Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween to everyone! I thought I would share our pumpkin carving adventure from this week, and later I will post pictures of the boys dressed up for Halloween. You can see the boys like scooping out the seeds (and making sure we save them for roasting). Our pictures also skip some steps...the parts of the boys cutting out the faces. This is because both Matt and I end up pretty busy helping with the cutting so that no one hurts themselves. Thanks to that diligence...no injuries need to be reported!! Tonight we will take a picture of them lit up, since we wait until dark on Halloween to light them up. Enjoy the pictures!

We did not make it...

Matt and I had a goal to not turn on the furnace until at least November 1st. It was a good goal to shoot for in the balmy state of Minnesota! We were doing really well too, we have nice South facing windows that help heat the house during the day. However, yesterday and this morning were too windy, cold and cloudy to hold out any longer. (Apparently we had wind gust equivalent to category 1 hurricanes yesterday, for those of you more familiar with that measurement scale). This morning I woke up to 63 degrees, and although that is just a little cooler than we normally let it get during the winter, it was still cloudy this morning, so we turned on the furnace. :( Of course now it is nice and sunny out and the house is heating itself back up, so we only had to run it for about 30 minutes this morning...but we did not make it to November 1. Later I will post some delightful pictures from yesterday :)

Sunday October 26, 2008. Yes, it is snowing in this picture!!!

Garek's Interpretation

This is a drawing by Garek (actually a scan of a pencil drawing, so bear with the faded look). We were talking about the pocket gophers out in the yard earlier today, and so when Garek drew a picture this evening, they were included. This is a picture of a house, with two boys holding balloons to the left, and in the grass on the lower right is a small pocket gopher hole and on the left is a long skinny one. You may have to use your imagination with this, but Garek is very happy with his drawing, and even after I scanned this in, he continued to add to his masterpiece! And like all good preschoolers, he did add his name to his drawing :)

I am home!

So I am home, and it appears I have some blogging to catch up on, and some editing of posts (I pointed out to Matt that the family blog should not have words like h-e-double hockey sticks on it). I promise to get caught up soon! But I will tell you this half of October should be much more calm for us than the first half. :)

The straw that broke this camel's back

So, who else is tired of the negativity of political campaigns?

Today I am home with the boys because of MEA. The phone has been ringing off the hook with calls from numbers that are obviously telemarketing call centers (guessing pollsters are wondering where I stand, since we need to know who will win before the actual election). So thanks to the wonders of caller id I have been strategically avoiding answering any calls that are not from known acquaintances. (Side note on all of this is that when we bought our house and signed up for phone service, we specifically asked for the most private situation we could have regarding our phone number, so we have a previously never issued phone number, that is unlisted, shows up as private on the other end of things, and best I understand isn't supposed to be available for purchase on any lists from the phone company, so I need to follow up with said phone company and figure out how the heck our number is getting out, since we are very careful when filling out forms etc to make sure other companies can't sell our information. We even pay extra to the phone company for these extra measures. . . I digress)

So, the phone rings, and it comes up as "unknown" or "private" - something like that. I was going to ignore it, then I remembered that if someone like us was calling, that is how we would show up, and given the fact that Gigi is a teacher/ school administrator people she knows and works with might be as vigilant as we are with keeping home phone information private. So I pick up in good faith.

"Hello. . . hello, who is calling please" some static sound and then an obvious click, but not like someone hanging up the phone, more like the line just goes dead. Hmm. . . oh well, I hang up the phone.

Not even 20 seconds later and the phone is ringing again, same caller id read out- I'm thinking, "must have been cut off, so they are calling back- really want to talk to me". "hello. . . [click]"

to quote Garek - "What the . . . ?!?!?" (use your imagination).

again

and again

and again this happens.


That's it! I'm going to go take a shower, and if this keeps up I'm calling the phone company once I am out.

So I hear the phone ringing while I am in the shower, but it only happened once.

I see that there is a new voice mail, so I check it.

Some woman is rambling on as fast as she can read the script in front of her (sentences were barely coherent, more of a frantic run on) about the fact that our country needs to know this and that about how horrible a person Obama is- every last bit of mud that was ever fabricated from being a Muslim to running with terrorists was in the message.

As this is going on (the message was quite long) I am expecting this to be one of those underground unidentified interest parties not associated with any candidate etc etc.

". . . this message was paid for by the McCain for President Campaign (or what ever his official gig is called), address is [inaudible mumbling that resembles portions of what makes up an address, but in no way could I have contacted them if I wanted to]"

Oh. . . this was one of those- we just want to leave a message on your voice mail telemarketing things where the system cuts out if someone actually answers the phone since they expect the average working American to be at work when they were calling.


Here's the deal folks. I would classify myself an independent, but not associated with the party that goes by that name (fact of the matter is I probably will never become a card carrying member of any party as I despise the way parties hinder the ability to get things done). You will typically never know who I am voting for, since I am both conservative and liberal in various areas (don't bother asking where I stand, because I won't tell you). Gigi and I both work in Education, and both have a strong belief in making sure we do not have our personal beliefs influence the students we work with- one exception is the belief that they should participate and vote if they can, yet we push the students to formulate informed opinions for themselves and will gladly play devils advocate to challenge what they say they believe.

Today, this made my blood boil! I refuse to even consider voting for someone who knowingly or unknowingly runs a campaign that isn't about the issues, but instead is about instilling fear into the minds of citizens on "facts" (yeah, that's what the woman said she was telling me) that have no credibility. Telemarketing calls are one thing, but this was an act of shear coward-ism as far as I am concerned! At least have the spine to talk to me "face to face" so I have to option to clarify things regarding your sources, otherwise go spew your slander somewhere else.

FYI John, you just lost any chance of me voting for you. I refuse to believe that this tactic would be an effective way to change the Country and World we live in (maybe I am wrong and we should start Voice Mail bombing the leaders of the world to spread lies and hate to get our way- watch out global warming, financial markets and terrorists we finally figured out a way to beat you).


Now I just have to wait and see if Barack is able to stay on the issues, since that is what this is all about (it would be a real shame if my vote would have to be wasted on a write in for "Joe the Plumber" that we heard so much about during the debate last night).

bX-46yn40

So I typed up a great post about what we have going on and even included a video from the boy's violin recital so Gigi can see that (she is in CA for the week).

Everything looked good, caught a spelling error or two while I waited for the video to process, it finished, I played it back everything is good to go. Went to post it, and got a "bX-46vn40" error code.

Ok, that sucks, now I have to figure out how to get things to publish, which I will work on this afternoon when I am home with the boys because of an early release- but my real thoughts on it (other than sorry honey for not getting the video up right away- at least she can see it in the world of "drafts") is who designs a system to have error codes with a name like "bX-46vn40" and not have a plain english explanation of what failed so to have the average human understand what is going on.

Think about all the other errors that you encounter in the world of technology and computers. Sure it is a Code "x" error, but then there is usually a "can't connect to server" or some other explanation that at least points you to what went wrong so you can (or at least I have typically been able to) find a work around or know not to wast my time trying because it is something outside of what I can control (like the way I went about doing something- "there is more than one way to skin a cat" or so the saying goes). My initial thought was that it was a unique identifier for my specific situation so that I could contact them and they can track the exact instance when something when wrong and explain what happened (initially it blew my mind that they came up with something that sophisticated), but alas, others have experienced the same error, which dispels any possibility of that being the case.

bX-46vn40 !?!?!?!?

I have had great respect for Blogger.com and the way their system works, but this is unacceptable from a design/ end user standpoint. Go ahead and use a hash for error codes as long as it is an internal log only and you are that far gone of a geek that would require you to want to know what kj83kd#)%dk3o3 really means. But the minute the external audience is involved, the design must have taken into consideration that Humans are involved, and the average person needs a better explanation than bX-46vn40.

Presidential Gala and 10th year reunion.

On Friday Matt and I were lucky enough to be invited to attend a Gala in honor of the new President of Gustavus- Jack Ohle. It was amazing! It certainly gives you a new impression of your Alma mater when you see it all decked out! We had a 4 course meal with different wines offered at each course. It was was delicious. We also heard from the new president and a variety of college constituents about a new plan for the future of Gustavus. In addition we sat with other alum and heard about their years at Gustavus.

On Saturday I went to my 10th year class reunion at Gustavus. I will start off this section with...I cannot be that old already!! I was the event chair for the reunion, so I already had a good idea of what was going on, but it still could not prepare me for the fun and excitement of catching up with my fellow Gusties! It was a great day and night! We had a brunch, homecoming game, dinner, and drinks at Patrick's (local bar). It really makes me want to keep in touch with everyone even better and we all talked about how facebook is helping us stay in touch! I am so glad that this was part of my 101 list and I strongly encourage you all to make it to reunions when you can.

I was pretty busy Saturday and neglected to take many pictures... here are a couple.

A couple of my fellow committee members...Alicia and Karen

My roomate from Sophmore year and good friend Karin and I were catching up

Of course there was a game going on...

October....

I just realized that today is October 2nd and I have not yet posted the Dobosenski to do list! (It kind of gives you an idea of what October holds for us, at least the first half...most of this is through the 18th or so)

• The normal weekly activities...lessons, Awana, Sunday School, Wednesday School, and Family Fun Night
• Matt and Gigi will attend the Presidential Gala for the new Gustavus President
• Gigi has her 10th year college reunion!!
• Matt has Nobel, Gigi will attend
• Gigi will go on overnight field trip with school
• Clean up the garden- till it under
• Gigi will go to CA to work with a school out there for a few days
• Gavin and Garek have their first recitals for the year
• The Denfeld Dobos will visit
• Gavin and Garek will have MEA off from school
• Mankato Symphony Concert
• Gigi will finish one EdD class and start a new one
• Halloween!