Fighting lice in Vancouver
.29.4 | No Comments »
April 29th, 2008 by Alex
We knew this day would come. Lice...yuck!
As we struggle to contain the lice outbreak on our kids' heads, we share the following resources and insights:
- Think carefully before using pharmaceutical lice remedies like Nix. They are based on a natural derivative from chyrsanthemums, but that doesn't mean they are necessarily safe or effective. At the very least, you may find that your household gets MORE itchy before it gets LESS itchy. (That's how it worked over here.)
- Don't just treat your household. Ensure your daycare or school CAREFULLY examines all kids' heads, and commits parents to treating kids with lice or nits.
- Educate yourself. The most detailed resources we've found are at http://www.headlice.org
- Spring for the fancy tools. The plastic lice combs that come with most lice treatment products don't begin to do the job. The tea tree oil-based Lice Stop product available at natural health stores contains a much better, metal comb; you can also buy a higher a quality comb from your pharmacist.
- Expect to spend a lot of time and money solving the problem. We're currently spending 2-3 hours per night going over each head with a finetooth comb; and we've already spent $100 having bedding and clothing laundered after we ran out of hot water. (To kill lice, you have to use HOT water and HOT dryer heat.)
- Consider getting professional help. We've just called in the pros at http://www.lice911.ca to make sure we get the job 100% done.
- Build lice checks into your routine. We realize our little one has likely had this problem for a while. If we'd been doing weekly lice checks, we could have tackled this problem much earlier, and had an easier time of it. From now on, we're doing weekly checks on each kid.
- Whatever you do, don't blog about your family's lice. It will only lead to trouble. I'm just sure of it.
New look & feel, kind of almost there
.23.3 | No Comments »
March 23rd, 2008 by Alex
The new and much improved look of my blog is based on the blog style template at Open Designs, created by fellow-Canadian Collin Grasley. Rob hacked it into Wordpress-iness for me, a process that’s still being debugged.
Open Designs is a very cool site that offers more than a thousand different blog and website looks, all available for repurposing. Once we finish adapting the theme to Wordpress, we plan on repaying the open source goodness by contributing the Wordpress version to the Wordpress theme garden — if that’s ok with Collin.
Please standby while this leopard changes its spots
.22.3 | No Comments »
March 22nd, 2008 by Alex
We’re retheming alexandrasamuel.com tonight. Could get funky, people!
Change the web, change the world
.19.11 | No Comments »
November 19th, 2007 by Alex
How we perceive technology has a lot to do with how we use it. I've recently written a blog post that talks about how we can personally use the web to support social change. In Five ways to shape the soul of the Internet, I argue that
The social value of the Internet is determined by how each and every
one of us uses the Internet as a communications medium, social space
and support tool. How we experience the Internet in our daily lives --
whether we experience it as a dehumanizing void in which e-mail
replaces face-to-face interaction, or as a meaningful community in
which we discover new commonalities and connections -- is a choice we
make every day, with every message we send or browser page we load.
Those choices can add up to personal and social alienation, or personal
and social transformation.
Vendetta of the month: Christmas (cancelled)
.6.11 | No Comments »
November 6th, 2007 by Alex
This month’s vendetta: Christmas. Why Christmas? The fact that my Christmas vendetta has to begin on November 6th should say it all. This holiday could be the poster child for scope creep. It starts out as a nice little religious holiday, sing some songs and have a big meal with your friends, and now it’s an entire season.
And what is the season about? Shopping. OK, shopping and drinking.
Normally, I am all for shopping and drinking. In fact, I like to start by having a drink to lower my inhibitions about maxxing out the Visa card, get a few hours of hours of shopping in, stop for another drink to get my second wind, and then keep on shopping until I hit that limit.
The problem with Christmas is that it makes it virtually impossible to achieve this shopping-drinking synergy. The stores are so crowded that you need your edge if you’re going to elbow your way into the store, clobber your way to the must-have-under-the-tree toy, and drag yourself all the way to the cash register. And as we all know, alcohol takes the edge off.
But you know where alcohol doesn’t take the edge off? Your office Christmas party. Office party booze actually puts the edge back on. By my fourth crantini I’m really worried about what I said to the client who just asked me a question about that thing we did with the whaddyacallit. By the fifth crantini I’m ready to gnaw my way out of the bar, if only to ensure my colleagues won’t have another chance to YouTube me singing “One Night in Bangkok”.
If the shopping and drinking were the whole Christmas drama, I might be prepared to charge up my Visa, water down my vodka, grit my teeth and coast through to December 26. But there are a thousand other little nightmares along the way. The Christmas muzak piped through every orifice of every building in the western hemisphere. The tedious heartwarming Christmas movies, TV shows and ads that occupy every screen in your field of vision. The Christmas dinner where you seat someone new in the seat that used to belong to Uncle Quentin, who was noisy and rude and you never really liked, until he divorced your Aunt Nina and now that there’s someone else in his seat you actually kind of miss him. And now, thanks to the joys of parenthood, the lobbying campaign that begins in mid-October for the Glow-in-the-dark Lion King Princess Barbie.
Do a poll of your own and find out whether anyone you know really needs multicoloured strings of tree lights to find their way home after Daylight Savings Time ends. Or cherishes the opportunity to spend $20 on a totally generic present for an office gift exchange where everyone gets something they don’t need and gives something they wouldn’t otherwise buy.
Or ask them whether they feel that our society really needs at this moment — a moment when we’re drowning in our own excess consumption, stripping the planet of its few remaining resources, and killing each other over our ethnic and religous differences — is an extended version of a European-created religious holiday, metamorphosized into an American marketing and consumption orgy.
I make a good case, don’t I?
Sadly, I must now inform you that this month’s vendetta has been cancelled. In the face of overwhelming evidence, and upon receipt of a cease-and-desist letter from the International Conspiracy of Christmas Marketers, I have been forced to concede that this is one vendetta in which I am unlikely to prevail.
Christmas is here to stay.
This is not an unconditional capitulation, however. Christmas, I am prepared to accept your continued existence. In return, I must stipulate that the Christmas season will henceforth commence no earlier than midnight on December 22, and end no later than midnight on December 25. Any seasonal decorations, Santa sightings, gingerbread foodstuffs, red and green wrapping paper, limited edition toys, Ebenezer Scrooge references, gift shopping, Nutcracker performances, evergreen decapitation or other holiday-related activities undertaken outside of this window will be punished with mandatory consumption of an 18-month-old brandy-soaked plum cake. And no sneaking in with “season’s greetings”, “winterfest celebrations”, “Chanukah bushes” or the like.
Yes, it will be three days of sheer hell — think, 72 hours of shopping fuelled only by eggnog — but then it will be over, and we can return to our usual programming, already in progress.
For all you folks who insist — despite all ad-supported evidence to the contrary — that Christmas is actually about the spirit of giving, love, peace on earth, etc etc, I want to reassure you that neither the vendetta nor the time limit extend to any of these virtues or practices. Go ahead and have as much peace on earth as you want. Can I suggest that Iraq might be a better place to try that out than your local mall?
Ditto for love. Bring it on.Don’t feel like you have to wait until after Halloween, or American Thanksgiving, or whatever. In fact, go for a 365-day-a-year love party, if you want to.
As for giving, again, I’m all for it. And since you need to have a target for all that spirit of giving stuff, let me volunteer my services as a recipient. But just to keep you safe on the whole Christmas spirit front, let me encourage the giving to focus on ethically produced, sustainably harvested, and ideally handmade products. I’m still looking for someone to knit me a black cardigan.
The joys of excel
.18.9 | No Comments »
September 18th, 2007 by Alex
I've tried a lot of financial management programs, but nothing beats the simplicity of an excel spreadsheet.
The joys of excel
.18.9 | No Comments »
September 18th, 2007 by Alex
I've tried a lot of financial management programs, but nothing beats the simplicity of an excel spreadsheet.
A beacon to find your life path
.7.8 | No Comments »
August 7th, 2007 by Alex
OK, I'm cheating a little here -- I already love my work a lot of the time. But recently I connected with someone who is helping our company bring its work into even closer alignment with our values and our goals.
Alanna Fero is a career consultant and personal coach who helps people figure out how they can bring their work into alignment with their values. She knows how to bring a values-aligned career or business to life -- to get from aspiration to vision to the nuts-and-bolts of how to get yourself from here to there.
And now she's launching a book that will make her approach accessible to a wider audience. Love Made Visible will be released on August 15. Launch details below:
LOVE MADE VISIBLE RELEASE PARTY
5:30 – 7:30pm August 15th
The Royal Vancouver Yacht Club
3811 Point Grey Road Vancouver BC (at Highbury, just west of Alma)
Book Signing, Light Refreshments & Great Networking
Please RSVP by August 12 to launch@alannafero.com
Web 2.0 and Your Organization - Event Hosted by Eventbrite
.4.6 | No Comments »
June 4th, 2007 by Alex
Accord Weather
.4.6 | No Comments »
June 4th, 2007 by Alex
Accord Weather
.4.6 | No Comments »
June 4th, 2007 by Alex
Freaky Facebook bug?
.11.5 | No Comments »
May 11th, 2007 by Alex