Blog, I

Last night was a bit of a rowdy one. Our downstairs neighbors who like to leave little blue crack baggies at the foot of the staircase decided to start setting off fireworks on the landing in front of our door.

Is it me, or what?

This just after their friend was arrested for his pit bulls attacking a young girl. I’m hoping to see a truck rental pull up and pull them out of here pretty soon.

One solution until then: contact local police and invite them to have their officers on horseback have full run of the apartment complex.

The other morning I was heading out the door a wee bit too fast. Ended up hearing this clicking outside my door. Rolled it down, and didn’t see a thing…until I got to work.

I drug my T-mobile Dash’s earp/mic phones down 14 miles of rural and interstate scenery.

Time for some online shopping! Off to Tigerdirect.com I headed and low and behold I caught on to a Bluetooth earpiece for under $20 USD! Way Cool! Rather than use either my credit card or paypal info, I was able to set up payment through eBillme.com. All it amounted to after the normal sales info at Tigerdirect.com was inputting premade account info they provided in my bank’s online payment section. Easiest purchase I’ve made to date.

In fact…funny thing happened after I set everything up. Within a few minutes after setting up the account, I forgot to tell my bank to make the payment. I decided to do some geek stuff, and needless to say had to replace the RAM in the laptop. Off to CompUSA I went, since I couldn’t wait for delivery. Came home, and completely forgot the purchase.

Lo and behold a few days later I got a call from eBillme.com, asking if there was anything wrong. Explained the problem, and they informed me that it was no problem, the purchase was ok to hold off until I got back online and it wouldn’t go POOF or anything!

Can’t do that with many services these days. I don’t have to give out personal bank info, everything’s safe one way out from my bank ONLY if I authorize it…unlike if someone gets your routing number and account number…and can suck out whatever they want!

That makes me feel safer. I feel even more secure when I read over their fine print of protection they give as well. If you’re purchasing anything online, check to see if the location offers eBillme.com as a payment option and try it once. Chances are you’ll be hooked like me, too!

With auto costs going up, I’ve started using Quicken 2008 Starter Edition again to see exactly what our vehicle’s going to run for the next two years.

Fuel’s running around $67.00 a week, car insurance around $125 a month, and the vehicle itself $75 a week. At the moment I’m looking at either maintaining ten hours a week overtime or accepting an evening job delivering pizzas…do it now before the crunch for the holidays hits.

The cool and easiest thing to remember about using Quicken is to keep the main categories simple.  You can always create ’subcategories’ by adding a colon (:) and typing an appropriate label.  When you go to view by category in reports, you’ll be able to view total costs such as ‘Auto’, or see what ‘Auto:Fuel’ costs as opposed to ‘Auto:Insurance’.

So far I haven’t seen if it’s possible to create a report using different subcategories, such as ‘Auto:Insurance’, ‘Health:Insurance’, and ‘Home:Insurance’.  I’ll edit this later and add the info if I do, otherwise it’s a matter of creating a more detailed report…something I don’t relish as well.

Microsoft Outlook has always had issues when it comes to holiday’s. It seems each version of Outlook that was rolled out had it’s own seperate file for holidays, rather than the software updating automatically; or when pushed; to an anticipated file online to handle such problems.

Rather than rely on Bill’s toy, I simply program in my own holiday reminders. The only problem with this is Easter, which is…

the first Sunday after the first fourteenth day of the moon (the Paschal Full Moon) that is on or after the ecclesiastical vernal equinox. [Source: Wikipedia]

The rest of the year’s a gimme though, so planning my Christmas invitations won’t have any problems. Like anything involving Windows, don’t rely on the tool so much…you’ve got the best one sitting on top of your shoulders.

True, there’s a ‘SNIP’ capability that’s available in Vista now…but it doesn’t come as an option for Home users. While a bunch of bloggers have chanted the wonder and awe of finding this, their making the same mistake noobs do.

Not checking other Operating System versions.

For an easy to use ’snippet’ creator of screen items on your monitor, run over to www.bhelpuri.net/snippy. You can create rectangles, free hand copies, add a border of pixels…and it’s free!

You can also check out most effective diet pills if you’d like.

Years ago a friend of mine was diagnosed with ‘Carpal Tunnel Syndrome’, one of a number of RSIs (Repetitive Strain Injury) that can hit anyone using a computer incorrectly.

That friend died a year later. Not from the injury, but from a combination of factors involving treatment and recovery after surgery.

If you’re using a terminal or computer at work, you should discuss with your family attorney any matters involving failure to modify equipment at work that aren’t ergonomically correct.

Another issue as deadly is watching your weight and the dreaded heart disease. The more time spent on a computer in worklife can translate to more of a need to lay off the chips, soda, and other things diet pills might be needed for.

Lastly, don’t get upset over the phone with anyone while working. Another of my best friends and someone I learned a lot from…he died of an brain aneurysm while trying to get someone’s client software reinstalled.

I still feel guilty he didn’t call me. Sometimes.

A few months ago I picked up a wireless router from Linksys, with no experience in networking whatsoever before. My main concerns were in anyone getting inside my computer, or doing anything over my internet connection that could come back to haunt me.

Rather than get additional hardware for sharing a printer, I decided to install my new printer on the tower PC the kids use and then share it as a resource with my laptop running over the WiFi. It’ll save a few bucks in having to have a print server.