Belts, Summer

The whole family (well, except for Dot) tested and earned their next belts this past weekend in TaeKwonDo. Whacko is now a green belt, Yakko has his yellow, and Mom and Dad are senior green. UPS didn’t get the new belts to us in time for the awards ceremony, so we have no pictures.

Whacko, as a new green belt, got fitted for his pads and sat in on his first sparring class. He was a little more tentative than we thought he’d be, but that’s probably just as well. We were worried he was gonna tear into the kid lined up across from him, but he was more preoccupied with how much his helmet itched.

Yakko is done with school as of yesterday. Because there are three kids to watch instead of two, that makes life harder on everyone except me. Not having to get him to school, I get to either sleep later or have extra time to get more accomplished in the mornings. I intend to do the latter, but will probably wind up doing the former.

This also begins Whacko’s last summer as a free kid. Kindergarten starts for him in the fall. We’ll hope he handles it better by then than he did at the meet-and-greet a few weeks ago. Growling at your kindergarten teacher might be an amusing story years down the road, but it’s not an optimal first impression.

May 25th, 2007 - Posted in Homelife | | 0 Comments

Skynet goes online

Ten years ago today, the computer Deep Blue beat Kasparov. It was the first time a computer had taken a full match from a human grand master.

(As an aside, The first Kasparov / computer match from the previous year was the first time I ever settled a bet by looking something up on the Internet. My buddy Cool didn’t believe Kasparov had won, and a Yahoo search proved me right.)

I “play” chess only in the sense that I know how the pieces move. Knowing the alphabet doesn’t mean you know how to read. But it seems to me that conceptually, there’s no reason to expect a human to play better than a computer. At any stage of the game, there are a finite number of possible outcomes, and that number gets smaller with every move. That’s the kind of thing computers do well. No one is stunned when computers factor huge numbers faster and more accurately than humans. Why should we be surprised when computers figure out better chess moves?

I guess if someone built a computer that could beat a top-notch Yu Gi Oh player, I’d be more impressed.

May 11th, 2007 - Posted in Uncategorized | | 0 Comments

Leave It To Beaver Letter

So on one of my tv blog sites I found this. It’s the contents of a letter from a Leave It To Beaver episode. 50 years ago when it aired no one could pause tv to read the letter so it didn’t really matter what was in it. Now thanks to the wonders of technology we get to read what bored prop people did. Check out the letter. It really is kinda funny. http://www.shorpy.com/leave-it-to-beaver

May 2nd, 2007 - Posted in Uncategorized | | 1 Comments