AbsolutBlog

Maddy has begun reading.  It was only a short summer ago that Maddy was learning her letters and writing them down.  Now she is picking out whole words.  She really likes reading an old book I loved as a child, “The Fire Cat” by Esther Averill (copyright 1960).  The story is about a cat named Pickles that gets stuck in a tree and adopted by a fireman named Joe. 

Madison can pick out the words “The, fire, cat, Pickles, barrel, Mrs. Goodkind, tree and ladder”.  We read it together and I stop at the words she should know.  In her limited vocabulary she can pick out which word it should be.  She is even picking out those words in other stories.  Whether from memory or actually reading it by sounding out, she read the sentence, “The firemen are coming” and can pick out the difference between firemen and fireman.

Because Madison’s birthday falls in late September (just after the cutoff), this summer she is going into Pre-K and next year just before she turns 6 will be entering Kindergarten.

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I am lazy. I used to bike across the street to my best friends house. I will take an elevator up one flight of stairs (out of habit). But at least I am not this lazy…

As seen on CrunchGear via LiveJournal

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After some gentle prodding from my buddy Ram (in lab), I have begun writing my dissertation…well actually I downloaded the correct templates and filled in the title page before I was exhausted and it was time for a break .  I mean, I had to go home and mow the yard.

Pictures of our attempted patio are now live: .  It is a work in progress, but the sod cutter was fun!  We had a poker party last weekend and were supposed to have it much farther along.  Currently we have the thing leveled and the black week barrier is down.  Next up, sand and a limestone border.  Then the stone and some pebbles between.  Should be done before I graduate

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Sweet
I doubt many of you are nerdy enough to find this interesting, but I now own my own 128-bit integer: 71 B0 29 31 EB E3 44 E2 98 F2 20 C3 4F 91 0A AA.

It seems the MPAA is censoring the 128-bit HD-DVD processing key that has spread through the internet citing the DMCA. So I thought it would be cool to get my own…you can’t have it without a fee . As noted by Slashdot, via Freedom to Tinker:

“”"
Byte Swapper writes “…the folks at Freedom to Tinker would like to point out that you too can own your own integer. They’ve set up a script that will generate a random number, encrypt a copyrighted haiku with it, and then deed the number back to you. You won’t get a copyright on the number or the haiku, but your number has become an illegal circumvention device under the DMCA, such that anyone subject to US law caught distributing it can be punished under the DMCA’s anti-trafficking section, for which the DMCA’s Safe Harbor provisions do not apply…”
“”"

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