Tonight, my wife pointed out that the picture I posted of the IKEA NOT lamp is not the lamp I bought. Maybe IKEA needs to get its website catalog in order. The lamp I purchased […]
Category: Living
Why NOT?
My daughter is taking a Japanese class with four other kids. My wife pulled the whole thing together, finding a teacher and opening our home for the classes. Anne deserves more credit than she gives herself. Kick-off gathering took place on Monday, the meeting of teacher, students, and their parents.
For days earlier, we scrubbed and cleaned, trying to get the house in order. The getting in order involved a Sunday trip to IKEA College Park, where I found this cool but cheap floor lamp. Seven bucks. I bought four.
Where Kids Fly Safe Online?
I simply couldn’t find time to blog this week, on my personal site. Busy week at the office, with the Consumer Electronics Show—and I didn’t even attend! I feel for my boss, who traveled to Las Vegas and soon goes onto San Francisco for Macworld.
My first catchup post is followup to my two posts, “What Kids Reveal Online” and “Minimizing Kids’ Online Risks“. Jan. 16, 2006, Business Week has a story about new online social network, Yfly.com, which opens on February 1. Apparently, Jessica Simpson’s soon-to-be ex-spouse Nick Lachey is behind the venture, which seeks to provide teens a safe place to socialize online.
There’s Still Time
Tomorrow work resumes for lots of folks, following the great Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa holiday. I blew off a bunch of vacation days during the holiday so that I wouldn’t lose them. Turns out, I needed the time off, and more. No doubt, other folks could say the same.
It’s 2006, but I’m living in the past. My calendar says December 2005 because I have yet to find a replacement. New calendars will be gone soon, now typically discounted to 50 percent. For years, I bought the Hansen Planetarium “Wonders of the Universe” calendar, but it stopped publication couple years back. Before the Web really took off, I subscribed by U.S. mail to the planetarium’s “Sky Watch” newsletter. I have yet to find a good replacement for “Wonders of the Universe.” Someone gave me the 2005 calendar that’s still on my wall, of Canadian provinces, in English and French.
Minimizing Kids' Online Risks
As the parent of an 11 year-old that is active online, I’m concerned about the risks she might encounter there. I also realize that my daughter is fairly insulated from many dangers, because of simple rules she willingly agrees to follow. Risks remain, as they would anywhere, walking along Capitol Hill at night, driving fast on the highway, or climbing a ladder to change a light bulb. Living is about taking risks. But taking unnecessary online risks, particularly when there are predators online hunting teenagers, is another matter. Adult content websites such as hdpornvideo are widely available and accessible all over the internet, but should only be viewed by those of us that are fully mature enough to understand what they represent.
Matchmaking Marketing
I am fascinated by marketing and how it is filtered through culture. This morning, I clicked through to a news story from Express India, for which RSS feed I subscribe. A banner ad for Indian matrimonial site Shaadi.com piqued my interest, because of its emphasis on matchmaking. There are similar services in the U.S., but they—even match.com—focus on dating or personal ads.
Shaadi.com’s marketing pitch is about finding the right match, utilizing the company’s eMatchmaker technology. The service’s focus isn’t about dating, but I would be shocked if the technology turned out to be dramatically different from other “singles” services.
Global Village
As a Cusper, I share some Baby Boomer values, although I shun most of them. However, I am drawn to some of the Boomer idealism, granted with pragmatic bent. And I’m still pretty idealistic, even in my, uh hum, forties.
The World Wide Web appealed to me because of my idealism, and the belief that the vast communications network would empower the masses.
Christmas Presents
Santa brought some good gifts this year, but some wallet busters, I might add. I’m not that happy with the presents given to my wife, who I think deserves much better than she got. Simple presents, but stuff she wanted, appeared under the Christmas tree. Goodies included a delightful iPod case, CD, and DVD.
For my daughter, my wife took care of the thoughtful presents, while I tackled the tough task of finding adorable and unexpected manga items. Through Google search, I found many of the gifts, some purchased on eBay and almost all paid for using PayPal, regardless of seller.
The Christmas I Couldn’t Forget
When I was in fourth grade, my parents both had jobs—a novelty in Northern Maine during the late 1960s but start of a national trend. Dad worked as a supervisor at the food processing plant and mom was night manager at a local hotel/motel. Financially, those were good years, when both my parents generated income. My mother would later lose her position, after the elegant facility burned down under mysterious circumstances. But that’s another story.
Christmas Eve, when my three younger sisters and I could open one present, I hardly could contain my want. Actually, I couldn’t contain it. My parents had gone out to food shop, preparation for feast as part of a spectacularly planned Christmas Day. They could afford to spend more on us that year than ever. Quite excited were they to give to their kids.
I Don't See the Justification
Yesterday’s SouthCoastToday.com story about a student’s investigation by the Department of Homeland Security is breath stopping. Apparently, the “senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung’s tome on Communism called The Little Red Book“. I have to admit that Mao’s communist manifesto wouldn’t be on my reading list, but like this kid I probably would want it for research on a college paper about communism.
Cold War is over, right? The war on terror is against Muslim extremists. Right? Last I checked, Muslim extremism doesn’t have much in common with atheistic communism. So why is a kid filling out a university library book request on communism, “leaving his name, address, phone number, and Social Security number” getting “visited at his parents’ home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security?” And I have to ask: The Feds are monitoring library book requests now?
Defending Wikipedia
Wikipedia has been under fire since a prankster changed an entry for John Lawrence Seigenthaler, which indicated that he was involved in the assassination of former senator Robert Kennedy. The change has since been corrected. […]
Steve Makes a Good Case
In today’s Washington Post, AOL founder Steve Case eloquently argues that Time Warner should split into four companies. He writes that in early 2002: “I proposed to the company’s board that it was time to ‘liberate’ and split the conglomerate into four freestanding companies—Time Warner Cable, Time Warner Entertainment, Time Inc. and AOL—each with its own strategy, stock, balance sheet, management team, and board.”
He contends that the four units would “benefit from the separation” and “that other parts of Time Warner would achieve similar results if set free from the conglomerate. Time Warner has proven to be too big, too complex, too conflicted and too slow-moving—in other words, too much like a classic conglomerate—to seize new opportunities”. He sees big potential from separation, and I can’t disagree.