Book Bub

I LOVE to read. Not so much the really deep intellectual stuff, but the light and fluffy, take me away for a few hours novels and short stories. I used to go to the library. A lot! But I am very forgetful, books are always late, and I always end up paying pretty hefty fines. So for a while, I would just pick up a new book or three every week when I went shopping. But that gets expensive too. Then there came the wonderful world of self-publication on Amazon. A lot of new authors are publishing e-books for 99 cents. It takes a while to find the deals though.  Luckily for me, and you, there is a website called Book Bub that does the searching for you.  Sign up at their site, and every day they will send you an email with new free and discounted books in the category or categories that you are interested in.  You can find discounted books by well known authors as well newly self published authors.  Check them out.

Little Free Library

I LOVE to read.  It is my absolute favorite past time.  I'm not a scholar.  I don't read Tolstoy or Homer.  But I do love to get lost in a good story.  I came across this project the other day and thought it was a great idea to share the love of reading.  The program is called Little Free Library.  You build (or buy) and set up a weather resistant box in a common area and leave some books there.  The idea is other people will take a book that interests them, and leave a book they have already read.  Great idea for sharing literature.


Here is the Mission statement for Little Free Library:

• To promote literacy and the love of reading by building free book exchanges worldwide.
• To build a sense of community as we share skills, creativity and wisdom across generations. 

text from their website

For the Chronically Forgetful

You remember that old Mystery show "Columbo"?   He is always losing his wallet or keys.  This new gizmo called the Tile would be perfect for Columbo.


You can put these little tiles on your keys, on your purse, basically anything that is portable, and use your smart phone to locate missing items.  It also has a tracking system that will help you find lost or stolen items.

I think I could use this for my keys and the remote.  For some reason we are ALWAYS losing the remote.

Zombie Exercise Game

Although I enjoy random Zombie movies, like Shaun of the Dead and ZombieLand, I'm really not a huge zombie fan.  However, this new Zombies, Run! app for iPhones and Android seems like a great idea.

The main idea is that you have to get active and move around to collect necessary items needed in a post-apocalyptic, zombie infested world.  You can fortify your base with collected items when you are finished with your run/walk.  If you don't physically move, you can't collect items.  

I was psyched on the idea of hearing hordes of zombies following me with the garbled "graggla aaaaah" noises as an inspiration to speed up and "get away."  I've only played the game a couple of times, and so far, I only encountered zombies one time.  Very briefly.  

So the next step is to take a few minutes to figure out the settings to see if I'm "playing" the game correctly. It has the potential to be a fun game and inspiration to exercise.     

My Fitness Pal

It's a new year, so I'm on a fitness kick.  Trying to lose weight and get fit. I started looking for a way to track calorie count on my cell phone.  The app that I found that I like the most is My Fitness Pal.   It is very user friendly and best of all it's free.  Yep.  FREE!

If you use your phone there is a feature that allows you to scan the bar code of foods you eat to track the nutrition information.  It also has a quick calorie entry, which can come in handy.   I used it when I made some home made enchilada soup.  I found the recipe on line.  The website listed nutrition information, but I didn't want to take the time to add the info into my account.  So I just added the calorie count.

Programs that track your daily calorie consumption are really helpful.  Once I started writing down everything that I ate during the day it rally surprised me how many calories I was consuming on a daily basis. It made me start evaluating everything I put in my mouth.  It also affected my trip to the grocery store.  I started looking at the labels of items before putting them in the cart.  It blew me away how much sodium and fat I was consuming.  Little wonder I am carrying around the extra weight.  Typing in everything makes you aware and feel more accountable.

More Free Icons

Found another place for free icons.  http://www.iconfinder.com/

Make sure you check the license.  Most are free but not all.  There are over 100,000 icons to choose from though, so great find!

Septic Cleaner Alternative

We've had a major septic eruption this past week.  It's still not all taken care of yet.  We've had the plumber out a couple times and the septic guys out a couple times.  We still need an excavator to come out and check our septic field. Although we still have problems, we did learn about the wonders of Buttermilk.  So there was something good that came out of cleaning up piles of poo for a week. (right?)

Apparently instead of buying chemicals like Ridex or Eagle Septic Clean, you can pour a gallon of buttermilk down your sink or in your toilet once a month.  The butter milk has the same enzymes to break down the waste with out the chemicals.  I haven't been to the store to check for the price of buttermilk compared to Ridex.  It may be cheaper.  Even if it is a little more expensive, I think I like the idea of something natural to take care of... well something natural.

Check Your Credit Score For FREE!

I think everyone knows about www.annualcreditreport.com by now. Once a year you can check your credit report from all 3 credit reporting bureaus for free.

I myself did this about 5 or 6 months ago, right around tax time when I was going to pay off some negative credit with tax return money.

Yesterday I stopped at my local bank to see about getting a signature loan.   The loan officer told me that they can usually work with people as long as they have a minimum credit score of 680.  He also gave me a great website to go check myself so he wouldn't ding my credit score.  I thought there HAD to be another company that offered credit reporting information and wouldn't you know it, there is!

The site he gave me was quizzle.com.  Not only can you check your credit report, but it will also give you your credit score.  For FREE.  What's the catch? Well of course they want you to buy something.  They offer services/software to help get your finances in line, monitor your credit and protect yourself from Identity Theft.  BUT if all you want is your credit information, you can get that with out giving them your SS# OR credit card number.

Logo from Quizzle site Sept 2012

This site is offered by the same people who came up with Quick Books, and Quicken.  So it's not a fly by night, steal your information kind of company.

One of the great things about this is that you can check your credit score before you apply for a loan.  If you see your credit score is too low, work on fixing your negative credit, and THEN apply for a loan.

Time Zone Converter

Sometimes I have to make phone calls to other countries.  This morning I opened an email directing me to contact someone from New Zealand.  I did a quick check on Google "What time is it in New Zealand?" and came up with 10:45 pm.  (it's currently 6:45 am in Eastern TN).  Well I could take the time to do the math and figure out what time it would be here when their office opens at 8am in the morning, but to be honest I'm tired and my brain is fried.  So I had a program do the conversion for me.

Time and Date.com has a lot of neat features that helps you when dealing with business, or even family internationally.  What is even better is that it allows you to add several cities.  So let's say that after I talk to these people in New Zealand, I then have to do a teleconference with my client in California.  I simply add in the goal time:  8am in New Zealand, and then add my city, and my client's city in CA, and viola.  8:00 am (tomorrow) is 4pm here today in TN and 1pm here in CA.

How handy is that?  There are more scheduling features that are helpful.  But I'll let you explore those!

Web Design Cheats & Tips

Memory, not being what it should be, and seeings as how I don't design every day, I often need to look up simple coding practices when making a new website.  

Here is my own little cheat sheet

Help with colors

Color Combos: This site helps you choose compatable color schemes.  Love it.

Color Picker Here is w3 School link for HTML Hexidecimal colors.  Has lighter and darker shades which is super helpful:

Optimize images

Image Optimizer: If your image is way too big (file size and wxh) then you can shrink it here online.

FROM your regular HTML pages:

Referencing Style Sheets:

<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="tis.css" />
</head>

Referring to Div: 

<div class="navlinks">
</div>

FROM the CSS document:

Font Family sample:

body {
  font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif;
}

Divs:

.navlinks {
    text-align: center;
    margin-left: auto;
 }

Here is a great W3C reference to font-family attributes:

Web Style Sheets Tips & Tricks

Work From Home Leads

Are you interested in Working From Home?  I know a lot of people who would LOVE to work from home.  I am one of the lucky (?) people able to from the convince of my home office.

I'm sure that most people think that it is an ideal situation.  No boss breathing down your throat, you can work in your jammies, if you have kids, you don't have to worry about day care, if you have health problems then you don't have to worry about missing work.  These are all legitimate reasons to WANT to work from home.

It's not always so cut and dry though.  First of all if you have young kids, like under 5 years old, it is very difficult to juggle working at home and taking care of your child(ren).  I have four children, ages 10, 7, 5 and 17 months.  Trying to wear all of my "hats" during the summer is extremely stressful.  I want to be super mom and super employee and super "house-wife" but trust me, only a true superhero can be all three at one time.  I've found it virtually impossible to have any kind of professional "phone" persona with young children running wild in the background.  And if you do have an office with a closed door, there is no way you can let a 1 year old run around the house for 8 hours a day unsupervised.  Or even 1/2 hour!  So my office is the front room with a baby gate in place.  The baby stays in here with me.  If the older kids or hubby is home, I may keep the kids on the other side of the gate while I'm on conference calls.  But luckily the people I work with know that I have young children and work with me.  I don't have a call center job and only have to touch base via phone to clarify projects.  Most of my communication is done through email.

So to recap, working from home with small children takes a very disciplined structured home environment and tons of patience, as well as the willingness to give and take on your expectations.

You may be wondering how people get work-at home jobs.  If you have already been searching you may be extremely discouraged, because most searches for work-from-home jobs will show you results that request money for the privilege of giving you information that may lead to a legitimate job.  BEWARE.  If anyone asks you for money RUN AWAY!  Hang up, don't look back.

I've been working from home since November of 2005.  My first gig was as a transcriber for a company in Canada   The work was fine.  My husband worked 2nd shift and I usually worked while the kids were sleeping or in the mornings when my husband was awake at home.  In 2006 I answered a craigslist ad for a web developer position and ended up becoming more of a jack-of-all-trades.  I've been with that company every since.  I've also picked up some editing and writing gigs.  The pay isn't much for my main client so I'm always scouting supplemental work.  Along the way I've applied for hundreds of other jobs.  Some scams and some I've never heard from again. A few short gigs have resulted.

From my vast experience with applying for virtual jobs, here is a hint that may help.  On your resume, remove any personal information if you are going to apply to a job with an unknown company.  I have a resume specifically for applying to work-from-home jobs that only lists my email address and phone number.  I don't list my home address for virtual jobs.  You never know where you are really sending your personal information and better to be safe than sorry.

LEGITIMATE FREE RESOURCES:

Ratrace Rebellion.  This is a great website.  The people that run the site give you FREE leads every day. They also list companies by category (ie type of work) that typically look for home based workers. RRR even shows you great keywords that you can use in a search for your own work-from-home leads.  I have to say on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest I give them 11 stars.  They are totally legit and a great resource to begin your search.

WAHM.com:  I have been looking at this site for about 7 years now.  Several times a week they push out new screened job leads on their jobs page.  Since they screen the leads it helps focus on more legit opportunities, but most of the leads are from craigslist.  Be very careful about replying to craigslist ads.  Never give all of your personal info, and never give out your credit score.  I encourage you to check out any lead you have with the Better Business Bureau.  Make sure the company is legit.  Another thing to note, there are a LOT of ads on WAHM's site.  As of the publication of this blog entry, the top of middle column of the jobs page is an insert from indeed.com.  You may find legitimate job leads there, but the job leads screened by WAHM.com will be below that indeed.com box.  I usually check those out first.

QUESTIONABLE RESOURCES:

VOT appears to be legitimate, but I've never had a call back for any job I've applied for and VOT wants you to purchase software to be certified or qualified to apply for jobs.

Craigslist  You may be able to find a good work from home job on craigslist but be weary.  The way to look is to click on the JOBS heading to give you ALL jobs in a given location, then click the Telecommute box to narrow your search.  You may find a pearl hidden there.  And you don't have to limit your search to your local home town.  Try all over.

PAID RESOURCES

There are a few good lead generators that you can have access to with a subscription service.  I've tried a couple, and the one I liked the best was Virtual Vocations.  I believe it is about 15.00 a month, but you can check out the job leads before you purchase a subscription.   They will let you know the job description for free.  The contact information comes with the subscription.

Tired of Walking Through the Airport?

I like this one.  Samsonite is working in conjunction with Micro Luggage to make a scooter that folds out of your traveling case.  It's light weight and durable.  Has a spot for your lap top and a change of clothes.

Looks like you can buy it from Amazon for about 300.00.  Not something you'd want to buy if you are not a frequent flyer.  Unless you have a ton of money and like interesting, and expensive toys.

I haven't flown very often, but most recently I've been in the Detroit International Airport.  It is a long trek from departures to your gate.  The walk out for parking can be a pain too.  This seems like a nifty way to eat up the distance.

There is an alternative from Glide Gear for around $90.00.  This is a backpack with a built in scooter.   When I checked on Amazon today it is selling for 74.00 there.  Would be neat for kids that walked to school.

Ad Leads

This looks like a great deal for small businesses looking to get the word out.
This thing called AdLeads allows you to only pay for customers that sign up for more information from your company.  Great way to put your ad dollars to work.
check out the link here: https://www.adleads.com/demo/

Short Cut Keys

This isn't exactly a "find" as much as sharing general knowledge.  

Ever have one of those moments where you are happily typing away and then your screen goes funky or something weird comes up.  Thank you short cuts.  If you know what you did its easy to fix it.  If not, you may just be scratching you head, or yelling at the PC ghost to leave you alone already.  

I love short cut keys and use them all the time.  Today I was typing an email, accidentally erased a whole sentence.  Wanna know what I did?  Accidentally hit Ctrl-Z.   That is the UNDO keyboard short cut.  Wanna know how to fix it?  Ctrl-Y.  That will REdo what you just Undid.   If you want some more handy short cuts, here is a whole list of them:

• Ctrl - C to copy, the text remains in the original position and you can paste it elsewhere
• Ctrl - X to cut, the text is removed from the original position and you can paste it elsewhere
• Ctrl - V to paste contents that you just copied or cut
• Ctrl -Z to undo any action you just took. This includes typing, copying pasting etc.
• Ctrl-Y to redo anything you undid

FORMATTING:

• Ctrl - I to italicize text 
• Ctrl - B to make text bold  
• Ctrl - U to underline text
• Shift - arrow key will allow you to highlight single characters
• Ctrl -shift-arrow key will allow you to highlight entire words

POSITIONING

• Home key puts your cursor at the beginning of the line of text
• End key puts your cursor at the end of the line of text
• Ctrl - Home puts your cursor at the top of the document
• Ctrl - End puts your cursor at the bottom of the document
• Ctrl -E will center text
• Ctrl - A will highlight the entire document 
• Ctrl -R will right justify text
• Ctrl - L will left justify text

Miscellaneous Shortcuts

• Ctrl - S will save your document
• Ctrl - O brings up a menu that allows you to open a different existing document. You can use your tab key navigate through this menu and down arrow key to go through drop menu items. If you tabbed past a section that you meant to stop at, hold down the shift key and then tap the tab key at the same to go back.
• Ctrl - N will bring up a new blank document
• F11 - this function key will put you in "full screen" mode.  Some people may not know how to get back to their desktop with out the bar on the bottom with the start key and icons of programs that you have open.  It also takes away your menu at the top of the screen to make more realestate for the program you are currently working in.  If you loose sight of everything (top and bottom) try hitting the F11 button.  It will put you INTO full screen mode and take out OUT OF full screen mode.

Hope this list helps :) 

Alternative to PhotoShop

Photoshop is a very powerful tool.  A very expensive, powerful tool.  There are alternatives.  You just have to look for them.

Here is one that works like a dream AND it is Free!
http://fotoflexer.com

This handy online software has the ability to do the following:

• Effects
• Fonts
• Shapes
• Doodling
• Distortions
• Retouch
• Layers
• Advanced options, including cropping and cutting 

I especially love the Smart Cutout and the Smart Scissors features.  Great for layering projects.

The only thing that I can't find on this software is the ability to compress images.  I'll have to play around with it some more, and if it doesn't compress then I'll be looking for something that does.  I'll share when I find it! Conversely, if you know some great freeware for image editing please share!

Free Organization Tools for moms

More free stuff!  Circle of Moms has a great post on Free pint outs that will help you organize information.   One great idea is organizing school papers from your kids for ages K-12.  Check out the article for more creative ideas on organization:
10 Free Organizing Printable for Moms

FREE Web Icons

I really like this one!  I was searching for pre made icons for a website that I'm working on.  With a limited budget I'm looking at free of charge royalty free images and found a great blog called instantShift.  They have the following article: 75 Free Useful Icon Sets for Web Designers and Developers.    Some of the links are dead now, but there are still a ton of great free icons you can use for your website.
Here is a sample of one of the free icon sets from icojoy:

I noticed that there are also a lot of content rich articles that web developers will find useful.   Check out instantShift.  I definitely recommend it!

Fictional Diary

Humm.  The (Secret) Fictitious Diary of Jasmine Quince.  May be interesting.
Looks like it just started. Will have to see if it goes anywhere...

No Pain No Gain. Literally

I was just reading some Mom blogs and the subject of Tubal Litigation came up.  There are a lot of women who are scared of the procedure.  I'm one of them.  I do NOT want a medical procedure where I'm cut open.  I am also happy with my large family.  So I opted for a new procedure.  Essure is relatively pain free (slight discomfort at the time of the procedure), you don't have to be put under, basically the doctor  inserts little coils into the woman's Fallopian tubes.  These little coils create scar tissue which blocks the tubes.  If you want to find out more about this procedure, check out this website: http://essure.com

Color Blindness a Thing of the Past?

My hubby is color blind.  A friend of mine sent me an article today discussing research into color blindness.  Apparently scientist Jay Neitz from the University of Washington is experimenting with squirrel monkeys and enabled them to see color.  Specifically they were able to respond to red signals that they were not able to respond to before.  Of course this involved injecting their eyes with a virus.  That doesn't sound so pleasant and who knows what the side effects are.  But the over ramifications of a cure to colorblindness and possibly even total blindness I think is pretty amazing.  If you want to read more about the study you can check it out here: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/colortherapy/