TheTangens.net

Simon Graduates to second grade

Yesterday, Simon graduated first grade and is well on his way to becoming an outstanding and clearly influential second grader! Note that I have really no idea what it means to be an influential second grader or if it is even possible to be considered influential in second grade. Although, I recently witnessed Simon tell his friend at school to stop eating glue and his friend stopped immediately, I remember thinking “now that’s influence”. So there you go…clearly influential.

We arrived before class began with thank you gifts in hand for Simon’s teachers. I was struck by the emotional response from his teachers as he was handing out his gifts. His teachers, many of which with tears welling in their eyes, responded with a big hug and stated how much they will miss him. As a parent it was wonderful to see and validated our decision to send our kids to Stonebridge.

The ceremony was brief but it was clear that the kids were beaming with pride as they were called up to receive their diplomas.

We celebrated dinner at Ruby Tuesday’s which was chosen by the graduate himself, he likes the salad bar.

We have a red belt in the house!

Twice a week for the past two years our six year old son, Simon, has been attending Karate class. Oh sure, there are days where the “Chuck Norris” in him is latent at best making it a parental struggle to motivate him to attend. But for the most part those little fists of fury are never far from the surface and more times than not he is eager to attend.

The other day Simon tested for and received his red belt! This is a big milestone for him and a clear source of pride as this positions him just a couple of belts away from his ultimate goal which is, of course, a black belt.

Needless to say, I am really proud of him as well. He has worked hard, been frustrated, and persevered…yeah Simon!

Here are a couple of photos from his test and graduation. Not the best quality but captures the spirit of the event.

Anyone seen a black umbrella floating toward my house?

Over the past couple of years I’ve been dealing with migraine headaches. More recently they’ve reached an all time high, causing me to wonder “Why me?” But after a day like today, there’s been a shift in my thinking. Now, I’m wondering “Why the hell not every parent?” Really. The dumping of a full cereal bowl, whining (”Mom, if I’m grounded from Wii, there’s NOTHING for me to do”), back talk, sneaking of parade candy right before dinner, and little sister’s brother-induced nose bleed are enough to constrict the blood vessels at the base of anyone’s skull. So, instead of the specialty headache doc (neurologist) I’m waiting months to get into to see, perhaps I just need Mary Poppins.

Driving to Sioux City in a sea of Vomit

We left this morning for our good friend Alison’s wedding in Sioux City Iowa. Within 45 minutes we heard a cry from the backseat, “I think I am car sick” quickly followed by the unmistakable sound of Simon wretching. Due to Maril’s cat like reflexes she was able to 1) find a plastic bag in time 2) place precisely in the most optimal position to catch the discharge. Maril’s physical response was quite impressive and just reinforced she is not a person to be messed with. Thankfully the event turned out to be little more than a shot across the bow, however, little did we know it was just a sign of things to come.

Approximately 30 minutes later Caroline indicated that she was not feeling well either. Since car sickness has never been an issue with her in the past and she had demonstrated no indications of being ill we brushed it off as just following her brothers lead. Surprisingly, Caroline does not make the same guttural moans that her brother makes when preparing to wretch. There must have been kryptonite in the car at that very moment as Maril’s superhero like reaction was unfortunately not repeated. Leaving a fair amount of clean up.

After these two events all was well and we happily went on our merry way and on time. Nevertheless, I hope that Heather and Josh who are watching our pets are having better luck!

If anybody is aware of any natural remedies or general ideas/”tricks” to help with car sickness please let us know as this is an issue; especially for our son. We have started to give him natural ginger sticks to chew on during long car rides. This seems to help but we are definetly open to suggestions.

Oh the Horror!

That was my wife’s reaction to finding out that there was a typo in this years Christmas letter; all 75 of them. This was a 11th hour find by my mother-in-law which quickly induced a panic across the Tangen family as we tried to identify alternatives, here is what we came up with:

1. Blame it on the kids. This is what I wanted to do.
2. Blame it on the husband. This was my wife’s and kids’ idea.
3. Cancel all holiday activities across the MidWest. This was definetly a group decision while we were at out lowest point in the 6hr discussion. Also, felt we could only affect that kind of change around the MidWest because, let’s face it, this blog is not nearly as influential on the coasts…yet.
4. Send out the letter as-is.

As you can imagine we decided to go with 4, but 2 still seems to be lingering and being tossed around.

We sincerely wish a very Merry Christmas to all as well as a happy and safe 2007!

Tangerine!

Spent some time today playing with Tangerine!. Tangerine is an application that allows you to create playlists by analyzing the beats per minute (BPM) and beat intensity of the songs in your iTunes library. Once analyzed, you query the results by providing a desired range for both BPM and BI that you are looking for and voila…you have a playlist.

I have always been particularly intrigued by this as my musical tastes are rather eclectic and often specific to what I am doing at that moment. Which, of course, means that my playlists are difficult to create in any meaningful way as by nature they are static.

First thing I noticed was the speed in which it ripped through my library. Their blog states roughly 3 songs/second. on a 1.83 Ghz dual-core iMac. I am running this on my 1.67 Ghz PowerBook so did not see quite the performance but was able to process 3.2GB in 200 seconds which is roughly 2.5 songs/second. Frankly, this is faster than I anticipated.

I must say I have been pretty impressed with the consistency of the results. This is not to say that there are some oddities generated. For instance, one of the playlists consisted of Frank Sinatra’s Girl from Ipanema (BPM == 135, BI == 41) with Rob Zombie’s Dragula (BPM == 125, BI == 62). Also, some of the BPM’s that were reported by iTunes were in some cases significantly different from Tangerine!’s analysis. But being that this is in beta (more on that later) I am hopeful that the algorithm will continue to be refined.

A couple of other things you should note if you are thinking about giving it a try. It currently only runs on OS X 10.4 (Tiger). Also, due to the DRM encryption around songs purchased off of the iTunes store Tangerine! is not able to analyze them. Although, they have stated that they are actively working on a solution.

Finally, Tangerine! is currently in beta but if you blog about it or report a bug they will send you a license key when it is released. Here is the Potion Factory, developer’s of Tangerine!, blog.

Camping Trip

This past weekend Marilee and I took the kids up to Taylors Falls on our first family camping vacation. It was a blast! For those that are not familiar with the St. Croix river valley you need to spend some time there especially during this time of the year.

The northern part of the St. Croix river is beautiful year round largely due to the unique rock formations from lava flows millions of years ago and glacial movements. Given this and you add the seasonal color changes in the trees, the faint smell of smoke from campfires, and finally the brisk northerly winds; it is stunning .

The camping itself was fun as well. Simon is going through an afraid of the dark stage, so Marilee and I were anticipating a rough night given the new environment. I am not sure if it was the 1 1/2 mile hike or the fact that he and Caroline made friends with somebody in a neighboring campsite which resulted in a 1 hour game of hide and seek but both he and Caroline slept through the night. Or perhaps it was one too many S’mores. In any event, they even found the courage to fall asleep in the tent by themselves which allowed Maril and I to spend some time around the campfire.

Maril and I both really enjoy the outdoors especially camping, we are really looking forward to our next trip. Here are some pics.