The Alex and Amelia mysteries

The case of the disappearing bed.

For a hardboiled, seen it all detective, Alex sure did see lots of things he’d not seen before. One would think that, by the age of 4, there would not be that much left, but this old world still had a few surprises in store for the old boy. He could understand his sister, merely 9 months old, was still a new babe, but this flummoxed them both.

Alex’s bed had disappeared.

It was there in the morning when he woke up. He’s pretty sure it was there when he left for school. But, upon his return that afternoon, it was simply gone.

In its place was a new structure, one taller than Alex. He could easily walk underneath it Amelia could not. Not that she was taller than Alex. She simply could not walk. Amelia pondered the structure as well, then tried to fit it inside mouth. It did not fit.

As Alex examined the structure, he discovered  a ladder of sorts, and proceeded to climb up. Amelia watched with both envy and  concern, and made this known with a loud squawking sound. But Alex was an investigator, and this needed to be investigated.

The top of the ladder revealed a site not altogether different from Alex’s old bed! His pillow was there, his blanket was there, but everything else was much bigger. Above all of this was a blue vinyl canopy that felt good to run his hands along.

Amelia squawked for an update, but Alex could not hear her over the sound of the fabric rustling. She proceeded to eat her hand.

After a while, Dad come into the room, or perhaps he’d been there the entire time, it  was hard to tell with this mystery going on, and announced that it was time to go to sleep. He covered Alex in the blanket and left him up in the structure and turned out the light.

Alex began to get worried. Dad had left him in this strange structure…. but… so soft.

Alex awoke the next morning feeling quite refreshed, but still not sure what happened to his bed. Still, this new thing might work.

Case: UNSOLVED

Customize blogger’s layout with labels

Here is a fun little thing I figured out recently. I’ve long been a fan of using labels in blogger to organize posts and make them easier to find. But, you can use the labels to customize the appearance of the blog depending on which one you’ve chosen. It requires a bit of javascript, but it’s not especially difficult. For an example, look to uccburlington.blogspot.com. Notice how the leader text reads differently depending on which label you choose.

The trick with the javascript is to look at the url header for the blog. If it sees a particular label, apply a particular style or block of text.

To add it to blogger, log in and customize the layout:

 

Add a gadget. Specifically an html/javascript gadget.

Now copy in this code:

<script>
    if(window.location.href.indexOf("Announcements") > -1) {
    document.write("<h1>Announcements</h1>");
    }
</script>

The if statement checks the url for the word corresponding to your label (note: It is case sensitive, so Announcement and announcement are different). If it find its, it executes the code below. In this case, it writes the line “Announcements” in an h1 header format. If you are feeling adventurous you can delve into the realm of javascript to dictate styles, colors, and other things as well, but I’ll leave that alone for now.

Lessons in Parenting

This is a short one, but a couple of quick observations. Alex went to two birthday parties last Saturday, during which I learned several things:

1. Sandboxes can make quite a mess.

2. A moonbounce house is worth its weight in gold.

3. It is surprisingly difficult to get chocolate frosting off of a helium balloon with only a dry napkin.

4. Little girls are gifted at losing their hat when you aren’t looking.

5. Pushing a stroller makes you more approachable. People are more likely to jump out of their car to ask for directions.

6. Seriously, moonbounce houses are amazing!

Lessons in parenting

Which do you think is harder? Feeding a 7 month old, or docking to the international space station?

You can already guess where I’m going with this, but lets lay out some of the difficulties for each, shall we?

When docking to the ISS, the space shuttle moves to within 50 meters of the station, stops, waits for confirmation, then approaches at a speed of .05 m/s until it gets to within 9 meters of the station, stops again, waits for confirmation, and carefully lines up with a black docking target 30 cm above the docking port. Pilot and copilot have to control 6 degrees of freedom to ensure that the shuttle is aligned perfectly so that the two systems slip and hook together for a proper seal.

An exercise that Nasa recommends for young children to learn and appreciate the complexities of the motion is to tie a string between two kids. In the middle of the string, hang a small weight. Next, place a cup on the floor and instruct the kids to insert the small weight into the cup without using their hands. For added difficulty, blindfold the kids and have them do it listening to instructions from someone else.

In other words, it’s a pretty tricky exercise, and one that you really don’t want to mess up. But, now let’s consider some of the things that make it less difficult.

A couple of things that you have going for you are the masses oaf the shuttle and space station. They’re both really big and have an enormous amount of momentum. The forces the pilot is applying with the navigation thrusters is miniscule in comparison, so you aren’t moving in large steps. The docking area is clear of other modules, to minimize the risk of a collision. There is no gravity, so you aren’t at risk of your cargo spilling if you need to roll over to get a good seal. And finally, you only have to dock once.

Compare this to feeding a seven month old. You still have to control six degrees of freedom, but percentage-wise you are moving a much greater distance, and a lot faster. The dock is prone to sudden, unexpected movements when it gets distracted, occasionally turning away just as the spoon is entering. There are also two appendages that often flail about in the approach path, risking collision with every approach. You do have to deal with gravity, limiting your approach options lest you spill your cargo all over the station, yourself, or the floor. Neither you or the station are very heavy, so you really have to police how much energy you expend. And finally, you have to repeat this procedure many, many times.

It may not come with bragging rights, but there’s not a single mealtime I don’t walk away from feeling like I couldn’t handle being an astronaut.

The Alex and Amelia mysteries

The case of the mystery flap

Alex is nearly four years old. He’s no fool. He’s seen it all. But this? This is different.

In the door to the basement, there is a small plastic flap. Whenever Alex is trying to make friends with one of the cats, they would disappear downstairs. Finally, he figured they were disappearing through the flap in the door.

He’d heard his parents mention a ‘cat door’ before, but this did not look like any door. There was no handle, there was no light switch next to it, and it hinged on the top instead of the side.

Alex went to consult with his associate and little sister Amelia, but Amelia was busy with a mystery of her own. Namely, why she could not fit the entire plastic toy phone inside her mouth. Alex tried a few helpful suggestions, like taking the toy away entirely, but none seemed to help. On his own, Alex decided that the only way to understand the nature of the flap was to figure out what would fit through it.

Two hours later, having exhausted his supply of toys, towels, tissue boxes, remote controls, pieces of computer hardware, clothes and drinking cups, Alex found himself only certain that large blankets would definitely not fit through the flap. He retreated to the living room to think.

A short while later, daddy reported to mommy that the door to the basement could not be opened. Apparently, it had been barricaded.

Alex suspected the flap had something to do with this, but wasn’t sure. As soon as daddy retrieved all of his toys though, he’d try again!

Case: UNSOLVED.

The Alex and Amelia mysteries

The case of the strange cup

Alex and Amelia were playing in the backyard, enjoying the first warm day of spring after a long, cold winter. Amelia, only 8 months old, was too young to even remember when days were warm. She was also too young to walk, so had to be carried everywhere by her daddy. She was fine with this.

Alex, on the other hand, relished the opportunity to run around and play on his swing set. It was a simple affair with three swings, rings, and a slide. He was too short for the rings, but would play with each swing in turn before finishing his playtime with a few zips down the slide.

Today, however, was different. Alex noticed after getting off the first swing that there was a cup sitting on the second swing. It looked just like the cup he had been eating goldfish out of earlier, but he did not remember placing the cup there. Immediately, Alex moved in to investigate. Amelia, who had all this time been watching her brother, spurred on her daddy to come over and join in the investigation.

Together, the two of them peered at the cup. It did look like the cup Alex used to eat his goldfish crackers. In fact, it had goldfish crackers in it, but neither one could figure out how it ended up on the swing.

Suddenly, daddy wrinkled his nose and announced that Alex needed a diaper change. He gather the two of them up and began to herd them back to the house. Alex looked back to the swing, but saw that the cup had disappeared.

Later, after the diaper change, Alex’s daddy gave him his cup of goldfish. Alex wondered if the two cups had anything to do with each other, but could not be certain.

Case: UNSOLVED!

Perception of value

I have direct deposit. It’s great. Twice a month my salary gets deposited into my account automatically. I don’t have to to go the bank, I don’t have to wait for the funds to clear. It just works.

A lot of my bills are taken care of in the same way. The mortgage gets paid automatically. The credit cards are nearly automatic. I keep that manual in case there are ever charges that I need to dispute, same with the phone bill. But, in the end, finances are controlled by logging in to an online service and shifting funds from one entity to another.

I sometimes wonder if this is a bad thing.

Money has become an abstraction in my life. I do not carry cash anymore. Too often, when I did carry it, I’d end up giving it away to people begging for change in the subways or on the streets in Boston. I’m not opposed to helping people in need, but think that supporting institutions designed to get people off the street is a much better use of my funds rather than giving someone $5 because they tell me they need money for a bus ticket to get home. What little reading I’ve done into the subject gives me little encouragement that the $5 is actually going to a bus ticket .

So, life is easier with a credit or debit card, handling the finances in computerized transactions that are automatically recorded, removing humans and human errors largely from the equation, streamlining the system of payment to give me what I want exactly when I want it, without having to worry about the availability of funds.

It’s easy to see why this appeals to so many people. The simplicity and speed of gratification is a sign of modernity. Companies like it too. One would think it heretical that both sides like the exact same thing. After all, aren’t they both competing to hang on to the money? Except we don’t. Or, at least I don’t.

What is a dollar worth? For value propositions, we are often presented the worth of something in dollars, but without a baseline perception of the metric, how can we have any meaningful comparisons?

Example 1: An unlocked (purchased off contract, without a subsidy) smart phone for $200 is perceived to be a good deal, but why? The reason is that, compared to other unlocked cell phones, $200 falls on the low end of the spectrum. Higher end Android and iPhones unlocked easily broach $600. But what is the value of $200? For that, you could buy 200 loaves of bread, or 100 half-gallons of milk. Or split the difference and eat like a medieval peasant for a third of a year (and probably die by the end, that’s not the healthiest diet).

The point is, why has $200 for a smartphone been deemed an acceptable value? One could argue that the  market demand determines the price. Higher prices reduce adoption, lower prices eliminate profitability margin, and you’re sort of right. We don’t usually know how much things cost to make, in every sense.

Example 2: Health insurance. The Affordable Care Act, if nothing else, is forcing people to face the quagmire of health insurance. Lots of articles and news reports have shed light on the completely bizarre value propostion presented by health insurance. Money loses are sense of value when it comes to health insurance. Doctors and hospitals bill amounts mandated by the hospitals, get reimbursed a certain amount, patients get charged another amount, and then there’s other amounts that just sort of vanish. It’s called “funny money” It’s charged, but never collected, and never expected.

Say you go to the doctor because you don’t feel good. She takes your temperature, concludes you have a cold that needs to run its course, and send you home with some aspirin. It was worth going because now you know what you have and you aren’t worried you’re about to die of some horrible, obscure disease. (Hypochondriacs unite! But don’t hold hands.) Let’s say the doctor’s time is worth $100, plus the cost of the aspirin at $3. Rather than pay the doctor directly, you pay a co-pay of 7.5 half-gallons of milk. The doctor then bills the insurance company for 300 loaves of bread. The insurance company pays out a quarter of an unlocked iphone ($150 for those keeping score) to the doctor and take the copay, along with the monthly premiums that the person and their employer pays them. But the doctor billed for half an unlocked iphone. What happened to the other 150 loaves of bread? The doctor bills that much because she is contractually obligated to charge a certain amount to the insurance company for certain kinds of service, but the value in it is never clear.

Example 3: Dinner out at a nice restaurant plus a show plus a babysitter easily runs north of $200. Plane tickets for the family to travel to Texas for a week: $800. A brand new videogame $60. According to steam, the most time I’ve ever spent on a single videogame is about 200 hours (that was before I had kids), but people online have bragged about spending over 2000 hours on some Call of Duty games. Not a a statistic I would brag about, but to each his own. For one of those people, a video game breaks down to $.03/hr. A dinner breaks down to $67/hr. A week in Texas breaks down to $4.76/hr (not including food, lodging, etc.) Am I spending too much on dinner, or not enough on the videogame?

Market forces are supposed to determine the value people have for a good or service, but has the abstraction of money clouded our perception of value, rendering a market that is free to chose a price that it wants, and then simply has to convince us that we want it at the price it has set? Are we numb to the market?

Either way, I think I need to find a babysitter I can pay in loaves of bread.