I’m back to work today after a week and a half of idling, partying, helping, and wrestling with kids. Kathy and I both got some reading in, caught up with a number of friends with whom we hadn’t spent enough time lately, and generally enjoyed the luxury of ignoring our to-do lists.

One interesting experiment we’ve tried recently is this: when we have family dinners, nobody serves herself, but must instead rely on those around her to fulfill her needs. The idea occurred to me while reading about Benedictine communities in Kathleen Norris’ The Cloister Walk, and has gone over pretty well. (Emily was a bit concerned that Liam would be dishing out her food the first night, as he evidently had a big booger hanging out of his nose at the start of dinner.) It has been an interesting and humbling exercise to have to rely on each other in that way, and a treat for us to see the children willingly meeting each other’s needs instead of thinking only about themselves and what they want.

For the first time in several years, I’ve managed to get it together to write up a Christmas letter. Of course, it was finished mere moments ago, so you, gentle reader, will be among the first to see it — our technologically backward friends will have to wait for us to come to terms with our printer and the postal service. Please enjoy our Christmastide Letter 2004.

Jason links to a fascinating article on the modern tendency to make a religion of work and business and heresy of idleness. The essay ties into a lot of themes in things I’ve been reading and watching, and quite piqued my interest.

Ironically, I’m too busy at the moment to write up my thoughts properly, but hope to come back to this in more detail soon.

Liam has been complaining for a while that he didn’t find Kindergarten very challenging. These complaints culminated in a meltdown the other day before class, shouting to Kathy he didn’t want to go, and that it was too boring, and he didn’t like it there. His teacher eventually came outside where he was bawling, and talked with him and Kathy, and decided to have him tested out for accelerated reading and math programs.

Today he took those tests, and we found out that he’s reading comfortably at a third grade level, and his math skills are nearly as far along. Poor little guy; it’s no wonder he’s been bored silly! The teachers are setting him up for self-paced work now, which I think will keep him much more engaged.

A few minutes after putting Liam to bed the other night, a plaintive wail escaped his room:

“Daddy? DADDY! My Elvis doesn’t feel good.”

“Your what, Liam?”

“My Elvis! It hurts!”

“What’s your Elvis?”

“You know, my Elvis bone.”

“You mean this down here?”

“Yes, my Elvis!”

“Liam, I think you misunderstood the word. That’s your pelvis. Well, let’s wait a few minutes and see if it feels better.”

Five minutes later

“Liam, how’s your Elvis feeling?”

“DADDY! It’s my pelvis. And it’s feeling better”

I’m not sure how to wax enthusiastic about this without it getting really geeky, but here it goes.

The ZigBee Alliance is a group collaborating on extremely low-power, low-bandwidth, dynamic networking standards. Where you’ll see this appearing first is likely in Home Automation applications, where you’ll be able to control your theormostat from your cell phone or have your TV mute itself with the phone rings. I had a pretty extensive home automation system set up before we moved to San Marcos, but had become frustrated enough with the slow speed and unreliability of the X-10 technology that my system was based on that I was never able to muster enthusiasm to get back into it in the new house.

Beyond home automation, this appears to be an excellent platform for building mesh-networked sensor arrays, and for building management and industrial automation. Potentially very cool stuff.

Oh, drat. I went and got geeky after all.

This past Saturday, Daniel and I went to see Doug Burr play at Flipnotics in Austin. Daniel discovered Doug’s music a few months back through Paste Music, and lent me the album shortly thereafter. It has haunted my CD player regularly since then, its “concept gospel” sound making it one of my favorite discs of recent memory.

I jumped at the chance to see Doug in person when Daniel mentioned he was coming to town. Flipnotics is a pretty small place, with seating for probably 30 people or so, which meant we got a great view of the goings-on. The show was great, and included most of the album’s songs and several new ones that hadn’t been recorded yet. Doug manned the guitar and harmonica, while Todd Pertll (whose surname really needs more vowels) played banjo and pedal steel guitar. Todd’s steel playing bears special mention, as he accomplished much more with the already versatile instrument than I’ve seen done before, using an effects processor to vary the sound, loops to create persistent harmonic underlays, and an E-Bow to create a sustained continuous sound. Great fun to watch and listen to.

To top it off, we got to visit with both Todd & Doug for a few minutes after the show, both of whom turn out to be genuinely nice guys. We talked music a bit, complimented them on the album, discussed Denton and Dallas, talked a bit about the challenges of balancing music with the demands of family life, and promised to drag along a few more friends the next time we came out to see them.

So check out the photos, buy the album or go see a show!

This weekend we took down our Autumn decor to replace it with wreaths, stockings, mangers, ornaments, and the ilk. Among the retired ornamentation were a few ears of indian corn, which I pressed into service this evening for an amusing experiment.

“Who’s ready for Fun With Science?™” I bellowed at the unsuspecting children. They made vague apprehensive noises, which I took as enthusiastic endorsement. “Today, we see if we can pop indian corn in the microwave!” They perked up a little at this, but not enough to leave the table. I threw one of the ears in the microwave, thought about it for a moment, and hit the “Popcorn” button.

10 seconds. Nothing.

20 seconds. Still nothing.

30 seconds. This is getting dull.

45 seconds. POP!

“Woohoo!” The kids were suddenly quite interested indeed, and all ran to the microwave to watch the ear of corn noisily transform itself into a fluffy white mass. Kernels went all over the inside of the microwave, and we laughed uproariously as the mess grew. After about two minutes, things were slowing down, so I pulled open the door and said “Who wants to try some?”

The kids were once again dubious (and have, by this point in their tender lives, realized when Daddy is trying to use them as guinea pigs), so I grabbed a piece and gobbled it up. The kernels were smaller than regular popcorn, but were otherwise quite good. Everybody else soon got into the spirit of it and stripped the cob. “It’s even more delicious with salt!”

I count this experiment a success.

As a follow up to my note on the furor over Electronic Arts’ labor management practices, here’s a posting with a recent internal email from Rusty Rueff, one of EA’s flock of Vice Presidents. Pertinent bits:

As much as I don’t like what’s been said about our company and our industry, I recognize that at the heart of the matter is a core truth: the work is getting harder, the tasks are more complex and the hours needed to accomplish them have become a burden. We haven’t yet cracked the code on how to fully minimize the crunches in the development and production process. Net, there are things we just need to fix…We’ve started a Development Process Improvement Project to get smarter and improve efficiency. Just as we have revamped the Pre-Production process, we are now creating a Product Development Map that will provide earlier decision-making (on SKUS and game features), improve our consistency of creative direction, and lessen the number of late in the process changes, firedrills, and crunches…Most important: we recognize that this doesn’t get fixed with one email or in one month. It’s an on-going process of communication and change.

It sounds as though the pressure the unhappy employees have brought to bear has been helpful in getting the senior management to take a look at some of these issues. I hope they’re able to bring off the changes they’re talking about, as there are a lot of good people in the company who are taking a beating because of the way the company manages projects and personnel. Thanks for taking the first step, Rusty.

My friend Daniel has posted a new poem called Rainboy this evening that I think is among his best work. Go read it! (Link to Blogspot’s annoyingly ephemeral “permalink” now fixed.)