Sarah Allen's Weblog

anyone up for a squishee?

In a delightfully, silly marketing move, 7-11 has re-made a number of its stores in the likeness of kwik-e-mart stores as seen in the Simpsons. I haven't seen this is person, but it may be worth a trek to Mountain View. I just checked it out in pictures (via Jackson Fish Market)

too old for Facebook?

I've been hearing good things about Facebook APIs, so I thought I would register and check it out. I have a policy of not giving out my real birthday information. So, I can remember it, I use the real month and day along with the year my grandmother was born. For the first time after signing up for dozens of sites this way, in signing up for Facebook, the year 1908 did not appear. I wonder... who makes these decisions? 1910 is the first year that appears in their list. I wonder what the discussion was like? "Let's start at an even year." "We don't expect anyone over 97 to seriously use Facebook" Is there some weird limit to the max number of items in a popup list on some browsers?

The oldest living person ever was 122, and the oldest people currently living are all over 110. My 99 year old grandmother is alive and healthy. She's been using a computer since I bought her a Mac in 1992. Now, I'll admit that she has been resistent to signing up for Internet access since a stamp only costs 41 cents and she could send an awful lot of letters for the montly cost of connectivity. She's pretty happy typing letters and her memoirs and printing them. While my grandmother is hardly Facebook's target customer, it just doesn't seem right. When I'm 99, if I make it that far, I wonder what new technology created by people decades from now will assume that I'm too old for it.

Five Stages of Yu-Gi-Oh

Almost four years ago, Yu-Gi-Oh came home from pre-school. Before the card game or the TV show ever entered our awareness, it was played out in the yard, a viral infection of the imagination spread by young boys. Blue Eyes White Dragon battled Exodia. Monters dueled in a land of Spells and Traps.

Before that time I neither knew nor cared about the Yu-Gi-Oh phenomenon. Over the years, I have often reflected on how this strange card game/TV show has affected me. It has seemed akin to the well-known five stage of loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. While it is hardly a loss to my young son who now boasts over one thousand cards, I think it speaks to the loss of my parenting innocence as I have grown to accept a child as an individual for whom I am only one influence in this strange world we live in.

1. Denial
My child only watches quality television like Animal Planet and Dora the Explorer. I won't need to worry about this sick cross-marketing phenomenon where children watch cartoons which act as half-hour commercials for a card game.

He comes home talking about Yu-Gi-Oh characters: dragons and mystical creatures. I continued in my denial until summer time when he had the opportunity to hang out with a family friend, a second grader with a huge Yu-Gi-Oh card collection. My son's whole face lit up as he was introduced to this fantasy world full of strange fish and magical beasts. Who was I to judge? I'm a sci-fi and fantasy junkie. I thought I would skip right to step #5.....

5. Acceptance
We stopped by a yard sale and bought 106 cards from a boy selling his collection for $4. This provided endless hours of looking at and trading cards. It seemed that every boy under ten had a Yu-Gi-Oh card collection.

I even agreed to play the game myself. That's when I started to suspect that this is a game where the kid gets to make up rules at any time to confuse the adult. Perhaps this was a bit like their experience of life: someone makes up a new rule for every situation -- no matter how many you learn, there is always another one.

2. Anger
I finally looked up the rules on the Internet. The pages just went on and on. This is crazy. There is no way I'm learning this game.

3. Bargaining
We settle on a pared-down, modified rule set. No tributes. You can sacrifice your whole hand and get a whole new hand, but only at the beginning of your turn. We can make the rules whatever you want them to be, but we both have to play by the same rules and you have to say what the rules are at the beginning of the game.

I realized that the game was never going to be any fun unless we were evenly matched. So, I created my own deck. We split up the really good cards and took turns picking the rest. If he won or I won too much, we traded cards till it was even. I kept score, while he quickly learned advanced arithmetic. By the time first grade arrived, he was easily subtracting 1000 from 8000, and by the end of the year addition and subtraction with numbers like 1600 and 1250 were quick and he had learned simple multiplication (required by some cards' effects). Hey, this game is educational. It turned out to be a great way to learn how to read too, although words like "Malevelont Nuzzler" and "Mystical Elf" were never a required part of first grade vocabulary.

4. Depression
I must be the only adult in the civilized world who plays this game. I meant well, but have I done my son a disservice, since now he plays well beyond the level of peers? I went through a long bleak period when I dreaded the game. He would pine for it. We struggled with issues of fair play. I would lecture about good sportmanship when he gloated after winning. Sometimes he would cry if I played a card that would wipe out his monsters too quickly, even if I would have otherwise lost and ended the game the early. I started refusing to play after 8pm. I made up a new rule: if it isn't fun, we stop playing.

5. Acceptance
I realized it needed to be fun for me too. I noticed that sometimes we do things that I want to do just because I want to do them. On my birthday, he joined me in drawing a still life. He gardens with me. Playing the game is just another way to hang out together. In ten or fifteen years, how often will he really want to do anything with his mother? For now, it makes his day when we play this card game together. He has learned to play fair and enjoy the game whether he wins or loses. Sometimes, he'll even throw a battle, just to extend the game play a little longer. I still won't play too close to bedtime, but we both have fun now when we play.

Yesterday, I learned how to play Pokemon. I actually think its more fun. The games are shorter and you don't have to keep score. The monsters have silly names and funny attacks. He's still learning new vocabulary, like "hypnotic gaze." And, of course, I have my own deck...

In dealing with this childhood obsession, I struggled with appropriate parenting in a landscape of commercialism, manipulation, greed, fair play and imagination. I find it an example of the success of child-led learning practices. I sought to merely survive the phenomenon, never guessing the number of learning opportunities for both of us, never suspecting the most important lesson of all: the reason to play is to have fun.

programmers walk into a bar...

"If programming languages could speak, really speak, not just crunch bytes and stream bits, they would have much to say that is both wise and profound." Burningbird told that story in a parable of languages.

Harry Chesley adds, on a similar note, what might be said if a group of programmers walk into a bar, to which I can only add that the LZX programmer would declare:

    <beer/>

Bite me! said C

Burning Bird writes the Parable of the Languages. She has quite accurately captured a conversation that could happen if only programming languages could talk.

Interesting to note several comments after the story by programming languages who missed (or weren't invited to) the party.

"I was busy that day." Posted by: Ada

XML defined

XML, noun: A magic elixir of legend, claiming to solve all problems while inevitably exacting an ironic cost.

"Once we drink the XML and take care of a few minor things -- parser, DTD, entification, well-formed-ness, validation, namespaces, I18N, XSL transformations, schemas -- all will be peaceful in the kingdom!"

-- devil's dictionary

via plasticbag

optimize world-class vortals

The reports of the demise of the web economy must be greatly exagerated. I recently found my browser pointed at the Web Economy Bullshit Generator. As these things go, this one is pretty good. I had thought I had heard (and perhaps spoken) every bullshit internet term there was, but "vortal" was unknown to me.

Dictionary.com pointed me to the Acronym Finder. Once I learned the definition of the term (vertical portal), I was surprised that Amazon listed no books on the topic. (I just had to check since AF auto-generated this convenient link.) I was hoping that the great Internet Bust of the new millenium had actually killed the abundant buzzword production of the late 20th century -- perhaps it's just the nature of "high" tech. I found an Ohio company that attributes its revenue growth to the creation of the company's first vortal (eek).

...integrate synergistic niches, evolve e-business experiences, transition dynamic initiatives, target viral markets, enhance magnetic infrastructures, deliver transparent applications...

frogs, rodeos and human nature

The myth was debunked in 1995, but I first read it this morning. I found it heartening to read this story about the old frog-boiling myth.

I was was tipped off by "the unknown Flash Guy" who tells a story about a rodeo, which itself could be a parable of human nature, if it weren't also true.