Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Monday, December 18, 2006
Update on IE7 Drops..
So far it's almost pleasurable. I'm still pretty skittish about visiting boston.com and some sites are loading kind of slow (but what banking site doesn't?). I had to root around for the refresh button too. Loving the tabbed browsing. Not quite the monster I expected.
Friday, December 08, 2006
IE7 Drops on Thursday
-Right onto my desktop. Will it touch down ever so gently like new-fallen snow? Or will it hit like Fatman? My inquiring mind can't wait.
BTW, I'm taking a little informal survey; Has anyone noticed lately that they have a lot of browser issues when they visit Boston.com? It seems like almost every time I sign on using IE6, the browser starts whimpering and cowering like a traumitized puppy. Is anyone else having issues with that site?
BTW, I'm taking a little informal survey; Has anyone noticed lately that they have a lot of browser issues when they visit Boston.com? It seems like almost every time I sign on using IE6, the browser starts whimpering and cowering like a traumitized puppy. Is anyone else having issues with that site?
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Monday, December 04, 2006
Book Report: Collapse, by Jared Diamond
This was a fun book to read in several ways. First of all, the paperback said "COLLAPSE" in big red letters on the front cover. People on the train kept giving me strange little looks, probably because it wasn't a cute little cover with drawings of cocktail glasses and shoes all over it.
Also, it was by the author of "Guns, Germs and Steel" which was a fairly fast read despite being something you could hold open a door with. "Collapse", like "GG&S" is built around a single poignant and pithy question that one of Diamond's students asked in class. "What were people on Easter Island thinking when they cut the last tree down?"
They were probably blaming their government and/or some convenient sub-group of the population. It's a good question though. Diamond broke down every reason he could come up with as to why different societies collapsed at different times in history, and compared societies like Easter Island, Greenland Vikings and Anaisazi to the list. And, much like modern life, it comes down to Location, Location, Location. Try to live too far away from your required resources for living and you won't survive very long. And it pays to play nice with your neighbors too. Erik the Red apparently wasn't and things didn't go so well for his descendants.
But if you tend to spend resources that aren't really there, over-populate your territory and piss off your friends and neighbors, don't come crying when all of a sudden you realize that you can't sustain your societial structure. You should have read this book.
Also, it was by the author of "Guns, Germs and Steel" which was a fairly fast read despite being something you could hold open a door with. "Collapse", like "GG&S" is built around a single poignant and pithy question that one of Diamond's students asked in class. "What were people on Easter Island thinking when they cut the last tree down?"
They were probably blaming their government and/or some convenient sub-group of the population. It's a good question though. Diamond broke down every reason he could come up with as to why different societies collapsed at different times in history, and compared societies like Easter Island, Greenland Vikings and Anaisazi to the list. And, much like modern life, it comes down to Location, Location, Location. Try to live too far away from your required resources for living and you won't survive very long. And it pays to play nice with your neighbors too. Erik the Red apparently wasn't and things didn't go so well for his descendants.
But if you tend to spend resources that aren't really there, over-populate your territory and piss off your friends and neighbors, don't come crying when all of a sudden you realize that you can't sustain your societial structure. You should have read this book.
Shalom Punks!
If you are like me and are of a "certain age", you might remember the perpetual ad that used to run in the Boston Phoenix's classifieds in the late 90's. "Shalom Punks! Boston's only Jew-core band seeks drummer that can keep a kosher beat..." it ran something like that. Now Steven Lee Beeber has come forth with the hypothesis that without Judaism, particularly New York Judaism (or, Jew Cool as the article puts it), there would be no Punk. I can hear Linda Richman in my head right now, "The punk rock revolution was neither punk nor rock. Discuss!"
Monday, November 27, 2006
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
40ish Mutant Retired Ninjas...
Just in case you were wondering what Rainn Wilson is doing RIGHT THIS SECOND.
By the way, I had no idea until today that his dad is Robert Anton Wilson.
The World According To...
This is pretty cool. It's different maps of the world with various countries and/or continents sized according to statistics instead of landmass. Think of it as a global homunculus.
(author's note: the preceding link is rated PG)
(author's note: the preceding link is rated PG)
Just In Time For The Holidays...Web 3.0
Just what I wanted, another reason to make me feel out-of-touch. Stay tuned, because I will bet you a Wii station that the same people blogging right now about how over-hyped Web 3.0 is, will be the same ones running around in 3 months ranting about how cool it is and don't you have it yet? Loser has to watch "It's A Wonderful Life" 5 times in a row.
Girls Vs. Girls
Gene swap makes boy flies fight like girl flies. Makes girl flies fight with lots of crotch grabbing and screaming things like “C'mon! You want some of this!!?”
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Renovation Time
Now that I've downloaded my umpteenth Web 2.0/blog/cms/wordpress created site, I'm finally ready to drink the Kool Aid and try making a go at using Wordpress to give my sites a thorough re-design. N. Design's beautiful home page was the final feather, nail, pick your analogy.
So far, I've gotten as far as some pen sketches on a few post-it notes, a ton of downloaded instructions from Word Press's link-happy site and a "standby page" with a little orange-jellybellied spider icon that I created in about 20 minutes last night (see above). Unfortunately, it will cost slightly more to host a php-enabled version of a couple of sites on Doteasy, but hopefully I'll make it up in increased income.
I've decided that until jennmearswebdesign.com has its own blog activated, I'll try to give updates here. For today, my mission is to determine if it's possible to use an animated GIF as my template's background. I have a series of design steps on the site, in the PROCESS link, that I would like to animate together in one illustration and place in the header of the new design.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Happy Election Day!
It's November 7th and finally time to hand in those ballots. Unfortunately, I have to sit this round of democracy in action out due to childcare/transportation/space time continuum logistics. It's funny how we all live in a society where you can go online to pay bills, order groceries, post photos, take surveys and a host of other things that would be nice to do privately and securely, but we can't seem to get out the vote online. Hmm. I guess all those nice old ladies who always seems to be the ones in charge at the polling stations need to feel needed. At any rate, I'm glad to live in a place where it's little old ladies with cookies when you go to vote instead of big guys in body armor with machine guns (see: Iraq).
If I could get a chance to vote today, I would vote Democrat down the line. Empirically, most of the people in my immediate vicinity seem to be slightly worse off now than they were under the Clinton Administration so I think it's time to try the other way for a change.
Link of the Day award goes to the Southern Poverty Law Center for their interactive map of hate groups currently operating in the US. Most embarrassing is the fact that South Carolina, my home state, reportedly has 46 hate groups, third behind Florida (50) and California (52). Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island, North Dakota and New Mexico all have 0 reported hate groups. This is starting to put Vermont in the running for state I would most likely emigrate to. I use the term emigrate, because with all of Vermont's dissatisfaction with Washington, I wouldn't be surprised if it cut its ties with the union altogether.
Click on this to view the MILOTD (Most Ironic Link Of The Day)
Monday, November 06, 2006
Swirling Plastic Vortex Menaces Marine Life
One of the few works of art that I can clearly recall from art school is an installation done by (rickrolled link! Damn you Weekly Dig!) Jef Taylor. He was living near Revere Beach then and at the time (late 80's) it was notorious for being so dirty that people were forbidden to swim in the ocean. Jef had spent months beachcombing the medical waste and other assorted junk that washed up on the beach every day and he had separated everything according to color and then arranged it in a long graceful spiral jetty along one alcove of the gallery. From a distance it was a beautiful vibrant spectrum stretched along the floor. Up close, however, one recognized the bright red of hazardous medical waste warnings, the yellow hues of condom wrappers and the subtle blues and purples of hypodermic needles. It was my favorite kind of art; playfully calling upon your senses only to turn the tables and shock you with its message.
And now in a horrible irony, it seems like life is imitating art. On a scale even Christo couldn't conceive of. And it probably is not as pretty as Jef's trash rainbow.
And now in a horrible irony, it seems like life is imitating art. On a scale even Christo couldn't conceive of. And it probably is not as pretty as Jef's trash rainbow.
Friday, October 20, 2006
I Like Dwight
More specifically, I like the way I can enjoy his particular strain of psychotic geek-dom from a safe distance. I think we all know a Dwight-like character in real life. I have known several:
1) Comic book collectors at Newbury Comics.
I worked there in the early 90's. You could always spot the comic book (excuse me, GRAPHIC NOVEL) collectors in the store at Harvard Sq. They wore glasses and pocket protectors and would screech like banshees if you touched their precious comics when you rang them in.
2) Barry F. at my kung fu school
He was really tall and wore a tank top so you could see his muscles. When he did the movements he had an intensity that was kind of scary/funny. Scary, because if one of his flailing limbs actually made contact, it would hurt (he gave me a good sized bruise during conditioning one day), and funny because if he missed a target, he would probably fall over because he was actually really un-coordinated. He went with us to a tournament and made everyone hours late because we were supposed to meet up with him to drive down to the hotel, and he was running really late but kept calling to tell us he was "a few minutes away". He had one guy's cell phone number and he kept calling it every 15 minutes when the guy was trying to watch a DVD to give him another update on his progress. The best part was when the guy answered his phone and the entire van heard: "Wait, what? You hit who? A cop?".
He had rearended an off-duty state trooper on the Jersey Turnpike. In a traffic jam.
We were all greatly relieved to hear that Barry had developed a hernia that required surgery and would most likely not be returning to the school. He had been there long enough to qualify for sparring classes and all the women dreaded being placed in an over-eager elbow lock.
3) Paul the Psycho PA
I worked on a film that shot at the abandoned state mental hospital in Waltham. It was the most fun I've had on a film set in my life. The crew was all people I had worked with on low budgets and we were all starting to make some decent dough. There was one fly in the ointment though, Paul the Psycho Production Assistant.
He was the only PA I have ever known who did not comprehend the sanctity of the grip truck. It is supposed to be the GE crew's sanctuary from the rest of the crew, chiefly over-eager PA's. Nonetheless, Paul would bound onto the lift gate, and then if that wasn't an invasion enough, stand within inches of me and start looking through my CD collection. He was so uncool that there was no way I could nicely hint that he was being a little TOO friendly, so I comforted myself with the fantasy that he was merely an hallucination due to over-consumption of Red Bull.
We had a scene that necessitated the Waltham Fire Department being on set to supervise a what they call a controlled burn. Paul ran around trying to impress the female members of the crew with his Boy Scout experience and then when the firemen set the fire he got REALLY excited. Later on, we all got baked and watched the video footage of the shoot. You could see him dancing from foot to foot as the fire burned and at the end, when the WFD stepped in and extinguished the flames, Paul jumped in the air, hooting and pumping his fist.
Soon, though, his puppy-like on set bumblings began to take on a darker tone. He asked out the new PA chick and she (wisely) turned him down, only to accept a date from the 2nd AD. Paul spent that night's wrap beers session hunched over and muttering things like: "What does HE have that I don't?" and "I could make her like me."
Paul had written a script, and he constantly tried to pimp it to the director when he was trying to work with the actors.
He claimed to have misunderstood a night shoot call time of 6pm for 6am and turned up on the set at dawn in his beaten up hatchback. When he realized, finally, that no one else was coming for the next 12 hours, he got lost on his way off the grounds and ended up stalling out his car's transmission when he tried to back up on a gravel road. He had to get his father to drop him off and pick him up from set. We would be hanging out after wrap, passing a joint and drinking beers and this station wagon would pull up and this guy who looked like Tom Bosley would get out and yell for Paul. Paul brought him over to introduce him to us. He actually looked more uncomfortable than we were.
John Doe was the big star of the film (it was a low budget) and every day Paul would hang around the AD asking if John was coming by the set, would John sign his X cd, what's John really like, on and on. Production started to send Paul on bogus missions that involved long distances and many hours, just to keep him out of everyone's hair. They actually sent him to a town on the South Shore to buy a case of beer from a brewpub. What I really loved about that was the kid managed to get lost on the way back and arrived at wrap time with a story about stopping by a farm to ask for directions back to the highway and getting a tour of the farm instead. We imagined some farmer's wife, her legs sticking out of a haystack somewhere, bloody pitchfork on the barn floor.
As the day drew near for John Doe to arrive on set, we began to dread Paul's presence. Finally, one morning I came to set and the 2nd 2nd AD took me aside and informed me that Paul had been fired. Apparently he was being sent on another bogus mission (this time to buy a dildo in Chinatown for a sex scene) and since he had no car, the Production Coordinator was trying to tell him how hers worked and he completely flipped out on her, accusing her of trying to make him look stupid. The producer, realizing his opportunity, swooped in and almost physically threw him off set. We all spent the rest of that day expecting to see Paul strolling up the road with a shotgun.
4) Dan, my ex-brother-in-law
Dan not only closely resembles Dwight K. Schrute in appearance, but I swear someone has been observing his movements for years and Dwight is actually based on him. This is a man who can spend 45 minutes quizzing you at the dinner table about your car insurance. He reads Consumer Reports cover to cover. My favorite joke that my sister told about him was that when he emptied his pockets at night, she could hear the pennies whine from being pinched all day.
He tried teaching me how to drive and almost ended up getting me arrested. We were driving down a stretch of road that was notorious for drunken late night spin outs. It was raining and cold and I was freshly traumatized by the car crash movies in Drivers Ed. I was going the speed limit and this huge SUV behind us started riding my bumper and flashing its brights into the car. I tried to speed up but Dan wanted to "teach this jerk a lesson" and insisted that I keep to the posted speed limit. Then he rolled his window down for a second.
When we finally pulled over to practice parking, I turned to my window and there was a man shoving a police badge in my face and looking extremely pissed off. I rolled the window down and he started screaming "What did you throw at my truck!!!" and threatening to have 10 points added to Dan's DMV record. Dan turned pale and started pleading with the enraged cop and I was caught in the middle. It turned out Dan had thrown an old cigarette stub out the window and it had hit the cop's brand new SUV.
As I got to know their family more, it seemed like he was the latest in a long line of i dotters and t crossers. His mother would corner my poor sister and spend what felt like hours sharing her recipes for turnip puree and how to get stains out of the toilet bowl. The more time my family spent with his family, the more we came to dread it and when my mother called to tell me my sister was finally throwing him out I said something like "That's great!"
I'm sure there have been more Dwights than that, but I think I have repressed the memories of them. Perhaps the more frightening the real life ones are, the more fun it is to watch the TV version.
1) Comic book collectors at Newbury Comics.
I worked there in the early 90's. You could always spot the comic book (excuse me, GRAPHIC NOVEL) collectors in the store at Harvard Sq. They wore glasses and pocket protectors and would screech like banshees if you touched their precious comics when you rang them in.
2) Barry F. at my kung fu school
He was really tall and wore a tank top so you could see his muscles. When he did the movements he had an intensity that was kind of scary/funny. Scary, because if one of his flailing limbs actually made contact, it would hurt (he gave me a good sized bruise during conditioning one day), and funny because if he missed a target, he would probably fall over because he was actually really un-coordinated. He went with us to a tournament and made everyone hours late because we were supposed to meet up with him to drive down to the hotel, and he was running really late but kept calling to tell us he was "a few minutes away". He had one guy's cell phone number and he kept calling it every 15 minutes when the guy was trying to watch a DVD to give him another update on his progress. The best part was when the guy answered his phone and the entire van heard: "Wait, what? You hit who? A cop?".
He had rearended an off-duty state trooper on the Jersey Turnpike. In a traffic jam.
We were all greatly relieved to hear that Barry had developed a hernia that required surgery and would most likely not be returning to the school. He had been there long enough to qualify for sparring classes and all the women dreaded being placed in an over-eager elbow lock.
3) Paul the Psycho PA
I worked on a film that shot at the abandoned state mental hospital in Waltham. It was the most fun I've had on a film set in my life. The crew was all people I had worked with on low budgets and we were all starting to make some decent dough. There was one fly in the ointment though, Paul the Psycho Production Assistant.
He was the only PA I have ever known who did not comprehend the sanctity of the grip truck. It is supposed to be the GE crew's sanctuary from the rest of the crew, chiefly over-eager PA's. Nonetheless, Paul would bound onto the lift gate, and then if that wasn't an invasion enough, stand within inches of me and start looking through my CD collection. He was so uncool that there was no way I could nicely hint that he was being a little TOO friendly, so I comforted myself with the fantasy that he was merely an hallucination due to over-consumption of Red Bull.
We had a scene that necessitated the Waltham Fire Department being on set to supervise a what they call a controlled burn. Paul ran around trying to impress the female members of the crew with his Boy Scout experience and then when the firemen set the fire he got REALLY excited. Later on, we all got baked and watched the video footage of the shoot. You could see him dancing from foot to foot as the fire burned and at the end, when the WFD stepped in and extinguished the flames, Paul jumped in the air, hooting and pumping his fist.
Soon, though, his puppy-like on set bumblings began to take on a darker tone. He asked out the new PA chick and she (wisely) turned him down, only to accept a date from the 2nd AD. Paul spent that night's wrap beers session hunched over and muttering things like: "What does HE have that I don't?" and "I could make her like me."
Paul had written a script, and he constantly tried to pimp it to the director when he was trying to work with the actors.
He claimed to have misunderstood a night shoot call time of 6pm for 6am and turned up on the set at dawn in his beaten up hatchback. When he realized, finally, that no one else was coming for the next 12 hours, he got lost on his way off the grounds and ended up stalling out his car's transmission when he tried to back up on a gravel road. He had to get his father to drop him off and pick him up from set. We would be hanging out after wrap, passing a joint and drinking beers and this station wagon would pull up and this guy who looked like Tom Bosley would get out and yell for Paul. Paul brought him over to introduce him to us. He actually looked more uncomfortable than we were.
John Doe was the big star of the film (it was a low budget) and every day Paul would hang around the AD asking if John was coming by the set, would John sign his X cd, what's John really like, on and on. Production started to send Paul on bogus missions that involved long distances and many hours, just to keep him out of everyone's hair. They actually sent him to a town on the South Shore to buy a case of beer from a brewpub. What I really loved about that was the kid managed to get lost on the way back and arrived at wrap time with a story about stopping by a farm to ask for directions back to the highway and getting a tour of the farm instead. We imagined some farmer's wife, her legs sticking out of a haystack somewhere, bloody pitchfork on the barn floor.
As the day drew near for John Doe to arrive on set, we began to dread Paul's presence. Finally, one morning I came to set and the 2nd 2nd AD took me aside and informed me that Paul had been fired. Apparently he was being sent on another bogus mission (this time to buy a dildo in Chinatown for a sex scene) and since he had no car, the Production Coordinator was trying to tell him how hers worked and he completely flipped out on her, accusing her of trying to make him look stupid. The producer, realizing his opportunity, swooped in and almost physically threw him off set. We all spent the rest of that day expecting to see Paul strolling up the road with a shotgun.
4) Dan, my ex-brother-in-law
Dan not only closely resembles Dwight K. Schrute in appearance, but I swear someone has been observing his movements for years and Dwight is actually based on him. This is a man who can spend 45 minutes quizzing you at the dinner table about your car insurance. He reads Consumer Reports cover to cover. My favorite joke that my sister told about him was that when he emptied his pockets at night, she could hear the pennies whine from being pinched all day.
He tried teaching me how to drive and almost ended up getting me arrested. We were driving down a stretch of road that was notorious for drunken late night spin outs. It was raining and cold and I was freshly traumatized by the car crash movies in Drivers Ed. I was going the speed limit and this huge SUV behind us started riding my bumper and flashing its brights into the car. I tried to speed up but Dan wanted to "teach this jerk a lesson" and insisted that I keep to the posted speed limit. Then he rolled his window down for a second.
When we finally pulled over to practice parking, I turned to my window and there was a man shoving a police badge in my face and looking extremely pissed off. I rolled the window down and he started screaming "What did you throw at my truck!!!" and threatening to have 10 points added to Dan's DMV record. Dan turned pale and started pleading with the enraged cop and I was caught in the middle. It turned out Dan had thrown an old cigarette stub out the window and it had hit the cop's brand new SUV.
As I got to know their family more, it seemed like he was the latest in a long line of i dotters and t crossers. His mother would corner my poor sister and spend what felt like hours sharing her recipes for turnip puree and how to get stains out of the toilet bowl. The more time my family spent with his family, the more we came to dread it and when my mother called to tell me my sister was finally throwing him out I said something like "That's great!"
I'm sure there have been more Dwights than that, but I think I have repressed the memories of them. Perhaps the more frightening the real life ones are, the more fun it is to watch the TV version.
Monday, October 16, 2006
More MBTA Engrish
I had to go on an errand at the Transportation Building the other day and stumbled across the Holy Grail of T riders everywhere: a street map of the city with T stations laid over it. Hot Diggity.
That said, I just wanted to share the following example of the MBTA's convoluted thinking. It's especially poignant because this was exactly where I got trapped on a platform with Chloe's stroller on Pride Day in June.
This is in the lower left corner of the new subway maps on the Orange Line:
STATE: Orange Line accessible Blue Line wheelchair access outbound side only. Inbound riders transfer to outbound train at Government Center. Exit State outbound.
Say what? Get back on the next train, get off, go up and over to the outbound side and then back to the same stop (probably ending up 10 feet away from where you started out), and THEN wait for the elevator. Only the MBTA could come up with this kind of skinner box bullshit. This arrangement had better be temporary because the idea of not being able to quickly switch from the Blue Line to a line that goes to several area hospitals is not good. Especially if you are actually in a wheelchair in the first place and trying to get to your doctor's office for an appointment instead of being a yuppie mommie taking your two month old to a Gay Pride event, like me.
That said, I just wanted to share the following example of the MBTA's convoluted thinking. It's especially poignant because this was exactly where I got trapped on a platform with Chloe's stroller on Pride Day in June.
This is in the lower left corner of the new subway maps on the Orange Line:
STATE: Orange Line accessible Blue Line wheelchair access outbound side only. Inbound riders transfer to outbound train at Government Center. Exit State outbound.
Say what? Get back on the next train, get off, go up and over to the outbound side and then back to the same stop (probably ending up 10 feet away from where you started out), and THEN wait for the elevator. Only the MBTA could come up with this kind of skinner box bullshit. This arrangement had better be temporary because the idea of not being able to quickly switch from the Blue Line to a line that goes to several area hospitals is not good. Especially if you are actually in a wheelchair in the first place and trying to get to your doctor's office for an appointment instead of being a yuppie mommie taking your two month old to a Gay Pride event, like me.
My Office Fling
I have a confession to make. Actually, I have several:
1) I really tried to watch the British, and therefore, I assumed, "cooler" version of "The Office". (I don't care about my street cred in terms of what television I watch, but I am really picky about my tube time) I think Ricky Gervais is really great in his "I'm trying so hard to not be a dork, that it makes me an even BIGGER dork" mode. I thought "Extras" was perfect. I've worked on so many films with people like that. My favorite moments are a toss-up between Kate Winslet's Oscar-grubbing hints and Ben Stiller's Balkan Meltdown. Therefore, I should have loved the British "Office" right? I actually found it to be so realistic that it was painful to watch. I get enough stomach churning vicarious humiliation at my own day job.
2) My aforementioned precious tube time is usually spent either looking for new episodes of "Teletubbies" in the On Demand menu for Chloe, or watching this week's episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher".
3) Despite the fact that it came out in theaters about 18 months ago, I just saw "The Forty Year Old Virgin" a couple of months ago when I was out on maternity leave. Maybe it was the raging hormones, but I totally fell for Steve Carell's nice loser guy schtick. Something about his bike helmet wearing, D & D figure dialogues, and all around wistfullness makes him highly likable.
So with all of this in mind, please forgive me for coming late to the table. I've been spending most of my weekend watching the American version of "The Office" and trying to keep from pissing myself laughing.
1) I really tried to watch the British, and therefore, I assumed, "cooler" version of "The Office". (I don't care about my street cred in terms of what television I watch, but I am really picky about my tube time) I think Ricky Gervais is really great in his "I'm trying so hard to not be a dork, that it makes me an even BIGGER dork" mode. I thought "Extras" was perfect. I've worked on so many films with people like that. My favorite moments are a toss-up between Kate Winslet's Oscar-grubbing hints and Ben Stiller's Balkan Meltdown. Therefore, I should have loved the British "Office" right? I actually found it to be so realistic that it was painful to watch. I get enough stomach churning vicarious humiliation at my own day job.
2) My aforementioned precious tube time is usually spent either looking for new episodes of "Teletubbies" in the On Demand menu for Chloe, or watching this week's episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher".
3) Despite the fact that it came out in theaters about 18 months ago, I just saw "The Forty Year Old Virgin" a couple of months ago when I was out on maternity leave. Maybe it was the raging hormones, but I totally fell for Steve Carell's nice loser guy schtick. Something about his bike helmet wearing, D & D figure dialogues, and all around wistfullness makes him highly likable.
So with all of this in mind, please forgive me for coming late to the table. I've been spending most of my weekend watching the American version of "The Office" and trying to keep from pissing myself laughing.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
MBTA Engrish
Green Line service is suspended between Government Center and Kenmore stations at this time, due to fire department activity at Boylston Station. Substitute bus service is being provided at this time. Please add extra time to your commute.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
That's funny, it seems like you've already added the extra time for me.
Thanks MBTA!
We apologize for any inconvenience.
That's funny, it seems like you've already added the extra time for me.
Thanks MBTA!
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
No Donut For You Lady.
Got to the orange line platform at Malden Center to find that it was more crowded than usual so, for the sake of my sanity, I decided to let one train go and wait for the next one. I took a spot just in back of the yellow line and waited. Then some more people gathered around the platform. Then I heard a loud "Scuse ME" and this woman pushed her way past people already waiting to get to the front next to me.
I don't know how they roll in Malden, but if someone tried this in Salem waiting for the 7:29, they would probably get thrown onto the tracks. We Salemites are nice enough people, but we don't take no shit. If someone got there ahead of you and stands a slightly better chance of securing a berth on the next train, then you should have gotten up earlier.
So the pushy lady starts digging around in her enormous tote bag for her sunglasses, finds them and then shoves this 2 foot wide bag over her shoulder, knocking into the book of the woman she just shoved aside. I didn't hear anything, but apparently she had said something because then this woman turns to her and says "Do YOU have a problem or something? Tough Shit." Turned back and stood there. And nobody said boo. The train came rolling in and no one shoved her in front of it. And the woman who she had just 1) shoved aside to cut in front of 2) had her book knocked almost out of her hands by a gigantic tote/feed bag because of and 3) dissed in front of about 25 other people; Just. Stood. There.
I know from long years of experience the city-bred virtue of minding your own business, but I couldn't help myself. I waited until the train had come to a complete stop and opened it's doors so she could hear me and then turned to the cow and said; "No donut for you." And continued on my merry way.
And I KNOW she heard me. And, for once, she kept her damn cakehole shut.
And just on a different note, this whole coupon thing is a nice thought and sometimes it is the thought that counts, like when your Great Aunt Hortense knitted you some underpants for your birthday, but c'mon. Giving me a coupon so I can go stand in yet ANOTHER line in a crowded place with a bunch of rude employees yelling at me to move along is not a good idea. Take that money you've spent on the deal with DD, and buy some new trains so you can put more cars in service, so you won't have to stand around, giving out coupons for acting like a decent human being. It can be my Christmas present.
I don't know how they roll in Malden, but if someone tried this in Salem waiting for the 7:29, they would probably get thrown onto the tracks. We Salemites are nice enough people, but we don't take no shit. If someone got there ahead of you and stands a slightly better chance of securing a berth on the next train, then you should have gotten up earlier.
So the pushy lady starts digging around in her enormous tote bag for her sunglasses, finds them and then shoves this 2 foot wide bag over her shoulder, knocking into the book of the woman she just shoved aside. I didn't hear anything, but apparently she had said something because then this woman turns to her and says "Do YOU have a problem or something? Tough Shit." Turned back and stood there. And nobody said boo. The train came rolling in and no one shoved her in front of it. And the woman who she had just 1) shoved aside to cut in front of 2) had her book knocked almost out of her hands by a gigantic tote/feed bag because of and 3) dissed in front of about 25 other people; Just. Stood. There.
I know from long years of experience the city-bred virtue of minding your own business, but I couldn't help myself. I waited until the train had come to a complete stop and opened it's doors so she could hear me and then turned to the cow and said; "No donut for you." And continued on my merry way.
And I KNOW she heard me. And, for once, she kept her damn cakehole shut.
And just on a different note, this whole coupon thing is a nice thought and sometimes it is the thought that counts, like when your Great Aunt Hortense knitted you some underpants for your birthday, but c'mon. Giving me a coupon so I can go stand in yet ANOTHER line in a crowded place with a bunch of rude employees yelling at me to move along is not a good idea. Take that money you've spent on the deal with DD, and buy some new trains so you can put more cars in service, so you won't have to stand around, giving out coupons for acting like a decent human being. It can be my Christmas present.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Design So Bad, It's Brilliant
Marvel at the cheesy repeating logo wallpaper, be hypnotized by the floating, blinking yin-yang symbol! You will become mesmerized by the flashing! Blinded by the colors! Click if you dare!
I've asked this before, but I'll ask it again; Why do so many martial arts websites really, really, suck?
I've asked this before, but I'll ask it again; Why do so many martial arts websites really, really, suck?
Top 10 Pot Studies the Govt. Wishes It Never Funded
Uh, I was gonna totally do this awesome post about like, hemp and W.R. Hearst and all this s*** but dude, the Teletubbies are on and I've got a wicked case of the munchies.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
At Least I Didn't Take It To This Level
How to create a timeline in Excel. Please shoot me if I ever do this for myself.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Please Help Me!
I swear to god that I saw someone riding a bike while wearing a bear costume through Boston Common at 8:23 this morning. Please let me know if you saw it too because I would hate to think that all the hallucinogens/cleaning solutions I have come into contact with over the years are coming back to haunt me now.
Don't Ever Build a Company Site Like This One!
I'm female, therefore attracted to bright shiny colorful things, therefore I shop from time to time for clothes. Unfortunately I have to work roughly 40 hours a week so that I can afford to buy them. Time is precious (see previous post: "What I did on my Summer Vacation"), so I thought I would take advantage of this whole Internet thing and look at the H&M site to see if it would be worth going to their Newbury St. location on my lunch hour.
I'm still going there, because honestly, as what's called a retail environment, they do an awesome job. I feel 10 years younger and 5 times more fabulous just walking into the place. The only problem is that I have to spend so much time looking that I never have time to try anything on. Mostly because the changing rooms need a LOT of work. Even if there's a room open, the attendant just keeps futzing around, completely ignoring a huge line of people because apparently, the rejected items urgently need to be organized on the rack Just So. And the line at the register is notoriously ridiculous. The clothes are probably priced as low as they are due to the fact that the company refuses to hire more than 3 cashiers per store. I've actually gone in, shopped at blinding speed and made a quick decision and approached the line, only to turn around and put everything down and leave because there were about 20 people ahead of me in line.
That said, it seems like H&M thinks it has such a captive audience that's it's OK for their website to really, really blow. I went to Google and typed in "Hennes & Mauritz Women's Clothing" and the store's official site was nowhere in the top rankings. The first site was the Wikipedia entry. Luckily, that had a large H&M ad in the right column, so I clicked on that only to feel like a complete loser when I was told that I couldn't go to the site because I didn't have Flash 8. Fortunately for us non-starbellied Sneetches, there was an HTML site so I valiantly surfed on. The next step was a brief form asking what country I wanted to look in and which gender clothing I was interested in. Fair enough, I'm an American Female. Next page, Which state did I live in? Normally a state of free floating anxiety, but I clicked on Massachusetts. NEXT PAGE, what city? Okay, now I'm on my 7th page and I haven't seen a single stitch of clothing yet. BOSTON! Finally, a page loads. It's a short, boring blurb about H&M's retail philosophy and a list of press releases and the nav contains links to contacting them, reading about them and working for them. Alright marketing geniuses, can you guess what the number one reason is that the average user would want to come to your clothing site? Here's a hint, it's not to read about your new store opening up in San Paulo. There was not a single link to check out what the store sells! I understand if the company wants save money by not hiring photographers, and models and all that but didn't they just get Madonna to do a huge ad campaign? Even Target has on-line retailing.
I'm still going there, because honestly, as what's called a retail environment, they do an awesome job. I feel 10 years younger and 5 times more fabulous just walking into the place. The only problem is that I have to spend so much time looking that I never have time to try anything on. Mostly because the changing rooms need a LOT of work. Even if there's a room open, the attendant just keeps futzing around, completely ignoring a huge line of people because apparently, the rejected items urgently need to be organized on the rack Just So. And the line at the register is notoriously ridiculous. The clothes are probably priced as low as they are due to the fact that the company refuses to hire more than 3 cashiers per store. I've actually gone in, shopped at blinding speed and made a quick decision and approached the line, only to turn around and put everything down and leave because there were about 20 people ahead of me in line.
That said, it seems like H&M thinks it has such a captive audience that's it's OK for their website to really, really blow. I went to Google and typed in "Hennes & Mauritz Women's Clothing" and the store's official site was nowhere in the top rankings. The first site was the Wikipedia entry. Luckily, that had a large H&M ad in the right column, so I clicked on that only to feel like a complete loser when I was told that I couldn't go to the site because I didn't have Flash 8. Fortunately for us non-starbellied Sneetches, there was an HTML site so I valiantly surfed on. The next step was a brief form asking what country I wanted to look in and which gender clothing I was interested in. Fair enough, I'm an American Female. Next page, Which state did I live in? Normally a state of free floating anxiety, but I clicked on Massachusetts. NEXT PAGE, what city? Okay, now I'm on my 7th page and I haven't seen a single stitch of clothing yet. BOSTON! Finally, a page loads. It's a short, boring blurb about H&M's retail philosophy and a list of press releases and the nav contains links to contacting them, reading about them and working for them. Alright marketing geniuses, can you guess what the number one reason is that the average user would want to come to your clothing site? Here's a hint, it's not to read about your new store opening up in San Paulo. There was not a single link to check out what the store sells! I understand if the company wants save money by not hiring photographers, and models and all that but didn't they just get Madonna to do a huge ad campaign? Even Target has on-line retailing.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
What I Did on My Summer Vacation
For a while I couldn't tell if I had "Blogger's Inertia" or if the world just suddenly became boring. Not that nothing happens, but it's the same stuff that's been happening ever since Mankind crawled out of a cave to bash in the head of someone trying to steal their fire so it doesn't really feel like anything new is going on. My niece is at the age where everything is "boring" and my sister combats this by telling her that only boring people find everything boring.
Not that I've been sitting there staring at Nickolodeon. Labor Day weekend was crazy. I had Brigid Berlin's Syndrome in spades and got a lot of cleaning, organizing and filing done. For some reason, I obsesively collect and print out every little thing I find on del.icio.us related to organizing, CSS and dealing with clients. I wish I had time for the first thing, the left brain for the next thing, and more of the last thing.
I guess the only thing I can say in my defense is that at least I don't vacuum my shopping bags and scrub the inside of the Vaseline jar lid. That's taking things a little too far. But my office is really, really small and I know from bitter experience that if I can see big messy piles of paper out of the corners of my eyes when I'm trying to work, it distracts me.
So, everything was good, my "office" looked like a little Zen temple of creative function, and then Chloe started cutting her teeth. Suddenly my precious little bit of time at home was spent jiggling and rocking and administering tiny dabs of Oragel to her bright red little gums. Dishes and half full beer bottles piled up next to the keyboard, abandoned as the whimpering started up again. The only thing that seems to work is Infant Tylenol but I can't keep giving her that without feeling like Julianne Moore's character in "Freedomland". (Read the book, it's probably better than the movie)
After about a week and a half of this I came down with a raging case of "TDLA" or, To-Do List Anxiety. (Don't feel left out, it will probably be a top story on "Geraldo" by the end of the week) It was the nagging sensation that there were a million and one things that I had to get done, coupled with a vague certainty that I was forgetting about a million more. The only known cure for TDLA is to sit down and write out everything you have to do and then go through the list, item by item until it gets done. So I grabbed a notebook and got busy and then bogged down by the somewhat depressing realization that I was inexorably turning into my mother, minus the prescription for Ativan. She makes little lists for EVERYTHING. Last year I told her that we were getting married and wanted a simple outdoor ceremony in NH for friends and a small party for the family the next weekend and before you could say "Florist" she had color-coded lists and charts that would have put Patton to shame. But at least now I have some kind of idea how much I have to do.
The TDLA is compounded by the number one problem most parents face. NETS, or, Not Enough Time Syndrome. You think you have hours and hours to get a lot of stuff done, you buckle down and try to tackle your list, and hours later, realize that you might be able to get half of one item done, if you're lucky. So, by bitter experience, you've come to the glum conclusion that you will never have enough time so why bother in the first place? I decided to get rid of the NETS by writing down exactly how much "open time" I have every day of the week before dropping Chloe off at a grandmother's and then after bringing her home at night. Assuming I can function with 6 hours of sleep per night, I came up with 45.5 hours in a 7 day stretch. At least it's more than I expected. Last night I went home and worked for an hour on a re-design project for the design site. Then I went to bed at 11pm and set my alarm for 5. I got up and worked for an hour and a half on a Flash project before heading out with Chloe. I think that, psychologically, knowing the specific amount of actual free time available, plus having a specific item to work on instead of a lot of vague "stuff" helps me to buckle down. But I still feel like Andy in 40 Year Old Virgin when you see that little schedule he has taped to his fridge in the opening sequence. "7am : up and shower, 7:15: start coffee, 7:20: make breakfast..."
Not that I've been sitting there staring at Nickolodeon. Labor Day weekend was crazy. I had Brigid Berlin's Syndrome in spades and got a lot of cleaning, organizing and filing done. For some reason, I obsesively collect and print out every little thing I find on del.icio.us related to organizing, CSS and dealing with clients. I wish I had time for the first thing, the left brain for the next thing, and more of the last thing.
I guess the only thing I can say in my defense is that at least I don't vacuum my shopping bags and scrub the inside of the Vaseline jar lid. That's taking things a little too far. But my office is really, really small and I know from bitter experience that if I can see big messy piles of paper out of the corners of my eyes when I'm trying to work, it distracts me.
So, everything was good, my "office" looked like a little Zen temple of creative function, and then Chloe started cutting her teeth. Suddenly my precious little bit of time at home was spent jiggling and rocking and administering tiny dabs of Oragel to her bright red little gums. Dishes and half full beer bottles piled up next to the keyboard, abandoned as the whimpering started up again. The only thing that seems to work is Infant Tylenol but I can't keep giving her that without feeling like Julianne Moore's character in "Freedomland". (Read the book, it's probably better than the movie)
After about a week and a half of this I came down with a raging case of "TDLA" or, To-Do List Anxiety. (Don't feel left out, it will probably be a top story on "Geraldo" by the end of the week) It was the nagging sensation that there were a million and one things that I had to get done, coupled with a vague certainty that I was forgetting about a million more. The only known cure for TDLA is to sit down and write out everything you have to do and then go through the list, item by item until it gets done. So I grabbed a notebook and got busy and then bogged down by the somewhat depressing realization that I was inexorably turning into my mother, minus the prescription for Ativan. She makes little lists for EVERYTHING. Last year I told her that we were getting married and wanted a simple outdoor ceremony in NH for friends and a small party for the family the next weekend and before you could say "Florist" she had color-coded lists and charts that would have put Patton to shame. But at least now I have some kind of idea how much I have to do.
The TDLA is compounded by the number one problem most parents face. NETS, or, Not Enough Time Syndrome. You think you have hours and hours to get a lot of stuff done, you buckle down and try to tackle your list, and hours later, realize that you might be able to get half of one item done, if you're lucky. So, by bitter experience, you've come to the glum conclusion that you will never have enough time so why bother in the first place? I decided to get rid of the NETS by writing down exactly how much "open time" I have every day of the week before dropping Chloe off at a grandmother's and then after bringing her home at night. Assuming I can function with 6 hours of sleep per night, I came up with 45.5 hours in a 7 day stretch. At least it's more than I expected. Last night I went home and worked for an hour on a re-design project for the design site. Then I went to bed at 11pm and set my alarm for 5. I got up and worked for an hour and a half on a Flash project before heading out with Chloe. I think that, psychologically, knowing the specific amount of actual free time available, plus having a specific item to work on instead of a lot of vague "stuff" helps me to buckle down. But I still feel like Andy in 40 Year Old Virgin when you see that little schedule he has taped to his fridge in the opening sequence. "7am : up and shower, 7:15: start coffee, 7:20: make breakfast..."
Thursday, September 07, 2006
State Police Lose Explosives During Drill
Somehow, halfway through reading it, the headline became the punchline.
Monday, August 14, 2006
I Came This Close...
The past weekend was declared a tax-free holiday on purchases under $2,500. I thought I would be a shrewd player and go grab one of the new Apple MacBooks to avoid paying the roughly $50 in sales tax. Bundled the little one into a snugli and went to the North Shore Mall, ZDnet MacBook review in hand, hoping to score.
When I saw the security guards posted outside the Apple Store, I knew I would be in for it. The moment I set foot in the store, I was swept away in a whirl of teenagers, "helicopter parents", and POD people in the Apple issued uniform of black t-shirt with computer+ iPod logo. I was approached by a man wielding a clipboard and he was very nice, showing me the laptop that was the focus of my desire, flirting with Chloe, and telling me about the "free" (rebated) HP printer, copier, scanner. Great, I just wanted to get a laptop bag and I would be on my way.
As I looked at bags, knapsacks and attache cases, the little voices kept popping up in my head, "it's easy, too easy, something will go horribly wrong, it will explode when you try to boot up Photoshop" The word Photoshop swirled around in my head like that scene in the Simpsons where Homer's waiting for his free company beer and he keeps hearing "Dental Plan (lisa needs braces). Then I remembered a line I had read. "Check to make sure your current software is compatible with the new Intel processor before buying."
I went back to the front of the store and flagged down a salesperson. He said the new MacBook would NOT run Photoshop CS but it would run Photoshop CS2. I had a brainfreeze and called Chris to make sure what we had at home. Left a voicemail and waited, fed Chloe a bottle on a bench in the back of the store. (its a very kid-friendly store BTW) And finally he called. Photoshop CS.
I trudged back to the front again and ran into a different salesperson. He rushed to pimp the MacBook but this time I said no, it won't run PhotoShop CS. "Yes it will, sure it will." But then I asked the first salesperson again, "No, it won't run that, only CS2." "Okay," I said, "Can't get it then." and walked out of the store.
This whole scenario kind of blows my mind. Here's the world's second biggest computer company, aggressively promoting a new laptop for a decent price for once, BUT it only runs the Adobe software that came out last Tuesday. Anything earlier, nope, uh uh, useless. With the price, it seems that Apple is making a play for the consumer who might be wooed by the $1,099 pricetag, but spooked by prices like $1,299 and higher. I argue that it's a reasonable assumption that someone like that is not likely to be running out to upgrade their PhotoShop software every 5 minutes.
It's a mystery, rapped in a riddle, but I think the answer might be here. You can read more about the Apple conundrum here. And here.
When I saw the security guards posted outside the Apple Store, I knew I would be in for it. The moment I set foot in the store, I was swept away in a whirl of teenagers, "helicopter parents", and POD people in the Apple issued uniform of black t-shirt with computer+ iPod logo. I was approached by a man wielding a clipboard and he was very nice, showing me the laptop that was the focus of my desire, flirting with Chloe, and telling me about the "free" (rebated) HP printer, copier, scanner. Great, I just wanted to get a laptop bag and I would be on my way.
As I looked at bags, knapsacks and attache cases, the little voices kept popping up in my head, "it's easy, too easy, something will go horribly wrong, it will explode when you try to boot up Photoshop" The word Photoshop swirled around in my head like that scene in the Simpsons where Homer's waiting for his free company beer and he keeps hearing "Dental Plan (lisa needs braces). Then I remembered a line I had read. "Check to make sure your current software is compatible with the new Intel processor before buying."
I went back to the front of the store and flagged down a salesperson. He said the new MacBook would NOT run Photoshop CS but it would run Photoshop CS2. I had a brainfreeze and called Chris to make sure what we had at home. Left a voicemail and waited, fed Chloe a bottle on a bench in the back of the store. (its a very kid-friendly store BTW) And finally he called. Photoshop CS.
I trudged back to the front again and ran into a different salesperson. He rushed to pimp the MacBook but this time I said no, it won't run PhotoShop CS. "Yes it will, sure it will." But then I asked the first salesperson again, "No, it won't run that, only CS2." "Okay," I said, "Can't get it then." and walked out of the store.
This whole scenario kind of blows my mind. Here's the world's second biggest computer company, aggressively promoting a new laptop for a decent price for once, BUT it only runs the Adobe software that came out last Tuesday. Anything earlier, nope, uh uh, useless. With the price, it seems that Apple is making a play for the consumer who might be wooed by the $1,099 pricetag, but spooked by prices like $1,299 and higher. I argue that it's a reasonable assumption that someone like that is not likely to be running out to upgrade their PhotoShop software every 5 minutes.
It's a mystery, rapped in a riddle, but I think the answer might be here. You can read more about the Apple conundrum here. And here.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Here's one for the Web Wayback Machine
5 years from now, we are either going to look back at this and laugh at how paranoid we all were, (see: McCarthy Era) or, we are going to collectively sigh and reminisce about the “good old days” when you could still fly with your clothes on.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Life's Little Victories #84
In tribute to the excellent cartoonist and Malden High alumni, Kieth Knight, kreator of "The K Chronicles" here is one of life's little victories for me; Seeing an idea that you had about 5 years ago show up as a Kottke.org headline on how to save money on airfare!
OLD HAG (not me, silly, the commentor on LifeHacker!) says:
"When traveling internationally, look for an agency -- yup, a real live agency -- in a neighborhood with a high percentage of citizens from the country you're traveling to (Williamsburg for Poland, for example). Those agencies buy out huge chunks of a flight and you can get cheaper fares -- I once went to the Czech Republic for $700 when everyone else was paying about $1200, and I have heard equally good things about flights to China, etc."
Yes! This does work. I went to a travel agency in Boston's ChinaTown about 5 years ago and got two (pre-9/11) roundtrip tickets to HCMC (Saigon) for about $1,200 bucks each during the Tet season which is the equivalent of scoring roundtrip tickets to New York on Thanksgiving weekend for $200. The only problem I had was when the travel agent didn't realize my name is Jennifer and typed it onto my ticket as Vennifer. ( Probably what the tabloids will come up with for Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaugn's wedding)
OLD HAG (not me, silly, the commentor on LifeHacker!) says:
"When traveling internationally, look for an agency -- yup, a real live agency -- in a neighborhood with a high percentage of citizens from the country you're traveling to (Williamsburg for Poland, for example). Those agencies buy out huge chunks of a flight and you can get cheaper fares -- I once went to the Czech Republic for $700 when everyone else was paying about $1200, and I have heard equally good things about flights to China, etc."
Yes! This does work. I went to a travel agency in Boston's ChinaTown about 5 years ago and got two (pre-9/11) roundtrip tickets to HCMC (Saigon) for about $1,200 bucks each during the Tet season which is the equivalent of scoring roundtrip tickets to New York on Thanksgiving weekend for $200. The only problem I had was when the travel agent didn't realize my name is Jennifer and typed it onto my ticket as Vennifer. ( Probably what the tabloids will come up with for Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaugn's wedding)
Yo! Your baby's so fat...
Our neighbor has an 8 month old baby that is ENORMOUS. Our daughter had a lot of trouble with weight gain when she was about 2 months old and it's a little scary to see her photos back then. She had cheekbones like Kate Moss on a desert island. I tried to breast feed her, but when it came down to choosing between my pride and keeping her weight on, I had to switch to formula. She's chubby, but not on a National Enquirer scale.
What an interesting time to be alive. I can read an article about how worried everyone is about American children being 59% more likely to be obese than 20 years ago, right next to a ad for a charity to keep babies from starving to death in the rest of the world. If you are seriously pondering this irony of modern life, then I encourage you to read "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond.
What an interesting time to be alive. I can read an article about how worried everyone is about American children being 59% more likely to be obese than 20 years ago, right next to a ad for a charity to keep babies from starving to death in the rest of the world. If you are seriously pondering this irony of modern life, then I encourage you to read "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond.
Monday, August 07, 2006
A Nation of Wimps?
So I went onto MSN.com this morning, like I always do. I was prepared to surf ahead to the sites that I actually read, when this headline grabbed my attention. It's a virtual kick in the nuts for any parent to see something that hints their child may be disadvantaged or damaged in some way and there are a lot of pundits and advertisers out there that know it. Pretty much since the moment I saw the little pink plus sign 12 months ago, I have operated under the general rubric that if it was something that my parents could have either lived with or without and still survived through the 1930's, then I didn't have to worry. It's the only defense I have against a barrage of coupon books, "helpful hint" pamphlets and parenting magazine columns. Electric wipe warmer? No thanks, if a cool, wet wipe touched my baby's behind, I figured it would get her attention, not psychologically damage her.
It's actually a pretty decent article on the site. Written by Hara Estroff Marano for Psychology Today, it touched on a huge nerve for parents. How much parenting is too much? Do we hover over the kid to ensure that we never end up as a Boston Herald headline? "Salem Mother Turns Back, Child Plummets From Changing Table". Or do we step back and nudge them to deal with the real world. For years I 've heard anecdotes from friends who teach school about parents that practically turn into Carmela Soprano when their precious pumpkin misses the deadline on their book report. Not to sound like one of those curdmudgeon types that grouses about "kids these days" and "walking twenty miles to school EACH WAY, but I did find myself talking with a group of adults about my age and one by one, we volunteered our complaints about the "new hire" at the office who flitted in and out and told them that the deadline for the financial report was "kind of a bummer."
I think the root of the problem here is that people are starting to feel the trickle-down effects of a spike in population. More people means more competition for things like education and well-paying jobs. So now everyone in the know is jockeying for the same few spaces so Tyler and Kaylie can get their shot at the brass ring. Well, what else is new? Some kids will become spoiled and convinced that nothing is ever really their fault. They'll probably end up being right, because nowadays people are as apprehensive about firing incompetent workers as landlords are about evicting unruly tenants. No one wants to be called discriminatory or (shudder) unfair, so people are allowed to drift along, blowing off their responsibility. Other kids will develope their own ways of getting along and learn through trial and error the basic equations in life and probably end up managing the first group.
By the way, two things about this article made me laugh. Right next to the sub-header at the top; "Parental hyperconcern maybe why kids can't cope." was a big ad for a video game company that featured a masked soldier with a rifle. Nothing in modern life T's me off more that seeing a family that lets their kids become surgically attached to a gaming console. Little kids bleeping and bonking their way through an entire family outing on their PSP's, kids that are allowed to play war simulation games in 10 speaker surround sound when there are actual WWII vets present who could probably scare the crap out of them with stories about what THEY were doing at 19. No wonder kids "these days" don't have a sense of the real world, they never see it. The other thing was that the article contained a quote from a Bernardo J. Carducci, founder of Indiana University Southeast's Shyness Research Institute, a concept that would have made my grandparents giggle in disbelief.
It's actually a pretty decent article on the site. Written by Hara Estroff Marano for Psychology Today, it touched on a huge nerve for parents. How much parenting is too much? Do we hover over the kid to ensure that we never end up as a Boston Herald headline? "Salem Mother Turns Back, Child Plummets From Changing Table". Or do we step back and nudge them to deal with the real world. For years I 've heard anecdotes from friends who teach school about parents that practically turn into Carmela Soprano when their precious pumpkin misses the deadline on their book report. Not to sound like one of those curdmudgeon types that grouses about "kids these days" and "walking twenty miles to school EACH WAY, but I did find myself talking with a group of adults about my age and one by one, we volunteered our complaints about the "new hire" at the office who flitted in and out and told them that the deadline for the financial report was "kind of a bummer."
I think the root of the problem here is that people are starting to feel the trickle-down effects of a spike in population. More people means more competition for things like education and well-paying jobs. So now everyone in the know is jockeying for the same few spaces so Tyler and Kaylie can get their shot at the brass ring. Well, what else is new? Some kids will become spoiled and convinced that nothing is ever really their fault. They'll probably end up being right, because nowadays people are as apprehensive about firing incompetent workers as landlords are about evicting unruly tenants. No one wants to be called discriminatory or (shudder) unfair, so people are allowed to drift along, blowing off their responsibility. Other kids will develope their own ways of getting along and learn through trial and error the basic equations in life and probably end up managing the first group.
By the way, two things about this article made me laugh. Right next to the sub-header at the top; "Parental hyperconcern maybe why kids can't cope." was a big ad for a video game company that featured a masked soldier with a rifle. Nothing in modern life T's me off more that seeing a family that lets their kids become surgically attached to a gaming console. Little kids bleeping and bonking their way through an entire family outing on their PSP's, kids that are allowed to play war simulation games in 10 speaker surround sound when there are actual WWII vets present who could probably scare the crap out of them with stories about what THEY were doing at 19. No wonder kids "these days" don't have a sense of the real world, they never see it. The other thing was that the article contained a quote from a Bernardo J. Carducci, founder of Indiana University Southeast's Shyness Research Institute, a concept that would have made my grandparents giggle in disbelief.
Monday, July 31, 2006
And, where do I get halal goat meat?"
Excellent question. The bbc website has an article about how refugees living in America are being taught that eating fast food and drinking soda all day is bad for you. I just assumed people already knew that, but when you might be from a country where you have to catch your food before you eat it, this might be a novel idea.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Extrapolated Data Relating to the Conventional Cultural Zeitgeist AKA “Dammit, just let me change that diaper myself” Syndrome
This is going to be a long post, but trust me, I threw some good links in. Enjoy!
In response to the fuss brewing over Linda Hirschman's article, allow me to jump in with both feet and wallow in the fray. In the past I would have stayed away, clinging to the comfortable reasoning that I didn’t have kids, therefore I would have no idea what I was talking about. Now that I’ve been a mom for roughly 3 ½ months and back at work for 7 weeks, I have completed all of the necessary requirements for bitching loudly about the state of Mom-dom in the US. I: A) had a SAHM for the first 7 years of my life. B) Was a “latch-key kid for the next 10 years, C) Watched as my sister became a SAHM for a few years, then a working mom since 1998, D) stayed at home with Chloe for 2 months and finally, E) went back to work.
In a nutshell, like most choices in life, there are things that are good about it and things that really suck. From close observation, and my own experience, here are things that are great about being a SAHM:
• You don’t have to commute every day.
• When the child is asleep or otherwise incapacitated, you can get some work done.
• You can get all the errands done, stress-free, at all the places that are not open on weekends.
• You can go grocery shopping without needing Zanax.
• If you are really good at space-time management, you can actually do some of the things around the house that you read about in women’s magazines, like cook.
• You are there for every gurgle, coo and crying fit.
Here are the things that suck:
• Because there is no need to rush out of the house to get the kid to daycare and get yourself to work, it’s very easy to let the day get away from you. One minute it’s 9am and you’re thinking how great it would be to plant some geraniums, the next minute, it’s 5:30 and you’re elbow deep in soil and you hear your husband’s car in the driveway.
• It’s hard not to get sucked into watching daytime TV. The Style Network should really come with a warning label.
• People look at you differently when you are an adult walking around your neighborhood in broad daylight. Sometimes it’s a good different: (You must be a stay at home mom! Aren’t you lucky!) sometimes it’s weird different: (You must be a stay at home mom! What’s the matter? Couldn’t hack it in the “real” world?)
• So many parenting magazines visually reinforce the image of the “Have It All Mom”, that you can end up feeling like Edith Bunker all the time.
• You miss all of the in-fighting, scheming and BS of working at a “real job”.
• You are there for every gurgle, coo and crying fit. Mostly every crying fit. The crying fit will usually start about 10 minutes before the Dad comes home from work. As he walks through the door, exhausted and stressed out after commuting home, and sees you standing at the kitchen sink, trying to jiggle a screaming baby and mix a bottle of formula at the same time, sometimes he can’t help but shoot you a look that makes you feel like Andrea Yates.
But enough kvetching and kvelling about that for now. I think the elephant in the room in this situation is the fact that, in most families, both parents NEED to work. I can now say from experience that, unless you are very lucky and have relatives close by that can step in, trying to find acceptable, affordable childcare on two average incomes that has hours of operation that you can actually fit into a nine to five work schedule is, to put it mildly, friggin impossible. I looked and looked and if it was “affordable” (okay, CHEAP) then the facility smelled like cigarettes. Anything that looked like a place I felt safe with was either over $300 a week (part time!) or only open from 7:30am at the earliest, to 5:30pm at the latest.
Pretty much the only other mother I know that works outside the home is an RN who does in-home visits with patients a couple of days a week and is able to do her paperwork while she’s at home. I used to think my sister was very lucky that she was able to stay home with her two children while her husband worked, but when I was pregnant she was the first to tell me that it’s a bad idea to make one parent the sole bread winner. Having one person making the money puts them under twice as much pressure and before you know it, the stay at home parent is forced to petition the working one in order to buy so much as a hair clip.
I had seen her put her own children into daycare when her separation meant the end of her SAHM status and she was soon forced to take them out when another kid knocked my 3 year old nephew into a bookcase, badly bruising his back. As far as leaving your kids home alone while going out to work, my own mother had been forced to do it back in 1978, before the evening news became a Horribles Parade of feral children and armed gangs of child pornographers that supposedly prowled every suburban neighborhood. I was given a key, my sister was told to come straight home after choir practice, and probably the worst thing I did was try to make M&M marshmallow krispies without using a double-boiler. Then again, I was a fairly nerdy child.
I vaguely remember my mother staying at home with us and I think I got into more trouble with her there. I managed to eat strawberry scented incense when I was 2, stick my finger into an outlet when I was 3 and also tumble down 3 flights of stairs while wearing my first pair of bellbottoms, and nobody pointed fingers, whispered over the fence or called DSS. It was all chalked up to being a normal kid and I have spent the past 37 years (mostly) therapy-free.
As far as the idea that the best and the brightest are abandoning their hard-won careers to suckle and cuddle and burp their offspring, here is my two cents: If these women are so well educated, then isn’t it sexist to assume that they don’t know what the hell they are doing when they choose to stay home? My gut instinct is that they probably know exactly what they are doing and, having had the luxury of a choice, they are probably much happier doing it. An added bonus is that by nature of being better educated, these women may have the advantage of being able to stay more informed and will probably make better choices about raising their kids than the last generation. Of course, I’m not saying that being better educated automatically makes you a better mom (item #43), But, I personally knew a girl when I was growing up who had a stay at home mom that left a good academic career to raise her and she ended up scoring 1600 on her SAT’s and getting a full scholarship to an Ivy League school.
In the end, I think that if someone wants to stay home with their children and they can safely afford it, then good for them. If they want to pursue their career, and they can place their child in a situation they are comfortable with, then that’s fine too. And as for the idea that women are usually the ones who stay home because childrearing is considered “women’s work” let me say just two things: If you take the term “women’s work” to task for being demeaning, then who is being the sexist one here? 2) Have you ever seen a grown man try to change a diaper?
It’s the giant piece of the population pie that lands in the middle that we should really be worrying about. If politicians feel the need to legislate my reproductive organs, then I think I have the right to demand legislation to increase my maternity leave and decrease the rates that most day care centers charge.
In response to the fuss brewing over Linda Hirschman's article, allow me to jump in with both feet and wallow in the fray. In the past I would have stayed away, clinging to the comfortable reasoning that I didn’t have kids, therefore I would have no idea what I was talking about. Now that I’ve been a mom for roughly 3 ½ months and back at work for 7 weeks, I have completed all of the necessary requirements for bitching loudly about the state of Mom-dom in the US. I: A) had a SAHM for the first 7 years of my life. B) Was a “latch-key kid for the next 10 years, C) Watched as my sister became a SAHM for a few years, then a working mom since 1998, D) stayed at home with Chloe for 2 months and finally, E) went back to work.
In a nutshell, like most choices in life, there are things that are good about it and things that really suck. From close observation, and my own experience, here are things that are great about being a SAHM:
• You don’t have to commute every day.
• When the child is asleep or otherwise incapacitated, you can get some work done.
• You can get all the errands done, stress-free, at all the places that are not open on weekends.
• You can go grocery shopping without needing Zanax.
• If you are really good at space-time management, you can actually do some of the things around the house that you read about in women’s magazines, like cook.
• You are there for every gurgle, coo and crying fit.
Here are the things that suck:
• Because there is no need to rush out of the house to get the kid to daycare and get yourself to work, it’s very easy to let the day get away from you. One minute it’s 9am and you’re thinking how great it would be to plant some geraniums, the next minute, it’s 5:30 and you’re elbow deep in soil and you hear your husband’s car in the driveway.
• It’s hard not to get sucked into watching daytime TV. The Style Network should really come with a warning label.
• People look at you differently when you are an adult walking around your neighborhood in broad daylight. Sometimes it’s a good different: (You must be a stay at home mom! Aren’t you lucky!) sometimes it’s weird different: (You must be a stay at home mom! What’s the matter? Couldn’t hack it in the “real” world?)
• So many parenting magazines visually reinforce the image of the “Have It All Mom”, that you can end up feeling like Edith Bunker all the time.
• You miss all of the in-fighting, scheming and BS of working at a “real job”.
• You are there for every gurgle, coo and crying fit. Mostly every crying fit. The crying fit will usually start about 10 minutes before the Dad comes home from work. As he walks through the door, exhausted and stressed out after commuting home, and sees you standing at the kitchen sink, trying to jiggle a screaming baby and mix a bottle of formula at the same time, sometimes he can’t help but shoot you a look that makes you feel like Andrea Yates.
But enough kvetching and kvelling about that for now. I think the elephant in the room in this situation is the fact that, in most families, both parents NEED to work. I can now say from experience that, unless you are very lucky and have relatives close by that can step in, trying to find acceptable, affordable childcare on two average incomes that has hours of operation that you can actually fit into a nine to five work schedule is, to put it mildly, friggin impossible. I looked and looked and if it was “affordable” (okay, CHEAP) then the facility smelled like cigarettes. Anything that looked like a place I felt safe with was either over $300 a week (part time!) or only open from 7:30am at the earliest, to 5:30pm at the latest.
Pretty much the only other mother I know that works outside the home is an RN who does in-home visits with patients a couple of days a week and is able to do her paperwork while she’s at home. I used to think my sister was very lucky that she was able to stay home with her two children while her husband worked, but when I was pregnant she was the first to tell me that it’s a bad idea to make one parent the sole bread winner. Having one person making the money puts them under twice as much pressure and before you know it, the stay at home parent is forced to petition the working one in order to buy so much as a hair clip.
I had seen her put her own children into daycare when her separation meant the end of her SAHM status and she was soon forced to take them out when another kid knocked my 3 year old nephew into a bookcase, badly bruising his back. As far as leaving your kids home alone while going out to work, my own mother had been forced to do it back in 1978, before the evening news became a Horribles Parade of feral children and armed gangs of child pornographers that supposedly prowled every suburban neighborhood. I was given a key, my sister was told to come straight home after choir practice, and probably the worst thing I did was try to make M&M marshmallow krispies without using a double-boiler. Then again, I was a fairly nerdy child.
I vaguely remember my mother staying at home with us and I think I got into more trouble with her there. I managed to eat strawberry scented incense when I was 2, stick my finger into an outlet when I was 3 and also tumble down 3 flights of stairs while wearing my first pair of bellbottoms, and nobody pointed fingers, whispered over the fence or called DSS. It was all chalked up to being a normal kid and I have spent the past 37 years (mostly) therapy-free.
As far as the idea that the best and the brightest are abandoning their hard-won careers to suckle and cuddle and burp their offspring, here is my two cents: If these women are so well educated, then isn’t it sexist to assume that they don’t know what the hell they are doing when they choose to stay home? My gut instinct is that they probably know exactly what they are doing and, having had the luxury of a choice, they are probably much happier doing it. An added bonus is that by nature of being better educated, these women may have the advantage of being able to stay more informed and will probably make better choices about raising their kids than the last generation. Of course, I’m not saying that being better educated automatically makes you a better mom (item #43), But, I personally knew a girl when I was growing up who had a stay at home mom that left a good academic career to raise her and she ended up scoring 1600 on her SAT’s and getting a full scholarship to an Ivy League school.
In the end, I think that if someone wants to stay home with their children and they can safely afford it, then good for them. If they want to pursue their career, and they can place their child in a situation they are comfortable with, then that’s fine too. And as for the idea that women are usually the ones who stay home because childrearing is considered “women’s work” let me say just two things: If you take the term “women’s work” to task for being demeaning, then who is being the sexist one here? 2) Have you ever seen a grown man try to change a diaper?
It’s the giant piece of the population pie that lands in the middle that we should really be worrying about. If politicians feel the need to legislate my reproductive organs, then I think I have the right to demand legislation to increase my maternity leave and decrease the rates that most day care centers charge.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Fun Summer Reading about the T
If you're like me and you're forced to take public transportation, then you might find the following sites to be interesting reads:
Badtransit.com
Today's post is a wonderful example of art imatating life; i.e. the scene in "Brazil" where the Information Security official says "And here is my receipt, for your receipt."
Boston.com message board about commutes affected by Big Dig's FUBAR situation.
I guess the addictive thing about these message boards is that it feels like what people really want to say to each other.
T-rage blog
Why stand there on the un-airconditioned, reeking platform swearing at Dan Grabauskas when t-rage can do it for you?
Badtransit.com
Today's post is a wonderful example of art imatating life; i.e. the scene in "Brazil" where the Information Security official says "And here is my receipt, for your receipt."
Boston.com message board about commutes affected by Big Dig's FUBAR situation.
I guess the addictive thing about these message boards is that it feels like what people really want to say to each other.
T-rage blog
Why stand there on the un-airconditioned, reeking platform swearing at Dan Grabauskas when t-rage can do it for you?
"It's Too Darn Hot"
I keep hearing this song from "Kiss Me Kate" in my head whenever I take the commuter rail in this kind of weather. Of course I've never seen the actual musical, but someone does a great job of lipsynching to it in the movie "Wigstock". (Fun link note, when you click on the link that heads this post, notice the ad for hot flash treatments on the righthand side. I think Adsense needs to rethink the target audience for this page a little)
"Wigstock" was a big hit with Chloe. Anything with bright colors and lots of dancing works for her right now and it's not as syrupy as Care Bears or Barney so I can deal with watching it with her.
"Wigstock" was a big hit with Chloe. Anything with bright colors and lots of dancing works for her right now and it's not as syrupy as Care Bears or Barney so I can deal with watching it with her.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
The Drunken Master Rides Again!
Sorry, I could put a snarky tagline here, but it's hard to think of something that doesn't sound kind of racist. OK, OK:
"FLEEBIRD!!"
"FLEEBIRD!!"
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Friday, July 07, 2006
Photo Verified as Constanze Mozart
Constanze Mozart is the elderly woman on the right. This is a photo of a woman born in 1762. BEFORE THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION PEOPLE! Photos like this kind of freak me out. It's like seeing a brontosaurus walking down the street.
Soul Sisters?
Madonna played the Garden last night. That explains some of the walking fashion disasters stumbling around North Station in too-high platforms. Chloe celebrated Her Madgesty's visit by raising her shirt over her belly and vogueing for about 10 minutes while we watched a Klaus Nomi documentary which, quite frankly, had better vocals.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Raindrops keep falling on my head
Warning: Sarcasm alert
5 Things I Love About This Weather
1) I'm saving a bundle on sunscreen.
2) My ancestors were from Scotland so this is a wonderful opportunity to re-connect with them.
3) I like ducks. Ducks like mosquitos. Mosquitos like water. So everybody's happy.
4) All I need is a cup of Starbuck's coffee in my hand and I feel like I live in Seattle. So I feel very hip.
5) The more baseball games that get rained out, the longer the season goes. Yay!
5 Things I Love About This Weather
1) I'm saving a bundle on sunscreen.
2) My ancestors were from Scotland so this is a wonderful opportunity to re-connect with them.
3) I like ducks. Ducks like mosquitos. Mosquitos like water. So everybody's happy.
4) All I need is a cup of Starbuck's coffee in my hand and I feel like I live in Seattle. So I feel very hip.
5) The more baseball games that get rained out, the longer the season goes. Yay!
Thursday, June 22, 2006
BTW, Happy Birthday to ME
Jennsweb is 1 year, 21 days old. In the past year I got married, had a baby and learned how to knit. So it's been a pretty good year.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
So Many Apps, So Little Time
It’s official. There are WAY too many crazy little applets out there. I give it about 3 days before I see one of those “NEED A COOL WEBSITE NOW!!!!!!!” ads on Craig’s List where they list every application on here and demand that you have EXTENSIVE experience with all of them and can you do it in two days for $100?
Not that I’m disillusioned or anything…
Not that I’m disillusioned or anything…
Monday, June 19, 2006
The Nerdiest Thing I Read Online Today
Sometimes Steve Pavlina seems like an OK guy. Other times, he's so perfect, so Martha Stewart, that you just want to whack him in the back of head. Either way, this article was a slightly guilty pleasure for me, even though I would DIE rather than listen to New Age music.
DOTD (Design of the Day)
Project83.com is actually one of the few design companies I've come across that actually practices what it preaches. The design uses a beautiful color and upon landing on the home page, you can instantly figure out where you are and what you are looking at.
I really can't stand sites that seem to be designed with the philosophy that if you don't know what the site is about, then you shouldn't be there. That is so Studio 54.
BTW, if you follow the last link, you will find a website that is a total "Goofus" of web design, but I swear I looked at every link that Google threw at me for "studio 54" and this one was the least offensive. Trust me.
I really can't stand sites that seem to be designed with the philosophy that if you don't know what the site is about, then you shouldn't be there. That is so Studio 54.
BTW, if you follow the last link, you will find a website that is a total "Goofus" of web design, but I swear I looked at every link that Google threw at me for "studio 54" and this one was the least offensive. Trust me.
Canadians get desperate when the temp climbs above 50 degrees
Have you ever noticed how the same people who bitch about how F*#$% cold it is all winter long are the first ones to crank up the ac when the thermometer hits above 80 just so they can shiver for another 3 months?
Friday, June 16, 2006
Geeks are Sexy!
You know what's sexy about them? They are not only not willing to ask for directions, they will create custom software for their cellphones to pinpoint where they are by triangulating the signals from cell towers with a bluetooth enabled GPS device. Mmmmmmmmmmmm
Anyway, it's an article on Wired's site about the Where 2.0 conference. It sounds like more fun than a shoe sale.
Anyway, it's an article on Wired's site about the Where 2.0 conference. It sounds like more fun than a shoe sale.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
I Knew It!
Apparently every real programmer knows that there is a new language born every week. At least the birthrate is not as bad as the one for suckers.
New blog on the block
I decided that rather than stuffing jennsweb chock full of a bunch of different topics, I'm going to focus up a little bit. So here's a brand new blog about where I live since I'm constantly finding cool stuff there and looking on the web for local things. I have a squidoo lens about Salem as well.
This coffee goes to 11
The office I work in has one of those custom coffee Flavia machines and I've been selected as the test monkey for the new Intense Dark Roast Coffee. They have a number system on the coffee packets to tell you how strong the coffees are on a scale of 1 to 5. The IDR is rated as 7. I've had 3 sips so far and my desk is now clean, my purse is organized and I've walked the length of the office delivering things twice.
This is some damn good coffee. If only I could stop the ringing in my ears.
This is some damn good coffee. If only I could stop the ringing in my ears.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Ice Cream Review
I know it's been a long time between postings. I could blame the baby, but she's really not that high maintenance. The fact of the matter is that I'm pretty lazy when the weather's nice...
Anyway, run, don't walk to the nearest grocery store and pick up a pint of Haagen-Daz Mayan Chocolate Ice Cream. Spicy chocolate never tasted so good. Even my niece, a textbook picky eater, loved it, even if she did insist that she get it on a separate plate, not touching anything else.
Anyway, run, don't walk to the nearest grocery store and pick up a pint of Haagen-Daz Mayan Chocolate Ice Cream. Spicy chocolate never tasted so good. Even my niece, a textbook picky eater, loved it, even if she did insist that she get it on a separate plate, not touching anything else.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Unleash your inner migrant worker
For those of you who miss feudalism, check out this site where you can find out where you can pick your own produce around Massachusetts. And if you're nostalgic for the days of child labor, learn about places where kids can pick along side of you. Fun for the whole family!
Ch-ch-ch-changes!
It's when I look at these all together that I realize how much Chloe is changing.
2 months
1 month
1 week
2 months
1 month1 week
Friday, May 26, 2006
Feature Fatigue
Why waste time ranting when Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe has so considerately done it for us?
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Parenting LOTD
I found this from a link at the previous post. I'm not an all-the-way vegan and I still eat tuna and sashimi, but I thought this would be a good resource for all of those parents out there who are trying not to doom their kids to a diet of pizza and chicken nuggets.
Blog Ho
I admit it. I read almost the entire article that Steve Pavlina wrote on how to make money from a blog. There's a lot of useful stuff in there without a lot of hype. It was a good antidote to all of the crazy "EASY $$$$$$$$$!!!!!!!!! WORK FROM HOME!!!!!!" crap that's out there. I won't name names but you people know who you are. (cough, cough, craig's list, cough, cough)
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Well I'll be a monkey's uncle-literally.
According to researchers at the Broad Institute based out of Harvard and MIT, humans and chimps split apart from each other millions of years ago, and then, just like Kim and Eminem came back together for a brief evolutionary second before splitting for good.
The tiny little popping sounds you hear are Creationists' brains collectively exploding all over the country.
The tiny little popping sounds you hear are Creationists' brains collectively exploding all over the country.
Online Childcare Search Engine
Thank you Mandy of Little Star Buddies daycare! I put a post on Craig's List a couple of days ago asking about good sources for info on daycare in Salem. This site, www2.childcarecircuit.org has a pretty decent system where you fill out a brief on-line form and get listings of places with openings for daycare. Pretty cool!
I think I will go ahead and put together a Squidoo lens for Salem parents though.
I think I will go ahead and put together a Squidoo lens for Salem parents though.
9 dollar MP3
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
The Real Parent Trap
This is one of those things that really makes me want to do more database/type web design. I spent about 2 hours today looking for daycare via the web. I can't think of a better topic for a database driven website with clean nav and dynamic pages. Instead , every site I went to was a candidate for "Web Pages That Suck".
So I think I'm going to have to do a new Squidoo lens on Salem daycare. At least until I can develop a site that 1) gives information on what one should ask a potential daycare provider 2) puts the cards on the table about rates and 3) provides solid information about openings, hours, and locations. I want a site that functions like bostonworks.com. I want to be able to type in my address, my cost range and the age of the child and the hours I am looking for and then get listings that fit my criteria along with e-mail links to the providers.
Stay tuned!
So I think I'm going to have to do a new Squidoo lens on Salem daycare. At least until I can develop a site that 1) gives information on what one should ask a potential daycare provider 2) puts the cards on the table about rates and 3) provides solid information about openings, hours, and locations. I want a site that functions like bostonworks.com. I want to be able to type in my address, my cost range and the age of the child and the hours I am looking for and then get listings that fit my criteria along with e-mail links to the providers.
Stay tuned!
Parenting LOTD
Eureka! A childcare site that "gets it"!
I've spent the past 3 days looking for affordable daycare for Chloe for Mondays Thursdays and Fridays. After googling and looking thru the yellow pages, I resorted to a list that I had printed out when I was in my 1st trimester and basically I'm reduced to calling every name on a 3 page list since there is no website I can find that will match seeker to provider. So far, about 1/3 of the numbers I called are either not in service, or shoot me into a caller ID system. The next third have been answered by people that barely speak english and the rest are either booked up or don't take infants.
So, thank you, littlestarbuddies.com for posting your rates, your hours, location, and basically all the information a parent is looking for when they try to arrange child care!
I've spent the past 3 days looking for affordable daycare for Chloe for Mondays Thursdays and Fridays. After googling and looking thru the yellow pages, I resorted to a list that I had printed out when I was in my 1st trimester and basically I'm reduced to calling every name on a 3 page list since there is no website I can find that will match seeker to provider. So far, about 1/3 of the numbers I called are either not in service, or shoot me into a caller ID system. The next third have been answered by people that barely speak english and the rest are either booked up or don't take infants.
So, thank you, littlestarbuddies.com for posting your rates, your hours, location, and basically all the information a parent is looking for when they try to arrange child care!
Monday, May 15, 2006
Thursday, May 04, 2006
It Figures...
My housekeeping heroine is really a man in color coordinated 1960's vintage hostess' clothing. I've been a stay-at-home mom for about three weeks now, and I have yet to dust the picture frames while wearing heels and a colorful flower print shift. Not that I feel like a failure, but it's ironic that the cultural imprint that we all seem to aspire to would be so perfectly personified by Brini Maxwell.
On a side note, if you feel the need to "get out with the girls" and you don't want to mess up your manicure by bowling, try this. for a change. You might even win a ham!
On a side note, if you feel the need to "get out with the girls" and you don't want to mess up your manicure by bowling, try this. for a change. You might even win a ham!
A Beautiful Oxymoron
If you really, really, don't like the clash between your plastic candy colored streamlined computer and your Zen temple or Early American themed decor, then try one of these out.
Radio Dharma
Links to teachings of the Dalai Lama. Also, a collection of MP3 recordings of Tibetan chants and teachings of the Dalai Lama in both Tibetan and English.
"Spit and Baling Wire"
A repair foreman at the MBTA realized that he could tape a 5 cent hairnet to the intake filters on subway trains so they don't get clogged with melted and re-frozen snow. It should save the T $126,000 a year in repairs. It's a great idea, but it begs the question; Why weren't the motors fitted with internal filters by the manufacturer in the first place?
Monday, May 01, 2006
A Modern Modest Proposal
Okay, by now I'm sure you've realized that a large portion of our country's population likes, well, large portions. Visit any shopping mall, grocery store, sporting event or schoolyard and you will witness large herds of obese human beings thundering across the landscape, eating everything in their path, staggering their way towards a life sentence of heart disease and diabetes. Seating has become too small for most of us on public transportation. Airplanes have fallen out of the sky because, although the passenger list was regulation, the average weight of the passengers was not. Ferries have capsized due to the combined tonnage of their passengers shifting suddenly to starboard to get photos of surfacing whales. We stand a good chance of making ourselves extinct due to a deadly combination of eating a high-fat diet and driving to the supermarket in our high volume, gas guzzling SUV's to buy MORE food to shove down our already engorged gullets in a futile attempt to conquer the stress of being overweight, unhealthy and in debt up to our ears because of car payments and high gas prices.
So, you can imagine my relief, when I read the article in this month's Wired about the New Zealander who built a boat that can run on human body fat. Here is the perfect solution to most of society's problems. We will use our own ass fat to power our fat asses around.
So, you can imagine my relief, when I read the article in this month's Wired about the New Zealander who built a boat that can run on human body fat. Here is the perfect solution to most of society's problems. We will use our own ass fat to power our fat asses around.
Going with the flow, part 2
Good news! Chloe went to the doctor's last Wednesday and had gained a whole 2 ounces! I, on the other hand, have gained 2 pounds. She's eating about every three hours and if I time it right, she's usually done with her "dinner" feeding before 9pm so I can watch the "Sopranos" in relative peace.
And now, a word about our sponsor,
I really wish I knew how blogger.com came up with the constipation remedy ad that you see above this post.
Hecho en China
Interesting article on Zhou Tiehai, an artist in China who doesn't paint himself, but farms out the work to his assistants who create the actual art.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Phong.com
Remember all those articles you read about web design mistakes? This site has them all, from mystery meat navigation to lack of information to tiny tiny print two shades lighter than the background! But somehow, I couldn't help but fall for all the little mouseover noises and flash animation.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Something I've always wanted to try.
This photographer exposed one piece of film 37 days out of the year to track the sun's position at 8:30 am. Very cool idea!
Going with the flow
Just a few words about breastfeeding. Just needed to get this off my chest, ha ha.
Right now Chloe is sleeping like what she is, a baby. She woke me up at 3am, I jammed my left breast into her mouth, she clamped down like a velociraptor and fed for about 5 minutes before falling back asleep. Great, now my left breast has flow like Eric B and Rakim and my right breast is tingling and engorged and she's sleeping like the dead. I think I gave birth to a vampire. I expressed what was left into a bottle and stored it in the refrigerator. Good thing, since she woke me up two hours later and wanted more, more, more. Luckily, Chloe will take the bottle, but I learned the hard way that she will gorge herself in a couple of minutes with the entire bottle if you let her and then spew it back up like Lindsay Lohan. So I sat there on the bed giving her sips at a time, fighting back sleep. This morning she let me sleep until 9:30 am and now that it's noon, she's fallen back asleep after just an ounce of expressed milk mixed with Infamil formula.
That's right, FORMULA! And, if you really want a reason to call DSS on me, EXPRESSED MILK MIXED WITH IT! I'll admit that I have fed Chloe directly from the breast, with music playing, in a rocking chair, just like the pictures in a La Leche League pamphlet, but DAMN if doesn't feel like a bee sting when she latches on! So I tried reading up about this and there is too much advice about everything to do with breast feeding. If I tense up from the pain, she'll get a complex that will likely lead her to the therapist's couch until she's forty. If I don't do anything, she won't realize that it hurts and I'll be the one on the couch. Anxiety about the pain of latching on will affect my milk supply. Not feeding her from the breast will cause my milk to dry up. Worrying about my milk supply will impede my flow.
You know what? I don't care. Just as every baby is an individual, every mother is too. My first feeding went great, it hurt a little but the student nurse who was showing me how, was currently breastfeeding herself and when I asked, she said it does hurt a little. When "a little" turned into "OW GODDAMMIT!" I asked another nurse for an icepack for my nipples, which, (I had read) was what you are supposed to put on sore nipples. She asked me why I wanted it, I said I was sore and showed her. This battlehardened nurse sucked in her breath in horror and ran to get me some Lasinoh. You would have thought that I was going to end up as some sort of entry into a medical textbook from her reaction. So now I was convinced that it was NEVER supposed to hurt and I was doing it all wrong. I asked my OB what to do, since she still had to eat. He told me to just nurse Chloe for 10 minutes on each breast. Then, I took her to the pediatrician and she hadn't eaten enough to gain weight. And, the pediatrician told me to try mixing in formula with my own milk as a kind of weight gain supplement. I even tried to use a breast pump, but it hurts almost as much as when the baby latches on and works about as much as expressing by hand.
So here we are, one day from another weigh-in at the pediatrician's office. Chloe's on about an every three hour feeding schedule, sometimes the breast, sometimes the bottle, sometimes formula in between. She's eating about an ounce at each feeding, which seems to be enough. I'm resolved to stop freaking out about every little detail and just go with what works for now. I feel kind of bad, since the nurses at the hospital loaded me up with La Leche pamphlets and my husband's niece gave me her book on breastfeeding, but honestly, the more I read, the more stressed out I get. I think, in the end, if we've survived this long as a species, without electronic $500 breast pumps and textbooks, then instinct is probably the way to go. Then again, if she still hasn't gained any weight by tomorrow, then I am perfectly happy to let modern medical science give me a hand.
Right now Chloe is sleeping like what she is, a baby. She woke me up at 3am, I jammed my left breast into her mouth, she clamped down like a velociraptor and fed for about 5 minutes before falling back asleep. Great, now my left breast has flow like Eric B and Rakim and my right breast is tingling and engorged and she's sleeping like the dead. I think I gave birth to a vampire. I expressed what was left into a bottle and stored it in the refrigerator. Good thing, since she woke me up two hours later and wanted more, more, more. Luckily, Chloe will take the bottle, but I learned the hard way that she will gorge herself in a couple of minutes with the entire bottle if you let her and then spew it back up like Lindsay Lohan. So I sat there on the bed giving her sips at a time, fighting back sleep. This morning she let me sleep until 9:30 am and now that it's noon, she's fallen back asleep after just an ounce of expressed milk mixed with Infamil formula.
That's right, FORMULA! And, if you really want a reason to call DSS on me, EXPRESSED MILK MIXED WITH IT! I'll admit that I have fed Chloe directly from the breast, with music playing, in a rocking chair, just like the pictures in a La Leche League pamphlet, but DAMN if doesn't feel like a bee sting when she latches on! So I tried reading up about this and there is too much advice about everything to do with breast feeding. If I tense up from the pain, she'll get a complex that will likely lead her to the therapist's couch until she's forty. If I don't do anything, she won't realize that it hurts and I'll be the one on the couch. Anxiety about the pain of latching on will affect my milk supply. Not feeding her from the breast will cause my milk to dry up. Worrying about my milk supply will impede my flow.
You know what? I don't care. Just as every baby is an individual, every mother is too. My first feeding went great, it hurt a little but the student nurse who was showing me how, was currently breastfeeding herself and when I asked, she said it does hurt a little. When "a little" turned into "OW GODDAMMIT!" I asked another nurse for an icepack for my nipples, which, (I had read) was what you are supposed to put on sore nipples. She asked me why I wanted it, I said I was sore and showed her. This battlehardened nurse sucked in her breath in horror and ran to get me some Lasinoh. You would have thought that I was going to end up as some sort of entry into a medical textbook from her reaction. So now I was convinced that it was NEVER supposed to hurt and I was doing it all wrong. I asked my OB what to do, since she still had to eat. He told me to just nurse Chloe for 10 minutes on each breast. Then, I took her to the pediatrician and she hadn't eaten enough to gain weight. And, the pediatrician told me to try mixing in formula with my own milk as a kind of weight gain supplement. I even tried to use a breast pump, but it hurts almost as much as when the baby latches on and works about as much as expressing by hand.
So here we are, one day from another weigh-in at the pediatrician's office. Chloe's on about an every three hour feeding schedule, sometimes the breast, sometimes the bottle, sometimes formula in between. She's eating about an ounce at each feeding, which seems to be enough. I'm resolved to stop freaking out about every little detail and just go with what works for now. I feel kind of bad, since the nurses at the hospital loaded me up with La Leche pamphlets and my husband's niece gave me her book on breastfeeding, but honestly, the more I read, the more stressed out I get. I think, in the end, if we've survived this long as a species, without electronic $500 breast pumps and textbooks, then instinct is probably the way to go. Then again, if she still hasn't gained any weight by tomorrow, then I am perfectly happy to let modern medical science give me a hand.
Yeah, what he said... Update
An update on Mr. Butch, currently residing in state custody for trying to direct traffic. Well, he IS the mayor...
(see post from March 21, 2006 for photos and video of Mr. Butch)
(see post from March 21, 2006 for photos and video of Mr. Butch)
Monday, April 24, 2006
Raja the Elephant Update
Raja the Elephant, who had too much candy and cookies during a Buddhist holiday, is doing better and is on a strict diet of leafy greens.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Things I wish I had known
I really tried to be a good mom-to-be and read the right books. But "What To Expect When You're Expecting" was pretty frustrating by the third month. Basically, my complaint was that the tone of the book was like the ultimate "gore-crow" type old relative that can't wait to mention the latest horror stories in the news whenever you talk to them. Apparently, every month I should have expected to experience vomiting, dizziness, constipation and bloating. Very fortunately, I experienced none of these so I felt kind of guilty.
There were things that I didn't expect and don't show up to often in books so here's the scoop on what to really expect for labor and delivery and postpartum:
1) You may be having contractions 5 minutes apart for hours and still be sent home after coming to the hospital if you are not dialated enough. Ambien is good for getting some sleep despite the pain. It can make you feel a little out of control of your body, but you need the rest for the next stage of labor.
2) Nurses will hook you up to several monitors and then spend 20 minutes asking you every question that you have already answered on your pre-admittance form that you filled out a month ago. Just go along, the question and answer thing is actually kind of relaxing.
3) Don't expect the doctor on call to remember anything from minute to minute, even if they've been treating you for 9 months. Doctors work 12 to 14 hour shifts on call and may be dealing with as many as 5 active labors at once.
4) Expect to be asked to sign important paperwork whilst in the midst of a Level 7 contraction. If at all possible, ask to have your labor coach/husband glance over what you are signing before you do. Most of the forms are strictly routine though. A friend told me that she signed something without reading it in the hospital and it turned out it was a waiver of her right to an at-home visit from a nurse!
5) Even if you've been asking for an epidural and actually get one, if you are so high you can't feel the second stage major contractions, the medical staff may turn off the feed so you will be motivated to push. Warning: don't ask if they did. Believe me, you don't want to know if they do.
6) Post delivery, do not watch the local news for about 5 days. Every single story involving babies in dumpsters, car wrecks, fires and general mayhem will make you cry uncontrollably.
7) Expect to have absolutely no peace for about a week. The hospital stay will be jam packed with blood pressure checks, baby checks, floral deliveries, food service, trash service, linen service and family members coming in to see the new arrival. Be patient, it'll be over soon.
8) Once you're home, don't try to schedule your day. Just give yourself one goal at a time. Some days it can be a major accomplishment just to get out with the baby for a trip to the mailbox and back. Just try to relax and enjoy the time to get to know the baby.
There were things that I didn't expect and don't show up to often in books so here's the scoop on what to really expect for labor and delivery and postpartum:
1) You may be having contractions 5 minutes apart for hours and still be sent home after coming to the hospital if you are not dialated enough. Ambien is good for getting some sleep despite the pain. It can make you feel a little out of control of your body, but you need the rest for the next stage of labor.
2) Nurses will hook you up to several monitors and then spend 20 minutes asking you every question that you have already answered on your pre-admittance form that you filled out a month ago. Just go along, the question and answer thing is actually kind of relaxing.
3) Don't expect the doctor on call to remember anything from minute to minute, even if they've been treating you for 9 months. Doctors work 12 to 14 hour shifts on call and may be dealing with as many as 5 active labors at once.
4) Expect to be asked to sign important paperwork whilst in the midst of a Level 7 contraction. If at all possible, ask to have your labor coach/husband glance over what you are signing before you do. Most of the forms are strictly routine though. A friend told me that she signed something without reading it in the hospital and it turned out it was a waiver of her right to an at-home visit from a nurse!
5) Even if you've been asking for an epidural and actually get one, if you are so high you can't feel the second stage major contractions, the medical staff may turn off the feed so you will be motivated to push. Warning: don't ask if they did. Believe me, you don't want to know if they do.
6) Post delivery, do not watch the local news for about 5 days. Every single story involving babies in dumpsters, car wrecks, fires and general mayhem will make you cry uncontrollably.
7) Expect to have absolutely no peace for about a week. The hospital stay will be jam packed with blood pressure checks, baby checks, floral deliveries, food service, trash service, linen service and family members coming in to see the new arrival. Be patient, it'll be over soon.
8) Once you're home, don't try to schedule your day. Just give yourself one goal at a time. Some days it can be a major accomplishment just to get out with the baby for a trip to the mailbox and back. Just try to relax and enjoy the time to get to know the baby.
Advice on Advice
Nothing gets people going like the sight of your bulging belly. Mom mags always have at least one mention in each issue about unsolicited advice, how to deal with it, blah blah. Since this was my first pregnancy, I just took everything people told me and filed it away in my memory in case it came in handy. After 9 months, delivery, postpartum in the hospital and being home for a week, here's my advice about advice:
1) Just like with a medical diagnosis, always try to get a second or even third opinion. One lactation nurse told me that a "little pain" is normal when the baby latches on. Another reacted in horror when I told her it was hurting a little and said it was NEVER supposed to hurt. Every mother I've talked to says it does hurt a little.
2) Take every opinion with a grain of salt. Remember, every nurse is different with different experiences. Every baby is different. There is no "typical" pregnancy, delivery, or baby.
3) The best advice I got for the entire experience came from a man who told me not to worry over anything, but just to enjoy every moment for what it was.
1) Just like with a medical diagnosis, always try to get a second or even third opinion. One lactation nurse told me that a "little pain" is normal when the baby latches on. Another reacted in horror when I told her it was hurting a little and said it was NEVER supposed to hurt. Every mother I've talked to says it does hurt a little.
2) Take every opinion with a grain of salt. Remember, every nurse is different with different experiences. Every baby is different. There is no "typical" pregnancy, delivery, or baby.
3) The best advice I got for the entire experience came from a man who told me not to worry over anything, but just to enjoy every moment for what it was.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
One Week Down...
An extremely rare photo of Chloe crying. Her dad and I were kind of freaked out her first few days because she was easy to deal with. Too easy. The first night I tried sleeping with her in her bassinet next to me I kept poking at her to make sure she was breathing. She slept 6 hours straight that night. I asked the doctor if it was normal and he said that it would change soon enough and to enjoy it while I could. The only problem is that she's so easy going that she actually waited for me to offer to feed her and she slept through some feedings her first few days home. So for now, my only job is to bring her weight back up to 7 pounds 14 ounces which was her birth weight. Since I'm vegetarian, I have to pound down a lot of Ensure and cottage cheese. I feel like a boxing trainer who's trying to get their fighter to move up a weight class. Right now she's at Bantam weight, but hopefully in a couple of days she'll get up to Feather weight.
Dairy Queen
By some cosmic coincidence of events, I purchased an Avent bottle on instinct while I took Chloe for her first walk in the stroller. Lo and behold, Avent bottles are integrated into the Avent Isis Breast Pump system, so not only did I luck out by spending six bucks on something that works with an inexpensive pump, but the last book I read before delivery was the "The Da Vinci Code" which mentions the whole Isis nursing Horus, Madonna and Child analogy.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Good Morning, Hello Kitty, How may I direct your call?
I knew this day would come. It's a good thing I know how to operate heavy machinery too. Although, I would like to see a Hello Kitty robot try that too.
Talk about making an impact with your presentation...
And yes, let's all say a prayer for a Kennedy, AGAIN.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Elephant Eats Scores of Cookies and Gets Sick
See the things you miss when you're in labor?
I hope poor Raja gets better though. Maybe it's the hormones, but the picture of this made me pretty verklempt.
I hope poor Raja gets better though. Maybe it's the hormones, but the picture of this made me pretty verklempt.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Contraction City!
I am currently coming out an Ambien induced sleep after being up all night with contractions. Forget the classic water gushing out in public, panting screaming for 4 hours, ending with the screaming baby scenario. I spent Saturday from 10 am until Sunday at 2 am on the couch watching tv and writing down the time that each cramp started. Of course I felt like a nervous nelly having my doctor paged, but I kept thinking if I try to tough it out, and my water breaks and I end up giving birth in a Dunkin Donuts parking lot at 3am, I'm not going to feel to good about that either.
By about 2 am I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep, so we made the call, packed up the hospital bag, diaper bag, insurance cards and boom box and drove over. I had a bad contraction right as I walked through the front door and had to hold onto the desk as I gasped out my name. We got settled into a room and two nurses came in to prod around my cervix for a while. I'm getting used to it by now, but I still feel like a farm animal when someone does that. I drank a glass of water, then a glass of cranberry juice and then they asked me to walk around the Labor ward for an hour to get my cervix to open.
So Chris and I shuffled around in circles for about an hour like a couple of centengenarians, stopping in the middle each time to check out the incubator room to see if we could see any newborns. Finally after an hour and about 10 more contractions I still wasn't dilated so the Doctor sent me home to sleep with a couple of tabs of Ambien. Things got foggy after that. It seemed like every time I turned my head to change the direction I was walking in, it would take my body a bit to get the drift. I should be a responsible adult today and finish my taxes before I go back into the hospital, but I don't trust my math right now.
By about 2 am I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep, so we made the call, packed up the hospital bag, diaper bag, insurance cards and boom box and drove over. I had a bad contraction right as I walked through the front door and had to hold onto the desk as I gasped out my name. We got settled into a room and two nurses came in to prod around my cervix for a while. I'm getting used to it by now, but I still feel like a farm animal when someone does that. I drank a glass of water, then a glass of cranberry juice and then they asked me to walk around the Labor ward for an hour to get my cervix to open.
So Chris and I shuffled around in circles for about an hour like a couple of centengenarians, stopping in the middle each time to check out the incubator room to see if we could see any newborns. Finally after an hour and about 10 more contractions I still wasn't dilated so the Doctor sent me home to sleep with a couple of tabs of Ambien. Things got foggy after that. It seemed like every time I turned my head to change the direction I was walking in, it would take my body a bit to get the drift. I should be a responsible adult today and finish my taxes before I go back into the hospital, but I don't trust my math right now.
Friday, April 07, 2006
Another Good Photo Site
Trekearth.com. Go places, take pictures, post them here. Just make sure they're good, because these are great!
It's a sandy day in hell...
Stumbled across this via FireFox's Stumble! function. I was going through a bunch of photography sites and becoming increasingly annoyed at slooooowwwww llllloooaadddinng over designed sites when I came across these amazing (and fast loading!) photos of an approaching dust storm in Iraq from last year.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
For Dads
I noted in a previous post that most parenting magazines are actually aimed at the mom, so here's one for the other person changing the pampers!
D-day is tomorrow!
As in DUE DATE. Of course this doesn't mean I start pushing at the stroke of midnight, but I would really like to! Today was my last day at work and by 10am I was ready to pack it in. It feels like the baby is gearing up by doing push-ups and crunches in there and she got a good case of the hiccups around 2pm. When I got home, the next door neighbor's baby was screaming on the other side of the bathroom wall and I listened for a couple of minutes trying to get used to the sound.
Gives new meaning to "Drunken Flower Plum Stance"...
Gardening just took on a whole new appeal for me.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Speaking of order coming from chaos...
There is now such a backlash against all the lamb/bunny/ducky baby wear and "mommytribe" group think, that sites like this are cropping up like mushrooms. I predict that in 2 months it will be so "normal" to be seen in public breastfeeding your mohawked little one under your Minor Threat t-shirt that the cute lil' fuzzy wuzzy aesthetic will come roaring back by September.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Iraq war statistics page
Link via the bbc site that has maps showing civilian and police casualities broken down by location and other maps showing population figures.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
What Goes In...
Must come out! Dogfish Brewing Co. has a new beer; Golden Showers Pilsner.
Talk about a niche market.
Talk about a niche market.
I'm a Zen Mommy!
At least for now. I took this quiz on areyouaslackermom.com and thankfully nothing exploded on my computer. I never take online quizzes because I'm always paranoid it will expose me to every spam device out there. This one was pretty harmless though.
LOTD
I wasn't planning on learning guitar, but since I was talking to a friend the other day about the sad fact that I'm 36 and can't read music, despite piano, guitar and banjo lessons, this is a pretty good thing to check out.
How the other half lives
I found this via Kottke.org. It's a really amazing article about a woman who tries to go undercover as a man for a month and learns what it's like. The weirdest factoid is that men don't make eye contact with each other in public.
Personally, I've always noticed how men who go to the movies with each other don't sit next to each other if they're straight.
Personally, I've always noticed how men who go to the movies with each other don't sit next to each other if they're straight.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Dishing the Digital Dirt
I read a few lines of this and then looked for my name on Google. Under my married name, the first entry is some kind of Scientolgist score card. What a relief when I saw what comes up under my maiden name.
Just a thought...
This just popped into my brain. If you have any input, let me know...
The link above takes you to an article that talks about why people are moving out of Massachusetts in droves. A lot of the people who contribute have the opinion that the economy here is "piss poor". Okay. I did a search once on Craig's List for web design jobs in the South Carolina area. My mother had told me that my grandparents' huge, southern colonial with full garage, basement and front and back yard was on sale for $150,000 asking price and it hadn't sold yet so the price might come down. Guess what? NO JOBS. Go look on Craig's List New England. JOBS GALORE.
So,
If you take into account the fact that test scores have plummeted in Massachusetts, people are complaining more and more about lazy undisciplined parents and their spoiled kids, maybe the key to the whole mystery is the fact that the level of education in Mass. has seriously declined over the past few decades. Bad education=bad employment potential. Bad employment potential=bad jobs. Bad jobs=bad pay. Bad pay=not being able to afford a house in Massachusetts anymore. Has this state managed to shortchange its taxpayers so badly in the education department that they can't afford to stay here and keep paying more and more property taxes, therefore, forcing them to leave and further depopulate the tax paying pool?
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
The link above takes you to an article that talks about why people are moving out of Massachusetts in droves. A lot of the people who contribute have the opinion that the economy here is "piss poor". Okay. I did a search once on Craig's List for web design jobs in the South Carolina area. My mother had told me that my grandparents' huge, southern colonial with full garage, basement and front and back yard was on sale for $150,000 asking price and it hadn't sold yet so the price might come down. Guess what? NO JOBS. Go look on Craig's List New England. JOBS GALORE.
So,
If you take into account the fact that test scores have plummeted in Massachusetts, people are complaining more and more about lazy undisciplined parents and their spoiled kids, maybe the key to the whole mystery is the fact that the level of education in Mass. has seriously declined over the past few decades. Bad education=bad employment potential. Bad employment potential=bad jobs. Bad jobs=bad pay. Bad pay=not being able to afford a house in Massachusetts anymore. Has this state managed to shortchange its taxpayers so badly in the education department that they can't afford to stay here and keep paying more and more property taxes, therefore, forcing them to leave and further depopulate the tax paying pool?
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
LOTD
This guy gets an "E" for enthusiasm.
I checked, it is a guy.
Who gets really excited about stewardess uniforms.
I checked, it is a guy.
Who gets really excited about stewardess uniforms.
101 Cookbooks
I love it when I'm randomly flicking through the web and find something that I was looking for, without actually searching for it.
Two Sides of the Coin
So I'm exactly 10 days away from having a kid and I log onto Boston.com hoping for the temporary vicarious thrill of some breaking news about about the earth opening up and swallowing an SUV (talk about poetic justice, Earth First has nothing on the actual Earth itself), and I come across an online forum about people who let their kids run rampant in public places. Not a forum for the faint of heart. Forget the war in Iraq, forget property taxes, forget immigration, if you really want to see what's going on in peoples' heads, throw out a question like "How do you feel about parents today not disciplining their children?" and step back and watch the fur fly between the breeders and the non-breeders. I didn't leave a post on the forum because there were enough people who had already expressed the same opinion, ie; You decided to have 'em, you've got to be the one who tells them to be quiet and behave.
On the other hand, there's an article on the Boston Globe's site about Augusten Burroughs' memoir, "Running With Scissors". Apparently, some people are trying to make him into the next James Frey, but his brother is backing him up and saying that not only is everything true, but he might have held back a little bit. So there you go, someone who is the product of a completely unsupervised childhood turning into a talented writer, albeit with a few stumbles along the way. (go read "Dry")
I think that's really the dilemma that a lot of parents face. On one hand, you have people who impose their will on every aspect of their child's existence. I honestly forget where I saw it, but there was an article online recently about countries in Asia where parents put their kids into boarding schools by the time they are 3. Maybe that kid will grow up to be the chairperson of Toyota, maybe they will turn out to be walking timebombs of repressed emotions.
On the other hand, you have (as people call them around here) the Cambridge Parents. "Cambridge" seems to be a code word for head-in-the-clouds knee-jerk liberalism that only works on one side of the Charles River. The theory being that if you raise children to "experience the world creatively and actively" then they will grow up to be wonderful well-adjusted adults with bucketfuls of compassion for everyone. Have I actually known people who benefitted from this approach? Maybe a couple. Most of the time when I come across the full grown results of that parenting style, they have an irritating habit of expecting the world to revolve around them. Ironically, this is the same outlook on life that most people are complaining about, but what can you expect when the Republican Party behaves the same way?
Ultimately, I think some of the best parenting advice I've ever heard came from on of the worst fictional parents in television history, Livia Soprano;
"Babies are like animals. Someone has to teach them right from wrong."
On the other hand, there's an article on the Boston Globe's site about Augusten Burroughs' memoir, "Running With Scissors". Apparently, some people are trying to make him into the next James Frey, but his brother is backing him up and saying that not only is everything true, but he might have held back a little bit. So there you go, someone who is the product of a completely unsupervised childhood turning into a talented writer, albeit with a few stumbles along the way. (go read "Dry")
I think that's really the dilemma that a lot of parents face. On one hand, you have people who impose their will on every aspect of their child's existence. I honestly forget where I saw it, but there was an article online recently about countries in Asia where parents put their kids into boarding schools by the time they are 3. Maybe that kid will grow up to be the chairperson of Toyota, maybe they will turn out to be walking timebombs of repressed emotions.
On the other hand, you have (as people call them around here) the Cambridge Parents. "Cambridge" seems to be a code word for head-in-the-clouds knee-jerk liberalism that only works on one side of the Charles River. The theory being that if you raise children to "experience the world creatively and actively" then they will grow up to be wonderful well-adjusted adults with bucketfuls of compassion for everyone. Have I actually known people who benefitted from this approach? Maybe a couple. Most of the time when I come across the full grown results of that parenting style, they have an irritating habit of expecting the world to revolve around them. Ironically, this is the same outlook on life that most people are complaining about, but what can you expect when the Republican Party behaves the same way?
Ultimately, I think some of the best parenting advice I've ever heard came from on of the worst fictional parents in television history, Livia Soprano;
"Babies are like animals. Someone has to teach them right from wrong."
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Parenting LOTD
Whether you are looking for a "stylish potty bench", (and who isn't?) or a way to stay lucid during long car trips, this is a great site. I just looked at it again and realized what's missing; tons of blinking diaper ads! It's refreshing to find a site that actually has content and is not just a glorified billboard. (babyzone.com, I'm looking at you!)
Whole Foods is Full of It
Pretty good article on the whole organic food debate. Funny, until 9:30 this morning I had no idea there was a debate. I like to stay informed but I don't like to obsess over anything (see previous entry). The article does support the theory put forth in my Dec. 22, 2005 entry though.
Thrifty mom's hint #101: You can find organic produce at Market Basket. I don't know why something grown nearby in a naturally occurring substance (cowshit) is more expensive than the overpackaged, trucked-in from two timezones away "regular" produce, but since most of the stuff you buy at Market Basket is ridiculously cheap, the price difference is negligible in the end.
Thrifty mom's hint #101: You can find organic produce at Market Basket. I don't know why something grown nearby in a naturally occurring substance (cowshit) is more expensive than the overpackaged, trucked-in from two timezones away "regular" produce, but since most of the stuff you buy at Market Basket is ridiculously cheap, the price difference is negligible in the end.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Parenting Scares Me
Man, ask a simple little question about whether you should let a baby watch television...
In the past eight months I've gone from total ignoramus about parenting issues, to info-accumulating nut, to apathetic incubator. There has to be some kind of happy medium between Lili Taylor's character Lisa on "Six Feet Under" and the moms that I watch on "Nanny 911". Basically every blog, internet article and parenting magazine will tell you that everything your precious one encounters is potentially harmful and/or fattening and you should monitor your kid every second of their existence, but don't worry! A Relaxed Mom is a Good Mom, whatever that means.
Incidentally, why is it that parenting magazines always direct everything at the mom? My husband is actually the one who suscribed to the one we get and so far I haven't seen him try a single one of the Make-Up Tips For Frazzled Moms. He's getting ripped off!
I watch television, but I don't watch whatever's on. Luckily we have HBO, so by the time Chloe's born she'll be very familiar with such quality programming as "The Sopranos" and "Real Time with Bill Maher". She'll probably even recognize Jim Lampley's and Larry Merchant's voices from "Boxing After Dark". Even though I'm only a parent in utero, I know I'm not going to be the most sheltering mother on the planet. The only objection I really have to a kid under 3 watching TV is that I have a sneaking suspicion all the quick frenetic editing and frequent shrill commercial breaks you see on channels like Nickelodeon might give a baby sensory overload and an attention span that maxes out at 30 seconds. And I know from my own childhood that it's really hard to concentrate on anything with a television on in the same room.
Check back with me in a few months after I've been dealing with a fussy baby all day. I don't want to do it, but if I get desperate enough I'll see if I can get her to sleep by letting her watch "Big Love".
In the past eight months I've gone from total ignoramus about parenting issues, to info-accumulating nut, to apathetic incubator. There has to be some kind of happy medium between Lili Taylor's character Lisa on "Six Feet Under" and the moms that I watch on "Nanny 911". Basically every blog, internet article and parenting magazine will tell you that everything your precious one encounters is potentially harmful and/or fattening and you should monitor your kid every second of their existence, but don't worry! A Relaxed Mom is a Good Mom, whatever that means.
Incidentally, why is it that parenting magazines always direct everything at the mom? My husband is actually the one who suscribed to the one we get and so far I haven't seen him try a single one of the Make-Up Tips For Frazzled Moms. He's getting ripped off!
I watch television, but I don't watch whatever's on. Luckily we have HBO, so by the time Chloe's born she'll be very familiar with such quality programming as "The Sopranos" and "Real Time with Bill Maher". She'll probably even recognize Jim Lampley's and Larry Merchant's voices from "Boxing After Dark". Even though I'm only a parent in utero, I know I'm not going to be the most sheltering mother on the planet. The only objection I really have to a kid under 3 watching TV is that I have a sneaking suspicion all the quick frenetic editing and frequent shrill commercial breaks you see on channels like Nickelodeon might give a baby sensory overload and an attention span that maxes out at 30 seconds. And I know from my own childhood that it's really hard to concentrate on anything with a television on in the same room.
Check back with me in a few months after I've been dealing with a fussy baby all day. I don't want to do it, but if I get desperate enough I'll see if I can get her to sleep by letting her watch "Big Love".
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Yeah, what he said...
Great video clip of the One and Only Mr. Butch of Allston/Kenmore Sq. fame.
Allston was one of the neighborhoods I lived in while going to school at Mass Art. The first year I lived there (1990), there were three used bookstores and two amazing indoor yard sale type junk shops on Brighton Ave. alone. Kenmore Sq. still had the Rat, the Wursthaus, and the cafeteria on the corner by the T that served trays of baked potatoes and macaroni and cheese.
I haven't really had a reason to go back to either neighborhood for years, but even though both are allegedly sterilized by chain stores and community zoning, I'm glad Mr. Butch is still going strong.
Check out Bill Miller's pictures of Allston while you're at it. Worth the download time!
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Link Love
Found via the t-rage link. Well done site and I just wanted to spread the word. Rhetorical question of the day; Why are most martial arts websites so badly designed? I'm only asking because I went to the Boston Martial Arts forum on this page and it was a visual soup of purple and gray that just screams 2001. It's either that or you get some "Web Pages That Suck" candidate with the flying eagle .GIFS and the bright primary color banners and blinking green text.
Here are some of my theoretical answers:
1) It takes a lot of time to run a martial arts school so there's less time to spend on a website.
2) A good portion of schools' sites are done on a volunteer basis by a student of the school. So you get what you paid for, and we all know what happens when you design on a "volunteer" basis.
3) Even though martial arts schools don't tend to make money hand over fist (see reason #2), it's not really in their best interest to do a lot of marketing and advertising. I think most respected Sifus would say that they would rather train 10 students the right way than 50 students in a half-assed way.
4) I've always been tempted to try a flash animation of a martial arts form from my school which, btw, has a better than most site, but good schools tend to view their techniques as copyrighted material and you don't want to give away too much of a good thing.
Here are some of my theoretical answers:
1) It takes a lot of time to run a martial arts school so there's less time to spend on a website.
2) A good portion of schools' sites are done on a volunteer basis by a student of the school. So you get what you paid for, and we all know what happens when you design on a "volunteer" basis.
3) Even though martial arts schools don't tend to make money hand over fist (see reason #2), it's not really in their best interest to do a lot of marketing and advertising. I think most respected Sifus would say that they would rather train 10 students the right way than 50 students in a half-assed way.
4) I've always been tempted to try a flash animation of a martial arts form from my school which, btw, has a better than most site, but good schools tend to view their techniques as copyrighted material and you don't want to give away too much of a good thing.
Final Countdown!
Just a quick update at 36 1/2 weeks. 147 pounds and only 2 pairs of pants still fit. I've officially given up on wearing tights because they are living painfully up to their name. Gravity is no longer my friend. I took a stab at thinking about a "birthing plan" like all the books tell me to, but when I asked the doctor about standing while going through labor (I'd seen it on the Discovery Channel and it made sense to me), all he had to do was put the words "perinium" and "tearing" into the same sentence and I was fine with being flat on my back, hopefully with a strong epidural kicking in. Every mother I know has described what it was like when her water broke, everyone at my office freaks out when I lift more than a pencil and the estrogen/blood pressure changes make me look like I've been swimming in bong water. I've had to switch to wearing my glasses which, combined with the 30 extra pounds makes me feel like I have officially turned into my mother.
Not that I'm complaining...
Not that I'm complaining...
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Potty Brain
Better than boston.com, more fun than the Boston Herald...Boston Online's guide to Wicked Good Restrooms is an invaluable public service. Being eight months pregnant will quickly teach anyone the value of plentiful public restrooms and once the little one is out and about with me, I'm going to want to know where every diaper-changing facility is within my immediate perimeter.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Fun with Google
Went to the Reuters News site and came across the headline "Bush Denies Iraq Headed for Civil War". That's funny, I thought, Bush seems to have to deny a lot of stuff lately. So I googled the phrase President Bush Denies and got over 9 million listings.
Design so bad it's funny
Long boring yet hectic day at work. I've been trolling around looking at sites all day trying to get good links for more Squidoo lenses. Sometimes I feel like I want to find the simplest thing on the web and discover that for all the billions of sites out there, nothing fits the bill. At one point I clicked onto three sites in a row that were spider traps. I would try to use the back button to surf away from the site and the page would simply keep loading. Really evil!
I found webpagesthatsuck.com on J. Jeffryes' lens on web design. Thank you J!
I found webpagesthatsuck.com on J. Jeffryes' lens on web design. Thank you J!
Monday, February 27, 2006
23 Squidoo!
After having gone through a state of being del.erio.us for the past couple of weeks, I found a link to squidoo.com on Pye in the Face and now I'm hooked. This is a natural progression that was just waiting to happen. Del.icio.us is pretty addictive. I have to confess that I've spent way more time than I've meant to collecting links about everything from baby care to RSS. I've become a virtual pack-rat.
Apparently so haven't some other geeks out there, so thank you to the fine folks at Squidoo for coming up with the perfect outlet for all that tagging and posting out there. Sign up for free and you become Lensmaster of what ever domain you wish. List your favorite links relating to a particular subject and include a brief description of what you are linking to. So far I've only done one lens which can be viewed here.
More lenses coming soon!
Apparently so haven't some other geeks out there, so thank you to the fine folks at Squidoo for coming up with the perfect outlet for all that tagging and posting out there. Sign up for free and you become Lensmaster of what ever domain you wish. List your favorite links relating to a particular subject and include a brief description of what you are linking to. So far I've only done one lens which can be viewed here.
More lenses coming soon!
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