Free Ebook: Take Control of Working From Home Temporarily

Glenn Fleishman of Macworld fame wrote a handy little ebook called “Take Control of Working From Home Temporarily”, and made it free for everyone.  I particularly liked Glenn’s analysis of famous BBC presenter Robert Kelly’s “office” setup:

A few videoconferencing tools, such as Zoom, allow you to create a virtual background if the real one is not too presentable.  But if you’re forced to use something like WebEx, you’ll probably want to do like the professor in the video call above did.  (but keep the door locked so kids can’t interrupt you)

The Rational Bible: Exodus

Just started reading my first Dennis Prager book: The Rational Bible: Exodus. A couple quotes really stuck out to me:

Fear of God—when that God is the moral God of the Torah, the God of the Ten Commandments, the God Who commanded, “Love your neighbor as yourself”—is necessary to make a society of moral individuals. Of course, there are moral atheists, just as there were moral pagans, and moral individuals in even the worst cultures. But you cannot build a good world with a handful of individuals who happen to be good people. You need a universal moral code from a universal God Who is the source of that moral code, and this God must judge all people accordingly.

Consequently, “fear of God” is as inevitable as it is necessary. If God judges how moral we are, of course there will be fear of Him—just as there is of a human judge. Conversely, if God does not judge people, there is no reason to fear Him.

Really good book so far; in the first chapter alone, there have been several “a-ha!” moments aiding my understanding of the history of the Jewish people and the Bible. Recommended.

Training Your Child to Walk

Our oldest child was a bit developmentally delayed in learning to walk.  She could stand and cruise along furniture, but she wasn’t confident walking more than a few steps on her own.  We decided to hire a physical therapist to come to our home and help her out.

What we didn’t expect is the therapist would actually be teaching us how to help our daughter.  We did about 95% of the physical therapy ourselves with tips from the therapist, and the therapist did the other 5%, plus evaluations.

I wanted to share one huge tip from the therapist that worked great for our child:

1. Find something your child really enjoys doing.  In our daughter’s case, it was being read to – she loves hearing a story, pointing out objects and characters, and especially – turning pages.
2. Get your child to participate in her favorite thing standing up.  In this case, we read from a standing position, three feet away.
   1. Ensure she is standing with support behind her.  Support meaning a couch, or a wall.
3. Gently encourage her to step forward or to the side, to challenge her balance.  Ask her step forward and turn the page.  After she accomplishes that, hold the book a little further away from her, and ask her to step forward a couple more steps to turn to the next page.

We did this every night before bed for a few nights and she was walking on her own almost immediately!  She was so very proud of herself, smiling and laughing.

The book we read was Walk On!: A Guide for Babies of All Ages, by Marla Frazee.  Our child loves this book, and shouts “BABY YOU’RE WALKING!  BEA-UTI-FULLLLL!” right from the story as she excitedly toddles around the house.  It also teaches how to fall and get back up again, no fuss, no muss.

Bonus tip: If your child only wants to hold your hand while walking, and refuses to move without your hand: Progress to letting her hold only a finger.  Then progress from just a finger to holding a shared object, such as a stuffed animal, spatula, or umbrella.  She will be walking in no time.

eBook Buying vs. Lending: How Easy Is It?

The eBook buying process is quite simple:

1. You search Amazon or the Apple bookstore for the book you want.
2. You hit buy and can instantly read the book in your Kindle or Apple Books reader app.

The ebook library lending process is a bit more lengthy, but not as bad as it used to be:

1. If it’s a popular book, you’re probably going to find that all copies are in use:
2. Place a hold.  Note that two of the hold formats (OverDrive and ePub) are not readable in your preferred reader, but Kindle is listed, so that’s something.  Wait 1-6 months and hope you catch the email that says your hold is available.
3. But not discouraged, let’s say you find another book you might like, and it’s actually available.  Hit checkout, and you’re presented with this screen:
4. Hit download, and select Kindle:
5. After you checkout, you’ll see another button.  It says, “Download Kindle”: 
6. Then you get shuttled to some contentreserve.com site, where you don’t stop, and are forwarded on to Amazon, where you have to sign in and hit Get Library Book:
7. Now you can open your Kindle reader or app and read the book.

The library lending process has gotten easier, but it’s not as fast as it could be.  You really should be able to checkout & download in 1-2 clicks max.  If the book is even available.  Let’s hope we see some improvement out of Bibliocommons/Overdrive!