Friday Foccacia
A new reason to hate Comcast - Yes, I know there are some people that think they are Comcastic, but I have aboslutely no regrets leaving Comcast in the past. First, I am happy about saving money, as I have since switching from Cable to DirecTV. Second, I am thrilled that with Verizon Fios, I don’t have to worry (so far) about bandwidth throttling or the fact that they lie about it. But now they have acquired Plaxo, a company that thinks spamming your contact list is tantamount to being a “Social Network” company. Even if I did believe that Plaxo is Now Less Evil (which I don’t), I would be damned if I was to turn over all my personal information and contacts into the hands of Comcast.
There is something wrong with these people - Who can seriously look at a 15 year old girl that is 5′ 9″ and weights 105 pounds and tell her she needs to loose a few pounds? My dear friend Mitch McDad caught a bit of flack on this post when he said women do this for women and not for men. But I have to say, that I agree. There is no guy looking at some emaciated girl thinking, “I wish my wife/gf/so looked like that!” Simply put, most men don’t find that “hot” at all. Well… except for the designer’s themselves, and they seem to have some sort of vendetta against women, or at least that it the way it seems to me.
Be sure your children are safe from online predators… then stop and check again - Liz from This Full House got her own frightening wake up call on Internet Safety. Go read it. Then go and double check everything you have done to ensure your child can’t fall prey to some sick bastard that is stalking them on the Internet.
Like something out of a sitcom - IzzyMom has the Best.Newspaper.Clipping.Ever. Perhaps, I am a bit insulated here in the New York/New Jersey area from vast trailer parks of this country and those that consider Wal-Mart a place you need to get dressed up to go to.
Easy (Well Easier) for him to say - Adventure Dad has a good article on how being (or getting) fit is his Favorite Parenting Resource. If I wasn’t already working on improving myself, I think I might have been ashamed. He makes some exellent points about how most people think about getting in shape all wrong.
If you don’t why not? - Have you checked out Ivy and Heather at Home Ec 101? If not, you really should. Tips, tricks, recipes, and every so often a guest tip (wink). Ivy may be having an unnatural love affair with a container of Bar Keeper’s Friend (I’m kidding… mostly) but their advise is helpful, friendly and has saved my butt on more than one occasion (and that is no joke).
Exploding Patio Sets?
OK, not really… but now that I have your attention, let me tell you what happened this past weekend. It was Saturday, a relatively warm, cloudy day here in New Jersey. Like every Saturday for the past few months, my routine was the same, I would go out on my back deck, enjoy a cup of coffee and my morning cigarette (yes, I know… don’t go there), the dogs run around the yard, and then I get ready and head off to the gym. So like every other Saturday morning, I knew exactly what the condition of the yard was (mostly I note whether I will be mowing or doing yard work that day). Nothing was particularly amiss or out of the usual.
As I was coming home, TheWife calls me and says the our patio set is “broken” (I really must speak to her about her ability to understate a situation). I arrived home to find that the tempered glass top of our patio set had shattered into nothing but a chards of glass. I mean tiny. The pieces were so small that you could fit two or three of them on a dime. I found this quite baffling. Now granted tempered glass is supposed to break in a way that prevents thos huge sharp edges from forming, but in the past, I had only seen the tiny pieces at point of impact when something broke the glass, and the rest sort of hung together in a “sheet” of broken pieces. In this case the entire tabletop was completely in chards. I did my best Gil Grissom imitation (other than taking photos… dammit), looking for a cause. There were no rocks, sticks, branches from a tree or other projectiles within the rubble. The ring that protects the center hold where the umbrella goes had fallen straight down and landed on the leg of the table, so obviously the table came straight down, and not at some angle. There was no blood to indicate that a squirrel or other animal had landed on it crashing through. I even entertained the notion that since I live in the flight path of Newark Liberty International Airport that it was a case of “blue ice” and that in the midday sun, it had just melted… but even that would have left some sort of residue from the dye (and or contained waste…ewww). No, nothing seemed to fit.
The table, was one I had purchased from K-Mart a couple of years ago, one of their Martha Stewart line of tables. I was talking about it this week to somebody, and decided to look up some information on Tempered Glass, and at first found this article discussing how when tempered glass is compromised in some way that it can seem like it just “explodes.” Back into Google for a search of “Tempered Glass Exploding” and there… the first article up (at least at the time I did the search), was this little piece called, “Sounds of Summer: Martha Stewart Tables Shattering.” Turns out, this “phenomenon” that had struck our table was not at all uncommon.
There is apparently even a class action lawsuit that is in the works against Martha Stewart Living Omnipedia and JRA Funiture. However, JRA Funiture filed Chapter 7 Bakruptcy (total liquidation) last year, so at least they are no longer the source (depending on inventories of course) of the tables, but it also means no recovery for the Class Action Lawsuit either.
I’d like to think that with JRA Funiture out of business that this is the end of the situation, but to be honest, reading how Sears (and/or Kmart) and Martha Stewart Living have not even (so far as I can tell) acknowledged this as a problem, outside of saying they will work with consumers under warranty, leaves me a little ill at ease with them, leaving me doubting whether I want to trust them again. Problem is, at least the old sets were also farmed out under different names to other chains as well. JRA’s funiture was also sold under the Hampton Bay name at Home Depot, as well as being carried by Sam’s Club, Target and Safeway. (Only Home Depot has has a similar report of an exploding table that I have been able to find so far).
If you have (or had) one of these sets, if your table is still under warranty you can call K-mart Customer Service about it at 866-562-7848 (though K-Mart has not specifically said they will honor the manufacturer’s warranty) or Home Depot (who will honor the warranty) at 800-585-9969. Other than that you are probably out of luck. So what does this all mean? I guess, most of all be careful if you are going to buy a glass top patio set from a discount retailer. In my case, I am thinking a nice teak set might be in our future instead of risking it with glass again.
Fat Fight
I, like many people have battled weight issues a good part of my life. Despite what many “skinny” people will claim, it is not a “choice.” Is it something I can do something about? In my case, yes. At least I have managed to do it before, and with weight loss of almost 16 pounds since April 17th, I am making some progress again.
But this isn’t really about that fight. No, this is something that has been simmering since my Step-Father-In-Law passed away from Lung Cancer last year. It bothered me at the time, but I wasn’t completely sure why, but there was a gnawing at me about this. Mostly, I guess because I felt it was so unfair that by the time it was “discovered” he was given six-to-nine months and didn’t last that long, that I dismissed what was bothering me as just the sort of bitterness you have when you lose a loved one to illness.
Well, a couple of weeks ago, my uncle was diagnosed with Lung cancer. Fortunately, in his case, it is currently considered early enough that while the long term prognosis is not good (can it ever be?), there actually IS so far, a long term prognosis. Something, that my Step-Father-In-Law never “enjoyed.” I started rethinking it, and using “the Google” to seek some others information and similar type of incidents and stories. I probably shouldn’t be shocked in this day and age to actually find a Blog dedicated to the topic of fat prejudice in health care. This is exactly what was bothering me all this time, and a couple of delicately placed questions to my mother-in-law confirmed this.
He had complained of shortness-of-breath and several other symptoms for quite some time before his diagnosis. Every time his Primary Care Physicians “diagnosis” was that he needed to lose weight, and that then it would no longer be an issue. Symptoms overlooked, simply because, well if you are fat… that is the problem and the end of the effort by the physician (in these cases).
I would love to think that this is infrequent and isolated with a few “bad seeds,” but when you see things like, UNC-Chapel Hill: Obesity May Keep Some Women from Getting Screened for Breast, Cervical Cancer it seems clear that this is not the case, and Kate Harding has a excellent breakdown of this story and how (and why) this issue exists. (On a side note, Kate’s Shapely Prose blog is an excellent read.) There are even studies published on the Stigma and Discrimination in Weight Mangement and Obesity.
Of course, the media is not much help in this regard either. Yes, there are some articles that point properly at some causes and issues, but doing so is “too politcally correct” for some writers, and just a lifestyle choice for others. Of course even some governments get involved as well when they do something like tell a person that they are ‘too fat to adopt.’
It is like continuing to get picked on by the school yard bully for being overweight. Only the sonsequences to your health could be far more severe.
Just Because… OK?
I’ve been stewing on this one a while, and while I have made mention of it before, it was always just more of an afterthought; but after encountering it yet again this past weekend, I think I have finally had enough. By now I am sure most of you (well all three of you), are saying “get to the point” so I will. Why is it that “everybody” (especially it seems older people, and for some reason very religious people) seem to have this particularly invasive idea that they have the right (or almost responsibility) to inquire about your reproductive plans? Oh, and if that isn’t enough, then they are going to judge you on it based on what they have determined is the “right” thing.
When TheWife and I were first married, it was the constant (and somewhat typical) question of “when are you going to start a family?” The fact that we waited 6 years was almost unconscionable to some people and family members. I won’t even get into what my poor sister has to go through since she and her husband have opted to not have children. For these people, can I just point out that people actually get married for reasons other than to start pushing out children.
Of course, fortunately the reason that we did not have a child right away was because of choice. I know (both in real life, and many others that I have come to know through blogging) that haven’t because of medical problem. This of course serves to act as a big slap in the face, and can (and usually does) open some painful emotions in people struggling to have a child, when these reproductive nazis…er… well intended individuals, come along and decide to poke their noses in and demanding answers.
Lately, the new question has come up about when are we going to have another child (now with the extra bonus of them reminding me that I am not getting any younger). The incredulous looks and shocked to downright snarky replies we get when we say we are done with one is a sight to behold. You would think that I had just put an end to the chances of the human race’s chance of survival. Then they begin the prodding, because they all need to know the “real” reason. Is it physical problems? Is there something wrong with LatteGirl that makes of afraid of another child? Is it money? (because apparently when you have enough kids, you can live on love) Wouldn’t it be easier to have more if TheWife didn’t work? (That one of course is insulting on assorted levels and goes into other issues I am not going to touch now) They just cannot accept that this was the choice we made. I had somewhat jokingly come up with the response of “We can only afford to raise and spoil one properly” just to try and head off the amount of time I would have to deal with their probing questions. But to be honest, I am tired of using it as an answer, because I see no reason that I should feel compelled to answer.
The answer is “Just Because” and I am done with it. LatteGirl is quite well adjusted thank you, and I know plenty of other only children at various stages of life to know that being an only child does not guarantee that they will not know how function in society as you seem to like to claim. While I like to use the term, somewhat loosely “spoiled” she certainly isn’t. She knows and has boundaries, she can play well with others, and is able to wait her turn, and doesn’t expect to always be first, just because that is “what she has always known” without competition from siblings. I don’t question your choice to have more than one child, even if it means going beyond your financial means (well, except for you Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar!! 17 kids? WTF is wrong with you people?) .
While I am busy annoying people today, let us take a side rant here. Why is it that people are against the use of condoms, or birth control because it “messes up” some divine plan, and that if “god” (or your personal choice of term) sees fit to bless you with a child, you should not “interfere” with this plan… but yet these same people seem to have absolutely no problem with fertility clinics and drugs that attempt to help in difficult situations (just to be clear, I do not have a problem with EITHER situation, I just don’t understand why messing with “the plan” is OK when you want to have a child, but not when you don’t). Simiarly confusing to me is why there is nobody protesting, bombing or trying to shame men that go to a place that offers a vasectomy. Doesn’t that mess with “the plan” as well?
What does this little side rant have to do with anything? Well, it really all ties up quite nicely in the end… Stay the hell out of our choices. My wife and I will choose what is best for us. And the only reason I will give from now on is “Just Because!”
TechParent: Picasa Web Albums
It doesn’t take much to know that at present Flickr rules the image sharing world. Discourse from long time users over Flickr adding video recently (and some time ago, complaints when Flickr finally integrated its login with Yahoo!), aside very few people have anything bad to say about the product. But that being said, often the underdogs sometimes try harder and are more willing to take risks and offer newer and cooler features in their attempts to catch up. And I wanted to see what if any affect this had on the picture sharing world. After all, most parents love having a nice and convenient way to share their photos with friends and/or relatives.
My first stop, and this weeks spotlight is on Google’s Picasa Web Albums. This extension to the Picasa photo library software that Google acquired in 2004 seemed like an excellent place to start. The Picasa software was tops in managing your photos, circa 2004, but has grown a bit long in the tooth and has fallen behind other competing products both online and off, with very little in the way of capabilities added with the exception of adding the Web Albums portion.
I was immediately put off and somewhat shocked at the 1GB space limit. Where they really serious? I mean sure virtually every photo sharing service offers some sort of "pro" upgrade that gives you additional functionality or the ability to upload more per month, but a flat 1GB of space for storage before having to purchase additional? You can purchase additional storage, but this is where things get a bit murky, because the space you purchase is "shared" between your Gmail and Picasa accou nts. I guess this is good for some people, but I have been using Gmail since 2004, and haven’t come anywhere near hitting that 6 GB storage limit, so I guess it really doesn’t matter that the space is shared, and conversely if I go over my 10 GB of purchased space, my Picasa account can actually use some of the excess Gmail space I have.
But things like photo albums are really meant to be cumulative over time, and in theory only grow over time.
As for the product itself, as like many Google products the interface is sparse, clean looking and in theory simple. I say in theory, because while there is not a lot of confusing additives, it is also not particularly intuitive or friendly. It is not difficult to figure out, but some of the interface choices (and the number of clicks to do virtually anything) can be annoying.
You don’t have much (read… ANY) control on how the album is displayed outside of choosing small, medium or large thumbnails. Some features like being able to pin the features onto a map, may appeal to some, but I don’t see any great appeal for this feature to make it worth storing pictures here over another site.
I also found the "slow" upload (upload large full sized photos instead of scaled back one) to be true to its word. It is slow. Painfully slow. So if you are planning to dump a lot up there, have something else planned to kill the time.
In the end, it is there. And if you happen to use Picasa anyway, and you already have a Google account, well it is there, and (for the first GB) it is free. But, I certainly wouldn’t "switch" to this service from something else. I’m really surprised, I expected the company that was smart enough to start the search engine ability to search images (or at least the first to make it easy) would make more of this service. But so far, that is not the case.
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