Aileen went to take the girls to playtime last week, only to find out it was closed. Apprarently, it follows the time schedule of the School District. I didn’t want her to blow time or be surpised like that again, so I put together an iCal Calendar of time off for the WA state Tahoma School District. Not all Holidays that fall within a break are designated. Instead, the entire break is listed.

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It is correct through the 2007-2008 school year per the files listed on the School District website. As more calendars are posted, I will update it into the future so it will always be up to date.
Leave a comment if you have any additional ideas or to let me know if you find it useful!

(This is free for all to use, but if you find it helpful, feel free to send a small paypal amount to myko@blueneedle.com to offset the time it took to create and the cost of bandwidth for hosting it.)

( via Boing Boing )

An (authentic?) Enigma machine has been seen on eBay. It is currently at a bid of €9.998,00 with 5 days & 11 hours to go. This is a piece fit for any collector of historical instruments. From the auction:

Fine example of a WW II Enigma cipher machine in a very good condition and a great history; full functional. Year of construction 1941 by Manufacturer Chiffriermaschinen Gesellschaft Heimsoeth and Rinke, Berlin. The Enigma machine is placed in an oak woodwork case. Three high-quality, all-metal, matched rotors and an Umkehrwalze “B”. The rotors are continuous numbered; serial numbers has been removed. There are two spare rotors in an additional small wooden box. Plug board is lettered QWERTZU…, wheels numbered 1-26. 100% Original!!! No Copy!!

I’m glad the toddler in this story wasn’t hurt, or I couldn’t have spent the last 10 minutes laughing my ass off. Yes, that kid is INSIDE the toy machine! I’ve always wanted to win one of these things. Now I know the way to do that is to get my daughter to just climb on in and grab the toys for me!

Seriously though, this shows us how damn fast young kids are. You could argue lackluster parenting since the kid was unsupervised long enough to get in there, but I wouldn’t place that much blame on the parents. Even at the dinner table in her high chair, Kaela can pull the magician’s trick of drop the spoon; only to go for the object we’ve been keeping out of her reach. Kids are talented I tell ya…

wcco.com - Boy Gets Stuck Inside Toy Vending Machine

When the 3-year-old Austin, Minn. boy crawled through the discharge chute of a Toy Chest claw machine at a Godfather’s Pizza here, he ended up on the other side of the glass surrounded by stuffed animals.

Rescuers had to pry the door open to get Devin out, though the boy was in no hurry to leave.

“When we got it open, he didn’t want to come out,” Fire Chief Dan Wilson said Tuesday. “One of my firefighters had to reach inside and get him. He was happy in there.”

This is a great mix of art, technology, and longevity. I may have to stay at this hotel and ask for this room; just to be a peripheral part of the process. I just wish I had the time to run with some of my photography projects. This makes me jealous…

100 Year Exposure Photo: Artist Jonathon Keats is taking one long photo. His project, a pinhole camera that is taking one continuous picture of a room in the Hotel des Arts in San Francisco, is a mixture of uber-low-tech and ultra-high concept geekiness.

(Via digg.)

Now that the state park parking fee is being repealed, it’ll open a whole new world of discovery for a lot of people. Thank you Gregoire for realizing the parks belong to the people. I challenge everyone to make plans to visit a park within the next month.

No more parking fees at state parks: Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a bill to repeal the parking fees for Washington’s 120 state parks.

(Via Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Local News.)

Good grief. No wonder I can’t get anyone in the house to listen to a word I say. They just don’t care.

Like teenagers, babies don’t much care what their parents say.

Though they are learning words at 10 months old, infants tend to grasp the names of objects that interest them rather than whatever the speaker thinks is important, a new study has found.

What Kelsey picks up is so mysterious - my wife and I make deals with her. We’ll say something like “We’re not going to read a book now since we’re going to the store, but if you’re good, we’ll read two when we get back. Deal?” My wife was trying to make a deal with her yesterday and she said “isn’t that the show with the suitcases?” Thanks Howie!

read more | digg story

Wow, this seems so in line with the last post, but in such a bad way. I was flabergasted at first by the rioting last November until I heard some of the arguements from the rioters about how they felt they were treated. This pretty much confirms what they were saying…

One third of French say they are racist
(Reuters):

Reuters - One third of French people say they are
racist, a French human rights watchdog said on Tuesday, after a
survey that showed an increase from last year in the number of
people who acknowledged being racist.

(Via Yahoo! News: Odd News.)

It turns out that Aspen, CO is a pretty non-diverse area of the country. Here’s a quickie video from YouTube made by what looks like an improv group of some sort. I’m a pretty PC friendly kind of guy, but the hilarity of this is just too funny. You’ve gotta hold out until the end, the last person is the absolute funniest one.

EDIT [So, does anyone know an easy way to use the embedded player in a Wordpress 2.0.1 blog post??]

There are several poker sites that offer Mac users access to the online poker world, but none as large a name as FullTiltPoker.net. PokerRoom.com is a great example; they use a Java based browser app to let Mac users play.

BUT, Full Tilt is the first to offer a native OS X client application.  I just downloaded it and gave it a go.  Did my first S&G (Sit & Go) Tourney.  It was 250 buy in and I got 2nd place for 675.  Not a bad start.  If I keep up the good work, I may see if I can get a big enough time block to do a WSOP freeroll.

I’ve been waiting for a site to do this, and I’m glad it was Full Tilt.