I'm the Dad, That's Why

Stowe Boyd: Connected Kids

johnporcaro — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:56:43 -0800

I pulled some data from a presentation from the K5 Learning Blog. Kids today are amazingly connected, but less involved in the physical world:

More US kids aged 2-5 can play a computer game than ride a bike.

19% of kids aged 2-5 know how to play a smartphone app; 9% know how to tie their…

fastcompany: Fast Company asked several of the most creative ad...

johnporcaro — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:55:59 -0800

fastcompany:

Fast Company asked several of the most creative ad agencies in the world to rebrand baby girls.

Agency: Cramer-Krasselt Target Demo: U.S. Couples The Ad Folks: This Chicago-based agency is America’s second-largest indie and has worked with Corona, Hilton, and Porsche. Their Campaign Strategy: Ads mock the conventional choice by presenting challenging, funny facts about raising boys. National print ads, signage in pregnancy-test sections of drugstores, and QR (quick-response) codes on boys’ clothing in retail outlets steer prospective parents to more data at hopeitsagirl.com.

Just Dance 3 for Xbox 360 Kinect House Party

johnporcaro — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:09:00 -0800

On Saturday night, we held our first (and definitely not last) Just Dance 3 house party, with a little help from Ubisoft and House Party, who sent me a copy of both Just Dance 3 and Just Dance for Kids 2 for review. We fired up the Xbox 360 Kinect, set out some snacks, and had a surprisingly great time.

The game was very easy to setup. No tricky calibration, or linking to profiles. We set it to the main screen, and immediately browsed the long list of songs to find our first dance. My 12 and 15 year old boys were impressed with the song list, with some of the most recent hits like “Party Rock Anthem” and “Forget You”, and some of the, uh, older folks liked “Boogie Wonderland” and “I Was Made for Loving You”.

Here’s the cool part: There were 12 year old girls that we knew would love to dance, but I seriously doubted that my 15 year old boy would be fighting for dance time, but he was. And he could really move!

One of the 12 year old girls wanted to see her dad dance, and he vehemently declined. She flashed the puppy dog eyes at him, and after a minute or two, he relented, and tore it up with Apache. Worth the price of admission!

I’ve seen the power of videogames first hand, and I’ve spent hours and hours teaching my 40-something friends to play Rock Band or DDR. But I was unprepared at how quickly everyone jumped into playing Just Dance 3, and how mesmerized we all were watching everyone dance. Kinect made it an experience that was completely intuitive to everyone, and nobody can wait for the next time we get together!

I’d highly recommend this game to anyone this holiday, and if you don’t have a Kinect, this is the game that will push you over the edge to get one.

9 Foods Not to Give Your Kids

johnporcaro — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:29:35 -0700

9 Foods Not to Give Your Kids:

Well, I guess I’ll have to completely revise my entire shopping list…

The new Blue October album was written from the perspective of...

johnporcaro — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:39:02 -0700

The new Blue October album was written from the perspective of Justin Furstenfeld shares his experience divorcing and losing custody of his daughter. This is one of the more upbeat tracks. “…Useless things, boxes labeled ‘memories,’ … ya we can leave those things behind.”

Groceries. My son asked what the catch was, because I brought...

johnporcaro — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:21:33 -0700

Groceries. My son asked what the catch was, because I brought home donut holes. It made me sad. It’s all temporary…

The 10 Commandments of Bad Parenting

johnporcaro — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 15:03:10 -0700

The 10 Commandments of Bad Parenting:

My personal how-to guide!

Trash Can Jenga?

johnporcaro — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 18:19:49 -0700

Trash Can Jenga?

COPIER DOWN! I hate it when our copier is down, but luckily, we...

johnporcaro — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:37:23 -0700

COPIER DOWN!

I hate it when our copier is down, but luckily, we have Seal Team Jason to fix things up…

Blog Post: Facebook Lists Keep Your Circles Close

johnporcaro — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 15:11:00 -0700

Blog Post: Facebook Lists Keep Your Circles Close:

Everyone is talking about Circles, but Facebook Lists are a great way to keep things private and relevant. It’s worth taking a little time to set up Facebook Lists to keep your Circle of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances separate. Just yesterday, I mentioned to a friend that I only have my Facebook Chat open to certain Lists, and she admitted that she didn’t know that was possible.

Create Lists
If you haven’t already, you can create lists under Account/Edit Friends. Think of the groups of friends you might have, and how you might interact differently with one group vs. another. I have Lists for friends, family, co-workers, people from my home town, and a couple of Lists I want to give limited access to.

Add People to Lists
Facebook makes it easy to add people to Lists. You can scroll through them one at a time, or you can let Facebook “Suggest” people to add to a List. I was surprised at how intelligently Facebook made suggestions for each List, based on who was in the List already. It quickly allowed me to fill up each List, even though I have a bunch of friends that weren’t in any Lists.

Control What Each List Sees
You’ve probably heard about Facebook Privacy settings, but if not, you should take a little time to adjust the settings for each List. Look under Account/Privacy Settings. I have a couple of groups that I don’t want to share some information with, like a few of my kids’ friends that added me. For example, I block them from knowing what locations I check into. To exclude some Lists, select Customize Settings, then select “Customize” from the drop down list for each of the “Things I share”

Select Some Lists for Chat
Once you have your Lists set up, it’s easy to narrow down those you want to Chat with. Simply turn off the slider switch to appear offline to some of your Lists.

Share a status update with a List
You might want to share some information with only some of your Lists. Under the update, select the lock icon, and if you want to exclude some lists, select Customize. Simple as that.

Taking a bit of time to set up Lists can enhance your privacy, and make Facebook a more enjoyable place to be for everyone.

Wordless Wednesday: NO Goaaaaaal!

johnporcaro — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:27:00 -0700

Wordless Wednesday: NO Goaaaaaal!

Why Are Boys Such Slobs?

johnporcaro — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 10:33:00 -0700

No, really, I want to know!

Coming home from work yesterday, I found another mess. Granted, it wasn’t as bad as the mess a few days ago.

This time, I calmly explained that they couldn’t do anything before cleaning up. Without a fuss, without even much fighting, they both pitched in and cleaned up in about 25 minutes.

I’m working on holding firm, and (I hope) they’re getting the concept of being respectful in our shared living space.

And once again, I had “the talk” about respect, and how disrespected I feel when they are careless, or make messes thinking I’ll follow behind them and clean up after them.

“After all I do for you, I expect you to do your part. When I work hard all day to pay for our food and rent and everything else, it hurts my feelings when I see you simply not caring for our apartment. It’s almost like you’re saying you don’t care about me, or how I’ll feel, and it’s hard to trust you.”

A day at a time, right? At least the house was clean when I left this morning.

gamefreaksnz: IMG_0438 (by Boo Radlus)

johnporcaro — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 13:26:06 -0700

gamefreaksnz: IMG_0438 (by Boo Radlus)

Why Juries Come Back with a Not Guilty Verdict

johnporcaro — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 12:27:00 -0700

I think I have a pretty good idea about why the Casey Anthony verdict came back so quickly as not guilty.

About a month ago, I spent six days on a jury where a father was accused of sexually abusing his daughter for 10 years. In our case, the trial lasted for three days, and we deliberated for three days. If not for one jury member, we would have wrapped it up in a few hours.

For three days, we sat in a 15 x 10 foot room from 9am to 5pm, going over every piece of the evidence, re-reading our notes, and offering our thoughts.

Out of the gate, we introduced ourselves, then we picked a foreman in a few minutes by asking who was interested in doing it.

Right out of the gate, we took a straw poll, and found that about 9 of the 12 of us felt that the state didn’t prove its case. Most of us felt that there was no physical evidence, not witnesses, and the girl making the accusations changed her story in significant ways. The only people that came forward for the prosecution didn’t corroborate her story.

We would take turns going around the table telling each other why we felt the way we did. By the end of the first day of deliberating, two of the three who thought the man was guilty realized that there wasn’t enough to be sure he was guilty—circumstantial evidence and enough doubt that they couldn’t convict him.

One member of the jury held out, he thought that some evidence (some recorded voicemails from the father) were so unusual that he was sure the man was guilty. As members of the jury, each of us took turns offering our reasoning, trying to show him why we felt the state just didn’t prove its case.

We felt like the evidence showed that the father was controlling, and that the family clearly had a culture different than ours, but that the young woman lied enough times, and that she was likely exaggerating her story in an attempt to make her father angry. And it was likely that her family (who didn’t like the father) prompted her to embellish the truth in order to get the father removed from the home. She clearly stated that she was abused at least 2-3 time every week from the time she was 11. They lived in a small trailer, she shared a room with a sibling, and often had extended family living with them.

And yet not one person would confirm that they saw anything going on. A nurse testified that she heard the story from the 21 year old girl, but they didn’t do any kind of medical exam. The police didn’t present any evidence. They showed us pictures of a car that an alleged event took place, but the pictures were from the internet, and were of the wrong model with a different configuration. Notes from the dad and voicemails only proved that the father missed his daughter when she left home, and that they were very close.

A couple of us on the jury had specific experience where we knew people who made up allegations—even allegations of sexual abuse—that just weren’t true. One small lie became a bigger lie, and when someone believed the story, the story grew. Sympathy to someone who is hurt or angry can be a strong emotion, and it’s easy to say things to help people explain how hurt a person feels, even if it’s a lie. Viewing the evidence in this light cast a lot of doubt, especially given the complete lack of any evidence, other than the girl’s testimony.

It’s sad that if the father did anything inappropriate, or harmed his children, that he wasn’t punished. But in this case, the rules of law were very clear, and we just didn’t have evidence, or even a clear enough picture of what really happened to be sure he did what he was accused of.

For example, one of the five charges was Child Molestation Second Degree. In our state, to be guilty the person had to have had done very specific acts to someone who is twelve or thirteen years old. The evidence we got was flimsy, other than the girl telling the prosecutor (and us on the stand) that she was 13. We debated whether it could have happened when she was 14, but the timeline was so vague that we just couldn’t be sure. Following that kind of logic, we also couldn’t be sure that a specific act brought up in testimony happened when she was 14 or 15, and so on.

By the end of the third day, even the lone holdout was convinced that the state did a poor job presenting and proving its case, and while he thought the man was guilty, he had doubts to the extent, and he believed (like the rest of it) that the girl was making up at least some of the allegations.

A few other things colored our opinion, though I think we would have come to the same conclusion anyway.

First, the prosecutor was looking out the window of the courtroom continually as the defense did her closing arguments. Some came away thinking that he knew he did a poor job, and that he was resigned that he didn’t make his case.

At another point in the trial, the prosecutor attacked one of the witnesses for the plaintiff, the girl’s brother with whom she shared a room. He stated that he never saw the father come in the room (especially 2-3 times a week). He then stated that he saw his father standing in the doorway a few times. When he was pressured, he said he once woke up and saw his father sitting on the edge of the girl’s bed. It made me angry that the lawyer accused the boy of lying, until the boy said what the prosecutor wanted him to say. And even then, it’s not unusual for a father to sit on the edge of his young daughter’s bed.

So, just like today’s acquittal of Casey Anthony, even though the evidence may point to guilt, when you look at the rules of the court, the fact that the jury had to make their entire decision based on the law, and the evidence presented, I definitely can understand why they could come back with a “not guilty” verdict.

Single Parenthood and Popped Mattresses

johnporcaro — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 15:26:12 -0700

One of the things that makes being a single parent hard is starting life over. Since my ex has the house, and everything in it, I have very few things at my apartment. Not that I mind, I really like that it’s forced me to live very simply. It’s a mixed blessing that I hadn’t counted on, but that’s freeing in so many ways.

To save some money, I bought an inflatable bed at Costco. I came home to find a HUGE lump in it, where it looks like some kind of inner seam tore, causing a bubble at least 6 inches high, maybe two feet across. So tonight, I go from sleeping on an inflatable mattress to sleeping on the floor.

Next stop, Craigslist, to find an inexpensive (or free!) mattress.

Why I Can't Leave Home (Photos)

johnporcaro — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:39:00 -0700

Why I Can't Leave Home (Photos):

The Best Post-Exercise Drink: Chocolate Milk

johnporcaro — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:20:45 -0700

The Best Post-Exercise Drink: Chocolate Milk

Photo

johnporcaro — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 11:45:41 -0700

Video

johnporcaro — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 21:33:50 -0700

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

Photo

johnporcaro — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:45:41 -0700