The Monday Review – Short Form

On By BekkiIn The Weekly Review1 Comment

A brought the Montezuma’s Revenge to Mexico, and ended up being ridiculously sick while we were on vacation. We have spent the last week and change in and out of Mexican and American hospitals. He’s finally feeling a little better, but he’s had a rough time of it.

Simultaneously, Z picked up a cold that has knocked me flat for the past few days. That, combined with a general lack of sleep, has wiped my ability to do much more than keep the two of us fed and dressed and entertained. She and I are also tentatively planning to go to OKC for my grandfather’s 90th birthday a little later this week.

My dad flew out to help us keep things together. It really does take a village.

There may be a longer blog post when all this is done. There may not. I make no guarantees about my ability to get blog posts out for the rest of the month. We’re all going to focus on getting better and getting back to normal.

On the positive side, Mexico was lovely.

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The Monday Review

On By BekkiIn The Weekly Review2 Comments

1. The holidays wrecked me. This was the first year that I felt completely over-scheduled during the holidays. We packed in a ton of family and friends time over Christmas and in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, with something going on almost every day.  By the time we got to New Year’s, I was frazzled and fried and pretty much wanted nothing more than to go to sleep at 8 pm.  I’m not sure there’s anything different we could or would have done – I think that’s just the reality of life with a small kid.  I do know that I’m really excited that I’m going to vacuum the house this afternoon.

2. Smarter than the house. The Philips Hue bulbs are going back to Best Buy. I’m a bit sad about this.  I can’t tell you how much we liked having the ability to change the tone of the bulbs throughout the day, from warm yellow early in the morning to a bluer, daylight color in the afternoon, and back to warm yellow at night. The color part was fun too, although it was hard to get anything to match the color wheel in the green/blue/purple spectrum. Apparently Philips traded in the ability to do true blues for the ability to have more flexibility with whites.* That isn’t why they’re going back, though.  As I mentioned last week, Philips has closed down their ecosystem so that it no longer works with most bulbs or other smart things. In the end, that’s a deal-breaker for us.  I think we’ll be switching to a combination of Z-wave dimmers and Lifx bulbs, and possibly some Hue knock-offs A found on Alibaba.

3. The year of tracking. This is the first year I’ve collected and reviewed stats for the year. I definitely want to do it again, in a somewhat principled manner.  And because it’s easier to decide to do something in early January than it is to actually do it throughout the year, I want to make it simple. That means finding apps that run continually in the background, without me having to do anything about it (Google locations, UP by Jawbone) or that have a ridiculously simple user interface (Clue, the non-pink period tracker).  I’m still searching for a good travel app, and I’d love to see a life tracker type app that let’s me track the “everything else.”

4. I would really like to buy a house with a roof that doesn’t leak. We noticed a wet patch in the ceiling on Christmas Eve, right under one of the solar panels.  The solar company sent someone out to look at it immediately, and he was awesome.  He got all the way into the back of the crawlspace (which is maybe two feet high), poked around, went up onto the roof, did a bit more poking around, figured out where the leak is coming in, and put a temporary patch on it. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the solar panels, which means that the solar company won’t cover it.  On my to-do list today:  calling roofers. If you live around here and have a roofer you like, please please please send me their contact info.

5.  We’re taking a toddler to Mexico for week.  I have researched toddler activities (whale watching on a pirate ship! a semi-submersible submarine!), found not one but two babysitting agencies that cater to tourists, and (mostly) penetrated the Mexican rental car thicket. We also bought Z a tapper of her own, a 7″ tablet that will be much less expensive to replace when she breaks it than either of our phones. She’s not one of those kids who will stare quietly at a screen for three hours, but I figure it’s probably good for 30 minute stretches of semi-self entertainment.  Anyone have recommendations for good toddler games?  Especially games that lock the screen so she can’t inadvertently exit out?

Closing Tabs

Questionable Advice and Advertisements put up a fun pie chart of New Year’s resolutions from 1946.

T-mobile isn’t throttling you, you’re just being down-graded.  For all practical purposes, I’m not sure there’s much of a distinction to be made. You’re still getting lower-quality service because we haven’t yet figured out who’s in charge of paying for the Internet.

Season Six of Game of Thrones will be out before The Winds of Winter.  Considering that I stopped around Season 4 of the HBO series, largely because I couldn’t take all the senseless violence any more, I’m not much troubled by this. In happier news, here’s a teaser for season two of Outlander.

CNET compared Philips Hue bulbs to Lifx, and the difference between the two is pretty telling.  If we weren’t already planning to switch, this might have convinced us.

Question of the Week

I got this new poll app, but someone mentioned last week that they were having trouble answering.  I think I’ve got it figured out now, but let me know offline or in the comments if it’s still broken.

[yop_poll id=”8″]

2015 by the Numbers

On By BekkiIn Musings & RamblingsLeave a comment

I like numbers. Not nearly as much as I like words, mind you. I won’t go so far as to say that numbers don’t lie, because you can manipulate numbers almost as easily as you can manipulate words. When used with the appropriate amount of caution, however, numbers do a pretty good job of telling you where you’re at.  Let’s take a look, shall we?

Apply Ass to Chair

This year, I told myself I wanted to write more.  That I am a better and happier person when I make that time for myself.  Ultimately, though, I didn’t write as much as I had wanted to. We moved, I got out of the habit of waking up at 6, the words didn’t make it onto the page.

Month Days Hours Words Blogging Railroad
January 28 21.40 9613 1 26
February 20 13.10 0  – 20
March 11 8.17 0  – 11
April 2 1.13 0  – 2
May – – –  – –
June – – – – –
July – – – – –
August 1 0.60 0 – 2
September – – – – –
October – – – – –
November 15 12.80 955 8 7
December 17 14.60 3323 8 9
Totals 94 71.80 13891 16 77
Average 13 10.26 1984 5 11

 

The result? I only wrote 94 out of 365 days this year.  That averages out to about 1 in every 4 days.  And the months I thought I was doing ok, particularly November and December, were slimmer than I would have liked. I’m also doing about as much blogging as writing, which is a bit surprising.  The Monday posts usually take me about three hours to put together, so I need to get better at condensing that time or working on blog posts at night, to graConflicting Resolutionsb mornings back for novel writing.

Get Moving

I’d planned to go into Cardio Trainer, the app I use to track exercise, and pull out stats on how far I went, how often, and so on.  Unfortunately, the app no longer links up with my Google account, and I had to hard reset my phone about a month ago. So it looks like I’m in the market for a new app.

Without data, I can tell you that my exercise numbers are the inverse of the writing numbers – I was out and about way more often in the spring and summer. I picked Z up from school on the bike a bunch of times, we did long walks in the stroller in the space between dinner and bed, and weekends saw us hiking the trails in town.

Reading 

According to Goodreads,* I read 34 books this year.  Most of those were sci-fi, fantasy, or historical fiction.  I read one non-fiction book – The Bully Pulpit by Doris Keans Goodwin – and it took me the whole year to get through it.  I have also pretty much entirely switched to reading eBooks.  In fact, the only print book I recall reading is God’s War, by Kameron Hurley, and that was because I picked up the first two books of the Bel Dame series at Half-Price. I don’t have precise stats (although I’ll start doing this for next year), but from a scan of authors I read 1 book by a non-US authors, no books by non-white authors, and 22 books by female authors.

*You might have to friend me to see the link.

Travel20151110_101744

I traveled a lot this year – enough to earn elite status for the first time with an airline.  Google maps says I took 26 trips, but when I break that down a lot of it is travel around town.  Google also had a bit of a rough time with the move from NY to CA, telling me I took several trips to and around California in the first few months we lived here.  My rough estimate is 8 trips, evenly split between business and pleasure.  I went to four states, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Texas, and DC, and one country, Poland.  The places I went most often in 2015 were my sister-in-law’s house, Z’s daycare, SFO, Target (!), various parks and playgrounds, JFK, and REI.

Final Thoughts

My biggest takeaway from this is that you get out of tracking what you put in.  The writing stats don’t really show blog posts or word count from earlier in the year because I didn’t really track those until the last few months. My Goodreads count is a bit lower than it should be, largely because I’m not great at actually adding things to Goodreads.  As for Google… well, it thinks I took a ferry ride that cut through El Sobrante and Richmond!

On a more serious note, doing this has helped me start thinking about my goals for 2016. I expect I’ll be putting that post up some time in the next few weeks.

The Monday Review

On By BekkiIn The Weekly ReviewLeave a comment

1. The Universe of Things. A got me a set of Philips Hue bulbs for Christmas. It’s the first step in automating our house, so it turns on lights when we walk into a room and turns down the heat when we’re not home. There are a bunch of controllers out there you can buy, but the best one we’ve found is OpenHab. It’s an open-source platform, meaning that it doesn’t rely on any proprietary technology — it will let us make things talk to other things, even if the manufacturers decide to stop making them compatible. Of course,  it’s also about the most user-unfriendly interface ever.  And yes, I eagerly await the day when our robot overlords rule the earth. Continue reading “The Monday Review” →

Monday Roundup

On By BekkiIn The Weekly ReviewLeave a comment

1. It was nice working in an office for a week… Golden Gate BridgeWorking from home is a sweet gig.  I can take conference calls in my PJ’s, and when I have an early morning, all I need to do is roll out of bed and walk five feet down the hall.  Even so, I sometimes miss being in an office environment, miss sticking my head in somebody’s office rather than having to email or call to get their attention.  Working alone, at home, is isolating.  I think the week helped us all feel a little bit closer.

2 … And even nicer coming home.  It’s been almost a week, and Z is still talking about her mama going away on a ferry boat. She’s also been a Velcro baby since I got back. Which is fine, because I think I missed her almost as much as she missed me. Not to mention that although A and I can handle long distance, we don’t much like it.

3. It snows in Salt Lake City.  Who knew?  Salt Lake City AirportAs both my husband and sister pointed out, apparently the 2010 Winter Olympics Committee.  I chose SLC as my stopover point figuring there was less chance of having weather-related delays than if I went through Minneapolis.  My first inkling that this may not have been the wisest choice was the captain of my DCA to SLC flight saying, “Folks, if you noticed we’ve been zig-zagging over Wyoming, it’s because it’s snowing in Salt Lake and they’re alternating runways to keep them ploughed.”  I’ve got to give it to the folks at that airport, though.  They’ve got their act together.  Ultimately, I was only delayed about an hour.

 

4. My solution to stress-free gift giving. A and I have very different ideas about gift giving and the holidays. He likes surprises; I’d rather make a list. This has led to no end of frustration on my part, as I find it impossible to get him to tell me what he wants. This year, I tried something different: I bought him “A flavored” stuff that I liked and wanted. Stress-free, it was rather enjoyable.  Here’s hoping he likes what he gets as much as I do.

5. Happy birthday to me!  I turned 33 this week. It was a pretty low-key day. Normally A and I divide and conquer on the weekends – I get Z and he gets the to do list. It’s efficient, but we don’t get to spend as much time together as I would like. For my birthday, I asked if we could have a day with the three of us. We took Z up to Scandia and chased her around the gerbil tunnels. It was terrifically fun.  When A asked her at the end of the night if she had a good day, she said “tunnels.”  So I think that counts as a success.

Closing Tabs

I thought planes were one of those things that are too large to misplace, but someone has left three at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. Airport management posted the lost and found notice in a local newspaper, proving that not all weird stuff ends up on Craigslist.

One of the best things about working from home is not having to wear a bra every day.

I’m intrigued by this pen and paper subscription service. Judging by the number of sold out items on the page, a bunch of other people are too.  I’m looking forward to the not-so-distant day when handwriting is an art form and paper is a luxury good.

Working at a British shop has turned me into an unapologetic tea drinker.  I’ve been using Tea Gschwendner for a bit, but T2 is now delivering to the US and the internet is pretty excited about it. Fellow tea drinkers: what’s your go to?

I’ve not yet managed to bring my camera on any of the business trips I’ve taken over the past year, largely due to luggage/space issues.  This tote looks like the perfect solution: there’s room for a laptop and an SLR.

Happy holidays everyone.  May your Christmases be full of good food (Chinese food, in the case of all my Jewish friends) and the people you love.