March Madness

Disclaimer: Neither I nor Athennia have ever been or will ever be into something as dreadfully boring as professional basketball. It's just been a fast-paced weekend and we happen to be in March; so, I titled this post accordingly. That is all.

Munching at the Mess Hall

I treated Lou and the kids to dinner at Applebee's in Newtown on Friday night.

Things have been a bit rocky between Athennia and the kids as of late. (Typical teenager stuff; but, who among us didn't know everything at the ripe old age of 17?) The kids have been consecutively ducking our invitations to hang out with them; so, Athennia put her foot down and told them we were going out to dinner as a family and everyone had to come.

So, we showed up at Applebee's smack in the middle of peak dinner hours (on a Friday). And, there were six of us; so, they had to push three tables together to seat us, and it felt like we were all lined up a la a mess hall or a grade-school cafeteria.

But, the food was great, and Lou and I sat next to each other and were able to get to know each other a bit more (since I hadn't seen her since I briefly met her just after Christmas).

Mudslides and Melting Ice Cream

On the way back to drop the kids off at Athennia's apartment, we stopped at the wine and spirits store so she and I could grab some ingredients to make Kahlua Kapali mudslides when we got back to my place. (Fun fact: Kapali tastes identical to Kahlua but is half the price.) Taylor asked us to get her some sangria if they had it.

You're how old, sport? Oh, right: 17. Yeah; sure thing!

When we got back to the car, Riley asked if we could get ice cream cones. Athennia was midway through explaining that we had just spent $100+ on dinner, but I interjected that I could actually go for an ice cream cone as well.

So, we hit the drive-thru at the Morrisville Burger King; and, it turned out that Athennia and the girl who made the cones knew each other in the past... so, she hooked us up with ice cream cones that looked more like carnival-sized cotton candy, and we all struggled to eat them before they started melting all over the car.

Mountain-Climbing and Madmartigan

On Saturday, Athennia and I decided to go for a walk at Tamanend Park in Southampton. Her cousin Danny called just as we were about to drive over: He wanted to catch up and had a favor to ask for later in the spring; and, when Athennia mentioned that we were going to walk at Tamanend, Danny declared...

Oh, that's not a walk: You guys are going hiking!

I readily assured her that it was just a walk, on mostly-flat well-traveled trails. But then, somehow, we ended up following the stream into the woods, and it became our mission to navigate the mud and the melting snow to get to the infamous "three tunnels" that I explained were all the rage back when I was in my early teens.

So, we did indeed end up hiking... and even decided to scale the steep incline leading up to the old railroad tracks (which have recently been converted to a paved bike path). Danny was right after all!

Microstopped and Minty Fresh!

Finally, Athennia had recently decided to splurge on a laptop so that I could start teaching her things: She wants to become more proficient with "computing" in general; but, she can also command a higher salary at work if she learns to code in Python or familiarizes herself with trigonometry or the other more advanced mathematics that underpin mechanical engineering.

The laptop arrived Sunday afternoon, and we spent a few hours configuring it. I had preemptively convinced her to make the switch to Linux; but, I was honored just the same that she had no desire to even try booting into Windows even once before we wiped it off her drive completely! It was most definitely a Big Daddy moment...

Microsoft went down three points!

So, I walked her through installing Linux Mint with sane defaults like full-disk encryption and privacy-respecting software choices...

She's not the biggest Google-user in the world, for example; but, she comes from a Chrome background on her phone. So, I explained why Firefox was preferable:

Imagine that there was this giant corporation that was by far the largest advertising agency that had ever existed in human history. And, they had somehow hoodwinked everyone into thinking they were legit... That they were ethical and trustworthy... That they were actually not THE biggest advertising agency that had ever been (and therefore exclusively in the business of mining personal information to better target said advertisements).

And now, imagine that they had released this web browser that everyone loved. And, if someone stopped and considered the obvious truth about them, that person might make the case that choosing this particular browser to serve as the interface between oneself and the digital world at large might be... let's put it nicely and say suboptimal.

And now, imagine no more: That corporation? It's Google.
That browser? It's Chrome.
And, the poor schmuck using it because she thinks she's not special or important enough to care about her privacy? That doesn't have to be you.

She went with Firefox instead.

Firefox comes with relatively-decent settings out of the box, but we locked it down with some crap-blockers like Ghostery and Privacy Badger.

Then I showed her how to use the TOR network (if you click this link, you will instantly be added to an NSA watch list: true story!) for anonymized browsing. I gave her a crash course in double-entry accounting and helped her set up GnuCash to model various aspects of her finances. We configured SyncThing to securely send any photos she takes on her phone right to her laptop.

And all kinds of other stuff that's decidedly not as noteworthy.

And so, Athennia now has a computer she can use without feeling like she lives in 1970s East Berlin. I think she loves it!