Now that I have a child I have been thinking more concretely about the elements of raising a child, and less about some fantasy optimum situation.

When you have a child you hear a lot about television, and toys. Specifically how much, if any television, and the sort of learning toys or active toys that are appropriate for children. For the most part I would like to tell all those who have advice about these things to blot it out their ass (though I will be offering my own opinion here, duh. I should point out though that I have already blown it out my own ass, saving a step in the whole process. No need to thank me).

First television, or at least the television that was. I am not currently trying to keep my baby away from television, though I also don’t watch dumb-ass baby shows (with minor exceptions(Classical Baby).), so the baby has little interest in the television (though she loves end credits, for some reason). I do find most of the modern kids shows to be mind numbing, and there will be no Barney or the like going on in this house, but that isn’t to say that all things that were ever televised for kids is bad, and in some cases I think that having watched them I am a better person. several of these stick out so clearly in my mind that I think they are part of how I am today, good or bad. Thinking that I am good, however, these are the things I will expose my child to, in hopes that she develops memories of them like I have.

Schoolhouse Rock
There are a large number of these on the internet, but a few leap out as my favorites:

My Hero Zero

Three is a Magic Number

Conjunction Junction

Interjections!

Sesame Street
Have you watched any new Sesame Street episodes? They suck. Elmo should be beaten to death with a tire iron, for example. The classic episodes have a wealth of good stuff, though, and these are just a few of my fond memories from childhood.

Rubber Duckie

Pinball (favorite of all)

Ladybugs’ Picnic

The Alligator King

Commercials
I have always thought that most of the best of television was in the commercials, and here are some of my favorites from over the years.

I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing

Tootsie Pop (3!)

Tootsie Roll

I’m a Pepper

Mean Joe Green

Macintosh

Two All Beef Patties

Toys
Let me first say that I hate toys that make noise. I think they stifle the child by doing the work of the imagination are are just entertainment devices. I think that some of the educational toys are fine, but that for the most part they have a short useful life. I’m not sure if my girl child will react to toys in the same way as I did when I was a child, but I can only judge my own memories. When I think back, it wasn’t the flashing lights and real sound robot that was my favorite but rather some other classics.

Tinker Toys
I always wanted more of these than I had, and I never really got good at building with them, but loved them al the same.

Lincoln Logs
I actually already bought these for my daughter, and I played with them now, and enjoyed it. I am going to have to get more though because you need a lot of them if you want to build more than a simple building.

Erector Set
I never had one of these as a child, but wanted one, and now I am not an engineer, so I blame the fact that I was erector setless.

Legos
One can never have too many legos. Duplo or other large blocks are worthless though.

Barbie
I admit that I have never really played with Barbie, as I am all man, but they seem like a good toy, and it will encourage my daughter to be skinny and pretty at any cost

G.I.Joe
The big G.I. Joe is the perfect compliment to any Barbie doll, as he can go off and kill the enemy by day and return to Barbie’s home cooked meal in the evening.

I know that girls may not tend towards playing war, but even now I look at this Amazon search result and get excited.

Let the brainwashing commence.

First off, news that only a specific kind of geek will give a damn about. The Wand is coming off of Spaceship Earth. If that sentence made no sense to you, then you wouldn’t care even if you knew all of the details. Trust me though when I say that this is certainly big news to geeks of this kind. For example: Here, here, and here.

I’ve had the iPhone for almost a week now, and I must say that it lives up to all the hype. It is far better than any similar device out there, and a real pleasure to use. Even AT&T’s Edge network is less awful than I expected, though being at home with the wifi is much better, of course. The real genius is not the individual application but rather the seamless ease of use of the thing as a whole. I can’t say enough about this thing. If you have the means, I highly recommend it.

I also got the Garmin Nuvi 350 which seems similarly easy to use, though I haven’t had much of an opportunity to run it through its paces yet. Maybe this weekend I’ll try and go out for a drive and see how well it works.

This is my second post in as many weeks. Might be coming up on some kind of record.

Christmas is upon us, and I have practically finished my shopping, though there is one quick item left to pick up. You have all seen the tree that ate Christmas by now, but you may not know that we have also set up a rather involved Christmas village on the dining room table (also famous for the cake to end all cakes). I have taken a few pictures to follow, but if you have a few minutes, I’d like to share a couple of quick videos I made of the place. This first is a little photo montage thing, and the second is a roll around of the town on its very own railroad.

Clicking on the pictures will take you to the photo set to see them all, if you run to that bent.

Merry Christmas to all of you, and best wishes for the holiday season.

I have lots of plans.

First of all, how are you? It’s been a while since I have said anything here, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been thinking of it.

Now that we have the pleasantries out of the way, on to business.

I am currently working on the hardwood floor on the second floor. There is much of this to do, and it takes far longer than it seems like it should. I’m sure professionals would look at my work speed an laugh, but that is how it is, and I am doing it as well as my deteriorating body will allow. We are about a year and a few months behind on this, but that is how it goes sometimes. What is in now looks really sharp, and I think the whole project will be a success at the end, even if we did do the baseboards a little wrong. I’ll keep you updated on the project.

I am still as fat as ever, so no progress on that front.

My next project that I am just starting in on is the Wieland Archive. This will be housed at the appropriately named website and will contain a database of archival information. This will consist primarily of items my father has collected over the years, as well as pictures and letters. I think at the end the archive will contain in the area of 100,000 items or so. It may well be the most complete collection of anybodies life. Entering the information will take years, I suspect, so all the better to get started. I was thinking about using regular blogging software to handle all this, but have instead decided to create my own content management system to run it. It should be pretty lean, as few bells and whistles are needed, at least on the back end. I’ll still try and keep the front end pretty. I’ll let you know when the first version is up and running.

We got a 2005 Prius, and are quite happy with it in the first couple of weeks.

Over at EatMe I have put up the first part of my Thanksgiving dinner menu. I will try and get to the rest of it as soon as possible, for those of you who are interested.

I am currently running Firefox 3 alpha (which installs with the ominous name “Minefield”), and haven’t really have any trouble yet. The pages seem to load very fast, but aside from that there don’t seem to be many immediately noticeable changes, but of course most of my extensions failed to work. I am also running the new Thunderbird 2 Beta1. There are some front end changes in this one, and it seems to work well so far, but I am still very new to it. It is prettier for sure. They have also added tagging, which some people will love, but isn’t a feature I use all that much. I think Mail for the mac had it, but I don’t think I ever used it. My testing of MS Word 2007 continues, and I love it. It is really nice to use, and I may actually buy it when the beta runs out. I am going to download the new version of Open Office today, so I’ll be better able to compare.

Must watch more Christmas movies.

Sometime last week I made what I’m sure will be the last trip I will ever make to Tower Books. The Tower location I always went to was the original location right across from the Tower theater on Broadway in Sacramento. I even remember going to Tower Drug, where Tower Records started, before it closed, though the record store was already opened. I have been going to Tower for my records, books, and video needs for all of my life, and now it is all going away.

I’m generally a pretty nostalgic kind of guy, and this actually makes me sad to see. Be glad that you live in other parts of the country and don’t have to wander among the nearly empty isles. All that is left now are the bottom of the barrel books. All the books around the edges are gone, and only the center rows still have books in them. The staff is still trying to be helpful, but I can’t help but think that they can’t really care anymore. I felt like too much of a circling vulture to actually buy anything that day. It is too late to help now anyway. They are gone, but we’ll always have the memories.

I know it’s just a store, but it always seemed like it was my store.