can. I would say they soundly succeeded in this instance.

- Cheers

Update: Here are some images of my kids playing with the stuff. Not really relevant, but damn cute.

So its no secret that I am voting for Obama (see my previous post, Vote).

This, I think, is a fine thing to do. Not fine as in grand, but fine as in generally acceptable. However, some of my close friends have stated that this may have been a, not necessarily bad, but at the least a somewhat dangerous thing to do.

My wife said that I should keep my official position to myself. The logic behind this being that nobody wants to be to blame for putting the wrong person in office should things not get better. She wanted the ability, I think, to participate in a thrashing of the candidate along with her friends should they be doing so. Following the crowd in the simplest sense. While it may go deeper than that, that is what it seems like to me. Perhaps she simply wanted to avoid any unseemly remark by the same friends if they knew her political position. We tend not to talk too much about politics since I enjoy sleeping indoors.

My friend though expanded in a different direction when I asked him what he thought of it. He said that its understandable to keep such things to yourself for security reasons. If you back the wrong horse, so to speak, and the more militant portions of our civilian population know about it, you could potentially be making yourself a target should these yahoos decide to get aggressive.

Leave it to my friend to instill that extra bit of paranoia into my life (thanks Lindberg Baby).

I can certainly understand that particular position when it comes to telling the world who you are backing. However I cannot understand why people are afraid to say who they are voting for when it comes to possible arguments from their peers. These same people will tell a random stranger calling their phone asking who they are voting for. They will also post onto forums who they are voting for. They do this, I believe, because they think they have a certain amount of security in their anonymity.

This, however, is not true. You are not anonymous. As a web developer, I know how easy it is to get anyone’s life history and vital info with a few simple searches. And even thought I know this, I still spout to the world my choice. Am I crazy? Am I asking for a beat down from some militant wacko with too many guns?

No, I say. I simply believe that we should not have to hide something that we believe in from either invisible threats or from our friends and family. I also believe that we should not fear those that would sway our opinions and thoughts under duress or through fear.

But mostly because I know that should some ass-hat come to my door yelling at me and telling me I’m wrong and going to hell for my choice, I can either cause them great physical harm (if needed only) or verbally abuse them to the point of tears. Telemarkers, Jehovas Witnesses, bill collectors and Mormons are already aware of this.

In short, I say don’t fear what may or may not happen should you choose to voice your opinion on something that your name is on. After all, if you are afraid to tell people who know who you are what you believe, then you shouldn’t bother voting.

OK. Let the comment spam and rude comments begin.

- Cheers

So this weekend it was fairly kickback, for the most part. Saturday was very good as there was an event that day. And since it was sunny we had an archery competition which, I’m stoked to say, I was victorious in. I had thought I lost so it was a pleasent surprise at court. I got a nifty carved feather as a prize (bonus).

We also did our pumpkin gathering on Sunday which was, well, quiet. We got there right when they opened and were first in line for everything so we got to do all the activities (face painting, boat ride, etc). We also came away with some honking huge pumpkins. I’ll post pics in a bit (I seem to have misplaced our rather expensive camera).

How was your weekend, Internet?

-Cheers

So today is my friend Peggy’s 29th birthday. She was a little bummed because none of her friends were getting back to her about festivities for the evening. So it’s Paul to the rescue! Also, you can drop a comment on her myspace page if you feel so inclined.

Were going to meet up with a few friends who finally for back to her and go bar hopping in Portland.

She sounds a little down with being almost thirty, so maybe a night of drinking and kareoke will cheer her up.

- Cheers

Update: a picture of the birthday girl.

You know, I really don’t mind taking care of my responsibilities. Family stuff, take out the trash, do the dishes, polish the weapons, all that is fine. However there is one task that I really, really despise.

Giving the cat a bath.

For those of you without the scars from claws, this is not as easy a task as you think. You fear holding the kitty tighter cause its so small in your hands and at the some time you want to squash it into a jelly mold just so it would sit still long enough for you to get the overpriced pet shampoo on it (and let sit for 4-6 minutes).

Anyways, Tom, our cat, is never happy about it. And every bathing he gives me a few good scratches to let me know so. The least I can do asuage my pain is to post pictures of our wet cat. They are funny to look at and I get a sense of fulfilled revenge, even though Tom doesn’t give a shit (and will possibly take one in my shoes later).

- Cheers