Product review: Davidsbeenhere Inflatable Travel Pillow with Cloth Cover

I found this travel pillow very comfortable. The difference between this pillow and an old inflatable pillow I usually travel with is that the center part of this pillow is flat. This means the pillow does not push your head forward, it only allows you to rest your head to the side. This is a very good design!

This pillow's nozzle has a valve, so when you stop blowing into it it does not instantly deflate. However, this mechanism makes it a little tricker to let the air out. To inflate the pillow the instruction say to pinch the nozzle. The first few times I tried to inflate the pillow I had trouble doing so because I was pinching too low. I though the right place to pinch would be where the valve that holds the air is. Instead the right place to pinch is on the neck of the valve, at the very top. I found that the easiest way to squeeze was not with out hand, but with hands pushing the valve with my two thumbs. This way I could easily place my lips on the valve without my hand getting in the way.

And a final note on inflation, inflation gets easier every time you do it. Before I figured out the pinch method described above I used a foot pump to inflate it. If you have trouble inflating trying that one time, it separates the plastic sides from each other and inflating by mouth will be easier.

To deflate the pillow you also need to push on the valve right at the very top. To get all the air out I found that rolling the pillow while squeezing was the best way. When I wanted to make the pillow totally flat I used a small object to depress the valve directly while doing the final roll.

I am attaching a collage of two photos.

Photo #1 shows the pillow and the storage pouch it comes with. The pillow has a cloth case that can be washed.

 Note that Amazon sells two versions of Davidbeenthere travel pillow:  this one  and another one which is similar, more expensive, but without a case. I asked Davidbeenthere about the differences and he told me that the pillows are identical, but this newer model has a cloth case and a new pricing.

The second photo demonstrates the technique for quick deflating without pinching I described earlier.

The the pouch with the folded pillow is sized: 6 inches wide x 5 inches long x 2.5 inches thick (thickness depends on how well the pillow is deflated).

The pillow is 14.5 inches measuring the long end that goes behind the head, and 9.5 inches front to back.

I received a sample pillow from Davidsbeenthere for evaluation and honest and fair review. I have described positives and negatives of my experience with the pillow and if you have any questions on the features I covered I am always happy to respond to comments.

Overall, I find this that this pillow puts my head into a more comfortable position that the old pillow which inflates evenly without a flat part in the center. I recommend it.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.



Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Book review: Green Beans & Ice Cream by Bill Sims Jr.

Even though the concept of positive rewards in order to induce the desired behavior is not new the author's thoughts on the topic are witty and insightful, and I found myself enjoying the book. His examples of poor management decisions reminded me of my bad bosses, and approaches that worked reminded why I found some people more pleasant to work with than others.

Even though this book is mostly aimed at managers anyone can benefit from it, as all of us have people around whose behavior we want to influence. Mr. Sims drives his points home with many stories and examples. They illustrate both approaches that work and those that do not.

One of my favorite examples was from experiment held in 1927 in Hawthorne Works factory in Cicero, Illinois. The researchers wanted to study the effects of lighting on the worker's productivity. During the first week they dimmed the lights by 10% and closely monitored the worker's productivity. The productivity increased. Each week as they continued to dim the lights the productivity continued to increase. During the entire period the workers were aware of the experiment and were given feedback on the number of parts they produced. After the lights got very dim the researchers returned the lights to their full strength expecting to erase all productivity gains only to find that the productivity increased again. Their conclusion was that it was not the lights but the feedback the workers received that were the cause of the productivity gains.

Another interesting observation of the author is that in typical company there is usually less than 3% difference in the pay between under performing employees and the highly motivated ones. This makes it clear that money is not the only thing that motivates people. Often that extra something is the recognition of people's contributions.

The lack of recognition has the opposite effect. It made me think of one of my least favorite bosses. We were working particularly hard for several months trying to satisfy a totally unrealistic deadline he set. We worked weekdays and weekends to get things done. During one of the meetings we asked him if after we deliver the product we could get some time off to make up for the long weekends at work. His reply was "Be grateful you are getting a pay check." That totally deflated our enthusiasm, after all we did not have to work weekends. Very few people came in the weekend after that meeting.

Positive reinforcement has to be tailored to a specific person. Mr. Sims uses another amusing story to drive this point home. One employee complained about her boss "Every morning I get a message from my boss telling me I am doing a great job, and that I am the best." What's wrong with that? Turns out when she talked to her co-workers she learned that they all get the same "You are the best" messages, so they considered their boss to be insincere and did not take his messages as positive reinforcement.

At the end of the book the author puts positive reinforcements in three categories: tangible, social, and self. Tangible awards are cash, stock options, gifts, and so forth. Often, the catch with tangible awards is that they are based on employees salaries more than the specific contributions each person have made. Social rewards are employee-of-the-month awards or team cook-out events. The catch of social awards is that you cannot reward someone by your presence if they hate your guts. If your least favorite boss has a cook out you are likely to find an excuse not to be there. Self reinforcement rewards is only something a person can do for himself. Some people are very self-motivated about work. It is hard to teach self-motivation, but it is fairly easy to destroy it by demoralizing, downsizing, cutting pay, and giving more work to fewer people. Which kind of reinforcement is best? All of them.

As much as I enjoyed this book, there was one minor thing that I found a bit annoying. Many chapters had references to the author's web site, where you can read additional details of a story the author is telling. I am typically reading a book away from the computer so having references to a web site in the middle of story felt like a tease. Why can't those memos from Tiger Oil owner be included in the book? If this additional information was included in the appendix rather than part of the main story line, I would just think of it as bonus info. Well, perhaps the author is experimenting with another behavior modification technique on his readers.

Table of content:

One: The Little Rebel
Two: Why Did He Do That?
Three: Changing Attitudes and Self-Motivation
Four: Does Punishment Really Work?
Five: The Church of Here and Now
Six: Why Does R+1 Work
Seven: Blinded by the Light
Eight: Why Cash Isn't King
Nine: The $3,000 Jacket
Ten: Behaviors We Haven't Learned to Observe
Eleven: Why Do I Have to Recognize People Anyway
Twelve: "Stop Recognizing Those Employees!"
Thirteen: A T-Shirt for a Million Dollar Idea?
Fourteen: Who Killed the Work Ethic?
Fifteen: Daughter of the Month
Sixteen: Most Likely to Succeed
Seventeen: "You Can't Positively Reinforce People If They Hate Your Guts"
Eighteen: Teacher's Pet Syndrome Nineteen: Pink Cadillacs Twenty: CAVE People: One Size Does Not Fit All Twenty-One: "Business Is Behavior" Twenty-Two: Stuff That Rolls Downhill Twenty-Three: "Feel-Good" Recognition Twenty-Four: Not Another Baseball Cap Twenty-Five: Isn't a Paycheck Enough? Twenty-Six: Is Cash Really King? Twenty-Seven: I Hate My Boss! Twenty-Eight: Is It Positive or Punishing?
Twenty-Nine: Don't Drink the Pink Kool-Aid
Thirty: Chocolate, Vanilla, or Strawberry? The Great Debate
Thirty-One: Empowering Employees is R+1
Thirty-Two: What Makes a Great Leader?
Thirty-Three: Why Green Beans & Ice Cream?

I enjoyed reading this book. If you want to change people's behaviors in a positive way this book will help you do it. I recommend it.

You can find this book on Amazon by following this link.
>


Ali Julia review ★★★★☆

I received a review copy of this book to provide an honest and unbiased review.

Book review: Proverbial Aesop: The Complete Aesopic Proverbs Translated with Commentary by Chandler A. Phillips

I really enjoyed this book. The proverbs are insightful, witty, and wise. The author discovered a set of proverbs attributed to the famous story teller Aesop that were previously untranslated. So he set out to create the translations himself. When the translation were done he realized that the modern audience may not be able to fully appreciate them without additional context that would help them comprehend the proverbs as the ancient Romans and Greeks would have interpreted them. This is how the author came up with the idea of adding fables to the proverbs. He found fables that either supported or opposed the meaning of each proverb included in the book. The difference between proverb is fable is that the proverb is typically just one sentence, where is a fable is a short paragraph with a few sentences.

I am including one example from the book below to give you a flavor of how this book is organized.

PROVERB 6.1(7):
You see the face, but you cannot know the mind.
*************************************************
SUPPORTING FABLE:
A cat was enamoured of a handsome youth and begged Aphrodite to change her into a woman. The goddess, pitying her sad state, transformed her into a beautiful girl, and, when - young man saw her, he fell in love with her and took her home to be his wife. While they were resting in their bedroom, a mouse ran in front of her. She at once forgot where she was, leapt up from the bed, and ran after the mouse to eat it. (Acs. 50, FAG. 88, SAH. 96 [etr.]).
*************************************************
CONTRASTING FABLE:
The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions.
Cicero

I found that I enjoyed the combination of the proverbs and fables together very much, they really enhanced my comprehension and delight in the wit and spirit of the ancient observations.

You can find this book on Amazon by following this link.



Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Note: I received an Advanced Reader Copy of this book to provide fair and unbiased review

Mobile App Review: Norton Mobile Security Virus Malware Scan , Free App (7.7 Samsung Galaxy Tablet, Nexus Table, Nexus Phone, Android)

We own two Android tablets (Nexus 7 running Jellybean and Samsung Galaxy 7.7 running Honeycomb 3.2) and recently added Norton Mobile Security apps to both. The Norton Mobile app in Amazon store appears to be available only for Kindle, so I installed the Android version from Google Play (searching on Norton Virus brings it right up).

The Norton Mobile Security app identifies apps that are potential risks or have annoying behaviours. The free version provides free anti-malware scan. The pro-version provides anti-theft, backup, and web protection, which are not available in the free version.

When you start the app it gives you an option to sign in or skip sign in. Signing in allows your to register your device with Norton Security.

The scan for malware is very quick. The results are presented in two tab view: the first tab has a list of malware apps, the second tab has apps with present other risks. Norton identified no malware on my tablets, but one of the tablets had an app that was flagged as "other risks". It displayed the application icon and name and when I clicked on it gave me a list of reasons why this app was flagged. I am including a screen capture show the information that is presented

Detailed info about the flagged app showed the following information:
- collects your device info
- puts ads on notification bar
- adds icons to device screen
- modifies browser bookmarks
- displays ads in the app

The Norton app gave me an option to mark the application as trusted or to uninstall it. When I marked it to be trusted, it was removed from flagged risks count but it remained listed on the page so I could back revoke trust or uninstall at any time.

The list of other actions available from the menu are: Display the activity log (it shows updates, scans, what you marked trusted), settings (frequency of updates, what is displayed on the icon bar), LiveUpdate, Help, Report a problem).

The scan for new threat definitions occurs on daily basis, rule update happens automatically if needed.

The application looks and feels well done. It has logically organized controls and navigation is easy and intuitive. Logging is detailed without being overly verbose.

In a way I am glad it found a minor risk as it gave me more confidence that it works. So far I don't feel that it slowed down my tablet in any way.

This app works well on my Samsung Galaxy 7.7 Tablet (my Galaxy 7.7 review) running Android HoneyComb 3.2. As well as Nexus 7 running Jellybean.  I had no technical problems and the app scales to my screen size very nicely.

The Kindle version of this app is free from Amazon Android Store and You can find this app on Amazon by following this link.


Other Android versions can be found in Google Play Marketplace by searching on "Norton" and "virus". 

I am including Norton Mobile Security icon (to the left of this text) so you can easily recognize it among other mobile security apps.

Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Product review: Energizer Watch/Electronic Batteries, 3 Volts, 2032, 2 batteries (Lithium Button Cell) Energizer Watch/Electronic Batteries, 3 Volts, 2032 (Lithium Button Cell)

I was a little concerned reading other reviews about getting old stock batteries, but my batteries are 2011 stock (date appears on the back of the blister pack). The package contains two new 3V Lithium Energizer batteries in the original blister pack.

CR2032 is a large button type battery (6/8" of an inch in size). This is a battery that needs to be purchased separately to power Davidsbeenhere: Portable Travel Digital Luggage Scale .



It fit and is working well. I am attaching a photo of this battery being inserted into the digital scale for reference.

I will keep this review updated with longevity of the battery.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Book Review: 2-at-a-Time Socks: Revealed Inside. . . The Secret of Knitting Two at Once on One Circular Needle Works for any Sock Pattern! by Melissa Morgan-Oakes

I am an experienced knitter who has made dozens of socks using 4 knitting needles method. When I saw a book by Melissa Morgan-Oakes in the local library I was intrigued by the possibilities of making two socks at once so I would not need to keep track of the design to repeat it perfectly on the second sock. However, after spending several days I was disappointed in the technique. It is much more awkward and time consuming than the 4 needle method. I had to spend a lot of time fussing with my work, my hands were at much higher tension and were tired (which I never experience with 4 needle method).

Because I am an experienced knitter I thought instructions did not seem right and looked up errata for the book, and found a very large number of corrections (I am including them at the end of this review). A less experienced knitter would just be left frustrated.

I LIKED:

1. The book has spinal rings and lays flat easily
2. The book has nice photographs
3. I like trying new techniques and even though I went back to the old method I am glad I now know how this method works

I DID NOT LIKE:

1. The technique itself is awkward and fussy
2. The book is 143 pages, but the explanation of the technique is only 17 pages. I did not find the instruction easy to follow and had to re-read them many times despite being an experience knitter. I attaching a photo of a sample page.
3. The book contains a large number of mistakes in the instructions (see errata below).
4. There is only one method for turning the heel. The short row heel technique (the look of which I prefer) was not shown.
5. Most patterns are shown in 3 sizes: women medium, women large/men small, men large. I wear women small and was disappointed to see very few patterns shown for women small size.

ERRATA FROM STOREY PUBLISHING

Corrections

2-at-a-Time Socks
The following revisions should be applied to all patterns:
Page - Knitting the Legs

The Note should read: "End ready to begin sock A heel . . ."

Page - Turning the Heels

The Note should read:
"Turn the heel on each sock separately, working in rows and beginning with sock A ."

And in the last 2 lines of that section:
" Sock A heel now has. . ."
"Follow directions above to turn sock B heel ."

2-at-a-time Technique
Page 15 - Dividing and Joining Sock A

Step 5. . . with your working yarn by knitting into the first cast-on stitch .

Page 16 - Dividing and Joining Sock A

Step 7. . . Now, work the remaining 16 stitches of sock A in K1, P1 rib .

Page 19 - Working the Heel Flaps

Caption of 2nd photograph should read: "completing row 2 of heel flap A"

Page 20 - Working the Heel Flaps

Caption of 1st photograph should read: " purl row of heel flap B"

Step 17. . . End having just worked a right-side row of heel flap B. Sock B will be a row shorter than sock A, but that's okay.

Page 21 - Turning the Heels

Sock photos should be of Sock A and therefore blue

1st paragraph:
"For the 2-at-a-time method, you work each heel turn separately, beginning with heel flap A. "

Step 18. . . On heel flap A , K10, ssk, K1, turn.

Page 22 - Turning the Heels

First sock photo should be of Sock A and therefore blue. It's caption should read:
"completing sock A heel turn"

Caption of 2nd photograph should read: "completing sock B heel turn"

Step 22. . . you have 10 stitches for the heel flap of sock A .

Step 23. . . Move to sock B , slip stitch. . .follow short-row heel-turn direction for sock A. You'll end having just worked a wrong-side row.

Page 24 - Picking Up Gusset Stitches

Caption of 3rd photograph should read: "picking up gusset stitches of sock A "

Step 29. . . Pick up and knit one stitch between the sock B instep and heel flap. . .Work across the heel stitches of sock B and down the left heel flap. (Adjust needles so that the cable loop separates the instep stitches of sock B from the newly picked up gusset stitches.)

Page 25 - Working the Gusset Decreases

Caption of photograph should read: " decrease round completed, next round begun "

Page 27 - Shaping the Toe

Step 36. . .On sock B, K1 , ssk, knit to the last three stitches of sock B, K2tog, K1.

Step 39. . . Work three more decrease rounds, with no even rows between

TABLE OF CONTENT


THE SECRET REVEALED 2-AT-A-TIME TECHNIQUE (17 pages where the technique is explained)
2-AT-A-TIME PATTERNS (17 patterns)
Berry Season
Spice
Be Mine
Varsity
Belle Epoque
Frolic
Coquette
Socks for Aidan
Twilight
Sugar Maple
H Sock
Athena
Emily's Socks
Sailor's Delight
Pitter Patter
The Classic Sock
Ragg Hiker
APPENDIX
Glossary
Pattern Stitch Key
Abbreviations
Standard Sock Sizes

You can find this book on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★☆☆☆

Product review: Blue Marble Designs Llc 100040 Snap 'N' Grow Ladder Trellis

"BLUE MARBLE DESIGNS" SNAP 'N' GROW LADDER TRELLIS is 6 feet tall (72") 23.5" wide and 1" thick. It is painted with Rosewood stain, and it smelled really nice (pine?) when I opened it. It looked simple but very nice.  

The trellis comes disassembled.  The instruction say that the trellis will take 5 minutes to put it together and assembly does not require any tools. It took me about an hour and I needed tools to work around some misalignment issues of how the notches and holes were cut on some of the bars.

I am attaching a collage of 8 pictures numbered 1 through 8 under customer photos that I will be referencing in this review.
1) Photo #1 shows the package as it arrived.
2) Photo #3 shows the hardware that comes with the trellis: plastic male and female screws that hold the trellis and 2 metal brackets that can be used to mount the trellis itself.
3) Photo #2 shows a close-up of the male and female screws that snap together to hold the vertical and horizontal slats together.  The three tall slats have notches where the horizontal slats fit and then held together my male/female screws.
4) Some of the holes had wood debris still attached to the hole. When I tried forcing one of the plastic screws through without clearing up the debris with a drill/screwdriver I damaged one of  the mail screws.  Photo #4 shows the screw.  After that I learned to clear the hole with a metal screwdriver first.  Fortunately, the kit has three extra screw pairs so I was able to discard the damaged screw.
5) Most of slats went in without too much problems, but two of them had real alignment issues. Picture #5 demonstrates the alignment issue where the notch and the hole do not light up with the holes.  Photo #7 shows one of the slats which have a proper alignment.  By enlarging the hole I was able to snap the screws, but this made a trellis a bit more wobbly than the parts that align well.
6) Photo #6 shows a large splinter on one of the tall slats.  I have glued it down with a wood glue, hopefully this will hold.

My recommendations for assembly:
1. First examine all holes, and smooth them out with a screwdriver or a drill bit, so the plastic screws don't get damaged by having to push through wood debris.
2. Then attach all horizontal bars only with female screws (i.e. do not snap in male screws) to check the alignment. If you need to enlarge holes to fix alignment it is a lot easier to do when you can easily disassemble the entire trellis, fix the holes, and put it back together. It is possible to unsnap the screws but I was worried about breaking the wood slats, they are not thick.
3. I found the following tools helpful:
--- mallet for taping in the screws
--- drill to enlarge misaligned holes
--- screw driver to remove wooden debris from the holes so the screws are not damaged when they are pushed in
--- wood glue to glue down any large splinters

Overall, I found the trellis nice looking: simple pleasant design, attractive color, just what I was looking for. I was somewhat disappointed in quality but was able to work around the problems.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.



Ali Julia review ★★★☆☆