Um, uh, you know, like

Earlier when the power went out for three and a half hours, I used the time to edit a podcast I'd recorded with a friend more than a month ago and had been sitting on. Most of the time when I record a podcast it is only me. I sit down, talk about five different bands, and then stop. After I cut out the large gaps of silence where was thinking about what to say about the next song the entire thing is maybe five minutes. I do a little bit of editing to cut out any egregious moments of awkwardness or long pauses, but for the most part I just make sure it sounds good and start to edit in the music.

This time, though, it had been so long since we'd recorded and we were a good six minutes over the normal length of my podcast, so I decided to go through the entire thing and cut unnecessary stuff as I went. I've gotta tell you, I was not expecting to discover just how stinking much I say, "Um." It's a lot. Like, a lot a lot. If it isn't um there is also a healthy peppering of "Uh," "you know," and the occasional "like." It's pretty awful.

I knew I filled in gaps with those annoying words, but going through a half an hour's worth of my speech over the course of several hours just threw a magnifying glass on exactly why I do it. When I talk my mind wanders ahead of my mouth and I get side-tracked. The "Um" fills the gap between the time I realize my brain has gotten off course and when I get it back on the path. That's pretty clear because the other annoying habit I have that makes for more editing work is leaving significant gaps in between words.

If I'm going to be recording and editing more talk-centric episodes of my podcast I really should learn to stop trying to fill in these gaps. My first idea was shock collar based but I'm not sure if that would help keep my brain on the right track. I'd likely just be thinking about getting shocked the whole time.

Anxiety of Speech

From a young age I was conditioned to be wary of putting myself out there. I never had very high self-esteem and when I stuck my neck out there to say something or make a joke I was either cut down by my father or mocked by my brother.

In my mind everything is magnified a thousand times. When I jump out there and make a joke about something on TV, and it is met with people joking back that I'm being anal about something or that I am in someway wrong, I suddenly feel like I'm in line on a firing squad. I feel singled out and under attack, and I hate that feeling more than anything.

That's why I've learned to just not speak. I rarely mutter responses to people and generally just ignore others unless I'm one on one with someone and feel a bit safer. Most of the time just yelling goodbye as I head out the door, or goodnight as I head upstairs for bed seems like a huge hurdle that I just can't get over. So I don't try.

This practice causes friction some times, like from my mother-in-law who assumes it's something I only do to her. This morning I blew a reaction from my wife out of proportion and got really upset. It's always the worst for her because I feel the safest saying anything to her, so if she reacts at all like I'm being annoying I take it pretty hard.

I'm not entirely sure how to fix something like this, other than never talk. I guess I just need to stop taking things so personally, but that's easier said than done.

Names Aren't Logical

We're being raised in a time when people are trying their best to make their children's names as unique as possible. No one seems to want to name their kids something boring and common, I get that. But when someone has free reign to ignore all that has come before them, it gets a bit out of hand.

You could technically name your child a random stream of symbols and tell everyone it's pronounced Bob and that's perfectly legal. I think. The point is, no one has to pay attention to any logic in the way a name should be spelled in order to be pronounced the way they want it pronounced. This has led to plenty of people completely ignoring logic and question every name they come across.

Emerson is a name. Quite an old name. We didn't make it up. It might not be very common for a girl until more recently, but it's certainly a name and that is most definitely the way it should be spelled. Mostly, we call our daughter Emmy, but I couldn't even tell you how many times people misspelled that nickname or asked about how to spell it. For awhile my sister kept spelling it "Emi" and I had to hold myself back from telling her that was the stupidest thing I'd ever seen. Emi wouldn't be pronounced as Emmy, it would be pronounced like Eli.

That doesn't really matter though, because if we wanted to say her nickname was spelled Emi, we easily could. With a name, the only thing that matters is how the parent says it's spelled or pronounced, and that is borderline crazy talk. You need to add a second 'm' to Emerson when turning it into Emmy, or else it just wouldn't make any sense. Somehow this rule of grammar proves me right, I just can't get my head around explaining it right now:

Rule #4: “Doubling Final Consonants”

When adding an ending to a word that ends in a consonant, we double that consonant in many situations. First, we have to determine the number of syllables in the word.

Double the final consonant before adding an ending that begins with a vowel when the last syllable of the word is accented and that syllable ends in a single vowel followed by a single consonant.

- submit is accented on the last syllable and the final consonant is preceded by a vowel, so we double the t before adding, for instance, an -ing or -ed: submitting, submitted.
- flap contains only one syllable which means that it is always accented. Again, the last consonant is preceded by a vowel, so we double it before adding, for instance, an -ing or -ed: flapping, flapped. This rule does not apply to verbs that end with "x," "w," "v," and "y," consonants that cannot be doubled (such as "box" [boxing] and "snow" [snowing]).
- open contains two syllables and the last syllable is preceded by a single vowel, but the accent falls on the first syllable, not the last syllable, so we don't double the n before adding an ending: opening, opened.
- refer contains two syllables and the accent falls on the last syllable and a single vowel precedes the final consonant, so we will double the r before adding an ending, as in referring, referral. The same would apply to begin, as in beginner, beginning.
- relent contains two syllables, but the final consonant is preceded by another consonant, not a vowel, so we do not double the t before adding an ending: relented, relenting.
- deal looks like flap (above), but the syllable ends in a consonant preceded not by a single vowel, but by two vowels, so we do not double the final l as in dealer and dealing. The same would apply, then, to despair: despairing, despaired.

Thanks to Alex Martin, Jonathan Cole, and Jay Henningsen for the grammar help on this post.

The Night Fight: Rounds 2 & 3

So, I'm not entirely sure what to do at this point.

The night before last I had an awful time getting Emmy to sleep in her own bed. You might recall that this was one of her first nights with the stuffed owl we let her make to help her feel safe sleeping in her bed. Well, it didn't really work.

I spent an hour and a half trying and failing. First I tried to convince her to stay over there but despite several books being read, me lying in the bed with her, and promises being thrown around, she'd still immediately get out of her bed once it came to going to sleep.

I asked her all about why she wouldn't sleep in her own bed and she had all manner of excuses that hardly seemed to be the truth. She pointed to things in the closet and said she was scared of them so I pulled each of them out to show her what they were. Confronted with this knowledge she'd just move onto another one. I got the sense that she wasn't actually scared of any of these things as she seemed to just casually say that she was.

I decided it was time to be hard about it and refused to even let her get up on our bed, so she started lying on the floor. After awhile I got up, picked her up, and put her in her bed. She started crying and got back out. Remembering all of those nanny shows that solved this issue by just continuously putting the kid back in their bed until they gave up trying, I did just that. She was screaming bloody murder after six or seven times, so I just picked her up and held her in front of her bed until she calmed down.

Once she'd stopped crying completely I laid her back down in her bed. She got a little fussy about not wanting the blanket but then she rolled over and went to sleep. That victory lasted until five or so in the morning when she woke up and climbed into our bed. Zoe was sick and I was un-wakeable so she was still there when I woke up at eight.

Round 3 was barely a fight at all. Last night I'd all but given up the war and chose to get plenty of snuggles instead of losing sleep.

I guess I'll be re-entering the battlefield tonight. Wish me luck.

Scaredy Cat

I'm not exactly the bravest person in the world. There are very few rides that I can go on at the fair each year without getting more than a little freaked out and panicking a bit inside my head. Apparently I passed some of that onto Emerson.

This weekend we met up with all of Emmy's cousins of the same age at some place called Play World. It was basically just a big building filled with McDonald's playplace-like structures, inflatable bouncy houses, and other child-sized amusements.

Emmy mostly stayed in the area with those plastic houses you can buy your kid to put in the yard, and the Flintstones type cars. Every time she ventured toward something bigger an obstacle would scare her away. She'd follow one of her cousins until it came to climbing through a tube and then she'd back away. A couple times I coaxed her into climbing up onto the second level of one of the structures via the nets but every time she would panic and slowly climb back down the way she came, close to tears.

The first time she got onto the giant blow-up slide she climbed up to the top because of the other kids getting on behind her. She actually went down but I could see the fear on her face as she did. Every other time she was pulled onto the slide she only climbed about halfway up and then held up the line of kids as she made her way back down.

It's probably safe to say Emmy won't lead a very exciting life, but I've found that doesn't really matter. I've gotten by just fine without feeling left out by not taking risks like a lot of others. We might be a little boring, but I'm happy with that.

Bunny and Her Magic Powers

Our state tax return check came in the mail the other day and it was a glorious time of celebration. On top of using it to pay off all of our bills for this month, we had a little extra to use on something a bit more frivolous. Upon weighing the options, there was only one real choice.

As I've written about before, Emmy is having a little bit of trouble adjusting to the next step of growth: her own bed. She has yet to make it through an entire night in her bed, and hasn't once fallen asleep in it of her own free will (we usually just transfer her after she's conked out). She's told me she isn't big enough for her own bed and refuses to believe me when I say a lot of babies have sleep by themselves. She is convinced that there are monsters, or scarecrows, or that the wall is scary over there, and it doesn't matter even if I check for all of those things and curl up in the tiny bed next to her. Nothing has worked.

So, we told her we were going to take her to a special store. We drove over to the nearest Build-A-Bear Workshop and had her pick out her own animal. We recorded us saying, "I love you" with each of our special nicknames for her onto a sound button to put into the foot of the owl she'd picked out. If you're unfamiliar with the store, the next step is for the kid to help pump the stuffing into the animal. They pick out a heart and go through a series of spins, jumps, nose touches, and a final kiss before it goes into the back of their new friend and is sewn shut.

After we picked a name for her new owl -- which she decided should be Bunny -- and got her an outfit to wear, we left the mall and headed for home. On the drive back I told Emmy all about Bunny. I told her that when she spun in circles, touched her nose, jumped up and down, and then kissed Bunny's heart, she gave her magic powers. I told her how she could use those powers to make a shield around her bed to protect her at night. Then I told her that Bunny's magic was weak right now and she could only protect her in her bed, but if she gets a lot of practice protecting her in her bed that she could keep her safe other places as well. Incentive for the future, I guess.

I'm not sure how much it will help, but even if it doesn't it was worth a shot. I can't think of any better way to have spent our rare bit of extra money.

Calm, Peaceful Nights

It's easy for me to complain about my job -- and I've done it plenty of times -- but there are several things I love about it as well. I wrote about being trusted and left to do my job without being micromanaged already, which is something I love about it, but there's more. Particularly the weekend night-time deliveries.

Saturday and Sunday papers are both in the morning. The way my schedule works out there isn't very much magic in dragging myself out of bed on Saturday morning and going to work, but something else comes along later. I go to bed at about 5pm and wake up again at 11pm. While every other day of the week takes about four to five hours, a Sunday paper takes me at least seven, if not eight. Meaning the entirety of my night is spent out delivering.

This might sound like a negative, but it's become one of my favorite times of the week. Imagine setting aside eight straight hours of your day away from the computer or TV screen. No contact with other human beings, save for a stop at a depot to load the second route. It's calm, quiet, and amazingly enjoyable.

After I finish my first route I sometimes stop at the grocery store to get some food. Even there I see maybe one employee the entire time. I grab some of the prepared food or something out of the freezer aisle, warm it up with the microwave over in the cafe area, and pay for it in the self-checkout lane without ever taking my headphones out to make small talk with a cashier.

The entire night is just me, music, podcasts, and my thoughts. On winter nights the cold air sets adds to the ambiance; On summer nights it's a cool escape from the daytime heat. I'm willing to bet you haven't had a block of time to yourself that sizable and that quiet for a very long time. Some people might complain about having to work all night long, but I cherish that time. It would be one of the biggest things I'd miss if I ever got a new job. So much time to just relax and enjoy life without being distracted by the thought that you should be doing something else. It's magical.

Modding Aspirations

As if I needed anything else to occupy my time, I've decided I want to start making modded game gadgets. Now, I know what you're going to say. I constantly set goals for myself that I never follow-through on, but maybe if I actually write these aspirations out this time I'll make good on them.

I've thought a lot about a possible career path for my life, and one of the front runners has always been an electrician. I don't have a lot of electrical experience apart from a college prep class I took in high school, but I think I'd take to it pretty well. Making a hobby out of tinkering with that kind of thing would surely help me out when I started to take new classes to brush up on it before pursuing it as a career.

So, here are some projects I hope to get started on soon, provided I can find all the necessary parts and figure out a way to afford a soldering iron and dremel.

Portable NES with games on chip:

Awhile back I found this site, which details how they built a portable NES with 50 or so built-in games using one of those Mega Joy/Power Player/Play Joy/Whatever plug-and-play things you find at booths in the center of the mall during Christmas time. Mine would be a little bit different, given that the screen and plug-and-play unit she used are impossible to find now, plus I'd use one of my old GameBoys and take a dremel to a crappy game to fit in the cartridge slot and keep it plugged up without taking up real estate inside. But provided I can find a plug-and-play unit with sufficient games on it I think this would be a fun and easy enough project to tackle.

Portable SNES

This project will require a little bit more tweaking but I think it's fairly simple enough for me to figure out. This walkthrough is for building a handheld NES, but I might change it up and do an SNES instead so I can play some awesome RPGs from that era while taking poops. Of course, I don't own an SNES with which to hack apart, so I might just go at one of the multiple NESs I have so I've got a portable version to play all my cartridge games on. I'd also probably find a cooler case to cut up and craft to my needs then what that guy used.

Something with my PSP?

My PSP-1000 is pretty much boned at this point -- just freezing about 10 seconds after turning it on. There has to be something awesome I can make out of that. At the very least I could take that awesome screen and use it for another project, but there's gotta be some way I can turn it into an emulation machine. That may be a bit over my head at this point, but it's on the table.

MAME Cabinet

I've got a refurbished Captain America arcade cabinet wasting space in my parent's basement. I'd love put it to use as a MAME machine. The monitor works great already, so that and the cabinet are two huge expenses saved. I'd probably see if I could take my really old computer, wipe the hard-drive, get a slightly better video card and slightly more memory and storage, then see it I could hook it up. The person who adapted the cabinet to Captain America put in two joysticks but only four buttons, so I'd probably add more as well as a trackball. Then I'd make a slide out underneath the controls for the keyboard and mouse. This is, of course, the ultimate culmination of my fantasy modding hobby, but I think I could handle it.

So there you go, those are the goals and aspirations that I've created for myself after a couple of days of thinking. Feel free to hold my feet to the fire on this stuff, because I could probably use the help.