The Saturday Post: If-I-had-an-iPhone 4 edition

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I don't have an iPhone 4—mine is a 3GS. But if I did have an iPhone 4, wherein the camera faces front, I'd put it in Jim's guitar and have him strum away just to see if I could capture something as cool as this:

Pretty nifty, don't ya think?

Happy Saturday!

3 ways Pinterest made Gramma awesome

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Simple, inexpensive ideas I found on Pinterest that convinced Bubby of Gramma's awesomeness:

Shaving cream bath paints.

Cardboard ramps for his cars.

 

<photo of Bubby in the tub with glow sticks removed by Lisa because perverts flocked to it>

Glow sticks in the bath tub.

Today's question:

Do you prefer taking baths or taking showers?

Saturday Post: Sharing too much edition

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I love the enlightening videos from TED. I found this one especially inspiring, despite its silliness, because it makes me consider that we...okay, that I...may be sharing far too much — and too often — online.

Time for me to stop sharing, back away from the screens, and spend my Saturday outside!

(I originally saw this on TED, but the TED player embeds wonky so I grabbed the YouTube version.)

Today's question:

What are your Saturday plans? (Do share!)

8 ways the iPhone makes this grandma smile

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This is the iPhone 4; I got the cheaper iPhone 3GS.I got an iPhone a few weeks ago. I think I'm in love. It makes me smile. Here's how:

One: The speaker phone is 2.3 billion times better than the one on my last phone (the speaker phone I never even figured out). It makes phone calls with Bubby much more fun...and understandable. And especially easy when Jim/PawDad wants to join the conversation.

Two: Apps, free apps, and more apps.

Three: It's fodder for long discussions with Brianna and Andrea. Who both have iPhones. Who both are much more savvy with their iPhone than I am with mine. And who both recommend awesome free apps for me to try.

Four: My iPhone helps me track my calories in hopes of looking and feeling better by the time I head to BlogHer '11. Via a free app Brianna recommended, called LoseIt. So far, so good. Of course, it's only been four days since I started using it, but it makes me smile when I'm below my allowed calorie count for the day. (We'll just ignore here the day it made me wince and whine as I was 883 calories over what it should have been. Darn cupcakes!)

Five: Bejeweled 2. On the phone. Need I say more? No, but I will anyway. You'd think I would play Scrabble or do crosswords or some other word-y time killer, but when I have a moment to de-stress and waste in a game, I want it to be mindless and wordless, as words fill my day from morning to night. Bejeweled has no words...unless you count the times the guy says "Excellent!" because I've made an excellent move. Which I do often. Because I'm awesome at the wordless game. And I can knock out a level or two in the time it takes the pasta to boil while fixing dinner.

Six: I now have (free) shiny, happy ringtones and text tones for people. Blues-y notes are Jim; Andie's are happy-go-lucky; Megan's include a bicycle horn each time she texts; and Brianna's ring — which makes me chuckle every darn time — is a robot voice that sounds just like her when she calls with her chirpy-chippy-chit-chat. Music to my heart each time my loved ones call...or text.

Seven: Less than 30 minutes after Mac was born, I had photos of him on my iPhone. Okay, my iPhone had nothing to do with it, as I would have gotten the same photos on my old phone, too. But Preston has an iPhone, which made it easy for the doting dad to take and text photos of the newborn. And that made me smile...even at 3:40 a.m. (Mountain time). And made me thankful for iPhones, even when they're not mine.

Eight: Even though my iPhone had nothing to do with getting the photos of Mac, it made a world of difference in my ability to forward those precious photos to Brianna and Andrea. And to Jim's phone. Even at 3:40 in the morning. Without my glasses on.

See? Lots of smiles that little more-expensive-than-I-expected-because-I-need-a-large-data-plan gadget brings. And this is just the beginning of the love affair! I've not yet even traveled with the thing, but I can just imagine the joy when I use a mobile boarding pass, check flight status in an instant, and keep tabs on my e-mail — and blog — without ever having to open my laptop (or depend on spotty airport Wi-Fi).

Consider, too, all the smiles there will surely be when I share with Bubby all the apps I downloaded just to impress and entertain him when I visit.

Yep, my iPhone just may turn out to be this grandma's very best friend.

Disclosure: This is not an ad, not a sponsored post, not anything more than my honest opinion. I love my iPhone...and no one has compensated me in any way for saying so. I wish they had. Maybe they should.

Photo © Apple

Today's question:

What is something you wish your phone could do, realistic or not?

Grandson No. 2 born!

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Baby Mac arrived at 2:10 this morning! Megan was on the phone with me barely 30 minutes later with the news. The healthy "big boy" weighed 7 pounds, 11 ounces and was 20 inches long.

Mom, baby, and Dad are doing fine ... now that their hearts have returned to resting rate after a mad-dash, usually-45-minute drive to the hospital, with Megan having contractions every two minutes and "ready to kill my husband" and Preston worrying he'd have to "play doctor." Baby Mac was delivered 30 minutes after they got to the hospital. Shew! Megan had been induced, but this was a far different scenario than the doctor described when administering the newfangled induction method yesterday afternoon.

Hooray for babies, healthy moms, and fast-driving dads! And hooray for technology allowing this long-distance grandma to get to see the baby mere minutes after he was born! (Thanks, Preston, for the photos!)

Now back to our previously scheduled programming (see previous post).

Searching for sense

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Ever since publishing my I wanna be HGTV'd post, I've been inundated by visitors landing here via a search for "HGTV." I'm happy to have the hits but feeling a tad guilty that somehow many of those arriving think this site -- despite the granny panties hanging on the line above -- really is HGTV and proceed to request help with their kitchens, yards and double-wides.

I'm baffled.

So I decided to use my nifty Squarespace analytics tools to figure out how and why they've clicked to Grandma's Briefs when searching for HGTV. I hoped what I'd find would assuage the bit of guilt I feel for unknowingly duping some folks into thinking I can offer them help with their downtrodden homes.

Then I clicked over to my "Search Engine Queries Summary" and saw the number of searches ... and immediately gave up plans to assuage guilt, for in the past week, there have been 598 searches using keyword variations of HGTV (believe it or not, there apparently are variations of HGTV). That's FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY EIGHT people who ended up on Grandma's Briefs instead of the HGTV website.

Why those 598 people might think the words "Grandma's" and "Briefs" are in any way related to "Home" and "Garden" -- regardless of what Google or Bing or Yahoo might say -- I don't know. And why, if they did go ahead and click out of curiosity, they would go so far as to honestly believe this site is the place to request help with their homes and comment with a request, I really don't know.

Like I said, I'm baffled.

The duped and downtrodden will have to remain such as I don't have the time -- and no longer the inclination -- to try to make sense of such things. (I did, though, take the time to tweet the HGTV Twitter account asking them to please help the confused folks who think I can offer them design assistance. No tweet back ... yet.)

Funny what you find, though, when you dig into a blog's analytics tools. In addition to the 598 hits to my site resulting from searches for HGTV (plus several other hits completely unrelated to grandparenting or grandmas or even briefs -- ya know, the things I do blog about), I actually did have visitors arriving via searches related to grandparenting and grandmas. Sort of.

Herein lies the "sort of." Below are the past week's grandma-related searches that baffle me most (the preceding number is search count):

2     how do i distance myself from my grandbaby (This is so not what Grandma's Briefs is about. How did such a search land them here? Funny thing is, it wasn't just one crabby grandma with intimacy issues searching for an answer, it was two!)

2     what should grandma carry in her purse (Meh. Sort of makes sense. Maybe my Grandma's Bag post lured them here.)

1     why are our grandkids always with the other grandparents? (I'm a jealous grandma. I admit it. But I didn't think it was that obvious.)

1     told grandma want a kiss for birthday (This one saddens me. I hope the grandchild in search of a kiss got one.)

1     craw cookie monster step by step (What the cuss is a 'craw cookie monster'?)

1     happy granmas (Okay, yeah, we do have those here.)

1     eating happy granmas (But we don't do this to them!)

1     www.verybiggestanimal (Hmmm ... and hmmm again. What more is there to say?)

1     hatch-n-grow dinosaur egg (Now this one makes sense. Glad to know I'm an expert on these, at least to the degree folks come here to find out more.)

1     grandma's tales for humidity (I do offer up a lot of hot air here, but no humidity. I don't think.)

Baffling, right? If you can make sense of these, do let me know.

I'm off to do a little searching of my own. To find out what the heck "craw cookie monsters" are. They just might be something worth adding to the Recipe Box -- or to News to Use as a warning to my dear readers to beware.

Who knows?

Photo credit: stock.xchng

Today's question:

Which search engine is your favorite and how often do you use it?