Author Archives: Randy Peterman

Evie: Video Footage

You can download a huge 16MB video file of Evie smiling and Jessica and I making complete fools of ourselves keeping her smiling here. I figured that since I still have yet to post some new pictures this was the way to go. It should be rather high quality (for the internet) and you should be able to view it quite large 🙂

The audio is a bit funky because our camcorder appears to be messed up for no apparent reason. It keeps me humble and from outdoing Steven Spieldberg.

UPDATE Some people have reported that the mpeg file did not work. Here it is in AVI, and here it is in a Quicktime MOV file.

Hockey Boots

Abby has Hockey boots. Not really, but she has boots that she calls hockey boots. Why? I blame Julia Roberts. She was in that one movie with some guy who had problems with gerbils… Richard something or other. She played a prostitute who had a thing for very tall boots. So… in my family tall boots (unfortunately) were called ‘hooker boots.’ So, Abby, not having a clue what hooker boots are has hockey boots. And let me tell you: she can play all of the hockey in boots she wants, as soon as she takes up fishing, its over.

One of My Worster Mistakes Ever

Last night, in what is possibly one of the sins in life that could be compared to say, murder, being discovered to not be wearing clean underpants when you get in an accident or not flossing daily: I went into Wal-Mart for a quick pickup of a few items Jess had put on my shopping list that were not at Whole Foods Market. Woops! I said ‘Quick’ and ‘Wal-Mart’ in the same sentence. However, this is not about sins or quick, or a quick sin for that matter (see: teaching a 3 year old potty words).

What amazed me was that a 2 liter bottle of Fresca no calory fruit soft-drink was 88 cents. A 20 ounce bottle was $1.20. If you do the math I could dump what I didn’t need down the drain and come out ahead just for buying 2 liters. I don’t think Coke is making its $100 billion on 2 liter bottles, but instead from those smaller bottles that people buy for convenience.

But enough about convenience. I think the Wal-Mart employees are working so slowly at the checkout lines because the ‘Wal-Mart Channel’ speakers are blaring Wal-Mart propaganda at them and their customers for hours on end. You can’t listen to, “We care about you and your family at Wal-Mart,” while making a $5.34 an hour as a cash register clerk and think, “Heck, yeah! Wal-Mart cares about me!” In fact if anything you can only think, “Turn this freaking thing off before somebody gets a load of damaged groceries for free!”

I especially liked that the Wal-Mart channel had a suggestion that people bring in photos and have Christmas cards made. One happy customer on the commercial said (and I’m not making this up) that people called her to tell her how professional they looked. Do you call people up and say, “Dang, Lucy, that’s the most unprofessional Christmas Card I’ve ever seen. If you send something like that out again, I’m never going to talk to you again!” I didn’t think so.

So, I learned a valuable lesson: buy cheap soda at Wal-Mart. But I learned a more valuable lesson: don’t shop at Wal-Mart period.

Lost in a World of Aliases

Jessica has been a big fan of Alias and Lost, both JJ Abrams production, for some time now. I was initially into Alias, but it eventually got too formulaic. Then Lost came out and I’ve been more hooked on that show lately. However, almost everytime Jessica watches Alias I call it Lost for no apparent reason. It is as if Alias does nto exist and my mind can only spew out ‘Lost.’ I hope this doesn’t happen in other areas of my life. It would be really annoying to have word associations in my head so as to place me in a scenario where I find that I always tell people that they look ‘fat’ instead of ‘good.’ As it is I can’t hardly not say that Jessica is pregnant even though she just had Evie. And by just I mean 6 weeks ago, which is plenty of time for recovery and getting pregnant again. That would be just slightly intense.

I’d rather keep calling Alias Lost and just move on now.

Coke, $100 Billion Isn’t Good Enough

In this article: Coke to retire ‘Real’ with new tagline in 2006 you can read about how Coke is only 1.8 Billion dollars ahead of Pepsi in drink sales and its really causing them to push harder. That’s right, billions and billions of dollars are spent on sodas around the globe. Those two ‘big players’ bring in just shy of 200 billion together.

Sales have been slumping though lately. I think this could be because of diet changes, a shrinkage in the economy or the fact that sodas with corn syrup have been linked to all sorts of medical problems, as have sodas with nutra-sweet. I’m doing my part to increase soda consumption, but Coke and Pepsi do not own Dr. Pepper, so I’m not helping them by drinking the Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper.

Schnikeys that’s a huge industry.

Bredth of Knowledge Verses Depth of Knowledge

In life I have been a jack of all trades, but master of none. Or so the idiom goes, and my English isn’t spectacular so I’ll stick with that idiom. You see, I’ve been fascinated with life around me and wanted to learn about as much as possible at least just to know something about it. I have picked up bits of musical training, juggling, slight of hand tricks, bits of languages [Spanish, German, French and Greek all mean almost nothing to me, but not nothing like Russian], mathematics, philosophy, woodworking, gardening, driving a car, riding a motorcycle, fishing, coffee brewing, tea brewing, cooking, bicycling, photography and parenting 🙂 However, there are a few items that are on a much shorter list, a list of things that I want to know a lot about. I want to know about programming and computers, I want to know a lot about theology and I want to know a lot about my wife. Those subjects are very important because my depth of knowledge in those areas has a broad impact on my future.

I want to add hundreds of things to my repertoire of experiences and understandings so that I can have a breadth of knowledge that understands how various fields of learning interact. Sometimes breakthroughs in one field are a direct result of knowledge of things in another field. At other times having a knowledge of one field helps you explain another field to people who only have a good grasp of the first field (example: explaining how Apple OS X works to people who use Windows requires a third party object to explain simplicity. Windows users inherently look for more complexity in software which makes learning how a Mac works twice as difficult for experienced Windows users). I once read an essay by Albert Einstein in which he encouraged people to gain a broad knowledge of many fields so that they could be educated.

I love history. Not just dates and times, which are of some use, but stories of people who lived through things and hopefully learned things as well. I love to learn about how nations were created, wars were faught and won, and how people succeded through failure. I figure that failure is only part of learning in this human life. Sometimes death is the only way to see life [see: Christ’s Resurrection]. Sometimes we have to try the many possible solutions before we succeed [See: Thomas Edison and Team’s work on the light bulb to find the right filament]. Sometimes we get it right the first time, and those times are often sweet. They are when we feel like we’re ‘naturals’ or that we have a talent or knack for something. I have a knack for learning things and I think making people laugh. My depth of knowledge in many areas is not very deep, but enough to make me dangerous, but I do know one thing: I know what counts. Do you know your strengths and weaknesses and what matters most? No matter what I learn I’ve found that knowing those things keeps me grounded… well, that and gravity – I know a wee bit about physics.

The Most Shameful of Confessions

I don’t know how to tie very many knots. I was never a boyscout, I didn’t learn how to tie knots on my grandparent’s farm, I didn’t learn how to tie more than my shoes at any given time. I can barely put together a slipknot. However, there’s hope for me yet: I Will Knot!. Its a site with simple text based descriptions and quick videos demonstrating the knotting techniques. I think that I’ll have to get a small piece of rope from the garage and get thist stuff down. Then I can check yet one more thing off of my list of things to do before I die.

Well, at least I can trade this for another thing like riding a uni…umpgh [and the sound of crashing]!

Getting Cold

It is now really close to 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-17.78 degrees Celsius) here in Aurora. What is so strange for me is this: I’m not used to the temperature getting that cold. However, getting that cold and getting that warm are quite possible, so I won’t complain. At least its not in the heavy negatives wherein deisel fuel starts turning to a solid 🙂

Doh!

I just got a phone call from a retailer trying to get in touch with my wife about a present that I know is for me. I’d like to add at this point in time that if you are such a retailer, work for a retailer or hustle watches on the streets of New York city [props to Louanne for the idea for that last one] please don’t call prospective buyers houses with a paragraph full of information. Caller ID is already a dead give away, it would be best to have as little information as possible for anyone but the person to whom you are supposed to speak.

Well, at least I’m looking quite forward to Saturday morning when we’ll have out local S. Mobile street present opening for the Petermans 🙂 The only hint I’m going to drop is this: one.

The Drumstick of Doom

When I was a boy I did not like chicken. There wasn’t a meat besides hamburger that really appealed to me, but chicken was right out. My mom probably cooked it because it was inexpensive to feed a family of 5 with chicken instead of steak and Lobster. However, I was not a big fan and so I took every oportunity to complain and gripe.

One night my dad was not home from school yet (my dad was in school for much of my youth, at least before I was a teenager) and my mom stepped out of the dining room for a moment. Not being keen on chicken I took that oportunity to slide the sliding glass door open and race to the trash can and dispose of the chicken I had been served. Brilliance. How could I lose for clearing my plate?

Well, for starters there was no chicken bone on my plate. That drumstick had a bone down its center that clearly made up a non-edible piece of chicken. My mom, not being as dumb as I had for some reason anticipated, asked me if I had eaten my chicken [I should not quickly that she most likely heard the door open and close]
“Yes,” I answered.
“Where is the bone?”
“Um… I ate it.”

I don’t recall the conversation after this point, but I do know that my mom went out to the trash can and found the chicken in it. I was punished with having to eat two pieces of chicken. Doh! The moral of the story should be something whittier than “don’t lie,” except that its not. At least she didn’t make me eat the chicken I had thrown away!