The Girlies!

As promised, here are those pictures of the girlies.

My parents got back home and were surprised at how much that pumpkin grew. It came from a seed the girls had planted near the shed. They had another plant in the other garden, but none of those got that big.

My new dating site profile picture.

The new Clark Kent.

Is 3GirlKnight a good online username for a guy?

I've gotten compliments for it, but only after I explain what it means. Explaining is a pain if it's necessary.

Here's the story: I got pretty bored the other night and started hunting for online chat rooms. There are quite a few, but most are Flash/Java based, i.e. useless on the iPad. Others are available, but they're....oh, how shall we say... absolutely horrific. Have you ever heard of Tinychat? They actually have an iPad app, but that crap should be banned. It's a bunch of teenagers in a chat room with a whole bunch of 'spectators'. Spectators meaning, 'horny old guys'. Heck if my kids are gonna be on that.

I also found Anybodyoutthere.com. It seems to be what I was looking for. A non-dating, text based chat room, even though it handles more like a forum with transitions into 1 on 1 chats. That's where the question about the username came into play. I got chatted up by a couple of girls who assumed I was another girl. I also got requests from guys to start chats. After starting one of those and explaining the situation, he promptly dropped out and I didn't accept any more. This was all within an hour or so.

So maybe it's just my insecurities but I'm considering changing my online moniker. Not everywhere, which would be a pain in the ass, but in certain places like chat rooms and online dating (if I ever do that.) I can imagine it ending up like one of those old sitcoms where the guy tries to date 2 girls at once without them knowing and starts getting their facts and names mixed up before it all blows up in his face.

Does anyone have any suggestions? If we can't think of a good one, it might have to be a random one, which would be easy to explain, but not as fun. Maybe something similar to 3GirlKnight, just without the 'Girl'. And no, I'm not doing '3GirlieGuy'.

Maybe a play on my real name: Kenster. Kenorama. VeltCamper (a gaming reference or outdoors reference. Both of which I enjoy.) I've been called Veltcrap before. Maybe that would work? CamperKen. No Barbie references please.

Having a tag that can be drawn up in a logo would be cool. Makes it hard to use a name then though.

I'm leaning towards 3GKnight now. What do you think?

Have you ever Googled your own name? If you're anything like me, it's all out there. It seems there's a fairly decent break between my real name and my online tag. Can't find any references from one to the other, which is good.

Anyhoo... I'm done blathering. Now it's your turn. Blather away please.

Disciplining for dummies

There's something hanging pretty heavy on my heart this morning. Something that I've questioned about myself and how our separation/divorce would affect our kids.

It has to do with discipline. Disciplining of children. Not about spanking or dealing with a troubled youth, but rather with consistency and effectiveness.

I was walking into church this morning. A little late. A single mother with her daughter were also coming in, having a very one sided 'discussion'. The mother is probably in her forties and the daughter is 9 or 10. There is no father in the picture that I know of, and I do know a little about them.

The topic of the conversation was about the glasses that the girl was not wearing. It was obvious that her mom had told her to wear them and she wasn't. Here's an excerpt of the conversation;

Mom - "I wish I hadn't bought those glasses. We could have used the money for something else! Oh, just forget it!"

Daughter - "Does that mean I don't have to wear them anymore?"

Mom - "Whatever. I said just forget it."

That broke my heart. I almost stopped them right there to chew them both out, but I'm sure that would not have been very productive. Can't she see that the girl got exactly what she wanted, which was against her mothers demand?

The thing that's wieghting on my heart is the fact that my girlies mother is also not effective when it comes to discipline. She's a good mom. She loves them very much, but I have, in the past, had to follow up on her disciplining for her.

Now, I'm certainly not an expert on parenting (and no, having children does not make anyone an expert) but I have read a little and there are a few points I've confirmed through experience.

1. Discipline your children. As in, actually do it. Reprimanding is not disciplining. There is no point in simply chastising, yelling, or trying to make them feel guilty. There has to be a consequence for disobedience. This is one area that I would like to say I do well at. Quite often I let them choose their consequence. That works pretty well actually.

2. Be consistent. This is difficult but imperative. Everyone has heard that children need to have boundaries, but only with consistency will they know what those boundaries are. How can they work within boundaries if they don't know what they are?

3. If you're wrong, apologize and ask forgiveness. I've been known to say "no!" to things they request, especially if they've annoyed me at some point that day. I'm not talking about apologizing for that, although you should if you need to. I'm talking about apologizing for being wrong about what they're being disciplined for. I have 3 little girls. Lovely, manipulative little girls. Sometimes it's difficult to discern the truth when someone disobeys. If and when I inadvertently discipline the apparent victim too much, I make it a point to apologize and ask their forgiveness.

Every time that's happened between me and one of my girls, it brought us closer. I think they appreciate it more than we know.

4. Do it, get it over with, and be done. Don't drag it out. The other crummy thing about the situation above was that the mothers guilt trip probably lasted the entire trip to church. Forgiving your children goes with along with this. Can you imagine a parent holding a grudge towards their children? Completely destructive, for both the parent and child.

So, four seemingly simple points. I would like to think I am relatively good at it. Relatively. What breaks my heart is that my girlies mother is not and nothing I've tried has made any difference in her. Yes, the focus is my girlies and I haven't lost that.

(I promise to post updated pictures of them when I figure out how to get pics in a post on this thing.) Thanks for reading.

EDIT: I forgot Compassion! 'Be compassionate' should probably be number 1. As kj mentioned below, there may be circumstances surrounding the act of disobedience that warrant consideration. This may sound dorky, but something I learned in management school was "The 5 Why's." The idea is to ask why as many times as you need to find the root cause of a problem. (It says 5, but it's really as many as you need.) I always ask why when one of my girlies disobeys. Even if they don't have an answer for me, it gets them thinking about it for themselves.

Compassion also means keeping their feelings in consideration. Sometimes they need a harsh 'wake up', so to speak, even if its just to get them to pay attention to you. But if you push it too far, they will stop thinking about anything except their fear. At that point, any consequence is practically worthless.

Problems with blogging from an iPad

Well, Blogger fixed something. Safari (on the iPad) will let me type in the Compose tab of a new post now.

I am a little bummed that Apple doesn't support flash. I can't use that cool music player (I forget the name) and the video embedding tool isn't working.

The image tool doesn't work the same either. You can upload an image with a URL, but not directly from the iPad. Just checked Photobucket and I can't upload from the iPad to that! This kinda sucks.

There is a 30 dollar kit you can get to pull images from a digital camera. If I do that, I would still have to use Blogpress to post them. If I wanted to use an image with a URL, I would have to upload it from a different computer.

The mobile YouTube site doesn't give you the HTML to put a video in a blog post either.

I'll have to do some research. There's gotta be an effective way to blog from an iPad and included videos & images besides ones taken with the iPad. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Mobile blog post

What to write...what to write...

- So I'm setting at a restaurant. Just ordered a sirloin steak from the bartender I have a crush on. It's kinda funny. This place, Texas Roadhouse, hired very attractive bartenders. I think there's only one male in the group. But this particular girl is the only one that has the personality to go with the looks. Another has gorgeous dark hair but absolutely ignores me if there's no tip involved. Another is very nice, but peppy. Obnoxiously so and gives terrible service.

But this one, oh this one... She's not gorgeous, in the magazine model sense, but very cute and could model jeans, if you know what I mean. They all have a policy of not dating customers, so I'm using that as an excuse to not ask her out. Chicken.

She always wears sparkly jeans. Just begging to be glanced at.

- I like people watching. It's fun to sit here and try and guess what's going on between couples out for a nice dinner. Today is a little different. There's usually a couple that looks like neither of them want to be here. Don't see any of those today. There's a couple over there having what looks like a first or second date. He looks very happy to be going out with her, probably because she's super hot, but she looks slightly interested, at best.

- I'm probably going to have to start calling this thing my date, and not an iPad. How sad.

- I started drafting an updated resume today. A big fat birdie hinted that we might be the only division open by the end of the year. When stuff like that happens, owners usually start chopping from the top.

I just look for reasons to be pessimistic, don't I?

- Speaking of owners, I got an invitation to my bosses wedding reception. They're getting married this week, in Hawaii, and having the reception in their home town later. I should go, but I'm probably not. On the other hand, the booze will probably be free.

- The two guys next to me are having a conversation in Spanish. I feel like I'm back in Cali.

- What is it about military guys? I'm watching a double date happening across the way. The guys are obviously air force and their dates are smokin hot. I see that a lot around here. Maybe me shaving my head will do some good. Up until they find out the truth...

- So I've finished my dinner. Just got a fresh Coors Lite. (Stupid calorie counter.) An ALCS game is on the tv. Baseball is somewhere on the list of 'sports I don't care about'.

- Sorry there are no pictures. I'm comfortable with typing this at a bar, but taking pictures for this post is too much.

- I wish I could understand the guys next to me. Maybe I should try that Spanish education program I saw at Sam's club. Maybe there's an app for that.

- Their wireless network is wide open. Nice.

- So after surfing a bit, finishing my beer, and driving home, that's the end of this post.

Have a nice evening.

Not dating yet

ChopperPapa has been doing a series on Dating a Single Dad. While those posts are written for a woman, they've prompted me to think about dating and how a guy should present himself in the dating world and how I might present myself, when the time comes.

For the record, the thought of dating is still kinda freaking me out. I really have no desire to do that yet, but there are times I would like to have someone to cook and converse with. Sounds like a date to me...

Dating has always seemed like a long series of lies to me. My dating history has been less than stellar and being 'burned', so to speak, has greatly affected my attitude. The idea of doing something extra to create a persona, whether it be online or in real life, smells of dishonesty. You might be reading something of my bad attitude there.

Most of that bad attitude comes from experiences with my ex. While I completely admit to being somewhat oblivious during our courtship, I feel that her method for catching a man was not honest. Not that she consciously thought about hiding things, but her approach to anything negative or uncomfortable was not open. She thought she would make me angry, or even lose me if I wasn't anything but completely comfortable. At the least, that has taught me to be aware of that and how I can discourage anyone else from thinking that and encourage them to be open with me.

Something I've tried to be, as a manager at least, is compassionately honest. (As opposed to brutally honest.) Of course I still get angry and give voice to that anger sometimes, but for the most part I criticize with as positive a spin as possible.

I would think that being compassionately honest, especially about myself, is the only way to approach the dating world. But what is the reality? Are the ladies out there expecting guys to be honest about themselves? Are the guys expecting that from the ladies? Of course it's different for everyone, but as a whole, what is it really like?

Even with my plan of being honest, there are certain aspects of my personality that could probably use some ...shall we say... polishing, for the dating world. Passion is a big one. Or lack thereof. 'Dispassionate' doesn't sound too endearing, but according to Websters definition, it's pretty accurate; "Not affected by strong feeling."

Even drafting this post, I'm losing interest in even writing about dating. Probably a strong indication that I'm just not ready.

Testing, testing, 1 2

Hello all. Hope everyone is doing well.

So I'm trying out a new toy. Yes, I got myself an iPad. I also rediscovered that I have a hard time saving money. Of course there is all sorts of justification, but primarily I just wanted one.

Blogger doesn't have an iPad app yet, but I picked up one called Blogpress that publishes to whichever blogging platform you might use.

I really like the iPad. It's very quick and I don't have to worry about spyware and all that. After I figured out how to make the sound better, it became my new music machine.

As for everything else;

- Haven't heard from the surgeon about carving up my face yet. They said it was going to be a couple of months before they could get me in anyway.

- I finally did it




Shaved it all off. Well, most of it. All but an 1/8th of an inch.

- Work is going good. Busier this year than last but we're still the only division making money. The owners are looking for an 'investor' now. Curious to find out what happens with that.

- As good as it is, I'm even more dissatisfied with the owner. I got to the point of directly telling my boss to get down here and spread some appreciation. Even named the people he should talk to. He did half of it. He came down. Just before he left, I asked him if he'd had a chance to talk to anyone. He didn't directly say no, but it was obvious he had not. He then started telling me how much he appreciated what I did, but he might as well have been talking to the wall.

Oh, and his sister just happened to be having her wedding here that weekend.

- Netflix put Breaking Bad up a while ago. Just got back into it and it's still awesome.

- Haven't been to the gym since I picked up Gears of War 3 a couple of weeks ago. Terrible, I know.

So I'll leave it at that and see how this thing works!