I track my husband. With GPS.

My husband’s commute to work is a bit brutal. He leaves the house by 5:15AM in order to beat the traffic, showers at the gym and then stays at the office until after 7pm to avoid rush-hour. On a good day, the trip takes 45 minutes, on a bad day it can take 2 hours; the difference merely due to what time he sets out.

The good part is that he loves what he does, running a staffing firm and helping people find work. The bad part is that he misses the kids (and I hope me too) a lot. Usually our kids are in bed by the time he walks in the door.  During a bad stretch, it can be 3 days in a row where he hasn’t seen them awake – and that kills him.

Between video chatting with Google’s GChat and iPhone’s FaceTime we make it work. We’ve also worked it so that he is home early for dinner with the kids twice a week and then will make up for it by doing some work on the weekends.

It works for us for now.

On those days when he sets out from the office in traffic, the kids and I track him.

With GPS.

We do.

I do it to estimate when he’s 20 minutes away so I can put the finishing touches on dinner. The kids love to track him and see ‘where Daddy is’ so they can greet him as he rolls into the driveway.

We like to joke that it’s the best Lo-Jack for your spouse.

And it’s free.

Here’s how you can do it using Google’s Latitude App:

1. Go to www.google.com/latitudes
2. Register your phone or just use it on your desktop.

Pretty simple.

Happy Tracking!

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I’m a very patient person but I may have reached my limit today.

First it was deer.  Then it was the guy at the Mexican restaurant.

Now… word verification.

Seriously?!?

I like to visit other people’s blogs and I don’t mind typing in a couple of letters so I can leave my attempt at a witty or sincere comment on their work. Personally, I totally appreciate it when someone leaves a comment on my post (hint hint hint) so I will gladly jump through this small hoop for a good post.

But today, facebook drove me off the cliff.

I wanted to share a great link with a group on facebook and before it would post, facebook asked me to “verify” these words:

I ask you… can you even read the first word? Is that an A?

If you CAN see it, do you know what it means? Abilted?

I did not.

I looked it up.

Here’s the definition:

Oh wait… IT’S NOT EVEN A WORD! I also tried ‘Abilt’ in case I was missing something. NOT A WORD.

See:

Oh and then the second word…

IS THAT UPSIDE DOWN AND BACKWARDS?????

What the heck people?

Please do me a favor facebook turn off word verification before I lose my mind. Or at least use real words.

M’kay?

Thanks,

Sara

The post Dear Word Verification. I Hate You. appeared first on Periwinkle Papillon.

SF bay area craigslist > for sale / wanted > free stuff

free iPad, iPhone and MacBook (san francisco / new york / miami)

Date: 2011-02-24, 3:26PM PST

Reply to: [email protected]

FREE – one iPhone, one iPad, one Macbook laptop and anything else with an internet connection that I can find in my house.

Available to the first responder that is unmarried and without children as I wouldn’t wish this on anyone else.

My wife and I are not on speaking terms any more. She has finally gone too far and therefore I am giving away what I think will tick her off the most. Her electronics.

She is a self-described nerd with an addictive personality.  In the early nineties, I watched her turn into a zombie when the Sims game launched. For hours she played in these reality worlds building fake cities and families. At first I thought it was hot, I mean a tall blonde chick that likes Tron and can speak geek?  But when she dissed me one night in order to install a fake power plant for her cyber city, I knew we had a problem.  I finally said something and steered her back to planning our wedding and her real job. She begrudgingly put the game aside.

Two years later, when faced with fertility problems, she again turned online and found a forum of women experiencing similar issues.  She checked in daily with these women, and told them when we “baby danced” and when her “cervical mucous” was primed.  I ignored the growing addiction that was brewing because I considered it cheap therapy that didn’t take away from my golf membership fund. Plus it was anonymous, at least I thought it was, now 5 years later apparently we exchange Christmas cards with these ‘fertility friends.’

With the birth of our daughter, my wife then discovered facebook and plastered photo after photo of our princess for the world to see.  Since nobody stopped her or said anything, she continued after our son was born. The fertility friends joined too and they continued their online therapy sessions.  I’ll admit I was kind of ok with this too because hey, our kids are pretty cute and the photos kept the extended family informed.

But recently she’s discovered blogging. She now blogs, tweets and researches constantly. It was fine when I had lost her to seasons of reality TV, like Real Housewives of Beverly Hills whose insipid heroines gab about plastic surgery and designer handbags. But yesterday was the last straw…

I came home to find that the kids had had 2 pieces of wheat bread with cheese for dinner. Not a grilled cheese, just bread and cheese.  Mommy was too busy blogging.

To say, she has an addiction is an understatement. She is wired-in, twenty-four-seven. I had to email her just so we could have this fight. It was a doozy and I’m hoping this intervention of sorts will snap her out of it. The kids are looking malnourished and I’m sick of feeling ignored.

So email me if you want all her stuff, but be forewarned, nothing is free and these electronics do come with a price.

I will deliver or ship for free.

Signed,

Disgruntled husband.

it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 223288557A

The previous was submitted as part of a writing project for the Red Dress Club.

We want you to imagine you’ve just had a fight with a friend, a co-worker, husband, significant other, child – you get the picture. You’re mad. It’s time for revenge.

What would you sell?

Write a humorous listing for eBay or Craig’s List. Talk about the history of the items, why they must go.

I couldn’t think of who to be mad at, so I decided I’d be the guilty party in this little experiment. While Alex did not really say these things, since this was the Valentine’s day card I gave him this year, which he loved, I’m guessing he would have no problem signing his name to this ad!

Whose stuff would you sell? OK no more blogging for me (for now).

The post Craigslist Ad: free iPad, iPhone and Macbook appeared first on Periwinkle Papillon.

Love, love, love these iPad cases. The first one is really up my alley!

Joy Factory’s Palette Cotton Candy Blue iPad Case – $49.95. Lots of other pretty colors available too. via coolest-gadgets

Padded Cotton iPad Case by JiuJiu on Etsy . $18.90

Wüdskins – price TBD, they are looking to be funded by Kickstarter here.

Eco Nation iPad case via UrbanOutfitters is made out of recycled plastic bottles. $9.99

iomoi customizable iPad cases. Cotton canvas on one side, leather on the other. $158.

Ori from JOBY – $79.95 via gizmodo

The post iPad cases to swoon over appeared first on Periwinkle Papillon.

Sometimes we all need to “get by with a little help from our friends.”

Let’s face it whenever big moments happen in your life, good or bad, you need your friends there.  And these days, whenever a new baby is born or word gets out of an illness, or worse – an email goes out almost immediately for all hands on deck.  Friends pull out their best casserole dishes and start cooking.  Within hours, you can have a freezer full of homemade mac n’ cheese and offers pouring in to help but with no way to keep track of them all.

Well, thank goodness we live in the platinum age of technology! There are free sites out there designed to help coordinate volunteers and make a friend’s and your life easier.

Meal coordination sites. Through these sites, for free, a coordinator invites a group of people via email (or even facebook) to sign up for pre-selected dates that a meal is required.  They are extremely user-friendly and up and running in minutes. The two sites that I highly recommend are mealtrain.com and Take Them a Meal.

Meals and More. If your friend needs more than just help with meals, there are few sites that really help you create an online community to care for them. Lotsa Helping Hands and Care Calender are two great ones.  In addition to posting needs for meals, a coordinator can request childcare, rides, playdates or anything they want. Volunteers can then view all their commitments on one calendar and receive email reminders the day before they are scheduled.

So hopefully these sites will make it easier for everyone whenever you next find yourself helping a friend out. And if you do sign up to take someone a meal, don’t forget to try foodily.com to search for a yummy recipe!

And this I just had to post here because it’s just so awesome. Enjoy!

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Is your little K-12th grader a budding Rembrandt? A potential Picasso? Then have them Doodle 4 Google and they could win a college scholarship and a $25,000 technology grant for your school!

Google is running its fourth annual drawing competition where students compete to design the website’s logo according to a theme. This year’s theme is: “What I’d like to do someday.” Cute and educational right?

So what is a ‘Doodle’?
Besides the iconic Google icon that usually is on the web, from time to time Google will replace it with a themed decoration.

You’ve definitely seen it before – you just may not always know what it’s for. Luckily, you can find a full history and description of Doodles here going back to the first one in 2000 when the founders added a stick figure to the logo to signify that they were out of the office and attending Burning Man. (Love, love, love that side note!)

Google Doodle for New Year's 2011

A 2010 winner: Grades K-3 Makenzie Melton Grade 3 El Dorado Springs R-2 Schools El Dorado Springs, Missouri

I was really impressed by the amount of supporting materials Google provides for this competition. There are great downloads and suggestions for parents and teachers to get the kids involved in this fun project.  So click here and register your budding artists today!

IMPORTANT: You have to register by March 2nd and entries must be postmarked by March 16th.  So get those kiddos Doodling!

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Time sure flieees… Facebook launched SEVEN years ago on February 4, 2004. Nuts right?

Facebook is now worth more than $64 BILLION dollars and employs more than 2,000 people.

Whether Betty White was right or not when she said on SNL that it ‘sounds like a huge waste of time’ – over 500 Million active users sign on and use their platform.

I’m one of them.

So Happy Birthday Facebook!

The post Happy Birthday Facebook appeared first on Periwinkle Papillon.

I love food. I love to cook. I love the internet. Now put those all together and what do you get? 1,000’s of websites: gourmet.com, epicurious.com, allrecipes.com, William Sonoma… it goes on and on and on. I can never remember what’s where or which one was good.

Now only if there was a way to search them all at the same time… Wait! There is!  Foodily is here!

Such a great site that allows you to search ALL the recipe sites at the same time and also share with your friends via Facebook your faves. Love it!  You can follow them on Twitter and Facebook or their blog here.

Foodily.com

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