Silicon Valley Moms Blog

Stay-at-home server not appropriate for kids

Microsoft has hit back at the funny Mac/PC ads with its own web site stayathomeserver.com.

The ads are funny, but also touch on a few more important Mom issues like the decision to stay at home being wimpy.  I am a stay-at-home mother. Ironically we have a Microsoft work server at home.  My husband works one day a week at home.

However the ads and the website mention little about security, my chief concern.  Due to my concerns about my children's safety, the Microsoft Media Server sits in our bedroom.  This is not my place of choice.  It's rather noisy.  It turns on at random times in the night.  My husband talks about tuffing it out to the study where our other servers live, but I refuse.  Microsoft has always had a poor record of security and in its line of media it's awful. 

A soldier writes his own farewell

I read political blogs.  One of my favorites is a blog called Obsidian Wings.  Major Andy Olmsted, who posted on Obsidian Wings as G'Kar, was in the armed forces, and was a good and a thoughtful writer.   He was 37, with a family and the perspective that comes from age and education, and I enjoyed his posts and perspective - that of a thinking soldier.  Here is one of Andy's posts about his job.  Here's one of his posts about the need for critical thinking about wars, and another about whether or not our next president needs to be "tough."

Andy left a posting with hilzoy, of Obsidian Wings, asking her to post it if he was ever killed in the war. Andy was killed this week, and hilzoy posted his farewell on January 4.  Rarely do people get to write their own farewells, and Andy's is a moving message from someone who lost their life doing the job that they committed to do - his part of helping to carry on our Democracy.

Classroom blog teaching kids about writing and technology

I was chatting with a co-worker today over our internal instant messenger tool.  We were talking about the weather.  Rainy here in Silicon Valley and snowing in his Boston suburb.  Then my co-worker sent over a link to his son's blog.  What??? A third grader with a blog? 

Turns out, the blog is the brainchild of Mr Hammer - Roy's third grade teacher.  He keeps a classroom blog and encouraged the kids (with the help of their parents) to start their own blogs.  The blogs encourage the kids to write about their daily experiences which in turns makes them better writers.  The kids write a weekly letter to their parents telling them about what they learned in school that week.  And by golly, these kids are great writers already.  And I'm sure that they have better computer skills than I do at age 30. 

Props to Mr. Hammer and Roy for doing something totally cool (and educational)!

The post was written with permission from my co-worker, dad to the budding blogger.

The Jessica Seinfeld Mystery - Gym Romance, Vegetable Plagiarism and 21 Pairs of Shoes?

Yesterday morning after I slaved over serving my three boys oatmeal for breakfast, I sat down to have my cup of tea and read my favorite section of the Sunday New York Times: Sunday Styles. Yesterday's Sunday Styles had yet another celebrity mom gossipfest about Jessica Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld's wife, in an article called "How I Met Jerry Seinfeld, Scene 1, Take 2".

At first I was excited to read some juicy gossip, but then I wondered if this is just another attack on a celebrity mom, well, because she is a celebrity (wife). I guess the hot issues are that she met Jerry Seinfeld at the Reebok Gym in Manhattan while she was still married, she is a accused of plagiarizing another writer's recipes for her children's cookbook "Deceptively Delicious" and gave Oprah Winfrey 21 pairs of Christian Louboutin shoes as a gift for inviting her on the show to discuss her cookbook. A blogger at the Huffington Post even calculated the cost of the shoes to be $16,000 - $20,000.

First of all, after I came out supporting paperless thank-you's so how could I criticize someone for giving

Supporting Maternal Health With BlogHer Acts

Contributors from across our blogs wrote posts in support of Blog Day for the Mothers Act (today, October 24, 2007). Part of the action listed on the post was to tell fellow bloggers about the Mothers Act Blog Day so that they can participate. So here are our posts, take a read and pass on the word .....

An intro post from Glennia: BlogHers Act: Support The MOTHERS Act

Karianna shares that Mothers Can’t Carry the Burden Alone

Mommaof1 shares that she is 2 Years Later and Still Dealing

Beth B. shares that even working mothers in high tech suffer from PPD

JB shares that Mother's Act is Blogging for a Cause

Wksocmom posts about a Brief Interlude with PPD

Veronica posts For Melanie

PunditMom posts about Something In Common for adoptive parents

Devra shares that approving The MOTHERS Act would be one small step for our lawmakers and one giant leap for mom-kind!

I Left My BlogHer In San Francisco

BlogHer will be back. In the Bay Area, that is. Announced this morning, the BlogHer '08 Conference will be in San Francisco July 18-20 at the Westin St. Francis in Union Square, a wonderful conference venue. Silicon Valley Moms had a great presence in '06 in San Jose as well as in Chicago (with the Chicago Moms) in '07 so I have no doubt many of us will be there in SF. (See our reports from this year's conference.) On a personal note, BlogHer is a fantastic way to meet some really interesting women, and it's a very low key event - not at all intimidating like some other conferences can be. The speakers are excellent and everyone is friendly.

BlogHer '08 will include a 2-day conference followed by an Unconference the following day. For anyone coming from out of town or who wants to get a room anyway if you just want an excuse to get away from your kids for a couple of days, room reservations will open up November 26th. (BTW, the Argent Hotel in downtown SF is being turned into The Westin San Francisco Market Street, so there will be two within blocks of each other, but the one on Union Square is the hotel you want. Right across from Macy's.)

Chicago Mom Blogger banned from hospital

I can not read my friend and fellow Chicago Moms Blogger Mary Anne's blog from my son's hospital. Her blog now contains cute baby pictures,  but yes she does write porn. I'm amused by the idea of a hospital blocking cute baby photos and a bit sad since they do brighten my day.

I understand that the hospital doesn't want people even parents viewing photos of porn in what is essentially a public place.  Even in my son's room people walk in and out all the time.  I do agree that seeing a porn image without one's consent is sexual harassment and doesn't belong in a hospital,  especially a children's hospital.  But I read her mommy blog posts only. And I can read this blog and any other Mommy blog to my heart's content and some even talk about *gasp* sex. Ironically Mary Anne recently wrote a post Things I'm Scared to Blog About.

Lactivists Take On Facebook, Bill Maher, Harvard and the List Goes On....

This morning I saw this post from IzzyMom called "First MySpace, Then Facebook, Now Harvard? (Edited to Add)". That post discussed the recent mistreatment of breastfeeding mother during a Harvard exit exam, Bill Maher's completely offbase (even discriminatory) "joke" about breastfeeding moms and now Facebook's wrong move to delete pictures of women breastfeeding on the site. PunditMom also wrote a post titled "Breast Practices" and posted on the DC Metro Moms Blog ("Breastfeeding Moms are Lazy and Narcissistic"). The best soundbyte was from the link that IzzyMom provided to the blog post from Mojo of a Mama: "“boobs for breastfeeding = bad! ~ boobs to sell stuff = good!”. Thanks IzzyMom for providing the great summary of the current controversy.

I am big Facebook fan, but this is ridiculous. I can only guess that that the people making the call at Facebook are young guys uncomfortable with looking at breastfeeding moms. I do appreciate the open nature of Facebook, I found the petition  "Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!(Official petition to Facebook)" and joined the group. I am already a Facebook member,  but for those that are not it may be worth joining just to join that group.

NOTE TO THESE PEOPLE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH (AND MAKING POLICIES AGAINST) BREASTFEEDING MOMS:

Blog Talk Radio - "Where are the Bloggers of Color and Why Aren't We Reading Them? "

Our SVmoms contributor Glennia Campbell from the Silent "I" was asked to join the discussion on a Blog Talk Radio segment hosted by Motherhood Uncensored. The title of the discussion was "Inclusion & Exclusion: Where are the Bloggers of Color & Why Aren't We Reading Them?". Check out Glennia's post to hear more details about a discussion not to be missed.

BarCampBlock, MomBloggers and the Like Welcome

When I first saw the word "BarCamp", I could only think of a summer camp that has a bar for the parents to get Martini's after they drop off their kids. But in Silicon Valley and many places across the world, BarCamp is quite a phenomenon of a different sort. Wikipedia explains that BarCamp  "is an international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols."

Liz Henry, a local mom blogger and part of the extraordinary team organizing the event,  sent us an email to make sure we know that is a great opportunity for mom bloggers, she said "There will be lots of bloggers, videobloggers, super hard core techie types, entrepeneurs, and all sorts of people." Best of all, being a mom herself, she is trying to organize a babysitting room. My fellow blogger Glennia from Silent "I" also emailed me about the event.

Coming from the technology field BK (before kids) and now being a blogger, I find these "unconference" events a great opportunity to learn what is going on, share ideas and meet interesting people. People come to these events with an open mind so whether you are a techie without kids or a mom interested in blogging/technology, there is opportunities for all.

In Palo Alto the event will be August 18-19th, 2007, 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM -at 655 High Street. As the BarCampBlock details page explained "It will be a multi-office party starting SocialText's offices... and maybe looping in nearby neighbors like Facebook, iMeem, IDEO, Edgeio and so on." For those not in Silicon Valley, there will be other BarCamps at locations around the country and world.

Cross Posted at Beth Blecherman's personal blog Techmamas.com.