Baby Rap Update

(Added a concluding stanza)

Little baby Shannon
She is demandin'
To be picked up 'cause she thinks she's been abandoned

She was on her mat layin'
With her rattle playin'
For her bottle waitin'
But her peeps they were delayin'

She let out a loud cry
But she got no reply
She said, "I want my bottle and I will not be denied!"

She's got a big brother
He treats her like no other
When he hears her cry he runs to get her mother

When her mom comes
She gets the job done
She puts a stop to her fussin' and then they have some fun.

They play some peek-a-boo
And little coochie-coo
Then she has to wipe her face; her new teeth make her drool.

It's been a long day
Full of anguish, angst, and play
But she's had her bottle, now she's tired
So it's time to hit the hay.

Is Homer Simpson Writing Legislation?

I just discovered "The MMMMM Act": Missing Mercury in Manufacturing Monitoring and Mitigation Act.

Mmmmm, missing mercury.

Baby Rap

Little baby Shannon
She is demandin'
To be picked up 'cause she thinks she's been abandoned

She was on her mat layin'
With her rattle playin'
For her bottle waitin'
But her peeps they were delayin'

She let out a loud cry
But she got no reply
She said, "I want my bottle and I will not be denied!"

She's got a big brother
He treats her like no other
When he hears her cry he runs to get her mother

When her mom comes
She gets the job done
She puts a stop to her fussin' and then they have some fun.

They play some peek-a-boo
and coochie-coochie-coo
Then she has to wipe her face; her new teeth make her drool.

Disturbing Picture of the Day

Stack o' Stuff

Victor Davis Hanson: Ripples of Retreat: Dark predictions for a post-withdrawal world.

Charles Krauthammer: "Petraeus’ plan is to eliminate all al Qaeda sanctuaries. You hardly hear about that from the anti-war Democrats in the Senate."

Groening on some Comedy Central show via iFilm.

Stupid and Guilty? Or Just Plain Stupid?

Someone who lives on my street (I won't to call him a neighbor because he isn't very friendly) recently had a brush with the law. He is a black barber and traded his SUV, which is probably a couple of years old, to one of his customers for a brand new Land Rover. You could tell it was brand new because it still had the dealer tags.

Turns out, the Land Rover was stolen from a dealership a day earlier. They must have used GPS or something to track it because 7 cop cars surrounded our parking lot and blocked off our street. The barber wasn't put under arrest but was taken away for further questioning. All the while that they were all out there, he was trying to call the customer -- whose name he didn't know -- on his cellphone but surprise, surprise, no one answered.

I guess the barber wasn't complicit in the crime. He certainly seemed shocked and surprised about the whole thing and he now has his old SUV back. But how stupid could a person a be? What a chucklehead.

The Goose Whisperer

The guy in the photo above can communicate with geese and his job is to manage relations between the birds and people in a city in the Netherlands.

WInged Walker

My white-eyed conure has gone from this:

to this:

About 2 weeks ago he started picking at his wing feathers, now he can't get any lift to fly up. I think it was out of jealousy of our 7 1/2 month old baby girl. I've had the bird for roughly ten years and he's never done anything like this before. He also gave me a rather malicious bite around the time picking began.

Once I noticed the problem, I added some news toys and shoe laces to his cage and have been giving him extra attention when possible - though without rewarding the bad habit. I've also added the ladder up to his cage so he can get himself back home on his own from the ol' futon. My son is on the lookout if the conure ever gets down on the floor, he knows to call for me so I can scoop the bird up.

I was never able to train him to "step up" onto my hand, he would always bite to hurt. What I would do is to gently lift him by the tail and slide my fingers under his claws out of beak-range. Now all I have to do is put my hand behind him and he steps up backwards onto my finger.

For his sake, at least the cats aren't around any more now that he can't escape a pouncin'.

Baby Bird Picasa Test

We've had 2 nests of robins outside of our rear window this summer. This little bird left his nest for the first time later in the day the pictures were taken.

Earlier in the week I installed Google's picture program, Picasa. I just used the program to upload the picture straight to Blogger, the process was several times quicker than using the regular upload within Blogger.

Only complaint so far about Picasa is the scroll bar. The scroll bar in iTunes is absolute: moving to the bottom of the scroll moves you directly to the last file. Whereas, in Picasa, the bar is relative, when you move the scroll bar to the bottom, it only moves you in the direction of the last file, you have to sit there and hold the bar toward the bottom while the menu moves gradually to the bottom of the file list. Irritating.

Hero

A Wisconsin state Rep, Frank Lasee (R), thinks there are too many lawyers so he is trying to block funding for the University of Wisconsin School of Law:

We don't need more ambulance chasers. We don't need frivolous lawsuits. And we don't need attorneys making people's lives miserable when they go to family court for divorces," said Rep. Frank Lasee, R-Green Bay. "And I think that having too many attorneys leads to all those bad results.

For Personal Reference

Here are three articles I had open all day to read but never had time to get to:

Democrats Facing a Fight To Lift Domestic Spending.

Getting things done.

55 articles on blogging

TinyUrl

Tinyurl.com is a handy website that transforms long and unwieldy html links into, well, tiny urls. For example, this long map link:

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&mqma
p.x=300&mqmap.y=75&mapdata=%252bKZmeiIh6N%252bI
gpXRP3bylMaN0O4z8OOUkZWYe7NRH6ldDN96YFTIUmSH3Q6
OzE5XVqcuc5zb%252fY5wy1MZwTnT2pu%252bNMjOjsHjvN
lygTRMzqazPStrN%252f1YzA0oWEWLwkHdhVHeG9sG6cMrf
XNJKHY6fML4o6Nb0SeQm75ET9jAjKelrmqBCNta%252bsKC
9n8jslz%252fo188N4g3BvAJYuzx8J8r%252f1fPFWkPYg%
252bT9Su5KoQ9YpNSj%252bmo0h0aEK%252bofj3f6vCP

was shortened to http://tinyurl.com/6.

One problem with tiny urls is that they are blind links - you can't be sure where you are going when you click on one. Well, they've recenlty fixed that by adding a preview feature. Just add the word "preview" and a dot in the link as such: http://preview.tinyurl.com/6.

Or, if you have cookies enabled, you can go here to make "preview" your automatic default.

Happy Independence Day!

We watched the National fireworks from a marina south of the Reagan Airport. In addition to the display from the Mall , we could see fireworks being launched from about 20 different locations all around the horizon.

Daycare News

Here's the note Ms. A. sent home today for baby girl:

Oh mom, I was so mad with Ms. A. - she took much too long to feed me. I was calling my dad : ) and he didn't come for me. Ms. A. said that he loves me, but that didn't work. I need my dada! My outside play was wonderful and I do like playing on the floor with Ms. A and my friends.

PS I wouldn't eat my oatmeal this morning.

Death to Spammers

In a previous blog post here, someone posted a comment with some funky HTML that hijacked the page, directing it some spam/phishing looking site called Quote Database Home.

Since my page wouldn't display completely before being hijacked, I was unable to delete the comment. Had to delete and repost my article. Word Verification has been turned on now for new comments.

Daycare News

Baby girl sent us this note from her daycare:

What a busy day : ) I played on the floor with Ms. A. Fun fun fun! We ate the books : ) Story time. Mom, I can hold my fingers and toes and I do like pulling the table cloth off the table!

The boy's daycare didn't send a note home today, but he reported to us that one of his teachers, Ms. D., told him "shut up" and "stupid," two words he gets in big trouble for saying. Knowing Ms. D., we remain dubious of his claim.

Pointless Family Photo

Someone forwarded this picture to me this morning: