A father's journey into relevance. 21st Century Dad...

I finally took the time to figure out how to be able to print from my OpenSolaris laptop to our HP 6450 wifi printer across the room without having to stretch a USB cord and move my laptop. I kept scouring the Internet for references, but realized that a wifi printer is no different than a printer connected directly into the LAN via ethernet.

 I first started with obtaining CUPS. To quote www.cups.org:  "CUPS is the standards-based, open source printing system developed by
Apple Inc. for Mac OS^® X and
other UNIX^®-like operating systems." I downloaded the CUPS packages from the IPS repository (SUNWcups-manager will pull in all the right dependencies). 

 Once installed, I made sure the CUPS services were running:

online          6:53:39 svc:/application/cups/scheduler:default
online          6:53:39 svc:/application/cups/in-lpd:default

If they are not running, you would just run "pfexec svcadm enable" for the 2 services.

In my browser, I typed http://localhost:631, which brought me to the CUPS interface. I followed instructions to add a printer, selecting the socket type with the printer's IP address (it should be set to a static address). In my case, it was socket://192.168.0.102:9100. A pop-up prompted me for user name and password. This puzzled me for a while, until I figured out that it was asking for "root" as the username and my system's root password. Once that was set, I was able to connect to the printer.

If you use VPN or (internal to Sun) Punchin, you should be able to select a bypass to allow access to the printer at the LAN address.

Finally! After feeling a bit like a second-class citizen for so long since running a Solaris (and now OpenSolaris) x86 desktop, I can now run Adobe Reader (formerly known as "Acrobat Reader") on my system. While evince certainly was adequate for reading through PDF files, it did not handle searches very well, and I could not copy text from one section without it grabbing text from an adjoining section on the same page. I was not prepared to run VirtualBox just to use Adobe Reader.

So now I was able to download and install from Reader 9.1 from http://get.adobe.com/reader/.  It knew my OS, and presented the download button. I am very happy to relegate evince to a secondary app as Adobe Reader (I know, I keep wanting to call it Acrobat too) takes over as my main PDF reading tool.

After disappearing from the Blogsphere for over a year, I thought it would be fitting to actually write something that is work-related. I even created a new category in my bloglist for it. So here goes...

I just received my brand new Toshiba Tecra M10 laptop. My plan is to keep Windows Vista on one partition for those occasions where it might be interesting or useful, but to keep the latest OpenSolaris OS installed for everyday work and home use. It's a win-win situation, since I get a new toy to play with while actually contributing to the testing and quality of a product related to my job.

Out-of-Box Experience

The first thing that I encountered when my system started up was a big red WARNING from the Toshiba Recovery Wizard. I haven't done anything other than plug it in and turn it on, and I already got a warning that all my data could be wiped out. After googling a bit, I found that it's apparently just the way Toshiba ships its "preinstalled" systems. So I proceeded, knowing that I have no data on this brand new system to lose. I was then given 3 choices for recovery:

• standard
• no changes to disk partitions
• specifying the size of the C drive

I knew I could change partition sizes later, so I went with the first choice. I didn't want to muck around with anything yet until I knew Vista was up and running as Toshiba intended. Next, it asked if I wanted the 32-bit or 64-bit version, with the caveat that not all 3rd-party software might run on a 64-bit system. I chose 64-bit. It proceeded to create the partition and install the software. It must have rebooted 4 or 5 times, and even after displaying a large "Installation Complete" message it continued to install all the peripheral software that it comes pre-shipped with. So after maybe an hour it was done and I could actually log onto Vista. I skimmed through read thoroughly the EULA, clicked "accept", and then got to choose a user and system name. This is actually the hardest part of installation. I wanted to choose something personal, yet full of deep meaning. I went through my various themes in my life (family, movies, interests, books) and settled on a user name of "Alan". I was more creative with my system name. Then after yet one more reboot, I was able to log in.

Preparing for OpenSolaris

Backup

Note that this was my first real experience with Vista. So I was not quite sure what to be prepared for. Well, the taskbar was overcrowded as usual with an OEM install, but the desktop only had 5 icons. But I did not want to start playing with Vista. First thing to do: make recovery disk! I found the Maintenance tab under "All Programs", and selected the Back Up Computer option. And that was my first experience with the annoying User Account Control pop-up. I popped in a DVD, let it to its backup, swapped in the 2nd DVD, and it was done. Now I felt safe that I could recover the Vista install if need be.

Partitioning

This is the scary part. Luckily I'm doing it on a brand new system so have nothing really to lose.

I then checked the Windows partition size, and sure enough it used almost the entire hard drive for the C partition. 18GB was used by the OEM install. With a 149GB hard drive, I planned on splitting it into 70GB for Vista, 15GB each for an OpenSolaris root partition, and the rest for OpenSolaris user area (/export/home). So after backing up the system, my next task was to repartition, following the instructions at http://opensolaris.org/os/community/documentation/reviews/Dual_Boot_Install_Doc_Plan/Dual-Booting-OpenSolaris-with-Vista/Creating-New-Partition/. Following the steps to get to the disk layout, I saw that I had 3 partitions:

• 1.46 GB EISA Configuration - No FS type specified
• 140.13GB System, Boot, etc. - NTFS
• 7.45GB Primary Partition - No FS type specified

Selecting the option to Shrink Volume, It showed me that the C partition was 143493MB, and Shrink Size available was 70791MB. This was actually perfect for what I wanted to do. A note at the bottom of the window stated that the size would be restricted by "snapshots or pagefiles" enabled on the volume. So it was telling me that the 18GB that was indicated as used was really 70GB. This didn't seem to make a difference as I later saw that I did actually have 50GB free on the Vista side.

The change resulted in a 69.13GB unallocated partition between the C drive and the small primary partition. I deleted the extra primary partition, which left me an unformated 76GB partition. I formated it with NTFS. The instructions from the link above said that OpenSolaris would be used for additional formatting prior to install. Following those instructions, I successfully created a Solaris partition that was recognized by the OpenSolaris install. It was definitely nice not to have to rely on GParted or some other utility to make the modification.

Installation

I then proceeded with the very familiar installation of OpenSolaris (Build 108). I popped in the LiveCD, and rebooted to the Toshiba "boot menu", a series of icons that you must act really fast to select before it goes to the default. I selected the CD icon, and it booted the LiveCD. As mentioned above the free partition was recognized as a partition on which OpenSolaris could be installed. I selected it and proceeded with the rest of the install dialog.

When the system rebooted, I was presented with a GRUB menu that included both Windows and OpenSolaris. I verified that the system could boot onto either one. 

Post-Installation

Once OpenSolaris was installed, I was able to run the Package Manager GUI, and select some of my favorite apps, including OpenOffice. For VirtualBox installation, I went to pkg.sun.com,  registered with my sun.com user name, and followed the documented process to install my certificate and keys. Then I set a second repository to https://pkg.sun.com/opensolaris/extra and performed a pkg install on the two packages needed. I did the same for the Adobe Flash plugin for Firefox. Much simpler than the Solaris SVR4 package download/unzip/pkgadd.

Since the laptop has a built-in webcam, I also downloaded the Cheese utility from the developer repository. I tested it out and was very impressed by the quality and size of the image. 

Finally, what blew me away was the ease of restoring my personal environment. I simply copied my entire home directory from my SXCE system to my OpenSolaris system, and then logged out. When I logged back in, I was staring at the very familiar customized desktop I put together over the years. The ONLY modification that was needed was in finding the icons for a couple of my panel launchers.

And now the story can be told: Last December I thought it would be nice to get a present for the whole family, and upgrade our 27" Magnavox CRT television to an HDTV. I did my research, including a perfectly timed article in PC World. I went to the stores, I checked on-line, and I decided on a Philips 42PF9631D. So I ordered it on-line at Philips, taking advantage of a corporate discount program.

As many people tend to do when anticipating a delivery, I checked the website daily for signs that the TV was being shipped. I wanted to know the exact day that I could expect this wonderful 21st-Century marvel at my doorstep. But it took a few days before it showed that a company I had never heard of was going to ship it. I'll just call it "Ship2U" to protect their identity.

After waiting a few more days, I hadn't seen any updates on delivery, so I called Ship2U. It turns out that they were ready to deliver it the next day, and were supposed to call me to arrange for a day and time. It turns out that the next day was not good, but the following day (a Friday) would be fine. It was a Work-From-Home day for me. They were to deliver it between 2pm and 5pm. And of course they show up at 5:15pm.

I should have realized something was not quite right when they proceeded to lift the top off of the box, and an inner box with the TV stand slipped off the top of the TV and onto the floor. But I was able to inspect the TV, and not being a fool, I plugged it in while it still sat in the base sytrofoam in the box bottom. The screen lit up, and I dismissed the movers.

My family went out for the evening, and when we came back there was no time to set up the TV on its stand. So instead I played with it while it was still inside its foam and box bottom. The remote sensor was covered a bit by the box, so I opened it a bit. This caused the TV to lean forward ever so slightly at what I would call an 85-degree angle. The picture looked really good. I even watched 5 minutes of "Lord of the Rings' before tearing myself away from it and going to bed. I just took one last look to make sure the TV was stable. Nope, it was not budging.

Then at 6:45 that Saturday morning, I was woken up by a muffled "thud". I knew exactly what the sound was. If a large plasma TV tipped out of its box onto the carpet, that's the sound I would imagine it would have.

My heart started beating rapidly. Tipping onto the carpet surely wouldn't break it, would it. I raced downstairs, to get my suspicion confirmed. The TV had taken 8 hours to lean far enough to break out of its foam support and land face-down on the carpet. I slowly lifted the (very heavy) TV up and back into the box. It looked okay. The glass front was not shattered or anything. I felt a bit of relief as I decided that plugging it in would be the best thing to do at the moment. The power light came on, but there was no picture!

And then I saw them. The little cracks all over the inside plasma tube. I broke our brand new expensive television! Noooooooooo! I wanted to throw up. (Yes, I knew it was only a TV and I shouldn't be so materialistic and it was only money, but I still wanted to puke.) I was also thinking about how disappointed my family would be, now that daddy broke the new present (keep in mind these were pre-teens, not toddlers).

So of course I spent a few minutes trying to justify how it wasn't my fault. That is when I saw the bottom of the box say "WARNING: DO NOT LEAVE TV IN BOX!!!" Okay, there was no way it wasn't my fault. As the family awoke in the next few hours, I gently let them know that their dad was a big loser who broke their brand new TV without them even getting to see it working. They were kind. They said it was okay, and I shouldn't beat myself up too much. There's a lesson there somewhere.

The next thing I did was try to find my credit card purchase protection policy. It basically said that it would pay up to the first $500. So much for full coverage. But maybe it could be repaired for less than that. Ha! The 2 authorized repair shops said it would cost double to just get a new plasma tube shipped to them. So repair was out of the question. But I could at least dispose of the broken TV at their stores.

I then went to see if I can just order another TV and worry about the replacement costs later. Of course the sweet deal I got had now expired, but Amazon.com sold the same model for just $100 more. I decided that after all my time and research, I wanted to just stick with the same one. So I hit the "complete transaction" button and ordered a 2nd TV. I would be out the difference over the credit card refund plus the $50. Not a total loss, at least.

I kept the broken TV in it's box covered with a blanket, so I would not be constantly reminded of my expensive mistake. And I began the paperwork for the credit card refund. That's when I read the delivery invoice. It stated that they were supposed to set the TV up for me. They had never even offered. So I was now thinking that maybe it wasn't entirely my fault.

So I went through the same exercise of waiting for the new TV to be delivered, checking for a delivery date. Hmmm. No actual date. I called up, and found the same story as with the first TV: Someone was supposed to call me first to arrange a date. It was the same shipping company. And when they arrived with the new TV, it was the same delivery guy!

So here is where I started to show what I had learned from the incident so far. When they brought the TV in, I explained to them that they were supposed to set it up on its stand for me. So they proceeded to open the box from the bottom again. I had to point out that the box said "open from the top first". This prevented the big inside box from slipping off, and guess what? Unpacking instructions where right there too! They moving guy admitted that they never set one up before, and were never told to. So I directed and assisted in following the instructions to the letter, and we got the TV up on its stand, and onto the entertainment center. Before they stepped out the door I made sure it was all working fine.

So now I realized something. If they had done their job on the first TV, I would not have tried to set it up myself, and it would not have fallen. So my wonderful wife called up the moving company the next day. And they transferred her to Philips, who heard our story. And then the most amazing thing happened! They agreed that the moving company was at fault, and they reimbursed me for the TOTAL AMOUNT of the first TV! They sent the same moving company to pick up the old TV and send it back, and we were only out the $50 difference in price between Philips and Amazon.

Lessons learned:

My wife is wonderful and can perform miracles.

Read the invoice when movers deliver something.

85 degrees is not a stable angle for a 75 pound object in foam.

Never laugh at people who broke their plasma TVs with a Wii controller.

Take responsiblity for your mistakes, but it always helps to share the blame.

Google Maps now has a great feature: My Maps. It lets you keep your own personal set of tags. Some people have gotten very creative: Presidential Election maps, vacation maps, all the Major League Baseball stadiums, and more.

I decided to make a personal map, and marked it with all the places I have lived in my life. You can find it
here (if anyone is really interested in where I have lived). I'm sure I can think of really good uses for My Maps, but for now I'm content to stare down at roofs of the places I have called home.

And speaking of Google Maps: Remember your first flight across the US when you were little? You looked out the window and wondered why you couldn't see the big dotted lines marking the borders between states. Well, I've been using the Hybrid feature of Google Maps for a while. When I was flying across California recently, I was trying to figure out which city or highway we were over. I really wished I could click a button and see the hybrid feature of street and city names overlaid across the landscape. And coming home, I didn't know if we were crossing the Sierras or the Rockies. It would have been nice to have everything labeled for me, at least as an option. And while I'm wishing, I wouldn't have minded a feature to remove the cloud cover. You don't see any clouds on Google Maps!

Our school auditorium looked like a presidential press conference or an appearance by Lindsay Lohan.

Last week our elementary school had its spring choir performance. The choir features all grades, with some songs performed by just the older or younger kids. So it shouldn't be surprising that there were a lot of parents with cameras. Maybe it shouldn't even be surprising that there were a lot of parents with camcorders. But I was very surprised to see the number of parents who had their cameras mounted on tripods. Some had the courtesy to stay in the back (maybe to take advantage of power outlets), rubbing elbows with those parents who chose to stand and video the whole performance while relying on the "steady-cam" feature. But there were quite a few parents who just sat down in the 2nd or 3rd row, with the tripod propped up right between their knees.

Now I'm not complaining. No one was blocking my view from 8 rows back (except for the 3-year-old that kept standing on his chair). It's a free country. If someone wants to videotape 60 minutes of a school choir performance featuring their child, then more power to them. It's good for the camcorder industry, and will help drive down prices by the time I'm ready to purchase an HD direct-to-hardrive camcorder. It could also eventually help Sun Microsystems when the video is made available for streaming. Tivo could get a lift from use of their new Home Movie Sharing service. And that means more broadband use that will drive down DSL and Cable prices. Right?

Oh, there is just one thing that has to happen before we can all rejoice as our Google/YouTube stock soars. The video footage has to make it off the camera's tape/mini-DVD/harddisk and onto the computer. That means that all those dads (yes, it was mostly dads) have to find the time to upload an hour's worth of footage to their computer, edit it, add menus and titles, burn DVDs, upload to sharing sites and alert all their relatives and friends so that they can enjoying the 1-hour performance featuring (if you listen very carefully) one 9-year-old kid among 50 K-6th graders. Maybe one day someone will be clever and just charge a small fee to record all school performances and put them on a download site. One camera tripod instead of 30. For those who want their own child highlighted, it's easy enough to splice in close-up footage of a particular kid a few seconds at a time.

Meanwhile, I was content to just sit back in my chair, holding the camera up above my head and using the flip-out viewing screen to zoom in on my girls and their friends for maybe 30 seconds per song. No tripod, no blocked views. True, my camcorder battery was starting to get in the red zone, but I had no intention of video-taping a 60-minute elementary school choir performance. My family certainly wouldn't watch all 60 minutes. And who else would?

My guess: all those tapes will join 30 others sitting in some dad's shoebox waiting for the time when dad has nothing else more pressing to do. No more homework to help with, no more household maintenance backlog, no more episodes of Lost or Heroes to watch on Tivo. I can speak from experience. Only for me it's 15 tapes, not 30. And it's a big cigar box, not a shoebox. And I've given up trying to follow Lost on a weekly basis. I'll wait until I retire, and get the whole 20-season series on Blu-ray. Save the video. Save the world.

I have finally found it after all these years! Ever since I was a kid watching various "invisible man" shows and movies, I now have the secret to becoming totally invisible!

My daughter is in a San Jose Children's Musical Theater Production of "Oklahoma". These productions never involve just the children. The parents put in time to supervise rehearsals, create sets, help with costumes, etc. Last Saturday I drew the short straw, and got to go with my daughter to supervise a 2-hour rehearsal. What were my duties? Something I am very well qualified for: shushing kids. I have a wide range of shushes, from the come on, you know you're supposed to be quiet shush to the make one more sound and you are out of here! shush.

I planned on using mostly the come on, you know you're supposed to be quiet shush because one of the Big Rules at CMT is that kids have to be quiet so that everyone can focus on the director. I figured one little shush would be all that would be required. There was one small group of boys and girls talking right near me, so I tried it. Ssshh.

No response. They kept talking. So I tried a little louder and longer hey, you're breaking the rules shush. Ssssssshhhhhhhh.

Still no response. So then I finally tried the I'm not your father but I'm not afraid to ground you for a month shush. SSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

And that's when I realized it. They couldn't see me! They must have thought that there was just a problem with the heating system making noise. I waved my hands, pointed, even puffed my chest to look more menacing (in a nice parent-supervisor-like manner). No response. I was truly invisible. But just like in the sci-fi shows, it turns out my invisibility had one weakness. Young innocent children could still see me. The youngest child in the group made eye contact with me, and got the others attention. They stopped talking!

Like any other true scientific breakthrough, I needed to repeat my experiment in invisibility. Sure enough, 15 minutes later there was another group of kids. I repeated my range of shushes, and got the same result. No response. This time there were no little kids to help me out. But there was a supervisor mom nearby. She heard the kids and came over and shushed them using the same tone and inflection as my shushes. And they got quiet.

So it could be a power only dads have, and only around kids over the age of 8. I guess I need more data before I can publish my findings...

One and a half years, 6 blog entries and 4 drafts that never got completed.

So it's time for a fresh start. I gave up the dream of actually getting my kids interested in my blogs. I now realize that people blog for themselves. If anyone out there wants to listen, or (even better) wants to respond, then that's just a bonus. And if some day my kids stumble on my entries while maybe doing a vanity search, then all I can say is "Hi kids". And I hope I haven't embarrassed you too much.

Which is why I have relaunched my site with the subtitle "A father's journey into relevance". Relevance means being an active part of their lives and experiences, besides being the guy that works so that they can eat and have cool things. And yes, this is a bit tongue-in-cheek. I know that I'm very relevant to them. They just don't show it much. But that's just how many teens and pre-teens are.

By the way, think of this "relevance" thing as being maybe 10% of the contents of this blog. Sort of like how fruit drinks nowadays contain "10% real fruit juice". The rest is mostly water and sweeteners.

My family is going to be flying to Mexico this Saturday. Yesterday I was talking with my kids about what I learned from Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat". He does a very good job of explaining the root causes of why we will be getting up at 4am for a 9am flight.

So my kids and I started talking about taking off our shoes when going through security, and why we started to do that. I explained how it was pointless, because "those bent on doing us harm" (I don't want to raise any NSA flags with the "T"-word) would say "Oh, they're onto us with the shoe thing. Better move to the _____ thing." It might make a lot of people feel more secure, but it won't really make them more secure. My kids are 13 and 11 years old. They get it.

This led my intelligent children to start talking about new ways that people might think of doing harm. They talked about ingesting dangerous liquids, and then vomiting them out. Then they started talking about using other bodily functions to cause things to go "boom" (I did mention that they are 13 and 11, right?).

We are going to have a field day at the dinner table tonight with the latest security alert. There is now a ban on bringing liquids, gels and lotions onto the airplane. The exceptions are baby formula, breast milk, or juice for small kids travelling with an adult. It doesn't define what a small kid is. So some poor 7-year-old might just get his juice box taken away. Deoderant or toothpaste for those long flights? Forget it. Guh-ross! Drops for those contact lenses? Better wear your glasses. Chapped hands from the cabin air? Live with it.

And how will they know that the stuff really is breast milk?

I did not originally plan on participating in Black Friday this year. There were no major electronic or software components that I felt I really needed. And then I saw the ads on Wednesday. I was working from home, and was being very good at resisting the call of the newspaper. But Wednesday evening I opened them up, got out the notepad, and began leafing through the ads one by one.

I had made a little list of things to look out for, just to keep me focused. I could use a 2nd harddrive for my video editing. And my daughter wants a digital camera for Chanukah. And to go along with that we could use more SD memory cards. And there were a few other things that would be worth it if I could get a hold of them.

So I committed myself to wake up at 6:15am Friday morning. My 12-year-old son wanted to come along, so I quietly went into his room. He normally takes a bit of shaking and tickling and calling his name 10 times to wake him. But when I whispered "do you want to come shopping with me?", he sat bolt upright and said "yeh". So we grabbed some waffles and headed to our first destination.

Circuit City was our first stop, just 10 minutes from our house. We got there at 6:45am, but this was almost 2 hours after they opened. The parking lot of totally full. Not a good sign. The checkout line started at the front of the store, and snaked on all the way back and around the corner. To save $15 on a memory card and $10 on MiniDV tapes was not worth an hour or more in line. But just to be sure, I checked the racks with memory cards. Of course they were out of the ones on sale. And I didn't even check the items on the short list from my brother-in-law. I knew they'd be out of them. So we went on to our next stop.

Office Depot was our next stop, just a couple of minutes down the road. The parking lot was relatively empty, and the store looked just a bit more busy than a typical Sunday afternoon. My big surprise for my kids: a new computer for them, since the 766 MHz Athlon system upstairs was too slow to run their favorite websites. So where was the HP computer advertised for only $100 (minus a bunch of rebates)? It was on-line only. So they get us into the store, then log us onto the internet. And the big catch: $100 shipping charge. On principle, I said "forget it" and walked away. But a 2.8 GHz system with 256 MHz RAM, 40 GB disk, monitor and printer was still a bargain at $200, so I said "what the heck!" and ordered it. And of course the harddrive and memory cards were already gone.

Next stop: CompUSA about 15 minutes away. Parking lot looked good. Store looked empty. Shelves also looked empty. As usual, CompUSA had nothing left that I wanted. No DVD-RWs, no harddrives, and no memory cards. Not surprising, since they actually opened at Midnight. The assistant manager told me that he had to break up one fight, and one of the aisles had been strewn with keyboards and other products. I'm glad I did not try coming at Midnight. So we left CompUSA empty-handed.

Staples was 10 minutes away. Small crowd, empty shelves. So once again we left empty-handed, but now it was around 8am, and time for a coffee and bagel at Starbucks. I was glad I had brought my son, who didn't seem to mind the shlepping back and forth. And he got to watch some of the Star Wars III DVD on a large screen at CompUSA.

With our stomachs warm and full, we had just one more stop to make. We went to the neighborhood Walgreens. We found the camera for my daughter, a Polaroid 3.2 MP no-optical-zoom camera for $40 after $20 rebate. It was the only tangible item that we were able to come home with.

As for the computer we ordered? We did have a stack of rebate forms we were handed as we left the store. But I just got a notice that it is arriving on Wednesday. For only losing an hour of sleep and 2 hours of driving around, I came away with a computer (virtual), a camera and a little bonding time with my son. And as for Fry's? Nothing good in their ads, so we just skipped it. Been there, done that.

My commute is about 30 miles each way. I leave home at around 6:45am, and arrive back at home around 5:30pm. The roads in the South San Francisco Bay Area are very busy at that time. So what are the odds of actually seeing the same car on the way into work, and on the way home?

I have on occasion recognized a personalized license plate I had seen a few days earlier. But the other day I actually was behind the same car both going to work and coming home. In both cases the sighting was on the expressway close to my home, so it was not the case that it was just a coworker with the same work hours. The other car's destination could be in a totally opposite direction for all I know. We just started out and ended up in the same space at the same time.

So if you figure out how many cars on the road during my commute time, and all the factors that result in someone being in a specific place at any one time, I would guess that the odds of being behind the same car both at the start of my morning commute and the end of the evening commute are pretty low. Or maybe it happens more often than we realize, but without personalized plates it's hard to notice.

For the record, the license plate read FOTEE9RS. Just one of the many variations I have seen from 49er fans.

And my kids will read this and say "Woopdeedo."

The 90s was a very bad decade for music. It seems that the current decade is trying to make up for it. Thanks to KFOG and it's morning crew, I have discovered a new artist. KT Tunstall has a great sound. Her bouncy hit Suddenly I See is lively and energetic and had me singing it all day.

From the 4 tracks that I heard, I would say that her sound is a bit like the Corrs (though she happens to be Scottish, not Irish), and a little Bonnie Raitt.

She will be performing at KFOG's Concert for Kids next month. Renee gave a great interview, revealing how down-to-earth KT is. A nice change from the Reality Show Singers that are cramming the airwaves.

My wife just called me to let me know that she was not the 101st caller, and did not win a Madonna CD. But she did win a CSI package of music, games and more.

Why was this bizaare? Because she was trying to be the 101st caller on K101. She accidentally dialed Alice without realizing it. She correctly answered the CSI trivia question that was thrown at her, but did not win the Madonna CD. This was her tip-off. That is when she realized that she actually won, but not the contest she was trying to enter. She just accidentally selected the wrong number, and coincidentally called Alice at the right time.

Okay, it's not quite like winning the lottery because you made a typo with your lucky number. But it's something...

Why am I blogging to my kids? Well...

When I was a kid, we didn't have blogs. We didn't have computers. Communication was accomplished by phone, or by paper and pen (and a 16-cent stamp).

When I was a kid, computers were something we visited. I remember visiting a room with a computer when I was around 7 years old. It was at UC Berkeley, where my older brother attended school. The computer was a box about 4 feet square, and 3 feet high. It looked pretty big to me. I didn't realize until much later in life that I was only looking at the printer. The computer was in another room. Or rather the computer was the other room.

When I was a kid, we didn't have video games. When Pong came out as the first video game, there was a long line inside the Exploratorium in San Francisco just to play on the free console. Blip.....blip.....blip....blip....blop. Today, in the comfort of my own family room, I can select from an arsenal of 15 different weapons as I try to defeat Dr. Nefarious in the 3rd installment of Ratchet and Clank.

So listen up, kids (my kids -- if any other kids want to listen up, that's fine with me). Stop your whining and complaining about how the wireless network is too weak to work upstairs, or how we don't have the right plug-in for the latest Neopets game. I'll get StarOffice 8 onto the computer upstairs, and you can just be glad you are living in the 21st Century. Appreciate what you have, because when I was a kid...