While I love the fact that my wife and I have already been so lucky to have two wonderful girls, we found out today that we’ll be having a boy sometime this February. While I would have been very happy with another girl as well, it’s going to be a great experience to raise a boy and have a son. My wife and our girls seem very excited, but let’s just hope he’s not as much of a web nerd as I am.
Here Comes Another McCarthy!
My wife informed me today that she’s pregnant with our third child! Great news, and I really feel more excited than the previous times we learned she was pregnant. I think I’m just so comfortable as a dad now and understand how great my kids are and I can’t wait to have another one. Now it’s time for the wait to see if it’ll be our third girl, which I’d love, or our first boy, which I’d also love.
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Moving to a Vista Machine is a Bit Painful
I haven’t been posting much over the last week, and that’s mainly because my time at home on the computer is being spent moving from my old machine to a new Dell Dimension Desktop with Vista as the operating system.
First let me say that Vista is nice. It feels smoother, looks better, and has some nice features. However, I’ve still spent five nights moving data, installing new applications, reconfiguring applications, troubleshooting, rebooting, and more. In this day and age can’t we make it any easier to upgrade from one operating system to the other?
How Do You Manage Your Contacts and Address Book?
I’ll admit it, I have no system for keeping track of contacts beyond saving and archiving old email so I can look up someone’s contact information. Normally I feel like I’m on top of ways to use your computer for business and organization, but for some reason I’ve never cracked the code on contact management. So why not ask for some advice?
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Off To New York
Heading to New York in the morning for various meetings and to sync up with the mothership office. Should be a good time and it’s always good to be around the New York coworkers to get more energy and news. Blogging will be light.
Just Had Lasik Eye Surgery, Wow
I’ve had contact lenses since I was 12 years old, and over the last few years they had really started to bother my eyes. Probably due to all the time I spend staring at a monitor, but of course I’ve been doing that for years as well.
Anyway, this winter I decided to pull the trigger and trust modern science to fix my eyes. After two months of wearing glasses in public for the first time in my life (it’s not so bad), I just had lasik surgery on Thursday. It was true that it was a painless procedure, but it was rather uncomfortable to have people doing strange things to your eyes, and it felt like something out of Clockwork Orange.
However, the results are phenomenal as my vision is now as good as it was with my gas-permeable contacts. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who wants a long term vision fix.
Oregon Ice Can Cause Some Damage
Although this video clip was a couple hours north us me in Portland, we had similar ice problems here in Eugene. I couldn’t get out of my driveway and almost slid back into my garage wall. What’s great about this clip from Portland was that it was actually filmed by a friend of my sister-in-law. She told me about it, and then lo-and-behold it’s popular on YouTube.
The Blog Push for Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs
Seth Godin ignited a blog push for a good cause, to encourage people to use/try compact fluorescent light bulbs instead of the standard incandescent light bulbs most people use today. I won’t rehash the benefits beyond saying they save money, last longer, and use way less energy than standard light bulbs. Instead, I’ll just mention my quick personal story with them.
I first read about the benefits of CFLs a few years back, and bought a few to try them out. Basically, my wife and I hated the flourescent feel to the light, they flickered and took a second to light up, and they looked “funny” in lights where you could see the bulb. Those reasons led us I guess to make the unconscious decision to not purchase them again although we never really discussed it.
It’s now a few years later, and the impacts of energy use are a bit more real, so we took another look. The newer bulbs I bought have a light that rivals the normal bulbs, they turn on much faster, and the flickering is gone. They still look a bit funny, but that’s really just because we’re not used to them. I’ve now started using them in place of any old bulbs that go out so soon I imagine all our lights will be switched over. Additionally, I’m looking at LED lighting for the recessed lights I have in my house because CFLs don’t fit there and LED lights also have low energy usage.
If you want to participate in the blog push for CFLs, there’s also a Squidoo Lens to note you’re participating.
5 Things About Me
Pete Caputa tagged me with one of the annoying yet interesting blog memes going around about letting people know 5 things they probably didn’t know about you. I usually stay away from email forward chains and the like, but since this is the first time I’ve been tagged for a blog chain I feel like I can’t resist. So here goes:
- I started coaching high school basketball only one year after graduating from high school myself, and did it for about 7 years until I had kids. I miss it now, but it’s not worth missing time in the evenings with my family.
- I’ve lived in Eugene, Oregon my whole life except for six months right after college when I worked for an internet startup in Los Angeles.
- I generally don’t like white sauces. By this I mean Ranch dressing, mayonnaise, cream cheese, sour cream, etc. Alfredo sauce is a notable exception.
- I can’t cook, at all. I once put butter on the outside of a bagel and then put it in the toaster. In my defense, I was much younger then. Luckily growing up my mom, dad, and brother all could cook really well, and my wife is an excellent cook. It probably is only a year away before my daughters can cook better than me.
- I started buying domain names with a buddy way back in 1995. You’d think this would make me rich many times over, unfortunately the best domain we bought was iceweb.com because all the others we were searching for were “too generic”. Yes, I kick myself on this one.
I’m tagging Cam, Travis, Marshall, Robbin, and Cale.
Swopper Chair Review and Recommendation
Problogger Darren Rowse asks his readers for office chair recommendations. This is a subject that is somewhat unfortunately near and dear to my heart as I grew up in a family business selling office chairs and furniture, and my dad is an ergonomics expert.
All jokes aside, it is an important subject as people are spending an unnatural amount of time sitting while working on computers.
Without question, the chair my dad recommends to the majority of people working on computers with or without back pain, isn’t even technically a chair, it’s the Swopper Stool. I use the Swopper at home at my computer, and I should probably get one for work as well.
The reason a Swopper is better than standard ergonomic office chairs:
- It forces you to sit with a proper posture instead of slumping in a chair with a back.
- It bounces up and down and side to side, it allows you to move around and “sit in motion”. This keeps your spine lubricated and muscles moving throughout the day. It provides for better blood circulation as well as helping to strengthen your core muslces while sitting (abdomen and lower back).
- It relieves back pain from sitting due to the posture and movement.
- Sitting on a Swopper keeps you energized and alert due to the ability to move and proper posture.
- It is a contemporary and stylish piece of furniture that is well made and looks good while being a conversation piece.
Many people try to substitute an exercise ball to achieve some of these benefits. While it does promote healthy posture, it lacks many of the features of the Swopper. It can’t allow you to rock from side to side or front to back because you’ll roll off. It doesn’t raise or lower like the Swopper, meaning it can’t be used by people who need their seating position at a certain height. And it doesn’t grip as well as the seating material of the Swopper. It definitely doesn’t look as cool, as the Swopper also comes in multiple interesting colors.
While the Swopper isn’t cheap, healthy sitting and avoiding back pain is worth a very high price in my book. My dad sells them at his site Workchairs.com, and he’d be happy to answer any questions people have about the Swopper.
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