Archive - 2008 - Paid Blog

Sears has joined hands with several non-profits to provide much needed supplies to families of our military heroes. The proud men and women who stand by as their family members follow the commands they are given and fight for our freedom are heroes. We often think about the soldiers as heroes, but their families are also heroes and deserve our support.

One way that we can show our support is by donating to the Heroes at Home foundation with Sears. Sears is giving the families gift cards so that they can go out and get shoes, clothing, and toys that their families need. They are trying to raise funds for 30,583 families. These families each has a soldier attached to it as well as several family members at home who need your help. If you can spare even $10 this holiday season to help out these heroes at home, you money would go to a good cause.

It appears that the monies are being distributed by Sears. This means that, while you are doing a charitable thing, the IRS does not look at it as a charitable contribution. If you are donating for the tax deduction, this is not for you. If however, you think it is good to just give for the sake of giving, even if you do not get anything in return, then God will bless you.

I realize I am posting this on Christmas Eve. I just found out about this project. But remember that just because Christmas is almost gone does not mean that the times of need are gone. People still need things. We give great at Christmas, but we need to be giving year round. If you have a little extra after the season is over, find some place that can use it. Perhaps some heroic families could.

I first came across Dragon Naturally Speaking several years ago at one one my technical jobs. Back then, it was cool, but it was so hard to train that unless you really needed to be able to talk to your computer instead of use the keyboard, it was not useful. Now, it is another story. Now, it is so easy to train, that I have considered getting it. Imagine, being able to just talk into a microphone and have your computer type everything you say, without ever touching the keyboard. You can even control your computer, Star Trek like, with it. Although, you do have to use a standard set of commands and not just talk to it like a person.

My sister's boss uses it. He has Parkinson's, and the program gives him a little extra ease in his daily life. He runs a very successful small business and is able to do so, because of the help of tools like Dragon Naturally Speaking. It is not just for those that need it anymore though. It has come a long way and unless you can type at 150 words per minute (I certainly can't) then it would be faster to read it and let the program write it for you.

I have used the software a few time, but I don't own it. The truth is that I do most of my work late in the evening when people in the house are sleeping. Sometimes I'll get up early to work. If people are sleeping, I can't very well be sitting here talking to myself. Although, I suppose that if I was not talking loudly, like I do when I'm making audio or video files, that I might be able to.

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Do you want to sit on Santa's lap? Don't want to go to the mall? Well, I sat on Santa's lap over the internet. It's a little cheezy, but it kept me out of trouble, and from studying, for a few minutes. I really want a guitar. I don't care if it is a good one, I just want to be able to play things like Clementine and Happy Birthday for my students. I'd like to eventually get good enough to be able to play and monitor my students too, but I'd be happy just to be able to play right now.

If you want to go see Santa, you should go tell him that you have got a wish and would like to tell it to him. I personally don't want much for Christmas. I would rather someone give to charity the money for what they would give to me. Well, at least that is what I want to want. Really I love to open the gifts and see what I get just as much as the next child.

I may not have much. I'm working hard right now to keep our bills paid while I finish grad school. Even though we don't have much, we have a lot more than many people. We have a solid roof with constant power, heat, even high speed internet and two cell phones. We never miss meals because we can't pay for them. Other people are not as blessed. This Christmas, and every day, we need to assist those who are less fortunate. I still really like opening presents!

Feel free to watch my cheesy video below and see what I look like sitting on Santa's lap. Oh, and if you create your own, you can enter to win a $500 check from Santa. I entered, I'll let you know if I win!

My wife really likes candles. The problem is that most candles are made out of petroleum. As I'm sure you know petroleum is not exactly environmentally friendly and takes millions of years to make. We need to reduce out dependence on this industry, so cutting using soy candles instead is a nice start.

Soy candles last significantly longer (up to three times) than petroleum based candles. Other types of natural candles, such as beeswax, can also claim long burn times, but soy is the most cost effective. Soy candles are also cleaner. While their might be a little soot, you should not have the thick black soot that you have with petroleum based candles. Petroleum candles can actually put out more smog than a car.

Candles are great, but can be a very dirty light source. If we are going to help clean up our environment, we have to look at every thing we do. Are our candles clean? Is our dish washer efficient? Are our cleaners phosphate free? There are so many things that we need to keep in mind. It would be nice if the manufacturers would do a little more to make sure that we get eco-friendly products, but we can't wait for them. We have to do it ourselves. A simple thing to do, if you burn candles, is make sure you use soy candles.

If you are a retailer, consider loosing your smog producing stock and replacing it all with soy. Wholesale soy candles are inexpensive and a great alternative to your current stock of petroleum based candles. The more we support the local farmers who farm the soy and the more we stop using products from the oil industry, the cleaner our environment will be. We are shepherds of the Earth.

Printing can be very wasteful. The paper comes from trees, petroleum based inks let out volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can damage the environment and the process of making paper is not very pleasant. But when we need to do brochure printing or business cards printing, or whatever else we need to print on paper, our businesses need to be able to do that. Without everyone using a PDA of some sort, there is no way to go completely paperless. What are we to do in order to keep our business and personal needs met and still keep our environmentally sound desires satiated?

Of course, the ideal of a paperless society is a long way off, and we may never get there. We can't produce enough sustainable wood products to meet all of our paper demands, but there are a few things we can do to help reduce the environmental impact. We can make sure our printers use recycled materials and we know what type of recycled material they use, we can make sure they use soy based ink, instead of petroleum based inks and we can make sure their paper comes from a mill that uses less water, contains their waste, and uses fewer volatile chemicals in their production of paper. We, as consumers, need to hold our printers to green printing practices.

There are two types of recycled material for paper, pre-consumer and post-consumer. Pre-consumer recycled material means that the wood chips from the wood mills (ie, sawdust, etc) is used in the production of the paper. This is good to use, but not a big shift from what they were already doing. The better type of recycled material is that used post-consumer. That means that you and I read the paper, we then put it into the recycling bin, it gets carried to the mill where it is shredded, pulped, and turned into new paper. A certain amount of pre-consumer wood is usually used to give it more strength, but we want a high amount of post-consumer paper used as well.

VOCs are damaging to the environment. Besides, we need to cut our reliance on unsustainable materials, like petroleum. Soy is a better solution. You can shred up the paper with soy based inks and feed it to your worms, spread it on your compost pile for bulk, use it as cat litter or bedding for small animals and much more. All these things would be dangerous with petroleum based inks.

The first two options are easy for you to check into. The last is not so easy. We often do not know what the mills do. We do not know if they dump their hot, chemically laden water into the river their next to. We don't know even what mill the paper came from most of the time. As consumers, there is not much we can do here, but the business owners that deal with these mills can insist on clean practices. They can refuse to work with mills that do not lead environmentally sound practices. And they can let us consumers know that they expect their partners to follow environmentally sound practices. The problem is, they need to define what is environmentally sound. What they call environmentally sound, I may not agree is such a great practice, but that is another article.

For all my contest loving friends out there, Charter Communications if offering a contest for anyone who lives in their services area (whether you get service from them or not). You can enter to win a Honda Civic Hybrid. It is a nice car that would be nice to have in this time of high prices and low wages.

I don't know much about Charter, since I don't live in their service area, so I can't speak to them being a good service or not. I did look at a few of their prices, and they are reasonable. If I was in their service area, I'd be interested enough by their prices to see how good a deal I'd really get. Unfortunately, since I'm not in their service area, I can't even enter the contest. :(

If you live in their service area, check them out. At least enter the contest. You can't win if you don't enter. If you win, be sure to let me know!

With the government mandating that all television broadcast must be digital by February, it leaves many of us wondering if we need to buy a new television. Our TV was purchased in 1991, so is not digital. Our VCR and DVD players are much newer, but I confirmed that neither of them have digital receivers. So I'm looking for a new TV.

I've looked at the local places and can get a decent one for around $500-$700. A bit more than I want to spend, but if I can manage to save up the money, I will. I thought I'd look at some of the large plasma screens that are available. If I'm going to spend that kind of money, I might as well spend a little more and get a really cool screen.

I found a 46" Sharp Plasma Screen for $750. It is just a little more than the 36" I was looking at for $700 and a lot bigger. But this is really out of my price range. I would love to have a screen like that, it would be awesome to watch Veggie Tales on a big screen TV with Dolby 5.1 surround sound, but I plan on spending that money on stuff I can do to keep Emma active, rather than sitting on the couch. I've sent away for the converter box coupons. The converter box costs about $60 and the coupons are for $40. That means that 46" screen will cost $730 more than the converter box. Maybe some day I'll get the big TV, but we don't watch TV enough to pay for cable, let alone a big TV.

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I'm not in great shape. I'm about the right weight, but I have very little muscle mass. With my arthritis, I should exercise daily, get some muscle mass, especially in my trunk. I do want to be able to dance at Emma's wedding.

The problem is that exercise is often boring. You can spend a lot of money on equipment that you might use as a clothes drying rack. There are also many videos out there, like the XFLOWSION series.

The nice thing about exercise videos is that you have a little excitement, if they are interesting videos. But after watching the same exercise video 20 times, is it still going to be interesting to you?

With the XFLOWSION series, you get several videos, which would be nice, but they cost $59.85. That is still a lot of money to be spending on something you may let sit on your shelf and collect dust. If you think you will use it, it would probably be worth it. I've not watched it, but from the short bits of it I have seen, it looks more fun that a lot of exercise videos I've seen. It seems like he has you doing multiple things, instead of the same type of thing every time. My library doesn't have it, so I can't try it out.

I think that the best exercise is one that you will enjoy. If you don't enjoy it, you will not continue doing it. If you really like riding your bike, ride it. If you like gardening, that is good exercise. If you like jumping rope, jump away. There are lots of good exercises that can be a lot of fun for everyone. I like gardening, but I don't think that I get enough out of it. I think I need more. What works for you?

When I was 13 when I got my first computer. A Commodore 64. It was a lot of fun. Along with it I got a 300 bps modem and the first thing I did was to connect to the an on-line chat service called Q-Link. This company later became known as AOL when they moved their services to the PC world.

I didn't stay with Q-link long, I found another service called Playnet. Playnet was a little more personal. It was smaller. It was actually older than Q-link and I was told that Q-link "stole" the software from Playnet. It was very similar, but Q-link did better marketing but getting Commodore to include their software with the sale of the modems. Playnet later went under and I had to move services again.

While I was on Playnet, one of my favorite things that we did regularly was bingo. I played regularly and had a lot of fun with friends from around the US. I've not played much bingo since, but now that I have a child, it might be fun to take up playing again. Especially if it is something that we can do as a family.

Disney Bingo could be a lot of fun. Emma is a big fan of the princesses. She loves all of them, but right not her favorite is Ariel. No, Sleeping Beauty. No Cinderella. Well, she really likes them at any rate. I like some of the other Disney products as well. Elizabeth came into our marriage with a large collection of Disney movies.

When I was a teen I used to play paintball every few weekends. Paintball is a lot of fun, a group of us would all cram our paintball gear into my car, don our battle dress uniforms and drive out to some forest land where a guy, we called sarge ran a paintball site. I'd grab my paintball gun, buy a box of paintballs, load up my rifle and sidearm, and two pouches of extra paintball ammunition. I'd pull my mask down over my face and I'd run out and shoot people, and get shot myself.

I no longer remember if I used a spyder paintball gun, or a tippman, or some other brand. The paintball weapon to me, is unimportant, what mattered was getting out with friend, enjoying the woods, and of course, shooting people. It was a blast and I highly recommend trying it.

If you are going to do paintball, I recommend getting a few basics to protect yourself. You have to have a mask. They make masks specific for paintball. Anyone who does paintball without eye protection is asking to be blinded, but I recommend more than eye protection. There are a few other sensitive places on your head. Getting a paintball in the ear, nose, temple or mouth is not pleasant. I used a mask that covered all of these and I still got hit in the face once (a shot came from underneath me, hit me in the chin.) It stung a little.

If you bruise easily, you might want to wear two layers of clothes, and this is a good idea until you know what it feels like to get hit by a paintball. You don't want to be always on guard, expecting to get hurt by a paintball shot. The extra layer gives you some padding, then you can learn what it feels like and as you play, you may find you don't need the extra layer.

The paintball gun you choose is less important. A paintball gun can range from junk to really good. If you are playing just once or twice, the paintball gun you choose will depend on what is available for rent. If you buy your own paintball gun, but the best you can afford and you will have a better paintball experience.

Where you play paintball determines what you wear. If you paintball in the woods, like I did, then you want camouflage. If you don't have camouflage clothing, either head to your local Army surplus, ear wear comfortable black pants and a dark shirt. If you paintball in an indoor park, then dark clothes are best as indoor paintball parks are often dim. Check out the venue before deciding on the proper attire.