Doing More With Less Since 1972

Tag: family

Daily Reading List — October 15th

Infrastructure – Not just countries and business organizations either. This stuff can be applied at the family level. And should be.

Las Vegas has one of the biggest populations of ‘sugar daddies’ – Third? THIRD?!?!?!

Step it up Vegas! This is one you should be able to win.

Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices – Um…how about just adding chromecast support to an Amazon Prive Video app.

Before I cancel my Prime account. Ok…seriously, I’m not even close to that, and hardly ever use Prime Video.

But still.

Last – The first person who ran 26.2 miles died. He died. – I’ve always had a lot of admiration for anyone who takes longer than me to run a marathon. They have to deal with at least one second more of suffering than I have to endure.

Still, not itching to be last either.

Are Your Barbecued Chicken Kebabs Missing a Key Ingredient? – Well…duh.

10 Stubborn Food Myths That Just Won’t Die – Did you know it takes more calories to digest a serving of Cap’n Crunch than there are calories in a serving of Cap’n Crunch?

Or wait…maybe that’s Fruity Pebbles.

School District Bans Tag for Reasons of ‘Emotional Safety’ – It’s getting to the point that my biggest concern as a parent is how to teach my kids to learn empathy and have mercy on their peers once they are all adults.

Their world is going to be filled with peaches.

Body found in suitcase near Boulder Highway – Wait…what? “Body found in suitcase”?

WHAT?!?!?!

Daily Reading List — July 15th

Money, Sex and Las Vegas Pool Parties – The only surprising thing about this article is that anyone is surprised by what is revealed in this article.

It seems like (almost) everyone likes to be around pretty people and pretty things. And for the most part they expect to pay a premium for that and are ok with it. And I suspect the people who aren’t ok with it simply don’t participate.

So what’s the problem?

The Case For Letting Kids Design Their Own Play – Yesterday we went on a hike, but never made it to our intended destination. We came across a lean-to/tepee someone had built, and the kids wanted to play in it. An hour and a half later, they’d cycled through several characters each and moved countless logs and sticks to create a fire pit with seating to facilitate their story.

Yeah. I’m bragging.

But we also got to relax in the woods at 68 degrees and no humidity while they played. Everybody wins.

Man blames tequila for taking Las Vegas’ Blarney Stone – I want to start a Twitter account for “Vegas Man”. Unfortunately, most of those headlines would involve shootings and pedestrian-on-vehicle incidents.

This is one of the funnier ones.

Sony Pictures: Inside the Hack of the Century – Pretty fascinating read. Not the technical parts so much, but the culture and politics inside a company that create an environment that this kind of damage can be done.

honest toddler: Open Letter To The Child I Hit At The Park – “It’s utterly confounding how possessive adults are about their own belongings whether it be a remote control or wallet, but preach about communal property without even a twinge of guilt over their blatant hypocrisy.”

Exactly. I’m always reminded of the phrase printed on the button Alex P. Keaton gave his little brother Andy to wear at pre-school:

I KNOW WHAT’S MINE.

Disney World will ban selfie-sticks from theme parks – The Disney enthusiast and judgmental/authoritarian/GrumpyOldMan side of me cheers this decision by The Mouse. And I hope this thinking eventually finds its way into our National Parks.

The libertarian side of me wants to use a selfie stick (which I don’t currently own) to take a picture of myself drinking a can of Falls City beer (which I don’t currently drink) I sneaked into SeaWorld.

Just because I can.

And because they won’t care.

The Influence of Fathers on Children – Some of the stuff here is correlation over causation, but it still rings true to me. Being a dad is the most important thing I do. I’m not always the person described in this post, but I sure as hell want to be.

Are dating apps to blame for STD increase in Southern Nevada? – I’m going to throw out a pretty crazy notion here…

I’m not a native, and I’ve only been here a short period of time, but I’m pretty sure Southern Nevada is to blame for the STD increase in Southern Nevada.

[feature photo credit]

Daily Reading List — February 3rd

Pre-Season Weaknesses: Become A Faster Runner – "The Fit, But Slow Runner" caught my attention right out of the gates. 10k training may be in full effect. After rest.

Amazon looks at boosting Prime fee – Not happy about this, but I feel like our family makes money on Prime as it is, so can't complain too loudly.

Trainer Road Will Make You Stronger – Trainerraod: Best. Value. In. Cycling

Effective as hell too.

Finally, A Digital DJ That Knows Its Stuff – This is my biggest complaint with Google Music. I don't understand how a company so good at meta-data processing can offer up a product so bad at DJing radio stations. Pandora was way better at this in 2008 than Google is right now.

Reading between the lines of the latest Facebook usage data – “We’ve asked about Google+ in the past and were worried when we heard respondents being interviewed that they weren’t sure if we were asking about the social networking platform or more broadly about use of any Google product. That was a while ago and we will likely be including Google+ the next time we ask people about social networking platforms.”

Well…yeah. I'm pretty sure that's exactly where Google is going with Plus. It's not as much of a destination as it is a layer that connects all Google products and services. Sure, there's a site there you can use as a "red Facebook", but the scope is way past status updates, likes, and shares.

I think Google is perfectly content to sit back and play possum with this for now.

What Should a 4 Year Old Know? – Yes. Yes. Yes.

7 Tools That Let You Control Your Own Data – OpenPDS is very interesting especially. I don't mind the idea of sharing data so much if I have more control over the precision of that data.

Google Launches AdSense Direct, A New Tool For Direct Ad Sales – I'm open for bizniss.

Daily Reading List — August 6th

Monotasking Is The New Multitasking – In other words, turn off email and Twitter and only check them on a schedule.

The Case for Replacing Family Dinners with Family Breakfasts – We do both. Plus lunch too on lots of days. Then there's the afternoon communal green smoothie. Studies would predict that my kids will all win Nobel prizes. Me…not so sure about that. 🙂

How To Tap Into Fat For Your Fuel – Working the program, taking a lot of trust. I bought a case of Gu a couple of weeks ago and haven't touched it yet.

Working From Home? Boss May Be Peeking Over Your Shoulder – Shoutout to @simplysql. 🙂

Heart-Throb Rob Fundraising

The whole fam made it out on Saturday for the inaugural Surf Your Heart Out fundraiser for my buddy Rob “Munch” Munchbach who is awaiting a heart transplant. The turnout was great, and it was the perfect morning for a run on the beach and the waves were tasty for everyone who brought a board.

There are more events scheduled for the year, including a “Stroke Your Heart Out” Paddling Challenge and a rugby tournament some time in November. In keeping with rugby traditions, details of that event are still sketchy.

Even if you can’t make it out to participate, please consider helping Rob out in any way you can and like his Facebook page. He needs help pre-transplant with medication and health care costs.

I didn’t race the run, which is probably a good thing since it was perfectly situated on a rest day, so I won’t report any times. I rushed through a 5 mile tempo workout on Friday and needed to loosen up though, so it was great to jog out the first mile and a half.

At that point I picked up a couple of squirmy bodies, one of which was not at all interested in running and stopped several times to clean the sand off her feet. The other was wrapped around my neck until the finish.

But the oldest got to “finish” her first race and was super excited! Kids tri coming up on September 30, and she’s pretty amped about the prospects of placing in her age group!

Some Programming Notes

Some of you may have noticed the pace of new posts has slowed (even more) over the past couple of months. We’re very happy to tell you that the reason is that Ana is in a family way once again. For those of you who aren’t from the Southeast–she’s pregnant. Unfortunately for Ana, that means 20 weeks of extreme illness, 24 hours a day.

So for the past few months we’ve been in “survival mode” around our house, and that means housekeeping is at a minimum, much less blogging. The homeschool co-op had to go on a hiatus as well. The good news is that she experienced the same thing with the first two pregnancies, and the kids were both born healthy, so we’re hoping that bodes well for this one too. The other good news is that we are almost out of the woods…the nauseas has mostly subsided, and now she’s building her strength back up.

On a less happy note, we learned this past week that our dear friend Coupon Katie has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Many of you know Katie and/or follow her blog, so you already know what a great, strong, and inspirational person she is. On top of that, she can tell you how to get a bunch of stuff for free at Walgreens and end up having them give you money. Please keep Katie and Shawn (the Coupon Koala) in your thoughts and prayers as they overcome this obstacle.

Veterans Day, Slightly Recycled

Before my grandfather passed on, he took the time to write down some of the stories and experiences of his life. What a great gift to our family! My favorite stories are the ones from his time serving in Pacific with the Army during World War II. This one, which I posted elsewhere last year, is one of my favorites and is worth recycling.

Even though it’s a very short snippet, when you read it you immediately understand the conditions these guys were in. It was brutally hot. They were hungry enough that a snack seemed like a feast to them, even when writing about it decades later.

But there isn’t even a hint of complaint. I mean, this is a story he chose to document because he looked back on it as a fond experience. You can tell by the tone–“yeah, it was hot and we were hungry, but man…what a feast!”

It was a one-day trip from Finch Haven to Saidor and we got a 1 day supply of “C” rations. As usual we didn’t leave Finch Haven until the next day and our food supply was gone. When we reached Saidor a little after night, the Japs had bombed a fuel (gas) supple and the place was lit up like midday. They ordered us back out sea so we wouldn’t be a lit up target for the Japs to bomb. We spent the night out at sea and came in the next day to land. We sure were a hungry bunch.

While on the boat, I saw a fellow lying on the aft deck under a workbench to shade him from the sun. He was lying on his back and had a can of corned beef setting on the deck right at the top of his head. I was starved which helped put my military strategy ticking. I got down on my stomach, crawled up there, got that can of beef, crawled backwards to where he wouldn’t see me get up and I sat down and had a feast.

When I got off the ship and grabbed a duffel bag and took off, every way I turned that bag something would be resting on my shoulder.We went about 1-½ miles up through the Mott river bottoms grown up in Cuni grass about 12 to 15 fee high. The sun was bearing down 100+. When we got to a stopping place, I took my knife and cut the duffel bag open. It had a lock on it. There were 6 cans (2-½ size) of peaches in that bag. Where he got them I don’t know. Where they went he never knew, but me and five of my buddies had a feast.

The guys who had their corned beef and peaches turn up missing may be complaining to this day. I guess that’s a possibility, but I doubt it. Because when I think back on all the people I’ve known throughout the years who have served in the armed forces, I can’t recall ever hearing any of them complain either. Pretty admirable for a group of people who put themselves in harms way so the rest of us can be safe.

Thank you all!

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