July Earnings and Cryptogon Readers Send Contributions in August
August 25th, 2009I don’t know about other parents out there, but for me, having an almost two-year-old son has shaken loose a couple of cotter pins and caused a few gears to throw some teeth around here. There is a constant hum of activity that is accentuated by crashing sounds and gleeful shrieks and laughter. Updating Cryptogon these days is somewhat like trying to read, write and concentrate in the middle of a machine shop.
I told Becky that I was having trouble concentrating and that something was probably wrong with me. She said that it’s called “baby brain” and that most parents experience it. *chuckle*
My use of the computer, or “booper,” is a source of near otherworldly fascination for Owen (although, given the choice, he’d much rather run around outside in the mud and pouring rain like a wild man). He doesn’t understand what his dad is doing in front of the computer for such long periods of time, or, more importantly, why he isn’t allowed to help. For a while, we tried closing the door to the room where I work, but he heard me typing on the keyboard and knew what was happening. “Daddy booper. Daddy booper.” Also, there are boopers at many of the places we go. Post office. ATM. Grandparents’ house. Auntie’s house. Grocery store. Library. Other people’s homes often have TV screens in addition to computers. Everybody except mum and dad have little screens (mobile phones) in their pockets or purses that occasionally light up and make weird noises. These are immensely fascinating. Seriously, he lets out a satisfied groan when he gets a hold of one and pushes the buttons.
I left Owen standing on the floor near my chair and I took two steps away to open a window. When I turned back around...
Owen mooing at the cows.
Owen likes steering wheels. Since his plastic trike has handle bars, he flipped it sideways and uses one of the rear wheels as a steering wheel. Slackjack Bunny often rides along. Owen provides the engine noise.
I was flat out shitting myself to think that we would be able to keep screens away from him. Even if I had a different occupation—that didn’t require the use of screens—he would still see all the other screens everywhere else… And there we would be again.
Anyway, we’ve decided to split the difference and allow him to have some time with the computer (we use Phun together, type gibberish into OpenOffice and look at pictures of creatures). The end of computer time can result in tears and back arching. After all, why the hell does daddy get to keep using the screen?!
Some of you have noticed that Farmlet hasn’t been updated in weeks. Becky is with Owen much of the time, and after he goes to sleep around 8pm, she pretty much just wants sit down and drink pot after pot of various herbal teas. But she doesn’t just sit down and drink tea because she has all kinds of stuff that she can only do when Owen is asleep; like maintaining her fermentation cultures, studying her Playcentre lessons (she’s doing the adult education program to help make sure that our Playcentre continues to receive funding), sewing, running the food buying co-op etc.
All of this is a roundabout way of explaining why I’m doing the July earnings total near the end of August, and why I have yet to acknowledge August contributions.
So, in July, total earnings came to $1276.84. Affiliate payments from Amazon and Bluehost made up about 60% of the total. That’s another great month. Thank you to all Cryptogon contributors and affiliate patrons for keeping us on the air in July.
Now, let’s look at August. The following Cryptogon readers have sent contributions:
Pookie $75
Eileen $40
JS $25
AW £100
SM $20
JM CA$15
MW $20
JR $25
PA $100
There’s one more here.
IL dropped a cool one thousand dollars on us. Yes, US$1000.
Once in a while, a member of the heavy lifting crew will take out the monthly goal in one shot. IL did it in August. Ironically, he doesn’t read Cryptogon much anymore (he gets it—enough already), but he wanted to make sure that both Cryptogon and Farmlet keep going.
Thank you all very much.
Thank you so very much for this post Kevin. I’m so very glad to see that you, Becky and Owen are happy and have a full life going on.
Yes I admit I sent you an email full of questions and worries but you alieved them all with this post. THANK YOU.
And whoever IL is, what a generous person.
Someday I hope to have the ability to be as generous to Cryptogon, Farmlet, as IL.
I have to work on my visualization more.
I have 5 year old twin boys and a 3 year old daughter, and I can completely sympathize with the seemingly impossible task of limiting their “screen time”. All 3 kids like to watch cartoons and play video games. I try to limit their tv watching to 1 hour a day at home, and we don’t own any video game systems. It’s hard, however, when other family members (wife, grandparents, etc.) don’t really care how much tv or video games they consume, and in fact actively encourage it with Christmas or Birthday presents. I suppose that, like it or not, this is the world we live in.
As for supporting Kevin and Becky and all the awesome stuff they do, I will admit to being incredibly lax on this. I’ve been a regular reader since 2004, and my wife is rather disapproving of me giving money to “wierdos on the internet”. That said, I really should order some stuff off of Amazon.
– Mike Lorenz
@Eileen
Tens of thousands of regular readers have never done anything at all to support Cryptogon (and never will). Someone who sends a dollar, or buys a used paperback off of Amazon has done far more to keep things going than the average reader.
Now, consider what you have done for us. Wow! I’m guessing that you’re in the top 1% of Cryptogon/Farmlet contributors, in terms of the total that you have given us. We appreciate it very much.
I’m glad signing up with Bluehost sent a few bucks your way…
We have a zero computer/video game policy at our house for the boy. The local school district has them on the computer once a week which is mind numbing enough. Right now, when every other kid is glued to some kind of screen between after school and dinnertime my kid is crushing bottle caps with his new hammer…
Let him play like we used to play – without electronic toys. Things will be hard enough when the power goes out without adding video game withdrawal into the soup.
Thank you for the compliment Kevin. But hmmph.
For me Cryptogon provides me with all the REAL NEWS that something like the New York Times, does not or will not print. Not that I even bother with the NYT anymore, but I figure the lag time between your postings and the MSM is that you are about two weeks ahead of the world mind set and that is why Cryptogon and Farmlet – are not “weirdos on the Internet” but have become established in my mind (at least) as my most trusted news source.
I do understand why people who read your site don’t, can’t or won’t contribute to keeping it up and running.
But when things get tougher than they are already and you have to take this project into subscription-land, please give me a discount on my subsription! 🙂 Cause I’m already pinching pennies, er a nickels, no dollars.
@ comradesimba
He’s definitely not getting any video games. I’d say that he’s almost as interested in Becky’s homemade playdoh as he is in the computer. For us, the answer is going to be a little of a lot of things. But no video games. Later, we may try the solution that dagobaz used with her kids. They were given access to computers, but the sessions had time limits. They got to do anything they wanted in the allotted time.
I used some of the earnings this month to buy more Lego Duplo bricks and three massive, illustrated encyclopedias (Dinosaurs, Animals and Birds). I must admit that my interest in the Duplo is higher than Owen’s so far. HA
@Eileen
We’re pretty weird. We grow a lot of our own food. We slaughter cows in our driveway for meat. We’re “poor” as defined by both the NZ and American governments, in terms of income, yet we own our own property and vehicles and have no debt. We add to our savings each month. Becky makes cheese out of raw milk. On and on. For most people, that’s a pretty weird lifestyle.
I’ve thought about how I would handle the situation with a subscription based site. While I don’t want to go into details, since it’s not happening yet, let’s just say that you wouldn’t have to pay anything to access it for a long, long, long time.