Author Archive

Early Day

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

I didn’t get to sleep until after 5am but due to a ringing phone early this morning I woke up about 10am. I’m not sure who called but considering the number was listed as “Blocked Call” all I can really say that it’s either a very rude telemarketer or a bill collector. Either way I believe calling anyone before noon on a Sunday, unless they’re expecting to hear from you – is extremely RUDE. I don’t like to listen to ringing phones either way but I think on a weekend it’s even worse considering Sunday is typically someone’s day off from work, the last thing they need is to hear a phone ringing at 9am on the only day they have to sleep in and catch up on the hours lost during the week getting up for work.

Baby is still asleep but it’s not rare for him to sleep past noon when he goes to bed late in the morning. We’re supposed to head to Wal-mart today to pick up a gas lever because we’re unsure of how much is left in the tank on the barbecue and the last thing we need is for it to burn out while we’re cooking dinner tonight. Hopefully they’ll actually be one there, but considering the tank is getting kind of light, something tells me we’re going to have to fill it up anyway. I’ll let him sleep for a little while longer but if he’s not up by 2, I’ll have to go pounce on him.

Give her…what?

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

PPP - BackgammonI’ve recently noted how backgammonmasters.com is now expanding to the Latin market, now they’re working on expanding to calebutaunts. As everyone knows, Paris Hilton will be going to jail soon. Typically this makes me very happy considering everything she’s done wrong and weaseled her way out of. Backgammon Masters wants to send her a backgammon board so that she’ll have something to do while she’s serving her time in jail. Part of me wonders if she’s going to a real jail or if she’s going to be set up in a cushy half-way house setup like Martha Stewart was but this is besides the point.

If she choses not to take any interest in her backgammon board, backgammonmasters.com is going to then auction off the board for charity. I say they’d probably have better luck handing it over to charity either way. I’m sure they can get her autograph on it, that may be the easier goal to reach. I do wish them luck on their quest but I’m sure she’d overlook them completely.

I really do like surfing around their site though. I’m not really into paying for online games but I’ve read through a lot of their things and have learned a few tricks of the trade that I wasn’t aware of before. I also find Jean-Claude to be rather hilarious. There’s two episodes that I know of, he’s too funny.

Still Sluggish.

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

I’ve been watching “What the !@#$ Do We Know?” it’s a documentary kind of a movie that’s the original basis of “The Secret” it’s a fairly interesting flick, I’ll say that much. I’m a little confused about it though, it bounced around quite a bit but that’s probably because all of these theories are based on quantum physics.

I just had dinner a little while ago, I broke my diet but I still did stick with portion control. As an Italian, I find it hard to avoid carbs. Pasta, Bread – I can’t just void it from my life. I know it’s better in moderation and I’m not exactly on a ‘set’ path as far as dieting is concerned. I know it’s the whole idea of just eating better (not forgetting to factor in portion control) and exercising regularly. I’m sticking to it, don’t get me wrong. I think I’m just having a bad week – that’s all. I’m sure I gained some weight back, I’ll just go back to working harder than I’ve been lately.

Psychics and Tarot Readings

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

I’ve done a lot of reading into the supernatural world. I’ve done a little research on Tarot and Psychic Readings and the more I read into it, the more I’m intrigued by it. Kay has seen a Psychic on more than one occasion and she strongly believes that there are powers out there that we don’t realize on a day-to-day basis. She believes that our lives are predetermined and that there are ghosts floating around her, mainly her mother. I have no doubt in my mind that she is because I’m almost certain that Joe is floating around me. There’s always that breeze or shooting star out of no where to ease my mind.

I came across lovepsychics.com.au which is a Australian Love Psychic. The site could use a little bit of work, a lot of work actually, but that’s just the designer in me talking. The real purpose of the site is to target you to their phone number. They cost $5 per minute and I assume if you truly believe that there are higher powers that can be tapped into it would be worth the cost. Try them out if you wish, maybe you’ll learn something. They also do Tarot readings, I believe.

What’s he bitching about?

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

Baby has a bit of downtime for work because one of his bosses hasn’t gotten back to him yet. He’s decided to beta test with Halo 3 for a little while and I don’t know who he’s playing with but he’s been yelling a bit at one of his team members. I want to assume that the person he’s playing with doesn’t know much about Halo because he can’t keep up with the rest of the pack. I also know that I don’t know how to play the game or even what’s going on so knowing what he’s bitching about is new to me as well. Maybe he’ll blow of some steam though, he’s been a little agitated lately because of money issues and the fact that I’ve been asking him too many questions lately. But hey, that’s better than me throwing all of his shit out because I don’t know if it’s supposed to stay or go – silly men.

ThePiggyBanker.com

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

There’s a site called thepiggybanker.com where they offer you the Highest CD Rates, the Best money market rates, savings, credit cards and bank promotions. One of their featured savings accounts is FNBO Direct because they offer a 6.00% APY Savings rate on all balances until September 28, 2007. It’s one of the highest rates available for both CD and savings accounts.

ThePiggyBanker.com is currently running a $50 blog giveaway. To enter, all you have to do is write a post about it. It’s really quite simple. Just visit their site for the best CD rates, savings accounts, money market, credit card deals and bank promotions. They’ve a pretty valuable resource – I spent quite some time surfing around the site to learn more about some credit cards and accounts they’ve featured in their articles – you should check them out.

It’s a shame.

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

A friend of mine recently announced that she was going to place herself into drug rehab. I know she’s been on kind of a downward spiral for a few months now but when you go to college and don’t know how to deal with things and are surrounded by drugs and booze it makes it difficult for you to stear away from it when you’ve never really been able to stand your ground. She’s always been easily influenced, something she openly admits to. It’s hard for her to not get addicted to things because she’s under the assumption that things can’t effect her no matter what she does. After almost over dosing on cocain a few weeks ago, she decided to check herself into a clinic. Being as she’s only 18, she realizes that she does have the rest of her life ahead of her and needs to move away from everything that’s a bad influence on her.

I’ve recommended StopYourAddiction.com to her, it’s a brand new 28 day drug treatment program located in Michigan. They treat addicts from across the country and I hope that no matter which place she happens to go – she gets the help she desperately needs.

Losing creativity

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

I don’t like feeling stumped. I’m working on setting up a template for a client and there’s only so much I can do to avoid having the template look so – generic – I hate that feeling. I like to try to make things look different or unique but when you’re lacking creativity – it’s pretty hard to do that.

I’ve been surfing around the internet for template ideas, I’m also going through a few books to maybe come up with something different as well. I own a few ‘how-to scrapbook’ – ‘how-to design’ kind of books. It’s not all internet based, it’s more hobby kind of books but they house some very bold colors and interesting page layouts. I’m trying to think ‘out of the box’ and considering a majority of the templates online are squared, I just want to come up with something kind of different. Even with bold round layouts that’s kind of generic these days.

Maybe if I keep looking I’ll finally come up with something, who knows.

Backgammon – Take 2!

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

PPPI know I’ve talked about them in the past but when I come across new and interesting news, I have to post about it.

A few months ago I spoke about backgammon masters, they’re an online game company that’s now expanding worldwide. They’ve now expanded to Latin American markets, which is pretty darn cool considering I’ve played backgammon online with a few friends in Central America, gotta love Yahoo – right? BackgammonMasters.com is the first-ever and only company to introduce an online version of a Spanish dice game, Perudo. Perudo is kind of like a guessing game and a version of it’s even been featured in Pirates of The Caribbean 2. This game can be played by two or more players and, basically, consists in guessing how many dice, placed under cups, there are on the table showing a certain number. The last player having a die is the winner. They’ve added this in addition to their online poker and backgammon games. They’ve opened a brand in Central America after studying and listening to the demands of Latin Audiences.

I’m sure you remember me talking about them in the past, they’ve got a mascot named Jean-Claude, remember? He was that super cool tiger who’s now into his third or fourth episode, you can find that on backgammonmasters.com as well – check that out, he’s rather amusing.

Yay! Pop Ups = GONE!

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

It took me a little while but I was finally able to get rid of all of my pop up issues. I strongly recommend that you purchase Spyware Doctor 5, it’s probably the only program that’s worked for me out of every one that I downloaded for the last few days. It’s only about $30 but it’s truly worth it.

I went ahead and uninstalled quite a few of the programs I’d downloaded. Considering only two of them actually FOUND the infected files on my computer I figured it would only be worth keeping the ones that work for me. It’s hard to find programs that do the job, it really is.

Highly recommended downloads:

With spyware doctor, the only downside is with the free version you can’t get rid of the issues you’ve found. I paid for it and now I’m covered for a year so I really can’t complain. Just intend to purchase the program, or patch it – whichever you happen to choose. I wouldn’t condone patching the program I think you’d have better luck purchasing it, honestly – at least you get the support out of it. AdAware is great as the free version but the Pro version is just as effective with a few extra goodies. Either way you can easily use the free version to do everything you want to do.

NEW CD!

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

The Police! PPP I know that I pay post quite a bit but this is an opportunity that I just about fell out of my chair for when I found it. The Police have announced that they’re going on a new WORLD WIDE TOUR! I don’t know about you but I grew up enjoying The Police. Both of my parents were huge fans so their music was always on in the background and I probably know the words to every song they’ve ever done. So when I found out that they have a new police cd out, I just about peed in excitement – yes, I’ll admit that openly.

There’s a track listing for all of the songs and I have to say that I’m rather excited about it, I can’t wait to get my hands on it. Disk #1 has my absolute favorite song Roxanne, and Disk #2 has “Every Breath You Take” which is the first song I ever learned how to play on the piano. Getting my hands on this police cd is something that WILL happen as soon as possible.

I used to get picked on quite a bit for being a fan of The Police, it’s hard not to be a fan of their music. Hell, how many other artists have covered their music over the last 20 years? They’re celebrating their 30th anniversary of their recording debut with their first double-disc CD ‘Best of’ collection titled The Police (A&M/UMe) which is going to be released on June 5, 2007. I’m tempted to put in for a pre-order. They started in 1977 and now 30 years later they’re still just as amazing, why wouldn’t I want the album?

The Track Listing:

Disc: 1
1. Fallout
2. Can’t Stand Losing You
3. Next to You
4. Roxanne
5. Truth Hits Everybody
6. Hole in My Life
7. So Lonely
8. Message in a Bottle
9. Reggatta de Blanc
10. Bring on the Night
11. Walking on the Moon
12. Don’t Stand So Close to Me
13. Driven to Tears
14. Canary in a Coalmine

Disc: 2
1. Do Do Do de da da Da
2. Voices Inside My Head
3. Invisible Sun
4. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
5. Spirits in the Material World
6. Demolition Man
7. Every Breath You Take
8. Synchronicity I
9. Wrapped Around Your Finger
10. Walking in Your Footsteps
11. Synchronicity II
12. King of Pain
13. Murder by Numbers
14. Tea in the Sahara

How could you NOT want it?

I looked over their Tour list and was disappointed to find out that they’re completely sold out for Madison Square Garden in New York BUT there’s still some available for Baltimore, MD and that’s only about a 2 hour drive from where I am. :giddy:

Not too bad.

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

I woke up rather late today but that’s because I didn’t get to sleep until about 5am. We wound up going to Milford last night, there’s a Big Lots there plus a 24-hour Wal-mart so we were basically shopping until about 1am before we took the half hour drive home. I went a little over budget yesterday but that’s mainly because I treated everyone to dinner last night. We went to Applebee’s after Big Lots and that ran about $50, so when I spent over $40 in Wal-Mart I knew I’d gone over. This is fine, however, because at least I’ve got the money to cover it anyway.

I’ve been rather productive today. I had my coffee and some quaker rice cakes so I only took in about 100 calories so far. I watered the flowers, cleaned out the bathroom, cleaned the bedroom. I made a quick snack for Baby and I so that we could put some real food in our stomachs as well. While I was outside I washed the cars as well, they were getting kind of dusty because of the trees in the area so I made it a point to get all of the dust off the windows especially – makes it difficult to drive if you don’t. Now I’m sitting here going through email so I can get started on my work day. I do intend to have the bedroom vacuumed and the kitchen straightened up.

We bought a lot of meat last night, we’re going to be barbecuing quite a bit this weekend considering it’s a holiday. Kay has a few extra days off so she’s going to paint her bathroom, bathe the dogs and then get some other things done around the house that she’s been putting off for a while. Baby will basically only have to barbecue but at least that will keep him entertained for a little while. It pushed 90F today and since the UV index is rather high I hope to have gotten some color with everything I was doing outside.

I guess I should get my ass in gear on some work. I’ve been slacking on my $20-$30 a day blogging goals so hopefully I can get back on track with that. Even then I could probably average about $750-$900 a month – not bad for a few minutes of work a day.

Stop Popping!

Friday, May 25th, 2007

My computer is being over run with Pop Ups and I honestly have no idea why. I’ve got every possible scan program I can find working on resolving this issue but none of them seem to be finding anything. I also had to install a pop up stopper just so I could load my browsers. I know for certain that the popups are no longer located on my site, that issue was resolved when I checked everything on another computer. After that, however, I’m not sure what to do.

I’m running AVG Free Anti Virus, AVG Spyware, Adaware, Spysweeper, Spydoctor and now I’m surfing around Download.com looking for other products to download. This is beyond absurd at the moment and there’s no way in hell that I’m going to reinstall windows again because then I’d have to spend time getting all of the drivers in order just so I can boot the laptop, let alone download anything.

: grrr :

Getting very close…

Friday, May 25th, 2007

At the rate that business is coming in for me right now, I’m confident that by July I’ll finally be able to enroll into Penn Foster because I’ll have everything I need for the first semester. Part of me wonders if I should hold off until September so I can treat it like a regular school year or if I should work diligently through the summer so I can get things cranked out faster, at the rate of my impatience I’m confident that I’m going to do the latter.

Up until recently I was unsure of which program I wanted to take first. I’m going for two degrees, the first being Multimedia & Design, the other being Web Programming. As of right now I have more of a career with the visual aspect of things than I do with the programming side. I’m not even programming the new site I’m working on, I talked Baby into that one. He’s quicker with things than I am so I figured it would be the best thing to do, he’s also in school for it so he’s got the resources on hand if something comes up.

I’m sure that it would make more sense to just continue with what I’ve been doing but companies won’t look at you unless you have a degree to back up your portfolio (at least the ones I’ve applied to seem to work that way) so getting my degree in the more prominent field is obviously important to me. I guess I’m going to choose the Multimedia option after all – go figure, a random (and probably useless) blog entry can figure everything out.

There are some serious upsides to taking the multimedia course first – I’ve spent years wanting to learn flash and never sat down and did it. The cool thing to this course is I now have no choice but to learn it so hopefully I can start taking on more jobs considering I have to turn down or outsource any job that requires flash work for me at the moment – I hate that feeling. But with more money coming in it means more resources for me and I’ll also be able to get my hands on the Mac that I’ve been anticipating for a few years now as well.

: sigh : maybe if I got my ass in gear instead of sitting back and dreaming, this shit would happen faster…heh.

Skip us, Skip Us!

Friday, May 25th, 2007

There’s a pretty nasty warm-front heading this way. Temperatures over the course of this weekend are supposed to soar to the mid-80’s and even the low-90’s in some area’s. I hate weather like this, I consider 70F to be too hot so having it all the way up in the 80’s is beyond absurd for me.

We’re not quite sure as to what’s going on this weekend. Kay finally got a hold of her sister but due to scheduling issues, she more than likely won’t be coming down here for Memorial Day. We were going to head to Wal-mart up in Georgetown to pick up some things but I assume that plan has been changed for a little while. Maybe since Kay has a few extra days off this week we’ll wind up going up there anyway.

I’ve got the TV on in the background. It seems weird watching Boy Meets World again, up until recently I hadn’t seen it for years. It’s just something to have on at this point, there really isn’t much on television at night anymore.

Gimme a bag!

Friday, May 25th, 2007

I’ve spent many years using bag vacuums that switching to bagless has been a little bit strange for me. I’ve been using a Dyson for the last few months and I have to say it’s a little bit more of a hassle than it’s worth. For a machine that supposedly doesn’t lose suction, it doesn’t really pick up anything either.

I came across bestvacuum.com which is an authorized dealer of Miele vacuum cleaners and is also a Dyson specialist. I did some surfing around their site and found that there’s a lot more than just vacuums to look through. They’ve got everything from floor scrubbers to a Blueair air purifier. I didn’t want to get side-tracked though.

I went directly to the Dyson section. The one we have is the DC07 Animal which is supposed to be the most powerful upright for pet hair and considering there are 3 dogs in the house, that seems reasonable. It’s not supposed to lose suction – but it has. It’s supposed to have ‘tough construction’ but it was very easily dented and dinged from the usage around the house. Not sure if I’d recommend a Dyson to anyone, honestly.