Author: TechyDad

Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner Review and Giveaway

Giveaway, Review

If you’re anything like me, you have a love/hate relationship with cleaning. I love a clean house, but hate how much time needs to be put in to clean the house. I’d rather be spending that time playing with my kids or having a date night with my wife. Still, if you don’t put in the time, the house begins to take on a rather unsavory appearance.

One of the worst jobs has got to be scrubbing the toilet bowl. First, you need to squirt that foul-smelling cleaner around the rim. Then, you need to wait for it to soak in. Then, you need to remember to go back and clean it off. And you just know that, during the soak-in time, a little one will run up needing to use the potty!

That’s why I was excited over the prospect of the Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner. You attach it to the toilet bowl and a sensor detects when the bowl isn’t in use. When the sensor identifies the appropriate time, it sprays a cleaning solution around the entire bowl’s surface. The next time the toilet is used, it is clean. That’s the theory, anyway. So how did it work?

ScrubbingBubbles.jpg

I took the automatic cleaner out of the packaging and set it up. I was half-afraid that this would be complicated, but it was actually quite simple. I just clipped one end to the bowl and suspended the other end from the toilet’s tank. After putting in the bottle of cleaning solution and giving it a “test fire,” I let it do it’s job.

We have hard water and, as such, will often get hard water stains on our bowl. I knew this was coming so I purposefully left them in place to see how it would do. Unfortunately, it didn’t get these off by itself. After scrubbing the bowl, though, I haven’t seen any sign of new hard water stains appearing (going on 2 weeks now).

The cleaner does a very good job of firing off only when the toilet isn’t in use. In fact, for awhile, I was wondering if it was working at all. The bowl was clean, but I never heard it fire. Then, I realized that the cleaning solution was steadily going down. So there was actual proof of it working even if it was a very stealthy cleaner.

You can purchase Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner from Amazon.com (affiliate link) or from Drugstore.com. But wait, there’s more!

Giveaway:

Thanks to Edelman and SC Johnson, one lucky winner will receive a Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner. To enter, simply leave a comment below answering this question: What is one household cleanup chore (besides the toilet) that you wish you could automate?

You can also earn bonus entries by doing any (or all) of the following items. Just be sure to leave a separate comment for each item that you complete.

  • Follow @TechyDad on Twitter. (1 bonus entry)
  • Follow @ScrubbingBubble on Twitter. (1 bonus entry)
  • Tweet about the giveaway on Twitter. Be sure to include @TechyDad, Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner and a link to this post in the Tweet. (1 bonus entry per day) For example: Automate toilet bowl cleanup. Chance to #win Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner from @TechyDad. http://bit.ly/bLiFYC #Giveaway
  • Subscribe to my RSS feed or let me know if you already are. (1 bonus entry)
  • Leave a comment on any of my non-giveaway posts from July/August. Leave a comment here letting me know which post you commented on. (1 bonus entry per comment, maximum 3 entries)
  • Write a post on your blog linking to this giveaway. Leave 3 comments about this to get credit for all of your extra entries. (3 bonus entries)

To enter, please follow the rules above within the comment section. Contest starts today, September 2nd and ends at Noon EST on September 16th, 2010. You do not have to be a blogger to enter, but must leave a valid e-mail address for me to contact you for mailing address once the giveaway is over. I will select the winner using random.org and contact you via e-mail. You will have 48 hours to claim the prize. If there is no response, another winner will be selected. Open to U.S. and Canada residents only.

Disclosure: I received a Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner complimentary of Edelman and SC Johnson in order to facilitate this review. No other compensation was given. The opinions expressed above are my own. Edelman and SC Johnson is also providing the giveaway item to my readers.

Gimme Free Stuff: A Guide For Review Bloggers Just Starting Out

Review

During NHL’s birthday, B and I were talking with my family a bit about our blogging activities. Specifically, we spoke with my sister. She was interested in how we were getting so much "free stuff." Skip forward a few weeks to earlier today when Jenn (aka KissMyKitty) tweeted:

Who the hell blindly contacts a company to ask for free shit w/o offering *anything* in return? Bloggers like these do us ALL a disservice.

This got me to thinking. When I first started TechyDad.com, I’d see companies sending products to bloggers and, I’ll be honest, I thought "Man, I’d love to get free stuff like that." I had fallen into a trap that a lot of people can fall into. They only look at one side of the equation: Blogger Gets Something For Free. There’s a whole other side of that equation: Blogger Reviews Product Thus Increasing Product’s/Company’s Exposure. When done properly, both sides come out ahead. The blogger gets free merchandise and content for their blog (the review) and the company gets exposure, usually in the form of a product review.

Now, obviously, companies aren’t just going to start shipping free products to random bloggers with no expectation of anything in return. In general, bloggers with a bigger following will get more review offers and more expensive offers than smaller bloggers will get. Of course, you don’t need to be King Of The Bloggers to get some great product review opportunities.

First of all, bloggers who are just starting out should expect to recieve nothing for free (unless you happen to have company contacts). For these bloggers, I would recommend cutting your product review teeth on items you buy for yourself or your family. Did your kid get a new game for his birthday? Review it! Did you buy a new kind of frozen meal? Review it! This way, when a company is evaluating whether or not to give you a review opportunity, they will see your past reviews. In fact, this is a good practice to keep doing even when you start getting review opportunities. After all, if you like a product enough, why not give it a little shout out on your blog?

So now your blog has been going for almost a year and you’ve gained a decent following. What do you do? Well, you could join a review group like Family Review Network. (NOTE: I don’t know if FRN is accepting new members or not.) You will recieve possible opportunities e-mailed to you and can apply for ones that interest you. You might not get all of the ones you like. You might not even get that many at first. But it will begin to open doors.

In addition, don’t be afraid to approach companies yourself. I’ve gotten review opportunities out of simple Twitter messages or e-mails. Just be sure that you research the company first, that your messages are professional and that you express how your review could benefit their company. Remember, they’re going to be looking for ways to improve their product’s/company’s exposure. They don’t really care about how you’d love to have a free item.

If a review possibility doesn’t pan out, be cordial. Thank them and ask them to keep you in mind for future review opportunities. You definitely don’t want to burn any bridges. Even if you aren’t going to review Company X’s products, that PR representative might get switched over to Company Y. If they then remember your blog and think it might be a good fit for Company Y, you don’t want their last memory to be a "frell you" letter.

When you do get a review opportunity, make sure you keep your time committment. If, for some reason, you are going to be late, let your PR contact know why and when you expect it to go live. If you find you can’t post a review of the item at all, be honest with the PR contact. Give them specific reasons why. (I have actually done this when something turned out to be not quite what I expected. It wasn’t bad, but just not quite applicable for my situation and therefore I felt I couldn’t give an honest review.) Keep those lines of communication open.

Remember, review opportunities aren’t about free products. It’s about establishing and maintaining relationships with companies. There’s a balance here and any free products that you recieve are just one side of that balance. Focusing on the "free" too much will upset the balance and make it harder to get review opportunities in the future.

Cheating and Desire at #BlogHer10

BlogHer

I’m in a long term, comitted relationship that has lasted many years. The two of us have produced many great things together. Yet, while at BlogHer’s Sparklecorn party, I looked at Louise at MomStart and felt a certain desire. I even cheated a bit.

Now, before I start too many rumors, I’m not talking about the relationship between B and me. The “long term relationship” is with my camera. I’ve had this camera for about 3 years now and the “great things produced together” were the many, many photos taken. The desire I felt was not towards Louise herself (though I’m sure she’s very pretty, I just don’t desire women other than B). No, the desire was towards her camera. I don’t even remember the exact make or model. Just that it was a DSLR. And it was a beauty.

A little history. My first digital camera was purchased in 1999 just a short while before my sister’s wedding. It was 2 megapixels and had no optical zoom. Yet, it was pretty good for a consumer camera of the time. Before B and I decided to seriously try to have kids, we went on a “last hurrah” trip to Las Vegas. (Little did we realize, NHL was tagging along.) I took 110 photos using my camera. That number is burned into my brain. I just wish the photos were burned in there, because at some point heading home the camera was lost or stolen. We were pretty sure when/where it happened, but were told that no investigation would be done and we would only get a police report to help with insurance.

Luckily, my insurance company was great and I was able to buy a camera with 4 megapixels and a 3x zoom. Before long, I was delving deep into the world of digital photography. I was shooting macro photos, landscapes, whatever I could. A poster I made still hangs on my wall. It depicts a small flower I macro-photographed which, upon examination on the computer, turned out to have tiny ants on it that I didn’t see before hand. The poster’s caption: “Even the tiniest flower contains and entire world just waiting to be discovered.”

During a trip to a local park, I was switching out lenses. Holding my camera in my left hand, I unscrewed the lens with my right hand and then reached into my camera bag with my left hand to get the case for the lens. Unfortunately, I forgot I was holding the camera and I watched in horror as it dropped to the concrete and bounced. Luckily, except for a few scuff marks, it seemed fine. But, over time, it started having more and more problems focusing.

That’s when I bought my newest camera. 4 megapixels, a 12x digital zoom and anti-shake controls so that it doesn’t blur with the slightest twitch. Plus, it does video with sound! (This was amazing to me when I first got the camera as many cameras at that time did video but didn’t do sound.)

Now, this camera has been good to me, but I’ve often fantasized about a DSLR. I would love to have one of those around my neck. At one point, during Sparklecorn, B and a few of her blogger friends wanted their picture taken so I agreed. I was handed a beauty of a DSLR and snapped a few photos. I loved it, even though I only got to take two quick photos with it.

I’d love to run out right now and bring home a nice DSLR, but there’s a little matter of money. DSLR’s tend to be pricey and we have bills to pay for things that are more important than a new camera for me. Plus, I haven’t figured out a compelling argument to get B to agree why I need to plunk cash down for a DSLR when my current camera still works well. Oh, well. Until I can find a nice, used one for not too much money (or somehow land a DSLR review *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*), I guess I’ll just have to continue to have Photo Geek fantasies while I take more photos with my current camera.

Aloha Friday: Overcoming Your Fears

Aloha Friday, Fear, Parenting

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I went up on a ferris wheel, facing my fear of falling primarily to take photos. That wasn’t entirely true. The original plan was that I was going to go up with JSL. He didn’t want any part of the ferris wheel, however, so I wound up sitting next to NHL.

While up there, I did what I usually do on rides such as this: I surpressed my fears so as not to panic my son. In fact, I’ve done that a lot over the years. You see, NHL has turned out to be quite the ride daredevil. He likes going on rides that are fast, twisting and make me afraid that one of us will fall out. Yet, in nearly every case, I supress my fears in order to make him happy. (This isn’t to say that I let him do purposefully dangerous things. Just that I know the difference between real danger and my phobia.)

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Do you have any fears that you have had to overcome when you became a parent?

BTW, if you like of The Wiggles or know someone that does, be sure to enter my giveaway for their new DVD. In addition, stop by TheAngelForever.com blog for a second chance to win.

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha Friday by Kailani at An Island Life

Aloha #52

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