I had a whole post planned about the Christmas inventory I did today. It was going to be entertaining and fun. I was going to enjoy writing it. Now it is 9 pm and I finally have time and quiet to write, only I’m too grumpy and tired from all the putting-kids-to-bed to write that post. Maybe I’ll get to write it tomorrow.
I shouldn’t complain. After all, I had vast swathes of free time this afternoon. I just filled them with inventory rather than with writing about doing inventory.
The free time came courtesy of our huge bin of legos. Way back when the very first sets of Star Wars legos made their appearance, Howard longed to own all of them. I aided and abetted this desire and so we used much of our disposable income on lego sets for several years. Then we realized that we were never going to catch up because they’d keep creating more sets. We also realized that we already had about a hojillion legos and didn’t need more than that. At the time our kids were too small to really play with legos. I remember one evening when we were building things when two-year-old Kiki pulled all the heads off of the lego men and lined them up on a flat green board like some sort of a head garden. Or perhaps it was a recreation of the French Revolution. Other than making head gardens, mostly the kids just scattered the legos without really building anything. But now they are old enough to construct. And now we do not have a lego eating baby or toddler in the house. So now is the time for us to put away the duplos and bring out the legos for every day use. The kids are thrilled with this prospect. I’m fairly certain that my vacuum cleaner will be less than thrilled as it eats all the tiny pieces that always get lost in the corners of the room. Hopefully it will be a happy switch and not one that has me ready to tear my hair out and throw all the legos away.
BUT the switch cannot be made until 1 pm on Wednesday after I finish hosting a church luncheon here at my house. The luncheon will have a variety of women and small children invading my house and some of them will not be lego safe. I’m looking forward to hosting this luncheon. It will give me motivation to clean all the corners of my house that I’ve been ignoring for the past several months.
So legos = good. Luncheon = good. Silence from upstairs where Gleek & Patches are in bed while Link is snacking and Kiki is reading = good. What was I grumpy about again?
Must have been something in the air. Getting my little troublemakers to bed last night was equally frustrating.
Must have been something in the air. Getting my little troublemakers to bed last night was equally frustrating.
With all those itty-bitty pieces, the kid who has the chore of “put away 200 toys” will find it a bit easier 🙂 That sounds cool, I hope the kids have as much fun with them now as you did.
“Christmas Inventory” ?
One thing that frustrated me with those Star Wars and other specific-exotic sets is that they don’t come with their own storage containers like the nice big sets of regular building bricks do!
We had a Mindstorms robotics set for a year or so. Fun little things, although we didn’t do that much with it. I’d gotten it at my husband’s urging for a security class project: a robot that created cryptographic keys.
We fiddled with concepts like pinball-machine style or rolling dice, and finally settled on flipping a coin. I couldn’t get the sensors to correctly read which face of the die came up, but the light sensor was able to easily determine if it was facing the black or the white side of an Othello chip. So in short, you’d tell the program that you wanted a 64-bit key, and it’d send instructions to the robot to flip the chip and read the light level, returning 0/1 as appropriate, then when it had picked up 64 bits it assembled them into a key.
It had an appropriately graduate-level high-falutin’-sounding title along the lines of “Creating Cryptographic Keys through Computer-Mediated Mechanical Random Number Generation”.
Mechanical – flipping a coin, or in this case, an Othello Chip; we did not use the internal RNG program because that’s not truly random
Computer-Mediated – the computer told it how many times to flip the coin
The bulk of the paper was research into random number generation and key generation, and a good dollop of statistical analysis of the results for randomness.
My husband is on the dedication for that project because he had to give up the dining room table for weeks and weeks. And he didn’t gripe (TOO much) about stepping on the frickin’ little pieces at 2am.
Just blathering a bit, putting off housework, and really enjoying your writing. *hugs*
With all those itty-bitty pieces, the kid who has the chore of “put away 200 toys” will find it a bit easier 🙂 That sounds cool, I hope the kids have as much fun with them now as you did.
“Christmas Inventory” ?
One thing that frustrated me with those Star Wars and other specific-exotic sets is that they don’t come with their own storage containers like the nice big sets of regular building bricks do!
We had a Mindstorms robotics set for a year or so. Fun little things, although we didn’t do that much with it. I’d gotten it at my husband’s urging for a security class project: a robot that created cryptographic keys.
We fiddled with concepts like pinball-machine style or rolling dice, and finally settled on flipping a coin. I couldn’t get the sensors to correctly read which face of the die came up, but the light sensor was able to easily determine if it was facing the black or the white side of an Othello chip. So in short, you’d tell the program that you wanted a 64-bit key, and it’d send instructions to the robot to flip the chip and read the light level, returning 0/1 as appropriate, then when it had picked up 64 bits it assembled them into a key.
It had an appropriately graduate-level high-falutin’-sounding title along the lines of “Creating Cryptographic Keys through Computer-Mediated Mechanical Random Number Generation”.
Mechanical – flipping a coin, or in this case, an Othello Chip; we did not use the internal RNG program because that’s not truly random
Computer-Mediated – the computer told it how many times to flip the coin
The bulk of the paper was research into random number generation and key generation, and a good dollop of statistical analysis of the results for randomness.
My husband is on the dedication for that project because he had to give up the dining room table for weeks and weeks. And he didn’t gripe (TOO much) about stepping on the frickin’ little pieces at 2am.
Just blathering a bit, putting off housework, and really enjoying your writing. *hugs*
Something that we go with the legos is to only play with them on top of a large sheet. At the end of the session, the sheet’s corners can just be bundled together, and the whole package goes back into the bin. That way a lot fewer pieces get lost or scattered, and it’s way easier to clean up than scooping everything off the floor.
Something that we go with the legos is to only play with them on top of a large sheet. At the end of the session, the sheet’s corners can just be bundled together, and the whole package goes back into the bin. That way a lot fewer pieces get lost or scattered, and it’s way easier to clean up than scooping everything off the floor.
Legos are the best. When I was a kid, my favorite toys were stuffed animals, legos, and these awesome big wooden blocks that my parents had gotten us from some non-chain wooden toy maker.
Also, I am entertained by the head garden. Heehee!
Legos are the best. When I was a kid, my favorite toys were stuffed animals, legos, and these awesome big wooden blocks that my parents had gotten us from some non-chain wooden toy maker.
Also, I am entertained by the head garden. Heehee!
1) “I remember one evening when we were building things when two-year-old Kiki pulled all the heads off of the lego men and lined them up on a flat green board like some sort of a head garden. Or perhaps it was a recreation of the French Revolution.”
That made me giggle like a loon. Wait, I am a loon. Okay, but it still made me giggle!
2) Legos rock. But I was terribly gutted when they dropped Magnetron and Blacktron for some newfangled space setting; and proceeded to start changing their space-themed sets every year or two. It meant you lost the desire and goal to buy the sets item by item as you saved up… now it’s “Get mum to buy the whole lot” or “Don’t bother”. I guess that’s the point and all, but the nerve of it put me off.
…But the french revolution quip still has me giggling. 🙂
1) “I remember one evening when we were building things when two-year-old Kiki pulled all the heads off of the lego men and lined them up on a flat green board like some sort of a head garden. Or perhaps it was a recreation of the French Revolution.”
That made me giggle like a loon. Wait, I am a loon. Okay, but it still made me giggle!
2) Legos rock. But I was terribly gutted when they dropped Magnetron and Blacktron for some newfangled space setting; and proceeded to start changing their space-themed sets every year or two. It meant you lost the desire and goal to buy the sets item by item as you saved up… now it’s “Get mum to buy the whole lot” or “Don’t bother”. I guess that’s the point and all, but the nerve of it put me off.
…But the french revolution quip still has me giggling. 🙂