To Catch A Tugboatcapn...

My Wife's Aunt Cathy and her five year old daughter Amy came to visit with us for Thanksgiving, and they are staying through the weekend to help Xena with the baby.

(Which has made Xena very happy.)

Last night, I was entertaining Amy by sitting with her at the computer and visiting the various websites that she likes to play around on. One of these was TyGirls.com.

Now TyGirls.com has a free tour type deal, for which you have to enter the free secret code on the homepage.

Okay.

After we played the three or four games available there, Amy wanted to log in and play around on the password protected side of the website. She didn't have her own account, so we decided to call her sister, and get her username and password.

Piece of cake, right?

Her sister hesitated for a moment, and then told me that "I don't want you playing around on that account, because I use that password for everything."

And she wouldn't tell me her password.

She's TEN.

And I respesct that. She is absolutely entitled to her own password and privacy. I will never ask her again for anything like that.

But now we still can't get into the website.

So, I said to myself, "Self... We will just set up an account of our own, and then we can play around on TyGirls.com any time we feel like it!"

Okay, here we go...

Username: Tugboatcapn

Password: {Password}

Email: tugsemail@domain.com

So far, so good.

Zipcode, State, First Name...

Date of Birth: 05/26/1966...

Age: ... Uhnm... Forty One...

(Select One:) O Male O Female

Wait just a long-eared minute!!!

What in the world am I doing!?!?

Chris Hansen will be knocking on the door any second if I do this!

I had to cease and desist on setting up my own account at TyGirls.com.

I wish that we lived in a world where I could do things like this and no one would ever accuse me of something that I cannot imagine doing.

I wish we lived in a world where a five or ten year old girl did not have to worry about keeping her password a secret.

I wish that we lived in a world where there wasn't a monster lurking around every corner, within every website, behind every keystroke, bent on perverting, damaging and destroying our children...

But we don't.

So we have to be careful, and not just for our children's sake, but for our own as well.

Life Is A Highway...

From Matt Drudge at The Drudge Report...

NOT UNTIL FALL: WHITE HOUSE PLANS SEPTEMBER REVIEW FOR IRAQ SURGE RESULTS
Fri Apr 27 2007 19:51:18 ET

The White House will not attempt to assess until September whether any of the major objectives of the troop increase in Iraq are being achieved, and now accepts that it will take far longer to achieve the results than President Bush envisioned when he announced the strategy, the NY TIMES fronts in Saturday editions.

The timeline administration officials discussed, in on-the-record statements and background interviews, suggests that the White House is now planning to extend the increase in troops well into next year.

That is a radically different timeline from the one envisioned in legislation that passed the House and Senate this week, which the president has vowed to veto.

Developing...

Nancy Pelosi herself has said that now the Gavels of Power will be in the hands of America's children...

And for whatever reason, last November, the American People, no longer content to let America's children simply kick the back of the seat, fog the windows with their breath and draw pictures, and scream "He's touching me!... Make him STOP!!", saw fit to put the children in the front seat, where they could grab the steering wheel, fiddle with the knobs on the dash, and try to stomp the brake pedal. (Probably for the sheer entertainment value of the situation...)

But the good news is that the President is still driving.

And he is reading the road signs, even if the signs say that the destination is still farther away than he thought it would be when he embarked on this journey.

Childishly wishing the problem of Terrorism away will not get rid of it, and even though we are all getting tired, we cannot just decide to stop and sit down beside of the road, because that would get us nowhere.

And when the President started this trip, he told the children before they ever agreed to get into the car, (which they all did, by the way,) that this could be a ten year journey. Complaining that the trip is too long at this point serves no purpose but to make everyone more miserable.

So, Harry Reid can declare the War "Lost", and say that the Troop Surge is not working before even half of the Troops involved in the Surge are in Theater, but when you hear him say those things, recognize it for what it is...

A tired, spoiled child asking for the seven hundred and thirty-third time...

"Are we there yet?"