Category / business

Recycle your holiday cards and help St. Jude’s Ranch

This is a great idea; something we can all do to help that doesn’t require a lot of time, effort, or investment. (Thanks for the heads up, Nadine!)

You can recycle this year’s Christmas cards and help out some kids at the same time. The St. Jude’s Ranch is a home for abused and neglected children. To raise money for the home, the children turn the fronts of used greeting cards (Christmas, Hanukah, birthdays, anniversary, etc.) into new greeting cards which they sell.

So instead of tossing the cards you’ve received, send them on to the ranch. (I’m just sending the fronts…easier to mail, less postage. You’ll be contributing to a worthy charity and saving a few trees to boot.

Here’s the address or you can check out their website http://www.stjudesranch.org/help_card.php

They are accepting used, all-occasion cards from thru February 28, 2010

Mail donations to:

St. Jude’s Ranch for Children
Recycled Card Program
100 St. Jude’s Street
Boulder City, NV 89005
877-977-SJRC (7572)

Steve Jobs has a "little talk" with AT&T

It’s no secret that I love my iPhone just a little more than my puppy and (slightly) less than my children. But from the very first day I turned it on, I have been dismayed by AT&T’s network. To say that it sucks would probably be giving them too much credit. Anyway, their network woes aren’t a secret to anyone either, and one of their bigwigs recently announced at a conference that they (the other bigwigs at AT&T) were dreaming up ways to coerce dis-incentivize penalize… Good Lord, I can’t think of the right word… Anyway, they’re trying to find ways to make their customers use their network less, instead of trying to just fix the damn thing to begin with.

So, Steve Jobs (well, actually, Fake Steve Jobs) got on the horn and had a little chat with them to attempt to coerce dis-incentivize penalize convince them to follow a different course.

Here’s a recap of what happened.

Doing something for your kids, every day


I was working on my Indianapolis Business Journal article this morning and noticed a post on the Wired Magazine GeekDad blog. The post was called “Cool Little Parenting Rituals” and referenced two Dads who were doing a little extra something for their kids on pretty much a daily basis. Both of the Dads he featured are artists who spend a little of their spare time each day creating lunch bags for their kids. Lunch Bag Art simply says “A new bag each day for my kids. I’m the dad. I make these during my lunch break.” Judging by the detail on some of these, I’m guessing he has some extended lunches; they are very, very cool.

Another also dresses up the lunch bag every day: After seeing the robots his son had drawn on their chalkboard, Justin decided to rip them off [his emphasis, not mine] try drawing some them on the lunchbags. He says he creates “Lunchbots” as a fun way to express his love for friends and family, and that alone makes it worth doing. They’re seriously cool, and I imagine seriously fun at school.
So, all of this got me wondering… what can I do?

So I got two boxes of Scabs in the mail…

Which, though gross, wasn’t all that surprising since I ordered them. Scabs are bandages designed to reflect all the grossness of being a kid (and, I guess, a Dad.) It also wasn’t surprising that I had two opportunities to use them this weekend since my kids seem inherently clumsy. I decided to conduct a little (un)scientific anecdotal study to see which design would be more in demand.

Scabs come in five designs: a zipper, stitches, eyeballs, worms, and spiders. Both times, the bandagee– (bandagie?)– ah, heck, kid with the cut, chose the spiders. These were both girls.

Grace went so far as to say, “I don’t want the zipper, Dad.” Really? I dig the zipper. I can’t figure out these kids…

Want to have some fun? Pick up some scabs of your own.