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May 11, 2012

Living in the Amazon and Loving It

Another Amazon Prime box has arrived. It’s become a regular care package to keep the gears at home moving. Joy.

Have I mentioned how sweet I am with Amazon.com, and how I gladly pay them an extra $79/year to get free two-day shipping with their Amazon Prime Service?

Do you consider me impatient and extravagant?
Am I just lazy, when for thousands of years, men have hunted
(and gathered) in the wilderness, or what we now call the shopping mall?

Do you feel you can’t trust a distant and faceless company with the very personal act of delivering to you what you used to get for yourself?

I used to feel that way.
Then something happened.
I became a dad, and I lost all of my free time.

I am a very proud 21st century father of a little boy who just turned two.
(In fact, my son had his big party last Saturday.)

But I’ve got to admit that life has gotten a bit disorganized lately. I need a little help. So I like to use available hi tech tools.

Who’s Got Time for the Brick and Mortar Store?
I don’t know how parents multitasked before Y2K, but I regularly tap the power of online shopping.

In fact, I find buying our basic supplies online not a convenience but a necessity. Getting in the car to get to a store can take an hour or more.
A few clicks on Amazon, and I’m done in three minutes.

Yes, buying online took some getting used to.
It felt like I was cheating.
Not doing it the right way.
Worried it wouldn’t work.
But once I got started, I never looked back.

Life is Messy
Let’s take a look at a slice of my daily life in the jungle…
(and then we’ll discuss Amazon some more)

I used the last of the kitty litter. Looked at my watch. All the stores were already closed.
D’oh!

My wife reminded me we needed Bacitracin ointment for my son’s boo-boo under his chin. What I’m calling a boo-boo are actually three stitches he received at his first trip to the emergency room.
He tripped and fell at home last week, while I was standing guard.
D’OH!

Even though the doctor said there wouldn’t be a scar, I’m still feeling super guilty, as I was only a few feet away from the ‘incident.’
A couple days later, a colleague, who is a father with daughters tried to be helpful after hearing my story, and he suggested that scars give boys character.
(Anybody out there know the name of a good plastic surgeon?)

All this happened while my wife and I were in the middle of final preparations for our son’s birthday party.
(Yes, that shiner on his chin looked really great on his big day. The good news is all of the other toddlers at the party were jealous and commented that his stitches really gave him character.)

And had I put off getting his birthday present to the last minute? Of course.
D’OOHHHH!!

Amazon to the Rescue
It’s now 10:30pm – I need help.
Time to sit down and boot up. Hello Amazon Prime!

First step- Cat litter.
Amazon had about twenty options, though not all were offered on the Prime plan.
(You need to pay attention to this detail as not all products fall under the Prime plan.)
I chose Arm and Hammer and clicked through.

Next was boo-boo maintenance.
Typed in ‘eye patch’ for my kid. (just kidding)
Almost immediately, the Bacitracin ointment was on its way!

Finally, the birthday present.
It was a Kettler tricycle that my wife was talking about. Here it was on Amazon. Sweet.
(Amazon often has more competitive pricing, though not always.)

11:00pm – I’ve hunted. I’ve gathered. Mission accomplished.
Order has been restored.

King of the Forest…for Another Day
This particular shopping expedition was an expensive one, because of the Kettler bike. But often, I’m just picking up little things here and there.
The beauty of Amazon Prime is you don’t have to worry about meeting minimum order amounts to get the free shipping. And it’s wicked easy to return the occasional item.

So you can buy with as much haphazard organization as life requires.
You can see how the $79 Prime fee pays for itself really quickly.
And it even has its own fledgling video streaming service that competes with Netflix. That’s a nice bonus, but it’s not really why I’m so excited about Prime.

For the past two years, I’ve had a little bet going with myself that I’ll never have to run out of the house at the last minute to buy diapers.
For me, that mini emergency represents the ultimate level of disorganization I hope to never sink beneath. (Even I have some minimum standards to meet if I am to remain king of my little forest.)
With the help of Amazon, and other online shopping sites like diapers.com, I’ve been holding that line. So far…

Amazon Prime doesn’t work for everything.
(Sometimes you’ve got to get out there and squeeze the melons.)
But it comes pretty close.

1 Comment
May 6, 2012

Joe and the End of Your World

Will this cup of Joe greet your next sunrise or doom your computer to a gloppy death?

How important is all the content on your computer?
If you lost it tomorrow, how much would it hurt?

  • All your family photos
  • Your home movies
  • Music collection
  • Every word you’ve written over the past ten years

Gone.

That would be bad.

The Terminator is Real
Like it or not, we live in an age where much of your life is stored on a small metallic box on your desk. Whether it’s a laptop, desktop or all-in-one, an ever-increasing amount of what’s important to you lives there.

Unfortunately, it is inevitable that your digital life will be in crisis… sooner or later.
Eventually, all hard drives fail. Period.
You need to protect your content and back it up.

Fortunately there are a variety of strategies to do just that with external drives and Cloud storage.

You must fight against that unexpected doom you know is waiting out there.
Thankfully, you have a good chance to prevent your personal digital apocalypse.

And if the unthinkable were to happen, at least you could take some comfort in the belief that it was not your fault. Blame would lie elsewhere. Your conscience would be clear.

But how would you feel if you caused it all?
What if you were your own digital Terminator?
Last week I had a glimpse of that.

There is a quiet evil that often lurks quite close to your computer.
It’s name is-
Coffee

Every morning I happily sit down at my desk with my cup of Joe.
I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember. And yes, we all know that spilling java on your computer is a catastrophe. Motherboards don’t react well to any fluid, let alone coffee. If the circuitry survives the moisture after the drying out stage, the dried gloppy residue would surely seal the deal.

So I’m careful. Very careful.
Still…

Judgement Day
Last Tuesday at 6:31am, the unthinkable happened.

My right hand moved too quickly to pick up a piece of paper and clipped my travel mug. It was a glancing blow, but it was enough.

The mug was recently filled with freshly brewed French roast mixed with a little hazelnut blend I like to throw in for some flavor zing.

And like a movie scene in slow motion, I watched my mug tip over, and its black digital death start to spread across my desk like a tidal wave.

Ahead of the creeping wake were my old laptop, my new iMac, and my backup external hard drives.

Time was short, and I had to act quickly.
At best, paper towels from the kitchen were fifteen seconds away, round trip.

As I sprinted, I heard myself muttering, “No, no, no, NO!”
I knew my rescue mission would not return in time.

But I had to try.

Sixteen seconds later, I layered my desk with a complete paper towel roll, soaking up the evil goo.
I plunged targeted crunched-up Bounty balls into the empty spaces in front of my sacred back up drives.
A gauntlet… a final line that I hoped would hold.

An Unlikely Ally
My desk was particularly cluttered that day with scattered note pads and folders, representing my ongoing reliance on my old analog ways.
All of the paper was now soaked and mutated brown.

I quickly removed the engorged paper towel strips to get a clear view on whether my brew had reached my precious hardware.

With just fractions of an inch to spare, remarkably, the coffee had been successfully repelled on all critical fronts.

But I wasn’t the hero.
Remember, my rescue mission had arrived too late.

What saved my digital life?
My analog life.

All that disorganized paper on my desk. The coffee spent too much time doing its destruction there. The delay allowed my rescue mission to arrive in time.

All that outdated paper. Mostly useless in today’s digital world.
Imagine how angry and bitter it must have been feeling.

And yet, it willingly gave up its existence for the greater digital good.
(Sniff. Sob.)

Anyway…
I’m just very lucky.

Wake up and Smell the Coffee
So moving forward, no more morning coffee at my desk anymore, right?
Are you crazy?!

What I did do is go to Amazon and buy a pear-shaped desk coffee mug with a much lower center of gravity that is designed not to tip over.

I still highly recommend it.

Do I still tempt fate? Maybe.
But like having a good digital back up plan…
at least now, I’ve got an upgraded no-spill strategy.

Our cat sits close by and purrs at me.
Eight more lives.

My computer should be so lucky…

Hope I never have to write about this ever again.

1 Comment
May 4, 2012

Loving the Loser Light Bulb

Lighting my house with yesterday’s LED tech that doesn’t cut it anymore. I’m okay with that- for the next 22 years.

I was in Home Depot last week, and I couldn’t help but walk through the lighting department to peek at the wonder LED bulb-
The Philips L Prize ‘A bulb’.
And yep, there it was for $49.95.
It was positioned in the back corner in its own display, almost as an after thought. And as I expected, I saw a few tumbleweeds passing by.

$49.95 is, of course, a steep price.

But front and center in the lighting isle was a separate LED bulb display with another Philips LED lamp, that walks and talks just like the L Prize bulb.

This one is called an AmbientLED.
Same 60-watt replacement.
12.5 watts.
Same design.
33% lower efficiency than the cutting edge L Prize bulb.
Lasts for 22.8 years, instead of 27 years.

Big whoop.
A bulb that will last till the year 2035 is efficient enough for me.

And the punch line?
The price after the boldly advertised $10 discount… $14.97.

The future had arrived and was already steeply discounted.

So I picked one up to try out in one of our lamp fixtures at home.
And my assessment?
Brilliant.

So why all the big fuss about the ‘A bulb,’ when Philips already has their AmbientLED out there at a much better price?

The L Prize lamp is more efficient, and its newer tech is supposed to provide a warmer light.
And it’s made in Wisconsin.
(My AmbientLED is from China.)

Look, you just don’t need the Lexus of light bulbs.
I think the runner up model is the place to start.
And in this economy, shopping for price is a reality most Americans still have to grapple with.

It’s simply time to start buying LED replacement bulbs. They’re good for the environment. They’re more expensive, but they save you money over the long run. And very soon, you’ll have to make the switch, because many incandescent bulbs are being phased out.

So the headline here is not a scary one. It’s pretty reasonable.
You get to keep your lights on, but you’ve got to upgrade.

That’s called innovation.
Like it or not, you need to keep up.

Anyone else out there made the switch yet?

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