For aspiring world conquerors everywhere

Jon and I were driving to pick up Maddox from daycare when I thought I heard Jon say “eight” and then a moment later, “seven.”

Thinking, gee, this is a weird game, but okay, I’ll play too, I started counting down from six.

From Jon’s confused reaction, I gathered that I had misheard him, and we were not in fact flexing our awesome countdown skills.

Because I figured I might as well finish what I’d started, I kept counting aloud anyway. This had an interesting effect: Jon grew progressively more alarmed with each number. I began to realize that 1) this was fun and 2) he was anticipating horrible acts when I ran out of numbers and 3) that was why it was fun.

Although I don’t want to psychoanalyze what this probably indicates about our marital relationship (if you have a hot line Jon could call, you can tweet him), I am kind of excited about the ramifications of this discovery.

I mean, who ELSE might be susceptible to this? What will happen if I start from a higher number than six? Will the increased anxiety cause people to explode? Most importantly, could you use the Countdown of Doom to take over a small country simply by implying that ominous things will occur if the clock counts down to zero?

If you think about it, LOST used a countdown to add suspense without ever explaining what would happen if the computer stopped counting down. And we all have heard a Mom disciplining her child by saying “don’t make me count to three?” God forbid she reach it, I still don’t know dire things my mother had planned.

So here’s the takeaway. I suggest that today you try counting down in front of someone, calmly but without explanation or pause. Then, let me know what happened. Please do not try this on pregnant women or people with heart conditions.

The Back Story:

It took awhile for me to trust our baby monitor. I didn’t believe that the voice-activate setting would work, and pictured my poor baby crying his head off in the other room.

Note: We live in a 2 bedroom apartment, and there is virtually no room in the house where you could not hear a baby from another room.

So, this is a post for all the other neurotic new moms out there who are worried that their baby monitors won’t actually allow them to monitor their babies.

Product Description

The Sony Baby Call Baby Monitor has three settings: On, off, and voice-active. The “on” setting is a bit much – you hear absolutely everything, and if your baby requires music or a white noise machine to get to sleep, this is not a benefit.

Voice-activate is smart enough to recognize a repeated sound, so it filters out the background noise. The sensitivity is good – it picks up our baby’s cries pretty early on, so he’s hasn’t reached the full-out “WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON” stage by the time we reach him.

The “send” half of the monitor plugs in, and the “receive” half has a detachable plug, so you can carry it from room to room. When the receiver needs to be charged, it beeps at you until you hunt down where you’ve put the plug and recharge the battery.

Price

The monitor costs $45 at Baby’s R Us, and there’s currently a 10% discount if you use the code 930851. It’s $42.50 on amazon, but then of course you have to ship it.

Either way, I think this is a fair price. You and your baby get security, the monitor lasts a long time so you can reuse this with each child you have (or give it to your sister) and you don’t even need to buy batteries.

Overall, the Sony Baby Call Baby Monitor has allowed me to sleep easier, and to stop making 3 minute check-ins when our baby is napping. Also, while letting our baby sleep in his own room is traumatic for Mom, it gives our baby quieter, less-interrupted sleep and will probably decrease the chances that I’ll need back surgery from contorting my body in weird shapes to protect him when he’s in our bed.

I hate to wait for things. I also hate to wait for people. Sometimes, when someone is explaining something, I yell at them to talk faster. I adore Jon’s Dad, because he and I can actually have conversations in which we both talk and listen at the same time. Seriously. You can quiz us afterward and we’ve processed what the other person is saying.

Once, when I was in Florida helping to create a title processor training guide for the title insurance company where I worked, in the midst of a heady brainstorming session, an exasperated co-worker cried, “talk slower!” to which I replied, completely without thinking, “hear faster!”

Everyone laughed like it was a great joke, which was fortunate, but uh, I wasn’t joking.

Anyway, I’ve finally stumbled upon a form of delayed gratification that I don’t mind, due entirely to clever marketing.

Since I live with Jon, and therefore have to keep my technological toys up to date in order to keep up with all the cool stuff he’s getting into, my laptop loads programs almost instantly. Some programs take a few seconds longer than instant, and I actually get impatient while waiting. I mean, if you’re not Adobe Photoshop, you really have no reason not to load immediately.

But one program’s load time doesn’t bother me. This is because when the program loads, the tagline is “Take a deep breath.” And I do. So, not only does that buy the program some time to load, but all that extra oxygen calms me down.

If more people incorporated sneaky relaxation techniques into their delays, it would be a different world. I mean, imagine instead of “we are experiencing technical difficulties” the announcer lead everyone in a meditative chant of “om.”

Should you attempt to take over the world, I suggest that you use this technique whenever possible. This will enable you to pacify your populace as well as to buy yourself more time to stash your treasury’s gold bars in your island slush fund. And if it’s taking you awhile to get started on your global domination, I suggest you slowly stretch your arms over your head and yawn 10 or 12 times, while taking frequent herbal tea breaks.

The History: Alleluia, Let’s Get Walking

Around 1212, a large amount of poor country folk joined up to form a mass movement of followers intending to carry out the will of God.

Depending on your source, God’s will was that they A) Bring Christianity to the Heathens Across the Water, B) Follow a Miracle Worker or C) Escort a guy named Steve on his trip to bring the French King a letter from Jesus.

Why This is Awesome

Imagine 30,000 delusional minions marching off to do your bidding. Although The Omen and Village of the Damned reduce their credibility somewhat, no one really suspects children when it comes to acts of pure evil.

True, modern accounts say that the “children” were actually just poor people of all ages (the confusion arose from a mistranslation), but either way, they were pretty gullible. The first group thought the Mediterranean sea would magically part for them and the second followed a 12 year old across France.

How You Can Use This on Your Quest for World Domination

First, you need a miracle worker. I would suggest hiring David Blaine. He is impervious to ice and drowning (crossing the Alps and or the Mediterranean is not a problem) and unafraid of heights.

Then, you just need to have him gather followers. Not hard at all – his Twitter account lists 26,813.

Finally, gather them all together and set them on a holy mission. As you can see from the missions above, provided you have enough miracles to keep them interested, it is not hard to get people to do just about anything.

Have fun, but don’t forget to plan ahead so your mission ends slightly more successfully than the Children’s Crusade – in all accounts, the Crusaders end up dead, enslaved, or broken up and sent home once they reach the northern suburbs of Paris. I wish you luck.

More Information: Wikipedia Children’s Crusade article.

Image credit: Crusade & David Blaine.

I’ve been blogging via the Guide to World Domination for about a year and a quarter now. Thanks to Google Analytics, I’ve realized that while I enjoy writing about the Life and Times of Leanne Heller, all of my popular posts contain useful, non-personal information.

When I learn about something that I think would be useful to others, like How to Add Images to Your Gmail Signature Using Firefox Add-Ons or AIM Coho, Salmon & Trout Bots, I’ll post about it. Google picks these up, and posts like this (thankfully) get higher traffic. But for the most part, I write personal posts that don’t make the Google Radar.

I like having a mostly personal blog. There are several personal blogs that I really enjoy reading, but mainly because I have some connection to the author. I think you have to be famous, or at least notorious, to have a really popular personal blog.

I’m okay with this. I first started getting more interested in blogging after hearing Chris Brogan speak at a North Shore Tech Council event. I don’t want to misquote him, so I’ll just say I’ve noticed his blog always contains content that is useful to his readers. That is why an alexa comparison of our sites looks like this:

Yeah, I’m the red line. The one parallel to (and on top of) the line that forms the bottom of the chart. Again, it’s okay. I figure if I work hard enough at it, I’ll be popular some day.

If you ever want to make yourself feel really good, by the way, use siteanalytics.compete.com. I plugged the old GTWD in there, and apparently, I’m a lot more popular than Google thinks. It’s sort of like viewing your site through one of those flattering skinny mirrors at the carnival.

Perhaps I will become famous for creating an alternative site comparison widget that congratulates you on your traffic regardless of your unique visitors. “Keep trying, people love you. I mean, they really love you. The internet would collapse without your support.” Although, perhaps I should have someone slightly less sarcastic write out the congratulatory comments.

The fun part:

I like to pretend I can garden. I have a lot of green leafy things in pots, and I occasionally water and feed them. I don’t grow complicated things like flowers, because they require too much maintenance and also because I can’t eat them.

Yesterday, I finally had time to do my spring gardening (having a baby puts you behind a season or two) and I had a great time pruning and potting and basically playing with a bunch of dirt. It’s like mud pies for grown-ups.

And, the not-so-fun part:

Unfortunately, I have this evil bag of peat moss that frequently causes my skin to flare up with disgusting itchy red marks. I have yet to actually throw the bag out, because I live on the third floor and the dumpster is far, far away. Also, my plants seem to like peat moss included in their soil mix.

It’s been awhile since I last gardened, so I forgot to wear gloves and long-sleeves. I even wore shorts, which was a stellar idea. As a result, today I have the most disgusting rash on my arms and legs, with all these teeny little white specks and huge poofy venom-filled patches skin. When you touch it (if you dare), it feels like a bee sting, or like you have wet baking soda packed under your skin. Mmm.

My Theories

1. The bag is infested with very small, stinging bugs. Since the rashes have gotten progressively worse, it stands to reason that they are lying in wait in the bag, breeding more and more monsters.
2. This batch of peat moss is very dusty. My skin, which already hates dust mites, had an allergic reaction and is waging war on itself.
3. My garden, spurred on by the fact that I regularly deny it food and water and sometimes even sunshine, has decided to kill me.

It’s a tough call. At least I know it’s happened before, and will go away. The first time I had just talked to a friend about their case of scabies, so I was certain that’s what I had. I woke up in the middle of the night itching like mad. Imagining tiny organisms crawling around inside your body is not a great way to relax.

Disgusting photos for the morbidly curious

Blech.

Why I Went There

I feel kind of arbitrary about birthday gifts. Some years I get people things, other years they’re lucky if they get a voice mail of me (and whoever I can coerce into joining me) singing happy birthday.

This year, I breezed over my sister’s birthday (sorry Kristy) in May but covered Father’s Day and 2 birthdays in June. I did get Kristy’s daughter Aoife a cool gift with the help of Cass, who used to work in a toy store and consequently knows what’s good.

Anyway, the gift I want to talk about was my brother’s. He is crazy about his puppy dogs and is rather fond of beer, so I thought a customized beer stein would be a good bet. After comparing a few sites, I found zazzle.com. (Top Google result for “customized beer stein.”

How it Works

After following the Google search link, I clicked on the image which took me to a “Customize Your Product” wizard. I clicked on “Add Image” and played around with “Adding Text” as well. After spending some time in Photoshop, I uploaded an image of the puppies and completed the online order process, which is pretty standard. (Think amazon.com.)

Important Step!

If you’re creating your product and the image shows the words “Add image or text” or similar, make sure you delete that text before submitting your order. If you don’t, those words will appear as part of the design. Classy, yes? They may have removed this, since I don’t see it on the site now, but watch out for it.

Customer Service

If you don’t delete the dummy text, you may receive an email from the Zazzle.com Quality Assurance team. I found my contact to be helpful and able to communicate well. Additionally, they spotted the issue and initiated contact via email, rather than waiting for me to get the product and feel like an idiot. I was given the option to cancel the order, and reorder it correctly, with a full refund on the botched order.

Savings

Retailmenot has coupon info (go to retailmenot.com and search for “zazzle.com”) and a hack involving making your product public so you qualify as a contributor and save an additional percent.

Finished Product

Here are two images of the finished product:

The photo quality was really amazing. The original image was pretty large, but even so, I was impressed how well it was translated to the stein.

Overall Review

Overall, this is a great site and a great service. The cost is reasonable (about $25 for this order including shipping), the final product is excellent, it’s easy to use and the customer service is above and beyond the usual online store service. Finally, the gift itself is both functional and personal, which is always appreciated. I recommend zazzle.com and I would use it again.