Foo Farley

Noah Hitting the Ice

Anybody that knows anything about my family knows that we are a hockey family.  No one in the family loves the sport more than my oldest son, Noah.  Noah is a gifted player and has a very good understanding of the game for his age.

Last weekend, Noah tried out for his first travel hockey team. He was tryoing out for the Blue Ridge Ice Hockey Association (BRIHA) Squirt House Select team.  That is a team that competes at the “Squirt” level (ages 9-10), but not in affiliation with any league.  The players are generally younger and hove no previous travel team experience.  They play other club’s select teams to give the players experience in organized team hockey.  This team is opposed to the regular league affiliated squirt team.  The teams are in a league with dvisions and compete for standings and in tournements.  In BRIHA’s case, they are affiliated with the Capital Beltway Hockey League (CBHL).  We felt the select team was a better fit for Noah due to his age (7) and size (small).  The try outs lasted two days and they were worked pretty hard over the two days.  Noah was definitely gassing on the second day, but he did pretty good.  We were told that we would hear if he made the team by the end of the week.

Well, Friday afternoon came and I started getting messages from other parents whose children tried out saying they had received e-mails telling them their kids had made the team.  No word on Noah.  By Friday night we still had not heard anything.  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t getting a little anxious for Noah.  Luckily, he didn’t seem overly concerned.  Around 9:00pm the phone rang.  It was the coach for the CBHL team.  They invited Noah to play on the more advanced team!!!  The recognized his skill and hard work.  They feel that he is a very coachable kid and that they can get him up to snuff over the summer.
This is a great opportunity for Noah.  His game has really improved over the last couple of months and this could be just the thing to continue that growth slope.

If you couldn’t tell…  I am one proud father.

I discovered this tonight while serving dinner.

Who new these innocent looking “McCain Smiles” potatoes hide a horrible secret.

McCain Smiles

When you turn them over, you find a Potato Minstrel Show!!!

McCain Smiles in blackface

I am a Joe Scarborough fan but he gets completely pwned by Zbigniew Brzezinski in this interview.

The last few minutes of this are pretty brutal.

I was watching a documentary tonight on Northern Ireland hosted by Henry Rollins.  It made me think of the letter I once received from Henry.

Back in the early nineties I was in a psuedo-band in college. We called ourselves “ThE BoB WaLtErS” (long story, don’t ask). My friend Ken Meekins and myself would get together, write songs, record them on his multi-track, and occasionally play for friends and partys. We were pretty into Henry Rollins. Henry is one INTENSE dude. If you’re not sure who Henry is, I suggest you check out Henry’s site.

Henry is a bit of a modern day renaissance man. Part musician, part poet, part author, part orator, part actor,… Part Animal, Part Machine. In summer of 1995 Henry’s band, “Rollins Band”, was on tour and Ken and I landed tickets and we were psyched. It was at some small park in Brandywine, MD. Helmet, Suasage (a.k.a. Primus), and some local bands were also on the bill. Ken and I trek out the the show. Nice day. My memory is a little fuzzy on details but about noon or so the first band, a local one, came on. Round about the same time some nasty thunderclouds came rolling in. The skies opened up biblical style. It rained, and rained, and rained for hours. The first band finished their set but then the show was put on hold to ride the weather out. We stuck it out though… Hey, this was Henry!!! There was not a square millimeter on my body that was dry. Well, a few hours of torrential rainfall later, it stops. Blues skies, birds chirping and everything. Moments later, some roadie type steps up to the mic and tells us the show is canceled. Man were we pissed. No, more disappointed. We really dug Henry and he is super intense onstage.

Weeks later, Ken came out to visit me when I was living in Salibury, MD. We planned for another few days of writing and recording. During a break we were goofing around on my computer and checked out Henry’s website. It used to have a form on there to send an e-mail to Henry. We got the bright idea to write Henry an e-mail and read him the riot act for cancelling the show in Brandywine. It was totally innocent and sophomoric in nature. We put stuff like “Why did you have to cancell the show? Were you home eating soup with your mommy?” I think we may have called him a “punk-ass bitch” too. The form required the entry of your snail-mail address for promotional mailers and stuff. We entered “Bob Walters” in the name field and my home address. We sent the e-mail, giggled, and never thought another thing about it. A few weeks go by and I stroll out to the mailbox to pick up the mail. There is an envelope addressed to “Bob Walters” with my address and a big fat 2.13.61 logo. I open it up and inside is a single piece of paper torn from a spiral bound notebook with the following written on it…

Henry Rollins Envelope

” Bob. Here’s what happened. The promoter Seth Horowitz was not prepred for the weather even when he promised he would be. By the time it was for Helmet to go on, the power generators were submerged in water. The stage was mostly metal and the risk of bands & crews getting fried. Seth really blew it for us. We were there all day into the night waiting to play. It was the last show of the tour with Sausage & Helmet and we were all looking forward to hitting it. I(t) would have been #80 for the year. To leave that place w/o playing sucked. Next time you see me, call me what you called me in your letter and we’ll se how it goes. -Henry Rollins”

My Letter from Henry Rollins

I received a letter from the electric company last week that they were going to upgrade our service in our neighborhood.  In order to do so they needed to cut the power to our house for at least two hours yesterday.  It was nice they gave me the heads up.

You may or may not know that I work from home so not having electricity would certainly be a problem.  I do some IT work on the side for our church and they have a standing offer to me to use a spare office they have any time I need it.  Yesterday I took them up on their offer.  I also had some errands ro run “in town” as we say here in the country.  So yesterday was the first time since I started working from home in December that I had to get up “on time”, shower up, dress half way nice, and make the half hour commute to Charlottesville.  I went in to “the office’ and worked at a desk.

It was a nice change in scenery, but, I don’t think I would like to go back to doing that every day.  Maybe someday I will, but for now, I’m sticking with the current plan.  Get up whenever, go to work in my underwear, and leave my personal hygene to chance.

We have all head for years now the concerns with electronic voting machines.  As a software engineer, I always thought that a voting machine should be one of the simplest machines on the planet to design.  I mean really… how badly can you screw up:

Candidate += 1;

Well, now comes word from the Washington Post that Premier Election Systems, formerly Diebold, announced their voting tabulation software, GEMS, has a flaw that causes it to incorrectly count votes.  Diebold systems are used in elections all across the country.  In local, state and federal elections.  So your county may have a pretender to the throne elected as the new dog catcher and perhaps maybe the vote counts are incorrect for  higher offices.

Here is CNN’s coverage of the story:

Hacking Democracy is an HBO documentary about the lack of security in electronic voting machines.

Yahya and Ghazala plus Ten

A woman in Egypt today has given birth to septuplets after eight months of gestation.  The babies weighed between 3.2 and 6.2 pounds.  Both of those facts are remarkable.  High order multiple pregnancies are often very premature.  The more babies, the earlier the usually come.  It appears the babies are all relatively healthy.

She had more in one shot than we had all together (and we have a lot!).

Looks like Jon & Kate have some competition now.

Jackson, Andrew, Sophie & Christian head off to school

The rest of our crew headed off to their first day of school today .  They will be attending a preschool right down the road from us.

Andrew has been going there since we moved here last year and he really likes it.  He was genuinely excited about going today and was really proud of his brand new sneakers… Sketchers.  Andrew is 4^1/2 and a really sweet boy.  I’ve said it before, but he has a tough job being sandwiched between two pretty big shadows… Noah and the triplets.

Andrew loves Noah to death, but I think he enjoys being a big brother more than a little brother.

Andrew tried soccer last year and depending on the day he either really liked or really didn’t like it.  When he did like it, he played really well.  He’ll start again in a few weeks. He has expressed an interest in playing hockey.  Perhaps he can try that after he learns how to skate.

Andrew knows more about the Star Wars saga than most malodorous comic book geeks.

The triplets are now 2^1/2.  Keeping up with three  2^1/2 year olds keeps us BUSY!

Christian is the clown of the bunch.  He is always doing something that makes us laugh.  He is the biggest triplet and the biggest of all of our children at this age.   He loves to sing and dance.   Like his older brothers, Christian really likes the Wiggles.

When groups of kids are around, Christian gravitates towards the bigger, older ones in the group.  He hangs right in there and keeps up with their play.  It is not uncommon to see Christian chasing Noah around the house and tackling him L.T. style.

Sophie, what can I say, just look at her.  She is a sweet little girl and quite a little athlete.  She loves to play soccer and do all kinds of acrobatics.  We’ll be putting her in to dance classes and gymnastics very soon.

Sophie loves her big brothers and they love her too.  She enjoys being a girl a doing girlie things.  You will also find her out in the yard playing in the dirt and leave with Christian and Jack.

Jackson is the smallest of the bunch.  Jack is very smart.  He speaks the best of the three, knows all of his colors and shapes, and can count to twenty (give or take).  He too has an affinity for soccer and hockey and is a bit of a natural athlete like Noah was at that age.

As mentioned in the title, Shelly also went back to school today… as a techer at the kid’s preschool.  She is teaching a 4 year old class three days a week.  It brings a little extra income in and gets us a much needed discount on the tuition.

Enough said.

Noah's First Day of School 2008 - 1st Grade

Noah starts first grade today.  He is really excited to go.  Noah is really smart and loves to learn.  I hope that lasts forever.

As another school year starts, I can’t help but think about what a great kid Noah is.  Yes, I sound like one of THOSE parents, but he really is a joy to be around.  He is kind and caring and is a great big brother.

He still loves his hockey and is excited to start up again in a few weeks.

He’s going to give cub scouts a shot this year too.

Well, here’s to the start of another school year.