Steve’s tips to protect your identity online
January 31, 2007
Protecting your personally identifiable information is important, but you might enjoy taking a few minutes to watch these ‘tips’…
Enjoy!
Roland
PC vs Mac
January 30, 2007
The Microsoft Vista Operating System was rolled out to the people of Earth last night. “The wow starts now.” (And there was much rejoicing.)
Stats from the paper this morning:
It cost Microsoft $6 billion to develop and contains 55 million lines of software code. Vista will be available at 39,000 stores in 70 countries, in 99 languages. Windows runs on more than 90 percent of the world’s PCs.
Microsoft has been the brunt of a great Apple ad campaign in the past year. Here’s a funny interpretation (presumably by a Mac fanboy).
Operating System debates can be as polarizing as political party affiliation. I’m glad Vista is finally released so we can move on with our lives. Personally, I switched to a Mac over a year ago and am happy on that side of the fence now.
I’m tired of confusing my kids with different computers and operating systems. At school, they have Dell PCs running Windows XP. At home we’ve had at least three (now all defunct) Windows PCs running either Windows 2000 or XP, a classic iMac running OS 9, a G3 tower running OS X, and currently an iBook running OSX. It’s awesome that kids adapt so easy. I know adults who would’ve been freaking out by now.
Ultimately, I just hope that Apple and Microsoft can continue to create better devices and user experiences for consumers, period.
Roland
Installation tips for infant car seat
January 30, 2007
85% of children still are improperly restrained, according to Safe Kids USA, a Washington-based group that works to prevent accidental childhood injuries.
If you are not sure what to do, read these tips or contact your local fire and rescue department who often have child car seat training sessions.
Common Installation Mistakes
- Seat is too loose.
- Harness belt system is too loose or positioned incorrectly.
- Rear-facing seat is too upright.
- Switching to a forward-facing seat too soon.
- Using wrong seat for the child’s age.
- Assuming the LATCH system is the best way to attach a seat.
- Incorrect or inappropriate use of the locking clip.
If your child is still in an infant car seat, be sure to read these tips:
“Buckle up for child safety”
BD-004 – Track Sex Offenders – Movie Rating Guide
January 29, 2007
In this podcast episode:
- How to check for sex offenders in your neighborhood.
- 29 year old sex offender posed as a 12 year old.
- Consumer Reports retracts infant car seat danger claims.
- Graco Contempo Highchair safety recall.
- Making sense of MPAA movie rating definitions.
- How to buy a notebook computer.
- Fuzzy Wuzzy family reward system.
- My kids are currently obsessed with Disney’s High School Musical.
- How to combat toilet clogs.
Enjoy.
P.S. Sorry about the delay. I upgraded the Web site then had trouble for several days trying to fix a bug to get the podcast feed working again.
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Get your blood pressure checked
January 29, 2007
Get you blood pressure checked. Yeah, you’ve heard it before. But you should take it seriously.
If your like me, you don’t fret about your personal health too much. I go to a doctor as an extreme last resort, usually because I’ve reached the point of needing an anti-biotic.
But my wife and I take our kids’ health very seriously, and we try to take care of ourselves as best as time allows. Surprisingly, it’s my wife who has to monitor her blood pressure daily. Yeah that seems odd, but it turns out about 65 million Americans have high blood pressure, and nearly half are women.
High blood pressure is dangerous because it makes the heart work too hard and contributes to hardening of the arteries. It primarily increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, among other ailments.
So take it seriously. Check your family’s health history. Better to be cautious and identify problems early. As parents we need to do what we can to stick around long enough for our kids to grow up.
Related links:
American Heart Association
What’s in a name?
January 27, 2007
I was browsing MySpace — yikes, what a mess — to stir up inspiration. I stumbled across a few posts of prospective moms asking input on baby names. It stopped me in my tracks. Bear with me while I share my experience.
(Flash back to the seventies.)
As I child, I was teased often for the name Roland. (It’s incredible the number of ways other stupid kids could make fun of it/me. I even begged my parents to change my name to Ronald before entering High School because I didn’t want more hassles. I seriously thought about using my middle name in High School just because I wanted a ‘normal’ name like the other guys, i.e. Michael, Anthony, David, Scott, Eric, James, Paul, Kevin, etc. (I think every class had at least three of each.)
It wasn’t until my twenties that I became comfortable with my name. I still get angry thinking back on how miserable others made me feel as a child.
(Fast forward to the late nineties.)
When my wife and I were planning to have children, I insisted we stick with strong names. No cute spellings. No obscure names. No names of months (April, August), colors (Magenta, Cyann, Sienna, Chartreuse), moods (Harmony, Sunny) or fruit (Apple). I wanted one syllable names that didn’t rhyme with any body parts. She agreed.
(Skip to 2007)
We have 4 boys, ages 3.75 to 7.75. We try to do everything possible to make our four boys feel strong and confident and remove annoying obstacles. I want them to have a good childhood to remember positively.
In my humble opinion…
I believe some parents get wrapped up in a weird distortion field where they believe a cute and truly unique name is best. But sometimes they fail to think about the baggage associated with names.
Before you start venting about raising children to be self-confident and thick skinned so name calling wont affect them, consider this. Being a child now is much harder than ever before. Children have enough to learn (education / social skills / physical skills) without having to be knocked down in confidence about their names.
It’s sad, but true. Other children can be terribly cruel, whether in Elementary or High School. It’s heart breaking to explain to my son why another child is constantly mean to them. I’ve had to start having those conversations lately. But that’s a different topic.
By the way, I know I’m not alone in this opinion. I know a half dozen adults who don’t use their first names. They’ve substituted nick names or middle names because they hate their first names.
What are your thoughts? I’d really like to hear your opinions on baby naming.
Roland
Related links:
Check out BabyNamer.com. They have a searchable database. Search on a name and click on “Teasing Drawbacks” (used to be called “baggage”) to see negative connotations associated with a proper name.
Data backup tips
January 25, 2007
I’ve suffered through a few huge loses of data over the years. Not from a lack of knowledge, but more from becoming complacent. You have to accept the reality that computer hardware will fail, eventually. As much as I’ve become dependent on technology to complete professional and personal tasks, and as much as I know about the risks, I still occasionally slip into complacency and get burned.
You should take it seriously. The last thing you want is your spouse screaming at you that you lost a few years of family digital photos.
Two years ago was my last bad experience. Six months of professional emails lost because my company had no proactive means of backing up Outlook archives at the time. We were encouraged to archive our email to our hard drive, not the network. I found out the hard way when my hard drive crashed hard and a data recovery firm said it was unsalvagable.
WHAT DID I LEARN?
1. Losing data isn’t the end of the world. Sure it sucks. I struggled for several months afterwards because much of my professional correspondence was lost. But I survived.
2. Take matters into my own hands. Since the company didn’t (at the time) have an archive process in place, I started having my email archive files burned to DVD once per month. I also started saving HTML or TEXT versions of important emails to our network project folders to help make sure there was redundant documentation.
3. On a personal level, I’ve looked more carefully at how I save my personal files. Backing up is time consuming. So I prioritized and worked out a method I’m comfortable with.
Monthly: I have an external hard drive and perform a full backup of my main hard drive personal files at the end of each month. That gets backed up to CD/DVD. Getting into the habit of backing up every 1-2 weeks would be ideal. My preferred hard drive is the Seagate ST3400601CB-RK 400 GB External Hard Drive FireWire/USB 2.0
Quarterly: At last count, I have over five thousand digital photos over the past three years. So every three months I sort through them, delete the bad ones, and burn a complete backup to CDs or DVDs.
Yearly: I do a full backup of my digital music files once a year. This is the least important to me since I have the physical, original CD for most of what I listen to. Music can always be bought again, but family photos and other personal document cannot be replaced so easily.
4. Store an extra set of backup CDs/DVDs offsite. Big companies have long known it is essential for disaster preparedness to maintain full backups at an offsite location. That way if the primary facility is damaged, backups located far away presumably maybe safe. So when backing up to CD or DVD, make an extra set and keep it some where you think is far away or safe, such as a relative’s house or your bank’s deposit box.
Backup, Backup, Backup.
5. We still don’t fully understand how long CDs and DVDs will last. Plus, some studies indicate that cheaper media may degrade at a faster rate. There are actually very few manufacturers, and most of the brands found on shelves are just repackaged/rebranded versions. Take some time, do the research. Consider paying more for archival quality media.
DEVELOP YOUR STRATEGY AND STICK TO IT!
Photos and video are tricky. With consumer adoption of digital photos and digital video, come new challenges. Shoe boxes of film negatives served us well for many decades, but now it’s time to rethink and retrain people’s behavior.
Photos are easy to burn from your PC to CD/DVD. But what about your video? I specifically bought a camcorder with A/V input so I can import old analog video from VHS tapes and 8mm video into MiniDV. I can pull from any device (VCR, tape deck, Tivo) that has traditional composite connections. That makes it simpler to keep the most important older footage on a current media that is easier to import eventually to a PC for editing or burning to DVD.
UNDERSTANDING DIFFERENT TYPES OF MEDIA
VideoHelp.com Details on DVD
PCWorld: Backup Medium Comparison Chart
GET STARTED. READ ABOUT BACKUP STRATEGIES:
MacWorld: Make your images last
The Mac Observer: Dr. Mac’s Guide to Backing Up Your Mac
PCWorld: Keep Your Data Backups Safe, Simple, and Fast
PCWorld: Backup data to separate partition
What do you think? Please post your comments or suggestions. Thanks.
Roland
Artwork Source:
Hard drive image from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Harddisk-head.jpg
