When mom doesn't feel good

This is what happens. The blog doesn't get updated, the laundry piles up, the freezer gets stuffed with TV dinners, and Zeke rules the house.
(Yup. Those are Fruit Loops. All over the floor. And he ate a good number of them before I could get things cleaned up.)

Naming Conventions

For those who are unaware, our cute Zeke is going to be a brother. If you missed the announcement, just click here.

You might be wondering why we called him Jaguar Paw. Well, back when we had the Mike and Tina Pregnancy Blog hosted elsewhere, we posted a poll with a few names we had been considering and asking for people to vote on the names.


Some nefarious people convinced Mike to add "Jaguar Paw" to the list, a name which comes from the main character of the blockbuster, Apocalypto. Through the power of the Internets, "Jaguar Paw" quickly rose in popularity until it was clear that our boy would become a great Mayan warrior, at least in name.

Not to be outdone, we would like to open up the voting once more, but this time, we are going to allow even more participation.

Please follow this link to our name suggestion form where you can provide all of the crazy name ideas you can think of. We will post the responses as time allows, and maybe open up voting after we have collected a series of names.

The Questions

Question 1:
What is the deal with "The Answer"?

Question 2:
Given the following string and commands, can you decode the secret message?

The String
!"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789

The Commands
36,13,-9,-6,8,8,-4,-1,9,-18,-3,17,-10,11,-15,-23,21,12,-2,-30,18,22,-18,14,-4,-2,-8

Instructions for decoding:
If a command is positive, count to the right that many characters. If a command is negative, count to the left that many characters. Always count from the most recent character, so that you are moving forwards and backwards along the string.

Start just off the left end of the string.

For example, the commands 3,2,-1 would yield the characters #, %, and $, and the output would be "#%$".

The Answer, in American History

If you are not up to the Python challenge, here is an alternative puzzle that will lead you to the same information:

Who was the fourth president of the United States?

A. Alexander Hamilton
B. John Quincy Adams
C. James Madison
D. Michael Jackson