Rollerblading with Aurora

On Sunday we all went for a walk on the St. Marks trail. Anne and Stanley joined us. Aurora and I brought our roller blades. Aurora had only had one thirty-minute blading session, so this was more-or-less her first real go on them.
She picked it up really well. At first she tried what I imagine most kids her age try, which is walking like normal. Over time she start picking up pushing her herself but wasn't quite getting it. At one point I showed her how I could go really fast, and she must have paid attention to how I was moving my legs, because when I got back she started doing it right. She would put on foot out, slightly slanted, and then push and then bring the next leg forward and do the same.
Her being so small and skinny, with those big skates on was quite a sight to see. She was really in to it though. She was determined to learn it. When she is determined to learn something she will pick it up pretty fast.
Sunday night she asked if we could do it again on Monday, after school. So yesterday I put our rollerblades and helmets in the back of the truck and picked her up from Creative Child after work.
She did really good on Monday. The first time she fell she got her palms scraped up a little bit, but every other time she fell she was very careful about trying to fall in the grass, or land on her bottom.
We went all the way down to the first stop sign, which is over 1/4 mile and then came back. This whole trip probably took us about an hour. Once back to where we parked we roller bladed around that area for another thirty minutes. While she went at her own pace, I took the oppurtunity to practice abrupt stopping. I'm a slow stopped, only able to use the back break on my right skate, which isn't very effective. I practiced getting going at a slow pace and then jumping and landing with my feet perpendicular to the direction I was going. I think I was doing pretty good at it. Abrupt stops really throw off my balance, and that is something I will have to work on.
I also gave a first-shot at going backwards, but I couldn't even figure out how to move my feet in a way to make myself move backwards. The best I could do was set myself up on an incline so that gravity simply pushed me backwards, but I was unable to find a good way to push to make myself go faster. Hopefully, once I can confidently stop abruptly, I can start trying to get going forward, and then jump backwards.

Feeds

For the first time since I left for California I have my feeds down to 0 unread. Woohoo!

Nobel vs. innovation

I read an article the other day about how some older Nobel Lauriets believed the internet was dumbing down culture. As someone who has been on the internet since ~1992, and have been embracing it ever since, this unnerved me. A large part of my life is spent on the internet performing various tasks. Different people belong to all sorts of cultures, and I belong to the internet cultures.

I look forward to the next internet meme, not the next eposide of Friends (yes, I know it's off air now.) When I went to talk politics I go online and say what I have to say. When I take pictures off my camera, I quickly upload them to my picasaweb album. I also spend countless hours a week reading blog from around the world, mostly regarding technology.So what is the problem that these Nobel winners have with the Internet?

http://www.smh.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2007/12/10/1197135340009.html
Similarly, author Andrew Keen argued in his new book, The Cult of the Amateur, that the internet was killing culture and assaulting economics.
"[Anyone] can use their networked computers to publish everything from uninformed political commentary, to unseemly home videos, to embarrassingly amateurish music, to unreadable poems, reviews, essays, and novels," Keen wrote in the book.

The problem that have is that amateurs are out there putting out art. Being amateurs, the art is what most would call sub-par. I mean, what kind of world do we live in if the average person is an artist? What happens when kids are more interested in art put out by some random kid on the street with a crappy video camera than someone else who went to school and fought their way through to publishers to get their contetnt out?

What happens is innovation in ways that the established industry is incapable of concieving. Take for example chocolate rain. This video has received millions of hits in a matter of months by fans all over the world. The popularity of this very odd song has landed this guy performances on network television, record contacts, and made him an instant international star.

Without the internet this guys music would have never made it past a couple of friends who may have mused at it for a while and then lost in a trash can.

But this is probably the fate that Andrew Keen would like to see this kind of art recieve. Why? Because he is an art snob. Art, to him, has to fit predefined hooks and follow certain rules.

The truth is that art has never done this. The new is always scary to the old. Think of swing. This music was truly the devils work, according to the old crowd at the time. Then along came rock n' roll, which was thrust in to the mainstreem by the Beatles. Surely the Beatles are trying to corrupt our children. Then metal followed by rap. Each time the older generation doesn't get it and cries fowl. But, like Bob Dylan says, "You better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone, for the time they are a-changin'" I like to remind this to old hippies when they complain about todays music.Andrew Keen and company's way of art may still have relevence as timeless quality work, but has no place in the new cutting edge world of art. What's worse, though, is his mind set regarding amateur work. This mindset has no place in any time period. Amateur artwork is especially important, and should be encouraged. And every amateur has the right to put his or her stuff out there to be judged by the community.

The great thing about the community is that every amateur has easy access to the community, and the community has a large share of amateur critics to rate the work. If the work is crap, people will tell the artist to piss off and the work goes nowhere. If the work is entertaining, the artist gets his or her fifteen minutes of fame. This really works out great because the critics and consumers are the same people. In the traditional system, the art has to first pass the publisher, is then reviewed by the critics, and whether or not people consume the product can depend on the ratings the reviewers gave it. The new system is more of a meritocracy, versus the old system that basically amounts to cronyism.

Someone I met online and have since met in person, wrote an elegant essay on exactly why anyone and everyone should be submitting their own content.

http://dmiessler.com/blogarchive/why-people-should-submit-their-own-content-to-social-sites
There
are thousands upon thousands of good writers out there — people who could be
improving the quality of what we see here everyday. But we won’t ever experience
what they have to offer because there’s nobody to bring it to our attention.
What are the odds that their stuff is going to be randomly “discovered”? Not
good. The only only option is for them to drop the socially ingrained
false-modesty and present it themselves. Remember that writers submit their work
to publishers; they don’t wait for it to be found. Artisans have shows and
invite lots of people, and academics submit to their respective journals. In
short, submitting original content for peer review is crucial in any community
that values intellectual progress.So to all of you who think you have something
to offer — show us. Getting someone else to submit it for you is more shady than
doing it yourself, and it’s not going to be discovered on accident. If you’re
doing anything to increase your chances of being seen (SEO, word-of-mouth
promotion, etc.) you’re already playing the system. Accept this and have the
balls to submit your own material if you think it’s worth reading.

So to the old Noble Lauriets and their old way of thinking, I saw good riddance. The internet, and it's art, is here to stay. It will shape the future and redefine everything (which will probably be the five thousandth time art has been completely redefined by new culture) and will eventually become old and irelevant by the time it's my turn to be old and grumpy.

Christmas in Sacramento

In a feet of awesomeness Kim's parents paid for Kim, my three girls and myself to fly out to Sacramento for Christmas. They also bought tickets for Katie and Annmarie to fly out as well. Technically Arianna was free because she just sat in our lap.
Our plane left at 6am out of Jacksonville last Sunday morning. We drove out to Jacksonville the night before and staid at a hotel.
We got to sleep at midnight and woke up at 3:00am. We also scheduled a wake-up call at 3:10 that we never got. Katie and Annmarie where great about getting up on time, which is something that I was worried about. The only hiccup in the morning was Athena who threw a big fit.
We where at the airport around 4am. The only thing that was open that early in the airport was Starbucks. Everyone got bagels and coffee (or some variation thereof.) Athena and I held out to see what was offered past the security check.
I was worried about going through security as we had some baby food and other questionable items but we got through without a problem.
On the other side of security was nothing but a snack shop that charged 3X+ the real value of the items they where selling. I settled for a sausage and cheese biscuit for ~$3.50 and Athena got an Apple (it's what she asked for.) We also split a sports drink. In all I paid around eight dollars. The biscuit was of lower quality than McDonalds and would have cost less than a dollar there.
The plan came forty minutes late but all of the kids where good about waiting around. On the plain the trip was very good. All of the girls where well behaved and I got a window seat.
Once we landed we heard on the loud speaker that our next flight was departing. We originally had some time between the lay over, but with the late flight we were pressed to make our connecting flight.
We rushed to our next terminal and made it on the plane in time.
This plan ride was not so pleasant. The girls where great again, but there was a lot of turbulence. It just so happens that I am not a fan of turbulence.
The first bout came from a big gust of wind that really pushed the plan around. Everyone on the plane made sounds of discontent except the girls who both said, "'Whee!"
I was holding Arianna and was really scared by the movement of the plane. You could feel it being lifted up and then down beyond the will of the plane and its pilots. I started having problems breathing and had to hand Arianna to Kim. This big gusts was followed by much more mild turbulence. I was unable to sit peacefully until all of the turbulence was gone.
We had about fifteen minutes of time with no turbulence and we where allowed to get up when the turbulence picked back up.
This was no good as I had to use the restroom since the time I got off of the previous flight. After a flight laden with turbulence it settled down again for a while and I jetted for the rest room. I wasn't back for long when the turbulence picked back up.
When we finally landed you could tell by the look on everyone's face that all was happy to be land lubbin' again.
At the airport two of our items never came out of the luggage pickup. Apparently because of the short amount of time between our connecting flights two of our items never made the connection.
Unfortunately one of these items was Arianna's car seat. The airliner happened to have a longer on hand. That afternoon our missing bag was personally delivered to our door. The next day the car seat was delivered.
Boo for missing luggage. Yay for the airliner doing everything it could to correct the mistake.
None of us had eaten since about five am Eastern time. Once at Chris and Steve's we raided the refrigerator. We where also running not only jet lagged but also on three hours of sleep.
I think everyone but Kim took a long nap. Fortunately even after our nap, at around nine at night everyone was ready for bed. Jet lag was solved that quickly for all of us.
Monday we went to a vineyard and an apple orchard that sold all sorts of apple goods.
The vineyard was nice and had wine tasting, as vineyards apparently tend to do. For $10 you could do premium wine tasting that included more expensive wines and also includes a glass. Kim and Katie took up the premium wine tasting. I did a few of the free ones, but once I felt the wine starting to hit me (which didn't take long) I gave up. I'm not a wine person anyhow.
The vineyard was beautiful. Grape season is long gone, but some old dried-up grapes still sat on some of the vines.
The apple orchard there was a store. The inside of the store was very old-timey lookingl. They sold all sorts of apple goods like apple pies, apple dumplings, apple butter, etc. They also had a line of different fudges.
Today for Christmas we started by opening presents of course. Then we headed out for a sledding park. Two types of snow sledding where available. Snow tubing was for adults and kids with guts for fast paced snow action. The other was sledding for kids.
The sleds where little plastic circles that look like over sized garbage can lids.
Tubes could be hooked together, so we started off with hitching the kids to our tubes and going down the big slope. Aurora was scared and ended the trip with crying. Athena loved it and wanted to go again.
I took Aurora to the kid sledding and she really enjoyed that. After showing her how to push herself off and how to get off once done and get out of the way, I watched her try her hand at all sorts of sledding tricks. She would make herself spin around or go down backwards.
Then I had Chris and Steve watch her go down the kids sled and I got back in line to go tubing. As I was getting back in line everyone was just going down their second bout of the tubes. Apparently Annmarie and Athena got stuck and when Kim went down she hit Athena's tube and flipped her over. She was now sufficiently scared of tubing so she joined her grandpeeps at kid sledding, which she enjoyed.
Tubing was a lot of fun and as time past the line got shorter and shorter, which allowed for more tubing.
Afterwards we went home and had lasagna for dinner.

So far this trip has been amazing and I really look forward to the days to come.

Political discussions

Political discussions

One thing I always enjoy in a debate is two people with intelligent opinions on the subject. One thing I hate in a debate is two people with unintelligent opinions on the subject.We all have unintelligent opinions on things. For example, I would like to see an increase in biomass electrical plants. While I have read a little on the subject, and it all seems well and good to me, I don't really understand the dynamics of our electrical demands, the different methods of how electricity is produced, or how much money these things cost. I really just don't have a good understanding of the subject. It's just a matter of making more biomass plants sounds very sensible to me. I would not go out and try and make an argument on the subject in a public forum because I'm not well equipped to defend my position against someone who does understand the dynamics of meeting electrical demands in a reasonable fashion.The problem with most political discussions, both public and private, is that the person representing their position is usually uninformed and has no real appreciation for the subject they are trying to tackle. This is why when abortion comes up it is always killing babys vs. woman rights. These arguments are tired, usually hateful, and do not really address their opponents concerns. Even the terms Pro-Life (or right to life) and Pro-Choice are designed to paint the other side as somehow inherently bad. Who wants to be against life, or against choice? Who wants to appear as being misogynistic or murdering babies? Nobody does, that's why each side frames the debate in these lights. The point isn't to defend their side but to offend the other.These problems trickle in to all sorts of hot topics, welfare, immigration, gay marriage, class issues, etc. Nobody is interested in sitting down and trying to understanding where we are coming from in our points of view. Once we can educate each other on our beliefs like mature adults we can start to build the foundation for finding a compromise. Even if a compromise is not reachable (like with abortion or the death penalty) we can at least carry on a dialog and fight our fights in the legal system without pretending like the other side is monstrous collection of undesirables that need to be ridiculed and chastised.So I say be wary of any pundit that tries to paint any issue with a broad brush. If a rebuttal to an argument begins with personal attacks against the opposing groups simply turn that person off and look for an intelligent debate. Life is too short to just sit around and hate people and groups based on political lines.

Why you do not have a constitutional right to vote in the primaries.

There is a lot of clamor going on here in Florida right now about the primaries. Florida has moved it's primary elections up to Jan 29th, which is in violation of the Democrats rules on when we are allowed to hold our primaries. To punish Florida the Democrats have decided that they won't count Democratic primary votes in Florida. Even more they are not allowing any Democratic hopefuls to campaign or do money raising events in Florida.This is sparking action by the Florida government to have a court rule that the Democratic party cannot punish Florida for moving up it's primaries. The argument is that the people have a constitutional right to vote.The problem with that argument is that we don't have a constitutional right to vote. There are some things laid out in the constitution that we have a legal right to decide. However political parties are private organizations. They are bound by certain special laws to prevent fraud and create open disclosure, but they are still private organizations. We have no legal right to make any decisions about these organizations, including who they pick for their nomination for the president of our federal government. In fact, we do not have a constitutional right to even vote for our president. For a long time citizens did not vote for president. Even today we still do not get to directly vote for our president. We vote for our state, which is in turn handed over to an electoral college who really gets to pick. Historically they have always voted in line with the voters.Article 2, section 1 of the constitution sets out how election of the president is held. The twelfth amendment was passed June 15, 1804 and replaced a little under half of the wording. Amendments twenty and twenty-five where passed January 23, 1993, and February 10, 1967 respectively. The last two amendments deal with succession and term limits of the president, not with election.The constitution sets up what we now call the electoral college to vote for the president. Each state gets the number of votes as it gets delegates in congress. These electorates may be voted in by the people, or chosen by any other means as dictated by the states constitution.The point here is that the electoral college gets to vote for president, and who they vote for could be chosen by many different means, and not necessarily by the citizens of the state. So we therefore do not have a constitutional right to vote for our president. It's strictly a matter of local laws that have been passed in all fifty states that allow us to vote for the president.So back to voting in primaries. Given that we do not have a constitutional right to vote for our president, and that the constitution does not even mention primaries, it is either a matter of ignorance or intentional malice on the part of politicians and pundits to claim that we have a legal right to have a say in who a private organization nominates for president.
If for any reason the history of the constitutional congress interests you at all I suggest you read a very informative write-up on the subject at http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_elec.html

Password Confusion!

At the helpdesk we experience users with all sorts of skill sets, or lack thereof. One thing that counfounds me is how many people seem to be completely confused about passwords. It seems simple enough, your username is your identity, your password is your key. You can only have on password at any given time. What follows is a frequent call:
User: I have forgotten my password.(Verifies identity)Me: Your password has been reset to 'abc123'User: So do I put in my old password now, because I don't remember what it is?Me: No, your password has been reset to 'abc123' so that is what you will need to enter.User: That didn't work.Me: Did you put 'abc123'?User: No I put in my old password.Me: Ok, I have set your password to 'abc123' Please type that in to your password field.Me: Did that work?User: Oh, you want me to do it now?Me: Yes, please put in 'abc123' in the password field, and then press the enter key.User: That didn't work either.Me: What error message did you get?User: "Your passowrd has expired. Please enter a new password in both fields."Me: Ok great. Now put your new password in the "New Password" and "Confirm Password" fields. The password must be at least six characters long.User: It wants my old password. I don't know my old password.Me: Your old password is abc123 and should already be typed in.User: Oh no, it had something in there but I removed it.Me: Ok, in old password type in 'abc123' and then put in your new password in the "New Password" and "Confirm Password" fields.User: It says that my password is invalid.Me: Did you put 'abc123' for your old password.User: No, I put in my old password.Me: If you do not put in 'abc123' for your old password it will not work. Please put 'abc123' for your old password, and type your new password in the "New Password" and "Confirm Password" fields.User: It says the passwords do not match.Me: Did you type your new password in the "New Password" and "Confirm Password" fields?User: Oh no, should I do that.Me: Yes.User: Ok, it works now.
Keep in mind that through all of this it is our responsibility to remain pleasant. There are some things that are inherently confusing If passwords confuse you, think of the password as a key. If you loose all of your keys you will need to have the locked change. Once you change your locks your old keys don't matter any more, only your new keys will work. If you find your old keys don't try them in your new lock. They won't work.

Bikes on Parade, Christmas roaches, and new daycare.

Saturday was the Festival of Lights parade in Tallahassee. Like last year, a space was reserved for Bicyclist to ride their bikes and show their support for alternative transportation. This year we had a electric-van that looked like the VW bus, only about 1/4 of it's size, with a big banner that read, "The International Order or Cyclepaths." We rode our bikes around it counter-clockwise. Not to be too boring we had people riding double-decker bikes (a bike welded on top of another bike), unicycles, and various other crazy frankencycles that I am sure gave the crowd a good laugh. Athena road on the child seat on the back.We met up at the shit shack which is off Gaines near the stadium. No I don't know where the name came from. From there we biked to Georgia St. & Monroe where our exhibit was set to wait.About half way through the parade I got a flat on my rear tire and had to walk the bike alongside the van. I found out today a coworker was riding his bike in the parade as well. I think there had to be about 80 bicyclists all together. Very cool stuff.
Yesterday we went to put up our fake Christmas tree and found that roaches had made a nest in it. Kim refuses to let the thing in the house now. I told her I'll boil it, but I can't really think of a good means of doing that. Maybe I'll treat it to high levels of radiation (though I'm not sure if the roaches will care or not.) Maybe I'll end up with Hulk Roaches. I'm not sure if that would be cool or not. ...
I just spoke to Rachel who is taking care of the kids for the first time today and things are going well. Athena is being a big help. I can only imagine having all four of those kids has to be complete insanity. She is very brave indeed.
As part of not having to drop Aurora off at school, Kim and I are starting to carpool where we can. I think on Monday and Wednesday we will go to work together. At 4:30 I'll pick her up from work, we'll grab Aurora from afterschool and then go home. Tuesday and Thursday I have school at 5:30 and that would be calling it too close. Friday Kim likes to stay late and catch up on work so she'll drive so that she can leave whenever she wants without us having to make a second trip back in town (nullifying the benefit of carpooling.) I am excited about the gas we will save.

Thanksgiving & Laptop joy

Thanksgiving was great. We had it at our house this year. I made a Turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. I pealed a 10-lb bag of potatoes and mashed them up. There was concern we didn't take the turkey out of the freezer in time, but come Thursday it was indeed thawed out completely and when cooked it was good. Not the best turkey in the world, but definitely nice and juicy.Our guests where Katie, Annmarie, Sue, Jim, Jon, Judith, Stephen, Nannie, Billy, Rachel, Magdeline, Malaki, Steve, Chris, and CK. I think I listed everyone. Each person brought some food and we had plenty for everyone. Good times where had by all. Nannie said grace which I think she really enjoyed.After cooking all day and having our small house stuffed with people, after I finally ate I had to hide away in my bedroom because I was feeling a little overwhelmed. In my room I burned some CDs for Katie which took enough time for me to relax and chill out a little.We used the extended weekend to get some painting done. We have already painted our kitchen (with massive help from Kim's parents.) We colored the wall that leads from the kitchen to the dining room the same color, a pumpkin orange.I had taped everything off in the dining room and Kim painted right passed the tape in some places. After I through a fit about messing it up Kim started being more careful.When we did the girl's bathroom she was much better about being careful and it came out right. She had picked out a bright neon green, that would usually be gross, but goes well with our jungle monkey theme we have in there.The bottom two feet of our wall is a fake wood thing with some trim. She painted the fake wood beige and the trim black.Next we paint the wall that leads from the dining room to the living room. It will be the same color as whatever we decide on for the living room.
Stephen and Judith told me that where going to get me a new laptop for Christmas. I was floored and really didn't know how to respond. This was a big deal and I didn't want to take it for granted. The gave me a price limit. I have always wanted to be able to support Dell's offering of Ubuntu preinstalled PCs so I went to their site and built a laptop within the price range with Ubuntu, not Windows, installed.I think Stephen was as excited to see this thing as I was. While I expected to have to wait for Christmas, Stephen e-mailed me at work the day it came in and had me pick it up that afternoon.While I expected this to be the best working installation of Ubuntu I had ever tried it was actually the worst. I expected that since Dell had the liberty of being able to hand pick well supported hardware and make tweak to the kernel and elsewhere to the specific hardware they were selling that things would work better than ever. Unfortunately I had problems with turning on Compiz and with trying to upgrade from 7.04 to 7.10 both making the computer completely unusable. I am currently running with Compiz on with 7.04 and all the latest updates. The only two outstanding issues is that changing the sensitivity of the mouse tracking doesn't work and trying to access my FTP sites from the bookmarks kills the Gnome menu bar. A restart of X doesn't fix the problem, only a complete reboot. I have run Ubuntu on various other computers and have never experienced anything like this. Looking around the Ubuntu-Dell forums it appears that my experience is an isolated situation.There is rumor that Dell is suppose to have an official version of 7.10 built for their computers in December. I am going to upgrade at that time and if I still have problems I am going to install 7.10 from the Ubuntu website and hope things are better.Overall though this laptop is rockin. It looks and feels smooth. I tried playing some DVDs last night and they looked real nice on the widescreen. Ooh, I like widescreen. The widescreen also gives me plenty of vertical space which is allows more content to be displayed without having to either wrap it to the next line or force me to scroll horizontally. Wireless works well to, except that Network Manager sucks as bad as it does on any other install. The battery life is ~4 hours of regular use. When I can scrounge up the money I would like to purchase a batter that holds a longer charge. Two 9-cell batteries should provide a charge that exceeds 10 hours. That would be really cool, but will have to wait.Stephen had previously provided me with a laptop that was given to him by someone else. It had lived a rough life going on many camping trips and other mayhem. It had some hardware issues and was slow, but it served it's purpose of allowing my to bring a portable computer in to class to take notes and browse the Internet. I will be donating it to Zeke. I am going to completely wipe the drive and put Xubuntu on it. I think I may have fixed the hardware issues as well. Time will tell.
Starting next week Rachel will be our primary daycare provider. We will drop all three kids off at her house in the morning. They will already have been dressed and their teeth brushed but not fed. Rachel will drop Aurora off at school and watch the other two girls all day. After school Aurora will go to the same afterschool at creative child. Judith has offered to pay for this. Aurora really likes her afterschool. When we pick her up she is usually disappointed as she always wants to stay until they close. Afterschool will allow Kim or I to pick up Aurora in stead of Rachel needing to make another trip in to town to pick her up. Rachel watching the girls will allow us to shave off 1/3 of our daycare expenses, and provide her with a nice income. To those not in the know, daycare is very expensive. I explained to my boss, who drives a very nice sports care, that if I didn't have to pay daycare I could afford a car that makes his look like poo.Aurora and Athena are very excited about having Rachel watch them as they really love her and her two babies.
I have started teaching Aurora North, East, South and West and some basic multiplication. She can count by twos and fives so I showed her how to use her fingers to multiply. She has a habit of multiplying anything I ask her by five regardless, and then sometimes increases it to six. So if I ask her for 5 X 4 she'll count 5 X 5 and tell me 25. Same if I ask her 2 X 3 she'll give me 10. We are working on it. She understand the concept but I think she gets confused trying to focus on the counting and not the number of fingers she is holding up.

Trip to Atlanta

This weekend Aurora, Athena and I went to Atlanta to visit Zeke and Vicky. I had a bunch of his stuff in the back of the truck that Vicky gave us.Aurora had rented Surf's Up, which I had promised her she could watch on the way up. We have one of those portable car DVD players. The cigarette lighter in my car had been acting up so before we left I made sure it worked and it did. When we went to actually leave it was not working and I was unable to make it work on the spot. I thought she was going to be upset, because we had made a big deal about it, but she took it pretty well.On the way up the girls where good the whole time. I really didn't expect this because such a long trip is really hard on little kids.Right before we got on I-75, which is about half way, we stopped at Apple Bees on Athena's request. The waitress was really nice. After that we went to Cracker Barrel and bought some candy to reward them for their excellent behaviour.When we got there we took the kids up to the park right behind the Atlanta zoo. The next morning we took the kids back up to the park because they had such a great time. Athena and Vicky where all about each other as well was Zeke and Aurora. They are really good with the kids, and the kids are really good for them.Before we left Atlanta I got the cigarette lighter working again so the girls where able to watch movies on the ride home. They started out with Surfs Up. Then we watched Star Wars Episode IV followed by SpongeBob.On the way down we stopped at the same Cracker Barrel we bought the candy from and ate there. The waitress there was exceptionally nice as well. Maybe that town produces excellent waitresses (and presumably waiters too.)So the trip was definitely a success.