Wi Fit party helps dystonia?

Frankly before I went to the Wi Fit party, I regarded Wii Fit as a bit of joke.  My husband showed me the Wii Fit parody.   "Wii Fit...a little plastic thing you stand on" "Don't want to invest $3.19 for a hula hoop,  why not pick up a Wii for just $300, and enjoy the same fun.. without that annoying plastic hoop?"

But hey, if Nintendo and City Mama offers me free food and drinks and a moms night out, I'm game..literally.   I bought a Wii from going to her last Nintendo Wii party. 

The party started out a bit nervously as the Nintendo folks demonstrated the body check.  Okay they picked the skinniest mom in the room whose BMI was listed as underweight, but looking around, I thought few would volunteer for that part. 

Then it was on to various "Balance Games" We started with the ball game.  It sounds simple enough.  You shift your weight around to tilt a surface and move a ball into a hole.  Then you get more balls and more holes.  I could see it would improve my balance, because I was concentrating on moving the ball rather than on what I was doing with my body.  I did quite well in that game.  Okay not greatest game ever, but considering that I was improving my balance, it was not a bad way to do it.

The Wii Fit also liked how I performed a yoga position. Now that was a joke, because due to my disability, dystonia, I kept jerking and the little bubble that showed your center of balance kept shifting.  Still I got 3 out of 4 stars.  I don't do much yoga in real life due to my jerking, and I don't think I'll be doing Wii Fit Yoga again. 

I enjoyed more a silly game where you're a Mii (a Wii version of a person) dressed in a penguin suit and you're on a iceberg and balance from side to side and catch fish.

I also enjoyed Slalom where like in real life you have to shift your weight from side to side to move your skiis. I was atrocious and big red FAILED showed on the screen.  For the ski long jump if you fail your Mii tumbles over and over in a big snowball.

I pondered whether the decision to keep the decidedly Japanese culture of winners and losers was a thought-out marketing decision, or simply a direct translation of the game from Japan as I watched women down Odwalla shots.  Now Odwalla makes you feel good.

I decided to play a "Fitness game." or "Step on the white thing"
according to the parody.  I know some geeks who use Dance Dance Revolution as exercise.  As the parody suggests, it was far slower which is good for a klutz like me, but also far less interesting.  The characters were all Miis and the music unvarying Ninetozak.  If you've played Donkey Kong or any Mario game, you've heard this music a thousand times.  I doubt I'd get up off the couch to step on the white thing.

I also glimpsed at the jogging game with its atrocious graphics, but I couldn't watch it for long.  According to Beth, it takes your heartbeat, but so does a cheap heart monitor.  Another mom commented "I hate annoying guy waving at you" [when you jog]

I still didn't like the hula hoop.  I never could hula as a kid and the
game mechanics proved even more awkward than doing it with a real hoop.

Proper body balance improves health and longevity and I used to literally lose my balance and fall down.  I now have a service dog who helps me with balance. 

I got home and talked it over with my husband.  He said the Wii Fi will be about $90.  That's cheaper than a physical therapy appointment or a course at the chiropractor.  If the Wii Fit does improve my balance, it will be worth it. 

In terms of cardiovascular exercise, the Wii Fit pales in comparison to the shiny metal of standard gym equipment, but then so many Americans need to just move every day.  Maybe moving on a white plastic thing as part of a game will help.

HP Hero

My husband's HP recovery disks just arrived via Fedex priority overnight for FREE.

Maybe they can help save my laptop. But I'll need to wait to find out. Little T just got home and I have even bigger news.

Shame on you, Sony!

Dear Sony,
Yes it's true I broke my hard disk. Yes, it's true I didn't make recovery disks as you instructed me to do.

However I broke my hard disk because I thwacked it due to my disability. I don't expect you to pay for that. However I don't understand why you place your hard disk right on the top right edge. You could have placed your tiny hard disk in a location a lot less likely to be damaged. I've had 4 laptops in my time and hit each one of them and never broke a hard disk before including the first one ever invented.

But your worst sin is charging me almost $50 for recovery disks that cost you less than $5 to make and ship to me. It is usurious. If you charged me a reasonable price, I would not complain. And you have me up a creek. It's either cough up $50 or buy another laptop.

Shame on you Sony for taking advantage of me in my time of need.

Shame, shame Sony!

Your rival HP sent my husband recovery DVDs for free. It's true that the recovery program didn't work and HP only allows you to make one copy. Even so, it illustrates how little recovery disks cost.

I was a big fan of your VAIO laptops, but after this experience I will probably NEVER buy another Sony laptop.

Sony, you have gained $50, and lost thousands and thousands of dollars from me. I purchase laptops every few years for the rest of my life, which I hope will last for several more decades.

Your practice of charging insane amounts for recovery disks is not only shameful, but also bad business.

Stupid and shameful Sony!

Stay-at-home server not appropriate for kids

Microsoft has hit back at the funny Mac/PC ads with its own web site stayathomeserver.com

The ads are funny, but also touch on a few more important Mom issues like the decision to stay at home being wimpy.  I am a stay-at-home mother. Ironically we have a Microsoft work server at home.  My husband works one day a week at home.

However the ads and the website mention little about security, my chief concern.  Due to my concerns about my children's safety, the Microsoft Media Server sits in our bedroom.  This is not my place of choice.  It's rather noisy.  It turns on at random times in the night.  My husband talks about tuffing it out to the study where our other servers live, but I refuse.  Microsoft has always had a poor record of security and in its line of media it's awful. 

I have no idea about the server's "parental controls" which I don't believe in anyway since that depends on others to tag videos. Worse, there's little control over what appears on the screen. Take the video section. It displays random videos from the Internet. That's fine except for this "feature" C and I will watch a funny video of a baby or a kitten. Okay the humor comes from bad behavior, but it's a baby or kitten. Unless we're very quick to stop it, the Media Center then randomly shows us another humor video. As you can imagine humor on the Internet varies a great deal in taste and appropriateness for children. The next video may be an adult farting, because the previous video was about a baby making silly noises. Sorry Microsoft, NOT the same thing. My daughter just turns away and says "Ewww gross!!!" No harm done. But we have not ventured forth into more potentially more dangerous areas.

My daughter loves to watch YouTube Videos. But I can preview the video ahead of time and it never plays a video unless I specifically tell it to. Yes the world of YouTube is filled with videos not appropriate for a 5 year old, but it's also filled with touching videos of puppies and kittens and assistance dogs. As I prepare to bring an assistance dog into my own life, I want to show her what these amazing animals do. I recently and wrongly used the word "comfort dog" to describe dogs that bring comfort to those who are ill or suffering. My friend snickered loudly. I can only imagine what would happen if my daughter unsuspectingly typed in those words into Microsoft's server. So the server is staying in our bedroom. A work server at home and unfortunately not appropriate for kids.

Crossposted to Silicon Valley Moms Blog

WII Games my kids love and hate

Since I obtained a WII through my blog connections, I figured it was only fair to blog about it.

• Super Mario Galaxy - my daughter is amazing at this game
  

C hates it, so we bought him some Orange Box thing - the best value in videogame history it touts. So far it seems to me like Half Life whose name I only remember, because it's a fun name for a first person shooter game

• Lego Star Wars - still going strong though I bought it for them as my birthday gift near Thanksgiving. They laugh and laugh at this game. They never tire of the jumping and running around. My husband is amused by the Star Wars story.
  
• Guitar Hero though they both love to watch it, not play it.
• Boogie - thought it's not so fun for me, because I have to sing "Doncha" over and over and over again. I wish WII would come out with a real karoke game.
  
• WII Sports - a surprise one, but my son still loves the fishing game and sometimes the shooting game, though sometimes he says it's too scary.

Failures

• Cars - The voices and animation and crazy driving held my boy's interest for a while, but after a couple weeks he stopped asking to play it. It's not interesting enough to hold adult interest and he still needs an adult to play with him.
• Zelda - "Too scary" say both of them, though they happily watch the Lego figures blow apart. My husband likes it, but not enough to play it when they're not around.

Crossposted to my LJ.

The Newshour in HD brings me joy

I got an email last night from KQED that McNeil Lehrer...sorry.The Newshour with Jim Lehrer will be in HD starting 12/17. This makes me far more excited than it should.

C says "it's not like broadcast news where they have sexy anchors." Do I really want to see Jim in high definition detail? I do. Real news is not pretty or glamorous. It's like Jim, who's been around the world.

Happy Holidays, Jim. Please don't feel you need extra makeup or anything. We love you the way you are.

Don't you love when they change things w/o telling you

Well LJ has been sold to Russia which they did announce. But it seems like Google decided to enforce a stricter password scheme without telling anyone. Just one day I couldn't log in. Grrr.

Nerdy giving

I love Free Rice. Maybe it's because I achieved the maximum score of 50 and gave 570 grains of rice to UNICEF.

When I think about it, 570 grains is a pittance, but I loved playing the game. It filled me with nerdy joy, and I even learned a couple words too. I believe this is the first time my large vocabulary has directly resulted in doing good. I'm working on doing it both more indirectly, but today with both kids home from school on holiday is not a writing day for me.

Steps for Little T one huge victory

Little T can climb up and down the steps of his school bus by himself. His preschool teacher says she has worked with him on steps everyday. How she accomplished this miracle I don't know since in therapy sessions it has been difficult to say the least. Picture a screaming boy at the top of our stairs. Bribes offered and refused. Lots of "No" screamed loudly.

No screaming at school. But then it's hard to refuse his teacher anything. She makes it all sound so sweet and reasonable.

It looks like Special K will be a Daisy Girl Scout if we can find one more girl in the entire school to join the troop.

I really like being able to walk to Longs. I'm still perhaps a bit overly excited to have a Longs in my neighborhood. I think it brings back childhood memories of biking to Longs as a child and Longs was this wonder store full of delights like candy and Merlin the electronic game that all the kids wanted and amazingly my parents bought.

Borrowed happiness with money

Rob Brezsny wrote once "Money can't buy you happiness but it can let you borrow it for a while while you figure out to get it for free."

Yesterday we bought me a shiny new laptop. See how it shines. Sturdy magnesium chassis a label stuck next to the touchpad reads. No shiny. Sturdy too.

I used to use my husband C's laptop but its power supply keeps dying and usually it's dead just when I have an hour to write. I must confess that 80% of my writing has been writing stuff for Little T and I mean letters to bureaucrats and doctors on his behalf. The other 20% is blogging. The only way I seem able to write these days is to leave the house entirely away from the numerous Little T letters that keep wanting to be written.

Once away other things ask to be written but I have no laptop. I need to rewrite my picture book. And I have a novel but I have not actually worked on enough to know what is yet. Just who the characters are.

My nonfiction book sits there waiting impatiently to be finished but I tell it that I just can't. We're back in hospital hell. And the book revisits hospital hell in graphic detail. "More fuel for me" the book says in the candid tone it is written. "I think I have enough material and I need a bit more distance." But it will get finished. I just need. Well I'd like to just get the hell out of the hospital.

Tomorrow we will literally spend all day in the hospital with our son who has been deliberately kept awake. Tests will be run. It will probably be hellish. The only bright spot in this otherwise dismal day will be the arrival of our WII. Oh and we bought WII play yesterday and we'll buy another WII game. Ye gods I had no idea these video games systems were so expensive.

Little T turns three next month. For the first time ever we have bought one of those party packages at a party place. Money buys me time and the party we had at the place for bigger kids made Little T happy. It's also a celebration that Little T can actually go to such places.

I also bought a package for Special K for April. She wanted one this year but by the time Little T was clear to attend such places the place was fully booked.

We also test drove a Honda Odyssey and Toyota Sienna. So clear who wins. It's our bid to trade money for the ability for me to drive again. We'll see if it works.

So I'm doing my part to keep the US economy afloat.

And I hope it lets me borrow some happiness for a while. But I would trade it all for better health for Little T. Unfortunately that I can't seem to buy.

The Kims could have been my family

Last night I saw the news that James Kim died of hypothermia.  With a sudden shock, I realised "I know that guy!"  I wracked my brain.  Then like a true geek, I used google.

James Kim was a senior CNET editor.  He appeared on my Tivo every week explaining the latest digital audio gadgets.  His eyes lit up and he smiled when he showed something he thought was particularly marvelous.   I will miss him.  I watched him both because I really want an IPod and because he was cute.

I had heard there was a family that was lost in the Pacific Northwest.  I didn't really pay much attention.  I broke my toe ten days ago and I've been craving more mindless entertainment.  I didn't expect to actually recognise the guy.

I know that James Kim left the car to help his family.  I could see that James Kim was clearly an intelligent man.  He and his family were very resourceful in their efforts to survive for a week with no food and no emergency supplies.

It made me realise that the only thing currently in my car is a basic first aid kit, a small water bottle and some jumper cables.  Before we drive in snow, I'll buy some space blankets (very small and cheap), some flares and a few emergency food rations (again they're small).  I already have my earthquake survival kit at home that fits in a backpack.

It's hard to write a post like this without sounding like I'm blaming or criticizing James Kim.  I'm not. In fact when I was about nine, my own family narrowly escaped Kim's fate of dying by hypothermia.  They hiked down Grand Canyon without correctly estimating how long it was until sunset. My mom tripped on a rock and hurt her leg, which further slowed them down. They wound up hiking on very narrow trails with no flashlight. They too got lost. They also got very cold.  Luck saved them.  Their wrong trail eventually led to a road.

I think that lesson didn't quite sink in because it had a happy ending.  I will learn from James Kim and be more prepared, because you never know when you may get stuck in a very bad situation.

Top Ten Signs My Kids Love Silicon Valley

Top Ten Signs My Kids Live In Silicon Valley, my second post on Silicon Valley Moms Blog.

10. My 4-year old daughter says, "I can speak Spanish" and says a Spanish word. We're not a bilingual family nor does she attend a bilingual preschool.
9. My daughter takes her own pictures with our digital camera.
8. My daughter asks me, "Why don't we order that on Amazon?"
7. My 2-year old son's playgroup is coordinated entirely via email.
6. My daughter asked, "Is the opposite of ok 'cancel'?"
5. When I asked "Do you know the recycling song?" on the playground, the kids knew several different recycling songs and sang them to me.
4. My daughter sent her first email at 3 years old and received her first email at that age too.
3. I first discovered my daughter could read when she read words on a video game.
2. My daughter says, "Let's go out for sushi."
1. My daughter says, "I need to go do my work" and goes and types on her own laptop (an old IBM Thinkpad) given to her by her dad.

The Boob Tube

For a few years of my life, the boob tube was literally the boob tube as it was the only thing I could do while breastfeeding. Yeah breastfeeding is supposed to be this magical bonding thing between mother and child and it is for the first five minutes. However if you're fortunate and your child is healthy, your child then breastfeeds for another 15-20 minutes. There's only so long even the most adoring mother can stare at her baby's guzzling mouth and the back of her baby's head. My babies never let me read, so I turned to tv. Now I turn to tv at the end of a long day. I have talked to C. I'm tired. My brain is full. I'm still too keyed up to sleep. Here's six shows I watch.

• Veronica Mars - If you're not watching this show, and love intelligent drama, you should be. It's hard to find strong female characters anywhere on the tv landscape. Well, here you have one in the title character. Film noir meets California high school drama. Veronica is a tiny blond bombshell who's not afraid to use her sex appeal or her smarts to solve mysteries or deal with jerks in high school. The disturbing and intricate mysteries involve murders embroiled with local town politics and teen angst. Veronica has a quirky offbeat sarcastic humour and so does the show. My main beef with the show is there are hardly any Asian Americans in Veronica's town, supposedly a rich town in Southern California, surely a mecca for certain types of Asian Americans. And pretty silly of the producers to miss a key demographic.
  
  
• Six Feet Under (on DVD) - The only show I know that features a gay couple like any other couple with their problems and heartwarming moments, not as a joke or the stereotype. I fell further in love with the show when it had an episode with Susie Bright. Some folks criticize the show, because at the beginning of the show, someone always dies, sometimes in silly ways, sometimes banal, sometimes shocking. The writers research and draw these vignettes from actual deaths. People die every minute and in all sorts of ways. Life doesn't stop being weird and funny because death is involved. I discovered this show a year ago and I found myself watching this show when things were really bad. I found it comforting not in a schmaltzy tv sort of way, but because it's the only show I've seen that understands grief. How grief can make you laugh inappropriately, trust inappropriately. How you can go along seeming fine, but grief catches up with you later. It's not a linear process. This show even has an Asian character. Woo hoo!
  
  
• House - The medical details on this show don't bear too close scrutiny, at least not the one time I looked, so pretend they don't matter. They're all supposed to be medical conundrums. I just accept them as given. Anyway it's not about that. It's about House, a misanthrope doctor who professes to hate patients but loves a good puzzle. He has one friend, an oncologist, but otherwise browbeats and insults the rest of his team who stay with him, because he's brilliant and right most of the time. He's so mean and unhappy, because he hates himself and self medicates with drugs. Because of his drug addiction, other doctors missed the fact that House's own leg had muscle death and he now walks with a pronounced limp. With a bad actor, this could be an awful show, but Hugh Laurie pulls it off. And you're sucked in wondering watching him take slow halting steps between self destruction and saving himself.
  
  
• Jeeves and Wooster - Hugh Laurie used to play his complete opposite, Bertie Wooster, a English upper class twit with lots of friends who got in silly meaningless misunderstandings. Also utterly captivating and so is his very proper and very clever butler Jeeves who quotes Pope and gets Wooster and his friends out of their mad cap schemes with quiet efficiency. He also brews a good cup of tea and makes a wonderful cocktail for a hangover. Who wouldn't want a Jeeves in their life? Never mind he's a servant. In this show he loves it.
  
  
• Daily Show with Jon Stewart - If you don't know about this show, I don't know which rock you've been hiding under.
  
  
• The Simpsons - Somehow this show manages to be funny even how after all these years. Occasionally it misses, but I have to say I laugh almost every episode.
  

There's more, but my mind wandered off. I do like my tv, but in small doses unless I'm sick or I really really need to escape from real life.

Still sick and playing World of Warcraft

Sorry for the silence. Christmas was somewhat stressful, but it's over now. We're still all sick. I'm in danger of developing a sinus infection, so I've been getting steamed four times a day at the suggestion of my doctor. You pour boiling water into a bowl, stick your face over the bowl, cover your head with a towel and then breathe in the steam for five minutes. He also told me about Mucinex. I didn't know they had time-release tussin. It's improved my life a great deal. I originally went to the doctor to get cough medicine with codeine, but I ended up only needing it one night so far.

C plays World of Warcraft with a hunter character. Special K and I watch. Special K likes the hunter's pet bear and killing the animals. Special K says "You can make different faces and dress them up." i.e. play different characters, usually dwarves or gnomes, little people. She kills lots of animals. She makes them jump and dance. She also enjoys making the hunter jump and run around in circles. She finds new and interesting ways to get the hunter killed like running the hunter into the loch and getting eaten by the loch ness monster. I like the hunter, because she lives off the land skinning animals. C likes exploring the world and solving problems that don't involve work or Little T.

Star Trek: New Voyages

I'm surprised I didn't learn about this before, but I haven't read much buzz about Star Trek New Voyages

You download it off the Internet for free, so it's a true labor of love. The sounds and music of the original Star Trek are reproduced faithfully and the same characters are portrayed by different actors who act in the same style as the original series as well. I waffle whether I find this charming or annoying. The special effects rival a decent video game. Gene's Rodenberry's son has given this effort his seal of approval during the filming of the second episode, so it carries the Star Trek name.

I watched "In Harm's Way", the second episode of two. The first episode was their pilot. This episode is a flying cowboy episode with lots of shooting spaceships and tricky maneuvers. Kirk doesn't get a girl. My favourite episodes were when Spock gets the girl. However the episode featured twists and turns, solid problem solving from Spock and the usual death defying stunts from Kirk. Unfortunately the writing suffered somewhat from what I call "fanboy syndrome". It required a detailed understanding of the episodes "Doomsday Machine" and "The City on the Edge of Forever". I had seen both episodes years ago, but I'd forgotten the details, so I was quite lost until C explained things to me. So if you don't remember these episodes, I recommend watching them beforehand or reading an episode summary.

It did make me appreciate how hard it must be to write tv scripts. I never get lost watching Star Trek episodes. Somehow they remind me of backstory without hitting me over the head too much, or losing me.

However the next episode due in 2006 was written by DC Fontana who wrote several scripts for the original Star Trek and several books. And I expect it will be fun and interesting.

I encourage any and all Star Trek fans to download the episode, or at least visit the site. I truly think it's a worthy effort and represents what I love best about the Internet.
Live Long and Prosper!

TV my drug of choice

I confess tv is my drug of choice when life is stressful. When things are bad with Little T, I watch a lot of tv. In the hospital, at home holding him being human pillow. When life gets too overwhelming and talking about it just won't help, I watch tv.

As drugs go, it's wonderful. It lets you forget about life for a while. It relaxes you. It produces a trance like state similar to that found in a good narcotic. Then you can turn the damn thing off,and except for having wasted some time, there are no side effects. And you might even learn something.

The righteous parents who decry how tv rots children's brains must have forgotten how much tv they watched as kids. The studies that show kids IQs dropping or speech delays with a few hours of tv a week seem extremely flawed to me. They are often based on self-reported data. Sure if you sit your child in front of the tv all damn day, their brain will rot. Not necessarily because of the tv watching, but because kids need stimulation besides tv. Or maybe the parents of kids with problems sit them in front of tv because they don't know what else to do with them. These parents will probably not admit in a survey that their child watches tv all day. Instead they'll respond a few hours a week like the rest of us.

Both my children watch tv as part of a balanced diet of activities. Special K also eats candy as part of a balanced diet of food. I feel sorry for those kids who never get to watch tv. I regard them the same as the child who never got to eat candy growing up. She was always sneaking candy, because it was this forbidden treat. Once your kids go to school, you can not escape tv or candy, so you may as well teach your kids to be responsible consumers.

Spoons, the perfect radio station, Baby E

spoon story from Shadesong to describe folks who live with chronic illness or debilitating disabilities. When I was pregnant with Little T, when I was healing from Little T's traumatic birth, I guess I had fewer spoons. Though the analogy isn't quite fluid enough to really work for me personally. Ironically I'm too tired to think of a better one, except a battery though that's hardly original. Any thoughts?

I've been searching for a radio station that I can customize and actually works. That perfect match. Looking for a girl like you to come into my life, Pandora Maybe you're the one I've been searching for all my life! Thank you Neil Gaiman!

Julie produced this wonderful spoof of a Baby Einstein video. Even if you're not a parent, I think you'll find it funny.

Little T speaks

Little T's smiling and scooting again. I feel such joy that I'm starting to have my son back.

He says "gah" a lot. Gah means something in Little T language, because it has many intonations, but I just don't get what it means. I asked him yesterday if he wanted a bottle and he said "yeah." I haven't heard any more intelligible words since. The previous word I heard was "bye" on Thursday though C says he said other words to him. Little T now has a vocabulary of four words: hi, bye, no, and yeah. However he says at most one word a day, so nobody but C and I know he can talk. When Special K knew four words, she said them over and over to anyone who would listen. The entire world knew she could talk. She had one Special K word "meh", but she kept saying it until C and I got what it meant -- food. It's such a contrast.

I took a few days off. Kinda hard to write when you have to hold a baby. Also Special K is having regression problems i.e an accident once a day usually accompanied by crying. I guess it's to be expected. This is the first time she's had any real problems, but it's also the first time Little T's been sick and not gone to the hospital and she's older now and perhaps better able to understand. So I've been holding her a lot too. A friend's taking her on a special outing tomorrow, which I hope will help.

But I started writing again yesterday. My non-fiction book's at 21,205. I'm hoping to have my book proposal done by Thanksgiving, but it may be unrealistic given how much baby and child holding still remains in my future.

If you enjoy the show Lost, you may enjoy this Lost Rhapsody.

Training Dumb machinery

Little T. is sick. I'm trying to dictate to my word document and it's making a total mess of what I'm saying. Kerensa is crying in the background. not sure what she's crying about exactly, but she's sitting on the floor crying. It has been a very long weekend. We had a delightful time last night at the fondue party, but that's now distant memory

Here's what Microsoft made of it:

Little tea is set and trying to dictate to mind word document and is making a total amounts of what I'm saying Kerensa is crying in the background not sure what she's crying about exactly what she's sitting on the floor crime has been a very long weekends we had a delightful time last night's at the forum to 40 that's now distant memory

Mediamonkey makes me happy

My mediamonkey playlist got me back in the writing groove. I'm up to 18,690 words. I'm 60 words away from rewriting my book proposal.