At work yesterday, the topic of smart phones came up.  While I’m a very techy kind of person (as someone called TechyDad should be), I’ll admit to being a bit of a luddite when it comes to my cell phone.  When I get a new phone, I’m invariably asked “What do you want your phone to do?”  My answer is always “Make calls.”

This isn’t to say that I don’t appreciate the utility of other features in a cell phone.  Last year, we signed up for unlimited texting and it’s drastically changed how we handle social media.  A twitpic or tweet from the road would have been unthinkable when we were being charged for each text message we sent out.  Now, they’re commonplace.  Still, for the moment at least, we have data blocked on our phones.  (To prevent any accidental connections and charges.)

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Do you have a smart phone?  What do you use your phone for (besides making calls)?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #68

I love cooking and baking.  (Maybe you could tell from my Cooking With TechyDad posts.)  While I appreciate creating dishes from scratch, I’m not ashamed to turn to box mixes either.  So when I was given the opportunity to review Duncan Hines’ new Decadent cake mixes and glazes, I jumped at the chance.

I received the Apple Carmel and Triple Chocolate cake mixes and the Vanilla and Chocolate glazes.  The chocolate (both glaze and mix) review will appear in a week or so.  For now, I’d like to focus on the Apple Carmel cake mix and Vanilla glaze.

First some information on the cake mixes and glazes:

Duncan Hines®, the well recognized brand that has been helping families create delicious memories for 60 years, introduces the latest breakthrough in deliciousness at the baking aisle – Decadent Cakes and Glazes. Only Duncan Hines now offers the most premium, indulgent cakes that one can find outside of a bakery. Duncan Hines new Decadent Cake Line with two new incredibly indulgent offerings – Duncan Hines Decadent Triple Chocolate Cake with real chocolate chunks and rich fudge and Duncan Hines Decadent Apple Caramel cake with real apples and rich caramel. With more people entertaining at home and looking for better quality desserts, these decadent cakes are perfect. Both cakes contain zero grams of trans fat and NO hydrogenated oils. They are available in cake baking section of supermarkets nationwide in 20 oz size boxes at a SRP of $2.99.

Simultaneously, Duncan Hines launches Decadent Glazes, a one of a kind glaze designed to elevate the baking experience with a whole new way to top your desserts. Available in Chocolate and Vanilla, Decadent Glazes help home chefs create spectacular desserts with professional results. Only Duncan Hines offers this versatile topping to complement your baked goods or any dessert with a touch of sweetness and flavor. What separates Decadent Glazes from frosting is they are not as heavy or sweet as frosting and are convenient to use. These glazes are available in a 10 ounce squeeze bottle at an SRP of $2.49.

Ok, now on to the cooking.  The mix includes two components.  The normal “cake mix” portion and the caramel mix-in portion.  These were really simple to prepare.  Mix in the required ingredients into separate bowls and you’re good to go.

Notice the lumps in the cake batter.  No, I didn’t neglect to stir enough.  Those are apple chunks.  We’re not talking apple flavoring here, but actual apple chunks!

For a normal cake, the caramel would go in first followed by the apple cake mix, but I decided to make this as a bundt.  This meant mixing the batter first and then tossing it all into my bundt pan.

Baking took longer than the box said, but I attribute this to the bundt pan versus normal cake pan.  As with any mix, you should use the box listed times as guides but realize that many factors (e.g. oven temperatures) can change cooking times.  In any event, I was soon greeted with a finished apple-caramel cake.

I let the cake cool overnight and the next day it was glaze time.  I was impressed by how simple this was.  Simply remove the bottle’s cap, microwave the bottle for a short while, replace the cap and pour your glaze.  Leftover glaze (and we had lots left over) can be refrigerated for later microwaving.

Looks delicious, doesn’t it?

Here’s a slice….

… Oh, rats.  I just realized we haven’t perfected web-to-plate delivery technology.  Oh well, take my word for it, this was quite tasty.  The cake was extremely moist and the glaze was sweet but not overpoweringly so.  The cake didn’t last long at all and now I’m itching to try the chocolate ones (as I’m a huge chocoholic).  This is definitely a product I’d recommend and one I’d eat again.

Disclaimer: This post was written for Family Review Network & Duncan Hines who provided the complimentary product for review in exchange for my honest opinions.

Lately, NHL has developed an annoying habit.  He’ll pull the shirt or coat around his neck upwards and stick it in his mouth.  Once there, he will suck away at it until the front of his shirt is soaked.  We’ve had to change his shirts and he has even ruined a few outfits.  The sucking is new, but prior to this, we would catch him chewing on objects like the Nintendo DS stylus.  We tell him to stop but he’ll almost immediately begin again.

What gets me nervous is that he might be picking up a nervous habit like mine.  Confession time: I pick my cuticles.  I’ve done this for as long as I can remember.  My father used to yell at me to stop and slap my hands, but it wouldn’t help.  Almost involuntarily, my fingers would reach out to my hand to feel along the edge of my nails.  If any skin was found to be out of order, it would be pulled at until it came off.  Yes, this caused me to bleed many a time.  The bleeding was not the intended effect, of course.  My “intentions”, such as they were, were to tidy up my fingernails.

I could go for long stretches of time without picking so long as I was occupied.  If my hands were idle, though, the picking would quickly begin.  Even once I became aware of this, I couldn’t stop.  I’d hold off the urge for awhile but it would build and build until I gave in.

I didn’t even grow out of it.  Although I do this less nowadays than I did when I was a teenager, I still find myself picking from time to time.  I even carry cuticle tweezers with me to work every day.  If the urge strikes, I’d rather use the sharp metal tweezers to make clean, precise cuts rather than haphazard rips and tears which often cause bleeding.

Going back to NHL, part of me is afraid that his shirt-sucking habit will turn out to be like my cuticle-picking one.  I’m supposed to give him the tools to overcome things like this, but how can I do so when I’ve never overcome my own nervous habit?

Do you have a nervous habit?  Have you ever overcome one?  What about your children?

Things used to be so simple.  If I got a comment that was in Russian, I would mark it as spam.  If I got a comment promising me “extra inches” or “wealth”, I would mark it as spam.  If I got a nonsensical comment, I would look at the URL and, sure enough, spammy link goes in the spam bin.  Truthfully, I’d rarely mark these as spam myself.  Akismet takes care of this for me most of the time.  You get the picture, though.

Recently, though, the line between spam and normal comment has blurred.  At first, it was valid comments that appeared to somehow hijack CommentLuv.  Upon further investigation, this turned out to be spammers copying previous comments and using them for their own comments.  (Replacing the links, of course, to be their own spammy links.)  That was annoying, but once I was on to their trick they couldn’t get by me.

Now, though, the spammers have me in a quandary.  And I’m not even sure it’s spammers I’m dealing with.  You see, I’ve recently had a few comments on my blog posts that are completely on topic (referencing specific themes of my post or my kids’ pseudonyms), use proper grammar and spelling, and are (as far as I can tell) 100% original.  No copying bits and pieces to form a Franken-comment here.  This wouldn’t be a problem except that the links given trigger my internal spam-alert sirens.

Is that comment really a valid one about my blog post even if the site linked to reeks of spam?  Should I allow it to remain on my blog?  Should I take it down?  Should I remove the URL so that the comment remains but the link doesn’t?  So far, I’ve been removing them entirely, but I’m afraid of removing a valid comment from someone whose URL just looks “different.”

Have you encountered comments like this?  If so, what did you do with them?

This morning, I gave NHL two very important pieces of advice.  The first came when I talked to NHL about failure.  Lately, we’ve noticed that he isn’t trying to do things that we know he can do.  He’ll say “I can’t do it” or “It’s too hard.”  If pressed, he does the task easily.  We believe the problem is that he’s afraid to fail.

Yesterday, I was watching an online video of the Mythbusters.  They were trying to test a myth from the movie Hellboy where a speeding car has it’s hood smashed in by Hellboy and goes flipping over.  Kari, Grant and Tory were having problems as the giant metal fist they made and the SUV wouldn’t get into right position at the right time.  Suddenly, I remembered the Mythbusters motto: Failure is always an option.

On the way into school today, I told NHL about this (promising to show him the episode later on).  He remembered other episodes we saw where they tried something and didn’t get it to work.  Specifically, he recalled Adam and Jamie’s Christmas-themed Rube Goldberg device which failed in every way imaginable and a few ways they didn’t imagine beforehand.

Were the Mythbusters frustrated?  Sure.  Were they upset that it didn’t work right?  Of course.  Did they quit?  No.  I told NHL that, when the Mythbusters failed at something, they figured out what went wrong, fixed it as best they could and tried their best again and again and again.  I told him that failing at something wasn’t bad.  Everyone fails at some point in their lives.  It’s how you react to the failure that’s key.  If you cry and whine and never try again, that’s bad.  If you dust yourself off, figure out what went wrong and try again, you’re learning from your mistakes and turning the failure into something useful.

The next piece of advice came after NHL told me that a classmate of his had called him a “loser.”  This hurt me deeply.  As I’ve written about before, I was a victim of bullying for many years.  I thought back to when I was a child hearing insults be thrown my way and thinking that I had no recourse.  I tried to come up with some advice for him.  This was my advice:

Don’t listen to them, NHL.  You aren’t a loser just because someone says you are.  Don’t let their words have any power over you.  If someone puts you down or criticizes you, tune them out.  Ignore them.  Of course, if mom, dad or your teacher say you’re doing something wrong, don’t tune us out.  Pretty much everyone else can be tuned out, though, when they say negative things about you.  The most important opinion is your own.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: What piece of advice have you given your children recently?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #67

Today is the last day of Chanukah, but there’s something even bigger to celebrate.  Today is the birthday of the most beautiful woman in the world: My wife, aka B, aka TheAngelForever!

In some ways, it’s hard to believe that she’s only been in my life for 11 years.  It feels like forever… and I mean that in a good way.  I can’t imagine my life without her.  I love being around her and every day I watch the clock slowly tick until it’s “go home to see B and the boys” time.  (I love my job, but my coworkers just are no match for my family!)  I love spending lazy weekend mornings in bed with her, seeing how long we can lounge around before the boys storm the bedroom demanding breakfast.

Every day, I try to do everything I can to make her happy.  I only hope I’m making her as happy as she has made me.  She’s a wonderful mother to our kids and wife and friend to me.  Although she’ll deny it left and right, she’s also extremely sexy.  Sorry, B, but despite your protests, you are sexy and I don’t mind shouting it to the world.  MY WIFE IS SEXY!!!!!! 

Happy birthday, B.  I love you with all of my heart.

Last night was a rough night.  I was already tired from staying up too late.  So I vowed to get to sleep early.  Yeah, right.  I wound up watching TV and reading articles online until midnight.  Finally, I shut down and tucked myself in for a nice, long, uninterrupted sleep.  What was that about uninterrupted sleep?

JSL woke us up once with a coughing fit.  He and I have been having these for weeks now.  No fevers or any other symptoms.  Just really heavy, congested-sounding coughs.  And, of course, he refuses to take any medicine.  (And, of course, I keep forgetting mine.)

After the second JSL-cough-wakeup-call, I pulled JSL into our bed.  Then we had a restless sleep until around 5am when NHL woke up.  He had had a nightmare.  I encouraged him to go to the bathroom and then go back to sleep.  He woke back up (or, more accurately, shouted questions at us since we don’t think he really went back to sleep) at 5:30am, 5:45am, 6am, and 6:10am before we finally dragged our tired selves out of bed, set him up on the couch and I pulled myself into the shower to get ready for work.

Now I sit here exhausted and thinking, “I really need to get to sleep early tonight.”

Yeah, right.

Lately, I’ve noticed a trend with JSL.  If I try to explain to him what we’re going to do or why something would be bad, he asks the same question over and over: “And then what?”

To give an example from the weekend, we went shopping.  While in the fitting room with him and NHL, they began fooling around, trying to play “Hide and Seek.”  Obviously, this wasn’t a great idea.  First of all, there are no hiding places in a fitting room.  Secondly, it interfered with our getting the clothes tried on quickly.  Finally, and most importantly, hide and seek is not a game to play in stores.  It’s a thin line from a successful “hide” and getting lost.

After NHL was done trying on his clothes, he went with B while I tried on a new pair of PJs on JSL.  I decided to have a talk with him regarding hide and seek and stores.  It went something like this:

Me: “You shouldn’t play Hide and Seek in stores.  You might get lost.”

JSL: “And then what?”

Me: “And then Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t be able to find you.”

JSL: “And then what?”

Me: “And then we’d be sad.”

JSL: “And then what?”

Me: “And then you’d be sad.”

JSL: “And then what?”

Me: “And then you’d cry.”

JSL: “And then what?”

Either JSL was looking for a full story complete with “Once upon a time” and “Then they lived happily ever after” or he was trying to wear me down.  I’m not sure he got the point of our talk.  Especially when, a few minutes later, he decided to play Hide and Seek with his brother as B paid for the PJs he had just tried on.

It’s sometimes been said that the Jewish holidays revolve around food (or the lack thereof).  We eat apples and honey on Rosh Hashana, fast on Yom Kippur and don’t eat bread on Passover.  Chanukah is no different.  Since, on Chanukah we celebrate one day’s worth of oil lasting eight days, the traditional foods involve items fried in oil.  Sure, they might not be the healthiest foods for you, but potato latkes and jelly donuts are quite delicious.  We even have a sort of Christmas day food tradition.  Since they are the only places open, we go to a Chinese restaurant.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: What are your family’s food traditions for this holiday season?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #66