Humor

Is your kid your friend?

A video has been circulating recently that makes the bold statements that “I am not my kid’s buddy. I am their parent and they are angry with me because I parented them.”

While I agree that more parents need to parent their children and not worry so much whether them doing that makes the kid happy. I also feel that in today’s day and age, your child has to have a friend that they can confide in. If you are not friends with you child, how can you hope to know what is going on in their lives. This doesn’t mean as a friend that you need to always give them their way, it simply means that you are constantly working on building a relationship of trust.

We walk a fine line as parents. My guidelines for being a good parent are:

1) Love the child.
2) Spend time with them.
3) Listen to them.
4) Be an example.
5) Be stern but understanding.
6) Correct and punish, when necessary.
7) Show an increase of love.

Parenting is hard. Trust me, with 6 kids, I get it but being a successful parent goes far beyond just laying down the lay and forcing them to comply.

Can you Make Money Driving for Uber?

by Darren

Have you been wondering if you can make a good side income driving for Uber? As a father of six, I’m always looking for a good side hustle so I set out to see if Uber was a valid way to make some extra money.

People claim that they can’t make enough money to make a career out of driving for Uber. I wanted to test it out for myself so I signed up as a driver. I love the idea of something flexible that parents can use to earn extra funds and still allow them to work around hectic family schedules.

Getting Started with Uber

The process to get setup with Uber was pretty simple. I signed up online then attended an in-person event to finish the process. They ran a background check, requested some documentation and a vehicle inspection. The entire process went fairly smoothly, despite the fact that I chose to use my electric car, a BMW i3 (more on that later).

Driving for the First Time

With the kids off to school, I put the Uber placard in my window, placed pepper spray in the driver’s door (just in case) and logged into the Uber Partners app on my smartphone to tell them I was ready to drive. Within minutes, I got a notification that someone wanted a ride. I accepted and used the GPS within the app to drive to the pickup location.

My first passenger was an older couple who wanted a ride to the train station, a short 14 minute ride of 7.63 miles and a fare of $14.06.

I can do this, I thought.

Safety

One of the biggest concerns people have about driving for Uber is safety. Will they be safe while driving? Since there have been a few high-profile news stories about Uber passengers getting violent, this seemed like a valid concern.

I didn’t find safety to be an issue. I met lots of very nice people and drove in areas I was familiar with.

I did take a few precautions. I kept mace in my door just in case and used a mount for my smartphone so I could stay handsfree.

I learned almost immediately that you MUST have some sort of mount to hold your smartphone in place. I honestly think Uber should make this part of the vehicle inspection. It is simply not safe to be looking at a phone for directions or where to pick someone up without a mount.

Proclip makes vehicle-specific mounts for just about any car and sent us one that was perfect for the i3 coupled with my iPhone. The mount even charges the phone and will accommodate a wide range of cases.

I always stopped driving by about 10pm so that I was taking people out for the night rather than bringing them home. So far I’ve avoided picking up an overly drunk passenger. I think this is a major part of the reason why I have never felt unsafe, but you do make more money if you are willing to drive later at night.

Flexibility

I loved the flexibility Uber offered. I was able to login to drive anytime I wanted and sign out anytime I was done. I found that demand is always highest in the evenings on the weekends here in San Diego. I did try and schedule my driving around those times as much as possible because I knew that I would make more money driving during those times, but I was free to set my own hour and adjust them to fit my schedule.

Demand

Demand, while the kids are at school, was a lot more sporadic. I might give several rides back to back and then have nothing for hours. I also found that even though Uber is completely flexible with when I can log in and work, the end time is much more difficult to schedule as you never know where the next ride is going to take you. It might be right next to your kids’ school (which I had happened perfectly once) or your last ride might want you to drive them to the airport which could take hours so you want to make sure you aren’t on a tight time schedule while driving.

Overall, the experience was good and driving for Uber is something I think I’ll continue to do as my schedule allows time for it. I met some great people and it was a really interesting experience. I actually found that it was great for networking and as a work-at-home dad it was a great way to get out of the house.

Interested in driving for Uber? Sign up here.

Super Bowl Ads with Kids

by Darren

UPDATE: USA Today’s Ad Meter ranked Hyundai’s Dad Ad as the #1 Super Bowl Ad of 2015

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R_483zeVF8[/embedyt]

Every year I watch the Super Bowl with my kids. We enjoy lots of great food, cheer for our favorite team and laugh at the Super Bowl ads. This year, like last, I loved that most of the ads were very kid-friendly. There were no sleazy GoDaddy ads and not even the Pepsi ad of years past. This year it was KungFu Panda, weiner dogs running towards ketchup, a family sitting down for PizzaHut together and a dad watching out for his teenage girl on a date. It seems that the advertising companies are now trying to attract the attention of families.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouTeio9AzGQ[/embedyt]

As a parent, I laughed at the Doritos Ultrasound ad of a baby wanting to eat Doritos and was honestly intrigued by how many people it offended. I have snuck my kids all kinds of things before they were supposed to have it so the idea of an unborn baby wanting Doritos does not offend me.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugn_qmQ0NFo[/embedyt]

My 10 yr old son loved the T-Mobile “Drop the Balls” ad! He didn’t know anything about Steve Harvey’s Miss Universe mess-up. He just loved seeing all the balls overwhelm and make fun of Verizon as he has seen their ads.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI8YZdejPKg[/embedyt]

Let’s hope that media continues to be “kid-friendly”.