TKNOGEKs Blog

I read the following the other day and got a huge laugh out of it….  I thought about tring it out on my kido’s but they know what tapes are already….

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Walkman, at 30, a mystery to teen
Alejandro Martinez-Cabrera

Wednesday, July 1, 2009
What better way to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Sony’s iconic Walkman than to ask a teenager for some feedback on the device?
The BBC couldn’t think of one, and neither can I.

I like to imagine that the experience was similar to an archaeologist rediscovering how a recently excavated artifact was employed thousands of years ago. But I’m well aware that it must have been different for 13-year-old Scott Campbell, who co-edits his own news Web site. For one, teenage impatience must have stood in the place where I fantasize scientific curiosity should have been.

“My dad had told me it was the iPod of its day,” Campbell wrote. “He had told me it was big, but I hadn’t realized he meant that big. It was the size of a small book.”

Sure enough, people on the street noticed the antique clinging from his belt with amusement and friends on his school bus were quick to come up with some witty remark.

Campbell went on to criticize the portable cassette player’s size, appearance, functionality and the “hissy backtrack and odd warbly noises.”

Even when he discovered the cassette had more music on the other side (it took him three days), Campbell was still disappointed it could only hold a small fraction of what an iPod can.

“Did my dad … really ever think this was a credible piece of technology?”

Ouch.

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Hope you laughed as hard as I did until I realized that I could be this kids dad… 0.o

Have a great day!!!!!

For those of you who don’t live in the New 9 viewing area (Central Oklahoma) here is my interview.

It is the Consumer Watch: Cash for Clunkers.

We have had a pretty tight summer so far… there has not been a lot of time just to play and goof off yet.

We opened the church sno cone stand on June 4 (um.. my birthday) and since we are active in church we are also active at the sno cone stand.  The Girl Child and wife both worked scheduled shifts there.  I show up after work pretty much every evening and do what I can to give breaks help out wash dishes… what ever is needed.  We as a family will be working the stand at the parade of boats at Shawnee lake on July 4^th from 9am – 1pm and then taking the trailer back to church and setting back up and working there till dark.  It should be a fun family day and a lot of hard work.

We are also in the process of redoing the kid’s rooms.  Scrapping the popcorn stuff from the ceilings and painting the walls.  Changing out the lights and fans (if they want) and in at least one room getting a new bed.  This is taking longer than expected because of the sno cone stand and us always being there.  The Girl Childs room is currently empty and her stuff is in my office/wife’s sewing room, the hallway and in the living room (where she drug her mattress last night to sleep.

We are also in the middle of cleaning out our half fallen down building and building a new one.  I say building a new one simply because the old one is not worth fixing any more.  It was there when we bought the house 14 years ago and has lived a wonderful life.

We did manage to finish the privacy fence before summer started but I still need to do some ground work where we pull up trees and other small bushes….

Wow… I just re-read all this and it has nothing to do with the title line “Oh to be a kid…” or does it?

It seems that my youngest (Boy Child) has failed to remember what day it is today.  I guess I have been keeping him to busy this summer.  Stephanie and the Girl Child when to church this morning to rotate the ice buckets so we can start another batch of ice this morning.  They must have told the Boy Child (who was 97.8% asleep) that they were going to church and would be back in a bit and that he needed to get up and dressed.

The following is the txt message I just got from Stephanie.

“The Girl Child and I just got back from switching out ice and refilling buckets.  The boy child came out to meet us all dressed for church.  He thought it was Sunday!! LOL”

Oh to be a kid again and loose track of what day it is in the summer time.  I love that feeling when I do it on vacation.

Have a wonderful day world….

You know that feeling that you get when it finally hits you that your kids are growing up.  Well I had that feeling last night…

The Girl Child has decided to ditch a school function in the early parts of August so that she can now go to Youth Congress with the youth group.  SHE has even decided that she is fine with FLYING out to Tennessee too.

I asked what had changed her mind and she said that there were a few reasons.  As a Dad I said cool… I think you will have a wonderful time.  Youth congress is a great time.  Them Mom asked… “Would the reasons name be Tyler?”  The Girl Child turned red and then said YES!!!!!

So who is this Tyler you ask.  Well… I HAVE NO IDEA!!!  Which I am sure will change over the coming weeks.  For now all I know is that he use to go to school where the Girl Child went and he use to make fun of her because she wore skirts all the time and did not do all the same things that the rest of the kids did.  She ran into him at church camp last week.  (I knew church camp was a bad idea but no one listens to dad)

More later…I am going to go throw up now…

Wow… at lunch today I decided to go to Route 66 Park where my boss will be getting married on the 27th of June.  I had never been there so I was more that a little courious about its location and where excatly I would be setting up the Buffet…

Yes I am in charge of the food.  I have to pick it up, take it to the park, keep in warm (on a hot summer day) and most likely will be packing it up and sending it on its merry way with the new couple. 

I am not sure if this will be wedding of the year… but I think it will be close.  What you have not heard of Emily nor Butch.  I find that hard to beleive.  I know we have taken calls about the wedding as far away as Singapore but I am sure that it is because we have an office there.

Everyone will be there… I think about half the FAA will be taking Friday off to fly in to Oklahoma for the wedding on Saturday.  It will be a start studded event.  I mean come on… I will be there… but more inportantly the lady who has been my boss for at least the last 8 – 10 years is finally getting married.  The lady who has always said… ug… I will “never” get married.  She is getting married… Yippie…

Laters…

 Okay… So after finding out that my auto poster stopped working I got to thinking about if I wanted to go back an re-write all those post or not… well I have decided on NOT… So I have stopped worrying about that and will move forward…

The boy child went the church camp this week. It is not that far away from were we live and its only about 10 miles from where I work so it makes it nice if he forgot anything he can call me and I can either go buy new and take it to him or bring it from home the next day. This is something that seemed to slide by him this year.

When Stephanie went to pick him up on Friday she (as every mom would do) asked how camp was, did he meet any new friends (boy and girl), did he change his under garments on a daily basis and did he shower every day. This is when he explained that he FORGOT to take A towel to camp with him. SO Stephanie said A towel I told you to take a least 3 and you opted for NONE? So she asked “When” he discovered this fact. He said Monday when I unpacked. So in her mind she is thinking the boy has not had a shower for a week at CHURCH CAMP. He said no no mom I showered. I just took one of the pastors son’s towels when he was not looking and used it. He is too funny. I told pastor that this morning and he got a good laugh about it.

We opened the snow cone stand up at church on June 4^th (my B-day for those of you who were wondering). It has done great so far… But it is about to wear me out. It is setting in the front parking lot at church where there was no water nor electricity. So last Monday I got James to bring over his backhoe and we dug a new hole for a water line and put in a new freeze proof outdoor faucet. Man that was fun but I did not get to drive the backhoe.

I then went home and started working on the Menu board for the new stand. I got the frame cut out using the dimensions of the actual sign instead of using the dimensions of the Plexiglas that was bought for the sign. The menu is 28” x 44” and the Plexiglas that was ordered is 26” x 50”. NOW I am no rocket scientist but those two measurements just don’t add up. I remeasured both items and then sent Stephanie down to ACE later in the week to buy another piece of Plexiglas.

So with the water problem solved, the menu problem in process of being solved that left electricity. I dug the hole, place a new 4×4 into it, wired up the new outlet by tapping into the existing electricity used for the church sign. I hooked up the fluke to check power and I got 0.0 volts. I checked the wires that I tapped… 120 volts. Hmmm I said to my self. What could this be? When the electrician wired the new church sign up several years back he ran an extra hot line for just this reason. But it was not working for me.

I called Pretson (young man in the church that is an electrician) and asked him about it. He agreed to meet me at the church on Saturday morning to take a look. Just as he has expected… I had wired the plug up right but the line I tapped into was a switch loop. SO.. we decided to pull the existing spare hot wire out and run in a new hot and common into the existing ½ emt. The problem… 100 foot or emt and 4 inches or wire to grab onto. But he grabbed the line with some pliers and pulled. The line broke about 4 inches into the emt… which was buried. So I started digging…

We found the line and was about to cut it when the joint on the elbow decided to break loose. Now we decided to pull all the wire out and then put it back in with the new hot and common line. Now with about a foot of wire out of the EMT we stated pulling. Two grow men and we could not get the wire to budge. What to do we asked each other. I happened to have some pull string in the truck so we decided to put a line on it to give us a little more room to pull on. The string has a 210# tinsel strength so we thought it would be good. We still could not get it to budge. In comes my 2005 Dodge 2500 Truck. We tied the pull string to the truck and I slowly pulled the string out of the emt… about 2 inches back and the string broke. UG…. I was beginning to think that the snow cone stand would have to run off and electric cord forever. We decided to run 4 pull strings between the truck and the line in the emt. This time it worked… the line came out about 10 feet and then we were able to pull in out by hand.

We were able to get the new lines in with no problems and not the snow cone stand has it own power outlet now. Woot… Oh… if you are ever in Shawnee, OK… stop by 1010 East independence street and get a tropical snow snow cone. They are the best… LOL

The Girl child is off to camp this week… I will be checking her out on Thursday so she can come home and have her truck.

Some friends of ours youngest boy is getting married this coming weekend so we are going to that…and the the following weekend my boss is getting married and I am going to that. I guess its June so marriage is in the air.

Well… More later… I am getting tired and its way past my bed time…

Good night world….