party planning blog
I got back in to town last week and I am just ready for the semester to begin. I am not typically the kind of person that likes to have a lot of down time. I prefer my life to be as structured as possible and to be filled to the brim. Sometimes I prefer it to even be overflowing with activities and appointments that have to be met on time. For now thought I have to settle for the comforts provided by the nice weather and my computer. If I had the money I would have bought a nice bike by now but unfortunately I am totally tapped out since I had such a fun vacation with my parents. For now I have been watching the Olympics and that's been pretty exciting but I get bored with television quite quickly as you can imagine.
Today I got really interested in my internet wanderings and I found a few new things. I have never really explored the world of blogs and blogging so I got to experience something new today and it was pretty cool. I started out by doing some simple searches in to a real estate market blog, I am a dork I know, and I found one. Then I kept on going down that school related rabbit hole and I eventually found a blog about banking which was just as interesting to read as the real estate blog and just got my mind sort of interested n going back to school again.
I finally decided to get away from the academic sorts of sites and go looking for something a little more pertinent to my fall schedule. I eventually found a really good party planning blog called www.partyplanningthoughts.com. The author of this blog really has my sort of style. They seem like the kind of person that I would love to hang out with because they could probably throw a pretty darn cool party when they tried. For now though I can only sit back and take notes since I have at least another week till I can try anything out in the party scene. Hopefully though I will be able to get something good going within the next two weeks to sort of welcome everyone back to this world.
movie torrent
Movie torrent is the way to go these days. I remember when CD's were such a big deal and I used to ask for them for my birthday or Christmas or when I would save up my allowance I would go out and buy a CD. Now I don't think I own a CD that I haven't made myself or that a friend has made for me. IPods and computer media is the way to go now and just the other day my friends and I were laughing at a guy we saw at the gym who was walking around the track with a CD player and huge headphones. It seems so strange to us because we have all moved into the new age of iPods and computers.
It is almost too weird how some people are so technologically savvy and so good at computers. A few weeks ago a friend of mine made me a cd with songs from his IPod that I liked and I would listen to it in my car and I just found out yesterday that I could upload them onto my iPod and when I told my roommate she was like, “duh”. Like I was crazy for not knowing or something. So I had to go online and look up how to do it. I found this website though that shows you how to do anything. You just type in what you need to do and it gives you the directions on how to do it. It has everything from where the nearest dry cleaner is to movie information to how to make homemade bread. It even tells you how to pick up a guy or to tell funny jokes. This site is ridiculous, because some of these how to's that are listed you'd think most people would already know, like how to brush your teeth, but it actually really is handy. It has directions for things like how to change a flat tire which would really come in handy sometime or how to make something (recipes) which are easy to find and make for yourself. So while the site really is funny, it actually is very helpful. It is weird to think of how much you can get accomplished online, like bill paying or last week I put in a request to have my mail held until I got to school. It is amazing how much there is out there on the World Wide Web.
blog about debt
Everyone knows that the internet has changed the way that people go about their daily lives. No matter if you use it regularly or you don't ever use a computer, you are affected by the internet in some shape or form. The products we receive are ordered online, and the gasoline we put in to our cars is electronically distributed. For the regular person though, it can be just as big a resource for their essential activities as it is for those large scale companies and organizations.
On the net today, each user has the potential to be totally invisible or a revolutionary voice. The ability of those without direct contact with the hubs of the world to become essential voices in the global community is part of what makes the internet a truly revolutionary device in modern human interaction. In this age of the modern media monopoly, the voices expressed in blogs are becoming the more prevalent that those with the most money. This is also true across all industry. At any moment you can find a blog about debt or a financial blog to answer the questions that people would have typically gotten from the companies themselves. In looking for just one search I found two such sites at www.thoughtsondebt.com and. These sites are some of these examples of sites that are driving opinion and sharing information at the level of the consumer and not necessarily representative of any one single organization.
In the area of product flow, the internet has completely changed the lives of every person in this country at least. Those who have typically lived in the areas in the center of the country where commerce isn't stressed as much, the trade has come to them through the digital means of the internet. Now if you are a farmer, or a ten year old child in the midwest, you can get anything you could ever want at the same rate of speed as those in New York or Las angeles if you have access to the internet. advances in technology are quite a beautiful addition to all of the other advances of human consciousness.
download anti virus
Stop, think, click! This motto is being enforced now with computers. People think that everything online or being downloaded is safe, but it certainly isn't. I have known so many people to get a virus because of something they downloaded. Thankfully I recently got a free anti virus download on my computer which protects me while I download music or even when I download homework assignments from the school website. When you download anti virus you are protecting yourself and probably saving yourself a lot of money in the long run (and stress). There is also another way experts say to protect yourself and it's called the 7 Practices for Safer Computing.
The first one is to protect your personal information. Identity theft is seriously on the rise right now and when you are shopping online you need to take precautions to know that the website you are on is secure. The second one is to always know who you are dealing with. Online baking is getting more and more popular but also scarier because there is a lot of information being used. You need to make sure you are dealing with actual bank employees when you are entering information into a computer. Use anti-virus software and a firewall, and update both regularly is the third practice. This is key because so many people get an anti virus or firewall protector but they forget to update it so they think they are safe but they aren't. The forth practice is to be sure to set up your operating system and Web browser software properly, and update them regularly (this step is important so that hackers do not take advantage of you). The fifth one is to protect your passwords. I read somewhere that the most common passwords are people's names or the actually word ‘password'. These things are easy for hackers to get into and your life could be ruined if someone gets into your personal information like your banking or credit cards. This kind of online damage could lead to worse things in the future like identity theft. The sixth is to back up important files (which I learned the hard way my freshman year of school when I wrote a 7 page long paper and my computer messed up and I had to rewrite it the night before). And the last one is to learn how to contact someone online if something goes wrong.
These precautions can help you in securing your future and all of your online transactions and may turn out to be a lifesaver one day.
mortgage interest rate
Once again our government, who by the way created all the financial chaos in our society, is now pretending to be some sort of superhero when it comes to finance, banking and mortgages. They say that they are helping us financially by working with the banks to lower US mortgage rates. Well, the truth is who do you think the banks are, they are the federal government and therefore, who do you think benefits from a high mortgage interest rate? It is the government. They are cutting their profits by offering lower interest rates, the problem with this is that they are now offering adjustable rate mortgage loans, which will start out low, making people want to take a new mortgage, but they also have the potential of going higher after a few years. Always be careful when you get an adjustable rate loan of any kind as this can work out well in the short run, but can turn out very badly in the long run. After all, you must consider the fact that the government is not going to drop rates indefinitely and they will need to make up ground later for the lower rates they are offering today.
Owning your own home was once part of the American dream. With the economy sitting where it is, it is honestly just becoming a pipe dream. We all want to own a home, however with the skyrocketing prices in the housing market and the rising inflation rate, I am afraid that this part of the dream is soon coming to a close. Unless, the rates in the housing market begin to reflect the economic times that we are in, I am afraid that many homes will sit, unoccupied for years to come. I understand that in the ideal world, people would make back what they have spent on their home, but with times the way they are, it has become unrealistic to think that people can afford to pay the higher prices of years ago when buying a home today. If you really want and need to sell your home, then you must not look at what you paid for that home when times were better, you must now look at what people can afford to pay for that home today, which is inevitably going to be less.
Keep in mind whether you are buying or selling a home, that the market is different now than it has been in the past. If you are selling, price your home to sell and if you are buying, try to talk the seller down and watch for mortgage rates that are too good to be true.
rabies facts
The summer can be an interesting time for any student seeking to find some new experiences. This is the time of year when lots of options open up for volunteering and helping out in order to make a little extra dough on the side. There are also plenty of experiences that may not fit in to your major or your career goals that can just be very enriching to the rest of your life if you are just willing enough to go out and try something new for a change.
This summer I decided to do just this by volunteering at a nature camp here in the area. Basically I was a certified camp counselor for about a month at this camp for middle school kids. All of these kids came from the area and wanted to learn more about nature and natural animal species. I came in to the experience very acknowledged when it came to anything wild, and especially anything that is nature to this area. It turned out to be a wonderful learning experience for both the kids and myself because we all sort of learned together through discovery and through tasks that had been laid out by the director of the camp a long time ago. Now I am a tiny wealth of knowledge on subjects like rabies facts, tree sap, bird calls, and first aid. I tried my best to pick up what I could but because it was all so new to me it was a little bit much. I learned most of these things from experience. The rabies facts and the first aid were both the result of a bat scratch while we were camping. The tree sap knowledge came from the maple tree harvesting and syrup making that we did right at the beginning of the camp. Then the bird calls came from both listening myself, and another counselor who was very learned in the local bird calls.
I got my interesting experience in for the summer and I feel like I would have been totally bored had I just went on vacation or hung out at home. I hope that everyone out there feels so motivated next summer when they have another year to try something new outside of school.
payday loans
I bet that there is no doubt in any of our minds that students can have it rough financially sometimes. We are not exactly put in a position of financial power when we are shipped away from home and left to ourselves. This is where we learn how to be savvy individuals. It is during this time that we really get to put in place and implement all of those things that we learned as coping strategies during our younger years. One of the biggest ways in which we learn quickly how to adapt and evolve within the atmosphere of our college is how to manage our finances.
We all know that some students start out with a little more of an advantage financially. For the rest of us college is a time of cheap food and cheap entertainment. Everything is measured in its dollars and cents. We live on week to the next and try our best to get some kind of an education out of the whole experience. For this crowd there is a big community that shares their feelings and understands. We all tend to congregate at similar locations and engage in similar activities.
Unfortunately for some of us in this crowd, things can turn sour quite fast. This is when we select few have to learn a new coping strategy that forces us out of our comfortable little boxes. There is some this out there to help us knows as payday loans. These can come in many forms like the quick turnover free payday loans, or for those of us needing it fast and electronic there are the no fax payday loans. These are tools used by those of us who just have no other option. Say we lose our job or we get in a car accident and we need some cash fast to cover the essential while we get a job or just get back in to normal working health. These quick loans give us the money we need with relative ease and relatively little repayment value. These are our safety net while here in financial limbo at college and we shouldn't be afraid to use them if the time comes.
California drug rehab
I am a big reader and one of my favorite genres to read is the rock and roll biography. I am also a bit of a traveler and so I really love to read a great book about a famous rock star and then look on a map or look at pictures of places they have gone. I have been to California and to other places throughout the country. One of the coolest places I ever went was the club CBGB which was just a funny little place with a huge history that I was just drawn to instantly when I saw it.
A big theme that I have noticed about a lot of the books is that there is a pretty common theme among the male rock stars. Many of them, a good majority of those I have looked in to, have gone to California drug rehab at one point or another. Though many of them live in the state at the time, I think that the quality of the care in these programs for drug treatment for men must be really great out there. Most of the rock stars I have read about, excluding a few oddballs, have gone through these programs and come out better than ever and much humbler as well.
Being the research style thinker that I am, I have been wondering what makes these programs different. I believe that a lot of it must be due to just the sheer amount of people within the state. They have plenty of people to test out various methods on when finding a proper treatment regime for all kinds of personalities. They also have a lot of money in the state so they would have a lot more resources available to those in need who don't have the money to seek treatment on their own. Sadly they also have a large prison population that surely must lead to increased demand for such programs for those leaving incarceration in need of special treatment follow up. No matter what the real reason is though, it seems to me that the whole system of rehabilitation services in California must be pretty amazing to help the people on the extremes that I have been reading about lately.
promotional mugs
It's weird how many things you accumulate by the time you are in your twenties, let alone your forties. I thought that I had a lot of useless junk; my parents have so many things that they have no idea where they even got them. My brother wanted to make a little extra money so my dad had him do house work and clean up (he's only 12) and he kept finding all this junk he didn't know what to do with, so he decided to have a garage sale. We're planning on having it next weekend and we thought it would be super easy and we could just get up the first morning and throw a bunch of stuff on a table and then sit around and wait for people to come by. Except it is way more work than that. He enlisted me to help out with cleaning all of the crap we found in the garage and tagging everything with a price. I think pricing everything is the hardest because I have no clue how much this stuff was worth in the first place let alone how much a stranger is willing to pay for it. So we went out to the garage and found a ton of stuff and got to work. It is crazy how much stuff there was. We had promotional mugs with random businesses logos on them (some of them we ended up keeping because they are really cool actually). We also found a bunch of old rollerblades and bikes. It is hard to throw away stuff or even sell it or give it away when my sister is young and she might want some of it like the bike (that I rode maybe 3 times, it is practically brand new) because she might want it in a few years. We are always avoiding getting rid of stuff and as an excuse we say that she might need or want it and the stuff is just piling up and I'm pretty sure she's never used any of it, actually I'm pretty sure everything she has gotten is brand new. Anyways, it is really weird to see how much junk you accumulate, from old t-shirts to dishes, to it is hard to throw stuff away (especially if it was free or a deal) when you think you might need it in the future (or at least that's what your excuse is).
phone service
I read somewhere a few days ago that so many households are getting rid of their phone service and switching to just using their cell phones. While I think this is such a great idea because everyone in my family has a cell phone, my dad feels better having a phone at home, even though it is an expense that should be cut out. We could save approximately 50 dollars a month by getting rid of our phone service at home, but my dad simply won't do it. The only people who even call the house are telemarketers now. None of our friends call the house phone, and when we give out our number for anything we use my dad's cell phone because he is never home anyways to answer the home phone. It just seems silly to even have it anymore when you could be using that money toward something more useful.
Cell phones are so much better than house phones anyways. So many people are saying that having a home phone gives them comfort in case of an emergency. Let's think about it though realistically. One emergency might be the electricity going out. Your home phone wouldn't even work in a case like that. It would be better to have a cell phone so you could contact someone if the electricity went out. If there was another kind of emergency where you would have to call 911, it would be much more convenient to use your cell phone. You wouldn't have to go find a house phone and you could move around and go in and outside if need be on a cell phone. Also most people keep their cell phones close by to them almost all of the time, so if there was an emergency it just makes sense that having your cell phone near you would be more helpful.
I am probably leaning toward cell phones more because I grew up on them and find a house phone inconvenient and a hassle, but I can see why older people may not feel as comfortable with getting rid of their house phone. If you weren't used to a cell phone and had to use it in an emergency, you may panic. But none the less, I feel like although internet companies are growing fast and thriving, home phone service companies will be losing more and more clients as the years go on.
diet pill
I walked down the street the other day, observing all types of things about the people I saw. The first thing I noticed was how different each person seemed to be from the next. I also noticed that those differences were often huge, in more ways than one. There's no contest that because of fast food, America has easily become one of the world's most obese countries. The good news is that there are remedies and courses of action people can take if they find themselves treading the fine line of obesity.
A highly talked about and publicized weight loss method is the use of a diet pill. Diet pills seem to have gained popularity partly because they come in many different forms and are greatly publicized by celebrities and muscular models on late night paid program infomercials. These advertisements often boast remarkable results with the use of the diet pill and convinces people that they too can be buff and beautiful with the help of a pill.
While it's certainly true that many diet pills don't exactly live up to the bloated expectations outlined in advertisements (they are advertisements, after all), they certainly aren't useless, either. In fact, given certain circumstances and if used properly, diet pills can be rather beneficial. Since many are appetite suppressors, they can work extremely well when used in conjunction with a diet. A person may not lose 100 pounds in a month or even a year using diet pills but they can certainly become healthier day by day.
That's the other thing about Americans, though: they are frightfully impatient! Part of the reason diet pills get such a bad rep is because they take time to work properly. The time issue is also part of the reason procedures like liposuction and gastric bypass are so popular; people see results much faster than through healthier methods of weight loss.
I see people on TV all the time who undergo all types of surgery just to look thinner. While it's true that pop culture glamorizes those with smaller waistlines, thinner isn't always better, especially if “thinner” doesn't equal “healthier”.
I tried diet pills once before at my doctor's advising, not alone but as a supplement to a good diet and exercise. The weight loss was slow coming but because I had become healthier rather than just thinner, the weight that I was peeling off pound for pound actually stayed off. Thankfully, I didn't have much weight to lose in the first place, which was probably why my doctor suggested diet pills in the first place. However, the amount of weight I did lose was significant enough to be noticeable. And whenever I attributed my weight loss to a diet pill, I was met with disbelief.
I would advise anybody who wants to lose a decent amount of weight and actually keep it off to consider using a diet pill. It's a good idea to talk to a doctor first, though, because I diet pill isn't always the answer. But it's certainly a start.
php hack
A friend of mine recently was a victim of something that I have never been a real witness to. He was the victim of an internet attack. I don't mean simply having some credit information stolen or having your name put on a telemarketing list without you signing up yourself. He actually had some major problems arise as a result of someone else preying on him while he ran his own website. Now, his business is suffering and his website is nonexistent. For now he is trying to figure out if he can still afford to run the business or if he should just call it quits for now.
My friend currently runs a painting business in town that employs students, like myself once, for local homeowners to use at cheaper prices than professional painters. He has been doing this for about seven years now and actually started the business out of his savings when he was a sophomore in college. Up until about three months ago he was doing quite well and had built up quite a large base of customers. A recent PHP hack in to his website really just changed the whole situation. Having once been my boss and a current friend, he came to me very quickly after he found out about the problems and I told him straight what the problem was. At the time his customers would log on to his site and when they would log in to their personal information the site would redirect them elsewhere while scanning their information for the hacker. This little web application vulnerability turned in to something of a huge mess for him.
His apparent knowledge of web security seemed to be quite extensive until this happened. Even though he himself had taken courses on how to protect himself, things like this happen even to the biggest websites out there sometimes. Now his big question is how to build back a base when all of his customers had information stolen and how he can afford to pay for better security while running a seasonal painting business. It is quite a sticky situation and I think that if he had thought more about his web security issues before, this could have been avoided fairly easily.
weight loss tips
I have a really bad magazine problem. I'm basically an addict; I can't go through a grocery store or a gas station without picking one up and buying it. Even though I know they all basically say the same thing. They are full of the newest fashions and weight loss tips. But to me, I feel like it is a necessity (which is obviously ridiculous). I spend so much money on magazines in a year, it would make much more sense for me to get a subscription, but instead I think I can just avoid them, and I always end up getting one anyways (or 5 at once). The latest one I read was a fitness magazine. I always feel good about exercising when I'm reading the weight loss tips and about the new workouts, but then afterwards when I actually have to do the working out, I don't feel as great about it. I do workout pretty much every day, but it doesn't seem as easy as they make it look in the magazine. Part of me thinks that weight loss pills may be worth it. But of course you always read that along with the weight loss pills, you need to diet and exercise. I figure why waste money if I still have to work my butt off (literally) anyways. But I have heard of a lot of success stories from weight loss pills. I just think it's hard to find a pill that's right for you (and okay with a doctor). You could go through ten or twenty different kinds of weight loss pills before finally finding one that works for you (or even for anyone other than the person who modeled it on the television). It seems like such a trial and error situation that I don't think I'm ready to go through all of that extra work. Since I'm pretty much happy with my weight, maybe lose five to ten pounds, I think I'll stick with the good old eating healthy and exercising plan for now.
It does seem to motivate you a little though when you read articles about celebrity weight loss tips and how they really work. Most of them are just common sense though that you know without being told by a magazine that it works for a celebrity, but it makes you feel better that you could look like them. So even though it is a waste of time and money for me to splurge on magazines day after day, I think I'll stick to them.
diet pills
I am home for the summer right now readers and I have some great news coming from my mom's little world. My mother has been on a mission since I left for college to get herself in to better shape. Her biggest goal was to lose twenty pounds before I came back for the last half of this summer. When I got home this week I found out that her diet has gone perfectly and now she has hit her target weight. She is also in great shape. I found this out when we went on a mountain bike ride and she blew me away. I mean I am usually pretty good on a bike but she was really good. It was a little scary.
When I was leaving for school last fall we had found out that her health was not in the best shape. I had challenged her to get in shape and get to her health goal before I came back. She has always been like my best friend so she was really taken by my challenge and has obviously stuck to it. Her main ways of working through the year have been diet and exercise. She rides her bike to work now instead of driving. She also goes on a weekly mountain bike ride which is now sort of a ritual for her and she takes it very seriously, I found out the hard way. She changed her diet to phase out all processed foods and contain the maximum amounts of nutrients that are essential to a woman of her ripe old age. She also began taking diet pills called Hydroxycut, which boosted her energy level and helped with the weight loss. She took her diet pills sparsely throughout the week and this gave her just what she needed to get to her target weight. Her physical last week also showed that her blood pressure is drastically lower and that her breathing sounds much better than it did last year. I am really happy for my mother and I am really proud of the progress she has made. I hope that everyone else out there is getting their own inspirational news.