As part of my New Year's Resolutions to "streamline operations" so-to-speak, I am dropping some of my blog locations. Unfortunately, this is one of them. It's not because I don't love AtariAge -- it's because cutting and pasting the same blog four or five times a day into different windows is taking up too much time. Additionally, every blog entry I post here has to have the HTML stripped out and replaced with BBCode, a process that can take anywhere from a little while to a lotta while dependin
Every now and then little snippets of songs pop into my head -- songs, for the most part, I remember singing in elementary school. Over the past few months several of these have popped back up for one reason or another. Hopefully by sharing them with you I will be able to get them out of my head, and into yours. Here are the seven songs, and what happened to them.
Pablo the Reindeer from Mexico
Santa's sleigh is starting to get a little crowded. At first there were only eight reindeer. R
Like a whirling dervish, Susan came and went this weekend. Our friend Emily picked her up from the airport just before midnight Friday night. The kids did their best to wait up for her. Morgan gassed out around 10:30pm. Mason made it a little longer, to around 11:15pm. By then, not even the spongiest of SpongeBob episodes could keep his eyelids open. Susan came home to a home full of sleeping children.
She also came home to a mess. The house itself actually wasn't that bad but there were dis
Apparently everything in my home that uses electricity held a meeting while I was at work yesterday and determined it is now time to start shocking me at every opportunity. The refrigerator door handle, the screws on the light switch plates, the fireplace, the front of the DVD player and of course the laptop. The fireplace shocked me so hard yesterday I thought it had blown my fingernail off and my whole finger throbbed for a couple of minutes. Ridiculous. I am now touching everything metal in m
Well here it is -- the longest and most thorough list of New Year's Resolutions I've made for myself in several years. I've been reading quite a bit about ways to find success when it comes to making and keeping New Year's Resolutions, and most experts agree (why are there experts in the New Year's Resolution department?) that there are three basic things you can do to increase your odds of success: put some thought into your resolutions (don't just make them up on New Year's Eve), make a plan t
My alarm didn't go off this morning. When I rolled over and looked at the alarm clock it said 7:37. My plan this week was to wake up around 6am, take a shower and be dressed by 6:30am, get the kids up and around and dressed and leave the house by 7am.
We're late.
My first thought was, "Gotta go wake the kids up." I ran out to the living room and ... there they were. Mason was playing his Nintendo DS while Morgan was wearing her ballerina tutu and watching television.
"How come nobody
As I continue hammering out my 2009 resolutions, one thing I cannot decide is what to do with my Star Wars collection.
I grew up loving Star Wars. In 1982, my bedroom looked like this:
The vast majority of my Star Wars action figures and spaceships survived my childhood and ended up boxed up and packed away. I've lugged them from house to house, occasionally unpacking and displaying them but, for the most part, just storing them. In 1995 when the original films were re-released, Sta
The kids and I just got back from dropping Susan off at the airport. She'll be in Florida this week, flying home over the weekend, and flying back out Sunday for a second week in Florida. The kids each have five days worth of clothes laid out for this week. Mason has to take his lunch on Tuesday (it's "stew day"). Other than that, everything should be fairly routine. Morgan was fine with Mommy going on a trip until we arrived at the airport and she realized she wasn't going. It was a rough ride
About an hour into The Tale of Despereaux (pronounced Dess-per-Row) I was already brainstorming headlines for this review. "Despereaux-te to Leave" was one I came up with. "The Tale of Desper-No" was another one. I originally considered "Desper-eaux-no" before settling on "The Fail of Despereaux," which I decided was wittier, funnier, and more thought provoking than anything contained within the movie itself.
Warning: this review deliberately contains spoilers in an attempt to keep you from
I hope everybody had a safe and enjoyable New Year's Eve!
Both Jeff and Andy and their families stopped by the house to helped us bring in the new year. There were lots of snacks and fun and (or course) games. Click on the picture of Sawyer Willrath below to see more pictures from New Year's Eve.
I've never had an appreciation for art that I can't make heads or tails out of, and I've always secretly wondered what would happen if you took a piece of abstract artwork and rotated it 90 degrees.
So, last summer, I did it.
In the Starbucks off of I-240 and Penn in Oklahoma City (and, I suspect, many others across the country) there are pieces of artwork made up of four smaller paintings arranged in a cube. Back in June of this year (2008) I noticed that one of them was not completely
One of my New Year's Resolutions is to go as digital as I can -- this means moving my music, movies, books and photos into the computer. In preparation for this, I built myself a four-terabyte drive RAID in a big yellow full-sized tower that has been since dubbed "Moonpie."
Currently I am copying all my mp3s up to Moonpie, one CD at a time. Each CD can take up to five minutes and I have 500+ CDs of music archived, so it's going to take a few weeks. If you're thinking, "there's no way anyone
So, here's where we stand. Mason broke his humerus (aka his "funny bone"). The doctor said it was a very slight fracture, but apparently slight fractures are treated the same way as any other fracture. Yesterday Mason's temporary splint was removed and replaced with a hard cast. Apparently great strides have been made in the area of arm casts over the past several years (who knew?). Mason's doctor actually recommended that he get his cast wet at least once a day -- Mason can shower and bathe wit
After a day of walking around the house with one shoulder significantly lower than the other, we took Mason to the hospital to get him looked at. The doctor said that he had a "muscle or ligament tear," which should heal itself with time.
Because of his injury, Mason decided to give the Heeleys a rest and switch to the Ripstick. As I briefly explained the other day, a Ripstik is a skateboard-like device that only has two wheels (one on each end), both of which spin. Here is a video of some k
With the children, I have learned not to ask important questions too early as their answers change frequently. For example, this year for Mason's birthday we asked him three times (about a week apart) where he wanted to have his birthday party. Each time we asked we got a different answer: bowling alley, the Omniplex, and finally, the skating rink. The trick is not to keep asking once the decision has been made so they don't get the opportunity to change their minds.
Unfortunately this doesn
Growing up, Susan's family exchanged presents on Christmas Eve. In my household, that was the ultimate sin. As a result we've ended up with this conglomeration of a holiday ritual. It starts on Christmas Eve when both of our families get together to eat, exchange gifts, and eat some more. The key here is that only gifts are exchanged with Susan's side of the family; we give them our gifts and open theirs from them. For three hours we open gifts and let the kids eat cookies, chocolate, and candy
Mason's officially on Christmas Break, which unfortunately just means he goes to daycare instead of going to school. He doesn't mind; it's like a mini-reunion up there with all his old daycare friends.
One of his friends has been bringing their Nintendo Wii to daycare this week, and apparently Mason promised to bring Rock Band for everyone to play. When I was informed of his little plan last night, I said no way. I don't need two dozen kids beating on our drums, breaking my guitars and drop
Nothing makes me more nervous than having to depend on technology in a "once in a lifetime" situation. I've done it a few times before and every time I've had butterflies in my stomach from start to finish.
For example, I've done three critical slideshows -- two for weddings, the other for a funeral. Those are events you don't want to screw up. Each of the slideshows consisting of photographs with music playing in the background. I work on computers every single day and while I know how rel
(Originally submitted to the Minco Millennium Newspaper.)
It's the weekend before Christmas and I had half a dozen topics lined up to write about: last minute shopping, mall crowds, fruit cakes (the kind you eat) and fruit cakes (the kind that visit during the holidays). Unfortunately over the weekend, another topic presented itself; my best friend's grandfather, Marvin Kimbrough, passed away.
I met Jeff over twenty years ago on the first day of seventh grade in music class. As our music
Me > We are having trouble with our phone line.
Analyst > Hi, I understand that you are having difficulties with your Digital Telephone service. Am I correct?
Me > Yes.
Analyst > What kind of problem are you experiencing?
Me > The kind where my phone doesn't work.
Analyst > I do apologize, however at the moment you have reached Cox High Speed Internet Technical Support. For information regarding our Digital Telephone services, please call your local support
The last time I went to a Thunder game the team was 1-10 and they had lost all four games I attended. Now ranked dead last with a record of 2 wins and 23 losses, the Oklahoma City Thunder took on the 24th ranked Los Angeles Clippers.
While the Thunder may have been in the Ford Center, there was no lightning to be found. The game started close with a score of 4-4, and five minutes later the Clippers were up by 14. The rest of the night was classic Thunder basketball, with our team getting wit
After four months of sales, the first run of Invading Spaces (100 copies) has basically sold out (I actually have four copies left, for anyone looking for a last minute Christmas gift for that arcade-loving man or woman in your life). I have more copies on the way, but it'll be two weeks before they're here.
Invading Spaces has sold at a slower pace than Commodork did. I don't think this is because Invading Spaces is an inferior book. My biggest problem with Invading Spaces has been marketi
Last Saturday, Dad, Mason and I went to the Warren Theater in Moore, Oklahoma to catch the 2008 remake/reimagining of The Day the Earth Stood Still.
First, a few words about the Warren Theater. The Warren is 25 miles away from my house. There are two theaters within 2 miles of my home, and we passed many others along the way. General admission tickets at the Warren are a couple of bucks more than either of those other theaters, and the snacks and drinks are about the same -- which is to say,
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord