Huffman Coding

Tomorrow is the start of Katie’s week of Horse Camp at Autumn Rose Farm. It is taught by Ohio State’s Equestrian Team.

Horselover that she is, she has been looking forward to it for weeks, but at dinner today she was in a funk. She announced that she no longer liked horses and no longer wanted to go to horse camp. We were surprised. She said horses weren’t like people and you couldn’t invite them over to play. I asked if she wanted to go to “people camp” instead, but that didn’t lighten her mood.

When we asked the real reason why she was upset, she said we should know why, but alas Chris and I still had no clue. (Living with three teenagers is going to be FUN in a few years!)

Finally she opened up. She didn’t want to go to horse camp because “we wouldn’t let her bring one home.”

Ah, I found an air-conditioned library. The first three days of GOBA I’ve been without air conditioning and out of cell phone range.

Last year the GOBA route was hilly and scenic. This year it is flat and corn field after corn field. Today, an optional day, there was a change of scenery: We tooled by Marbled Head, Lakeside, and Catawba Island. Very nice.

The only hiccup this week so far was the lack of food at the lunch stop on Monday. Food is provided by local non-profits, with hints from the organizers as to the type of items we like.

The organizers also inform the locals as to when the riders will be riding through town. The riders start the ride anywhere from 6:30am to 9:30am. (To avoid the heat of the day, I tend to be among the early bunch.) This means “lunchtime” on the road is anywhere between 8am and about noon. Despite lots of warning as this timeframe, the church ladies are frequently taken aback by sweaty guys expecting to be fed lunch at 8am.

The Monday food provider apparently showed up at 9am. Way late. Several dozen sweaty, smelly riders went hungry. I was one of them.

I’m headed off to GOBA for a week of bicycling.

Year over year, I have less “me” time and end up with fewer miles under my belt before the ride. I’m been on my bike maybe 5 times this year, and GOBA is 300 to 400 miles.

So I will not be blogging this next week. I know how meaningless and empty your lives all are without my postings, but try to get by.

So here are the things I should have written about, but probably won’t get the time to blog:

1) Marissa’s piano recital and how she learned that “traditional” (the composer of her two 20-second songs) means “they forgot who wrote it.”

2) Chris discovered that the flash delay on her digital camera is unbearable, this after missing just about every important shot at Katie’s gymnastic meet.

3) A couple of friends and I bought a half a terabyte of hard disk drives for $100 combined (if all NINE rebate checks come back).

4) “Half Caff” coffee sucks.

Marissa announced a couple of weeks ago that her favorite song was 1985. She’s heard it on the minivan radio.  The chorus is:

Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, way before Nirvana,
There was U2 and Blondie, and music still on MTV
Her two kids in high school, they tell her that she’s uncool
Cuz she’s still preoccupied with 1985

I found it humorous that she likes a song that makes references to musical groups that were popular more than a decade before she was born: Bands that she has never heard of.  But I have to admit that it is a catchy tune.

Always one to encourage her to appreciate music, I went to the website for the band (Bowling for Soup).  Like most sites it had snippets for the first 30 seconds of a few songs.  All of them were upbeat pop, so the next day at Best Buy I got the DualDisc CD.  I was hoping that the 5.1 DVD side would work in my car.  Unfortunately, my car only plays surround sound if it is DVD-Audio and the flip side of this album was in DVD-Video.  The extra buck was wasted.

The album was called A Hangover You Don’t Deserve.  Not a good sign if you are also buying for a seven-year-old.  There was also a “Parental Advisory” sticker.  Ug.  Oh well, I’d rip the CD onto another, removing the tracks inappropriate for a second grader.  A backup CD is a good thing to do anyway because my girls have scratched up other CDs in the past.

I listened to the CD at work this past week to figure out which tracks would pass muster.  I enjoyed the entire album, but it got more ribald the farther it went along.  I’m really NOT a prude, but only about half could be shared with Marissa.  Track 8, Last Call Casualty: no.  Track 9, Next Ex-Girlfriend: no.  Track 10, A-Hole: definitely not.  Track 11, My Hometown: eeek!

This CD is going to stay in my car.  Perhaps I can interest her in The Decemberists instead.

I did rip 1985 onto her GameBoy though.  And an hour ago, with her headphones plugged into the thing, I could hear her sing:

Springsteen, Madonna, way before your mama…

As most of you probably remember, it took until day 51 of ownership before my wife sat in the new car. I had to ply her with a movie to overcome her inertia. I figured once she realized it was just a harmless family sedan, she would choose to acclimate to it herself on her own schedule.

Well it seems that she has settled in to a eight week cycle. Because today, day 107 (not that I’m counting), she sat in it a second time. And actually drove it. At this rate she will sit in the car three more times this year.

I choose to believe she could no longer her suppress her hidden desire to drive the car. And not because she needed to go somewhere at the same time I had to use the minivan to pick up a couple 8ft tables.

Star Wars this afternoon, I saw.   With co-workers, I went.  For all the engineers to go, the company Vice President paid.  Private screening, it was.  Stilted dialog, did certainly George Lucas write.  Continually moped, Natalie Portman character’s did.

Buffalo wings after the movie, we had.  To bail early, I did.  Pick up Claire at daycare, I must.  Claire’s last day of the school year, it was.

Sandbox sand in the backseat of car, will there hopefully no longer be.

On a grocery store run last weekend to get apple butter (a fixation) and dishwasher rinse agent (not a fixation), the car radio fell silent and the display reported “XM Updating.”

The 90 day trial period for XM had expired and now all I can get is the preview channel. Now if I want to listen to talk radio, I have to tune in… the AM band. Oh the horrors. Although I might miss Morning Sedition, I never found the one XM station that I couldn’t live without.

I’ve got a promotion code that will probably allow me to get XM for half price, but still I cannot rationalize the monthly fee for a car that is only driven about 7000 miles a year. This is in keeping with our recent monthly austerity plan of cancelling cable and our rarely used YMCA membership, and switching to Vonage and a cheaper cell phone plan.

On a related note, the two pound bag of Starburst that I keep in my car’s armrest to dole out to my children when they behave also ran out this past weekend.

In keeping with reducing our recurring expenses, perhaps I should switch to hard candy.

After several contacts with their customer service and a couple of expired deadlines, my Sprint PCS rebate check finally came yesterday. W00t!

In celebration, everyone who stops by my office this week with will qualify a free soft drink. (Allow 8 weeks for delivery.)

Sometime I suppose in the past day or two, the thermostat in the aquarium went out. The temperature rose to the point today that six fish and the snail perished.

Instead of floating to the top, they sunk to the bottom of the tank. Except for the one that got stuck Nemo-style in the aerator intake.

Chris was bailing when I got home. She refilled the tank with cleaner, cooler water for, what appears to be, the sole remaining fish.

By sheer coincidence, we had fried fish for dinner.