I watch quite a bit of TV during the day while I’m sitting at my desk working (I like the background noise!) and sandwiched in between the ads for lawyer referral services and vocational schools are ads to get a “free credit score” or a “free credit report”…or even “free credit monitoring”. You’ve seen them…”I’m thinking of a number between….” Notice how I put those terms in quotes? Those services are NEVER free, and most are scams designed to separate you from your hard...

I’ve returned to college this spring, and signed up for the first of what will be many online classes. It’s kind of amusing that I’m such an internet addict, yet in all my years of college, I’ve never taken an online class! I’m in the first week of statistics, and while there is some disconnect that occurs when you never meet your instructor or attend a lecture, I don’t mind at all. I’m saving time on commuting to the campus and sitting in a class trying to keep my eyes open. I can do all of my work at home and...

We’ve bought 3 homes now (and sold two of the three) and have been through the process from start to finish – listing the home, negotiating an offer, and showing up at closing to sign your name eleven hundred times to various papers. We’ve never had an issue, and I think that was in part due to the excellent agents we had representing us, and the title insurance company doing a thorough job. I’ve heard the horror stories though, of people showing up at the closing table only to find out that there’s a lien on the dream home...

For whatever reason, when I got my new laptop from work, the IT guys didn’t install the calculator that comes with Windows. How the heck did that happen? I haven’t been able to spare the time to hand over my laptop to the IT guys to get it added, so I’ve been using cheesy free calculators online whenever I needed one. I just found out that the Google toolbar works with Firefox to give you a little free calculator utility, right in your browser! It even does square root functions, so I can use it for my statistics class.

I was in the craft store last month and happened to stop in front of a display of sewing and embroidery machines. I learned to sew on an ancient Singer sewing machine from the 60’s that was built into an end table our house, so that it could be hidden away when it wasn’t in use. Sewing and the craft of embroidery have gone a lot more high tech since my days with a bobbin and thread. Oh sure, sewing supplies and your typical sewing kit may not have changed much, still containing thread, needles, and scissors, but the sewing machines are quite...

If you’re starting a business, you’re probably pouring most of your cash into inventory, services, and advertising. You’re saving cash by running it yourself (most likely without a paycheck for the first few months, or even the first year!) and cutting costs wherever you can. One way business owners can cut costs is with equipment leasing – buying the supplies and instruments you need to run your business can be a costly endeavor, and it can leave you flat broke pretty quick. Say you’re opening a bakery – you need a...

I just saw the weirdest thing in my neighbor’s yard. You’ve probably seen a Roomba, right? It’s a an automatic vacuum that’s designed to clean your floors while you’re doing something else. We have one, and it’s amazing. It’s got a sensor in the front so it avoids running into furniture and walls, and getting stuck in corners, and it sweeps up a ton of dirt and dog hair. Anyway, what I saw was similar to a Roomba, but it was going around in my neighbor’s front yard! I’m guessing it was some sort...

If it weren’t for the internet, would we be so involved in celebrities lives? Take the recent tragedy with Heath Ledger’s untimely death. Instead of waiting until the next day to find out about this via the front page of a newspaper, people knew within hours of the event. Shortly after that, the first falsehoods about Heath’s death were making their way around the internet, one that the apartment was Mary Kate Olson’s. That was found out to be incorrect, but it illustrates how quickly information moves thanks to the internet. What...

A few months ago, stressed when I couldn’t get any more Dexter discs from Netflix, I decided to get Showtime on Demand from the cable company. Watching television on demand got me thinking about the advances made to the entertainment industry in recent years. Cable came out in…what, the 80’s? I remember needing a box for our television back then. Once cable came out, nothing changed for a LONG time. And then, along came the DVR, which I refer to as the single best invention since the internet. After that, it was TV on demand, and Netflix...

One of the things I could have used on our trip last week was a GPS tracking system. I normally have an excellent sense of direction, but Amsterdam is a confusing city! The streets are narrow and winding in most cases, there are alleys with storefronts and restaurants that don’t appear on maps, and when you throw in canals and bridges on every other block, things tend to get a wee bit confusing. To our cab driver’s credit, he made it from the airport to our hotel in 20 minutes flat, without a GPS vehicle tracking system, quickly navigating...