Spending Local: When it Works and When it Doesnt

I am typing this post (at least the first part of it) from a place I rarely come: Starbucks. Being an enthusiastic supporter of local business, the neighborhood coffee shop is the cornerstone of those habits. Before moving to Raleigh I knew of three good quality local coffee shops that could give me a comfortable atmosphere to relax and caffeinate in the morning. Although I have yet to find the exact atmosphere I'm searching for I have found a couple of coffee shops that live up to my standards since moving.

So why, if I've found multiple coffee shops, am I typing this from Starbucks? Simple- they are the only ones open before 6. On a fairly regular basis I find myself between working hours. From 6am to 8am I need to find a place to get some caffeine and browse my nook. I have come to discover that in Raleigh (very differently from DC) no one is awake at 6am and most coffee shops wait until 7 just to open. So here Starbucks fills a need with a grande triple-shot white chocolate skim mocha at 5:45am.

This Starbucks experience can be generalized to other missed "shop local" opportunities. The reality is that I'm the only one here for opening and even in the first hour few straggle in. Local business can't afford to staff these hours because they don't get enough out of it. I would be willing to pay a little extra for local coffee, but it's just not available.

So when do you find yourself opting for the corporate store over the local one?

Off-Topic Continued: Cell Phone Search

Life is a mixture of blessings and curses. The cliche "two sides to every coin" comes to mind and I am no different. I like to research and I like spreadsheets. Most of the time I really do enjoy researching and making spread sheets especially before making an important purchase and because of this it is my blessing. On the other hand it is also a curse because my need to research and organize that data into a spreadsheet tends to continue past the point of enjoyment.

I am lucky enough to have had a guardian angel of sorts in my life at precisely the time I needed one. A little over a year ago my life was a grab bag of suckiness. I had just moved to Raleigh from Northern Virginia and was living with my sister. I had just broken up with my boyfriend of 3 years (quite dramatically I might add) and I had no job prospects. It was in my search for a job that I met my guardian angel, D. We hit it off so well that my interview turned into 3 hours of girl talk and within a few weeks I was moved in as a live-in nanny. Another big help that D gave me was adding me to her family's cell phone plan and getting me am iPhone 4. Over a year later, I haven't lived with D for many months now, but still have that phone. I now have the means to pay for my own cell phone and intend to do so, not to separate myself from D, but to add to my own independence.

So after a year of not having to worry about a cell phone bill I had forgotten how expensive they can be! Enter my research and spreadsheets. It just so happens that my boyfriend needs a cell plan too since his mother is getting a company phone and will not continue paying for his. So off I went to research my options. He is a devout iPhone user (although I may be bringing him over), and I have a clear preference for android. I quickly learned that if you are okay with having a non-smartphome (dumb phone or feature phone), then by far your cheapest option is to pay for the phone you want (usually available for $50-100) and use a month-to-month or pay-as-you-go plan. While it is very important to check the coverage in your area before selecting your carrier, these plans can be as cheap as $30 a month for unlimited talk and text.

If you plan to have a smartphone, though, the choices get much pricier and more confusing. First let me say do not be fooled by contract plans. The popular feature to advertise is being able to upgrade your phone yearly rather than only when your contract renews. I'm those cases you are not being given anothet upgrade because you are paying full price for a new phone, they just break it up into payments and add it to your monthly bill. That gets expensive fast.

My research put all the cell phone carriers right around $140 with the differences over 24 months being negligible leaving coverage in your area as the deciding factor.

That just seemed like a lot to me so I continued on to look at monthly plans. Monthly plans require you to buy your phone up front (Usually between $400 and $600 for a smartphone), but averaged $50 a month for unlimited talk, text and data (usually throttled around 2.5gb). StraighTalk was the cheapest plan coming in at $45 a month, and if you don't do much talking, Virgin Mobile offers unlimited text and data with only 400 min for $35 a month. So over the course of 2 years you do save some money buying the phone outright. In the end, though I decided to gamble on a new player.

Enter Republic Wireless. In many ways they are a regular month-to-month carrier, but they are truly unique. Republic's most expensive plan is $40 a month and includes unlimited talk, text, and 4g data. The strangest thing about Republic is the lack of phone choices. The only phones you can use on Republic are the Motorola Defy and the Moto X. The reason for the limited options is that they include specialized hardware to allow your calls to go over WiFi whenever available, using cell towers Ina secondary capacity. Its a very interesting concept and the reason the plans are priced so well. It took some research into the capabilities of the Moto X before I was sold, but I will be ordering a Moto X for use on Republic Wireless at the end of the week. Republic offers the Moto X at $299 - half the price of the main carriers. Once I have my phone I can choose from 4 different and very well priced plans: $5 for unlimited use only over WiFi, $10 for unlimited WiFi and unlimited talk and text over cell towers, $25 for unlimited everything and 3g data, and $40 for unlimited everything with 4g. I don't know if I'll choose the 3g or 4g plan, but I can switch plans up to twice a month if I want to and I can also send the phone back for a full refund within 30 days if I don't like it. Since the company is based out of Raleigh I'm assuming it works well, but it is nice to know I can send it back if I want.

The affordability of this plan even has my hardcore iPhone boyfriend considering switching to android. I told him he could play with my phone before buying one. I'll be sure to update on how well it works after I've had it for a few weeks.

I'm Back and Off-Topic

Fair warning to all before you read, this is an "off-topic" post meaning it very likely has nothing to do with kids or parenting. Starting off, I never have an exact idea of where this post will go but technology is a good bet.

So I guess it really is humorously coincidental that I seemingly disappear right after a post discussing the difficulties of blogging, but here I am to say I never left you! My absense was due in part to illness which made my bed my bestest friend and in part to the fact that I have embraced the use of a tablet. I will admit that a tablet is far easier to bring along when working than a laptop, but there are quite a few downfalls as well. I'm actually attempting to write this post on a 7" Nook HD tablet and in comparison to the posts I have written on my iPhone, I have to say I prefer the iPhone.

This week has been a research filled adventure for me as far as technology is concerned because in addition to purchasing a tablet I had to pick out a phone and carrier. All of my rhangouts)has led me to the conclusion that in today's WiFi connected world each device fills a particular need for the user and each user's needs are different.

Primary Full-Function Computer

By this point we pretty much all have this one. This is either a Windows PC or a Mac and for most of us is a laptop. It is true that in the past a laptop was considered "on the go" computing, but today we are constantly on the go so we all just have laptops.

My laptop is a 12.1 inch HP Touchsmart Convertible Laptop. I bought it after community college before starting at university and I put a ton of research into it. I was an early adopter of both touchscreen and convertible laptops and in high school I had a convertible Asus netbook with a resistive touchscreen (all the techies are laughing at my resistive touch screen). If I'm completely honest with myself I've always loved the looks of wonder and awe that I get when effortlessly flipping the screen around to lay flat in tablet mode. By now I don't get that reaction because in the past year convertible tablets have become the "it" thing to have so my computer looks just like everyone else's "new" computer (even though it's three years old!). My touchscreen came with a Wacom active digitizer which is basically a pen that works on your screen and the benefits of this pen are simple, yet profound. You get fun features to show off like being pressure sensitive and having a digital eraser on the end, but most importantly, when you are using the pen your hand is ignored. For me in college this meant that I could naturally take notes easily and have them quickly converted to text.

So, for me, my HP is the perfect computer when I need a keyboard for writing or any serious computing. Even the 12.1 inch size is tailored to my preference. Coming from having used a netbook I wanted something big enough for a full-sized keyboard but still smaller than the standard 15" laptop screen. After all, if I'm watching a movie I can always hook up to a TV. Even though it is not a novelty item any more, I don't think I'll be replacing my laptop any time soon.

After about a month of working nights as a doula/night nanny I came to appreciate how bulky even my small laptop was. On a slow night where a baby sleeps well I could be stuck finding a way to entertain myself for 5-6 hours easily after getting the cleaning done. Bringing my laptop requires me to bring my backpack instead of my tote and the amount of time I chose yo play on my phone instead led me to start researching a tablet purchase. 

The In-Between Computer-Tablet

One of the first places I went for advice was my brothet . my brother is currently deployed and on active duty with the Navy on board the USS Nimitz. Since he doesn't have a wife or children to support back in port, he has certainly fallen into the trap of having lots of money saved up by the time you have shore leave. Because he for some reason assumed I, too, had such money saved he suggested the Microsoft Surface Tablet. For a couple of days I did flirt with this as an option. The Surface Pro (his suggestion) goes for about $900 and as far as functionality does pretty much everything my HP laptop does. In the end, I came to the conclusion that the Surface was essentially a convertible that fell more on the tablet side than the laptop side and therefore was not what I was looking for.

Tablets: Mobile Media Consumption & Web Browsing

So the Surface was too much computer for me. I had to sit down and ask myself "why do you need a tablet?" And "What fo you want your tablet to do". Here are the answers I came up with:

• Something light weight and portable 
• Browse the web easily
• Bigger than my phone, but smaller than my laptop
• Read books
• Watch movies
• Play flash games

Not a terribly demanding list, it showed me some basics immediately. Size was the first factor I figured out; I think that 7-8" is the sweet spot for tablets. Since my computer is only 12.1", a 10" tablet just seemed too big. I'm a little person (5' on a good day) and my tiny hands have issues with iPads and similarly sized tablets. My tablet needed to be "iPad mini" sized. The iPad mini was even on my list of possibilities, but never made it too high because of the price, incompatibility with flash, and honestly I prefer android over iOS. Sorry to the apple fans out there but I've had an iPhone for over a year now and while it certainly has it's appeal, I'm going back to android at the end of the week. 

So in the field of 7-8" android tablets my short list consisted of:

• Nexus 7
• Samsung Galaxy note 8.0
• Samsung Galaxy tab 8.0
• Nook HD

While I would have loved to get a Samsung, the price was a bit high and I couldn't shake the feeling that they were going to be obsolete at any moment. So the real competition came down to the Nexus 7 at $229 and the Nook HD at $129. In the end, I just couldn't justify an extra hundred dollars for a camera. To me that seemed to be the only difference. While I could certainly go into the specs of each device, there are tech blogs that will do that for you (I'll even link to a few at the end of this post). If I ever decide I want a pure android experience I can mess around with the software and get it. Now, price point was the deciding factor in the end for me, but my choice has implications. With the Nook HD I cannot do video chats (no facetime, Skype, or hangouts) and even though I have access to the Google Play store, a lot of apps are listed as "not compatible with your device", so who knows, maybe I will mess with the software a bit and update in a later post.

Cell Phone (and provider)...TBC

I had intended to include my quest for a cell provider and a phone to match, but this post I already long enough and that subject just might demand its own post.

Blogging is Harder Than it Seems

Even babies have a hard time writing about babies!

The Mommy Whisperer is not my first attempt at blogging. Being a member of the "millennial" generation, blogging is a term and a concept that I have grown up with. I honestly cannot remember when the term first appeared or a time before there were blogs, but that doesn't mean they come to me second nature. Truthfully, it requires a lot more work and effort than anyone (including me) would initially think. Some of it is obvious; you need decent writing skills and an ability to type without using "text-speak", but some of the difficulty lies in areas you wouldn't initially consider. The parts of blogging that you expect to come easier than they do are readers, topics, and time.

Time (for me) is the most surprisingly difficult one. When I started The Mommy Whisperer I felt that I had a decent amount of semi-free time in which to pull out my laptop and write a great blog post. After a couple of weeks in blog land I've come to redefine "free time". In a great example of Murphy's Law, since starting this blog my contract clients have doubled (or tripled in the case of last week), and my down-time during overnights has been cut out by babies who have decided sleep is just not their thing anymore. When I do find time where I am neither working nor sleeping, remembering to type up a blog post never seems to happen. Add to this timing issue the fact that when I do have the time to write, I always want to write about something that demands a good deal of research (There's no way I could allow myself to write a "quick post" about Postpartum Mood Disorders) and that is just going to take up more time that I do not have.

Topics tend to compound with time, but certainly do not take the top spot for blogging blues. For me (and for most bloggers I imagine) topics tend to come out of what I am dealing with at the time. For example, because of what my clients and friends are currently dealing with I have plans to write posts on Postpartum Mood Disorders, Can Infants Have Nightmares, Hard-to-Find Nursing Bras, and I seem to think of a new one every time I work. The problem with this kind of topic selection is that it is definitely research intensive. Opinion posts are so much harder to come up with. I want to provide good, readable, evidence-based information to parents, but there are a lot of topics available that tend to make you pick a side. I'm not interested in the "Mommy Wars" and I don't want to alienate a parent who could potentially benefit from some of the information I share. I know that a central part of blogging is allowing your own personality and opinions into your writing, but it seems that I have a way to go before I can comfortably proclaim whose side I'm on.

As I've already said, I don't want to alienate potential readers. I do believe that as time goes on and this blog matures (and hopefully attracts more readers), I will be less concerned with alienation, but while I'm still trying to attract readers its an issue. Most of the advice you can read on blogging tells you not to worry about readers - they will come if you are writing something worthwhile. While I don't think I would be so concerned as to write only posts that will attract readers, I do want to know what readers are interested in. Writing it down makes it seem even sillier than I thought at first. I have the whole internet of people to appeal to. I guess this would go better in a post on "Why I Started Blogging", but writing is notably cathartic and often times once you put something in print it is easier to think about rationally. So, ignoring my comments about appealing to readers, just attracting some can be tough work! I'm having to learn how to write a decent title and how to make my posts "pinterest friendly". I tried posting on reddit only to discover; A - a lot of reddit users don't like you posting your blog posts, and B - reddit is a wonderful and addicting community. A lot of leg work goes into finding readers and making your blog available to be found.

So, when compared to my initial expectations (or lack thereof), blogging is tough work. I can see how it really could be a full time job maintaining a blog if you consider all the research and legwork involved (even more if you try to monetize it). There are a lot of positives to blogging too, though. I've remembered how much I love writing and extended my reach to help educate parents way beyond what I am capable of in person. I'm sure that as I continue blogging, it will get easier. I'll attract more readers and get better at finding time and topics. Even since the beginning of this post one difficulty has lessened and because of that I think I might just start an opinion piece.