Discarded drafts from 2013: Part 2

• On writing groups and other things.  This was a post #2 started.  #1 has never been part of a writing group.  #2 wrote:  “What have we gotten out of them?  What structures are helpful and unhelpful?  Varies by project, time, etc.”  #1 has been part of research brown-bags and those are very helpful.  Maybe I’ll write a post on that.
• Individual differences.   The Cognitive Demands of Work and the Length of Working Life: The Case of Computerization by Robert J. Willis.  “I find strong evidence that women and many men retired earlier if they are in computer-intensive occupations while, for other men it appears that computerization does not have a significant effect on retirement. Higher cognition and being in a high wage occupation appears to partially offset retirement incentives of computerization.”  I do not remember this paper at all or what I wanted to say about it.  The other thing written on this post is:  “Laura Cristensen? Tenure.”  Which I think is misspelling the name of a Stanford psychologist.  But what that has to do with tenure is beyond me.
• Why people buy lottery tickets.  I mean, this is part of one of my class lectures so I probably could write a post on it, but I don’t feel like it.  If someone really wants my thoughts on this, please ask the grumpies and I’ll put it there.
• Do we attack problems or do we attack people?  Then it says in the post “Don’t link to this piece of sh*t” and there’s a link to a post from 2013 from some mommy blogger I’ve never heard of and don’t remember who is being really hateful to some other IRL mommy in a post.  I will listen to whichever of us said not to link and I will not link.  Wow, drama. My heart rate increases just reading her vitriol about some other parent volunteer who just wants the best for her kids. In any case, I think my last anniversary post I extolled DH’s ability to attack problems instead of people and don’t need to go into more detail on that idea this soon since that post.
• The effect of DH’s new job on my ambition.  This was two jobs ago!  “Less stress… less ambition.  Fewer grants.  Not even remotely thinking about going on the market.  Sabbatical denied…”  I did get that sabbatical a year later.  It is true that when DH is happily employed I don’t feel the need to be the breadwinner.  But I also do less housework.
• Hill climber heuristic.  Man, this was from when I was flirting with doing more behavioral economics.  That project is lonnnnng published.  Here’s what I said:  “when in doubt, step in the direction you should end up.  For example, when choosing a path to the top of a hill, if you are in doubt, take the one that leads upwards.  Usually this works well, except in situations where you temporarily need to go DOWN in order to get UP to the top.” “link to wikipedia” “going to school” “getting a car loan”  I guess that might have been a pretty fun post.  Going to school and getting certain types of loans are examples of doing things to build capital at the expense of short-run earnings/saving.

Grumpy Rumblings 2023 Year in Blogging

Can’t believe another year has passed.  Let’s look at some stats!

Traffic is down again compared to last year.  Posts are up a bit (206 this year compared to 203)), and comments are also down.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2023:

• 1 RBOColleges March 2023
• 2 Liberty Tabletop Review:  We bought cutlery April 2017 (These still spark joy every time I use them)
• 3 College Results:  Reddit Style April 2023
• 4 A fairly dramatic family post (cw: estranged family) November 2023
• 5 RBOCareer?  November 2023

Four of these are from 2023 and recent!  Liberty Tabletop has come back after not being on the leaderboard in 2022, but otherwise we seem to have disappeared from search algorithms.  It looks like views were driven by DC1’s college outcomes and my kind of cruddy year in terms of larger family stuff and career.

According to our stats, here’s another five of the most popular posts from 2023:

• I feel like the word for this academic year has been rejection February 2023
• Are college visits necessary?  A deliberately controversial post April 2023
• Things I want to say to kids on reddit a2c April 2023
• I want to go on vacation somewhere new October 2023
• And the decision is Carleton!  April 2023

More traffic on the college/my miserable year posts.  And one about a vacation we may never take…

Top referring sites were (same sites but natural scientist and academic jungle swapped places– particularly remarkable because only bardiac and delagar post regularly!):

• bardiac.blogspot.com
• something-remarkable.blogspot.com
• http://naturalscientist.blogspot.com/ 
• academic-jungle.blogspot.com
• delagar.blogspot.com

Most visitors came from The United States. Canada & the UK came next.  Germany is inching up even more.

Our most commented post was Delurk for us today!  (note to self for next year:  this stat is now hidden under “insights” which is now a tab on site stats) (Thank you previous self!  Also, self next year, it’s been further hidden in the comments part– you have to scroll down and change to comments by posts and pages where it says comments by authors) (Thank you, again, previous self!)

I can’t get the most active commenters for the year, only for what appears to be all time.  So what I’m doing is looking at how many pages of comments each person in the top 6 (which is all they show) gave this year (each page has 20 comments) :( These were the most active commenters of all time, sorted by the number of comments in the past year, but I may be missing newer active commenters or regulars who have changed the email they login with over the years.

1.  Revanche@agaishanlife 8 pages
2.  CG 7 pages
3.  First Gen American 5.5 pages
4.  Debbie M/debomill 5.5 pages
5. Jenny F. Scientist 5.5 pages
6.  delagar 4 pages

Revanche is the winner this year, but CG is starting to sneak up.

Yay Revanche!  This means you get to tell us where to donate the proceeds from our most recent month’s sales (plus a bump because amazon sales are really small these days).   Either tell us and link up in the comments (if you want more exposure) or email us at grumpyrumblings at gmail if you want it to be more secret-like.

Any blog commentary or highlights from the grumpy gallery?  Also, congratulate Revanche in the comments.  :)

Discarded drafts from 2013: Part I

• Commercials of our youth.  I have no idea what this one was supposed to be about, but it was probably nostalgic and would have gotten a lot of comments.  What are some of your favorite commercials from when you were a kid?
• The media often suck:  Yes yes, we know this is a common complaint during any political season.  Female politicians are graded on their looks, their outfits, their hair, their children, in a way that male politicians aren’t… This was especially noticeable during the last presidential election when both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin were treated rather shabbily in that respect (not that all Palin criticism was unjustified, we’re just referring to the crap that she still would have had to deal with even if she were say, Hillary Clinton).
• Home Work Books.  This only has a link:  http://www.msmi-mn.org/home/msmi-programs/msmi-talks .  I’ve talked about the workbooks my kids have done in other posts.  I have no recollection of that website at all.  No idea what I was going to say.
• Should you have everything you want?: A deliberately controversial post.  “MMM post  http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/05/15/the-principle-of-constant-optimization/ idea of enough, compensating differentials, decision fatigue.”  So, I know what the idea of enough is, and what compensating differentials are, and what decision fatigue is… but I have no idea how those relate to the MMM post and the question about whether you should have everything you want.  Maybe I meant to say it’s not possible because you always want more? (Economists don’t believe in enough.)  I don’t know.
• Changes in grandparenting “Now that my in-laws have five grandchildren instead of just one, they’ve started doing weird stuff like asking us what the DCs want or need.”  Now that there are 8 grandchildren, they take things off the kids’ amazon wishlists!  I could go into more detail on this change, but I feel like it’s been pretty well covered on various Christmas posts over the years.
• Things I didn’t know before discovering the internet.  This post is completely blank.  I don’t know what we didn’t know but know now! If we knew them in 2013, we’ve probably since forgotten them.  #2 really should have posted some octopode facts in here, though if she had, we probably would have posted it already.
• Economic protections for SAHP.  All there is here is a link to this post:  http://feruleandfescue.blogspot.com/2013/06/on-leaning-in-or-dropping-out.html.  It looks like we were pretty active in the comments section, though nicoleandmaggie has for some reason been turned to “anonymous”.  (“We at grumpy rumblings..” is a big clue it was us though.)  Here’s maybe what we were going to post, “And the official grumpy rumblings position is that we are pro-choice feminism. But we do hope that folks who are making that choice are making it with full information, because divorce and widowhood are non-zero probability events, and the hit to long-term earnings is real. “

Abandoned Wednesday posts from 2012

Here’s the list from 2011.

Maternity leave:  “I didn’t get any with my first child.  People are often shocked when they hear that, assuming that everybody gets maternity leave.  But, in reality, maternity leave is a luxury for the coasts and fancy schools with reputations to uphold.”  We currently (in 2023) have something called “Alternate Work Duties” which is usually a little bit of extra service in exchange for a two course teaching reduction.  And now our state also requires unpaid leave for people who aren’t covered under FMLA (if, for example, you start work pregnant).   What was really irritating about not having that maternity leave back with my first kid is that my senior professors just *assumed* I’d gotten one.  They assumed I had a semester off teaching when, in fact, I did not.  I had two weeks off exactly:  one because of a freak snowstorm and one where I had the librarian come in and explain how to use the library for research instead of me teaching.  So not only did I not have the leave, I got the demerits as if I had!

Anti-Montessori Bashing:  This was a weird post where people were attacking Montessori on various mommy forums when, in fact, the things they were complaining about (I don’t remember what) had nothing to do with the actual Montessori method.  My notes:  “Lots of Montessori bashing on the internets. The things they’re complaining about aren’t problems with Montessoris. They’re problems with individual daycares, individual directors. Reggio has the same problem.  Worse even because doing a good reggio program costs a lot more– only a small number of Reggio-inspired schools are actually worth what they cost, it seems.”  I have no idea what weird ideas people have on mommy forums now, 11 years later!

On Competence:  This was just noting how easy it is to achieve when you are working with competent people and don’t have to double check everything.  At the time, I was surrounded by competent people at work (currently not so much the case!) and we were volunteering for DC1’s private school which was basically going to shut down after we left for my last leave.  My notes:  “Love job– competent people, can miss a few hours of all day retreat (to give a final exam!) because trust they’ll make good decisions. Volunteer work, OTOH… we’re necessary.  We make a larger difference (maybe) but it’s so frustrating.  I hate it.”

Wicked hot diverse, yo.:  This is one of #2’s.  Um… here’s the notes: “appreciating. Bollywood dance (more on canadian than US). planet b-boy. modify. sex is not the enemy  (also the other post about growing up ugly). The Library Card by Jerry Spinelle”  What do you think it all means?  #2 doesn’t remember either…

Next up:  2013!  What will we do when we run out of drafts?  (There’s now 94 posts in drafts.)

 

 

Delurk for us today!

We haven’t done a delurking post in YEARS.  Like, maybe 10 years?

We miss our lost commenters.  We love our current commenters.  We wonder about the new people who have been reading but haven’t necessarily joined in the conversation.

So, in the interest of increasing conversation, we’re declaring this Grumpy Rumblings Delurking Day.

If you’re a reader of ours but not a regular commenter, say hi, and, if you like, tell us a little about yourself.  If that’s intimidating, then tell us what you like about our blog or what you’d like to see more of.  If that seems self-serving on our parts, then just say hi (and we’ll understand)!

If the problem is thinking up a screen name, we recommend choosing a font name.  Here’s a list, though you may of course choose something else.

There’s no captcha code, so delurk now!

Grumpy Rumblings 2022 Year in Blogging

Can’t believe another year has passed.  Let’s look at some stats!  I will note that some of these stats may be undercounts because wordpress stats has been wonky much of December this year and hasn’t been recording any thing it’s been tracking for some weeks.

Traffic is down compared to last year.  Posts are down a bit (202 this year compared to 209)), and comments are also down.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2022:

• 1 DH’s Delta Trainer/Co-Pilot Review July 2021 (DH is still going strong with this and I started it as well.  We would 100% recommend.)
• 2 RBOC (cw: aging verbally abusive parent etc.) May 2022
• 3 This link love that asks why The Frugal Girl was signing a lease from April 2022  (This was not expected!)
• 4. Dream job not happening from October 2022 (Boy I’m really starting to get depressed right now)
• 5.  Navel gazing on goals and midlife crises from January 2022

Four of these are from 2022 (Last year only two were from 2021!) and, for the first time, the post from students trying to plagiarize a really common composition assignment not only isn’t #1, it isn’t in the top 10. We have lost the market on plagiarizing a short essay about a relative’s wedding. (It still got 480 views though.)  Some of our other common standbys are still in the top 10 though (liberty tabletop review, percent vs. percentage point, our parenting philosophy, etc.)

According to our stats, here’s another five of the most popular posts from 2022:

• RBOMusings on divorce, marriage, and religion
• Add me to the numbers of people who got covid for the first time this past month
• This link love from May 2022 … but I’m not sure why?
• This recent RBOMoney about DC1 not getting into hir early decision school
• This RBOCollege from June.

Ok, what I’m getting from this is either I have had a really bad year OR there are suddenly a lot more people hate reading us and a lot fewer search engines finding us.  Are you hate reading or just sympathetic? Was my year really as terrible as it seems from traffic? Let us know!

Top referring sites were (same sites but slightly different order from last year):

• bardiac.blogspot.com
• something-remarkable.blogspot.com
• academic-jungle.blogspot.com
• http://naturalscientist.blogspot.com/
• delagar.blogspot.com

Most visitors came from The United States. Canada & the UK came next.  Germany is inching up.

Our most commented post was Add me to the numbers of people who got covid for the first time this past month (note to self for next year:  this stat is now hidden under “insights” which is now a tab on site stats) (Thank you previous self!  Also, self next year, it’s been further hidden in the comments part– you have to scroll down and change to comments by posts and pages where it says comments by authors) (Thank you previous self!)

I can’t get the most active commenters for the year, only for what appears to be all time.  So what I’m doing is looking at how many pages of comments each person in the top 6 (which is all they show) gave this year (each page has 20 comments) :( These were the most active commenters of all time, sorted by the number of comments in the past year, but I may be missing newer active commenters or regulars who have changed the email they login with over the years.

1.  Debbie M 9 pages
2.  Revanche@agaishanlife 9 pages
3.  First Gen American 7 pages
4.  CG 6 pages
5.  Alice 4 pages
6.  Bogart 3 pages

Debbie M has a bunch more on that 9th page than Revanche, but it was pretty close.

Yay Debbie M!  This means you get to tell us where to donate the proceeds from our most recent month’s sales (plus a bump because amazon sales are also way down).    Either tell us and link up in the comments (if you want more exposure) or email us at grumpyrumblings at gmail if you want it to be more secret-like.

Any blog commentary or highlights from the grumpy gallery?  Also, congratulate Debbie M in the comments.  :)

RBOC

• As I dig into old drafts for post ideas, I wonder, am I running out of ideas?
• I guess a lot of my brain cycles are taken up with incipient fascism and there’s only so much I can talk about that without everyone getting depressed.  Plus my kids are older and their business is their business to a much greater extent.  Nobody wants to discuss teens or even pre-teens like they want to discuss toddlers.
• I will say that my kids are really really neat.  Watching them grow up into their own people is so amazing.  It’s crazy that DC1 will be off to college in a year and we think zie is going to be ok on hir own.
• That said, I am a little concerned about DC1 being able to actually feed hirself.  Everything else, no problem.  Choosing food and getting it eaten before low blood sugar sets in, maybe not as confident.  (This is something zie inherited from me, but I didn’t realize until I was married and DH pointed it out because his mom has the same problem if she doesn’t eat.  At least DC1 grew up knowing.)  Like I’ve said before, a college with full dining hall service would be ideal.
• DC2 grew a full inch last month.  Now 4’9″.  Soon I will be the shortest person in the house except for the cat.
• Maybe I’ve said all the things I had to say.  Like, I had 30-odd years to think up the things that got detailed long posts on the blog back when we started and now I’ve already written about them and don’t need to write about them again.  So that leaves little twitter-sized snippets.  But I don’t have twitter, so they end up on these RBOC.
• I have been having a lot of headaches recently.  I am not a fan.  I don’t know if it’s pressure or menopause or not enough stretching my upper-back/neck after doing various exercises with dumbells (lateral lifts are hard!).  Or maybe I’m just not sleeping correctly.  Stretches, massages, hot baths, and just heat in general seem to help (also OTC painkillers, though sometimes it takes two kinds).  Also it not being overcast helps.
• I’m definitely getting to the age where I can talk about my aches and pains ad infinitum.  I try not to in polite company though!
• Exercise continues to be happening.  I think I feel more nimble and stronger?  It’s not as obvious as with DH who has been doing it for a year now.

Abandoned Wednesday post ideas from 2011

• Here’s the list from 2010
• Websites for kids.  This was a list from 2011.  In case you’re interested:  http://www.starfall.com http://playinterrobang.com/missions http://www.bigbrainz.com/ http://www.coolmath4kids.com/ .  The only one I remember DC1 playing a lot was starfall.com.  DC2 used it too but not as much.  11 years ago is a long time when you’re a kid!  I did not check to see if these still exist.
• Money is about life.  This was actually an abandoned Monday post.  It was supposed to be deep and philosophical.  But I only got as far as:  “time is money too”
• Goal ladders.  I’d come across a really neat psychology article in the course of my research and wanted to talk about it.  I don’t know what article it was.  All I have written is:  “Focus on future vs. focus on accomplishments”
• Playground equipment.  This was going to be a rant about how they’d gotten rid of swing sets in all of the playgrounds in our county and some discussion about the old playgrounds still standing in the place we were on leave.  All I have written is:  “safe/boring.”
• Real Self vs. Ideal Self. “pictures of both” And then this link to unclutterer that no longer goes anywhere:  http://unclutterer.com/2011/06/14/living-as-close-as-possible-to-your-ideal-self/#comments .  Since the article is gone, I’m not really sure what the post was going to be about.  I mean, I like to think I’m constantly trying to grow and improve, and I’ve definitely taken steps to change myself in the past… but I probably have reached a bit of a complacency rut in middle-age that I didn’t have back 11 years ago.  Who knows.  I don’t know my real self or my ideal self and these days I’m just trying to get things done without the long-term planning.
• Which is more important preparing for baby: money or time?  I probably could still write this one and it would generate a lively discussion.  But I can’t find myself caring that much?  I think my natural state of the world is that babies are boring, and it’s only when I have one of my own that the topic is at all interesting.  Here are my notes:  family money, whether joint or separate finances; cost of childbirth (varies by state, insurance); story about working over time; push presents.  (BTW, push presents are such a ridiculous concept.  I’m pretty sure this post was sparked by the comments on that post.)
• Cooking for diabetes/insulin resistance.  I’m worried that my knowledge on this topic is at least 11 years out of date.  Though I think cooking magazines now “get it.” Here’s my few sentences on the topic: Cooking when you’re insulin resistant or diabetic is all about the glycemic index. As best as I understand it, you want foods or combinations of foods that are slow to digest because this decreases the incidence of insulin spikes.  It’s really weird how so many of the cooking magazines I saw had recipes with baked potatoes and white rice.  Hello, not glycemically balanced.
• Learning that you shouldn’t have tantrums in stores.  Another one I probably could write up.  But I’ve come to realize that my childhood was maybe not so great in many ways and I’d prefer not to dwell on it.  The short version is my father would only let me get a hard candy lollypop (like butterscotch) at See’s Candy.  Once (when I was small) I tantrummed that I wanted something else.  He dragged me kicking and screaming out of the store and I didn’t get the lollypop at all.  Then I have some commentary:  “somehow my kid is way better behaved… maybe just not old enough… doesn’t seem to have as big a sweet tooth either.”  There’s a lot of introspection in that comment from 2011 that I don’t really want to go into.  Anyhow, that was my last tantrum that I recall.
• We’re down to 95 drafts now.  Next up:  2012.  I wonder what will happen if we run out.  Will we be able to come up with new stuff?

Grumpy Rumblings 2021 year in Blogging

Traffic is again a little up compared to last year.  Posts are down a bit (209 this year compared to 210(!)), and comments are also up.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2021:

• 1 My cousin’s wedding December 2011
• 2 Liberty Tabletop Review: We bought cutlery April 2017
• 3 How often do you have to buy new plates and glasses:  Musings on breakage April 2017 (I don’t know why this became popular last year and continued this year)
• 4 I am not ok August 2021
• 5 Why I don’t want to list my pronouns January 2021

Two of these are from 2021 (Last year none of them were from 2020!) and, of course, the #1 post is still from students trying to plagiarize a really common composition assignment. We have cornered the market on plagiarizing a short essay about a relative’s wedding.

According to our stats, here’s the most popular posts from 2021:

• I am not ok
• Why I don’t want to list my pronouns
• RBOC from March 1, 2021 (I think this is a first for an RBOC)  This one has a lot of complaining that is also in I am not ok above.  People like complaining!
• Link Love from Jan 2, 2021 (I think this is a first for a Link Love).  See above comment about people loving complaining.
• DH’s Delta Trainer/Co-Pilot Review  (DH is still going strong with this and would 100% recommend if you want to get into shape and have time to do so– if there is interest, I can do a post updating.)

Top referring sites were (no change from last year!):

• bardiac.blogspot.com
• something-remarkable.blogspot.com
• http://naturalscientist.blogspot.com/
• academic-jungle.blogspot.com
• delagar.blogspot.com

Most visitors came from The United States. Canada & the UK came next.

Our most commented post was Why I don’t want to list my pronouns (note to self for next year:  this stat is now hidden under “insights” and is no longer on site stats) (Thank you previous self!  Also, self next year, it’s been further hidden in the comments part– you have to change to comments by posts and pages where it says comments by authors) (Thank you previous self!)

I can’t get the most active commenters for the year, only for some undetermined amount of time. :( These were the 5 most active commenters on that unspecified amount of time:

1.  Revanche@agaishanlife 60
2.  Debbie M 36
3.  First Gen American 30
4.  Three way tie for 4th:  mnitabach, omdg, Matthew D. Healy 27

Yay Revanche!  This means you get to tell us where to donate our most recent month’s proceeds from amazon sales.  Either tell us and link up in the comments (if you want more exposure) or email us at grumpyrumblings at gmail if you want it to be more secret-like.

Any blog commentary or highlights from the grumpy gallery?  Also, congratulate Revanche in the comments.  :)

Abandoned Wednesday post ideas from 2010

• We have a ton of money posts and a ton of Ask the Grumpies, but these Wednesday posts are a bit harder to come up with.  I guess all I think about these days is money and work and whatever interesting questions Grumpy Nation comes up with for us?  I’ve been dipping into our archives for ideas and it’s a bit crazy how irrelevant or not applicable so many of these things are now.
• The oldest abandoned post is called “On the Importance of Moxy.”  It only has a title and it was started in 2010.  I’m pretty sure it was about faking it until you make it and how you shouldn’t put yourself down because people start believing it.  But now I know more about the double-bind that women are in and how hard it is to get that humble yet confident thing right.  And the literature says to praise other women and have other people praise you, but what happens there is that sometimes other people don’t praise you back and then they end up getting resources because the powers that be think you’ll be ok with that.  I’ve gotten so negative!  Not just cynical, but also negative.  Maybe I’ll delete that one.  Still– don’t put yourself down.  That never helps because people do believe you.
• The next one is about Nice to Live vs. Nice to Visit (also 2010) and I think that was about how nice it is to visit some places (Boston, LA) but not as great to live there.  4 years of Trump has made me rethink what it means for a place to be nice to live.  Though I still am worried about the unhealthy body images that LA indoctrinates people with.
• The last 2010 post was a Mini-rant that I thought for sure I’d just use sometime when we needed a post.  Maybe I’ll do that even though the thing it’s ranting about isn’t as big a deal as it seemed to be 10 years ago when unhealthily messed-up “raw/honest” etc. was in.  With picture-perfect influencers being “in” right now it’s a bit outdated.  Still, there may be a backlash brewing.  Maybe you’ll see it next week!  (But also maybe not!)
• After deleting or scheduling those 2010 posts we now have 142 items in drafts (not including this one which is scheduled).

Do you have any thoughts on places that are nice to live vs. nice to visit?  How important do you think moxy is?  Have you worked on not putting yourself down or does it come naturally to you?  Are you interested in me going through 2011 next?