Birds Attack Car Mirrors

I started letting Momoko and Kit Kat park in the carport. They drive to school every day. And they both have problems backing into the driveway next to the carport. This works out good for them. But my car is now in the driveway. The birds are targeting it.

Every day the birds poop on my mirrors. I tried cleaning them right away. The birds come back multiple times a day and soil the mirrors. A quick fix was to put plastic grocery bags of the mirrors. That deters the birds. It also makes the car look bad.

I bought some spikes to put on top of the mirrors. They also work well. But they were hard to mount onto the mirrors. I had to use two-sided tape. That is hard to remove when I take the spikes off to drive the car. There has to be a better way.

Academic Dishonesty

Little Kat has been doing well in college this semester. There is no other option. Momoko and I are watching him like hawks. I am effectively auditing his two computer classes, quizzing him each week and forcing him to better learn the material. Going into the last week he had all As. Then he got a zero on a Python programming assignment. Not good.

The instructor told Little Kat to call him. Apparently the instructor accused Little Kat of cheating. He had two options: take a 0 for the assignment, or fight the accusation. Little Kat chose to take the 0. Initially Little Kat said he got a 0 because he used Google to find some materials outside of class. That did not make any sense. I actually know the instructor. He is not some crazy dude who would say that.

Upon further investigation, I found that Little Kat could not figure out how to complete his programming assignment. So he Googled around. He found some code that he did not understand. That code solved the assignment. So he submitted it. This was a fail. Even if Little Kat did not copy the code directly, there is no way an outside investigator could tell the difference between a copier and a guy like Little Kat who had no idea what he was doing.

Hopefully we got some lessons learned from this episode. Dig in and get help from instructors, parents, tutors if you cannot figure out your homework. Use Google, but make sure you understand what you read so you can produce your own material that you can defend. And in the worst case, just take the lower grade by not completing an assignment you cannot figure out. Let's hope the lesson sinks in.

Getting Breakfast

This morning I woke up and dialed into my first meeting of the day. Normally I stick around for an optional second meeting. But today I was too hungry. I went upstairs and brushed my teeth. Then I put a load of clothes in the washer. Finally I departed for McDonalds.

When I pulled into the parking lot, there was a big armored car trying to make a U-turn in the parking lot. I gave them plenty of room. Then a guy who also pulled aside for the truck got into line before me. I was next. The ordering line moved fast.

After I paid, I waited a while to get my food. The worker asked me to park in numero dos. She clarified that meant parking spot number two. Somebody came out immediately asked if I ordered hotcakes.  I told her no. She asked if I was sure? WTF? Of course I was sure.

Later this worker came back out. I told her not only did I not get hotcakes, but I substituted English muffins for the biscuit in a Big Breakfast. I checked and verified my order was correct. At home, I added a slice of cheese to the English muffins and sausage. Then I heated it all up in the microwave. Delicious.