The title of this post is based on Lifehacks, a nifty website with a catchy name, dealing with all sorts of productivity tips. I figured I’d jot down some things which have improved my own life and, in some cases, the lives of those around me, with some explanations included.

del.icio.us: This website has certainly become popular enough with the technology-savvy crowd, but most of the people I deal with on a daily basis don’t belong to that bunch. That’s unfortunate, though I suspect popularity will increase and begin to catch on with the general public, provided it doesn’t get contaminated with a whole lot of garbage. One friend of mine described it as Google on steroids, which isn’t far from the truth. I’ve been using it to store my bookmarks in a shared area online. My wife tends to check it now and then, so I lean towards posting things that might interest her. It’s also a powerful search engine, which searches through sites that have been recommended by the community, hence the Google analogy. Rather than relying on Google’s algorithms, real people choose real sites that get added to the repository. So, after searching high and low for a perch for our parrot, I finally gave del.icio.us a shot. In a couple of clicks, I found Perch Factory, which was exactly the type of place I’d been looking for. Our bird is much happier now that she can hang out with all of us wherever we might be on her Companion Perch Portable Tee Stand, rather than be confined to her cage in my home office all the time.

Zillow.com: If you have any interest in the subject of real estate, check this website out. You can get a Comparative Market Analysis of your home in seconds, and it’s even fairly accurate in my opinion. (I am, incidentally, a NYS Licensed Real Estate Agent.)

VBA Developer’s Handbook: I’m not affiliated in any way with the writers of this book, and I’m not even necessarily trying to push the book itself. Rather, it’s VBA itself which has dramatically improved my life over the years. Considering how many people use Microsoft Office all day long, it pains me how few even know what VBA is. Whenever I encounter a task which I’m liable to repeat, I look for ways of automating it with VBA. Having done this for many years now, I can say with some degree of confidence that I’m doing the work of ten people at any given time while at work (probably a conservative estimate)- at least, ten people who don’t know what VBA is yet depend on Microsoft Office to do their jobs.

Sirius Satellite Radio: Since moving into our house out in the boondocks, my one-way work commute has increased from 12 miles to over 40 miles. Shortly after said move, Howard Stern made his historic move to Sirius. He was to be replaced with David Lee Roth, whom I admire tremendously, having been a die-hard Van Halen fan from the pre-Van Hagar days (I’m sorry, but Van Hagar was NOT Van Halen, no matter what you say). This combination of events spelled one thing for me: Sirius. In all fairness, I gave ol’ Dave a shot that first morning, driving my sorry ass to work, listening to him grill his old gravelly-voiced uncle whoever about who knows or cares, and that sealed the deal. I was at Best Buy right after work. By that night, I was hooked up with a full one year subscription. My commute turned from a stressfull daily ordeal to a relaxing, humor-filled experience that I look forward to. There’s even the huge added bonuses of Scott Ferrall and Bubba the Love Sponge, not to mention Raw Dog. As of this past Monday, they began streaming all these shows over the Internet. Between all that and Howard Stern On Demand, my life has become richer. My commute is now an ongoing First Amendment political statement. I can spend more quality time with my family, since I’ve been laughing the whole way home, rather than dealing with 40 miles of road rage. The subscription has paid for itself many times over.

Ta-da List: They say “Necessity is the mother of invention,” but really I think laziness is the proud parent. It occurred to me one evening as my wife was dictating yet another shopping list to me over the phone that there must be a better way. Sure enough, there’s this free online list sharing service. No more paper (except for when I print the list out prior to actually shopping). She can add items as they occur to her, I can add things I need, and life is good. I also recently discovered Wridea, which is a similar concept, with some cool features which set it apart from Ta-da List, such as categories and a “Print View” option, but I haven’t gotten too deeply into it. Ta-da has been working just fine.

Fairway: We like to cook, and we really enjoy gourmet, preferably organic foods. They opened one of these markets a mile from my job. Try their freshly sliced, organic smoked salmon. With all the bagels and lox I consumed growing up, nothing could have prepared me for this stuff. Now I could never go back to prepackaged lox. They also have the best meat, seafood and deli departments I’ve ever seen (which include plenty of organic items to choose from, of course), and I’ve seen more than a few. Try their organic Peruvian coffee. Surprisingly, they’re not great with the fresh mozzarella- though they do carry mozzarella curds, which I hear is the way to go if you’re up for the added steps of making your own mozzarella. Supposedly, it’s pretty easy, but I haven’t tried, yet. There’s also bulk olives, sundried tomatoes, organic spring mix… I could go on and on. The place is overwhelming, and we’ve struck gold.

Bonterra: Speaking of organic, we’ve tried a bunch of different organic wines, and maybe it’s the lack of sulfites in most of them that we’re just not used to, but frankly, the vast majority really suck. These people, on the other hand, aren’t quite as sulfite-phobic as the average hippie. They’re probably not even hippies. Their wine has sulfites, it’s organic- and, in my humble, non-connoisseur’s opinion, it’s great. Thank my wife for turning me on to it.

This list is by no means exhaustive. I’ll probably be posting a lot more in more specialized areas. There is, for instance, the Bumbo Seat, which deserves mentioning here as well as under the Parenting category. From their website: “The Bumbo is a soft, safe and comfortable environment for your baby. This innovative infant chair is designed to fit the contour of your baby’s body while supporting their spine and encouraging good posture. It lets babies sit upright all by themselves as soon as they have head control. The Bumbo Seat provides the trunk control. This helps your child learn the skills they need to sit up on their own.” There’s also Wikipedia, an endless source of information, The Internet Move Database (IMDb)…

When I was accompanying my wife to her doctor’s appointments during her first pregnancy, I noticed a distinct lack of male-oriented reading material in the offices. It occurred to me that there might be some value in starting some sort of publication geared towards expecting fathers. At some point, I might actually do that. In the meantime, I’m still in the researching phase. This research consists of my raising two daughters. Since the overwhelming consensus seems to be that our children are extremely happy, maybe my sharing some of my experience can lead to more happy children. I hope so.

I’m not recommending anything or dispensing advice. All I know is, our kids are either really good actresses, or those smiles are genuine. Since our youngest is only six and a half months, I’m going to go ahead and assume she’s being genuine. The two and half year old, well, she can be a big faker at times, but I’ll trust my own intuition on this one. Her happiness seems real to me, and everyone else for that matter. Of all the reactions to our children upon meeting them, the most common comment is, “They’re so happy!” There have been times in my life where I received some external validation, whether it was through applause after a musical performance, a good grade here and there in school, a compliment here and there on my appearance, not to mention ongoing validation from my wife, but to date, by far the greatest validation I have ever received is my children’s happiness. I interpret those smiles to mean I’m doing the right thing somewhere.

We have a small house, and our kids are at ages where they need our attention constantly. The fact that they appear to really want to hang out with us at all times is, I find, extremely flattering. We include them in everything, which is pretty easy to do, since as things stand right now, we don’t do too much. I work, I go home, and that’s it. From Friday night until Monday morning, I’m with the family day and night. I hope to arrange things so I can spend more time with them, but that’s another story entirely, which I won’t go into here. We are fortunate enough that my wife can stay home with the kids when I’m not around. I intend to do anything I can to keep this going as long as humanly possible. The results speak for themselves.

We’re tired, and that’s OK. We haven’t had the benefit of a huge support network. We live in a sort of rural, remote area, far away from what little family we have that happens to live in the same state. The rest are scattered around the country. I’ve called on my sister a couple of times to help, before our second daughter was born, just so we could go out to dinner for Mother’s Day (or was it Easter?), then so we could go househunting after we found out we were about to have a second child. So here we are, nestled in our cozy first house, far from everyone we know, in a new neighborhood. We could use some help, so we’re hoping to find some kind of babysitter or something, someone we can call a couple of times a week so we can maybe get some time to ourselves, however brief that time might be.

We strive to enjoy what we have, which includes eating well, enjoying ourselves and generally trying to laugh often. My wife and I share diverse tastes in music, food, life, spirituality, business, you name it, so there is no shortage of conversation going on. Our older daughter is an increasing participant in those conversations. I think our youngest is attempting to stick her two cents in there as well. Apart from the nagging feeling that I don’t spend enough time with my family, our routine is pretty comfortable and consistent. Our children are safe and loved, and they are constantly reminded of that. Perhaps this is the benefit to having no significant external support system. We didn’t plan it that way. In fact, we didn’t plan much of anything. We’ve been flying by the seat of our pants the whole way, and that’s forced us to live in the moment. There really hasn’t been much of a choice. We went from living in a cramped one bedroom third floor walkup apartment with a lousy parking situation to finding out we were expecting a second child in another five months to having to go househunting for our first house to finding that house to moving into our new house, all within a very short time. There’s been very little opportunity for us to reflect on the whole situation, and maybe it’s better that way. It feels good.

My wife and I are pretty self-aware, in my opinion. We’ve both seen a lot and been through our share, and we’ve explored a wide variety of lifestyles and belief systems, maybe excessively at times, but what the hell. We both value the importance of self exploration and expression, and we talk about it frequently, and we value those qualities in others. We try to encourage our children to develop those qualities in themselves. It seems to be working thus far. Those kids are a couple of characters, that’s for sure. They each have a tremendous sense of humor. I think that might be one of the most important things to possess.

We recently registered our older daughter for preschool starting in the fall, three days a week, three hours a day. It’s a Montessori school, and I don’t know how we’re going to pull it off as it’s really a stretch financially, but I intend to continue to do whatever it takes to provide them all with a safe environment in which they can flourish. I can’t believe she’s going to be starting preschool already. I’m almost glad I won’t be there to drop her off all the time, so I don’t have to face leaving without her. The whole separation anxiety thing works both ways.