CodeMash 2016

The Evil Genius family got a terrific chance at a basically free vacation, when Mr. BTEG's company arranged to send him to CodeMash, a convention for computer developers, that is held yearly at the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, OH. Mr. BTEG got a four-person room, and since that entitled him to up to four waterpark passes, the Musician, the Dancer, and I came along. It was not only a great opportunity for a vacation, but family participation is encouraged with KidzMash, "a free family track for the spouses and families of attendees."

The Good:
Free-to-us getaway, as noted above

The Musician and the Dancer got time to interact with all kinds of adults in technology fields, and take part in activities such as helping Daddy build a NodeBot. Most of the KidzMash activities were designed for much smaller children, but the girls were very welcome in anything that was not an official lecture or class. The Musician's outgoing and vivacious personality really shone through here. Since the Dancer is still thinking of studying STEM in college, it was a fantastic chance for her to get a closer look at technology opportunities, and meet lots of adults in the field. They also got to do some fun things like play Settlers of Catan.

Parts of the waterpark were really fun. The girls enjoyed the wave pool. I got to ride the Zip Coaster, a kind of roller coaster in a water slide tube, which was fun for this roller coaster enthusiast.

The Bad:

I got bored with the water park very quickly. I enjoy the lazy river ride at Great Wolf Lodge, and expected to find a really great lazy river at Kalahari, since it is a much bigger water park. But it wasn't really any longer than the one at GWL, and it was chilly! GWL likes to stress how warm their waterpark is, and I can see why now that I've been in the Kalahari one. Not only was I shivering in the lazy river, but there are several places where water splashes down on you, which does not help with the chill. Another reason I didn't enjoy the water park as much as I would have liked was because:

The air was very dry. After only several hours in the park, my legs were dry and itchy. I would have liked to have gone on the Zip Coaster again, or tried out a few other things, but I didn't want to make my skin irritation worse. I do have sensitive skin, but even though Mr. BTEG hadn't gone in the water park yet, his hands were drying out after a couple of days. I can see that they would not want to have the area outside the water park feel overly humid, but they went too far and dried the air out too much, especially for the winter months.

The food was so-so. One of the fun things about going to an indoor water park like GWL or Kalahari during the winter months, is that everything is self-contained: your lodging, your meals and entertaining activities. It's great fun not to have to venture out into cold or snow for a few days. I'm a picky eater, but even so, with all the different places to eat in Kalahari, there was nothing special for any of us. We quickly discovered that the food options were essentially the same. The food at the cafe by the arcade was the cheapest and lowest quality; the upscale restaurant was the most expensive and best quality, but that was about it. Mr. BTEG found the catered lunches for attendees much more interesting than the restaurant food. Also frustrating was that one of the restaurants, the buffet, was closed for the week, although the park was at or close to maximum capacity for the entire week. This leads us into:

The Ugly

On Wednesday night, Mr. BTEG, the Dancer, and I went to the mid-priced restaurant to grab something to eat. There was a line to be seated, despite the restaurant being half-empty. The hostess mumbled something about everybody from the convention coming in to eat. Well, what did they expect? They had a very good handle of how many people were at the hotel, given that most people got a water park bracelet. This is the 10th year that the convention has been held at Kalahari. The schedule includes lectures during the day, and social activities at night. Many people are going to come for dinner in between those times. There are a few other outside restaurants in that area, but really, shouldn't Kalahari want you to stay and eat at their places? Plus, as I mentioned above, although the weather has been blessedly snow-free, it was rather cold. It was a very appealing option to just stay inside.

After a wait to be seated, we then had to wait for our waitress, who had probably just come on shift. We sat and watched the line to be seated wax and wane, until we noticed the table behind us was getting food. Unfortunately, the people at that table had decided to leave a while ago. At this point we realized that not only had we ordered our food before that table, but it had been forty minutes since we had ordered, and we hadn't even received our appetizer in that time. The manager did give us our entire meal for free, but the whole thing was just a big mess that should have been avoided by having enough staff on hand.

The first night, the Dancer and I grabbed something small in the cafe that was next to the arcade. It was dimly lit, and there was some kind of pipe making noise the entire time we were there, that made it difficult for the Dancer and I to hold a conversation. The cafe didn't look any brighter any of the other times we walked past it, which we did a lot, because:

You have to walk through the arcade to get to the water park. Not only is this over-the-top marketing to try to get you to play games in the arcade, it was unpleasant to have to wend your way through arcade games to get where you were going, every single time. The Dancer and I especially found all the lights, noises and garish colors to be over-stimulating.

The lazy river decor was literally ugly. There were about ten hyena statues placed at intervals around the lazy river. Hyenas are ugly animals, and that was pretty much all there was to look at going around the lazy river. At one point, there were a couple of hyenas that looked ready to take on an alligator, which wasn't really much fun to look at either. I don't know; it was like they got some hyena statues cheap and just decided to throw them there.


So to sum it up, the girls and Mr. BTEG did have a good time at the CodeMash part of the week. I got bored and came home Wednesday night; they will be there until late tonight. I was expecting Kalahari to be so much more, since it is so much bigger than its neighbor down the street, Great Wolf Lodge, but it really wasn't. It probably is at least more fun in the summer, when all the outdoor activities are open too. It was refreshing to get away for a couple of days at least (we got there Monday night) so there's that.

Times Are Changing

Now that the Dancer is studying Spanish in school, she and the Musician are sharing their experiences, especially since their first year teacher is the same. The Dancer's class is learning how to express clock time in Spanish, and the Dancer informed us that the teacher had to give them times to translate presented only in digital time, as apparently many of the kids did not know how to read an analog clock. The Musician concurred that things were the same when she was in Spanish I. At the risk of once again sounding like an old curmudgeon, why is what was once a basic, very basic, skill being ignored? I don't see much value in learning Power Point but not being able to tell time using a clock face with numbers and hands. I also wonder what else is being taught, that kids don't have time to study the analog clock. I won't even bother asking where parents are in all of this.

Related, having electrical power is not something we can always take for granted, and I'm not simply talking about short term power outages due to weather or accidents. Our current president *wants* to make "electricity rates skyrocket." Electricity-generating coal plants are being shut down all over the country, including right here in my local area. Rolling black outs and power outages may become the norm in all of our futures. It was ironic to many that the Super Bowl lost power for half an hour last night after planners bragged about how "green" it would be. Germans turned to stealing wood this winter to keep their homes warm because power costs are so high. Germany, a first-world country often associated with technology innovation and precision! Yet its citizens are become reduced to relying on wood fires, and not by choice. Don't say it couldn't happen here.

Back to the Future

In lieu of something more serious, which I'm still mulling over in my mind, I present another one of my Christmas gifts -- an old-school headset for your cell phone. I absolutely love it, although I haven't gotten a chance to use it yet. I imagine it will be very useful if I am forced to spend a lot of time on hold with some stupid company. Much easier to hold under your head and use both hands for something else than a cell phone. Heck, I ought to just have one of my daughters call me just so I can try it out.

The box proclaimed it to be both retro and trendy. I mean, I guess retro is currently trendy, but then the "style" has been to recycle stuff from both the seventies and the eighties for quite a while now, years actually. Behold this preppy folder from 2006, with adorable little whales all over it. Currently, day-glo is back in style. When will they start recycling stuff that has been recycled from the seventies and eighties, tweaking it just the slightest bit again?

The Modern Sewer

Anyone else have an Android phone and not an iPhone? I got an issue of my sewing magazine the other day, and one of the features was ten sewing apps. Before I even turned to the page, I said to myself, "I bet most of them will be for the iPhone." Well, I wasn't *entirely* right. In actual fact, 9 out of 10 were iPhone exclusive. Mr. BTEG tells me that there as many apps out there for the Android as there are for the iPhone, but not for the stuff that I'm interested in. I have found one knitting app, called County, which helps you keep track of which row you're on. I can't even find a grocery list app that I like.

Another problem I have with sewing magazines is that too many of the projects assume you have an embroidery machine. And the embroidery is a big part of what makes the project. It just makes me feel poor and out of the loop, and I hate that.

On the other hand, there was a "survey" about how much fabric people have in their stashes. I'm a total piker compared to a lot of these women, but that, I'm totally cool with. I feel guilty about how much of a stash I have as it is. Although I'm getting to a point where more and more of it is leftover bits that are big enough that I don't like to throw them away.

Nothing New Under the Sun

As the Dancer's parents, we received a letter from the principals of the local intermediate, middle and high schools. It contained a urgent plea that parents become aware of what their children are texting, and what they are saying on Facebook. Apparently enough students are affected by rumors and threats posted in these two venues, that their school attendance is suffering, and the schools want the behavior to stop. What the appropriate authorities see when they have stepped in (after kids stop coming to school) is language that is "beyond inappropriate," X-rated, slanderous and/or threatening. Schools are right to be concerned about this kind of activity. What I find interesting is how negatively they look at texts, and Facebook (which word they put in italics for the entire letter.)

Kids have been mean to each other, well, probably since Cain and Abel fought as young boys. Anyone remember Nellie Oleson and Laura Ingalls? It's beyond stereotypical, the mean kids and the nice kids. The only thing that is new is the medium. Granted, texts and posts can reach the entire class with one click, whereas it took a little longer for the rumor mill to work back in the old days. But kids who wish to hurt someone else badly enough are not even shy about saying unkind things to their classmates faces, either. Did you all see that video that went viral a few months back, of the overweight kid hauling off and punching one of the boys who had been teasing him for years about his weight? The aggressor was going so far as to physically push his victim. The Dancer knows very well who the "cool" kids and the "popular" kids in her school are, because they have no compunction with going around and saying so.

Are teachers and school administrators right to be concerned? I think so. Would you like to go to work after the guy in the next cubicle threatens to beat you up at the end of the day? (Sub sandwich commercials notwithstanding.) Or loudly calls you a slut while everyone is in the lunch room? Children should not dread or be afraid of coming to school. But texts and Facebook are not the enemy, and reading all your child's texts and postings (as the letter suggests,) will not stop the malice and the desire to hurt others that lies in the hearts of children.

That's the real problem, you see, that we are all poor miserable sinners. The school can't say that, of course. But what parents really should be doing is teaching their offspring kindness and self-control. We're never going to like everyone. We probably all think unkind, negative things about people. But we should be taught to curb our tongues and not say hurtful things aloud, or seek forgiveness if we fail. If we're Christians, we should even go as far as recognizing that our very thoughts are sinful, and seeking forgiveness from God for them. The real problem is ourselves, as it has ever been.

Phoning It In

Via Pastor Peperkorn (on Facebook,) an iPhone app for Confession. What do my Catholic friends think?

I enjoy using the internet for keeping in touch with people that live far away, and I obviously enjoy broadcasting my thoughts and ideas via blogging. But I hope we don't start using things like Skype or cell phones to replace the importance of the physical interaction between the pastor (representing God,) and the congregation. Not that I'm saying that this app does that.