Category Archives: Fun

Homemade fun!

December 3, 2008Family, FunFamily, Funwarren

The kids were helping their grandparents decorate their tree last weekend when we all noticed the old ornaments Emily and her brother had made in school. Several were hand-painted and had pictures of them through the years. I don’t know if all schools stopped doing that or just the ones we have been in but we don’t have any homemade ornaments and even fewer than none with pictures of the kids. We couldn’t let that continue so we had project night at our house this weekend.

Emily’s folks found some wooden ornaments that just happened to have a space in the middle to accommodate wallet sized pictures. We had just finished having Christmas pictures taken at a local department store and we had the disc with the copies. I printed out a bunch of copies and we had some good old fashioned fun painting and otherwise decorating the ornaments.

I wear a black leather jacket typically. I had hung it over the chair in the dining room this weekend (well, truth be told, I hang it there every day). The kids were dancing around and painting, having fun, etc. I didn’t notice until the paint was dry, but someone did battle with my coat using a green paintbrush. Take a moment to find a zen place, Warren…the paint is water based and washable and came right off luckily!

So, all is well. We now have some homemade ornaments with current pictures hot-glued in place. We had a good time messing around with family and I have a significantly scrubbed, much cleaner coat. It was certainly good homemade fun!

We hot glued ribbons to the top to hang them on the tree. It’s sort of funny but we decided that the kids don’t really look like either of us when we were kids. Of course, my kids are much cuter than we were!

No hair…hair…no hair…ear hair

December 2, 2008Audio, Family, FunAudio, Family, Funwarren

Warren - age 1 or so!

A long time ago in a state not so far away…yeah, well that’s it for the Star Wars bit. I was born a number of years ago but you’ll have to do some research to figure out how old I am…

The number of holes in the mouthpiece of a telephone is <my age>
In a “3-4-5” right triangle, the small angle is approximately <my age> degrees
“Les Miserables” has a cast of <my age>
There are <my age> U.S. Federal Reserve Banks
William Shakespeare wrote <my age> plays
Hannibal brought <my age> elephants with him on his conquest of Rome

So, I have no idea if I was born with or without hair, but I know I had it for some period of my younger years. I had hair for about 25 or so years and then I decided to shave it all off. Warren - with HAIR!

For awhile, that was pretty cool because I shaved it before other people were shaving their heads. At that time, I was too young to be “old man bald” but my kind of bald was cool. About a year or 3 ago, my follicular karma caught up with me and I started sprouting hair in my ears. It isn’t fair!

Anyhow, it’s my birthday today so I will tell you a few odd things about myself. Apparently I was to be named Jedidiah (hey, that’s almost Jedi!) but when I was “out”, my parents though I looked like my Dad so they named me Warren instead.

Warren - and little brother - Easter best!

I was almost continually sick as a child. I had pneumonia many times and rheumatic fever once before I got through 3rd grade. My illness made me exceptionally handsome…I am still plagued by it!

I remember my absolute favorite pair of shoes…it was in first grade. May parents got me a pair of green gum boots. I wore them to school…all day long…every day. I also loved western shirts more than any other style.

Seriously, though, time has surely flown but I can’t imagine being any other place or with any other people!

Oh yeah, here’s my source for the strange ways to get my age.

By the way, here is a family tradition we enjoy. We call it happy birthday – loud and proud!

[audio:https://myhomeamongthehills.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/dadbday1.mp3]

Some of my favorite turkeys

December 1, 2008Family, Food, FunFamily, Food, Funwarren

Like most of the country, our family overate on Thanksgiving. We always go to Emily’s grandparents house in a small town outside the city. But before the actual feed, we have a tradition. We usually start checking in early on Thanksgiving morning as soon as we get up. Emily’s grandmother typically gets up at dawn’s crack and does the magic that she does to get everything ready. By the time we wake, the turkey is sure to be well along in the oven. We always call and ask how things are looking at their place.

“Smells like things are getting along pretty well.” We check in a few times in the morning to make sure everything is under control. Of course, she’s been cooking for 70 or so years but I want to make sure she doesn’t need my expert advice! We try to get the kids to dress in some Thanksgiving-appropriate attire. Typically the kids dress as Native Americans. We couldn’t talk Isaac into it this year. Abigail wanted to be a pilgrim so Emily’s mom sewed her a pilgrim hat. I wanted to give her a blunderbuss to carry but Emily nixed that idea sighting the fact that my shotguns were all far too long for Abigail to carry. Darn practicality!

Anyhow, we headed to their place around 11:30 or so and start to nibble…and by nibble I mean I eat as much as I can sneak away with in my pockets. So, I nibble a turkey leg or a pumpkin pie waiting for everything to get finished up. Eighteen of us gathered for a huge feed and subsequent nap this year. Most of us were able to eat our meal and get away from the table before falling into the tryptophan-trance. We did lose a few in their mashed potatoes this year though. I guess we eat for an hour and a half. There must be a little hobbit in our family though as we always eat a second lunch as well.

Some of us took a walk around the neighborhood this year as we always do. Emily’s Mom and Dad grew up a few blocks from each other and have known each other since before they were in school. We walked through their old stomping grounds and had a great chance to chat and reminisce. I bounce a little as I walk to ensure that my food gets packed in pretty well so I can hit the dessert table again. Unfortunately, Emily had to carry me part way home from our walk this year. Too much nibbling I guess!

After dessert, we played a few games of Tripoli and Uno and goofed around with the kids. The kids enjoy playing on the playground of the elementary school next door. We continued to eating and playing until first supper sometime around 6. The dark is our cue to start to pack up and head home as we sober up from our turkey-induced hang-overs.

I think Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays (Groundhog day is right up there too…more on that another day). It is pretty low-key (easy for me to say since I just show up and eat) and is all about hanging out with family and having fun. It is still a simple holiday and an absolute joy!

Look at my new hardware!

November 28, 2008Fun, TechnologyFun, Technologywarren

Just yesterday I was commenting on how machines do not define me…but I have to admit, I do sort of dig technology too. Just to be clear, I plan to use a lot of buzz-words and mumbo jumbo to astound you with my computer savvy…isn’t that what computer people do? Anyhow, I think there may be some interesting bits for computer neophytes as well.

I had been running this blog on an old 1.4 ghz desktop machine with 512 mb of ram and a 20 gb harddrive. This machine was pieced together from parts we had laying around the office and was never supposed to be exposed to the public. But, as with most computer projects, the prototype became the product and sure enough, this blog was turned on with the power and support of “ole Bessie”.

By trade, I am a software engineer…I write computer software for a living. I don’t know a lot about computer hardware. I just assume the hardware works. Asking me to choose computer hardware is like asking your autobody guy to rebuild your engine…it might be successful, but it is probably not ideal. So, a few weeks ago, Dell had a sale on Poweredge SC440 small business servers. A hardware friend/coworker of mine mentioned that it was a good deal and might serve as a good replacement for “Bessie”. The sale price of the machine was $199. I upped the memory a little and got the whole thing delivered for $252.! It has 2 gb of ram, a dual core 2 ghz pentium processor and an 80 gb harddrive. Ahh, much better! So I migrated the blog from “Bessie” to “Vader” (more about that later).

Now, let me tell you, 8 servers in a 10×10 room put off a powerful lot of heat. Yup, I have 8 servers in my office. My current project needs 4 servers to function. I have a couple of extras for testing, etc. Adding this new server raised my heat by one machine. I am somewhat worried about going through a Bruce Banner change. I don’t think these machines put off gamma rays, but I’d also rather not turn into the incredible hulk either.

Anyhow, migrating a wordpress blog from one machine to another is really pretty simple also. I spent about 4 days making it complicated but it need not be. Basically, I installed WAMP which is the webserver and database programs that run the website. I just installed it with all of the default settings. I did not install wordpress on the new machine. Instead, I copied the entire WAMP directory (c:\wamp\…it includes the web server, database and wordpress files) from my original machine to the same directory on my new machine. Restart the webserver and we’re in business. I read all sorts of opinions on how to do backups and migration plans and how to properly sacrifice a chicken over the old and/or new servers. I tried some of those things (well, not the chicken part) and none of those options really worked. WordPress and WAMP will run on windows but are not really Windows-based so I figured that they probably didn’t have the invasive installation mess that most Windows programs have (i.e. I figured I would just copy stuff over and hope it works). Sure enough, I was right! So, after fooling around for 4 days with no success, I punted and in 8 minutes, my blog was migrated! I don’t know if you can tell the increase in speed, but please humor me and say you can! Wahoo!

Cure for the common cold

November 25, 2008Fun, ThoughtsFun, Thoughtswarren

Like almost everyone else in the United States, I seem to have gotten some sort of cold. Upon recommendation of my Dad, I tried some Theraflu and it is really pretty amazing stuff. It soothed my throat and dried up my snot-maker. I still feel pretty miserable though so I decided to amp it up a bit.

I remember my Grandpa sipping on ginger brandy when he had a cold. He wasn’t a drinker at all so for him to hit the brandy, it must have been effective. I headed to the local drug store tonight. After slinking through the liquor aisle, I found a bottle of the exact brand of ginger brandy Grandpa used to drink. Like Grandpa, I am not much of a drinker. I had no idea how to drink brandy so I figured I would start with a straw. It worked but it didn’t seem too tough drinking hooch through a straw. I considered how they drink on tv so I decided to do brandy shots. I can report that after 11 shots, I am not feeling any pain at all. I have developed a red nose though.

Anyhow, I am definitely feeling no pain, but I don’t know that I truly knocked out the cold. With a bit of scientific Google research, I found a few more home remedies to try out. I read that zinc can shorten the life of a cold. I didn’t have any zinc laying around but I know that pennies are made partly of zinc. The above study said 15 mg of zinc is the recommended dose for men. Pennies are 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper. An individual penny weighs 2.5 grams. Though I am in an altered state, I believe that means that each penny has 2437.5 mg of zinc. As always, if some is good, more is better so I swallowed 2 pennies and another shot of brandy. I also discovered that increased copper will help reduce LDL cholesterol and lower blood pressure…awesome! And another shot of brandy for health!

I found a listing of all sorts of home remedies as well. Some were easy to try. One suggestion is that lemon and some honey mixed in water would reduce the length of a cold. I have honey from my bees but I am a little short on lemons. The kids still had some Halloween candy so I swiped a packet of lemonheads from their stash and chased them with a tablespoon of honey. Now, I expect that some of this stuff will help my cold. By the way, is a headache part of the recovery from a cold? I am starting to get a bit of a headache and a cottony mouth…we’ll see how that turns out. Anyhow, does anyone else have any home remedies that work? I am in need!

Adventure at the Clay Center

November 19, 2008Adventure, Family, Fun, WVAdventure, Family, Fun, WVwarren

We used to live in Nashville, TN before moving to WV. On a visit back to TN last year, we took a tour of the Adventure Science Center. We decided to buy a family membership which is good at many museums and centers across the country…including the Clay Center in WV. This weekend, we decided to head for the Clay Center to see what we could get into. We arrived at 11:45 or so on Sunday morning and basically had the place to ourselves. We took in a planetarium show which included the movie, “Space Oddities” as well as the typical tour of the constellations (which was excellent).

We exited out of the planetarium directly into the art gallery which had a special display of WV artists in addition to the gallery-owned pieces. We each picked our favorite pieces.

In particular, Abigail liked a modern piece and wanted a picture. Of course, we couldn’t take a picture so she is determined to write the artist a letter asking for a print of the piece. I suspect she will succeed. Anyhow, it was great to see them excited to pick their favorites (though they were ready to move on as soon as they had found their pieces). We ventured into two displays they had including Milton Gardener’s Earth City and Health Royale.

Earth City was a cool model of an old-timey road-side attraction where the kids could play with water to discover how it flows as well as see all sorts of gizmos to move water and soak unsuspecting bystanders. They had boots attached to a conveyor belt that the kids manually operated to fill a bin that occasionally dumped. We watched as water trickled down through all sorts of things and saw how steam (fog) travels through a valley.

In Health Royale, there were a number of games, but in particular the kids enjoyed a Hollywood-squares-esque game where various body parts helped the kids answer questions about oral hygeine. Isaac loved the talking brain especially.

Finally, we went to an exhibit called the Gizmo Factory that was all about fun with physics. The kids got to reflect lasers through fog via mirrors, pull themselves up in a chair with pulleys, see how a computer translated their dance into sounds, play a laser harp, and watch water and a ball defy gravity.

All told, we spent 3 full hours exploring the fun at the museum. The best part was that it was all free (aside from our membership which has already paid for itself).

The kids had a blast and would have stayed longer if we would have let them.

We’ll definitely go back and soon. Next week they decorate for Christmas which includes a display of model trains and trees decorated in various styles from around the world. I can’t wait to go back!

Junk vibrobot

November 14, 2008Fun, TinkeringFun, Tinkeringwarren

There is a category of electric critters called vibrobots. I hesitate to call them robots , but I guess they are autonomous moving things. Anyhow, as usual, I have bits of junk laying around that tend to rear up and get in the way now and then. I have an old motor I salvaged out of a vcr or something. I also had wire insulation hangers from my crawlspace insulation project. That’s about all you need to build a junk vibrobot. I bent a paperclip in an L-shape and taped a screw to one end of it. The screw attached off center of the motor shaft throws the balance of the motor off so it vibrates. Since it is attached to rigid, skinny wire feet, the vibrations through those feet on a hard surface translate into motion…random motion!

So, I zip-tied the end of the paperclip without the screw to the shaft of the motor. I then bent the insulation hangers in an arc and zip-tied the 2 sets of legs around the motor. I hooked a 9-volt battery to the motor contacts and away it went. I tried putting little rubber feet on it but the bare wire on hardwood jittered the best.

Mo, our silly cat had to get in on the fun. The kids had a blast running the v-bot around Mo. They had it timed perfectly so he would jump in the air when it started spinning. For a cheap toy, it was quite a bit of fun! Just a word of warning though…if you do this on your dining room table, be sure the cat is not around. Also, be sure your wife is not around as she will not be impressed with the cat on the table or with the little scratches the v-bot feet leave. Of course, this is certainly not the first time I have scratched the dining room table…but that’s another story.

Click the image for a short video

Here are some other vibrobots that other people have made. I have seen some that are solar powered, some that look just like bugs, and some that are made or worse junk than mine.

Itty bitty vibrobot
Bristlebot
Minty vibrobot

Chinese – making our fortune…cookies

November 12, 2008Family, Food, FunFamily, Food, Funwarren

I was reading the Y-2K Hippie blog last week and saw they had posted a recipe for fortune cookies. I love Chinese food but am usually not brave enough to eat it at a Chinese restaurant. That leaves us with typically not eating Chinese…but the homemade fortune cookies seemed like a really cool idea so we decided to make some and along with a Chinese entree. I cut come strips of paper and asked the kids to write some fortunes. Being young and inexperienced at it, they quickly ran out of wisdom to impart.

I said, “just write anything, draw a picture…just fill out all the papers.” Well, they made up in ink what they lacked in content. Isaac drew all sorts of epic battles on his half-inch wide sheets. Abigail wrote things like, “dog, dog, cat, cat, Dad, Dad, Mom, Mom”. Oh, the fortunes we’re great fun. They were certainly cryptic which made them feel more fortune-like. Anyhow, we mixed up the recipe :

Fortune Cookies
1 cup Margarine
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
3 1/4 cups of flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
I kneaded it some and then rolled it out thin (though not thin enough….it needs to be really thin). We cut circles with our biscuit cutter, added the fortunes, then folded the circles in half, then in half again. We baked at 425 for 10 min….and then 5 minutes more.

Ok, the most important part was done. We also stir-fried some beef and broccoli with a seasoning packet we bought at the store. Based on the fact that we had to add soy sauce and some other stuff, I am pretty sure we just bought a packet of corn starch with Chinese lettering. As we cooked, Mohinder our cat bravely wandered into the kitchen. He made a lot of racket and never realized the fate he could have met.

Anyhow, Emily and I stirred and tended the stuff with bamboo cookware (just to be authentic – plus, it is all we have) and bowed to each other a lot (apologies to all my Asian friends for all of the terrible cliches and inaccuracies).

It was a lot of fun! Anyhow, it cooked up great along with some delicious fried rice. We plowed through every bit of what we cooked as well as a plate full of cupcakes the kids and their Mommaw decorated. Our fortunes were interesting, but I am sure I found my real fortune in good food and good times!

Ship in a lightbulb

November 10, 2008FunFunwarren

In addition to checking Woot every day, there is another site that I check pretty regularly called Instructables. Last week I was browsing and found an instructable on how to build a ship in a lightbulb. In an effort to postpone several of the projects that I really should be working on, I decided to build myself a ship in a lightbulb.

A few things I learned:

1. It’s never as easy as they say to get the base off of a lightbulb.

2. Never try to get the base off of a lightbulb in shorts and barefeet.

3. Never try to get the base off of a lighbulb over a couch or carpet.

4. A shattering lightbulb will send glass many feet in all directions.

This is just stuff I heard about…don’t really know if any of it is true!

OK, so I couldn’t get the base off like the article suggested. Fortunately, I have tinkered with stained glass so I know how to cut glass. Cutting the base off of a light bulb is not easy since the glass is incredibly thin. Once that’s off, the rest is simple. We’re not much for drinking wine (though cutting the bulb nearly drove me to drink!), so we didn’t have any corks laying around. Of course, I rarely follow directions either so I was still in good shape as far as the instructable goes.

Instead, I got some erasers and made my boat from them. I painted it and made a mast. Setting the mast up was pretty simple which was a surprise. I was very excited when I got it done. I showed the kids my creation and they were only slightly curious how I got the ship inside. I tried to convince them of all sorts of trickery, but Isaac called my bluff. He finally said, “Yeah, whatever Dad.” Still, they sort of got a kick out of it and I had some fun too! I put it on the top shelf of one of our bookcases where it can showcase our extensive dust collection!

My first time…

October 21, 2008Fun, TinkeringFun, Tinkeringwarren

They say you never forget your first time…knitting. This weekend will forever be in my memory. This special time of my life was beyond my expectation. Why do people have such a hard time talking to the kids about…knitting?

So I was inspired by the folks at Children in the Corn to try this form of loom knitting. I have never been one to have enough patience to sit down and do stuff like this so their mention of knocking out a hat in an evening was appealing. I have never heard of Knifty Knitter looms so I wandered out to our local junk retailer and bought the cheapest one they had. There are a variety of looms for making all sorts of things but I wanted to ease into this. My wife accuses me of too often jumping into things with both feet so I decided to honor her and only spend $4 on this newest hobby (if it becomes that). So, the cheapest loom that the junk retailer had was the flower loom. The package assured me that I could make all sorts of things besides flowers so I figured I was set for life. Never mind the pink loom or the purple hook. I was about to be a knitter.

What I didn’t know was that the only pattern that came with the loom was for flowers. A quick internet search turned up the only other pattern for that loom – the friendze scarf. Cool…I have a daughter…she’ll dig a friendze scarf knitted by her Dad on a pink loom. This isn’t wierd at all. Sure enough, Abigail loved the first scarf I knitted. She danced around as I worked on the first one. She sang and laughted and giggled and hung around while I worked. She even said she loved me for knitting her a scarf. She took it to school to show her friends and teacher. I really like knitting now…that’s the easiest $4 I ever spent!

I learned a few things along the way…superglue every other peg into the loom if you never plan to make flowers. The pegs are designed to pull out for flowers but are a real pain for scarves.

Work around the loom clockwise but wrap the thread around individual pegs counter clockwise. If you don’t, you’ll gnaw off your own arm and beat yourself senseless with it…trust me on this one lefty.

Single color yarn is more difficult to work with than variegated. Both are cool though.

Get more looms. My daughter liked the first two scarves but I think she is ready for something cooler and bigger now. These things are so simple to use that I will likely buy more and make more stuff. I need to wear a winter hat in the cold as I have no hair to protect my noggin. I tend to go through knit hats like I change underwear…at least once a month. Being able to knit my own in an hour or so sounds pretty good to me.

If you buy a pink loom, don’t let your son catch you using it. My boy doesn’t know why he teases me but he knows it’s funny. That’s all I will say about that.

Special times…I will never forget my first time…knitting. Now that I have done it, I can’t get enough. I want to knit all the time – in the car, watching tv, outside in the woods, while other people watch. I am a knit-o-maniac!

My Home Among The Hills

Life in WV!