Sylvia's Blog

Nexus One voice recognition is pretty good!

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:22:00 +0000

I've been using the Google Nexus One now for about a week. Last night I stayed up late, reading through the users guide online, and read up on voice recognition. It works pretty well! I've started to use it to jot down tasks in Remember The Milk and it can really beat typing in terms of speed. It's been quite accurate when I speak slowly and clearly - though the note I made to write up this particular blog entry got garbled. But that was the first one to be completely wrong - most of the previous ones went in correctly.

I have not been happy at all with text entry - it's just REALLY tedious and slow to get it typed in correctly - so I'm excited to have another option.

Switching from the Palm Treo to Nexus One/Google

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:24:00 +0000

I'm making the switch to the cloud. After 13 years (since November 1997) of uninterrupted and relatively happy Palm usage, I'm making the switch to the Nexus One and Google accounts. This is a really big deal for me - I've been thinking about it for months now. Originally I was thinking about switching to the iPhone, but when my husband got a free Nexus One (he decided to stick with his iPhone), I decided to try that out.

Like I said, I've been quite happy with my Palm Treo for long time. But it really seems like the Palm is a dead end. Pretty much all the new apps are being written for the iPhone and Android. So, I'm converting.

This is probably not the best time to be writing up an account of the switch, since I'm particularly frustrated by a formatting problem in Gmail. I'll update later if there's interest.

1. Contacts - Moving the contacts over to Google contacts was a breeze. In my Palm desktop (version 6.2.2) I selected all the contacts, clicked on File, Export vCard, exported everything out, and them in Google contacts, imported them into a new group I created. One issue was - if you have an equal sign (=) in the notes, everything after it doesn't come in. Once I figured that out, I just did a search for the equal signs, and deleted them. I didn't have groups in the Palm contacts that I cared to keep, so I just imported all into one group. If I had, it would have been easy to just export a group at a time, and them import into a corresponding Google contacts group.

One thing that I wasn't happy with in Google Contacts is that you're only able to search in the notes of a contact on the web interface, and not on the contact application on the Nexus One. That's not good for me, because I do those searches all the time. I would put a keyword in the notes - for instance, "tennis". Then on the Palm, whenever I wanted a tennis partner, I just searched for the word tennis, and all my tennis partners showed up. I'm going to miss that feature.

2. Calendar - Moving the calendar over to Google calendar wasn't too bad either. I ended up using CompanionLink for Google. It looks like it's designed to continuously sync up between the Palm and Google, but I just used it for a one time sync. I would have paid for it, too, because from what I read the other options are not that easy, but there was a 14 day trial, and I just needed a one time load. From a relatively quick overview, it looks like events imported fine. I should probably review it a little more.

Oh, great. I just looked at one of my events, and I'm not able to edit it in the Gmail calendar interface - it just says "loading" and then never loads. Sheesh.

Okay. Shut down the browser and restarted, and it works.

3. Tasks/ToDos - I was hoping I'd be able to use Google tasks, but it's not full-featured enough - there's no offline application for it. I checked out a few other apps, but ended up using Remember the Milk. It's taking quite a bit of adjusting - after all, I'm been in the Palm environment for 13 years - but so far, things are going reasonably well. I paid for premium support, and have had quick responses to my questions (a day or so).

To import tasks, you email a list of tasks to your own personal email account. It loses the notes, and groupings, but at least it gets them in there. If you had a lot of tasks and were serious about keeping groups ("lists" in Remember the Milk), you could import in batches, and then move them over to the group that you want. I put the notes for those tasks that had them in manually.

By the way - notes are really strange in Remember the Milk. You have to add them manually - there's not automatically a notes field. Plus, you can add multiple notes. I have no idea why they did it this way - I can't think of any advantage over just having one note field that shows up like a regular field.

4. Memos/Notes - I checked out EverNote (I think it's beta on the Android, it hung a lot) and a few others, but at the moment I'm using Gmail drafts, organized with labels, for my memos. I'm frustated right now with a major problem - it seems that whatever I copy and paste into a new draft on the Gmail web interface, it looks great there, but when I look at it on the Nexus One Gmail app, it's just a big blob of text, with no line feeds. Impossible to read or work with. So, either this gets fixed or I need to find another solution.

(Update - it needs to be in rich text format. That shows up fine on the Nexus One for me, plain text does NOT. If you have a link above your email that says "rich formatting", then you're probably currently in plain text format, and should click on it to get into rich text format.)

I've made a commitment to the Nexus One now - or at the very least, to cloud computing. But there's a lot that I find a little frustrating. For instance, I'm a heavy user of the main Palm apps - tasks, memos, calendar, contacts. To get to them on my palm Treo is a matter of seconds and a few clicks. To get where I need to go on the Nexus One takes me a lot longer - lots more clicks and slides.

Typing on the virtual keyboard is much slower and more error prone than typing on my palm Treo.

Overall - I'm excited to make the move, and I look forward to trying out all the applications. Hopefully the current frustrations are just a bump on the road.

WTO Anniversary - my notes from when it happened

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:31:00 +0000

It's coming up on the 10th anniversary of the WTO in Seattle! I was there at the time - below are some notes I took and sent out to friends. I thought it might be interesting for people to read.

-----Original Message-----

From: Sylvia Moestl [mailto:tower@seanet.com]

Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 1999 11:31 PM

To: Undisclosed-Recipient:

Subject: Street level view of the anti-WTO riot in downtown Seattle Tuesday

Since I work downtown (shop.theglobe.com), I got to work at 6:45 today to try and avoid problems such as road closures, traffic jams, etc., caused by the anti-WTO protesters. The traffic was very light even for that early in the day. Many people were probably just staying out of downtown entirely. I made two forays into the prime protest area around the convention center, one around 10:30 and then when the curfew was announced for tonight and people at my office were encouraged to leave, I wandered downtown again. That was about 5:30. I hope you enjoy reading my notes about what I saw.

As I got closer to the epicenter of the riots, the scattered groups of 3 or 4 protesters started congealing into large crowds. I was glad I was dressed more casually today than usual, with tights and running shoes. I still stuck out a little bit amidst all the hippies in protest garb, but not as much as I could have. Plus the running shoes helped me get away from the tear gas. Seriously.

It'll be made abundantly clear later on in my narrative, but I disagree totally with the protesters' point of view, and especially with their actions. I glared at them with as much hostility as I dared when they smiled at me, thinking that by being there I was showing solidarity. It was really more a morbid curiosity at what a riot like this is like which attracted me like a moth to a streetlamp. I sympathized strongly with the shop owners in the area. They were all completely shut down, starting many blocks away of the area of the protests. Most of the shop owners were standing in their doorways, protecting their stores with their presence. At least, I assume they were the owners, because that's a task that seems like it would be very difficult to delegate. Who knows if they'll be shut down all this week. At one shut down bakery/deli the owner was standing guard when a woman with the usual anti WTO stickers and signs asked if he would give her some bread. I heard bits of the conversation--she was saying that they were hungry, and the bread smelled so good. The owner asked in disbelief if she wanted to be given the bread for free, and she said, "Yes, that bread right there in the window", pointing to some very fancy looking bread rolls and loaves that were sitting just inside the window. The owner said, "No, we're closed today". I thought that there was an implication of a threat in the woman's request for free food--as in, "If you don't give it to us, we'll break your window. I really hope that didn't happen to that guy. I chatted with him a little after the woman left, commiserating with him over the situation of the shop owners. Once he was convinced that I wasn't trying to play some game with him, that I was really not a protester but just looking around, he responded warmly. He was really hoping that he wouldn't need to stay shut down all week.

There was all kinds of massive debris strewn in the streets--it seemed like all the newspaper vending machines had been dragged out into the streets to make impromptu barricades. Massive concrete planters filled with dirt and shrubs had been dragged out as well, one of them had broken and there were big clods of trodden down dirt in the street. One street light was bent over about 30 degrees--that must have taken quite a large and determined group to do that. The bottom was reinfoced with sandbags. The strategy seemed to be to make it as difficult as possible for the delegates to attend any meetings. By and large it seems they succeeded very well. The entrances to the convention center that I saw were completely blocked--closer to the door by a layer of police in riot gear, then after that by a bunch of protesters who had linked arms in front of the police. They were trying to get more people to form a second line and looked at me strangely when I just stood by them looking at them without making any motions to join their group. I wish I could have told them what I thought of them. My instinct for self-preservation overrode my willingness to take a stand, though.

The one group of protesters that I could sympathize with were the Chinese religious group Falong Gong. I asked if they had a stand on the WTO, but the Falong Gong representative diplomatically said that the were neutral towards it, and just thought that this would be an opportunity for attracting attention to their plight.

There was also a group of Koreans dancing on the street--with some very explicit signs about continuing subsidies to farmers in Korea. I spoke to a Korean who was a student at the University of Washington, who said he was there as a relatively neutral observer. His English wasn't very fluent--he said that some of the cans of tuna that are sold contain dolphin. I assume that he meant that the tuna wasn't trapped in dolphin safe nets.

Another group that I saw was some women who called themselves witches. They were dancing around a painted 5 gallon bucket, singing something that as close as I can recall was, "We are the real, live witches, we're here to restore the sun and the moon". Or something like that--I've paraphrased a little. One of them had on a floppy black witches hat with a gold star on it, probably left over from halloween. Another woman who looked like a middle-aged deadhead joined them. She was even doing the typical spacey deadhead dance.

There were also people who were supposed to be medics, but they didn't look very trustworthy. They wore full camo gear, military boots and a military cap, and had a cheesy looking white scrap of cardboard with a red electrical tape cross in the middle.

When I went out at noon, there were lots of guys who seemed to be self appointed organizers, that walked around either with bullhorns or yelling for groups of protesters to assemble in various locations, to block more entrances to the convention center or to block intersections. Or just to sit down, so that they'd be harder for the police to remove. It didn't seem like the police were doing much manhandling of protesters, though.

There were, however, a lot of tear gas cannisters going off. The first gassing I experienced was just sprayed out, I think (I didn't see it at the time, but the police had massive cannisters of peper spray that they used on people). However, when I went out in the evening, I experienced the real thing. As I got closer to downtown, my jaw dropped as I saw the number of stores that had had their windows smashed in. Fidelity Investments, Starbucks, Old Navy, Nordstrom, McDonalds, a jewlery store, the Gap. Plus there were tons of grafitti sprayed everywhere on the windows and the walls. One McDonalds that I passed in the evening had all its windows boarded up completely--during lunch it had been open and serving people. When I passed by at lunch I saw guys putting up plywood on the broken windows. They were really tough burly looking guys who didn't look like they'd be intimidated by the protesters.

There were tons of protesters with masks on, either scarves or bandanas over their mouths. Part of that might have been just being ready for tear gas, but I saw lots of people wearing masks when there wasn't any tear gas around. I'm sure they were just wearing the masks for anonymity so that they could break windows and destroy property with impunity. A fair chunk of protesters had military surplus tear gas masks of all different makes. Lots of them appeared to have condensation problems--people were wiping out the goggles of the masks when they got fogged up.

As I was walking around there were two guys in suits and trenchcoats. I looked at them curiously, and one of them said, defensively, as if I were going to attack or something, "We're not delegates". I chatted with them a bit after that, explained that I wasn't on the protesters side, and just generally talked like reasonable people do when faced with the random violence that we saw. They said they were from the Seattle Times. They advised me that I should walk away backwards and not run if I got stuck outside after the curfew. That didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. When we parted we warned each other to be safe.

In the evening there were serious blockades going on on the road with all the broken out windows. This is where I had my first close-up view of fully decked out riot police. They looked kind of like insects, fully covered from head to toe with shiny segmended hard plastic protective gear. They also had special helmets with a face guard that accomodated the tear gas mask. On their shoulders and chest they had padding that made them resemble football players. They also had very long batons, about 3 ft. long. Some of them had huge bundles of plastic handcuffs. This very serious looking police line was right behind a group of a couple dozen protesters that were sitting down on the street, blocking it. I hung out next to a reporter with a cameraman. I didn't ask her what station she was from. She was arguing with a protester, who was saying that they shouldn't be gassing people. While this was happening there was a group of black guys pushing behind me dressed not at all like protesters in assorted hippie gear, but more like hoodlums, with the huge baggy down jackets. I tried inching away from them.

The reporter argued that this kind of violence can't be allowed to go on. She drew out from her pockets the things she'd had thrown at her--a wrench, and a swiss army knife. I asked her if there's usually a warning before tear gas is fired. She said that warnings were given, but not necessarily right before the gas is fired, and besides you usually couldn't hear it unless you were right there. Plus, in that area where the blockade was going on, they'd been given warnigs to disperse already.

As if on cue there were some loud explosions. This was the first time I'd head the gas canisters actually exploding--maybe before when I'd seen it it had been sprayed instead of in canisters. For one crazy moment I though it might have been gunshots and ran away. I'd already scoped out an escape route which was pretty empty when I was listening to the reporter right next to police line. A lot of people had the same idea that I did, though, and the street was filled with running people. Some people were yelling, "Don't run, we only get hurt when we run".

I did end up feeling the gas some. My eyes started burning, and then I felt it in my throat. Some people really got it bad, with really red and teary eyes. I also saw one guy who had what looked like dozens and dozens of really recent mosquito bites on his face. I wonder if that was some weird gas reaction.

After that tear gas episode, I walked north. Things got ugly at the intersection I ended up hanging out at. (Okay, they were ugly before, but got worse). There was a line of police about a block back, and as I was standing up on a 3 ft high brick wall, a tear gas cannister went off above my head. I half fell off the wall trying to figure out where it was going to land, and ended up scraping my shin painfully. Cars were still trying to get by--I guess you couldn't see from inside the cars that there was danger up ahead. The protesters lured a dump truck into the intersection, motioning that they would let it through. Once it was right smack in the middle of the intersection, though, protesters stood right in front and behind it so it couldn't move. Quickly newspaper vending machines were dragged and a huge dumpster were dragged behind it. A guy with a mask ran up to it and stuck a knife in one of the tires. A few minutes later when it was completely surrounded by protesters (I guess I should just call them rioters at this point) the hiss of air from the tires was heard again, it sounded like they were doing all of them. I felt so sorry for the poor guy driving the truck. I imagined what I would do to help the driver if they dragged him out and started beating him up. Didn't decide, though. They were banging on the side of the truck incessantly. I'll bet the the poor guy was practically having a heart attack in there. After this had been going on for about 15 minutes, about 6 police cars came swooping through the intersection, making a corridor for the truck to get out. I guess they hadn't dragged any obstacles in front of the truck, because it was able to drive out.

While this whole thing was going on I was talking with a woman who was dressed semi businesslike--I approached her saying, "You look like you just work downtown like me". We ended up chatting for a while. It turns out she works for the governers office, and was staying at a hotel right at the intersection, and was just out for a look like I was. It seemed like she was there specifically for the WTO, perhaps to be a representative for the governor. We talked about the violence and the destruction of property we'd seen.

As I was walking away from this area (it was getting really close to 7, when the curfew was to go into effect) the tear gas was spreading in my direction. I talked with one guy for a while who had flown here from Oklahoma specifically for the protest. He was a student from a state university there. We had a mini-debate about free trade, since he seemed like a pretty safe person to disclose my pro free trade views to.

I think the whole argument about the vast majority of protesters being peaceful is completely false. If it had been true, there would have been at least 100 non-violent protesters to every one violent one, and the violence could have been stopped. As it was, the hoodlums broke windows and destroyed property with impunity. I read in a news article online about how one woman was saying, "This is the classical case of non-violent protests being met with violence by the police". What a load of baloney. The protesters' level of understanding of free trade issues can probably be surmised by the complexity of their slogan, which was, "Hey hey, ho ho, WTO has got to go."

Well, that's it. Very intersting, very exciting to be there, but very upsetting to actually see what went on there.

Sylvia

Treo HotSync stuck on synchronizing memos

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:52:00 +0000

I wanted to jot this down in case anyone else has the same problem. I have a Palm Treo (been using Palm devices heavily for 12 years now!) and in the last few days had a major problem - I couldn't hotsync with my desktop anymore. It got stuck on synchronizing memos - and believe me, I waited a long time. None of the suggestions that I saw online fixed the problem.

So - I went into the hotsync settings (they aren't in your Palm Desktop, they're in the Hotsync manager, which should be in your system tray). And, for Memos, I configured it to "Desktop overwrites Handheld". I didn't have any particular edits in the handheld that I cared about, so this was fine by me. And then - viola! Everything synchonized fine. I'm assuming there was some kind of corruption in my desktop.

For some reason, I didn't need to go back and set it to the regular synchronize settings - it did that automatically. But you should probably check this.

Toys that get played with

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:41:00 +0000

Sometimes I've been wildly wrong about the toys that my kids (Peter, 2, and Kenny, just turned 6) would like to play with. Actually, more than sometimes - often. Very often. It's especially frustrating when there's loads of adoring reviews for said toy on Amazon, and it barely nets a half hour of playtime. So, below is a list of toys that actually get a lot of playtime from my kids.

Toys that get played with:

Magna-doodle.
This will get left for long periods of time, but it always gets picked back up again. It's so convenient, too - you can do your drawing and writing anywhere you want, without worrying about markers and crayons in the living room.

Duplo legos
These are great. Even my 6 year old will still play with them, and my 2 year old loves them. They're so much easier to handle for the kids than the regular legos, and since I got 2 big bags for almost nothing at a school rummage sale, we have tons and can make huge structures.

A box of plastic animls
These get taken out again and again.

Another box, of little cars
You don't need a ton - a little shoebox sized plastic bin of assorted matchbox type cars gets taken out frequenly.

Some stuffed animals
Again - you don't need a ton. I went through recently and purged all the stuffed animals except what fit in a good sized plastic bin. Nobody ever missed anything.

A ride-on toy
We have a little 3-wheeler only for indoor use. It actually gets a lot of use (when it's not in toy jail for banging into walls and doors).

Toys that do NOT get played with:
Blocks. I know this is one of those classic toys that every kid needs to have, and Peter will happily play with them when I take them out, but he never takes them out on his own.

The complicated Star Wars type Lego sets
These are frustrating. Kenny loves them, and they get assembled (with the help of a parent). And they get played with for a while, and pieces gradually come off and go into our "general" Lego bin. And then you have hundreds of highly specialized pieces that are very difficult to use in general building, scattered in a big Lego bin. Don't get me wrong - Kenny still likes them, but he mainly digs out the little figures and plays with them. Your mileage may vary - I hear some kids keep these complicated sets together, and play with them all the time. FYI - for a while, I tried keeping these in their original box, so the pieces wouldn't get mixed up with the other ones. That was just way too much work.

Train table
We had one of these for Kenny. He had some fun with it, but it lost its luster very quickly, and then was just large piece of furniture that took up space. I know some kids absolutely love trains, but Kenny wasn't that interested. Maybe we'll try again with Peter. I think that I won't get a train table, though - I'd just get a box of tracks, trains, etc., to put together, that we could put away when we need the space.

Predicting the future is hard

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 19:21:00 +0000

In reading and thinking recently about the kids obesity epidemic, I remembered a filmstrip (remember those?) that I saw back in 3rd or 4th grade, which would have been around the mid 70's.

It was about nutrition, but the slant was interesting. The villian was a guy who was out to get kids to eat nothing but potatoes, and the good guy was the one pushing pizza, as a healthy food that had lots of variety.

How times have changed. Now, it's probably the rare kid who actually eats plain potatoes, that are NOT in the form of french fries. And your average kids eats pizza all the time - and way too much of it.

It just struck me that what nutritionists worried about in those days wasn't even remotely close to what the actual danger was going to be - obesity. Which makes me think about a lot of the dangers that we supposedly face now. Is what we worry about the real issue? I doubt it.

Will the REAL danger please stand up?

The Smile Train

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:37:00 +0000

It's been a while since I've posted, so this will hopefully serve to get me back into the swing of things and posting a bit more regularly.

I've been noticing recently loads and loads of ads for the Smile Train, a charity that fixes cleft palates in third world countries. I'll be honest - with the mere volume of these ads, in all kinds of papers and online, my first impression was skepticism. How much do these ads cost, and how much do they bring in? And - I've never seen this many ads for a charity anywhere - is there something suspicious here, in that there's such a huge number of ads?

Well, I did just a tiny bit of research, leading me to a few Freakonomics blog posts about the Smile Train. They were overwhemlingly positive, and talked about the founder establishing a new paradigm for charities, run as efficiently as businesses. I've had some experiences in the past with charities run very poorly, so I'm all for better management.

If ever some big scandal comes up for the Smile Train - like a percentage of the money is being siphoned off to secret Swiss bank accounts, etc. - I will have a huge "I knew it!" moment. But for now, it seems like they're doing good in a new and different way.

Establishing new habits

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:36:00 +0000

Good habits - doing things on a regular basis without needing to think a lot about it - are one of the keys to a healthy, happy life. But it's not necessarily easy to establish a new habit. Here's the story of how I started the habit of regularly taking fish oil.

The benefits of taking fish oil have been piling up, so I've been convinced for a while that it would be a good idea to take some regularly. I've tried pills, but they're just to big for me, and don't go down easily. Plus, you need to take multiple pills, and I also want to give my kids fish oil, and having them take a pill every morning would be a big pain. So, I researched liquid fish oil, and ended up buying Carlsons Lemon flavored fish oil on Amazon.com. This is not the nasty tasting cod liver oil from years ago, it has a light lemony taste. After thinking about it a while, here's how I established the habit:

1. I decided to make it a weekly thing instead of daily. It's lots easier that way, since you don't have the overhead of doing something every day. That's assuming you can remember to do it - usually daily habits are much easier to remember. There's no negatives to taking more once a week, rather than some every day.
2. For remembering - I have my palm Treo remind me every Sunday to give the kids some fish oil, and take some myself.
3. As soon as I get the reminder from my palm Treo, I put a small bowl with 3 spoons (one size for me, one for Peter, and one for Kenny) on the kitchen table so that it's visible the next time we eat there.
4. Before we eat, I'm reminded by the bowl with spoons that I need to get the fish oil out from the fridge and give us all a spoonful. This is critical - it puts an infallible reminder of the fish oil in a place where we're going to be very soon (kitchen table), and when we're all together and ready to eat.

Voila!

It does take some thought and planning to establish a solid new habit. And I wouldn't actually say this is solid yet - it's been about a month and a half. But so far, so good. And it's taught me some important lessons in establishing habits.

Making snacks less accessible

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:34:00 +0000

I love snacks as much as the next person. And by snacks, I don't mean an apple or carrot, I mean potato chips or popcorn.

Of course, for health reasons, I want to make sure I eat the less-than-nutritionally-optimal snacks only on occasion. So, I don't keep the actual snack on hand, so I could just open up the panty and start chowing. I keep the raw ingredients for snacks. For example:

1. Microwave potato chips - they're awesome, relatively quick to make, and not too unhealthy! And all you need is a potato, some oil, salt, and parchment paper. And a microwave, of course.

2. Popcorn. Need I say more?

3. I keep chocolate cake mix in my pantry - it takes me about 15 minutes to use it to bake some great chocolate chip cookies. I don't generally do this for myself, just for when there's kids coming over.

The theory is - make the healthy snacks easily accessible, and make the less healthy snacks just a bit harder to get to, but still doable.

Organizing tip - you need a "Donate" box right in your closet!

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:06:00 +0000

I used to be pretty good about getting rid of things - I'd occasionally (every year or so) go through my closet, and put aside things that I no longer needed. That still left a whole year or more for things to accumulate, though.

Recently I put a box, labeled "Donate", right in the closet. It's amazing what a difference it's made. Now, when I decide that I no longer want something, I don't put it back on a hanger until my yearly clean-up. I just put it in the "Donate" box. Having the box right there may not seem like much, but the mere fact that I don't even need to take an extra step makes a big difference. Then, when it gets full, I bag it and put it in the car to bring to the goodwill.

I've noticed this in a lot of areas of my life. The easier you make it to "do the right thing" (having the right foods right there when you want to eat better, exercise clothing and equipment ready when you'd like to exercise more), the more likely it will happen.

I love Sharon Mann!

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 21:09:00 +0000

My workout routine has undergone a significant change. I used to work out on the treadmill, while watching television shows that I had tivoed. But a friend told me about a kick-boxing videotape that she had, which gave her a really great workout. So, I decided to try some workout shows. And now I'm totally sold on Sharon Mann. She's always upbeat, and has a tremendous amount of variety on her show. The people that are doing the workout with her are all dressed differently (unlike some other shows, where they look like they're all in the same uniform). She does shows with step exercises, pilates, workouts on the exercise ball, "boot camp" type workouts. All great stuff.

I think it's made a real difference in my fitness level. Walking on the treadmill (even though I did a few push-ups and sit-ups) was much better than nothing, but now my workouts are much more varied, and I use so many more muscles. I really feel, moving around the house and picking up the kids, how much more fit I am.

Are plastic bags so bad?

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:19:00 +0000

There's been lots of news recently about bans on plastic grocery bags. The grocery store Whole Foods is not going to be offering them anymore, and they were banned entirely from Ireland.

What I haven't seen is any debate about the issue. Why are they so bad? The accepted notion is that they're bad for the environment because they don't degrade, and apparently last for thousands of year (which I have a hard time believing - thousands of years? Really?). And, wildlife can eat the plastic bags and choke.

Well, let's look at the plus side of plastic bags:
1. They're convenient! I can carry my son Peter in one arm and 2 plastic grocery bags in the other.
2. They don't break! Unless you really overload them, your average plastic grocery bag is tough. (especially the ones from Whole Foods - they were great!). Paper bags, on the other hand, break on me all the time, not to mention that they're difficult to hold.
3. They're tiny! I can shove a few in a little pocket of my diaper bag for emergencies.
4. They're waterproof! (See the above bullet point for why waterproof is critical at times.)

Okay, yes - plastic bags look terrible strewn about a parking lot. But that's not the fault of the plastic bags, that's the fault of the people littering.

Also, apparently creating recycled paper is much more energy intensive than creating plastic bags. And what about transporting paper bags? They're so much bulkier and heavier that they have to be much more expensive to transport (which means more trucks spewing more exhaust).

Looks to me like another "anything for the environment" movement without a whole lot of critical thinking applied.

Live with Regis and Kelly in NYC

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:24:00 +0000

My friend Jean and I went to New York City last weekend, to celebrate my 40th birthday. Lots of fun was had in general, but I've been itching to blog about our rotten experience with the Live with Regis and Kelly show. We didn't have tickets to be part of the studio audience, so we showed up at 7 in the morning (after getting up at 6 in the morning, which is 3 AM PST) to get line for stand-by tickets.

So, we stood in line for about 45 minutes in the freezing cold, and then got a numbered sheet of paper. I was #20 and Jean was #21. So far, so good - they told us to come back at 8:30, and we'd be let in, if there were spots, in order of our number. We hung out at Starbucks for a while, then headed back and waited in line again at 8:30. Close to 9:00, they started letting some of the standby people in. The part of the line that we were in was around the corner from the main door, so we didn't really see what was going on. We kept on waiting for them to call numbers, and let people in by number, but they never did. Eventually someone came out and said told us they'd filled the show, and that we could leave now.

There was a group of us there who had low numbers but who hadn't gotten in, who were really pissed that these low numbers that we'd waited in the cold for weren't even worth anything. They hadn't even gone by number at all! We complained to the lady who was handling the stand-bys, and she was so incredibly rude! She said "What's the matter, don't you know how to read numbers?", and "Didn't they teach you that in kindergarten?". I've never seen the Live with Regis and Kelly show, but lots of the women there were actually big fans, and now they aren't anymore!

The stand-by lady did eventually get us into the show about 20 minutes after it had started, and let us stand by the side of the set, where we could barely see anything.

Cool idea (I think) for rewarding kids

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 18:30:00 +0000

I had what I think is a really great idea for a reward. Kenny loves candy, and doesn't get it very often. So, if there's a behavior that I really want to encourage, if I rewarded him with a candy for it, that would work out great. The problem is, I don't want to give him that much candy!

My idea is that, instead of actually giving him a piece of candy, I would allow him to spin a "wheel of fortune" device (probably from a board game), divided into a number of different sections. If the pointer ended up on the appropriate section, he'd get his piece of candy!

They say that intermittent rewards (i.e. like gambling) are the most powerful, so maybe this would really work. I don't have a behavior right now that we're working on, so I'll put this in my parenting tips archive.

Oh - bedtime is now working really great. What we're doing is setting up the kitchen timer for about 6 or 7 minutes. If we finish all our bedtime tasks in this time, then Kenny gets a story. If not, no story. This has speeded things up dramatically, and I don't have to do any nagging (other than occasionally saying, "Look, the timer's ticking!").

My new job

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 03:56:00 +0000

About a month ago I started looking for work - and I'm just starting my second week of work now, working on a data warehouse project at Tmobile.

The thing that really surprised me on this job hunt was how easy it was - not just to find a job, but to find a job where they were okay with the schedule I've kept for more than three years now. I work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with Tuesday and Thursday off. I got not one, not two, but THREE job offers within four days. And they were all okay with me working Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Previously I had the obviously mistaken idea that part time work was very difficult to find, that you had to have worked at the company for a long time and developed a great relationship, yadda, yadda, yadda. I think the thing that made a difference this time was that I didn't make such a big deal about it before actually meeting with potential employers. I mentioned that I had some schedule restrictions, but it was only after I had already interviewed with people, and sold them on me, that I told them what my schedule needed to be like. And they were uniformly fine with it.

Here's the two things that really helped me both with finding a job, and finding a job where they were okay with me working part-time:
1. Highly experienced database professionals are very difficult to find right now
2. I looked only for contract work. That way, there's no hassles with what the company policy on part-time work, do you get benefits, etc. It's very simple - you get paid per hour worked.

Avoiding Colds this winter

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 20:58:00 +0000

I'm just now getting over a cold, which became complicated by a serious cough and sinus infection - the first sinus infection that I've ever had. I was never sick enough to stay in bed, but I was sick enough to stop working out, doing any kind of projects - basically doing anything other than the bare essentials.

My plan this winter is to avoid catching any more colds. I've been doing some research online on how best do this. Basic handwashing is recommended very frequently. But why is it recommended to use alcohol gel based sanitizers only when washing with soap and water isn't available? It seems that the sanitizers would be even more effective. Anyway - I'm proceeding on the assumption that using a hand sanitizer is just as good.

The other recommendation is - avoid touching your face. Touching your nose and eyes in particular is supposed to be a very effective way to transmit cold viruses - exactly what I don't want.

So, I'm planning a two pronged attack:
1. Use hand sanitizer frequently. Maybe I can try to do it every time I get home from being out and about, and every time I get in the car after shopping. Plus at work - whenever I get to my desk from talking to someone, or using the restroom.

2. Don't touch my face at all - if I need to scratch, use the back of my hand.

My endeavor is complicated by the fact that I have a 3 year old son in daycare. Stay tuned to see if I can avoid colds this winter.

Fun is different when you have kids

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:17:00 +0000

Yesterday I went to Newcastle Beach Park with both Kenny and Peter. It's not easy to go swimming with a preschooler, when you have an infant with as well. Nevertheless, Kenny and I had lots of fun in the water (and there were friends at the beach who were able to watch Peter for a while).

The epiphany for me was that what I think of as fun has changed dramatically since I had kids. Before, fun at a beach park would have meant hanging out with friends, getting a good swim in, reading an enjoyable book. But now with kids, my priorities have changed. I have a lot of fun, just watching Kenny enjoy himself in the water. We never even went above knee height for me (waist high for Kenny), but Kenny had a big grin on his face the entire time. We played chase, with Kenny and Kenji chasing me as I splashed through the water, and also spotted little fish, no more than two inches long, darting through the shallow water. And fun was had by everyone. Although Peter did sleep through almost all of it...

Feeling peppier every day

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 22:52:00 +0000

So, it's seven weeks post-childbirth now. Peter is doing great, and is starting to -- not sleep through the night, but at least go immediately back to sleep once he's fed at night. So, I'm getting at least about seven hours of sleep, albeit interrupted. That's assuming I can get back to sleep once I wake up at 4. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

And I'm feeling so much better! Every move, during pregnancy, was difficult. Just getting out of bed or out of my chair was an ordeal. But now - the idea comes to me that I need to do something aroud the house, or get something, and pop I go off the couch -- no problem at all! It feels great. I'm eating very well, losing some of the pregnancy weight, working out on the treadmill 30 minutes every day, and also doing strengh exercises. Everything is making a big difference. I'm loving it.

My first few weeks with baby Peter

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:42:00 +0000

You wouldn't have known from my blog, but I gave birth on June 28th to a son, Peter. He's a very cute and good natured little baby.

I think I'm enjoying Peter as a newborn more than I enjoyed Kenny. Not from any differences between them -- it's just that with Kenny, I was so exhausted from trying to breastfeed (including pumping, etc), that I wasn't relaxed enough to really enjoy him. That did come after a few months, though.

But with Peter, holding him is like a drug - instant ecstasy! I sit and hold him and watch his little stretches and listen to his little grunts and squeaks, and just adore him. I wonder how he'll turn out...

Toothbrushing success - revisited

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:37:00 +0000

A few months ago I blogged about having a new technique for toothbrushing with Kenny, that was very successful. Well, it turns out that over the course of time, it was actually only somewhat successful. Supervising Kenny's toothbrushing was still one of the more stressful parts of my day.

Anyway - I have a new technique, or actually an addition the previous techniques. I pull myself together, try to be less grumpy, and make the toothbrushing into an adventure, by pretending that I can see the "cavity bad guys" in the form of animals. For example, "Look, I see a tiger cavity bad guy! I'm going to brush him away...got him!"

So far, surprisingly successful. We'll see how it works in a week or so.

How to stop unproductive web surfing!

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 21:15:00 +0000

At work, I frequently run a process or query which may take 10 or 15 minutes to finish. Not enough time to really get another piece of work done, but just enough time to waste surfing the web. Then before you know it, the process has been done for 5 minutes, and I'm still surfing away!

So, I've devised a technique to prevent myself from web surfing certain time-wasting sites at work. This is for Internet Explorer 6.0. Go into Tools, Options, then choose the Content tab. Enable the content advisor. Then, go to Approved Sites. It's somewhat of a misnomer in this situation, because we're actually disabling websites. You can restrict yourself from whichever websites you want. The content advisor will prompt you to create a password to get to the site. I put a long string of nonsense text in there, that I'll never remember, and then pasted that string in a text file on my computer. In the password hint, I put the location of the text file. So, if I ever really want to get to a certain site that I've restricted, I can do that with just the extra step of looking up the text file. I haven't yet, though.

This simple tip has gained me a lot of time. I'm a big believer in modifying your environment to make your life better, instead of trying to use sheer willpower to do or not do things.

Toothbrushing success!

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Tue, 29 May 2007 03:38:00 +0000

Victory is mine! A minor victory, and just for the past 2 days, but still, it feels good. Some background here - my son Kenny is generally a very good boy, but when I brush his teeth, he's incredibly squirmy. Actually, he's always squirmy, and on the move, but that's what being three is all about. It only bothers me when I'm trying to brush his teeth. I'm always having to admonish, reprimand, etc. It's almost the worst part of my day.

So the past few days I've been using the following techniques:

1. He needs to hold his elbows. This has the result of quieting his hands, which quiets his whole body.
2. If he stays still, we get to read two books for bedtime. If he doesn't, he only gets one book.
3. Instead of having him stand on the stool right in front of the sink (and also in front of the mirror, where he gets distracted making faces at himself), I sit on the tub, and have him stand in front of me. No more getting distracted in front of the mirror.

All in all, we've had a few good days now, and the evening tooth-brushing routine is no longer so daunting. Plus, I'm more thorough. I started begin more thorough just recently, when the daughter of a friend of mine (same age as Kenny) had six cavities, 4 of which need to be filled. Yikes!

I'm a sucker for self-improvement

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Sun, 13 May 2007 20:29:00 +0000

I'm a huge consumer of self-improvement books, and websites and blogs. I don't buy a lot of self-improvement books, but I do get lots and lots from the library. My thoughts about this are two-fold:

1. It's great that I'm interested in self-improvement, making changes, making things better. And honestly, I'm not a slacker in that regard - I'm pretty good at the basics.

2. Seriously - enough of the reading already! Making one substantive change in habits, discipline, etc., would be much better than to read 5 books on how to be more efficient.

I'm a really fast reader, and it doesn't take me long at all to zip through some of these self-improvement books. But I should focus more on actually doing things rather than reading about them.

Limiting TV viewing...

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Sat, 12 May 2007 02:19:00 +0000

Now that I'm in my last 2 months of pregnancy (and very eager to have it over with, too), I've been watching lots and lots of TV. My energy level is so low that watching TV is about the best I can manage.

I have high hopes and grand plans, though, of all that I'm going to accomplish in the evenings, starting a few months after baby #2 is born. And to do this, my TV watching habits will need to change drastically. Put simply - I have very little free time at all. Soon, with baby #2, I'll have even less. I can't afford to spend large chunks of that time watching TV, if I want to get anything done.

Last night, Eric and I watched the show Rough Science. Great show, very interesting. But the thought I was left with was this - that watching other people do neat things on TV rates about a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being things that make you a loser couch-potato, and 10 being things that make you a well-rounded, interesting, accomplished person). Actually DOING neat things yourself - that ranks far, far higher - in the 8 to 1o range.

The problem is that a normal brain, when faced with a choice between watching something interesting and/or entertaining on TV, or not watching TV, and having to come up with other plans, will most often just make the easy choice - just watch TV. It takes a lot of effort to do something else - especially if you've been in the habit, like I have, of watching TV as a default activity.

About 12 years ago I moved out of a house that I rented with a lot of other people, where TV watching was the default activity every evening. I moved to an apartment, and made the choice to not have a TV. The first few weeks were rough. I remember looking longingly at the cable plug on the wall. But it got better, and soon I didn't think of it at all, except that I had more time for things, and felt somewhat smug about not having a TV.

So, it can be done. And soon I'll be thinking more about specifics. Like, can we just get rid of the TV? My husband might have a problem with that, being that he bought this monster flat screen TV for himself. What other solutions are there? Our son Kenny frequently watches a kiddie show a day, such as Dora the Explorer and Franklin. Should we limit that?

Stay tuned till next time...

My search for a kid's timer

noreply@blogger.com (Sylvia Moestl Vasilik) — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 15:15:00 +0000

I've heard a lot about how well timers work with kids - for things like giving your child a set amount of time to clean up, get ready for bed, etc. Generally a kitchen timer is recommended. Well, I've found that kitchen timers are not really that great. We have a manual Oxo timer that goes from 0 to 60 minutes. However, most tasks for Kenny would take no more than 5 minutes, and it's difficult for him (as well as for me) to tell how much time is left on the timer. Plus, there's no warnings when he's getting close.

So I've been searching around online for something else. I found the Learning Resources Time Tracker on Amazon, and was really excited to see it - it looked like exactly what I wanted to find, with a light that starts out green, goes to yellow, and then red when time is almost up. What a cool idea! Then, however, I read the reviews. Some of them were very positive, but many were quite negative, and vociferous about how poorly designed it was and how hard it was to use.

So, the search goes on. Please let me know if you find anything cool!