06.15.09
Frozen in Time
While I was on work travel last week the 3yo found the dial that sets the temperature in the fridge and freezer and turned both dials to “1,” which is the lowest cool setting. Hubby discovered it and cranked the dials up to the maximum “5,” but we do not know how long the dial had been turned down. We do know it was on low long enough to melt the ice cream which then ran all over the lower shelf of the freezer. And, I was concerned enough about how long things in the freezer had been defrosting that I cleaned out and threw away pretty much everything that could spoil. The only things left were popsicles, a pie crust, two bags of pecans and the top of our wedding cake.
Wait. What did that say? The top of our wedding cake? Yes, the top of the cake which we had at our wedding more than 10 years ago. In true wedding tradition, we saved the top tier of our cake for our first anniversary. But when our first anniversary came around we actually had planned a trip back home for a friend’s graduation. It felt strange to eat it any other day, and since we were leery about eating it anyway we just decided to do nothing. I think now it’s just about seeing how long it can actually survive. It’s moved with us six times, including the big six-hour move from Indiana to back home. (We transported it over ice in a cooler.)
This week’s melted ice cream actually got onto the foil that was wrapped around the bakery box that the cake is in, so I had to replace the foil. I took a quick sneak peak inside the box and was scared of what I’d see, but it still looks exactly the same. I wouldn’t eat it now, of course, but on what grounds do you throw away a 10-year old cake? Unintentionally it has become a symbol of our longevity, so barring major freezer meltdown, as long as we’re together, the top to our wedding cake will be in the freezer. How funny to think about our boys someday having to figure out what to do with some decades-old wedding cake!
05.30.09
Fun Clips!
Staples has this awesome build-your-own office supply bucket station that is so00o me! I don’t think that is its official name, but that’s what it is. Basically, it’s this large display of different paper clips and binder clips of all different colors and styles, and you stuff all you can fit in either a medium or large bucket. A store at Downtown Disney does the exact same thing with Mr. Potato Head pieces. You get a box and you stuff as many pieces — eyes, lips, ears and fun Disney-themed hats and accessories — as you can, into a box, for one price.
I’ve been wanting to do the Staples thing for a while now and finally last weekend made it happen. I love fun paper clips and so glad that Hubby allowed me this indulgence and even helped me pick out things I might like.
05.08.09
Plinky Prompts
I get these Plinky writing prompts each week by email, and while I’ve thought about using them as a springboard for things to write about here, I never have. This week’s were so good, though, I decided to answer quite a few of them. Consider it a little mini-interview with moi.
Which movie’s characters would you befriend in real life?
I’m gonna cheat here and not name a movie but rather a TV show. I would want to be part of the Friends’ friends. I can see myself fitting in easily with the girls, shopping, hanging out at the coffee shop, chatting, etc. I have elements of each one — Rachel, Monica and Phoebe — in my personality so I think I would relate well to all three. I wouldn’t want to be regular cast member, per se, because that would complicate things. Then you’d have to have another guy in the cast to balance out and eight people seems a little much and not quite as believable as six. But six, with a cool occasional friend, is totally doable. Plus the show just makes it look incredibly fun to be young and single in New York City, very much like the dreamworld I envisioned as a teenager.
What two cities should be moved closer together?
Wow. I think it would be cool if New York City were closer to San Francisco, like if we just cut out the heartland and the two were a hundred miles apart. You could spend the day on the West Coast beaches and then hop over to the East coast for the city nightlife. I have nothing against the heartland. It would be fun someday to drive across country and see it all — coast to coast. I just picked two cities that I think it would be cool to experience in the same day.
What musicians would you like to see join together to form a new band? List the members of your ideal supergroup.
Hmmm… Well, I’d start by combining all my favorites. Sheryl Crow, Dixie Chicks, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, throw in a little Mylie Cyrus and some Matt Nathanson. Fortunately they can all do a pop/country/rock mix. It’s not like mixing Bon Jovi with Willie Nelson or something strange like that.
If the shoes make the man (or woman), what do your shoes say about you right now?
Well, if you take them quite literally, my shoes might say I’m indecisive — I’m wearing flip flops. Get it? Flip. Flop. Indecisive? But more figuratively, flip flops probably say that I’m fun. After being a flip flop snob for years and only wearing Birkenstock sandals, I broke down and got a pair of flip flops last summer. They were $2 at Old Navy and my mother-in-law was buying, so why not? At first the thong part was hard to get used to, but after a few times wearing them, my I adapted I guess. This summer I’ve gone off the deep end and bought like seven or eight pairs, all different colors and styles.
What was your go-to “broke meal?”
Like most, I did the ramen noodle thing in college. But my favorite uber-cheap meal is cheap pizzas, like the 59 cent store brands. I love the little cubes of pepperonis. And, yes, I still buy them occasionally, especially when Hubby’s out of town and I’m not cooking as much.
Who was your arch enemy when you were 10?
I can’t think of anyone from age 10 (that was fifth grade and a pretty good year, actually), but at age 9 there were several. Two girls in particular — Amy and Mandi — were very much the snobby, bossy, yet popular “mean girls” of 4th grade. I was new to school that year and while most of the time had no trouble, I can remember them being rather agressive and controlling with our group of girls. I think it was Amy’s idea for us to wear purple and black cheerleading outfits for some little cheer league they had going. Those weren’t even our school colors, and we had these crazy purple skirts, black tops and purple suspenders??? Anyways. I’m sure it was the typical new-girl-threatening-our-turf issues. I only stayed at that school one year so didn’t have to deal with it long.
Ok, last one.
Do you prefer writing on paper or a keyboard?
Man, that’s a tough call. I love paper, like cool notepads and sticky notes and I sometimes like writing just to see my handwriting. But computers and thus typing is so much more efficient … . I think it depends on my mood and the purpose of what I’m doing. At work, whenever possible I like to type my interviews as I’m doing them, as opposed to taking notes on paper and typing them in later. It seems more efficient to already have my notes and quotes in a document file. And these days I can type faster than I can write by hand so I don’t miss as much content. But sometimes writing things on paper and the portability of a notebook is more appropriate and compelling. (I kinda dodged that one, sorry.)
05.01.09
Top 10 iPhone Apps
A friend ask me a while back for my top 10 iPhone apps. So here goes, in true David Letterman style, from 10 to 1.
Top 10 iPhone Apps
One of my iPhone screens, showing quite a few of my favorite apps
10. Google — My favorite thing about the Google app is it uses voice. So I touch the microphone icon, speak what I want to search, it hears what I said and pulls up the results. Most of the time it hears me right on the first try. It’s great for ordering take out because not only can you pull up the phone number, with the iPhone you just tap the number and dials too.
9. Flixster — Remember the days of wanting to see a movie and having to drive to the store and pick up the newspaper to find movie times? Or calling the movie theater and listening to all the movies and times to find out what was playing? Last fall, after my 10-year high school reunion dinner, a couple of us wanted to see a movie and drove to like 3 different gas stations to find a newspaper. We never found a paper and wasted 20 minutes of potential movie-watching time trying to. If I’d only had Flixster back then …. It tells me movie times for multiple theaters so I can see which time and which theater work best with my other plans. Flixster can link to Facebook so that I when I rate movies on the Flixster iPhone app, it syncs with my Flixster Facebook app. It also tells me what’s new on DVD. The only way Flixster would be any better is if it could sync with my Netflix account so I could add DVDs to my Netflix queue from it. That might bump it from #10, to, say, the top 5 in heartbeat.
8. Shutterfly — I’m loving the Shutterfly app and it really deserves to by higher on the list because it’s that cool. But, since I’ve just discovered it, I felt bad ranking it above some of the others that have been there for me a while, some since the beginning. What I like about Shutterfly, obviously, is immediate any-time access to every photo I’ve taken in the last 5 years.
7. WordPress — I don’t do it often, but I like being able to blog on the go. I mainly use the WordPress app to post a picture from my phone to a blank blog post and then fill in the blog post later. It’s much quicker and simpler than plugging in the phone, downloading pics and then uploading to WordPress.
6. Fuzzle — This is the only game to make my top 10 list. I have quite a few games on the iPhone, but Fuzzle is the only one I’m addicted to. It’s kinda like Tetris but instead of pieces of falling they appear in random places. I blame my Fuzzle addiction on the fact that I never had a Nintendo as a kid and while I spent as much time as possible at friends’ houses playing Tetris and Dr. Mario, I just never got enough.
5. Pandora — I love Pandora for iPhone for the same reason I love Pandora on my desktop. Having my own customizable radio station is just awesome. The iPhone app lets me have my own customizable radio station wherever I go. I often listen to my Pandora stations on the iPhone while cooking or studying.
4. Wikitap — I’m kinda new to wikitap too, but basically it lets me look up things and retrieve spellings, definitions, wikipedia entries, etc. I frequently use it when I hear or read a word that I don’t know. Before wikitap, I would have moved on without knowing what the word meant and that’s just stupid, literally.
A screen shot of last night's grocery list in Foodle
3. Foodle — Foodle is a grocery list app. You can make other shopping lists too (and I do). I have my primary grocery list, but have seperate lists for office supplies, clothing, gifts, etc. What’s neat about Foodle as a grocery list app is as you start to type it pulls up suggestions, so it has a database of items to choose from. But, if you’re like me, and have unique items, like “ground turkey” or “shredded cheese” (to be distiguinished from sliced cheese or block o’ cheese, which are also in my foodle lists) then it remembers those things. And next time you start typing s-h-r, it will pull up shredded cheese as one of the choices. When you check things of your list as you shop it captures data about the order in which you found items which can help it organize your list on future trips. Finally, as you mark things off your list the list can get hard to read with some things marked off and some things still to find. SO … you just shake it and the things that are left shift to the top of the list. Fun, huh?
2. Bible — I kinda feel bad that the Bible app is #2. But my #1 app is really good and I just couldn’t lie and put the Bible as #1. That would be kinda hypocritical, wouldn’t it? So what I like best about the Bible app is that I can search a phrase from a verse that I’m trying to remember or a subject I want to read on and it pulls up all the results. I can then change and compare versions. And this thing has hundreds of version, different languages even. I can then bookmark the verse I’ve found so I can quickly come back to it later. It also has a daily reading plan with several chapters from both the Old Testament and the New Testament to read daily. One thing that would improve the Bible app would be a share option so that I could easily share a verse with someone in my address book.
And my #1 iPhone app is …
1. Shazam — I’ve written about Shazam before. But I use this thing a lot. I mean A LOT. Shazam tags songs by “listening” to them. So if you’re in a movie and you like a song, turn on Shazam and it will recognize the song and pull up the title, artist, album, etc. In some cases it will link to the music video on YouTube. Also, a recent discovery about Shazam is sharing. You can share your tag with someone, and if they have Shazam too they have the option of adding your tag to their tag list. I’ve used it frequently during movies, especially for short bursts of songs that are cool but you don’t hear enough to get the whole thing and for songs that play during the credits. I use it daily in the car to bookmark songs I like and might want to purchase on CD or iTunes. The one downside is it doesn’t work with live music, although I’ve tried.
One caveat to this list: the two iPhone apps I use the most are actually Facebook and Twitterfon. However, what I like about these apps is they allow me to access those two social networks, not really something intrinsic to the app itself. But those two would definitely make my top 20, Twitterfon possibly even coming in at #11.
04.17.09
Cal-Luna: Princess of Honor
Best friend of Sher-Ra: Princess of Power.
Not really. Just playing around with the Create Your Own Superhero site.
Create your own Superhero at marvel.com
04.09.09
No Privacy
At the newspaper we had certain justifications for printing certain news, especially news that seemingly invaded one’s privacy. For example, once you chose to be a public figure, either as an elected official or other choices that made you a prominent citizen, anything you did was up for grabs. Things that were no one’s business for a regular Joe became front page news if you were a public figure. In general, we respected someone’s privacy unless they gave us a reason not to either by choosing to be in the public’s eye or doing something publicly.
All that an introduction to the idea that in today’s world of blogs, facebooks, camera phones, etc., privacy as we know it no longer exists. On this very blog I have written about individuals without their foreknowledge or permission, and they may not have wanted me to do that. I don’t know whether they did or not because I didn’t ask. According to that logic, if you’re just in my life you should have no expectation of privacy. I may not use people’s names, or if I use names I may not use full names, but the point is that on my blog I write about personal experiences and that may sometimes including writing about the people in my life and often without their permission.
On facebook, people can upload pictures and “tag” me, and that picture can then be seen by all my friends. No one gets permission from me before tagging me – I’ve never asked permission from anyone before tagging them. You can remove tags, but that’s not part of this discussion. Recent photos — taken with digital cameras — have been tagged of me eating at a work luncheon, opening presents at Christmas, and playing shuttle pilot at space camp. But the ones I find most relevant in terms of privacy are the pictures of me from high school. In high school, photos were taken on film and they were actual prints that might have been shown to a few people and then put into an album to rarely be seen again. In high school, we had no way of knowing anything like facebook would exist and that photos we had long forgotten about would be posted for all the world to see. When a friend took a photo back then, there were cultural norms and expectations and limitations of what could happen to the photo. Today? You have no idea or control over how a snapshot photo of you can be used. And it can be used and spread world-wide immediately.
It’s easy to say that if you don’t want potentially embarrassing photos or stories out there then don’t do anything you might be ashamed of or might not want publicized. But when I say that privacy is gone, I’m not talking exclusively about embarrassing or questionable things — just anything. Trivial things even. And for that matter, was privacy ever really there, and is it just the various Internet applications that I have chosen to be a part of that are just now making that more apparent to me. Dunno.
Like the “Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us” video I posted here last week, such things certainly do give us more to think about.
