Jason Massengale » Dad of 4

How Many People Watch Phineas & Ferb

Jason Massengale — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 20:01:31 +0000

I just had a proud daddy moment. My 8 yr old son called me into the living room where he was sitting in front of the computer with Google up & he asked me “Dad, how do you spell Phineas & Ferb?” I’ve never even heard of the show and I had no idea how to spell it so I asked him what it was and what he was trying to accomplish.

Eli let me know that he’s watched Phinneas & Ferb “like a hundred times” & he was curious how many other people watched it. Pretty cool right? Here he is, 8 yrs old, he has a question that he wants an answer to so he hops on Google to find the answer.

We proceeded to Google where I started slowly typing f-i-n-e-u-s then a list or suggestions popped up with several misspellings. The first result was for Phineas & Ferb on Disney so he knew that was the right one. He then popped back over to the other tab and finished typing his question in Google.

Not wanting him to lose confidence in his ability to find answers using Google, I cautioned that he may not find the exact answer, because that’s probably not a really common question & left him to figure it out on his own. “Dad, 835 people have voted on it. That must mean a lot of people watch it”. I agreed and congratulated him for finding an answer.

If you’re curious, millions of people watch the show. Here’s some info about Phineas & Ferb viewership. I don’t know much about it, but it’s a Disney show so I’m hoping it’s good.

We definitely live in a new era with 8 yr old kids turning to Google for answers & I kind of have mixed emotions about it. What other types of questions is he going to turn to Google for when he wants answers… There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle so I guess I’ll just monitor his activity & teach him to police himself. It’s like my Staff Sgt Thomas often said while I was in Marine Combat Training: “Do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do”.

My fingers are crossed.

Manage Photos of Friends and Family

Jason Massengale — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:27:23 +0000

Google released Picasa 3.5 a couple of weeks ago and it’s got my vote. It basically allows you to tag photos similar to the way photos can be tagged on Facebook.

They’ve got all kinds of cool little features built in to it. Picasa will scan all of your photos and look for matches to names you’ve already assigned using facial recognition then flag the photos letting you know that it might be the same person. It’s super easy to confirm or delete the suggestion by either checking it or x-ing it.

They say picasaweb (the free service that allows you to publish your photos to the internet) also has built in name tag features though I didn’t see them when I looked. Check it out for yourself: Picasa Name Tags.

Helluva Santa huh?

Jason Massengale — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:13:26 +0000

How bout this Santa? We had the family Christmas Eve gathering at our house this year. All in all, things went well. No fights with the in-laws, actually I don’t recall hearing any arguing at all – that makes two grief free holidays in a row. Let’s hope this is the beginning of a long trend. God knows the previous trend was really starting to wear on me.

I really enjoyed the Santa gig this year though. Stephanie grabbed me to see if I had any tape around. “Sure thing, I’ve got some electrical tape in my office, will that work?”

We walked back to my office and there Jackie was decked out in the Santa garb. They were having trouble with the eyebrows and needed some tape to keep them in place. I kept the chuckles to a minimum after Jackie asked if I wanted to be Santa this year. Thanks, but no thanks.

From years of different family members playing Santa on Christmas, most of the 13 kids know it’s not the “real” santa that shows up to hand out presents at these gatherings. Jackie did a great job with the ho ho’ing but forgot to take off her watch so she was busted.

I’ll get the video up one of these days. Until then, here are some pics:

Hope you had a Merry Christmas,

Jason Massengale

Jason Massengale with Santa

Cody and Santa Mom

Brandi and Santa Mom

Lauren and Santa Mom

Eli and Santa Mom

Those damned parent/teacher conferences…

Jason Massengale — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 22:19:28 +0000

A few weeks ago, Jackie got a cool phone call from an automated system at school letting her know conferences were the next day. The machine was calling about Cody’s conferences – he’s a freshman this year. Maybe those systems are common, but it was new to me. He’s the only one of our kids in public school, the rest go to a private school through eighth grade.
Anyway, it was funny. Jackie came home from the conferences pretty pissed off. Cody was doing miserable in school and all the teachers basically said the same thing. Cody is plenty smart enough to handle the content, he’s just too busy doing other stuff in class.
Cody’s response… I thought I was going to have time to get my grades up before you found out about it. I didn’t know you knew about conferences. Classic 14-year old response.
Jason Massengale

Dad of 4 – Jason Massengale

Jason Massengale — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:19:51 +0000

I’ve got 4 kids, 2 of ours and 2 of hers. I’ve been around the older two since they were 1 & 3 so we’re pretty comfortable with each other. Cody, 14, is the oldest. Brandie, 13 is next followed by Lauren, 8, and Eli, 6.

Crazy that they’re getting this old. They’re all great and have they’re own individual strengths, but the thing i can say about all of them is that they’re not slackers. They’re competitive and try hard at everything they do (almost everything anyway). They all make me proud and I wish I would spend more time with them than I do. Talk soon,

Jason Massengale