Switching from the Palm Treo to Nexus One/Google - Continued

Count me as totally sold on the Nexus One/Google combo. It's not even so much the Nexus One, though I'm fairly happy with that. It's just the productivity improvements that come from never having to sync, and having my personal workspace (mail, contacts, docs/memos, calendar, tasks) available everywhere I am, no mater which computer I'm on.

But it sure was a big transition. A quick review:

1. Contacts - still using Google Contacts, still fairly happy with it. Actually dialing phone numbers on my Nexus One is more of a hassle than it was on my Treo - many more keystrokes/screen swipes. Also, I can't search the contact notes on the Nexus One, although I can search when using Google Contacts directly.

2. Calendar - using Google Calendar, quite happy with it. I almost missed a dentist appointment yesterday - don't know what happened, did I just not hear the alarm or what? But overall it's good.

3. Tasks/ToDos - I started out wanting to use Google tasks, but it didn't have enough features, so I'm with Remember The Milk (pro membership - I think it was $25/year) and loving it. Before switching I had in my mind the features that the Palm had for todos, and wanted exactly what they had - and frankly, doing that takes more manipulation in the Nexus One. But I've switched to using some of the newer features that RememberTheMilk has, that the Palm system doesn't - basically Tags and Smart Lists and it's really cool. You can basically organize them any way you can dream up - you're not just stuck with 1 category per task. Also - I've started using voice recognition a lot on the Nexus One, and it rocks. Tip - talk directly into the microphone on the bottom of the phone.

4. Memos/Notes/Docs - this was a real pain, and continues to be a thorn in my side. I started out trying to do things in Gmail, using drafts that have a label of Notes. However, this is really clunky and cumbersome. So, now I'm using Google Docs, and using Gdocs to access them on the Nexus One. At first I was really excited about Gdocs - it seemed like the perfect solution - but there appear to be a lot of bugs and syncing problems. Hopefully the problems will be fixed, or maybe Google will come up with an app.

Nexus One voice recognition is pretty good!

I've been using the Google Nexus One now for about a week. Last night I stayed up late, reading through the users guide online, and read up on voice recognition. It works pretty well! I've started to use it to jot down tasks in Remember The Milk and it can really beat typing in terms of speed. It's been quite accurate when I speak slowly and clearly - though the note I made to write up this particular blog entry got garbled. But that was the first one to be completely wrong - most of the previous ones went in correctly.

I have not been happy at all with text entry - it's just REALLY tedious and slow to get it typed in correctly - so I'm excited to have another option.

Switching from the Palm Treo to Nexus One/Google

I'm making the switch to the cloud. After 13 years (since November 1997) of uninterrupted and relatively happy Palm usage, I'm making the switch to the Nexus One and Google accounts. This is a really big deal for me - I've been thinking about it for months now. Originally I was thinking about switching to the iPhone, but when my husband got a free Nexus One (he decided to stick with his iPhone), I decided to try that out.

Like I said, I've been quite happy with my Palm Treo for long time. But it really seems like the Palm is a dead end. Pretty much all the new apps are being written for the iPhone and Android. So, I'm converting.

This is probably not the best time to be writing up an account of the switch, since I'm particularly frustrated by a formatting problem in Gmail. I'll update later if there's interest.

1. Contacts - Moving the contacts over to Google contacts was a breeze. In my Palm desktop (version 6.2.2) I selected all the contacts, clicked on File, Export vCard, exported everything out, and them in Google contacts, imported them into a new group I created. One issue was - if you have an equal sign (=) in the notes, everything after it doesn't come in. Once I figured that out, I just did a search for the equal signs, and deleted them. I didn't have groups in the Palm contacts that I cared to keep, so I just imported all into one group. If I had, it would have been easy to just export a group at a time, and them import into a corresponding Google contacts group.

One thing that I wasn't happy with in Google Contacts is that you're only able to search in the notes of a contact on the web interface, and not on the contact application on the Nexus One. That's not good for me, because I do those searches all the time. I would put a keyword in the notes - for instance, "tennis". Then on the Palm, whenever I wanted a tennis partner, I just searched for the word tennis, and all my tennis partners showed up. I'm going to miss that feature.

2. Calendar - Moving the calendar over to Google calendar wasn't too bad either. I ended up using CompanionLink for Google. It looks like it's designed to continuously sync up between the Palm and Google, but I just used it for a one time sync. I would have paid for it, too, because from what I read the other options are not that easy, but there was a 14 day trial, and I just needed a one time load. From a relatively quick overview, it looks like events imported fine. I should probably review it a little more.

Oh, great. I just looked at one of my events, and I'm not able to edit it in the Gmail calendar interface - it just says "loading" and then never loads. Sheesh.

Okay. Shut down the browser and restarted, and it works.

3. Tasks/ToDos - I was hoping I'd be able to use Google tasks, but it's not full-featured enough - there's no offline application for it. I checked out a few other apps, but ended up using Remember the Milk. It's taking quite a bit of adjusting - after all, I'm been in the Palm environment for 13 years - but so far, things are going reasonably well. I paid for premium support, and have had quick responses to my questions (a day or so).

To import tasks, you email a list of tasks to your own personal email account. It loses the notes, and groupings, but at least it gets them in there. If you had a lot of tasks and were serious about keeping groups ("lists" in Remember the Milk), you could import in batches, and then move them over to the group that you want. I put the notes for those tasks that had them in manually.

By the way - notes are really strange in Remember the Milk. You have to add them manually - there's not automatically a notes field. Plus, you can add multiple notes. I have no idea why they did it this way - I can't think of any advantage over just having one note field that shows up like a regular field.

4. Memos/Notes - I checked out EverNote (I think it's beta on the Android, it hung a lot) and a few others, but at the moment I'm using Gmail drafts, organized with labels, for my memos. I'm frustated right now with a major problem - it seems that whatever I copy and paste into a new draft on the Gmail web interface, it looks great there, but when I look at it on the Nexus One Gmail app, it's just a big blob of text, with no line feeds. Impossible to read or work with. So, either this gets fixed or I need to find another solution.

(Update - it needs to be in rich text format. That shows up fine on the Nexus One for me, plain text does NOT. If you have a link above your email that says "rich formatting", then you're probably currently in plain text format, and should click on it to get into rich text format.)

I've made a commitment to the Nexus One now - or at the very least, to cloud computing. But there's a lot that I find a little frustrating. For instance, I'm a heavy user of the main Palm apps - tasks, memos, calendar, contacts. To get to them on my palm Treo is a matter of seconds and a few clicks. To get where I need to go on the Nexus One takes me a lot longer - lots more clicks and slides.

Typing on the virtual keyboard is much slower and more error prone than typing on my palm Treo.

Overall - I'm excited to make the move, and I look forward to trying out all the applications. Hopefully the current frustrations are just a bump on the road.

WTO Anniversary - my notes from when it happened

It's coming up on the 10th anniversary of the WTO in Seattle! I was there at the time - below are some notes I took and sent out to friends. I thought it might be interesting for people to read.

-----Original Message-----

From: Sylvia Moestl [mailto:tower@seanet.com]

Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 1999 11:31 PM

To: Undisclosed-Recipient:

Subject: Street level view of the anti-WTO riot in downtown Seattle Tuesday

Since I work downtown (shop.theglobe.com), I got to work at 6:45 today to try and avoid problems such as road closures, traffic jams, etc., caused by the anti-WTO protesters. The traffic was very light even for that early in the day. Many people were probably just staying out of downtown entirely. I made two forays into the prime protest area around the convention center, one around 10:30 and then when the curfew was announced for tonight and people at my office were encouraged to leave, I wandered downtown again. That was about 5:30. I hope you enjoy reading my notes about what I saw.

As I got closer to the epicenter of the riots, the scattered groups of 3 or 4 protesters started congealing into large crowds. I was glad I was dressed more casually today than usual, with tights and running shoes. I still stuck out a little bit amidst all the hippies in protest garb, but not as much as I could have. Plus the running shoes helped me get away from the tear gas. Seriously.

It'll be made abundantly clear later on in my narrative, but I disagree totally with the protesters' point of view, and especially with their actions. I glared at them with as much hostility as I dared when they smiled at me, thinking that by being there I was showing solidarity. It was really more a morbid curiosity at what a riot like this is like which attracted me like a moth to a streetlamp. I sympathized strongly with the shop owners in the area. They were all completely shut down, starting many blocks away of the area of the protests. Most of the shop owners were standing in their doorways, protecting their stores with their presence. At least, I assume they were the owners, because that's a task that seems like it would be very difficult to delegate. Who knows if they'll be shut down all this week. At one shut down bakery/deli the owner was standing guard when a woman with the usual anti WTO stickers and signs asked if he would give her some bread. I heard bits of the conversation--she was saying that they were hungry, and the bread smelled so good. The owner asked in disbelief if she wanted to be given the bread for free, and she said, "Yes, that bread right there in the window", pointing to some very fancy looking bread rolls and loaves that were sitting just inside the window. The owner said, "No, we're closed today". I thought that there was an implication of a threat in the woman's request for free food--as in, "If you don't give it to us, we'll break your window. I really hope that didn't happen to that guy. I chatted with him a little after the woman left, commiserating with him over the situation of the shop owners. Once he was convinced that I wasn't trying to play some game with him, that I was really not a protester but just looking around, he responded warmly. He was really hoping that he wouldn't need to stay shut down all week.

There was all kinds of massive debris strewn in the streets--it seemed like all the newspaper vending machines had been dragged out into the streets to make impromptu barricades. Massive concrete planters filled with dirt and shrubs had been dragged out as well, one of them had broken and there were big clods of trodden down dirt in the street. One street light was bent over about 30 degrees--that must have taken quite a large and determined group to do that. The bottom was reinfoced with sandbags. The strategy seemed to be to make it as difficult as possible for the delegates to attend any meetings. By and large it seems they succeeded very well. The entrances to the convention center that I saw were completely blocked--closer to the door by a layer of police in riot gear, then after that by a bunch of protesters who had linked arms in front of the police. They were trying to get more people to form a second line and looked at me strangely when I just stood by them looking at them without making any motions to join their group. I wish I could have told them what I thought of them. My instinct for self-preservation overrode my willingness to take a stand, though.

The one group of protesters that I could sympathize with were the Chinese religious group Falong Gong. I asked if they had a stand on the WTO, but the Falong Gong representative diplomatically said that the were neutral towards it, and just thought that this would be an opportunity for attracting attention to their plight.

There was also a group of Koreans dancing on the street--with some very explicit signs about continuing subsidies to farmers in Korea. I spoke to a Korean who was a student at the University of Washington, who said he was there as a relatively neutral observer. His English wasn't very fluent--he said that some of the cans of tuna that are sold contain dolphin. I assume that he meant that the tuna wasn't trapped in dolphin safe nets.

Another group that I saw was some women who called themselves witches. They were dancing around a painted 5 gallon bucket, singing something that as close as I can recall was, "We are the real, live witches, we're here to restore the sun and the moon". Or something like that--I've paraphrased a little. One of them had on a floppy black witches hat with a gold star on it, probably left over from halloween. Another woman who looked like a middle-aged deadhead joined them. She was even doing the typical spacey deadhead dance.

There were also people who were supposed to be medics, but they didn't look very trustworthy. They wore full camo gear, military boots and a military cap, and had a cheesy looking white scrap of cardboard with a red electrical tape cross in the middle.

When I went out at noon, there were lots of guys who seemed to be self appointed organizers, that walked around either with bullhorns or yelling for groups of protesters to assemble in various locations, to block more entrances to the convention center or to block intersections. Or just to sit down, so that they'd be harder for the police to remove. It didn't seem like the police were doing much manhandling of protesters, though.

There were, however, a lot of tear gas cannisters going off. The first gassing I experienced was just sprayed out, I think (I didn't see it at the time, but the police had massive cannisters of peper spray that they used on people). However, when I went out in the evening, I experienced the real thing. As I got closer to downtown, my jaw dropped as I saw the number of stores that had had their windows smashed in. Fidelity Investments, Starbucks, Old Navy, Nordstrom, McDonalds, a jewlery store, the Gap. Plus there were tons of grafitti sprayed everywhere on the windows and the walls. One McDonalds that I passed in the evening had all its windows boarded up completely--during lunch it had been open and serving people. When I passed by at lunch I saw guys putting up plywood on the broken windows. They were really tough burly looking guys who didn't look like they'd be intimidated by the protesters.

There were tons of protesters with masks on, either scarves or bandanas over their mouths. Part of that might have been just being ready for tear gas, but I saw lots of people wearing masks when there wasn't any tear gas around. I'm sure they were just wearing the masks for anonymity so that they could break windows and destroy property with impunity. A fair chunk of protesters had military surplus tear gas masks of all different makes. Lots of them appeared to have condensation problems--people were wiping out the goggles of the masks when they got fogged up.

As I was walking around there were two guys in suits and trenchcoats. I looked at them curiously, and one of them said, defensively, as if I were going to attack or something, "We're not delegates". I chatted with them a bit after that, explained that I wasn't on the protesters side, and just generally talked like reasonable people do when faced with the random violence that we saw. They said they were from the Seattle Times. They advised me that I should walk away backwards and not run if I got stuck outside after the curfew. That didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. When we parted we warned each other to be safe.

In the evening there were serious blockades going on on the road with all the broken out windows. This is where I had my first close-up view of fully decked out riot police. They looked kind of like insects, fully covered from head to toe with shiny segmended hard plastic protective gear. They also had special helmets with a face guard that accomodated the tear gas mask. On their shoulders and chest they had padding that made them resemble football players. They also had very long batons, about 3 ft. long. Some of them had huge bundles of plastic handcuffs. This very serious looking police line was right behind a group of a couple dozen protesters that were sitting down on the street, blocking it. I hung out next to a reporter with a cameraman. I didn't ask her what station she was from. She was arguing with a protester, who was saying that they shouldn't be gassing people. While this was happening there was a group of black guys pushing behind me dressed not at all like protesters in assorted hippie gear, but more like hoodlums, with the huge baggy down jackets. I tried inching away from them.

The reporter argued that this kind of violence can't be allowed to go on. She drew out from her pockets the things she'd had thrown at her--a wrench, and a swiss army knife. I asked her if there's usually a warning before tear gas is fired. She said that warnings were given, but not necessarily right before the gas is fired, and besides you usually couldn't hear it unless you were right there. Plus, in that area where the blockade was going on, they'd been given warnigs to disperse already.

As if on cue there were some loud explosions. This was the first time I'd head the gas canisters actually exploding--maybe before when I'd seen it it had been sprayed instead of in canisters. For one crazy moment I though it might have been gunshots and ran away. I'd already scoped out an escape route which was pretty empty when I was listening to the reporter right next to police line. A lot of people had the same idea that I did, though, and the street was filled with running people. Some people were yelling, "Don't run, we only get hurt when we run".

I did end up feeling the gas some. My eyes started burning, and then I felt it in my throat. Some people really got it bad, with really red and teary eyes. I also saw one guy who had what looked like dozens and dozens of really recent mosquito bites on his face. I wonder if that was some weird gas reaction.

After that tear gas episode, I walked north. Things got ugly at the intersection I ended up hanging out at. (Okay, they were ugly before, but got worse). There was a line of police about a block back, and as I was standing up on a 3 ft high brick wall, a tear gas cannister went off above my head. I half fell off the wall trying to figure out where it was going to land, and ended up scraping my shin painfully. Cars were still trying to get by--I guess you couldn't see from inside the cars that there was danger up ahead. The protesters lured a dump truck into the intersection, motioning that they would let it through. Once it was right smack in the middle of the intersection, though, protesters stood right in front and behind it so it couldn't move. Quickly newspaper vending machines were dragged and a huge dumpster were dragged behind it. A guy with a mask ran up to it and stuck a knife in one of the tires. A few minutes later when it was completely surrounded by protesters (I guess I should just call them rioters at this point) the hiss of air from the tires was heard again, it sounded like they were doing all of them. I felt so sorry for the poor guy driving the truck. I imagined what I would do to help the driver if they dragged him out and started beating him up. Didn't decide, though. They were banging on the side of the truck incessantly. I'll bet the the poor guy was practically having a heart attack in there. After this had been going on for about 15 minutes, about 6 police cars came swooping through the intersection, making a corridor for the truck to get out. I guess they hadn't dragged any obstacles in front of the truck, because it was able to drive out.

While this whole thing was going on I was talking with a woman who was dressed semi businesslike--I approached her saying, "You look like you just work downtown like me". We ended up chatting for a while. It turns out she works for the governers office, and was staying at a hotel right at the intersection, and was just out for a look like I was. It seemed like she was there specifically for the WTO, perhaps to be a representative for the governor. We talked about the violence and the destruction of property we'd seen.

As I was walking away from this area (it was getting really close to 7, when the curfew was to go into effect) the tear gas was spreading in my direction. I talked with one guy for a while who had flown here from Oklahoma specifically for the protest. He was a student from a state university there. We had a mini-debate about free trade, since he seemed like a pretty safe person to disclose my pro free trade views to.

I think the whole argument about the vast majority of protesters being peaceful is completely false. If it had been true, there would have been at least 100 non-violent protesters to every one violent one, and the violence could have been stopped. As it was, the hoodlums broke windows and destroyed property with impunity. I read in a news article online about how one woman was saying, "This is the classical case of non-violent protests being met with violence by the police". What a load of baloney. The protesters' level of understanding of free trade issues can probably be surmised by the complexity of their slogan, which was, "Hey hey, ho ho, WTO has got to go."

Well, that's it. Very intersting, very exciting to be there, but very upsetting to actually see what went on there.

Sylvia

Treo HotSync stuck on synchronizing memos

I wanted to jot this down in case anyone else has the same problem. I have a Palm Treo (been using Palm devices heavily for 12 years now!) and in the last few days had a major problem - I couldn't hotsync with my desktop anymore. It got stuck on synchronizing memos - and believe me, I waited a long time. None of the suggestions that I saw online fixed the problem.

So - I went into the hotsync settings (they aren't in your Palm Desktop, they're in the Hotsync manager, which should be in your system tray). And, for Memos, I configured it to "Desktop overwrites Handheld". I didn't have any particular edits in the handheld that I cared about, so this was fine by me. And then - viola! Everything synchonized fine. I'm assuming there was some kind of corruption in my desktop.

For some reason, I didn't need to go back and set it to the regular synchronize settings - it did that automatically. But you should probably check this.

Toys that get played with

Sometimes I've been wildly wrong about the toys that my kids (Peter, 2, and Kenny, just turned 6) would like to play with. Actually, more than sometimes - often. Very often. It's especially frustrating when there's loads of adoring reviews for said toy on Amazon, and it barely nets a half hour of playtime. So, below is a list of toys that actually get a lot of playtime from my kids.

Toys that get played with:

Magna-doodle.
This will get left for long periods of time, but it always gets picked back up again. It's so convenient, too - you can do your drawing and writing anywhere you want, without worrying about markers and crayons in the living room.

Duplo legos
These are great. Even my 6 year old will still play with them, and my 2 year old loves them. They're so much easier to handle for the kids than the regular legos, and since I got 2 big bags for almost nothing at a school rummage sale, we have tons and can make huge structures.

A box of plastic animls
These get taken out again and again.

Another box, of little cars
You don't need a ton - a little shoebox sized plastic bin of assorted matchbox type cars gets taken out frequenly.

Some stuffed animals
Again - you don't need a ton. I went through recently and purged all the stuffed animals except what fit in a good sized plastic bin. Nobody ever missed anything.

A ride-on toy
We have a little 3-wheeler only for indoor use. It actually gets a lot of use (when it's not in toy jail for banging into walls and doors).

Toys that do NOT get played with:
Blocks. I know this is one of those classic toys that every kid needs to have, and Peter will happily play with them when I take them out, but he never takes them out on his own.

The complicated Star Wars type Lego sets
These are frustrating. Kenny loves them, and they get assembled (with the help of a parent). And they get played with for a while, and pieces gradually come off and go into our "general" Lego bin. And then you have hundreds of highly specialized pieces that are very difficult to use in general building, scattered in a big Lego bin. Don't get me wrong - Kenny still likes them, but he mainly digs out the little figures and plays with them. Your mileage may vary - I hear some kids keep these complicated sets together, and play with them all the time. FYI - for a while, I tried keeping these in their original box, so the pieces wouldn't get mixed up with the other ones. That was just way too much work.

Train table
We had one of these for Kenny. He had some fun with it, but it lost its luster very quickly, and then was just large piece of furniture that took up space. I know some kids absolutely love trains, but Kenny wasn't that interested. Maybe we'll try again with Peter. I think that I won't get a train table, though - I'd just get a box of tracks, trains, etc., to put together, that we could put away when we need the space.

Predicting the future is hard

In reading and thinking recently about the kids obesity epidemic, I remembered a filmstrip (remember those?) that I saw back in 3rd or 4th grade, which would have been around the mid 70's.

It was about nutrition, but the slant was interesting. The villian was a guy who was out to get kids to eat nothing but potatoes, and the good guy was the one pushing pizza, as a healthy food that had lots of variety.

How times have changed. Now, it's probably the rare kid who actually eats plain potatoes, that are NOT in the form of french fries. And your average kids eats pizza all the time - and way too much of it.

It just struck me that what nutritionists worried about in those days wasn't even remotely close to what the actual danger was going to be - obesity. Which makes me think about a lot of the dangers that we supposedly face now. Is what we worry about the real issue? I doubt it.

Will the REAL danger please stand up?

The Smile Train

It's been a while since I've posted, so this will hopefully serve to get me back into the swing of things and posting a bit more regularly.

I've been noticing recently loads and loads of ads for the Smile Train, a charity that fixes cleft palates in third world countries. I'll be honest - with the mere volume of these ads, in all kinds of papers and online, my first impression was skepticism. How much do these ads cost, and how much do they bring in? And - I've never seen this many ads for a charity anywhere - is there something suspicious here, in that there's such a huge number of ads?

Well, I did just a tiny bit of research, leading me to a few Freakonomics blog posts about the Smile Train. They were overwhemlingly positive, and talked about the founder establishing a new paradigm for charities, run as efficiently as businesses. I've had some experiences in the past with charities run very poorly, so I'm all for better management.

If ever some big scandal comes up for the Smile Train - like a percentage of the money is being siphoned off to secret Swiss bank accounts, etc. - I will have a huge "I knew it!" moment. But for now, it seems like they're doing good in a new and different way.

Establishing new habits

Good habits - doing things on a regular basis without needing to think a lot about it - are one of the keys to a healthy, happy life. But it's not necessarily easy to establish a new habit. Here's the story of how I started the habit of regularly taking fish oil.

The benefits of taking fish oil have been piling up, so I've been convinced for a while that it would be a good idea to take some regularly. I've tried pills, but they're just to big for me, and don't go down easily. Plus, you need to take multiple pills, and I also want to give my kids fish oil, and having them take a pill every morning would be a big pain. So, I researched liquid fish oil, and ended up buying Carlsons Lemon flavored fish oil on Amazon.com. This is not the nasty tasting cod liver oil from years ago, it has a light lemony taste. After thinking about it a while, here's how I established the habit:

1. I decided to make it a weekly thing instead of daily. It's lots easier that way, since you don't have the overhead of doing something every day. That's assuming you can remember to do it - usually daily habits are much easier to remember. There's no negatives to taking more once a week, rather than some every day.
2. For remembering - I have my palm Treo remind me every Sunday to give the kids some fish oil, and take some myself.
3. As soon as I get the reminder from my palm Treo, I put a small bowl with 3 spoons (one size for me, one for Peter, and one for Kenny) on the kitchen table so that it's visible the next time we eat there.
4. Before we eat, I'm reminded by the bowl with spoons that I need to get the fish oil out from the fridge and give us all a spoonful. This is critical - it puts an infallible reminder of the fish oil in a place where we're going to be very soon (kitchen table), and when we're all together and ready to eat.

Voila!

It does take some thought and planning to establish a solid new habit. And I wouldn't actually say this is solid yet - it's been about a month and a half. But so far, so good. And it's taught me some important lessons in establishing habits.

Making snacks less accessible

I love snacks as much as the next person. And by snacks, I don't mean an apple or carrot, I mean potato chips or popcorn.

Of course, for health reasons, I want to make sure I eat the less-than-nutritionally-optimal snacks only on occasion. So, I don't keep the actual snack on hand, so I could just open up the panty and start chowing. I keep the raw ingredients for snacks. For example:

1. Microwave potato chips - they're awesome, relatively quick to make, and not too unhealthy! And all you need is a potato, some oil, salt, and parchment paper. And a microwave, of course.

2. Popcorn. Need I say more?

3. I keep chocolate cake mix in my pantry - it takes me about 15 minutes to use it to bake some great chocolate chip cookies. I don't generally do this for myself, just for when there's kids coming over.

The theory is - make the healthy snacks easily accessible, and make the less healthy snacks just a bit harder to get to, but still doable.

Organizing tip - you need a "Donate" box right in your closet!

I used to be pretty good about getting rid of things - I'd occasionally (every year or so) go through my closet, and put aside things that I no longer needed. That still left a whole year or more for things to accumulate, though.

Recently I put a box, labeled "Donate", right in the closet. It's amazing what a difference it's made. Now, when I decide that I no longer want something, I don't put it back on a hanger until my yearly clean-up. I just put it in the "Donate" box. Having the box right there may not seem like much, but the mere fact that I don't even need to take an extra step makes a big difference. Then, when it gets full, I bag it and put it in the car to bring to the goodwill.

I've noticed this in a lot of areas of my life. The easier you make it to "do the right thing" (having the right foods right there when you want to eat better, exercise clothing and equipment ready when you'd like to exercise more), the more likely it will happen.

I love Sharon Mann!

My workout routine has undergone a significant change. I used to work out on the treadmill, while watching television shows that I had tivoed. But a friend told me about a kick-boxing videotape that she had, which gave her a really great workout. So, I decided to try some workout shows. And now I'm totally sold on Sharon Mann. She's always upbeat, and has a tremendous amount of variety on her show. The people that are doing the workout with her are all dressed differently (unlike some other shows, where they look like they're all in the same uniform). She does shows with step exercises, pilates, workouts on the exercise ball, "boot camp" type workouts. All great stuff.

I think it's made a real difference in my fitness level. Walking on the treadmill (even though I did a few push-ups and sit-ups) was much better than nothing, but now my workouts are much more varied, and I use so many more muscles. I really feel, moving around the house and picking up the kids, how much more fit I am.

Are plastic bags so bad?

There's been lots of news recently about bans on plastic grocery bags. The grocery store Whole Foods is not going to be offering them anymore, and they were banned entirely from Ireland.

What I haven't seen is any debate about the issue. Why are they so bad? The accepted notion is that they're bad for the environment because they don't degrade, and apparently last for thousands of year (which I have a hard time believing - thousands of years? Really?). And, wildlife can eat the plastic bags and choke.

Well, let's look at the plus side of plastic bags:
1. They're convenient! I can carry my son Peter in one arm and 2 plastic grocery bags in the other.
2. They don't break! Unless you really overload them, your average plastic grocery bag is tough. (especially the ones from Whole Foods - they were great!). Paper bags, on the other hand, break on me all the time, not to mention that they're difficult to hold.
3. They're tiny! I can shove a few in a little pocket of my diaper bag for emergencies.
4. They're waterproof! (See the above bullet point for why waterproof is critical at times.)

Okay, yes - plastic bags look terrible strewn about a parking lot. But that's not the fault of the plastic bags, that's the fault of the people littering.

Also, apparently creating recycled paper is much more energy intensive than creating plastic bags. And what about transporting paper bags? They're so much bulkier and heavier that they have to be much more expensive to transport (which means more trucks spewing more exhaust).

Looks to me like another "anything for the environment" movement without a whole lot of critical thinking applied.

Live with Regis and Kelly in NYC

My friend Jean and I went to New York City last weekend, to celebrate my 40th birthday. Lots of fun was had in general, but I've been itching to blog about our rotten experience with the Live with Regis and Kelly show. We didn't have tickets to be part of the studio audience, so we showed up at 7 in the morning (after getting up at 6 in the morning, which is 3 AM PST) to get line for stand-by tickets.

So, we stood in line for about 45 minutes in the freezing cold, and then got a numbered sheet of paper. I was #20 and Jean was #21. So far, so good - they told us to come back at 8:30, and we'd be let in, if there were spots, in order of our number. We hung out at Starbucks for a while, then headed back and waited in line again at 8:30. Close to 9:00, they started letting some of the standby people in. The part of the line that we were in was around the corner from the main door, so we didn't really see what was going on. We kept on waiting for them to call numbers, and let people in by number, but they never did. Eventually someone came out and said told us they'd filled the show, and that we could leave now.

There was a group of us there who had low numbers but who hadn't gotten in, who were really pissed that these low numbers that we'd waited in the cold for weren't even worth anything. They hadn't even gone by number at all! We complained to the lady who was handling the stand-bys, and she was so incredibly rude! She said "What's the matter, don't you know how to read numbers?", and "Didn't they teach you that in kindergarten?". I've never seen the Live with Regis and Kelly show, but lots of the women there were actually big fans, and now they aren't anymore!

The stand-by lady did eventually get us into the show about 20 minutes after it had started, and let us stand by the side of the set, where we could barely see anything.

Cool idea (I think) for rewarding kids

I had what I think is a really great idea for a reward. Kenny loves candy, and doesn't get it very often. So, if there's a behavior that I really want to encourage, if I rewarded him with a candy for it, that would work out great. The problem is, I don't want to give him that much candy!

My idea is that, instead of actually giving him a piece of candy, I would allow him to spin a "wheel of fortune" device (probably from a board game), divided into a number of different sections. If the pointer ended up on the appropriate section, he'd get his piece of candy!

They say that intermittent rewards (i.e. like gambling) are the most powerful, so maybe this would really work. I don't have a behavior right now that we're working on, so I'll put this in my parenting tips archive.

Oh - bedtime is now working really great. What we're doing is setting up the kitchen timer for about 6 or 7 minutes. If we finish all our bedtime tasks in this time, then Kenny gets a story. If not, no story. This has speeded things up dramatically, and I don't have to do any nagging (other than occasionally saying, "Look, the timer's ticking!").

My new job

About a month ago I started looking for work - and I'm just starting my second week of work now, working on a data warehouse project at Tmobile.

The thing that really surprised me on this job hunt was how easy it was - not just to find a job, but to find a job where they were okay with the schedule I've kept for more than three years now. I work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with Tuesday and Thursday off. I got not one, not two, but THREE job offers within four days. And they were all okay with me working Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Previously I had the obviously mistaken idea that part time work was very difficult to find, that you had to have worked at the company for a long time and developed a great relationship, yadda, yadda, yadda. I think the thing that made a difference this time was that I didn't make such a big deal about it before actually meeting with potential employers. I mentioned that I had some schedule restrictions, but it was only after I had already interviewed with people, and sold them on me, that I told them what my schedule needed to be like. And they were uniformly fine with it.

Here's the two things that really helped me both with finding a job, and finding a job where they were okay with me working part-time:
1. Highly experienced database professionals are very difficult to find right now
2. I looked only for contract work. That way, there's no hassles with what the company policy on part-time work, do you get benefits, etc. It's very simple - you get paid per hour worked.

Avoiding Colds this winter

I'm just now getting over a cold, which became complicated by a serious cough and sinus infection - the first sinus infection that I've ever had. I was never sick enough to stay in bed, but I was sick enough to stop working out, doing any kind of projects - basically doing anything other than the bare essentials.

My plan this winter is to avoid catching any more colds. I've been doing some research online on how best do this. Basic handwashing is recommended very frequently. But why is it recommended to use alcohol gel based sanitizers only when washing with soap and water isn't available? It seems that the sanitizers would be even more effective. Anyway - I'm proceeding on the assumption that using a hand sanitizer is just as good.

The other recommendation is - avoid touching your face. Touching your nose and eyes in particular is supposed to be a very effective way to transmit cold viruses - exactly what I don't want.

So, I'm planning a two pronged attack:
1. Use hand sanitizer frequently. Maybe I can try to do it every time I get home from being out and about, and every time I get in the car after shopping. Plus at work - whenever I get to my desk from talking to someone, or using the restroom.

2. Don't touch my face at all - if I need to scratch, use the back of my hand.

My endeavor is complicated by the fact that I have a 3 year old son in daycare. Stay tuned to see if I can avoid colds this winter.

Fun is different when you have kids

Yesterday I went to Newcastle Beach Park with both Kenny and Peter. It's not easy to go swimming with a preschooler, when you have an infant with as well. Nevertheless, Kenny and I had lots of fun in the water (and there were friends at the beach who were able to watch Peter for a while).

The epiphany for me was that what I think of as fun has changed dramatically since I had kids. Before, fun at a beach park would have meant hanging out with friends, getting a good swim in, reading an enjoyable book. But now with kids, my priorities have changed. I have a lot of fun, just watching Kenny enjoy himself in the water. We never even went above knee height for me (waist high for Kenny), but Kenny had a big grin on his face the entire time. We played chase, with Kenny and Kenji chasing me as I splashed through the water, and also spotted little fish, no more than two inches long, darting through the shallow water. And fun was had by everyone. Although Peter did sleep through almost all of it...

Feeling peppier every day

So, it's seven weeks post-childbirth now. Peter is doing great, and is starting to -- not sleep through the night, but at least go immediately back to sleep once he's fed at night. So, I'm getting at least about seven hours of sleep, albeit interrupted. That's assuming I can get back to sleep once I wake up at 4. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

And I'm feeling so much better! Every move, during pregnancy, was difficult. Just getting out of bed or out of my chair was an ordeal. But now - the idea comes to me that I need to do something aroud the house, or get something, and pop I go off the couch -- no problem at all! It feels great. I'm eating very well, losing some of the pregnancy weight, working out on the treadmill 30 minutes every day, and also doing strengh exercises. Everything is making a big difference. I'm loving it.

My first few weeks with baby Peter

You wouldn't have known from my blog, but I gave birth on June 28th to a son, Peter. He's a very cute and good natured little baby.

I think I'm enjoying Peter as a newborn more than I enjoyed Kenny. Not from any differences between them -- it's just that with Kenny, I was so exhausted from trying to breastfeed (including pumping, etc), that I wasn't relaxed enough to really enjoy him. That did come after a few months, though.

But with Peter, holding him is like a drug - instant ecstasy! I sit and hold him and watch his little stretches and listen to his little grunts and squeaks, and just adore him. I wonder how he'll turn out...

Toothbrushing success - revisited

A few months ago I blogged about having a new technique for toothbrushing with Kenny, that was very successful. Well, it turns out that over the course of time, it was actually only somewhat successful. Supervising Kenny's toothbrushing was still one of the more stressful parts of my day.

Anyway - I have a new technique, or actually an addition the previous techniques. I pull myself together, try to be less grumpy, and make the toothbrushing into an adventure, by pretending that I can see the "cavity bad guys" in the form of animals. For example, "Look, I see a tiger cavity bad guy! I'm going to brush him away...got him!"

So far, surprisingly successful. We'll see how it works in a week or so.

How to stop unproductive web surfing!

At work, I frequently run a process or query which may take 10 or 15 minutes to finish. Not enough time to really get another piece of work done, but just enough time to waste surfing the web. Then before you know it, the process has been done for 5 minutes, and I'm still surfing away!

So, I've devised a technique to prevent myself from web surfing certain time-wasting sites at work. This is for Internet Explorer 6.0. Go into Tools, Options, then choose the Content tab. Enable the content advisor. Then, go to Approved Sites. It's somewhat of a misnomer in this situation, because we're actually disabling websites. You can restrict yourself from whichever websites you want. The content advisor will prompt you to create a password to get to the site. I put a long string of nonsense text in there, that I'll never remember, and then pasted that string in a text file on my computer. In the password hint, I put the location of the text file. So, if I ever really want to get to a certain site that I've restricted, I can do that with just the extra step of looking up the text file. I haven't yet, though.

This simple tip has gained me a lot of time. I'm a big believer in modifying your environment to make your life better, instead of trying to use sheer willpower to do or not do things.

Toothbrushing success!

Victory is mine! A minor victory, and just for the past 2 days, but still, it feels good. Some background here - my son Kenny is generally a very good boy, but when I brush his teeth, he's incredibly squirmy. Actually, he's always squirmy, and on the move, but that's what being three is all about. It only bothers me when I'm trying to brush his teeth. I'm always having to admonish, reprimand, etc. It's almost the worst part of my day.

So the past few days I've been using the following techniques:

1. He needs to hold his elbows. This has the result of quieting his hands, which quiets his whole body.
2. If he stays still, we get to read two books for bedtime. If he doesn't, he only gets one book.
3. Instead of having him stand on the stool right in front of the sink (and also in front of the mirror, where he gets distracted making faces at himself), I sit on the tub, and have him stand in front of me. No more getting distracted in front of the mirror.

All in all, we've had a few good days now, and the evening tooth-brushing routine is no longer so daunting. Plus, I'm more thorough. I started begin more thorough just recently, when the daughter of a friend of mine (same age as Kenny) had six cavities, 4 of which need to be filled. Yikes!

I'm a sucker for self-improvement

I'm a huge consumer of self-improvement books, and websites and blogs. I don't buy a lot of self-improvement books, but I do get lots and lots from the library. My thoughts about this are two-fold:

1. It's great that I'm interested in self-improvement, making changes, making things better. And honestly, I'm not a slacker in that regard - I'm pretty good at the basics.

2. Seriously - enough of the reading already! Making one substantive change in habits, discipline, etc., would be much better than to read 5 books on how to be more efficient.

I'm a really fast reader, and it doesn't take me long at all to zip through some of these self-improvement books. But I should focus more on actually doing things rather than reading about them.

Limiting TV viewing...

Now that I'm in my last 2 months of pregnancy (and very eager to have it over with, too), I've been watching lots and lots of TV. My energy level is so low that watching TV is about the best I can manage.

I have high hopes and grand plans, though, of all that I'm going to accomplish in the evenings, starting a few months after baby #2 is born. And to do this, my TV watching habits will need to change drastically. Put simply - I have very little free time at all. Soon, with baby #2, I'll have even less. I can't afford to spend large chunks of that time watching TV, if I want to get anything done.

Last night, Eric and I watched the show Rough Science. Great show, very interesting. But the thought I was left with was this - that watching other people do neat things on TV rates about a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being things that make you a loser couch-potato, and 10 being things that make you a well-rounded, interesting, accomplished person). Actually DOING neat things yourself - that ranks far, far higher - in the 8 to 1o range.

The problem is that a normal brain, when faced with a choice between watching something interesting and/or entertaining on TV, or not watching TV, and having to come up with other plans, will most often just make the easy choice - just watch TV. It takes a lot of effort to do something else - especially if you've been in the habit, like I have, of watching TV as a default activity.

About 12 years ago I moved out of a house that I rented with a lot of other people, where TV watching was the default activity every evening. I moved to an apartment, and made the choice to not have a TV. The first few weeks were rough. I remember looking longingly at the cable plug on the wall. But it got better, and soon I didn't think of it at all, except that I had more time for things, and felt somewhat smug about not having a TV.

So, it can be done. And soon I'll be thinking more about specifics. Like, can we just get rid of the TV? My husband might have a problem with that, being that he bought this monster flat screen TV for himself. What other solutions are there? Our son Kenny frequently watches a kiddie show a day, such as Dora the Explorer and Franklin. Should we limit that?

Stay tuned till next time...

My search for a kid's timer

I've heard a lot about how well timers work with kids - for things like giving your child a set amount of time to clean up, get ready for bed, etc. Generally a kitchen timer is recommended. Well, I've found that kitchen timers are not really that great. We have a manual Oxo timer that goes from 0 to 60 minutes. However, most tasks for Kenny would take no more than 5 minutes, and it's difficult for him (as well as for me) to tell how much time is left on the timer. Plus, there's no warnings when he's getting close.

So I've been searching around online for something else. I found the Learning Resources Time Tracker on Amazon, and was really excited to see it - it looked like exactly what I wanted to find, with a light that starts out green, goes to yellow, and then red when time is almost up. What a cool idea! Then, however, I read the reviews. Some of them were very positive, but many were quite negative, and vociferous about how poorly designed it was and how hard it was to use.

So, the search goes on. Please let me know if you find anything cool!

What's so great about organic foods?

I've been thinking about writing up something on organic foods for a long time. I've never seen much (any?) evidence that they're actually better for you. They certainly are much more expensive. Anyway, there was recently an article in the Wall Street Journal about organics, "Are Organic Food Advocates in Thrall to Mythology Rather Than Science?". Very interesting. Here's some choice excerpts:

"Organic-certification rules only prohibit most, although not all, "synthetic substances and ingredients." The word "chemical" isn't used in the rules because there is no intrinsic physical difference between the categories of synthetic and nonsynthetic substances. They are all chemicals."

"...no currently approved crop pesticide, whether organic or not, has any detectable effect on the health of consumers. The enormous premium paid to purchase organic foods is based on mythology, not fact."

Interesting stuff. Now I need to figure out a good non-confrontational way to bring that up with people.

Minimizing how often I need to go grocery shopping

I try to have us eat as many meals as possible at home. Home cooking (at least, my home cooking) is far healthier than eating at restaurants, not to mention more convenient and cheaper. Of course, you also need to consider the time you spend grocery shopping. I don't particularly enjoy that, so I like to buy items that are nutritious, and stay fresh for a long time.

I collect tasty, healthy recipes for things that don't require a lot of fresh ingredients. For example, 3 bean salad made of various types of canned beans. The only fresh ingredients are onions and parsley. Onions last a very long time in the fridge, so you'd only need to buy the parsley fresh.

Or my corn and black bean salad. Very yummy, the only fresh ingredients it requires are onion and cilantro.

Cabbage, in the form of cole slaw, is great. Delicious, healthy, everyone loves it, and cabbage lasts for weeks in the fridge - unlike green salad, which lasts a few days.

Cauliflower is another very healthy vegetable, and a good keeper in the fridge. Lasts a couple weeks at the least.

Let's not forget carrots! They last forever as well. Need some more carrot recipes. I do have some carrot slaw recipes that are great.

I could use some more tips for keeping cilantro and parsley fresh in the fridge, though. These are some very useful herbs, but they have a tendancy to go all brown and mushy in my fridge.

Tracking finances on Yodlee

I found out a few months ago about a website called Yodlee (the actual URL is moneycenter.yodlee.com). It's site that can aggregate all your finances in one place. Basically you give them ALL your financial information (credit card, bank, mutual funds, etc) and they will download information for you, so you can click one "update all accounts" button, and get your transaction history, net worth, recent expenditures, and so on.

Giving a third party the password to all your accounts is probably a big leap of faith for many people. But I trust online security more than I do credit card security at your average restaurant. And the only time I've ever had a fraudulent transaction on my credit card, it was a local thing, not something that happened online.

Using this website has simplified my life tremendously. Before, I had a monthly routine of putting all my transaction into Microsoft Money, categorizing them, checking the Microsoft Money totals against the financial institution. I had a whole list of steps that I had to go through before I could check off the "did MS Money" task from my to-do list. Frequently I procrastinated because it was so tedious. This made things more difficult for myself down the line.

Now things are much simplier. I just login to Yodlee, update all my accounts (by pressing one button), and check recent transaction to make sure they're all kosher. Of course, there's not nearly as many bells and whistles as I had with Microsoft Money, but there's also not nearly as much work, nor as many opportunities for error.

All in all, I consider this a great leap forward in simplifying my life financially.

Crime and Punishment

We've been telling Kenny for almost 2 years now to cough into his elbow. That's what his daycare teachers ask the kids to do, to avoid transmitting germs. It seems like a good idea to me, considering that most of the time a tissue isn't handy.

Anyway - Kenny almost never actually did cough into his elbow. He would cough, not covering up, we would say, "Cough into your elbow!", and that would be that. If he coughed again within a minute or so, he might cough into his elbow, but otherwise he would forget.

Until about a week ago. Eric and I were baking Christmas cookies with Kenny, who had a persistent cough. He coughed right onto the Christmas cookies. Yech! We said the usual, "Cough into your elbow!" He coughed onto the Christmas cookies again a few minutes later. And then I gave him a time out.

Ever since then, literally without fail, he coughs into his elbow. Eric noticed that he was coughing into his elbow all the time, and said, "What brought that on?". And then I remembered the time-out that I had given him for NOT coughing into his elbow. That must have been it - it would be too much of a coincidence otherwise.

This is an interesting concept. I had always had the idea, previously, that time-outs should be reserved for bad behavior such as hitting, being rude, etc. But now I see that giving a time-out for behavior that's not really bad, just forgetful, can also be quite effective.

Seattle Windstorm 2006!

We got power back – yippee! This happened about 7 PM Friday night. We were right in the middle of watching the children's video Charlotte's Web on the laptop (Eric had patched together enough power via spare laptop batteries and a UPS). And boom - the lights went on! Thrilling. Overall the length of the power outage for us wasn't that bad. It started sometime early Friday morning (but definitely by 2 AM), and lasted, like I said, till about 7 PM.

I had previously kind of romanticized the electricity being down. I sometimes get so tired of one of us always being on the computer, surfing the web, doing email, or watching TV. But honestly, not having power is bleak. It was dark by 5 PM, and darn cold (we got down to 54 degrees inside the house, eventually).

The windstorm itself early Friday morning was pretty exciting. Both Eric and I were up during the worst of it, listening to our wind-up radio (the power was already out). The wind was pressing against our large windows, and there were scary creaky noises, like the house was going to be blown down. We listened to AM 1000 (kiro?) because they gave lots of weather and traffic updates. Their phone lines were apparently jam packed with people kept awake by the storm, giving updates from various neighborhoods. We have a good view of the whole Seattle area from our house, and except for downtown Seattle and downtown Bellevue, everything was dark.

We eventually did get to sleep...maybe around 4 or 5 AM. I woke up at 8, and went into Kenny's room. He said excitedly, "Look Mommy, there's a towel in my crib!". Eric had gone in last night, when the heat went out, and put a large fluffy towel on him to keep him warmer.

In the morning I did some crafts with Kenny. Eric checked out the house – a large chunk of the back fence was torn town, and a small metal piece from our awning was blown away. But that’s all the damage we had. A friend in the neighborhood came by with a horror story – their skylight had blown out twice overnight, and her husband went up on the roof each time and nailed it back in again.

Then Eric was bored, so we went to Bellevue Square – thinking that since it looked like the power stayed on in downtown Bellevue overnight, we could go there, hang out at the kiddie play area, do some shopping, go to a restaurant, etc. But what do you know – although the mall was open, the power was out, all the stores were shut (except Nordstoms), and it was just lit by skylights. No restaurants were open at the mall. We eventually walked across the street to the Galleria area (also nothing open there!) and finally to the Barnes and Nobles area. There was a grill type restaurant there which was open, but apparently there was a 2 hour wait, so we decided to drop the whole idea and head home. Traffic was pretty bad because of all the unpowered traffic lights, but we managed to get home fairly quickly by going on less traveled roads. We just had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at home.

Since we don’t have a gas stove I recently bought us a gas cooker and an attachment that fits it to the large propane tank for our grill. Thank goodness we had this, because we were able to cook a hot dinner (boxed macaroni and cheese, with diced tomatoes thrown in). I’m glad we had the lanterns that we did, but still, cooking with limited light and no hot water is tricky. It’s definitely not the time to be cooking anything fancy.

We were all bundled up by this time – Kenny in two pairs of pants, and his fleece jacket, and Eric and I also in multiple layers, including hats. Cold wasn’t really an issue, with us being bundled up like that, but it’s definitely less comfortable with so many layers.

Here’s the things I’m glad we had:
Wind up radio from LLBean. This was fun and sturdy, and let us listen to the news. Kenny really enjoyed winding it up, too.
LED lantern from LLBean. Small and handy, and with hooks for hanging it wherever necessary. Also, it doesn’t use very much power, since it’s LED – I think it’s supposed to run for something like 100 hours on one set of batteries.
Gas burner to cook on
Plenty of extra clothes
Rubber gloves for doing the dishes. Doing dishes by hand in cold water is cold! It’s cold even with rubber gloves on, but of course it would be much worse without them.

Things I would have liked to have:
A phone that didn’t require power. Our regular phone requires power, as do most phones nowadays, and our cell phones were very flakey
The yellow pages! We count on the internet to look up phone numbers, but of course that was not possible.
A rubber drainer to fit over the sink. I’m so used to just letting food waste go down the disposal that I really need something like this for when there’s no power, because otherwise the sink gets all clogged with food scraps. Yech.

We’re going to call some friends today, now that we have power, and check up on them, and see if they’d like to come over. I think much of the area is still without power, and right now the temperature outside is 30 degrees.

The magic of K'nex

I went to a garage sale a few weeks ago, and picked up a box of K'nex for $5. K'nex is a type of building toy, made by the Lego company. It's basically a bunch of rods and connectors, with some wheels thrown in. I was fully prepared to put it away in the closet for a few years, because it's supposed to be for older kids. Luckily I still had it out on the counter when Eric and I went out for a date night, and the babysitter let him play with it. The next morning it was the first thing he wanted to play with.

Kenny will spend hours playing with it, building things (nothing that recognizable yet). Eric and I build him more complicated models (windmill, swingset, cars, windsurfer) that he'll play with and modify. It's an amazingly well-designed and constructed toy. Even the box to hold it is designed very cleverly, so that pieces don't fall out. It's just a pleasure to see him play with a toy that holds his interest so long.

We just bought him another set, and are holding onto it until his 3rd birthday (in about a month).

Car camping with an almost 3 year old

This past weekend we went car camping for the first time with Kenny. In Washington, reservations are pretty much a necessity for the state campgrounds around the busy time of year (i.e., now). I tried reserving a campsite at Deception Pass, but it was completely booked. The only place I found a campsite available was at Dash Point State Park. And let me tell you, there's a reason that nobody else wanted this campsite.

Let me preface my complaints with the fact that Kenny had lots of fun. Sleeping in a tent, having a campfire, roasting marshmallows and hot dogs - all were new and exciting experiences. And Eric and I enjoyed it, through Kenny.

Having said that, the campground itself was a sea of dust. It was about an inch thick wherever there was no pavement. The campground staff actually put some stuff that looked like grass clippings on the dust, which did improve it slightly, but still - very dusty.

The beach was crowded, dirty, full of dogs, and encrusted with mats of dried seaweed. Nothing close to a wilderness experience. Of course, we were 7 miles north of Tacoma, so what did we expect? I was kind of hoping for something like Seahurst Park, in Burien. That doesn't have camping, but it is a great waterfront park, and also pretty close to an urban center.

I have a reminder set up in my Treo for January of next year - make summer reservations at the most popular campgrounds.

The Worst Diet in the World; follow-up

I've been fully recovered from a while now from my bout with doxycycline induced esophagitis (see previous post). It ended up being about a week of being seriously ill, then another week or so of needing to be really careful of what I ate, as lots of things still caused pain on swallowing.

I had written a letter of complaint to Rite Aid about their policy at the pharmacy of not asking if you wanted to speak to a pharmacist (see my earlier post for details). About a week after that, I got a call from a pharmacist who worked at Rite Aid. He could have been a little more gracious, but he did apologize for the whole episode. Interestingly enough, it turns out supposedly they are supposed to ask you if you'd like to speak to a pharmacist. As a matter of fact, it's a legal requirement.

He also said I'd be receiving a gift card from Rite Aid. Haven't gotten it yet, and it's been more than a month. Humph.

Life with a 2 year old

Kenny will be three in a few months. So I can say with relief that there were no "terrible twos", few tantrums, and in general, things run very smoothly. I'd like to chalk it all up to our parenting, but I think the truth is that Kenny is very easy-going and happy.

Okay, I do want to take some credit here. Having firm consequences for misbehavior eliminates a lot of whining and temper tantrums. I'm a huge fan of the book 1-2-3 Magic, by Thomas Phelan. That's what we've based our discipline techniques on. It boils down to firm, reasonable consequences, consistently applied.

Also, I troubleshoot the problems that we have. For example, recently I had some issues with getting Kenny dressed. He can get himself dressed, albeit slowly. But frequently he would rather play than get dressed, so I had to nag, remind, cajole, and punish when he dawdled. I had a flash of insight, which led to me creating a rule. Now, well before it's time to leave, I present him with his clothes for the day. Then, he needs to stay in his room until he's dressed. He gets dressed immediately because he wants to be around me, and play until it's time to leave.

The ability to feel guilty

Feeling guilty is often derided in pop culture as unhealthy and not leading to good self-esteem. I disagree. I have as healthy a sense of self esteem as anyone I know, yet if I feel that I've done something wrong, or caused someone a problem, I have the ability to wallow in guilt for days.

A recent experience I had at work illuminated this. I worked with somebody who categorically said that a certain feature (I work with computer systems) wasn't possible. And they were in a position to know. This feature would have saved a huge amount of time, so I did some extra research, to satisfy myself that this feature was indeed not possible. And lo and behold, it was 100% possible. So, you'd think that the person who originally had stated categorically that the feature wasn't possible would feel, if not actually guilty, at least a little perturbed. Discomfited, perhaps. But no. Once they were shown to be wrong, the story became, "Well, it won't save that much time anyway".

Something like that can really change your desire to work with someone in the future. Feeling guilty is a valuable indicator that the person will probably take pains to avoid that kind of situation in the future. Hopefully they'll take what they say more seriously. On the other hand, not showing any remorse at all is a danger sign - don't trust this person.

The Worst Diet in the World; continued

Can't sleep now for hunger (see previous post), so I'm going to jot down some of the things I'm craving right now.

Tops on the list - the Greek omelet with feta cheese and spinach, at Goldbergs Deli at Factoria Mall.

Artichoke dip - the kind that's made with about half mayonnaise and the other half sour cream. Very rich and creamy.

Anything, really, that's rich and salty. Nowhere on the list is anything sweet. This is probably because the only things I've been drinking are Kool Aid and Ensure, both of which are very sweet.

I tried a small piece of Triscuit this afternoon, just because they were out. It was a particularly bad thing to try, since it's very fibrous and rough, and almost felt like it got stuck in my throat.

The Worst Diet in the World

I'm on a diet now, and have been for the past 5 days. I'm losing a lot of weight - down 6 lbs - but I didn't want to lose weight, and I don't want to be on a diet. This is an involuntary diet, caused by not being able to swallow without severe pain.

I'll explain. I was prescribed an antibiotic called doxycycline, and started taking it last Sunday, twice a day. Monday night I took the regular dosage, and went to bed. During the night I felt some discomfort in my chest, and thought perhaps the pill hadn't gone down correctly. Tuesday morning I was pretty sure something like that had happened, and tried eating some cereal to help it go down. Swallowing was painful.

Swallowing continued to be painful on Wednesday as well. I wasn't sure anymore that it was caused by the pill, and researched on the internet for heartburn, thinking that was perhaps what it was. I also searched for "pill stuck in throat", and finally found the right information.

It turns out that doxycycline is one of the prime culprits in pill-induced esophagitis, or injury to the esophagus. It's quite caustic, so if it gets stuck in your esophagus, it can cause ulcers. If you take it right before going to bed, and don't drink a full glass of water, you could end up in the morning with a big problem.

So, at least I knew what it was, but aside from the satisfaction of knowing, this information didn't help me very much. Thursday I progressed from just feeling pain while swallowing to feeling ill and feverish. Friday I was in bed all day, feeling very ill, Saturday (yesterday) I was in bed all day as well, but Saturday around noon I turned a corner, and am now starting to feel like I'm on the mend in terms of general health. However, the pain during swallowing is as bad as it ever was. I haven't eaten solids for 2 days now, and am living off Ensure and Kool-Aid. And I literally groan with pain whenever I take a swallow.

A big thumbs-down for Rite Aid, where I had the doxycycline prescription filled. I wasn't warned to not take it right before going to bed, wasn't warned to drink plenty of water. In fact, I never spoke to a pharmacist at all, and was never asked if I wanted to speak to a pharmacist. They have a terrible system whereby, as you get the drug, you have to check one of two boxes. Choice 1 is "I decline to be counseled by a pharmcist", and Choice 2 is "I have already been counseled by a pharmacist". They never actually ask you if you'd like to speak with a pharmacist, you just check one of these boxes.

Book "Making great decisions in business and life"

I just got this book (by David R. Henderson and Charles L. Hooper) from the library, and am enjoying it thoroughly. It's full of illuminating little stories, and has given me some interesting insights about decision making and priorities. Probably the kind of insights that they charge their consulting clients big bucks to hear.

I do have a minor quibble with the authors, with their view on sunk costs. An example of a sunk cost would be (and this is one of the examples they use) a person starting a coin store in a small town. The store is losing money every day, but the storeowner says, "Well, I've already invested so much into it, I can't walk away now". In this case, assuming the storeowner really does know that a coin store is just not sustainable and he has no bright ideas for fixing things, it's a cut and dry case - he probably should call it a sunk cost, chalk it up to experience, and move on with his life.

But in most cases, it's not nearly so clearcut. The other example that the authors mention - you've reserved and paid for a camping spot, but there's a rainstorm - do you still go, or do you call the reservation fee a sunk cost, and do something else? If you go, you'll likely be uncomfortable, but the rain may stop, you may experience wonderful solidude because the rain has driven everyone away, or you may befriend some other fanatics who don't mind the rain. You may also have some insights about how people lived before modern conveniences protected us from all discomforts.

There's lots of potential positive outcomes. Plus, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you planned something, and then did it, weather be damned.

Good book, though. I particularly like chapter 7, Realize What's Important. I need to work on that some more.

Potty training Kenny

On May 21st, Eric and I started potty training with Kenny. It had been a frequent topic of conversation among my friends who have kids of the same age, and we had a completely uncommited weekend, so we thought - why not?

If you'd asked me during the first week how it was going, I would have been pretty negative. The first week was rough - the first day in particular, we went through 16 (!) pairs of underwear. But it's been getting better and better all the time, with accidents coming further and further apart. He had an accident yesterday, but before then we had 4 or maybe 5 accident-free days. I don't hesitate to go anywhere now.

I know this doesn't work for some parents - particularly those with younger children. But for us, "boot camp" potty training (i.e., no diapers except at naptime and night) really worked well. The World War II quote from Churchill, about the choice between "and end with horror, or horror without end", seems somewhat appropriate (if a little over-dramatic). In other words, a messy and stressful few days or weeks, with relatively quick potty training, vs. allowing diapers, which can confuse the child and draw out the whole process.

Search any magazine or newspaper that you want, online

Many people don't know that their local library has a wealth of information available to them besides the books. Most libraries have access to online databases that index the full text of thousands of newpapers and magazines. I live in King County, Washington, which has one of best library systems in the country. We have access to most popular magazines and newspapers - including expensive ones like the Wall Street Journal. You can even do this all on the web, without needing to go to your local library.

Something to take advantage of!

How best to talk to kids

I was talking with a friend yesterday who has a kid about Kenny's age (2). We were talking about all the advice you get nowadays on how to speak to your children. One particular piece of advice is that you should phrase everything positively. For instance, if they're running where they shouldn't be, say "Put your walking shoes on!" instead of "No running!". The idea is that if you say, "No running!", then they'll focus on the "running" part, and tune out the "no".

Later, when I thought about it again, I thought - what a bunch of baloney. Saying "No running!" is a much clearer and more direct way of saying what you want. The word "no" is one of the first words that children learn - they're not going to miss it, except deliberately.

It's this kind of advice that makes me skeptical of a lot of parenting books. Particularly the "kinder and gentler" ones that advocate more discussion, more understanding, more catering to children. My favorite child-rearing book is 1-2-3 Magic, by Thomas W. Phelan. Great book, very down to earth, and full of great ideas on how to make life with kids happier.

Big corporations function as socialist style command economies

This is my first ever economics blog, so please bear with me. I'm a small-time economics fan - have read some Hayek, read the latest popular economics books like Freakonomics, and read the Wall Street Journal every day. I'm a big believer in the free-market.

I'm currently work at a large online travel company, in a data services group. We do all kinds of stuff with data - purge, merge, consolidate, cleanse, report, etc., for the whole company. Recently there was a big reorganization. And because management felt that there were a lot of uncoordinated projects going on, there was a big effort made to gather all the project plans in one place, and prioritize them.

It was the master plan. And it struck me - this master plan is similar in one very important way to the old socialist style economic planning. There's no prices to determine what's actually important to people! Different groups in the company can't say, "It's worth $10,000 to me to have this new report ready by next week". Instead, they have to pressure management, and be a squeaky wheel to get what they want. If there were actual dollar amounts attached to the different requests, it would be much clearer what's actually valuable to people.

Of course, pricing is not as meaningful without competition. As in, "My group can create this report for you for $5,000 instead of $10,000". That would be interesting, to have multiple data (or other) groups in a company, all competing to provide services of one kind or another within the same company. It certainly wouldn't be a corporation as we currently understand the term.

It's not too likely that this kind of company will come in the near future. But I think that experimenting with some elements of a free market economy (meaningful prices, competition) inside the corporation could shake things up a bit, and introduce some of the efficiencies of a free market into the inner workings of large corporations.

Another productivity enhancement

I'll admit that I tend to think more than most people about how I could make my life more productive and efficient. Okay, okay, a lot more! Hey, at least I'm not like some people whose blogs I've read. They seem to spend far more time thinking and writing about the lastest time management methodology than actually doing anything.

One of my recent posts (My latest productivity enhancement - dump the junk!) was about how my new plan was to totally cut out all time-wasting activities. This eliminated web surfing, TV, and leisure reading. I knew it wouldn't last long, because it was pretty extreme, but it really didn't last long - about 3 days. That's 1 day after I wrote up a post on it.

What didn't work? It felt too punitive. I expended too much willpower in not doing things, as opposed to doing the right things.

Anyway, I'm back to the old standby now, which is

a.) making a list of things to do each day, and
b.) actually doing what's on the list

The main enhancement is that I plan to do this, without exceptions, for a full month. This is supposedly how long it takes to create a habit. I've done it now for 2 weeks, and have 14 little stars on my calendar to show for it. Halfway through! It feels really good.

Grass is greener syndrome

What is it about human beings that causes us to always want what we don't have? I know that our striving for more and seeking improvement is what has caused us, as a species, to do so well. But it doesn't lead to a relaxing life

Specifics - I'm the mother of a two year old, and I also have a part-time job. When I was first thinking about it, this seemed to me the ideal situation. And in general, it does seem pretty good. But now that some of my friends with kids are starting to go back to work full-time, I sometimes run out of friends with kids, for playdates and excursions. And then I start thinking - well, maybe I should just go back to work full-time. At least Kenny would then have playmates there.

So, the grass continually looks a little greener on the other side of the fence.

My latest productivity enhancement - dump the junk!

I was getting annoyed with myself recently at how little I've been getting done. Tasks seemed to have an eternal life on my To Do list, irritating me each time I looked at them.

What was stopping me from getting things done? It wasn't my 2 year old - I had time in the evening after he had gone to bed. It was the fact that my time was taken up in doing so many other activities. Just like good food is crowded out by junk food, productive time can be crowded out by "junk time". I define junk time for myself as web surfing, TV, and reading. Reading is tricky, because obviously, certain types of reading can be great.

My plan (in effect a whole 2 days now) is to BAN all the life-energy sucking activities mentioned above - web surfing, TV, and reading. I've gotten so much done in the past couple days! Things that had been dragging me down for weeks - I got them done, because I had nothing else to do!

Is this a sustainable system? Probably not. I've built in some exceptions (Friday night movies, etc) but I still don't see this lasting forever. I'll learn something from it, though, which will be great.

The Microsoft Permatemps Fiasco

I recently became a beneficiary of what's known as the Microsoft Permatemp class action lawsuit. Basically, a number of people who worked at Microsoft on a contract basis over the years decided, "Hey, the stock has gone up tremendously, why don't we sue Microsoft to see if we can squeeze some money out of them, even though we signed contracts specifying that we aren't employees and aren't entitled to anything other than hourly wages".

When I worked at Microsoft, I worked on a contract basis, getting paid for each hour of work. This was clearly detailed in the papers I signed when starting work. The employees who got stock options and ESPP (employee stock purchase plan) were frequently there 60 to 80 hours a week. This was part of the deal - employees worked for salary, stock options and benefits, including the employee stock purchase plan. If the stock went up, they did well. Contractors worked for their hourly rate, period.

Yes, I got some cash out of the deal, but I certainly don't feel that it's money I deserve. And overall, it's been a huge net loss because now the job market is much more limited for contractors. Almost all large companies that hire lots of contractors now have a mandatory break period for contractors, to protect them against lawsuits. This mandatory break period means that after you work a year, you must take a certain amount of time off. At Microsoft, it's 90 days. What does this mean? Basically, if you enjoy the contractor lifestyle (flexible scheduling and vacations, less stress, high hourly rates) and want to continue being a contractor, you're screwed. You'll have to take 90 days unpaid leave after one year of work. Doesn't matter if it's mid-winter and you don't particularly want to be taking a vacation, you have to take leave anyway. Also, this usually this means that you'll need to be looking for another contract every year, since very few groups are able to have a potentially critical person gone that long.

How much did your average contractor make out of this deal? Anywhere from hundreds to potentially tens of thousands of dollars. And how much did the lawyers make out of it? A total of $27 million in attorney fees. This is our legal system at its worst.

For some more background, search on google for Microsoft Permatemp or check out this link

Getting back into camping

Camping, hiking, and backpacking - these used to be some of my favorite things to do. That was before my two-year old, Kenny. Except for a few very short little hikes, it was all over.

I've really been itching to get out there again, though. To wake up outdoors, climb around in the mountains, identify wildflowers, see wildlife - just generally get away from the indoors environment that surrounds me 99% of the time.

There's some problems, though. Even before I had a two-year old, I never found camping very comfortable. I didn't like sleeping on hard ground, being cold, and especially having to set up a tent in the dark. The payoffs made it worthwhile, but it sometimes got a little uncomfortable.

So now I'm thinking - how to get out into the great outdoors again, go camping, without getting cold and wet and miserable? I love the idea of a little pop-up camper, something we could tow with my Toyota Highlander. There's lots of decisions to make (Is this even a good idea? Where would we store it? Should we just buy a big tent instead?). But I'm jazzed about the idea of getting into the wilderness again, and the Pacific Northwest has so much to offer in terms of natural environment. I also love the thought of being away from electricity and the internet.

The FleetwoodRV Elements trailer is looking good to me now: http://www.fleetwoodrv.com/

Kenny and the never-ending "Why?"

Before I had Kenny, I had heard and read about parents getting irritated with constant "why?" questions from their children. I thought to myself that these parents were just not patient enough, and that they failed to consider how beneficial, in terms of language skills, that this type of interaction was for their children.

Well, the shoe is on the other foot now. I, too, find myself getting a little bit impatient when faced with the "why?" that just never ends. Cute, but also kind of irritating. For example, when I tell Kenny that I'm dropping him off at daycare because I have to work:

"Why are you going to work?"
"Because I like to work"
"Why do you like to work"
"Because it's fun"
"Why is it fun?"

At about this point, I pull out some techniques to cut short the questioning. For example, "Look, do you see that bulldozer!", that always work. Or I say, "Why do you think? I almost never get a real answer to that one, but it points the conversation in a different direction.

On the plus side, I'm now getting some real "conversations" with Kenny. For instance, on the way home from daycare he might tell me about a fire drill, where there was a loud siren, and then they all had to hold hands. I love it.

Zero Tolerance for Donuts

The group I work in at Expedia holds a "donut day" every Wednesday. What this means is that every Wednesday, somebody in the group brings in 2 dozen donuts to share. Responsibility for the greasy treats rotates around the group. I decided about a year ago that I would not participate in eating the donuts. Previously, I'd try to restrain myself to eating a half.

The remarkable thing about my new decision (and what makes it blog-worthy) is how much easier it is now. There's no mental stress, no decisions, no angst about should I eat a half or a quarter. Nothing. I just set zero as the tolerance level, and haven't had a problem with that.

Too bad eating as a whole can't be like that.

Keeping websites simple and easy to use

I learned something about the importance of keeping things simple in the last few months. I had been working on a new website for our community association (it's a big one - 1,300 houses). I wasn't developing the website from scratch. Instead I choose between service providers that do this type of pre-built website.

After a lot of evaluation on my part, and on the part of other committee members, we came to a decision, and set up the website on OneCommunity. I had very high hopes that lots of people would register, post content, interact with other community members, and keep on coming back online. There were tons of features - a calendar, classified ads, discussion forum, profiles, notice board, you name it. I did my best to encourage people to use the site.

What's happened so far? Well...nothing. Okay, not absolutely nothing, but not very much. When the site first went live, I went crazy putting up ads and posting in the discussion forum. But I was almost the only one, and the site never really took off.

Why is nobody using the site? It could be so useful (so I thought to myself). People could sell stuff they didn't need anymore to their neighbors. They could ask for and receive recommendations for babysitters, housecleaners, yard care services. They could post items of neighborhood interest.

But the bottom line was, it just wasn't easy to use. That critical fact was hidden to me, because I work with computers. I understand how websites work, and how to work around whatever doesn't work. Most people didn't understand it immediately, and weren't interested in investing the time into learning it. This one fact has been critical in making the new website bomb.

Why is Google so successful? Lots of reasons, of course, but mainly - they're so easy to use! There's one box to imput text, and there's 2 buttons (although frankly, I think they should get rid of the "I'm feeling lucky" button). Anybody can jump right in there and get information almost immediately.

There's a superb book on web usability called Don't Make Me Think. It's my all-time favorite book on web usability, but it also has a lot of lessons on how people process information in general, too.

Preparing for a possible bird flu pandemic

Recently I've been spending WAY too much time on a website devoted to bird flu (http://www.fluwikie.com). I tell ya, you can really get sucked into this. There's a lot of people - thoughtful, intelligent people, but probably leaning more than a little bit to the paranoid side - who are preparing to hunker down and have enough stocked up to be able to live on their supplies for months on end. The idea is that the flu will be raging outside, so the more that you can avoid going to stores, and contact with other people in general, the less likely it will be that you'll catch the flu.

I spent a few hours reading the posts, then starting making lists of what we need to buy in order to be prepared. And I actually did go out to Wal-mart and buy lots of canned goods, and other things that I thought would be useful. No harm done - I tried hard to buy things that keep, and that we use regularly anyway. Plus, this is earthquake country, and it doesn't hurt to be prepared for power outages.

Intereseting to note, though, that a few of things I bought - namely a wind-up, no battery needed LED flashlight from LLBean, and also a simple one-burner propane stove from Campmor - exactly what people would be buying when preparing for emergencies - were backordered, and only expected to be available in a month or so. Also some bulk food storage containers from the Container Store were out of stock. Coincidence? I don't think so. What with all the coverage of the potential flu pandemic, and also the New Orleans hurricane, people are stocking up on these kinds of items.

My strength workout - making it easy and quick!

In my quest to get the best workout in a relatively short period of time, I'm looking at my strength workout. How do I motivate myself to actually do this? What's the minimum I need to do in order to stay strong?

My regular aerobic workout is 30 minutes, 4 times a week. I work out on the treadmill while watching TV (yea for TiVo!) and try to break a good sweat by going uphill or doing some jogging. I also do a 15 or 20 minute brisk walk on the treadmill on those days that I work and have very little time in the morning. I have no problem at all motivating myself to do the aerobic workout - it's my chance to watch some of the home decorating/home organization shows I've taped!

However, motivating myself to do strength exercises is a different story. I tried doing some strength exercises in the evenings, while watching some TV with Eric. It doesn't work well for me. It requires an enormous effort of will to get off the couch, plus I'm tired in the evening anyway. So, I'm going to tack the strength exercises onto my morning workout, though time is very tight then. My goal is to add only 5 minutes to my workout time. This means a limited number of exercises, and only one set. I'm tentatively thinking push ups, leg lifts and sit ups (both on the exercise ball), and maybe a few others. I'd have to rotate them to keep under the 5 minute deadline.

By the way, I've dropped stretching entirely. The latest info is that it doesn't do you any good, and actually causes more injuries than not stretching.

The importance of getting feedback from customers

We took a cruise over the Christmas holidays on Royal Caribbean. It was enjoyable, but could have been more so. Quite a few times during the cruise I wished that there was a suggestion box somewhere, where I could give some feedback on what I liked, and what I didn't like. There was actually a customer survey form given out at the end, that you were supposed to fill out before you left the ship, but by that time (it was a 10 day cruise) I had forgotten what the original issues were, and I wasn't necessarily motivated to fill out another form. So, I left it laying on the bed.

Too bad for Royal Caribbean. Feedback from customers is incredibly important, and they were neglecting that important resource.

I have a lot more thoughts on the whole topic of establishing and maintaining a feedback loop with customers (or employees, too). From what I've seen, it's grossly undervalued. I'll be trying to make my thoughts more cogent and writing them up soon.

Kids junk food advertising - and does it really have anything to do with kids getting fatter?

My answer on this on is a big fat "NO". Most of the times when my son Kenny has been exposed to loads of food that's bad for him have not been related to cute little characters advertising junk food. Instead, it's been parents bringing a big spread of massive cupcakes from Costco to daycare, with frosting half an inch thick, for their little one's birthday. Or, I go to a playgroup, and there's a huge spread of food for the kids. There may be some fruit, but there's lots of other snack food. And this is not heavily advertised stuff like Cheetos, but rather fancy snacks, frequently organic, and sold at more expensive groceries like Whole Foods and Larry's Market. Or tasty homemade cookies and cakes. So much yummy food, so much variety. All this food is not good in excess, but that's what the kids go for.

So, the answer is not to restrict advertising. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure really what the answer is to our expanding waistlines (yes, I'm a woman and can actually say "I don't know" without choking. I'll think more about it, and comment in a future blog). But restricting advertising is absolutely not going to make a dent in the obesity epidemic.

Doing what I need to do, every day

A goal I've had numerous times over the last few years is do write up a list of things to do every day. Basically, I figured it would be a good thing to spend some time every morning planning what I needed to do that day. It sounds great, and it worked, kind of. I would frequently write up a daily plan.

However, what good is it, ultimately, to go through your to-do list and choose the items you need to do that day? It's not completely useless, because at least you think about what you need to do. But the bottom line is that you need to actually do the tasks, not just make lists.

So, I've changed my thinking recently. I still try to make a daily to-do list. However, the plan doesn't stop there. I have a little monthly calendar taped to the inside of my Palm cover. If I actually DO those tasks that are on my daily list, then I put a little star on the calendar. It may sound kind of childish, but I really like getting those little stars, and it motivates me to do a couple things:

• Be reasonable about what I put on my daily list. If I only get a star if I finish what's on my list, then I need to be realistic about what I can accomplish in a day.
• Actually do the items that are on the daily list! That's the only way to get a star
• Make my tasks very well defined. So, instead of writing "Organize garage", I'll write something like "Spend max 15 minutes clearing off workbench". I may still have a larger project/task for organizing the garage, but I wouldn't put it on my daily to-do list.

That's the plan in a nutshell. And yes, writing up something in my blog was on my to-do list today! If I finish everything else, I look forward to getting a star.

Exercising...in 10 minute increments

I've read a lot of articles recently that state that doing, say, three 10 minute sessions of exercise a day is as good as 30 minutes at a stretch. I don't have a hard time believing that, as far as it goes.

However, when it comes to cultivating a long-lasting habit of exercise, I don't believe that planning out three 10 minute sessions are a good idea. This is for a couple reasons:

• You're not just allocating 1 chunk of exercise into your day - you need to make room for three. Granted, 10 minutes is a lot less than 30, but you still have to think about it three times a day. I don't want to have to think about exercise 3 times a day - once is plenty
• What about showering? You won't get as sweaty in 10 minutes as you do in 30, but you do break a sweat.

This is not to say that cultivating a habit of, say, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, is a bad idea. On the contrary, I think it's a great idea. What I'm saying is that you need to make exercise as friction-free as possible - easy, routine, predictable. You don't want to need to think about it multiple times a day - do it in the morning, get it over with, and have time for other things.

I have a treadmill at home, and do a more serious workout 4 times a week. This is either walking with some bursts of running, or walking on an incline. A new habit that I'm trying to get into is to do a mini-workout (just basically walking on the treadmill) the other 3 days a week, to get some activity in there.