Scenario: Create digital composition with photo and text, print as a photo at Walmart for about $0.15/card. Get the print back from Walmart and run the photo through a home printer to put text on the back and make it a card.

Consider: It's fun to make things by yourself. There are challenges to solve. $.15/photo vs. $.55/ea. for a front/back Christmas postcard at Walmart. $0.35/ea difference isn't much to have them handle a good piece of this process. There goes the fun... and the challenges... and the growth. Wait, that $.35 is mine! And the experience!

Problem 1: First print after changing to 4x6 paper orientation, printed with card top on right side of input paper. Afterward, showed the 4x6 in landscape preview, text still fitting. It printed the card top on the left hand side of the paper for the rest of the time.

Solution: Pay attention to print preview orientation. If portrait, prints top on right side. If landscape, prints top on left side. Feed photo into printer accordingly.

Problem 2: Too much ink. It smears. It's too heavy, gets blurry.

Solution: Use Courier New, as lightest font. Use Printer Media - Glossy Paper. Use Printer Quality - Best.

Problem 3: When printing the back of the card, the last little bit will shift the card in the printer, smearing and offset-printing the last few columns of text.

Solution: Make the right-hand margin bigger (about 2 in total) so that it's not trying to print that close to that edge of the paper.

Final fun suggestion: Use mail merge and print the names and addresses of your Christmas correspondents on the envelopes. Fun and efficient.

I'm grateful for the ideals of self government. Our Creator has endowed each of us with the desire to be free, as so we should be. Free to serve Him.

"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite"

Thomas Jefferson

It's hard to find something to watch online with your kids.

Examples:

• Prime - only 3% of content is TV-G or TV-PG
• Netflix - 62% originals are TV-MA

Wading through muck to find a diamond in the rough... is rough stuff!

See the Families Need Not Subscribe report from 2023.

Sure, there are niche alternatives. More essentially, there are way better life options than streaming shows with the kiddos.

Family streaming is mostly a loss, but not one felt too keenly. Definitely recoverable.

I thought this was a playful take on the glories and furies of mathematics:

Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky -- or the answer is wrong and you have to start all over and try again and see how it comes out this time.

By Carl Sandberg, from "Study is Hard Work", by William H. Armstrong, page 111

Here's a refreshing bit about the moral reasons to excel in writing.

To write well, you must think correctly. You cannot hope to write clearly unless you first have clearly in mind what you are going to write. Before you attempt to write anything, even the answer to the simplest question on a daily quiz, you must have something to say. Not all students are gifted with equal creative ability, but all are responsible in a very real way; it is indeed a moral obligation to carry out certain practices of intent and honesty. These may be called the basic obligations of all students toward written work, and the are three in number: (1) All are obligated to study sufficiently in order to have a working knowledge of the subject before beginning to write. (2) All are equally obligated to use all the skill they posseses to convert this information into an interesting, coherent piece of writing. (3) All are obligated (and the seriousness of this obligation touches the very character of the student) to never try to pass off thoughtless, boring, and sloppily executed written work merely to get by.

From "Study is Hard Work" by William H. Armstrong, pg. 79

Ah, what clarity of standard and purpose! We and our students need more of this kind of talk.

My son and I are reading this, and he can't stop smiling about how much I'm nodding my head and exclaiming, "Yes!"

Now that your mind is elevated to such ideals, hopefully this blog will not be an utter disappointment.

This site has historically been a dev blog. And it'll continue to be so, now with more life.

Once I interviewed a man for a dev job. I asked him what side projects he had been working on. He said, "There's more to life than code, you guys." He's right, of course. I still love a nice side project (see this addition to the site). And I love life! There's so much more to life than code.