Insurance shopping

So, for the first time in over 10 years, I find myself looking at new insurance companies. I have been a faithful Erie Insurance customer for over 10 years. However, in the past three years I have seen some large rate hikes (10-15%/year) including one that I feel was handled dishonestly. Every year I have called my insurance agent and last year I didn't even get a call back. So, while looking for new insurance I decided to start with another Erie agent. My call seemed to be fruitless as once they heard I was with another Erie agent they lost all interest in helping me. So, I am now looking outside of Erie now...mostly because of their agents. I found these complaint ratios from the North Carolina Department of Insurance nice to have when evaluating new companies. It seems to me that those companies with below a 0.5 complain ratio seems to be on the "good" side. I also find the rate calculator on the DOI site to be useful.

Derick and Emily's wedding

Well the madness is now over. Anna made it down the aisle as the ring bearer. My wedding day duties as best man were complete. More importantly, Derick and Emily are married and on their way today to honeymoon on a tropical island. Congratulations to both of them!

We used both Google Docs and Google Wave when I was helping Derick and Emily coordinate things. That was a learning experience, and I now know when Docs is useful and the few times when Wave is useful. Google Docs provided both help managing the guest list (and emailing people for their updated address information) AND a basis for RSVPs forms. The idea to use these in this way largely came from a Google employee's own experience in this video.

Derick and Emily certainly had a fun reception. They had an inflatable bouncehouse at the reception, the XL Fun House from PartyHopperRentals.com. They had EyeFi cards to automatically upload pictures from a couple cameras up to a slide projector. Unfortunately, this didn't work quite as easily as hoped. The technology will soon catch up and I am sure we will see this at more parties soon.

It was certainly a memorable experience and I think with the amount of cameras, there will be plenty of memories available to be shared. Here are some great ones that ended up on twitter:




And finally, them leaving...

playing with stop motion video

So, I have taken a small interest in stop motion video. I have always had an interest in photography and whether is be my friend Derick's influence or just my own curiosity, I have started to play with doing real stop motion type videos. I have a 6 year old Canon Digital Rebel and when connected to a computer, it can do timed captures. Although it seems to fail at anything less than 20 seconds between capture (which seems to be related to the speed of data transfer :-/), you can create a decent little stop motion feel with it. Here are some videos I put together with the Canon remote Capture and iMovie:

First try was a time lapse Maddie and I creating a quick Mega bloks tower.


Then, I took a a time lapse set of 500+ shots throughout the day yesterday while helping our friends Suzanne and Aaron clean out and reorganize their garage.


Then, today I made another quick time lapse video of Anna, Madelyn and I making a mega-blok tower.


Finally, while Maddie was napping and Heather and Anna were at the mall, I tried a fun little puzzle adventure stop motion style.


I think I have figured out a few things, one of which is I need a tripod and maybe a newer camera to do cooler stuff :-) Not being able to take pictures quicker than 20 seconds apart because of the speed of transferring data from the camera to my laptop AND not having a tripod really makes this more difficult.

Also, here it is on Vimeo in case you prefer Vimeo over YouTube...

Eat Mor Chikin Stop Motion Puzzle from Erik B on Vimeo.

Car seat dilemma

We have two kids, a 3 yr old and a 21 month old. We have bought 4 car seats (for the car) and we may have wasted money in doing so. :-/ As a guy who is known for researching product selections among friends and family, I can't believe that we may have screwed up our car seat selection this bad. Here is what happened...

Our first car seat for Anna was a Chicco KeyFit 22. It was a car seat that went up to 22 lbs. Before her first birthday, Heather was 3 months pregnant and Anna was not looking comfortable at 20 lbs in a 22 lb car seat so we went shopping for a convertible for her to move up in. At first we bought the highest rated one from Consumer Reports, the Evenflo Titan 5. It was a bit too big for Anna and the usability was horrible so we soon bought a Britax Roundabout and the Titan ended up in our second car for the past 18 months. When Madelyn was about ready to move up out of the Chicco to the Britax, we moved Anna to a Cosco Deluxe Summit which we bought. The Chicco has been passed to my sister in law who will soon be using it for the second time and will have gotten its fair share of use. Unfortunately, the Chicco KeyFit 30 wasn't around or it could have been used even longer.

So, there is the short story of how Heather and I have 3 car seats, the Evenflo Titan 5, the Britax Roundabout, and the Cosco Deluxe Summit. All three of those have one thing in common, their forward facing 5 point harness weight limit is 40 lbs. The Cosco has belt positioning, the other two do not. Why is this important? As of November, as Heather wrote here, Anna was 36.5 pounds. She was weighed again in January at 36 pounds...but how long until she hits the 40? Certainly possible before she turns 4...

Before we realized that yesterday Heather and I were blindly looking for another deal on the Cosco/Safety 1st Deluxe Summit to move Maddie up into. She isn't uncomfortable in the Britax Roundabout, but is more comfortable in the Cosco and Evenflo. Around the same time Heather saw the weight rating on the Cosco and we realized the mistake we had made, I saw this report on booster seats from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. To summarize, they think all the booster we have are horrible when it comes to seat belt positioning. Everything I read says to keep them in 5 point harnesses as long as possible. So, here are our choices in the next 6 months...

1) Buy a Britax Frontier which seems to be able to go on as a harness for much longer (80 lbs) and gets the IIHS Best Buy.
2) Buy her a Booster like the Maxi-Cosi Rodi or Recaro Vivo and switch her to belt positioning
3) Buy a 65 lb 5 point harness like the Safety 1st Go Hybrid and decide what to do in the future.

Right now I am leaning towards #1, buying a Britax Frontier. Thoughts?

Silly bets on the TV Show Ed

I always liked the short lived TV show Ed and have often quoted it..although many don't have any clue where the quotes come from. Today I googled for all the silly $10 bets made on Ed and found a list of some here on tv.com. It makes me laugh reading them and so I thought I would pass on the humor...

Season 1
Ep 2: $10 Bet: Mike challenges Ed to meow loud enough to make a guy sitting on a bench turn around.
Ep 3: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed that he cannot drink a bottle of pancake syrup.
Ep 4: $10 Bet: Ed bets Mike to order a burger using only two words: burger me
Ep 5: $10 Bet: Mike dares Ed to walk up to a woman at the bar and ask to buy her a drink -- with nuts in his mouth
Ep 6: $10 Bet: Ed bets Mike to go up to a man and call him "Mommy"
Ep 7: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed, in the supermarket, to ask the clerk where the lettuce is - but he has to call it "let-oos".
Ep 8: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed that he can't rhyme his lunch order at the diner. The waitress is the same one who took the "burger me" bet.
Ep 9: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed that he can't eat some of the dog food pate that he has made for his dog, Troy.
Ep 11: $10 Bet: Ed bets Mike to walk up to a stranger and start singing "Tonight I Celebrate My Love."
Ep 12: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed to order a shirley temple when he goes out on a date with Bonnie Hane.
Ep 13: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed to go up to a stranger on a park bench and touch his bald spot.
Ep 14: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed he can't call Reverend Carver "Padre".
Ep 15: $10 Bet: Ed bets Mike can't speak in a British accent to a girl from high school, Hillary Sanders, who is at the Smiling Goat.
Ep 16: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed he won't give him 10 bucks to give him 10 bucks. Ed turns it around and bets Mike he can't give Ed twenty bucks for ten bucks.
Ep 17: $10 Bet: Ed bets Mike ten bucks to go upto a bunch of people waiting at the bus stop and do the Snake Dance.
Ep 18: $10 Bet: Ed bets Mike ten bucks to finish eating his dinner in the restaurant without wearing his shirt.
Ep 19: $10 Bet: Ed bets Mike to cover his face in wedding cake after giving the toast at Ari and Barbara's wedding.
Ep 20: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed to yell "I love kitties" as loud as possible in the bowling alley.
Ep 21: $10 Bet: Ed bets Mike to kiss Kenny on the cheek.
Ep 22: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed ten bucks to stop talking about Carol. Ed keeps talking so Mike increases the bet to $1000. Ed doesn't accept the bet and keeps talking. This is the first time either one of them has declined a bet.

Season 2
Ep 1: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed to kiss a garden gnome in a neighbor's lawn - while the neighbor is watching.
Ep 4: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed to ask the waitress to wrap his one last french fry.
Ep 5: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed $6 to go hug a chicken who is advertising for a restaurant. Ed wont do it for $6 so he bets Mike to do it for $10.
Ep 7: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed ten bucks to go over to two women at the farmer's market and introduce himself as a jackass. Ed walks over to do just that, when one woman turns around and asks, "What do you want, jackass?" Mike has paid the woman ten bucks to say this to Ed, who insists Mike pay up.
Ep 8: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed $10 to eat a potato chip, despites Ed's 20 year quest to "eat just one". Ed initially refuses, but backs off when Mike calls an end to the ten dollar bets, declaring Ed the loser.
Ep 10: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed that he can't get a person at StuckeyBowl to say "tater-tots" in 30 seconds. It takes 32 seconds and Ed loses.
Ep 15: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed to order a brandy at the bar by saying brandy 20 times.
Ep 20: $10 Bet: Ed bets Mike to go up to a man at the Smiling Goat and ask for his autograph pretending the man is Kenny Rogers.
Ep 22: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed to whistle like a wolf at a man. Ed doesn't want to at first but does it after seeing Dennis and Carol.

Season 3
Ep 2: $10 Bet: Ed bets Mike to ask a man on the street to tell him where he can find a hotel - while consistently turning the radio volume up so the man has to shout the directions.
Ep 4: $10 Bet: After a discussion on how male ostriches court females, Mike bets Ed to court a woman at the bus stop, using his best ostrich impression. Ed goes up to the woman, rests on what he supposes are his hocks, flaps his "wings" and screams like a banshee.
Ep 7: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed to play song A55 on the jukebox. Ed does and the jukebox starts playing "It's Raining Men". Everyone stares at Ed. Mike laughs.
Ep 11: $10 Bet: Ed bets Mike to stand on a chair and bark the song "Jingle Bells".
Ep 13: $10 Bet: Mike bets Ed to go up to someone at the snack bar of StuckeyBowl and do a commentary of their behavior just like a sports commentator.

Photo Hangover

We go through this every year...between the end of Anna's birthday and Christmas we have taken hundreds of photos and it almost wears us out such that we go through this period I will call a photo hangover. Thats a period where we avoid taking pictures because frankly we are exhausted of pictures. Does anyone else experience this?

Stripper Free Bachelor Parties?

There is a vast misconception in this world that one cannot have a fun bachelor party without strippers and alcohol. For the second time in my life, I find myself directly battling that misconception. If you missed my last post, one of my best friends, Derick, asked his girlfriend to be his wife right before Christmas. The images link to their website where you can read about the proposal and see a countdown to their wedding....also, you can watch a slightly updated video on his site or on my last blog post which I updated.



So, last night Derick asked me to be his best man which is an awesome honor for which I intend to work very hard to complete. Being a best man to me is more than just standing beside your friend at his wedding, but a commitment to help him achieve his objectives and uphold his commitments, short term (getting married) and long term. Long term is often lost in our culture but vitally important in my opinion. Imagine if every best man felt it was his responsibility to keep in touch with the groom and ensure he was doing his best to honor, love, protect, and cherish his wife. The world may look a bit different.

As for the short term, there are lots of lists. I found this one which I thought was useful. On the phone last night the first thing I thought of was the need to plan Derick a bachelor party. Knowing Derick, he and I are similar in that bar hopping and strippers were not on the list of activities we are interested in for our bachelor party. My first thought was what did I do? I went jetskiing with my friends in Wilmington and then had a nice dinner. Since Derick is getting married in March...that wasn't happening. What did my brother-in-law do? We played basketball. Not really Derick's thing. So, I started to compile lists of other things to do. Here are some of the things I thought of as I was trying to get to sleep last night..

• Paintball
  
• Go Karts/Laser Tag
  
• Large scale poker night
  
• Camping / Geocaching
  

Then I was out of ideas and came across some others through friends or this helpful website.

• ATV or Jeep offroading adventures
  
• Rent and fire machine guns at the range
  
• Ziplines in the mountains
  

Here were things I had to cast off because of the time of year:

• ski/snowboarding (might be too warm in March, especially in NC)
  
• jetskiing
  
• white water rafting
  
• sea kayaking
  
• hunt
  

And other things that fell off my list:

• Basketball
  
• Football
  
• Video Games
  
• Golf
  
• Skydiving
  
• Sports event or concert
  

Congratulations Derick and Emily!

My close friend Derick proposed to his girlfriend, Emily, last night. I am thrilled for them as Derick and I have had many great conversations about relationships and specifically even her before they actually started dating. He was attracted to her from the beginning and to see that work out into a marriage about 2 years later is amazing.

I was blessed with the opportunity to help him with his project on how he was going to pop the question. Derick is a professional movie maker (editor, animator, and more) who works for a company called Centerline locally here in Raleigh making, amongst other things, videos for what I work on at IBM. Since he is a production guy, everyone expected something big out of him and he delivered. He and some of his friends including myself spent two late nights filming light writing out of the 18th floor of the Clairon Hotel in Downtown Raleigh from 6 PM to 6 AM last Thursday and Friday nights. Fortunately these were some of the darkest days of the year, meaning two all nighters would be all that was needed since it took almost the whole 24 hours. Then Derick edited for about 4 days straight...my estimated guess.

Light writing is the idea that you leave a camera lense open (exposed) and capture all the light that comes in. In doing that, you capture certain intentional light which eventually when merged with another photo (or 500) can spell a word, phrase, or sentence. There is more info on it here on wikipedia. For this project, Derick chose to do it in downtown Raleigh which meant going over the natural terrain of the city. Some of these letters are partially up walls (the WILL, The M, A, and Y in Marry, and the M in Me), through bushes/brush (Emily's whole name), and across busy streets.

Please check out the video he made of the proposal and rate it 5 stars...he deserves it!

Light Writing Proposal from Derick Childress on Vimeo.

Most importantly, congrats to Derick and Emily! Heather and I couldn't be happier that you two will be together and look forward to your friendship for many years to come.

Before you make that purchase...

Heather and I have come up with a system that has really started working to jointly control any compulsive spending and I thought I would share it. It started off with the first two questions but we have expanded it to 3 questions we ask one anothee in order to better think our purchases out. I added just some of the sub questions which have come up in my mind when thinking out the answers recently.

1) How often would you really use it?
-- Is it worth buying another item for how often it will be used?
-- Do you need it or just want it?
-- Can you borrow or try it out before committing to spending the money?
-- Is there something that you can sell or get rid of first to offset the cost? We do this with cars all the time, but not other things we buy.
2) Are their cheaper alternatives?
-- Does this purchase have reoccurring costs such as supplies being more expensive than alternatives?
-- What are the tradeoffs to the cheaper alternatives?
-- How long will the cheaper alternatives be good enough?
3) Can the money be better used elsewhere?
-- If you used the money to pay down debt would you end up being able to afford something better in the long run?
-- If you aren't going to use it often, would it be better to support a charity or a friend in need?
-- Would letting the money grow in a savings or an investment account be better while you think it out?

Try it and let me know if you come up with other short questions to add to the list

Mountain getaway

As Heather said here, we had a real enjoyable mountain getaway. I thought I would label some of our favorite and least favorite things.

Lodging: We stayed at Parkway Vacation Rental's At Home with Nature. I would issue a Buyer Beware on these folks. While their service was excellent during the sale - when we got to the location we found all sorts of problems in the house. Once told about it - they promised to fix them the first day we were there and never did. Here are examples of what we found:

• Mold in the kitchen sink and shower
  
• Bedroom doors without handles
  
• Toilet Seats split in half
  
• Hot tub that never worked
  
• Phone service (which we were supposed to have in our contract unlimited loca+long distance) which was turned off
  
• DVD Players without cables. Remotes without batteries.
  
• An oven door that doesn't shut (great for kids, eh?)
  
• Lack of playground and tennis courts prominently listed on their site. Two guards at the gate confirmed this.
  
• Broken dining room chairs

The place was once beautiful - its a shame this management team is running it because its falling apart.

Food: We ate in a lot - but had some yummy food out...
Kojay's cafe in Blowing Rock - Loved it and ate lunch there twice. The coffee, however, was not a hit.
Higher Grounds in Boone - Best Coffee. Heather complains about other lattes now after having theirs.
Dan'l Boone Inn in Boone - Great southern all you can eat family style breakfast. We had 14 people which they accommodated in about 20 minutes and it was a blast.
Kilwin's in Blowing Rock - best ice cream.

Things to Do: We kept it low key and were there in November when some things like Tweetsie were closed..but there were things we loved.
Grandfather Mountain. Its a zoo and a scenic getaway all in one, what's not to love? They do push the fudge a bit much though :-)
Playground in Boone - this was the most incredible playground we have ever been to. See the pictures on Heather's blog.

Finally, I'll say this...even if the place you stay in isn't meeting your expectations - when you wake up to this its wonderful:

Petco and Natural Balance Dog food

I know I haven't blogged in a couple of months so I plan to do a mini-blog series on what's been going on in our lives. The first thing to mention is that sometimes us common folks know more than doctors and veterinarians...or at very least the latter. We have had our mutt Cassie for 6.5 years. When we got her, she had mange and she basically never stopped itching since then. Two vets have told us that our dog Cassie has dry skin - the latest told us to try fish oil in her diet. Fish oil can be real expensive, so we went to Petco to see if they had foods with fish oil. The employee there told us that sometimes the dogs keep itching because of allergies (we should have thought of this but never had) and recommended this (expensive) organic food, Natural Balance, with no wheat in it. Since Cassie went on it she has stopped itching...or at least itches very infrequently like a normal dog.

Just so you realize how bad it was..we found out 2 weeks ago that Cassie had a staph infection because she scratched herself bad enough. Now, she doesn't itch/scratch and her infection is practically gone. Thank you Petco for being more knowledgeable than our veterinarian!

My media stand

One of my projects this weekend was to create a media stand. We just switched from Time Warner Cable to DirecTV this Friday and that left my receiver sitting on top of my blu-ray player which I didn't like. In general - its a bad idea to stack AV equipment on top of one another because they all generate heat and heat is bad for electronics. So, I needed to create some space between them but our Pier 1 entertainment center only had one shelf..and they don't sell it or the extra shelf for it any longer. So, I decided to make a simple stand for the receiver...

I started by getting a 4 ft long dowel rod from home depot that was 1" in diameter. This cost $3.35. Next, I reused a piece of particle board I had in the garage that used to be shelves in our garage when we bought the house.

That particle board was perfect, just less than 1 ft wide. I cut that board to the right length, 20", and the dowel rods for legs at 7.5" high. I attached the dowel rods with some wood screws I had around the house and used some plywood left over from when we refinished our kitchen to create a small DVD shelf on the front 2 legs of the stand. Then I used a cheap $1 can of flat black spray paint to paint it so that it would be unnoticeable in the cabinet.

It is very stabile and fits perfectly. I am going to enjoy being able to look at that stand and think I put it all together for less than $5...while people that don't read this will never notice it :-)

With a light shining on it:


Normal view with the speaker above:

Saving for college

Reading this Sunday's Wall Street Journal article on saving for college, one might view our children's future ability to have a debt free education as hopeless. In the article, there were some important facts:

For the 2008-2009 school year, the average cost of attending a four-year public school for in-state residents -- including tuition and room and board -- rose 5.7% to $14,333, according to the College Board. The cost was up 5.6% to $34,132 for a private university. (These numbers aren't adjusted for inflation.)

Well, if you round up to $15,000 for public school and 6% per year, in 12 years that will double to $30,000 per year. If you have younger kids you might have a couple of extra years but let's assume those last few years won't get much interest as you pull the money out into conservative investments. It would mean that you have 12 years to save $120,000 per child. This is amazing to me and I can't even fathom at this point being able to save $10,000 per child per year. But, you have interest on your side, right?

Using an investment calculator, I figured that if you could save $430 per child per month for 12 years at 10% return per year, we could save our $120,000 in those 12 years. If you assume 12% return, you only need $375 saved per child per month. At 8% return, you need $500 per child per month. And that's just for an average public school!

What were we thinking having 2 kids only 1 school year apart? I can hope that we are able start saving $1000/mo within a couple of years for the kids but it can't be easy. I can also hope that we, as a society, get control of these college expenses and don't continue to let them grow at such a high rate assuming our children can bear the brunt of it through student loans. Until then - this is something to think about for sure..

2 years of exercise with the last 6 months of frustration

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this month and the one special thing it means to me. See, as of this month i have been working out consistently for 2 years. I have never worked out for 2 years straight without a break of at least 2 weeks. I always slacked off at some point and going into this, I unfortunately expected to do the same. In the last 2 years though, I haven't slacked off. It started at 4-5 days a week and has grown to 6 days a week with a couple of exceptions for vacation and business trips. Even on vacation and during business trips, I try to squeeze in workouts every time I can. When I went to the Venetian in Las Vegas last Spring, I knew I wasn't willing to pay the outrageous amount they were asking for their gym...so I brought my Perfect Pushups and did those plus some in place cardio and ab workouts.

People often ask about results and I am pretty happy with mine. You have to first understand that my primary goal when I began was not to lose weight. I had started and failed at that goal way too often. I didn't want to go on a special diet that I would eventually fall off the bandwagon. Instead, my goal was to be able to be active with my family again. You might remember when I wrote extensively about this goal in January of 2008 when it seemed to be working. I didn't want to have to hesitate when doing something active with my girls. I didn't want to make an excuse when asked to help a friend and I thought I was too out of shape to help them. I wanted my daughters to grow up in a physically active and healthy environment.

Within one year of having a normal exercise routine, I was comfortable doing whatever. I wrote extensively about that last October. I was able to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted at the time. In that first year I had lost 40 lbs without going on a diet and I felt great.

One might expect similar success this past year. But in the past 6 months, I have had to deal with a lot of frustration. From that October timeframe til April, I gained about 15 lbs back, theoretically all muscle. Then, in May, I went to Las Vegas for a business trip...the one I mentioned above. Two of my good friends went with me and we were supposed to go indoor skydiving. The indoor skydiving place put us on a scale when signing in and I weighed too much to do it. I had been looking forward to it for weeks and I couldn't do it because my weight. This was the first time since I was back in shape I couldn't do something I wanted to do because of my body. It wasn't that I wasn't in shape...it was just I weighed too much.

Since that point I have had nothing but frustration with myself. I have been pretty hard on myself as my wife would probably attest. My goal is and has been to be in good enough shape to do whatever I want to do. But it wasn't about physical fitness, it was about weight. Unfortunately I don't have the answer to my frustration. I know how I can lose weight, either by focussing on pure cardio and not building muscle or by going on a diet.

Until I find an answer I will make my primary goal to stay in healthy enough shape to do whatever I want. I do have a secondary goal to lose enough weight to do the indoor skydiving I missed out on last next May when i am back in Las Vegas. However, I don't plan on altering my diet or exercise routine, so I don't know if this is feasible. However, since May i have lost another 5 lbs.

For now, I will be bouncing in inflatable toys with my girls - something I wouldn't have felt as comfortable doing two years ago:

What's driving, priorities or life?

I'm not particularly old but I have lately been in a position where more and more people are asking my advice. At least, I have found this one piece of advice seems very relevant for my generation. That advice is very simple, let your priorities run your life and do not let life run your priorities. I won't make this a conversation about what are the appropriate life priorities but am willing to have that conversation with anyone who wants to know my opinion...but instead, I want to talk about keeping your priorities first and let them run your life.

How does that work? I think so much of my generation hasn't set priorities and often thinks this is something "old" people do. But flying by the seat of your pants leads to one thing, life dictating your priorities. Some examples I have seen are people claim they can't do what they want (pay off debt, go on vacation, stay at home with their child, work less hours, have family dinners, eat healthy, exercise, etc etc) because they don't have the time or money. More often than not though its a decision they make to not make the sacrifices necessary to do what they say they want to do. Yes, you may have to eat beans and rice for dinner more often to pay off debt for go on vacation. Yes, you may have to move to a smaller house than you'd like to stay at home with a child or have a less stressful job. Yes, you may have to sacrifice career advancement or even get a job that pays less to spend more time with your family. And yes, you might have to sacrifice watching TV (even DVRed TV) to get more exercise! :-)

From my limited life experience I have found that when I can follow this advice above (and I fail consistently and am far from perfect) my life goes particularly well. My children are happier, my wife is happier, my focus is better, and the results of my work are even better. When I don't follow it, there is more stress at home, more fights between my wife, less happy children, less fulfilling and rewarding times at work, and overall I fail at life.

So, how do you get started? Make a list of your priorities in life. Check them daily as to what you, in reality, made your priorities. Try your best to correct it in your current life without drastic changes. If you find something just isn't working like you can't work less for fear of getting fired and you need that drastic change...make a 2-5 year plan to change the course of your life. I am not suggesting you just quit and hope that everything will work out. But a multi year plan could include downsizing your house, paying off debt, and changing to a job that fits within your priorities. If its to get out of debt or you can't save for a vacation, check out Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University to learn how to get out of debt and live your life without debt.

And because everyone needs a plan mapped out.. :-)

Step 1: Set your priorities
e.g. God, Family, Friends, Health and Exercise, Work, Play

Step 2: Keep a log of where your time is spent and where your focus is during your "downtimes"
e.g. 60 hours of work, ate family with dinner 2 out of 7 times this week, spent 2 nights in a recreational sports league, watched 8 hours of TV

Step 3: Analyze how to reorganize your time and investments in order to meet your priorities.
e.g. 2 less nights in sports league would allow for 2 more nights at home.

Step 4: Look for hard to solve problems and decide how to approach them.
e.g. Does work each week have to be 60 hours? Can you spend less time away at work, work your email instead of watching TV, or do you need a new job?

Repeat :-)

On social media and personal websites

One of the interesting things I have noticed these days is a lot of software developers in my generation (early Gen Y, late Gen X) have their own websites and spend as much time publicly marketing themselves as the companies and products they work on. In these positions, these people often blur the lines of their professional and personal lives.

When I joined twitter, I debated heavily whether twitter would be personal or professional for me. I had been trying to take a hard(er) line on Facebook and LinkedIn, much like my colleague Billy Newport stated here, where Facebook is for friends and family and LinkedIn is for professional contacts. I got enough Facebook invites from colleagues eventually that I made the rule that I would accept those who I would seek out to have a beer with if in town. I thought that was a good qualification...but I realized that this line was getting hard to maintain. And that is about the time I was joining twitter.

Well, when I joined twitter I decided this would be my first experimentation at having one point of contact that was both personal and professional. So far, I have no idea how it is working. Most of the people that I regularly communicate with on twitter are those that I would also gladly be Facebook friends with and some of them I am Facebook friends with. If I had to declare what is happening one way or another I would declare that twitter is more personal and less professional for me because it is personal at all. I think once I let my personal life bleed into it, it was mostly personal. But, I still have regular professional postings and there is a chance that my microblogs on twitter have some professional followers.

I come back to the original reason I began this blog post. Do I need a website? In this new day and age, is it more important for me to market myself? Years ago it wasn't needed because of corporate loyalty. These days it seems more common and in my age group corporate loyalty is not the norm. I don't know if I have a public enough presence to switch companies in a heartbeat or to be recruited by the top software engineering firms on a regular basis...but I am also not sure that is what I want. For now, this is something I heavily debate and try to make a decision on.

And, since I blurred the lines with this post on my personal blog...I thought I would also show off the cool stuff I have been designing as part of my product. Here is a recent video (only 1 min long) I made to show off the user experience we created with the function I designed:

Localvore challenge complete...

So, we finished the localvore challenge. We had tacos last night on our last localvore day and made some corn salsa with fresh off the ear corn. The ground beef was from Angus Acre as I had written before. Here is what we learned:

1) We don't know what is in season anymore. I am not sure if this is a generation Y thing or it spans generation X as well. But, growing up I remember my mother always knew what the seasons for various fruits and vegetables are. I have no idea but need to learn. I think this chart from the NC Dept of Agriculture will help. but I hope to raise children that are knowledgeable of their surrounding farming...which leads me to the second point.

2) Its obvious that my suburban life has positioned us too far away from those that have the very important job of growing our food so that we are out of touch. One thing I hope to do is visit more farms with the kids and one of the primary ones on the list is Homeland Creamery where we get our milk from. As milk is one of the words Madelyn knows and can say, I think that this is something she can more readily understand.

3) We need to continue to look for local replacements for things we missed this week. Whether it be yogurt (our favorite is made in CA), food bars, tortillas or bread, if a local replacement is available we should try to shift towards it. Likewise, we need to reconsider how often we eat bananas and apples which seem to all be from far away.

4) We enjoyed the beef, thought the chicken was not so great, were indifferent on the eggs (farmers free range vs our normal Egglands best free range.), and always like fresh seafood. The vegatables were all great and Heather is sick of cantaloupe :-) In the end, we may keep trying to eggs and expect we will try to get the large quantities of beef like 15 or 30 lbs batches.

It was a fun experiment in which I learned a lot. If we do it next year, it may be a challenge for dinners only as it seems more reasonable and maybe would encourage more participation.

Pure localvore failure

I told Heather that we couldn't be strict localvores anymore after seeing this tweet of hers:

Over halfway through the challenge and I don't think I have ever craved food so much in my non-pregnant life

The point wasn't for us to be hungry or go hungry. The point was to try to eat local. I am sure that I will be able to analyze this further in the upcoming days and weeks but here is our problem:

1) Heather and I got into a pattern of not eating as many carbs and having healthy mid-morning/mid-day snacks. We lost this when we went local. The "snacks" ended up things like toast or bagels with butter and jam or a hard boiled egg.
2) We bought lots of food for great dinners (over a week's worth in fact) but utterly failed at breakfast and lunch. Breakfast we had bagels, toast, eggs, and homemade waffles. With the time constraints we are on in a normal week, that often doesn't work. Not only that but for lunch we had tomatoes (which we ran out of), cheese (which we ran out of) and PB&J + leftovers. Some days we didn't have leftovers so what do you do?

So, as of yesterday we started straying a bit from the localvore menu and ate healthy snacks when hungry. For dinner we had a completely localvore meal though - chicken in Bone Suckin Sauce, butter beans, and mashed irish potatoes from the farmer's market...with Lumpy's ice cream for dessert.

We are going to try to close out our week with as much local food as possible but I don't think we are going to continue unhealthy eating or being hungry for the sake of eating local.

Localvore update

Today as I was eating breakfast I found something unique - for the first time in my life I could name where all the food and drink I was consuming came from. What a difference. Last night we had swordfish from Southport Seafood Company. This company actually brings their seafood to the North Raleigh Farmer's Market which is less than a mile from our house. We also had green beans from a vendor at the farmer's market in Raleigh which came from Wilson NC. For dessert, we had some delicious chocolate cherry Lumpy's Ice Cream. This morning I had 2 eggs from Acre Farms in Plymouth, NC and whole wheat toast made at Great Harvest off Six Forks Road with butter and a glass of milk from Homeland Creamery.

For the past probably 6 months we have been getting our milk at Fresh Market from a local creamery called Homeland Creamery. This week we also got a huge tub of butter. This Creamery is out in Julian southwest of Burlington but before Greensboro...about 75 miles from our house. Heather and I were considering a trip out to the creamery to take a tour. We figure that since we so often are drinking milk (and now eating their butter) it might be valuable for the kids to see where their milk comes from. Thoughts?

Localvore challenge

As Heather talked about here, this week we are undergoing a challenge to buy all local grown or produced products for our meals. So, I thought I would start chattering about what we bought and what we ate.

Friday at the Raleigh Farmer's market we got Cantaloupes (3 for $5), green peppers ($.50 each), irish red skin potatoes ($.99/lb), red peppers ($1 each), german johnson tomatoes ($2/lb), butter beans (2 pints for $7), green beans ($2/lb), corn ($.50/ear), zucchini and squash.

We also picked up stuff in the indoor side. First we got a block of sharp cheddar cheese, peanut butter, and strawberry jam from the berry patch market. Later I realized once we got home that it being from Colfax, NC is outside the 150 mile radius. :-/ This was at the Berry Patch. We also got ground beef ($5/lb), london broil ($8/lb), and free range eggs ($3/dozen) from Acre Angus Beef at the indoor side. They are from Plymouth NC. The actual meat is packed in labels from Riverside Meats in Trenton NC. Both of these make it within the 150 mile radius.

On Saturday, we started at the North Raleigh Farmers Market (open 8am until noon) and got a whole chicken (3.7 lbs at $4/lb), chocolate cherry ice cream ($4/pint) from Lumpy's, a loaf of whole wheat bread ($4.25) from Great Harvest, and about 2 lbs of fresh swordfish ($16.50). There was also some cheese there for the first time. There are 3 places that sell fresh eggs from $4-5/lb. The guy who sells fresh lamb at bratwurst for the first time and there are vendors like Cane Creek Farms who was featured recently in the N&O.

Then, later Saturday morning we went to Fresh Market to get milk and butter from Homeland Creamery in Julian, NC. We also got locally produced bagels.

So, what did we eat for meals? Saturday morning I made homemade waffles. For lunch we ate cheese and tomato (german johnson) sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly, cantaloupe, and some purple hull (pink eyed) peas. For dinner we ate at Heather's dad's house so we didn't have a local only meal necessarily but I believe most of it was.

This morning (Sunday) we had bagels, hard boiled eggs, and cantaloupe. For lunch I made some homemade flour tortillas and ate london broil on it. Made a quesadilla for the girls who also had peanut butter. Heather had some tomatoes.

The tough things so far is the lack of snack foods and fruit for the girls. As a regular part of my diet I had been eating fruits like apples and bananas, food bars from Odwalla and Kashi, and almonds. None of these things are available locally so I am forced to learn of new snacks. I also don't want to eat unhealthy just for the sake of trying to eat local. As for fruit, watermelon, honeydew, sprite melons, peaches, blueberries, and cantaloupe were the only real fruit options this week. That is a lot of options but when bananas, grapes, apples, and pears are part of the regular staples in the household, its tough to switch.