Twenty-One All Over Again

Work today was slow, but the time seemed to go by fast. I think a lot of people are on spring break or something: the call volume just seems to be lower than normal. I finished my chapter on subnetting at work today, but I’m going to need to go through that chapter at least one more time to get it down. Very cornfusing…

I had set a trap for Colin last night. I suspected him of lying to his mother and I about his medications yesterday, so I counted the number of pills before I went to sleep. When I got home, he was absolutely out of control, bouncing off the walls style. I did a quick count of them while he was busy yelling the same syllable at the top of his lungs and running around in a circle. Surprise, surprise: the number had not changed. After calling his name half a dozen times, I finally captured enough of his scattered attention to ask him if he had taken his medication. He replied with an emphatic yes. ORLY? I looked him in the eyes and asked him once more if he was sure he took his medication. Without blinking, he told me he had taken it.

At that point, I called him out on his lie and made him sit in a chair facing the corner until his mother came home. While he was sitting, I removed all video game consoles and handheld video games, locked the cable box down with a password, locked his user account on the PC and removed its MAC address from the switch table. He will be home for the next 5 days on spring break with absolutely nothing to do. No friends, no games, no TV, no computer: nothing but his books, studies and cleaning the house he has spent the last two days destroying. We’ll be assigning chores to be completed by the time we get home if he wants any chance to have those privileges back again.

Probably the worse part about this finding is that he lied so smoothly: no sign whatsoever. I know he did the same thing yesterday. How many more times has he lied to get his way with us? I want this to be so severe that he’ll think twice before he decides to lie again.

The kids went to bed at the same time, and we set out for our static night. The usual camp with the usual rats was it usually packed self, and it took about an hour or so before we shooed off all the soloists. I want to try somewhere else that’s not so crowded, but the problem with those places is that they suck in some way – that’s why they’re not crowded! The experience went pretty well after everyone cleared out, right up to the end of the party. We caught some major linkage of several rats and aggroed worm, resulting in a few more deaths that we’re used to. We just got crammed into a bad spot to try to fight in. I’m going to post a map on the forums to help us organize our camps and maybe help prevent that from happening again.

Study night tomorrow night. I need to review subnetting and see if I can make myself some practice problems. The problem I’m having is the book doesn’t provide enough practice scenarios, and I don’t know enough to make my own. I’ll do my best with what I got. Lastly, if you have a chance and see her online, in person or talk to her on the phone, wish my lovely wife DeAnn a Happy Birthday. No matter how many times you turn 21, you’ll always be my girl, hon.