In what has become an annual pilgrimage, sons #3 and #4 and I headed off to Plum Beach again.
Two younger sons at Plum beach, August 2010
where we managed to see quite a few kiteboarders going in opposite directions at the same time
Kiteboarders at Plum beach, August 2010
and, of course, I enjoin my fellow city-dwellers to not be such slobs and not leave litter everywhere
Litter @ Plum beach, August 2010
please?
In our family, we've got one person with a #000000 belt, one with a #FF0000 belt, one with a #00FF00 belt, one with a #0000FF belt, and one with a #FFFFFF belt.

It doesn't get more fundamental than that. We could be a CRT.

However, I'm sure that soon, son #1 will get promoted to #800080 shortly, so we'll have to switch over to CMYK.

It appears that nmap, the ultra-handy network scanning program, has the same problem that Microsoft has with estimating time-to-completion: it's a moving target.

It seems that nmap has 30 seconds to go for 5 minutes.

(That particular scan, by the way, took over 30 minutes to complete.)

Black Belt

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I was inspired to write a longer blog post about Black Belts in martial arts (specifically, Japanese-derived martial arts; other systems and places have different methods of ranking but the "black belt indicating some level of mastery" is so universal now it has just about co-opted all others). However, I couldn't come up with a whole lot of words to discuss my own receipt of a black belt in Tora Dojo Martial Arts earlier this evening that I felt it better to just put up some photos.

On 2010 June 7 at 1800, I, along with my co-student Moshe-Chaim Silverstein, were examined for the rank of 1st degree Black Belt in TDMA by our instructor, Arkady Dudko, and the head of the system, Prof. Harvey Sober. Only 209 "sho-dan" degrees have been given: I was #208.

In our system, exams are cumulative, beginning with the very basics:

karate basics

karate basics

and moving on with "kata" (pre-arranged forms):

onto self-defense "one-steps" or "make-ups" (yes, I really did contact my partner's head here):

and so on. I've left out quite a bit--a lot went by in a blur of memory and some of it could have used more polish (so I won't put up those videos/pictures). At the end, there is a symbolic presentation of new clothes, a new black belt is tied on by my instructor:

black belt presentation
and a certificate
black belt presentation

It is traditional in our system, since our founder was trained in a traditional Chinese fashion, for each new Black Belt to receive a new name in Chinese, representing his lineage. Mine is "强鑚心" (qiang zuan xin), the first part being a family name (qiang), for my teacher's teacher (it means "robust, vigorous"), the second two having the idiomatic meaning of "one who studies studiously to get to the heart of the matter" (study + heart).

I was also blessed to have my family able to attend;

the family and I

my 3 older sons already participate:

4 future blackbelts

and my youngest just can't wait to get started.

It is a misconception to think that Black Belt is somehow a terminal grading; there are grades above Black Belt (5-10 depending on the formation of the system), and a considerable body of knowledge to obtain in other martial arts. (In my system, one begins with a version of Shotokan karate and progresses on to the Chinese arts after black belt.) This is just a new beginning in training.

After the death of our guinea pig, Poogy, last May (more or less), we decided that, for the time being, we'd live with just our one pet, Shafan the rabbit:

...UNTIL the fateful day when my dearest wife Elana found a craigslist posting for a free chinchilla late last week. She "applied" for it, and on Tuesday, got a call from the pet's owner that the chinchilla could, indeed, be ours.

So off to Flushing dearest wife traveled with son #2 to fetch the newest member of the household, Snoopy the chinchilla:

Chinchillas, as you may or may not know, are somewhat crepuscular (not nocturnal)--so Snoopy tends to sleep a lot during the day, almost as if she were narcoleptic, so the most often way I find her is either snoozing

or running around in her exercise wheel.

I'm reasonably certain we're not sure what we're getting into, as chinchillas are not the low-maintenance pets we're used to.

Our aformentioned rabbit is curious about the new family member, but was quite nonplussed this morning when we opened Snoopy's cage door, and she scampered out, ran circles across the hardwood floor (Shafan is skittish about the hardwood floor because he can't get a good grip on it) and under and into our sofa, prompting Elana and me to spend 20 minutes literally shaking the sofa up and down to extract Snoopy, all while son #4 was trying to be helpful by directing Snoopy away from the loud noises Son #4 was making. (At least we got some exercise.)

A chinchilla's expected lifespan is a little longer than a typical rabbit's lifespan (which is longer by a few years than we originally thought, and longer still than the lifespan of a guinea pig), and given that Snoopy is 2 and Shafan is at least 4 (we got him before the birth of Son #4), we're definitely in this for the long haul.

And we're looking forward to it.

The Moody Blues sang "22000 days"



but they have nothing on Windows Vista, which wants me to wait over 129 years to compress some files on my disk:



Gee thanks, I think I'll just...run out for a cup of coffee...run to Colómbia and plant a coffee tree...and wait...


(p.s. It sped up considerably and finished in a few minutes.)
We just had this happen in the upstairs apartment in our house.

One of the tenants was cooking, the oil overheated and caught on fire. She threw water on the fire.

The water superheats, boils immediately, and the steam carries the flaming oil into the air, giving you a rising plume of fire. That's what she got upstairs; the ceiling is now covered in soot.

She is ok; she is only mentally scarred, not physically scarred.

For a vivid demonstration, watch the following (UK) 30 second public service announcment:

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