Have you ever looked at the world today and thought, “Wha..?”

Believe it or not, somehow, children have survived for at least 6000 years without any form of government interference in their lives. When I was a kid (Okay, enough with the old jokes.), a “car seat” was just that, the seats in the car (usually made of naugahyde that would melt your Umbro shorts in the summer). Now kids are in some kind of special restraint until they’re old enough to shave. In my day, as the youngest kid, my place in the car on family vacation was the back window deck. GASP! The way I remember, you were “high strung” and so you didn’t get much sugar. Now, you’re ADHD and get drugged into being a zombie. When I rode my bike, the only wore I helmet was when I was pretending to be Evel Knievel. Now kids wear helmets anytime they travel faster than a brisk walk. The way I remember it, when we were on the play ground at school… WE PLAYED!!

But not anymore. Today, kids are not allowed to be kids. Get a load of this story from California.

An 11-year-old girl in West Covina, Calif., was suspended from her school from doing “dangerous” cartwheels and hand stands during lunch time…

Administrators at the school said they were concerned about safety of their students. They said gymnastics on the playground creates an unsafe situation.

Great googly-moogly people! Why don’t you just lock your kids in the basement until their 18. As long as you throw them some Happy Meals and the latest XBox game every week or so, they come out as perfectly well adjusted obese psychopaths. They’ll fit right in! GAH!!

(Link borrowed from Drudge. I’ll give it back, I promise.)

And just to prove that I’m not making this up, I want to point out something. You’ll notice that you can see my white board in this picture of Uncle Robert and me in my cube.

You can, in fact, see my actual White Board Quip of the Week! See! I TOLD you so. And you thought I was just being silly. Well… yes, I am. But still.

Uncle Robert made a day trip from Atlanta to come out and visit for my birthday. What a treat. There was an ulterior motive, though. He’s taking some college courses on web development and wanted to see how we run our shop.

It was a great visit. I got to turn the tables on the old Lieutenant and teach him some things about web programming, CSS, and project planning. He even got to sit in on a weekly project meeting, thanks to the good graces of my bosses. He also got a nice tour of our server room and an explanation of all the cool equipment. (Thanks Bryce!) Of course the old soldier still taught me quite a bit during his visit. (“Get your hands out of your d@#n pockets!”)

We managed to catch Tammy for lunch and had a good time at Chili’s. Robert took care of some important business. That is to say, he got an update on how Tammy is doing so he could relay it to is wife, Linda. And, of course, he entertained us with all sorts of war stories over some good chow. All in all, the trip was a success for all involved. I look forward to his next visit, whenever that may be.