What I Have to Live With at Home

For some reason I can't explain, the rest of my family has become obsessed with this song and is singing it continually, to my chagrin. This afternoon my younger daughter walked up to me while I was cooking, held up her digital camera, and said, "Dad! Can I get a quick picture of you cooking?" It was a strange request, and I should have been suspicious, but I dumbly smiled, and when the initial flash went off I turned back to cooking, only to have the red eye flash fire a second time, catching me with a dumb look on my face. My daughter squealed in delight and began singing the chorus.

I'm ready for them to move on to something else...



(I can't see the video.)

A Tale of the Travels of My Kindle Fire

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm very excited about the imminent arrival of my new Kindle Fire, an Android tablet that many people are calling the first significant competitor to the Apple iPad (mostly because of price--the Apple iPad starts at $500, while the Kindle Fire is only $200). I'm mostly excited because of what the device could mean from an educational standpoint. If a Kindle Fire-like device can provide for web browsing, ebook reading, minor document creation, and some educational apps, it could actually become a viable 1:1 option for schools. After all, a new textbook can cost $200, and a graphing calculator is another $100. But the Kindle Fire can download a FREE app that makes it function as a graphing calculator, and hopefully textbook manufacturers will get some sense about them and start charging steep discounts for digital textbooks. In that case, the Fire practically pays for itself if it works, and I can't wait to get ahold of mine to start seeing how it fares.

But I'm not here today to write about that. I'm here today to talk about the whirlwind travels that my Kindle Fire is taking. The Fire was supposed to be released on Tuesday the 15th, but I got an email Monday the 14th from Amazon saying that my Fire had shipped a day early. I hadn't forked out the money for overnight shipping, so I didn't expect it to arrive right away...at least not at first. I logged onto the Amazon website in excitement and clicked the "Track Package" button. After a few seconds wait, a screen popped up that said that my Fire, at 4:06 AM on the 14th, had been in Hebron, Kentucky. Hebron, Kentucky! That was about 10 miles from my house! I got excited. Maybe Amazon was working on the "Underpromise and Overdeliver" philosophy and was going to get my Fire to me on the next day when it officially became available. If not, I'd at least get it on Wednesday the 16th!

But that was not to be. I tracked my package again early on Tuesday, hoping to see that it was "Out for Delivery" or something like that. Instead, at 8:04 AM on the 15th, the package had moved from Hebron (Again, only 10 miles from my house) to Grove City, Ohio, which is just outside of Columbus. My Fire had left me and gone more than 100 miles to the north. Maybe it was an Ohio State fan and was headed up there for an early basketball game or something. I don't know. In any event, it was pretty apparent that--if it were in Columbus at 8 AM--I wasn't getting it on Tuesday.

I checked again Tuesday night, and Tuesday evening at 7:03 PM it had moved a little closer, from Grove City, Ohio, to downtown Cincinnati. Again, it was only about 10 miles from my house, just now a little north of my house rather than a liitle southwest. Maybe I'd get it on Wednesday, I though to myself.

I got up yesterday morning and checked, and at 3:03 AM the device had left Cincinnati and at 4:55 AM had arrived in Lakeside Park, Kentucky, which is where the post office that services Fort Mitchell sits. I was excited! 4:55 seemed a little late to get the package on the truck for delivery, but there was an off chance that it had gotten there early enough for me to get it Wednesday. Maybe, just maybe.

But the mail came yesterday afternoon and there was no Kindle Fire. I looked online, and at 12:06 PM the package had moved from Lakeside Park, Kentucky to Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, which was ridiculous, since--as I said in the previous paragraph--the same post office (which I think is actually in Crescent Springs, but that's an issue for another day) services both cities. That means that in 7 hours the package had moved from one basket in the back of the post office to another basket. That's all.

There have been no updates today. However, when I got home today there was the Kindle Fire sitting on the front porch. All told, he traveled about 250 miles to get from Hebron, Kentucky to my doorstep. I hope it was a nice trip.

Now that I have a chance to actually hold the device in my hand, I'll be trying it out both as a personal device and as a potential instructional device. I'll write a review on both counts later.

I'm Not Dead (But one Presidential hopeful IS)

It's been a week since I've written anything on this blog, and I'm writing mostly so that no one thinks I've died.

There are two main reasons I've been remiss in writing: 1) I've been busy at work (district technology plan being written). 2) I've been busy at home (kids finishing up marching band season). When I'm busy either place I find it pretty difficult to find time to write. When I'm busy BOTH places it's pretty much impossible. This last week it would have been almost impossible to write.

But if I HAD written, here are some of the things I MIGHT have said:

• Rick Perry: Pack it up, man. You're done!
• National Champs: Speaking of marching band, my kids' marching band won the national Class A marching band championship this past weekend! Awesome!
• Cell Phone Withdrawal: I was reminded this weekend of how much I'm attached to my smart phone. Its battery died during said marching band championship (apparent cause: an app that wigged out and drained the battery), and a number of times I wanted to post an update to Facebook to keep family and friends up to date about the competition, or to post a picture or something, and I couldn't. But more than that, I found myself, during awkward moments, reaching for the phone to check to see if I had an email, and I realized it had become a crutch. When I first got contact lenses and lost my glasses, I found myself for weeks reaching up to my face to adjust the glasses that were no longer there. I had that same feeling with my dead smart phone. I'd reach for it, get it halfway out of my pocket and think, "What am I doing?"
• Colts Stadium: The marching band competition was in the Indianapolis Colts stadium, and as a prop parent I got to go down into the bowels of the stadium several times. While in there I got to see the press room, the coaches room, a classroom (where presumably the Colts learned how to lose), and a group of referees reviewing for the game the next day.
• Quick Turnaround: Speaking of that, the marching band competition ended after midnight Saturday night / Sunday morning, and there was a home football game at 1 PM that next day. I was amazed at the amount of work that had to be done to flip that stadium to get it ready for a game in 12 hours. There must have been an army of workers who started as soon as the band thing was over and worked through the night.
• Enjoying the Moment: One of the things that I'd say I haven't always done a good job of in my life is enjoying the moment. I made a conscious effort during the marching band competition to do just that. My daughters got to compete on the Colts' field three times, twice in competition and once just in exhibition as the winning Class A band. The first two times I hustled my props onto the field, and then sprinted off the field quickly, and once the performance was over I hustled back onto the field and quickly pulled and pushed the props off the field (The band has 15 minutes from the time we're told "Go!" until the last prop or instrument or band member has to be off the field) and didn't really get a feel for the moment. It was a whirlwind. That final performance, though, when there was nothing really on the line, I took my props out, got them set, and then turned around to face the audience in the stands at Lucas Field, and I soaked in the sight of seeing the filled stands from the field. I'd seen the reverse (a field from a packed stand) many times before, but I'd never really seen it from that point of view, and I stood and enjoyed the view for what felt like a very long time (It was probably about 4 seconds) before sprinting off the field to watch my daughters perform one more time.
• Kindle Fire: My Kindle Fire is shipping tomorrow, and I'm so excited! I'm like a little kid. I can't think of a time when I was looking this forward to getting what basically is a toy for me. Maybe when I picked up our Nintendo Wii when it first came out. But I hadn't PLANNED to buy that. It was back when you couldn't find the darned things ANYWHERE and everyone wanted one, and I just wandered into a Target and saw two sitting on a shelf. I bought it, and the clerk said to me, "Who told you?" When I asked him what he meant, he said, "These only arrived about 10 minutes ago. We got 30 of them and they're gone already. Somebody leaked that they were here." I assured him that I hadn't known; I'd just stumbled upon them. He said I was a pretty lucky bastard and gave me the device. That's not the same, though, as waiting for the Kindle Fire.
• Kindle Fire II: Okay, that last paragraph ended up not being about the Kindle Fire but about the Nintendo Wii. Maybe I could go back and edit the paragraph and cut that out, but I'm in rapid fire, non edit mode and I'm not going to do that, so I thought I'd just make a second bullet about the Kindle Fire and take it from there. So here it is. Uh...
• Kindle Fire III: Okay, that last paragraph ended up not being about the Kindle Fire but about why the first paragraph wasn't about the Kindle Fire. This one really IS going to be about the Kindle Fire. All I wanted to say about it was that I'll write a review of it once I get it. I'm too cheap to pay for standard or overnight shipping. Instead I got the free Super Saver shipping, so I'll probably receive it sometime in March, but once I receive it I'll write the review.