Snapshot Chronicles

Monster headphones deliver Monster sound (and cut out commuting noise!)

by Susan Getgood on October 11, 2013 · 1 comment

in BlogHer,Giveaways,Music,Reviews,Sponsored

Three days a week I commute 90 minutes each way into Manhattan. Most mornings, the train is fairly quiet; there is an unwritten weekday commuter rule (suspended on weekends!) that noise and conversation should be kept to a minimum. So most mornings I work or read or sleep. From time to time though I end up in a car with a couple of folks that just have to have a conversation. All the way. Nonstop.

Those are the days I resort to my iPhone and Pandora for enough peace to concentrate. I used to use the earbuds that came with my phone even they don’t really cut out the noise very well. I just didn’t want to cart around a set of bulky headphones on top of all the stuff I carry back and forth every night – iPad, laptop, shoes and so on, and smaller headphones generally didn’t seem much better than the earbuds.

So I was delighted when BlogHer and Monster asked if I would like to try the N-Tune noise isolating headphones.

Things I love:

Great sound quality for my music and they keep out most of the annoying conversations I am trying to block.
Very comfortable, avoids the “itchy ear” syndrome that sometimes comes from using earbuds for an extended period of time.
Small form factor, plus they come with a little carry bag to protect them in my bag.
Tangle free cord.

I also asked my 13 year old son and my brother, both of whom also use headsets regularly, what they thought. My son, who primarily uses a headset for gaming and Skype calls with other gamers reported that the sound quality was good, but he prefers a wireless headset that completely surrounds the ears. Better to totally block me out when I speak to him I suppose. My brother also liked the sound quality for listening to music but wasn’t crazy about the microphone for making phone calls. I received a call on the train the other morning while listening to my tunes, and I thought the quality was fine.

Net — if listening to music or watching videos is your primary use for a headset, the Monster N-Tune is good choice. I probably won’t replace my earbuds for phone calls, especially when walking down the street in Manhattan but these candy apple red beauties will definitely get a spot in my commuting bag. And if candy apple red isn’t your color, there are 4 other choices – green, purple, blue and orange. The N-Tune would also make a great holiday gift for the music-lover in your life.

Want to try them out for yourself? For a chance to win your very own pair of N-Tune headphones (valued at $150), read all about them here and let me know in the comments which color you prefer. The comments on this post will be aggregated with the comments on the posts from the other bloggers participating in this review, and 25 pairs will be given away.

Sweepstakes Rules:

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “#SweepstakesEntry”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post
Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winner will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected. BlogHer will pool entries from participating blogs and select a sweepstakes winner at random and will contact the winner with details about fulfilling the prize. The Official Rules are available here. This sweepstakes runs from 10/2/13 – 11/1/13.

Learn to Ride – More lessons than I expected

by Susan Getgood on August 18, 2013 · 1 comment

in Lessons

I was a guest of Harley-Davidson at an immersion event in Milwaukee last summer in conjunction with my job at BlogHer. As part of that experience the company offered the participants a certificate for a free Rider’s Edge class at a Harley dealer.

This weekend I took the range portion of the Harley-Davidson Rider’s Edge Learn to Ride program.

I washed out. Early on the first day. And learned a little more about myself in the process.

Feeling like a failure sucks. Especially if you are (as I am) somewhat of a perfectionist. Although age and parenting have cured me of the worst of those tendencies, I really like to get it right. But note that I said feeling like a failure. Even for the little while during which I FELT bad, I knew that I had done the right thing. It wasn’t the day I was going to learn to ride. I pulled out before the instructor had to tap me out and kept myself and the other students safe. That’s success of a different kind.

So, I am going to finish out the written part of the class, so that if I do decide to try again, I only have to take the range portion of the class. I’m also going to take the instructor’s advice on prepping myself for the class.

My biggest hurdle was speed and control. Just like when I learned to ski 20 years ago. I’m tentative, and that leads to a tendency to look down not forward. As well as overthinking and getting caught up in the number of things to do, as opposed to just doing them. I have to overcome a lifetime of muscle memories and create some new ones. I learned to ski, and I CAN do this if I want to. But I have to prepare better before I try to take the range course again.

Because, and no fault of the instructor, the dealership or Harley-Davidson, the Learn to Ride course (at least in Connecticut) isn’t simply about learning to ride. It’s really about learning the skills necessary to pass the range test for the motorcycle endorsement. In Connecticut you have to take a class; you can’t just go to the DMV with your bike to do the riding test. As a result, some of the students are already experienced riders simply there to do the time, perhaps improve their skills and pass the range test.

Now I am not daft and do realize that passing the range test should be the goal for all the students. I also get that the rapid fire pace of the course has a purpose, in that in order to pass the range test you have to be able to do the skills smoothly, quickly and almost automatically. There’s not a lot of time for pondering when faced with a road hazard or traffic situation. So the instructor HAS to weed out the folks who aren’t ready.

But mixing raw beginners with experienced riders creates a different head space for the newbies. It also contributed to the performance anxiety that a perfectionist like me often has in such situations. I think that was affecting me from the very beginning of the day, and just compounded every time I had a little difficulty with something. Let’s be clear: It is MY problem, not the other riders, not the instructor, not the course designers. What goes on between my ears is for me to work on.

But as performance anxiety goes, every little failure compounds until you can’t do even the simplest things that you were able to do at the start of the day. You can’t build skill because you just. can’t. do. anything.

When I realized I was at that point, I stopped.

I also wasn’t having fun. It wasn’t the exhilarating feeling I remembered from the short intro lesson we had during the 3 day immersion event last summer at Harley headquarters in Milwaukee.

I thought a little last night about what made that experience so much fun. Of course, there isn’t really a comparison between a short intro lesson that is part of a larger experience and a full-on class, but the camaraderie of the group of women that had been together for 2 days was part of it. The student: teacher ratio was 4:2, which definitely made a difference, and we weren’t necessarily working to goal. The instructor’s job was to give us a taste, not teach us a life skill.

That sort of camaraderie isn’t going to happen at a weekend class with people of disparate backgrounds who are going home at night, not hanging out at group dinners and baseball games. Even before we arrived in Milwaukee, the group had the commonality of all being bloggers, and some of us already knew each other through our participation with BlogHer.

Photo courtesy @sugarjones

Reality: that generous student teacher ratio isn’t realistic. And, hullo, if you are taking a class, there is a goal.

However, I do think I might do better in a women-only class. Ideally if it were women 30+ (even 40+) who have a similar lifetime of memories (muscle and otherwise) that we have to get out of the way.

But that’s not all I need to do if I want to succeed at learning to ride.Because the course isn’t going to change. It is still going to be about developing the skills necessary to pass the range test.

So, really, I need to learn to ride before I go next time. Not a motorcycle, but I have to get past my mental speed bump and feel more comfortable on a motorized bicycle. If I can’t do that, I will be wasting everyone’s time.

Chatting with both the instructor and my brother (who used to ride until a hand injury made it difficult), I’ve got a strategy. First, I need to get out on my bicycle and do some fast riding. The practice balancing and operating multiple controls simultaneously will also help get my head around what I need to do on the bike. Once I have that nailed, we are going to rent some mopeds and do a little practice on those, getting even further up to speed. I gotta get out of first gear.

Then I just might be ready to ride.

It’s also a distinct possibility that I will be just as happy tooling around town on a scooter, and experiencing the pleasures of long-distances while riding from the comfort of my VW Beetle convertible.

Whatever I decide, however I end up in this journey, it will be the right decision for me.

That’s what success looks like.

PS: My new boots (which I LOVE and will get a ton of use from, riding or not): http://instagram.com/p/dFztHRAHH-/

Books for the Beach by Boys (Summer Reading Part 2)

by Susan Getgood on July 13, 2013

in Books,Mystery

My previous recommendations all fit into the fantasy mystery category and were written by women. This post moves onto the mysteries I’ve read recently, and can be summed up as Book for the Beach written by Boys (men!)

The Cloud by Matt Richtel. Richtel draws on his experience as a NY Times technology reporter in his novels, combining the ethical dilemmas presented by computer technology with good old fashioned suspense and intrigue. The Cloud is his latest novel. I’d read reviews on Amazon that suggested reading the previous tales featuring his protagonist Nat Idle, but I can tell you that this is not necessary to enjoy the novel. Twisty turny with all sorts of surprises, it’s fun to follow along with Nat as he figures things out. Highly recommended for your beach reading. Fun fact: years ago, when I worked at Cyber Patrol, Matt interviewed me about something, probably the Communications Decency Act or online privacy, two issues with which I was very involved at the time. Funny that — I remember him but not the specific story.

Inferno by Robert Langdon. Perfect airplane reading. Because it really doesn’t bother you when the flight attendant announces that it is time to turn off electronic devices. Yeah. The book doesn’t suck. I just found that I didn’t really care all that much. About the characters or the mystery. The ending is quite rushed, as though Brown suddenly realizes that he has boxed his characters into an impossible corner and needs a hefty dose of deus ex machina to extract them. But you probably won’t want the few hours back. Definitely beach reading.

Bad Monkey by Carl Hiassen Classic Hiassen. Protagonists Andrew Yancy and Neville are two of Hiassen’s most likeable characters. They are why you just can’t stop reading Bad Monkey. Hiassen is always funny, but sometimes I just haven’t liked the “hero” all that much. Not in Bad Monkey. The mystery that purports to be the plot isn’t that hard to figure out, but it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Following the threads of how Neville and Andrew’s stories come together is what makes the book. I can’t say much more without giving away the real spoilers in the novel, so just go buy it.

Bonus Carl Hiassen read– If you have never read Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World, it’s a perfect quick read. I admire the Disney franchise, and definitely love me some Steamboat Willy, but the repackaged reality of the Disney Parks is more than a little creepy. Think about how many trees were cut down for Animal Kingdom’s plastic centerpiece “Tree of Life.” Hiassen captures the contradictions of “the happiest place on earth” perfectly.

My Spring of Steampunk (Summer Reading Part One)

by Susan Getgood on June 24, 2013 · 1 comment

in Books,Fantasy,Mystery,Steampunk

Looking for some summer reading? I’ve got some suggestions for you.

I’ve been digging into three fantasy series, two of which are definitely steampunk and the third perhaps better classed as historical fantasy. All have strong female protagonists and at their core, mystery — both as the plotline and about the characters. Let’s start with the steampunk.

The Immortal Empire series by Kate Locke: This series is set in “modern” England with a highly revisionist history that allows Locke to wantonly mix elements of Victorian English culture with modern technology. So far I have read parts 1 and 2, God Save The Queen and The Queen is Dead. Part 3, Long Live The Queen, is due this fall. The entire series shares an underlying mystery, but each installment does resolve some elements, while (of course) introducing new ones. There’s a romance between the two principal characters plus goblins, vampires and werewolves, oh my. Some of whom are the good guys, and some not so much.

After I started the Locke series, Amazon kindly recommended The Iron Wyrm Affair by Lilith Saintcrow. The timeframe is Victorian, but a very different Victorian England than what we learned in our history books. Magic is very real, and computers are human. Literally. The protagonists Banner and Clare are brought together by circumstance to solve a mystery for the Queen of England. I enjoyed the book enough to purchase its sequel, The Red Plague Affair, but the storylines are unnecessarily convoluted in places, requiring a bit more “divine providence” than perhaps I would like. Although I suppose that is what magic is, so your mileage may vary.

The real discovery of the season is the All Souls trilogy by Deborah Harkness, also recommended by Amazon based on my previous purchases. The first novel A Discovery of Witches establishes our protagonists Diana Bishop, a reluctant witch and historian of science, and Matthew Clairmont, vampire scientist, with their story continuing in Shadow of Night. The first book moves very quickly to introduce the mystery as well as most of a large cast of characters while the pace of second is much much slower, and at times it seems to wander. I am hopeful that the author has a plan and some of the threads that seemed pointless in Shadow will actually bear fruit in the third book, which as yet does not have a title or release date.

My advice: Start with Harkness, then Locke, then Saintcrow.

The Appeal Of Steampunk

How does the garden grow

by Susan Getgood on May 25, 2013

in Dogs,Gardens & Flowers,Spring

Just about a year ago, we moved into an old turn-of-the-(20th)-century home that needed (and still needs) a lot of work. We’ve been making slow progress, and with the exception of some initial and very necessary construction to remodel the very rundown kitchen and a few other improvements, doing most of the work ourselves. But one of the things we began work on almost as soon as we moved in was the gardens. Here are just some of the early Spring flowers (photos shot May 5, 2013)