One Man's Junk...

A while ago, my wife and I bought a nice new microwave. We had one that was about 15 years old. It was huge, and ugly but it worked.

But we had been talking for a while about getting a smaller one, because we don't use it very often. So we went out and bought a $50 small microwave.

We figured we'd sell the old one on Craigslist or something, but never got around to it. My brother-in-law mentioned that my wife's parents could probably use it, because they have a microwave that is over 25 years old, and doesn't work. But they haven't replaced it because the countertop under it was never finished - and they didn't want to have a big unfinished space under it. So because our old one is huge (and works) its perfect for them.

Weird how everything can find a home...

Work and the Environment

On May 16th, it will be Bike to Work Day. So I thought that it would be great to think about biking to work. After all, I have a pretty short commute, don't I?

Well, I looked into it, and I have a little shorter than an average commute. At least for the nation. According to the source referenced above, commuters usually spend 87 minutes - round trip - for a distance of 16 miles each way.

That makes biking to work pretty much impossible for your average commuter.

What can I do?

So what are my options to try and make it better? Or reduce my environmental impact?

Well, the most obvious is that I could get a car that is better on gas. But its still a car. What about a motorcycle? Or a scooter? Well, considering that I'm in the northeast - that would (at best) give me 6 months of the year for commuting. And people drive crazy around here - even on backroads. Not only that but people driving motorcyles are 5.5 times more likely to die in a given year than someone driving a car. That doesn't seem like great odds.

The Train!

Ok, how about Mass transit? Unfortunately there's almost nothing at all in the area I'm in. If I wanted to head into Boston I could take the commuter rail - that would mean a :30 drive to the train, and then an hour on the train, and then a walk - instead of a :45 minute drive (during non-peak hours). Its frustrating. I have friends in the Bay area - they have a better Mass transit system, but I think that they are fairly unique in the US. Lots of older cities have mass transit systems that don't reach much of the suburbs at all - never mind trying to get people between suburbs.

Relocation

I could move closer to work! But wait, the average tenure of someone in a particular job in the USA is only 4 years. That doesn't make sense. Moving every 4 years? I just want to mention that the next country up the list is Great Brittan, and they have an average Tenure of 10 years. More than double the USA.

I've watched too many friends and family get laid off, or have to change jobs for reasons outside their control to run my life around where I work.

So what's left?

It seems to me that if we (in the USA) want to break our addiction to commuting a couple of things have to happen.

1. We have to start looking to replace/supplement our highways with mass transit. Either a bus or train going along large beltways (such as I495) in MA would open up a world of opportunities.


2. We have to come up with some way of giving workers more confidence that they can stay at a single company for their entire (or a good portion of their) career.

Or we can keep going down the path of trying to make cars cleaner. I just worry that cars aren't the right answer.

Megan's Essay for Connor's Admission to Cornerstone

My Wife is amazing.

Given this almost impossible task:

Write an essay that describes your child and why they are a good fit for Cornerstone Academy. Please describe both his or her strengths or weaknesses.

She was able to create an amazing essay. Now it might not seem that impossible, but think about it; you have to create an essay that talks about how great a fit your child is for the school, but also talk about his weaknesses are, and still balance the two.

So, here it is, my Wife's amazing essay:

I see my son as a very bright child who is not just interested in why things work, but how as well. We have always felt that the best way to answer the endless "why" questions that he has posed since he learned to talk was to give him the answers in a way he could understand, but not too dumbed down. This is why we wound up one day standing around my truck with the hood up, 2 1/2 year old Connor in my husband's arms, explaining to him how an internal combustion engine works.

Connor had asked how a car goes and when he was told that "stepping on the gas pedal put gas into the engine and made the car go", insisted on knowing exactly why and how! The best way for us to do that was with a visual aid - my engine block. We were sure he wouldn't digest it all - let alone retain it - which is why I was stunned to hear the next day at school that he was telling his playmates how an engine worked with the hood up on his play car. This, is feel, is my son in a nutshell. He will ask why until he feels he understands. Our primary goal for him is to find him a place where his curiosity will be encouraged and answered - not replied to with "just because", and then directed to sit down and stop asking.

I feel a love of learning is something that needs to be nurtured and encouraged. It's one of my favorite traits in Connor; that and his sense of humor. With both parents possessing a rather dry sense of humor, it is no surprise to us that Connor has it as well. He also loves to cook and can be found on a chair next to whomever is in the kitchen cooking. He will then turn around and later be heard repeating his cooking knowledge to any pet in the house who will listen, or failing that, many of his stuffed animals from his bedroom.

We also have encouraged a love and respect for animals that I find a joy to see in him. We share our home with two dogs and seven cats and he loves and is loved by them all. He shows great gentleness and care with all of them - especially our deaf cat, blind cat and very nervous 17 year old cat.

Not to say Connor is perfect - he is not. He can be short on patience and it shows sometimes, especially when he feels he is not being heard or understood. He is also posessed of a great knack for selective hearing which he can turn on especially at bedtime, or if he is being told to turn off Alton Brown (FoodTV's Good Eats Show). He can be shy in new situations and can be clingy to familiar faces in these situations. He also can be prone to tuning out adults if he feels bored.

This is one of the big reasons we are trying to change his school now. He is the oldest in the room and he is not being as challenged, learning-wise, as he could be. At home, he is beginning to spell and read, and do rudimentary addition and subtraction. In his class, however, the students are learning the ABC's and how to spell their names. Since this is something he can do already, he has been talking in class and generally not paying as much attention. I can't encourage this, yet I understand he isn't as challenged as he needs and wants to be and that this lack of challenge is causing his frustration. This is the most driving reason for why we want Connor to attend Cornerstone.

All in all, we have a very bright, articulate 4 1/2 year old who can be found at home cooking Alton Brown recipes for his dogs, his stuffed animals and anyone else he can find. He loves fishing and is looking forward to his first outdoor camping trip this summer. He can also be stubborn, snippy and sometimes sarcastic. But I am confident that he will do fabulously in the school environment provided by Cornerstone.

Cornerstone Academy

A couple of months ago, Megan and I realized that Connor was getting awfuly close to being ready for Kindergarten, and we had no idea where he was going.

He will turn 5 on 9/8/2008, just missing the cutoff for public school. Our original plan was that if we didn't find anywhere else, we'd send him to his current school - Our Future Learning Center for their K program. Unfortunately they just changed their program to only offer Pre-K instead of full Kindergarten.

We started looking around, looking at all sorts of schools. We looked into Fay School, a great school in Southboro, but it was very expensive, and out of the way. We looked into some Montessori schools, but they weren't quite right.

Then we found a school that was perfect! Cornerstone Academy in Northboro. A small, academically oriented school - only 1 class of 10 students per grade, a focus on well-rounded children, located on a wooded area with nature trails. Exactly what we were looking for.

We then had to go through the admissions process. This was not something that I anticipated having to do until Connor was much older (like ready for College). Here's how the process worked:

• We filled out an application, including a picture and an essay describing Connor (more on this later)
• We had to get teacher recommendations from his current teachers
• He had to go for a 1/2 day interview, where the teachers observe him to figure out if he's a good fit
• Megan and I then had to go to an interview to find out if they like us
• We get accepted

As far as we know this process could stop at any point, and he could be rejected. So each part was nerve wracking and kept up nervous.

We found out today (April 2, 2008) that Connor has gotten into Cornerstone! This has been a long, but great process. I will be posting another entry with the essay that Megan wrote that got us past the first step, because I thought it was an amazing essay, and I would have been at a loss to figure out how to write an essay about my son.

My FiOS Experiance

Well, I think its finally over.

My (very brief, and quite expensive) time with FiOS. I've heard lots of people rave about FiOS and how great it is. I'd like to tell another side to the story.

Over the past several months I've spent over 20 hours on the phone with Verizon - getting the problems I was having not solved.

This is the first post in a series of posts talking about my awful experience with FiOS.

How I ended up with FiOS

Roll back the clock to December 2007. I am a (relatively) happy customer of Comcast, with their Triple-Play (IP Phone, Cable and Internet Service). I pay somewhere around $150 per month for all three services. This includes 2 HD Tivo's - each with 2 CableCards, and a STB for a plain-old TV.


I had been toying with the idea of moving to FiOS, but hadn't taken the bait yet. Then Verizon makes their Free HDTV offer. This sounds pretty good. I have two HDTVs already, but a replacement for the aging 13" TV/VCR I have in the bedroom sounds like a nice thing - if I don't have to pay for it.

So I bite the bullet and call Verizon. I talk to a very nice agent who actually lives in my hometown. Overall this was a nice call. It took quite a bit longer than I had hoped (about 2 hours to get the scheduled appointment), but was pleasant. Verizon would have to wait 2 weeks to come out to my house, because I was porting my phone number from Comcast. No big deal (although this number will come back later).

I asked a couple of very important (to me) questions of the FiOS representitive:

• Can I pay my bill online - the answer was "yes - of course"
• Do you carry the Celtics games in HD - I know they're carried by "Comcast Sports Net" - so I want to make sure I'll get all the HD games - again, the answer was "yes, we carry CSN NE - HD"

Based on these answers, I figured that I was getting a good deal:

• "Faster" internet than I have now
• A free 19" HDTV
• Cheaper than I was paying ($120 vs $150) - Nice!
• A company backing the service that grew up supporting an always-on infrastructure that understood 5 9's of reliability (or so I thought)

Little did I know what would come next (to be continued...)

How Stupid Can You Get?

I read yesterday that Sony was going to join the DRM free MP3 fray.

I was very excited. Since Amazon started offering MP3 downloads I haven't bought any DRMed music. Since iTunes started selling Music, I've encouraged my wife to only buy music online.

Finally the king-of-DRM Sony was going to give up and start offering DRM-free music.

Then I read this.

In order to buy Sony DRM free music - wait for it - you have to go to ... A STORE.

What!?

You have to go to a store to buy a card that has a scratch-off code. You then have to scratch that code off, and then can only download one of 37 albums.

Not individual songs, just whole albums. I suppose that it reduces the environmental impact of those CDs and packaging, but really!?

How stupid can a company be? Oh well, I should have expected that with Sony.

Travel with our Son - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

My wife and I recently took our 4 year old son to London. We received a lot of advice - most of it "oh, don't take a kid on a trip like that". I will say that I'm very glad that we did bring him - we had a lot of fun, and it was great to let him see something different. And it really gave us a perspective that we didn't have before on our Son. It also gave us some ideas of what we did well, and what we would do differently next time.

It was also very interesting, because this was our second trip to London in the past two years. Last time we went, we didn't take Connor - it was just the adults - so it gave us an interesting chance to contrast the two trips and really try and think about what traveling with a child means.

So thats why I'm writing this post. To let you know about our experiences traveling with our 4 year old.

The Good

These were things that we were worried about - but we really didn't need to. They worked out well, and I'd have no problem doing them again.

Flights

My wife and I were horrified that Connor would be a bear on the plane. We had a long flight - 1.5 hours from Boston to Washington DC, a long layover, and then another 6 hours overnight to London. We arrived in London the following morning at 6am.

On the way back we went through Chicago - and it was 8 hours, 3 hours, 2 hours.

Amazingly this part of the trip really wasn't a problem. We told Connor what to expect - and things went pretty much to plan. We packed a videogame for him (the Leapster) - along with a new game, and some music he liked on my iPod. We also had some snacks, and a few cars and planes for him to play with.

That kept him busy the whole flight. No problems at all. He slept on both flights, and things were good.

Getting Around

Getting from point A to point B was one of our worries. We brought a stroller just in case we needed it - or he really wouldn't walk. With a couple of exceptions getting around was ok. We actually didn't use the stroller at all - actually we accidentally left it at the hotel in London.

Connor love the Tube. So taking public transit was one of his favorite things to do. Megan and I liked it less than him. In fact there were times we wanted to try and take a taxi, but ended up on the tube because he wanted to so much.

If you've never been to London, they don't have an "ADA" act (or equilivant) for the old buildings. And everything's old. So in a lot of cases the stroller would have been a bigger pain than just walking and/or putting him on my shoulders.

Jetlag

I've done a lot of travel, so I have my own way of dealing with Jetlag. It worked just fine for Connor. When we took off we changed our clocks. The real key was to make sure that we all stayed up until real bedtime (in this case 10pm) every day - so we were tired. And we didn't nap too much on the first day. That let us adjust pretty easily.

I think Meg and I were hit harder than Connor.

The "Bad"

These are things that we did that we could have planned better - but we didn't think would be problems.

Eating

Typically our son isn't a picky eater (for a 4 year old). In the US we never really have a problem finding him food. He'll eat Mexican, Chinese, Italian, American, Japanese - pretty much anything around here. However he had never been exposed to typical British food - and getting him to try something new can sometimes be a challenge.

Well, breakfasts started the difficulty. Bacon and sausage was different - there were no pancakes or french toast or waffles, the eggs were a little runny - everything was just a little off. So he had ham and toast for breakfast.

By the end of the week he enjoyed Tea - which is what we would do for lunch. He enjoyed the pastries and scones and even the ham sandwiches.

But dinner was tough. Everything was a little different - and he wouldn't bend - he was tired and wanted something normal.

So he ended up having lots of deserts, cookies and chocolate all week - because we didn't have his typical snacks or dinner. We got through the week, but I think that was a big part of the one Ugly moment we had - the highs and lows of sugar.

The only time that dinner was what we expected was when we went to Giraffe on the recommendation of on of the "London for Kids" books that we got. That was great. They had a kids menu, and a grown-up menu, and it was something that he was used to - I can't tell you how much it helped having a placemat and crayons for coloring at dinner. We even talked about bringing those ourself in the future.

Playtime

This wasn't really "bad", but it was something we didn't think about - but we should have. We ended up spending quite a bit of time just having "playtime".

One time it was a playground in the park, another time it was running around through the leaves in Hyde Park, and often it was playing with toys in our hotel room.

I think that one of the reasons things went so well for is is that we did spend at least a few hours a day playing and relaxing.

Museums

Museums didn't work out well. Connor was just not interested. We tried the Museum of London and the Mews at Buckingham Palace. These things are just BORING for a 4 year old.

The Ugly

We only had one "ugly" moment. The day before we left I think we pushed Connor's patience a little too far. We took him to Harrod's (a huge department store), and tried to shop with him - for things that we wanted.

Normally we can do this in a mall, and we can keep him busy, but I think the whole week of traveling just had him a little outside his comfort zone.

So we had a complete meltdown.

Now - if this was at home we could drag him to the car, and ride home with him screaming - but we could yell or whatever - and then get home to our house - where noone was watching.

But on Vacation - we could either take public transit (seems like a bad idea with a kid throwing a fit) - or a taxi (still not great, but better) - and then get to the hotel - where the doorman and the lobby staff can hear him say "I never get to eat - I'm so hungry" (the fit was over a piece of chocolate) - making the "walk of shame" that much worse.

When we returned later - we took a new tact. Realizing that we may have been pushing his patience a little too far, we instead took him up to the toy department and one of us stayed with him while he shopped - and we took turns looking for things in the store. For the couple of things we wanted to go together for we just would all go, and then come right back to toys.

Things like shopping that normally would test his patience were just a bad idea in the normal way.

Keeping him distracted worked great, and will definitely be in our arsenal next time.

In conclusion

The trip to London was great. We really enjoyed (other than the meltdown) Connor's company. It was fun to see his perspective on things - seeing things that we already had seen with a kids perspective was really cool - and I think we had a lot of fun as a family.

There are a few things I would do differently next time - but I would definitely do it again:

• Upon arrival, I would buy a bunch of snacks to take with us during the day - healthy ones that he would like and we could stave off the sugar binges


• When shopping, I would have tried to focus more around what he wanted to do - and try the one parent shopping at a time trick - even though its not exactly what we would have wanted as adults - it would have been better than our ugly moment


• I think overall we would have tried to eat at least one more night at a restaurant with a kids menu. We only did one night, and I think having the kid-friendly atmosphere would have been great and helped made him feel more like home one more day.