sillyDaddy

Red Wine Shields Your Brain!

2010-06-03T05:00:00.002-04:00

More proof that you MUST.DRINK.MORE.WINE!

According to the Hopkins study, resveratrol protects your brain from damage in the case of stroke. So soak your neurons in wine for the sake of your children...

Find the story link in the column to the right and consider me your favorite enabler.

Cheers!

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Organize Big Tape Rolls With Twine and a Carabiner

2010-05-24T05:00:00.003-04:00

QUICK TIP: Use a carabiner and some twine to keep your big tape rolls organized.

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Dad: YOU Can Keep Your Teen From Smoking

2010-05-17T05:00:00.002-04:00

Everyone says establish your relationship with the kids when they're little if you want to have an easier time managing them when they're older, right?

Well here's a new study from England's Cardiff University School of Medicine that documents an example.

According to this three year study, it was their father's influence (or lack thereof), more than any other factor, that tipped the scales toward smoking or non-smoking for teenagers.

Communicative Fathers Help Reduce Teenage Smoking...

ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2010) — Dr James White from Cardiff University's School of Medicine undertook a three-year-study, involving some 3,500 11 to 15 year-olds, as part of the British Youth Panel Survey -- a self report survey of children in the British Household Panel survey.

Results indicated that one of the strongest protective factors for reducing the risk of experimenting with smoking in early adolescence was how often fathers talked with their children, both boys and girls, about 'things that mattered'.

Dr White, who presented his findings to the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference on April 15 said: "This study suggests that a greater awareness of parents' and especially fathers' potential impact upon their teenagers' choices about whether to smoke is needed. Fathers should be encouraged and supported to improve the quality and frequency of communication with their children during adolescence.

"The impact of teenager parenting is relatively un-researched and further research is very much needed."

Only children who had never smoked at the time the study began took part. As well as their smoking, the children were also asked about the frequency of parental communication, arguments with family members and the frequency of family meals.
The frequency of family arguments and family meals did not have a significant effect.

After three years, the responses of children who had remained non smokers were compared to those who said they had experimented with smoking at some point.

Recognised risk factors for smoking, such as age, participant sex, household income, parental monitoring and parental smoking, were all taken into account during analysis of the study's findings.

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It's Cinnamon Toast Time!

2010-05-10T05:00:00.004-04:00

Cinnamon sugar sprinkled on toast is a fantastic way to sugar-up the kids' morning (yours too)!

All you need is refined sugar and loads of cinnamon.

Place the sugar in your container. Dump in a lot of cinnamon - really - you'll need quite a bit, but don't go totally overboard because too much and it'll taste too "spicy".

Use a small whisk or spoon to stir the b'jesus out of it.

Add the concoction to buttered toast. The cinnamon/sugar will absorb the butter and turn dark.

The cinnamon/sugar/butter blend will also stiffen the toast a bit and make it easier to use your cookie cutter.

Yum!

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Dad Is Primarily Responsible For Child's Confidence Building Exploratory Behavior

2010-05-03T05:00:00.005-04:00

Here's a new study from the University of Montreal that examines 'activation theory' as a complement to the well known 'attachment theory'.

Activation theory examines parental influence on a child's exploratory behavior and defines an optimally stimulated child as one that is exploratory yet respective of rules. According to the theory, optimally stimulated children are more self confident.

The author of the study suggests that fathers are largely responsible for activating a child's exploratory behavior while mothers are usually greater contributors to a child's feeling of attachment and that both of these phenomenon complement one another in a well developed child.

Exploration in Toddlers Activated by Fathers
ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2010) — A new study has found that fathers give toddlers more leeway and that allows them to actively explore their environments, according to a new study on parent-child attachment published in Early Child Development and Care.

Daniel Paquette, a professor at the Université de Montréal School of Psychoeducation, says the 'activation theory' is just as important as the 'attachment theory.' The latter was the prevailing 20th-Century notion that children usually connect with their primary caregiver since they fulfill their emotional needs and guarantee their survival.

"In attachment theory, a child seeks comfort from a parent when he or she is insecure. This theory underestimates the importance of exploratory behavior in children," says Dr. Paquette, who completed his study with Marc Bigras of the Université du Québec à Montréal.

As part of the investigations, kids aged 12 to 18 months (accompanied by a parent) were placed in three different risky situations: social risk (a strange adult entered his or her environment), physical risk (toys were placed at the top of a stairway), and a forbidden activity (parents were forbidden to climb the stairs after the child succeeded the first time).

"We found fathers are more inclined than mothers to activate exploratory behavior by being less protective," says Paquette. "The less the parent is protective, the more activated is the exploratory behavior in the child. Children who were optimally stimulated, meaning they were exploratory yet respective of the rules, were 71 percent boys. Meanwhile, 70 percent of children who were risk averse were girls."

The parent's behavior was measured by the distance they kept from their child as he or she climbed the stairs. "For a child to become self-confident, the parent mustn't be too far or too close," says Paquette. "The ideal distance seems to be an arm's length. This distance was statistically significant with fathers yet not with mothers."

According to Paquette, classical attachment theory doesn't highlight these differences between boys and girls. This is why he feels his theory is better adapted to evaluate the role of the father while factoring in the temperament of the child and the level of protective parenting, both of which trigger the activation relationship.

Paquette is convinced that mothers and fathers intervene differently in the education of a child and these complementaries benefit a child. "Even if both parents change diapers and give the bottle, they don't do it the same way," says Paquette. "By stimulating exploration, controlled risk-taking and competition, fathers provide something different to the child who will benefit greatly from this singular contribution."

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$796 Saved On Energy Cost In One Year!

2010-04-26T05:00:00.002-04:00

Do you remember when I posted way back in September that it was possible to save 800 bucks off your energy bill in one year WITHOUT replacing your windows?

Well I've got an update for you!

Our final savings tally for the year was $796.08! There is no doubt in my mind that we would have broken the $800 barrier if this past December hadn't been 6% colder than last year's December.

I'll have another post out next fall with several new additional low budget techniques that I've implemented since the original September post.

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Avoid Horrible Gift Giving With Free Google Docs

2010-04-19T05:00:00.007-04:00

Do you sometimes have a problem coming up with the perfect gift for your wife?

Oh SURE, during the "courting period" it was easy to come up with stuff. But now, finding something she won't immediately want to return is a bit tougher.

Well I've solved this problem, and many others, with Google's free Google Docs collaboration tool.

I created a shared 'Wish List' spreadsheet for eM, myself and the kids. Now when eM thinks of something she might like to have as a future gift she opens up our shared document and adds it to her list.

Now I always know I'm getting her something she really wants, and as long as there are enough items on the list, we still retain some element of surprise because she doesn't know which gift is coming. Some of our immediate family members have also asked to see the list so we've given them permission to view it as well.

It's hard to even count all the ways we use this feature now and I literally have hundreds of documents stored this way.

Every science article that leaves an impression is copied and pasted into a Google Doc. We use it to keep track of our financial data. I used it to analyze my grandmother's available Medicare Pharmacy plans in collaboration with my mother and grandmother. And most recently, I created a Google Doc to log what's in our safe deposit box and what's in queue to place in the box.
If you have a Gmail account then you're already set up to use this free feature!

Here's how to use it:

Go to your Gmail main page and select 'Documents'. It's important to go through Gmail to get this first page

You're in! Click on the 'Create new' drop down menu at the top right and go to town! A Google 'Document' is like a Word-lite document and 'Spreadsheet' is Excel-lite. They don't have nearly the same functionality as Word or Excel but for most uses they're perfect.

From that same menu you can also create a 'Folder' to manage your docs (I'll get into the 'Form' menu option in a future post because it's also terrific).
Before you've closed your new document, you can click on the 'Share' button at the top right and 'Invite people' to view and/or edit.

TIP: Always enter Google Docs through the Gmail link. It's important so that you're riding Gmail's https secure socket layer (which just means it's encrypted and no one else can easily see what you're seeing). If you come in through iGoogle or any other Google menu you'll be transported on an unsecured connection.

Previously featured Google favorites include Google Calendar, Google Reader, and Gmail Filter.

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New Study: Negative Short Term Video Game Effect on Children

2010-04-12T05:00:00.005-04:00

New study out last month about the short term effects of video games on children's writing, reading and learning skills.

The study examined a group of 6-9 year-olds both before, and then 4-months after, receiving a video game device and three age appropriate games.

According to the author of the study which appeared in a journal of the Association for Psychological Science,

"boys who received the video-game system at the beginning of the study had significantly lower reading and writing scores four months later compared with the boys [who did not]. Although there were no differences in parent-reported behavioral problems between the two groups of kids, the boys who received the video-game system immediately had greater teacher-reported learning problems."

There are lots of studies out there right now about gaming and many deliver conflicting messages.

Some point out the physical problems associated with kids sitting for hours and the effects of video game violence on children.

Other studies indicate that gaming improves both the speed and accuracy with which kids process information, can help kids to be kinder and more helpful, and that 'active' video games can even be an alternative to moderate exercise for kids.

I absolutely loved asteroids and space invaders growing up. I hate the thought of denying my children the pleasure of spending hours interacting with a lifeless, cold, intelligence sucking machine that may eventually become their best friend (as it did for me :..(

I've encouraged J to play some Sesame Street related games through the public television web site. I am proud to report that she's become dexterous with the mouse and is able to do some fundamental navigation.

With that said, we've not faced the true decision point yet in the sillyDaddy household (i.e. to buy a gaming console or not). I expect that we will most likely bring one into the house and roll with a policy of age-appropriate games played in moderation. Perhaps we'll provide our kids with a choice during their alloted TV time: (i.e. during the next 1/2 hour you may either watch a show or play a video game). That way they don't log any extra screen time and they end up feeling like they had a choice.

Parenting: ain't it fun!

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DIY Fix For Your Wobbly Keyboard

2010-04-09T05:00:00.005-04:00

Tip: Is your keyboard wobbling because you snapped off one of its little legs? Use the "spring" from a large binder clip to replace it. Good as new!

(and yes, that is a delicious glass of scotch in the background)

***

Balance Important For Your Child's Mental Health

2010-03-29T05:00:00.006-04:00

Yes it's true.... sillyDaddy fractured his toe recently while running from the children on top of the couches in the family room....

While my balance may be in question, eM and I have encouraged the kids' balancing skills to build their coordination, strength and esteem - and all our friends just thought we were careless parents.

We've let them climb and move through their home, let them problem solve about how to get around or over obstacles and even allowed them to stumble occasionally in our safe, child proofed environment.

So far they've come through in much better shape than I have.

I reached back into my sillyDaddy archive to find this article that made an impression on me from early last year. Published in Research and Developmental Disabilities journal, the study found that "all [children] with balance problems do exhibit symptoms of anxiety, pointing to a link between the two conditions."

According to the research, children in the study, five to seven year olds with an anxiety diagnosis, went through a 12-week sensory-motor intervention in which, "the children use equipment to experience their environment and move in space." Their balance improved, anxiety was reduced to normal levels and their self-esteem increased.

Improve Balance, Relieve Childhood Anxiety

By Rick Nauert, Ph.D., Senior News Editor
Saturday, Jan 24 (Psych Central) -- Many of the 40 million American adults who suffer from anxiety disorders also have problems with balance.

As increasing numbers of children are diagnosed with anxiety, researchers have discovered that the link between balance and anxiety can be assessed at an early age and that something can be done about it before it becomes a problem.

Dr. Orit Bart at Tel Aviv University’s School of Health Professions, and her colleagues, have found that a simple course of physical treatment for balance problems can also resolve anxiety issues in children. Her work offers new hope for normal social and emotional development for children with both disorders.

Anxiety has a significant impact on children’s personal and academic well-being. While not all kids with anxiety have balance problems, all those with balance problems do exhibit symptoms of anxiety, pointing to a link between the two conditions.

“This is a breakthrough in the field of occupational therapy,” says Dr. Bart.

Her study — done in collaboration with TAU researchers Yair Bar-Haim, Einat Weizman, Moran Levin, Avi Sadeh, and Matti Mintz, and to be published in Research in Developmental Disabilities — investigated the anxiety-balance connection in young children for the first time.

Dr. Bart tracked children between the ages of five and seven who had been diagnosed with both problems to see how treatment would affect each disorder.

After a 12-week intervention of sensory-motor intervention, the children in Dr. Bart’s study improved their balance skills.

The therapy also reduced the children’s anxiety to normal levels, she reports. As their balance and anxiety issues improved, the children’s self-esteem also increased.

Treating the Mind Through the Body

“You can’t treat children with anxiety in a cognitive way because of their immaturity and lack of operational thinking. Working with the body may be the answer,” Dr. Bart explains.

The treatment therefore focused on letting the children use equipment to experience their environment and move in space.

Dr. Bart found that by working with their bodies, children could work through their emotional problems, including anxiety.

Dr. Bart is now working on expanding the initial results through a larger study with more control groups. The goal is to explore the exact nature of the relationship between balance and anxiety in children, and to focus the results on more specific treatment types.

“Young children who have anxiety should first be assessed for balance issues to see if that is the source of the problem,” says Dr. Bart.

“We can now treat these children because we have a better understanding of the relation between these disorders.”

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Free Google Calendar Makes It Easy To Organize The Family

2010-03-25T05:00:00.004-04:00

Do you wish you had a more organized and reliable way to coordinate schedules with your wife? Would you like to be able to share your schedule with friends and family? Wouldn’t it be cool to have an up to the minute weather report right on your calendar?

You can have all this and more with Google’s free shared calendar application!

If you have a free Gmail account you have access to Google’s free calendar application. There’s absolutely nothing to download because it’s all web based.

You will be able to create specialized calendars, share them with friends and family or keep them private, overlay multiple calendars on top of each other so you can easily see conflicts, send appointment alerts to your phone or email, and add free extras like a calendar for all US Holidays and a Weather overlay!

eM is able to manage a calendar in her mind. I am not. It used to drive me crazy when she would try to talk to me about scheduling things without a calendar in front of me (i.e. like while we’re driving) because I find it difficult to visualize our occasionally complex schedule. And I used to drive her crazy by constantly asking for updates about event details that she had already reviewed with me days or weeks before.

This shared calendar has eliminated the issue. Now, if eM wants me to think about an event, she places it in the calendar and gives me the heads up. And if I want to know detail about an upcoming event, all I have to do is pull it up on the calendar.

TIP: Remember, you can create as many calendars as you’d like so make sure each calendar has a single purpose. That way you can overlay multiple calendars when you want more information or eliminate overlays when you don't need as much information. For instance, we have a calendar just for park events. We don't always want to see this on our regular appointment calendar so we only overlay the park events calendar when we're planning on doing something at the park.

eM and I both have separate appointment calendars that show up in different colors. That way when we overlay our calendars it’s easy to tell at a glance which appointments were made by eM and which were made by me.

We've set up calendars for just about everything including:

My company’s holidays and my scheduled time off
Birthdays/Anniversaries
Household chore schedule
J’s preschool schedule
My blog post schedule

You can add all kinds of detail to each event including recurring appointments, Google Maps and appointment reminders.

Here’s how to do it:

To set up a new calendar from Gmail click on Calendar on the top menu.
Click 'Create' under the 'My calendar' section (see the screen shot to the above right). Set up your calendar; choose with whom you’d like to share and what power they should have; and click 'Create Calendar' at the bottom.
If you’d like to add local weather, go back to the main screen and click 'Add' under the 'Other calendars' section.

Once you have several calendars set up you can click the arrow to the right of the calendar name to display just that one, or you can click directly on the calendar name to add it to the display.

Once you get comfortable with the basic features, have fun with the settings which allow you to add icons to your events, change the calendar's background image and more!

Other favorite Google features already reviewed here include Google Reader, Gmail Filters and Google Docs.

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Internet Crime Up 22%!

2010-03-22T05:00:00.011-04:00

you are the water buffalo in this scenario (J took this pic. Nice, right?)

A scary report out this month from the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) regarding cyber crime.

Especially scary because it details a high rate of cyber-crime in the Washington DC Metro Area.

The IC3 is an organization put together by the FBI in conjunction with the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. I mentioned their list of 17 identity theft prevention tips in my hardening your passwords post.

According to the report, Maryland ranks 19th and Virginia 28th in the number of perps per capita!

Complaints to the IC3 increased 22% last year and the average amount of money lost per complaint jumped from $265K in 2008 to $560K.

The Top Three Crimes:

20% non-delivery of goods or services.
14% identity theft.
10% credit card fraud.

If you haven't done so already, please plan on carving out some time to protect yourself.

Review the four post series:
Protecting Your Identity
Stop Credit Solicitations
Freezing Your Credit
Hardening Your Passwords

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Spring Equinox - Not Just For Druids Anymore!

2010-03-18T05:00:00.004-04:00

Have you always wanted to celebrate the spring equinox but were too intimidated by druids and wickens?

Spring equinox isn't some bizarre, candle lighting, virgin sacrificing, robe wearing ritual. It's a meteorological event.

And we're takin' it back baby!

The spring equinox is one of two times of the year when the sun crosses the plane of the earth's equator and day and night are of equal length. This year's spring equinox will occur on March 20th at 1:32pm.

You know what that means??? From here on out we'll have more day than night and summer isn't far behind!!!

Now, lets go kick some druid ass.

***

Captain's Log

2010-03-15T05:00:00.008-04:00

TIP: Hey guys, here's a little tip for you...and I know this is going to come as a shock to many of you as it did to me...

No matter how good an idea it seems at the time, NEVER tell your wife you're thinking of keeping a log of her mistakes around the house....

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Build A DIY Secret Bookshelf Compartment!

2010-03-11T05:00:00.010-05:00

Regardless of whether or not you actually have anything secret to store in your home, every Daddy, silly or not, wants a secret compartment.

I've read lots of interesting ideas for creating secret spots but they always looked like they'd take years to complete and cost thousands of lives.

This is a quick and easy secret compartment that, so far, has fooled everyone who's looked for it.

A couple of points I should make right off the bat:

I have been reminded by eM and others of what a particularly pointless project this was given that we have nothing either secret or valuable to hide.
I have been reminded by eM and others that ~~forcing everyone who enters the house to view~~ showing off the secret compartment entirely defeats the purpose of having said secret compartment.
My single malt scotch levels are very low.

Well, to all these sayers of nay I say, "Nay" right back at thee!

Here's what you'll need:

Three, 3-ring binders. Bigger the better (as long as they're not too tall to fit on your intended bookshelf).
Staples - not the kind that fit into your stapler - the heavy duty kind from the hardware store.
Strong glue.
Utility knife.
Small wood screws with a head. I used screws designed to be used with picture frames.
Drill to make pilot holes for the staples and wood screws.
Secrets to hide (although this component is completely unnecessary).

Line up your 3 notebooks to make sure they look good together. Apply your glue. Not too close to the edge! You don't want any glue to be visible when you're all done.

Once the glue has dried, throw in two staples to each inside cover.

Use your utility knife to cut out the inside covers just past the staple and glue line.

Line up the joined notebooks on your shelf and figure out where to fasten them. This part isn't entirely necessary but it makes it much easier to open and close your secret compartment.

I used very small wood screws with a large enough head so that they wouldn't pass right through the notebook's plastic and cardboard cover.

Place other notebooks and books close by to complete the deception.

Now, tell all your friends to come on over and see your secret compartment (that's what she said...badabing).

***

Steeple Chase Time!

2010-03-08T05:00:00.009-05:00

Steeple chase season arrives in Maryland on April 10th with the 108th running (that's just over a century to you and me) of the My Lady's Manor Steeple Chase!

J & D have attended each year of their lives; eM and I have attended almost every year since we've been together and I attended with friends many years before that. It's a fun event, great for people with or without families. This is one of the few remaining vestiges of my pre-fatherhood days when I still had disposable income. In fact, it might be the only surviving vestige.

Now the vibe at this race is a little different than the Virginia or International Gold Cups that DC folks are used to. It's more ancient country manor & LLBean vs. nouveau riche & fancy hats. Oh you can still find plenty of pompous but most folks are very friendly.

The weather can be a real wild card which is part of the adventure. It might be really warm or you might get a cold and damp day as we did last year. Either way, with our little group, the scotch and wine flow, the provisions are abundant and there's even a little friendly wagering among the group.

The location of the race adds to its charm. In 1713, Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore made a gift of this land (10,000 acres) to his fourth wife, Lady Margaret, christening the estate "My Lady's Manor." The races, which are over wooden fences, or 'timber' began in 1902. The horses are known as timber horses and/or jumpers.

Tips:

There are no food or drink vendors so be sure to pack sustenance.
Bring folding chairs.
Keep a close eye on the weather.
If it was wet leading up to race day wear good mud boots. Wear comfortable walking shoes regardless - you will be walking through actual fields with actual divots and actual horse droppings.

If you're going to go it's best to fit as many in one car as you can because general parking is $50 and parking prices go up from there. Once you park you can walk just about anywhere along the course to see the races. We normally park in a homeowner's yard across from the race entrance. The price for one of his yard spots has steadily gone up but it's still just under $50.

If you really want to splurge you can buy a parking spot on the rail. If you do, don't forget to invite your favorite sillyDaddy for a visit (seriously...don't forget...i promise to bring extra scotch)!

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Quality Fathering Boosts Your Child's IQ

2010-03-04T05:00:00.005-05:00

While I was posting about the research released last week concerning girls and math ability, I was reminded of another article in the sillyDaddy archive.

The research (pasted below) released at the end of 2008 found that an involved dad boosts a child's IQ in a significant way!

The author, a psychologist at the University of Newcastle (where they also happen to make a lovely brown ale....bada bing) writes, "This is not half a point, this is a few points of IQ, on average."

The research was based on surveys of more than 10,000 children completed over more than 50 years and was published in the journal of Evolution and Human Behavior.

Time with dad is time well spent
by Ewen Callaway

When picking out that perfect Father's Day gift next year, sons and daughters might want to look to their own accomplishments before deciding between a gaudy polyester tie or splurging on a new set of golf clubs.

The more effort a father invests in his children, the smarter they are as kids and more successful as adults, new research shows. And highly educated fathers make even more of a difference than less educated dads, all things being equal.

"It's not [just] about having dad around, it's about what kind of dad he is," says Daniel Nettle, a psychologist at the University of Newcastle, UK, who led the new analysis, based on surveys of more than 10,000 children over half a century.

Nettle used the National Child Development Study, which traces the lives of every Briton born between 3 and 9 March, 1958. Surveys taken in the 1960s and 70s asked mothers to rate the father's involvement in his child, from "inapplicable" to "equal to the mother". These and later surveys through 2005 tracked intelligence, income, and education of the participants.

Nettle has previously used the same data set to show that wealthy men father more children than paupers.

With paternal investment, however, time seemed to be the most important currency. At age 11, children of highly involved fathers boasted markedly higher IQs than children with less present dads. "This is not half a point, this is a few points of IQ, on average," he says.

Nettle also found that highly educated and successful fathers get more bang for their buck, compared with uneducated and working class men. All things being equal, fathers of high socioeconomic status gave children a small extra boost with their attention than less affluent fathers.

However, this effect did not last through middle age. At 42, the children of super-dads were no more socially mobile than other children - regardless of the father's education level or profession.

Robert Quinlan, a biocultural anthropologist at Washington State University in Pullman, says the study breaks new ground in showing the benefits of having a father around - especially an affluent one.

Quinlan wonders, though, whether discrepancies in a father's socioeconomic status make a real-world difference, rather than a statistical one, detectable only in large-scale surveys. "How much would you pay to get a half a point of IQ," he asks.

Journal reference: Evolution and Human Behavior(DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2008.06.002)

***

Use Filters and Labels To Manage Your Gmail

2010-03-01T05:00:00.006-05:00

Does your swamped Gmail Inbox have you down? Wish there was an easy way to sort through and organize all your mail?

Well there is!

Gmail has easy to use filter and labeling options that allow you to handle and organize your mail BEFORE it ever hits your inbox.

As an example, I have a filter set up to capture mail from my favorite retailers. And while these are retailers that I want to hear from, I still don’t want their email choking my inbox.

Each time one of my filtered retailers sends me an email, Gmail captures it, labels it, and diverts it to a special folder I’ve labeled “Retailer”.

The "Retailer" folder keeps an unread email count in my side bar so I always know if a retailer has sent me something new. Now, instead of these emails hitting my inbox, they wait patiently in the folder until I want to read them.

Here’s how to do it:

Click the "create a filter" link (click photo at the right to see larger image).

Fill in fields for anything you'd like to filter against. In this example, I type "@acmoore.com" in the "From" field to catch any email from acmoore.

Use the check boxes to tell the filter what to do. In this example I want the acmoore filtered email to 1) skip the inbox 2) have a label applied and 3) make sure it's never sent to spam.

Since you don't already have a label named "retailer", select the "new label" option from the "choose label drop down menu.
Finally, click the "Create Filter" button and you're done!

Now, when you return to your main gmail screen you'll see your folder named "retailer". Click on that folder and you'll see all of the email captured by the filter.

Set folders/labels for everything else you'd like to organize. For instance, I have a filter that just applies a special label to any email eM sends me. That way I can just click my "eM" folder and instantly see all email from her grouped together on one screen.

Other Google favorites reviewed include Google Calendar, Google Reader and Google Docs.

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You Are The Main Factor That Influence's Your Child's Pursuit Of A Tech Career!

2010-02-25T05:00:00.014-05:00

Interesting study results out of Michigan State earlier this week about factors that lead children to pursue science or technology careers.

Key findings from this study, which followed 6000 students from middle school to college, include:

The main contributor to a child's decision to pursue science/tech is parental influence.
Success in math classes turns out to be more significant a factor than success in science classes.
Sons are encouraged to pursue math classes more than daughters, which reinforces my previous call for all dad's to encourage their girl geeks.

Parents Still Major Influence on Child’s Decision to Pursue Science Careers

ScienceDaily (Feb. 21, 2010) — Parental influence and access to mathematics courses are likely to guide students to careers in science, technology, engineering, mathematics or medicine (STEMM), according to research from Michigan State University.

The findings of Jon Miller, MSU Hannah Professor of Integrative Studies, and colleagues were presented at a symposium titled "Tomorrow's Scientists and Engineers." at this year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The education of more researchers, engineers and others in the field of science is critical, said Miller.

"Failure to build and maintain a competitive scientific workforce in the decades ahead," Miller said, "will inevitably lead to a decline in the American standard of living."

Miller used data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth, which kept track of nearly 6,000 students from middle school through college, attempting to determine what led them to or guided them away from STEMM careers.

According to Miller, "The pathway to a STEMM career begins at home." He said this is especially true in families in which children were strongly encouraged to go to college.

"Only four percent of students who experienced low parent encouragement to attend college planned to enter a post-secondary program and major in a STEMM field," he said. "This compares to 41 percent of students whose parents strongly encouraged college attendance."

The research also found that sons were slightly more encouraged than daughters to do well in science and math.

Also influential, although not on the same level as parental encouragement, is the parents' education level. The research found that approximately 27 percent of the children of college graduates planned to major in a STEMM field, compared to 18 percent of parents with a high school diploma.

The research also reinforced the role mathematics plays in the pursuit of a STEMM career.

"Mathematics is a primary gateway to a STEMM career," Miller said, "beginning with algebra track placement in grades seven and eight, and continuing through high school and college calculus courses."

The researchers said high school and college science courses have "small, positive effects" on a student's decision to pursue a STEMM career, but is not at the level of mathematics.

***

DIY Teddy Bear and Deranged Kitty Birthday Cakes

2010-02-22T05:00:00.013-05:00

sillyDaddy loves to build interesting cakes. I don't so much like the baking of them but I surely do like the building of them.

eM and I teamed up to make teddy bear cakes for a combined bday party for J and D. She did the baking and I did the building.

This one was, well, a piece of cake compared to the bug cupcakes I wrote about earlier and a cool dragon cake I made but haven't posted yet.

One major lesson learned from those past experiences is that applying icing to a cut cake is really tough. This time around I picked up a mini cupcake pan and small round cake pans at the local craft store to avoid icing over cut cake as much as possible.

Here's what you'll need:

Mini cupcake and round baking pans.
One box of cake mix.
One can of icing.
Food coloring.
Decorative icing in a can for ears, eyes, etc.
Chocolate chips for nose, eyes.

I kind of whipped this one together so if I had more time I might have looked for more interesting candies for the eyes, nose, etc.

The arms and legs consist of one full mini cupcake attached to half a mini cupcake cut into a semicircle.

The ears are semicircle mini cupcakes attached to the head.

I made a larger one for J (using two rounds for the body) but I'm afraid it kind of looked more like a mutant, freakish cat then a teddy bear. When she saw it she started to cry and begged her mommy to take away the "scary kitty".

Happy Birthday!

***

Harden Your Passwords

2010-02-18T05:00:00.017-05:00

Today's post is all about passwords and it's my fourth in a series of four about DIY identity protection.

In the first post of the series, Protecting Your Personal Information on the Internet, research revealed that most peoples' passwords were extremely easy to hack.

Well, last December, 32 million passwords belonging to a company called Rockyou were breached by a benevolent hacker who turned the passwords over for study.

A firm named Imperva conducted research on the stolen passwords and found, "Nearly 50% of users used names, slang words, dictionary words or trivial passwords (consecutive digits, adjacent keyboard keys, and so on). The most common password among Rockyou.com account owners is '123456'."

According to that same study, a hacker with a decent DSL connection and a list of the top 5000 passwords (the top 20 of which are pictured below) could "gain access to one new account every second" and take "less than 17 minutes to compromise 1000 accounts."

Believe it or not, NASA actually publishes recommendations regarding password security and they say your passwords:

Should contain at least eight characters.
Should contain a mix of four different types of characters. If there is only one letter or special character, it should not be either the first or last character in the password.
Should not be a name, slang word, or any word in the dictionary and should not include any part of your name or your email address.

I recently hardened 104 of eM and my passwords. I'll lay out how I did it and invite comments on any flaws that I may have overlooked.

I divided our passwords into two groups; those that hold personal information that could lead to identity or other resource theft (like bank accounts) and those that I've "scrubbed" and hold absolutely no personal information (like an account with a news site). For the purposes of this example I'll call the first group critical and the second group non-critical.

I created an easy to remember short password to be used with all of the non-critical sites. I use the same password for all of these sites. If this password were to be hacked, there wouldn't be any information the hacker could gain from these sites that could be used to crack our critical accounts.

I used a site that generates random 63 and 64 digit passwords for each of my critical sites. Each of our critical sites has its own unique, randomly generated password.

I created an Excel spreadsheet as my main repository for all of our passwords and I store that file on the desktop of our home PC. This file is never moved from the PC with the exception of backed up files stored in another secure location (i.e. it's never placed on a thumb drive or CD, it's never moved to a lap top, it's never placed in a shared network file).

Security questions used for password recovery are only found in this file.
The file itself is somewhat hardened and I used, among other things, a password to protect the workbook from being viewed (that's a feature that comes with Excel). If someone were to get ahold of the file they would need to crack the file's password before they could view our information.
The PC where the file is stored is also password protected. If the PC were to be stolen, the hacker would first have to crack the PC's password before they could see the Excel file.

I like the idea of a master password and a password vault service like KeePass but what I don't like is the idea of a third party controlling the information. In place of a KeePass-like service I use several web based components but no one party has access to all of our credential information (all components run on https connections).

One entity holds user names, one entity holds passwords, another entity holds a list of the sites we use and eM and I hold a key for piecing them all together. I know it seems like a pain in the ass, but eM and I have gotten use to viewing all three entities and using a key I developed to figure out which password goes with which user name.

So that's how we roll. It took me about a day to execute the plan but we feel much more secure.

For some additional reading I recommend you visit a site put together by the FBI and a partner organizations the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistancer. There you'll find a comprehensive list of 17 current internet and identity crimes and ways to prevent them.

The other three postings in the DIY identity protection series:

***

Snow Carvings

2010-02-12T12:13:00.007-05:00

Before we lose all of this glorious snow, be sure to carve a few runs for the kids!

And while you're designing your fortress, keep vitamin D production in mind.

Our bodies produce a tremendous amount of vitamin D when exposed to the sun. Sun exposure is important for everyone but especially for the little ones and it's tougher to come by in the winter. Sure, you can supplement their bodies' production with added vitamin D in milk and oj, but, with brief exposure to the sun, their bodies produce way more than they can get through diet alone.

When I dig runs for the kids, I design them for maximum sun exposure. I also like to throw in one or two straight runs so they can really get some exercise.

Naturally, keeping the kids in the sun helps them stay much warmer and makes it a more comfortable experience for them.

Two additional snow excavating tips:

I cut a couple feet wide path around my house foundation so that all that melt won't be running straight down the foundation wall.
I also dig out the downspouts and the splash area to make sure they're opened for business during the melt. You'll most likely find a solid chunk of ice in the mouth of the downspout. Pull this straight out and it should come right out.

***

An Approach To Managing Behavior

2010-02-11T05:00:00.004-05:00

This piece from the sillyDaddy archive was written by a pediatrician and published in the opinion pages of the NY Times last year.

The author describes the approach as respectful of a child's "intellectual and emotional privacy" and writes, "I’m not telling you to like your teacher; I’m telling you to treat her with courtesy. I’m not telling you that you can’t hate Tommy; I’m telling you that you can’t hit Tommy. Your feelings are your own private business; your behavior is public."

Making Room for Miss Manners Is a Parenting Basic

By PERRI KLASS, M.D.
Published: January 12, 2009
NY Times

For years, I took care of a very rude child. When he was 3, I called him rambunctious — and I talked to his mother about “setting limits.” At 4, I called him “demanding.” At 5, he was still screaming at his mother if she didn’t do what he wanted, he still swatted me whenever I tried to examine him, and his mother asked me worriedly if I thought he was ready for kindergarten.

I could go on (he didn’t have an easy time in school), but it would sound like a Victorian tale: The Rude Boy. I never used the word “rude” or even “manners” when I spoke to his mother. I don’t describe my patients as rude or polite in the medical record. But I do pass judgment, and so does every pediatrician I know.

It’s always popular — and easy — to bewail the deterioration of manners; there is an often quoted (and often disputed) story about Socrates’ complaining that the young Athenians have “bad manners, contempt for authority.” Sure, certain social rubrics have broken down or blurred, and sure, electronic communication seems to have given adults as well as children new ways to be rude.

But the age-old parental job remains. And that job is to start with a being who has no thought for the feelings of others, no code of behavior beyond its own needs and comforts — and, guided by love and duty, to do your best to transform that being into what your grandmother (or Socrates) might call a mensch. To use a term that has fallen out of favor, your assignment is to “civilize” the object of your affections.

My favorite child-rearing book is “Miss Manners’ Guide to Rearing Perfect Children,” by Judith Martin, who takes the view that manners are at the heart of the whole parental enterprise. I called her to ask why.

“Every infant is born adorable but selfish and the center of the universe,” she replied. It’s a parent’s job to teach that “there are other people, and other people have feelings.”

The conversations that every pediatrician has, over and over, about “limit setting” and “consistently praising good behavior” are conversations about manners. And when you are in the exam room with a child who seems to have none, you begin to wonder what is going on at home and at school, and questions of family dysfunction or neurodevelopmental problems begin to cross your mind.

Dr. Barbara Howard, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and an expert on behavior and development, told me that a child’s manners were a perfectly appropriate topic to raise at a pediatric visit.

“It has a huge impact on people’s lives — why wouldn’t you bring it up?” she said. “Do they look you in the eye? If you stick your hand out do they shake it? How do they interact with the parents; do they interrupt, do they ask for things, do they open Mommy’s purse and take things out?”

Dr. Howard suggested that the whole “manners” concept might seem a little out of date — until you recast it as “social skills,” a very hot term these days. Social skills are necessary for school success, she pointed out; they affect how you do on the playground, in the classroom, in the workplace.

We also think of social skills as a profound set of challenges that complicate the lives of children — and adults — on what is now called the autism spectrum. Children with autism, whether mild or severe, have great difficulty learning social codes, deciphering subtle body language or tone of voice, and catching on to the rules of the game.

Therapy for these children can include systematic training in social skills, sometimes using scripts for common human interactions. And one lesson, Dr. Howard said, “is that you can teach this stuff, and we maybe aren’t teaching it as well as we should be to children who are developing normally.”

And of course, one of the long-term consequences of being a rude child is being a rude adult — even a rude doctor. There are bullies on the playground and bullies in the workplace; it can be quite disconcerting to encounter a mature adult with 20 or so years of education under his belt who still sees the world only in terms of his own wants, needs and emotions: I want that so give it to me; I am angry so I need to hit; I am wounded so I must howl.

I like Miss Manners’ approach because it lets a parent respect a child’s intellectual and emotional privacy: I’m not telling you to like your teacher; I’m telling you to treat her with courtesy. I’m not telling you that you can’t hate Tommy; I’m telling you that you can’t hit Tommy. Your feelings are your own private business; your behavior is public.

But that first big counterintuitive lesson — that there are other people out there whose feelings must be considered — affects a child’s most basic moral development. For a child, as for an adult, manners represent a strategy for getting along in life, but also a successful intellectual engagement with the business of being human.

I did not enjoy visits with my rude patient. Despite his generally good health and his normal developmental milestones, I couldn’t help feeling that the adult world had failed to guide and protect him. He was loud and demanding and insistent, but one of his basic needs had not been met: no one had taught him manners.

As a pediatrician, I worry about the trajectories of children’s growth and development: measuring a baby’s head size, weighing a toddler, asking about the language skills of a preschooler. Manners are another side of the journey every child makes from helplessness to autonomy. And a child who learns to manage a little courtesy, even under the pressure of a visit to the doctor, is a child who is operating well in the world, a child with a positive prognosis.

***

Prep for Round Two With Mother Nature

2010-02-09T09:26:00.008-05:00

As of this writing, they're calling for another 10 to 20 inches of snow for the Washington DC metro area.

Here are a few quick tips for round two:

Prep for loss of power:

Charge your cell phones, especially if you're like us and did away with your land line years ago.

Crank up the cold in your freezer and fridge. Set them to the coldest setting to buy yourself a little time if you lose power.
Gather your flashlights and make sure they all work. I put ours in two central locations.

Keep your gas meter clear of snow. If it freezes you could loose your gas supply.
Make sure your cars are filled with gasoline.
Spend time regretting that you don't have a back up generator.
Watch Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back again for tips on how to slice open your family pets and stuff your children inside to keep them alive, just like Han did for Luke with a tauntaun.

Snow shoveling:

Let others stock up on milk for the kids. Remember to stock up on WD40 for your snow shovel.
If you have a deck, get some snow off of it before the next round hits.
Examine your roof. Ours is slanted so I haven't yet decided if I'm going to try to move snow off before the next wave.
Spend time regretting that you don't have a snow blower. Spend time feeling foolish for mocking the old man who lives down the street who brings out his monster snow blower for every dusting.

Have a slate of activities prepared for the kids. My current list includes:

More DIY pine cone bird feeders.
DIY toast bird feeders - Use a large cookie cutter on a toasted piece of bread. Make a hole for your twine. Apply peanut butter and birdseed.
Painting with brushes.
Painting with spaghetti - use al dente spaghetti. Keep it to two colors.
Chalkboard drawing.
Soccer game - set up "goals" at either end of a room.
Build a snowman.
Build an igloo and/or snow tunnel.
Make snow cream - my grandmother's recipe: Fill large pot with snow, 1 quart milk, 1 cup sugar, about a half a bottle of vanilla. It'll seem like too much vanilla at first but the snow will melt and dilute it. Save any extra in the freezer for a milkshake.
Set up tape for Heel And Toe - run masking tape all over the floor and have the kids walk heel to toe. If you fall off the line you have to start over. I set a line up that goes under tables and over the side of a couch. This is big fun and it's a nice little work out believe it or not.
Make more DIY pipe cleaner rings.
Make cinnamon almonds.

Be sure to keep the kids involved with cleaning up their toys. Nothing brings on the cabin fever quicker than a cluttered house.

Have an idea that I didn't list? Please include it in "comments".

***

Freeze Your Credit So Bad People Can't Get It (rhymes)!

2010-02-08T05:00:00.011-05:00

Did you know that, as of January 2008, if you're a Maryland resident, you can freeze your credit report with each agency for 5 bucks a pop and as of January 2010 you can do this on-line?

Freezing your credit report means that no one can open up a new line of credit in your name. So even if someone were to steal your identity they wouldn’t be able to use the information to get lots of shiny new credit cards.

Each state has its own version of this law and you can check out Consumer Union’s web site to get the latest info for your state. In Maryland it costs $5 to either place a freeze, lift it temporarily or remove it (there’s no fee if you are the victim of identity fraud).

You can still order your free credit report each year, even if your file is frozen. If you need to remove a freeze, the companies must comply within 3 days after receiving your request.

I’ve recently frozen my credit reports with all three agencies. Experian and Equifax were both a breeze and requests with these companies took less than 3 minutes each to complete on-line. Trans Union made me set up a user account so my request with them took a few minutes longer.

BTW, you are entitled to a free credit report from each of the three agencies each year. eM and I stagger our requests so that we're getting a look at our credit histories throughout the year.

Hope you've found this latest post in the DIY identity protection series useful! I'm planning one more post in the series focused on passwords.

***

DIY Pine Cone Bird Feeders!

2010-02-04T05:00:00.011-05:00

Ahhhh the classic pine cone bird feeder.

Four simple ingredients, pine cones, peanut butter, bird seed and twine.

This one's messy so have the paper towels ready.

First, tie the twine good and tight around the pine cone.

Next, slather peanut butter all over.

Finally, hand off the buttered pine cones to your helpers so they can roll them in birdseed.

Interestingly, our smaller birds didn't seem to know what to do with these but our neighborhood woodpeckers showed up right away (click on either image to see a female downy woodpecker)

And as expected, the squirrels took several of them right away -

SQUIIIIIIIIIRRELS!

***

Stop Credit Solicitations From Coming In The Mail Where The Bad People Can Steal Them!

2010-02-01T05:00:00.006-05:00

Do you think that tearing up your credit card solicitations is overkill?

Don’t think a person could really get a credit card in your name if they dug through your mail or trash, pulled out a direct mail credit solicitation, added a different address and sent it in?

Well you’d be wrong. That’s exactly what can happen as reported by MSNBC.

As big a pain in the ass as it is, you really need to thoroughly shred (with a cross cutter) the credit solicitations that come to you in the mail.

But wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to stop them from coming at all?

There is! It’s called OptOutPrescreen. After you register, credit companies must stop sending you direct mail solicitations. You can choose to have mail stopped for 5 years or select a permanent option which requires you to print out, sign and snail mail a piece of paper. You can always return to the site and opt back in to receive mailings if you change your mind.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) required all the major credit reporting agencies to give consumers the ability to "opt-out" of receiving offers for pre-approved credit or insurance. This site is the mechanism by which the credit agencies comply with that law.

I registered about a year ago and it works! eM has now registered as well.

We still need to hang onto the shredder but we have a lot less to feed it!

Protecting Your Identity on the Internet was the first in this four part DIY series. Stay tuned for more postings in this identity and credit protection series.

***

Tour De France Route Announced!

2010-01-28T05:00:00.012-05:00

Bonjour!

The route for the Tour de France (that's Tour OF France to you and me) has been announced!

Our boy Lance is back again and he's in it to win it this year baby! Eff you Alberto! (and eff your family too....................
.......what, too much?)

sillyDaddy has already gone to the trouble of listing out the key stages for you (aren't I nice?...unlike those Frenchies?).

For the love of all that's holy, don't miss these days:

Tuesday, July 6th, Stage 3 - Kickin' it old school over cobblestone! OMFG! Have you ever tried to ride a bike over cobblestone? Well...neither have I. Frankly, I care too much about my giblets (that's what we call them here). But it looks pretty freakin' tough. Last time the tour raced over cobblestone was 2004.
Sunday, July 11th, Stage 8 - The first high mountain stage. They race through the Ramaz pass. This pass has only been attempted twice in the tour. The last time was 16 years ago.
Tuesday, July 13th, Stage 9 - This is considered to be THE major alpine stage. This will be absolutely freakin' brutal. Keep the kids and small pets away from the television.
Thursday, July 22nd, Stage 17 - Into the Pyrenees and a visit to...The Tourmalet. This year they're climbing it on it's steepest side. Mon Dieu!
Saturday, July 24th, Stage 19 - Into wine country (Bordeaux)! This will be the race's only time trial this year and it's an individual. If you've watched the tour the last few years you'll know about the fantastic helicopter camera shots along the way. Helicopter shots of Bordeaux should be amazing and the stage will be a nail biter! BTW, I feel a drinking game coming on. Each person has to take a drink of wine each time they show a vineyard! Yay!

The tour runs from Saturday, July 3rd to Sunday, July 25th.

This will be the tour's 97th running. It'll have 21 stages and cover over 2,200 miles!!

Now.....go ice those giblets.

***

Fight The Female-Teacher-Effect!

2010-01-26T08:40:00.017-05:00

Dads, work now to counteract the newly documented female-teacher-effect so that your geek girl can flourish.

A University of Chicago study released today (pasted below), follows other research released earlier this month that found little gender difference in math ability.

The author of the earlier Villanova study says, "Girls are likely to perform as well as boys when they are encouraged to succeed."

If you're able to successfully counterbalance the math-challenged sisterhood teaching her, then you're also going to need these 5 tips for raising your girl geek.

Believing Stereotype Undermines Girls' Math Performance: Elementary School Women Teachers Transfer Their Fear of Doing Math to Girls, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2010) — Female elementary school teachers who are anxious about math pass on to female students the stereotype that boys, not girls, are good at math. Girls who endorse this belief then do worse at math, research at the University of Chicago shows.

These findings are the product of a year-long study on 17 first- and second-grade teachers and 52 boys and 65 girls who were their students. The researchers found that boys' math performance was not related to their teacher's math anxiety while girls' math achievement was affected.

"Having a highly math-anxious female teacher may push girls to confirm the stereotype that they are not as good as boys at math, which in turn, affects girls' math achievement," said Sian Beilock, Associate Professor in Psychology and the Committee on Education at the University of Chicago, lead author of a paper, "Female Teachers' Math Anxiety Affects Girls' Math Achievement" published in the January 11 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Beilock is an expert on anxiety and stress as they relate to learning and performance.

Other authors were University graduate students Elizabeth Gunderson and Gerardo Ramirez as well as Susan Levine, Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology, Comparative Human Development, and the Committee on Education at the University of Chicago.

More than 90 percent of elementary school teachers in the country are women and they are able to get their teaching certificates with very little mathematics preparation, according to the National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education. Other research shows that elementary education majors have the highest rate of mathematics anxiety of any college major.

The potential of these teachers to impact girls' performance by transmitting their own anxiety about mathematics has important consequences. Teachers' anxiety might undermine female students' confidence in learning mathematics throughout their years of schooling and also decrease their performance in other subjects, such as science and engineering, which are dependent on mathematical understanding.

To determine the impact of teachers' mathematics anxiety on students, the team assessed teachers' anxiety about math. Then, at both the beginning and end of the school year, the research team also tested the students' level of mathematics achievement and the gender stereotypes the students held.

To assess stereotypes, the students were told gender neutral stories about students who were good at mathematics and good at reading and then asked to draw a picture of a student who was good at mathematics and one that was good at reading. Researchers were interested in examining the genders of the drawings that children produced for each story.

At the beginning of the school year, student math achievement was unrelated to teacher math anxiety in both boys and girls. By the end of the school year, however, the more anxious teachers were about math, the more likely girls, but not boys, were to endorse the view that "boys are good at math and girls are good at reading." Girls who accepted this stereotype did significantly worse on math achievement measures at the end of the school year than girls who did not accept the stereotype and than boys overall.

Girls who confirmed a belief that boys are better in math than girls scored six points lower in math achievement than did boys or girls who had not developed a belief in the stereotype (102 for the girls who accepted the stereotype, versus 108 for the other students).

Other research has shown that elementary school children are highly influenced by the attitudes of adults and that this relationship is strongest for students and adults of the same gender. "Thus it may be that first- and second-grade girls are more likely to be influenced by their teachers' anxieties than their male classmates, because most early elementary school teachers are female and the high levels of math anxiety in this teacher population confirm a societal stereotype about girls' math ability," Beilock said.

The authors suggest that elementary teacher preparation programs could be strengthened by requiring more mathematics preparation for future teachers as well as by addressing issues of math attitudes and anxiety in these teachers.

The National Science Foundation provided funding for the study.

So unless your girl is lucky enough to attend St. Gregory's say: Hey, teachers! Leave them kids alone!

***

Protecting Your Personal Information on the Internet

2010-01-25T05:00:00.018-05:00

Do you continue to hear the stories about passwords and accounts being hacked, people being scammed on-line and companies "losing" their customers' information? Does it make you nervous?

The on-line world, much like the real world, is both wild and wonderful. There are positive elements and seriously creepy elements.

This is the first in what I think will be a four post series on protecting yourself and your family on the web.

To start us off I’m posting a terrific, albeit scary, MSNBC article about how easy it is to gather and then use your personal information from Facebook and other sites where bits of your identity can be viewed by any maniac with a computer.

From the story, "Using only one friend’s name and place of employment, he found her blog and résumé. That provided a font of information on her grandparents, pets, hometown and more. He then visited her bank’s Web site...." I'll have tips for you at the end.

‘Forgot your password?’ may be weakest link
by Bob Sullivan, MSNBC

Almost everyone forgets a Web site password once in a while. When you do, you click on the familiar "Forgot your password?" link and, after entering your pet's name, identifying your high school mascot or answering some other seemingly obscure questions, you can get back into your account.

But there's a problem: A criminal can do that, too. With the help of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, personal trivia is getting less obscure all the time. You’d be surprised how easily someone can uncover Fido's name or your alma mater with a little creative searching.
Some security researchers are beginning to sound the alarm about "password resetting" tools, suggesting they could be the weakest link in Web security.

As an experiment, Herbert Thompson, chief security strategist of People Security, recently asked a few friends for permission to "hack" into their bank accounts. Using only information gathered from Web sites, Thompson found his way in within minutes.

"This is a serious problem. It kind of blew me away," Thompson said.

Here’s what Thompson did. Using only one friend’s name and place of employment, he found her blog and résumé. That provided a font of information on her grandparents, pets, hometown and more. He then visited her bank’s Web site, where her user name was simply her first initial and last name. He asked for a password reset. The bank sent an e-mail with that information to her Web mail account. Thompson then asked for a password reset there, which sent a link to her old college e-mail account. There, Thompson needed only supply the woman’s address, zip code, and birth date. Once successfully in the college account, Thompson hacked his way into the Web mail account – supplying her birthplace and father’s middle name -- and ultimately entered her bank account by supplying her pet’s name.

“I did this a couple of times. But the scariest thing would be someone doing this with some scale,” Thompson said. A more detailed description of his romp through someone else's identity can be read on the Scientific American Web site.

There are no known cases in which hackers have widely exploited “forgot your password” links, but there are indications that both researchers and criminals are training their eyes in this direction. Markus Jakobsson, principal scientist at the famed Palo Alto Research Center in California, said answers to password reset questions have become so valuable that a black market has developed for personal information like dog's names. Criminals buy buckets of personal information, obviously with an eye towards foiling security systems, for about $15 per set, he said.

In most cases, such information sets are probably the result of successful phishing attempts, Jakobsson said, where a victim unwittingly supplied personal information in response to an e-mail. But he’s seen demonstrations of far more sophisticated tools designed to “scrape” information off blogs and social networking pages for later use by hackers.
“It’s an automatic dossier building tool,” he said.

Like Paris Hilton
Questions about hacking through password resets have been raised before. When Paris Hilton's cell phone was famously hacked in 2005, some tech sites reported that criminals simply used her dog's name, easily found online, to break in. That theory was later discredited, but it likely sent criminals scurrying to find famous people's dog's names.

It also prompted researchers to study the issue, which is also known as “fallback authentication.” Ariel Rabkin, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, is probably the first to attempt to quantify the problem. He recently published a research paper titled in part, “Security Questions in the Era of Facebook.” It examined password reset questions at 20 banks. Of the 215 questions used by the banks, he classified only 75 as secure and usable. The others were either easy for hackers to guess or obtain, or simply too hard for consumers to remember.

"Security questions are getting weaker over time," he said. Mother's maiden name, for example, continues to be asked even though it's often now available from various online sources. "We can’t seem to get rid of that question. … If we do nothing this will get steadily worse."

In some situations, statistics give the criminal an advantage. For example, data published by some U.S. cities indicated about 1 percent of the nation’s dogs are named “Max,” making that a pretty good guess for a criminal trying to break into thousands of bank accounts. When a bank asks consumers who their favorite president was, it rarely takes more than two guesses, Rabkin said.

Even if the questions are more personal, and even if the subject doesn’t have their own blog, others might blog about their dog, car or high school. And search engines can easily unearth such minutiae.

“There is an arms race here between people who trying to ask obscure questions about (us) and people who are trying to answer obscure questions about (us),” Rabkin said.

Not a bad idea
Thompson, the People Security expert, said that asking “challenge” questions with so-called “out of wallet” answers – questions that even a criminal who stole your wallet couldn’t answer – once was a secure way to confirm someone’s identity.

“If you think about it, 10 years ago this didn’t seem like horrible idea, to ask for someone’s personal information,” he said. “You could say, ‘It’s probably unlikely that someone will know all of this information about me, or spend the time necessary to gather it.’ But now it’s really easy for someone who's never met you to know all this about you.”

Coming up with secure challenge questions is no easy task. There are two problems to consider: The question must be difficult for a stranger to answer but it also must be easy enough so the customer doesn't forget. Quick: What's your kindergarten teacher's name? Was it McFadden or MacFadden or Mcfadden?

“In some cases, it’s easier for an attacker with good data mining skills than the real person to answer these questions,” Jakobsson said. He is hard at work developing a new solution, one which relies on the answers to “preference” questions rather than fact-based personal questions. A consumer who requests a password reset might be confronted with questions like, “Do you like antique stores?” or “Do you like opera?”

Asking 16 questions like these would provide positive identification in better than 99 percent of cases, he said. “And preferences are rarely stored in databases.” (More on this idea can be found at I-Forgot-My-Password.com.)

Rabkin is all for improving the problem of forgotten passwords, but he is careful to not exaggerate the problem. In addition to the lack of proof that any widespread forgotten password hacking has occurred, he says banks have multiple systems in place to prevent thefts from online services. When a password reset is initiated, for example, banks automatically set a red flag on an account and watch it for suspicious behavior. Any large transactions following soon after would surely be stopped, he said.

“The problem is not as bad as you think,” he said. “It’s not so easy to match up a pet name from Facebook with another database of login names and another database of Social Security numbers,” and use that to withdraw cash, he said.

Still, there is another problem associated with the importance of personal questions in security. A consumer who falls for an extensive phishing e-mail or has their blog copied by a hacker, may find it nearly impossible to navigate the digital world in the future. How would such a person ever reclaim a password or otherwise authenticate their identity?

“It would be incredibly difficult to recover from something like that,” Thompson said. “You can't really change your mother’s maiden name or these other things.”

Red Tape Wrestling Tips
Researchers like Jakobsson are looking for new ways to authenticate consumers. One obvious area of potential is biometrics. The chief criticism of this technology, which uses people’s eyes, fingerprints, etc., to verify their identity, is the “doomsday” possibility that once such information is compromised, it could never be trusted again. You can’t change irises, for example. But Thompson points out that the same is true for personal information such as your first pet’s name or you mother’s middle name. While biometrics has potential flaws, new systems will soon be necessary, Thompson said.

Of course, these security enhancements are still in the future, so for now, consumers must fend for themselves. When answering password recovery questions while registering for online banking and other Web sites, don’t always pick the most obvious question. Consider what someone might be able to find about you on your blog. Better yet, consider not disclosing any personal information on your blog.

Alfred Huger, a security researcher at Symantec Corp., offers this suggestion: Some sites now allow consumers to make up their own question. While that might be a hassle, it’s probably much more secure. Again, think of a question only you can answer, and something that’s unlikely to be in any database. That probably means the name of your first girlfriend or boyfriend won’t cut it.

Are you sufficiently scared?

Here are some tips that eM and I use on-line:

Facebook tips:

Keep an eye on this site! Facebook's founder believes that you don't really care about privacy! For starters, don’t use any of the goofy applications and add ons available – they are not vetted by Facebook and when you install them you often give them access to your personal information even if it's hidden. If you already have them installed, go into your privacy settings and either deny them access or eliminate them. Users have gotten into trouble because of installed Facebook apps that looked harmless but weren't.
Don’t include any personal information about your date of birth, kids’ names, pets’ names or anything else that you’ve used to set up passwords. Doesn’t matter if you’re not using the kids’ names in your Facebook password (see the article above). If someone posts something with your kids’ name, ask them to delete it. If they tag them, delete the tag. Did you put your high school or college graduation dates on your profile? Eliminate them immediately. Limit the amount of other personal data you show on your profile. I'll have another post about creating better passwords later in this series.

General tips:

Don’t EVER, EVER click on a link to a site that’s sent to you in an email. Always navigate directly to the site through your browser. Bad people scam lots of good people by making an email look official (like from the bank) with a login link that captures your user name and password. Once they’re in the very first thing they do is change your password so you’re locked out of your own account.
Don’t ever send personal or financial information over the web unless the url in the address bar at the top of your browser starts with “https://”. That little extra “s” at the end means that it’s a secure, encrypted connection. If you’re using an address that starts with http (without the “s”), assume someone is looking at whatever it is that you’re looking at and seeing whatever it is that you’re sending across the web.
Don’t store credit card information on any site. I know it’s a pain in the bum to enter your info each time you’re making a purchase from a favorite site but do you really want your credit card info sitting on some company’s machine?
Never check the “remember me” button when logging in unless you’re doing so from your home machine.
Always hit the “log off” or “sign off” button when you’re finished.
Always close your browser tab when finished with a site.
Configure your CCleaner to run on pc start up to clean out your internet files and cookies.

Hope that helps! During the rest of this four part DIY series we're also going to review opting out of direct mail credit solicitations, working with passwords and how to freeze credit reports.

Use Google Reader To Manage Your Subscriptions

2010-01-21T09:18:00.006-05:00

Are you new to the wonderful world of blog subscriptions (also known as RSS feeds) and would like to learn how to add a subscription to your favorite blog (wink wink, nudge nudge)?

Google's Reader feature is an incredibly easy to use subscription management tool and, like everything else from Google, it's free!

First, you'll need a free Google account. If you already have Gmail (Google's free email service) then you're already set! Use the "Reader" link at the top of the Gmail page (click on any picture to get a close up view).

If you don't already have a Google account you can click here to get started.

Once you're on the Google Reader page, click the "Add a subscription" tab at the top left of the page and either enter the blog address or enter key words to conduct your search.

TIP: Once you're set up with Reader you can subscribe to future blogs while you're on that blog's site by finding and clicking the blog's "Subscribe" button. Your subscription will be added automagically to your Reader.

Once you get a few subscriptions you can create files to hold similar blogs, add them to your iGoogle account (more about the wonders of iGoogle in a future post), etc.

Other free Google products reviewed here include Google Calendar, Gmail filters and Google Docs.

Happy Reading!

***

Re-purpose Wooden Alphabet Blocks As DIY Photo Holders

2010-01-11T11:07:00.004-05:00

My fifth wedding anniversary was last October (yes I know, I can't believe eM has put up with me for five years either).

The traditional gift material for the fifth year is wood. I decided to use some of the kids’ wooden alphabet blocks to make magnetic picture holders, one for each of the kids' first initials, that eM could stick on the fridge or on her file cabinets at the office.

I thought about buying new blocks for this project but I like the worn, played-with look of the blocks we have around the house. The kids haven’t played with these for a very long time so I'm hoping that removing a few of the letters from their collection won't permanently effect their spelling ability.

Here’s what you’ll need to make your own:

A ¾ inch spade bit – they’re cheap and you can buy them at any hardware store. They fit into any standard drill.
A vice or something to hold the block while you’re working with it.
A coping saw – also pretty cheap.
¾ inch flat magnets – found at most craft stores.
Really strong glue.
Fine grain sand paper.

TIP: Create a prototype block first using a letter that you don’t care about.

Make sure you have the block facing the right direction with the letter right side up and place it into your vice.

Carefully drill a hole into the center of the back side with your spade bit. After a few revolutions of the bit, stop drilling and put the magnet in the hole to make sure you’re not in too deep. You want that magnet to lay level and you want it to slightly protrude from the hole.

Next, use your coping saw to create your photo opening. You want to create a slit that is parallel to the front surface and about halfway between the front and the middle of the block. The cut’s depth should be about ¼ of the block's total height – enough so that the picture will be snugly held in place but not so deep that a large portion of the picture will be obscured.

TIP: Have a photo handy while making your coping saw cut. After every few strokes, blow out the saw dust and insert the photo to make sure your cut is level.

Once you’re satisfied with the cut, insert your sandpaper into the slit and slightly sand down the side edges. Don’t sand too vigorously!
Take your block out of the vice, use a rag to wipe out the hole you made with the spade bit. Use your glue and insert the magnet into the whole. Place a weight on it or put it back into the vice and let it sit overnight.

TIP: These look cute and all but you may not want to make these the only gift you give your wife on your fifth-year anniversary.

I mean eM isn't materialistic but when your wife’s friends ask her, “So what did he give you on your anniversary?” you probably don't want her to have to answer, “He gave me two used blocks of wood."

I may be a sillyDaddy but I'm not a crazyDaddy ;)

***

Protect Hardwood Floors From Chairs

2010-01-11T08:26:00.002-05:00

Please believe SillyDaddy when I tell you that you don't want to refinish your hardwood floors.

I've refinished two in our house, and while the hallucinations from the massive amounts of inhaled wood dust were awesome, it was otherwise backbreaking work.

Take a quick step to protect your floors from sliding chairs and furniture.

In the past I've bought felt pieces with an adhesive back and applied them to furniture legs. This works just fine for a while. But when dealing with a piece of furniture that's moved often (like dining room chairs), the felt eventually works its way off.

I found the following product at a local hardware store and gave it a try.

Use your hammer to pound these into the tips of the chair legs. They were fairly easy to apply and I'm happy to report that they're working perfectly.

***

Free Program Helps You Deeply Customize Your Wallpaper

2009-12-29T11:11:00.006-05:00

John's Background Switcher is a free program that allows you to customize your computer's "wallpaper" with your own photos.

And when I say "customize" I REAAAAALLY mean customize!

Among its many features:

Pull photos from ANY source, including your internet photo account, random photos from the web, etc.

Manage how the pictures appear on your desktop. You can configure a montage, use a single image, whatever!
Automatically switch out your photos with whatever frequency you set.

I use it on both XP and Vista machines and it's stable. It handles dual monitors with no problem but has a little trouble with three.

***

Store Holiday Stuffed Animals and Books With Your Xmas Decorations

2009-12-29T11:03:00.001-05:00

Christmas Decoration Storage Tip: Round up all of your holiday related stuffed animals, toys and books and store them with your Christmas decorations. Bust them out again next Christmas for an added layer of holiday fun!

***

Use WD40 To Keep Snow From Sticking To Your Shovel

2009-12-29T10:59:00.004-05:00

TIP: Spray your snow shovel with WD40 to prevent the snow from sticking and making the chore even more miserable than it has to be.

You can also use a no-stick cooking spray but it won't last as long.

Extra tip: be sure not to get any oil on your gloves! Makes it tough to hold on to the shovel!

***

Use Cookie Cutters For Toast, Pizza!

2009-12-23T12:36:00.009-05:00

TIP: Use your holiday cookie cutters for toast and pizza! In fact, I use non-seasonal cutters all year round!

The best selection of non-seasonal cutters can be found at AC Moore. Last time I checked, Target had a limited selection and Michael's had squat.

***

Communication and Discipline

2009-12-16T14:52:00.018-05:00

J & D are really good kids. And eM and I recognize that a lot of that comes from them. But we do however give ourselves credit for planning the ways in which we communicate with them and discipline them.

So it's probably no surprise that we're fans of the show Super Nanny. I found an article on the show's official site that really captured our current communication/discipline processes and gave us a few new ideas.

By writing this post I don't mean to imply that we believe we have it all figured out. These are a few things that have worked for eM and me. If you find them of value then please help yourself.

I've added a few thoughts and, as always, I'm interested in others' ideas so please feel free to comment.

How to communicate
To get your child to listen, think carefully about exactly how you communicate. Subtle differences in words, tone and body language may affect whether your child tunes in or out!
Tone of voice
How you say something is as important, if not more important, as what you say. Use an upbeat, encouraging, positive tone as much as possible. And when indicating limits, sound definite and confident. Any hint of uncertainty and you’re more likely to be ignored and debated.
To indicate disapproval, use a firmer, lower, authoritative tone, but don’t shout.
Avoid nagging. Ask once nicely, once firmly and then take action. If you typically repeat yourself several times before you take action, your child will learn to ignore your initial requests.

I believe tone of voice is an extremely powerful tool. I consciously choose a playful, higher octave as often as I can with the kids. My pitch is lowered for DEFCON 2 when the discussion is about something serious. If I observe that they're not listening and I need to get their attention, we move to DEFCON 3 and tone and intonation change again.

For my DEFCON 4 technique, I've found that either briefly raising my voice or getting close to them and speaking softly gets their immediate attention and compliance. Once they comply, my tone changes back to normal. I've been able to effectively manage their behavior with this technique which also means fewer timeouts and crying fits for them.

A note about nagging: it's very easy to slip into a routine of frequently repeating requests to them. I've found that the key is to be self-aware enough to recognize this in yourself (or in your spouse). Fall back on the fundamental technique of asking once, warning once and then, if you still don't have compliance, move to timeout. You'll find this gives your future warnings weight and you will break the nagging cycle. The hardest part is recognizing that you are, in fact, nagging.

Body language
Communicate from close by. Don’t shout through from the next room.
Always get down to your child’s height and make eye contact. An adult towering above a child can be intimidating.
Words
Use clear commands and keep requests brief and to the point. Limit yourself to a few important words (e.g. “8 o’clock. Bedtime”).
Avoid accusing (“you never listen!”), criticizing (“you’re so lazy”), or threatening (“if you don’t hurry up, then I’ll leave without you”).
Avoid phrasing which implies that cooperation is an option! “Shall we...?” “Could you...” gives your child a get out clause (i.e. “No!”). Instead, make requests clear, short and specific: “Bedtime now.”
How to encourage cooperation
For some children “no” can be the default position when they are asked to do things. Below are some tips to encourage your child’s cooperation.
Make a statement of fact that describes the problem rather than accusing or criticizing. “There’s paint on the table,” or “I can see wrappers on the floor.”
Give information. “Clothes on the floor don’t dry very quickly,” or “Leaving lights on wastes electricity.”
Describe how you feel. “I don’t like hearing whining,” or “It bothers when I see clothes on the floor.”
Reduce resistance by offering a choice about when or how something is done. “Would you like your hair done before or after breakfast?” or “Do you want to skip to the car like a pony or bound like a dog?”
Avoid lectures, use one word. “Shoes!” or “Pajamas!”.
Use the “when ... then” technique to focus your child on what needs to get done. “When you’ve brushed your teeth, then I’ll read you a story,” or “When pick up all your toys, then you can watch TV.”
Praise and reward cooperation. Praise all signs of cooperation with warmth and enthusiasm.
Use a reward chart to motivate your child for daily tasks such as getting up, brushing teeth or getting dressed.
Use the involvement technique to encourage helpful behavior through positive attention.

For what it's worth, eM and I have added every single one of the nine techniques listed above to our parenting tool bag and have had great success with all of them.

One of my favorites is the involvement technique. I involve D and J in all of my projects around the house, with the obvious exception of those that are dangerous. I have found that this lends even more weight to the involvement technique when you need to apply it to a "chore" like picking up toys.

In addition to all the great advice from the article I'd also add that we use "please" and "thank you" to requests whenever possible so that J and D model our behavior.

***

Another Free Favorite: Volumouse!

2009-11-18T12:10:00.005-05:00

Volumouse is one of the those little programs that I can't live without and can't remember what life was like before I found it!

How would you like to be able to control your pc's sound from the wheel on the mouse?

Well download this little beauty and you can!

I've got mine set to work whenever I mouseover the desktop or a title bar. You can configure yours anyway you'd like.

It's a free program, and it's been stable on both my Vista and XP machines.

Scroll down the Volumouse main page and click the automatic download link.

Pump up the volum...ouse.....

***

Children and Marital Happiness

2009-11-18T10:25:00.020-05:00

This op-ed piece points to research that challenges both the conventional wisdom that marital satisfaction increases after children arrive and the research that suggests that all marriages experience a decline in happiness after children arrive. I've highlighted some of the key points.

What are your thoughts? Please add them to the comments.

By STEPHANIE COONTZ, NY Times
Olympia, Wash.

HALF a century ago, the conventional wisdom was that having a child was the surest way to build a happy marriage. Women’s magazines of that era promised that almost any marital problem could be resolved by embarking on parenthood. Once a child arrives, “we don’t worry about this couple any more,” an editor at Better Homes and Gardens enthused in 1944. “There are three in that family now. ... Perhaps there is not much more needed in a recipe for happiness.”

Over the past two decades, however, many researchers have concluded that three’s a crowd when it comes to marital satisfaction. More than 25 separate studies have established that marital quality drops, often quite steeply, after the transition to parenthood. And forget the “empty nest” syndrome: when the children leave home, couples report an increase in marital happiness.

But does the arrival of children doom couples to a less satisfying marriage? Not necessarily. Two researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, Philip and Carolyn Cowan, report in a forthcoming briefing paper for the Council on Contemporary Families that most studies finding a large drop in marital quality after childbirth do not consider the very different routes that couples travel toward parenthood.

Some couples plan the conception and discuss how they want to conduct their relationship after the baby is born. Others disagree about whether or when to conceive, with one partner giving in for the sake of the relationship. And sometimes, both partners are ambivalent.

The Cowans found that the average drop in marital satisfaction was almost entirely accounted for by the couples who slid into being parents, disagreed over it or were ambivalent about it. Couples who planned or equally welcomed the conception were likely to maintain or even increase their marital satisfaction after the child was born.

Marital quality also tends to decline when parents backslide into more traditional gender roles. Once a child arrives, lack of paid parental leave often leads the wife to quit her job and the husband to work more. This produces discontent on both sides. The wife resents her husband’s lack of involvement in child care and housework. The husband resents his wife’s ingratitude for the long hours he works to support the family.

When the Cowans designed programs to help couples resolve these differences, they had fewer conflicts and higher marital quality. And the children did better socially and academically because their parents were happier.

But keeping a marriage vibrant is a never-ending job. Deciding together to have a child and sharing in child-rearing do not immunize a marriage. Indeed, collaborative couples can face other problems. They often embark on such an intense style of parenting that they end up paying less attention to each other.

Parents today spend much more time with their children than they did 40 years ago. The sociologists Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson and Melissa Milkie report that married mothers in 2000 spent 20 percent more time with their children than in 1965. Married fathers spent more than twice as much time.

A study by John Sandberg and Sandra Hofferth at the University of Michigan showed that by 1997 children in two-parent families were getting six more hours a week with Mom and four more hours with Dad than in 1981. And these increases occurred even as more mothers entered the labor force.

Couples found some of these extra hours by cutting back on time spent in activities where children were not present — when they were alone as a couple, visiting with friends and kin, or involved in clubs. But in the long run, shortchanging such adult-oriented activities for the sake of the children is not good for a marriage. Indeed, the researcher Ellen Galinsky has found that most children don’t want to spend as much time with their parents as parents assume; they just want their parents to be more relaxed when they are together.

Couples need time alone to renew their relationship. They also need to sustain supportive networks of friends and family. Couples who don’t, investing too much in their children and not enough in their marriage, may find that when the demands of child-rearing cease to organize their lives, they cannot recover the relationship that made them want to have children together in the first place.

As the psychologist Joshua Coleman suggests, the airline warning to put on your own oxygen mask before you place one on your child also holds true for marriage.

Stephanie Coontz, a professor of history at Evergreen State College and the director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families, is the author of “Marriage: A History.”

***

Grid O' Life Updated!

2009-11-18T09:51:00.002-05:00

New info added to The Grid 'O Life, everyone's favorite guide to supplements...

***

Make DIY Mummy Dogs The Next Time You Pull Dinner Duty

2009-11-12T18:21:00.026-05:00

Ariel the Mermaid and her brother
at her preschool Halloween parade

I made these MILF's (Mummies I'd Like to Feast upon) for J and D's Halloween dinner. Everyone was pretty pleased and so I've definitely added them to the small but popular sillyDaddy dinner repertoire!

Here's what you'll need to make your very own mummy dogs:

Pillsbury Crescent Dough
Pack of hotdogs
Mustard
Cheese
Rolling pin and flour (for the rolling pin and your rolling surface)

Pop out the Crescent roll dough. Your goal is to roll it out into a thin flat square so lay all the pieces together as best you can and pinch them together. Rub some flour on your rolling pin and roll away!

Once you've got something that resembles a square, take a knife and cut out 1 inch wide strips.

Cut some mini-strips of cheese and overlay them half way up each strip of dough.

Take your first dog, remove all of its internal organs and place them into jars....ha ha...ha...h... Take your first dog and begin to wrap it in the strip of dough. Start with the "cheesy" end of the strip. Wrap it tightly at the "bottom" and leave room for a mummy face at the top.

Wrap the rest of your dogs the same way. I found that one package of dough covered about 7 dogs.

Use the baking time recommended on the dough package.

Pour a little mustard in a small bowl and get a utensil with a point. I used the end of a chop stick. Dip the point in the mustard and then dot your eyes.

Next, allow to sit for thousands of years and serve. MMMMMMMMM that's good mummy!

***

Carve A Cool Jack-O-Lantern This Year - It's easier than you think!

2009-10-26T17:47:00.023-04:00

I always wanted to have a go at making a jack-o-lantern with a fancy pattern. J was old enough to enjoy it this year so we gave it a try. Turned out pretty well (see pic above), it wasn't as tough as I thought it would be and there’s still time for you to do the same this year!

Here’s what you’ll need:

A star shaped cookie cutter. Use any shape you'd like but remember that a curved shape is more difficult to cut. The straight lines that compose a star are pretty easy to manage.
Free templates from www.pumpkinlady.com. They switch out free patterns every week and they force you to visit each category to find them. Annoying but they’re free.
A knife with a narrow blade (I used a hybrid hacksaw blade but any long narrow blade will do).

Hammer or rubber mallet.
Transfer paper – this is cheap and you can find it in any craft store.
Vellum paper – this is NOT cheap and you can find it in any craft store.
Pencil.
Push pins.
Strong tape – I used packing tape.
Spoons to scrape out the pumpkin guts.
Big bag of cheap votive candles.
Pumpkins – duh.

First, prep your pumpkin. J and D helped with this part. I called the guts “pumpkin spaghetti” and they had fun scraping it out and getting messy.

TIP: Put the guts in a bowl as you scrape them out. After this project was finished I picked out the seeds and eM baked them with some olive oil and salt.

Once you’re finished the prep, wipe down your pumpkin.

Tape on your transfer paper, graphite side down.

Tape on your pattern. It’s ok if it doesn’t lay perfectly flat.

Use your pencil to trace the pattern.

When you’re finished, remove your pattern and transfer paper. You should now be looking at the pattern on the face of the pumpkin.

Take your knife and get to work. Take your time.

Once you’re finished, use your knife to thin out the walls around your openings so the maximum candle light escapes.

Wipe the pumpkin down again.

The vellum paper is going to diffuse the light from the candle and gives your jack-o-lantern a cool finished look. Place the vellum paper into the pumpkin to get a sense of how much of the paper you’re going to have to cut off. Make your cuts, re-place the vellum paper and use your push pins to hold it in place. Make sure the paper is against the inner wall so none of it drifts over the candle flame and sets your house on fire (hate it when that happens).

Repeat with the second pattern.

Next, place your cookie cutter on the face of the pumpkin. If you have a rubber mallet great! I didn’t have a rubber mallet so I covered the cookie cutter with a rag and used a regular hammer. Hammer the cookie cutter into the face of the pumpkin. Not too far or you’ll have trouble getting it back out.

Place more stars in whatever formation, or lack thereof, you prefer and place them at least 3/4 of the way around the pumpkin.

Pick up your knife and get to carving again. Finish with vellum paper.

Fire up two votives for each pumpkin and drop them in.
Enjoy!

***

Introduce The Kids To Classical Music With These High Energy Baroque Tunes!

2009-10-21T09:01:00.017-04:00

sillyDaddy loves him some Baroque!

J and D throw a nightly dance party in the living room and they love to bust out moves to either classic rock, childrens' tunes or, you guessed it, fast paced Baroque.

Early Baroque Hottie

In sillyDaddy's humble opinion the Baroque and Classical are two of the most enjoyable of all the musical periods. Sure, they all have good stuff to offer but generally I find the Renaissance/Medieval periods and earlier to be a bit too druid; the Romantic and later - a bit too schmaltzy.

Listening to baroque even produces a documented mood enhancing benefit. Granted, you have to occasionally suffer a little harpsichord but hey, it's all good.

Tip: choose "allegro" movements which have lots of energy if you want your kids to dig it.

Don't know where to start? sillyDaddy can help...

Here are 17 kickin' baroque pieces. You can download all of these from Amazon in a few minutes for about a buck a piece!

Telemann: Tafelmusik (Trios und Quartette)

Banquet Music in 3 Parts / Production 3 - 4. Trio in D major - 2. Allegro
Banquet Music in 3 Parts / Production 1 - 4. Trio in E flat major - 4. Allegro
Banquet Music in 3 Parts / Production 3 - 2. Quatuor in E minor - 2. Allegro
Banquet Music in 3 Parts / Production 3 - 2. Quatuor in E minor - 4. Allegro
Banquet Music in 3 Parts / Production 2 - 4. Trio in E minor - 2. Allegro
Banquet Music in 3 Parts / Production 2 - 2. Quatuor in D minor - 4. Allegro
Concerto In D Major / La Bouffonne Concerto for 3 Horns and Violin in D major, TWV 54:D2: I. Allegro
Trio Sonatas

Johann Sebastian Bach

Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G BWV1048: I. [Allegro]

Giuliani

Guitar Concertos Nos. 1-3 - Grand Quintet, Op. 65 - Variations for Guitar and String Quartet, Op.102
Guitar Concerto No. 1 in A Major, Op. 30: III. Polonaise - Allegretto
Guitar Concerto No. 2 in A Major, Op. 36: I. Maestoso
Guitar Concerto No. 2 in A Major, Op. 36: III. Rondo - Allegretto
Guitar Concerto No. 1 in A Major, Op. 30: I. Allegro maestoso

William Boyce: 8 Symphonies

Symphony No.2 in A major - Presto Allegro
Symphony No.2 in A major - Allegro assai
Symphony No.2 in A major - Vivace

Vivaldi

Concerto RV 454 in D for oboe, strings and continuo (Allegro)

Now where did I put that powdered wig?

***

Re-purpose Baby Food Jars To Store Your Miscellaneous Hardware (And prevent archeologists from finding your skeletonized remains)

2009-10-14T14:25:00.005-04:00

As a boy, I always loved going into my uncle's workshop. His father built (and I mean "built" literally) the home where my cousins were raised and where he and my aunt still live. His workshop contains equipment accumulated over two generations and his work bench shelves are lined with jars filled with hundreds of random pieces of hardware.

There's something really nice about looking around that shop and thinking about how the equipment and hardware has been used and about all of the projects and all of the problem solving that's gone on there.

I wanted to recreate some of that same feeling in my much smaller shop. I don't have a lot of equipment but I do have a growing collection of miscellaneous, loosely organized hardware. To make my shop extra cozy, I decided to use some of J and D's very first baby food jars to store my odds and ends.

I was sharing my idea with my grandmother and she suggested I mount the jars to the bottom of each shelf to free up all the space below. Hey, I guess they're right; senior citizens, although slow and dangerous behind the wheel, can still serve a purpose*.

Here's how to do it:

Figure out where you want each jar to go. Remember, if you're putting up a line of jars you'll need enough space for your fingers so you can twist off the jar when you want to take it down.

TIP: You need two screws in each lid so that the lid stays in place when you twist off the jar. If you only place one screw then the lid will rotate around that single screw and you'll be caught in an infinite loop of jar twisting and archeologists will find your skeletonized remains many years later grasping the still firmly in-place jar.

Use one of your smaller drill bits, hold the lid up to the bottom of the shelf and drill the first of two holes. Don't drill both holes yet! Get that first screw into the first hole and then drill hole number two.

That's all there is to it. Finish each jar before installing the next so you can double check your placement and spacing.

*if you're reading this grandmom**, sorry. That's a quote from the movie Dumb & Dumber that I couldn't resist.

**my grandmother may be reading this because she is on top of this whole technology thing. She's actually more on top of it then her daughter (my mother***) or my mother in-law****.

*** if you're reading this mom, sorry (but it's true. double sorry)

**** eM's mom is terrific. I really lucked out!*****

*****I'm not just saying that because she may be reading this*******

******I'm trapped in an infinite footnote loop and archeologists will find my skeletonized remains

***

Get The One Free Program I Download For All My Relatives

2009-10-08T14:17:00.005-04:00

CCleaner is a program that deletes all kinds of stuff that bloats your computer and makes it run slower.

I've used this absolutely FREE application for over a year and I've installed it whenever a family member has asked me to work on their pc.

This application helps to optimize your system and protect your privacy by deleting all kinds of third party applications, browsing history and unwanted cookies and it cleans up your registry files.

You can set it, as I do, to run when you start up your computer.

The download is easy and it's FREE!

***

Grid Of Life - stay on the grid if you want to live!

2009-10-07T09:06:00.017-04:00

[UPDATE: The Grid O' Life has been updated with some new information. Bad news for folic acid and coffee lovers (in fact I'm pretty sure that if you wash down your folic acid with coffee your pancreas will explode). Good news for Vit D.]

I've tracked medical journal articles related to a bunch of key health topics for the last couple years.

The articles were interesting but I wanted to connect all the dots so I could really begin to use the information - especially considering sillyDaddy's age and the pesky linear nature of time. I also thought it would be a cool thing to share with family and friends.

So I spent some time recently putting the findings into a simple grid to make the info a bit easier to consume (click on the image below).

No, it's not an all encompassing list. It's a compilation taken from the legit journal articles I've read over the last couple of years.

A green cell indicates a positive effect.

If something catches your eye I recommend you go to ScienceDaily and conduct a search to read the associated reports. ScienceDaily pulls the latest articles from a range of journals from across the world.

BTW Dad, if your doctor recommends statins for your high cholesterol, RUN!

***

Do Your Children Push The Boundaries? It May Be A Sign Of Future Leadership Abilities

2009-09-29T17:17:00.007-04:00

Your last nerve.

Kids plucking your last nerve?

Considering the "I have to run down to the 7-11 for cigarettes" ploy, never to return, even though you don't smoke?

Well check out this article published today in ScienceDaily - your little envelope pusher may be the future leader of the free world!

***

Make A Batch Of Bugs!

2009-09-28T17:33:00.004-04:00

I'll show you how to make a cool batch of lady bugs and butterflies – and I’ll tell you the secret that the pastry chef fascists don’t want you to know! (what…too much?)

OK, here’s what you’ll need to make 6 good looking bugs:

Your favorite chocolate or dark colored cake mix
One can of vanilla icing
Cans of specialty decorating icing (the kind that comes in the tall can with the plastic nozzles) – variety of colors
Assorted food coloring
Paper cupcake cups
Cupcake pan – 12 places
Dots (the candy), or anything that looks like Dots
String licorice
Skewer or tip of a meat thermometer or a small, clean drill bit

Here’s how you do it:

First, find a larva.

Just kidding, you’re going to need lots of larvae.

Just kidding again.

OK, seriously, use your skewer to pre-drill a little hole into one of the Dots.

Next, break off a little piece of the string licorice and stuff it into the hole. Use the skewer again to work it deep into the hole so it’ll stay in place (that's what she said - OHHHH! Bada Bing).

Make at least 6 heads for your pan of cupcakes. I pre-assembled a bunch of heads while J & D napped.

Next, fill each spot in the cupcake pan up to the top of the paper cup. If you were making regular cupcakes you might not fill it this high but you want the cupcake to bake up and over the paper so fill it to the top of the paper and it’ll expand as it bakes.

Once they’re baked and thoroughly cooled, separate out your biggest and smallest cupcakes.

Lop the top off of a smaller cupcake. You’re going to use this top piece for the wings.

Now here’s the secret that the fancy pastry chefs don’t want you to know – or at least I assume they don’t want you to know because it wasn’t in the recipe I read – it takes two cupcakes to make one full bug. Yes...it’s true.

You see, once you cut off the top of a cupcake you can’t apply icing to the remaining part because you’ve cut off the nice outer “shell” and you’re left with the crumbly inside of the cupcake. It’s just like applying caulk to a dirty substrate – the icing bonds to the crumbs and doesn’t stick to the body.

So once you cut off the top, put the useless, headless cupcake body to the side.

Now cut that top piece in half – now you have your two wings. You can turn them over so the curves are on the inside and the flat edge is on the outside for butterfly wings or leave them right side up for lady bug wings (see pics).

Next, put some of your vanilla icing into a bowl and add some food coloring (my 3.5 year old enjoyed participating in this part). Apply icing to one of the bigger, non-beheaded, fully intact cupcakes. This will be your first “body”.

Now apply your wings to this “body” cupcake to make either your first butterfly or your first lady bug.

Put some more vanilla icing into a different bowl and mix up another color. Apply this icing to your newly attached wings.

TIP: It’s extremely hard to apply icing to the butterfly wings for the same reason it’s hard to apply icing to the body of a headless cupcake. You may be better off just making a whole batch of lady bugs which is what I wish I had done.

Next apply your decorative icing to make the spots on the wings and stick on a head assembly (this is another place where J was able to help).

TIP: Since you’ve hopefully used a dark colored cake mix, you can leave the icing off one set of wings and just apply the decorative dots for a nice effect.

TIP: Next time I do this I'm going to use some dark colored jimmies to make little eyes and a mouth on each head.

TIP: Take all of those beheaded cupcakes and whatever left over icing you have and go to town – these are mom and dad’s cupcakes.

And you thought lady bugs were just a good luck omen and a friend to farmers (they eat aphids). Who knew they were also so darn tasty!

Ummmm ummm, that’s good bug!

***

Cocktails With eM

2009-09-22T08:34:00.007-04:00

eM isn’t a big cocktail drinker so when she asked me to make her something the pressure was on.

I was inspired to do something special for her and so the muse was upon me. I dusted off some things from the cabinet and realized that we’ve accumulated a bizarre variety of liquors throughout the years.

I grabbed the following ingredients:

OJ from the fridge
Seltzer water
Gray Goose – orange (just a reminder that I'm not paid to endorse any product or service :)
Crème de Banana
Triple Sec
Crème de Cassis, Black Currant

eM liked the result (and I don’t think she was just being kind).

Here’s how I made it:

Fill up a tall glass with ice.
Pour the following, in the following order:

1/5 of the glass – Gray Goose – Orange
1/5 of the glass – Crème de Banana
Heavy splash – Triple Sec
1/5 of the glass – Orange Juice
Rest of the glass – Seltzer Water
Stir all the ingredients
Light Splash – Crème de Cassis – don’t stir after you’ve added this piece
Garnish with a slice of orange

Now all I need is a name for this concoction. Ideas?

Cheers!

***

Get On-Line Crime Reports For Your Neighborhood

2009-09-18T07:35:00.009-04:00

This free site takes information from participating police departments and plots crimes against a Google Map interface...

I have it configured to send me an email summary each week:

You can also customize your reports by crime type and time frame:

Unfortunately it doesn't provide a lot of detail about each crime and there’s no info about arrests made so you don’t know if the maniacs responsible for the crime are still on the street.

A really important feature is the mapping of the homes of registered sex offenders (even includes a mug shot).

If your police department doesn’t participate then you’re out of luck.

Either way, buy a samurai sword and prepare to defend yourself!

To check out your neighborhood got to crimereports.com.

***

Make Jewel Encrusted Rings For Your 3-Year-Old!

2009-09-15T09:35:00.016-04:00

Dude, you have to be secure in your masculinity and leave all the macho bull s#it behind when it comes to doing stuff for your little girl. Case in point

I recently made these cool rings for J. I also made one for eM so that they could have a matching set...

WARNING: After he saw that J was getting something, D wanted the same thing too (didn't really matter what it was - he just wanted what J was getting). There’s an extremely high risk of turning your son into a sissy if you craft jewelry for him. Try to use dark, manly colors, and definitely don’t use any heart shaped gems. Immediately after giving him the ring, make him shoot a gun (ignore the objections you’ll hear from your wife like, “He’s only 22-months-old!” and “We don’t own a gun.” By God woman, then I’ll craft him a gun! ). OK, so maybe it's hard to leave all the macho bull s#it behind.

Here’s everything you’ll need:

1.       Multicolor pipe cleaners.

2.       Needle nose pliers.

3.       If your pliers don’t have a wire cutter feature then you’ll need some.

4.       Glue – I tried some AC Moore “craft” glue and it sucked.   eM, as I’ve said many times before, has many wonderful qualities. She can be, however, a little rough on jewelry. The glue held the “jewel” on eM’s ring until she actually wore it. Now there’s a little rhinestone out there somewhere just waiting to jam itself into D’s trachea. I’ve started using just a few dots of Gorilla Glue on a recent batch of rings. Be careful because Gorilla Glue expands as it cures.

5.       Jewels. You’ll find all kinds of stuff at any craft store. I bought a couple of bags of rhinestones and picked up a sheet of round adhesive stones.

First let your daughter pick out the pipe cleaner colors and then fit them to her fingers.

Next she’ll have fun picking out the stones she wants on her rings.

Use your wire cutter to snip off about a fifth of the pipe cleaner.

Use the needle nose pliers to bend in the cut tips of the pipe cleaner. Careful, if you put too much of a crease in it you’ll make another sharp point.

Next wrap the pipe cleaners around in a tight spiral. Use your fingers to tighten and flatten them and try to form as perfect a circle as you can.

Drop a bit of glue directly onto the center of the felt. As I said, I’m using a few drops of Gorilla Glue and it’s working well. Place the stone in the center so that it’s perpendicular to the finger.

Let it sit facedown overnight.

Have fun making a big deal of presenting the rings to her the next day! Let her give mommy her ring too.

Now, where’s my gun?

***

Darth Vader (LMAO!) - so worth the 46 seconds

2009-09-11T10:12:00.007-04:00

***

Prevent Housework Arguments!

2009-09-09T18:01:00.189-04:00

You don’t need a PhD in marital counseling to know that perceptions about who is, and isn't, pulling their weight around the house can fuel some pretty heated “discussions” (although it helps if a PhD has written a related article).

eM and I both like the house tidy but I’m way more detail oriented than she is (believe me, it's a curse). I used to occasionally get ticked off because I didn’t perceive that eM was doing her fair share of the housework. What I finally realized was that she wasn't slacking, in fact eM works her ass off, she just wasn’t noticing the same things I was noticing so they weren’t a priority for her like they were for me.

And eM was doing lots of other things for the team, like managing our household cash flow and all of the grocery shopping, things I wasn't thinking about while I was focused on the cleanliness of a particular room.

There were also occasions when eM thought I was taking care of a task and I thought she had it covered. As you can imagine, hilarity ensued.

So, once again, eM and I saw eye to eye on the need for a plan. Here’s how we went about taking all the ambiguity out of our household division of labor...

We took an hour together away from distraction.

Tip: Get someone to watch the kids while you meet– you can’t do this if the kids are on you. Roll it into a date night. Go out for drinks somewhere first while you do your work and then celebrate with dinner when you’re finished.

We each took time individually to write down all the stuff we do for the team. This includes seasonal outdoor stuff, administrative stuff (i.e., manage Quicken), grocery shopping, etc.

Tip: Include the big stuff in your list and don’t forget the small stuff. The disconnect over small things builds just as much resentment as the big stuff.

We compared our lists and brainstormed about chores that needed to be done but that hadn’t made either of our lists.

Then, and this is a biggie, we figured out which chores on our combined list we each hated and which we didn’t mind. We reassigned things so that we were each doing as few things that we hated as possible.

As an example, I really hate everything about grocery shopping – finding parking, trying to find stuff in the store, standing in line, dealing with the cashier drones (sorry if you’re a cashier – I'm sure you're not a drone, or at the very least I'm sure you're king of the drones).

eM, on the other hand, really hates cleaning the bathrooms.

Since eM doesn’t hate grocery shopping, she’s taken on that chore. I don’t hate cleaning the bathrooms (at least not as much as grocery shopping) so I take that on each week.

Here’s a screen shot of our list (click to enlarge):

Next it’s important to schedule out when the main jobs are done. Here’s a screen shot of our schedule (click to enlarge):

No need to be a schedule Nazi!

Sometimes I’ll clean the bathrooms on Sunday instead of Saturday – no big deal. Similarly, sometimes eM will do the dusting on the weekends instead of during the week – whatever.

On the other hand, it’s nice to know that certain things will be done around the same time every week. Because I know that eM does the laundry each Friday, I make sure that dirty clothes find their way into a hamper on Thursday night if I want to be able to wear them the following week.

The main point is that you're accountable to each other and you understand the other person's contribution.

Congrats! You have created a platform for any future discussion about work load!

Now, don't be a nag! But if the work isn't getting done on a consistent basis over time, fall back to the plan and use it to begin a friendlier discussion. And if you're not getting your share of the work done, address it upfront before she gets fired up about it.

With your workload arguments out of the way you will have much more time to dedicate to all of your other arguments!

***

You Have A Smoke Detector – Why Not A Flood Detector? A product you need and never knew existed!

2009-09-04T12:10:00.014-04:00

We’ve had a couple of water intrusions in our house. The first came when I wisely put a fine mesh screen over a storm drain in the bottom of the stairwell outside our basement door. The first big rain sent leaves down the stairs which promptly piled up on the mesh creating an watertight seal, sending the water that was meant to go down the drain directly under the basement door.

The second was when eM 1) neglected to change the lint screen on the outlet hose from the washing machine and 2) didn’t check to make sure the drain was clear in the outlet tub.

I realized I needed to find something to give us the heads up when water starts flowing where it’s not supposed to...
After quite a bit of searching I found a product that works pretty well at a great price (just a reminder that I’m not paid to endorse any product or service). I’ve turned a couple of people on to this and one friend uses it under a kitchen sink that occasionally leaks.

Glentronics, Basement Watchdog Water Alarm, $12.37 for one.

(Don’t be freaked out by the disturbing googly eyes staring out at you from the picture. Everyone gets those here.)

The box has two leads at the bottom. When they get moist an alarm sounds – it’s as simple as that.

It’s easy to test. Just wet your finger and touch the lead.

After you regain consciousness you should hear a fairly loud tone.

Pros:

It works!

The price is right. I shopped around and found the best price at Lowes but that was a while ago.

It takes one regular 9-volt battery.

Doesn’t draw much power so the batteries last.

Cons:

There’s no battery life indicator so you have to set it off if you want to make sure it’s working.

The alarm isn't as loud as it needs to be.

Stay Dry Mis Amigos!

***

Save over $800 In The Next 12 Months On Your Energy Bill – Without Replacing The Windows!

2009-09-02T13:17:00.053-04:00

In December of 2008 we got a shock when we opened our power bills (get it? shock - power...). Our combined power bills were up 22% versus the previous December!

I did some further digging and discovered that our cost per unit of energy had gone up 32% during that same period - greedy utility company bastards!

I immediately started working on a plan to turn things around. Since January we’ve saved over $493 (and 31 cents!) on our combined energy bill versus the same seven months last year.

I’ve often heard that the greatest savings comes from replacing old windows. Our home was built in 1960 and the original, horrible, single pane windows are still in place. We’d love to replace them but that’s just not in the budget, even with available stimulus plan money. I needed a plan that didn’t involve a massive cash outlay...

Our home is heated with gas and cooled with electricity. I developed a separate plan for both, each with two components: Home Improvement and Behavioral Changes. The common thread throughout is that each small change adds up to a very real aggregate change ($493 so far!). No single piece of the plan is going to make a big difference alone. You need to put a plan together that touches each area of the household.

And it’s no good to put together a plan unless your wife is on-board.

You both have to see the energy bill as a problem or you’re not going to be able to take action on the behavioral components.

eM and I saw eye to eye on the need for a plan right away but if your spouse isn’t buying in, start talking about what you could do with the hundreds of dollars that you’re going to generate in savings.

If she still doesn’t buy in, don't get bitter. Work on the home improvement pieces by yourself and save the conversation for another day.

Keep in mind that, even if she does buy in, behavioral change takes time so be patient.

Here are a few of the key pieces of my diabolical plan (more detail is available in the image at the bottom):

Save Gas:

Install a programmable thermostat. You won’t see it on the plan (below) because I installed one the week we moved in. They are extremely easy to install and they are REALLY worth it. If you don’t have a subscription to Consumer Reports, get one and do some research to find the best value.

Make small incremental adjustments to the thermostat. A small change (like a 1 degree difference during the day and the night) will have an impact. Obviously if you have an infant in the house you’re going to have to wait till he/she’s a little older before making any temperature changes.

If the kids are with a nanny during the day then you need to make sure that she's complying with the plan. Warn the sitter ahead of time about any planned change to the thermostat so she can dress herself and the children appropriately.

Change your water heater settings to bring your water temperature to 120 degrees. Here's how to do that if your water heater doesn't have a dial with temp settings:

Use a kitchen thermometer to determine your water temp at the kitchen tap. Make incremental changes to your water heater over the next couple of days until you get it to 120 degrees.
This is a multi-day process because the water in the tank will take 24 hours to change temperature once you turn the heater down. Grab a marker and mark your dial when you finally find the spot!

When you travel make sure you turn the water heater down to the “Vacation” setting and make a major adjustment to your thermostat. It’s a good feeling to leave the house knowing that you’re saving money on your energy bill while you're spending money on your trip! We actually go through a printed check list before we leave the house for a trip to make sure we’re adjusting these settings.

Invest in insulated window coverings. I installed double cell honeycomb shades in the kids' rooms and our room. I've also covered the honeycomb shades with a roman shade in the kids' rooms.

Save Electricity:

Install fluorescent lights everywhere you can. I believe this is the single greatest contributing factor in our dramatically reduced electricity consumption.

Check out Consumer Reports to find bulbs with the best "warm up" time. Warm up time is the time it takes the fluorescent light to produce its full brightness.

When we first moved in, I installed lots of dimmers and a motion sensing switch inside the house. Look for places to install these wherever possible but remember that you won’t be able to use a fluorescent light with a dimmer or a motion detector.

I use a sunlight sensing adapter on the front outdoor house light and a high wattage fluorescent on our back outdoor light. The fluorescent has worked great outside during summer and winter.

We unplug EVERY charger and device we can when not in use. Move phone chargers to an outlet that’s easy to work with (I found the end of the kitchen counter worked best for us).

Does that VCR in the spare room really need to be plugged in?

Use masking tape to make a label tag for your cords so you don’t have to figure out which is which each time you want to unplug one.

If you have a home network you DO NOT want to turn the router off each night. Here's how to set up your power cords so that you turn off your office equipment without turning off your router:

You’ll need two surge protectors (or one surge protector and a regular outlet block).
Plug the first surge protector into the wall.
Plug your router, modem and the second surge protector into the first protector.
Plug everything else, the PC, printer, monitors, speakers, any external hard drives, etc. into the second surge protector.
Each night, after you've shut down your PC, flip the second surge protector off.
Now all of those devices will be prevented from sucking their little bits of energy throughout the night but your router and modem will remain on.

Fill your freezer to capacity. Don't feel like spending extra cash on groceries? Fill empty milk jugs with water and put them in the freezer (leave a little room for the ice to expand inside the jug). A full freezer is MUCH more energy efficient than a half full freezer. It actually takes less energy to keep more things frozen then it takes to keep fewer things frozen within the same space.

Reduce the temp settings on the fridge and freezer as much as you can. According to the CDC the proper temp for your fridge is 40 degrees and the proper temp for your freezer is zero degrees.

Reduce your family's dependence on sharks with friggin' laser beams attached to their heads. Laser beams consume a tremendous amount of energy.

The spreadsheet below is a screen shot of my plan and contains columns that list 1) the planned action and 2) notes about what’s required. What you can't see in the shot is a third column which lists the result of the action or the next step in the process.

Click on the image below for a few more tips.

My ideas to keep the savings going next year:

Research painting the roof white
Consider investing in a better front storm door
Research insulating the outside of the clothes dryer with hard board insulation - dryers are incredibly inefficient!
Insulate the sills in the unfinished portion of the basement
Insulate/cover the windows during the winter.
Stop drafts around the attic hatch and the bathroom vent.
Insulate water pipes in the basement
Install a massive wind turbine in the back yard
Attach battery leads to the children and the cat (à la The Matrix)

***

Express Your Innermost Dad!

2009-08-31T09:49:00.026-04:00

If you’re a dad you probably use this expression frequently.

Why not memorialize it in a t-shirt.

And why not make one for everyone in the whole blaspheming family?...

I’ve seen t-shirts with lots of my favorite IM messages emblazoned across the front but I couldn’t bring myself to shell out 20 bucks for one of them.

So how hard could it be to iron a few letters onto a t-shirt…

… pretty hard let me tell you!

Here’s what you’re going to need:

T-shirts for everyone in the family. Preferably in the same color so your family can be as cute and sickly sweet as possible.
Iron-on letters.
Measuring tape, preferably the cloth kind that tailors use.
Chalk.
An ironing board.
A dry iron – no steam!
A cutting board or cork board from the kitchen.

First go to your local craft store for your supplies. I went on a Sunday, unshaven and unshowered and I’m surprised they let me in the joint.

Craft stores normally have a supply of t-shirts at decent prices. One of my local stores happened to have shirts on sale for 3 bucks a pop. I bought one for myself, eM, D and J.

Next stop: the iron-on letter aisle. I bought two sets of large block fonts for the adult t’s and two packs of a smaller font for the kids’ shirts. Lesson learned: the kids’ font types weren’t the same as those I grabbed for the adult shirts. The large letters were block and the small letters were not and I didn’t notice until I got home.

I examined a few of the t’s in my closet and determined that the bottom edge of art work for most t-shirts falls about 5” from the bottom of the collar, 3” for kids’ shirts (who knew).

I also measured out my letters and determined that the whole expression, accounting for equal spaces between the letters (1/4” for the adult shirts, 1/8” for the kids), would need about 4.5” of real estate. I used chalk from J’s blackboard to make my marks on the shirts.

Tip: Work on one letter at a time. It takes longer but it’s worth it. If you run through the entire process for each letter, you can make tiny adjustments with each successive letter. If you were to iron-on all the letters at once you run the risk of effing the whole thing up on your first pass and that would suck (you would probably also yell, “OMFG!” and that’s just going to scare the children).

Measure down 5” from the bottom of the collar (3” for the kids’ shirts) and make a mark with the chalk.

Find the center of the shirt and travel down to your mark. The first half of the expression will be to the left of center and the second half will be to the right – make sense?

In other words, if the total expression uses 4.5” of space, that means the letters will begin 2.25” to the left of the center mark. Remember to account for even spaces between the letters when you calculate how much space you’ll need. Your total space may be different depending on the size of your letters.

Tip: After you think you have a letter lined up right, stop what you’re doing and view the letter upside down. The new perspective will help you see any flaws.

Next, carefully slide the cork board or cutting board into the shirt and under the letter – this prevents any potential bleed-through and gives you a nice hard surface for the pressing phase.

Make sure your iron is fired up and on the appropriate setting for the shirt. Set the iron down onto the letter carefully at first and then press gently. This prevents the letter for shifting under the weight. Keep the iron still while you’re pressing.

Watch out for the M’s – mine wanted to shift as I was pressing down with the iron.

Follow the rest of the directions on the label that came with the letters to the letter – bada bing! (Be sure to tip your waiters and waitresses everybody, I’m here all week, good night!)

Now off you go to offend family, friends and the clergy.

***

Welcome to Slime Fest 2009!

2009-08-29T01:26:00.006-04:00

Ahhhh yes. Slugs come from miles around just to crawl on our screen!

Look closely and you'll see there were five slugs on the screen at the kids bedtime and two more arrived about 15 minutes after I took this picture.

WTF!

Is our screen made of slug crack? Is this retribution for the pounds of salt I poured on so many of their brethren in my youth? Is dragging their bodies across the screen sexual in some way?

Whatever's going on, it's freakin' us out man!

***

Enjoy decent scotch on a budget! (And here's an idea for drinking it in the summer)

2009-08-28T17:28:00.023-04:00

Back in the pre-eM, J & D days I was crazy for the single malts.
I spent time pondering scotch on oh so many levels - even thinking about what kind of ground the water flowed over before it was collected and used by the distillery. Yes, I know...

Anyway, if you're like me and you're on a budget it's extremely hard to justify spending the cash to keep a supply of the single malt stuff.

A friend's dad recommended the well known blended Dewer's so I gave 'er a swirl. Good, but I thought it a little bland. I've tried a few other blended scotches since then and I've settled on Johnnie Walker's Red Label (just a reminder that I am in no way paid by any manufacturer or service provider). Nice flavor profile and you can buy it in a big 'ol jug and often on sale!

Now some of you may be thinking, "sillyDaddy, scotch isn't a summer time drink." Well I've got a simple "recipe" that I find INCREDIBLY refreshing.

After the last feces laden diaper has been changed and the last child has been read to, sung to, rocked and put to bed, find yourself an old fashioned glass, fill it as full as you can with ice (crushed or broken is best), cut a small wedge of lemon, squeeze and push it down to the bottom of the glass.

Now pour that yummy scotchie over that ice. Don't drink it yet! Give it a few moments to melt the ice and infuse everything with that lemony goodness.

Drink up Dad, you deserve it!

***

CommandCentral - how to add an additional monitor without buying a new video card

2009-08-28T15:07:00.011-04:00

Here's a shot of my cozy home work station.

You may have noticed that I have a few monitors.

If you're not a software developer you may not need four. But everyone could use a second monitor!

If your PC doesn't support two monitors you may have thought your only choice was to take your machine to your local tech store and have an expensive video card installed.

You have another option!

All you need is an available USB port on your PC and a VGA-USB adapter.

I've shopped around A LOT and found the best value at the moment (just a reminder that I am in no way paid by any manufacturer or service provider except for the random GoogleAds that are on this web page).
I bought the EVGA UV12 Plus+ USB VGA Adapter. I spent $39 with buy.com. There's a $10 rebate (snail mail) which brought the price down to $29 (or at least it will once I receive the rebate). Shipping was free.

As you can see from the pic, it's an incredibly easy hook up. It came with both the digital-analog adapter that you see in the picture and the USB cable along with an installation disk. I'm running XP but it's supposed to also work with Vista.

Because some of the equipment pictured belongs to my employer and the rest we already owned, the only new cost for adding an additional monitor was the $29 investment in the adapter.

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DIY Framed Earring Organizer

2009-08-28T12:04:00.028-04:00

As I've mentioned before, eM has many wonderful qualities. Organization, however, is not among them.
She takes her earrings off and usually drops them on the nightstand - perfect level for D to come along and pick one up for an impromptu earring tasting.

I read about this idea and thought it might help her keep her earrings organized. It was pretty easy and, as you can see from my pic below, it ended up looking pretty good. Best of all she's actually using it and D hasn't put anything crazy into his mouth for at least 30 minutes.

I had a bunch of old framed pictures in the basement. The frames are in good shape so I picked one out, removed the glass and backing but kept the nice double mat.

I took a trip to the local craft store and bought a black plastic mesh usually used for crochet for about a $1. I fit it to the back, threw in some extra tacks and glue and let it set.

I already had the glue, tacks and matted frame so my total cost was about one dollar!

If you're reading this and you likie, leave a comment and I'll shoot a pic of the back.

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Horrific Playroom Scene

2009-08-28T11:55:00.008-04:00

I work from home on Fridays.

This is the tragic scene that unfolded before my eyes when I opened my office (the guest room) door.

What horrific scenes have you witnessed around your house?

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Welcome to sillyDaddy

2009-08-28T10:34:00.021-04:00

Hello friends!

Try as I might I couldn't find a blog that combined

Real world parenting tips for the first time dad
Real world marriage tips for the first time husband
DIY help for both household projects and crafts
Technology tips
Reviews about things I need and products I can afford
Written from a regular guy's perspective, i.e. a guy who's not a professional writer, or wealthy, or living in NYC without a car, a yard or a house to maintain (not that there's anything wrong with any of those things).

If you likie what you read, then please use one of the numerous methods in the column to the right to follow along.

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