Doing More With Less Since 1972

Tag: parenting

Daily Reading List — May 3rd

Why Don’t People Return Their Shopping Carts? – It’s actually just poor planning coupled with laziness. Don’t give me this “kid in the car” excuse either. Lazy people and poor planners circle the parking lot looking for the spot closest to the door.

Smart people (me) try to get a spot right next to a cart return. That way, even if you have to deal with kids, you can return your cart easily. You also don’t have to deal with stray carts in the parking lot around these areas ramming into your high dollar minivan.

Think people!!!

An Accidental Discovery Could Solve Earth’s Plastic Waste Problem – Next we will have to find something that can break down all those annoying re-usable bags people have been toting to the store with them for the past few years. ‘Cause those are all going to get trashed.

The Worst Places To Get Stung By A Bee: Nostril, Lip, Penis – If you happen to only have 2 of the 3 you are living a charmed life. Where’s the social justice?

How Running a Marathon Puts Your Body Through Hell – Word.

The Baby Boom Tsunami That May Drown The Economy – I’ve wondered for a while how these folks are going to pull money out of the markets while we’re all building them up. Sounds like another social security type thingy, huh?

Would America be better off if we became Norway? – We’d be happier if we were Vikings, but with central heating systems and North Face clothing.

The Origins of Overprotective Parenting – We make an effort (sometimes at the horror of The Mrs.) to keep our kids as free range as possible. And we still probably don’t do enough.

Here’s How This Shoe Will Decompose Like Food In Your Trash – I’m not sure if they were biodegradable or not, but I’ve had a few pairs of Adidas decompose on me.

Daily Reading List — September 5th

8 of the Best Hikes Close to the Valley – Going to make a big dent in this list soon

How to Make Your Own Bitters for a Signature Stamp on Every Cocktail – Easier than home brewing. And gluten free!

The Most Violent Man in Wrestling Lays Down His Staple Gun « – New Jack. One scary dude.

This is What Happens to Your Body When You Stop Exercising – The biggest reason I clicked on this article was because I expected to see a picture of me on such a popular site.

Very disappointing.

How to Make Flavored Spirits That Are Way Tastier Than Store-Bought – Some good tips here. None of my previous attempts have been widely successful, but I haven't had anything come out undrinkable either.

Yet.

3 Families Every Young Man Needs – Worth your while to read the whole thing.

The Next Wave Of Enterprise Software Powered By Machine Learning – Some pie in the sky here, but I hope it pans out. There are several industries I can think of off the top of my head that are ripe for disruption *coughcough*

It’s Your Fault Email Is Broken – Limiting participation seems to work pretty well. Soon people start realizing that's just not the best way to communicate with you. That, or stuff gets solved without you intervening.

Either way…

Daily Reading List — March 10th

What Parenting and Running Have in Common – There's more here than just "People who don't run/parent aren't very interested in hearing about your running/parenting."

Is College for Everyone? An Introduction and Timeline of College in America – This questions is being asked more and more. That's a good thing. Nice short review of how we got to where we are.

2014 Epcot Flower and Garden Festival FULL Food Booth Menus – Awwwwww Yeah!

Houston Issues ‘Cease-And-Desist’ To Uber To Stop Houston Residents From Communicating With Their Government | Techdirt Lite – If you think uber ISN'T going to come to your city, you got another thing coming. In looking at you Vegas.

Framers and polishers – I'm pretty confident I know where I am here.

Disney park prices to jump again Sunday – Was there over the weekend, and by the looks of it the extra few bucks wasn't keeping anyone away.

How to Make a Drinking Glass From a Bottle – Maybe I'll skill up good on this, then start an ETSY.

12 Of The Coolest Offices In The World – We've been sharing photos of our work spaces on our yammer network. Haven't seen any that look like this.

Startup Quanttus Makes a Wristband That Tracks Several Vital Signs – HRM on the wrist!!! Faster please, also please sample my blood periodically to give me an idea about glucose levels. Thanks.

Haven’t Link Dumped In A While

The Age Of Data Wars Dawns

Cool Ironman Kona Infographic – Check out the decrease in bike/run splits. And the fairly level swim splits.

The Future Of Working From Home – Things are definitely moving this way. I’m pretty sure if I had to go back to a normal office situation, I’d struggle with it.

Chrissie Wellington: The Mind Over Body Battle – And you think you suffer? Love hearing how this affects even the super-humans.

Easily Monitor and Manage all of your WordPress Sites with WP Remote – Thanks to @mwender for this one. Great time saver

Google Turns Turtle and Takes Street View Underwater – Coming soon to iPhone5!

Alternative ways to ride The Downward Spiral – I created a Spotify playlist based on this. A couple of the songs weren’t in Spotify, but I found some good substitutes. Just reading this makes me afeared.

Whoa, Dude, Are We Inside a Computer Right Now? – Is it wrong that this seems completely reasonable (and likely) to me?

Solo or Group? Train Your Way – I’ve been opting for the solo route a lot lately. It’s quiet.

How To Determine Your Long Run Training For Any Triathlon Distance – Some really good info here. It’s hard to train for a distance event and fill like you got enough running in. The truth is, you really just can’t, but you can get the optimal amount.

Accessing SharePoint Lists with SQL Server Integration Services SSIS 2005

Raising Children To Become Productive Adults – In short, walk it like you talk it. Applies to pretty much everything in life.

Simple Tips to Help Your Grocery Budget – As always, thanks to @couponkatie for all the amazing tips and deals she points us to!

A Glass All Empty – When your S.O. gets on the wagon. Both of us are for the most part…one due to pregnancy and nursing, the other due to choosing brownie calories over beer calories. Must to get faster, and those calories slows me down.

An Unexpected Ass Kicking | Blog Of Impossible Things

Link Dump From Stuff I’ve Been Reading

Denso (and others) Plea Guilty To Price Fixing – Coming soon, “Shame on Denso” signs in front of Alcoa Highway Wal-Mart.

Has the Higher-Ed Revolution Begun? – I’ll take advantage of the CS courses, but I’d really love to see a business school offer this type of program. We may have to wait all the way until next year for something like that.

What’s Wrong With the Teenage Mind? – In summary (I think), they need to be taught responsibility and experience in addition to facts.

A future President

It’s time for us to get to work. To get busy. My advisors and cabinet members are going to sit down to find ways to help get out of your way. To encourage you.

Re-elect this guy. If we ever elect him.

Whatever happened to: Rucking?

The key advantage of ‘traditional’ rucking was that it produced quick ball. It also occupied forwards who might otherwise loiter in midfield clogging up the pitch.

The game started changing in this regard as my career was ending, and I remember that feeling (we’ve all had it) just KNOWING that the boots were coming after doing something on the edge of the law in a tackle in order to steal or secure the ball for my team.

And then…nothing would happen. Occasionally someone would curse your actions, but they wouldn’t dream of chucking boot and letting you know that was not acceptable.

I do know of at least one referee who was more than happy to have the game become more about him than the players on the field and welcomed the changes in rucking.

10 Things You Can Do to Raise a Reader – On of the most important things you can do as a parent.

Sweden Plans A New Superhighway For Cyclists – Not going to pretend I wouldn’t like to see this here. Privately funded of course.

Federal government debt site – But it doesn’t track the federal government’s massive debt. Instead, it gives them information on decreasing their own debt. Isn’t that rich?!

So Why Read Anymore? – Damn. Just…damn.

Somehow we must convince this new wired generation that speaking and writing well are not just the DSL lines of modern civilization, but also the keys to self-mastery, a sort of code that one takes on — in addition to others, moral and legal — to uphold standards of culture itself, to keep the work and ideas alive of our long gone betters for one more generation — as if to say, “I did my part according to my time and station.”Nothing more, nothing less.

The Future of Personalized Medicine – Can’t wait for this to be widely available. Can I get a GPS add on?

QUnit – jQuery JavaScript Library – Free, and a time saver down the road.

Spotify Free Unlimited Music Streaming Ends After Six Month Promotion – Sadness. Extreme sadness.

Homeschooling, Robot IronMen, Unstructured Play, Plus MORE!

Another link dump. I promise I’ll try to include more bloggers and less news stuff in the future.

Here’s How to Stop FB From Tracking You Online – Logging out isn’t enough.

Can We Play? – Feeling guilty because you don’t get to spend enough time on education and they are aimlessly wasting the day? Don’t.

Career Ruin: Homeschooling

I realized that public school is like Social Security. There is no money to do what we are pretending we are aiming to do. We should just grow up and admit that we cannot have effective public schools for everyone. Just like we cannot have Social Security for everyone.

Well there go her Presidential hopes.

Gamers Unlock Protein Mystery That Baffled AIDS Researchers For Years – More of this please.

Woman tries to shoot possum, shoots acquaintance instead – I wasn’t even aware @knoxvillerugby was playing in ATL this weekend.

Dubya and Me – You don’t have to be a fan of his politics (I’m not) to enjoy this great piece on W.

Three Market-Based Solutions To Pull People Out Of Poverty – More of this too!

Robot Triathlete Will Complete An Ironman? – These things don’t have the greatest form, but I’m not one to talk.

Nonacademic Success, Attacking Social Networking, and More!

Nonacademic Skills Key to Success – Crazy idea…let’s assign two people to each child born in this country to make sure they learn these intangible skills like reliability and work ethic. We can call these people “Parents”. Even if we can only get one good one per child, it will be progress.

16 Yummy Slow Cooker Desserts – Tadow!

Ransoming Someone for an XBox 360? – HT @MichaelSilence If you owe me ~$100 (and you know who you are), hope we don’t have a mutual friend who owns an Atari 2600 with several cartridges.

Social networking under fresh attack – I don’t think it’s the “devil in his self”. Obviously. But, I doubt I’m only person in the world who thinks it’s rude to see a person I’m sitting with IRL grab their phone every time it makes the slightest little noise. The message there is, “I’m not sure who this is or what they want, but it has to be more interesting than this.” It’s not so much the social media and texting I get annoyed with so much as it is the inability for people to sit comfortably without it.

I’m reading– January 5th through January 6th

How to get Fat as Fast as Possible (losing weight humor) | 3 Boys And A Dog – How to get Fat as Fast as Possible: Woot! I'm batting 1.000 so far this year!

The most reliable (and unreliable) blogging services on the Web – These rank almost exactly as I would have expected. I kinda sorta don't get Tumblr. Is is like the midpoint between a blog and Twitter?

RunKeeper With Heart Rate Monitoring! – This almost makes me glad I need a new HRM. I hate having to buy a new one, but it's very cool that I can get one to work with RunKeeper!

How Bad Movies Get Seen By So Many People – I get accused of being a movie snob sometimes. Whatever. I don't have a lot of time to spend watching movies, and even if I did, it's not what I want to do with a lot of my time. So I'm not that interested in wasting my movie time on a recycled story or bad writing/acting.

Early Infant “Reading“ With Larry Sanger – Web’s – They really do have fun too. Learning doesn't "suck" until it's made to suck.

Global Food-Price Index Hits Record – Of course, there is no inflation. None. In fact, we need to continue to worry about deflation and "stimulate" the economy by printing more money. Got it?

Changing Huckleberry Finn – A Travesty – Anyone who thinks this is a good idea needs to read the book (again). If they still think it's a good idea, their literacy is questionable.

What Your Kids See You Read

George Washington Crossing The Delaware

I’ve read articles before (someone can provide links in the comments) about how important it is to have books around the house and to set an example for your kids by making sure they see you reading. But I’ve always looked at that as a general idea–just make sure they see that you read, and the magic will happen later on. Last night I got my first glimpse of how it can affect them in ways I hadn’t considered.

I’m currently reading To Try Men’s Souls, which is a historical novel about George Washington and the Continental Army’s crossing of the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776. The cover of the book features the famous painting by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. Yesterday afternoon, Pea was looking at the cover and asked, “Who’s that?”. I told her it was a painting of George Washington crossing a river in a boat, and the book is a story about him going across the river. She’s familiar with George Washington because she’s seen another painting of him when going over the Presidents of the United States with Ana. She immediately said, “Look Mami! Daddy’s reading a book about George Washington! He’s one of the Presidents in my pictures!” She looked through the pages for a little while before putting the book down. I assume she was looking for more pictures–that’s what I did when I was little. It didn’t take long for her to get bored and go play with something else.

We read books together before bed every night, then Pea climbs up to her top bunk and looks at books in her bed before she goes to sleep while I hang out on the bottom bunk and read. Last night, as she was looking at her books and going to sleep she whispered down to me, “Daddy, are you looking at the book about George Washington in the boat?”

Cool! She just made a connection between two paintings she’s seen at different times and something the person in those painting did, and it’s stuck in her memory! She also understands the that I’m reading the story (learning) about what happened from the book. Hopefully this will lead to more questions about George Washington in the future. Maybe she’ll even ask me to tell her the story.

Stuff You Should See– December 9th through December 15th

How to Use Gmail as Your Central, Universal Communications Hub – One of these days, one of these days…I'm going to implement these suggestions. At least the ones I haven't already implemented.

End of the Culture Wars? – Really interesting take on the widening gap between the moderately educated and the highly educated. The numbers on divorce rates alone are pretty staggering.

Toasted Coconut Cake with Coconut Filling and Coconut Buttercream – I'm thinking of throwing down again.

The Crisis of the Middle – hmmm….interesting.

Montessori at Home? – We're working up a Montessori area right now. The materials are the catch for us, but you can build as you go.

Cutting Back on Screen Time

From today’s Tennessean, Dr. Frank Boehm calls for replacing t.v. time with book time:

If we began to encourage our children to replace screen time with reading books, they would be more able to counter ignorance in themselves and others by being able to enter conversa­tions with real facts rather than sound bites from television programs and the Internet.

I won’t pretend our kids don’t watch any television. They do. But we’ve found it easier to limit their tube time by getting rid of cable and only using a Roku player to stream Netflix. This allows us to limit what they see to very specific programs and zero commercials. An added benefit of using only a streaming player is that when a show ends, it’s over. There aren’t any “Coming up next…” announcements. Pea usually gets up and turns the television off when her show ends, saying, “We don’t watch t.v. all day.”

It’s been good for us (the parents) as well. We watch considerably less television now. Gone are the days of flipping through channels looking for something to watch. The only time the television is on at our house is when we sit down to watch a specific movie or an episode or two of a television program we’re streaming after the kids’ bed time. If you thought DVD was the best way to watch a series, you should try streaming it!

Again, no commercials, and we spend a lot more time reading and talking than we do staring at a screen.

We’re also saving a ton of money. For the cost of one month of cable we were able to buy the streamer to connect to the television, and Netflix is less than $10 per month. Cutting cable completely may not work for every family, especially if you like to watch sports live, but we love it!

Image Credit

Stuff You Should See– October 13th through October 28th

‘Stranger Danger’ and the Decline of Halloween – "We can kill off Halloween, or we can accept that it isn't dangerous and give it back to the kids. Then maybe we can start giving them back the rest of their childhoods, too."

Amazing Beans: Black Lentils/Kidney/Garbanzo – Giving this a shot soon.

YOU are Superman – Mamapedia™ Voices – “If eight park moms and one visionary principal could pull our little neighborhood school out of its twenty-five year nose-dive, surely others could do the same thing. If Waiting for Superman could spark a national grassroots school reform movement that would pull us all out of the giant mess we’re in, now wouldn’t that be something?”

A ‘Do-Over’ on the Mortgage Market? Project Mayhem Fallout – I won't even entertain the idea, but it's an entertaining read.

If Every Website Got A Dramatic Movie Adaptation – Damned clever.

3 Simple Ways You’re Missing Out On Mobile – Great post by my buddy Gavin!

Dropping Science Like Galileo Dropped The Orange

science_parentingI have a few friends that are expecting babies soon. Well, their wives are…my friends just look like they are expecting babies soon.

I was reminded of this really cool gift a friend gave me. This book basically gives you an idea about what goes on in the human brain as it develops and what to expect behavior-wise based on what’s going on physiologically.

Oh wait…first let me tell you how you should parent your kids. It basically goes like this…

You should parent your kids the way you see fit–don’t pay attention to unsolicited advice from other people.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, if you are like me and didn’t don’t know anything about babies, you may find this book interesting. Good gift for expecting parents too, especially if they lean more towards an AP philosophy.

© 2024 Scott Adcox

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑