...because she can pretty much walk with impunity now. She's been teetering on the verge for awhile now, but the needle's pointing at "I'm walkin' now, so there" without a whole lot of question. (In the interests of full disclosure, she does still revert to crawling when she gets to a new environment until she's sure the floor is solid and safe, but I regard that as a good, safe reflex for her to have.)
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Friday, January 12, 2007
A Snub for Blu-Ray
For the record, my family bought a Betamax VCR way back in the dark ages of the VHS vs. Betamax wars. I can tell you for a fact that it worked better and that it was easier to store the damn tapes because they were smaller. There's a reason that the television industry hung onto that format for a long time after it was dead in the consumer market.
However, it seems that the pornography industry has something against Sony's video formats, because Wired has just reported that, in the next-gen DVD format wars, pr0n has gone with HD-DVD. This, many argue, is similar the move that killed Betamax: when the porn video distributors went with VHS as a standard instead.
Will it happen again? Only time will tell. Technology has come far enough now that there are already dual-format players in the works, and if I had to guess, I'd say that will become the "standard". They'll be more expensive at first, but I betcha the price will come down once there is a certain volume of them on the market. We, as consumers, have the distinct advantage this time that the two formats are burned onto stunningly similar media.
Don't even get me started on the disadvantage we consumers have that both of these new formats are DRM'ed up the wazoo. I'm rooting for either a) both of them to fail or b) a third contender to enter the marketplace, with less of a reliance on handcuffing me to their idea of what it's "safe" for me to do with the media that I legally buy and own.
So I suppose what I'm saying here is, "Meh."
However, it seems that the pornography industry has something against Sony's video formats, because Wired has just reported that, in the next-gen DVD format wars, pr0n has gone with HD-DVD. This, many argue, is similar the move that killed Betamax: when the porn video distributors went with VHS as a standard instead.
Will it happen again? Only time will tell. Technology has come far enough now that there are already dual-format players in the works, and if I had to guess, I'd say that will become the "standard". They'll be more expensive at first, but I betcha the price will come down once there is a certain volume of them on the market. We, as consumers, have the distinct advantage this time that the two formats are burned onto stunningly similar media.
Don't even get me started on the disadvantage we consumers have that both of these new formats are DRM'ed up the wazoo. I'm rooting for either a) both of them to fail or b) a third contender to enter the marketplace, with less of a reliance on handcuffing me to their idea of what it's "safe" for me to do with the media that I legally buy and own.
So I suppose what I'm saying here is, "Meh."
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
A Quick Math Quiz
I was offered a choice of three coupons for a major retailer for signing up for their free loyalty program. Here are the buttons I was given to select from:
Okay, quick. Which one is worth the paper you'll print it on? If you get this right, you may have the math skill necessary to go on Deal or No Deal. (Was forced to watch this over Christmas and it seemed like a very simple application of probability and only really needed the ability to do a quick 'n' dirty average of some numbers in your head so you can see if you're getting a good deal or not, but I digress.)
Let's throw out the one in the middle right away. A free hot beverage? Eh. Are you really gonna go in there for a damn coffee and not buy either one item worth $20 or a group of items worth at least $50, either of which is a better deal than the free coffee, which I can't imagine is more than $4, the smallest possible value of either of the other two coupons. (And if you're buying $5 coffee at this joint, then you have bigger problems than choosing a coupon.)
From this point, the coupon on the left seems like the best deal, until you see the "one item only" that you get your 20% off of. But hey, let's say you've been eyeing, gee, I dunno, some big box set of DVDs or something. You could turn a $100 box set into a $80 one, which doesn't suck.
From this point, all you have to do is figure out what you're likely to buy on your trip. If your largest item costs less than $50 but you will still be spending at least $50, the right one is your guy. If you are buying at least one item of $50 or more, then you go with Mr. Lefty.
But I wondered as I clicked the button, "How many people actually do the math, and how many just pick one based on whether it dazzled them with sheer implication or not?" I think that percentage would be worryingly high. Oh well. More good coupons for the rest of us then, huh?
Okay, quick. Which one is worth the paper you'll print it on? If you get this right, you may have the math skill necessary to go on Deal or No Deal. (Was forced to watch this over Christmas and it seemed like a very simple application of probability and only really needed the ability to do a quick 'n' dirty average of some numbers in your head so you can see if you're getting a good deal or not, but I digress.)
Let's throw out the one in the middle right away. A free hot beverage? Eh. Are you really gonna go in there for a damn coffee and not buy either one item worth $20 or a group of items worth at least $50, either of which is a better deal than the free coffee, which I can't imagine is more than $4, the smallest possible value of either of the other two coupons. (And if you're buying $5 coffee at this joint, then you have bigger problems than choosing a coupon.)
From this point, the coupon on the left seems like the best deal, until you see the "one item only" that you get your 20% off of. But hey, let's say you've been eyeing, gee, I dunno, some big box set of DVDs or something. You could turn a $100 box set into a $80 one, which doesn't suck.
From this point, all you have to do is figure out what you're likely to buy on your trip. If your largest item costs less than $50 but you will still be spending at least $50, the right one is your guy. If you are buying at least one item of $50 or more, then you go with Mr. Lefty.
But I wondered as I clicked the button, "How many people actually do the math, and how many just pick one based on whether it dazzled them with sheer implication or not?" I think that percentage would be worryingly high. Oh well. More good coupons for the rest of us then, huh?
Monday, January 08, 2007
Poor Santa
There were three pictures...the first was confusion, the second was mild panic, and then there was...this.
Hats off to the photographer at the hospital, where they did free pictures with Santa at the new mom's group, for spending an entire morning photographing babies who were just terrified of this creepy lookin' guy.
(The Santa at the hospital was also lovely. He had the patience of a saint and hung right in there even though pretty much every baby just cried when they sat with him. Poor guy.)
Hats off to the photographer at the hospital, where they did free pictures with Santa at the new mom's group, for spending an entire morning photographing babies who were just terrified of this creepy lookin' guy.
(The Santa at the hospital was also lovely. He had the patience of a saint and hung right in there even though pretty much every baby just cried when they sat with him. Poor guy.)
Plurals
One of the silly things that came out of our time at CK and LWC's, a random silly conversation of the sort that has been sadly lacking for me since The Company went boom, was a short discourse on plurals.
I don't know why the two words are similar to me, but peek-a-boo has always seemed oddly the same sort of a word as cul-du-sac. Now, if one is to properly pluralize cul-du-sac, it is actually culs-du-sac. This all came out when we were talking about peek-a-boo, as the B has been known to play a single sitting of that game for nearly twenty minutes, and she was in the middle of just such a sitting when this silly conversation occurred.
Though peek-a-boo does not find its etymological roots in French, there is still some part of me that wants to say "peeks-a-boo" instead of "peek-a-boos". Or perhaps it's "peeks-a-beaux".
Yeah, that all still sounds as ridiculous as it did the first time.
I don't know why the two words are similar to me, but peek-a-boo has always seemed oddly the same sort of a word as cul-du-sac. Now, if one is to properly pluralize cul-du-sac, it is actually culs-du-sac. This all came out when we were talking about peek-a-boo, as the B has been known to play a single sitting of that game for nearly twenty minutes, and she was in the middle of just such a sitting when this silly conversation occurred.
Though peek-a-boo does not find its etymological roots in French, there is still some part of me that wants to say "peeks-a-boo" instead of "peek-a-boos". Or perhaps it's "peeks-a-beaux".
Yeah, that all still sounds as ridiculous as it did the first time.
Whirlwind Tour, or We're Not In Kansas Anymore
The last few weeks have been interesting, but we've been able to see a lot of people we had to wave goodbye to when we left VB a little over a year ago. First up, Joe and Erika were here as a stopover as Joe moved to take up a new job.
We got the excuse to do a few things that we haven't done yet because we had company in town, including going to a large local farmer's market and also up in the Arch. To wit:
After some airline shenanigans, Erika did get a flight out after helping to get Joe ready for the second leg of his trip, though we all did like the Arch-visiting and fondue-eating part more than the packing part, I'm sure.
After a little car-loading Tetris, we determined that if we packed lightly for ourselves, we could just barely fit me and the B in the minivan as well, so we could make the trip and visit Dr. H, CK, and LWC. CK and LWC very graciously put us up (no mean feat when one of us is only one year old and chewing on everything she can get her little hands on. As you can see, she learned a lot about how to kick back while we were out West.
We had just a little time to spend there, as the mister needed to get back in time to go on a trip for work, so we savored those bare hours as much as possible before we started the trek back, also known as "When the hell will we be out of freaking Kansas?"
The B was a little trooper in the car, though admittedly the trip back was much pleasanter with an almost-empty van and plenty of room for me to sit in the second row with her and entertain her with various silly toys. We were glad to get home again, if only to get back into some sort of routine, but the B and I are both uncommonly sad to be here on our own for a bit until the mister returns from his work trip. We'll get through, though, and it will be a little strange to have everything back to normal again.
We got the excuse to do a few things that we haven't done yet because we had company in town, including going to a large local farmer's market and also up in the Arch. To wit:
After some airline shenanigans, Erika did get a flight out after helping to get Joe ready for the second leg of his trip, though we all did like the Arch-visiting and fondue-eating part more than the packing part, I'm sure.
After a little car-loading Tetris, we determined that if we packed lightly for ourselves, we could just barely fit me and the B in the minivan as well, so we could make the trip and visit Dr. H, CK, and LWC. CK and LWC very graciously put us up (no mean feat when one of us is only one year old and chewing on everything she can get her little hands on. As you can see, she learned a lot about how to kick back while we were out West.
We had just a little time to spend there, as the mister needed to get back in time to go on a trip for work, so we savored those bare hours as much as possible before we started the trek back, also known as "When the hell will we be out of freaking Kansas?"
The B was a little trooper in the car, though admittedly the trip back was much pleasanter with an almost-empty van and plenty of room for me to sit in the second row with her and entertain her with various silly toys. We were glad to get home again, if only to get back into some sort of routine, but the B and I are both uncommonly sad to be here on our own for a bit until the mister returns from his work trip. We'll get through, though, and it will be a little strange to have everything back to normal again.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Please Stop With the Lead Poisoning
The U.S. Consumer Safety Division publishes a set of feeds of their recalls, and I subscribe to the one that deals chiefly with the recalls for childrens's products. There is a definite trend recently having to do with excessive amounts of lead being used in clothing and toys. It seems as though every other recall has the word "lead" in the title.Um, WTF? Can't you possibly stop trying to poison my child with all this frickin' lead? Is it really that cheap? Did we just not know any better? Or was everyone asleep at the wheel?
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