movable furniture

Maybe the key to having nice furniture that you can take with you is to try and purchase furniture that breaks down into pieces. I have a desk, for example, made of glass and steel that is easily taken apart and packaged. As a result, it has survived several inter-state relocations without being a damaged in any way. It's a bit industrial looking due to what it is made of, but it works fine for my office. Unfortunately, I don't want glass and steel bedroom furniture.

Another idea might be to go for modular furniture. I've seen some very interesting modular designs for living rooms before. They're usually very minimal designs, but I don't see why some furniture company wouldn't be able to mimic antique styles and yet make them interchangeable in some way.

I'm also a big fan of casters. As cheesy as it may sound, adding wheels to large and bulky pieces of furniture is a "no brainer" to me. I know that it doesn't help when it comes to stairways and multilevels, but it's nice to be able to rearrange the furniture in a room without needing an extra set of muscles. Of course, you need to be sure that you have some sort of locks on the wheels. I'm sure kids would love to ride a large comfy sofa with non-locking casters down a stairway, but the last thing you need is Roller Coaster Furniture smashing into a glass display case or grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs.

I guess there isn't really a solution for people who have to move periodically, except to not get too attached to their furniture. My lovely cherry bedroom set was perfect until our last move, when it arrived with a huge scratch on the side of it. Our coffee table was one of our favorite discussion pieces until it showed up with a large chip on the top edge. Sure, the moving company sent someone out to "fix it" but the snot-colored wood filler that he used doesn't exactly match the honey maple finish.

The best solution is probably to just quit moving...

furniture for nomads?

We were very close to picking up an antique piano last week. I grew up in a house with a piano, and I often think that it would be great for my children to have access to the same musical enjoyment. Unfortunately, we have very little space for a piano, even an upright piano. So, although the deal we were looking at was one of those deals that you usually kick yourself for passing up, we had to turn down the offer.

The truth is - even if we had the room for another large piece of furniture, I'm not so sure that I want it. Every time that we have been relocated, I am painfully made aware of how much furniture we own. Most of it is heavy and bulky. Although we don't really own any antiques, we have none-the-less done our best to find only solid hardwood furniture. I'd love to pick up some antique furniture, or something truly unique and beautiful like faux Eighteenth Century furniture with a hand rubbed finish, but I don't want the headaches associated with maintaining it.

First, there is the trouble of having it delivered. When we purchases our bedroom set, we had to have various pieces of the set delivered six times before we got a set without blemishes or damage. One of the delivery men even tried to substitute another brand for us. The same was true for a large leather couch / love seat / chair and ottoman set. It took three deliveries before we had a set that matched and wasn't damaged in some way. On the bright side, I got them to knock some cash off of our total cost due to the headache.

When it comes to furniture, I am really left in a quandary. Unless you know that you are there to stay or you are selling your home furnished, how can you purchase nice furniture without getting stressed out about it getting damaged every time that you move? And what are the alternatives? We looked at some of the more modern lightweight stuff, but most of it doesn't last one or two moves, much less three or more. Sure, there's plastic furniture, but I'm not into that whole sterile space-age look. Maybe distressed furniture is the way to go - that way, you're not worried about it getting marred or scratched.

a lighter shade of black friday

The day after Thanksgiving, also known as "Black Friday", is the shopping heyday for consumers in the United States to pick up so called incredible deals from retailers. Every years hundreds of thousands of consumers compete for parking spaces and the latest limited quantity fads, sometimes resulting in black eyes and lawsuits. I find it rather ridiculous, and haven't stepped foot in a shopping center on "Black Friday" for a very long time. In fact, I haven't been in a mall in a long time, and I certainly don't miss it.

Some of my relatives think that we're crazy, and often praise Black Friday as a great way to get a head start on your Christmas shopping with some extremely low prices. I honestly wouldn't mind the low prices. I just don't like to go shopping with a million other people. I've always wondered - why not just buy the same deals online? Why fight the crowds? Simply because it is a holiday shopping tradition?

I'm also not even sure that "Black Friday" really offers the best prices of the year for holiday shopping, and sometimes I think that retailers take advantage of people who are "in the mood" for spending money by placing sale tags on their everyday discounts. So how do you find out for sure whether you're getting the best deal?

Well, for one thing, you could do some online research ahead of time to compare prices. Of course, the problem behind this theory is that much of the shopping on Black Fridays is impulse shopping. What isn't impulse shopping are the shoppers who see the Black Friday ads and seek out those deals before they run out of stock.

One thing that surprised me is that there are websites that can show what the deals are going to be on Black Friday ahead of time, for certain retailers. So instead of waiting until the week before Thanksgiving to peruse the bfads, you can check them out ahead of time and see how much money you are really saving. For example, if I was planning on hitting Circuit City for their Black Friday sale, but I wanted t make sure that I was going to be getting the best deal (as opposed to getting wrapped up in the whole "Black Friday" spending craze), I might stroll over to a site like Black-Friday.net and see what deals Circuit City is going to be offering for their Black Friday sale. Even though Thanksgiving is a few months away, they've somehow got the deals listed already. I'm not sure how they know what the retailers are going to list, but it gives you a chance to see what is coming, and keep your eyes peeled for better deals between now and then.

400 posts strong

This is the 400th post for this blog, and it also marks one year of blogging here. Much has changed since I first started blogging. This blog has fanned out a bit to include more than just my typical rants - after all, nobody wants to be known as someone who just has a chip on their shoulder. I also believe that my foray into the world of paid blogging has been successful, as I've managed to make some extra cash here and there without "selling out" or giving up my approach of "telling it like it is".

Looking back, my only regret was not setting up my own blog on my own domain. Using Blogger is easy enough, but it doesn't get you the respect and Google juice like having your own domain. But I must admit that I probably wouldn't have started blogging when I did if it wasn't for Blogger making it to simple to sign up and get started. I have since installed several different blogging software solutions, and while Wordpress is often exalted as *the* blogging platform of choice, it still involves a certain sense of web design acuity to make it look unique.

I can't guarantee that I'll keep using this free Blogger site forever, but if I do switch to my own domain, I'll be sure and provide a link. Thanks for reading!

fighting for memories

In my last post, I mentioned how Alzheimer's Disease can effectively turn your loved ones into strangers. With this, post, I'd like to share some information on the Alzheimer's Association and their Memory Walk, which is a walk to raise funds for awareness and research. It is generally 2 or 3 miles in length, and open to people of all ages. They now have walks scheduled in over 600 different communities.

Aside form the "feel good" benefits of participating in such a walk, it can be a lot of fun, as well. There's no reason to walk alone. In fact, you can even start your own team with as few as nine friends or acquaintances. The Alzheimer's Association makes it very easy to do this by offering a PDF guide for team captains, a sign-up sheet, and even a free website that you can set up to promote and track your team recruitment and progress. The Association recommends that each member raise a minimum of $200 to be truly successful.

There are lots of places to find members for your team - at the office, in your neighborhood, at church, or even at the local bar or bowling alley. If you find more than ten people for your team, you can get someone else to sign up as a co-captain, or get someone to start their own rival team. A little bit of competition never hurt anyone, especially when it is for such a good cause.



If you won't be walking or starting your own team as a team captain, make sure to pledge your support for anyone in your area who may be walking. Alzheimer's is an emotionally catastrophic condition that needs to be battled with every bit of financial support we can muster.

filling the generation gap with memories

While I've been feeling the need for a vacation (or at least a night out) from the kids lately, I've also been thinking more about our own parents. How did they handle us when we were children? My parents were fortunate enough to have lots of relatives living nearby, and as a result our extended family was quite close and we rarely ended up in daycare facilities or unrelated babysitters.

I'm sure that if we were still living near our parents, our kids would be spending lots of time with the grandparents. There's a special relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren that the in-between parental generation can't seem to comprehend. How can they just let them do anything that they want? How can they spoil them so much when things were so strict and tight when we were kids ourselves? What was this revelation that changed our parents attitudes towards children (and better yet, how can I find it now)?

As their parents, we get stressed and tend to freak out about just about anything. But as grandparents, they have this awesome capability to just let things blow over. I've tried to emulate this attitude and it just doesn't happen. Why? Perhaps it's because at the end of the day, the kids are back at *my* house. So eve if they've been pumped full of sugar and television at the grandparents house, they're still going to be back home when they are going through withdrawal.

It's actually quite interesting to see how different our parents act around our kids, compare to how they acted when we were young. It's almost like they are completely different people once they retire. And it prompts me to wonder if I ever really knew my parents at all when I was young. As popular music blogger Bob Lefsetz recently stated, once you grow up you realize that everything your parents said when you were a child was right...and wrong.

So how do we get to know our parents? How do we get past that point where we are inherently trying to impress them and earn their respect so that we can just be friends? I often wonder how many people ever even get the chance to do this, and I suspect that once they have passed on, that thought is the one thing that haunts us. That we had all of this time to get to know who they really were, and now they're gone, and all we've got left are old photo albums and our own skewed memories.

I've been working on my genealogy off and on for the last decade or so, and one of the things that has floored me is how I waited so long to get to know some of my oldest living relatives. In some cases, I waited too long. In other cases, I actually got to meet a relative only weeks before they passed away, and the information that they gave me was more than I could have ever found in any census record or vital statistics report.

I think that lots of people wait until their parents are on their death beds (or worse, until after their death) before they decide to try and learn who they really were. And even if we catch them at the end of their journey before they pass away, there's always Alzheimer's disease to worry about. Will they remember the answers to our unsolved mysteries? Will they even remember who we are? It's a frightening and saddening thought.

So take this post as a reminder to cherish your parents now, while they are still around and of sound mind. While hearing about their latest bowel movement or trip to "Wal-Mart's" isn't going to make your day, you'll likely look back on the time spent together with fondness and longing when they're gone.

do kids make you old, or does age do it?

Lately, we've been trying to plan some social activities involving several families that we are friends with, but we find that we're just not too enthusiastic about the types of get-togethers that involve so many kids running around. At this point, in my hermit-like existence of working overtime all the time, and spending the rest of my time with my own kids, sometimes I wish us parents could just get out and go dancing or drinking. It sounds silly and probably somewhat immature, but I'm not exactly eyeing a new sports car so I don't think I've hit that midlife crisis just yet. It's just that I'm not ready to sit around with other parents playing bridge on our own personal poker tables, discussing our impending physical ailments, and chasing the "kid collective" around while discussing the latest elementary school gossip.

I don't mind the responsibility of being a parent, or the irony of us getting "older", but it will be nice when we find ourselves a trustworthy babysitter again so that we can be normal adults every so often.

the downside to being "historic"

Aside from the outrageous costs of refurbishing and maintaining a historic home, I have noticed some serious wallet pains from home owners in my quaint little town...mostly having to do with historical requirements. Where poured concrete might suffice in your typical suburban neighborhood in the outlying areas of a large metropolis, we are required to use hand-cut limestone. Pricey, indeed! Colors have to be approved, as well as building materials, and if you have an enemy on the historic commission, you're possibly in for a world of trouble when submitting your approval request.

One of the latest squabbles in town involves a new resolution concerning "demolition by neglect", and is basically fines a homeowner and restricts them from rebuilding on said property should they allow a home to disintegrate. I can understand this approach, as it is all too easy for some to buy a dilapidated old home and allow it to fall apart, knowing full well that the underlying lot is worth so much more if newer structure could be built in its place. However, I can see the other side of the argument. Imagine the costs of repairing a moisture-laden rotting foundation, or one in which termites have made it their home for the last eighty years. This is why the idea of purchasing a home in the historic district is even more financially prohibitive than the already inflated sales price.

Does it make me wish for a more urban and contemporary environment? No, sorry. I don't miss the traffic and the noise or the glass and steel buildings. Although it can be a headache, I'll stick to my charming and dilapidated hometown for now.

have credit cards changed or am I just getting older?

I recently ran into a bit of a crisis when my credit card went over limit due to an accidental double charge at the hardware store. I managed to get the hardware store to fix their overcharge, but it was too late and still showed up on my bill, along with an overdraft charge. I dreaded the idea of calling up the credit card company. Every time that I have had a problem like this in the past, it was like pulling teeth to get it resolved.

And in most cases, I get mad enough with their response that I cancel the card and start looking at other options. While I might not immediately run out and fill out the first credit card application that I find on the internet, I might start googling for the best deals out there. I'll break out the spectacles so that I can read the fine print on APR and variable rates, which aren't generally advertised in a very forthcoming manner at some websites.

Lately, there's been much talk of identity theft on the internet, and I tend to waft back and forth with my concerns. On one hand, I sometimes try to find pages like the one above for the uniquely shaped Mint credit card, where you fill out your name and address and they send you an application packet, instead of inputting all of my personal information right there on their website. But at other times, I ask myself what the difference is between submitting info on the internet and handing over a signed charge slip to the cashier at the local grocery store. But then, I remember all of those prying Russian eyes across the globe that manage to hack into sites like Monster. So maybe there is a difference.

Anyways, back to my original story. I was surprised when I called my credit card company because not only did they fix everything without an argument, but they even offered to increase my credit limit. I asked if they could increase by $1000 and they came back and offered me an increase of $3000 more. I think I actually surprised them when I said, "no thanks" and that $1000 more would suffice. I'm a firm believer in not having to much available credit. I know for a fact that it affects your credit score. It also makes things that much more annoying when your credit card number is stolen.

So what has changed over the years and why? My credit card company's customer service was friendly, and not belittling or intimidating in any way. But why? Is it because I am getting older and have better credit history? Or are they wising up? Could it be that credit card companies are starting to understand the benefit of easy card ownership, as opposed to just offering easy card obtainment?

stealing internet?

The BBC recently reported that a man in London was arrested for using someone else's wireless internet service. They brought up all kinds of questions about the morality of such an act. After all, if someone is pumping out a wireless signal without any sort of security to ensure that nobody else can use it, is it really stealing? Aren't they essentially giving it out for free?

What's the difference between this and a radio station deciding that they want to start charging their listeners, but fail to put into place any sort of access restrictions?

Personally, I think it' a joke. Sure, it sucks if someone hops on your internet connection and start downloading a bunch of stuff, all the while clogging up your internet connection. But who gave you permission to broadcast your wireless signal outside of the boundaries of your computer area? If you're transmitting into their home or into a public area, without any ind of access restriction, then it's your own fault. Plus, I'm still not convinced that all of this wireless stuff isn't going to end up causing some sort of health problem over the years. Scientists claim that the signal strength is too weak, but I would suspect that it's too new of a technology for us to really know the results of prolonged exposure. What gives us the right to broadcast a poentially harmful signal into areas of the unknowing?

toy withdrawal?

As a newbie father, I'm not quite sure how to handle this...

My daughter is obsessed with her toys...specifically her stuffed animals, and we are actually running out of room for all of her stuff. My wife and I quit buying them for her a few years back, but the relatives continue to reward her with new plush gifts for nearly every greeting card occasion. While once content sending gifts for the "big" holidays like Christmas and for birthdays, our kids now receive Halloween bears, annoying singing frigs with plush hearts for Valentine's Day, green creatures for St. Patrick's Day, etc., etc. My father even felt the need to purchase her a lot of 400 beanie babies off of eBay several years back. At first, he presented them to us stating that they were an "investment" that might someday be worth money. But you don't give an "investment" to a preschooler and expect them to stay in mint condition.

Now, the disciplinarian (and space saver) in me says to just take the ones that she no longer plays with regularly and ship them off to the local thrift store or Salvation Army. However, she plays with all of them. She seems to go through regular rotations of her plush toys, and strangely remembers them all. Our next idea was to get rid of the ones that were shabby or not of the highest quality. So we removed any of the ghetto ones filled with carnie-style styrofoam pellets, and kept the fancier gund and other name-brand ones for prosperity. She didn't throw too much of a fit about losing the ones that weren't very "plush" in the first place. But she has thrown huge fits over some of the ones that we disposed of because they were ripped, torn, or just plain falling apart.

So what do you do. I got rid of a small stuffed panda bear several years back as a retaliation for her not picking up her toys, and she *still* brings it up (along with a tear in her eye) to this day. Is there such a thing as toy withdrawal, or toy mourning?

leasing the virtual office

No, this title is not referring to an imaginary land in the game Second Life, but rather a new take on leasing office space that I just noticed while reviewing a website that offers incorporation services in many different states. In my last post, I had discussed the possibility of an office coop, to which I see many potential cost savings. In addition to sharing the physical space and utilities costs, one can also think of the money that could be saved when combining orders for items like office supplies. Inc Paradise apparently offers what they refer to as "virtual" office space for as low as $45/month in the state of Tennessee. While this is of no help to the Florida corporations that they may register, nor the corporations in the state where I reside, it shows that the idea of an office space coop may even work on a large scale level. It is almost like a time-share in some ways, although I don't see any details on what would happen if every company decided to utilize the office space at the same time.

None-the-less, it is refreshing to see that there are opportunities out there for small businesses to enhance their outward professionalism at such a low cost. Add to that the incorporation services that they offer for very reasonable rates (only $89 plus the state fee in my area), and sites like Inc Paradise are a very frugal business resource.

business office coop?

Not too long ago, a local resident posted an advertisement in the classifieds which stated that they were looking to share an office space. This certain individual worked from home, and was having a hard time concentrating and getting work done. They also didn't like the idea of meeting with clients at home. I can definitely relate.

Seeing as in have two very loud and active children in my home, things have been a bit difficult for me with my business lately. As much as I love being home and around the children, I have to admit that I am looking forward to my daughter going back to school in the fall, and having only one child in the home during the day. I'm sure we'll still see some fits here and there, just like the one I experienced about five minutes ago, but the days are definitely quieter sans the sibling rivalry.

I'm just not sure that I would be ready to take on a whole other lease to share an office. Part of what I love about doing business on the internet is the fact that I don't have a brick and mortar business, or any of the operating costs that go hand-in-hand with owning or renting a storefront or office space. Things like rent, insurance, and utility bills are items that I only have to worry about at home. The cost to rent an additional office space would eat into my monthly income considerably.

lightspeed weight loss

In my last post, I was discussing weight training and lo and behold, I was just offered an opportunity to take a look at a company called JourneyLite, which practices lapband, or laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding surgery.

From what I gather, they basically place a band around the upper portion of your stomach to decrease its capacity. Because the stomach doesn't have the capacity to take on as much food, your body senses that you are fuller faster and therefore you don't eat and have as many cravings. It sounds simple enough, and from what I have seen, it works. While it is definitely not for everyone, people with serious weight-related health problems should find this surgery a blessing.

My body mass index isn't too bad, and in fact I am still within normal limits (albeit at the high end of the spectrum), so I won't be bothering with something this involved. I just need to stick with my weight training to get myself back in shape.

weight training for dummies

So I've recently started lifting weights again, which I haven't really done religiously since I was a teenager. The weight bench that I purchased was a great deal, and it is very sturdy and chunky and offers lots of different positions and adjustments for working out different muscles. I'm using some old plastic-encased concrete weights from a former weight set and they seem to work out okay.

I remember all of the guys bragging about how much they could bench press when I was younger. One of my cousins claimed to be able to bench press like 200 pounds when he was only 17 years old. He used to joke around that he could bench press his mother if he wanted to. I didn't have nay reason not to believe him, but I also never asked how many sets of 200 pounds he could press, either. Of course, he's grown quite chunky over the years and now looks like he has gained about half of that weight instead.

I remember when I was only thirteen, and a friend of mine had this great idea that we could go out for the cheerleading team, and that we would get to peer up cheerleaders skirts while we were holding them up in the air. It sounded like fun at the time, but we soon realized that we couldn't even lift the 70-pound empty bench press bar, let alone a sixteen year old girl. So it didn't last long, and we quit, our dreams being smashed of ever seeing older girls at such an angle.

Nowadays, I wonder how much I'm supposed to be bench pressing at my age. I basically added as many of the largest weights as I could to the bar, which I think added up to about 120 pounds, not including whatever the bar itself weighs. I can do a set of 12 each night, which seems to do the job and effectively wear me out. My muscles look great for a while after I workout. Of course, it's disappointing the next morning when I wake up and the "ripped" effect has gone away. So how long before this "ripped" effect actually sticks? I just don't know. I also don't know when the belly weight that I've accumulated over the years from my lethargic deskjob will start to go away.

Of course, I realize that it takes time to get back in shape...probably as much time as it too to get out of it...or more.

antiques to the rescue

A good friend of mine has entered into the realm of wedding proposals, and he will likely be popping the question soon. Unfortunately, this friend of mine does not have the best job, and as such he's not paid very well. So what's a guy to do, if he still wants to impress his soon-to-be (hopefully) fiancee, but he doesn't have the ability to save the traditional three months of income for a classy engagement ring?

Well, I see several possibilities for him. For one, he could try taking on monthly payments, to pay off his purchase in installments. Of course, this is assuming that he can afford the additional payments each month. Instead, I recommended that he check out the antique stores. If your wife-to-be doesn't cringe at the idea of a "used" ring, there are some great deals to be had on stunning and rare designs from centuries past. I was lucky enough to be engaged to a woman who loved the Victorian era, and I purchased a Victorian ring from an antique mall for her. We returned to the same antique dealer several months later for her Victorian wedding dress. The dress was exactly her size, and didn't even require any alteration for it to fit perfectly. It was as if it was meant to be hers. And guess what? We saved a bundle! She continues to receive comments from people who see her ring twelve years later. They find it intriguing and beautiful because it looks nothing like the jewelry you find in shopping malls today.

While some see antiques stores as nothing more than money-pits for bored retirees, I quite enjoy rummaging around dusty furniture and odd knick-knacks. (I just can't stand places that call themselves "antiques stores" when they are actually frilly craft replica stores.) Over the years, we have found many great deals on some very interesting collectibles, including diamond rings, my wife's wedding dress, furniture, unique decorations, formal wear and other clothing, and even vintage toys. Some days I wonder if I should just start buying and selling antiques since they are in such high demand and I am interested in them anyways.

taking your sports team with you

I've never been a huge sports fan. Admittedly, I think much of my discontent with sports had to do with the fact that I grew up in a town with a lousy football team that promised the world and delivered nothing but an excuse to call them the "Aints". They had their own theme songs, and big advertisements on the side of the city buses. They had obsessed fans like any other pro team, although I would think that traditional Saints fans were even more fanatical to stick by a team that was suffering through such a bad losing streak for so long.

Another team with fanatical support (and perhaps one of the most dedicated fan bases around) has to be the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Regardless of where I am living, I still see the big red "N" everywhere I go. It doesn't matter if you're in the West, East, North or South...they take their fandom very seriously and they take it with them wherever they go. The Huskers have earned this respect from their fans though, and do for college football what the Beatles did for pop music. It's like they are super beings from outer space or something, given their track record.

I also had a college professor who was quite obsessed with the Florida Gators. So obsessed, in fact, that he managed to hire fellow Gator football fans as fellow colleagues when he became the chair of his department. It was rather comical. The Gators' record isn't too shabby, either, what with three national championships under their belt now.

While living in Denver, we had the Bronco fans who went so far as to state that God made the sunsets blue and orange because he, too, was a Bronco fan. We also had the naked bearded "barrel" man...I won't gross you out with the details.

None-the-less, I am excited because I have decided to take my kids to their first pro baseball game. They've never been to a "real" stadium before, and I expect that we'll do all of the things that you see in campy movies during the sports game montage...hopefully we'll get lucky and catch a fly ball like they do in every movie, too. Although we aren't avid fans, this won't prevent us from having a good time, waiving around foam fingers, screaming our heads off, and making complete fools of ourselves. Then I'll buy the kids some overpriced and overcooked footlongs loaded with all kinds of artery-clogging gunk and they'll go home with a pleasant life-long memory and mustard-stained fingertips.

Now it's just a matter of buying tickets for the last game of the season, in the hopes that the weather won't still be so unbearably hot.

remember roller-dances?

I was quite excited to discover that there is going to be a new roller skating rink opening up here in our small town. his comes as quite a surprise, as I never thought that we had the population to support such an enterprise. However, I wish the owners the best of luck and commend them for opening a business that provides a fun, creative and athletic outlet for the youth of our area.

Without making myself sound too old, I'll never forget how much fun it used to be to go to the roller skating rinks for their special dance parties. It was an unforgettable pure eighties experience, and as cheesy as I am sure it would look today, I hope that our kids get to experience their own version of it.

After all, who among us can say that they have truly "lived" until they have fallen on their ass while trying to do the "hokey pokey" on wheels? What remains to be seen is if the roller skates will be inline or the traditional 4-wheelers like we used to wear. I actually still have a pair tucked away in my closet. Frightening, eh?

the new canadian utopia?

Lately, the weather has been unbearably hot. Looking at the Weather channel, it is apparent that much of the nation is experiencing the same heat wave that (for us) started precisely at the beginning of August. The humidity has hit us full force, as if making up for its absence in June and July. The locals claim that the weather has progressively gotten worse over the last few years, and can only speculate that global warming is the cause. Will the human race just adapt to these areas if they continue to heat up every year?

I saw a special report not too long ago regarding the effects of global warming, and they made a bold prediction that people would start looking to Canada as a source of perfect weather. Believe it or not, they were actually referring to the frozen tundra areas of Northern Canada...the areas that one often gets confused with say...Greenland or the North Pole. As crazy as this sounds, it makes perfect sense if you read what any scientists are saying about the future climate changes that we will be seeing.

If you take a look at the current trends of UK travelers (which tend to predate the investment travel done by Americans), you'll quickly find that travel sites like Dialaflight offer regular flights to Canada (or as UK travelers call them "holidays" in Canada) and one can only speculate if many of those flights end up being house-hunting trips. The site sets up reservations by phone specialist only, so you know that anyone booking these trips are serious about their flights and not simply internet junkies looking for last minute $10 off coupons. I also read not to long ago about how UK travelers have been purchasing land in many small towns in areas of France and Spain. If their purchases are any indication of the new hot property markets, then Canada may be next on the list.

My wife has a large group of relatives in Quebec and we have had to spend quite a bit of cash on Quebec flights in the past, but I have also visited areas like Banff, Calgary and the super-mall in Edmonton. The land in that area is just gorgeous, and I wouldn't have to worry about the whole "Francais factor".

While I am not rushing out to buy a bunch of land in the Canadian tundra, the idea of living in Canada has crossed my mind. In addition to the fact that my wife has relatives there, I think we would fit in quite nicely in a country that keeps their international noses out of everyone else's business. I don't really get their government system, as I haven't been exposed to it very much, but I have heard that they offer free education and health care to their citizens, which is commendable. Cigarettes are said to be ridiculously expensive, but I don't smoke so I couldn't care less.

for the love of money

So what do you do when an offer comes in from left-field and presents you with a chance to make a lot of money, but not necessarily doing something that you would enjoy? For some, this question may be a "o brainer", but I'm having a difficult time with it.

I decided some time ago not to make any decision that is purely driven by money. Not that there is anything wrong with making more money, but I still believe in the old saying that money won't buy happiness.

In my case, I have the opportunity to place all of my financially unstable ventures on hold to return to something that I was doing once before. In return I get steady income, regular work hours, and lots of headaches. Is it worth it?

One of my primary concerns is that I will not be able to just call it quits and put all of my other projects on hold, and as you can see from the time of this writing, I already have a problem sleeping at night due to all of the things that I feel I must get done in a day. Adding another full time job to my schedule isn't going to make things any easier, and even if I promise myself that I will not concern myself with my unpredictable internet ventures, they will still be there - in the back of my mind.

What to do? What to do?

great idea for a new invention

As I am discussing traveling, I can't help but set my sights on more distant lands. I hope to one day visit places across the ocean, like Europe or Asia. As my mother in law is from Canada and speaks fluid French, I've always thought that it might be a little more convenient to invite her to go with us as a translator for when we're in French speaking countries. My wife and I both took French back in high school, but I have no idea whether we would be able to keep up if we were visiting France. Some people talk very fast, and seeing as I am more interested in venturing off the beaten path, we may find ourselves in non-tourist areas where native bilingual skills are more limited.

I was recently thinking about voice recognition software and those handy little translator devices that you can take with you, and I was thinking that it would make so much sense of someone were to combine the two. In a sense, it would be like having closed captioning for real life. You could carry your little hand-held voice recognition device with you and as others speak to you, it could translate what they are saying. Unfortunately, I don't think we're quit there yet with voice recognition, as most of the software that I have see takes some time to effectively "learn" a certain persons voice. However, seeing as many large companies are now using voice recognition for their customer service systems (with arguable success) for a multitude of customer calls, I would suspect that we are not that far off from implementing this same technology in other places.

Of course, traveling "purists" might say that this is missing the whole point of visiting other countries. What good is visiting another land if you're not willing to absorb yourself in their culture? My only problem with that is that areas like Europe have countries that are very near each other and yet speak different languages. To effectively communicate across Europe, I would suspect that you would have to learn Spanish, German, French, and Italian...maybe other languages, too. And seeing as not all of us have the cash to visit often enough to polish up on our foreign languages, I don't see this as a viable solution.

Sci-fi authors have already foreseen this type of translation technology. I can't remember the names, but I know that I have seen movies where someone is wearing a small button or pin that automatically translates what someone is saying to the other person's language. What they don't explain is how it makes it so that they cannot hear the original words being spoken at the same time.

I can picture a "Whisper 2000" styled apparatus, like an ipod that allows you to get a custom translation while in a foreign land. And like an Imac, I can see something that even allows you to customize the type of translation you hear...be it a male or female voice, a robotic voice, etc. Eventually, I suspect that it would detect the timber of the speaker's voice, and mimic it appropriately.

Just think of how much easier it will be to find the bathroom in a foreign country!

going away so we can return home

Sometimes I wonder if I came from a lineage of gypsies. I tend to roam a lot. Although my genealogical research doesn't suggest this in any way, I can't help but contemplate why I have so much trouble "settling down". I had no problems getting married and having kids. I didn't baulk at buying a home (several times). However, it always seems that I feel like moving on once we've settled down on one place or another. As a result, we've moved the family around half a dozen times in the last ten years or so.

I generally blame it on my idealistic longing for community and a restlessness at finding perfection, not unlike the numerous Utopian visionaries of the 19th century. So I am always looking to the horizon instead of what is sitting right before my eyes. It's frustrating, and I'm hoping to get through it this time, because I do like where we are living. I just don't like the local politics, or the tourism, or the occasional sweltering humidity in the dead of the summer. Picky, ain't I?

Yesterday, we took a day trip to a larger city that was about two hours ago. We didn't really have any concrete plans, although I had checked out their chamber of commerce website before leaving. I should have printed some maps.

After having lived in small towns for a couple of years now, I still can't believe how frustrating it is to visit larger cities with all of their traffic and road construction. Sometimes I think it would just be a matter of spending time there, and I convince myself that (like the rest of their inhabitants), I will eventually grow accustomed to the layout of the city and know my way around. After all, it took me several years of driving before I attained this sense of direction in Denver. But sometimes I wonder if I haven't actually rewired my approach to life, and if there is no going back. But then, why would I want to?

While we take these little day trips to other cities and towns to see something "different", I am starting to believe that there are times when we are only going away just so that we can return to the comforts of home. Let's just hope that I can someday recognize and accept that I am in fact "home".

Rob Zombie Offers a New Treat For Halloween

It's August here in the South and the humidity is stifling, but I can smile a little because that means that fall is just around the corner. When it comes to living in this town, there are several types of pests that we have to deal with - spiders, snakes, mosquitoes and tourists. Fortunately, they are all seasonal and we get a good six months of nice weather and relaxed living.

In addition to the changing colors and lazy days, I am looking forward to my favorite holiday, Halloween. The town really gets into the spirit, and we even have a large haunted house attraction. When I was younger, I used to spend a bit of cash each year putting together a small haunted house of my own on my parent's front porch. It's a tradition that the neighbors eventually came to appreciate, and my mother has even said that they tell her that they miss it each year since I "grew up" and moved out.

One of these years, I will get back into that tradition and spend some time and cash presenting my new neighbors with some scary fun. Until then, we have fun taking the kids out to trick or treat and generally end up spending half the night watching scary movies. It seems like most of the "scary" movies coming out these days aren't very scary at all, though. The only films coming out that have any kind of disturbing flavor to them are the more independent releases. You know the type - veritably unknown actors, lots of blood and gore, bent sexual references. Generally, I'm referring to the type of flicks that the kids can't see...like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or Rob Zombie's twisted classic House of 1000 Corpses.

Fortunately for the those with a "fright-tooth" like myself, I have just learned that Rob Zombie has recently redone Halloween the movie, and it will be released on August 31st. At first, I was wondering why they didn't just wait until Halloween night for the release, as many horror movies have traditionally done. But then I remembered that I have gone out to see horror flicks at the movie theaters on Halloween night, and it sucks. There's something more "spooky" about watching a movie at night in the comfort of your own home, than in a sterile environment like one of those mega-plex cinemas.

So this means that instead of driving out to a movie theater on Halloween night, we get to take the kids trick-or-treating, tuck them into bed (if they can sleep on that sugar high), and curl up together to watch a good horror flick that is actually frightening (as opposed to being one of those high production movies that relies on cheap looking digital monsters). Also, let's not forget how much cheaper the popcorn is at home, either! I expect that Rob Zombie will bring some seriously sick and twisted new themes to the Halloween classic, and I'm sure there will be some equally menacing music in the soundtrack.

Check out the trailer from YouTube:

Tip For Telemarketers - Know Your Customer, Know Your Product

Lately, we seem to be receiving more telemarketing phone calls than usual. I thought that I had already opted out of receiving them, but I will have to double check. Maybe it has been a year and it is time to renew my request to be left alone. None-the-less, it amazes me how unprofessional some telemarketers are.

First off, if you're going to mention that your business is going to be in my area for a "free demo", make sue that you can at least pronounce the name of the area correctly. There's nothing quite like receiving a call from a non-local business who is intending to win customers in a new market, and they can't even pronounce the city's name correctly. It makes it fairly apparent that they have never been here. And since they obviously don't have any interest in at least learning how to pronounce where I live, why should I have any interest in their crappy product?

The next tip that I have has to do with the product that you are attempting to sell as a telemarketer. I was recently contacted by a telemarketer trying to sell me a copy of a newspaper subscription. The newspaper was titled the "Morning News" and I had never heard of it before. I asked them what city it covered, and they had no idea. They fumbled and stuttered for a few minutes and could not produce an answer, so I could not produce an interest.

Come to think of it, these two "tips" are important in nearly any sales position, telemarketing or not. If you don't know the details, it looks like you don't care to learn them. And if you don't care about selling it, why should I care about buying it?

the faux stainless mistake?

I'm getting a little worried about a decision that we made a year ago when moving into our home. The range was missing the the microwave was broken when we moved in, so we went out and ended up purchasing an entirely new set of appliances for the kitchen. We were intent on getting stainless, until we saw the prices. We settled on a faux stainless "silver mist" finish from Frigidaire, and have been happy with it thus far. My parents also picked up this same finish for a new refrigerator in their kitchen. Unfortunately, their refrigerator got scratched and he is now trying to find a way to fix the scratch. His first hurdle was to get some touch up paint. They kept sending him the wrong color. He now has an assortment of touch-up colors, form white to bisque to black...but no "silver mist".

This got me thinking. Did I make a mistake buying "silver mist" appliances? What happens if one appliance dies? Am I going to be able to pick up matching "silver mist" appliances in the future, or will this be a fad that dies away when the Frigidaire line gets fully absorbed by Electrolux? I don't believe that the stainless steel look is going anywhere but will the cost continue to decrease so that "silver mist" is no longer necessary as a stainless alternative? Gee, I really hate to think that i have saddled myself with "proprietary" appliances that i will never be able to match in the future, should one fail.

As it is, this type of finish is already difficult to match up to overhead stainless fixtures, knobs and kitchen faucets. I suppose that I could always replace them in black if/when they fail. I guess that at this point I just need to hope that they last a while and give us several years of good performance. It just worries me that we've had to call on the refrigerator's ice maker three times already...

gaming for life?

I recently came close to picking up a job at a local video game production company, but ended up turning do their offer. Why would I do such a thing? After all, wouldn't it be fun to work for a game development company? Honestly, I'm sure it would be, but I also believe that it is a targeted field of employment. Targeted, in fact, to single people with lots of time on their hands. One of the questions that stuck in my mind during my interview was if I had played several of the latest massive multiplayer games out there, such as World of Warcraft, Second Life, or Starcraft. Feeling a bit unschooled, I had to sheepishly reply that "no" I had not. I immediately started to feel like Anne Hathaway in that silly modeling movie "The Devil Wears Prada", as in...I'll take your money, but I'm not interested in immersing myself in your reality. So it quickly became apparent that to work as a gaming professional, I would first have to live in the gameworld, something that I do not have the time or inclination to do at this point in my life.

In addition to playing the games, I would need to attend conferences, visit online forums like the one for Starcraft at CreepColony.com to discuss the latest developments and get user feedback. Even if my particular position didn't involve things like map making, bot creation, and build designs, I would still have to understand what they were talking about so that I don't look like a complete idiot. All in all, I would have to either educate myself in the world of gaming, or set myself up for failure. Seeing as I don't have the time for another bout of secondary education, and I'm no fan of failure, I'll let someone else have a go with it. There are gamers out there who already know these skills and don't have the learning curve or other responsibilities to hold them back.

the angels weren't angels after all

Okay, so maybe spoke too soon. It turns out that during the Hell's Angels visit to our town last week, a group of four "Banditos" ended up in the hospital after an armed altercation with the angels.

What remains to be seen is why a group of Banditos would want to visit the town during the Hells Angels rally, or if they even knew of it when they came through town. Were they here to simply start trouble with the HA? It's hard to say, but from eyewitnesses who saw the event, it leads me to believe that both sides were acting out in typical gang rivalry. Granted, it is a free country and these groups can go anywhere they want whenever they want, but visiting when their arch enemies are going to be somewhere sounds like pure antagonism to me. Perhaps it was just coincidence. After all, it doesn't sound like much of a smart move to bring a handful of your gang buddies to fight a group of 400 Hell's Angels, now does it?

domain forwarding and masking

I've recently been contracted to perform some SEO work for a local realtor, and one of the first things that I discovered was that he had several different domain names pointing to his homepage. In most cases, this is a good thing, as long as you aren't masking your domains. In other words, if you type in one of your alternate domain names, it should forward the visitor to your real site, and display the real domain name, not the alternate name.

If it still displays the alternate domain name upon reaching the site, you run the risk of being penalized by Google for duplicate content (or what is essentially a duplicate website with the exact same content as your primary site).

So what is domain masking good for? Aside from spammy type applications, masking is great for pointing domains names to sub-domains that may otherwise be ignored by Google. However, you still need to make sure that the subdomain in question doesn't get indexed as having the same content as the masked domain. Your best bet, if it is available from your hosting company, is to opt for what they call an "add-on" domain. It automatically creates the subdomain and sets the domain to point to it. Most cpanel packages feature this. If yours doesn't, you can ask for it (or find another host).

Using multiple domain names is *very* common in the real estate industry. I wonder how many of them are hurting their search engine ranking by using masking features to serve up duplicate content.