To College or Not To College

You know, I've often asked why we bother going to college.  

I mean, unless you're going to be a professor, you don't really need to go.  You only need the job experience.  And nowadays, there are all of these certificates that make college rather a mute point because if you don't have the certificate, you can't get the job....but the same job only requires college "or equivalent experience".

So, honestly, why bother going?  The argument is that you can "try out" several different things, but can you?  With the rising cost of education, can you really afford to take underwater basket weaving and not the classes specific to you major?

And to that point, why can't you "try out" things that you can actually make money doing.  

Think about it. 

Instead of going to college, you get an entry-level job where they have tuition reimbursement.  Instead of starting life out in debt, you start off in the black.  You already know which classes you need to take to get the high paying jobs in the company AND THEY WILL PAY FOR IT.

As for the other elective courses, take a community ed class.  Better education at 1/10th the price.

The Underdog

I don't know why I feel so happy about this.  Perhaps it's because it means that I was taught correctly, afterall.  Perhaps it's just because I have a small vindictive streak about hotshot scientists trying to make a name for themselves by claiming we're all wrong.  Perhaps it's just the small amount of wry glee that I get thinking about all the educational companies that need to make a critical change- again- to their Earth and Space Science.

I don't know.

But I'm really happy that Pluto is now a planet again.

Just Like Mommy

My daughter walks up to me and says "I want to type something".

Not only cute, but articulate.

I finally broke down and opened Word and let her type.

And, man, did she!

typetypetypetypetypetypebackspacebackspacetypetyptypetype

It was very cute.

Right up until she brought up all of the Word menus and Start menu and changed my headphone balance.

So, mommy realized that we need to find a laptop for the little typist.  When I went to look at toddler laptops, I found a mixed bag.  Most of them are straight up dumb.  I don't understand why you'd want to buy a toy that looks like a laptop but has a 2" screen with poor resolution.

And the keyboard.

Most of the keyboards (Leapfrog, FisherPrice, etc) are not qwerty keyboards.  They're some cutsie version of a keyboard with the letters in alphabetical order, most likely to help kids learn the ABCs.  (note the irony I feel after my Qwerty article).

But to this point, I wish to bring up that V-Tech does have a Qwerty keyboard on their toddler laptop.  It has poor reviews for batteries, but otherwise, it does have  a Qwerty keyboard.

Why would you want to teach your child anything other than a Qwerty keyboard?  (in America, that is- I don't know what to tell you out there in Europe and Asia.  Perhaps you're all smarter than American toy manufacturers).   We're talking about THE MOST IMPRESSIONABLE TIME in a child's life.  If they learn something now, they never forget.

Why on EARTH would you want to handicap them by teaching them a keyboard in alphabetical order?  Not to mention the higher level knowledge that is required to not only recall which letter they're looking for and what it looks like, but also to assess that this is the one I want out of more than 26 options!

Please, people, be smarter about your children.  Don't baby them.  Teach them.

Minty

So, why do they flavor dental floss?  You can't taste the mint unless you haven't brushed your teeth.

Graphing What You Already Know

So, just in case you needed more convincing, here are some graphs that tell you what you already know:

The economy is on the verge of a major collapse (or rather, we're in the middle of the collapse)

Countries that are most significantly affected by the economic collapse have the highest income inequality.

Even though you go to work and work overtime, possibly even a second job, you can't get ahead of where you are in life right now.  (Uhm, isn't that like a serfdom?  You're born into a station in life and you stay there forever?)

And why do I care?  Because this is the epitome of my whole blog:   I can only DREAM of being a housewife because the American economy doesn't allow me to be a housewife.  Both my husband and I, like 99% of all Americans, work LONG HOURS, WEEKENDS, and we can never hope of doing any better in life than what we were born into.  That is strickingly different than my grandparents, who were both born into poverty or near poverty.  Only my grandfather worked in an office while my grandmother was a housewife.  He did work hard, but I don't think he worked any harder than I do now (I'm averaging about 50 hours a week, get paid for 40, and I think that's pretty standard for Americans).  And even though I save every dime I can (we don't have cable, we don't buy meat every week, we don't eat out except once or twice a year, we don't buy a lot of fresh produce), we cannot escape the caste level that we were born into because we're making less than our parents did when we were born!

WAKE UP AMERICA!  SAVE US!  EQUAL TAX FOR EVERYONE!

Robert Reich for President

If you don't know who he is, you should.  Don't worry, I didn't know who he was, either.  But I reaped the benefits of his thoughts without knowing it.

He's the former Labor Secretary under Clinton and a president of economics and politics.  In other words, the only period in my life where the government had a profit and unemployment was AT IT'S LOWEST- yeah, his policies, his thoughts.

This man seems to be the only one who actually UNDERSTANDS how America is no longer the country where dreams come true.  We're worse off than Ivory Coast!  We're America the Ashamed.  It's just like I've been screaming:  corporations are in charge because they have the money.  We live in an era where the unions and collective representation of the peoples of America do not exist because of corporate bullying.

The ONLY solution here is to remove the power from corporations.  It's not through violence.  It's through taxation.  Did you know that I currently pay 36% of my hard-earned salary to the government, while the rich pay 11-15% of theirs?  Seems like mandating that everyone pays the same would really free up the money to bring back government jobs and programs (like the Freaking LIBRARY!)- think of how much another 15% of 3 billion dollars PER CEO PER YEAR would do for the American economy!

The only way America is going to recover from the plummet that we currently are in and regain our jobs and self respect is to sue the 1% CEOs and billionaires for ruining our lives- for ruining America.

The problem is that we're all scrambling and groveling for the schilling that they throw in the ground in front of us because we're freaked about affording gas to get to the job where they overwork you so that you're too tired to put up a fight.


Hillary, if you don't run and hire him, I'm voting for him for President.

That's a Load of Crap

So, I accidentally came across this at the hardware store when looking at that combo trainer toilet seats for toddlers and adults.

And my thought was this:  Wow, I wonder how many of those they sell in Minnesota?

And thinking that the number must be rather high from the obese people here, had the thought:

So, what's the point?  The toilet base isn't bigger; does it come with a plunger?

Oh, Boy

Is it really necessary to find solutions to allow women to smoke while pregnant?

Next, they'll find something to lessen fetal alcohol syndrome that will make it sound like it's ok to binge while pregnant.

Rubix Cube

I can't believe it!  40 years!  Man, does that make me feel old :(

And while it's a cute little app with very realistic movements, they left off one very important function that you can do with the original but you can't do here.

Nope, it's not that you only see 3 of 6 sides here.

Give up?

It's that you can't peel off the sticks.

Well, I mean, if you're going for realism...

When Moving, Plan Ahead

Now that we're moved, I can laugh a little about the chaos that happens once you get to the new house.  Afterall, it's not just getting out of the old house, closing on it, and closing on the new one.  It's all about getting comfortable in the new house, as quickly as possible.

Especially if you have kids and cats.  (Dogs aren't as smart as cats, so they're ok with the change as along as you're there with them. Just my experience)  So, after you get the litter box and water bowls set up, and then build the kid's beds, you have time to go to the kitchen and think, "uhmm.........." because you have no idea where to put stuff in your kitchen.  And during these stressful times, the last thing you really want to be thinking about is where to put the spoons.

So, here's what I recommend:  On  your inspection of the house, take detailed pictures of the cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms (and laundry room if you have one).  Open them up in Paint or Photoshop and start playing around with where you'd want to put things.  Make yourself a map.  It's especially nice if you have people helping you move in so that they know where to put things, too.  But, really, the best part is that you get to play around in your new kitchen without really being there.

Then, on moving day, grab your pad of sticky notes and label doors and drawers.  You might want to leave those up so that your family knows where everything is, too.

Ta-da, instant kitchen de-stresser.

Be Creative- Kind of

I know, been busy moving.  Give a lass a break

Ok, so, my latest is this:  now that we've moved, we need to cover up the color palette from the previous owners.  And as any parent knows, that means that you start in the kids' rooms first.

So...

My daughter and I had a fun outing to the local hardware store to look at paint chips.

I honestly have a weakness for paint chips.  SO MANY COLORS, SO LITTLE TIME!!!!!!

AND...

THEY'RE ALL ORGANIZED!

It's a comfort spot for my OCD artist side.

I was less than thrilled that my daughter was not as enthralled by the colored paper as I was.  In fact, I had to hand her suggestions- she wasn't pointing and crawling on shelves to get to the colors like I thought she would.

I think I did at Standard Brands (ah, long live Standard Brands- back when they premixed the paint colors and you had to match the dye lots in the cans....)

Anyway, the trip to paint aisle was a bust, so we sat down and looked at colors online.  I know how much she absolutely LOVES Pooh, so we looked at the Disney colors (yes, there are Disney paint colors just like there are Martha Stewart paint colors).

Sure enough, there is a Pooh palette.

AND there's a nice little Silverlight plug-in for pretending to paint 3 of your 4 bedroom walls.  (they call it a "room" but 3 walls is more of an alcove, isn't it?)  And they have preset wall clings that you can add to see how those would look.  They didn't have Hapi the Owl like she had at the last house, but they had a couple of Pooh-looking trees and the Pooh characters, so I pulled those over in a Photoshop-like-way, and started to plan her room with her.

...

Only the program won't LET you put the wall clings anywhere.

If you try to put them in a customized arrangement, the program gives you an error message about them needing more space, at which point, my daughter lost complete interest because Pooh and Piglet couldn't hold hands and I lost all interest in traveling to a WalMart across town that had the Pooh colors in the Pooh sheens.

We did have a happy ending, however, as any hardware store can match any color, so after taking my laptop back to the paint chip aisle and finding a match for Busy Bee, we got our paint at 1/2 of what the Pooh color would cost and it still looks great.

And we can put the decals anywhere we want.

Neti Pots and Water Bulbs May Lead to Brain Death

For all of you that love your little neti pots or have a water bulb for suctioning out boogers in your kid, you really ought to be aware that you are putting your life in danger from brain-eating amoebae.

It's science.  Can't argue with that.

So, I guess if you have to use it, buy some IV bags of sterile water- comes with it's own irrigation system and everything.

QWERTY

If you have kids, you may know this:  it's for children to learn to type on a keyboard (well, hunt-and-peck) than it is to learn to write.

Are trees applauding now?  No more kindergarten-lined paper with huge wood chunks in it?  No more tree-sized pencils?

Well, I don't think that's coming any time soon.  But I do know that students are no longer graded on penmanship because there is no real need for that anymore.  Same with cursive.  Can you imagine?  No more cursive letters!?!  Guess there's going too be a huge generation gap that can't read historical documents.  Perhaps cursive will be a history subject.

But you have to wonder:  with the dawning of our digital age, are we in for some more dramatic changes than the loss of sloping letters?

I was thinking about this when I was helping my daughter type out her ABCs.

Will we still have "ABCs"!?  Maybe we'll learn "QWERTY"s instead!  Do we still need to use the order from the ancient Greeks?

"Q, W, E, R, T, Y, U,
I, O, P, A, S, D, F..."

You have to wonder:  is it really that far off??

Talk about a generation gap!

WebEx

Years ago, I found that you could play Scrabble on yahoo.games.com with people around the world. Remember that?

And remember how people use to meet in the games just to chat?  That was before person-to-person chat sessions.  Quite irritating for me who was there to actually play the games.

But, people stayed in contact with each other.

Without being in the same room.

Then WebEx came along with the webcams and online meeting.

Then GoTo Meeting and video Skype and, most recently, Google Hangouts.

What do all of these things have in common?

You're not in the same room with the person at the other end.

You don't even need to be on the same continent.

And judging from the prevalence of these tools and webcams in laptops, I have to say, they seem to be working as effective communication devices.

Can someone tell me, then, why there is still this idea that going into the office makes you more productive?

I know, let's burn 3 hours of your day in rush hour traffic so that you're super relaxed and happy by the time you reach either end, and then let's be more effective communicators that we would be in over a webcam.

That makes sense, right?

When are people going to really accept that remote works.  Technology isn't just for online gaming, you know.

Element 86

There's been a lot of hype about Element 86 (aka Radon- who says you don't need to know the periodic table!)  Maybe more so in the Midwest where there are basements...you don't have too many of those in earthquake country.

Something I didn't know is that radon levels fluctuate dramatically within a 48 hour time period.  Honestly, I didn't know that.  Since it's a gas, i guess that makes sense.  I just didn't know that it could shift from top to bottom of the scale in that time period.

It turns out the best time to have that tested is during the rainy season because radon rises from the ground like inch worms, so it will be at its highest following the rain.  And that's exactly what you want to know:  how high does the radon get.

But honestly, if the radon levels fluctuate wildly, how useful is the $160 test?  

I guess, erring on the safe side, wouldn't you want to have some way of removing it from the basements?  

Why isn't it required?

Poor Grammar in Children's Books

I honestly never paid too much attention to grammar until I learned a foreign language.  You start analyzing how this language is the same as the one you know (or think you know).  Especially if you learn a language with strict, complex rules, like German.  And at that point in my life, I became one of those irritating teenagers who corrects people when they speak.

<eye roll>

I have relaxed a bit since then (I only correct people in my head- some habits die hard), but when my daughter started reading, it stirred up my snobbery about grammar.

Have you actually read some of these children's books?

For example, A Pocket For Corduroy where the friendly bear is "looking for something to make a pocket out of" instead of "looking for something from which to make a pocket".

Luckily, I married someone who is just as irritated by the grammar.  He actually refuses to read it wrong (which is leading to other problems for our daughter, as she tries to match the printed word to how is sounds).  I guess I'm not surprised since he was eating Eats, Shoots, and Leaves when we were dating.

But the main problem here is this:  what do you do as a parent when you're trying to teach your children to speak correctly and every book they read is an example of the opposite?

It's the same problem as Frances.

I love Frances.

You know, the cute little GIRL badger?  But while I am personally torn about how I feel about the lesson in A Bargain For Frances (i.e. revenge), I am completely put off by A Birthday For Frances where we find our leading badger attempting to spell....incorrectly.  Like "GMMP" for "Cake".  It's cute, but not really for a beginning reader who is trying to associate the language with the words.

I never thought I would have to preview so many books for my daughter.  But between the questionable content and the poor grammar, it's truly difficult to find a great book.

You just have to wonder what editors get paid for.

Yes, that was on purpose.

MORE POWER!

When I saw this, the only thing I could think was, "Still not 1.21 gigawatts!  You're still stuck in 1955, Marty"

I wonder how many solar panels it would take to generate the same amount of electricity as a bolt of lightning.

Why don't we have lightning farms?

o_O

ARGH!

AM/PM

I had the lovely experience of a dead battery the other day.  Yesterday, as I was driving through the frustrating early rush hour traffic, I noticed that I still hadn't reset my clock.

As I pressed the button to scroll through the hours and minutes, I wondered:

Why do car clocks have AM/PM settings?

Isn't is obviously what time of day it is?

Do you need a machine to tell you that it's 4 in the afternoon and not 4 in the morning?

Perhaps in Alaska.

Just something that we take for granted, I guess.

Of course, I prefer the 24 hour clock- you always know what time it is.

Good Mornin' Vietnam!

...is the first thing I thought of when I saw this...

...although they rather purposefully don't say the word dike anywhere, I did have instant thoughts of how many people would be flocking to NY since gay marriage is allowed (and they're in need of....)

yeah.  I guess you had to be there.

What I've Found Out

So, I've found out a couple of things today:

1. Great highlights don't have to cost a lot...and in fact, you may find someone better.


2. There are a lot of cat haters in the world.  Evidently, you have to get rid (GET RID, GET RID) of your cats while you sell your home because people think that cats smell...and those same people have dogs in the cars with them when they come to visit.

I have to tell you:  DOG smells a LOT worse than any cat smell I've ever smelled.

More Reasons Why Women Are Better Than Men As Leaders

No, I'm not making this up.

There has finally been a scientific study that proves that the eldest children are more ambitious than their younger siblings.

If you're in a family with more than one sibling, you're saying "Duh" about now.

But the MOST SIGNIFICANT part of that is that women who are eldest offspring are more likely to not only be more ambitious than their younger siblings, but they're also more likely to succeed at what they're doing than their younger siblings.

Kid you not.

Guess which one I am....

I'm not surprised.