Is Fatherhood a Hard Thing to Do? Maybe? Maybe Not?

Fatherhood is hard!

Wait, no it isn’t: I’m literally drafting this missive while quaffing a beer in downtown San Francisco (the Mission actually), waiting for the kid to finish up a class.

*Thinks back*

Wait. maybe fatherhood is hard?

So, “What the hell am I even talking about,” you ask?

Here’s an example. It starts with car seats. Car seats are a nightmare! They especially were for one of the kids. I’d plop her in the car seat and she’d start to scream. She hated it! She’d continue to scream until we reached our destination. So, ok, that was hard.

Here’s the thing though. In the middle of that we moved to a city with phenomenal public transit, and I quit driving. After that, I just had to hop on the bus with the kid in a wrap. She loved it! I loved it!

Except… Some bus rides are forty-five minutes long. And, sometimes? Sometimes the kid wanted to be bounced through the entire ride.

That was hard.

But other times? On the same ride. The kid abided. The kid snuggled into her wrap up against my chest so warmly, snugly, and secure.

And the kid snoozed.

And sometimes, I did too.

Also? The kid grew. And, as she grew, she would sit on her own in a bus seat. Then—slowly but surely—she could climb onto the bus on her own, following her sibs. That was incredible to watch.

But then? Some people thought she needed to be lifted onto the bus, and so they did. And she’d howl with the anger of a hundred banshees. Mourning. The idignity. The personal violation. The lost opportunity to do what her sibs could do; to follow in their footsteps.

And that hurt. That was hard. Not because she screamed at people. I was with her. How dare they! It hurt to watch her mourn a lost opportunity no matter how little it may have seemed to others. Each and every time she climbed on that bus was the stuff of legends to her.

Now!? Now, the kid rides the bus on her own with her sibs. And that kinda rocks, but I know I’m gonna miss the cuddles, the adventures, and the snoozing, and so it goes.

Comments

More Cowbell! Record Production using Google Forms and Charts

First, the what : This article shows how to embed a new Google Form into any web page. To demonstrate ths, a chart and form that allow blog readers to control the recording levels of each instrument in Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is used. HTML code from the Google version of the form included on this page is shown and the parts that need to be modified are highlighted. Next, the why : Google recently released an e-mail form feature that allows users of Google Documents to create an e-mail a form that automatically places each user's input into an associated spreadsheet. As it turns out, with a little bit of work, the forms that are created by Google Docs can be embedded into any web page. Now, The Goods: Click on the instrument you want turned up, click the submit button and then refresh the page. Through the magic of Google Forms as soon as you click on submit and refresh this web page, the data chart will update immediately. Turn up the:

Cool Math Tricks: Deriving the Divergence, (Del or Nabla) into New (Cylindrical) Coordinate Systems

Now available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents ! Get a spiffy ebook, and fund more physics The following is a pretty lengthy procedure, but converting the divergence, (nabla, del) operator between coordinate systems comes up pretty often. While there are tables for converting between common coordinate systems , there seem to be fewer explanations of the procedure for deriving the conversion, so here goes! What do we actually want? To convert the Cartesian nabla to the nabla for another coordinate system, say… cylindrical coordinates. What we’ll need: 1. The Cartesian Nabla: 2. A set of equations relating the Cartesian coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: 3. A set of equations relating the Cartesian basis vectors to the basis vectors of the new coordinate system: How to do it: Use the chain rule for differentiation to convert the derivatives with respect to the Cartesian variables to derivatives with respect to the cylindrical variables. The chain

The Valentine's Day Magnetic Monopole

There's an assymetry to the form of the two Maxwell's equations shown in picture 1. While the divergence of the electric field is proportional to the electric charge density at a given point, the divergence of the magnetic field is equal to zero. This is typically explained in the following way. While we know that electrons, the fundamental electric charge carriers exist, evidence seems to indicate that magnetic monopoles, the particles that would carry magnetic 'charge', either don't exist, or, the energies required to create them are so high that they are exceedingly rare. That doesn't stop us from looking for them though! Keeping with the theme of Fairbank[1] and his academic progeny over the semester break, today's post is about the discovery of a magnetic monopole candidate event by one of the Fairbank's graduate students, Blas Cabrera[2]. Cabrera was utilizing a loop type of magnetic monopole detector. Its operation is in concept very sim

Copasetic Flow

Search This Blog