*** I originally posted this on the official World of Warcraft forums. ***

I’ve been playing for months (levels 1-80 [not this character]) with one or both of my sons (ages 11 and 15). We’ve quested a bit, and we’ve run dungeons, just the three of us. My 15 year old stopped playing WoW about 10 levels ago, so since then, it’s been just me and my 11 year old.

Since there’s only two of us now, we’ve been joining LFDs for our dungeon runs. It’s not nearly as fun — we can’t enjoy the dungeons at our own pace, we have to follow the rush :-(

During these runs with PUGs, I’ve seen my son be the “problem player”. On multiple occasions, he has aggroed something by getting too close to it — just wanting to look at it. He has seemed AFK because he wanted to look at the scenery of the dungeon. He has pulled a side mob because he wanted to test himself one-on-one (or battles have seemed so easy, and so he thinks he can just kill one more on his own). He has switched between specs while forgetting to change his gear accordingly. He has annoyed people by emoting constantly. *sigh*

He never does any of this to intentionally be a problem. He’s just being a kid. If you have kids, you know how they just do completely ridiculous stuff to entertain themselves. When we were playing as a threesome, I could overlook some of his silliness because I know he’s a child, or I could control potential problematic actions because we play in the same physical room together.

Now, he’s not all bad in LFDs. Just last night, when the tank died, my son (as an enhancement shaman) stepped up and managed to hold the enemy’s attention off the clothy casters. He also throws out heals on himself or others when the group healer is pressured. He knows how the group tank/healer/DPS dynamic works, and he tries to be helpful. I trust him completely when we’re under pressure. And when we’re not under pressure, usually a simple, one time warning (verbal from me, or in chat from a party member) straightens him up.

Basically, when there is real trouble/danger, he plays well. But when the run is easier, he tends to be silly and sloppy, and probably annoying to strangers. So, I’m sorry for that.

Bullgrit

Saw this gun in a car in our high school parking lot. I wonder if someone will get suspended or fired?

Bullgrit

Calfgrit15 just finished up his 30 hours of drivers ed at high school. The schedule is a bit different than when I took it back in the 80s. I remember taking the class one hour a day for about a month, during the regular school day — I think it was during the PE/Health class time. But nowadays, (at least in this area), the class is after school, for three hours a day over two weeks. Although it is held in a high school classroom, it’s not offered as part of the regular school curriculum — we parents have to enroll the student on our own.

Another difference is what is presented in the class. I remember learning the rules of the road in the classroom, and then going driving with the instructor all in the same month. Now, though, the 30 hours he just completed were all classroom instruction, (no actual driving, yet). The instructor and a state trooper extensively covered the dangers of driving — especially texting while driving. They won’t actually hit the road in a vehicle for another month or two (or more).

The dangers of texting and driving were a very prominent aspect of the instruction. It’s a really big deal, I understand.

At the end of the two weeks, we parents were invited in for an hour. The instructor reiterated her plea against texting and driving, even showing us a YouTube video:

The instructor explained how our kids are watching us drive. As homework, she told them to observe their parents, and then she had them write down some bad habits they witnessed. She picked up a stack of papers and one-by-one, she read the bad habits the students had written down about us. Every single paper included texting. Wow. (I assumed she cherry picked the papers with that specific problem to make her point on the prevalence of texting and driving.) There were one or two other bad things, also, like speeding or putting on makeup. I wondered what bad habit Calfgrit15 caught me doing. Probably not coming to a full stop at stop signs, or maybe not keeping both hands on the steering wheel at all times — I know I sometimes do both those things.

I never intentionally speed, and I never text while driving, (and I very rarely apply makeup while driving). I’ve never been a speeder — my mother even thinks I drive slow (the speed limit!). And even if I was so asinine as to want to text while driving, I can’t read anything that small without my reading glasses on (which I don’t wear while driving). At the worst, if I must know what a text says while driving, (very, very rarely), I just ask Siri to speak it for me.

When Calfgrit15 is in the car with me, he doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to my driving. He’s either looking at his phone, reading a book (something he can do but I can’t while riding in a car), or talking to me about video games. He has shown no interest at all in driving, even when I keep offering to take him to an empty parking lot to let him practice a little. He’s driven once around a parking lot one time out of the dozen times I’ve offered. So I was interested to know what and when he actually observed about my driving.

As we were leaving the parent/class meeting, I asked Calfgrit15 what bad habit he saw me doing. “I didn’t really pay attention,” he said.

“Did you fill out the homework paper?” I asked. “What did you write down for my bad habit?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I just filled in something generic, like texting.”

*facepalm*

“You said I text while driving? Oh my god.” I held up my hands in exasperation. “The way she preached against that, I’d be less embarrassed if you told her I shoot a gun at other drivers.”

I wondered, and I hope, those homework papers were anonymous. My son officially told a drivers ed teacher, (and maybe a state trooper?), that I regularly text while driving. O. M. G. !

Bullgrit

On the issue of whether Apple should help the FBI crack the San Bernardino shooters/terrorists iPhone, I am on the side of Apple. When I hear “people on the street” talking about this case, they almost always say that Apple should be patriotic and help fight terrorism and crime with the government. These kinds of statements reveal that most “people on the street” don’t understand security technology. And even when I hear or read news pieces on this issue, rarely do the journalists or reporters explain what actually is the real issue with this.

It’s not that Apple is refusing to crack open one iPhone — the “crack” will actually allow any and all iPhones to be opened. Apple has a very good security system built into their phones, and millions of people rely on that good security to keep their personal information protected. If Apple creates a bypass for that security, that security is compromised for everyone. The technology is such that creating a crack for one iPhone, (any iPhone), is essentially creating a crack for every iPhone.

See, this whole thing actually is not simply “cracking a phone” — that is, it is not breaking into the one, single physical iPhone device.

It’s “cracking the phone security system” — that is, it’s breaking into the computer program which locks that one and all iPhone devices.

Imagine:

A company makes a super good physical padlock. No one has been able to pick it — not criminals, not the government, not competing padlock-making companies. Even employees of the company itself can’t pick the lock, because no one person at the company knows exactly how the whole mechanism is created. Each little piece of the lock is designed and created by separate workers, and even the guy who assembles all the pieces into a whole doesn’t know how the individual pieces are made.

Then one day the government wants/needs the company to pick one of their locks. If the company complies, it means they have to get everyone together, compare notes, and create a lock-picking tool for their padlocks. Once that lock-pick tool is created, it can open any of the company-made locks. That’s good for the government because it can now pick the lock they need to open. But it is very, very, very bad for everyone who uses that brand of padlock because there now exists a lock-picking tool for their padlock. What was once an unpickable lock is now totally pickable because the company created the pick. No one’s lock is truly safe anymore, from anyone — government or criminals.

Because we live in and are discussing a digital security system, the above analogy falls far short of the actual danger. In this digital world, the lock-pick tool can easily be copied and multiplied. Hell, even if the actual cracking code (the lock-pick tool) was destroyed*, there now are people who know how to (re)create it. Maybe dozens or hundreds of people, who, even one, could remake the crack, or maybe just pass along the knowledge to someone else.

* Nothing in the digital world is ever truly destroyed.

What if Apple kept a database of everyone’s iDevice password in a “very safe” place? When you buy a new device (phone/tablet/whatever), you told Apple the password you were (ever) going to use. The only way Apple would give away your password is if the government came to them with a proper warrant. Would you feel that your private info stored on your device was safe? Would you, really? Even if you have complete trust in the government — they would never misuse their power to get your password, just think: there exists a database with everyone’s passwords. A database of passwords just like there are databases of credit card info, medical histories, and government secret programs — all things that have been compromised.

If you don’t follow this concept yet, let me try one more (less computery) analogy:

What if there was a law dictating that you have to give the government a copy of your home key? Even if the government was completely flawless and incorruptible, would you feel completely secure knowing that there is a room in the police office where your (and everyone’s) home key was hanging on a hook with your name and address on it? Would you support such a law even for the intent to protect your neighborhood? Would you feel secure and protected when someone else (even the government) has access to your home?

Bullgrit