Ideas that were better on the drawing board

Posted on March 25, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Pants in a Pinch – a pair of pants that is vacuumed into a disc the size of your palm that is actually a pair of pants for your 3 to 36 month old child (up to 6T supposedly available by special order). I get the idea that these are “In case of Emergency” pants, but at $20 pair I am not so sure how great a deal it is. I mean how many people travel with a small child, and don’t have some sort of backup apparel in a bag, the trunk of the car, etc where you can stash something for these types of situations? And I guess whether you used them or not, you would have to keep buying a new size as you go along, as with the rest of the clothes, but then what do you do with the old one? Pass it along? Maybe I am being too hard on them, but it just doesn’t seem to make a heck of a lot of sense to me.

BabyPlays – I heard this described as the “Netflix of Baby Toys.” I dunno, to me this sounds like an idea that would have (and perhaps should have) come (and more importantly GONE) during the dotBomb era of bad business plans. Let you child play with toys that come in the mail, play with them, then send them back and get new toys. Oh sure, at a marketing meeting this sounds great, it is a great pitch story. Keeps parents from having too many toys around the house, and reduces clutter, of toys that have a limited life in a child’s world. Marketing. But it starts to fall apart in practice as I see it, especially with infant and small child toys where you would think this makes the most sense.

Toys from small kids are generally soft and contain lots of foam. It doesn’t take much to immediately think about every child that has drooled, chewed and spit up on that toy before it arrives in your mailbox. Of course the company says that they sanitize the toys, but how becomes the big issue. Too little santizing, the surface is clean but everything that is caught in the foam remains behind only to be reconstituted when your child’s wet drooling mouth comes in contact with it. Too much santizing and the foam breaks down, and the toy rendered less that appealing. $36/month gets you 4 toys per month (and plans go up from there). I don’t know about you, but with a minimum plan of 3 months or $108 total, I can get an awful lot of toys (especially baby toys) for that price. Again, I guess there is a market of some sort for this type of service, but the thought of rental toys just doesn’t work for me.

Scan-It Operation Checkpoint Toy XRay – Sure there are toys for kids that want to play doctor, be a veternarian, or be a princess, or a knight.   You can be a fireman (excuse me fire person), you can pretend to be many great things.  But up until now, if your child’s imagination had them in a place where they wanted to be an underpaid screener at the airport, there were no toys for them to simulate this career path… until now.  The Scan-It Operation Checkpoint allows you child to check for metal in their toys as the Scan-It will beep when metal passes through.  Who knows, perhaps with these kinds of toys, in another 10 or 15 years, maybe we will have people at the scanners that can actually do their job, and not slow you down.  But I doubt it.

Photobucket Faux Pas – The photo sharing site Photobucket ran into a heap of trouble with users, when they deleted pictures of diaper clad babies by Good Mama Diapers, as claimed it was because the pictures depicted ‘nudity’  They have since,  backed down and admitted it was their mistake.

Seen a dumb product (or an awesome one) that you think should be highlighted on TechParent (look for the new separate blog coming soon), e-mail it to me at jaymonster at the gmail dot com.

Filed Under: Better Home, Kids Stuff, TechParent Tuesday

Un-Imbalanced

Posted on February 12, 2008 · 2 Comments

I usually laugh at parents that post about the mythical beast of “balance” between work and home.  I do this usually because it seems like the search is for the one “right” answer, and anybody who has been playing this high wire act long enough knows… there is no one right answer, nor is it even really a constant.  It changes as life changes.

I have basically considered myself pretty lucky.  I have for the most part been able to find a situation that has worked well for me.  Sure, I have passed over a few promotions and positions that would have paid more, but required extensive travel.  But the reality is that I have had that luxury.  I have still managed to make a good enough living, and still managed to be around for LatteGirl.  Have a missed some things or am I around as much as I would like to be?  Of course not, but I have found a place that works for me.

Well, I did.  But now that is being challenged.  I got an offer that is too good to refuse.  There is some risk involved (minimal) but high reward potential.  But it means longer hours, more travel, and a whole lot more stress.  Oh sure I guess I could quit and look for something else, but there is no guarantee that this would provide me with any more flexibility.  I can almost certainly make as much if not more money if I start to commute into Manhattan again.  But, even when I was managing to find the time to be home, I was so wiped out, that I might as well not have been home at all.

So, what is my point?  I guess a big mea culpa.  That even if you accept that “balance” is whatever you can do, there are going to be times, that you will still feel off balance.   That even if you know the beast if only a myth, you will still at times find yourself struggling to find him.

Filed Under: Better Home, My So Called Life, Proud Parent

Food Battle

Posted on January 15, 2008 · 2 Comments

Since more than 50% of people are against animal cloning according to a study done by the International Food Information Council, I am confident that I am not alone when I say how disappointed I am at the FDA approving cloned animals to be used in our food supply. What bothers me more than that, is that the companies that lobbied the FDA to get this through, are aware (as I am sure the FDA is as well) at the negative response, and because of this have gone through the effort to hide it by refusing to require food derived from cloned animals to be marked as such. Sort of a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell for Clones.

This of course leads to the potential for labels from those that do not use cloned animals to mark their products as such. But let us look for a second at an issue that I have mentioned here before, the use of synthetic hormones in milk. Dairies that have chosen to not use Monsanto’s rBGH/rBST should under the same theory be “free” to let consumers know that they produce a product that does not use these hormones, giving consumers that would rather not use them a choice. Simple enough, right? Wrong! Monsanto tried the court route, with mixed results, certainly not good enough for them. Suddenly now there appears to be a genuine campaign to get these labels removed, so that consumers will not be allowed to chose for themselves.

Is this what the FDA means by “free to label or mark their products?”  The simple fact is, that they assume an uneducated consumer is the best consumer, because that means more profits at the expense of your health… not that you would know it, because the FDA… who is supposed to be watching out for the best interest of the people, are all too quickly giving in to pressure from politics and big business.

It is coming to a point, where regardless of how careful you are or try to be with what you feed your family, these corporations have the money to take away your right to know what it is that you are eating.  If this all sounds “anti-business” it isn’t.  It is about anti-corrupt-businesses.  Businesses like Monsanto that have no ethics and cheat and lie to the public and try to buy off politicians.  Heck, I have all the respect in the world for companies like Burger King.  Are they selling products that are, well questionable in nutritional value and awful in regards to fat?  Of course.  And they make no bones about it.  They tell you simply the way it is.  We cater to fat people with big appetites.  Sure, a bacon cheeseburger is loaded with fat.  But if you are a big person, with a big appetite, and want something that has 5 layers of cheese, burger and bacon, and want to consume all that fat in one sitting, then we are happy to serve you.  It is not healthy.  It is not smart.  But they aren’t trying to get lawmakers to ban health food stores for “misleading customers by claiming that their tofu is a better choice” as their defense.  It is disgusting… but it is honest.   You want to eat that… you know what you are getting and are making a choice.

Unfortunately, when it comes to cloning (and unless we can stop it soon milk as well), you can’t make such a choice.

Filed Under: Better Home, Corporate sneaks, Health and Safety, Political Parenting, Rantings

Timing is everything

Posted on November 26, 2007 · 5 Comments

OK, yesterday the Super Sized job my wife ordered began. Front Stairs Gone, Side walk Gone.

Now… here comes the rain! And it looks to planning on staying for a spell. Oh goody. The back door leads to the yard. Which we now get to trudge through the mud (thanks to the rain of course) to get in and out of the house.

There are plenty of “laws” that don’t exactly work every single time. But Murphy’s law? Count on it every dang time.

(Update: Link Fixed, sorry about that)

Filed Under: Better Home, House and Home

Finding food close to home

Posted on April 30, 2007 · 1 Comment

I have spoken before about the benefits of supporting a sustainable culture when it comes to food.  I am not talking (necessarily) about Organic.  Because while yes, certainly buying organic has virtues also, they do not (necessarily) always translate well into sustainable.

As a matter of fact, if you check your area, you will probably find farmers that practice good sustainable (and “nearly” organic… the big problem being the the expense and paperwork involved in getting that seal which can be prohibitive to a small local farmer).

Now of course we all know that it benefits the planet if your fruits, vegetables, and so on do not need to be trucked or steam shipped thousands of miles to your grocer.  Few will argue the benefits to the local economy of keeping those dollars closer to home that you spend.

But until it becomes news, few really pay attention all that closely to the fact that regulations and laws governing food, are lax or non-exitent in many of these countries that many big agri-business source from for cheap goods.   And even then, most of it goes by the wayside.

I mean, most people are(were) aware of the e.coli outbreak as laid out in this  SF Chronicle article,  and I certainly hope everybody paid attention to the Peanut Butter recall, but how many people started thinking twice about where their bananas came from, even after Chiquita Bananas was fined $25 million dollars for paying known terrorists protection money to guard their farms in Columbia?  And while, unless you have been living under a rock, you have no doubt at least heard about the recall of Pet Food, but how many paid enough attention to the story to stick around and hear that animal feed has caused a quarantine of at least one farm where melamine was found in the urine of animals meant for human consumption?

With the warm weather upon us, we are going to try and make an effort to not only shop locally and sustainably, but even hopefully visit a few farms, where not only can we get some great fresh food, but we can actually talk to the farmers, and hopefully teach a lesson or two to LatteGirl about where are food comes from (or should).

Want to find sustainable farmers in your area?  Then check out the Eat Well Guide over at Sustainable Table. Visit your local Farmer’s Markets when and where available.
Ask questions.  Build a better relationship with the food you eat, and your body just may thank you for it.

Filed Under: Better Home, Earth Friendly, Health and Safety
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »