Foodies

Local culture is anchored in food.  While carrying a server from building A to building B I stopped to talk with a friend. He offered me bananas to take home. I accepted.

I have a box of bananas on my desk. Child comes in to talk about yo-yos. He looks interested in the bananas and I offer him to help himself. He eats two while we talk, his mom yells for him to get in the car and he grabs three more on the way out.

I still have two more!

I kept the peels to take home for compost.

Friendship service

We have friends that had a child about 6 months before we had ours. We wrote them emails saying "let us know if you need anything!" and never heard a response. I didn't think much of it.

Having a child now I realize what happened.  It feels strange to ask your friends to come over and do your dishes or a load of laundry or pick up diapers.  It feels uncomfortable asking someone over to hold your baby while you go to sleep. I'm used to inviting people over socially not as a utility. But that's what I needed.

What I really appreciated during our first weeks days and weeks with a newborn were the friends who just did things for us.  They dropped off food and didn't ask to see the baby. They brought dinner over and did our dishes afterward while I napped.

If you have friends with newborns and you're looking to contribute, don't ask and wait for a response. An easy thing is to drop off food and then go home. Don't expect any social niceties or catching up.  This isn't a social call, it's a friendship service.  

If you're close enough and you really want to go the extra mile bring over food, put the baby in a sling on your chest and do the dishes. This feeds, completes a chore and occupies the baby while mom and dad grab a nap. Even 30 minutes can make a difference in those first few weeks.

New born prep

I'm 6 days into a newborn.  Lots of advice I receive was about getting enough sleep before hand and having lots of sex.  That's really it for advice from the masses.  I think the sex part is good, there's no time or energy for sexy times in the weeks following a baby.  But the sleep advice is pretty bad.

You should be well rested going into delivery.  All nighters and burning the candle at both ends should no longer be in your routine.  But you can't bank sleep.  You can't sleep so well the week before that you can stay up for days afterwards.  Why is this such popular advice?

The best things I did before my boy arrived were to buy and prepare food and freeze it.  A CostCo run a few weeks before means that we have food ready to go without much prep.  My wife made and froze some soup and curry.  Having food on hand is probably the most annoying and difficult to worry about while caring for a newborn.

The other thing we did was all the errands and chores on our list.  We made a couple lists with degrees of criticality:

• Most critical - absolutely had to get done
• Things that really should be done 
• Things that would be nice but not critical 
• Least critical - not important to get done.

Then we started at the top of the list and worked our way down.  So far, having those critical items complete has made the biggest difference. It was challenging to get all that stuff done, some of those things have been waiting to get done for almost 2 years.  This is part of being an adult though, right?

The best preparation I have for this experience comes from a youth spent at UU cons.  Running around all weekend with no sleep, sleeping on any surface and waking up after only an hour or two. These experiences provided the best training I could have. Losing a sleep routine is not new for my body and I'm able to match my boy's a lot better.

Forget traveling the world or pursuing your dreams

The majority of the friends I have from my life in VA do not want kids.   The world is full of kids with indifferent parents, there's no need to feel obligated to have kids if you don't want them.   Having a child that you're not ecstatic about  is doing a disservice to that kid and to the world, so I think it's NBD to not have kids if you're not ready.


The only thing that makes me sad about all my friends that don't want to have kids that I think they'd make excellent parents.  They're smart, capable and fun.   They'd teach adventure and learning. They'd have self confident and lovely children.

Uninstalling applications with GPO that were installed manually or during installation.

I installed applications with MDT during deployment.   I always assumed I could uninstall or update  it easily with a GPO later.  This is not the case. The GPO for software management works for uninstallation but only if it was installed with GPO.

Here's how I removed a few outdated apps.  On a machine with the applications that you want to remove, run:

WMIC product where "name like  '%application name%'" get Name, Version, IdentifyingNumber

The part in bold is the name of your application, run the command for each application.  This will give the product ID.  Use the product ID for a startup script that looks like this:

msiexec /x {XXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX} /qn

The open and close brace are mandatory, this wasn't clear to me in my research.  

Create a GPO in  GPO/computer configuration/Policies/Windows Settings/Scripts (Startup/Shutdown). 

Switch blade fob

You know when you have a project and you have to purchase a special tool or a package of supplies to accomplish it?  You use the tool once or the remainder of supplies that go into a box somewhere to either get lots, damaged or dry out before you can use it again?


Well tonight I got to use lithium grease on another thing!  I originally bought it to lubricate my car door, then used it on my house door.  Tonight I used it to lubricate the stupid switch-blade action on my car key.

It didn't fix the problem but it's a little better.



Apparently in an effort to curb car thefts, modern manufacturers have special cut keys in addition to RFID chips in the fob.  This means that if a replacement is needed, it has to be ordered from the manufacturer through dealership for ~$150 and then programmed by them for an additional ~$100. 

For a key. A spare key is going to be just shy of $300. 

The RFID chip is also made out of glass. This makes it difficult to handle without breaking.  If it breaks and it's the only key then the car is immobilized and will not start.   It will need to be towed to the dealership and a new key ordered and programmed.

The chip is glued into the fob, using nail polish remover I was able to loosen it up and transfer it to a new fob purchased from Amazon.  The new key isn't really flush with the fob so it takes some work to extend.

Generations

Lots of tools are not Buy It For Life. That's OK, even things that don't last forever can be used for a very long time.

These gloves are Mechanix gloves I got on special from Sears for $4 almost two years ago. I bought them because of the low price, they retail for ~$25.  Once I started working out doors more they got a lot more use. 

Digging up the rusting roof panels from the yard spelled their demise.  Now I wear them when I'm using a shovel or machete, just an extra buffer between me and the handle.

Eventually they'll deteriorate enough to be scrapped completely.  Then the newer gloves will get holes and be demoted to tool duty. 

I do the same thing with abrasive sponges in the kitchen. New sponges clean lightly dirty dishes, the older sponge scoops out teh refried beans, soups and anythign else mushy or dirty that may get stuck.  Eventually the new sponge gets old and dirty and the cycle repeats itself.

Old shirts become rags. Cardboard boxes become ground cover to deter weeds. So while I'm still living in a disposable culture, everything gets two lives.  It may not cut my wast exactly in half but every little bit helps.

Simple tools to secure browsing.

Here are some the tools that I use in my browsing habits.  

• Pry-Fi - Changes your MAC randomly while connected to WiFi. Good for public WiFi.

• Tor Browser - Does not need to be installed. Makes your traffic anonymous. It runs on Firefox and comes with HTTPS Anywhere. Don't torrent over it.  

• Orbot -  This creates a connection to the Tor network on Android. It goes hand in hand with Orbweb or a Firefox plugin.

• HTTPS Anywhere - Browser plug-in developed by the EFF. A good idea for any browser.

• Incognito / Privacy mode - This is the most basic of protections.  Useful if you ever sit down on someone else's computer.   The browser doesn't remember anything locally.  It does not protect your Internet traffic it just covers your tracks on the computer you're using.