Dad Revisited

I’ve always wanted a Tivo. I think time-shifted television is the best idea ever. We have all of this technology at our fingertips. Yet most of us still sit mindlessly in front of the television watching the TV shows on the network’s schedule.

My problem with Tivo is… I’m cheap. Really cheap. I have never loved he terms of the Tivo service, which includes a monthly fee. You can sign up for a lifetime membership, but the membership is not for YOUR lifetime, it’s for the lifetime of your unit. My luck with technology makes me worry about the fact that my unit would outlive the warranty by 10 minutes, and then I’d be on the hook for a new unit AND a new membership.

Since I’ve moved to my weekday crashpad, I have no access to television. I made a trade with the landlords, and we agreed to share an internet connection, and they would not have to wire the apartment for cable. The wireless connection allows me to access the internet, and I get great throughput. I can watch video streamed from the internet. Yeah, you can watch YouTube, and the major networks have begun to show more of their content online. However, it is in their best interest to make it somewhat complicated to find the shows. The longer you are on the website, the more likely you are to find something new that will suck up your time or money.

This is why I like Hulu. NBC, Comedy Central, and many other content providers have begun providing much of their content to Hulu for streaming. The advertising is somewhat unobtrusive. You get a single commercial breaks on a schedule similar to that of broadcast TV (usually 3 per half hour, 5 per hour) and the content restarts AUTOMATICALLY. However, the most exciting part of Hulu is the subscription service. You can subscribe to clips or episodes from shows (you choose) and they show up in a personalized queue on the site, or you can subscribe in an RSS feed. You can also receive individual show feeds if you prefer.

You can share your feeds publicly (social media style), receive email updates when a new clip or episode is added to your queue. For some people, the movie offerings are their favorites. However, I rarely watch the movies. You are not seeing new, top tier releases. They are classic releases, and in some cases never-to-become-classic releases. For me, I just don’t have the time to sit and watch two hours of movies most days. I need that time to catch up on my shows.

My shows? You can check out what’s in my queue, but the highlights include:

• Fringe
• Heroes
• House
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien
• Life
• Mad TV
• Monk
• psych
• Saturday Night Live
• Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles
• The Daily Show
• The Colbert Report

Still waiting for ABC, CBS, TNT, TBS, and others to get a clue about services like Hulu. These guys are doing online video well. You are late to the game. Either steal good ideas from them, or throw in together and do it better. NBC posts shows on both NBC.com and Hulu. There is no reason not to do both. More eyes is better, isn’t it?

And Network Executives, if you think online video is taking away from your vieweship, guess again. I found House on Hulu, and now my wife AND I watch it faithfully.. on broadcast TV.

As a Music Teacher and Choir Director, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been asked about what to do with ‘non-singers.’ I’ve also been heard “I can’t sing” more than a thousand times.

Look. You can sing. Not everyone is a professional. I’ll admit it, you probably don’t sing as well as I do. You may not sing as well as half of my choir. You may not sing as well as anyone in my choir. Perhaps you don’t hit the notes so good. Maybe you have a hard time following along with the music. Maybe you can’t get from high to low and back again without a little help. Maybe the people around you look twice once you start singing.

Maybe you are not as bad as you think. There are a few things you can do in order to improve your chances of being successful when you are singin along in church:

1. Prepare. Before the service starts, take a look at the hymn board (most places post the numbers prior to services) and look over today’s music. A successful skier walks the hill before he starts a race. Do the same with your music.
2. Stand up or sit up straight. Your body is your instrument. Would a flute work well if it was all bent up? No. Neither does the body. Tall and straight makes it easier for all the muscles you need for church singing to work properly.
3. Don’t forget to breathe. Air is the fuel of singing. If you are short of breath, you will never sound good. Get a good, deep breath before you start the first line. It’s like an Indy Car driver’s first tank of gas. It’s the only time you get to fill up all the way. After that, you will have to breathe quickly, so make the first tank as full as possible.
4. Lighten up. Literally. On your voice. You don’t have to carry the entire church. You just have to sing for yourself. Don’t whisper, but don’t try and raise the rafters. A nice, moderate singing sound should be easier to maintain.
5. Let it go. If you miss something, it’s gone. Music is a snapshot in time. That which is missed cannot be reclaimed. Find out where everyone else is, find a place to jump in, breathe, and sing.
6. Pick your battles. Some songs are harder than others. Let the experienced singers, choir, or song leader do the heavy lifting. Join in on the refrain/chorus. By the end of most songs, you should know it by heart.
7. Lighten up. Figuratively. On yourself. It’s worship, and it’s meant to be meaningful, not perfect.

If the folks around you are looking askance at you, imagine that it is because they are impressed with your prayerfulness and musical skills. After all, as St. Augustine said, “Singing is praying twice.”

Grounding is defined as the restriction of a child’s freedom of movement for a specified amount of time or until the child meets a certain condition (or conditions). We are newly in the position of having to consider really using grounding as a method of discipline. We have seen positive results, but often wonder how effective it truly is at changing behavior. Is there really a change taking place, or are we merely witnessing an Oscar-worthy performance as the sanctions are lifted?

Below are some interesting thoughts and ideas that come from Dr. Kenneth Kaye’s book entitled Family Rules, © 2005, published by iUniverse Incorporated. The summary is from The University of Louisville website.

Kaye asserts that grounding should be used as a logical consequence for children’s problem behaviors and should be used for one or more of these reasons:

• To show children that they’re not using their freedom responsibly.
• To provide extra supervision so that they have the opportunity to show improvement with their problem behavior. Example: Parent stays home with teenager on week nights until she brings her math grade up to passing or better.
• To help children realize that they’re engaging in certain behaviors that their parents deem are incompatible with being a part of the family.
• To separate children from particular friends and/or a certain event that Mom and Dad disapprove of.

There are some things to keep in mind when assigning grounding as a sanction:

• Grounding must be done in small increments of time—minutes, hours, or days. Then, if children defy the grounding, it is increased in small amounts as well.The author explains that if the original amount of grounding time is large (ie, weeks or months), parents risk escalating their child’s defiance rather quickly.

EXAMPLE: Talking on the phone instead of doing homework.
Normal Consequence: Cell phone taken away for one day and evening.
First Escalation: Cell taken away for one additional day/night.
Second Escalation: Three days.
Third Escalation: Four days.

• Make sure the situation/activity the child is being grounded from is something he really sees as punishment. If he doesn’t seem to care whether or not he goes to his grandfather’s birthday party, ground him on another day when he’ll miss going out with his friends.
• Be prepared to alter your routine in order to enforce the grounding. This may mean making small sacrifices and inconveniencing one or more members of your family. Dr. Kaye reminds us that making small sacrifices now will reap benefits in the future for you and your child. So, if grounding your daughter means that one parent stays home with her and misses the family’s Friday pizza night, so be it.
• Be ready to take extra steps to enforce the grounding if need be. The author of advises parents that if your son leaves the house and goes to the party anyway, go and get him. This action lets him know that you mean business. Kaye says not to worry about embarrassing your son, since his friends probably already know that he’s supposed to be grounded anyway.

As a final note, Dr. Kaye cautions parents that there are a few instances when grounding is not appropriate. These times are:

• When your child enjoys spending time alone in her room. Here, restricting her to her room will serve to reward her instead of punishing her.Try taking a privilege away instead, or require her to spend some time outside her room like outdoors.
• If your child has a history of violent behavior and/or has been physically abusive toward you parents.

I hate grounding my children. I don’t like removing them from activities they enjoy. I especially do not enjoy having to sit around with them while they are in a terrible mood. However, there is little denying that it appears to work. Even if they do not welcome the change they have to make, they will almost certainly make it IF they know you will stick to your guns and keep them from the party, so to speak.

Do you ground your kids? What events (or privileges) do they sacrifice?

We’ve had quite a go with cellular phones. My son got his first cell phone when he was in Middle School. We got him a ‘pay as you go’ model just in case it got lost. Good thing, because within the first month of school, he had lost it. We did not replace it. We tried to cancel it, but by the time he admitted it was lost, all the minutes ($100 worth) had been used.

After a year without it, we decided to try it again. We got another ‘pay as you go’ phone. This one went a little better, lasting a few months until it was lost. An uncle looking for a cool gift got him a replacement which lasted for half a year until it was washed in the pocket of a pair of pants.

We did without until August of this year. With my son in High School and my daughter entering Middle School, we needed to get cell phones. Both are involved in after-school activities and often have changes in schedule. I did an extensive analysis of plans and costs and determined that the cheapest way to go was to get a pay-as-you-go plan for my daughter, while (gulp) adding my son to our plan. My biggest concern about adding him to the plan was a lost phone and the possibility of getting slammed by overage fees before actually finding out that the phone was missing.

However, my cell provider has changed it’s plans and may have saved me. T-Mobile has added a management system to Family Plans that allows me to lock down my son’s phone in a variety of ways. I can enable, limit, or disable text messaging by phone. I can limit how many shared minutes he can use each month. I can limit what hours the phone will work. I can set restrictions on who can be called. In amongst all of these limitations, I can set numbers that can work all the time.

I’ll explain. We had Unlimited Family Texting, but he was texting during class in school. Additionally, he was calling his girlfriend and talking to her long past he was supposedly going to bed. I went into the dashboard via the T-Mobile site and set the number of texts allowed each month to zero. Then I restricted the hours of use so the phone can only function between 3 and 11pm each night. However, I added all of our family cell phones, work numbers, and the home number as “always available” so if he needs to call at lunch, or if he is stuck at a party or a friends house after 11, he can still get through to us. Finally, because he shares 11 hours of minutes with Mom and I each month, I can limit him to no more than 4 of those hours. That way he doesn’t leave us with an end of month overage.

The site also now allows you to disable receipt of text messages. One problem we had previously was that his friends all had unlimited text messaging. He didn’t have ANY text messaging! They would send him a text message, which was free to them but cost me fifteen cents. With that fee now at twenty cents, something had to be done. I now have his phone set only to receive system messages from T-Mobile.

If your service does NOT allow this type of customization, call and ask when or if they will. Raise a ruckus. With these new limits set, I am considering adding my daughter’s phone to our plan as well. I figure that if I have to purchase minutes, I will spend $100 this year. If I add her to the plan, I will spend $120 and never have to worry whether she has enough minutes, whether she is wasting them, and I will actually have MORE control of her phone than I do now. Oh, if ONLY they had done this 3 months earlier, I could have saved about $50 and be done with the entire process.

I often wonder, during the more than 120 masses I sit through each year, why there can’t be more quality sermons. I imagine creating a sermon is difficult. As a matter of fact, this site grows out of the idea that I thought I could create a weekly sermon as good or better than the ones I’ve been hearing. I may be wrong about that, and it certainly isn;t easy to be compelling and moving on a scheduled basis. The real question is ‘what makes a quality sermon?’ Thomas J. Leonard (I have no idea who he is!) offers these Top Ten Elements of a Great Speech. I thought we could deconstruct the sermon and see what happens.

1. A proper introduction and/or self-introduction.

Many sermons fall down right here. If you don’t grab the audience, it’s hard to get them back. One of the better preacher at my church used to start with “while I was in Target the other day” or “as I stood in line at the grocery store.” This helps to humanize him, and connected the sermon immediately to us, as we thought “this might actually apply to my everyday existence.”

2. Acknowledge and touch the audience.

The preacher is a step above us all, literally and figuratively when he enters the pulpit. Somehow, a preacher needs to be sitting with us, and not above us. Otherwise the sermon is just dogmatic, and the sentiments lost on folks who can discount it with “he doesn’t understand what it’s like down here.”

3. A concise statement of purpose of the speech.

Many preachers bury the statement of purpose late in the sermon. If you front-load it, it’s heavy-handed. However, if you bury the lead too far in, we never get it. The drone has become too loud, and we can not be called to attention to hear the most important statement of all. A clever or moving anecdote followed by our statement of purpose brings it home. Say it a few times. It helps.

4. Acknowledge and honor the audience’s resistance and doubts about your topic/purpose or about you.

A good preacher knows just how to make us all feel in the same boat. “I know you have bills to pay, I know you have mouths to feed, I know the economy is hurting us all, but God’s work is even more important today then ever! Men and women are struggling to meet their obligations, and they need our help. Heaven knows that it might someday be us in need. I would come to the community just the same to ask on your behalf. Be there for your neighbors.” Find a man not reaching for his wallet, and I’ll show you a deaf man.

5. Create a sense of urgency.

Why is this important to me? I’m a pretty good guy. I don’t have to be that much different in my day-to-day life. Often the story is of some person who had a life changing event and can no longer do what is needed. The man killed after a fight with his wife. The father whose daughter runs away, and he realizes he’s never told her how much he loves her. The son who gets a girl pregnant because his family was too embarrassed to bring up sex. These stories create an urgency, a “don’t let this happen to you” vibe.

6. Present the solution.

There is a lot of thought and reflection required in religion. Thought and reflection are easy to postpone. People need actions that they can enact that will create the change sought. Sure, it would be great if we were all holy and virtuous, thoughtful and community-minded. We’re not. Being faithful is difficult for many of us. We need to be led. We need to be told what to do. Those who do should be kind enough to say QUIETLY to themselves that they already do these things, and be encouraging to those who don’t. Too often preachers aren’t prescriptive for fear of offending those who don’t need prescriptions.

7. Make your specific points, the steps needed and the obstacles to reaching the objective.

Walk me step by step through the process. “If he were to have done this, then that, then the other thing, he might have made it work.” If it sounds simple and accessible, I can do it.

8. Share or draw a conclusion.

Now we need to take the whole thing and sum it up. Remind me of why I need this. Let me know that this is not just about what is right, but how my ever-living soul benefits from this. Tell me how this is better for you, me, my family, and my faith.

9. Ask for something: action, willingness, a change, support.

You can leave church with the idea that the changes asked of you are so far beyond your control or grasp that you can’t manage it today- it will have to be for another day. A good sermon gives us something to do right now. “Go home and sit with your children, and tell them how you feel.” There should be a long-range plan, but we need to be aware of the first step, and we need to know that it has to happen- now.

10. Q&A or a fresh statement of the speech.

In my opinion, this comes at the end of the service. The sermon is buried mid-service. We need to be sent out the door with our marching orders. The last thing I hear needs to be your call to action. Remind me before I go to get it done now.

The best sermons I’ve heard have often been from non-priests. Rabbis, Ministers and deacons. People who, in my opinion, lead lives more closely related to those of their parishioners. They can marry. They can have children. While they are still religiously ‘above’ where we are, their status as family men and women puts them one step closer to ‘us’ on the ladder.

Not recently, of course. I’ve been married for a while. More than 18 years, to be specific.

I knew a few girls in my younger years. I wasn’t what the kids today might call a ‘player’ but I did okay. Well, okay for a young man who played the clarinet and saxophone, sang in a Renaissance singing group wearing tights, took tap dancing lessons, and ran away from the only fight that ever came his way.

Believe it or not, there is a woman in the world who finds these things attractive. Scoff if you want, but it’s true. We’ve been married for 18 years. We dated for three years before that. We met 7 years before we started dating. In total, we have known each other closely and peripherally for 28 years. It’s a long and somewhat wierd story.

We met doing theater. I was playing Judas in a community theater production of “Godspell.” She was prop mistress for the show. She was also dating “Jesus.” We knew one another, and actually went out on a double date once. I was fifteen years old, and I had a habit of dating older women. She was 18, but never popped on my radar as a person in whom I had an interest. She just wasn’t on my radar.

The show ended, she got engaged and went to college. I went back to high school. She and the right-hand-of-the-father never married, and after what could be called a bad breakup, she decided to go away to graduate school. In the meantime, I was finishing my time at high school and spending four years in the business world.

Our worlds collided again when she returned from grad school and decided to get back into community theater. A friend had called her to be the stage manager for a workshop production. The theater hosting the workshop was showing “The Threepenny Opera” at the time, so she had to coordinate events with the resident stage manager. I was the resident stage manager. I was finishing up my last show prior to going away for my undergrad. She came in, I looked into her eyes, and remembered I was going away to school.

She claims she knew soon after we met that we would be together forever. It took me a while. It was 7 days before I was sure she was the one for me. It was a whirlwind at first, but a long-distance relationship is not really whirling as much as it is slogging. It was terrific, and she got me through a lot of difficult times in college. Her love and support were indispensable. I would not have finished school had it not been for her on the other end of the phone.

We were married 18 years ago, and she has been there for me every day since. I could not imagine spending my life without her. I only hope someday to be able to show her how important she really is to me.

I have been using an iPod Shuffle. I have one of the second generation Shuffles. You know, not the one that looked like a pack of gum, but the one that looked more like a money clip. It had 1GB of memory (the maximum available at the time) and it was purchased for $99. For $79 I could replace my current Shuffle with a 2GB for $79. Moore’s Law in action.

Why would I want an iPod Touch, when I could have gotten an iPod with 5 times the memory for the same price? The iPod Touch is more than an iPod. It also replaces a Palm T3, which I have been using as my PDA for more than 5 years. It is a Personal Digital Assistant. Well, maybe it’s more of a Partner than an Assistant.

My iPod Touch has built-in wifi, which allows it to access the internet using my router, a router at Starbucks, Panera Bread, or the nearest ‘unprotected’ router I can find. My Palm T3 did not have wifi, so on the road I did not have access to my email. I could not post to Twitter. I could not get maps or directions. Now, all I need to do is find an access point and I’m set. Additionally, if I need to check something on the internet, I do not have to break out my laptop. Now I can stay cuddly with the wife and kids and STILL find that IMDB entry proving that yes, it WAS that guy from the coffee shop who had that bit role in the video we rented.

My Touch integrates seamlessly with my iCal application (Mac only, but I understand Windows solutions are easy as well), and that integrates well with  Google Calendar. After the initial culture shock of moving my info and the realization that events on the Touch could not repeat on the ‘first monday of month’ but only by ‘monthly by date’, I am settling in well with the Touch. It certainly has more features and functions than the Palm T3. The iPhone Application Store is available to Touch users, and I have a bunch of free games (Daily Sodoku, anyone?) It is better integrated with podcasts than the Shuffle (for which I had a work-around, but it was kludgy.) Most importantly, it’s eliminated one item from my tool belt. I’ll miss the little clippy thing on my Shuffle, but I appreciate more that I can find my songs using a menu and not just via a search and destroy mission, hoping against hope to land on my intended target.

So if I sell my Shuffle on eBay, could I ask 10 bucks for it?

St. Peter Catholic Church (Stevens Point WI)

Years ago, I got kicked out of church. Well, it wasn’t actually me who got kicked out.

I’m a Roman Catholic. Mom and I went to a church in a town about 30 miles north of New York City. At the time, she was a divorced mother taking her child to church. Apparently, the pastor of our church didn’t take too kindly to divorced folks. When I was about 10 years old, the pastor stood up and said that divorced people weren’t welcome in his parish. Mom was a lot of things, but dense wasn’t one of them. She scooped me up, and off we went, not to return for many years. It appeared that my sacraments were to end at communion.

In the interim, we moved to a new town. I was an early teenager, so I had no real interest in church. Mom had apparently soured on the idea, but was at an event one day when she was introduced to the local pastor. He asked her why she was not coming to church. She explained. He pointed out that the previous pastor may not have been the nicest guy. He encouraged her to return, if for no other reason, so that I might be confirmed.

Mom and I returned to church. I received my confirmation, and that was my last moment in church for quite a while. I did finally return to church, but not until I met my wife. My wife has been a devout church attendee for her entire life. She was brought up in catholic schools. She attended a catholic college for her undergrad. Growing up, she played in guitar groups and sand in the youth choir. She was a member of the youth ministry.

Today, I consider myself to be a spriritual person. I am not better than you if you are not a spiritual person. If you go to church once a week, I am not better because I go twice. I don’t care if you are divorced. I dont care if you’re gay. I don’t care if you look at internet porn. I don’t care if you don’t put much in the collection plate, although I would love a moment to tell you how important it is to do so.

I have a problem with the way many of my faith (and other faiths) treat their religions. A religion should not be an exclusive club. Religions and churches should be warm and welcoming. Religious folks should be accepting of others. The idea that a faith would exclude anyone is patently ridiculous. I’m especially concerned about this when the sin, as they say, stops at the tip of my nose. If your sin does not have an impact on me, who am I to judge you. None of us is without sin.

If I go to church with a contractor who has ripped me off, shouldn’t he be kept out? His sin had a negative impact on me. If he was gay, it would not be a problem unless he was a predator and hit on me. If he was divorced, he and his family are the ones affected. Adultery may be a threat to the parish itself, so that’s a tough one. Let’s agree that, in the case of a draw, we are going to opt with “you get to come to church UNTIL you prove you are no longer entitled.”

Would it be a sin to sit on that committee? Have I just made the problem even worse?

I get this in one of my email accounts every year. I understand what it’s saying, and I’m not happy with the way the world is now, but it is not the same world you and I grew up in as children. In any case, either a frustrated coworker, an overwrought mom, or a lamenting dad shares their frustration with the changes in the world by sending this to everyone in their email list. As we commemorate 9/11 and the new and sometimes frightening world in which we live, let’s remember (hopefully with fondness) the world we knew so well when we grew up.

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s!!

• We survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.
• They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.
• Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
• We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
• As infants &children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.
• Riding in the back of a pickup on a warm day was always a special treat.
• We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
• We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
• We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank Kool-aid made with sugar, but we weren’t overweight because, WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
• We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
• No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
• We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes! After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
• We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD’s, no surround-sound or CD’s, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms…….
• WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
• We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
• We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
• We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out very many eyes.
• We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
• Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
• The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! If YOU are one them, CONGRATULATIONS!

A quote from Jay Leno:

With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?

Text On The Beach by dougww

Text messaging makes me crazy.

I see kids walking through the mall (I live near the second largest mall in the USA) with large groups of their friends. Intelligent, attractive looking kids. However, none of them are speaking to one another. They are texting other kids. They have left their homes and come to the mall to visit with friends, and they are visiting virtually with someone else.

Kids have lost the ability to talk to one another. They have cellular phones and phone plans, but they use them for text messaging almost fully. They take their lives in small bites of language, comprised of 140 characters (or fewer). They sit with people physically but do not experience them. They come together physically without actually coming together in any other way.

So I fought against text messaging for my family. I was convinced this was not a good idea. I did not want my kids to be sitting at a friend’s dinner table, texting their OTHER friends about what was happening. I was going to be the parent who stood firm against the tide. We don’t need text messaging. We have phones. People can talk to us!

A disclaimer is important here- I hate the phone. Truly. I much prefer to talk to people in person. I cannot sustain a long conversation without seeing people up close. I am easily distracted and find it difficult to sustain my end of the conversation for too long a time.

After getting my son a pay-as-you-go plan, all of his minutes were expended. He hadn’t called anyone, but his friends sent him so many text messages his minutes were gone! Then we upgraded him to a phone on our plan and gave him 400 messages a month. In the first three days, he had been through 120 messages. This clearly was not going to work.

I bit the bullet and got the ‘Unlimited Family Message Plan.’ My wife was not interested, but I had begun to see some wisdom in this plan. First, I’d be able to update my Twitter status using text messaging. Second, I’d be able to have my calendar send me the occasional reminder of my appointments.

The real bonus, though, is in how I can now communicate with my son.  We have a deal. After 4 lost/stolen/laundered cellular phones, I need constant confirmation that he still has the phone in his possession. A phone call is a little much for a 15 year old boy, but a text that simply says ‘I’m on the bus’ is enough to confirm the phone is still in his pocket.

It also gives us a new way to connect. I can remind him of his commitments (curfew, homework, etc) without ‘calling him out’ in front of his friends. It’s just between us. Eventually, I may set it up so he too receives updates from a family calendar on the road.

I think the coolest part may be this- if you can keep your messages to 129 characters, you always have room for “I love you.” It’s only 11 characters.

Check out Congress, and their new push for better text messaging rates.