I asked this on my FB page the other day so I’ll ask it here too: Last year I only read 5 books the entire year. This year I promised myself I would do better so I set a personal goal to read 30 books. I’m already at 17 books and a short story.
How many have you read this year?
College isn’t for everyone, but EYE cannot in good conscience suggest to a black/brown kid to skip college/trade school/military svc when the majority of our black/brown kids are already undereducated coming out of high school. Per the usual, the NYTimes article is written from a place of privilege and that’s annoying. The playing field for US that encourages entrepreneurship is still not level and the barriers to entry to run your own business for people of color are still very high. Not to say that it cannot be done because it is occurring, but right now if I had a kid, I’d be sending them to college.
That’s all I got this morning..what’s going on random with you?
One of the major themes of this year’s election is the economy, with the Republican party asking the electorate if they are better off than 4 years ago, when President Obama was elected. I’ve also been following a series in the NY Times which is discussing the state of the middle class in the US today. In a follow up blog post, the author highlighted selected comments from that post:
“Most of the income gains seen in my lifetime have been created by families going on afterburners — sending the other adult out to work. Now, we are seeing families going backwards, but that may be a good thing. But we will need to learn to get by on less, especially if competition by foreign workers accelerates.” – jstewart58
“Interesting that this appears on the same page as the article about Caterpillar. Is it really necessary for them to freeze wages when they are making record profits? You can bet that the upper echelon of company officers will not have frozen wages. There are many hard issues that contribute to the problem, global wage competition, automation, poor education, but these are exacerbated by actions taken by companies like Caterpillar.” – Oh Please
“Since WWII, the idea that one is solely responsible for their own success has widely taken root and the generations since have increasingly failed to acknowledge that success is the product of both individual initiative/hard work AND opportunity. The first generation that had the privilege of combining hard work with unprecedented levels of opportunity was the baby boomers and, speaking very generally, they seemed to forget the opportunity component as they rose through the professional ranks of business and government. This explains policies that reward the haves while eroding the opportunity (education, health care, higher minimum wages, pensions) that allows have-nots to use their individual initiative to pull themselves out of the lower classes.” – Dan
“The uncomfortable truth is that America’s economy has progressed beyond blue collar jobs and is now a service economy. Our biggest export is knowledge (in the form of technology, patents, business, etc), and is no longer ‘stuff.’ So it is slightly misguided to blame manufacturing companies that don’t pay workers higher wages, because these companies are no longer in industries where their workers can demand a premium.”– Austin
“Tax cuts for the rich have turbocharged inequality, beginning with Reagan and culminating with Bush II. To afford these tax cuts, we’ve cut everything else that helps the middle class, especially really great public schools.”– Carol
Honestly, speaking it’s a mixed bag for me. I am better off than I was 4 years ago because I got laid off in February 2009, worked contract for about a year and have been full time at my current employer for a year (after being a contractor there for a year). I got married which added a wonderful husband and an additional income to my household. But, the value of my house is upside down and there are additional expenses that must now be paid. It’s been difficult to save money, this year in particular. But I know so many people who are so much worse off that I feel I shouldn’t complain.
How about you and your family? Are you better or worse off than you were 4 years ago? Do you agree with the commentators from the article?
One of my favorite parts of the New York Times to read, is a section called Sunday Routine. Famous and not so famous New Yorkers are interviewed about what they do on Sundays. It’s always interesting to see what people do to relax on the weekend.
So I really only have one question for you: What is your Sunday routine? Is it planned out or do you tend to play it by ear?? Does it vary depending on the season or time of year??
Myron and I enjoy watching Shark Tank on ABC on Friday nights when we are at home. The sharks make dreams come true or crush them under their collective heels. I like the updates on the entrepreneurs too, even the ones who don’t get any money out of their dealings with the sharks.
As for me, I’ve always wanted to own a resume writing and career services business that would help college students market themselves better. I revise folks resumes for fun anyway and am always willing to pass along a lead on a job, so why not?
That got me to thinking, if you had the capital and the product, what type of business would you want to have?? If you have a plan in mind, have you gotten started on making it happen?? Be vague if you need to, but at least share the industry that your dream business is in.
Here are a few pictures of the tab sitting in the keyboard dock that I ordered. It’s about the size of a netbook. The keyboard is very sturdy and sits flat easily. It will be good for blogging or tweeting during an awards show! Lolololol!
The keyboard dock will also let you plug in the charger and power up through the dock as opposed to plugging the tablet directly into the wall. Cool, huh?
As you all know, I’ve been on the hunt for a larger tablet/e-reader to use as a laptop replacement for around the house and when I travel. I already have a Nook Color and I have probably been a tad bit obsessive about how much I really enjoyed it as an e-reader and as a hacked Android tablet.
But I wanted something a little bit bigger, still small enough to toss in my purse but larger so that I could surf the web without squinting and that would have enough processing power to stream movies and TV shows from the internet or Netflix without getting hung up. I didn’t necessarily require cellular wireless access, WiFi is suitable for me.
After doing my research and polling nearly everyone I could think of, I decided to go with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9. It’s the longest name for a gadget on the planet but since Samsung has several tablet sizes in their lineup, it’s helpful in knowing what size you are dealing with. My tablet measures 8.9 inches from corner to corner, diagonally. It runs the most recent Android tablet OS, Honeycomb 3.2 and has 16GB of storage. It is not expandable beyond that.
8.9 and Nook Color side by side
A word on the storage capabilities. There are other Android tablets that are able to be expanded for additional storage with microSD cards (such as Acer and Toshiba). They also tend to be thicker and heavier because of the ports required for the additional expansion. I use the Dropbox app to store music, documents and pictures in the cloud. I will be streaming movies and TV shows wirelessly and my e-book files are very small. Based on my needs, I determined 16GBs was more than enough for me.
I decided to go with an Android tablet to stay on the same platform as my cell phone, it was cheaper than an iPad, and most of the apps that I use scaled up decently enough for me on the larger screen size. I know that Apple has more tablet optimized apps than Android but I found over 2000 tablet apps in the Android market that I could utilize if necessary and that number is growing daily. I blog, I tweet, I Facebook, I use Google Reader, read, and play games and all of the apps that I have so far work just fine on my 8.9.
Facebook App for Android
Email on the Samsung 8.9
Myron ordered a case for me from Amazon that protects the tablet and allows viewing horizontally or vertically. I also splurged on a keyboard dock as well. I haven’t gotten it yet, but I will update this posts with pictures when I get it in.
Case for the 8.9..Delta Red of course!
Overall, I am enjoying this tablet. The screen is bright and the colors look awesome. It’s lightweight, the build quality is good and it doesn’t feel flimsy, I can customize the look the way I want (which is why I tend to like Android over Apple in some ways) and it seems to be satisfying the needs that I have in a tablet. It’s around $400 dollars at Best Buy, which is $100 bucks cheaper than the base model Wi-Fi iPad. If you want a similar size to the iPad, I would suggest the Galaxy Tab 10.1, which is actually a bit larger than the iPad’s screen size of 9.7 inches.
Here’s a review of the Galaxy Tab 10.1. The 8.9 has basically the same specs, it’s just smaller.
Thoughts? Questions? Comments?
I’m not a mother, but I hope to be in the near future, and I know that quite a few of my readers are moms.
I read the Motherlode blog on the New York Times website pretty regularly and I came across this parental quandary today:
Can my daughter hang out with you guys after school?” That’s the question A. hears from a fellow mother nearly every week (and sometimes more often). After school, or when she needs to work a weekend or an evening shift, this mother seems to have settled on A. as her go-to emergency baby-sitting option.
In the great game of reciprocal child care, not all parents play fair. You may always be there for a friend who calls with “I’m running late,” or “I just got a last minute, hard-to-get doctor’s appointment,” but is she always there for you? This is A.’s quandary, and the mooching parent isn’t really a friend, but the single working mother of a friend of her 8-year-old daughter.
The result is that her daughter’s friend spends a lot of time at A.’s house. Her mother texts A. at the last minute, asking if A. can pick the little girl up from school with A.’s daughter, and keep her just until the end of the workday. The other woman is relatively new in town, with no local family, and A. thinks there’s no one else to help out — if she doesn’t pick the child up, who will?
But the requests are frequent, and rarely reciprocated. A. works too, and the extra little girl in the house on school nights, or coming along on after-school errands and weekend activities, can be a problem, not to mention a financial burden. A. finds herself with three kids in tow for meals and everything else, and her fellow parent, even with gentle reminders, never pitches in. As a final straw, the little girl is all too comfortable with A. She bickers with A.’s children, and begs for candy and treats on errands. These “play dates” aren’t even fun for A’s daughter anymore.
A. knows she needs to say something — but what, and how? She’d like to maintain her daughter’s friendship. She doesn’t mind helping out once in a while. And she suspects that there’s no money for a baby sitter there, and A. can relate to that.
Read the rest of the article and comments here: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/parental-quandary-the-mooching-working-mother/
The mother in this scenario is a working single mother, BUT this scenario could apply to any parent or caregiver. It does take a village to raise children, but at what point does a parent set boundaries that are necessary for their own kids?
What would you say? How would you handle?
I got a few questions about what I was reading on my Nook in yesterday’s post. Here’s a synopsis:
In Saudi Arabia, two American missionaries are targeted by the infamous religious police—Muttawa. The man is tortured and killed; his wife arrested on trumped-up charges before being deported to the United States. Compelled by the injustice of her plight, young attorney Brad Carlson files an unprecedented civil rights suit against Saudi Arabia and the ruthless head of the Muttawa. But the suit unleashes powerful forces that will stop at nothing to vindicate the Arabian kingdom. Witnesses are intimidated and some disappear; jurors are bribed; and a member of Brad’s own team may be attempting to sabotage the case. As Brad navigates a maze of treachery and deception, he must gamble his case, his career, and the lives of those he loves on his ability to bring justice to one family, challenge the religious intolerance of a nation, and alter the course of international law. Directed Verdict is a Christy Award–winning novel.
