Love Letter to my Blackberry

By kate on October 20th, 2007

Yesterday, I had a bad day. One of the main reasons was because I was stuck in awful traffic (related to the Ballard Bridge closure) for at least two hours. I missed playing Ultimate Frisbee and instead spent a furious and frustrated time behind the wheel, with the car at a standstill.

My Blackberry kept me sane. Using it, I could vent my frustrations (via Facebook status and Twitter). I warned my friends away from the area the same way. I caught up on blogs. The Blackberry gave me a connection to the outside world that kept me interested and distracted from the fact I wasn’t getting anywhere. (I should note that I only used the Blackberry when my car was stopped, of course.)

When I thought more about it, I realized that my Blackberry makes many bad situations better. Anytime I have to wait (be it a waiting room, a railroad crossing, whatever), I have fresh reading material at my fingertips in the form of blogs I subscribe to. I can quickly keep up on what most of my friends are doing by checking Facebook and Twitter. I never have a bored moment. I can ask my friends for help or company if I want.

This is all on top of the basic calendar, contact, email, and map functions on the Blackberry, which I take for granted so much I hardly notice them.

My Blackbery is a Pearl, so it has a camera as well. I never thought a cameraphone was important until I got one. Now, I find myself using the camera frequently. Yesterday, I redeemed the day somewhat by stopping in a local store and finding not just one, but several options for our new bathroom vanity. We had been desperately searching all over online with no luck, but at this store I found some that fit our criteria. I whipped out my Blackberry and took pictures of each one, emailed them to Steve, then called him to discuss them. We were able to decide together and make a purchase right then, thanks to the Blackberry.

I even installed a timer application on the Blackberry recently so that I can use it to measure Ruby’s time outs while we are away from the house.

I guess the term “crackberry” is not inappropriate because of the way it’s integrated into my life. You may jeer, but I feel that, rather than taking me away from my life, it’s enriching my life and my social connections.

Filed under: life, technology | 1 Comment »

The Examined Life: Parenting a Toddler

By kate on September 28th, 2007

I’ve realized that, when parenting a toddler, you must be very self-aware. That’s because anything and everything you do can be considered a precedent (in the legal sense). Every action, reaction, word, or activity could be something the child decides should be repeated forever. All day long, I stop and ask myself, “is this something I want to do (or want Ruby to do) over and over?”

It’s not just simple things like avoiding bad words (a topic for another post) or not giving her cookies. The most important area, and one of the hardest, is discipline. I need to keep myself ruthlessly consistent or Ruby will stop trusting that I mean what I say. If I decide to tell her not to do something, I have to make sure it’s in the form of a simple rule that I am willing to enforce every time. Sometimes it’s hard to distill good behavior down into simple rules (because human behavior is subtle and situational), but that’s the only way a toddler will understand it.

I also need to make sure my reactions to bad behavior are consistent. Anger (or frustration, or exasperation) has no place here; I have to remind myself that she usually does “bad” things because she doesn’t know any better yet, and that I’m helping her to learn. So, I select an appropriate punishment (usually a time-out, or taking away the object involved) and tell her clearly and firmly that if she does [whatever it is] again, I will do [chosen punishment]. And then I do punish her, without exception, if she repeats the behavior. I feel like if I threaten and don’t follow through even once or twice, the game is lost.

With all this talk of punishment, I should say that we’ve been exceptionally lucky and Ruby is a very well-behaved child. I don’t punish her very often (maybe once every 1-2 days), and she accepts the punishment without too much fuss. I’m sure the greater part of that is the personality she was born with, although at this point in her life I like to think Steve and I have had time to develop her better qualities.

But I can never let down my guard! I wonder how long this will last? Will I be scrutinizing myself for consistency until Ruby goes to college?

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This made me want to cry

By kate on September 13th, 2007

“According to a new survey… fully a quarter of Americans believe the First Amendment�’goes too far’� in its provision of rights and freedoms. It gets worse from there…”

Go read the linked blog post, then come back. I’ll wait.

These survey results depressed me so much that I followed the link to the survey and scrutinized the methodology, hoping to find some way to make the results seem less true. Here is the relevant bit: “The 2007 national survey of 1,003 respondents was conducted by telephone between Aug. 16 and Aug. 26.” Follow along as I grasp at straws and try to convince myself that our country isn’t doomed to idiocy.

Telephone surveys. Who do you think responds to those these days? Well, first you have to have a telephone. More and more young people are ditching the landline and going cell-only, or maybe VoIP. So that demographic is not included. Second, you need to be home to answer the phone. That makes it much less likely that the survey respondents were busy people, or even employed. Finally, even if they are home, many people will not take the time for a survey, especially one of this length. This rules out busy people (again), most parents, and anyone who is generally suspicious of unsolicited phone calls (in other words, people who think critically).

To continue my broad generalization, that leaves retirees, unemployed bums, the mentally defective, and cranks. It’s no surprise they come across as closed-minded.

Filed under: current events, justice | 1 Comment »

AirSet – my new PIM

By kate on September 10th, 2007

I’ve been using Trumba for an online calendar since they were in closed beta. I became a paying user because I liked it so much. Now, however, they’ve given the finger to their individual users, jacked their prices sky-high, and aimed for the enterprise market. Fine, screw you too, Trumba.

I spent a long time looking around online for a solution that would be an online calendar and sync automatically with Outlook (not because I’m a giant Outlook fan, although it’s fine, but so that my calendar could then sync to my Blackberry). Most of the sync solutions out there are made to synchronize Outlook and Google Calendar, so I gave Google Calendar a whirl. Unfortunately, I found the interface kind of clunky. I was also not interested in sifting through the pile of third-party Google-Outlook sync apps to weigh value for money.

Luckily, I finally stumbled across AirSet. After finding it, I read that both Joel on Software and Walt Mossberg liked AirSet, so I registered and gave it a try.

AirSet is not only an online calendar, but also includes RSVP management, contacts, lists, group management, photos, files, links, and even music playlists. All for free! It’s a group website in the vein of Yahoo! Groups (but more sophisticated). Right now, the only thing you pay for is to access AirSet on your mobile phone (they don’t support Blackberries yet, but I can still sync mine free using RIM’s desktop app). If you install the free AirSet desktop app, it can sync AirSet with Outlook, Outlook Express, and/or a Palm device.

In one long day, I was able to move all my calendars from Trumba to AirSet and get them synchronized. My contacts are also being synchronized from Outlook, which is a great addition because now Steve can access them online if he needs to. I don’t think we’re going to use the more frivolous features like music playlists or photo albums (we keep those elsewhere), but maybe one day we’ll use the files feature to store important family info or use AirSet to share important URLs.

To put the icing on the cake, their customer support is very responsive. I had a bunch of feedback and suggestions after setting myself up, so I submitted them yesterday afternoon. Within four and a half hours, I had a personal and detailed reply from someone at AirSet (on a Sunday evening!).

I’ve only been using AirSet for a couple of days, but so far it seems like it’s a winner.

Filed under: Links, technology | 1 Comment »

Where to find me online

By kate on September 7th, 2007

If you’re reading this blog, I can assume you have at least some level of interest in what I have to say. In fact, you may be interested to hear more from me than you get from this blog.

HOW TO GET IT ALL: Read my tumblelog. This is a micro-blog that aggregates everything I put online. It includes this blog, Ruby’s blog, photos (from Flickr), videos (from Vimeo), quick status updates (from Facebook/Twitter), shared links (from Facebook), and other miscellaneous things I toss in there*. You can get the tumblelog in these ways:

Bookmark the tumblelog page in your browser.
If you have a Tumblr account, you can friend me from that page and my items will appear on your dashboard.
Add the tumblelog’s RSS feed to your regular RSS reader.
Use Feedwhip to email you when it is updated (generally several times a day, although you can tell Feedwhip how often you want an email).

If you’d rather pick and choose, you can do things like follow me on Twitter or friend me on Facebook. There’s a complete list of places to find me in the sidebar on the right. Of course, you can continue to read just this blog, where I will put my longer, more thought-out entries.

*I’m planning to follow up with an entry on just how I got all these sites to play together. It makes for a pretty complicated web, but it works.

Filed under: meta, technology | 1 Comment »

Mexico trip recap

By kate on September 2nd, 2007

Steve, Ruby, and I went to Mexico in mid-August. I’d been getting the travel itch pretty bad, and thought that a trip within the U.S. would not be enough. We have a good family friend in Mexico – a former Catholic priest who has known Steve’s family for years. My last trip to Mexico had been with Steve’s family to see his ordination in 1999 (he has since left the priesthood, married, and had a baby).

Our friend, Rafa (short for Rafael), lives in Guadalajara, an inland city west of Mexico City. It was a perfect starting point, since my ideal Mexican vacation is more of the exploring-cities-and-towns type, rather than the sit-on-the-beach type.

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