The Digital Dad

So let me tell you all a little bit about this friend of mine. Greatest guy in the world. Do anything for ya. Travel to the ends of the earth to help a friend. Just can’t seem to remember too well.

So the wife and I were off to Louisville this past weekend to celebrate her sister’s 30th birthday. I love venturing to ‘the Ville’ as any opportunity to set foot out of Calloway County is a wondrous respite from the abundance of ineptitude plaguing said county. The only difficulty with these jaunts is that we parent not only the nine month old wunderkind, but also a 3 year old dog and a 2 year old cat. The dog’s an outside aminal (yes, that’s how we say it in my family), too lumbersome to be allowed free reign of the indoors, and the cat…. Well, the cat should be an outsidey-type creature, save that we opted to spare our pantlegs and had her declawed at a young age. (Stupid us.) However, she dislikes being cooped up in the hizzie all day and scampers to freedom at every opportunity, only to whine incessantly for sanctuary once she remembers how much outside sucks. So she falls under the indoor-outdoor alien hybrid class of evils. At any rate, we long ago realized toting all 5 of us creatures across the country was an exercise in self-loathing, so we always have a friend feed and water them while we’re gone. Now, this is not an overly exuberant task, nor is our pool of suckers friends extraordinarily shallow. So finding volunteers is never a terrible ordeal. Usually by the second phone call, a worthy candidate steps forth. This time, the ready recruit was Scootter.

Now, Scootter’s my best friend. He and I have been pals since pals there were. Drinking buddy. Fraternity brother. Former roommate. Groomsman. Present at the birth of my son. Thick and thin, true to the end. Scootter’s the kind of pal everybody should have. Kind of like Jimmy Olsen to my Clark Kent. Or maybe he’s Clark and I’m Jimmy. I dunno. The point is, he’s the kind of bud that when he comes to you topless, razor in hand, and asks you to shave the birthmark on his back that’s shaped like Australia so that in the off chance he gets lucky tonight she won’t reach around to dig in her nails and freak when she instead snakes a paw full of Aussie back fur, you say “Sure, guy, let’s get you laid proper.” That’s my best buddy.

That being said, he’s got the cognizant memory of a rotten whale-corpse. As we returned home from a relaxing weekend out of town, I quipped to my wife, “Man, I sure hope Scootter remembered to take care of our animals.” To which she responded, “Yeah, or we’ll have a house full of dead critters.” (No, my wife is not developmentally retarded, she was speaking colloquially.) Imagine, if you will, the astonishment we experienced upon arriving home to a defenseless, weary dog, left to wither in the heat, and a panicked, starving cat, held captive in our home with no food, water, or more importantly, LITTER BOX, for an entire weekend. Thankfully, a friend was coming to mow the lawn on Sunday and happened to water the dog (although he couldn’t be fed as his food was locked in the house) or else he very seriously might have died. As it is, the only lasting effects of the animals’ lost weekend is the pungent aroma of cat pee emanating from, oh, everywhere.

And the moral of the story, boys and girls, is this: Always double-check. Even if you’ve got Steven Hawking minding the store, it never hurts to give him a call. (Although I very seriously doubt Steven Hawking is the guy you want attempting to feed your pets.) And so, I leave you with a simple poem I wrote just moments ago to commemorate the male of the species and his innate ability to forget absolutely everything.

So raise up your glasses, ye lads and ye lasses, to the mind and its wondersome wit.
While we men may remember what to do with our member, give us anything else and we’re shit.

Thanks, Scootter.

These pics are from the little guy’s first trip to the pool. Tell me he ain’t a duck to water.

Warning: geek speak ahead

So I bought us a new computer. We’ve been without a home PC for some time now. It’s not been a terrible inconvenience. My company provides me with a laptop which I carry home daily, but many days Missy’s at home by herself without a PC. She needed something simple to cover internet and email, that’s about it. Bear in mind, in the Perry household, we don’t do any geekery simple.

So I’d been perusing our options for some time. The old coin purse stays kind of light for a family with a baby and a car payment, so cheap was the operative point. Tell that to any geek and he’ll give you a one-word response — Linux. While this is true, a free operating system able to run on older hardware can save you many a coin, I didn’t necessarily want our living room adorned with a 10 year old techno-turd I bought at a yard sale, no matter how cheap. And let’s not forget the fact that it’s a foreign entity to our household. Would the wife be able to adapt to a Linux-based operating system? Then along came ubuntu.

Quick geek lesson for those not in on the Linux: the word Linux describes the kernel, the core program of the operating system. Try to think of it as the engine in your car. Many different automobiles use the same engine. There is but one Linux, one engine. Distributions, however, there are many. Distributions, or distros, are often referred to as “flavors” of Linux. In the early years of Linux development, Red Hat and Mandrake were the top two names in Linux distributions. And neither was extraordinarily user-friendly. Years pass, and we see distros such as Debian, SuSE, and Gentoo. Getting closer, just not quite there yet. Enter ubuntu.

From an African word meaning “humanity to others,” ubuntu has taken the Linux community by storm. Its ease-of-use and lesser learning curve are setting it up to be the premiere “Switcher” distro. But therein lies the catch, at least for the Perry household. It’s still a switch.

We used to be a Mac household (Note: before it was cool!), to which my wife had shown no difficulty adjusting. Growing up “PC,” I was concerned for both our abilities to adjust to a new OS when I purchased our first iMac 3 years ago. It was a G4 running OS X 10.1, the “Soccerball” style of iMac. And to my surprise, my wife just sat down and used it. All she needed to know was how to open the internet browser and bang, she was off. Ah, the internet, the great equivocator. Everything’s the same on the internet, regardless of your operating system. And that’s the story of how, armed with an internet browser, we both began, bit by bit, to learn the ins and outs of this new Apple OS.

So the adjustment period isn’t so much of a concern. There’s still the clunky old hardware to look for. Ubuntu rides again. There is a PowerPC architecture version of ubuntu identical to its x86 version. What does this mean in non-nerd format? It means that I can pick up one of the cool older G3 iMacs from eBay for around fifty bucks (plus $hipping, ick), throw in the PPC version of ubuntu, and whammo! Geek chic on a budget.

So the next time the neighbors pop in for a visit and peep the iMac on the desk, I’ll be ready for the inevitable, “Oh, a Mac. You’re one of those people,” armed to quip, “Moreso. It runs Linux!“

So, the wife and I have a new vice, Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance. It’s in the second season and, yes, we watched it last year, too. It’s kind of funny. Last year the competition focused on a lot of technique and classical stylings: the Paso Doble, the Quick-Step, the Waltz, to name a few. In the off-season they must’ve been reading up on Fox’s viewer demographics, because now we see mainly crowd-pleasers like West Coast Swing, Hip-Hop, even Krumping!

Krumping aside, I’m a fan of the stylistic change. For myself, at least, it’s somewhat more entertaining to see Pop and Lock than, say, the Fox Trot. But it does seem something of a sell-out to the classically trained, hard-working, professional dancers who’ve spent years honing their craft that their peers who perform easily as well as, if not better than they in the competition, learned their moves watching MTV and “You Got Served,” hanging out at the skating rink and mall parking lots. Where’s the ups for hard work and dedication?

But it does make for some darn fine television. We’re at the point in the competition where the halfways and maybes have already been kicked and it’s anybody’s game. Of the 6 remaining couples, any of them could win it outright, and everyone’s your favorite. Until this point you pretty much knew who’d be leaving at the end of the episode. But now it’s so close, and everyone’s so talented you don’t want to see anybody go. I feel like the flakey mom at the school talent show who “wishes everyone could have a trophy.” But dem’s da breaks. Somebody’s gotta win, and somebody’s gotta stand up there with Cat Deeley while they play a montage clip to send you home by. My picks for next week’s Vid o’ Shame? Ryan and Ashlee. They’re both great dancers, but like I said before, they in da big leagues. And dancers like Natalie and Allison, Benji and Dmitry make em look like plain old chumps.

Not to be outdone by himself, the little guy took another swing at the ol’ bathtub photo-op. And without further ado… more bathtime!