Twins reducing media exposure

I'm supposed to blog about my media exposure each week. This week, my media exposure has been reduced a lot. Why? Because grandparents' (our parents) support (them living here helping) has ended and our twins and 17 month old are doing a wonderful job keeping us busy. 

Our son almost never sleeps without being snuggled against someone, and has almost always been acting ferociously hungry whenever he's awake. He also startles very easily, and often wakes up when someone else cries. Our twin daughter is much more laid back generally speaking, but wakes up and cries very easily when anyone else cries (hopefully that means she'll be very sympathetic/empathetic). A bit like her brother, she also is often hungry when she's awake, but she at least also spends a somewhat significant amount of time awake without fussing. It seems more recently, her brother is rubbing off on her on how fussy she is (“making her” much more fussy), and she is perhaps rubbing off slightly on how fussy he is (“making him” slightly less fussy).

Between the two of them, one of them is almost always awake needing active attention. When we finally get both of them sleeping without having to hold them (happens about twice a day), our 17 month old often “decides” she's going to fuss/cry about something, and her crying causes our twin daughter to awake and cry, making two babies crying, and both babies crying causes our twin son to awake and start crying. So when we think we've finally made it to that one time in the day when they'll give us a break to shower or eat or something, we momentarily feel relieved and start to do whatever, and then our 17 month old fusses about something and changes the “break” to all 3 babies crying and wanting attention. Talk about discouraging for my wife.

Yay, finally, a break; the twins are asleep; I'll go take a shower; got off the couch, made it out of the room, almost got to my dresser, all 3 babies suddenly crying and there goes the break; nope, “never getting a break” today; no shower, hardly time to eat anything, the house is messier (further behind on laundry, dishes, ect.) than yesterday, and basically no progress on my schoolwork again.

Since the twins were born, I believe my average time to go to bed to even start getting sleep is after 4:00 am (usually about 4, 6 or 8 am), and then, after repeatedly interrupted sleep through the night to get up and take care of the twins, I finally get up and it's somewhere around 2 pm or so, or perhaps as early as around noon, unless I get up earlier for class or church. I've been blessed so far to be able to run reasonably well on only a few hours of sleep per day (less than 4 hours of sleep is common), but my mental ability to work on schoolwork seems to be suffering quite significantly. There is still so, so much to do for my big research paper for the class. I intend to get a babysitter to help free me up on Monday and Tuesday to work on it, but even with that, I'm pretty worried.

Anyway, I need to be done here. There; that's a blog for ya. Rambled through and not really proofread, but a blog. :)

It's 4:44 am in the morning.  Goodnight. (I hope...)

Paper pokes

Not a whole lot of media exposure this week. Mostly (in regards to media use) been trying to help with the poster and work on the paper for the class. So difficult to get much done.

For other media exposure this week: Some email checking. Some phone calls for home teaching stuff. Daily scripture reading. A little Mighty Quest of Epic Loot (an online video game) watching replays of other people attacking my castle to help me wake up or stay awake during the night, while feeding the twins. General Women's Meeting in the background while I tried to keep my wife's hands free, though she was falling asleep (or asleep) for most of it. A hymn on CD for Family Home Evening. 

That fairly well covers my media for the week.

Name Your Own Price experience (Priceline.com)

So, in a previous blog, I mentioned priceline's Name Your Own Price option for flights. I did a little research and eventually decided to try it. It is risky. Technically speaking, once you make “a bid,” you have given them the power. If you make “a bid” and they get a flight ticket that meets your “bid,” then they buy the ticket for you and charge you, and there's no going back. Once you make “a bid,” they might get you a ticket right away, or they technically could wait until the day before your flight or even just an hour before your flight (so there's no way you could make it) and still charge you. They hopefully never do that to people, but technically speaking, that power is in their hands, at least as I understand the Terms of Use and such. Also, once you make “a bid,” you have no power to cancel it.

Now, it may seem a lot like gambling, but I see a difference in the Name Your Own Price option. In gambling, one of you wins at the cost of the other, and the odds are very rarely in your favor. In the Name Your Own Price option, you both can win, and not at the cost of each other. That makes it significantly different, in my current opinion, if you have enough to take the risk and be ok if it fails.

So, I ended up deciding to try out the Name Your Own Price option. They're sneaking in that if they don't like your offer, they make it appear like it wasn't submitted, and give you the option to change it, but you can't change only the price; each time you change the price, you have to either add another day that they can choose from, or allow red-eye flights, or something out of a few other options; if they decide they like the offer enough that you gave, they can freeze your offer, meaning you can't change it anymore, and you just have to wait and keep checking on the status. I believe they will almost always either get you a ticket or consider the “bid” closed/declined (a “no go”) within a day or few, but technically speaking, they don't have to. After my offer had become “frozen,” (in the manner I described earlier) I kept checking my emails and didn't see any from them, but after a day or few, I found out how to check the status on their site and there I found out that my offer had been declined. I also called to confirm that, which turned out to be easy to do.  They apparently don't send you an email like I expected to inform you of their decision, at least in the case of declining your offer”bid.”

So in summary, using priceline's Name Your Own Price option is probably pretty safe, in that they probably will make their decision within a day or so, but you have no guarantee, and the “probably” here is based on just my experience and the experience of someone's report I read about when I tried researching the issue. That's a very small sample size to go off of.

My mother's ipad

My mother is up with us for two weeks, ending Tuesday. She has an ipad that my father got for free from work in some drawing thing they did for their employee's. My 17 month old daughter has been quite entertained using it. She “constantly” is jumping around through apps and scarcely stays on one app. My mother kept trying to keep her on a fish game, and she did sorta got the gist of it when she would actually “cooperate” and not try to leave the app.

It was kinda fun to use the ipad to read scriptures, but I currently still much prefer a hardcopy of the scriptures. For example, when trying to be on the scriptures at church, our 17 month old daughter kept touching the ipad, leaving the app and going wherever on the ipad, making staying on the scriptures pretty hopeless. Letting a baby have access to an ipad takes constant close babysitting, making sure she doesn't start doing anything that would cause a problem. With a hardcopy, generally staying “on the page” is usually much easier, and if difficult, we can easily have an extra copy to give her (thankfully, we have little worry of our daughter ripping pages so far). I also like to not be reliant on electricity to be able to read scriptures. Call me paranoid if you like, but if the world goes crazy and we lose electricity, I still want to have access to my scriptures.

And just to try to be clear; I am not saying I think ipad's are bad. Anyways, later. :)

The Secret World of Arrietty

I watched the movie, The Secret World of Arrietty. It's a Japanese anime that Disney distributed in North America after modifying it for the English language. It's existence was a secret to me until it came up in our list of movies to watch for our group project.

The movie is based on the book, The Borrowers, by Mary Norton. The “borrowers” are little people (looked like about 3 or 4 inches tall) that secretly live beneath floorboards and in the walls of human homes, and they “borrow” (take) things from humans that they need and humans won't miss.

It was interesting and fun, but wasn't nearly as much of a happy ending wrap up as most Disney movies are; I guess they wanted to keep it pretty realistic, or were following the book which kept it pretty realistic.

The Princess and the Frog

I watched The Princess and the Frog this week. It was entertaining and had a nice, fun little twist on the traditional princess and the frog fairytale. It seemed like it generally shared good messages. “It doesn't matter what you look like,” you have to work hard to make your dreams come true, trying to mess with bad, dark, shadow magic (through “friends on the other side”) gets you into trouble, dreams can come true, love is more important than anything else, etc. (Or as kids-in-mind.com put it, “Love can overcome all odds.”) I didn't quite like that it made it look like seeking “good” voodoo magic is good, but I think that to be a minor concern, because it can be mostly resolved by discussing it with children who watch the movie.

In general, it was a good, fun, Disney movie. It did a pretty good job a creating a good princess character for children to identify with, and I like it.

Priceline.com & Name Your Own Price Question

Been using priceline.com and finally bought a one-way ticket for my mother to come up here from Florida. (Her huge Christmas gift from us was to pay for a flight for her to be able to come up here sometime, and that time is arriving.) It's sad in a way, in that the first day I looked at prices (about 3 weeks ago), a round trip was only $262. Since that day, the price has been around $400 plus (I've checked the prices on most days since). I got the one way because a flight that was a little bit cheaper (~$20) finally came up, and I decided that was probably the best I could get. With the return trip two weeks later, I have a little more time to look for a dip in prices for her return flight.

Priceline.com has a Name Your Own Price option. Does anyone have any experience with it? It appears very risky to me. No way to cancel or change anything; seems like they might not buy a ticket (with our money) until an hour before a flight, with no time to get there to use the ticket! Or they won't buy a ticket at all, and I'll have to pay the inflated price of a quick ticket. Or if I were to think they weren't going to get one, and I buy one, they then buy one afterwards, and we get stuck with 2 one way tickets, going the same way, for my mother.

Anyone with experience with the Name Your Own Price option for flights, please speak up.

Dieing Yahoo Mail Functionality

My primary mail has been through Yahoo for a long time. I would have switched to another provider long ago, if I could automatically forward emails without paying money, but Yahoo hasn't allowed that. However, recently, Yahoo seems to be broken at varying levels of severity. It's often been very slow, freezing up, unable to send emails, unable to forward an email as is (it removed graphics and links), and unable to figure out how to view just my starred emails (or to put them at the top of my emails). It's been so bad I've hardly done anything with my emails this year. I frequently have gone 4 plus days without checking it at all, and when I check it, I check near bare minimums (pretty much just check for class emails).

I pretty sure I'm about to finally make the switch. Looks like to Gmail. I spent several hours this week researching how gmail works, and figuring out what to expect when I switch. I'll have to still check my Yahoo mail for awhile, but will attempt to get people to mail me at my Gmail account instead. So far, I'm really hopeful on this Gmail stuff. I hope it works smoothly. :)

Valentines Day

With Valentines Day having been coming up, I used the handy internet to look up dating ideas and options around Provo. There are many great dating ideas, and also a good bunch of options around the Provo area. We even made plans for what to go out and do. However, when it came time to do something, as things turned out, we ended up playing a couple rounds of Ticket to Ride instead. Ticket to Ride is my wife's favorite board game (or it was before I started playing with her anyway; beating her nearly every game makes it less fun for both of us).

Why did we not get out of the house? Well, when your wife is about 36 weeks pregnant, her tummy is measuring at least 47 weeks pregnant, she's 80% effaced and 3 cm dilated – when she's about to pop with twins – and she decides she would rather stay at home, you don't argue.   :)

Late Happy Valentines to everyone.    :)
Or are we only supposed to say “Happy Valentines” to romantic interests? Some random guy said “Happy Valentines” to me as he walked by, which seemed a little weird to me and made me wonder about that question.

Watching Olympic Figure/Ice Skating

My wife and I spent several hours this week (and a few last week) watching our DVR recordings of the Olympic figure skating / ice skating. It's quite entertaining to watch. So much skill, artistic talent, strength, and courage. Lots of great things. The individual men's freestyle/long program wasn't quite as good, (lots of mistakes; the winner had two major mistakes [fell twice or something], yet still won, though that was much because of his incredible world record setting/blasting short program he had already done the day before) but overall it was pretty awesome.  :)

Teaching Patience in Adversity

One of the people I home teach requested that I teach them a lesson on patience in adversity. I love how easily we can get online and look up information. On Sunday, I got onto lds.org and searched for “Patience in adversity”. The search results were very helpful. I printed a couple talks and did some reading and marking (underlining, making some notes, and such). The media resources we have make it so easy; or so easy compared to how it would be without media. I'm very grateful for the positive ways we can use the media. :)

So why do we have adversity? Summarized, and leaving out much detail, experiencing adversity (and developing patience) is a large part of why we are here on Earth in mortal bodies; we can bring adversity on ourselves through evil choices; but even without unrighteousness, we experience much adversity, not too unlike the Savior did, from several potential sources (such as from God permitting the agency of others). 
We can obtain rest by coming close to God.

(Much greater detail can be found by going to LDS.org yourself and using the searchbox to search for patience in adversity.)

Coding Brave

This week I learned through email correspondence (and a Google Doc), with my group from the class, that for our pilot movie to code, we would code the movie, Brave. I used online resources to try to get my hands on the movie. After obtaining it, I spent about ten or more hours working on coding the movie. I love how easy it is to enter information into, and organize information on, a computer. Can you imagine how much harder it would be to code, and make many edits to coding, without a computer? I'm much more reliant on computers for recording information (To-Do Lists, journal, notes, ect.), and writing, than most people are, and I appreciate having computers very much.

Coding Brave was definitely interesting. I learned quite a bit about the challenges faced when trying to do research by coding information; every shade of gray present between things we're trying to code can make coding quite difficult.

Researching Baby Names

I've spent a lot of time this week researching baby names. I think names are very important and I like to choose them carefully. For the child we have, my wife was quite set on her first name, and everything about it seemed great to me too, so that was easy, but I think I spent about 40 hours or so researching and working on picking her middle name. Too much time? Probably more than I should have spent for a middle name; but at least I won't have to regret not spending enough time on it.

The majority of my online research has been through use of babynamesworld.parentsconnect.com, but I've used other baby sites too. I love the ability to search by name meanings, yet I wish I had a site with even more advanced search options (I have certain search options in mind). For an example, I wish I could search for names that have four or more origins, each with their own meanings. I've only found relatively few of those. I also wish I knew where I stored the research information I did in the past. I was almost certain I stored it on the computer, or in an email, but I've searched them both and can't find it anywhere. I'm thinking I must have a printed paper copy somewhere, but I don't know where. Anyways, I'm sort of getting off topic.

What am I looking for in names? Many things. Names with meanings that the child will likely identify with in a way that will help them be a better person and do more good in the world; and won't likely intimidate them or cause them to identify themselves as not being what their name means. (For example, I'm weary of choosing a name that means bold, because if the child ends up shy, she might identify herself as not bold like her name means, thus actually reinforcing her shyness.) Other things I'm looking for or paying attention to in names include names that:
- sound beautiful (at least for girl names)
- don't sound or appear too much like anything negative
- people can spell when they hear it, and vice versa
- create initials that seem good, or at least that aren't bad
- are unlikely to be “replaced” by a nickname
- are unlikely to be made fun of
- people who already have the name seem to like their name
- are unique, or at least are not “overpopular” (like Jessica is “overpopular”)
- are easy to say
- are not too long
- don't have other negative associations
- my wife likes
- other things that I'm not thinking of at the moment

Mighty Quest for Epic Loot and Overview of My Video Game History

Sometimes I permit myself to play some video games. I'm rather restrictive on myself, lest I let myself get “out of control” with them. I grew up playing video games, my father owned a computer store, and with two older brothers whom I felt it would be difficult to compete with in “sticking out” in about any other area, I chose to focus on video games. I excelled greatly at them. My father loved playing me games because he loved the challenge of trying to beat me. Most games I'd win, but sometimes he would and he felt like he accomplished something when he beat me. There's a lot of background history about how heavily I was into video games. In short, I say “aside from school and homework, video games were my life” before my mission, and after my mission, my father went as far as threatening suicide if I didn't play him games (lots of pressure). Also, video games are very addicting for me, and I have difficulty playing them and/or thinking about them in appropriate moderation. What do I mean by “thinking about them” too much? Well, if I go from not playing any games (several times now I've banned myself from them for awhile) to playing just a little bit of strategy games, my mind will spend over ten times as much time thinking about the game than actually playing it. So one hour of play time equals over ten hours of time used up, because my mind is occupied thinking about game strategies. If I'm not really careful, games can easily keep my mind preoccupied from paying attention to spiritual things.

All that being said, I've spent several hours total this week playing a game (in closed beta) called The Mighty Quest for Epic loot. It got advertised as humorous and that got my attention. It's quite a bit of fun, there is very little commitment (easy to pause or leave at any moment), the strategy isn't so in-depth that I spend tons of time thinking about it, and there's a competitive aspect that I like. In the game, you attack other castles (I usually attack other players' castles) and loot their resources. You also build your own castle and put defenses (various monsters and traps) in it, trying to make it difficult for attackers to loot your own castle. So far, you can play a knight (“smash city”), an archer (more reliant on skill), and (currently costs money) a mage. (The game announced it will change to open beta before the end of February.)

Studying the Book of Mormon

Currently, I am taking a Book of Mormon class. I thought the first exam started this week, so I studied up for the exam. I love the material. I very much appreciate the wonderful messages and points made.

After studying for the exam, I then went to the college testing center take it. I found out I misunderstood the schedule and the exam is a week later. Part of the bright side is I got somewhat ahead on my Book of Mormon class material. Additionally, since I spent a significant portion of my time on it this week, I decided to post this blog about some of my Book of Mormon related media use.

Every day, or to be more specific, on about 99% of days, I read some of the Book of Mormon, and have done so for many years now. Since getting married about two years ago, I've done so with my wife on about 98% to 99% of those days. 

I feel reading from the Book of Mormon blesses my life greatly. I do it because I know the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as taught by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is true. Thanks, in large part, to me reading the Book of Mormon, I know my Heavenly Father loves me; I also know my purpose, God's plan for me, where I go after this life, and how I can live with my family forever, through time and all eternity. Reading the Book of Mormon helps me better understand the gospel, know it is true more fully, live the gospel and keep the commandments of God better; and helps me to be much happier than I would be otherwise.

I love the scriptures. I love the Book of Mormon! I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ!!

Once Upon a Time Season 3 (and some of my TV History)

So I don't watch TV much; I've probably averaged around 20 hours or less of TV per year for the last eight years, and I don't think a lot more than that for the prior several years either (perhaps 50 hours per year). Since marrying two years ago, I've watched a few shows of Psych and CSI with my wife when she watches them, and occasionally see short pieces of the shows while she has them on. Or I see pieces of movies (I don't remember Disney movies very well it seems) while I'm in the waiting area for pregnancy appointments or baby appointments (we have one baby with two more coming very soon, and I've gone to almost every one of these appointments).

Recently however, my wife and I moved into a new house and eventually checked out the DVR, which was set to record Once Upon a Time shows. We let ourselves get “hooked” on season 3 (the one they just finished that involves Neverland). This week, we decided to finish the last two episodes of the season that we hadn't seen yet, so now we've watched the entire season (around ten or so espisodes).

My thoughts on the show, or season 3, are that it's quite interesting, pretty creative, and a bit dark. I particularly noted the dark aspect when watching one of the first shows in the season while my baby, who was nearby playing, started to cry, I'm pretty certain because of the “dark music.” There certainly was a dark aspect about it; it comes with trying to represent the darkness. That dark aspect made me question if we should really be watching the series, if it was deceptively harmful, but I decided it was OK. Perhaps my curiosity got the best of me; I didn't spend too much time worrying about it because it did not seem to be harmful to me.

What I like about it are the creativity and ideas, and that it gives my wife and me some interesting things or ideas to talk together about. What if this, or what if that? How would that work, or how do you think that will work? It seems like...

I Started Blogging :)

I spent awhile during the latter half of this week becoming somewhat familiar with blogs.  I created my blog account, posted an intro. blog, customized my blog some, and looked over and adjusted the settings some.  I feel it was helpful to get a good start on becoming familiar with blogging, and will help me continue to learn about and become familiar with blogging. 

This start on blogging may lead to my continued use of blogs beyond the class, (whether writing my own blogs, looking at other people's blogs, or both) but at the very least, it is educational and helping me fulfill my class requirements.  :)

Reading Terms of Use Agreements and such

Last week and this week, I spent awhile carefully reading the terms of use and privacy policies (and closely related content) of Google, Google+, and Blogger/Blogspot.  It was fairly interesting to me.  I find it interesting to see what they have to clarify and say in these things to protect themselves from legal issues and “thievery,” while also protecting their users and keeping their products appealing.  It's also important to me to know my rights, what's appropriate, and, since it's my belief that we should obey our country's laws here in the U.S.A., to have confidence that I'm following the law.  This is largely due to my belief in the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which includes the Articles of Faith.  The 12^th Article of Faith states, “We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.”

There is pressure on me NOT to always read terms of use agreements, (and associated content) due to how long and difficult they often are to read (thankfully, Google's is well made and, relatively speaking, very reasonably short), and due to my unusually significant, chronic lack of time.  On the other hand, my religious beliefs persuade me to read them, with a little added persuasion from a comment I once read.  The comment said something along the lines of, “Terms of Use Agreements, things that are just like the Bible. Everyone says they agree with them, but very few actually read them.”

Despite the cost to me in time spent, I now can use, and have confidence that I am using, Google and Blogger correctly.  :)

Blog Intro.

Welcome.

If you're here regarding a media class, then you're in the right place.  My actual name is not associated with this blog, thus allowing me to speak more freely with less concern about the public availability of my private content.  Also, I am new to blogging; if there are issues with or relating to my blog, I apologize. 

Thanks for visiting.  :)