We have been cleaning our house lately. We finally just got really sick of all the mess, so we started cleaning it out. Jeff joked that our house had lost 400 pounds (thus the title of this post). He could be right: several loads to the recycling center later, our house is starting to look good.
We finally unpacked the last of the boxes we had moved here more than five years ago. I went through a lot of papers and shredded the documents we no longer needed. We also cleaned out closets and piled unwanted clothing into boxes, in preparation for Vinny's school's annual garage sale. In the closet next to the front door, I discovered a lot of things I had forgotten that we had, such as some felt to put on chair bottoms and some markers you can use on windows. That closet is now bare, except for a few coats, and it is also the vacuum cleaner's new home.
A few weeks ago I scrubbed the kitchen floor with a scrub brush, getting all the dirt out of the pits and pores of the vinyl, and it now looks really good. After we finish with all the clutter, we plan to hire somebody to come in and clean the place, from top to bottom. It will be so nice to have a really clean house again, and hopefully after this we will keep it that way.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
Humor, Preschooler Style
Vinny's sense of humor continues to grow and change. I taught him the concept of the knock-knock joke over the summer, and he loves it still. For some reason, his favorite stage from which to tell jokes is the potty. So in the evening, when he is sitting on the potty doing his business, he is also telling me jokes.
Most of his jokes really aren't that funny, except for the fact that he laughs so heartily. For example, while on the potty, the punchline of his knock-knock jokes is often "[X] farted!" which gets pretty old pretty fast. He also repeats the old standards that I taught him, such as "Boo!" "Boo who?" "Don't cry -- it's just a joke!" and "Dwayne the bathtub, I'm dwowning!"
But it can be funny when he tells a surreal, Dada joke, such as "Knock knock!" "Who's there?" "Bob!" "Bob who?" "Bob sat on a mushroom!" and its sequel, which culminates in "Bob got off the mushroom and sat on a log!"
Most of his jokes really aren't that funny, except for the fact that he laughs so heartily. For example, while on the potty, the punchline of his knock-knock jokes is often "[X] farted!" which gets pretty old pretty fast. He also repeats the old standards that I taught him, such as "Boo!" "Boo who?" "Don't cry -- it's just a joke!" and "Dwayne the bathtub, I'm dwowning!"
But it can be funny when he tells a surreal, Dada joke, such as "Knock knock!" "Who's there?" "Bob!" "Bob who?" "Bob sat on a mushroom!" and its sequel, which culminates in "Bob got off the mushroom and sat on a log!"
Monday, January 17, 2011
Adventures in Stupid Speakers
Last week, a friend of mine attended a computer science talk and was faced with the ever-ubiquitous Gratuitous Pr0n* Reference (GPR). It made me want to FEMINIST HULK smash something to hear of yet another incident of GPR.
I am not a fan of P..n, to say the least. I find it highly offensive and degrading to women (and to men, as well). The reasons I believe this are long and complicated, but suffice it to say that this is based upon long hours of thinking, and studying of feminist theory, as well as my own ideas about social justice. So when I encounter some jerk bringing a GPR into his talk, it makes me angry. But it also makes me feel small and self-conscious, because I am often only one of a few or even the only woman in the room. It reminds everyone that in our society, women are there for the pleasure of men, and makes them more conscious of the fact that I am a woman.
But even if you disagree with my assessment of P..n, there are a myriad of other reasons why incorporating a GPR into your talk is inappropriate. Here are a few:
I am not a fan of P..n, to say the least. I find it highly offensive and degrading to women (and to men, as well). The reasons I believe this are long and complicated, but suffice it to say that this is based upon long hours of thinking, and studying of feminist theory, as well as my own ideas about social justice. So when I encounter some jerk bringing a GPR into his talk, it makes me angry. But it also makes me feel small and self-conscious, because I am often only one of a few or even the only woman in the room. It reminds everyone that in our society, women are there for the pleasure of men, and makes them more conscious of the fact that I am a woman.
But even if you disagree with my assessment of P..n, there are a myriad of other reasons why incorporating a GPR into your talk is inappropriate. Here are a few:
- As the number of people in the audience grows, you are likely speaking to more and more survivors of sexual assault. Survivors of sexual assault are often triggered by GPRs. Why risk triggering someone's post-traumatic stress disorder for a cheap laugh? There are plenty of other ways to get your point across.**
- The best comedians are the ones who talk about humorous situations and use clever wordplay instead of degrading other people. P..n jokes generally boil down to a joke about exploiting other people, which is not a funny topic.***
- P..n is a controversial topic. Since the topic of your presentation is computer science, why mention something that is such a hot button for so many people? There are plenty of controversial views that I hold, such as my disbelief in a deity, but since I want my audience to learn about my topic and enjoy it as much as I do, I don't make jokes about stupid Christians or whatever. (Not only for that reason, but also because I don't think Christians are generally stupid -- they're just mistaken about a particular topic -- and I respect believers as fellow human beings so I find jokes insulting others' intelligence disdainful.)
I've often been accused of being "oversensitive." The problem here is not that I (or my friend) am oversensitive -- it's that others are not sensitive enough. It would be nice if we could just go to work and be scientists instead of having to endure all this crap.
* This word altered to protect my blog from purveyors of said items.
** If you can't think of alternatives, you are seriously lacking in imagination and I feel quite sorry for you.
*** It is the same reason that jokes about minorities, the disabled, and other marginalized people are not funny. But somehow, when it's about p..n, this no longer applies in many people's minds.
Friday, January 14, 2011
My Sad, Sad Sniffer
When I learned about the five senses as a child, I remember comparing the relative enjoyment I derived from each one. I remember thinking that as much as I enjoyed them all, I would miss my sense of smell the least.
That assertion is being tested in my life today. You see, I have mostly lost my sense of smell.
It's not being blocked by nasal congestion. I can breathe just fine. But, when I inhale, my sniffer fails to register some portion of the scents in the air.
It has been a gradual process, but over time, I have been able to smell less and less. I first noticed that I could not smell diaper odors very well when Vinny was still in diapers, but I just attributed it to olfactory adaptation. Instead, I am afraid I am developing anosmia.
The severity of my affliction was underscored the other day when I started to eat some leftovers. They smelled fine to me, but when I took a bite, I could tell that something was not quite right. They tasted a little bitter. So I asked Jeff to check it for me. One whiff and disgusted fanning of his nose later, he informed me that the food smelled so rotten that there was no way it could have even made it into his mouth. Thank goodness he was there to save me from certain food poisoning!
It's interesting, because there are lots of things I can still smell. Skunk, body odor, hydrogen sulfide, and a host of other unpleasant odors are still quite vivid to me. I can also smell some pleasant scents such as citrus, cinnamon, baking bread, and lavender. I can smell some of the components of eucalyptus, and have relearned how to identify it. And, on the bright side, I am almost completely immune to the smell of urine (I can detect that there is a scent but I can't tell what it is).* But whatever was rotten in that food, I completely missed it, and this frightens me greatly. Had I been alone the other day, I might have eaten those leftovers and made myself quite sick.** And I probably would have just thought I had the flu or something, since that food had only been in the fridge for 2 or 3 days.
Other than that, though, the loss of my sense of smell has not been that traumatic. So, maybe I knew what I was talking about.
* The other day I could smell something on Vinny's sleeper, and when I asked him about it he said he had dribbled a little urine on it. So, I can detect urine but it no longer has that unpleasant, acrid smell I recall from the past.
** Maybe I need a personal food taster!
That assertion is being tested in my life today. You see, I have mostly lost my sense of smell.
It's not being blocked by nasal congestion. I can breathe just fine. But, when I inhale, my sniffer fails to register some portion of the scents in the air.
It has been a gradual process, but over time, I have been able to smell less and less. I first noticed that I could not smell diaper odors very well when Vinny was still in diapers, but I just attributed it to olfactory adaptation. Instead, I am afraid I am developing anosmia.
The severity of my affliction was underscored the other day when I started to eat some leftovers. They smelled fine to me, but when I took a bite, I could tell that something was not quite right. They tasted a little bitter. So I asked Jeff to check it for me. One whiff and disgusted fanning of his nose later, he informed me that the food smelled so rotten that there was no way it could have even made it into his mouth. Thank goodness he was there to save me from certain food poisoning!
It's interesting, because there are lots of things I can still smell. Skunk, body odor, hydrogen sulfide, and a host of other unpleasant odors are still quite vivid to me. I can also smell some pleasant scents such as citrus, cinnamon, baking bread, and lavender. I can smell some of the components of eucalyptus, and have relearned how to identify it. And, on the bright side, I am almost completely immune to the smell of urine (I can detect that there is a scent but I can't tell what it is).* But whatever was rotten in that food, I completely missed it, and this frightens me greatly. Had I been alone the other day, I might have eaten those leftovers and made myself quite sick.** And I probably would have just thought I had the flu or something, since that food had only been in the fridge for 2 or 3 days.
Other than that, though, the loss of my sense of smell has not been that traumatic. So, maybe I knew what I was talking about.
* The other day I could smell something on Vinny's sleeper, and when I asked him about it he said he had dribbled a little urine on it. So, I can detect urine but it no longer has that unpleasant, acrid smell I recall from the past.
** Maybe I need a personal food taster!
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Adventures in Calendars
Yesterday I was talking about the fact that sufficient time has elapsed from the arbitrarily set starting point of our calendar system such that the date was filled with ones. I have always been very interested in numbers, and starting when I was about Vinny's age, calendars were a big obsession. I had my own perpetual calendar which I regularly studied. I pored over it, seeking patterns in the days and months -- for example, my sister's birthday in April predicted the day of the week upon which both my September birthday and Christmas would subsequently fall.
That's why, when I saw the following on a Facebook friend's status, I had to respond:
If you think about it, you can see why. The reason July will have five Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays is because the month will start on a Friday this year. The day of the week July starts on is determined by what day January 1 is and whether it is a leap year. There are fourteen unique calendars -- the year can start on one of seven days, and times two because it could be a regular year or a leap year.
There are 365 days in a (non-leap) year. A week consists of seven days, so there are 365/7 = 52 weeks plus one day in a year. This means that the next year begins one day of the week later than the current year. The year that follows a leap year begins two days later. So, this year (2011) began on a Saturday, next year (2012, leap year) begins on a Sunday, and the year after that (2013) begins on a Tuesday.
Non-leap years that begin on Saturday produce Julys with five three-day weekends. So do leap years that begin on Friday (because that extra day occurs before July). Thus there are two out of the fourteen possible calendars that exhibit this phenomenon.
But at what frequency do these calendars occur? After all, there could be some calendars that occur more frequently than others. Obviously, leap calendars are less frequent than regular calendars, but all leap and regular calendars occur with the same frequency as their counterparts. In fact, there is a 28-year calendar cycle that is easily generated.
Let's code the days of the week as follows: Sunday = 0, Monday = 1, Tuesday = 2, Wednesday = 3, Thursday = 4, Friday = 5, Saturday = 6. We can denote the year starting with a given day of the week with the corresponding number.
If there were no leap years, the sequence would look like this:
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...
However, there are leap years, so the sequence gets interrupted once every four years. Let's denote leap years with a prime (') and the color red:
0, 1, 2, 3', 5, 6, 0, 1', 3, 4, 5, 6', 1, 2, 3, 4', 6, 0, 1, 2', 4, 5, 6, 0', 2, 3, 4, 5'
(at this point we start over with 0, 1, 2...)
If you count it up, there are three of each of the years 0 to 6 in this 28-year span, and one of each leap year. So, if we count up the number of sixes and five-primes in the sequence (years with five three-day weekends in July), we get four out of 28, or one in seven.
So, I'm sorry, Facebook friend, but this phenomenon occurs on average once out of every 7 years, more than 100 times more frequently than you have asserted. Your post will be as effective as all the other forms of feng shui -- in other words, completely ineffective. But, at least it gave me something interesting to write about!
That's why, when I saw the following on a Facebook friend's status, I had to respond:
I'm not superstitious, but this year July has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays. This happens once every 823 years. This is called money bags. So, copy this to your status and money will arrive within 4 days. Based on Chinese Feng Shui. The one who does not copy.....will be without money.This July will indeed have five Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, but this is a frequent occurrence -- once every seven years, on average.
If you think about it, you can see why. The reason July will have five Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays is because the month will start on a Friday this year. The day of the week July starts on is determined by what day January 1 is and whether it is a leap year. There are fourteen unique calendars -- the year can start on one of seven days, and times two because it could be a regular year or a leap year.
There are 365 days in a (non-leap) year. A week consists of seven days, so there are 365/7 = 52 weeks plus one day in a year. This means that the next year begins one day of the week later than the current year. The year that follows a leap year begins two days later. So, this year (2011) began on a Saturday, next year (2012, leap year) begins on a Sunday, and the year after that (2013) begins on a Tuesday.
Non-leap years that begin on Saturday produce Julys with five three-day weekends. So do leap years that begin on Friday (because that extra day occurs before July). Thus there are two out of the fourteen possible calendars that exhibit this phenomenon.
But at what frequency do these calendars occur? After all, there could be some calendars that occur more frequently than others. Obviously, leap calendars are less frequent than regular calendars, but all leap and regular calendars occur with the same frequency as their counterparts. In fact, there is a 28-year calendar cycle that is easily generated.
Let's code the days of the week as follows: Sunday = 0, Monday = 1, Tuesday = 2, Wednesday = 3, Thursday = 4, Friday = 5, Saturday = 6. We can denote the year starting with a given day of the week with the corresponding number.
If there were no leap years, the sequence would look like this:
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...
However, there are leap years, so the sequence gets interrupted once every four years. Let's denote leap years with a prime (') and the color red:
0, 1, 2, 3', 5, 6, 0, 1', 3, 4, 5, 6', 1, 2, 3, 4', 6, 0, 1, 2', 4, 5, 6, 0', 2, 3, 4, 5'
(at this point we start over with 0, 1, 2...)
If you count it up, there are three of each of the years 0 to 6 in this 28-year span, and one of each leap year. So, if we count up the number of sixes and five-primes in the sequence (years with five three-day weekends in July), we get four out of 28, or one in seven.
So, I'm sorry, Facebook friend, but this phenomenon occurs on average once out of every 7 years, more than 100 times more frequently than you have asserted. Your post will be as effective as all the other forms of feng shui -- in other words, completely ineffective. But, at least it gave me something interesting to write about!
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Happy 1/11/11!
It is a pretty exciting day on the calendar today for those of us who love numbers -- all 1's (and notice my time stamp -- 11:11 pm). I enjoy patterns like this even though the only meaning is that sufficient time has elapsed since the arbitrary starting date of our calendar system such that there are a lot of ones in the date.
In other news, we have had a lot of snow lately (where by "a lot of snow" I mean about three inches). This has caused sufficient havoc that they even closed my workplace on Monday, and Vinny's school has been out for three days this week (another snow day tomorrow). It was Vinny's snack day tomorrow, and I baked up some blueberry-banana muffins for school, which I now have to do something with since school was cancelled.
In other news, we have had a lot of snow lately (where by "a lot of snow" I mean about three inches). This has caused sufficient havoc that they even closed my workplace on Monday, and Vinny's school has been out for three days this week (another snow day tomorrow). It was Vinny's snack day tomorrow, and I baked up some blueberry-banana muffins for school, which I now have to do something with since school was cancelled.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
The Skeptic and Santa Claus
Vinny is really excited about the upcoming visit of Santa Claus. I am enjoying his excitement and enthusiasm.
After he was born, I had some reservations about Santa. I enjoyed the tradition of Christmas stockings filled with gifts. But I was unsure how to handle the existence (or non-existence) of Santa Claus. I did not want to lie to my child, after all. On the other hand, I recalled a story about my parents telling my older sister that Santa was not real -- "I don't want to know that!" she replied. So being truthful wasn't all it was cracked up to be, either.
I remembered from reading "Ask Marilyn" years ago that she told her kids that Santa represented holiday joy and love, but was not real, and they would all pretend to believe in him. I thought that was probably how I would handle it, until I read the book Parenting Beyond Belief by Dale McGowan.
In the book, they had dueling articles about whether a freethinking family should endorse or eschew the Santa legend with their children. After reading them both, I was convinced of the wisdom of teaching my child about Santa, to give him an early lesson in reasoning.*
Santa, you see, has a number of parallels with the another supernatural peeping-Tom myth that persists well past childhood in the majority of the American population. They are both watching and judging you. They both have big white beards. If you are good, you will be rewarded. Whatever you get, you deserved -- anything lacking is your fault. So puzzling through the Santa myth is just a dry run for puzzling through the God myth. The same logic refutes both.
I've already gotten some skeptical questions about Santa from Vinny. "How does he go to all those houses?" I was asked just the other day. "Some people say his sleigh is magic," I replied. "What do you think of that?"
For now, that was an acceptable answer to his question. But at some point, says McGowan, the desire to know the truth about Santa will outweigh your child's desire to believe in Santa. The trick is to allow your child to reason through it on his own, and to never lie to him when he asks direct questions. That's why, following McGowan's lead, I deflected with "some people say," and allowed him to assess the validity of the answer.
Someday, he will puzzle it all out himself. He will realize that Santa and his parents use the same wrapping paper, and have the same handwriting. He will fathom the sheer numbers of houses Santa allegedly serves, and deduce that it is impossible. He will no longer believe in magic. And he will put it all together, decide that the benefits of knowing the truth outweigh the benefits of living in denial, and stop believing in Santa. And when he makes this decision, it will feel good, and not be disappointing, because he figured it out himself.
And I will be proud of my little skeptic, and feel confident that he will use his intellect to dismantle other myths he's exposed to (not just higher powers, but myths about gender, race, politics, relationships, himself, etc.).
* Read McGowan's Santa article here, and then buy the book to read the rest!
After he was born, I had some reservations about Santa. I enjoyed the tradition of Christmas stockings filled with gifts. But I was unsure how to handle the existence (or non-existence) of Santa Claus. I did not want to lie to my child, after all. On the other hand, I recalled a story about my parents telling my older sister that Santa was not real -- "I don't want to know that!" she replied. So being truthful wasn't all it was cracked up to be, either.
I remembered from reading "Ask Marilyn" years ago that she told her kids that Santa represented holiday joy and love, but was not real, and they would all pretend to believe in him. I thought that was probably how I would handle it, until I read the book Parenting Beyond Belief by Dale McGowan.
In the book, they had dueling articles about whether a freethinking family should endorse or eschew the Santa legend with their children. After reading them both, I was convinced of the wisdom of teaching my child about Santa, to give him an early lesson in reasoning.*
Santa, you see, has a number of parallels with the another supernatural peeping-Tom myth that persists well past childhood in the majority of the American population. They are both watching and judging you. They both have big white beards. If you are good, you will be rewarded. Whatever you get, you deserved -- anything lacking is your fault. So puzzling through the Santa myth is just a dry run for puzzling through the God myth. The same logic refutes both.
I've already gotten some skeptical questions about Santa from Vinny. "How does he go to all those houses?" I was asked just the other day. "Some people say his sleigh is magic," I replied. "What do you think of that?"
For now, that was an acceptable answer to his question. But at some point, says McGowan, the desire to know the truth about Santa will outweigh your child's desire to believe in Santa. The trick is to allow your child to reason through it on his own, and to never lie to him when he asks direct questions. That's why, following McGowan's lead, I deflected with "some people say," and allowed him to assess the validity of the answer.
Someday, he will puzzle it all out himself. He will realize that Santa and his parents use the same wrapping paper, and have the same handwriting. He will fathom the sheer numbers of houses Santa allegedly serves, and deduce that it is impossible. He will no longer believe in magic. And he will put it all together, decide that the benefits of knowing the truth outweigh the benefits of living in denial, and stop believing in Santa. And when he makes this decision, it will feel good, and not be disappointing, because he figured it out himself.
And I will be proud of my little skeptic, and feel confident that he will use his intellect to dismantle other myths he's exposed to (not just higher powers, but myths about gender, race, politics, relationships, himself, etc.).
* Read McGowan's Santa article here, and then buy the book to read the rest!
Monday, December 20, 2010
Adventures in Speaking Too Soon
Alas, I spoke too soon in the previous post. He was able to sleep on his own for about a week but now we're back to square one. Sigh. I know it can't last forever -- if nothing else, he'll become a teenager and not want anything to do with us at some point. But it sure is frustrating.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Adventures in Migraines
I can't say that I am a fan of migraines, but the last one I had actually resulted in something good.
I've been getting them with more and more frequency, probably 3 times a month over the past couple of months, which has been pretty unpleasant to say the least. I went to the doctor, and she has scheduled me for a CAT scan to make sure I don't have a tumor or something, but otherwise I just have to collect information and try to figure out any kind of pattern to them.
On Wednesday night, I had a really, really painful one. It is my job to put Vinny to bed every night. Lately he has been too scared to fall asleep on his own, because developmentally he has gotten to the stage where he knows something about death and is afraid of being alone. So I have sat there and played on Melvin (the tiniest, babiest computer) until he falls asleep -- thus the recent spate of prolific postings on this blog. But on Wednesday, my head just hurt way too much to be able to do that. And of course, that evening he was particularly hyper and not ready to fall asleep at bedtime. I was getting angry and because I was so frustrated and in so much pain. So I went downstairs to Jeff and asked him to help me. Jeff went upstairs and lay down the law, telling Vinny that Mama was going to bed because her head hurt really badly, and that Vinny could goof off and play if he wanted to, he just had to stay in his room. There was some crying, but Vinny did it.
The next morning, Vinny pointed out to me that he had been promised a prize for falling asleep all by himself and staying in his bed all night. (This prize had been dangled in front of him after he returned from that week at Grandpa and Grandma's, where he had fallen asleep by himself with no problems, in an attempt to convince him to do the same thing here, but to no avail at the time.) Upon confirming what had happened that night with Jeff, I agreed and awarded him the prize: sunglasses with blinking blue lights on the sides (one of the best pieces of swag we picked up at the conference). Then I told him if he did it again that evening, he would get another fantastic prize. The next morning, he was rewarded with another piece of light-up swag. And yesterday I told him if he did it for the next two nights he would get yet another prize. Last night was a success, and I anticipate tonight will be too.
I think he'll be falling asleep on his own for the foreseeable future, which is a great thing! So for perhaps the first time ever, something good came out of a migraine!
I've been getting them with more and more frequency, probably 3 times a month over the past couple of months, which has been pretty unpleasant to say the least. I went to the doctor, and she has scheduled me for a CAT scan to make sure I don't have a tumor or something, but otherwise I just have to collect information and try to figure out any kind of pattern to them.
On Wednesday night, I had a really, really painful one. It is my job to put Vinny to bed every night. Lately he has been too scared to fall asleep on his own, because developmentally he has gotten to the stage where he knows something about death and is afraid of being alone. So I have sat there and played on Melvin (the tiniest, babiest computer) until he falls asleep -- thus the recent spate of prolific postings on this blog. But on Wednesday, my head just hurt way too much to be able to do that. And of course, that evening he was particularly hyper and not ready to fall asleep at bedtime. I was getting angry and because I was so frustrated and in so much pain. So I went downstairs to Jeff and asked him to help me. Jeff went upstairs and lay down the law, telling Vinny that Mama was going to bed because her head hurt really badly, and that Vinny could goof off and play if he wanted to, he just had to stay in his room. There was some crying, but Vinny did it.
The next morning, Vinny pointed out to me that he had been promised a prize for falling asleep all by himself and staying in his bed all night. (This prize had been dangled in front of him after he returned from that week at Grandpa and Grandma's, where he had fallen asleep by himself with no problems, in an attempt to convince him to do the same thing here, but to no avail at the time.) Upon confirming what had happened that night with Jeff, I agreed and awarded him the prize: sunglasses with blinking blue lights on the sides (one of the best pieces of swag we picked up at the conference). Then I told him if he did it again that evening, he would get another fantastic prize. The next morning, he was rewarded with another piece of light-up swag. And yesterday I told him if he did it for the next two nights he would get yet another prize. Last night was a success, and I anticipate tonight will be too.
I think he'll be falling asleep on his own for the foreseeable future, which is a great thing! So for perhaps the first time ever, something good came out of a migraine!
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Winter Weather
It has been pretty cold here lately! Why, today I don't think the temperature rose above freezing. I excitedly wore several layers of clothes today.
It doesn't get quite this cold that often here in Tennessee. The weather (although not the complete lack of snow) reminds me of my days in Illinois.
Speaking of Illinois, when I told Vinny that one of his cousins lives in Illinois, he suggested that his cousin actually lives in "Billinois" and just laughed like it was the most hilarious thing ever. Then I suggested that Vinny lived in "Sillynois" and laughed a bit myself (although Vinny did not find that as humorous as his own joke). I am still trying to figure out the four-year-old sense of humor. So far it seems to me that watching him laugh is about the funniest part of his jokes.
It doesn't get quite this cold that often here in Tennessee. The weather (although not the complete lack of snow) reminds me of my days in Illinois.
Speaking of Illinois, when I told Vinny that one of his cousins lives in Illinois, he suggested that his cousin actually lives in "Billinois" and just laughed like it was the most hilarious thing ever. Then I suggested that Vinny lived in "Sillynois" and laughed a bit myself (although Vinny did not find that as humorous as his own joke). I am still trying to figure out the four-year-old sense of humor. So far it seems to me that watching him laugh is about the funniest part of his jokes.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Fun with Creative Play
Vinny's been really into creative play these days, which I really love. He has a great imagination and it is so fun to see what he comes up with.
Tonight, he was C3PO and Jeff was R2D2, and when I joined in the play I was dubbed Darth Vader. Luckily, I didn't have to behave like Darth Vader particularly, and all our conflicts were solved with a pizza party. If only it were that easy in real life!
Tonight, he was C3PO and Jeff was R2D2, and when I joined in the play I was dubbed Darth Vader. Luckily, I didn't have to behave like Darth Vader particularly, and all our conflicts were solved with a pizza party. If only it were that easy in real life!
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Computers and Me (Part 2)
In that first semester of grad school, I suddenly realized that I had a lot of work to do to catch up to all these people with computer science bachelors degrees. I was a pretty good programmer for a physicist ("for a physicist" being the operative phrase) -- but the thing is, there is so much more to computer science than just programming. It was pretty tough going, but with help from friends and my very patient adviser, I eventually learned everything I needed to know to get that doctorate.
I was more on the math side of things than the programming or hardware side through my graduate career. (Thus the title of this blog, started in my final semester of graduate school.) I resisted learning any more of the technical side than I needed to, but I knew I needed to learn more. But I was scared -- it all seemed so complicated, and to admit that I didn't know something was a big risk -- what if I failed at learning it?
I took a research assistantship at the supercomputing center, which turned out to be the best thing I ever did careerwise. I got used to working with big supercomputers and started to feel a lot more comfortable programming in parallel. This allowed me to do the computing I needed to do for my dissertation, which could not have been done on anything smaller than a supercomputer. It was a risk I took that paid off many times over.
In my postdoc, I learned a lot more about programming and designing scalable parallel algorithms, which was awesome, but I was still kind of light on the hardware side when I started my current job. I had hoped to stay that way but quickly realized that I was on the side of things where I actually had some input into the design of the next-generation leadership supercomputer. (Okay, very little input, but more than I had ever had.) So instead of just not having an opinion, I had to actually start thinking about computer architecture and how it impacts the scalability of parallel algorithms.
But I really didn't know enough about computer architecture to have a particularly valid or useful opinion. So, when I was asked to help give a workshop on using our machines, I volunteered myself for the part where we explained the machine architecture. I then learned Computer Architecture 101 (courtesy of Wikipedia) and translated what I had learned into a presentation for a lay audience. This helped me to understand computer architecture in a way that I had never understood before. Suddenly all those discussions about next-generation machines made a lot more sense. And I could throw around computer hardware jargon with the best of them.
Today, I am pretty sure that I have no interest in designing computer hardware, but I am interested in how the components fit together and how this relates to algorithms for high-performance computing. I am really happy in my current job because I now have just enough knowledge of computer architecture to understand what is going on.
I was more on the math side of things than the programming or hardware side through my graduate career. (Thus the title of this blog, started in my final semester of graduate school.) I resisted learning any more of the technical side than I needed to, but I knew I needed to learn more. But I was scared -- it all seemed so complicated, and to admit that I didn't know something was a big risk -- what if I failed at learning it?
I took a research assistantship at the supercomputing center, which turned out to be the best thing I ever did careerwise. I got used to working with big supercomputers and started to feel a lot more comfortable programming in parallel. This allowed me to do the computing I needed to do for my dissertation, which could not have been done on anything smaller than a supercomputer. It was a risk I took that paid off many times over.
In my postdoc, I learned a lot more about programming and designing scalable parallel algorithms, which was awesome, but I was still kind of light on the hardware side when I started my current job. I had hoped to stay that way but quickly realized that I was on the side of things where I actually had some input into the design of the next-generation leadership supercomputer. (Okay, very little input, but more than I had ever had.) So instead of just not having an opinion, I had to actually start thinking about computer architecture and how it impacts the scalability of parallel algorithms.
But I really didn't know enough about computer architecture to have a particularly valid or useful opinion. So, when I was asked to help give a workshop on using our machines, I volunteered myself for the part where we explained the machine architecture. I then learned Computer Architecture 101 (courtesy of Wikipedia) and translated what I had learned into a presentation for a lay audience. This helped me to understand computer architecture in a way that I had never understood before. Suddenly all those discussions about next-generation machines made a lot more sense. And I could throw around computer hardware jargon with the best of them.
Today, I am pretty sure that I have no interest in designing computer hardware, but I am interested in how the components fit together and how this relates to algorithms for high-performance computing. I am really happy in my current job because I now have just enough knowledge of computer architecture to understand what is going on.
Friday, December 03, 2010
Computers and Me (Part 1)
I have always loved computers, as long as I remember. I remember my dad bringing home a computer when I was very young, and using a modem (which was a cradle for the rotary phone's handset) for something-or-other.
The summers between my early elementary school years I took some computer science classes for kids. We programmed in BASIC on some mainframes at the university. One of my teachers was a woman, but I don't remember the gender makeup of the class.
I do remember being the only girl in the electrical engineering class I took the next year, though. I was self-conscious about it because I was just learning about gender roles and the fact that my interests were not typical for those with a matching 23rd pair of chromosomes. I think I was a bit overwhelmed by the boys in the class, but I did learn a lot about resistors and capacitors and other interesting things.
When I was nine, we got our own home computer. It had two floppy disk drives, no hard drive, and a monochrome (amber) monitor. You had to boot it from the A drive. It had BASIC so I was able to write some programs, just like I had done in my computer science classes.
In junior high, I was interested in joining the computer club, but I was intimidated by the boys in my class and did not join. They weren't just loud and boisterous; they actually made fun of me for wanting to join the computer club, urging me to return to the kitchen where I belonged. So it was not a welcoming or safe space for me and I stayed away.
I went to a math, science, and technology magnet school for high school. In my math class my sophomore year, we wrote programs in Quick Basic, so no line numbers were necessary. I remember for our final exam we had to write a code that would determine whether the number you input was prime, and that I wrote a program to do this in no time flat, while the rest of the class was struggling with it. (Of course, the method I used, namely counting by odd numbers and testing whether the number was divisible by any odd number from 3 to the square-root of the number in question, is not scalable for large numbers, but that is beyond the scope of this post.)
There was an advanced computer science course offered, but at the time I had found that I had a great interest in chemistry, so I took AP Chemistry instead of computer science. I enjoyed playing on our computer at home, but my formal computing education waited until college.
In college, I took a class on FORTRAN for engineers. It was really easy and I aced the programming projects and the exams. At that time I was majoring in chemical engineering, but I soon switched to physics.
I thought I wanted to be an experimental scientist until I did a summer internship simulating physics on a computer. At that point I discovered where my heart really was! So I did a concentration in computational physics for my major. To do that concentration, I took a class on numerical methods, and aced it. It was in that class that I got the first inkling that maybe I could go into computer science. I got a problem set back with a 100% grade and a personal note from the professor: "Have you considered graduate school in computer science? I would love to have a student like you!"
I took an extra year to complete my undergrad and took some additional CS classes that final year. I was overjoyed to discover that I was admitted to the institution from which I eventually earned my Ph.D. some seven years later.
(Stay tuned for Part 2!)
The summers between my early elementary school years I took some computer science classes for kids. We programmed in BASIC on some mainframes at the university. One of my teachers was a woman, but I don't remember the gender makeup of the class.
I do remember being the only girl in the electrical engineering class I took the next year, though. I was self-conscious about it because I was just learning about gender roles and the fact that my interests were not typical for those with a matching 23rd pair of chromosomes. I think I was a bit overwhelmed by the boys in the class, but I did learn a lot about resistors and capacitors and other interesting things.
When I was nine, we got our own home computer. It had two floppy disk drives, no hard drive, and a monochrome (amber) monitor. You had to boot it from the A drive. It had BASIC so I was able to write some programs, just like I had done in my computer science classes.
In junior high, I was interested in joining the computer club, but I was intimidated by the boys in my class and did not join. They weren't just loud and boisterous; they actually made fun of me for wanting to join the computer club, urging me to return to the kitchen where I belonged. So it was not a welcoming or safe space for me and I stayed away.
I went to a math, science, and technology magnet school for high school. In my math class my sophomore year, we wrote programs in Quick Basic, so no line numbers were necessary. I remember for our final exam we had to write a code that would determine whether the number you input was prime, and that I wrote a program to do this in no time flat, while the rest of the class was struggling with it. (Of course, the method I used, namely counting by odd numbers and testing whether the number was divisible by any odd number from 3 to the square-root of the number in question, is not scalable for large numbers, but that is beyond the scope of this post.)
There was an advanced computer science course offered, but at the time I had found that I had a great interest in chemistry, so I took AP Chemistry instead of computer science. I enjoyed playing on our computer at home, but my formal computing education waited until college.
In college, I took a class on FORTRAN for engineers. It was really easy and I aced the programming projects and the exams. At that time I was majoring in chemical engineering, but I soon switched to physics.
I thought I wanted to be an experimental scientist until I did a summer internship simulating physics on a computer. At that point I discovered where my heart really was! So I did a concentration in computational physics for my major. To do that concentration, I took a class on numerical methods, and aced it. It was in that class that I got the first inkling that maybe I could go into computer science. I got a problem set back with a 100% grade and a personal note from the professor: "Have you considered graduate school in computer science? I would love to have a student like you!"
I took an extra year to complete my undergrad and took some additional CS classes that final year. I was overjoyed to discover that I was admitted to the institution from which I eventually earned my Ph.D. some seven years later.
(Stay tuned for Part 2!)
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Debugging in Parallel
Sometimes* when you write a computer program, there are bugs in it. Some of those bugs can be easy to catch (e.g., I forgot to put a semicolon at the end of line 67 and my code won't compile), while others are not. There are different types of bugs, too -- memory errors that cause a segmentation fault, typos that might cause one variable to be updated instead of another, and errors in your algorithm, to name a few. Each of them is uniquely challenging to find and fix.
But when we add an additional layer of complexity to a code by making it run in parallel, the difficulty of finding and fixing bugs goes up by several orders of magnitude. The most insidious of bugs will appear only at high process counts, or irregularly. How then can we find out where our code is going wrong?
A classic method of finding bugs is by inserting print statements in the code. Using the print statements and running the code, we can follow a sort of bisection algorithm to determine where things go bad. Typically we insert a few print statements at the first pass, and then further hone down to the point where the error occurs with several subsequent runs. But this is highly time consuming, and produces a lot of excess data. I for one would hate to insert all those print statements in a complicated code, not to mention sift through the output of print statement debugging across 200,000 processes. It can take weeks to find a bug in this way, especially if you have to wait for a batch system to run your jobs.
The best solution is to use a debugger. Using a debugger, you can pinpoint the exact line at which the bug occurs in a single trial (for bugs such as segmentation faults). And you can insert break points around areas of the code you suspect are faulty, and examine the contents of the variables. You can also step through the code slowly and figure out how x came to equal 27 instead of 32 (for example).
Parallel debuggers exist, and do scale up to hundreds of thousands of processes. Of course, these are commercial products but I'm guessing you don't have a 200K-core supercomputer in your basement. Most supercomputing centers have a license for a commercial debugger such as Allinea DDT or TotalView. Both of these are great products that will help you to find your bugs quickly and relatively painlessly. And if you stubbornly insist on not using a commercial product, most mpirun or mpiexec commands allow you to attach your favorite free debugger to your parallel execution.
Do you think it is too hard to learn to use a debugger, that by the time you do learn it you could have already found that bug and moved on to something else? Invest in your future and learn to use a debugger anyhow! Let me tell you the sad, sad story of a graduate student I knew quite well.
This graduate student felt that by the time he/she learned to use a debugger, that final bug sitting between the student and graduation would have been found and fixed. Because, of course, that was the final bug. He/she said this, bug after bug after bug. Looking back, this person realized that by investing a day learning to use a debugger, he/she could have graduated (and started earning for-real money instead of measly graduate student stipends) about six months earlier.
Don't be like that graduate student. Learn to use a debugger and stop wasting your time!
* Actually, pretty much every time you write anything more complicated than "Hello, world!"
But when we add an additional layer of complexity to a code by making it run in parallel, the difficulty of finding and fixing bugs goes up by several orders of magnitude. The most insidious of bugs will appear only at high process counts, or irregularly. How then can we find out where our code is going wrong?
A classic method of finding bugs is by inserting print statements in the code. Using the print statements and running the code, we can follow a sort of bisection algorithm to determine where things go bad. Typically we insert a few print statements at the first pass, and then further hone down to the point where the error occurs with several subsequent runs. But this is highly time consuming, and produces a lot of excess data. I for one would hate to insert all those print statements in a complicated code, not to mention sift through the output of print statement debugging across 200,000 processes. It can take weeks to find a bug in this way, especially if you have to wait for a batch system to run your jobs.
The best solution is to use a debugger. Using a debugger, you can pinpoint the exact line at which the bug occurs in a single trial (for bugs such as segmentation faults). And you can insert break points around areas of the code you suspect are faulty, and examine the contents of the variables. You can also step through the code slowly and figure out how x came to equal 27 instead of 32 (for example).
Parallel debuggers exist, and do scale up to hundreds of thousands of processes. Of course, these are commercial products but I'm guessing you don't have a 200K-core supercomputer in your basement. Most supercomputing centers have a license for a commercial debugger such as Allinea DDT or TotalView. Both of these are great products that will help you to find your bugs quickly and relatively painlessly. And if you stubbornly insist on not using a commercial product, most mpirun or mpiexec commands allow you to attach your favorite free debugger to your parallel execution.
Do you think it is too hard to learn to use a debugger, that by the time you do learn it you could have already found that bug and moved on to something else? Invest in your future and learn to use a debugger anyhow! Let me tell you the sad, sad story of a graduate student I knew quite well.
This graduate student felt that by the time he/she learned to use a debugger, that final bug sitting between the student and graduation would have been found and fixed. Because, of course, that was the final bug. He/she said this, bug after bug after bug. Looking back, this person realized that by investing a day learning to use a debugger, he/she could have graduated (and started earning for-real money instead of measly graduate student stipends) about six months earlier.
Don't be like that graduate student. Learn to use a debugger and stop wasting your time!
* Actually, pretty much every time you write anything more complicated than "Hello, world!"
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Running Me Ragged
So, today my Mean Running Coach* took me on a route that was over 5 miles. This is farther than I have ever run before. I hasten to add that I probably ran half of it at most -- but we did complete the whole thing in maybe an hour and a quarter, which is pretty respectable.
But oh, was it painful! The good thing is, it will be a lot easier to do on Friday. It is amazing how the body gets stronger so quickly.
* She is actually really nice and one of my dearest friends at work.
But oh, was it painful! The good thing is, it will be a lot easier to do on Friday. It is amazing how the body gets stronger so quickly.
* She is actually really nice and one of my dearest friends at work.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Thanksgiving Adventures
We had a good holiday weekend. I stayed home on Wednesday so that I could cook for our Thanksgiving dinner. I went grocery shopping and made an apple pie and cranberry sauce that day.
Then on Thursday morning I put the turkey plus some carrots, parsnips, and the appropriate herbs and spices in our super-deluxe oven on the slow-cook setting before we left for a Thanksgiving-day race. The entire family participated in a fun run, and Vinny got a medal upon completion of the race. We headed back home and we continued cooking: rolls (made from my favorite leftover oatmeal bread recipe), corn pudding, fresh beets and greens, macaroni and cheese for Vinny, and Jeff's broccoli casserole.
The turkey was delicious -- very moist and falling off the bone. I'd never tried parsnips before but I liked them. I ate all the beets because I am the only family member who actually likes them, but Jeff tried some of the beet greens and thought they were good. Vinny feasted on macaroni and cheese, rolls, and cranberry sauce. We all enjoyed the pie for dessert, but especially Vinny, because it was an "X" pie (lattice top).
My dad and bonus mom arrived on Friday and we enjoyed some of their leftovers and ours, plus Italian roasted pork loin, for dinner. They came so that we could go to a football game together on Saturday -- the annual Kentucky vs. Tennessee game, which is always held on Thanksgiving and which Kentucky has consistently lost for 26 years in a row now.
On Saturday morning we got decked out in layers of clothing (blue of course!) and headed to the game. We had a pretty good view of the field despite being near the top of the stadium. The stadium was filled with a surprisingly high proportion of people wearing blue. It wasn't half, but it was more than a third. We had a good time even though our team lost.
Dad and Marvis left after we had dinner. On Sunday we went to the same Christmas tree farm that we went to last year, and cut down a tree. We are slowly decorating it -- I got the ornaments and lights down from the attic last night, and we have put a few strands of lights on it as a reward for good behavior in everybody's favorite four-year-old. Tonight I plan to make a 25-link paper chain like I did last year for him, to illustrate the countdown to Christmas.
Then on Thursday morning I put the turkey plus some carrots, parsnips, and the appropriate herbs and spices in our super-deluxe oven on the slow-cook setting before we left for a Thanksgiving-day race. The entire family participated in a fun run, and Vinny got a medal upon completion of the race. We headed back home and we continued cooking: rolls (made from my favorite leftover oatmeal bread recipe), corn pudding, fresh beets and greens, macaroni and cheese for Vinny, and Jeff's broccoli casserole.
The turkey was delicious -- very moist and falling off the bone. I'd never tried parsnips before but I liked them. I ate all the beets because I am the only family member who actually likes them, but Jeff tried some of the beet greens and thought they were good. Vinny feasted on macaroni and cheese, rolls, and cranberry sauce. We all enjoyed the pie for dessert, but especially Vinny, because it was an "X" pie (lattice top).
My dad and bonus mom arrived on Friday and we enjoyed some of their leftovers and ours, plus Italian roasted pork loin, for dinner. They came so that we could go to a football game together on Saturday -- the annual Kentucky vs. Tennessee game, which is always held on Thanksgiving and which Kentucky has consistently lost for 26 years in a row now.
On Saturday morning we got decked out in layers of clothing (blue of course!) and headed to the game. We had a pretty good view of the field despite being near the top of the stadium. The stadium was filled with a surprisingly high proportion of people wearing blue. It wasn't half, but it was more than a third. We had a good time even though our team lost.
Dad and Marvis left after we had dinner. On Sunday we went to the same Christmas tree farm that we went to last year, and cut down a tree. We are slowly decorating it -- I got the ornaments and lights down from the attic last night, and we have put a few strands of lights on it as a reward for good behavior in everybody's favorite four-year-old. Tonight I plan to make a 25-link paper chain like I did last year for him, to illustrate the countdown to Christmas.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
My Little Nerd in Training
So, while Vinny was staying with his grandparents, my dad was walking with him through a parking lot, where Vinny proceeded to rattle off the make and model of every single car. If he could identify cars, Dad thought, then surely he could learn to identify trees too. So that week, Dad helped Vinny to create a leaf collection and learn all the leaves.
There are a couple dozen different leaves in that book, and Vinny knows them all. He can flip through the book and rattle them all off, but also he can identify them out of order or even outside of the book. He took the leaf collection book to school and showed it during show and tell. His teacher was amazed by his leaf knowledge, and so am I. I think that at this point, he can identify more leaves than I can. The mind of a four-year-old is like a sponge!
There are a couple dozen different leaves in that book, and Vinny knows them all. He can flip through the book and rattle them all off, but also he can identify them out of order or even outside of the book. He took the leaf collection book to school and showed it during show and tell. His teacher was amazed by his leaf knowledge, and so am I. I think that at this point, he can identify more leaves than I can. The mind of a four-year-old is like a sponge!
Monday, November 22, 2010
Travel and Home Again
We took Vinny to his Grandparents' house on the Wednesday before we left for the conference, because we wanted to take a CPR/First Aid class on Thursday. We did, and are now both certified in CPR and First Aid, at least for the next year.
We left on Saturday, driving to New Orleans. We spent one night in a beautiful new hotel for a bargain price (the gubmint rate, since I was on business travel!) before arriving mid-afternoon.
Jeff had a great time in New Orleans -- he explored the French Quarter and went on a cemetery tour. I spent the majority of my waking hours in the convention center, although I did get a chance for an evening beignet excursion to Cafe du Monde, and to go out to dinner one night with my boss and his wife (and Jeff too), and another night with Jeff alone. I tried a lot of new foods, including rabbit, which tastes like a cross between chicken and pork.
Finally the conference was over, and before leaving New Orleans, we went on a swamp tour. We saw lots of alligators and other creatures, and we got to hold a baby alligator. Then we started driving.
We stayed in that same hotel at the same gubmint rate -- unfortunately I suffered a migraine when we got out of the car for dinner, so Jeff made the executive decision to stop. We arrived home on Saturday evening -- only to get up early the next morning to go pick up Vinny.
We spent the afternoon with Jeff's sister and brother-in-law, allowing Vinny to play with his cousins. It was a lot of fun, especially for Vinny, but we had to leave earlier than we would have liked, to make it home at a decent hour. I was terrified that the migraine would make a reappearance, but luckily I remained migraine-free. This morning marked the return to our regular schedule -- Vinny to school and me to work.
We left on Saturday, driving to New Orleans. We spent one night in a beautiful new hotel for a bargain price (the gubmint rate, since I was on business travel!) before arriving mid-afternoon.
Jeff had a great time in New Orleans -- he explored the French Quarter and went on a cemetery tour. I spent the majority of my waking hours in the convention center, although I did get a chance for an evening beignet excursion to Cafe du Monde, and to go out to dinner one night with my boss and his wife (and Jeff too), and another night with Jeff alone. I tried a lot of new foods, including rabbit, which tastes like a cross between chicken and pork.
Finally the conference was over, and before leaving New Orleans, we went on a swamp tour. We saw lots of alligators and other creatures, and we got to hold a baby alligator. Then we started driving.
We stayed in that same hotel at the same gubmint rate -- unfortunately I suffered a migraine when we got out of the car for dinner, so Jeff made the executive decision to stop. We arrived home on Saturday evening -- only to get up early the next morning to go pick up Vinny.
We spent the afternoon with Jeff's sister and brother-in-law, allowing Vinny to play with his cousins. It was a lot of fun, especially for Vinny, but we had to leave earlier than we would have liked, to make it home at a decent hour. I was terrified that the migraine would make a reappearance, but luckily I remained migraine-free. This morning marked the return to our regular schedule -- Vinny to school and me to work.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Prepping for the Conference
Remember last November, when I was the signage chair for a major conference in my field, and how exhausted and burned out I was, and how I said I wasn't going to do anything for the conference this year?
Yeah. Uh, so, I didn't exactly keep my promise to myself there. I'm not doing anything as hard or involved as that, but I am one of the judges for a student competition, a speaker for the part of the program aimed at attracting minorities to the field, and I am presenting a session (along with two of my colleagues) at the conference. Also, I was asked to help some students who won a prestigious fellowship find their way around the conference. (I was also told I should use this as an opportunity to recruit shamelessly for my employer, so I have them all set to meet some Important People from my workplace.)
The conference is in New Orleans, which is just close enough to drive to (although far enough that it is still a big trip). Jeff is going with me, and we are once again leaving Vinny with Grandma and Grandpa, who were kind enough to look after him once again. Unfortunately, their house is in the opposite direction that we need to go, making the trip about six hours longer each way (since we have to go there and back once each way). But I think Vinny will have a good time, and so will Jeff, exploring the city.
Yeah. Uh, so, I didn't exactly keep my promise to myself there. I'm not doing anything as hard or involved as that, but I am one of the judges for a student competition, a speaker for the part of the program aimed at attracting minorities to the field, and I am presenting a session (along with two of my colleagues) at the conference. Also, I was asked to help some students who won a prestigious fellowship find their way around the conference. (I was also told I should use this as an opportunity to recruit shamelessly for my employer, so I have them all set to meet some Important People from my workplace.)
The conference is in New Orleans, which is just close enough to drive to (although far enough that it is still a big trip). Jeff is going with me, and we are once again leaving Vinny with Grandma and Grandpa, who were kind enough to look after him once again. Unfortunately, their house is in the opposite direction that we need to go, making the trip about six hours longer each way (since we have to go there and back once each way). But I think Vinny will have a good time, and so will Jeff, exploring the city.
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