Thanksgiving, what a topic! So many things can be put into a thanksgiving post. So many, in fact, that this could be a jumbled mess if I am not careful. I want to cover three different parts of today from my perspective so bear with me and I promise to try and not jumble this all up.
First off I want to talk about how my family will be celebrating today and there’s a bit of story to it. For about six, maybe seven, years now we have done every single holiday with my in-laws. This is due to animosity on the part of one of my younger sisters. I will not go into why this animosity exists or the reasons it causes me not to be with my family on holidays because it doesn’t matter one bit but that it exists needs to be mentioned for context. Once this issue cropped up my family basically stopped being together on holidays and since I was already with Michelle we, by default, went to her family’s holiday celebrations. For a long while I was bitter about this dynamic as my family is a very close knit group and it was a blow to not see them on the days I was used to all of us getting together under one roof. Don’t get me wrong though, some of the togetherness had already gone when my uncle passed and we stopped seeing what’s left of my dad’s family, so this was yet another blow. So in short I went into the holiday season, starting ’round about Thanksgiving week, spiraling into a depression of sorts.
Michelle’s family is nice, for the most part, but their dynamic is so very different from the family I am used to that it was like going to a company Thanksgiving dinner rather than a family gathering. It was more straw on the camel’s back, so to speak, and I came to dread to the holiday season. Although last year I made it up until Christmas Eve before losing my mind it hasn’t been easy to enjoy myself during this season. I honestly tried but all the baggage seemed to be too much and I failed every year.
This year our mini-van’s transmission is out and we are pretty much broke so from the outside it would seem that I would be more upset going into the season and be worse for wear but that’s not the case. In the past Michelle’s family has provided transportation when we didn’t have a vehicle large enough for the clan but this year they aren’t doing Thanksgiving at the usual haunt and the logistics were too much so we were left doing the holiday here. At some point my brother considered having dinner at his house but decided to carry on his tradition of eating dinner with his best friend’s family. So we were left with pretty much no option but to have Thanksgiving with just our clan. The more I thought about this the more I realized that circumstances came together in a perfect storm to provide us this chance to start a new tradition and have this meal here at our house in a different manner than either family has done and it made me happy.
I can change the dynamic that has caused me to hate the holidays and it starts today. I have all the fixin’s, minus cranberry sauce, for a traditional meal and cooking begins soon. It may seem late to start cooking but we are planning for a later meal than most and doing early evening instead of mid-afternoon. I am also letting the kids cook. I am teaching Hamish to make key lime pie, Seamus to make sweet potato pie, Aryanna to make my special green been casserole, and Aoghdan how to do a brown sugar ham. By teaching I mean they will do each part and I will tell them, showing when necessary, how to do it. So today’s meal will be a family affair for the start of cooking to the serving of the fare. I plan to continue this tradition and if either side of the family wants to see us they can come here and participate in the festivities at my house. My dad did call last night and he is coming by but I don’t know if my mom will join us. In fact anyone is welcome at my home today and that includes: family, friends, and strangers. If you need a Thanksgiving meal then my door is open and me and mine will welcome you with open arms and be grateful that you are here.
In summary the first thing I am thankful for is to be spending Thanksgiving with my wife and children in our home. I am also grateful to have a home that I can open to anyone and everyone.
The second topic I want to cover is the freedom we have in United States that is provided and protected by our armed forces. I have never served but I am truly grateful for the men and women who have given their lives to provide a place where we can gather, bow our heads, and thank God for what we have. There are still places on this ball of dirt where one cannot be grateful to God out loud for fear of his life. Boys and girls have given their last breath, their limbs, their sight, their sanity, and much more to give us the gift of freedom and we so often overlook their sacrifices. Our boys and girls are over in the sandbox, and other places right now, away from their loved ones on Thanksgiving and my prayer is that we remember them today as we sit with our families and gorge ourselves on the fruits of the freedom that they and their brethren have provided for us.
A year or two ago I was out with Michelle at our favorite Mexican joint and there was a soldier eating dinner with his family a couple of tables over. It was obvious he was deploying and this was his dinner to say goodbye to his family. They were happy but there was a bittersweet could over them. I was moved to do more than shake his hand and say “thank you”. I called over my waiter and told him I would be covering their meal and that I didn’t want him to say who had picked up the check. He obliged. The soldier looked around when it came time to pay the bill, argued just a bit, and then walked his family out. I got up to pay our tab and the one I had picked up and watched as he held onto his wife and child, each in turn, and made sure they got in the car and away without any problems. He came back in and looked around then walked straight over to me and asked if I was the one that picked up the check. I almost lied about it because I didn’t want to feel like I was taking credit for anything but I decided that telling the truth was better so I admitted that I had. He had tears in his eyes when he grabbed my hand and thanked me. I told him that thanks weren’t necessary and I was grateful for his service and sacrifice. Neither of us had dry eyes when the exchange was over.
I tell that story to illustrate how much our boys and girls over there need to know that we are grateful for their service. I don’t want to get political in this post but there are those in this country who vilify our armed forces and I know from friends that this cuts deep. So today as you sit around the table with your family and friends make sure you give thanks for our military. If there are vets at you table make sure you recognize them and if there are active duty soldiers in your family who made it home then make damn sure you let them know what their service means. Those in uniform are willing to lay down their life so that you can have this holiday, so you can have all the holidays, and we are remiss as a nation in giving them thanks.
I had this link forwarded to me and it’s a neat way to thank our troops. You see Xerox has collected art from children all over the country, turned it into cards, put up this website, and you can go by, pick a card, pick a message or write your own, and Xerox will send the card to a soldier. It doesn’t cost you dime and it take all of three minutes on a slow connection. If you have seen the site and haven’t sent a card then your soul is as black as pitch and I have no use for you. Go say thanks to a soldier. It is the very least you can do.
The third thing I want to talk about is what all I am grateful for. And I have a damn lot of them. This is by no means a complete list but it’ll have to do.
God: The most important thing I could mention is this right here. I am grateful for God and His son’s sacrifice. None of the rest of the things I thankful for would be worth anything if it were not for two pieces of wood and a willing sacrifice 2,000 years ago.
Freedom: All the freedoms we have in the U.S. provide the atmosphere to allow everything else for which I am thankful.
Family: I have a beautiful and caring wife, seven wonderful children and a large extended family. While we all have issues at times the honest truth is that I couldn’t make it without my family. They catch me when I slip, know when to let me fall, and love me in spite of my faults.
Friends: I have amazing friends including those I have never met. There are way too damn many to mention here but I want to give credit to a few. Greg and Nicole who I haven’t seen in nigh on a decade made my trip to Portland a little nicer. Ellie in Portland who took a Texas boy who was far from home out for a beer. Bryan who asked me to write for 9b even though I suck at writing. Kyle who comes and babysits without ever asking for anything in return. Lee and Sarah who are closer to being family than they are to being friends. Dermot and Laura who we don’t see nearly often enough. Gretchen who I am still mad at for settling down in Alaska. Mark and Amber who make sure we get to church every Sunday. There are many, many more who I haven’t mentioned but my time for writing this post is almost up. I love all of my friends and if I didn’t mention you here then I owe you a big hug.
Job: I have the best job I have ever had and great co-workers who actually understand me and accept me with all of my quirks. I am doing what I love and getting paid mad money to do it. I couldn’t have described a job more perfect for me and I had this one handed to me completely by accident. The owner of my company is great and takes care of us to a fault. I have nothing more I want out of my career at this point except to keep doing what I am doing.
Church: We have found a church that’s just amazing. In fact I should have listed the church under family because they actually get it. It’s like going home every Sunday. All of the things I have thought a church should be this church is striving to be. And they are more than just what I thought a church should be. They have taught me more about what church should be and I am grateful for each and every one of our new family members.
There’s a lot of other dross for which I am grateful like the fact I have an Android phone, work with Linux, and so on but that’s all superficial crap so it doesn’t get more than this passing mention.
It’s time to cook now. It’s later than I wanted to start but I’ll get it done. Writing this was almost as important as cooking the dinner we will gorge ourselves on in just a few hours. Now stop reading my blog and go spend time with your family.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING
11
Nov
This mix has tracks that some of you might not agree with and some I don’t even agree with but this is not my day. This is Veteran’s Day and it’s a day to put politics aside and salute those who keep us free. If you find yourself disagreeing with a song or two on here then suck it up. No politics are welcome on this post. Ever.
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="430" height="330" src="http://mwbe.romeosidvicious.com/mixwidget/mixwidget.swf" wmode="transparent" flashvars="config=http://mwbe.romeosidvicious.com/confs/veteran'sday2009.xml&playlist=http://mwbe.romeosidvicious.com/playlists/veteran'sday2009.xspf&skin=http://mwbe.romeosidvicious.com/skins/audiomagnetics_ugly.jpg"></embed>
This one comes courtesy of D.C. Live Tracks. I didn’t record it and wasn’t at the show. I did go see Lucero last night here in Houston but this is not that show. So none of the credit is mine at all. I wanted to share a good quality recording of Lucero with all of you and since this is from this tour it’s pretty much what I heard last night with few exceptions. And of course I interviewed the band last night but you’ll have to wait for that post to pop up on 9b. D.C. Live Tracks has some other great shows up but you’ll have to click one of the link and head over there to check them out. I found about them on the Lucero Message Board and have downloaded most if not all of the shows that get posted there.
On another note I am working on a blogroll, of sorts, to cover all the alt-country blogs I read and will have it packaged up as a bundle on Google Reader. This was inspired by The Bird List, a project I have been invited to participate in, and no I ain’t tellin’ you what it is just yet. You will have to just wait and see.
I have also been working on some other stuff on the backend of the old site here. I have changed the MP3 player, not the tape widget, to one that’s actually being maintained after the old one decided I didn’t have permission to access the settings anymore. Most of the rest of the stuff will be transparent to the readers but I did add a twitter widget to the sidebar and some other little tweaks. Anyway…
I leave for Portland, OR on Friday and will be gone until the following Friday. I don’t know how much I’ll update from there so follow me on Twitter if you want to keep up. This’ll probably be my last post on here this week. I have a lot of getting ready to do before I bail out of town. I am sure I’ll have geeky crap to post about when I get back.
This guide is adapted from here for the initial rooting and here for the app removal. If you follow this guide and break your phone I can’t help you. All the following actions should be taken with the knowledge that it is at your own risk and will void your warranty. For that matter Sprint may send an army of ninjas after you. Don’t say you weren’t warned….
This guide assumes a base install of Ubuntu 9.10 but should work for previous versions. If you know enough to have changed your download directory then you know enough to modify the following commands.
Prep:
- Download the Android SDK
- Download asroot2
- Download the recovery image
- Extract the SDK into your home directory
tar -xzvf ~/Downloads/android-sdk_r3-linux.tgz -C ~ - Copy the other two files into the newly created android-sdk directory
cp ~/Downloads/asroot2 ~/android-sdk-linux/
cp ~/Downloads/recovery-RA-heroc-v1.2.3.img ~/android-sdk-linux/ - Turn on USB debugging on your phone: Menu -> Settings -> Applications -> Development -> USB Debugging
- Connect your phone to your computer with a USB cable
Now in normal circumstances I would never recommend you “become” root as it’s generally not necessary but my attempts to root the phone did not work with sudo so for the next steps you will need to actually be the root user.
Rooting the phone:
- Become root
sudo su - - cd to your the directory created when you un-tarred the SDK
cd ~/android-sdk-linux/tools - Copy asroot2 to your phone, change the permissions to make it executable, execute asroot2
./adb push ../asroot2 /data/local/
./adb shell chmod 0755 /data/local/asroot2
./adb shell /data/local/asroot2 /system/bin/sh - Now we will use the access asroot2 has given up to create a su binary for root access
mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
cd /system/bin
cat sh > su
chmod 4755 su
If all has gone well you should now have a root prompt “#” instead of “$”. If you don’t then ask over at the first link in this post for help. I didn’t do any of the development on this I am merely giving the steps that worked for me. Now it’s time to flash a new recovery image so we can take a backup of the phone before we start screwing around. These steps are from the android-sdk-linux/tools directory you were in before. If you already exited your android shell bring it back up with ./adb shell and type su to get your root prompt.
- Reboot your phone. Yes this is a necessary step. The recovery image won’t flash if you don’t so this.
reboot - Copy the recovery image to your phone once it has booted
./adb push ../recovery-RA-heroc-v1.2.3.img /sdcard/ - Connect to the shell on your phone and flash the recovery image
./adb shell
su
flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery-RA-heroc-v1.2.3.img - Reboot into recovery mode and take a Nandroid backup before you do anything else
reboot recovery - Once the recovery screen has come up take a backup, make sure you have enough free space on your sd card before you do this, so that when you screw up your phone you will be able to restore it. Once you get bored in the recovery image select the top option to boot the phone into your regular HTC Sense environment.
I received no output from the command to flash the recovery image and it took less than two seconds once I had rebooted the phone. If you do not reboot the phone prior to the above steps you will most likely see Out of memory errors. If you see them even after a reboot then uninstall all your silly little app market playthings and try again. If you play around and screw up your phone without a backup then you’ll have to track down a recovery image or single apps and so on. Once again I WILL NOT HELP YOU WITH THIS.
Removing the stock Sprint Apps:
Simply connect to your phone with the SDK, become root, and remove the files from /system/app
./adb shell
$ su
mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
cd /system/app
ls
At this point you will have a list of all the stock crap on your screen. If you go about removing stuff you may screw up your phone. That’s what the backup we took earlier was for. Don’t think you made a backup with app store app so you are alright. Do the nandroid backup. Don’t be an idiot about this.
To remove an app simply use the rm command. The following commands remove Sprint NFL, Sprint Nascar, Peep, Footprints, and Sprint Stock, the stock music program (if you are using something else), and Quick Office
rm *Twitt*
rm *Stock*
rm *Foot*
rm Quickoffice_HTC_1.0.1.apk
rm com.htc.MusicWidget.apk
rm com.htc.MusicWidget.odex
rm HtcMusic.apk
rm Sprint_Nscar.apk
There’s a list of apps and some more description here on XDA Developers.
Like I said: This is NOT my work. I merely typed up all of the steps and put them in a single place. All thanks should go to the folks who posted the threads and risked bricking their devices to make this possible!
9
Nov
I have two kinds of kids at my house: The oppressed and the oppressor. These roles change based on what time it is, what mood people are in, what direction the wind is blowing in Alaska, and any other number of factors I have yet to figure out. Of course this is an oversimplification as some of the kids, I have seven kneebiters in case you are new here, don’t fit into those categories all the time and there are the occasional bouts of peace in the house but for the purposes of this discussion those two categories are what matters.
The problem is that these attitudes are self-perpetuating and breaking the cycle has to be done on levels at once and we have not figured that out yet to be perfectly honest. The first step was ADD testing and medication for DS2. If you are new here you probably don’t know I have a near-phobic reaction to medical personnel. This is due to various reasons rooted firmly in reality and some rooted closer to Never Never Land but it is what it is. I say that to say this: I did not start getting any of the horde tested for ADD without a lot of soul searching, research, and frankly sheer bloodymindedness on my part. I did not want to medicate my children and turn them into Ritalin zombies, stunt their growth, risk the other complications, and so on without a damn good reason. DD1 gave me my first good reason and the meds she is on boosted her ability to handle sitting still and completing school work so much I almost felt guilty for not getting her tested sooner. DS2 was different in that he is working three years above the standard for his age so school wasn’t an issue. What was an issue was his bullying everyone, including attempting to bully Momma and me, to get what he wanted and his out of control fits when the bullying failed. We tried everything from crunchy “I love you and I understand so let’s talk” parenting methods to swift corporal punishment for the bullying and all of them had the same effect: No change at all. So it was almost out of desperation that I decided to have him tested. He is all of seven years old and has a wonderful personality when he’s not being a little Pol Pot and I was deathly afraid of wiping that out along with the hyperactivity if he got diagnosed with ADD and went on meds for treatment. While I feel my fears were founded in reality they turned out to be wrong. On his meds he still acts up sometimes, he still pushes his brothers and sisters around sometimes when he gets mad, and he still throws a fit here and there. The difference is that these things appear to be habits rather than a lack of control. He is able, now, to pull himself back out of the acting out and change his direction and he is getting better and better at it as time goes on. His personality, the good parts, show more often than not these days and he can be a real help when he sets his mind to it.
One of the things I learned while researching discipline methods for kids with ADD is that he needs choices instead of orders. For instance one of their grandmothers was going to pick the older five kids up and take them to a movie. My better half agreed for this without remembering I had told them they were allowed to do nothing but sit down at the table for meals unless their rooms got cleaned. Every last kid was grounded from everything until their bedrooms were clean. For DS2 just telling him “Go clean your room” wouldn’t work. He may clean for a while then play, respond with “I don’t want to”, or simply go into his room without a word and start playing. To combat this we explain his choices to him. “You can go clean your room and work until it is done then go to the movies with grandma or you can not help clean your room and sit at home while everyone else goes to the movies and has fun. What do you want to do?” “I want to go to the movie!” “How do you get to do that?” “Clean my room” (In his best Charlie-Brown-why’s-everybody-always-pickin’-on-me voice complete with defeated body language) “So what do you want to do?” “Clean my room.” This doesn’t work all the time. For larger jobs he still gets distracted and plays but he understands that what happens is his choice and his alone. There is no “If you do or don’t do X I will do this” but rather “If you do or don’t do X you will cause Y to happen”. This makes things his responsibility and his alone. It may seem strange to put emphasis on responsibility with a child who has been diagnosed with a disorder that is marked by a lack of control but it works. It’s not a magic pill that fixes everything but it does help a lot. By presenting choices when it’s something we are telling him to do he has also learned that it’s his choice how he treats the other kids. Sometimes he makes a bad choice and sometimes he makes the right one but what seven year old can be expected to make the right choice every time? He is a great kid and he is learning, along with us, how to manage things better and I know we will work through helping him change.
Now DD3 is about to be three years old and I see much of the same attitude and behaviors that we dealt with in DS2. I would love to say that we just have to work with her until she’s old enough to go to the neurologist and be tested for ADD but I can’t. I have the same fears as I’ve had about every single one of the kids we’ve had tested so far. I don’t think it’s a bad things to have these concerns as I believe that we, as a society, rely on medication to fix way too many things and when we have school nurses, not even PAs, diagnosing kids with neurological disorders and GPs accepting that diagnoses without question and prescribing based on it then we have a problem. Of course we homeschool so that will never be an issue but I don’t want to be the equivalent of the school nurse in my own home. So I struggle with each child that I take to see the doctor for this or any other problem but I always take them in the end. I don’t want to cripple them by not having something treated that could have been. These are hard decisions for a parent to make, at least they should be, and if you are struggling with them then do your research, find a medical doctor (read: neurologist and not a shrink) you can trust, and see where things lead. Always be informed and always ask questions. If your kids are in public school and the nurse or administration is trying to say they have a disorder then always always always seek another opinion and preferably one that knows nothing of the school’s “diagnosis”.
We are trying to raise our Lost Boys as responsible men and our Princesses as respectable women. I will probably fail at a lot of the necessary pieces of these puzzles and my wife will fail at others but in the end I hope to give them all what my parents gave me: the tools to become responsible adults regardless of much their parents screwed it up. If I can do that then I have done better than most parents in my age group.
