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.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
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.
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.
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.
Monday, September 10, 2012
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!
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.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
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>Referring to Div:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="tis.css" />
</head>
<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:
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
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/
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/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)