Flow chart - diagrams

click on image to get it into a larger format to see the whole thing ... sorry I can't get it differently...

Problem solving flow chart - now this is my humor of the month:

































Circuit diagram:
































the holy water is my favorite part

What's going on, now that we're out ...?

Really cute - doesn't explain offsides, though.


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Drugs vs. Reading good books

Hennepin County Sheriff's Office is implementing a new program within DARE (drug abuse resistance education - btw have I mentioned how annoying I find cutesy acronyms?). I'm glad they're being creative about personnel resources. I know it's been around a while, but I don't know if it's really been demonstrated to be effective. Given the teenage drinking rate is chronically increasing, I'm not sure if it's so worthwhile.

Drugs & alcohol are some of the few things that worry me about being a parent ... I cannot remember ever being even vaguely interested in trying anything. Alcohol was always an ordinary part of life: I've never seen either of my parents intoxicated. Albeit, this is no doubt part of a child's perception of things - - but still, being intoxicated was always seen as something stupid, just as doing drugs was seen as something stupid.

Yet, I never got any peer pressure to do either. My high-school classmates drank - yet the rebellious aspect always seemed to be the simple "look at what I can get away with". Getting drunk didn't seem to be the goal. Admittedly, since I was never part of the social circles, this is a perception from outside.

Still, both of my parents smoked, and I was also never tempted to smoke either. I didn't see it as bad or good, just something that seemed like "mom and dad do it". Unlike drinking, which I assumed all adults did, smoking seemed to be more of a personal choice.

My brothers & I got wine at the big holiday dinners (Thanksgiving, Christmas & Easter) - just a little bit. I think I was 12 the first time I did. I distinctly remember it, since it seemed to be such a big deal.

I once wondered if being Roman Catholic might make drinking less of a mystery. We normally let children take communion when they're around 9 or 10 and we use real wine. Never the less, I'm sure Catholics are just as likely to drink underage as any other group, so my assumption is likely empty. (let's not even get into what 'underage' is or ought to be)

There are so many things that are critical to a child having a healthy, well-adjusted life, e.g. reading, respecting others, personal faith. In the grand scale of things, I'm more worried about the boys avoiding the life-destroying activities (drugs/teenage sex) than whether they read at age 5 or 6. Yet, I can influence the reading far more than the others.

A Night of Music - and what a night it was ...

Our friend, Dr.Nuke - a.k.a. Joachim - was the first person I ever met named Joachim. Not so surprising, since I'm American. Now I can't seem to get away from them. Some child who attends the same after-school group with Jr.Gopher#1 has a father named Joachim. I often see the last name before mine is Joachim-something. Some artwork I admired was from some other German guy named Joachim. And now, Joachim Neugart, the conductor for the Neuss Chamber Orchestra/Kammerorchestra.

He (and they) performed last night at the Germanic-American Institute in St. Paul. We attended. All 4 of us.

The St. Paul German-immersion pre-school is located on the property; the Institute opened it for the evening to allow parents like us to be able to attend something spiffy and not hire a baby sitter. Not really out of any warm-fuzzy hearted feelings, but more since some of the German School's students were performing, and in order to get *their* parents to come, some incentivization was required.

The Jr. Gophers had the opportunity to attend something cultural that children generally don't - the evening chamber orchestra with hors d'oeuvres and getting 'dressed up'. The evening started right about when we're usually telling the boys to put on their pyjamas. This was Michael's first exposure to life classical music, not just the radio in Papa's car.

Gregor departed fairly early to the child-care group. After winning the hearts and minds of every woman over the age of 50, i.e., most of the women there. He looked really handsome (sweetly adorable) in a white oxford shirt & slacks. I, on the other hand, took the opportunity again to wear my new elegant high heels, even if I'm quite certain none of these women noticed.

Michael lasted through the first piece: two movements from Haydn's Symphony No. 1 in D; his attention disappeared during something in Hawai'ian by a local choral group. He then went out to the children's enclave.

Peter & I had a lovely evening listening to lovely music - okay, so I liked Holst better and Peter liked Haydn. The conductor made a point that the St. Paul's Suite wasn't written for anyone in Minnesota.

The program was called "Ein Nacht voller Muzik" A night full of music ... Yes, opening at the GAI with
Twin Cities' German Immersion School student string group
Neuss City Chamber Orchestra playing Haydn (Symp. 1 D) & Holst (St. Paul Suite),
Rose Ensemble singing in Hawai'ian,
the chamber orchestra again, playing with the school children
and then in the car on the way home The Wailin' Jennies: Water from a Deeper Well
while Gregor belted out "Laterne Laterne Sonne Mond und Sterne, brenne ...." (currently his favorite song), then the boys wanted for bed-time songs the ABC-song, and Froggie went a-courtin'.

Let's hear it for eclectic music.


On the ride home, we asked Michael what his favorite part of the evening was, if he enjoyed the (grown up) musicians. He said yes, in a rather non-assertive manner, and then waxed poetic about the huge pretzels ...



Saturday's bed time lights out was 10 p.m. Central Standard time, or rather 11 p.m. Central Daylight Savings' Time.
Ein Morgen(morning) voller Muzik was neither advertised nor occurred. The Tobias men stayed in bed this morning while the Tobias woman went to St. Albert's and did *not* listen to music; unless you consider the wailin' 15-mo. old boy's 45 min cry to be music. It was our turn for during-Mass-child-care. At least one person from the German school noted that someone failed to consider Daylight Savings switch as part of the children's schedule. Although, serendipitously, the wailing boy's parents tried to buy tickets to the GAI concert, which was sold out... Maybe if they'd gone, the boy would have been home in bed, like mine.

Be a lady

Arlen Spectre tells She Who Must Not Be Named (R-MN) to act like a lady, to wit:

"I'm going to treat you like a lady," Mr. Specter shot back. "Now act like one."

Ah, all the more reason to rejoice that he became a democrat: no party harangue after such an honest reminder of common courtesy. This article, however, gave grave cause for fear & trepidation. She Who Must Not Be Named (R-MN) is apparently hosting She Who Must Not Be Named (R-AK) at some rally. I will definitely be somewhere else that day.

I thank God that I don't live in the 6th District. Keith Ellison could board a Northwest flight with explosives in his underwear & I would still prefer him to Bachmann. Come on - complaints about Ellison going on Hajj - or complaints about Bachmann lying about health care bills?

Truth-o-Meter Lie of the Year:

61% Palin ... claims ... uh, lies ... about death panels

3.8% Bachmann ... claims ... uh, lies ... about health care bills

Now, lest you think this is just a bunch of "liberal elitists" slamming "poor misunderstood Christian conservatives":
7.1% of their readers thought that Pres. Obama's claims about "preventative care saves money" was a lie.

Why spend money on basic education, when PR campaign dollars are so much cheaper and quite obviously so much more effective?

Gone Fishin'

[written last Friday]

The boys' daycare field trip was to Lake Minnetonka this morning. It's just west of Minneapolis. Yes, one of those 10,000 lakes. There was a Fish-a-Thon our neighbor kids participated in. After discovering that the boys had never gone fishing, Ms. Tonja decided she was going to correct this deficiency. Getting the boys out of bed and out of the door by 6 a.m. was a bit of a challenge. As Jr. Gopher #1 commented, "It's too dark to get out of bed!" I didn't want to explain that this would be his lot in life as of Monday the 30th.

Jr. Gopher #1 caught 2 fish and wasn't too thrilled with the catching part. He had fun while dangling his line in the water, but not reeling the big catch in.

Jr. Gopher #2 caught 3 fish, and had a blast. He had a Barbie-fishing pole. Maybe the fish were attracted to pink?

Both Jr. Gophers & The Girl Next Door got a boat ride. Much more #1's style. It was a pontoon boat, offering a very stable ride where they could stand up.

Being catch-and-release, we didn't have a fish dinner.

It wasn't quite the Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay kind of day. Cold and rainy not being the sort of weather to deter fishing, they went anyway.


for the wonders of visual special effects, which don't require my brother's skills ....

the photos of Gopher #2 have the same fish.

Famous writers

For those of you who were at our wedding in Gladbeck, you might remember Joachim the organist. In his other life, he's a professor of nuclear physics at the Technical University of Darmstadt. And now, he can add the news magazine Der Spiegel to his C.V. list of publications.

If you happen to read German, you might find this interesting. You might find it interesting anyway, but require it to be translated.

win-max = fn(η-min)

St. Olaf Professor of Physics Jason Engbrecht said you'll want to see this "because obscenely complicated machines are cool."



St. Olaf was not only the only liberal arts school in the competition, it was also the only school without an engineering program.

The annual competition aims to bring to life Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Rube Goldberg's drawings of complicated machines and gadgets that accomplish simple tasks. Using as many whimsical, counterintuitive steps as possible, the machines must complete a task determined each year by contest organizers. The contest is sponsored by the Theta Tau engineering fraternity (at Purdue) and rewards machines that most effectively combine creativity with inefficiency and complexity.

This year's task was to replace an incandescent light bulb with a more energy-efficient light-emitting design. It took 239 steps to turn off an incandescent light and turn on dozens of LED lights spelling "St. Olaf."

Team members built a record player from scratch that, as it spins, allows lasers to fire through pre-drilled holes. The lasers are picked up by light sensors, which trigger several other steps and eventually enable a gate to open and release a ball.

The team also constructed a Gauss rifle, a mechanism that uses a magnetic chain reaction to launch a metal ball at a very high speed, and a simple harmonic oscillator, a system that employs simple harmonic motion and magnetic induction to trigger the start of a car moving along a track. They even turned an ice auger into an Archimedes' screw that caught pool balls and took them from the machine's lower level to an elevated track.