Alex explains ...

... about pilgrims, the Mayflower and stuff like that. Or at least the propaganda they learn.

Thanksgiving

Another year, another thanksgiving.

I still don't really 'get' thanksgiving. But the boys learned a lot about it at school. They brought home a montage of pictures they'd made, and I asked them to explain it to me. They said I should read it, and it would tell me everything I needed to know.

It said "Mayflower. Pilgrims. Native Americans. Turkey." Which was all I needed to know. Apparently. (There's a number of funny things about the way the boys identify races. They don't know, for example, what Indians are. There's native Americans. And they are blissfully unaware of race. There's a reasonable mixture of white, black, Hispanic and Chinese/Japanese [who are called Asian here, which is as logical as the UK census form giving the race categories Asian and Chinese, but anyway ...]. If you ask them to describe one of their friends, they never, ever use race. They don't seem to be aware of it. )

They had a thanksgiving feast at school. They had made tunics (from paper carrier bags - I wasn't sure of the significance of that), pilgrim hats, and Turkey hats. All the children in the two classes wore their tunics and pilgrim hats and climbed onto the steps of the climbing frame. Then a big piece of painted cardboard which had 'Mayflower' written on it, was placed in front of them, and parents dutifully took photos with their cellphones (I left mine at work, which is why they're not here yet).

That was on Wednesday. Yesterday we had our thanksgiving meal. We had Tofurky, actually we had two, which made S cross (she said we only needed one), sweet potato, veggies, and a pumpkin pie that was left over after the school feast so we stole saved it from going to waste. The Tofurky included giblet gravy (it had bits of mushroom floating in it, for extra realism) and cranberry dumplings, which were a bit weird until you get used to them.

Today is Black Friday, as the day after thanksgiving is known, although no one seems to know why, but it's the day that everyone goes shopping - the shops have sales, and people start their christmas shopping. JC Penney (think Debenhams) opened its doors at 4am. Because everyone goes shopping, me and the boys thought it would be a good day to go at Adventure City. Adventure city is a teeny weeny theme park, aimed at kiddies, in Anaheim.

Anaheim is a mysterious place. It's got Disneyland, the world's most famous theme park. It's got Knott's Berry Farm, which isn't a farm, doesn't have berries, but is a pretty big theme park, and it's got Adventure City. Of all the places you could build a theme park, why there?

My theory was that everyone else would be shopping, and so there would be no lines. I don't know if my theory was correct, but there were no lines. Quite a few rides, the kiddies just stayed on, including the airport bus, where they sat in the same seats without moving for seven turns.

The toilets were particularly child friendly. I wondered what was next. His'n'hers?

One the fire engine ride, there was an option to dress as a firefighter. They didn't seem to have the full range of sizes though.

There was a petting zoo, where you could buy sheep and goat feed for a dollar, but the animals were just as prepared to eat leaves from the ground, and were too lazy to pick them up themselves. (Daniel took this film. He's getting better.)

Writer's Strike

The WGA writer's strike is a fairly big deal around here. Here's a video which explains what it's all about.

Geeky Charitable Presents

For quite a while there's been a group who've been trying to develop a laptop computer that would cost $100 (or less), that would be built for children, and that could be used in developing countries. They're called the One Laptop Per Child group. And they've almost succeeded, except that the laptop costs $188, but that's still pretty cheap.

Anyway, for a limited time only, you can buy one of these laptops. Actually, you can't buy one of these laptops. You can buy two, of which you get one, and a child in a developing country gets the other, for $400. So it's fairly charitable, but $400 isn't bad for a laptop.



And they are very kiddy friendly - they don't have a hard disk, just quite a lot of RAM - that's because hard disks break when you drop them and use a lot of power, which isn't any use if you don't have a reliable power supply. They have a clever screen that you can still see in full sunlight, handy if you don't have a classroom. They have wireless internet, and if there's another in range, they automatically detect each other so that kiddies can chat and browse the web together and stuff like that.

But they're fairly geek friendly too. They run a version of Fedora Linux, and have some software that comes with them (including versions of things like FireFox and Opera), games, chat and stuff like that. And for when your little geeklet gets more advanced, it's got a Flash programming language, Python, and stuff like that.

It's so exciting, I want to buy one for me. So that's what the boys are getting for Christmas. Don't tell them though.

Here's a video of one of the laptops controlling a Roomba, over the web.

Halloween

Here's a video of some halloween stuff.

Citizen of the Month

This morning, Alex was given a prize at school assembly, because he was "Citizen of the Month". He got a certificate, a token for a free pizza at Shakey's, a free hamburger or cheeseburger from In'n'Out Burger (oh well), a pencil (which says "Good Citizen" on it) and a bumper sticker for the car, which says "My wonderful child was citizen of the month at Paseo del Rey School".