1. The clicky “bip-bip” noise every time you shift to a new selection.
Whyyyyy, Netflix, WHY? Why would you do this? It’s practically the first thing everyone shuts off of any kind of interface (iPod, cell phone) and you can’t shut it off of the Xbox interface. It’s driving me INSANE. Every move you make now has a noise attached and it’s horrible. I mean, really – I’ve pressed a button and I can see the screen shift accordingly. I don’t need the extra feedback of a noise to alert me that I’ve done something.

2. Autoplay instead of preview
If I hit “enter” to see more information about a movie like the description, or actors or whatnot, I do not automatically want to watch that movie. The update made it so you can view this information without clicking, which is nice, but I want to be able to select “Play” on purpose.

3. Button for searching vs Search “category”
I may have just missed this, but “Search” used to be one of the main options like “Instant Queue” and “Recommended for you” or whatever. Now I have to press “Y” to get there. Which I guess makes sense, but it took me a frustrated minute of scrolling through all the categories and not finding Search to realize that was the case.

4. Load time
Lots of things give you the whirly loading icon where they didn’t before. Especially searching – if you are typing in letters, it used to quickly try to match a result right away, and now it seems like it waits for you to stop typing.

5. The not-transparent-enough layers behind the current category
This is petty, but I hate it. If you’re looking at a category, you can see the covers of the next category extremely clearly. I find this incredibly distracting visually, and it makes for a cluttered interface. I want to see what’s in the current category, not the two behind it. It might be less annoying if it were WAY more transparent, but I don’t think it even needs to be there to begin with.

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Things aren’t all bad, I suppose, because there are two updates I do really like:

1. Ability to browse TV shows by season
It’s something I appreciated on Hulu and found irritating on Netflix – if I wanted to look at an episode in Season 7, I had to scroll down through six previous seasons! Now I can go sideways to the season I want and scroll down through a manageable number of episodes to get to the one I want.

2. Ability to view TV show descriptions
You used to only be able to see the show descriptions if the episodes took a long time to load, and there was no way to get back once they did. Now you can see what a show is about before you look at the episode description.

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Somewhat unrelated, but I really wish there were more shows like The Tudors, Camelot, and Legend of the Seeker. Big, productiony shows with great characters, drama, sexytimes, and humor. (Is Game of Thrones anything like this? I saw some of the first episode a while ago but haven’t seen anything else.) I was really sad when I found out Camelot only had one season! Also, there needs to be more than only three episodes of Sherlock with Martin Freeman.

The ad has since been marked as “private” on YouTube and is no longer available for viewing, but let me recap:

1. Obnoxious in-laws arrive and gawk at mother holding her baby, Mother-in-law says derisively, “Breastfeeding AGAIN?” (Despite the fact that it doesn’t even look like the mom is breastfeeding!)

2. Husband tries to usher his parents out of the room, claiming mom and baby’s need for privacy. (As though nursing in front of your in-laws is a total impossibility.)

3. Mother-in-law makes a comment about “them” (mom’s breasts) being “so small” and wonders if Mom can make enough milk. (Breast size is not a good indicator of milk supply. Women with small breasts can have oversupply, just as women with large breasts can have undersupply.)

4. Mom and baby sneak around the house trying to breastfeed in private while Father-in-law searches vainly for half & half for his coffee. (Again, as though you must be sequestered to nurse).

5. Mother-in-law whines that no one else gets to feed the baby. (It’s not their job to feed the baby – it’s Mom’s! They can do any number of other things, like change baby’s diaper, do laundry, do dishes, give baby a bath, make dinner, etc.)

6. Mom asks husband to pass her her purse, and they exchange a knowing glance. They run to their bedroom where the mom pulls a hand pump out of her purse and says to give her a few minutes. (As though pumping a bottle is going to solve the problem of mom and dad’s complete lack of boundaries regarding their obnoxious, unsupportive in-laws?)

7. Mom returns from the bedroom carrying a bottle of milk, which Father-in-law then mistakes for half & half for his coffee. Time slows down (“Nooooooo!”) as he pours the pumped milk into his coffee and takes a big gulp. (As though breastmilk is so gross, it’s not to be ingested.)

8. Father-in-law makes a comment about the milk definitely being 2%. (Implying her milk is “less than whole” when really, it is her infant’s source of complete nutrition.)

My reaction to the video was one of irritation and anger. The in-laws undermined the breastfeeding relationship at every turn, and instead of standing up for her baby’s best interests and telling the in-laws to screw off, the mom caves and hides in the bedroom to pump. I know there are probably some women who find pumping empowering, but I really, really did not enjoy it and cannot imagine purposely pumping when I didn’t have to do so, especially if it was done to placate family members with a misguided sense of entitlement with regard to my baby’s eating habits.

The entire thing really squicked me out. Ostensibly, this ad was to promote Evenflo’s manual breast pump. Helping perpetuate the most damaging breastfeeding myths around is not a good way to win the support of breastfeeding mothers.

Evenflo attempted to placate the masses by posting the following on Twitter:

…and then followed up with:

Somehow, with the last scene of the video highlighting the Evenflo pump, I don’t think that was their true intent. And I don’t think that showing breastfeeding as an inconsiderate and selfish act is “fully supporting” all moms.

This article sums up the timeline of events pretty well, but I think they get it wrong when they indicate it’s just “mommy bloggers” who are upset. It’s moms who use social media who are upset, and I’m willing to bet that many, if not most of them, do not maintain a blog.

The comments on the above article indicate that many people think nursing moms can’t take a joke. I can take a joke – it’s just that this video wasn’t funny. There is humor in obnoxious in-laws, in pumping, and yes, even in breastfeeding, but this video did not find that humor. Instead, they took cheap pot-shots at a mother doing what she felt was right for her baby, and offered their product as a way of capitulating to overbearing family members who clearly don’t have the baby’s best interests in mind. Not really a product I want to support.

(Plus, having anybody drink the breastmilk that I pumped for my baby would have been devastating (not funny!) to me, because of the time and effort it takes to get that amount of expressed milk.)

I have not purchased any Evenflo products in the past, but you can bet I will not be buying them in the future, and I suggest you don’t either.

Yesterday, I went to the library by myself (amazing, since I don’t get a ton of alone-time these days!) and got six books. I read four of them yesterday and one today. The last one was kind of an impulse grab, something about small businesses that I thought Daniel might be interested in and that I thought I’d skim through too, but I probably won’t actually look at it. The other five were The Discipline Book by Dr. Sears (because I like his philosophy and was interested in seeing what he had to say about toddlers), Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy (saw it on the shelf and remembered I’d heard of it and wanted to read it), Escape by Carolyn Jessop (lady from a fundamentalist religious cult escapes with eight kids in tow), The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (girl and siblings grow up with flighty mother and alcoholic father, live off the land, etc), and The Baby Thief by Barbara Bisantz Raymond (described as “the Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption”). All great choices, for sure. (And yes, I do read that fast!) (But I did stay up until 3:30am last night to finish Escape.)

I had kind of forgotten how much I love reading, and it made me sad that I don’t get to do it very often anymore. I used to read at least 20 minutes a day (split between my to-and-from work commute) which worked out to about an Agatha Christie novel per week, and now I’m lucky if I read a book every two months. The last book I read before that was The Help, which I liked very much.

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I made myself a portfolio site. I redid our local Farmer’s Market website. I made a site to locate city sidewalks, because they are few and far between. I’m kind of trying to get back into the swing of things with regard to development, since I think I might want to take on some freelance stuff.

It’s hard though, because I know I’m not as strong of a designer as I am a developer, and while I am able to come up with nice things, I really honestly do not think I can do it under pressure (e.g., a paying client). My plan is to stick to simple sites that I can develop with WordPress and take advantage of customize-able themes, or do site “fixes” or facelifts to fix issues rather than total redesigns. Unless one of my lovely designery-type friends wants to team up with me? I can work random hours on a part-time basis, haha.

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Last week, we went to the county fair twice in one day. I used to love the fair growing up – if you got a blue ribbon on something you entered, you could get $3 for it, and I often made my “summer money” this way. I got free coloring books about Smokey the Bear, admired the needlework exhibits and vowed to enter something next year, and ran away from the Tea Party booth (!) and registered to vote at the Idaho Democrats booth. Pigs oinked at Wesley and he burst into tears. (He loves piggies but I think he loves the idea of piggies more than real-life ones.) I ate an oversized corn dog and had bites of an elephant ear.

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Daniel made this cola recipe and I can’t say enough good things about it. It’s the perfect summer drink. Light, refreshing, and delicious.

That meant that when I moved to Portland in the fall of 2003 and saw a tour poster for The Art of Rock 2 including Nile, Vader, and Amon Amarth, and I felt like I HAD to go, I almost backed out because I had no one to go with! Daniel was still in Idaho, I had only just met my roommates, and I didn’t know anybody in town with my same musical tastes.

My roommate convinced me to just GO, and man, I was so glad I did.

Here’s an excerpt from a recap I wrote post-show:

THEN, I had the coolest thing EVER happen to me! I was just standing there by myself, and I turned around and immediately recognized this guy.
This was weird, because I really don’t know anyone from Portland. There was a small circle of people around him, and it finally dawned on me that it was the huge blonde guy from NILE! So when he went over to the FYE table, I followed him. He was signing stuff over there so I got in line. I got to shake his hand, and he signed my ticket, and I told him that Daniel was really jealous that I was there because he couldn’t go. Karl was like, man, that sucks. You should have told him to come down for the weekend. I was like, yeah, I know, but he had to work. So then he asks me my name, and shook my hand again, and told me thanks for coming. I WAS SO STOKED!

(No judging, I was barely 18 and still a total idiot.)

But still totally awesome! I went to a death metal show, BY MYSELF, in a new city, and met the lead singer of a band I really liked. It showed me that I could do things by myself in a new city, and I didn’t have to let opportunities pass me by because I didn’t want to be adventurous.

(This blog post is part of a May challenge at theqbee.net.)

But if you break this rule, you’re not alone: A poll of BabyCenter moms reveals that only 10 percent of moms with toddlers forbid TV completely. Sixty-seven percent think it’s okay to let babies watch some TV, and 69 percent let their child watch the TV shows and DVDs they’re watching. But the shame is still in play: 26 percent of moms lie about how much TV their children watch!

So even if it’s kind of a crap BabyCenter poll, it’s a bit of a more widespread look at how actual people interpret the AAP’s recommendation. I found it interesting – right now we’re in that 10% that “doesn’t allow” TV.

Edited to Add:

Babies who watch TV are more likely to have delayed cognitive development and language at 14 months, especially if they’re watching programs intended for adults and older children. [...] Babies who watched 60 minutes of TV daily had developmental scores one-third lower at 14 months than babies who weren’t watching that much TV. Though their developmental scores were still in the normal range, the discrepancy may be due to the fact that when kids and parents are watching TV, they’re missing out on talking, playing, and interactions that are essential to learning and development.
- TV Watching Is Bad for Babies’ Brains

Eeesh.

(Side note: I’ll admit to being sort of horrified that the stat for AAP-TV-rule compliance is only 10%, but we co-sleep AND put Wesley to sleep on his tummy, which is like NUMERO UNO big bad horrible thing that will kill all babies everywhere. Obviously, I am not immune to picking and choosing what works for us, AAP be damned. We all do what works best for our families!)