Save the Words for the Happy Times, Next Installment

Just a quick post to let you know that Part III of Save the Words for the Happy Times should be up by Monday, and possibly as early as later today depending on how the weekend plays out. It is a busy one. I know a couple of you had mentioned looking forward to the next post. Hope the first week of school went well for all of you. More soon.

What Web 2.0 Says About Human Beings

What strikes me about web 2.0 is that traditional economic models wouldn’t have predicted it. Why would people, for instance, work really hard writing blogs with no monetary compensation?

Turns out that people have a much stronger drive toward self-expression and connection that the “rational self-interest” models would have predicted. And I think that is a wonderful thing to have the latest technology reveal about human beings in our face paced information era.

Apple Updates iPod Line

Okay, now this post definitely gets filed under "miscellany", but I couldn't resist. It appears that the iconic classic white iPod has now gone the way of the dinosaurs. As one blog suggested, it seems appropriate to bow our heads for just a moment.

There is a lot for iPod fans to be happy about today. I'm not a huge gadget person across the board, though my wife might argue with me on this, but I do have to say that I have a weakness for Apple products. Today Steve Jobs did one of his over-hyped press conferences. I was impressed with the number of changes to the iPod line that some of the apple gossip sites had predicted that actually became reality today.

The basic changes are the Shuffle has a bunch of new colors. No changes in memory. The Nano has a new format for viewing cover art and can now play video. To make the viewing feasible the shape of the Nano has changed to shorter and wider with a larger 2" screen. It also has increased pixilation so the screen is not only larger, but more vivid than the one on the previous Nano. It is available in 4 and 8 GB sizes. The Nano as well as the larger iPod, now called the "iPod classic", both have a split screen feature now that previews cover art on the right side of the screen as you navigate the familiar menu on the left. Both also now can be navigated via "cover flow", which uses animated cover art that looks like flipping through an old juke box. Most iTunes users will already be familiar with the look of Cover Flow. The iPod classic is now encased in aluminum and is available in 80 and a whopping 160 G sizes.

Finally one of the bigger rumors fulfilled is the "iPod touch", which turns out to be essentially an iPhone without the phone service (or contract). It is very close to the same dimensions as the iPhone. The iPod touch comes with WiFi that allows users to download music as they walk around, so long as they're within range of a hot spot, rather than needing to be at the computer. Apple has started a partnership with Starbucks to make those hot spots more predictable. iPod touch users will be able to instantly download any music they hear at Starbucks with the press of a touchscreen button (this can also be done with laptops). iPod touch also has web browsing capability. The storage is only at 8 and 16 GB, which some are saying is too small for the price, and is not a good match for the beautiful wide screen and touchscreen experience. Presumably users would want to use the widescreen for video, but the memory won't allow for much storage. I've heard speculation, which seems plausible, that Jobs will announce larger storage sizes for the iPod touch just prior to Christmas. The touchscreen interface truly is remarkable. If you haven't had a chance yet, it is worth stopping by the Apple store to experience it even if you're not remotely interested in buying one.

On a related note Apple dropped the price of the 8 GB iPhone to $399, $200 lower than it debuted, and discontinued the 4 GB model. I will leave the more detailed analysis to the folks at Macworld and other gadget sites. Here is the lineup at Apple. I can't be held responsible for any impulse purchases you might make. Please weigh in on the the poll over to the right.

Forgotten Car Roof Items & the Cycle of Luck

When I was 14 years old I had my first boom box, earned with what was then the boyhood rite of mowing lawns in the neighborhood. They weren't cheap when the first came out. My friend placed it on top of his grandfather's Plymouth Barracuda, with an on-dash push button shifter, as we were packing up for home from a fishing trip. After seeing and hearing several other motorists pointing and waving at us and yelling things we couldn't make out, we finally stopped and got out. We were amazed to see my treasured Toshiba boom box still sitting up there several blocks later. If you recall the design on the early boom boxes was much more upright and flat than the more recent lower profile design, so it was remarkably impressive that it stayed upright on the ride. It probably helped that my friend's grandfather was no speed demon, despite the hi-tech push button shifting. My luck with forgotten items on the roof has grown increasingly worse over the years. Maybe 15 years ago, I left a Nissan stainless thermos cup on the roof, which functioned amazingly like one of those twirling lawn sprinklers as it tumbled off my Toyota pickup. Despite the impressive random coffee streaks on my truck and the parking lot my thermos cup thankfully only suffered cosmetic dents.

Last night my wife and I were taking our 7-year-old daughter and her friend out to dinner. While my wife was getting the booster seats situated, she placed her keys on top of the car. When we were just about to be seated at Red Robin, my wife noticed her keys weren't with her. We went out to the car and looked for them. She recalled that she had put them on the roof of the car. We called a neighbor who was nice enough to look around on the street by our house to see if they were there. We didn't want to wait until after dinner for someone to pick them up that would have no way of knowing whose they were. No luck. We did a small exercise in the physical sciences as we tried to figure out where they would have been most likely to have gained enough momentum to slide free of the car's roof. After much deliberation and calculation of possible trajectories we concluded it must be somewhere between our house and Red Robin. Lots of driving around. No keys.

After talking with a local homeless man, who was kind enough to offer to keep his eye out for us, and posting an ad on Craigslist, the implications began to dawn on us. With the electronic entry key fobs, if the keys had fallen off closer to the house, all it would take is a drive down the street at night for any less-than-scrupulous person to locate the car in front of the house with no problem, and voila, noiseless entry into to two cars and to the house. So to cover the possibility of the keys having been lost nearby, we are now out a couple of car clubs, four re-keyed house locks and the two lost key fobs. Don't those those fobs seem a bit overpriced? So the question is, have I used up all my forgotten roof item luck...or am I now finally due to restart another cycle where I'll be as lucky as I was with the boom box Barracuda experience? I'd better not push it.

What's With The Name?

I've had quite a few clients mention that it was the name of my web site, Enjoy Parenting Again, that got them to initially contact me. For them the name just made sense. Presumably they had times earlier in their relationship with their children where they really felt some connection, when things were going more smoothly, and they contacted me because of concerns about how things have been going more recently.

For others the first two words make sense, but back when I was doing more health fair appearances, I would not infrequently be asked, "Again? Is it really, again?" I think I get what these folks mean. Lots of times parenting feels like an uphill climb from the first days. The way I responded to people who asked me this is something along he lines of this, which I actually really believe, "Even if it's been rough going since birth and it hasn't seemed to get any better, my assumption is that there are at least fleeting times where, if only for fractions of a minute, things really felt good, they were going smoothly."

That's is what getting into this line of work was all about for me, the satisfaction of seeing things go a bit more smoothly. It is amazing how little time that often takes, and it is hopeful to see for a lot of families things end up going quite a bit more smoothly a lot more often.

Inaugural Quote

I thought it be appropriate to start this whole blogging thing off with a quote:

"For a long time it has seemed to me that life was about to begin; Real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life."

Father Albert D’Souza

I find this meaningful whether about life generally or about parenting. It hit me for the first time when I was in undergrad. I remember as much younger man getting very frustrated with setbacks, financial aid not coming in on time, losing 3/4 of a term paper because it was the 80s and I had yet to learn the lessons about saving frequently (to my 5 1/4 inch floppy). I used to experience a lot of my life with the following thought as my background theme, “Once I get past X hassle, then I can get on with enjoying my life.” But I began to discover exactly what this quote is getting at. If I wait until all the fires are out, until my inbox is empty, until things finally calm down, I will be waiting for a good portion of my life, rather than living it. The nature of life, I think, is that even though we get the wisdom in this quote, it is all to easy to lose sight of, which I guess is synonymous with losing perspective.