Tour De France Route Announced!

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?).

Fight The Female-Teacher-Effect!

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.

Protecting Your Personal Information on the Internet

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.

Use Google Reader To Manage Your Subscriptions

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!

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Re-purpose Wooden Alphabet Blocks As DIY Photo Holders

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.

Protect Hardwood Floors From Chairs

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.

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