Poopy Pond

 I'm listening to a podcast from - they walked about micro successes that help build up to when you are ready to work.   Now, if you're like me, you have a regular job.   With my writing, I write a little here and there.  I steal minutes through the day to do what I can.  It's not ideal.  But sometimes, it is all I have.  And I try to make the most of it. For the last three weeks, I have been doing something that I should have done years ago.  It turned out that I have managed to put in an hour’s worth of it every day.  Imagine if I keep this up for the last five years.  At the rate of an hour a day and not including weekends when I am able to spend more time on it, it comes out to be about 1,800 hours.   I’m talking about coding.  I started with Swift and now I’m onto Python as well.  I found Python to be easier but about a week ago, I started up using Playgrounds on the iPad, Apple’s app to teach the fundamentals of coding to children and even adults via a game.  And I’m

Yesterday was crazy.  I woke up at 4 AM to get a jump on the day.  That sure helped a lot because if cannot imagine what my day would have been like if I had not done that.  However, my day turned out to be rather productive and by around mid-morning, I began to turn things around.   Me waking up at 4 in the morning is rare now.  I've done that since high school - zero period and jogging, work in college and I just got used to it.  Now, 5:30 or so is more typical.  My plan yesterday was to get some simple tasks done so I can get a jump on a jog and my own projects.  I was able to do all that and I figured I would have time for some downtime as well.   But that did not happen.   Emails upon emails.  Calls upon calls.  Reports.  Requests.  A flurry of work related stuff flooded in within an hour.  I admit I was sort of flustered from about eight through ten yesterday morning.  That has not happened for a while.  I generally prep ahead of time so avoid things like this - anticipate th

        UV-C portable sanitizer.       Let there be light! Well, let there be UV-C light!  In light (no pun intended), of the current pandemic, I want to revisit something that I have looked into, well, mostly my wife, UV light to disinfect drinking water.  The purpose of purchasing such an item was to add it to our earthquake kit.  It is similar to the steripen sold at REI.  I have not checked our earthquake kit but it probably might be the same steripen pictured below. Now, UV-C sanitizers come in various sizes, power, and claims.  So, with the pandemic hitting us, I an only assume that companies are taking advantage by flooding the market with their UV-C sanitizing products.  They all claim to work, but how do we know it works?  Are the light bulbs even emitting UV-C?  As humans we cannot see UV light, further more, UV-C is dangerous to our biology.  So, what that means is we cannot stare at the light, nor even expose our skins to the light.  The claims that companies make about the

  Toilet seat covers.     There are many wonders in this little beautiful blue planet of our that hold little secrets. Are you, like me curious, about what secrets everyday products will reveal? For the longest time I have wondered about that little pocket sewn into my pair of jeans. I have seriously pondered it’s secrets. I would ask questions like,  “Why is it there?”, and “What is it used for?”.  Right now there are more pressing issues than little pockets. There are websites that will reveal the “why’s” in products we use everyday or use sometimes.    What I want to talk about is toilet seat covers. I do not mean seat covers that you wrap your toilet seats to keep your tushy nice and warm. I am talking about the paper toilet seat covers at work or any public places. The questions I have are not about whether you should use them, or does it really protect your bottom from little tiny critters from other people’s nether regions and unspeakable.     My questions are, how do you place

I recently started reading a book about how we should maximize our limited time on earth and do what we are meant to do and outsource certain tasks to others who are more suited to do them - let coders who are better at it than we are, let someone else walk our dogs, or clean our homes.  While I believe the idea certainly has merits, it is not for everyone. Not in the beginning anyway.  Plus, there are things that we should do ourselves like walking my own dog (I don't own one).  And as for cleaning one's home, I do believe that unless you live in a mansion, you should take time to at least tidy up your place on a regular basis even if you are a high power attorney, doctor, or, you know, me.   Let's start at the beginning.  I'm not good at cleaning my own house.  I do it from time to time when inspired but for years I did not do it on a regular basis.  Fast forward to years later and what happened?  I now clean my house on a regular basis.  Every two weeks or so.  What

 By Sarcast I’ve read all sort of neat and cool tips on the Internet.  I’ve bookmarked them for later reference or used them if I find them so useful that I could not wait a moment longer to implement them.  A few involved cleaning the kitchen stove, getting buildup from my glasses, or reusing items in ways I did not think off.  MacGyger things, you know?  And then there are tips that are petty interesting and right up the alley of Poopy Pond but then I have to think twice before trying them. The one I’m talking about is this one here where you can bury a bottle water in the ground to help you water your plants and save water at the same time.  You can cap the water bottle to prevent water loss through evaporation.  The water is inches deep underground that further prevents water loss and the roots of the plants happily hydrated.   I’m definitely going to try a variation of this.  Variation?  Yeah, see the thing is that I’m not sure burying plastic bottles in the ground is such a good

Bringing it old school.  The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged what we know about about normal and therefore, it has brought on many changes.    Hopefully, the changes we are experiencing are temporary, whiles others are permanent. I will not focus on the temporary changes but on that I feel should be permanent.  Family time, for some families is the norm been going strong even before this pandemic. My wife would try and implement family game nights years before the pandemic. It would last a couple of weeks or maybe even a month, then life happens.  This past weekend during a three day holiday weekend, my wife asked me to play a game of Risk with my kids. I actually dreaded it. I dreaded because meant reading the instructions, explaining the rules, and referring back to it during the game.    All that would take extend the game. Before you call me lazy just remember that our sporadic family game nights happened years ago.    I want to also admit that I do not have the patience of Mother

Use help when it is available.  There times when we cannot do it all, unless you are alone then you might have to get creative. This article is for folks that have to get past the occasional brain fart and pride.  It is a brand new year, my wife and I have three kids. We wanted to rearrange their their rooms and make it as permanent as possible so we did away with kiddie furnitures, and bunk beds.  So, we have a twin/ full size bunk bed that was occupying one of the rooms we wanted to to rearrange. My wife put the bunk bed on Craig's List and had several inquiries.    Some of the folks who inquired about the bunk bed flaked, except for one. We had made arrangements for the sale and pick up of the bunk bed.  The night before the scheduled meet up time, I was taking apart the bed. I had my eleven year old son (middle son) help me.    My son was done unscrewing his portion of the bed where the horizontal bed frame attaches to the vertical leg frame.    The bed frame and leg opposite (

This is a test post. These photos are attached. This one should work. Embed a photo in the first post did not work for me a few years ago when I tried it. I don't know if anything has changed by Google.

  Lego After two weeks of being in quarantine, I finally got to go home and spend some time with my family.  I had some Christmas gifts. I got a shirt, shorts, pants, and a Lego set. This was not any old Lego set.    It was a Lego set that brought back nostalgic memories from years ago (long time). The Lego set is the Nintendo Entertainment System, Kit #71374. It might be on the pricey side, but I would like to to think I am totally worth every cent. Despite the price, when you sit there and start building, like all the other Lego sets out there, there are a lot of little details that go into them.  Just in the TV set if this Lego set, there are    a lot of moving parts. There is a crank which moves Mario through a moving screen. The details that go into it is extremely amazing! The folks at Lego that dream this stuff up, kudos!  The second part of the build is the Game console itself. The detail again for this build is amazing! It has moving parts that receives a Lego game cartridge (

 Source:  Men’s Health I need to lose weight and I’ve done what everyone else have done: diet, exercise, fasted.  Joined gyms, sign up for 5K runs with friends, ran with friends, ran by myself, and everything else I’m sure you’ve done. However, I would have some early success before I start gaining my way back. So, there is Internet articles about how to gain muscles six packs lose weight or how to become the next Iron Man really work? That’s what I want to find out after finding this article about a guy doing 100 Burpee’s per day. Does it really work? We’ll see. However, I would have some early success before I start gaining my way back. So, there is Internet articles about how to gain muscles six packs lose weight or how to become the next Iron Man really work? That’s what I want to find out after finding this article about a guy doing 100 burpees per day. Does it really work? We’ll see.  Today is my second day doing it yesterday.  I had a busy day I only did 40. Today, I had an even

  Customer service. How many times have you had to call customer service. For me it seems like I have to call customer service to three maybe four times a year usually buy the same products. Now I have a DIRECTV at home and several HP products, And usually I am the one that makes all the phone calls. What prompted me to write this article is because I have children like some of you who are having to use computers chrome books, and iPads to learn remotely. And unfortunately as we all know with technology things happen and it forces you to have to deal with customer service of a particular product. In this case, not to pick on Hewlett-Packard, but    my older son is using a HP he had broken his other chrome book, and school starts in less than week.  I don’t mind making the phone calls I just sometimes hate having to deal with    customer services, because when you navigate websites sometimes it just seems like it makes you are running around in circles. And a lot of times the options ar

  On the morning of Christmas, I found out that I had COVID-19. I had some but not all of the symptoms. The symptom that concerned me the most was the breathing, soreness in chest .   So, today December 31, 2020, I received an oximeter, which my wife ordered through Amazon. It was recommended by the urgent care doctor, whom I had a Zoom meeting with.    He was telling me if my oxygen saturation percentage was 93% or higher but had trouble breathing I should probably come into Urgent care. On the other hand if my oxygen saturation level was below 93% and I had trouble breathing, then I would need to make a trip to the hospital.    Of course, I do not need a machine to tell me that I am having trouble breathing (if there is such a machine). I mean, I can just tell that I am having a shortness of breath, right?  What I cannot tell is the oxygen saturation level in my blood.    How do I know if I need to go to the hospital,    urgent care, or simply stay at home?  I could always rely on my