Kay -N- Kay

Bran had an eye doctor appointment today.  While looking deep into my son’s eyes, examining irises, corneas, retinas, and his very brain for all I know, the nice doctor made an attempt at some chit chat with him.

Dr. Archer:  “So, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
Bran:  “I want to be a god.”

Me:  * I just cover my face with my hands and shake my head*

<silence follows after Dr. Archer stopped dead in his work and sat back just looking at Bran>

Dr. Archer:  “You know… in all my years of asking that question, I don’t think I’ve ever once been given that answer…”

It may be time to curb some of Bran’s video game time.

US low score on world motherhood rankings

To be more specific, USA ranked #28 on the Save the Children Organization 2010 annual report on the best and worst places in which to be a new mother.

Countries are ranked on mother related data:  such as the risk of maternal death (1 in 4,800 for the USA, compared to 1 in 47,600 in Ireland); Female life expectancy (A pretty good 82 for the USA); female schooling; and maternity leave benefits (USA ranks dead last out of 43 developed countries).

And countries are also ranked on children related data:  such as under 5 mortality rate (8 in 1,000 kids die before their 5th birthday in the USA, compared to 3 in 1,000 for several nations such as Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Luxemborg, and even Macendonia); and schooling for children (only 61% on kids in the USA get enrolled in pre-school, compared to 100% in many places)

If only we could figure out just what those other countries are doing so well…

Other countries where fewer kids die before age 5 compared to the USA:

Developed Countries:  Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estoria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxemborg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.

Less Developed Countries:  Brunei Darussalam, Cuba, Cyprus, Israel, Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore

Americans more loyal to brands, country than company

Basically, this study is showing that Americans no longer have any loyalty to their lying, abusive, employers who would sell the souls of 50 employees if would get them an extra 0.01% margin.

Americans are more loyal to their favorite soft drink, television show or car brand than they are to their employer, according to a joint Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Shocker.

Imagine that?  Refer to people as “headcount”, treat them as costs instead of assets, and lay them off at the first hints of lower profits for the quarter and for some odd reason they leave you when given half a chance.  Who’d a thunk it?

Companies did not fare well when it comes to allegiance. Most Americans said they are more committed to their favorite soft drink than the company they work for.

That about sums it for me.  If I worked for Coca-Cola, I’d have a real dilemma on my hands.

Most anyone who has run a web sites is probably familiar with AWStats.  If you know enough to start up a web site then you are geeky enough to dig statistics.  And what could be cooler that stats about yourself?  And if you run a blog, by definition, YOU are your own favorite subject, so it’s like geek-heaven!

One of the things you can find out with stats collected about your web site is just how exactly people found you.  If you’re a business, trying to make money from your web site… read:  PR0N… then this is pretty important, as you can imagine.  In particular, you would want to know how people found your web site via search engines.

Now, I have no interest in any of this.  I don’t sell anything from this web site, I don’t make any money, I have all of maybe five people who read this, afterall.  (Hi Mom!!!)  But what I do find highly amusing is when someone accidentally finds my web site, by Googling something almost… but not entirely, unrelated.  It’s like a tiny window to peak into the creepy, dark, altogether wretched Internet habits of completely anonymous strangers.  So every month I take a look at what people search for on the Internet, which just so happens to also touch my blog albeit ever so slightly.

For example:  For all of 2009, far and above, the #1 search phrase that hit my site was “bascic reading skills”.

What do you suppose is more likely?  Something is interesting enough about “bascic reading skills” to warrant the vast number of searches, or that people interested in “basic reading skills” should really be searching for “remedial spelling”?

Some other ones from 2009 that I find funny:

nkay the god – Who is nkay?  I can only hope we’re related, somehow.
caps lock is god – No, it isn’t.
top 10 things that scare people – nkay is probably in the top 5.
abandon all hope tattoo – Maybe people will put this right on their face.
detroit sucks – Yes, it does.
kwame kilpatrick in cuffs – Glad that other people are interested in this, too.
marie douglas-david is ugly – Now that’s a cheap shot, folks.
youwwwporn.com – Now how did this find me?
shut up woman n getonmyhorse – Heh.

So here are the top search phrases that linked to my blog from March, 2010:

mit pi cheer – It’s real!
why does she talk to me – I don’t know, but Googling the answer is probably not going to help.
sister never hooked up – Prude.
bascic reading skills – All the illiterates love my blog.
losing the country – Do you really care if it’s lost?
big guns – Great big, enormous, BURSTING guns…
wwwpornqueen.com – with big guns?
zombie ahead – Dear God!

Father of the early cubicle dies at 85

Glenn M. Walters, a former Herman Miller Inc. executive who was key in the production and marketing of office workspaces that became commonly known as cubicles, has died. He was 85.

That’s right, the man who turned humans into hamsters has passed away.

Walters joined Zeeland-based Herman Miller in 1955 as a field salesman. In 1967, he led a task force that finished development and handled marketing for the Action Office system, which was introduced in 1968.

The system, with its movable walls, was a departure from the typical fixed office desks of the time and helped make cubicles commonplace.

Later in 1968, the first covert workplace operations were conducted in the field of crop dusting.

Bran and I spent a nice Saturday morning putting together a little science project, courtesy of Grandma!

BEHOLD… BranCan2010

Our initial activation of BranCan2010 was met with limited success:

It turns out that he just needed a more suitable surface to navigate:

I think the hardest part about making BranCan2010 was trying to stop myself from just putting it all together myself! 

I just noticed a few minutes ago that my 401k had reached an all time high as far it’s total value!

For a few moments I felt pretty good about things, until it sank in that the previous all time high had been back in October, 2007.  :-/

Then I realized what this really meant… in the last two and a half years I have put only a couple of dollars more into my account than it has lost…. which is roughly 20% of its entire value.  I took two and a half years of saving and flushed them down into the sewers of Wall St.

Purely by coincidence, I’m sure, 2-1/2 years is the same amount of time my house has been on the market.

We took Bran and his friend Noah out bowling this weekend and I took a couple of videos with my phone.  I think I may try using those rails next time I bowl a game!

We finally got hit by part of Snowmagedon 2010 and Bran’s school was cancelled.  Someone has to stay home with him, so I stepped up to take care of the situation.

The choice was stay inside and play video games or…

DRAG TEH SPAWN OUTSIDE!

Snow days can be a lot of fun…

Snow days can also be a lot of work…

No matter what you do on a Snow Day, no school never fails to put a smile on a kid’s face.

Before you read this: Please don’t judge me… I’m just sharing my story because people asked…

Wow… okay, I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to tell anyone about this, but it’s late and I’m sleep deprived, so I guess I’ll just write it now and regret it in the morning.  :-/

First of all, just for some background:  My mom died right when I was born. (she was actually really, really hot- but this isn’t about her.  I guess that’s screwed up to say, but whatever.)  I actually grew up with my dad’s family, because my dad has all sorts of emotional issues and he bailed before I was born.  So you can see, my childhood was really kind of messed up.

Anyways, growing up I feel like there was always a lot of distance between me and my sister.  When I was about 17 or 18 I noticed that my sister was a hottie.

I don’t want to go into too many details about it, but basically what happened is that I accidentally found a video that she made of herself.  I knew that she didn’t make it for me, but I thought she was so incredibly beautiful that I watched it twice.  Hell, I probably would have watched it a lot more, but right around the time I found the video, all of this crazy crap went down and I had to leave home. (My dad’s family who I was staying with got in bad trouble with the law.  I never talk about it.)

Sooo… I was totally lusting after my sister at that point.  She was also having bad trouble with the law.  In fact, she was actually in jail when I left home.

My friend and I went to go pick her up.  When I saw her that day, after seeing the video, I have to be honest, I wanted her really bad.  Like… wanted her.  Looking back on it now, it’s pretty messed up, but I think she had feelings for me, too.  She actually kissed me right after we came to get her… and it wasn’t a sisterly kiss, you know?  I mean, it wasn’t ridiculously sexual or anything, but it definitely wasn’t sisterly.

After we left, we all went to crash with my sister’s friends.  On the trip there, my friend sort of implied that he wanted to get with my sister and I got a little jealous.  He’s a good looking guy and even though she was my sister, I just felt like he was competition.  Not much else happened between us for a while except some maybe-sexual hugging.

My friend and my sister never hooked up, I don’t think… but I thought there was some serious sexual tension going on between them.  It was around that time that I got really badly hurt in an accident.  It was really F-ed up.  I almost died.  But when I was in recovery, my sister came to see me and out of no where she just gave me this awesome, slow, passionate kiss on the lips.

Sadly (although, I guess for the best) nothing ever came of it.  We spent some time apart… and I started to get really religious, so I tried not to think of her in that way.  It was actually going well for a long time- like I was totally over her.  But I have to say, like a year or so after all that stuff went down, we were out sailing (not like a date or anything romantic like that) and she was wearing like the hottest bikini I’ve ever seen in my life, like anywhere, on anybody.  It just immediately brought back all of the old feelings.  *sigh*

A little while later she actually wound up with my friend from before. (the sexual tension guy)  I can’t say I was surprised.

But even after she was shacking up with my friend, there was this one time we were at a party… my friend was inside and my sister and I were out on the deck alone.  It was really an intimate moment.  I think something might have happened, except that I killed the mood when I told her that our father was Darth Vader and I had to go face him.