Vox Publica

As a busy mom of two, I like to do as much of my shopping online as possible. That can be a risk, of course, specially when buying apparel and it was one that turned out badly when I shopped from Motherwear.

I bought a nursing bra and a nursing top. The nursing bra was horrible. It was a cheap piece of crap, made from the cheapest, ugliest nylon and providing no support at all. Furthermore it was itchy and got unberable to wear after a couple of hours. Yes, I should have realized that it would suck by looking at its fabric (nylon/spandex) but I never imagined that a company would get away with selling such bad quality product $19.

I also made the mistake of not looking at the fabric of the nursing top I bought. It's nice looking but it's made of 50% polyester and the fabric is tough, non-breathable and just plain uncomfortable.

The result is that I will never shop from Motherwear again.

Camila had been suffering from painful gas for several weeks before we finally tried Dr. Brown's bottles. These bottles have a special insert that allow for air to escape while the baby is eating. My mom had strongly recommend them as they seemed to work on my niece, but I was skeptical. She was right. Since we got them last week Camila's gas has decreased significantly. She's still gassy - though now it seems most of her gas is intestinal rather than stomach - but it's nowhere as intense as it was before. Now I wish I would have bought them sooner.

Yahoo has changed its layout and it's for the worse. For some reason, they've decided to make it firefox unfriendly - many of the new buttons the site now uses are invisiable to firefox users. The RSS reader at My Yahoo also seems to have problems. *sigh*

In the last month or so we've noticed that our service from Netflix has slowed down considerably. While they used to mail us movies the same day they received them, now they wait one or two days before mailing them. My brother, also a subscriber, was so enraged by this slowdown and the inability to communicate with customer service that he canceled and join Blockbusters instead. I was reserving judgement until I decided to do a small survey on a popular bulletin board - the majority of those who responded had noticed a slow down as well. One poster said she asked customer service about it and they'd said they'd had such an increase in business that it was taking them time to adjust. Maybe, or maybe they did it on purpose. Is it a coincidence that the slowdown followed the reduction of pricing to which they were forced by competitive pressures?

A January posting at the Digital Lifestyles blog provides an answer. According to research firm SG Cowen & Co, which has been carrying out a survey of DVD postal rental services in four US markets, Netflix has reduced its service by buying less new releases and shipping less movies. This saves them money at the price of users like us.

A quick search online shows that this deterioration of service has been noticed by many users, and it's even been covered by the local news. Apparently, it is Netflix's policy to slow down shipments to heavy users, hoping they'll be driven away, no doubt. But the slowdown seems to hit more than heavy users, however.

In any case, we're considering canceling. Does anyone know of any alternatives?

BTW, their secret customer service numbers seem to be 800-279-5688 or 888-638-3549

Before Camila was born I thought I might be able to get away without buying a new stroller to accomodate my two children. We already had two stroller and a third one seemed overkill. Mika can walk quite well, and our Peg Perego Pliko has a very small platform that would allow her to ride standing up if the need be.

Things didn't turn out as planned. The platform in the Pliko is almost useless when the sit is reclined all the way, you can ride on it, but only by leaning back a great ammount. Moreover, Mika immediately declared that this was her stroller, and that she wanted to sit on it. I figured she already had enough displacement issues as it was, and it probably wouldn't help her much to be literally displaced from her stroller.

But even when I could convince Mika to let Camila ride while she woke, the logistics didn't work well. Michaela is three and convinced she must explore every single thing in her environment, from each and every parking meter and tree, to every leaf and piece of garbage in the floor, to every vegetable, animal or mineral that chances upon her path. Walking with her is a painfully slow affair, made even more miserable by Camila's general discomfort with stroller-riding and the likelihood of having her scream at the top of her lungs if we stop at all.

So by the time Camila was a few weeks old we realized we did need to get a double stroller. Several people, including my sister Kathy, recommended the sit n' stand, as a smaller, lighter alternative. The reviews of it at epenions and other websites were mixed, but I figured I'd buy a used one off craigslist and if it didn't work out, I'd sell it. So far it has been working out.

We got a pretty basic model for $45. It didn't come with the bottom basket which I've read is inaccesible when the front seat is down (as it must be to accomodate an infant seat) anyway. This is inconvenient, but we take a couple of sturdy empty bags (Mike has gotten many of these at computer conferences) that we can use to carry groceries and what-have-you. This stroller, unlike newer models, does not have the attachment to lock a carseat - but ours fits quite well, and while it's not locked in, it seems quite secure in the seat. A final problem is that the sun cover is meant for a second rider sitting down - it would be nice if it was taller and would cover Michaela while she rides standing up.

But other than that it has worked great for us. Michaela is happy to ride standing up, while when I picked her up in her own stroller she always insisted in walking part of the time, now she's happy to just ride which makes trips back and forth much quicker. It's true that in that position she can't fall asleep, and generally by the time we're headed home she's really tired, but as I say to her, it's better than having to walk.

I particularly like how easy the sit n' stroll is to steer. It's much easier than all the other strollers I've had, and I can even steer it with one hand if I have to. It does feel quite light as well, obviously less so when Michaela is on it. I've had no problems getting it over the curb and up and dow the steps at home, though I do have to face these steps straight on and make sure Camila is secured to the car seat, lest she fall down at that angle.

All this said, one of my friends has a new model (they look pretty similar) which she uses as a double stroller and she doesn't like it at all. The stroller veers towards one side and she finds it very hard to steer. Even with the two seats in the vertical position, the basket is hard to access.

So obviously this is not a product that will work for everyone, I'm happy that so far it works for me.

As for the picture, that's what Mika does just as soon as Camila shows signs of starting to cry.

These are some of my favorite internet products & services, some of which I use daily. Check them out!

Skype

A free internet telephony product that really works. I use it to call my parents in LA, and my colleagues around the world. You can also use it to call phones - rather than computers -, at very low rates. If you want to call me, my username is mlacabe.

Picasa

This is a free image editor by Google. It's great in that it's very small and it takes minutes to download and install, but it lets you do simple photo editing (cropping, red-eye correction, color correction) very quickly and easily. It doesn't have the functionality of photoshop and its folder structure is a complete and total mess, but I like it quite well, in particular when used in conjuction with:

Hello

This is a tool that helps you share your pictures with other Hello users. It's also free and extremely quickly to download and install. Picture transfer is amazingly quick and you can see what your friends are looking at. My username here is margalacabe

Craigslist

I spend way too much time at the discussion groups here, but Craigslist is most useful as a place to buy and sell anything you want, find a job, a nanny or a lead or just kill some time.

Salon

The grandaddy of the internet magazines, it's also my favorite. I love the wide range of topics and viewpoints it presents. It's well worth the $35 annual subscription.

Epicurious and All Recipes.

These two websites offer thousands of recipes with user reviews. Epicurious' recipes come from cooking magazines (Bon Appetite, Gourmet and others) while All Recipes accepts submissions from everybody. I usually have better luck with epicurious recipes, but not always. They're both worth checking out.

btefnet.net

There are many torrent sites out there and they often close as quickly as they open, btefnet has been pretty stable so far. It's for episodes of TV shows only, mostly from network TV.

Amazon

I hate being so dependent on this megahuge ecommerce site, but it's the first place I go when I want to read consumer reviews of specific products. epinions is usually the second. Amazon also has good prices and lately I've been lucky with their shipping.

Yahoo Shopping

It has thousands of small stores so it's a great place where to go for comparison shopping and where to find difficult-to-find items.

Please feel free to comment with your favorites.

I no longer travel as much as I'd like, but we still manage a trip here and there. In 2003 we went to Argentina for six weeks and last year we went to Hawaii. In planning that trip, I found Trip Advisor's reviews very useful so I decided to start writing my own hotel reviews. A few months later, Mike has returned them to me edited and they're now on the website. If you're curious, you can find them at http://www.marga.org/fun/travel/hotels/

When we went to Washington State last month I made reservations for a full-size car with Budget rent-a-car. I chose them both because they were cheap and because supposedly they were located at the terminal. It was a BIG, BIG mistake. While I was getting our luggage, Mike and the two kids (3.5 yo and 7 months) were in line at the Budget counter. They only had one person there, who worked at a pace that would have embarrassed a tortoise. Then, after half an hour in line, when he was the next person in line, she closes the counter and says he has to go downstairs. When we finally get there (with two kids, a stroller, a suitcase and a couple of car seats it took us a while), there was a line of about ten people in front of the Budget counter, and again, only person working. It was almost like a Far Side version of hell.

We quickly noticed that the other car rental company counters were pretty much empty, so I held our place in line while Mike went to see if anyone else had cars. A couple of them were out of cars, but Avis not only had them, but were willing to match Budget's price. Because they didn't have a full-size car (what I'd reserved) they bumped us up to the "mini SUV" category for the same price. That ended up being a Pontiac Vibe, a.k.a. the Toyota Matrix, a car we've thought about buying.

We loved the car and we loved the service we got at Avis. Next time we have to rent, there is no question who we will go with.

The Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego has instituted a new policy forcing housekeepers to clean 30 rooms in an 8 hour period - almost twice as many as they had to clean before. The workers are protesting, it's just not possible to clean so many rooms without compromising their health. So far Hyatt remains unmoved.

It's not surprising that Hyatt will have such disregard for its workers - but you wonder why it decides to have such disregard for its guests. A housekeeper who has ten minutes to clean a room (she will have to spen precious minutes moving her cart from room to room and fetching towells and other things) will just not be able to do a good job of it. Indeed, recent reviews at Tripadvisor show that this has indeed, been the case.

One recent guest complained about toenails from a previous guest left on the edge of the bathtub (gross!), and toilet paper, kleenex and coffee packets not being refilled. Other guests have complained about dirty sheets that are never changed and filthy bedspreads.

For more information on the protest see:

Hyatt Housekeepers United - Home

One of my favorite gadgets - indeed probably my favorite gadget, is my Rocket ebook. It's the perfect way to read a long document (and just try to read a sentence on human rights issues, they are hundreds of pages long), to carry several documents with you, without the necessity of printing them out. I hate wasting trees.

Alas, I don't think they make rocket books anymore. Indeed, I don't think they make any e-book eader anymore which is a real shame. I don't know if this is because there isn't a market for ebooks - people just prefer paper - or because people rather use their palms. Or perhaps they were just too expensive.

But I think the problem might have been marketing. They marketed these books as products to read books, not documents. If they'd done the later, they would have been able to reach the business audience. It's really a great way of reading a long document.

What I like about it is that it's backlit, it charges quickly, and the battery lasts an enormous amount of time - 20 hours, I think. The font is also quite clear and easy to read. It's a bit heavy, I prefer using it lying down or holding it on a surface, otherwise I need both hands to hold it. But all in all I love it.

I'm off to read a long document now.

So I've installed the latest Movable Type - hoping I'll be able to change the look of my blogs, but I still have to get some plug-in to do that - and I realize that I can now get subcategories as well as categories. Great, just what I need. Only problem, I don't know how to use it. *sigh* It seems I /am/ going to have to look at the manual :( Probably a good idea anyway.

Mike got me a Sony reader because it was only $100. A waste of $100 if you ask me.

The screen has so little contrast that you can barely see the text, it's not back lit, so you can't read unless there is a lot of light around, and the font size on PDF files is so miniscule even someone with 20-20 vision could not read it. In other words, the thing is useless.

My ancient rocketbook is far superior. It has a much better and brighter screen (even if more pixelated, at least you can read what's on the screen), and much easier to handle buttons. The Sony reader is lighter and has a longer battery life, but my main reason for getting it was to read PDF documents, which it apparently can't do - so what's the point?

Mattel/Fisher Price has recalled a myriad of recently sold toys because they've been painted with paint containing unacceptable levels of lead (apparently there is such a thing as paint with acceptable levels of lead, imagine that!). The products - surprise, surprise - came from China. You expect to find lead in that cheap metallic jewelry sold out of machines - we've heard about it from quite a while - but in brand-name toys? You would imagine they would have better quality standards.

We owned some of the recalled toys, those to the left, and of course Camila had already chewed on one of them. Very, very sucky.

You can check if you have any of these products at http://service.mattel.com/us/recall/39054_IVR.asp?prod=