Reality Me

Blog

  • In yesterday’s mail

    The Stigma

    Apparently there’s some stigma around bloggers, particular mommy bloggers, doing product reviews. There shouldn’t be. I understand the stigma’s origins. The stigma comes from those ridiculous pay-per-post services where the participants are encouraged to write shining reviews in return for the product and/or money. They are disingenuous. The advertiser is not paying for the post. The advertiser is paying for search engine ranking. The 200 people who read that paid post, or even if it was 10,000, are not going to pay for the cost of the advertising. What pays is when someone searches for the product and the multiple paid posts have given credibility and ranking to the product in the search engines. As a matter of personal choice, I do not participate in pay-to-post programs.

    Should product reviews be on a blog? Absolutely! The Internet is a reflection of the real world. In the real world, if I try a product I like, I will probably tell others about it. If a company wrongs me, I will warn others. It is only natural to extend that to the Internet. Some bloggers will even ask companies to send them products. They have the audience and clout to get this benefit. Reviews don’t have to be positive. The catch is that if you get a reputation for giving negative reviews, no one will send you their product. Mike Arrington recently accused Leo Laporte of Twit.tv of getting a pre-release Palm Pre in exchange for a glowing report and Leo took great offense.

    I have products sent to me. I’ve had the best intentions of reviewing them but never have. Until someone starts BlogHim and lets us daddy blogs have cat fights over swag, I think I’ll accept products for review. Joan Goldner, a wonderful person!, sent me The Busy Body Book when my Covey planner had run out and I forgot Cathy’s birthday. I never posted a review of The Busy Body Book but it remains one of my favorite organizers despite being a Covey fanboy. I’ve been calendarless for 2009 but am just about to order a Busy Body Book. Read about it on their blog.

    Yesterday’s mail

    IDE to SATA adapter and LifeStyles Condom

    Yesterday I received two products: a bidirectional IDE to SATA or SATA to IDE Adapter and a LifeStyles premium polyisoprene Skyn "closest thing to wearing nothing" condom with Excite female stimulating gel. I’m looking forward to reviewing both of these products! The adapter I ordered from Hong Kong for $4 which included free shipping. It comes with a circuit board, power cable, and a SATA cable. I recently tried to buy a SATA cable locally, just the cable, and it was going to cost me $20 plus tax! The condom was a surprise and comes with a survey asking for feedback on the Excite female stimulating gel. I think I’ll be able to find a volunteer to help me fill out that survey (pseudo related note: We bought Watchmen last night). Now I’m off to plug a cable into something.

    IDE to SATA adapter and LifeStyles Skyn condom

    The Review

    Here’s your quickie review: The Excite female stimulating gel product..let’s just wow! No, let’s say that twice..WOW! WOW! As for the Skyn condom, anyone with a LATEX allergy who has been horrified by a polyurethane plasticized baggy as an excuse for protection can be happy to know that your polyisoprene condom lives up to its marketing. Not only is it as comfortable and flexible as a latex condom, it truly is almost like wearing nothing.

  • August?!

    Where did the summer go?

    Mobile post sent by djuggler using Utterli. reply-count Replies.  mp3

  • But it’s just a simple feature!

    Everyone must read Brent Simmons’s Anatomy of a feature!

  • Today’s Status Report

    Today is far from over but I feel a status report is in order. My wife had important meetings today that would keep her out of the house most of the day and early evening so I’m in charge. She left, two neighborhood children joined our horde, and I attempted to meet my goals. Of course, the older two children were off doing their own things all day so I had no true backup. My goals were simple: write a business proposal in the morning and walk a client through the changes I’d made to their application in the afternoon; if time permits, prospect for more work.

    We had no causalities on my watch, but the collateral damage is awesome! Only one dog was so muddy that she needed a bath. Only one child needed a midday bath. We had only 1 temper tantrum and associated bout of tears, otherwise a happy day. There was lots of laughs and much bouncing on the trampoline. I realized that my yard needs to become a much higher priority. I failed to get the proposal done. The chat with the client went well but didn’t end with the "all done" that I’d hoped. I did, however, get some long overdue to do items off my list, such as ordering the dogs’ flea preventative, and that felt great! Now I need to cook dinner and see if I can begin digging our house out of the rubble.

  • You can have your jet ski

    Keep your jet ski! I’m getting a Jetlev flyer!

  • From the mouths of babes

    Looking down at the trampoline I see one child drawn and quartered by four other children. They waddle to the edge of the trampoline and start rocking the captive child back and forth as if to throw her from the trampoline to the ground. Then they release sending the captive nearly to the other side of the trampoline with a flop.

    Me, opening the window and softly calling down into the valley: "Hey Noah! Do me a favor and make sure we don’t go to the hospital. I don’t have time for that today."

    Earlier it was:

    Me: "Evan. We have guests. They don’t want to see your penis."

    You know.. there should be a book they give to new parents titled, "these are the ridiculous things you will say" with a list of the absurdities you will utter. I’ve said them all!

  • Today is marketing and sales day

    As a freelancer, I wear many hats. I am a programmer, quality assurance engineer, project manager, gopher, sexy intern, accounts receivable, accounts payable, technical support, information technologies (IT), customer service, human resources, facilities manager, accountant, marketer, and sales person. I’m sure I forgot a few. Today I am wearing my marketing and sales hats. I have committed myself to getting a proposal out the door by lunch.

  • PHP is exactly the same on Linux and Windows…

    PHP is exactly the same on Linux and Windows as long as you are using good coding practices, are not using deprecated variables and functions, are not suppressing error messages, are not porting code from an older version of PHP. See, I maintain code on a project that was originally contracted to someone in the United States who failed to tell his client that all he was doing was outsourcing the project to a foreign company. He lost the contract to me when that foreign company became unresponsive to change requests. Many of the comments and variable names are in a foreign language that I do not recognize. The code looks like the foreign company had once written a CMS and just resell it shoehorning new features with hacks. There are many weaknesses to their code but this is not about judging other developers. This post is to warn that although PHP should conceptually move seamlessly from a Linux environment to a Windows Server environment, in reality it doesn’t.

  • From the mouths of babes

    Evan, 4 years old: "Dad, wassit?"
    Me: "It’s called a Slinky."
    Evan: "WHOA! Cool!"

  • frustrationfrustraTIONfruSTRAIONFRUSRATION!

    I’ve spent the day trying to accomplish something that should have taken 40 minutes and is preventing me from doing the things I really want to be doing today. Something that I’m not even getting paid for. I feel that I’ve been constantly interrupted. At one point I declared, "I’m taking the next 40 minutes and finishing this" during which time I was interrupted 3 times. So finally a crisis hit. Minor. The 7 year old, the 4 year old, and the dog went missing in the creek. Normally this would not be a big deal but we’ve had substantial rain these past couple of days. Also, I believe there is a sinkhole in the creek that the children do not know about. It’s mostly covered with debris right now. It’s not really on my property and I’ve been wanting to clear the debris away to see if it is the entrance to the rumored cave that is supposedly nearby. Right now, I simply know that water flows into the ground through the debris at that point and I don’t want the children near it. So I channeled Coach Boomer (which I only now realized is one of my heroes, Bruce Campbell!) for some echo location and proceeded to be anything except that great TV dad that I so aspire to be. Several tears later, everyone is safe but mad at me. And I feel like crud.

  • 1994 Was a Long Time Ago – Fix your website!

    I need to offer some professional advice to some of you. 1994 was a long time ago. Some things your website should NOT be doing:

    1. do not resize my browser!
    2. do not automatically play music or videos! If you insist on doing this, do not loop the music/video and definitely do give me the ability to stop or pause the obnoxiousness.
    3. do not tell me your website is under construction! Your website should be an ever changing, living, breathing entity. Either hide the elements/pages that are not ready for prime time or put them up as-is and change them when ready. You should have a development server hidden from the public, a staging server which a limited amount of public eyes (testers) can see, and a production server that is live to the world. At the bare minimum you should have a development server and a production server. Never make changes directly on your production server.

    Thank you.

  • Rainy Wednesday

    I like the rain…except when it floods my basement but the trench seems in good shape so I don’t anticipate any flooding. I wish I had a nice screened in porch to enjoy the rain. Can’t add anymore words. Work calls.

  • Of Grasshoppers

    Student: Will I be remembered?
    Master: Why?

  • Holding my map upside down

    Today did not go as planned.

  • We are only human

    Either she was wrong or I was wrong but it doesn’t matter because now it’s not right. Dammit damage control is expensive!