This story sort of began a few months ago. Colin and I were reading through one of my old favorite books: "What makes it go? What makes it work? What makes it fly? what makes it float?." One of the pages shows how a typewriter works. Despite never having seen one (or, as far as I knew, heard of one) before, he was very interested and told me that he wanted one.
We read the book again a couple weeks ago and were both reminded of the typewriter. So last week I stopped in at a thrift store hoping to find one. Somewhat to my surprise, I did find a decent-looking typewriter. For $3!
(While paying another customer came up and admired the typewriter. I jokingly offered to sell it to her at a handy profit. She told me shes a typewriter collector, gave me her card, and told me to give her a call if we decide we don't want it any more.)
Initially the typewriter didn't work all that well. It didn't advance the paper roller after each keystroke. A little oil in the right spot fixed that.
Colin took it upon himself to type up a valentine note for Grandma Theresa. This gave Anne the idea that he should type up cards for his schoolmates -- all 30 of them!
Using the typewriter has given us many opportunities for lessons in imperfection. At first, when C made a mistake he would take out the paper and start over. Repeat a few times and then add some tears. We tried to show him the miracle of liquid paper, but that didn't really solve the problem. At one point C and I walked around the house together and I pointed out all of the mistakes that I make on my projects. Screws sticking out, lines not straight, and pieces still missing. This seemed to help a lot. Then I showed him how to XXXX out typing mistakes, and he liked that. Even better, we learned how to use the typewriter's correction tape!
About two years ago I went to the awesome Maker Faire in silicon valley to promote Make Projects: Small Form Factor PCs. While there I mentioned to my editor, Brian, that I built something with the Make Controller. Brian said I should write it up for Make Magazine and introduced me to Mark Frauenfelder, editor of the magazine and of the Boing Boing Blog. (swoon...)
This week the article finally came out in print! The project uses a micro-controller, temperature sensor, motor, and some gears to automatically adjust the speed of an exhaust fan so that the room temperature stays constant.
Last week I was in Virginia, starting my new job. While there, I was lucky enough to be a guest on Episode 13 of the The Ask Mr. DNS Podcast!
The podcast is hosted by my friends and colleages, Matt Larson and Cricket Liu. Cricket and I have worked together on The Measurement Factory's DNS surveys. I've known Matt for a while through my work and research into DNS traffic analysis and he is now my manager at VeriSign.
It's my first time as a podcaster and it was great to see how it all comes together. I was sitting in Matt's office, but Cricket was on the other side of the country. They each record locally and then take turns editing and merging the audio channels. Although it doesn't come through in the final product, we had to do a couple of takes due to technical difficulties saving the audio files.
We answered three questions: one about IPv6-only names, one about addresses as query names, and one about how long it takes Google to find a server after its address changes. I felt a little like it was "DNS Mythbusters" and I wanted to shout out "busted" or "confirmed!"For as long as we've been going to Bumpers, we've been saving our tickets. But the other day Colin became obsessed with what he calls a "gumdrop machine" in the display case. He told me that he wanted to buy it for Mommy to help her feel better, like when she has a sore back and a scratchy throat. The gumdrop machine costs 1000 tickets.
C was a little upset on New Years Eve because we didn't go to Bumpers. He was sure that all the gumdrop machines would be gone, taken by other kids. He wanted me to call them and ask if they still had one.
On New Years Day we went to Oshaughnessy's and left about 5:30. We were subjected to about 10 minutes of crying. One of the reasons being that we still hadn't made it to Bumpers. Back at home, we carefully counted out 1000 tickets in lenghts of 10 and in bundles of 100. Our plan was to be waiting outside their door when they opened tomorrow at 10:00 AM.
Colin loaded the tickets (and buddy Pete) into his luggage, and placed the luggage in the car. We arrived at Bumpers about 10:05. He was very excited to see that they still had two gumdrop machines left in the case. He went up to the counter and said, "Could you please give me a gumdrop machine?" The employee was a little confused at first, until she saw him pull the ticked bundles out of his luggage. I was worried they wouldn't be accepted since we'd taken them home, rather than turn them in each time before leaving. She told us we had 1060 tickets according to the scale, because she didn't take the rubber bands off.
Colin picked out a gumdrop machine with a big smiley face on it, and put it in the luggage. With the 60 extra tickets he got a small box of "Jaw Busters" to go in the machine. Then we played a few games and did some other shopping at Ross with Mom. After that we got some tripleberry drinks at Orange Julius, went to Old Navy, and then home to try out the machine:
Family portrait on Jan 1, 2010. With some luck we might make this a yearly tradition.
Grandma treated everyone to Carousel rides after the family get-together in Spokane:
Some highlights from the Kopczynski Christmas day at Uncle Don and Aunt Dena's house.
Grandma Theresa gave cousin Jill a fabulous set of personalized graduation gifts:
Dena gave out updated family cookbooks to everyone. It was the highlight of the day:
The youngsters didn't get cookbooks, but thank goodness for small handheld electronic devices to prevent them from going insane with boredom:
The Nintendo DS is the only thing that kept Colin from snacking on chocolate peanut clusters.
The "Theresa Branch" family photo!
Christmas eve we drove to Grandma Theresa's house down in Lewiston. Shortly after arriving, we realized that we forgot to bring our big jar of Grandma Tillie's Shrimp Cocktail that I made the night before. So Dad drove back to Moscow to fetch it. In retrospect, I don't think it was worth it. Note to self: next time don't use frozen shrimp!
We went to Children's mass where Bradleigh sang, Jacob read, and all the kids sat up near the altar. They were quizzed by Fr. Les. Colin said he hopes Santa doesn't bring him a bag of rocks. A reference to the Great Pumpkin, I believe.
The lasagna dinner at the Oshaugnessy's was sooooo good. Even got some "to go." Aunt Karen made some perfect Wessels Tom & Jerry. It was wonderful on my scratchy throat. Also got my fix of Grandma's traditional christmas desert: Graham cracker crust, marshmallows, ice cream, chocolate. I should know what its called, but I'm too lazy to go look in the family cookbook. I think I need to learn how to make this.
Opening of the gifts went about as well as could be expected with a 5-year old hopped up on Christmas cookies. Colin got a very nice Idaho Vandals hat, and a Hot Wheels track set. Daddy got some warm coveralls so he can be just like Uncle Larry. Mom's gift was a bit of a trick. She was very surprised to unwrap an Ipod touch case. After getting the tape off, she gasped at the sight of a new wedding ring with three stones. Look for the video on youtube. But she should know better to think that I'd buy her any type of jewelry without prior approval. The ring's a fake and she got neither an Ipod or ring. But, hey, what about that nice kitchen composting bin, huh?
Santa found us at Grandma's house and left a Nintendo DS for Colin. Mom and Dad still aren't sure about Santa's choice here, but for now we defer to his years of experience and good judgement. It came with Super Marios Bros and Scribblenauts (thanks to Santa's Clarkston helpers), but I think his favorite is just the built-in chat/draw program.
One of my favorite Colin gifts is this homemade hooded towl from Grandma Theresa. The old blue Monster Towel hits him at about the knees now!
Such a good helper. C was a little sad that I quickly cleared most of our own driveway. He decided to sweep the snow off the neighbor's walkway, all by himself!
