If you you believe that then why do so many companies pour so much money into advertising research?

What our kids watch on TV is a HUGE influence in their way of thinking and that doesn’t just apply to them. Parents are equally influenced.

To find out how influenced, just read the abstract from research done in Brazil. once you read that, maybe you’ll be intrigued enough to even read further.

Influence of One TV Program in Brazil

If one TV program can do this much, how much of an influence are other programs? Even deeper, how much does marriage or the lack of a mother and father play a role in influencing children?

Listen to this: The Case for Traditional Marriage

Rafting through gorgeous red-rock canyons, relaxing and camping under the stars, hiking and enjoying the beautiful nature God has created should make for a great trip!

There are 8 people going in total. All but one person have been on previous trips.

Please pray for our safety and that God would be revealed through this little adventure.

All of that has changed though thanks to Denise’s non-stop hard work unpacking, organizing and arranging things and her ability to find out how to use our hi-tech heater from Germany. She has done an amazing job on the house and it finally is beginning to feel like home…and I think I speak for everyone. NOTE: Ask the others to get their opinions firsthand.

Would you believe we didn’t have Internet for the first week? It actually wasn’t as hard coping as it might sound thanks to having iPhones. We also didn’t have TV setup for the first few days either. It was a nice change though.

Today, I took the legs off our bed. The legs were tall and whenever Denise or I turned in the bed at night the bed would move side to side. Denise was quick to ask me to take them off, but I didn’t want to because I knew it was going to be a hassle because several of the screws were stripped. Since I only had a handheld screwdriver, I knew it would not be a fun job.

So to get the job done right and more easily, I went to the store and bought a Ryobi drill. It was 4000 yen well-spent! The drill allowed me to get the stripped screws out without much fuss. I got the wood I screwed into the bed to hold the legs off and then had to go to the store one more time to buy some rubber feet to screw in place where the wood meets the floor.

Now the bed is lowered to the floor and it will not move anywhere! You could run and jump on the bed and it wouldn’t move. The rubber feet stick!

Well, it seems everyone is out of the shower. So I’m heading to get a nice hot bath in our automatic onsen-tub and then watch a movie with the family!

Parenting Concepts that Work 3

Parenting Concepts that Work 4

Parenting Concepts that Work 5

Parenting Concepts that Work 6

Parenting Concepts that Work 7

Here’s a podcast I’m listening to now.

What I’m looking for in this podcast is how to be a better father, husband and leader.

I am no authority on parenting, but the people at Focus On the Family have a better grasp of it than I do. So I am going share the podcast links to this series to hopefully help others who wish to be better too.

It will be strange not living in this apartment we have spent most of our Japan-lives in. 12 years in this place! What will be even stranger is moving into our friends’ home where we have spent much of our lives also. We are looking forward to this move though.

Mia and Noah will have their own rooms, desks to do homework and a toilet upstairs. Denise and I will have a room to ourselves, too. Because it is a two-story house, we will have space where noise-separation will be welcomed and space to settle down and enjoy peace and quiet…somewhat quiet I imagine.

It will take a little getting used to because our current place has gas and electricity, but the new home is all-electric and very Panasonically efficient. We will still be able to enjoy the Panasonic heater, stereo and bathtub. The tub can be placed on a timer, filled and heated automatically! Nice!

Another blessing is the piano that comes with the house. I’m sure we will be pounding on it trying to learn how to play. I have always wanted to play and now will be a great opportunity to begin again after 40 years of not playing. NOTE: My piano teacher told my parents that I was too young to play at 5 or 6 years of age. So they believed the fool and stopped my lessons.

It is almost 12pm now, so I had better get off this computer. I told Denise I would begin packing at lunch time. Gotta go pack!

As the number of smartphone users increases each day, more and more videos, apps and other digital data are being transferred across the information highway testing the hardware mobile phone companies like AT&T and Verizon have installed.

ISPs and mobile phone companies are not new to these types of problems. Their servers have been getting pushed to their limits ever since the Internet became popular. As technology improves, companies switch out their old servers with newer, faster ones. Yet, even though technology has improved, the growing number of users continue to push even newer and faster servers to their limits.

In the old days, when users were attached to the Internet via dial-up, files were mostly text with little or no graphics or media. 20 years ago, uploading photos was new technology and video technology on the Internet was only in dream stage. Nowadays, photos and videos can be shot from mobile phones and immediately uploaded to websites like Fl;ickr or YouTube.

YouTube, as of May 2010, receives over 2 billion views a day. Imagine how much data is being processed just for people visiting YouTube. It’s mind-boggling! Their servers processing this data, because they are faster and newer than ones even a year or two ago, can process and send the data on the Internet at blazing speeds.

Considering that and the fact that Verizon has had 3 outages this month, you may draw the conclusion that their servers running their business may have become outdated, especially since technology these days can become outdated almost overnight! Yet, given the fact that 12.5x more smartphone users entered the market over the Christmas holiday season, it might possibly be that they are experiencing problems because more users bought Verizon smartphones than AT&T. Whatever the reason, they weren’t very well prepared.

NEXT ARTICLE: Why Verizon and AT&T should not cancel Unlimited Service plans or create plans where users have to pay extra for downloading or uploading more than their monthly allotment.

So I gave him a choice. He could either go to baseball and tell his coach his back was sore and that he didn’t want to run or he could stay home and clean; and clean like he has never cleaned before.

He has already washed the car and wheels and dried it. Plus, he had to take everything out to clean it and put it away and clean up afterwards. Now, he is in the middle of cleaning the windows of the house.

He’s pretty tough, and at the same time, pretty determined! That makes two of us, because I am determined to make it very tough on him today.

Hopefully, when this is all said and done, he will have learned how to clean properly, and that even if baseball practice is tough, he needs to go to practice.

Today will be a good test for those who live in the area to see how traffic will be and see how best to get to the store. It will also be a good test for employees who have hopefully been well-trained for the fast pace that Costco works at.

I’m heading there right now! Of course, by bicycle.

The Los Angeles Angels must be picking the pockets of their fans, or planning to, if they’ve got that much money to shed out on one player, much less a whole team of players.

I would love to be able to play baseball everyday and provide for my family with the money I earned. Give me 10% of what Pujols makes and I’ll outperform Pujols! Give someone in the minors 10% of Pujols earnings and I bet they would do an even better job than me and last longer since most players in the minors are way younger than me!

Hitting 3 homeruns in a World Series is amazing, but it ain’t worth 10 million a year for 10 years! One year, okay. 10…no way!