The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll tell you why my family has switched over entirely to using Chromecast as our streaming technology after trying out almost all of the others. I'm definitely an early adopter for certain kinds of technology and apparently streaming tools are one of those.  We got an Apple TV back in 2007 when they released the first generation device and since then have tried Roku, Amazon Fire stick, Google Chromecast, and a bunch of different Smart TVs.  For a while, we were using Roku, but now we have entirely switched over to Chromecast and let me tell you why.  First of all it has a  Pros: Light interface - Chromecast works different than most other streaming devices.  Other streaming devices require you to fire up the interface on the TV, choose a channel like Netflix, log in with your credentials using their awful on-screen keyboard, laboriously type in a show name ...

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll tell you why I switched my task/reminder app platfrom from Toodledo to Todoist. Of all of the apps and systems that I use to keep my life straight, I one I look at the most throughout the day is definitely my task/reminder system.   It serves as a checklist during the day to ensure that get things done and it helps me to remember things that I need to do in the future.  Up until recently, I had been using Toodledo for task management.  Toodledo was basically fine for my needs.  It is highly configurable and has great options for recurring tasks.  There were a couple of issues, however. First of all, it is pretty basic looking.  The interface looks like it got stuck in the early 90s.  It really doesn't try to hide the fact that it is really just a big spreadsheet. Second, the mobile app, while fine, is pretty clunky, not slick at all, and do...

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share some of my takeaways from another book by Dr. John M. Gottman, PhD. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. I did a video recently on another one of Dr. Gottman's books, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail and How You Can Make Yours Last.  I feel like that one laid out some of his more foundational ideas about marriage including the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse (criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling) and 3 different kinds of stable couples.  If you haven't seen that video, it's probably worth watching first.  This current book is even more prescriptive, describing exactly how to implement 7 big principles that support a successful marriage.  These principles are born out of the extensive research that he has done on couples in his Love Lab in Seattle, Washington.  So, it's not just based on hunches, but on well researched data. In...

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share some of my takeaways from reading several books by Dr. John Gottman, an expert on marriages.  This is the first of 2 videos on this topic.  Dr. John Gottman is my favorite researcher and writer on the topic of romantic relationships.  One of the main reasons I like his work is that it is based on the massive amount of data that he has collected at his "Love Lab" in Seattle, Washington.  He invites couples to his lab, watches them argue, and within 5 minutes, can predict with 91% accuracy whether they will be divorced in five years.  Crazy stuff, right?   Gottman has written a ton of books — all discussing the data that he’s unearthed in his research.  What I like about Gottman’s work is that it sometimes runs contrary to conventional wisdom. So, he may go into an experiment with a specific theory — like "the key to good relationships is...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll tell you about my big review of all of my regular monthly expenses.   I think I established in a couple of my other videos that I am a bit of a budget nerd.  I like setting up a budget, tracking expenses, and maintaining the system.  But, as with any project, I’m always most excited about the setting up part.  The problem is that, as you live your life, you add new things to your monthly expenses and expand your budget to accommodate them, but if you are like me, you rarely take a good, hard look at everything to determine if you REALLY need to spend that money, or if you might be paying too much in each category.  In this video, I am advocating doing this process once a year.   Now, this can be a pretty big project depending on how trim your budget is or how good you are about researching things before you sign up for them.  For me, it had ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share my rule of thumb for deciding whether I needed smartphone insurance and for how long.   I’ve been going though this process of examining each of our monthly payments and to determine whether I’m paying too much and whether they are still worth the price.  One of the areas I looked at was our smartphone insurance.   Smartphones are expensive, easy to break, and easy to lose.  The fact that we have them with us at every moment makes the risk of loss or damage even higher.  Someone recognized all of this and is making big money off of smartphone insurance.  We are good candidates for insurance.  Both of my kids have ADHD which makes loss or damage almost unavoidable and, although their phones are not top of the line, they are definitely not cheap.  Not all insurance is created equal — some only cover manufacturer defects, others cover...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll give you a top-level overview of the Enneagram Personality Type system and I’ll tell you why I think it can help you be a better person.  I love personality tests. When I was in high school, I did a whole science project on whether the Myers Briggs Type indicator predicted employment plans — it sort of did.  I have forced many people to test their introversion levels with this test that i keep on my phone. And I like to categorize people into foxes and hedgehogs based on my family’s unique take on those economic metaphors.  I know these tests aren’t usually data driven.  In other words, there isn’t much evidence to support that people who are, for example, classified as ENFJs behave similarly in a given situation. The one personality description that IS based on statistical factor analysis is the Big 5 Personality Traits. Those are just 5 dimensional trait...