Bryce Moore's Blog, page 155

One Mop to Rule Them All

[image error]We’ve gone through various mopping solutions over the years. (Hey–it’s a busy day, and I don’t have a lot of time to think of topics. AND I think this one could help some of you out there. So if you’ve got any complaints, speak with my manager.) For a while, Denisa used this steam mop thing that I swore was going to explode any second. Then we switched to reusable Swiffer things. But the Swiffer was made for people who must be about three apples tall. My back would kill every time I used it.

And then it broke in half the last time I was mopping. I am literally too much man for that mop. I had to put it back together with duct tape just to finish the job.

So Denisa added “Mop” to her Christmas wishlist, because she’s entirely too practical. And she did a ton of research and settled on The Mop that was The One For Us. “It’s reusable. It’s big. It’s supposed to be great,” she told me.

“This is a mop, right?” I asked. But I am nothing if not dutiful when it comes to following lists. So I ordered the mop. I didn’t wrap it, though, because that thing was a beast, and there’s no way to wrap a mop in any way that doesn’t end up screaming “I AM A MOP” while it’s sitting under the Christmas tree. So I left it in the box, stuck a bow on it, and called it good.

Denisa used the mop. She said it was wonderful. She laughed. She cried. It was better than Cats.

I thought that was a bit of an extreme reaction, for a mop. Then I made the chores chart, and last week I had to mop again. This mop is like a grown up Swiffer. You get the microfiber pad, get it wet with plain water, wring it out, and then stick it on the end of the mop. Then you use it until it’s too dry to mop anymore, at which point you go back to step one and repeat.

Friends, this mop is awesome. It’s wide, so you get your mopping done wicked fast. It’s tough, so you can scrub through stains like a pro, and it has a handle that’s actually made for people of all sizes. My back didn’t even hurt. Plus, if ninjas ever invade our house again, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to use this mop to battle off at least three or four of them while Denisa takes out the rest with that steam mop thing.

In other words, if you’re looking for a mopping solution, you’ve come to the right place.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. It’s better than Cats.

A Quick Report on the Chores Chart

I let you all know last week that I’d switched up how we’re running chores in my household. It was a drawn out process, filled with family debate and short tempers at time, but in the end, the whole family went along with it. I wasn’t sure how it would go, but it was worth a shot.

Nearing the end of the second week of the new system, I decided to do a walk through of the house to assess how it was going. And lo and behold, each and every room looked good. Not spotless, and not perfectly tidy, but tons (tons!) better than any random spot check weeks ago would have turned up.

Better yet, there has been much less complaining about the chores around the house. Denisa is getting the help she needs, the kids are doing what they’ve been asked to do, and it’s all been going great so far.

Of course, I realize we’re still in the honeymoon phase of the relationship. Things feel different, and so the kids don’t mind doing things as much. But I have good reason to think this has the potential to stick. For one thing, the kids themselves have been talking about how much they like the new approach. They know exactly what’s expected of them each day, and they know it’s up to them to get it all done. They also know they only need to do their least favorite chores for one week of the month. They’re a fan of that.

Denisa and I have been easing them into it, as well. “Clean room” is one of the daily chores they each have, but we haven’t dictated that they need to have a spotless room right off the bat. Instead, they’ve been allowed to work for 10 minutes each day on cleaning their room, but they have to do it consistently. Go figure. It works.

It’s also really helped that they see me actively doing my chores before I do fun things each day. They see me come home from work and get right to work on my chores, sweeping or cleaning a room. And so they feel like they’re part of a team, and not just on their own. (Though I’ll add that it’s added stress to my life in that respect, as it means there’s more things I need to stay on top of.) Yesterday I even saw one child get up from the table, rinse their dish and put it in the dishwasher, even though they weren’t on table clean up. They just knew it would be their turn to do table clean up eventually, and so they could see the advantage of everyone chipping in some.

I don’t mean to say that having a single dish be cleared up should be cause for mass celebrations in the street. But when you consider what that dish stands for, maybe it makes more sense.

So far, so good. Can definitely recommend.

My Least Favorite Job: Gas Meter Reader

I’ve had a number of jobs over the years, but as I look back on all of them, one rises to the top of the “Least Favorite” list: Gas Meter Reader. I had that job for a couple of years in college, and it was officially No Fun.

I could see some people liking it. You got to be outdoors every day. You did a lot of walking, which could be great for your health. You got to be on your own for long periods of time. And for the first while, it had some perks with how they paid you. They paid by the “book,” which meant that each neighborhood was divided into sections that supposedly would take a certain amount of time to complete. 8 hours or 5 hours. And when you were done reading that book, you were paid for those hours. There was one 5 hour book that took me about an hour to read, typically. Getting paid for 5 hours of work when I only actually worked 1?

That made up for a lot of the down sides.

The job was quite straightforward. You’d get that book and go to the neighborhood. Get out of your car and start walking. Each house had an address and a location, and you had to find the meter and write down the current reading. Sometimes the meters would be buried in bushes. Sometimes they’d be behind locked fences. Sometimes the book would proceed in a logical order (up one side of the street, down the other). Sometimes it wouldn’t (houses randomly scattered throughout the book). I’d carry a small pair of binoculars with me, and that helped for some meters, though I got pretty good at reading a meter from a ways away.

Condominiums were better than neighborhoods. The meters were clumped closely together. Rich neighborhoods were worse than normal neighborhoods. Huge houses meant spread out meters, and you never knew where exactly the meter was on the house. Really rural areas were bad, as there were huge dead zones of walking with no meters to read at all.

But meter reading had a lot more against it, too. For one thing, you had to be out in the weather, no matter what it was. Reading meters when it was pouring rain? Not fun. Reading meters after it had just snowed a foot and a half? Not fun. For a guy who hates being wet, is it any wonder I wouldn’t like those aspects to the job? Beyond that, there were the dogs that would attack you everywhere you went. You could never tell if a dog was going to be friendly or not until it was rushing you, and all you had to protect yourself was a metal clipboard.

I love dogs and snow, and my years reading meters made me dislike both. How crummy is that?

So this morning, as I was snow blowing my driveway, I was thinking about all the people on Facebook who had been complaining about more snow, and about how I still enjoyed it so much. I look forward to big storms. I want to get buried. I think it’s fun and exciting. (If I didn’t have a good snow blower, that might be different. A few weeks ago ours almost broke right before a series of huge storms. That was a bad feeling.)

But there was definitely a time when I didn’t love snow. And I for one am very glad to be back in a job where I can once again look forward to snow in the forecast.

We got more than a foot and a half of snow last night, and it was great.

An Expedition to Women’s Conference

I mentioned last week that Denisa and I were presenting at a women’s conference at my church. (The presentation on budgeting, remember?) That happened Saturday, and the presentation itself went very well. (Well attended, great questions, and I feel like people got what they paid for. Even though they didn’t pay anything, so I suppose that statement could be misleading. It’s the thought that counts, right? Right.)

But there were a few things that surprised me about the conference. Enough so that I thought it would be interesting to write a blog post about them. Ready?

First up, I wasn’t really anticipating just how out of place I would feel. I work in a profession that’s largely dominated by women: more than 80% of the library field is female. So I’m very used to going to meetings where I’m one of the few men in the room. That doesn’t throw me for a loop at all. There were something like 175 women at this conference, and maybe 10 or so men, but I don’t think that alone would have made me feel like I didn’t fit in. Yet I still felt very much like an outsider.

Part of that is no doubt due to the theme of the conference. If I went to a library conference that was all about “Women in Libraries,” I imagine I’d feel the same way. But it goes further than that. For the bulk of the day, I was there in a support role. I was watching our kids (well, keeping an eye on them from time to time as the iPads did the heavy lifting), getting food ready, setting things up, and taking things down. And during those times, I felt like an outsider simply because I was apart from the rest of the conference. Watching it happen instead of being part of it happening. I also made observations about how different this conference seemed to be from the church meetings I’ve gone to that are dominated by men.

(A few observations. First, the main course for lunch was salad. There were a plethora of toppings to put on that salad, but it was still salad. The toppings that went first were tomatoes and cottage cheese. By the end, most of the toppings were gone. There was still plenty of sliced chicken, however. At conferences for men that I’ve attended, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see some of the attendees skip the salad entirely and just pile some sliced chicken on their plate. There were also 18 beautifully decorated cakes that were centerpieces of each table. The salad disappeared like mist on a summer morning. The cakes went away one thin slice at a time. By the end, there was probably still the equivalent of 10-12 uneaten cakes. Trust me. I went around and tried many a slice once lunch was over. (My conference loophole on sugar still applies if I’m just helping out around the conference, right?) Again, at a meeting for men, those cakes would have been gone in a blink. Probably well before the salad.

A second observation would be how well run this conference was, especially in the small details. Men’s conferences I’ve gone to in the church are very utilitarian. The bare minimum is done. There are meetings. Between the meetings, there are breaks. There are no decorations. There are no snacks. You go from one meeting to the next. End of story. This conference had citrus water stations. It had homemade cookies that went out during the morning break. It felt much less thrown together than the other conferences I’ve attended.)

But beyond that, I felt the most out of place during my presentation. It wasn’t that the women did anything to make me feel unwelcome. Rather, it felt very odd to me that I was speaking at a conference so directed at women. Granted, I’d been asked to speak by my wife, who had been the person invited to present. So it wasn’t like I’d heard she was doing a presentation on budgeting and I said, “Better let me do that presentation instead, honey. I’m a man, and men are better with budgeting,” right after I grunted a few times and burped for good measure. But I very much wanted to just say my piece and then back off so that Denisa could do as much of the instruction as possible.

As I looked over the paneling for the day, I was interested to notice how many of the sessions were being presented (at least in part) by men. Good men, and all of them teamed up with their wives, but men nonetheless. And no doubt they were on great topics, and the men were qualified to speak on those topics. But here’s the thing: I have never in my entire 38 years of living in the church seen a single woman present at a conference directed at men. Not even once. I’ve seen them serve food at them, just as I helped serve food at this one. But to have them present? It’s never happened that I can recall.

And as I thought more about it, I noticed more things. In General Conference (a twice-a-year meeting for all church members at large), women will sometimes speak (10%-15% of the speakers are women, I’d guesstimate. Though now that I took the time to actually check, I realize it’s much less than that. Of the 28 speakers in the last conference, 2 were women. 7%. There’s also a session just for women and one just for men. At the one just for men, 100% of the speakers were men. At the one just for women, 25% of the speakers were men. And the one man who spoke occupied the final “keynote” position, as is typical for the session, from what I understand.) And even when women do speak, they often do so with the disclaimer that they’re aiming their talks primarily at other women or children.

Are we a religion that has been trained to listen to men, and to occasionally listen to what women have to say? It would certainly appear to be the case.

This isn’t really a post about how men shouldn’t talk at women’s conferences. Or how women *should* talk at men’s conferences. I actually feel like presentations by men and women teamed up (as we were at this women’s conference) might be ideal much of the time. There are vital perspectives that are heard when multiple viewpoints are given on a topic, and I feel like we are lessened as a church when women’s voices are silenced or not as strong. We are certainly lessened at a local level when they are ignored or only listened to in passing.

Then again, I wonder what would happen if women were asked to present on a topic to men at a local meeting. Would they offer the women the same respect and attention the women at this conference offered me? I don’t think the men would be openly hostile toward women. That definitely would go against church teachings. Instead, it would be something more subtle, like just not going to whatever presentation was offered by a woman, choosing instead to go to the one being given by a man. (If I were a social scientist and wanted to conduct an experiment, it would be interesting to have two identical presentations offered. Same topic. Same conditions. But have one where the speaker is a woman and one where it’s a man, and then see how attendance stacks up in comparison.)

But these were all private thoughts I had during the conference. Food for thought that Denisa and I discussed later on that night. The conference itself was a smashing success. I’d happily go again next year, but perhaps if I do, it would be simply to help serve food, clean up, and watch my kids watch their iPads. Or perhaps if the men ever have a general meeting on how to live life more fully in today’s world, women and men will be paired up to speak.*

*Who am I kidding? In my experience, the only way men show up at a regional meeting is if it’s mandatory and implied that part of our eternal salvation rests on us showing up. A voluntary meeting on a Saturday? We’d be lucky to get half as many attendees. Which only serves to strengthen my thinking that my gender has much to learn from its counterpart.

Let the Madness Begin!

Okay peoples. It’s March Madness time, and that means the annual contest on my blog is up and running. Click on over to make your entry. As always, there’s a fabulous prize on the  line. Up this year? I want to make something special. I’m tired of promising scenes in books or character names. I’m going to put the winner in my next published acknowledgements page.

Got that?

You win this time, and your name is going in the acknowledgements page of the next book of mine to be professionally published. Not only that, but I’ll publicly state how you are better than me when it comes to picking brackets. (Unless I win it all myself, in which case I will acknowledge the runner up, but note that I’m just a bit better at it than they are.)

Sound like a deal? Your name. In print. With me explaining how you’re better than I am.

It doesn’t get better than that, people.

To enter, click . The group name is Bryce’s Ramblings. The password is vodnik. Enter by this Thursday when the brackets close. Don’t forget!

May the picks be ever in your favor.

Proud Parent Moment

You might recall we signed Tomas up to take the SAT this past January as part of the Center for Talented Youth (CTY) program. My brother and I had both done this back when we were Tomas’s age, and I thought it would help him to be prepared to take the test later on, when it really counted.

From what I remembered, I’d done a fair bit of practice and preparation for the test, back when I was in seventh grade. We had a teacher who went over tips and tricks of the test for weeks? Months? (Time always seems longer in hindsight. For all I know, we had a single after school prep session, and that was it.) Either way, Tomas didn’t have much of that. Instead, he and I used Khan Academy’s practice tests to make sure he had an idea what to expect. Beyond that, it was me just basically telling him how to approach the test.

But there’s a difference between knowing the theory and actually applying it. Case in point: I discovered this was the first scantron test he was going to take. So the night before we went over how that worked. How to fill in bubbles. How to follow the directions. Good times. And then when we actually went and I dropped him off at the test, it was intimidating. He was there with a whole bunch of older students, of course. A few of his friends who were doing the same thing he was, but by and large it was high school Juniors or Seniors. You could tell Tomas was worried about it all. Who wouldn’t be?

I tried to do everything a good parent should do. Remind him to try his hardest. Remind him that this was just practice, and that for now, the grade he got really didn’t matter. He came out of the test feeling good about things, and we really thought no more of it. Project successful.

Yesterday he finally got his grades back. The SAT has gone through changes over the years since I took it. Back in the day, the best you could get was a 1600. Then that became a 2400, and now it’s back to a 1600. The average score a BYU accepted student gets is a 1280. The average score to get into the university where I work is a 1050.

Tomas got an 1130.

Denisa and I were, of course, very proud of him. But it was even more rewarding to see him be proud of himself. Not that I want to raise little stuck up humans who think they’re all that and a bag of chips, but I think it’s important to be able to know you did a good job. Tomas beat my score from back when I took it. (I think I got around a 900.) In fact, he even earned “High Honors” through the CTY program, which means he did better than 70% of the other CTY students who took the test. Middle School can be tough times. There are many reasons to feel down about yourself. It’s great to have tangible things you can look at that help you feel good, instead.

Anyway. He qualified for any CTY program he’d care to enter. Of course, the question now is if he wants to go to one, and if Denisa and I can afford it. The answer to the first is probably, and to the second is probably not. It costs about $5,000 to do a summer camp. That’s a lot of dollars. On the other hand, his scores also make him eligible to take AP classes through CTY, and those AP classes just cost about $1500, which is much more doable. I’m not honestly sure what AP classes our local high school offers, but it’s nice to know that if Tomas wants to, he’ll be able to end up supplementing his education with additional content.

In any case, it was a great day in the Bryce household yesterday. Thanks for letting me share, and go Tomas!

Budgeting Basics

Denisa and I are teaching a class for a women’s conference on Saturday for our church. It’s going to be about living frugally. Denisa’s going to be teaching the bulk of it, actually. Talking about how to shop and live for less. I’m coming to go over the basics of budgeting. The thing is, I’m note entirely sure my part will be that interesting. To me, budgeting is fairly straightforward at this point. It can be broken down into a few principles:

First, know how much money you make. I find it helps to be as pessimistic as possible at this step. Assume the worst and set that as your baseline. For Denisa and me, we assume that the only money we make comes from my job. Since I’m on salary, that’s pretty easy to calculate. I get the same each month. I look only at take home pay, after all taxes and deductions are taken out. That’s what I build our budget around. If you’re not on salary, you can get a good idea of what you’re actually taking home by looking at pay stubs for the past several months. Average it out.

Second, know how much money you spend. This one can be trickier. I remember right after I got my library job in Maine, Denisa and I thought we had Arrived. We had a house. We were bona fide adults. And we spent like we imagined bona fide adults with full time jobs could spend. Then we looked at our budget at the end of the month, and we realized how wrong we’d been. For the next several months, we kept track of all our expenses and logged them into Excel. It was a huge pain, but once it was done, I was able to categorize everything. (These days, I just use Mint for this job, which makes life tons easier. You register your bank accounts and credit cards with them, and they automatically keep track of your spending. I love love love the service. And it’s free.)

Once you know how much you make and how much you spend, then it’s a matter of making sure that you spend less than you make. Period. How you do that is going to depend on you and the decisions you make. Many things we view as necessities, aren’t. Cable? Internet? Cell phones? Restaurants? Fast food? Two cars? A house? I’ll hear people argue how each of those is a necessity, and they’ll come up with many reasons why their case is special, but I can say from experience working with the public in rural Maine, there are many people in this nation who get by without each of those, and they get by just fine. Necessities (in my book) are basic: nourishing food, health care, a safe place to sleep and live, clothing. Stuff you literally need to live. Some of that isn’t cheap. (Health care!) But you can ditch the other things long before you can ditch the necessities.

If you’re lucky, then you can make how much you spend be less than how much you make without too much hardship. But if you’re like many people, and those necessities just can’t be trimmed any lower, and they’re still more than you make, then you’ve got to go to more extreme measures.  You need to find a way to make more money.

One thing that never ceases to amaze me here in Maine is the way so many people come up with ways to do just that. Whether it’s selling eggs or substitute teaching on the side or getting a second job or baking bread or starting an Etsy business, I have seen people successfully add income to their bottom line. Between me and Denisa, we have many different jobs. I work at the library, but I also occasionally teach classes at the university, have done computer repair in the past, and I write books. Denisa rates TESOL exams online, bakes bread, and teaches at the university as well. The biggest trick is that as you find ways to make more money (through jobs or raises or saving tax refunds), you can’t increase your spending. You can’t say to yourself, “I just made $100 by selling bread. I deserve a reward.” That’s not how balancing a budget works.

I realize that for some, they just can’t make ends meet. There aren’t enough hours in the day, and their salary isn’t nearly enough. In those situations, I’m still assuming the overall goal is the same: get their life to a place where they aren’t in that situation anymore. And sometimes that can take a long time. Sometimes it means going back to school, getting in debt in the process so that at the end of it all, you’re better off. Sometimes it means picking a different career. Sometimes it means moving to a place that isn’t as expensive, or where there are more jobs.

When I write posts like this, I think about what people will object to. I realize that I’m in a place of privilege: I’m a white, male American who grew up in the middle class, then upper middle class, and then above that as well. When I’ve needed help, I’ve had parents who could pitch in to bail me out of tight spots. So I can definitely see why some people would read this, shake their heads, and dismiss what I’m saying as inapplicable to them for [insert reason here]. But I’ve talked to many people in many walks of life, and that whole “spend less than you earn” keeps coming up again and again. I know people who make six figures who are unable to stick to that rule, and I know people who make under 30,000 who are. Is there a chance that you are one of the exceptions? Sure there is.

But for 95% of the people out there, I believe this simple outline can and does work. For me, it’s the same as dieting. People know how to lose weight. Any doctor will tell you the method that will work for the majority of people out there: diet and exercise. Keep track of calories in and calories out, adjusting for personal metabolism and circumstance, and most people can make an impact on their bathroom scale. But you have to do it day in, day out. You have to not cheat. And it’s flat out more fun to eat whatever you want, as much as you want, whenever you what. It’s easy to overestimate how many calories you burned mowing the lawn or exercising, and it’s even easier to eat all those calories and more when you chomp down on a brownie. (Personal experience speaking here.)

So instead of making a lifestyle change or really committing to a diet or a budget, people look for alternatives. Diets that promise you can eat what you want. Get rich quick schemes. Ways around doing the hard work. And if you’ve found such a thing, more power to you. I personally doubt they exist outside of getting lucky.

At the end of the day, the basics work. They’re not fun, but that’s life.

Anyway. We’ll see how Saturday goes. Can I manage to do this without getting on a soap box? Tune in and find out . . .

Podcasting for Fun (and No Profit)

So you’ll recall that I started doing a radio show a while ago as a way to promote my library. A coworker and I would get together once a week and talk library issues for a half hour. We had a good time doing it, but we wanted to somehow reach a few more people. We decided to try to record the show and broadcast it as a podcast. This turned out to be one of those thoughts that was very simple in theory, and really difficult in practice.

First up was the actual recording of the show. Our university’s radio station is set up to do things live. The microphones didn’t go to a computer that could record, so we switched the way we did the show, recording it ahead of time and then playing it back over the air at a later date.

But for a podcast to really be successful, it needs to live somewhere. For the first few months, I just hosted it on SoundCloud, because free. And that was fine, until I ran up against SoundCloud’s free limitations. It only lets you have three hours of recordings up at any one time. I could have started to delete old episodes as new ones came up, but that would kind of defeat the purpose.

So I was on a quest to find a way to host the podcast on the cheap. In the end, I went with Amazon S3 as the solution. All the research I’d seen indicated it was the best answer, but it also said it took a bit of work on your end to get it set up right. No problem! I’m good with technology, so I figured this was the way to go.

The trouble was “a bit of work” ended up being a huge understatement. My main goal was to get the podcast on iTunes, and so I had to teach myself not just how to link to individual episodes, but how to get it set up so that podcasts automatically got updated with iTunes. This meant I had to work out how RSS feeds functioned, and how to massage them so they worked with iTunes the right way.

In the end, this was hours and hours of work, believe it or not. I tried setting up brand new websites for the podcast. (Three different ones, as a matter of fact.) I kept going back to feed authenticators and iTunes podcast submission pages. I could get the feeds to load, but not the individual podcast episodes. I had to go to Amazon S3 and tweak permissions on the files and file names. It was much, more more complicated than I’d suspected.

The worst part of that struggle is never knowing if you’re ever going to actually solve the problem. After you’ve tried fifty or so approaches and none of them work, it can be really disheartening.

In the end, I got it to work. I had to post it on my own website (here), linking to Amazon S3 files, and using a new WordPress plugin to make it all come together, but in the end, I’m pretty sure I have it all ironed out. If you’d like to listen to the podcast (Heavy Meta with Mantor), you can check it out on iTunes here:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/heavy-meta-with-mantor/id1211843738

At least, I hope that works. Let me know if it doesn’t . . .

You can also check out the latest episode here on my blog.

The good news is that now that it’s all figured out, I think it should be smooth sailing from now on. Until it isn’t at some point. That’s how it goes with technology . . .

Heavy Meta #7

Another in our series of interviews with UMF authors. This week Kelly and Bryce talk with Luann Yetter about the Roaring Twenties (which, come to think of it, are only 3 years away from possibly needing to be called the Roaring 1820s. I suppose it depends on how roaring 2020 and beyond seem . . .)

Right click to download audio file.

Heavy Meta #6

Another interview this week! This time it’s with Michael Johnson.

Right click to download audio file.