Gandhi, The Dalai Lama, and I

Did I get the grammar in the title right? I are an engineer after all. Which apparently leaves me with an insatiable desire to take all sorts of quizzes. Here are two quizzes that had very interesting results. The first was What Kind of Thinker Are You? from the BBC.

You are an Intrapersonal thinker
		Intrapersonal thinkers: Spend a lot of time thinking about and trying to understand themselves Reflect on their thoughts and moods, and work to improve them You understand how your behaviour affects your relationships with others
Like intrapersonal thinkers, Leonardo worked hard to improve all aspects of himself.		Other Intrapersonal thinkers include Sigmund Freud, Gandhi, Grahame Greene Careers which suit Intrapersonal Thinkers include Psychologist, Teacher, Pilot, Child care worker, Explorer, Drama therapist

Huh? Psychologist, Teacher, Child care worker? I think not. They obviously didn't have "patience" as part of the test. But Gandhi - that's cool, I can live with that.



The next test was The Political Compass. This is a fairly extensive quiz which not only determines your position on the left/right scale but also on the authoritarian/libertarian scale.

Your political compass

Economic Left/Right: -3.75

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.72

The first chart on the results page listed where world leaders of the past would lie on this scale:



My position lies closest to Gandhi. Hello again, Gandhi!! The next graph listed where world leaders of today stand:



This explains why I cannot agree AT ALL with our current fearless leader way in the opposite corner of the chart. And it is interesting that the so-called religious right has a Pope who is actually left of center.  (I know, the religious right are mostly evangelical protestants, but they all look alike ).



My results fall almost smack dab on top of The Dalai Lama. Now that is also very cool. If only I could chill out and not be a complete perfectionist, control freak, supermom and embrace my inner Gandhi and Dalai Lama.

Dova's Sayings Part 3

Here's the latest installment of Dova's Sayings. This imaginative girl is now 4 1/2 years old, and I'm hoping there's still plenty more to come.

• My knee is allergic to boo-boos.
• How come there are so many allergies (algae) in the fish tank?
• I don't like sleeping, it's boring.
• From now on I'm going to turn the difficult off and turn the good on. 
• Mom: Are you going to hold on to that balloon tight so you won't lose it? 
  Dova:  Yes, just like my eyes. I hold on tight to them while I'm sleeping.
• Dad:  Are you a sweet and helpful girl? 
  Dova:  Any minute now.

Check out the first and second installments as well plus a preview installment from when she was two years old.

Photo Hunters - Bright

These photos from Kimball Farm's mini-golf are definitely bright over-exposed, but I like them as Doug and Adam are exposed perfectly (both photos were deliberately taken with positive exposure compensation). Doug looks like he is putting on a piece of astroturf on the sun. Adam looks cozy under the shadow of the rock and waterfall, but he is also putting into the bright white.  And yes, he putted two balls into the water "by accident".

WW - Adam rides his dirt bike

Silly Monkey Stories - Fun at Kimball Farm

We went to Kimball Farm in Westford, MA for some family fun with friends, and the kids were nothing short of swinging from the trees.


Here, they were on sitting on top of a boulder. Adam was grooving to Burning Love, which they know from Lilo and Stitch. Imagine, learning rock classics from a Disney movie! This shot of Dova made me realize that she is quickly turning from a toddler into a little girl.


Adam pretending that he wasn't tickling his sister.


A close-up of Adam driving the bumper boat before I had a chance to zoom out the camera. One-handed shooting with a DSLR while driving a boat was not an easy task!


Here they were bumping their boat into mine.


Here's Dova trying to kiss her brother.

My Piggy Personality

Here are my results:

Toward the top of the paper, you are positive and optimistic.

Facing front, you are direct, enjoy playing devil's advocate and neither fear nor avoid discussions.

With few details, you are emotional and naive, they care little for details and are a risk-taker.

With less than 4 legs, they are insecure or are living through a period of major change.

The size of the ears indicates how good a listener you are.
The bigger the better. You drew medium sized ears, you are a good listener

The length of the tail indicates the quality of your sex life.
And again more is better! You drew large tail, WOW!

Find your own piggy personality at Draw a pig personality test.

Photo Hunters - Water

Here are some pictures of fun in our new wading pool. Hopefully this will last longer than the last one which Dova bit a hole in.

Bigger, Better, Faster!

No, this isn't the latest in penis enhancement, but just some updates on geeky tips I've given in the past.

Bigger - Remember my tip about double-clicking the format painter? It was a pretty hidden feature that I only learned about recently from a colleague. Now in Office 2007, the tip comes up in full glory when you hover over the blasted ribbon. But there's more news on that front. We were talking about double-clicking the format painter button at work and my friend Jim said that he was the one who invented it! He was working at Microsoft (yes THE Microsoft in Seattle) as an software quality engineer on the Powerpoint team and logged this feature request about 10 years ago. Developers argued that no one would find it, but apparently we have. And in a recent Office 2007 training session, an administrative assistant asked whether you could still double-click the format painter, so there's more than two of us that know about it. Yes, we're supposed to use styles and all, but the painter is so much easier. And now I know who invented the double-click format painter!

Better - Goodbye Slickr, hello Google Photos Screensaver! For whatever reason, Slickr was crashing my machine lately, with some enormous memory leak eating of gigs of memory. I installed the Google screensaver and haven't looked back (yes, being sucked in by evil empire number two again). The best thing about it is that before you exit the screensaver mode, you have the option to go back and review the pictures. This is especially handy if you see a picture from across the room, and say, what was that - can I go back? You can do that easily now. The collage mode isn't for me as I like to view my photos in 24" widescreen glory. Woo hoo!

Faster - Syncplicity has been fantastic for syncing between my work and home computers. I've looked at other services and they either don't work with the company firewall, or cost money. This saves me loads of time instead of using SyncToy with a flash drive. Every once in a while, my Outlook.pst file gets corrupted, but Scanpst.exe usually fixes it. And if not, I've got five backups of the file because I can't trust evil empire number one.

Going Green Without Paxil

Fantastic artwork titled I wish they would recycle by explodingdog.

Ever since the Earth Day Challenge, I've made an effort to be more green at work. It is so easy to fall into using disposable paper plates and plastic ware without regard to recycling or reusing. Where I work in New Hampshire, they have only recently started a recycling initiative at work. And these New Hampshire-ites are not exactly used to it (Massachusetts'ers are much more conscious about recycling). So I took it upon myself to print out these recycling signs to put over the trash barrels to remind people. They get splattered with ketchup once in a while, so I reprint, recolor, and repost them. And then I do inspections. See that aluminum can and plastic bottle in the trash? After I shot the picture, I fished them out and put them in the proper recycling bins (and washed my hands incessantly afterwards). The signs do help deter the non-recyclers as there are some days that I don't find recyclables in the trash. But really, why do I need to be the recycling police? I ought to chill out!

Another way I've changed at work was to bring in my own plates and silverware from home. It was a bit awkward and strange at first. The first time I went to wash my plate and fork, I went to the kitchen, washed them, and then took a paper towel to dry my hands and tableware. Then I walked back slowly to my desk thinking, wait, I just wasted all this water and here's this paper towel which I'm going to throw away. I ran into a few colleagues in the hallway who were wondering why I had this puzzled look on my face. I explained the predicament of not using a paper plate, but using water and a paper towel instead. Should I save it to dry and use again? One smart ass said, "You know what would help you? Paxil." Ah yes, apparently I've gone over the edge trying to be green. But I've finally struck a balance. Now I only go to wash my tableware when I go to the bathroom. I wash my tableware at the same time I wash my hands and use one paper towel for double duty. Yes, over-analysis, but it works. The only downside is that I can't use my tip of using a plastic knife to fish out my english muffin out of the toaster and nearly burn my fingers every morning.

I've also finally hopped on the reusable bags wagon for grocery shopping. Since I like to be frugal as well as green, I wasn't about to shell out a fortune buying beautiful reusable bags (but feel free to buy me some of these). I went to my closet and fished out unused canvas totes from WGBH (green and a public television/radio supporter, can you say flaming liberal?), the Emerson Hospital Birthing Center (had the earn those for sure), and one from a trade show. They still weren't enough to cover all the groceries, so I sprang for these $1.29 mesh grocery bags from Market Basket. And these are wonderful!! They fold up neatly and snap shut, and open to hold huge amounts of food. And these bags are catching on even in New Hampshire.

Happy Father's Day!

I got so caught up in my week of Wordless Wednesday's that I blew by Father's Day without a post (and Adam forgot to bring him his card from school until Monday). According to Adam, Doug is only good for motorcycles, like his mom is only good for video games.

Dova made another flower pot at school, this time with grass seed:


How did I get this strange eerie lighting for this strange eerie painted pot? Well, I failed to shoot the picture under natural light and all the flash shots were coming out with huge shadows. So I flipped my camera upside down, bounced the flash off the floor, and post processed by rotating twice, straightening, cropping to portrait, and correcting for the wood floor colored white balance. All that work because I was too lazy to wait for daylight!

Doug's birthday was one week before Father's Day and we celebrated on a hot steamy day. For some reason, the party always falls on the hottest or rainiest day of June. Here he is being presented with a cake made by his wife who insists on putting all the candles on. This year I had to purchase two boxes of 36 candles because he needed one candle more than two boxes of 24 candles.



Happy Birthday Doug and Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there!

WW - A Walk Through Arlington MA

I had a glorious afternoon with Dova after Liz's wedding. The weather was perfect and Dova was in great spirits. I love to photograph little girls running. They look so carefree!

Tuesday Toot - Multiplication in First Grade

More school posts? Ah yes, unfortunately we are still in full swing until the last day on June 25th. Our town's school year started after Labor Day because of budget votes and we had way too many snow days. Next year we are starting after Labor Day again, which affords us a late August vacation, but another school year ending in late June. But more interestingly and importantly, is that Adam is getting extremely good at math.

Lately, Adam has been telling us that he has been doing third grade math at the end of first grade. Without actually looking at his work, we nodded and praised him. And then he brought home this multiplication worksheet. Now, we've only explained the concept of multiplication, and covered two's and some three's, but not much beyond that. We were completely astounded that he got most of this worksheet for nine's right. I asked him whether the teacher explained multiplication and showed him a multiplication table. He said no, and that he figured it all out on his fingers. Fingers? Seven times nine on fingers? Even I would get that wrong! Wow!

We asked if anyone else in his class was doing third grade math and he said no. So our little boy genius is well on his way to becoming a math geek, just like his mom. I found a nice multiplication table for him to memorize over the summer and blow away his second grade teacher as well. We are extremely proud of you Adam!


Image from vaughns-1-pagers.

Edited to add 6/18/08 - I since learned that what he meant by "doing it on his fingers" was that he was doing the multiply by nine's trick where you hold out your fingers, fold down the finger that you're multiplying by, and then count the remaining fingers to get your answer. For example, for 9 x 3, fold down the middle finger of your left hand, and you have 2 and 7 fingers showing, or "27". I explained this to him a long time ago, although he claims he figured this out himself.

WW - Pretty in Braids

"Kissy-face"

WW - Bubbles

Photo Hungers - Emotion

If looks could kill!! Here's Dova, when she was two, with her mad face on, ready to punch you out.

WW - Balloon Animals

The same mime that tried to eat Adam's ice cream also created these wonderful balloons. Here's Dova's princess balloon and a flower balloon (hey that's the name of one of our fish!). Who knew that you could make a princess out of balloons? Adam refused to have a balloon made (mime-phobia?).


A kiss balloon.


A lion mask.

WW - A Clown Tries to Eat Adam's Ice Cream

Adam was not pleased at all although it makes a cute photograph. Hopefully, the clown didn't traumatize him too badly and give him Coulrophobia for life.