Wordle

Wordle is my favorite new thing from 2022. It's a part of my morning routine to sip coffee and eat cereal while solving this puzzle. I like comparing my solves with my wife. At one point our daughter played the game, and it was fun trying to have the fewest guesses.

I like Wordle's history: Josh Wardle, a programmer, makes a game to play with close friends and family. He makes a website for this game, which allowed more people to play it. He created a nifty emoji-based scorecard which was easy and fun to share. Within a year his game becomes viral. Frustrated by copy-cat versions of his game, he made a deal to sell his game to The NY Times.

Like other programmers, I took stabs to solve Wordle programmatically. However, the enduring challenge is solving it with just the clues that emerge from the game itself. The fact that you can only play one game per day is another draw. At first, Wordle allowed every five-letter word to be in the puzzle, but he whittled that down to the most popular 6000 words. At one game per day, we're talking 15 years of puzzles!

Some Wordle words are fiendishly difficult. Double consonants and double vowels add difficulty. If I can identify the first letter, it's usually easier. Some words are hard enough that I wouldn't finish the game during my breakfast. Instead, I'd let the puzzle linger in my head, turning over the letters until an hour or so later, usually in the bathroom, I'll remember my game and when I open it, I'll instantly solve it. 

Someone on Twitter said that the ideal starting word is TASER, because it contains the most popular letters. My brother said AUDIO is another great starter: you identify the vowels early! In the end, what's worked best for me is to come up with a brand-new five-letter word every morning. Before it was a word  from the cereal box (WHOLE, WHEAT, HEART, GRAIN), but nowadays I pick something out of the blue, like my mood for the day: CRANK, FUNNY, SMILE.

I am competitive with my Wordle score. I always try to get the word before the sixth and last guess. My Wordle statistics show 100s of solves in 4 and 5 guesses and I like to keep it that way. Ultimately it's a guessing game, so I try not to get too down about not getting the word (breaking my streak). Of late I've been posting my scores on a public Facebook group. Look for my posts there if you want to see my recent puzzles!

COVID-19

Earlier in the month, I was still skeptical about COVID-19, the disease that has now become America's central focus. Back then it was still far away, and I thought that everyone was overreacting. I was persuaded by the "it's just another flu" argument. The lack of urgency from the federal government kept me pessimistic.

I changed my mind when I looked at the death tolls from Italy. Then my daughter's college announced that students should not return to campus after Spring Break. Instead, students would resume their Spring semester work online. Soon after, the company I worked for announced an indefinite work from home mandate.

Since then, major aspects of American life have shut down: all professional sports leagues, college sports, movies, churches, casinos, restaurants and retail centers. It is stark living out without these non-essentials. I would love to be able to go to the library, to the gym, or to the movies. I think all of us would.

Until then, we are practicing social distancing. We go out for groceries, but not with the same frequency as before. The hoarding and insanity of that initial shut-down weekend seems gone, but being in a supermarket feels risky. The virus is invisible. Is this cart wiped down?

We still enjoy take-out, but picking it up from empty restaurants is disquieting. Our take-out orders are a small way of helping local businesses, but they are absorbing a big economic hit. I wish the country were better set up to help people on the edge. Of late, I've been pondering the brutality of capitalism.

As I write this, we're in this situation for at least another month. I hope that we continue to follow the guidelines so that we can flatten that curve. Next time COVID-19 comes around (if indeed it's seasonal), we'll be closer to a vaccine, have more hospital equipment, and have way better protocols. Until then, hunker down, America.

College

Our house is too big now
We're missing our teen
With her up in college
We've lost our routine.

Her room has her stuff
Lots of movies and books
It's just as she left it
Every time we take looks.

Our chores are now different
We clean a bit less
We're cooking for two
There's not that much mess.

We love that she's learning
But school's a good drive
With FaceTime and texts though
We're not too deprived.

For all of us three
We feel all the feels
It's a new phase of life
Let's see what reveals!

Self-Driving Cars

Futurists have been ushering in the era of the self-driving car, but I was glad to see a recent article proposing more caution. A recent fatality involving a self-driving car underscores this. The emergency backup driver in that fatality was not paying attention to the road. Why would they? After all, the car was driving.

Two years ago I started teaching my daughter to drive. At first a lot of what I was showing her was checklist and task oriented. As we started driving I tried to demonstrate continual awareness and anticipation. It was a constant stream of me saying "look out for this", "watch that", and "this person is signalling." Driving is continually reacting and making decisions.

Trying to replicate what the brain is doing while driving is going to be quite the feat in artificial intelligence. Lots of driving involves intuition and, in some cases, improvisation. I couldn't even imagine the computer science behind how you'd do this, though I suspect machine learning is a part of it.

A co-worker said he cannot wait for the age of the self-driving car to arrive. He thinks it'll be the end of distracted drivers. Machines don't get distracted. Despite laws, people still peek and peck at their mobile devices before, during and after traffic lights.

I like the baby steps that the self-driving car is taking, namely starting with smaller vehicles on controlled roads. Let's get collision avoidance figured out, then the computer will at least hold their own on real streets with real self-driving drivers.

The Cars of My Life

I first learned to drive with my Dad's Chevrolet Chevelle in the mid 1980s. It was long, it was blue, and towards the end of its existence it belched out blue exhaust smoke at random. I remember many afternoons with my Dad practicing parallel parking over and over between two traffic cones.

Our family traded up from the Chevelle into a generic Chevrolet conversion van, complete with a manual sliding door and a ladder to get to the roof. We drove this car across the country, wearing out its single cassette player. I was excited when I drove for a few hours on those long rides.

When I left for college and beyond, I inherited the family sedan, a blue Nissan Sentra. (My parents bought a red Sentra to replace it.) I shared the car with my wife in the 1990s after we moved to the suburbs. I drove the Sentra until small holes started to emerge in the trunk and back-seat wheel wells due to rust.

In 2000, using a little dot-com money, I bought a used Audi A4. It remains my favorite car. It was sleek yet muscular. I loved that you could lower the windows by rotating the key counter-clockwise in the door lock. I also loved its red interior lights. I gave up the car after one too many engine start problems and a persistent water leak.

In 2006, I bought a Subaru Legacy. This car is completely nondescript but is thoroughly reliable. The all-wheel drive has paid for itself over many winters up and down our hilly neighborhood. I taught my daughter how to drive with this car. It might not be flashy, but as long as it's drivable, I'll be keeping it.

Review: Bohemian Rhapsody

I'm still in the sway of the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, the generous and loving bio-pic of the band Queen and Freddie Mercury, its lead singer.

Rami Malek had the great responsibility of performing as the larger-than-life Freddie Mercury, and he succeeds in every way. Malek's mannerisms, his accent, and his singing (lip-syncing) seemed spot-on, but what elevated the movie was his emotion, which shimmered through the screen. When he telephones his wife Mary (Lucy Boynton), and asks her to have a drink over the phone, my heart ached seeing the hope in his eyes. When he finally figures out the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody ("I don't want to die; I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all"), the surprise and wonder on his face says everything about creativity.

The rest of the band is ably portrayed: lead guitarist Brian May (Gwilym Lee), drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy), bassist John Deacon (Joe Mazzello). They each had moments of humor and drama. The movie reinforces what I've learned about big rock bands: it's a unique bond and brotherhood; it's a repetitive, burn-out inducing job, with confrontations and infighting heightened by the glare of adulation and the pressure of giving people what they want.

Much has been made about the rocky production (two directors, changes to the lead actor, multiple scripts). Much has also been made of the film's liberal use of dramatic license. I chose not to let these detract from my enjoyment. It probably helped that I wasn't well-versed on the band's real history. A movie like this is a myth-maker. It's a rock-and-roll myth with Queen and Freddie Mercury. For some this will be all they know about Queen, and their music. For others the movie will increase their curiosity to learn more about this great band.

The end result for me is a movie that left me spellbound, and deeply satisfied. Being reintroduced to all their great songs was invigorating. I loved it so much I saw it again the following weekend with my daughter. I'm grateful to her for making us see it!

Becoming An Adult

My wife and I were chatting about money one day. It's a frequent touch point: the everlasting discussion about money. My daughter was with us, and she asked "Is this all adults talk about? Money?"

"Well, we talk about you a lot!"

All kidding aside, it's an intriguing question. It made me glad our kid was interested in us adults. She'll be one soon enough.

I remember the exact moment in which I truly felt like an adult: at the real estate closing for the house where we now live. I sat at a table with a few lawyers, the current owners, and some real estate agents. My wife was there too, and maybe she felt the same way: "I'm doing an adult thing here!"

We decided on a house in November 1996 and closed in March 1997. Along the way we had to make lots of decisions. We had to hire a lawyer, sell a bunch of stock, figure out the inspection process, buy furniture, and lots of other tasks that I have now forgotten. All of this may sound like run-of-the-mill bureaucracy but the closing felt like momentous occasion.

While it may seem that adults only talk about money, in reality what adults talk about are decisions. That's the essence of adulthood: decision making. Small decisions. Big decisions. Inconsequential decisions. Humongous decisions.

These decisions become your history and experience, and that helps because decision making never ends. Spend a few years making decisions and you'll be talking like an adult before you know it!

Memories of Holding a Baby

The last time I held a baby was November 2013. The baby was my wife's cousin's child, a boy just a few months old.

My wife's cousin was in town for a reunion, and there was a mini-party at her parents in Connecticut. When her twin baby boys woke up from napping, they were passed around to adoring uncles and aunts and cousins.

I was thrilled when I had a chance to hold one of them. I was slightly terrified, but I had been hoping for a chance to try. Did I remember how to hold them right? Would the baby start crying?

The heft of the child was incredible. How does 8-10 pounds of baby feel so heavy? The little boy grabbed one of my fingers, and began to gurgle. I made some coo-ing noises. He began to squirm. I put him up on my shoulder. I felt like I might cry.

"I'm getting emotional here!" I said, smiling before handing him back to the father.

I remember that my daughter was recording some of the festivities on her iPod that day. My daughter! Fourteen years ago I held her for the first time, when she was born.

This past week, I asked her if she had video from that party in November 2013. She found it on her computer. We watched a few seconds of my wife holding one of the twins. No video of me, though (I looked for it later). The memories will have to do.

A Year of Mining

I spent most of this year enthralled by a little game called Minecraft.

I downloaded this game just after New Years Day 2012, and ever since then I have been constantly engaged and delighted by it.

When you first play Minecraft, you find yourself in a natural area (blue sky, green grass, trees, water). Your character can break blocks of wood, and dig up blocks of dirt. You soon realize that blocks can be collected. You soon realize that these blocks can be built into other things, which in turn can be used to build yet more things. Finally, you find that night time is fast approaching, and you must seek some shelter. If you are up and about at night, a monster may come to attack you. Or not.

In Minecraft, you can turn off the monsters from appearing. You can, in fact, enter a "creative" mode where you can call up any particular block that you want, and with this capability you can build practically anything. (The blocks in Minecraft are like Lego blocks, and unsurprisingly Minecraft and Lego are building off that similarity.)

There's only one "rule" in Minecraft: you can only sleep at night. Other than that, you can do practically anything that you want. You can run a large farm, you can grow chickens, you can build a boat and travel the ocean, or you can climb the highest mountain, or explore the deepest mine. You can make maps, write in books, make a large railway or dig for gold.

I enjoy exploring Minecraft's seemingly endless world. Unlike most video games that have pre-defined maps or territories, Minecraft generates its world as you enter them. When your character reaches an area you haven't visited yet, the game produces a new territory for you to explore. It can be a desert, a wintry forest, or a vast plains area. It can be rainy, or snowy.

It's a game that caters to your imagination. I love walking around in Minecraft, getting lost, and building small areas so that I can sleep at night. I pretend I'm "the last person on Earth", except I often play with my daughter on our local server. I love exploring abandoned mine shafts, and climbing mountains. I pretend I'm an intrepid explorer. There's no time limit, so I don't have to rush anything.

Most video games are goal-oriented, but in Minecraft, the only goals are those that you set for yourself. Because of this, everyone's attachment to the game becomes deeply personal. Not everyone plays it the same way, and as a result the game becomes a reflection of you instead of a reflection of its creator. Think of Minecraft like a musical instrument: everyone knows the notes, but everyone plays them differently.

To say that it's my favorite video game is an understatement: it's one of the best things in my life.

The Middle of Parenthood

My daughter Mia turned nine years old a few days ago.

My wife jokingly said "we only have another nine years to go!" I smiled. In another nine years, Mia will turn 18, technically an adult. Do I really have that little time left with my daughter as a "child"?

Sometimes I find myself staring at her. How did that little baby we had nine years ago become this big girl? I look long and hard at her face, picking out my features, my wife's features. I watch her while she reads or plays video games or sits at the computer, and I think I can see her adult demeanor. I hear Mia talking and I think I can hear her all grown up. I hold her hand, and I imagine it the size of mine.

Mia has an interest in the adult world. We drive by the middle school and high school. When we go into town, we point out where Jenn went to college. She's been to my office. There's a very interesting future waiting for her, and she seems up for it.

Maybe this is the middle of parenthood. A fond remembrance of the baby she was, but an eagerness for the adult she will become. Nine more years. It almost seems too short.

Seven

I took a peek at some of my daughter's homework the other day. The class is learning how to count coins. For some reason, this seems advanced to me. I don't remember knowing about coins and money until I was much older. Mia is somehow picking this stuff up.

Of late, Mia's been obsessed with her Nintendo (she's really become adept at Mario Kart DS) and WebKinz. I don't remember playing video games when I was her age, because they weren't invented yet. I certainly didn't know or remember passwords when I was her age, yet here is Mia, carefully instructing me not to reveal her WebKinz password.

I take her to school every morning that I am able. I've looked on at the parents of her classmates, and I sense the same feelings: warmth; pride; love. Raising a child is ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. One minute I'm blinking tears at her sweetness, and the next minute I find myself yelling at her to get dressed for school.

Mundane. Profound. And she's now seven.

Happy Birthday...

...little girl!

Scene from a Marriage

This past week, a small Nor'easter blew through. The mixture of icy rain and heavy snow produced a thick layer of ice on my driveway that I had to pick apart. The ice was quite hard and thick, and with the vicious cycle of thaw-then-freeze, I was picking at the ice all week. I used a heavier and older garden shovel. It has a solid steel blade, and its true purpose is for moving soil. (My snow shovels are all plastic.) I worked the ice by reversing the blade, and driving it into the ice, breaking the ice apart. The weight and the blade make for a great ice breaker.

One night, after dinner, after another session of ice picking, I began to feel a small sharp pain in my right hand. When I turned it over, I saw it. Somehow, while working the old shovel, I managed to get a small splinter in my right hand. My gloves didn't prevent the splinter from piercing me. It was a burr, no larger than a thorn of a small rose. It was in the fleshy part of my palm, under my thumb. It seemed to get more painful now that I knew what it was.

We have a first aid kit, and I found some plastic tweezers inside it. I worked without glasses, wishing that we had one of those magnifying monocles. I couldn't get it out, despite my careful work. If I pinched the area where the splinter was, I saw that I might be able to get it, but I'd need a third hand. Would I have to peel back my skin, like an onion, to get at this sliver of shovel wood?

I went to Jenn, and told her my woe. She was in bed, reading. (She goes to bed earlier than I do, so I was glad she was still up.) She took my hand, saw my splinter, made a face, looked at my plastic tweezers, and said "get the ones that I use." I fetched hers, and gave it to her. She pulled my hand close to her face, and she worked the wound.

I remember that she had picked out a splinter from our daughter's hand one summer. Mia was crying, no doubt from this new feeling of pain, but Jenn was gentle. I felt like Mia just then. Minus the crying.

Jenn peeled back a bit of the flesh, which stung a bit. Then she squeezed the tweezers, trying to clasp the splinter. She got it out in a few tries. My hand felt immediately better. Funny how a foreign object in your body makes you uncomfortable.

"Go wash your hands," Jenn said. I kissed her goodnight again. "Thank you," I said.

Go Daddy

Last Saturday, I took Mia to the park. Some boys were playing basketball, and while Mia went up and down the slide, I cast a look at those boys. All tough. Slam dunking the eight foot rim. I was a boy once, but sometimes it's so hard to remember. I used to spend whole days playing, pausing only to eat.

"Look at me!" Mia will yell. I'll turn to her. She's walking up the slide. Did I ever do that? Now she comes back down. Over and over again. My mind hovers between distraction and attentiveness.

"Let's run, Daddy!" And there she goes, running to the other slide, across the empty parking lot. "You'll never catch me, Daddy!" she shouts.

I slow jog after her, saying the lines that she knows I will say. "I will catch you, Mia!" She laughs and runs. I will catch you.

Happy Birthday, Mia!

Mia, my daughter, turned four today. All she knows is that there's lots of cake, presents and people saying Happy Birthday to her. She thinks Mom is 'five years old' and Dad is 'six'. She can say that she's not a baby, but she can still cry like one. Life with her has become 'routine', but when I let myself, I easily feel amazed that she is in my life.

Happy Birthday, Little Girl.

Blogging About Children

Ayelet Waldman decided to end her BLOG. She appeared in a late January New York Times article about parents who BLOG about their children. When I finally visited her web page, I was surprised to read "The End."

In the article, she said: "Fundamentally children resent being placed at the heart of their parents' expression, and yet I still do it." Another parental blogger, Molly Jong-Fast, said "There comes that inevitable moment when parents who write about their children need to choose between their writing and their children's privacy and honor."

These words gave me pause. I used to write an online diary about my daughter Mia. And even though I've stopped, I still regularly post pictures of Mia. Now, after reading that article, I sometimes wonder if I should stop my picture site as well. I used to joke that I'd stop posting the pictures as soon as Mia herself asked me. The punchline was that this would happen around the time she was old enough to date.

So what I think I'll do is post fewer pictures for the upcoming year. And next year, when she goes to kindergarten, maybe I'll bow out from the picture site too.

Baby Doll

This past weekend, which included Father's day, Jenn had brought home a Zapf baby doll for Mia. We already have a baby doll named Bob, but this new doll is programmed to cry, yawn, and actually get drowsy and fall asleep.

The first thing the baby doll did when we put in the batteries was cry. Mia was fascinated. "She's crying!" I was instantly brought me back to Mia's first year.

"Where's the switch to turn it off?" was my first question.

I still hear my share of crying, but it's nothing like those days of infancy. I'm happy and weary of being a father. I've seen so much of Mia growing up, and I know there's more to come! More than anything, I've learned that time really does go by quickly. Hearing that doll cry and cry brought that lesson to the forefront again.

That Sunday, I showed Mia how to pat and rub the baby so that she closes her eyes and dozes to sleep. At night, after work, I make sure it's switched off. Time flies indeed.

Picture of Mia

I created a new picture album for my daughter's third birthday party. It was a fun but exhausting day. Mia was really out of it by her bedtime, but she really enjoyed playing with all her cousins and friends.

Valentine's Day

I had a nice Valentine's weekend with my two favorite women (my wife and my daughter).

The Magic Season

It's that magical season again, a time of gift giving and gift receiving.

As I get older, the two-sided coin of gift giving and receiving has become more and more worn. It's hard to find the shiny spots anymore. Somewhere along the way, giving gifts has become a chore (or at best, another item on my to-do list). And receiving gifts hasn't gotten any easier.

My wife and I have developed a highly sensible approach for the holiday season. We simply tell each other what we'd like. This starts as early as Labor Day. By the time I buy gifts, which I now do almost exclusively on-line, it's a matter of crossing items off a very detailed list (often with catalog and item numbers). We rarely surprise one another nowadays and this makes me wistful.

I like to think I'm a very gracious gift receiver, but somewhere along the line, I started making enough money to buy myself my own gifts. If I find myself wanting a music CD, or a book, or a new computer part, I buy it. I don't wait for a holiday, or my birthday, or my anniversary.

At work, a bunch of us were grousing about how competitive gift giving can become. The secret Santas. The price limits. Who gave what to whom. Gifts become a measure of the giver and the recipient. "Oh, he can afford to give that. Oh, he deserved that; he's out of work." Instead of sentiment, it's judgment.

Since we have a daughter, Jenn and I have returned to simpler emotions regarding the holidays. Mia's at an age where handing her packing tape is a cause for high celebration, and we can't wait for her to open the myriad of gifts that we bought her. In her squeals of delight, in her simple eagerness to tear away the wrapping paper, I remember that gifts symbolize love and generosity. "I'm thinking of you." "I love you."

I think receivers and givers should remember that this magical season.