Archive for October, 2005
Friday, October 14th, 2005
Vistaprint drives me crazy! Am I the only one?
Not only havethey emailed me at least twice a week since I placed my order, sometimes it seems like I get an email from them every day…and that’s not counting the emails I get about them from mypoints.
In addition to that they called me and left a message on my answering machine…weeks after I’d got my order, which means they had no reason to be calling me! I have no idea what they wanted, but it annoyed me that they called. If I want to order something else from them, I know where to go…after all, I’ve gotten 500 emails from them since I’ve placed my order.
And then someone just forwarded me an email about their Columbus day sale. Thanks, but I’m really not interested. And Columbus day is OVER!!!
What’s the point?
I wonder if they ever sell anything that’s not actually on sale?
Posted in Life, Business | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, October 12th, 2005
I had the strangest dream last night. I dreamed that I won a pair of aerosoles shoes…but the company wasn’t really trying to get us to test their shoes like they said they were. They were really trying to get us to buy their new ICE CREAM PANTS!
Ice cream pants are basically black leather pants with a special pocket for ice cream. I don’t know why you need leather pants, but apparently you do. Maybe it keeps the ice cream fresher or something.
Now, as you can imagine, you can’t just pull a gallon of chunky monkey, or peanut butter and chocolate (mmm) ice cream from your refrigerator, scoop it up, and put it in your pocket. If you did you’d have a huge mess.
That means, of course, that there must be a special ice cream that’s made specifically to go in your pants. So ice cream pants ice cream comes in clear, pint size containers, which are conveniently located at your local convenience store (or, in the case of my dream, the convenience store closest to the house you grew up in. 
)
Since ice cream pants are so new, there are only two varieties of ice cream- red white and blue, and pink, purple and carolina blue. Although I couldn’t tell from the containers if there was anything special about the ice cream (it was in a clear container, they didn’t have a label. I did notice that one of the containers was sitting on the floor and not melting. I guess that would be a very important quality for ice cream to have if you were going to keep it in your pants.
Can you imagine walking around with ice cream in your pants…make that ice cream in your leather pants. How would you eat it? With a spoon? Or maybe a collapsible straw-just pull it out of the pocket when you need it, and put it back when you are done.
LOL, so does anyone want to analyze that dream?
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Monday, October 10th, 2005
OK, I think my search for new recipe software has finally come to an end. I downloaded Recipe Center 5.0 over the weekend from http://www.bluechillies.com/details/28543.html because you didn’t have to register to downloaded it from blue chillies. Yes, I know it’s silly.
So far everything is looking great, and it came with a ton of recipes. I deleted at least 30 that I knew I’d never cook, and there are still a lot more.
It was easy to add new items to the database, although I must admit since I was copying and pasting from my old database (the recipes show up in notepad form, with tons of extra junk in there, but I can’t see the old database) I didn’t exactly enter the measurements right-I just put all of the ingredient info in the ingredient column, instead of using the quantity, and unit columns.
You are also supposed to be able to import recipes that are in Meal Master format to the database, one at a time, but since I’ve never used that…
So far it’s working great, and I’m really impressed. Now I’m off to transfer more recipes.
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Sunday, October 9th, 2005
http://woot.com/
If you’re a bargain hunter you need to check out woot. This is not the place to come if you want instant gratification though. It’s much worse than the Silver Jewelry Club in terms of instant gratification, but it still runs along a similar principal.
Woot has one deal, every day. If you don’t get there before deal of the day items are sold out, you are out of luck. They also have a link under the description of the product, so you can see what other people are saying about it.
Today’s item was a refurbished internal cd-rw for $9.99 plus $5 s&h.
Check out their blog if you’re interested in seeing the other deals they’ve had
Posted in Life | No Comments »
Saturday, October 8th, 2005
Yes. I admit it. I telecommute.
And after everyone realizes that yes, I have a job, I’m not just staying at home saying I work at home because I’m ashamed to say I don’t have a job, and yes I get paid, and yes, in most cases I make more than you do, they want to know how I found my telecommuting job.
So, here is my telecommuting advice.
Never pay for a job, or for information leading to a job. Many of the places that charge you for information about jobs, or that charge you for jobs are scams. They may simply take your money and run with it, they may take your money and require you to place the same type of ad that you signed up for, and hope that people will fall for it like you did, or they may take your money and promise that they will send you “fresh job leads that are updated daily.” If the company actually does post fresh leads daily, by the time these “fresh leads” are posted, all of the other people that are paying for the leads will be able to see, and apply to these jobs as well. And the more people that apply to that job, the less the chance that you will get hired for that job.
There are so many free resources to help you find a telecommuting position, that I have never found the need to pay for anything. I learned most of what I know about telecommuting through Wahm.com The Online Magazine For Work at Home Moms.
Wahm.com offers a telecommuting forum where you can ask questions about, and research potential companies and job opportunities. They also have a telecommuting/work at home job listing section, and many members post job leads in the telecommuting forum as well.
There are many ways to search for telecommuting positions. Work at home, and work at home jobs are usually not the best search terms to use, because these words usually bring up scams, or business opportunities. Some of the words that are more likely to bring up legitimate results are telecommute, telework, contract position, freelance, virtual, virtual employee, or independent contractor.
It is very important that you research the company that you are applying to before you send them any personal information. I know how scared I was to send off my hire papers, and I knew the company I work with is legit, so I can’t image how scary it must be to mail off your name, phone number, address, and social security number to someone, and then find out that they aren’t a legitimate business. Unfortunately, you will have to mail of this paperwork to most legitimate jobs, so it’s important that you have enough information about them so that you feel comfortable doing so. There will be times when you will be unable to find information about a company, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that the company is bad, but it is a situation where you will have to use your judgement.
If you can’t find information from an outside source, at least get a name, and a phone number for the business, and make sure that the company is using a professional website. Free hosting, and free email addresses with no contact information are definite red flags.
There may also be cases where you apply to a job that you think is legit, and then you find out it isn’t. Take the steps that are needed to protect yourself from fraud (hopefully this will never be a problem for you) and then forgive yourself.
You can look for telecommuting positions on most of the online job sites, such as Monster.comand Careerbuilder.
I personally found my job at craigslist.org in the San Francisco section. That’s the great thing about telecommuting. Your job can be anywhere!
When I look search craigslist, I search all jobs, leave the keyword section blank, and check the telecommute box, that brings up all of the telecommuting jobs for that city.
I do know people who advise entering “telecommuting is ok” in the keyword field, and that is what I did when I ran across an elusive site that allows you to search all of the craigslist cities at once. Unfortunately craigslist frowns on sites like that, so it was removed :-(.
The only thing that I don’t like about craigslist is that you don’t always know what company you are applying for. I’m pretty sure that I got on a couple of junk mail lists while applying to blind ads at craigslist, but they have so much information that I keep using them.
Well, that’s my telecommuting advice for today, if you have any questions feel free to ask!
Posted in Life, Business | 1 Comment »
Thursday, October 6th, 2005
If you’re like me and you have a ton of packing peanuts lying around, but you feel bad throwing them away, check out the peanut hotline.
You can find drop off sites, sign up to be a member of the hotline for $30 a year, and learn more about recycling efforts and peanuts, or loose fill packaging.
Unfortunately, there are no hotline members near me at this time 
Posted in Life | No Comments »
