-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Baby Crap Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 From: Josh To: (Two guys too lazy to use condoms)

Sorry this has been a long time coming, but what you will soon find is that you're not going to have much time for anything outside of your new nuclear family, nor the brain power to remember anything that isn't currently (literally) screaming at you for attention. Anyhow, here's the list. The Wife doesn't agree with me on a couple of these, but then she's never had to assemble our Pack&Play.

1) Don't buy a bottle warmer. Or a wipes warmer. Or a bottle cooler. Unless your nursury is a thousand yards from your kitchen, it will just take up precious space. Real estate in your baby room is going to become more valuable than that in Manhattan. For the couple of months your baby wants their bottles warm, you just fill a large glass or small plastic container w/ hot water from the sink and let the bottle warm in that for a few minutes. You can dip baby wipes in the bottle warming water too - just don't double-dip.

2) Buy a Graco SnugRider car seat. We went with the MetroLite "Travel System" that includes a full-size stroller, but if I had it to do over I would just buy the seat. 2b) Buy a spare Snugrider seat base for your other car. 2c) Buy a Graco SnugRider Infant Car Seat Frame Stroller. http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2266236 You might want one to keep in each car. I love this thing. 2d) Buy a Graco SnugGlider Infant Car Seat Swing Frame. http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2583976 Works at home or at the grandparents- at least as well as any swing does. (see item 6)

3) Buy a serious stroller for longer excursions and trips from the house. One that you can still drop a car seat onto is nice, but the main thing here is something with bigger wheels for rough terrain, and good coverage for rain. If going to be getting a trailer to tow behind your bike anyhow, this is where a Chariot brand rig with a stroller kit would be nice. You can also get the jogger kit for hiking and running. It's pricey, but worth it. Start watching CraigsList and eBay now. The problem with the Chariots is that they take up more space than a regular stroller.

4) If you feel you must have a Pack-n-Play before the kid is a year old, you are WRONG. When we had ours up we used the changing table a couple time, but after we broke it down (a MAJOR PITA) for a vacation, it never went up again. Spend that money on a nice baby monitor and put the kid to sleep in their crib. For travel, buy a much smaller, cheaper travel crib. I have no recommendations, because we no longer travel except to relatives', and they all have cribs. If you absolutely have to buy a playpen, buy a SMALL one. We registered for and received the biggest one Graco makes, and now we are stuck with it.

5) All those digital thermometers sold at BabiesRUs and the pharmacy are SHITE. Buy something from a medical supply store, or just feel their forehead- it's more accurate than the $200 worth of thermometers I have crammed in a drawer. What the fuck happened to the little mercury-based thermometers we had when we were kids?

6) Do not spend $100 on a swing/cocoon/bouncy seat. I guarantee the kid will not like it, and it will take up massive amounts of your precious nursery space, or crowd into the common rooms. Buy used swings on eBay or Craigslist so that when the kid hates them you won't feel as bad about throwing them out a window or selling them at a loss. Before you ask: Lysol kills germs; get over it. We've had three or four different swings, all bought new, and the kid hates them all.

7) Buy a nice TV with a DVD player for the nursery- not for the kid, for YOU. You are going to spend a lot of time int there rocking.

8) Learn to love eBooks on your smart phone or a kindle or whatever, set to light text on a black background. Works great when you are stuck rocking or bottling the kid at night and you don't want to wake them up with a reading light or the glare of the TV- at least until the kid is old enough to figure out your iPhone makes a great chew toy.

9) Buy a quality glider with gliding footstool. Do not cheap out on this like we did, thinking it only needs to get you through one baby. It didn't. You want a comfy seat for HOURS of continuous rocking, and machine washable cushion covers. Ours is stained and the glide mechanism is almost shot already. I've had to hack it to work around a slipping glide lock, and I still need to glue on a lever that I shattered in a rage one 3am when the fucking thing seized up on me for the 5th time in 10 minutes.

10) Buy RedBull by the pallet. If somebody buys you a bottle cooler for the nursery, at least you can put your Red Bull in it.

11) Buy/request sleepers with ZIPPERS. I don't care how fucking cute it is, at 3am you will HATE the person who gave it to you as you try to get the snaps lined up properly while the baby screams and thrashes.

12) If you have a boy, forget PP-TPs. Just learn how to change a diaper quickly. No mater what, you and he are both going to get it in the face at some point- perhaps at several points in a single changing.

13) Spend the $$ and get Dr. Browns bottles. And the dishwasher racks, and multiple mixing pitchers. Less air = less gas = almost no vomit on your shoulder. I'd go with 12 bottles, 3 dishwasher racks, and 2 pitchers.

14) Get a proper co-sleeper for next to your bed. For the first few months I couldn't sleep if I couldn't hear the baby breathe, and I needed to be able to reach over the side of the bed to calm him. We had a crib with sides that were 6 inches higher than the bed, and I would get a numb arm and shooting pains in my back from falling asleep with my arm draped over it. And of course because we got the crib from a friend I wasn't allowed to throw it out a window and buy something useful. Look for adjustable height and/or drop-sides.

15) Learn to stand up to your family and friends when it comes to baby gear. Don't be afraid to stuff gifts you can't use into the attic or sell them off. You are the one who has to live with/around all the junk that people lovingly give you. We're still working on this one. In the end, you are the one with the baby they want to visit, so they'll have to suck up their hurt feelings when you trade the $200 swing the baby hates for a can of RedBull that will actually help ensure your child lives to see their first birthday.

For those who don't know, I got married and had a kid in the past year. It's time to start going through my rants posts here and cleaning them up for posterity- i.e. the kid, the wife, and the in-laws. That means the nastier language and the pictures of old girlfriends are going away. Better start saving coppies if you want good blackmail material later.

To: eHockey Roster Support
Re: Sharks Tuesday Night Hockey Roster

Hi guys,

Last night I missed my game due to an injury (snowboarding is hard), but got a call a few minutes before the start because one of the new guys I'm sure I registered on the online roster was not listed in the check-in system and thus not being allowed to play.

I tried to log into the site from home to check it out, but I have my password cached at work, and none of my normal ones were accepted.   I tried to change the password, but when confronted with my secret question, "who sucks?" I discovered that I apparently do not spell "Pittsburgh" the same way every time- especially when I've had a bottle of wine with dinner.   I guess I should have made it, "f**k who?" as "Model" is easier to remember.

Anyhow, now I'm back at work, but the site won't take my cached password, so it looks like I locked myself out.   How can I fix it?

Thanks for your time,

Josh

With the Republicans actually considering a Mormon for President, a lot of people are bringing up the flaws of the Mormon faith. Many point out that it doesn't really follow the established tenant of Christianity and holds to a lot of crazy mystical stuff that is somehow believable when it comes from a from a 2000-year-old book, but not a 200-year-old one.

But the wackiness of Mormonism isn't at all out of proportion to that of Christianity- unless you are talking about the "fundamentalist" version most of the other Republicans subscribe to, which shed the mysticism and pageantry of Catholicism to get back to the original teachings of Christ: hate foreigners, immigrants, gays, and brown people; amass as much wealth and status as you can; fuck the poor and the sick; and kill as many infidels as possible, preferably by throwing the children of the poor at them.

A guy I know just returned from a 30 day leave of absence for "personal reasons." I thought I should send him a card...

Dear Sir, welcome back! We hope that you enjoyed your...
  (check all that apply)
  backpacking tour of Europe
  stint in rehab
  ninjitsu training
  imprisonment
  tutelage under the Dalai Lama.

We are pleased to have you amongst us once more, and are sure that we shall all benefit from your...
  lyncanthropy
  drug dealer and celebrity contacts
  ability to kill pirates
  kick-ass tattoos and expanded sexual horizons
  mastery of Feng Shui.

Hi All,

Hopefully you have received a request to fill out our online survey. The survey is scheduled to close Monday night, and I've been asked to contact as many of you as I can, and beg you to take it.

I know you all have more pressing things to do, but this really is a unique opportunity for you- AND me. See, when you use this survey to voice any complaints you have about ________ or the service you receive from us, it goes straight to the president of the company, who will then come down on me to make sure it gets fixed. And if you gush about how awesome I am, I will be able to hold it over him at my next salary review. Either way, it only takes a few minutes to complete- nowhere near the time I spent trying to insert leading questions that will make me look good.

So please check it out. Management spent a lot of time and money making it not boring or annoying, and they're really quite proud of it, so it'll break their hearts if only my family fills it out.

If you did not receive an e-mail link to the survey, or would like it re-sent, please let me know or call ______________ at ____________.

Josh _________
Support & Training...

So, I've been loosely boycotting Quiznos because of their shitty negative ad campaign against Subway (what did Subway do to them?), but today my choice was between them and a Subway that's in an Exxon station (buy out Mobile and rescind all of their domestic partner benefits? Lifetime boycott for you!), so I hit Quiznos, which was empty @ 2:30.

Bought me a sammich, a Sobe, and a cookie; paid the cashier and left the cookie ballanced on the Sobe bottle by the register while the cook finished the sub and I filled a cup with peppers at the pepper bar.

I stepped back to the register as the cook was bagging my stuff and passed him the cup of peppers. As headded that to the bag I reached out for it, and he looked a little thrown off, and asked if I wanted him to close the bag. I was thinking I interrupted some lame-ass presentation thing they do, so I held up my hands and smiled as he sloppily folded over the top of the bag and slid it to me. WTF? I arched an eyebrow, grabbed the bag and drink, and headed back to the office, where I discovered that the motherfucker had not included my cookie in the bag.

Fucking Fucker! With the cookie balanced on top of the Sobe bottle there's no way I absently left it behind. THAT FUCKER STOLE MY DESSERT. And no, I have no idea why.

I WANT MY MOTHERFUCKING COOKIE, YOU FUCKING SKIPPY!!!

It was cinimon & sugar, and would have been the perfect counterpoint to the little bit of heat lingering in my mouth from the peppers.

from the Miami Herald quote: Posted on Sat, Oct. 28, 2006 ELECTIONS Glitches cited in early voting Early voters are urged to cast their ballots with care following scattered reports of problems with heavily used machines. BY CHARLES RABIN AND DARRAN SIMON

After a week of early voting, a handful of glitches with electronic voting machines have drawn the ire of voters, reassurances from elections supervisors -- and a caution against the careless casting of ballots.

Several South Florida voters say the choices they touched on the electronic screens were not the ones that appeared on the review screen -- the final voting step.

Election officials say they aren't aware of any serious voting issues. But in Broward County, for example, they don't know how widespread the machine problems are because there's no process for poll workers to quickly report minor issues and no central database of machine problems.

In Miami-Dade, incidents are logged and reported daily and recorded in a central database. Problem machines are shut down.

''In the past, Miami-Dade County would send someone to correct the machine on site,'' said Lester Sola, county supervisor of elections. Now, he said, ``We close the machine down and put a seal on it.''

Debra A. Reed voted with her boss on Wednesday at African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale. Her vote went smoothly, but boss Gary Rudolf called her over to look at what was happening on his machine. He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.

That's exactly the kind of problem that sends conspiracy theorists into high gear -- especially in South Florida, where a history of problems at the polls have made voters particularly skittish.

A poll worker then helped Rudolf, but it took three tries to get it right, Reed said.

''I'm shocked because I really want . . . to trust that the issues with irregularities with voting machines have been resolved,'' said Reed, a paralegal. ``It worries me because the races are so close.''

Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney said it's not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot -- essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual.

''It is resolved right there at the early-voting site,'' Cooney said.

Broward poll workers keep a log of all maintenance done on machines at each site. But the Supervisor of Elections office doesn't see that log until the early voting period ends. And a machine isn't taken out of service unless the poll clerk decides it's a chronic poor performer that can't be fixed.

Cooney said no machines have been removed during early voting, and she is not aware of any serious problems.

In Miami-Dade, two machines have been taken out of service during early voting. No votes were lost, Sola said.

Joan Marek, 60, a Democrat from Hollywood, was also stunned to see Charlie Crist on her ballot review page after voting on Thursday. ''Am I on the voting screen again?'' she wondered. ``Well, this is too weird.''

Marek corrected her ballot and alerted poll workers at the Hollywood satellite courthouse, who she said told her they'd had previous problems with the same machine.

Poll workers did some work on her machine when she finished voting, Marek said. But no report was made to the Supervisor of Elections office and the machine was not removed, Cooney said.

Workers at the Hollywood poll said there had been no voting problems on Friday.

Mauricio Raponi wanted to vote for Democrats across the board at the Lemon City Library in Miami on Thursday. But each time he hit the button next to the candidate, the Republican choice showed up. Raponi, 53, persevered until the machine worked. Then he alerted a poll worker.

Miami Herald staff writer Linda Topping Streitfeld contributed to this report.

By PAUL RIECKHOFF Published: September 25, 2006

IN 2002, I attended the Infantry Officer Basic Course at Fort Benning, Ga. At "the Schoolhouse," every new Army infantry officer spent six months studying the basics of his craft, including the rules of war.

I remember a seasoned senior officer explaining the importance of the Geneva Conventions. He said, "When an enemy fighter knows he'll be treated well by United States forces if he is captured, he is more likely to give up."

A year later on the streets of Baghdad, I saw countless insurgents surrender when faced with the prospect of a hot meal, a pack of cigarettes and air-conditioning. America's moral integrity was the single most important weapon my platoon had on the streets of Iraq. It saved innumerable lives, encouraged cooperation with our allies and deterred Iraqis from joining the growing insurgency.

But those days are over. America's moral standing has eroded, thanks to its flawed rationale for war and scandals like Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and Haditha. The last thing we can afford now is to leave Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions open to reinterpretation, as President Bush proposed to do and can still do under the compromise bill that emerged last week.

Blurring the lines on the letter of Article 3 - it governs the treatment of prisoners of war, prohibiting "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture" and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment" - will only make our troops' tough fight even tougher. It will undermine the power of all the Geneva Conventions, immediately endanger American troops captured by the enemy and create a powerful recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.

But the fight over Article 3 concerns not only Al Qaeda and the war in Iraq. It also affects future wars, because when we lower the bar for the treatment of our prisoners, other countries feel justified in doing the same. Four years ago in Liberia, in an attempt to preserve his corrupt authority, President Charles Taylor adopted the Bush administration's phrase "unlawful combatants" to describe prisoners he wished to try outside of civilian courts. Today Mr. Taylor stands before The Hague accused of war crimes.

It is not hard to imagine that one of our Special Forces soldiers might one day be captured by Iranian forces while investigating a potential nuclear weapons program. What is to stop that soldier from being water-boarded, locked in a cold room for days without sleep as Iranian pop music blares all around him - and finally sentenced to die without a fair trial or the right to see the evidence against him?

If America continues to erode the meaning of the Geneva Conventions, we will cede the ground upon which to prosecute dictators and warlords. We will also become unable to protect our troops if they are perceived as being no more bound by the rule of law than dictators and warlords themselves.

The question facing America is not whether to continue fighting our enemies in Iraq and beyond but how to do it best. My soldiers and I learned the hard way that policy at the point of a gun cannot, by itself, create democracy. The success of America's fight against terrorism depends more on the strength of its moral integrity than on troop numbers in Iraq or the flexibility of interrogation options.

Several Republican combat veterans, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Senators Lindsay Graham, John McCain and John Warner, have recognized that the president's stance on Article 3 is a threat to our troops and to our interests. It would be insulting for the president to assume he knows more about war than they do.

But the compromise the president struck with the senators last week leaves the most significant questions unresolved. The veterans must hold their ground - and the White House must recognize that our troops need all the moral authority they can get.

Paul Rieckhoff, the executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, is the author of "Chasing Ghosts: A Soldier's Fight for America From Baghdad to Washington."

My girlfriend is working on a PHD in cancer research, with an emphasis on breast cancer. One of the amusing bits of information I've gleaned from her is that quite a lot of breast cancer research is funded by the Department of Defense. Yep, you read that right. Every now and then one of the bullshit pork-barrel amendments Congressmen sneak into spending bills actually does something positive- in a round-about, inefficient, maddeningly bureaucratic way.

And with the economy in the crapper right now a lot of research funding from corporate sources has dried up (unless you're trying to prove that smoking, auto exhaust, and factory pollutants don't cause cancer, in which case funding is endless).

Add the fact that Bush has been slashing every normal federal fund for scientific research so we can afford to give tax breaks to SUV and yacht owners while at the same time outspending the past three presidents on everything related to- you guessed it- Defense.

Which makes DoD grants one of the few stable sources of funding. Which makes the competition for those grants tough. It doesn't help that rather than submitting your previous achievements and the results of your work to-date (which would be far too technical for them) they give you a bunch of warm-fuzzy questions that test your ability to bullshit rather than to slaughter tumors. The gf has been pulling her hair out over a training grant form, and I offered to help...

Apparretly a Dell laptop keyboard will oly tollerate so may liters of coffee ad water before thigs start breakig dow. My replacemet keyboard should have bee here this morig, but o luv. I may have to ru to the auto parts store for some electrical cotact cleaer ad experimet.

Bee busy aroud the house lately gettig a few thigs doe i time for my aual ew Years Day Recovery Party. Fially fiished framig i the dishwasher ad fittig a butcher block top to it, replaced the itermittatly workig diig room light fixture that had bee daglig from its wireds forever with a ice broze tiffay thig, ad am i the process of replacig the dowstairs bathroom door.

Iterrupted all that to brig home a couple of kittes, "Ra" ad "Schroediger," because I like life complicated.

Btw, American light beer still sucks, and sucks worse the next morning.

It was a busy Summer. I didn't really accomplish much of anything, but I can't seem to get very worried about it. I sold a ton of VW crap and culled the herd to just my '96 Golf, hosted a couple get-togethers, did a lot of camping, played more paintball than in the past 5 years combined, and mowed the lawn, like... three times.

April:     Hosted a LAN party with a few of the guys from the Atari Secret Society (ASS) -my old video game clan. My callsign is Frogger (get it, Atari / Frogger?) For some reason people react oddly when they see me listed as assfrogger. The guys next door had to move out at the end of the month, and they gave me their full-size Rampage console game in exchange for... accepting their full-size console game. Kept it for a couple months, then traded for 100 movie passes to Studio 35. You can play it in the lobby there.		May:     Did the anual camping party to celebrate my friend Mike's birthday party. Followed by the inevitable flurry of camping supply purchases.
June:     Bought a new paintball gun, a Tippmann A-5, played at The Bash for the 8th time in 14 years, followed by the inevitable flurry of paint gunupgrades.
July:     Spent about a billion hours cutting out masking tape stencils to camo paint my paintball gun. I always was easily entertained. Had a miserably hot time camping at the Michigan Monster Game, with highs over 100, lows of 78, 80%+ humidity and thunderstorms. Had fun playing, but I'll never camp for that one again.
August:     Had most of the guys I hung around with in High Scool down for a little reunion. Couldn't find Chad in time, Pete stopped replying to e-mails (changed your address for a 10th time?), and Dave needs to growup a little before I can have him and Rich in the same place. We had big plans for cart racing and bar hopping, but ended up sitting in my back yard grilling and drinking case after case of cheap bear for 15 hours instead. Doesn't get much better than that. Somewhere in there we managed to get the upstairs laundry room re-floored, and I finished framing in the doorway to the attic stairs.
September:     Back to Michigan for the Tippmann World Challenge. One team is all Tippman users, the other is everybody else. About 900 people attended this year.
October:     Joined up with the Delta Squad-Ohio paintball team for the Splatterpark Fall Big Game. It's nice to not be the craziest person in the group for a change.

...and yes, my Summers are 7 months long.

Next week I'm off to Newport for my brother's wedding. After that I may have to think about getting some stuff done on the house while I can work with the windows open.

Session Start (josh:jetta_man): Thu May 05 09:12:43 2005
[09:12] jetta_man: Hola Sr. Westhoofer. Esperanza usted tiene un Cinco encantador de mayo.
[09:14] josh: An enchanter cinco de mayo?
[09:14] josh: five wizards in May?
[09:15] jetta_man: hmmm
[09:15] jetta_man: El español un no tan bueno
[09:16] josh: Espero que tienes un Cinco de Mayo bueno.
[09:16] jetta_man: encantador = lovely
[09:16] josh: from same root as  enchanting
[09:16] josh: and enchantment
[09:16] josh: magical spell
[09:16] jetta_man: Si
[09:17] josh: -tador = male doer
[09:17] josh: so an encantador would probably be a magician
[09:17] jetta_man: Ahh
[09:18] jetta_man: ¡mi castigo para el español pobre será un tiro del tequila para el almuerzo!
[09:21] josh: Dude, let me get a cup of coffee before I attempt that one
[09:21] jetta_man: LOL
[09:32] josh: So was everything else a set-up to let you paste in that last line about tequila for breakfast?
[09:33] jetta_man: ?
[09:33] josh: It had punctuation and everything
[09:35] jetta_man: yeah, i cheated