TechnoDad

Gift Baskets

2006-05-02T09:38:00.000-04:00

Thought I would take a moment to plug the new business of a friend of mine. If you are in need of gift baskets for any occasion, visit Gingham and Posh. The website is in need of some work, but give them a call and they will make a basket to order.

SI Goal #3

2006-04-21T11:30:00.000-04:00

Eat healthier and exercise.

I have the good fortune of having a fairly high metabolism, so even though I eat like there's no tomorrow, I don't really have a lot of weight to lose. Having said that, I would like to replace about 5 pounds of fat with 10 pounds of muscle. Towards that end, I have decided to start the Abs Diet.

Written by a Men's Health editor, the Abs Diet just makes more sense to me than many others. Basically, the author gives a list of "Power Foods." The idea is to include as many of these in each meal as possible. He doesn't ask you to count calories or limit portion sizes. The diet does ask you to avoid fried foods and limit your intake of highly processed starches and "junk food," but that makes sense. There is also an exercise plan that is an integral part of the diet. Since maintaining muscle burns calories 24 hours a day, this can greatly increase your fat loss.

Once TechnoBaby was born, I let my gym membership lapse, since I simply didn't have the time to use it. Luckily, most of the exercises in the Abs Diet require very little equipment, and can be performed effectively at home. However, I find that going to the gym motivates me to work out harder, so I would like to find a convenient, affordable gym to join.

In addition, I think it's important to take a multi-vitamin to ensure that you receive all the vitamins and minerals your body needs. Personally, I take Vemma, because I think the liquid form makes assimilation into the body easier. Anything is better than nothing, though.

SI Goal #2

2006-04-07T16:29:00.000-04:00

Set a budget and get finances in order.

Where to begin? This is a toughy. I haven't figured out the whole budget thing yet, but I definitely need to. The first thing I plan to do is monitor my spending for two months. I figure that will give me a good baseline for everything that I need to spend money on, and likely shed some light on areas that I can cut back. In fact, I already see one glaring area. I eat out way too much.

As part of the budget, I want to make sure that I include putting some money into a savings account/CD/MMA/whatever. I'd like to have enough money easily accessible to get me through 3 months.

Of course, you can't ignore income in the budget, and it would certainly make everything easier if I could swing a raise and/or promotion. I like my current job, but if I can't get a raise by the end of the year, I'll need to start looking elsewhere.

Budgeting has never been one of my strong points, so I think this will be the toughest goal to accomplish. Wish me luck.

SI Goal #1

2006-04-04T13:49:00.000-04:00

Get organized and practice better time management. I mean this mainly professionally, but if there was some spillover into my personal life, that would be great. I'm trying to develop a plan for this, but right now I just have some general ideas.

I've been using GTD TiddlyWiki to keep track of projects and To-Do lists. If you're familiar with the concept of a Wiki, this is pretty easy. Even if you're not, it will just take a couple of minutes to get the basic idea. There are a couple of thinsg I really like about this. First, it's completely editable, so you're not locked into anyone else's style. If you don't like it, change it. Second, although there are some server-side adaptations of this program, I like the fact that it is a single local file. Leave it on your laptop, or even put it on a USB stick and run it from there.

The GTD in the above paragraph refers to "Getting Things Done," a book and time management philosophy by David Allen. From what I've read, it seems like an effective system, so this book is now on my short list of things to read. I'll post an update once I read it.

Past those two things, I'm trying to keep my email inbox as low as possible at all times (see Inbox Zero for tips and inspiration) and I'm considering trying out the Hipster PDA. Oh, since I've used a few links to the site already, 43 Folders is a great site for time management and oraganization tactics.

I know everyone has their own system, but if you have one that you think is particularly great, post it in the comments.

3 year subscription to Kiplinger Personal Finance for 4.91

2006-03-31T09:13:00.000-05:00

1) Go to NetMagazines
2) Search for Kiplinger
3) Choose the 3 year subscription for 44.91
4) During checkout, use coupon code DCMPS40D to take 40.00 off the price.

I found this deal over at Money Dummy.

Self Improvement

2006-03-29T09:40:00.000-05:00

Every few years, I go through a self improvement kick. After a while, some things stick and others don't, but I feel better for having made the effort. I suppose that shortly after having a kid is a natural time to re-evaluate so, in that spirit, here are my four self improvement goals for this year. I will post a separate entry about each in the coming days, and give updates as time goes by.

SI Goal #1: Get organized and practice better time management.
SI Goal #2: Set a budget and get finances in order.
SI Goal #3: Eat healthier and exercise.
SI Goal #4: Get more sleep.

Nothing earth-shattering in the list, but I think they can make a tremendous impact on my general well-being. Stay tuned and feel free to add some of your own goals in the comments.

HP donating to the Livestrong Foundation

2006-03-27T10:24:00.000-05:00

HP and AMD are making a donation to Lance Armstrong's LiveStrong foundation. For every picture uploaded to their website, they will donate a dollar to the LiveStrong foundation, up to a maximum of 25,000 dollars. Click here to upload your photo and help a great cause.

Funny Site

2006-03-21T16:38:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post. If you have some time on your hands, and are looking for something to make you laugh, check out this site: Things my Girlfriend and I have Argued About. Very funny stuff.

Tar Heel Tavern #56

2006-03-15T21:50:00.000-05:00

I wanted to thank everyone for their entries to this week's Tar Heel Tavern. So, let's get to them.

Billy the Blogging Poet sends us our first entry, a link to Laureate's Kids , a poetry blog for children.

Our second entry comes to us from Ron Hudson, and is titled Betrayed By Eggs. It is a recollection of his childhoof and hometown, prompted by his mother's refusla to eat her egg substitutes.

Coturnix has written an article about his childhood and the search for a career. It is published at Lablit.com.

Ogre's Politics & Views contributes an article on Home Schooling.

Marcu Newberry writes in from Burnsville, NC with a post titled The Lifestyle Chronicles - NGA Wellness Where We Learn - State Initiatives.

David Inman has given us his entry, Spring is in the Air.

Erin Monahan sends us a post complete with a picture of a stuffed hippo wearing a diaper: Wildlife in the Hospital.

Laura N has written a post about encouraging her children to enjoy reading.

Ms Jude C has sent us her entry, entitled All My Children.

Zha K from Rock Creek Township send in a humorous story entitled A Daughter's Help.

Our Final entry that came in under the deadline is Mister Sugar's A Family Orientation.

If I get anymore during the course of the day, I will get those posted as well. If you need to contact me, the email address is technodad.blog @ gmail dot com. Thanks again, and happy reading!

Tar Heel Tavern

2006-03-14T21:49:00.000-05:00

Attention North Carolina Bloggers! I will be hosting this week's Tar Heel Tavern at Technodad. The theme will be Parenting and Children, so send in anything you've got that's in any way related to that. Whether it's your children or your childhood, I'll be posting them all on Sunday, March 19th. If this is your first time participating in the Tar Heel Tavern, simply create an article on your blog, or pick an old favorite, and send me the link! You can send your entries to technodad.blog at gmail dot com.The sooner you get them in, the better. I will try and get the links up as early Sunday morning as possible. Any late submissions will still be posted, I just can't guarantee a turn-around time on them. Thanks for your submissions!

Photo Editing Tools

2006-03-13T18:18:00.000-05:00

As part of my ongoing effort to be as cheap as possible, I always try to find freeware or Open Source tools to do the tasks I need. Luckily, there are no shortage of these when it comes to photo editing. For heavy-duty editing, the best program I have run across is Paint.net. Developed as an upgrade to Microsoft Paint, the creators have added features until it can handle most of the functions of expensive software, such as Photoshop.

For lighter duty work, or to simply create an album, Google has a free program called Picasa. In many cases, this is all you need, and it is easier to use than the software that comes with many digital cameras.

When I take pictures, I always use the highest possible resolution. You can never be certain when you're going to capture the perfect photo. If you decide that you want to blow it up to poster size, the resolution needs to be pretty high. Unfortunately, those pictures aren't great for uploading to a website or emailing to friends and family. For that, there are two free tools to resize your photos. By default, both of these tools will create a new, smaller, copy of your current pictures.

instance, I used Visualizer Photo Resize against a folder containing 67 pictures. At full size, those pictures took up 112 MB. Visualizer created a new folder with smaller versions of all of those pictures. The new folder was only 2.3 MB, or about 2% of the original size. Microsoft also makes an image resizer as part of their Power Toys for Windows XP. It is both easy to use and effective.

Love the Baby Swing

2006-03-12T14:51:00.000-05:00

Last night TechnoBaby decided to that TechnoMom and I really didn't need to sleep. Starting at 9 PM she got a little fussy. We fed her, changed her, and put her to bed, but she was having no part of that. The fussiness escalated into full-blown screaming. For the next 7 hours, we could do nothing to alleviate the screaming. Passing her from one parent to the next would buy us about thirty seconds of quiet time, then she would start again.

At 4 AM, we decided to put her in the swing and see if that helped. Why we didn't think of that sooner, I have no idea. Actually, I do have an idea. It's very difficult to do any thinking at all when you have a screaming baby in your arms. Almost immediately after starting the swing, she stopped crying, and within ten minutes, she was sound asleep. Or so it appeared. After thirty minutes, we tried to move her from the swing to the bassinet. Bad idea. The screaming resumed.

So, to make a long story short, Technobaby slept in the swing for about five hours last night. So far, the swing has definitely been our best purchase. We purchased the Aquarium Take Along Swing by Fisher Price. Besides the normal swing and music, TechnoBaby really seems to enjoy the lights on this model. It would be nice if it came with an AC adapter, but the batteries did keep it going for more than 5 hours last night, so no real complaints there. It's fairly compact, and can be easily moved from room to room. And, if you want to take it on a trip, it folds down fairly small.

Very Cool Blogging Tool

2006-03-10T22:03:00.000-05:00

This isn't exactly new, but I just stumbled on it, and thought I would share. If you're using Firefox (and you should be) there is a new blogging extension called Performancing. Basically, it lets you call up a window on any website that you may be visiting, and post to your blog directly from there. You either hit F8 or click on the small pencil icon, and you're blogging! The program is extremely easy to set up. It just asks for your username at Blogger, WordPress, or Movable Type, then shows you your blogs. Click the one you want to post to, and start typing. Definitely worth a try. This really fits in with the way I blog, becasue I generally just post whenever the mood hits. Plus if you want to post about a website, you can still be looking at the site while you type.

Anyone want to recommend other tools?

Required Reading

2006-03-09T22:17:00.000-05:00

When was the last time that I read a book that didn't talk about the art of changing diapers? This is getting a bit ridiculous. But, since I'm still very new to this whole fatherhood thing, and looking for any tidbits of knowledge I can find, what baby or parenting books do you recommend? So far, my favorite is Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads. This book doesn't sound preachy and doesn't wax poetic about the many joys of fatherhood. You can figure out those things. What you need is something that just dives in and starts offering sound advice. There's nothing earth-shattering in here, but I have turned to it for reference a few times when I felt it was a bit late to call on my own parents.

So, any recommendations?

Alarm Clock Roundup

2006-03-09T11:04:00.000-05:00

Because of my variable sleep schedule, I read the alarm clock review, Read it and Sleep, with interest. If you want to skip right to the executive summary, the article recommends the RCA RP3765 as the best mix of performance and price. Personally, I was hoping that it was going to review a few of the more non-traditional alarm clocks. I am especially interested in the new alarms which attempt to track your sleep phase, and wake you up when your sleep is the lightest. Basically, you set a window of time, and a time which you absolutely must be up. These monitor your sleep (so obviously there's something strapped to you, generally on your wrist) and wake you up at the time of lightest sleep in the prescribed window. A couple of examples of this are the SleepTracker watch, and the upcoming aXbo sleep phase alarm clock.

Finances

2006-03-09T06:12:00.000-05:00

I'm guessing I'm not the only first-time father to realize that I need to get my finances in order. I had thought about this before the baby was born, of course. I even meant to do something about it on several occasions, but I never realized how quickly nine months could slide by. I'm planning on setting up a college fund this week. I'm not sure what else I need to do at this point. It seems a bit premature to start saving for a car. If TechnoBaby ever decides to go to sleep, maybe TechnoMom and I can discuss getting our financial situation. It certainly needs to be done before we start paying for daycare.

I've been looking for a good financial blog, and so far All Things Financial seems to be the best. Anyone have any finance sites that they recommend?

Simple ways to increase your cleverness

2006-03-07T21:21:00.000-05:00

Experiments by the BBC Programme 'Get Smarter in a Week' show that making simple changes to your lifestyle can help with memory, decision-making, & confidence, by improving your brain's functioning. I'm hoping that this can help a sleep-deprived new father function somewhere close to normal. Might be worth a read.

read more | digg story

Upromise

2006-03-07T17:05:00.000-05:00

I've been using UPromise for a couple of months now. In case you haven't heard of it, it's an easy way to save a little money for your child's education. Basically, you sign up, register your credit cards, and grocery store cards, and certain purchases trigger a donation to your account. I was a bit leery of registering my credit cards, but they're backed by some big name companies, and seem trustworthy. I've read a couple of complaints where people have said that getting the money is a hassle, but I'm willing to give them a chance. It's free money without me having to go out of my way at all. There are some ways to maximize your contribution, by buying certain products, or signing up for a Upromise credit card. There are also a few other sites out there that offer a similar deal, notably BabyMint. From what I've seen so far, Upromise is the easiest to use though. While you certainly shouldn't count on it to pay for your child's education, it may at least be able to pay for their school books, and that's a pretty big gain for no work.

Criminals Using Hotel Keycards as Credit Cards

2006-03-07T13:54:00.000-05:00

In Las Vegas, criminals have been found with hotel keycards that have been erased and re-written with credit card information. Note that this information is NOT contained on a normal hotel keycard. The thieves, assumed to be members of organized crime rings, are simply using the magnetic stripe to store more information.

read more | digg story

Pentax Optio WPi Update

2006-03-06T22:08:00.000-05:00

I promised I would upload a picture from thew new Pentax Optio WPi whenever I had a chance, and I'm finally making good on that promise. Here's a picture I took just outside of the house. This was taken around lunchtime, so it was in full sunlight. I'll try to take some more pictures in other lighting conditions and post them soon.

Hybrid car built by high-schoolers

2006-03-06T21:54:00.000-05:00

This is truly amazing. A group of high school kids from West Philadelphia have built a hybrid biomass/electric car that gets up to fifty miles per gallons. Not impressed yet? It goes from 0-60 in about 4 seconds. Find out more at Gizmodo.

Hospital Security

2006-03-06T21:36:00.000-05:00

Many security threats in the real world are analogous to those on the internet or in networks in general. Because I work in network security, I find myself interested in many aspects of physical security, as well (I guess it's also possible that the opposite is true). At the hospital were TechnoBaby was born, they had taken a number of precautions to prevent someone unauthorized from leaving with the baby.

The most obvious deterrent they had in place was a small band around the baby's ankle. If this was removed, or if the band got too near the exits from the maternity wing, alarms would go off, and the doors would lock. Unfortunately, it also triggered the alarms if it got wet, or if it was jostled too much. The alarm went off four times that I am aware of while I was there, and it was never anything serious. In one instance, I was standing at the nurses' station, and it was clear that this was a common occurrence, and the nurses were not at all concerned.

Probably the most effective measure in place, the hospital had hand scanners controlling access to the nursery. These required you to place your hand on a scanner and then enter a PIN. I considered this to be the most effective, because it is unlikely that a stranger would be able to walk into the room with mother, father, and baby, and leave with the baby.

The third and fourth measures went together and were for security and identification. Only the nurses wearing a badge with a pink background were allowed to leave the room with baby (though that could be counterfeited rather easily) and baby wore a wristband that matched mother and father. Anytime the baby left, the number on the baby's wristband had to be verified against the mother and father when it was returned. Until the wristband was on, the baby was never out of my sight.

Although I felt like most of the security measures could be fairly easily circumvented, I did appreciate the effort. In my opinion, the alarm from the ankle band needs to be done away with or overhauled, as it produces far too many false alarms. This, in turn, leads the nurses to treat every alarm as false.

More digital Picture Frames

2006-03-05T22:17:00.000-05:00

I found another digital picture frame on Amazon that is quite a bit cheaper than average. The reviews for it are mixed, so I'm not recommending it, just keeping you informed. It is the Photoco PhotoShare 7. Priced at only $99, it accepts input from USB, Memory Stick, and SD/MMC. The resolution appears to be quite a bit lower than the pricier units, so keep that in mind.

Digital Picture Frames

2006-03-03T16:45:00.000-05:00

I never really saw the need for these before, but now I want one. It seems like TechnoBaby is changing so fast, by the time I get a digital picture printed, it hardly resembles her anymore. The nicer digital picture frames accept a variety of memory cards, so you can just pop the card out of your camera and into the frame. Instant up-to-date picture. Wired Magazine tested out a few frames, and they recommend one made by Philips. At $250, they're still a bit rich for my blood, but hopefully the prices are dropping. This model does have multiple memory card inputs, 14 MB of built-in memory and a 7" screen. If I recall my geometry correctly, that should come out just shy of a 4"X6" photo. The Philips digital picture frame also runs on AC or rechargeable batteries. Does anyone have any experience with these? If the picture is bright and sharp, they could be the perfect digital camera accessory. Of course, based on price, maybe the digital camera is the accessory.

Travel Systems

2006-03-02T16:53:00.000-05:00

With old-fashioned strollers no longer cutting it for today's baby-on-the-go, the market has responded with Travel Systems. These perform essentially the same task as a stroller, but at a greatly inflated price. Of course, we had to have one. Basically, a Travel Sytem is a stroller that you can snap a car seat into. This gives you the slim hope of being able to remove the baby from the car and get her moving again without her ever waking up. Naturally, I wanted a Bugaboo since Seal and Heidi Klum have one. After all, it's a a stroller. It can't be that expensive. It turns out that they're about 700 dollars. So, I looked at the Peg Perego, because they're still pretty fashionable. 400 Dollars. Fine, let's go to Target.

After playing with all the choices at Target, we settled on the Graco Travel System. The main selling point on this system was the car seat. The Britax car seat got slightly higher reviews from Consumer Reports, but the safety ratings were identical, and the Britax seat costs about the same as the Graco system. Although we haven't done a lot of field testing yet (since TechnoBaby is only two weeks old), we're pretty happy with this so far. You can fold and unfold it with one hand, and it's not too heavy for TechnoMom to deal with. It's fairly mobile, and has a pretty good turning radius. Plus, it accepts any Graco Snugride seats. So, if you want to have a car seat in multiple vehicles, but share a stroller, you can do that. You can also buy just a Graco Snugride base and share the seat and stroller.

At this point, I recommend the Graco. If I have reason to be displeased in the future, I'll let you know.