It’s almost that time of year for me…time to order new checks! We rarely use checks, so I only order a small box each time, but they’re still a necessary evil. Several of the small businesses I frequent around town don’t accept debit or credit cards, and I rarely carry cash. The school always wants payment in the form of a check for field trips and other things, and the piano teacher always wants cash or a check as well. We’ve been ordering checks through our credit union, which is convenient, since they deduct the payment...

While I was at the baseball field this week, watching my son’s practice, I took a quick glance through my new issue of Real Simple. They recommend new products from time to time, and I spotted a quick blurb on the Eye-Fi Card. You can check out the neat video demo at the site I linked here, but in a nutshell, the Eye-Fi is a wireless memory card for your digital pictures and video. You insert the card reader into your PC, and the Eye-Fi card goes into your camera. Without cables or camera docks or waiting, each time you snap new pictures, the Eye-Fi...

My office has always included ongoing training as a line item in the department budget. Nurses take continuing education courses to stay on top of their game, and IT professionals should do the same. Just because you’ve got your four year degree, or a few certifications under your belt isn’t any reason to stop advancing your education. If the thought of spending time in a classroom to take an IT Course makes you break out into a cold sweat, consider QuickCert.com – they allow you to self study for everything from Cisco to Oracle and Crystal...

Have you ever seen recut previews on YouTube? I’ve seen one previously where a preview for Mary Poppins was edited to make it look like a horror film. The people who create these are so talented. This one for The Shining is no exception, taking one of the creepiest films ever and making it appear like a romantic comedy: If you’ve seen The Shining, you can pick out scenes that were intensely creepy in the movie…and they just look like lighthearted fun in the clip.

A while back, I posted about the new system to gauge blog rank available from Izea. I’ve got all of my blogs registered there, and in the past months, have seen quite a few advertisers willing to forgo pagerank in order to experiment with RealRank. Several of my blogs are at the top of the rankings, meaning that they rate highly as far as links and traffic, which translates to more opps for me. This blogs real rank is at 850 for today, which is another feature I like – ranks are updated daily, not every 3 months (or more) like pagerank. To...

Yahoo isn’t going to sell for cheap to Microsoft. A new article on Yahoo today (is that biased news? LOL) stated that they want Microsoft to pony up at least $45 million. Will Microsoft do it in order to enter the Google game? Forecasters predict that Yahoo revenue will go up over 70% during the next three years, totaling $8.8 billion in 2010. That would mean that not only would Microsoft be giving Google a run for their money, they’d be MAKING money in the long run. Yahoo shares are over $27 right now, while Google sits at $439. Might be...

Promotional items are always a fun way to promote your business. My sister recently gave us some Devil Rays (St. Petersburg baseball team) SWAG she scored from a business contact, and we’ve been enjoying our loot. Last night I grabbed a plastic beer mug out of the freezer (the kind with water inside) and noticed that it had the Devil Rays logo on one side, and the logo of a local tire company on the other. My son has been using his Devil Rays baseball mitt at his baseball team practices. My husband wears his free Devil Rays hat when he mows the...

Have you been following the Jesus (Hay-soos) storyline in Dilbert? I’m a big Dilbert fan, and I read the blog that Scott Adams writes every week. It cracks me up to hear about people getting fired because they posted Dilbert comics at work. Uhh…I should clarify, it’s not funny that people got fired, but it’s funny if their management is that paranoid. The Hay-soos storyline has been a good one – I enjoyed seeing Wally with hair. Not everyone liked it though, and Scott Adams actually got hate mail about it. People are nuts.

In another case of a company being afraid of a little competition, Experian (one of the three big credit bureaus) is attempting to block Lifelock from helping credit consumers. I’ve previously written about the great services offered by Lifelock on this blog, which include Lifelock creating fraud alerts on your behalf with the credit bureaus. Experian is trying to stop this, saying that current credit laws don’t allow for a third party to place a fraud alert on the behalf of a consumer. Hmm…why would Experian be trying to block this service,...

In the newest case of the pot calling the kettle black, Google said that Microsoft’s bid to purchase Yahoo would hurt the internet. Umm…yeah. Because Google isn’t a HUGE monopoly doing things to make things tough on the internet already, right? I read the article and what I took away from it is that Google is scared of the competition. They know with Microsoft behind Yahoo, that Yahoo would actually be able to do something about Google’s monopoly on the internet. Competition like this is beneficial to bloggers like me, and people...