In my book Invading Spaces I talked about moving arcade games. I talked so much about moving arcade games that I devoted an entire chapter to the topic of moving arcade games. I described every possible way I could think of to move an arcade games. Then my friend Drew Stone posted these pictures online and I realized ... you can't think of everything.
A little over a week ago I downloaded the beta version of Google's new browser (Chrome) to give it a test run.
Believe it or not, there was a time when Internet Explorer didn't come bundled with Windows. Then again, believe it or not, there was a time when most people didn't have a use for Internet Explorer because they didn't have Internet access! These days Internet Explorer comes pre-installed (and deeply embedded) in Microsoft's operating systems, and therein lies the problem. To challe
Mason and Morgan both had friends sleepovers last night, so the four of us spent most of Sunday lounging around the house, catching up on sleep. Mason and Talon worked on their Star Wars movie; Morgan and Madison slept in a tent and watched Disney movies.
I rented the 2008 version of Journey to the Center of the Earth for Mason and I to watch tonight but somehow I ended up with the 2008 made-for-tv version of Journey to the Center of the Earth, starring Rick Schroeder. An hour into the film
Of all my Shedeck stories, this is one of my favorites.
During fifth grade I became friends with Jason Lee, who was friends with Jeremy Smith. For a couple of years we were the best of friends. Mr. Hatcher used to commonly refer to us as "the three stooges." Jeremy grew up in Sun Valley with me. In fifth grade Jason lived near Shedeck, but at some point (maybe during the summer between fifth and sixth grade) he moved to Sun Valley as well; in fact, his backyard was caddy-corner from my own (
Neither of today's stories have to do with that old portable building, but they're both Shedeck-related and they're two of my favorite stories from that era. The other one is a better story, but this one is such a strong memory that I wanted to post it as well.
Throughout grade school (and especially elementary school) it was extremely rare for a student to lobby an idea and have it accepted by a teacher -- so rare in fact that I can count the number of times it happened on one hand. For exa
In sixth grade, the Yukon school district decided it would be better for all the elementary school nerds to mingle instead of doing whatever it was they were doing at their own schools. The third year in a row, my Gifted class moved. In fourth grade (while attending Myers), I attended Mrs. Leatherwood's Gifted class there. In fifth grade I moved to Shedeck Elementary, as did Mrs. Leatherwood. I don't know how they do it now (I'm sure I'll find out soon enough), but back then Gifted consisted of
Also in fifth grade, we studied superheroes. We read about the history of superheroes and comic books and so on. I don't remember spending a lot of time on the subject. Perhaps it was just a week or two.
As part of this mini-course, each student created their own superhero. Mine was a patriotic fellow named "Terc" who turned into "Super Terc" from time to time. I have no idea where I got the name Terc from -- it sounds suspiciously like "Herc", Hercules nickname from the cartoon that I used
When I was a kid, my mom bought me a book called "How to Build a Monster." I probably still have it, somewhere. The book went through a list of monsters like "Bigfoot," "Lock Ness Monster," and "Giant Robot" and showed you how to build them.
Now I gotta tell you, there were some definite leaps of faith contained within the pages of that book. I'm reminded of the old math joke, where the guy is writing a big formula on a blackboard and in the middle it says "then a miracle occurs" in between
One time in Mrs. Leatherwood's second grade Gifted class, I had to create a commercial for a ficticious product. I invented Monster Marshmallows ("Marshmallows with a BITE!") To create my marshmallows I bought a big bag of big marshmallows, dyed them with food coloring, and then created little accessories out of paper (eyes, horns, claws) to glue to them. The only problem with Monster Marshmallows was ... they were delicious. By the time I was to perform my commercial, two-thirds of the monsters
One of our yearly Gifted rituals was "Independent Studies". Independent Studies was the educational term for "pick something you're interested and go learn about it." These studies often lasted an entire nine-week period and culminated with some sort of big project and presentation (something that could be graded).
My Shedeck Gifted teacher, Mrs. Leatherwood, had also been my Gifted teacher at my previous school as well. In fact, I'd had Mrs. Leatherwood for gifted since 2nd grade, so she'd
In December of 1983, Mrs. Leatherwood organized a Christmastime "fantasy gift exchange." It worked like most other gift exchanges do -- everybody in class randomly picked the name of a fellow student and we were to give them a gift. The difference was, as this was a "fantasy" gift exchange, instead of buying the gifts we got to draw them on paper instead. The only limit to our gifts was our imagination.
I can't remember exactly who drew my name, but I specifically remember whose name I pulle
Starting this year, Mason is attending Open Door, a program at Shedeck that allows you to drop your kids off a little early and pick them up a little late. It costs money, but it costs less money than it costs Susan and I to drive separately to work, and Mason loves playing with his friends both before and after school so it's a win all the way around.
This blog entry, however, has very little to do with Open Door. Instead, it has to do with the room (portable building, actually) that Open
It was one of those Sundays where the kids wanted to do "something" and we couldn't come up with a single thing to do. Finally Susan suggested we hit the Omniplex and so we did. We are members of the Oklahoma Science Museum something-or-other which allows us free admittance anytime we wish to go. So, we went.
When we arrived at the Omniplex -- er, Oklahoma Science Museum -- we were informed that a live demonstration of science was to take place in about ten minutes. We walked straight to the
My presentation at Oklahoma City Community College went off without a hitch. It's funny, before I give a presentation like this I constantly worry that something technical will go wrong -- the machine will blue screen, for example -- but once I get up in front of a crowd I forget all about that because then I'm too busy being nervous about standing in front of a group of strangers. I hope I didn't look it. The panic only lasted five or ten minutes this time. After that I loosened up a bit and go
On Tuesday I was extended an invitation to speak to a class of students at Oklahoma City Community College on Thursday. The class is studying the history of videogames, and this week is Commodore week.
In order: Shock, honor, panic.
I've spent the past two nights throwing together a PowerPoint presentation that I hope the class will find (1) informative and (2) entertaining. ("Wait -- strike that -- reverse it." - Willy Wonka.) The class is 80 minutes long but my slot is going to last 50
Before Susan leaves for one of her out-of-town work trips she stocks our kitchen to the brim with things the kids and I would never eat. It's a motherly thing -- I get it. She doesn't want to leave the kitchen bare and so she spends a bunch of money on breakfast cereals, easy-to-prepare meals and a wide selection of fruit. While she's away the kids get McDonald's for breakfast, fast food for dinner and popcicles for snacks. Susan's well-meaning rations generally sit untouched until her return, a
The other day at a kid's birthday party, a good friend of mine introduced me to some of his friends as "a writer." Something about that made me uncomfortable. I downplayed his comment and immediately began backpeddling.
"Oh, I'm not really a writer," I said, looking down and shuffling my feet.
"What?" my friend said. "You just published your second book!"
"Oh, yeah ... that ..." I said, hiding an embarassed smirk.
What was it about the word "writer" that made me so uncomfortabl
I was on IRC the first time I heard the term "MP3" used. It took me a while before I got the point of transferring digital music files back and forth. I remember thinking at the time, "Why would I want to download music I already own and listen to it on my computer?" At that time I was still a dial-up modem user. It took longer to download most songs than it did to listen to them.
Scanning back through my MP3 collection I found a handful of songs with dates as early as March of 1997, but it
If you haven't seen one in person yet, the new Smart cars are small. Really small. Like, they're so small that when you pass one (they don't pass you) you think, "That's too small to be on the road." I've seen a couple of them zipping around town, but hadn't seen one up close and personal until yesterday when Johnny drove his (and by his I mean his wife Stephanie's!) to work.
Johnny is six-foot-two and "a lot of pounds." Yours truly is six-foot-flat and also "a lot of pounds." The Smart
August, 1978
I'm riding in the back seat of my mom's car, a maroon Mercury Zephyr station wagon, on the way to my first day of school. I'm a little nervous, but upon entering the room I see a Star Wars picture book displayed prominently on Mrs. Cove's bookshelves, and I decide things will probably be okay. We just recently moved to Sun Valley, and I can't wait to get home from school and start exploring the neighborhood on my bicycle.
August, 1988
It's the first day of tenth grade and
On Friday I received a short and to-the-point e-mail from Lulu.com (my book publisher) informing me that, due to a content violation, my book Commodork had been removed from their store. If I had any questions (and who wouldn't at this point?) I could visit their forums and post a message in the "Support Forums."
My heart skipped a beat. Had I done something wrong? I published Commodork over two years ago. Had it really taken this long for a problem to arise?
I visited Lulu's Support For
Last Friday marked thirty-five years of me walking the earth. It was probably the most low-key birthday I've had in a decade or two; maybe the quietest since Susan and I celebrated the event alone in 1996 and 1997, the years we spent living away from home in Spokane, Washington.
My co-workers who were stuck out of town with me in KCMO last week took me out multiple times for my birthday last week. "Let's go to the casino ... for Rob's birthday!" "Let's stop by the bar ... for Rob's birthday
Last year on Mason's first day of school (kindergarten), I was in Dallas. This year on Mason's first day of school (first grade), I'm in Kansas City. Once again, Susan came to the rescue and took a picture of the kids standing in front of Shedeck.
For reference, here is the picture she took last year:
One year is a nice gesture; two years running is a tradition.
(Culled and plagiarized from multiple online news sources.)
The body of a supposed ape-man found in the North Georgia mountains was nothing but an empty rubber monkey suit embedded in ice, according to California Bigfoot enthusiasts who finally got a chance to examine it last weekend. The two Atlanta men who stood up at a news conference in California last week and tried to convince the world they had found Bigfoot now apparently can’t be located — just like the real Bigfoot.
Searching f
Triskaidekaphobia is the "illogical fear of the number 13." The number thirteen is considered so unlucky by people that many skyscrapers do not have a thirteenth floor. According to Wikipedia, NASCAR does not issue the number thirteen to cars, many sports teams do not use the number thirteen, and even Microsoft skipped version 13 of Microsoft Office, jumping from twelve to fourteen. Thirteen is also the least picked lottery number.
Today is my thirteenth wedding anniversary. I am one of the
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