Showing posts with label gadgets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gadgets. Show all posts

Jan. 7: ♫♬ Every step you take ♪♫♪

walker Like just about everyone else in the world, it seems, we got fitness trackers for Christmas. Steps, exercise, calories burned, sleep quality—all the device’s collected info is really fascinating to follow. On days when I haven’t met my total steps goal by evening, I’ve taken to walking laps inside the house, which confounds and excites Lucy, and which I’ve decided is just like taking her for a walk, but without me having to bundle up for cold and/or wet weather. Win-win.

On work days, Vic meets his total steps goal with no extra effort. I sit a LOT for work, so I typically only meet my goal on days in which I run errands or am otherwise extra-active. I definitely need to add some additional exercise to my daily routine, and maybe spending a little less time with Netflix wouldn’t be the worst idea ever.

I first heard about how fitness trackers are used when I read this piece by David Sedaris, published last summer in The New Yorker, about his experience wearing a FitBit. Reaching his daily goal became an obsession, then increasing that daily goal, and then reaching that goal, etc. Now that I’ve got a tracker, I can easily see how the obsession could happen.

I doubt I’ll get a garbage truck named after me—I have no desire to walk 25+ miles a day and also, trash is icky—but I do enjoy this little accessory and the incentive it gives me to get out of my chair.

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May 7: Gadgety links

  • Are you a celebrity (or wannabe) and don’t know what to name your kid? Here’s some help: The Showbiz Baby Name Generator. Our results were Popo Manullang for a girl and Michaelmas Manullang for a boy.
  • Want to see if you can handle the emo look? Click the image of me and Vic as emo kids below to make yourself look as freaky as we do. Note: I didn’t see where results can be downloaded; I saved the image as a screenshot and cropped it to publish it here.

    Yikes, huh?
  • I stumbled across some family “photo” generators that are customizable and kinda fun. Also a little lame.


    My Stick Family from WiddlyTinks.com


     
    My Family from WiddlyTinks.com
  • These next goodies are kinda cutesy-stupid, but my kids love them. The animation’s fun.


    My Family from WiddlyTinks.com


    My Family from WiddlyTinks.com
  • Makes your own Simpsons character. I did this one today (click it to go to the avatar generator):
    jen-simpsonavatar

    This is the four of us I created a while back:

    simpsonsavatars 
    Yes, I know I should’ve used the chubby woman’s body for myself, but I looked way too much like Lunchlady Doris and I just couldn’t handle it. And yes, I probably do look way more like Lunchlady Doris in real life than I ever hoped to, but we’re not going to talk about that right now.

    Here’s another Simpsons character generator. This one lets you do different kinds of customizing than the one above, and has a background that can be changed.
  • While we’re on the subject of cartoon versions of ourselves, check out the South Park character generator at SP Studio. Some of my favorites created with this site are not my own, but fan creations published by a few actors from The Office:

    officestaff1
    officestaff2 
  • What’s the haircast? Here’s a widget that can help you decide how to style your hair today based on the weather forecast. Enter your zip code and hair type and find your best coif.


  • I hesitate sharing this next one, and not only because it put my face on weird and makes me look totally creepy and cross-eyed. Consider it a gift, Shevaun. :)

    Create Your Own

 

All that junk oughta keep you busy for a while.

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Apr. 22: Ketchup

I haven’t blogged much lately. No reason, really, except that I’ve not been feeling like there’s much to say. I know, you’re wondering what one has to do with the other.

So rather than individual posts about a bunch of different topics like I usually write, I’m going to smash everything I haven’t said for the past several days into one post to get caught up. Totally cheating, yes.

Movie

For Manullang Family Movie Night on Friday, Jack chose Monsters vs Aliens. We went to the cinemas and approximately $467 later, enjoyed a very, very funny movie. I was pleasantly surprised. The voice talent was good—Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Seth Rogen, Stephen Colbert (as the president!), Rainn Wilson, Kiefer Sutherland, just to name a few—and the story was sweet. Not Pixar-caliber, but still good, and deserving of many alien thumbs up from the Manullang Fam.

Jen and Lori waiting for the Spinal Tap guys to find the stage (they did!)Concert

Lori and I went to Unwigged & Unplugged at Keller on Sunday evening. If you enjoyed the movies This is Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind, you should punch yourself in the nuts if you missed this concert. It was Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, appearing as themselves, and incredible—it’s amazing what those guys can do; they play several instruments and create some awesome harmonies. And their lyrics—oh my word, they are talented! They did songs from all their movies and albums, interspersed with film footage of various types and a couple special treats, like 3-D effects for one lucky audience member and a dramatic reading of an NBC censors’ memo. The crowd was enthusiastic and that made it even more fun. Lori and I loved it.

My friend Chris also went, and even got autographs before the show. Is this the coolest?

Photo ripped off from Chris Dunlop's Facebook page

He left me a very strange and amusing message on my Facebook wall yesterday:

I didn’t look closely to see what was available at the merch stand, but I saw the green skeleton t-shirt on several audience members. If only I’d known they had “Big Bottom” spandex Speedos! They’d be perfect to wear at the Lassens’ housewarming pool party!

Illness

Jack stayed home from school today. He said his stomach hurt but we weren’t altogether sure he didn’t just want to stay home and play with his Nintendo DS. Still, he was moving pretty slow and I didn’t want to get to work and then get a call from the school saying he needed to go home. I stayed home with him and babied my little guy, which I loved much more than he did.

He seems to be feeling better; right this minute he’s sleeping on the couch with his hand in his pants.

New bed

Our new bed was delivered Saturday morning and I could hardly wait to go to sleep that night. I was disappointed that I slept terribly, though—it was one of those nights where I felt like I just tossed and turned and never really fell asleep. A nap a few hours later went fine, but Sunday night was more tossing. Of course, I wasn’t ready to return the mattress quite yet, but I was frustrated at it being less than perfect. As I said before, I had unreasonably high expectations in that bed.

Monday and Tuesday nights, I slept much, much better. Like a baby, even. Now I think I’m loving it. My back pain is gone. GONE!

Victor’s been sleeping just fine, as snore-y as ever.

pto

It’s official: I’ve been nominated for the PTO board. Next month they vote. I’ll probably be the VP of Student Programs, which means I’ll coordinate a bunch of the events that are supposed to make the kids smarter. Because of my responsibilities, I think a more appropriate title would be VP of Central Intelligence. Not sure when I should propose that revision…

Many homes in our neighborhood are now well-represented by the PTO board and active members, and more than one person has called us a gang because of this. This is thrilling because I’ve never been in a real gang before. When do I get to kill someone for looking at me the wrong way? Soon, I hope, because I’ve already got my eye on someone.

iPhone

My favorite iPhone applications so far are twitterific, Huff Post, and Scramble. Scramble is like Boggle, and you can play against other people. Sometimes I rock at it and sometimes I think I must be playing against that guy who wrote the dictionary himself.

My fat fingertips are getting used to the teeny-tiny keys on the keyboard, and although I’ve not received nearly as many texts as I had been promised (ahem!), I’m getting better at texting too. Yay.

The lack of my custom ringtones still pisses me off. Boo.

Bad guys

I ran into a friend of mine yesterday whom I hadn’t seen in quite a while. Her 26-year marriage is ending and the reasons why are completely depressing to me. It was really good to see her again and catch up a little, but she’s planning to move soon to get away from all the bad stuff and that was the saddest news of all (for me). I don’t blame her for wanting to move; I’d want to too. Strange how you think you know someone and then realize how much they’ve kept from you all along. Gah. Makes me mad.

Also, some people’s exes are just jackasses extraordinaire, or so they tell me. Makes me mad.

EmCityGuy’s wife Bryan got hit by a car while riding his bike yesterday. He’s alive but hurtin’. The idiot who hit him wasn’t paying attention because she was “rushing home to relieve her au pair.” (I’m sorry, Ma’am, but you have a babysitter. You can call her an au pair, but you’ll sound exactly like the moron you are.) I’d like to hit HER with a car! Stupid woman shouldn’t have a license. Makes me mad.

I’m like the Hulk (if he was in a gang)

And you should not make me mad. Remember, I’m in a gang and we are BAD ASS.

jensignature

Apr. 18: Much new-ness

iphone3gYippee! I got an iPhone yesterday. Spending a weekend with my seester and her Blackberry was just too much for me. I admit, it’s been difficult all this time, suffering the taunts of Ed (who has been known to throw cruel accusations at me in the past, such as, “you’re so technically savvy, AOL is your Internet service provider?”), Lori (“what’s wrong with you?”) and, well, almost everyone else I know. Now I can join in with them all as a text messager and email checker and web surfer and twitterer while on the go.

I don’t deal with peer pressure in an inexpensive way, no sir.

The iPhone certainly has some nice features. I’ve downloaded applications for twitter and Facebook. I’ve found some fun games. I synced my contacts and calendar with Outlook. I’m using—and liking—iTunes for the first time. So far, so good.

What I don’t like:

  • The touch keyboard is a challenge, to say the least. I had no idea I had such stubby fingertips.
  • iPhone ringtones suck, and you can’t use custom-made ones. Steve Jobs needs to kiss my big fat butt for that one because I ♥ my custom ringtones. What good is a phone that won’t play “Hollaback Girl” when Ed calls, anyway?
  • I haven’t found a way to easily sync my Outlook notes with iPhone notes, although I’m sure I will eventually. I didn’t realize I rely on those notes so much.
  • There’s no graphics organizer included and that makes no sense to me at all.
  • The fingerprints! My god, the fingerprints!

Kathy has assured me that I’m now as cool as three out of four Vosses. Whew. Isn’t that what we all want? However, I’m sure I remember being told that random people would be wanting to have sex with me now that I’m an iPhone user, and there haven’t been any yet—no random ones, anyway. Just the usuals.

Two Facebook things cracked me up today. First, Shawn’s response to my status update/complaint:

jenfbstatus418

I also thought Vic’s status was pretty good:

vicfbstatus0418

Which brings me to another new thing from this week… Yes, Victor got new glasses. Bifocals. He thinks this makes him old and I admit to helping that a teeny bit. Of course, I had bifocals in grade school, so I don’t think it has much to do with age at all. Besides, Vic will always be a superhero, or at least Indiana Indonesia Jones, to me.

In other Facebook news, I friend-ed Marilee this past week! She was a classmate in high school and one of my college roommates. We lost touch over the years and are now getting reacquainted. See why I love Facebook? Just when I think I’ve stopped being so addicted to it, another dear friend shows up on my “people you may know” list and I LOVE it!

sleepy Perhaps the most exciting new thing from this week is that our fancy new bed was finally, FINALLY delivered this morning! We already have one family member who hates it—Scout, who can’t jump on it without a good running start and then bites at Casey and Millie because they can. I’m attaching a lot of high hopes to this mattress to relieve my now-constant lower back pain; I’m hoping it won’t disappoint. I’ll be testing it out when naptime comes in another couple hours. Or maybe I won’t wait; I’ve got a new book waiting on my nightstand and a TiVo full of shows I missed while in Medford. I had all kinds of plans to get through my to-do list today, but that was before the bed arrived. Heh heh… extra-long to-do lists are what Sundays are for, right?

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Mar. 13: Gadgetry

I know I’ve mentioned my lightning-fast typing speed many times. Please forgive me; it’s one of the few things I do well enough that I feel I can—nay, should—brag about it. But just to prove that I don’t mention it every time I wax boastful about my many talents, here’s a list I wrote a couple years ago of my many talents. You’ll see that “typing speed” appears nowhere on the list.

And for the purposes of equal opportunity skill-listing, I also offer a list of my incompetencies. I ask that you please feel free NOT to add to my list of incompetencies. I’m in a fragile state right now since I made that horizontal scroll bar yesterday.

Speaking of scroll bars that do not belong, you know what can help you stay awake all the live-long night? Wondering where you went wrong with a cascading style sheet. Also, intense back pain. Also, a husband with intense back pain. We’re a houseful o’ whiners right now.

But I digress.

You might remember that I mentioned a few paragraphs ago that my typing speed kicks ass. What I may not have mentioned a few paragraphs ago, or ever, is that I also have very fast 10-key skills. Even more impressive (to me)? I taught myself those 10-key skills. I know, I know. I rock the casbah.

I worked for payroll at WWU the summer before my freshman year, which frequently involved 39 hours a week of calculating time cards in tenths of hours. When I first started, I pecked away at the 10-key and it took me a long time to get through the pile of every time card of every person in the entire university every week. I thought I was brilliant when I figured out a quick way to use the 10-key and a few years later when I actually took a 10-key class, realized these things:

  1. I had been doing it right all along (yay me!)
  2. It ain’t rocket surgery

When I started using a laptop as my primary computer, what I missed most was having a separate number pad. If you’ve ever tried to use a number pad on a laptop keyboard as a 10-key, you know the average laptop keyboard’s number pad sucks. I bought a USB number pad and it sucked almost as much.

So why do I think this little combo mouse/number pad gadget is so awesome? I don’t know. I just do.



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