rivka

A while back, in the course of a couple of weeks three different bloggers I read mentioned the Swagbucks online-rewards program. I decided to check it out. I signed up about a month ago, and in that time I've earned a few $5 Amazon gift cards from Swagbucks. At this point I feel as though I know enough about the program to review it.

What it is: The main way Swagbucks works is by selling your search results. They have a search page and a search toolbar, and the idea is that you are supposed to use these tools in your normal Internet browsing. Their promotional material assures you that your search results come from Google, and they do. But the Google results are mixed into a list of "sponsored" results. They're all labeled as such, but for a given search 4-6 of the top ten results will probably be ads. They claim not to sell your name or your search history. I haven't seen any increase in spam.

What you get in return: "Swagbucks," a made-up currency which can be traded for gift cards, sweepstakes entries, or prizes in their online store. Searches are quasi-randomly chosen to receive Swagbucks rewards, usually in denominations of 10 or 20. Reportedly their software detects, and penalizes, non-naturalistic search behavior. I haven't tested that out.

You can also earn Swagbucks by using their online shopping portal (which includes sites like Barnes & Noble and Target), by pursuing "special offers" like credit card applications (I've stayed the hell away from these), by referring people (although it's not technically MLM; you don't get points from your referrals' referrals), and by hyping them via Twitter. They also run little promos designed to get you to visit their site a lot, by, for example, randomly offering a Swagbucks reward on their blog which is only good if you happen to visit within a brief window.

You can only use the service from the US, Canada, and the UK.

My evaluation:

• It isn't a scam. They do actually deliver gift card codes, and the codes do work on Amazon.



• Their search results are adequate for simple searches but almost always inadequate for anything subtle or involved. I tend to use their search for things like finding an author's home page, a particular blog, or the answer to a straightforward question, but not, for example, for trying to find a blog that discusses certain topics. I often use the Swagbucks search page as a replacement for bookmarks - i.e., to get to known sites I visit often - and go with Google for searches that are actually searches.



• There is a massive amount of Swagbucks-related hype, largely designed to get people disproportionately excited about earning or winning small quantities of Swagbucks. If you read the blog or follow Swagbucks on Facebook/Twitter, it becomes hard to focus on Swagbucks' actual value and whether various offers are a good deal or not, and it starts to seem more reasonable that one might do things in exchange for Swagbucks. That seems to be the basis of their business model.
  
  Given that a $5 Amazon gift card costs 450 Swagbucks, I find it helpful to keep in mind that one Swagbuck is worth approximately one penny. If typing the name of a blog into the Swagbuck search page potentially rewards me with 10 Swagbucks, that's a dime. Minimal effort, tiny reward, probably worth it. On the other hand, they have a "special offers" page where (for example) you might be invited to complete an online task estimated to take half an hour and thereby earn 18 Swagbucks. No thanks, my time is worth more than 36 cents an hour. Or you can agree to be contacted by phone by insurance sales agents in exchange for 200 Swagbucks. No, freedom from telemarketing is definitely worth more than $2 to me.



• Similarly, some of their prizes are craptastically bad deals. Like a five-pack of off-brand crayons for 359 Swagbucks, which works out to roughly $3.59 in Amazon gift card equivalence. Or a portable DVD player for 22,600 ($226 in gift card equivalence) which appears to retail for less than $100. An Amazon card worth $25 is 7 times the price of a $5 card. I suppose that there may also be disproportionately good deals, but I'm not really interested in putting in the research necessary to search them out. I'm sticking to $5 gift cards.



• The shopping portal has quite a range of stores. The payback rate is 2 Swagbucks for every dollar spent, which works out to roughly 2% if you're using Amazon cards to figure the exchange rate. It wouldn't be worthwhile to change your shopping behavior just for the sake of rewards, but there doesn't seem to be a down side to going through the portal for stuff you were going to buy online anyway. For example, we usually get groceries delivered from Safeway a couple of times a month, and I can do that through the portal and get the equivalent of $3 or so each time. It's a trivial amount of money in an absolute sense, but it's $3 more than I would get by going straight to safeway.com. Airline tickets (through Expedia) or computers (Dell, Best Buy) would produce rewards pretty quickly.
  
  I have found that it takes a long time - they say to allow up to 30 days, I think so that you can't manipulate the system by buying pricy things and then returning them - for shopping rewards to be added to your account. So it's not instant gratification, by any means.

My bottom line: Swagbucks is worthwhile if you don't get caught up in the hype and change your online behavior trying to chase rewards. Modest use of the search page and shopping portal = modest, incremental payoffs. For me it's worked out to about $15 at Amazon in a month, which is a nice treat albeit not a life-changing one.

If you decide to give it a try, you can use my referral code and I'll get extra stuff. Or, you know, don't.

My grant's study section meets in ONE HOUR.

*hyperventilates*

I don't know when they'll post our scores (and more importantly, our percentiles). Best case scenario is probably tomorrow. More likely by the end of the week.

So, uh, I'll just be over here going crazy until then.

Thanks everyone for your concern and support. I really - no, really, legitimately - don't think this is a matter of depression. I have a bad cold and Colin has been sleeping awfully - which means that I've been sleeping awfully as well. I think it's a combination of exhaustion and what fairoriana said about "I'm so busy with Things That Must Be Done that I get bored of myself." I am bored with myself, and feeling boring, and I am too unbelievably exhausted to be able to come up with a way of being less boring.

We took a step today that I think will help in the long run, although in the short run I expect that it will make things worse. We assembled Colin's crib in Colin's own room, and tonight I put him to sleep in it. I am done with cosleeping, with scrunching myself into a corner of the bed and holding my breath every time Colin stirs. I have also been suspecting for a while that he might sleep better in his own space. (As Dr. Jay Gordon says, babies like Colin "don’t sleep through the night any better than most of us would if we napped and cuddled within inches of the best restaurant in town and knew it was open 24 hours a day.")

So hopefully (a) I will sleep more deeply and comfortably in between night feedings, and (b) Colin will be able to move towards not feeding at night. And those things should help a great deal.

In the meantime I am trying to take it a day at a time, and I'm glad to know that I don't look as much of a boring nonentity from the outside as I do from the inside.

When tyrants tremble, sick with fear
To hear their death knells ringing
When friends rejoice, both far and near
How can I keep from singing?
To prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging
When friends by shame are undefiled
How can I keep from singing?

When I got home last night, Michael wanted to show something off. "Colin, do you want to go to Mama?" he asked. Colin's head bobbed up and down in an enthusiastic nod as he reached for me.

I said I'd noticed a nod or two myself, and Michael proudly described how Colin had answered several questions (e.g., "Do you need a diaper change?") with a nod. We discussed how useful this was going to be from a communication standpoint, and how Colin's receptive language must be much better than we'd realized.

Then I asked Alex a question. (I think it was "How was school?") And felt Colin's nursing head go nod, nod, nod.

Oh.

We tested it out a few more times. And yep, Colin will nod in response to anything said in a questioning intonation.

I suppose that the helpful, nurturing thing to do would be to now give him lots of concrete experience with being offered something, nodding, and then getting it. But frankly, we'd have to be much, much better parents than we are to refrain from using this new skill of his for our own entertainment, instead.

The peer review committee meets to review my grant application in 22 days.

*hyperventilates*

I had the opportunity to take part in a mock review through my Cyber Mentors program. It was a harrowing yet fantastic experience. I am assured that the process was very much like a real grant review - certainly, the people conducting it regularly serve on peer review committees for NIMH - except that my mentor and I got to listen in by conference call.

So I have a much better idea of what is happening to my grant right now than I did the last time through.

Peer review happens like this: Your grant is assigned to a "study section," a group of scientists drafted by NIH to review applications of a certain broad type, topic, or speciality. I am lucky in this regard, because NIMH has a speciality subsection for grants of my exact type (R34s proposing AIDS-related interventions), which means that my grant is not going up against projects with bigger scopes and/or more completed preliminary work. Within the study section, two or three people are assigned to review your grant.

The primary reviewers decide whether your grant falls within the upper half of applications. If it doesn't, that's the end of the road. They write up some comments for you and your grant is "unscored" - it never makes it to a full study section meeting.

If the primary reviewers agree that your grant is in the top half of the pile, it gets presented at the study section meeting. All the peer reviewers meet at NIMH, and the primary reviewers take turns presenting the grants they've read. There is some general discussion and a time for questions, and then everyone assigns your grant a score.[1] The primary reviewers write up comments, plus the NIH staff member assigned to the study section summarizes the group discussion.

This is the part I didn't really grasp before I participated in the mock review. It is absolutely harrowing to listen to someone with only a vague understanding of your grant application pitch it to a group and answer questions about it, potentially mangling it in a way you have no control over. The other study section members have the opportunity to read all the grants, but realistically speaking they are only likely to read the abstract and perhaps the Specific Aims section, which outlines the purpose and goals of the study. So what the review committee thinks of your grant is pretty much entirely dependent on what is conveyed by the primary reviewer.

Many of the grantsmanship strategies I learned from my mentor during this process had to do with spelling things out for the reviewers, making it easy for them to fill out their review forms, and making sure they don't miss any of the important stuff. At first I kind of rolled my eyes about some of her suggestions, but after the mock review it became clear why she wanted me to do things like briefly recap the entire grant application in the Aims section, use bolded topic sentences in the Background & Significance section so that someone who is quickly scanning will get the gist of my argument, and include homework-helper sections like the paragraph that begins "This proposal is innovative because..."

I "know," in the professional way that you know people in your field, two of the thirteen people assigned to the study section. They're both very good. I don't know anything about the other eleven. I will never know who the primary reviewers of my grant are.

Sometime after March 23rd, I'll log on to the NIH eRA Commons and click on my grant application, and there will be a score and a percentile. A few days after that, there will also be a written review available.

*nailbiting commences*



[1] They've changed the scoring system since the last time I had a grant reviewed. Now grants are ranked on a scale from 1-9 (1=exceptional, 9=poor), and the mean score is multiplied by 10 to produce an "impact score" from 10-90. You can see the criteria I'll be reviewed on here.

Colin walked partway across the study this evening - a remarkably steady six- or eight-foot journey. He must have known that I had a developmental update in the works.

This has been a long time coming. He's been so steady on his feet: standing independently, reaching down to pick something off the floor from a standing position, even dancing while standing. A few times he's taken a few little side-steps, edging himself along crabwise. Then, suddenly, this (relatively) long, assured walk. He's walking.

He's been preoccupied with the large-motor stuff in general. The latest obsession is climbing onto the furniture. We have a couple of child-size straight chairs, and Colin likes nothing better than to climb on, crow at his achievement, climb off, and then climb on again. He can almost get up on the low futon in the study and the low rocking chair in the living room. He cries with frustration when he can't. If we give him a boost, or he finds a toy to stand on, he gives us his biggest grin and his crowing laugh. He absolutely loves to climb into the little wagon we gave him for Christmas. I thought he'd like to push it, and he does, but he likes to get in and out of it even more.

Colin also loves to open and close doors. Cabinets and drawers, too, but doors are his favorite. Most of the doors in our house don't latch properly, and he patiently works his fingers into the cracks until he can swing them open. Then he's very proud. And he should be; he's ingenious and persistent, and it pays off. He can easily open things like Rubbermaid storage containers with snap-down handles.

He's developed a real love of books. His first love was Moo, Baa, La La La, and in honor of that, I guess, he consistently says "lalala" when he wants to be read to - no matter which book he's brandishing. He likes the same book read over and over and over. Sometimes he is so excited about rereading that he can't wait for us to finish the first read, and he snatches the book, closes it, and hands it back over for us to begin again. When he settles in to be read to he grins and clasps his hands in front of him. It's unbearably cute.

He's very focused on the pictures in books. Alex, as an infant, was much more focused on the words. When Colin is being read to, you can watch his eyes intently scanning the pictures.

He loves dolls. Baby dolls get hugged and cuddled and touched and brought to an adult for cuddling. But he also loves Alex's tiny Polly Pocket dolls. I've seen him hold one of them in one hand and a dress in the other and sort of bash them together; it's clear that he knows that you're supposed to dress them. He also likes to play with toy vehicles, balls, nesting cups, and stacking rings. And anything of Alex's, really.

He has three clear and recognizable words: Dada, Mama, and A-leh (Alex). I also think of lalala as a word because it definitely means something consistent. He is also good with communicative gestures: he points and gazes intently when he wants something, shakes his head "no" when you get something wrong, tugs on the bottom of my shirt when he wants to nurse.

He nurses enthusiastically, but these days he's also very much about regular meals of table food. He has strong opinions about getting to try everything that we eat; he'll point and make urgent noises until we hand over bits of pork roast or whatever else we initially thought was unsuitable for babies. He's started to demand to have his bowl or plate set on his tray so he can help himself. He hasn't eaten baby food for a while now. Interestingly, he's also resistant to taking bottles of breastmilk from our nanny. I am psyched about that, because if we can transition him to taking cow's milk from a cup when I'm at work I can STOP PUMPING. He already drinks water well from a sippy cup.

For all these mature eating habits, he's still marching steadily along at the 10th percentile for weight, 50th for height. He's a little string bean. Today was his one-year-old well baby visit, and he weighed 18 pounds, 10 ounces.

He's been sick for a week or two, so that's probably partly why he's less unfailingly happy than he was before. But he's also become less laid back. He has a definite will, and he cries when he's thwarted. He is still super affectionate and snuggly, though.



He still thinks Alex absolutely hung the moon.

To update my previous post: I called BGE twice this afternoon. The first time was to ask whether they had a record of a worker being sent out to a call from #837; they did. The second time was to complain.

The BGE customer service rep explained to me that BGE workers have a right to access their equipment regardless of where it is or whose property they have to cross to reach it. I explained that I was aware that he was not trying to do anything illegal; I just wanted to express concerns about how he behaved.

Apparently, in the eyes of BGE customer service he did nothing wrong. It is totally normal, she explained, for a BGE employee to climb someone's fence or attempt to get through or over a locked gate. Did she see how it might be frightening to find an unknown person trying to get through to a limited-access part of one's property? Well, she said, it's not like he was trying to break into my house.

Also: apparently he was under no obligation to show his ID unless and until I specifically asked him to do so. When I said "Hey!" and "What are you doing here?!", that didn't constitute a request for ID, so there was nothing wrong with the fact that he did not immediately provide proof of his legitimacy.

I went around and around with the customer service rep, trying to explain that although his behavior might technically be legal, it was inappropriate from a customer-relations standpoint because it scared me and could reasonably be expected to scare other women as well. I was too smart to say (although I wanted to): "Don't you realize that your guy could have been shot?! He was acting like a fucking housebreaker!"

Oh, and also also: as far as his urgent emergency need to access our back area in order to solve our neighbors' potentially life-threatening electricity problem, using technical skills so advanced that it would've resulted in significant impairment to his performance if he'd been expected to simultaneously exercise common courtesy? He was an arborist. And our neighbors made the complaint on February 6th.

When Michael started at his current company, a transportation engineering firm, he had been unemployed for a long time. He started working there as, essentially, a contract laborer, doing unskilled or barely-skilled work for a low hourly rate, sometimes working very strange shifts and very long days in undesirable conditions. It helped put food on our table.

He got signed on for a longer-term project, still low-paid contract work, conducting a survey of public transit passengers in Baltimore. He spent a lot of time riding buses and trains on distant routes over scary parts of the city. Sometimes he had to be at the bus stop at 5am. When the bus-riding part of the project was over and they were compiling and checking the data, Michael distinguished himself by showing that he could make good data out of bad, applying logic and reasoning to figure out what was meant by the responses to a poorly filled-out survey.

A job opened up as a courier. Still menial labor paid at a low rate, but full time. They offered it to Michael. He did it well. It offered him the opportunity to be known around the company.

Then a job opened in the accounting department. Michael had been wanting to move into a financial position, having developed that interest serving as the treasurer of our church. He interviewed well for the job, but it was hardly surprising (although disappointing) when they gave it to someone who had several years of experience working in a similar position. Michael kept on with his courier job, doing it cheerfully and well.

Eventually the supervisor of the accounting department contacted him again. They kept being slammed with work, and she had received permission to create a new position for someone to help out with a variety of tasks across the department, filling in for someone who was about to go on maternity leave and then also picking up the slack in a number of areas. She thought Michael would be a fine person for the job. He stopped couriering and was given an office of his own. He learned billing and accounting skills on the job.

Over time, Michael has developed a reputation in his department: if a project is a total mess, and something very strange has happened in the intricate details of billing and payment, and you can't figure out what the hell is going on, Michael is the person you want to give it to. He digs back through years of records and straightens everything out. He likes the challenging assignments. Over time, his boss has handed him responsibility for more and more tricky projects.

On Friday she called him in to her office. The partners had announced that no one would be getting raises this year due to the dismal overall financial climate, as he knew, but she wanted Michael to know that she was so impressed with his effort and his skill and his positive attitude about challenging projects that she had gone to the mat for him. There won't be any COLA raises across the board, but she was able to secure Michael a 10% merit raise. In this economy, that's a very big deal.

I am so proud of Michael for getting his foot in the door at this company and working his way into a great position via techniques which are almost Horatio Alger-esque. He never acted like the early, crappy, menial, contract projects were beneath him. He made himself highly visible as a person it would be good to hire and then promote, and it paid off, and now he has a job he enjoys and a job he does extremely well.