Family Life

I learned to program on a computer like this one. It’s a Texas Instruments TI99/4A, popular in 1981. My high school acquired a lab-full of these, and I signed up for the very first class. I programmed in BASIC, which was about the only programming language available to home computers at the time, and in [...]

POST OF AN OLD DRAFT. Originally dated Monday, April 14, 2008.
Debbie recently took Daniel to a piano concert at the central library. He’s learning to play, and she wanted him to see the talent and abilities of a concert-caliber musician. Besides, she wanted to attend the concert herself, and “furthering Daniel’s education” was a good-enough [...]

This afternoon I took Joel with me on an errand, just the two of us. On the way back he asked, with a mischievous grin, if he could sit in Daniel’s seat. Sure. Why not? So with much conspiratorial laughter I buckled Joel into Daniel’s car seat, wondering what his comments would be about the [...]

The boys have a fixed bedtime ritual, and part of it involves turning off the light. Such a simple step, so intrinsic to going to bed, and yet so fraught with conflict and formal negotiation. On the surface, the agreed-upon procedure is that the boys take turns: tonight Daniel turns off the light, tomorrow night [...]

Daniel is learning to play the piano, and he’s learning to read. One thing he’s learned of music is that when a note is followed by a dot it is three beats long. He has to name the notes and count while he plays. So playing a piece goes something like, “A, B – two [...]