The Oscar for Best Song

With all apologies to Randy Newman, who richly deserves his Best Song Oscar last night, here is the best song performed on this year's telecast of the ceremony:

Now, if only they had used autotune on a few of the performances as well...

Noah's a puzzler

For the past month or so, really since Christmas, Noah has been Sam's mini-me.  In the morning I'll ask the boys what they want for breakfast and Noah will shout out "Oatmeal!"  Sam will casually look up and say "grits," which immediately causes Noah to proclaim "Grits AND Oatmeal!"  Or we'll ask the boys if they want to wear car shirts or dinosaur shirts.  Noah's preference is almost always swayed by Sam's decision.

The one area where Noah will always break with Sam is over the issue of puzzles.  Sam has always ignored puzzles, playing with the car pieces as cars instead of wondering how they fit into the puzzle's scheme.

Not Noah.

Noah is obsessed with puzzles.  For Christmas, his Aunt Heather gave him a box with four wooden Disney puzzles in it.  The puzzles fit into nice compartments under a sliding top that acts as the puzzles' frame.  Almost every day, without fail, Noah pulls the box out of his closet and systematically goes through each puzzle, carefully putting each puzzle back into its slotted container before moving to the next puzzle.  He dug through Sam's toy drawers and found all the puzzles we bought or were gifted to Sam that have languished for years and cheerfully took them to his room and added them to his collection.

Perhaps the best puzzle yet came from Aunt Misty and Uncle Stephen.  They gave Noah a giant dinosaur floor puzzle.  This puzzle is four feet long and features Noah's favorite animals.  The puzzle is a perfect storm of Noah obsessions.  He pulls it out and without any assistance (he will actually push me and Joy away if we attempt to help) covers his floor with dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes.  If we need 15-20 minutes of peace, all we have to do is pull out the puzzle and close the door to Noah's room.

But the puzzling is getting a bit out of hand.  I had never noticed before how many doctor's offices, banks, and play centers have puzzles until Noah started pulling them out.  He'll find any puzzle around and start piecing it together, not allowing any interruption until he is finished.  Just yesterday, I went to pick him up at PDO and after giving me a hug (usually a prelude to running out to the car), Noah turned and declared he had to finish his puzzle.  So if we are late in the next few months, you'll have a good guess as to why.

Time for Listening Journals!

My writing intensive students are at it again, exploring music outside the traditional canon of Western music and blogging about it on their personal sites.  Here's my class blog that I use to direct students to their colleague's blogs and where you can find the newest listening journals.  Each student looks into the cracks of the Classical period (1750-1810) and finds startling music that I think you'll enjoy.  Take a look!

Forget Punxsutawney Phil...

We have our own groundhogs around here.  And they are predicting spring is coming soon.  Of course, that doesn't mean they don't want to enjoy the snow while it's here.

In Case You're Wondering About Our Snow...

Last Friday after school, Sam and a neighbor boy up the street helped us dig out an ice fort for Sam:

But being inside the snow is only so much fun.  Much more entertaining for both boys (when they weren't throwing snow at me) was to climb a snow mountain and then slide down the other side:

Needless to say, we all were cold, wet, and happy by the time we came inside.

My Experience with Craigslist Scams Part I - Arianna Emmert and TNT

Two years ago, we came back from Christmas break, powered up the computer, and nothing happened.  I cracked open the computer, cleaned out the enormous amount of dust, and replaced a bit of memory.  Everything went back to normal, we backed everything up, and went about our lives.

Fast forward to two weeks ago.  We come back from Christmas break, power up the computer, and nothing happens.  I crack open the computer, clean out the slightly less than enormous amount of dust, and fiddle with the memory.  Unfortunately, I discover that one of our memory slots is shot, meaning that instead of our normal 1 gig of memory we could only operate with 512 MB.  In other words, our computer became really, really slow.

I quickly began shopping for a new computer and since I use a Mac at school, thought about switching at home as well.  As part of my searching, I went on craigslist and found the following amazing deal:

2 Month Old iMac for sale running 3.2 GHz Intel Core i3 Processor, 4 GB Memory. $610.
Snow Leopard 10.6.4 Respond to post with any further questions regarding this computer!

I read the post and thought to myself, "Too good to be true," but followed up anyway, sending the seller the following message:

Hi,

I was wondering if you still had the iMac for sale.

thanks,

The next day, I received back this message:

Hi, I am getting back to you regarding the 21.5-inch iMac from Craigslist

My name is Arianna and I am now in Wolverhampton, United Kingdom.
I am selling the iMac for $600 USD. I have attached some pics with it to this email.
The iMac is still available and I hope you are still interested. The iMac was bought brand new from Apple a couple of months ago.
About the iMac I can say it's in perfect shape, as I used it only for a few weeks. Included in the $600 price is everything that came with the iMac.
The iMac is here with me.
I tried to be as thorough as I could with the presentation so you can have all the info if you decide to go ahead and buy it.

Please get back to me and let me know if you like the iMac if you're really interested in buying it.

Thanks,
Arianna

Chief Logistic Officer
www.bluechipremovals.co.uk 

She even included pictures of an iMac like this one:

Needless to say, a red flag went up when a transaction that was supposed to be local suddenly went global.  I decided to play a bit and see where this went, so followed up with this message:

Arianna,

Thanks for the e-mail.  Two quick questions.  First, why are you selling the computer and second, why did you advertise in Kansas City?  How would you get the computer here?

Thanks,

Now the story gets really interesting.  Since most people won't just send money overseas without having the object purchased in hand, "Arianna" responded with this option:

Hi,

I posted the ad there because I live there. But now I have been relocated here with my work.
I am selling the imac in the US because the warranty is good only there. Because of that, nobody wants it here for this price.
I found a way to sell you the imac that will cover the both of us. It's a worldwide delivery company called TNT. They have a service that will allow you to test the imac before I receive my payment.
Please go to the TNT website below and read their procedure so we can be on the same page:

http://ukservices-tnt.com/tnt.express.wolverhampton.depot.overseas.transactions/

I will pay the TNT shipping fee and I can use 2 day delivery if you are in a hurry.

Thanks.

Arianna Emmert

Chief Logistic Officer

www.bluechipremovals.co.uk

 

Hmmmm.  I followed the link and it was extremely well put together, and actually looked like the real TNT website.  But look through the two sites and you can begin to see small differences.  I sent a note to TNT's fraud department and then did a few searches for "Arianna."  Seems like she moves a lot, has had several last names, and tries to scam people on craigslist regularly.   So I thought I'd see how long I could string her along and replied with the following message:

Arianna,

I'm in no hurry and I need to talk to my wife about the computer today.  I'll get back to you.

By the way, where did you live in Kansas City?  In the city proper or in one of the suburbs?  Find some favorite BBQ while you were here?

She must have realized I was on to her because no messages since then.  But hopefully my posting this little saga will help someone else out who encounters "Arianna."

Criminals beware...

...because the Super Guys are on patrol.