Groovy Daddy

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

2007-07-09T22:14:00.000-05:00

Danah's article is a great look into how the Web 2.0 world is transforming our society. An interesting read most certainly ... I wonder what the web will look like when my daughter is an adolescent.

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

GroovyDaddy is getting control of his InboX!

2007-03-18T20:48:00.000-05:00

Fresh Start: The Email DMZ
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Like a lot of the best fresh starts, this one’s a total psych-out; also, like most of the best ones, you won’t believe how well it works until you actually try it for yourself.
Open your email program and create a new folder called “DMZ“
Go to your email inbox and Select All
You might alternatively choose all email older than n days
Drag those emails from your inbox into the DMZ folder
Go, and sin no more.
Is this the email equivalent of covering your ears and singing loudly? Not really. You still need to deal with all the emails in your DMZ folder (personally I’d recommended “archiving” anything older than 21 days), but, most importantly, you’re drawing a line in the sand. You’re saying “Okay, starting this minute I quit letting ‘being behind’ stop me from making good decisions now and going forward.” Hence the “fresh start.” Get it? Tomorrow morning you arrive to a spanking fresh inbox and the chance to start anew. Of course, using your fresh start to develop an actual new habit is entirely optional, but it’s certainly more reachable than ever now, right? Right.
Basically, this works at accomplishing the one thing you need more than anything else right now: to stop digging.
Think about it: how much stuff in your life has gotten unmanageable simply because you decided at some point that you were too behind to ever make a difference? More than anything you need a way to recover these projects from the brink — to find the handle that lets you stop making it worse and start seeing a way back toward daylight.
(On another day, I’ll tell you my super-secret way of paring down the biggest DMZ folder to empty in 15 minutes.)

http://www.43folders.com/2006/01/04/email-dmz/

Safety and Style in Your Child’s Room

2007-03-18T09:47:00.000-05:00

Safety and Style in Your Child’s Room

Safety and Style in Your Child’s Room
Text: Mélanie Pratte

Decorating the room of your little cherub is not child’s play! Interior designer Pierre Isabelle tells us the questions we should ask before we start – to guarantee results everyone will love.
Whether you’re decorating solo or with a professional, answering the following questions – which the designer also asks his clients – will enable you to clearly identify your child’s tastes and help you to reconcile them with your own priorities for the room.
Infant, child or pre-teen?Your child’s age will partly determine the theme, colours, style and furniture of the room. Pierre Isabelle also advises choosing decorative touches based on the child’s developmental stage: Brightly coloured mobiles stimulate motor development in infants, imaginative motifs promote creativity among five- and six-year-olds, and so on.
Short-, medium- or long-term?“If the clients tell me they plan to redecorate in two or three years, I recommend more age-specific colours and themes. But if they want the decor to grow with the child, I advise them to choose more classic styles and colours. I also suggest they invest in better quality, more durable paint and bedding,” Pierre explains.
“This factor also brings us to the issue of whether or not the client wants the room’s decor to reflect the latest decorating trends,” he adds. “Once that’s been decided, we can choose from among the (often more expensive) ultra-fashionable items, or else we browse the larger range of more classic ones.” (use hyperlink to continue article)

First bath!

2007-03-10T23:33:00.000-05:00

I just finished giving my daughter her first bath by myself (she is 3 ½ weeks)!. A big moment (in my humble opinion) in daddyhood. I’m happy to report that she’s all clean, smells great, and is dressed like a princess! However … it seems that for everything that went well … there was something that went astray as well. My daughter and I made it ¾ of the way through the bath before she started to cry. The final ¼ was heart breaking though. Once I brought her down to see her Mama my wife and I noticed that at some point during the shower she managed to shed a wack load of hair! Did I scrub too hard or does she just take after her father. So the mystery still remains .. we started the bath with hair intact and we finished the bath with a lot less hair and a slightly dry scalp. Grovvydaddy is still learning!

The Money Hunt

2007-03-10T23:28:00.000-05:00

So here’s the thing … the lifestyle that I envision for my family and I is one rich in experiences where money is not the limiting factor for us. I see trips to exotic locations, dinners in fine restaurants with remarkably interesting people, beautiful homes scattered around the world, yachts and fine cars, clothes that turn head, and a bank account that commands respect.

Enter reality. Oh cruel reality. Well, life isn’t quite like that … at least not yet. My wife and I are currently getting use to an adjusted income while she is on maternity leave. We’ve made it game to scour the weekend newspaper and seek out coupons and plan our Saturdays around saving pennies here and there. We’re not sure if we’re quite winning the game, but we’re doing our best to enjoy the experience. I figure that if we can optimize our spending now, then when my wife goes back to work and we return to a full income then we should be sitting pretty (well kinda). I’m also taking this year as a challenge my own entrepreneurial resourcefulness. Each week since my daughter was born, I’ve been spending time looking for new creative ways to make money for us. This is a game that I really do enjoy and I hope to be able to do some amazing things in the near future. My goal is pretty simply:

1. Find 1 new service that I can offer to the marketplace
2. Find 1 new product that I can offer to the marketplace
3. Actively invest in the stock market.

The first two goals are going ok, as I’m in discussions with some people now and hope to find some interesting services and products to add to my signature over the coming few months. The stock market is a different sorry though. I guess you could say that I’m the ‘preparation phase’, as I’ve cracked open my old finance and investment textbooks from business school and have indoctrinated myself the teachings of Ben Graham, Warren Buffet, and . … yes ... Mr. Jim Cramer (Boooya!). . I guess the biggest challenge for me at the moment, is that I lack the capital to really get going and every time I start thinking about taking a position in the market, I start considering the opportunity cost of investing versus spending on my wife and daughter. So at this point in time, I think I’m heading in the right direct by developing my investment strategy and waiting until I get some extra coin together (hopefully generated from my new services and products) before I invest. I can’t wait to move from the virtual stock market that I practice with into the ‘real world’.

I imagine that others father who want to provide for their families think about similar visions and goals. I guess it’s the old ‘provider mentality’ that lurks deep within each of us that is responsible for this drive. So I’m raising my glass to any father who shares my challenges and goals and hopefully we all find the success we want (however we define it)!

Cheers,
the groovy daddy

PS. If any of you have any thoughts or ideas ... I’d love to hear from you.

An Inconvenient Truth - A wake up call

2007-03-05T21:43:00.000-05:00

Last week, between diaper changes, my wife and I watched Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. I must give a ‘high five” to Mr. Gore and his crew for creating such a thought provoking documentary. It truly is worth seeing ... actually I'd go so far as to say it is worth buying the DVD. If you haven't seen it and are interested you can check out the trailer for this 'fab' documentry.

This movie awoke a true sense of stewardship within me that I can’t seem to shake… yes I know that sound cheesy … but it is true. I think the reason that the Inconvenient Truth resonated so deeply with me is that I realized for the first time that the earth that I’ve grown up with for the past 30-something years will be profoundly different when my daughter Nèa is my age. Wow! This thought disturbs me greatly and I decided that I need to soften my footprint on the world and have made a promise to myself and that I will do a minimum of one thing each day to soften my footprint on our Earth. I figure that this commitment can be one of the greatest gifts that I give to Nèa because as the soulful John Mayer swings “Waiting for the world to change” may not help any longer, I need to help make the change.