Rick’s Rants and Raves

When I pulled into the parking lot at work this morning, this story came on the radio. I couldn’t get out of the car until I dried my face with an old McDonald’s napkin.

Friday Anne and I spent all day at Ikea and Jungle Jims. We bought a new coffee table, kitchen table, 4 chairs, and other assorted goodies. It barely fit in the back of the car. I’m glad we didn’t take the van.

Saturday started out with Soccer games for the kids in rural central Ohio. It was amazing how we went from over-crowded suburbia to wide open farm land in the space of about 3 miles. After the games (Emily tied, Nathan won, all had fun!) we ran to The Andersons to get some stuff for Tom and Kathy. Again, we were back in over-crowded suburbia where the car noise and exhaust made it difficult to enjoy the beautiful spring day. We then took the stuff to Tom & Kathys where we met them and friends Tom and Kristin to work on the garden. We did that for about an hour (after some lunch) and then had to head home. The kids finished their showers just in time for Sandy to pick them up to see Peter Pan at Otterbein. We showered and went to pick up our friend Linda to go to the Columbus Destroyers game (they won! shocker!). We watched about 2 minutes of the Penguins vs. Redwings game 1 Stanley Cup game at the R Bar, then headed to Lindas to watch the last 8 pathetic minutes (poor Penguins!). We got home to releive my mother so that she could go home. Fortunately our kids were already asleep.

Sunday started a little slower than usual (ok, about like usual), with some coffee cake, eggs and bacon for breakfast. We eventually made our way out of the house back down to Tom & Kathy’s for more garden work with Kevin and Kristina. We spent all afternoon and into the evening planting, weeding, mulching, etc. On our way home, Emily was invited to a sleep over at Tom & Kristin’s with their daughter, so Emily got through her shower, and went over with Anne.

Today, Monday, we’re going to help Anne’s mom do some planting, and then have dinner with my mom, somehow picking up Emily in between.

There isn’t a thing I wish we hadn’t done, but boy we have been busy.

My son and I had dinner last night with CJ, and his kids. We’ve known CJ for 5 months now: he started out as my daughter’s street hockey coach, and is now her soccer coach, and he’s the de facto coach of my adult kickball team. A number of us from the kickball team went out to dinner last night to celebrate our not-so-terrible loss (5-8).

Since I knew CJ was coaching two kids soccer teams, and the kickball, I asked if he was coaching 24×7. Yeah, he pretty much was, and he enjoys it, but he felt like he wouldn’t have to coach so much if only other parents would step up and help out. He detailed his family schedule which ends up being 12-18 hours at the YMCA a week (after work and on Saturdays), and that kind of schedule is starting to get a bit draining.

Initially, I felt a bit defensive. I am an active capable parent, and my kids have been in a couple of sports, and the most I do is show up, root, and provide snacks on my appointed week. But then I realized I felt much the same way about other parents and scouting. “Scouting would be so much better if only the parents were more involved” I frequently think to myself.

And then it came to me: most parents are about as involved as they can be in helping to organize and lead various attributes of their kids activities. The parents I know individually do the following: lead scout troops, lead or participate in the PTA, volunteer at the schools, coach sports, lead choirs, help at the community theater, and probably so much more. Throw into that a few struggling (or broken) marriages, caring for elderly parents, job difficulties, and who knows what other issues, and it isn’t really surprising that there aren’t more parents involved in the stuff I’m leading.

And that brings me to my point–we only know small parts of each others lives. As a coach, CJ only sees the parents on the sidelines of games and practices. As a den leader, I only see parents at scout functions. We don’t know all the other stuff (and struggles) that fill their lives.

Today, my son’s soccer team played pretty well. I’m not sure I understand their coach’s methods (can’t the offensive line help defend their goal? why should they stand idle at mid-field? oh well, I’m not the coach) but they are having fun, and Nathan felt good about how he played in the game.

One of Nathan’s teammates forgot one of his shin guards. His mother was explaining to me that he’s easily distracted and “he’s so smart.” I had to stifle a snort. When I watch him play soccer (his second season, I believe) he looks dense. He’s not terribly coordinated, and pretty slow moving, but what really gets me is he doesn’t seem to understand the game, even at a 9 year old level. He parks his butt in position and waits. If the ball comes within 5 feet, he lumbers towards it, and tries to kick after it hits his shins, if the opposing team hasn’t gone around him. When the coach tries to instruct him, he stares with a blank, angry sort of look. He doesn’t watch the ball, or the other players, and just doesn’t seem to “get it.” Like I said, he looks dense to me.

But I only see him in one narrow slice of his life. His parents are proud of him, and I think its admirable to try to get him involved in some level of physical activity even though that clearly isn’t his strength. Maybe his smartness is exhibited in other ways: math, reading, working with hand tools; I don’t know. When I watch him play soccer, and think “aw man, does the dumb fat kid have to be a forward?” I need to remember to be more charitable. I see only a tidbit of his life.

Installing ReactOS on VirtualBox couldn’t be easier, and really couldn’t be much faster.

1. Grab a copy of the ReactOS Install CD ISO. Unzip it to your favorite location.
2. Launch VirtualBox, and create a new virtual machine. The name of the new vm is up to you. Set the OS Type to Windows XP.
3. I used 256MB for base memory.
4. Create a new Boot Hard Disk, dynamically expanding, with as much space as you want. The final install size for ReactOS v 0.3.4 is only 94MB. I chose 2GB.
5. Add the Install CD ISO to the vm.
6. Start your new vm and begin the ReactOS install process.
7. Choose your language.
8. Choose your hardware settings (PC or multi-processor PC, display, keyboard, keyboard layout).
9. Partition your disk (or just use the whole disk, since its virtual, after all!)
10. Choose to format your disk FAT (not quick)
11. Choose your install directory, or just leave the default \ReactOS.
12. Since you’re doing a virtual machine, install the bootloader on the hard disk.
13. Reboot the machine.
14. When the machine boots, it will automatically run the ReactOS Setup Wizard.
15. Acknowledge the license and “shoulders”.
16. Give it your name and organization
17. Specify the computer name, and administrator password. The password, at this point, is optional.
18. Change the system locale settings if you want. Change the keyboard layout if you want.
19. Change the date and time if you need to, as well as the timezone.
20. One more reboot, and your ReactOS VirtualBox is DONE!
21. When mine first came up, it wanted to install a driver for “System Device”. When I chose to install it automatically, it failed to find the driver. It didn’t seem to be a big deal.

Clearly, this is still a very early release. It is “still under heavy development”. But I must say that it is promising so far. I could see this going a long way to capture much of the hobbyist and embedded device market.