Stormy's Corner

Best domain name tool

Want to know if a domain name (the "address" of a web page) is available?  Start typing in the Instant Domain Name widget, and it will let you know.

Underwater digital camera: Pentax Optio W30

There's a new a new digital underwater camera!  Pentax Optio W30 is:

• $300
• 7 megapixel
• 5.6 ounces
• waterproof up to 10 feet for 2 hours
• video mode
• macro mode (close up shots)
• 2.5" LCD viewable in the sun
• shake reduction
• 3x optical zoom

I want one to try on our BVI vacation!  Here's a full review with some great pictures.

What kind of blog should Stormy's Corner be?

Common wisdom says that successful blogs are niche blogs.  Actually Ben Casnocha puts it well when he says blogs are either niche blogs or personality blogs and each blog post gets evaluated by:

a) Does the post cover one of my preferred topics?
b) Is the post from someone I like and want to stay connected with?

So I struggle with Stormy's Corner.  I have lots of regular readers that probably read all posts because they want to stay connected with me and secondly because the topics may or may not be interested to them.  But at the same time most of my blog visits are from somebody searching for an answer - at the moment they are searching for help stopping breastfeeding or about dogs and alcohol. I even created a "niche blog,"  Humans for Dogs, since a lot of the searches came from dog related topics from alcohol to chiropractic care to sleep.  (Breastfeeding posts are by far my most popular but I don't feel like I have enough to say about breastfeeing to create an entire blog about it so I will just continue to post the occasional story on Stormy's Corner.)

I've been reading a lot about blogging about blogging and how to make a blog successful and while I want Stormy's Corner to be successful, I think it is right now. 

If there's a way Stormy's Corner could be more to you - could meet your needs more - let me know!  Comment now!

Stormy's Corner has its own domain!

Stormy's Corner now has its own domain at http://stormyscorner.com!  (You can continue to read it at http://stormy.blogs.com as well.)

New type of cruise ship in the Carribean

The New York Times has an article about easyCruises and they sound appealing, like what I think a cruise ship should be: transportation from one island to another.  Their website says to think of them as a floating hotel.  The cabins are cheap with no frills, not even room service.  But you don't spend much time there - you have from 9:30 in the morning until 3am the next morning to explore the islands! If you search for "easyCruise" on Flickr, all the pictures are of places - France, Carribean islands, etc - not the cruise ships.  That says a lot!  (That said, there were things to do onboard like swimming pools and hot tubs, happy hour and gyms.  It sounded like happy hour was pretty popular.)

• It's cheap.  I picked a random week and it was $50-70/night for two people.
• It's not a set time period.  You can get on or off on any given day - you should have to arrange your transportation to and from the boat.
• It's smaller than a typical cruise ship.
• Less is included.  No free room service, no free food, no free drinks.
• People tend to do their own thing more and participate less in the arranged shore activities.
• The crowd is younger than the typical cruiseship.
• There were even some locals on the cruise ship using it as transportation from one island to another.  (Remember you can book for just one night!)

The cruise line, easyCruise, was created by the same company as JetBlue.

Warning: The New York Times article said there was a lot of flirting, sex and topless swimming, so if that's not your thing, this probably isn't the cruise for you.

Photo by Rockies.

Cash or Charge? How to spend less money.

Spending cash does help you to spend less money than when you pay with credit.

Numerous personal finance experts claim that spending strictly cash will not only help keep you on a budget but will also help you spend less.  The problem I have is that I hate spending cash.  As a 11 year old I left $40 in a purse in McDonalds and ever since I've been terrified I'll lose the money!  (We went back and found the $40.)  Also, I love credit cards because you never have to worry about how much cash you have, you never have to go to an ATM, and everything you spend is automatically tracked for you in a nice computerized report.  (And I pay it off every month so using credit cards is not a financial penalty.)  But I recently decided to try again for a couple of reasons:

• I wanted to keep a budget and it's easier to stick a couple of hundred dollars in your wallet and say "this is it for the week" than it is to track all the money you spend on gas, eating out, groceries, the coke from the vending machine, etc.
• I think I'm over my fear of losing cash.  I realized a while back that losing the money in my wallet might make me upset but it wouldn't really devastate me.  ($40 to that 11 year old was a lot more than $200 is to me now.)
• I was curious ... would sticking to cash make me spend less?  Would I treat money differently?

So I've been doing this for about a month - every Friday I put a certain amount of cash in my wallet and that's it for the week.  If I buy gas with my credit card, I actually take that much cash out of my wallet and put it aside.  (Buying gas with my credit card is too convenient to give up.)  And it works.  I'm spending less money!  I'm not sure what I'm spending less on since I tend to track overall numbers not all the details but I don't feel like I'm depriving myself of anything.  (If I had to guess it's lunches by myself, snacks and impulse purchases.)  Here's some of the reasons I think I'm spending less:

• I'm very aware of what everything costs.  With my credit card that I don't pay much attention to what anything costs.  Thirty seconds after I pay I couldn't tell you what I just paid.  (I saw it, I made sure it made sense, and then I didn't bother to store the information in my memory.)  With cash I pay attention to what things cost and I remember what I spent.
• I make tradeoffs.  Since I can see how much is left in my budget I can say, "I'd better not eat lunch out if I want to go to sushi on Friday night."  Using credit cards I'd just do both.  (Note that giving out the lunch out if it's by myself isn't really giving anything up.  I just need to remember to grab leftovers at home in the morning - Frank always has lots of great leftovers in lunch size containers in the fridge.  See My Man's Man for more on that.  I haven't given up any lunches or going out with friends - those events are high on my priority list!)
• Another theory that I don't think applies to me is one from freemoneyfinance that says that if you keep $100 bills in your wallet you are less likely to spend them because you don't want to break them.  I use $100s simply because they take up less room but I don't think I'm any less likely to spend them than $20s.  But who knows, maybe that can be my next experiment.

What do you think?  Do you spend less when you spend cash?  If so, why?

Photo by velo_city.

Freedom of Religion = Free to be Atheist?

Either I'm on an atheism trend or the media is because I keep running across interesting news on atheism.  This letter to the editor points out that while there is freedom of religion in the United States, our founders clearly believed that everyone would believe in God.  Our currency says "In God We Trust."

I would argue that there are philosophies like Buddhism could qualify as religions and they don't believe in "God."

What's causing our kids to become autistic, fat, near-sighted and sleep deprived?

TV!  This latest study found that watching TV lowers melatonin levels which can create all sorts of nasty side effects in children.  This study (as others) linked TV watching in kids to:

• autism
• obesity
• trouble sleeping
• eye problems
• lower melatonin levels
• early puberty

In adults, "the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease increases with each extra daily hour of television viewing among people aged 20 to 60."

Watching TV must give people immense pleasure ... otherwise I can't imagine why they would expose themselves and their kids to so much of it. We spend nine months of pregnancy trying to eat right, drink no alcohol, get all sorts of prenatal tests and then we plop our toddlers down in front of another round of SpongeBob or Thomas the Tank Engine without a second thought.

How to get others to tag your inventory

There's a really interesting post on the LibraryThing blog about tags and Amazon.  (Actually the post is about why there are so many more tags on LibraryThing than Amazon.)  I really think it boils down to the reason that resonated with me: you spend the time tagging things you own.  Amazon won't let me see my library (even though they want to know which books I own), much less sort my library or my tags or even my favorites, so why spend time tagging an entire building of books if my tagged books just get mixed in with everyone else's?  On the other hand, LibraryThing, and del.icio.us for that matter, let me tag my books or my web pages.  I can then go back and search through my library or bookmarks by my tags.  I have no problem sharing my tags with the world if they are helpful but I tagged them for me.  So I win because I get sorted, searchable books and LibraryThing wins because they get a searchable library for everyone.  (This is different than reviews.  Amazon's reviews have been successful because people like to share their opinions, get credit for them and have their reviews read by others.)

Things I tag: my books (in LibraryThing), my web pages (in del.icio.us), my posts (in Technorati.)

Would you prefer a homosexual president or an atheist one?

If you are like most people, you picked the homosexual one, but let us know below!  As James Joyner writes:

A recent Gallup poll reveals that Americans are much more likely to elect a black man or a woman president than a Mormon or an old man. More interestingly, they’d rather be governed by a homosexual than an atheist

I continue to be surprised at how anti-atheist Americans are.  It makes me laugh (in an ironic way) because so many people aren't actively religious, and if people went around preaching, they'd annoy a good many people - probably more than those that are anit-atheist!

The good news is that things are looking good for women and blacks.  See all the data here:

	Yes, would vote for	No, would not vote for
	%	%
Catholic	95	4
Black	94	5
Jewish	92	7
A woman	88	11
Hispanic	87	12
Mormon	72	24
Married for the third time	67	30
72 years of age	57	42
A homosexual	55	43
An atheist	45	53

What do you think?  Who would you vote for?  Or not vote for?

Blogging about blogging

I've always read a lot of blogs but only recently have I checked into blogs about blogging.  Wow!  There's a whole other world out there, a whole community, that blogs about blogging and all the things associated with blogging like how to get more traffic, how to make money, how to create a good blog, etc.  There are also some celebrities.  People everyone in the "blogging about blogging" world know - like everyone in the open source world knows who Linus Torvalds is or everyone into football knows who Howie Long is.  One of the celebrities in the blogging world is John Chow from JohnChow.com. 

In order to see how links can drive traffic, I'm taking John Chow up on his offer to link back to my blog if I write a review about his blog.  So this review is honest but it's driven by the motivation to get a link.  (So you are duly warned!)

Here are some of my observations about JohnChow.com:

• Great content about how to write a good blog.  John Chow follows his own advice and writes great original content.  (Although giving advice on blogging doesn't seem to be his primary or only focus.)
• Integrity.  He offered to link back to every blog that reviewed his blog and it looks like a lot of people took him up on the offer and he's honoring his word!
• Communication.  He's very good about writing blog posts and about promoting his top commentators but maybe not so good with email.  I originally wrote this review on 2/20/07 and submitted it via email.  I never heard back - not even a thank you or I'll get to it later.  I'm assuming on 2/25/07 that the reason I haven't been listed on his blog yet is because I didn't include a link back to the rules page but some type of feedback that it had been received would have been great.  Feedback on why I wasn't going to be listed would have been terrific.  If you're going to have an email form promoted on your website, you should answer it. 
• Navigation.  I like the navigation tabs at the top of the blog and I liked that the subscribe buttons were at the top.
• Memorable logos and banners. 
• Lots of good pictures, especially of food! (And pictures of food are hard - I've been trying on My Man's Man.)
• Lots of community building tools like listing the top commentators and using MyBlogLog to show recent readers.
• I like how he mixes content about blogging (what most people probably read the blog for) and personal stories about restaurants he's eating at and places he's been to.  I think that adds "voice."

It feels a bit weird to review someone who is supposed to be the expert.  Maybe I should ask John to review my blog!

[Edited on 2/25/07.]

Getting wealthy might not be good for your kids

Pursuing wealth may not be good for your kids says Pyschology Today:

the pursuit of status and material wealth by high-earning families (say, $120,000 and above) tends to leave skid marks on the kids, but in ways you might not have expected. Affluent suburban high schoolers not only smoke more, drink more and use more hard drugs than typical high schoolers do—they do so more than a comparison group of inner-city kids. In addition, they have much higher rates of anxiety and, in general, higher rates of depression.

Although once again, one of the strongest predictors of success was family dinners together!

Great Online Tshirt Business

I found a great online Tshirt business.  You upload any picture you want and then you can offer that image on Tshirts, buttons, mugs, etc ...  Cafepress tells you how much it costs them and you mark up your Tshirts with your design however much you want.  When people order your Tshirts, Cafepress makes them to order, sells them to the person that ordered it and pays you the markup.  Pretty cool way to get custom Tshirts made ... or to make some extra money.

There are some great designs already up.  Some of the most popular themes are:

• anti-Bush
• army wife
• autism

It only takes minutes to get setup.  Have fun!

Photo by redune.

How to create an awesome bibliography in seconds

Do you remember bibliographies?  That list of all the books you read or quoted while you were writing a paper?  And they all have to be in a special format with all sorts of rules?  (How do you handle multiple authors and does the year go before or after the publisher?)

Well, now there's a website that creates a bibliography for you: OttoBib.  You type in the ISBN numbers and it spits out a nicely formatted bibliography! 

Now if it would only handle web pages in your bibliography ...

Photo by Olivander (Great Old One).

10 home business ideas that work

For those of you willing to work and still looking for a home business idea, here are ten stories to inspire you.  They all have an online presence and they include:

1. Making charms for charm bracelets ($2.5 milllion/year)
2. Putting beads on tank-tops ($1 million/year)
3. Referral business for home contractors ($100,000/year)
4. Domain naming service ($25/domain name)
5. Baby announcement cards
6. Crocheted underwear (and other stuff)
7. Editing legal transcripts
8. Selling balsam from the trees on your land
9. Selling mannequins
10. Making cuff links ($500,000/year and still has another job)

There's links and descriptions of all the sites in the original post.  And then there's making money by selling ads on your blog: .

So what business are you going to start?

The secret to making money from home

I was working from home last week (sitting on the sofa working on my laptop) when the cleaning people showed up.  When they asked where Caleb was I said "at daycare, I'm working."  To which they replied "is that what you are doing!"

I see a lot of websites with lots of traffic all talking about how to make money working from home, blogging or from an internet business.  Do all those readers realize that to work from home you have to work?  Or are they secretly hoping that they'll make money doing nothing?  The main benefit to working from home is not commuting.  (Yeah!)  And some people think working in your pj's is a benefit.  But in general, you are working - not playing with the baby, doing laundry or watching tv.  (You can do that stuff but you aren't working when you are doing it.)  I think all those people interested in working from home are really looking for a job that isn't any work.

What do you think?  Are you interested in working from home?  If so, why?

Make sure your baby is swallowing

If you are having trouble breastfeeding (or bottle feeding), make sure your baby is swallowing.  This was pointed out to me again and again but it didn't really hit home until 2 am this morning.  I held the bottle for 20 minutes and his cheeks were moving and he was really working at it but after 20 minutes, there was still the same amount of fluid in the bottle! He hadn't been swallowing!  (In this case because there was too much of a vacuum in the bottle.)

So if your baby is having trouble eating, make sure they are swallowing, not just sucking.

Photo by pfly.

Book review: Success Mastery Academy

I just finished listening to Brian Tracy's Success Mastery Academy. (Which I got from Audible.)  While I didn't agree with everything he said, he had a lot of very good points.  Here are the main ones that stuck with me.  (I listened to it in the car so I couldn't take notes and I can't flip back through it.)  Some may seem obvious to you, others may be an "ah-hah," and some you may not agree with at all.

1. You have to work hard to succeed.  And once you've done that, everyone will say "how lucky you are!"  So once you've worked 80 hour weeks for 10 years, become CEO of your own company, own a nice home and take nice vacations, people will say "you're so lucky!" So that was really two points:
   
   • You have to work hard to succeed.
   • People are unlikely to notice how hard you've worked.  Most people just want to "get lucky."
2. You have to be happy to make others happy.  None of this "I'm sacrificing so my family, friends, etc. can be happy."  You can't make them happy if you aren't happy yourself.
3. Write your goals down.  Not just your career goals, but all your goals for the year.  Start now.  Write down all your goals for 2007.  Think big but be somewhat realistic.  Put them in present tense.  "I got a 5% raise this year," "I run 3 miles a day," "I weigh 125 pounds," ... whatever you want.  The more detailed the better.  Even if you don't do anything with them, writing them down will help.  (If you make them unbelievable like "I won the lottery," "I lost 200 pounds," ... they are much less likely to happen than if they are realistic.)
4. Lists are good.  Lots of lists are even better.
5. Listen.  Listen to people.  Listen to people more than you talk.  Ask lots of questions.
6. Treat money like it's important and you like it.  Dad actually taught me this one.  Don't play with your money.  Keep it in a safe place.  Value it.  It will "attract" more and you'll lose less.  Dad even got upset when I got checks with pictures on them.  Checks are money and money is serious. (And the day before I heard this on the tape I was telling our six year old that he needed to keep his money in his wallet in a safe place in his room and not play with it.  I'm not sure I want Frank to learn this one - I make a significant amount of money from wadded up bills in the laundry!)

The book was geared towards people in sales but it had a lot to do with life in general.  If you are in the mood for a self-improvement book, I highly recommend it.

The Secret of How to Talk to Your Kids

New York Magazine's How Not to Talk to Your Kids is scary!  According to the author (and many studies) when we tell kids they are smart, they are more likely to care about looking smart and will only pick tasks they are sure to succeed in.  If we tell them they did really well because they worked really hard, they are more likely to keep trying hard.

“When we praise children for their intelligence,” Dweck wrote in her study summary, “we tell them that this is the name of the game: Look smart, don’t risk making mistakes.”

In one study teachers said that students who were taught that they could work at being smart improved their study habits and grades.  Those that had been told they did well because they were smart, didn't improve.

Children are also dismissing compliments because they are getting too many insincere ones, "a teacher who praises a child may be unwittingly sending the message that the student reached the limit of his innate ability, while a teacher who criticizes a pupil conveys the message that he can improve his performance even further."

Another point they made is a random reward is better than a reward everytime.  I remember this from college psychology and dog training.  A treat once in a while for a good "sit" is better than a treat for each sit.  If it's for each sit, the dog expects a reward everytime, does it just for the reward and may not do it if they don't want a treat.  If you only treat sometimes, they'll do it everytime because they want to make sure they get the treat when it shows up! 

My takeaways were:

• Make sure your praise is specific.  "That catch was great" instead of "you played great."
• Praise effort as well as just ability.

20 Ways to be Happy

The New York Magazine has a list of 20 ways to be happy.   Here are some excerpts:

Decide where to go to college by picking two decent schools and flipping a coin.  [...] Those who seize the first option that meets their standards (which don’t have to be low, just defined) are happier than those who insist on finding the perfect solution.

So Dad's way of shopping was best - he always made us buy the first item that fit.  (So the strategy was to say that nothing fit until you found the one you liked.)

Don’t go to law school.
Lawyers are 3.6 times more likely to be depressed than members of other professions, and it’s not just because their jobs are more stressful. For most people, job stress has little effect on happiness unless it is accompanied by a lack of control (lawyers, of course, have clients to listen to) or involves taking something away from somebody else (a common feature of the legal system).

I know lots of people with law degrees that aren't lawyers, probably because being a lawyer doesn't make people happy.  People don't like lawyers either, which probably adds to the unhappiness.

If someone tells you he’s still pining for his ex, ask the ex out.

If somebody else liked him, you are likely to too.

If you can’t decide what TV to buy, walk across the hall and ask your neighbor if he likes his.
[...] Turns out, people are happier following advice.

This is how I bought my new phone and I really like it.  Usually I research all the options forever, don't really like any one of them and then pick one.  This time I asked the t-mobile rep what he would buy if "small" was the most important criteria.  And I like it.

But don’t work overtime . . .
[...] lottery winners and Forbes 100 members are no more likely to be satisfied than anyone else.

Just make sure you live next to people that make less than you do.  Even if you only make $30K a year, you'll be happier than if you made $100K and lived next to people that made $150K.

They also said married people are happier and kids don't make you any happier than you were.  I disagree with the kids one because I think families and communities make people happy.

Photo by 油姬.

 

CSI goof: There is no Ruger 10/22 .223 caliber

We are watching CSI Miami and Frank is having a hard time ... he wants me to know that there is no Ruger 10/22 .223 caliber gun.  This isn't the first time they've talked about a gun that Frank says doesn't exist. 

He even went and got a shell that goes into his Ruger 10/22 and a .223 shell and showed me how they are very different sizes.  One is twice as big as the other.

Picture by Robby-T.

Book review: Vital Friends

In Vital Friends, Tom Rath makes two main points.  One is that having friends at work is very beneficial to the employer.  With a best friend at work, you are much more likely to be productive.  Without a best friend at work, there's only a 1 in 12 chance you'll feel engaged!  With three good friends at work you are 96% more likely to be extremely satisfied with your life.  (All the numbers are from a Gallup poll.)

• The second point he makes is that you can't expect all your friends to be all things to you.  He says different friends fullfill different needs and describes the different types of friends:
  

• Builders
  • Motivators and coaches
  • They push you
  • They know our strengths
  • They provide moral support
• Champions
  • Stand up for you
  • Sing your praises
  • "Thrive on your accomplishments and happiness"
• Collaborators
  • Share similar interests, ambitions and passions
  • Do a lot with you
• Companions
  • Always there for you
  • Make sacrifices for you
  • First person you call
• Connectors
  • Always introduce you to others
  • They seem to "know everybody"
• Energizers
  • Your "fun friends"
  • Make good days, great
  • People you call to have a good time or to relax with
• Mind Openers
  • Ask good questions
  • People you share ideas and express yourself outloud with
• Navigators
  • Give advise
  • Steer you
  • Share dreams and goals

Interestingly, he says that in friendships we don't play the same role to each other.  So you might be a mind opener to your friend and your friend might be a champion for you.

This book was an easy and interesting read.  You can easily read it in a day. (I read it on a two hour plane ride.)  However, I would have liked a lot more detail and depth.

So you want to own a bookstore

I think owning a book store would be one of the coolest jobs - especially a used book store.  I know it doesn't pay very well but being around a lot of books, especially well read, well loved books just really appeals to me.   This woman's story about how she started an online bookstore and is now expanding to a real world store was very inspiring.  She buys books wholesale and sells them through her eBay store.  Her inventory has expanded so much she needs warehouse space and she discovered an opportunity that allows her to rent retail space for the same amount of money, so she is opening a store!

The US is ahead when it comes to working moms

Several of my friends that live in Germany and Spain have told me that I'm very lucky to be able to work.  When they have children it will be very hard for them to go back to work.  Things that are hard to find internationally, that we take for granted here:

• daycare
• part time work options
• a society that accepts working moms

This quote in a New York Times article made me realize that I've had this conversation with a number of friends:

when she had a baby 18 months ago she was able to work part time — something she said would not have been possible in Germany

Do astronauts wear diapers?

When the news came out about the astronaut who wore diapers so she wouldn't have to stop driving my first question was, "yet she took the time to go buy diapers?"  After thinking about it, I decided that astronauts must wear diapers, so she was familiar with the idea and maybe even owned some.  Turns out that astronauts do wear diapers.

Because astronauts sit on the launch pad, strapped into their seats for over three hours, they all have to wear diapers. Astronauts also wear diapers when they are working in space during spacewalks which normally last 5-8 hours.

Am I bad mother if I don't breastfeed?

Wired Magazine (a technology magazine) takes on the almost taboo topic "Am I a bad mother if I bottle-feed my newborn instead of breast-feed?"  Their conclusion:

Try breast-feeding - it’s healthier and may be less onerous than you think. And if it just doesn’t work out, formula is fine.

One interesting point.  Michel Cohen, author of The New Basics, says that breastfeeding may be correlated with all sorts of good things because breastfeeding is also correlated to high incomes. 

Who else wants to help find Jim Gray?

Jim Gray disappeared while sailing last week.  Now you can help find him.  As the CTO of Amazon writes, they have satellite photos from Thursday.  The photos have been broken down into small images that are available to everyone to look at.  You login into Amazon Turk (with your Amazon login), accept the task (i.e. hit), look at five images and check whether there is anything worth looking at more closely.  From what I understand, Jim's boat would be about six pixels long in the images.  You can look at as many images as you want.

This is a great way to get lots of eyes on these images!  Very clever use of technology.  Let's hope it helps us find out where Jim Gray is!

Dogs are Good for Babies' Health

Infants Wheeze Less in Homes with Multiple Dogs.  If that's true, then Caleb is set.   He's got two big furry companions who shed everywhere and follow us around everywhere - including the middle of the night feeding.

Babies Gagged in Russia

Having just spent three days in the hospital with my own 5 month old son, this article hit a nerve, Russian Shock at Gagged Babies.  The babies were gagged with plaster and tape because their crying was disturbing the nurses.  A woman who happened to be in the hospital with her own children heard the babies and took a video with her cell phone.

All of the gagged children were orphans.  It definitely made me understand why people want to adopt!  Everytime Caleb cried in the hospital I talked to him or held him.  The thought of those babies being gagged instead of comforted just made my heart hurt.