Review: Clorox Disinfecting Wipes

A few weeks ago, after being hospitalized with an infection of MRSA, the infectious disease doctor told me that everything I used needed to be single use and to wipe all surfaces that I touched with disinfecting wipes. Protecting my children was the reason for these precautions. Perhaps we are going overboard, he offered, but it is the little ones, you see. The other discharge orders revolved around hand washing and at what temperatures to wash the towels and linens I used. (If you want to know more, the link above is pretty good at explaining MRSA. I had the community acquired variety. How I got it is still under debate.)

As daunting as it is to realize that my level of disinfecting guarded my children from this infection, I followed the directions. I purchased, on my own, Clorox Disinfecting Wipes for multiple reasons:

1. Trusted name in disinfection products.
2. Single use wipes in canisters that I could put in the kitchen and in the bathrooms.
3. Scents that did not make me cringe.

What I purchased were the scents lemon and fresh scent, a lite floral. Mom Central offered me a canister of lavender scent for review. Because I needed more wipes for the family room, I took them up on the offer. The lavender scent is very nice.

While I like the idea of the Green Works products from Clorox, at least the surface cleaner is not disinfecting. I couldn't rely on that product when the health of my children was concerned. I wiped the refrigerator handles, the cabinet handles, toys, everything I touched at any moment. I knew that one of the bacteria killed by the Clorox Wipes was my dreaded, pain-inducing enemy Staphylococcus aureus.

These canisters will remain in my house. I've found another use--keeping my husband's summer cold (because it is really summer here in New Orleans) from infecting the rest of us. The wipes do really well cleaning the computer keys and mouse after he's put his virus-laden fingers on them. I've got into a habit of wiping the phones, too.

I cannot tell you how difficult it is for me to be so persnickety about disinfection. I'm completely biased for the hygiene hypothesis. I want it to be true, that all this crazy cleaning, wash-your-hands, OMG-don't-touch-that attitudes aren't that great for us. What isn't difficult is pulling out a Clorox wipe, cleaning, and enjoying the lite scent that doesn't linger.

I am, however, allowing the dog hair to float unheeded along the floors. ;-)

Catching Up

So, y'all, I've got some catching up to do with being in the hospital, recovering from the infection, and much traveling. Some of that catch up is keeping up with the reviews I agreed to do. For the next few days, you'll get review upon review.

I'm also catching up on putting everything back where it should be in the house and tackling the piles of paper. Even though most of our documents are delivered electronically, we receive too much paper. Thankfully, we have a reliable recycler that picks up curbside every two weeks.

If you don't like reviews, my apologies. I enjoy trying different products. One is particularly useful for our house. I'll post that tomorrow.

Alright, y'all. Have a good day.

Review: Norton 360

I am a geek, yet I am not a computer geek. My knowledge centers around organic molecules and their interactions with each other and with pharmacological substances that humans use. I do know enough HTML to keep me out of trouble, and I am not bashful about tinkering with my computers. I get nervous, though.

Nor nervous enough for some. I spoke to my mother about a website, telling her that she should have a look at it. She said she wouldn't as she worried about what that site might introduce to her computer, her link to bill paying, emailing families, and ever-so-important financial and tax preparation software. I scratched my head over that, a real honest-to-goodness scratch. I know there are viruses, worms, trojan horses, and spyware waiting to infect our computers. Still, even when certain viruses infected other computers in a widely spread pattern, say from finding a hole in a Windows operating system, I've not been a victim of those. I got one small one, I think. Well, heck, I don't know. I was able to reboot the system and get rid of whatever that thing was. Maybe I had some type of anti-virus software from my work as it was an employee laptop.

That incident with my mother got me wondering if the anti-virus, anti-spyware software that came bundled with the modem from my ISP worked. Could I get better? Was a product available that stopped viruses, spyware, malware, worms, and trojan horses? What about identity theft? Any help there?

Well, not three days after that conversation, Mom Central offered me a chance to review Symantec's Norton 360 v 2.0, an all-in-one security solution for daily computing activities. Here's the important part--I put in the disc, ran the executable program, and in a short time was done. I liked that as with three kids around me for a good part of the day, I don't want to be worrying about if the program is taking a hour to load. The product offers a firewall, virus protection, spyware protection, malware protection, Identity Safe, back-up service of 2.0 GB, PC tuneup, and one click support. I've not used the support as I've not needed it. My computer runs as it always has, which I've heard can be a problem for some. Again, not for me.

I have set up the Identity Safe feature, which remembers your passwords for different sites and allows for an auto-fill function if you authorize it. I do quite a bit online at password protected sites. Do I forget my differing passwords? Oh, heavens, do I? The only two I've never forgotten are the primary bank and my email. If you add all of the sites I visit to track credits card activity, investments, insurance, schools, and oh, so many others, my brain begins to fry. I like the identity protection feature.

The back-up service took seconds to set up. For the particular computer I call my own, which is a complete lie as anyone can use it but this one travels to my bed for writing, I want pictures, documents, and the few financial files routinely backed up. You can choose from a list of file types, including music.

As for the PC security, I can only say that my computer runs as it should. I haven't been getting crazy emails, and I've noticed that two viruses have been detected and removed in the two months that I've had the software. I don't notice the virus scans annoying me as I write or browse the internet.

I have one slightly annoying, but I can deal with it feature that I haven't perfected. Let me explain by giving some backstory. Please pardon the dump.

I like typing in the first three letters of the site I want to visit in the address bar of Firefox. If I want to check a friend's blog to read the comments, I type in the first few letters, highlight the address I want in the drop down list . . . Boom! I'm there. I used to bookmark all the blogs I would read. I still do for websites not offering an RSS feed. Because of readers such as Bloglines and Google's Reader, I don't bookmark news sites, blogs, or daily photography pages. By typing in the letters I can arrive at the site faster than opening the reader, clicking on the blog, waiting for it to open. Maybe this marks me as weird, but I like doing it my way.

With the Norton 360 on the laptop, once I close the browser my history is gone. If I open the browser the next morning and want to see what so and so said on whoever's blog? No dice. I must open the reader. You get the idea. I bet I could fix this if I read the user guide.

Guess who hasn't read the user guide? Me. But, I can still open the Norton 360 window, click on the bit I want to check. Since the program is so user friendly, I have no use to read the small user guide. Of course, please add in the fact that I had a serious infection that landed me in the hospital for four days and required such a high-powered antibiotic that I had no energy for the next seven days. One day after I felt close to normal, my grandmother passed away, brining family obligations (but they so didn't feel like obligations because I like my family). Please factor in the funeral followed by a rushed drive to the airport to attend a cherished friend's wedding. I feel lucky to even have noticed that the program works at all!

I like that the program works with Firefox, my preferred browser. I get annoyed, angry even, when a website won't work on Firefox or a security program doesn't work within its framework.

While I received this product for free, I won't hesitate to renew for the $79.99 base subscription of 1 year. That price covers three computers (we have two). There are also parental controls and anti-spam available via downloads for no additional cost. (www.symantecstore.com) I might go for that, providing that I set up a Windows user account for the kids. I haven't yet, but I see it looming on the horizon. I'm going to want to control what those little eyes see.

Lastly, this review wouldn't be complete without a big online hug to the ladies at Mom Central, who gave such support and understanding as I missed two blog dates due to my illness and the death in my family. Thank you, ladies.

Why My Daughter Loves Me

My six-year-old daughter wrote this to me on a popsicle stick frame . . .

I love my Mom
because . . .
She walks me to school
instead of driving me so
she doesn't make
the polar bears
endangered.

Don't we wish it were that simple? (I mean the endangering the polar bears thing.)

Curb Appeal

White Tigers

Begs for a Caption

These are the two elephants at the Audubon Zoo, and they all asked for you.

Two Photos of My Grandmother

Circa 1993

1946, with my mother at age 2

Dream a Sad Dream

I dreamed about my father's friend speaking at the funeral. I heard the words as the wind carried his praise across the sun-soaked national cemetery. I felt the weight of my then seven-month-old son as he wiggled discontentedly in my arms. The shock of the guns saluting my father made me jump, although I heard the commands of the sergeant, carried on that same breeze.

I woke with tears, wondering why I had this dream. Yes, the day nears that marks the second year without my father. Yes, I constantly think of my father.

Could it have been that someone who loved him passed into the great beyond last night? I'm not one to believe in that. Yet, my grandmother, his mother-in-law, said goodbye to this world late last night. At the age of 92, she lived a long life, full of family. She wished that she had not outlived her husband and six younger brothers.

We will miss the woman whose garden supplied us with soup bases, lima beans, corn, green beens, tomatoes, field peas, squash, and watermelon. Large ones, cooled in the outside refrigerator, frequently eaten under the shade trees. Long have we missed the large pots of chicken and dumplings, the pies, the cakes, the "cat head" biscuits (so named because they were as large as a cat's head), and the fried chicken.

We crammed her table, the kids bumping hips on the bench along the wall. The adults occupied the other seats and a few at her counter. We drank sweet tea and always had a side of sliced tomatoes. Clean-up, standing at the sink washing and drying the dishes, took hours.

Goodbye, Grandmother. You were loved.

Some People Buy It . . .

but here it grows wild, large, and crazy. The dark orange and bright yellow contrast so well with the dark green of the leaves. This photo required no doctoring of the colors. That's true to life.
Yet, here it grows wild and large and craz

Green Fairy

Phill enjoys the occasional cocktail. Recently, a friend introduced him to the Sazerac. I find it too harsh to drink, but I've never been much of a hard liquor person, unless you are talking about a tequila shot with the lime and salt at a baseball game. Of course, the tequila, smuggled in via an overlarge bag of popcorn, was served in a Dixie Cup. Well, let's cover that another time.

So, the Sazerac used to be prepared with a coating of the glass with absinthe, a spirit with a bad reputation of bringing the "green fairy" or the "green muse". Artists, writers, and the like saw absinthe as a way to connect with inner creativity. Its supposed psychedelic effects led to a ban in most countries by 1915.

Recent analysis of absinthe demonstrate that the psychedelic effect arose from the high amount of alcohol, not from the small amount of thujone contained in absinthe.

However, the study found relatively small concentrations of thujone, amounts less than previously estimated and not sufficient to explain absinthism. Thujone levels in preban absinthe actually were about the same as those in modern absinthe, produced since 1988, when the European Union (EU) lifted its ban on absinthe production. Laboratory tests found no other compound that could explain absinthe's effects. "All things considered, nothing besides ethanol was found in the absinthes that was able to explain the syndrome of absinthism," according to Lachenmeier.

Now, you can enjoy absinthe, legal in Europe and in the U.S., without bringing on the green fairy. I'm still not going to indulge in a Sazerac. I'll opt for something else.