My Ebenezer

I’m really struggling with what to get Princess for Christmas. Those of you with daughters, any suggestions for an almost 2 year old? Speedy is getting a battery operated tractor thing he can ride on. I am tempted to get a similar ride on for Princess even though I know she is too little to operate it now. They make one with a steering stick for parents that we could use until she gets used to it.

My other ideas for her are a kitchen or a doll house. I know she likes playing with the furniture from a dollhouse but I just don’t know if she’d REALLY play with it. Maybe this year it really doesn’t matter so much since she’d still be just as happy to play with a cardboard box. She does spend a little time with a doll house she is around about once a week. This morning, she was taking all the furniture out and opening and closing all of the little doors and drawers. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and get her a nice dollhouse for Christmas.

Here’s the dilemna, do I get her just a little dollhouse now and get the really nice one later when she’ll appreciate it more or do I go ahead and get a good one now so I don’t have to buy ANOTHER one next year? Or what about a little battery operated ride on? I know she is probably too small, but that’s what Speedy is getting and she likes to do everything just like him. Maybe she’d really get into. They have some really cute smaller ones with Dora on them that would fit her perfectly - and the “go button” is on the handle bar instead of the foot pedal. Anybody have kids around two with anything like this?

UGH! I have to remind myself that she is not going to go crazy over anything at this stage. Speedy, on the other hand….

Man, my posts are getting more exciting by the day, aren’t they?

Not that it helps me much with shopping for Princess, but I have learned of a way to shop and help all at the same time. I’m sure we all know someone who has been affected by Alzheimer’s so as you start your shopping, why do purchase a holiday gift that will do a little more than cross another item off your list? We can all agree that seeking a cure to Alzheimer’s is crucial, ensuring quality care for those who suffer from the disease is also critical. The holidays are a good time to gift a donation or buy a gift from the eStore - you can purchase some beautiful jewelry that signifies the deep love and attention provided by caregivers. As it says on their site, “Caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease or related illnesses give from the deepest recesses of their hearts, inspiring the world with their courage, dedication and hope. Embrace the spirit. Share this inspirational heart. Show you care—about caregivers, loved ones and the cause.” All proceeds benefit the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America.

I can’t imagine having to watch a loved one suffer with this disease - and I don’t know where I’d begin to look for help. I knew a girl who graduated with me from high school who helped to care for her mother several years ago - who has since passed on from Alzheimer’s. Caring for a suffering parent or friend is difficult, especially when you are trying to manage your own family life at the same time. So as you get ready to do your holiday shopping this year, consider a holiday gift that will have a little extra meaning.

You know, it really creeps me out to think about things like this. I just can’t imagine interviewing people to care for a loved one who can no longer care for themselves. It’s hard enough to find people you trust to care for your children when you’re away, but what about when it comes to caring for adults? I’m sure it only gets more difficult.

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Is anything more annoying that the constant drip drip drip of a leaky faucet? Okay, so maybe there are lots of things that are more annoying than that, but lately this one is really bothering me. The faucet in our bathroom has a little leak and daddyo hasn’t had time to fix it yet.

Of course, my thought is if you’re going to take it all apart to fix it anyway, we may as well look into some new faucets, right? Like aMoen faucet with some super cool features. And as long as we’re looking at new faucets, we may as well get the new tub you promised me when bought the house, SIX YEARS AGO. So maybe that isn’t exactly what you promised, but you did promise to upgrade the bathroom to at least a jacuzzi tub.

Boy, I sure could have used a big jacuzzi tub last night. Calgon, take me away. The kids and I were playing in the front yard yesterday when my neighbor came over for a little visit. As I was telling her about my day, she told me she had plenty of wine at her house and I was welcome to come over and help myself. I told her I may take her up on that after I got the kids in bed. Daddyo came home when I was bathing the kids and I could hear him laughing and talking to someone so I assumed he was on the phone. He came into the bathroom and told me that our neighbor had brought over some wine. I laughed and said, “she must really be feeling sorry for me after our conversation. I guess she could tell I wasn’t feeling so great.” I said this thinking she had brought over a glass of wine. Much to my surprise, she had brought over THREE BOTTLES of wine. Guess I was worse off than I thought.

So I got to enjoy a nice glass of wine while I took my bath in my old bathtub with a drippy faucet. Maybe two glasses. It was nice, but it would have been even nicer with a new Moen faucet. Perhaps you are wondering what was so bad about my day? Rather than tell you, I think it will be more fun for you to guess. See if you can complete the paragraph below:

When I picked Speedy up from school, his teacher said, “can you stick around for a few minutes?” OH CRAP. This can not be good. So I waited until she could talk with me and she explained that Speedy had……….

So what do you think Speedy did at school? LauraP, you can’t play this one since you already know. But how about the rest of you? We’ve been seriously lacking in the comments department lately, so take your best shot.

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Okay, forgive the advertisements that will soon be showing up regularly. I’m going to donate the money I make advertising to my own fundraising campaign for Stella and others like her.

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So part of my job is online training - I do a lot of talking over the internet and connecting in real time with people around the world. The technololgy has come so far, you really can’t tell that you are talking over the internet vs talking over the telephone line. Because I work out of my home office, I’ve often considered getting a seperate business line instead of using just my cell phone for work calls.

But then I stumbled upon PBX Phone System and now I think I have another solution. This is really cool for people like me who work from home - in fact, the company I work for is completely comprised of people like myself, working from home offices all over the country.

After browsing the site, I think I’d go for this phone just because it looks cool. Actually, the Complete Broadband Phone System comes with a speaker phone and pre-programmed “softkeys” to drive Virtual Office features. And did I mention it looks cool? ha ha ha You can see I’m in this for the right reasons, huh? In my case, I’d want to use the “Unlimited Extension” plan because it offers free calls to multiple countries - and like I mentioned, I often work with people around the world.

There are lots of plans to choose from, including a “Fax Metered Extension” which provides the industry’s most reliable fax solution based on the T.38 ITU standard for sending faxes across IP networks in a real-time mode. You should definitely jump on over to Packet8 and check out the PBX Phone System.

I can hardly wait to see what they come up with next.

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I have to tell you that along with other gaming addictions I have mentioned here before, backgammon is probably one of the worst. I have spent more hours than I’d like to admit playing backgammon online.

I guess I like that playing backgammon really does require a certain level of intelligence. Unlike solitaire, which I also play way more often than I should, in order to outwit your opponent you have to plan ahead. You also have to be willing to take some risks. Anyway, I write all that to say that Backgammon is a lot bigger than I thought it was. Evidently, there is worldwide interest in playing some serious backgammon - an oonline backgammon gaming company is now even focusing its attention in Latin America.

So if you find yourself bored at work just log in and you could end up playing backgammon against someone who speaks a different language and is in another part of the world. Like I need any kind of excuse to play backgammon. Hey, maybe the secret to world peace is in backgammon! Everyone can speak backgammon and it can unite us one and all……okay, sorry. I couldn’t resist. I realize I’m really reaching here.

I need to go back and find all my posts with links to random games on the internet so those of you who have misplaced them can once again be fulfilled. Remember the egg basket game? Geez! I wish I could find that silly link. It was my favorite, followed closely by the helicopter game. Maybe I better not go linking for any of those links. It’s not like I have any extra time on my hands these days.

Speaking of games, I sure wish I could find a good online version of Q-bert. Do you remember Q-bert? We used to play it on our Atari. Man, those were the good ole days, weren’t they? Pole Position was another favorite. Ahhh….the eighties. I think if I ever win the lottery one of the things I’m going to do is throw an amazing eighties party. Complete with parachute pants, Atari games, Cyndi Lauper songs and reruns of Different Strokes. I might even have to serve YooHoo and Poprocks.

Ah, I’m digressing! Back to the backgammon thing. Check out this press release:

“http://www.BackgammonMasters.com online game company is expanding worldwide, placing its attention and resources on Latin American markets. By being the first-ever and only company to introduce an online version of the popular Spanish dice game, Perudo, (in addition to their poker and backgammon) BackgammonMasters has now established itself as an industry leader in most, if not all, of the world’s major online game playing regions. This increased activity in Latin markets has resulted in the need for the company to open a branch office in Central America.

By studying and listening to the demands of Latin audiences, BackgammonMasters is able to provide the most desirable and popular community games of particular world regions as part of their global strategy to maintain the world’s largest community game network. In addition, the BackgammonMasters animated series starring their tiger mascot, Jean-Claude, has drawn viewers from all over the world, including those from Latin Markets.

What is unique about BackgammonMasters’ software and all-in-one game concept is that with only one download from one site, players enter one game lobby and select from any number of games whether it be backgammon, perudo, poker and soon to come, blackjack. All of BackgammonMasters games are developed in multi player variations as part of their community concept, and the company has stated that more popular games for the Latin Markets are already in the works.

BackgammonMasters.com, the World Backgammon Network, has a revolutionary approach to online backgammon. BackgammonMasters.com owns and operates its own proprietary backgammon software that delivers a realistic experience, with first-rate graphics and unrivaled usability, in a fully-supported playing environment. BackgammonMasters.com supports all popular payment methods in Latin American countries such as Visa/MasterCard.

Report by Gammonish.com – backgammon online resource for news and information. More about backgammon online and online backgammon game rules can be found at http://www.gammonish.com.”

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Surely you all remember my rants about Time Warner Cable and how much it sucks. Well, maybe the poor people over at TW could benefit from better CRM software. Sure, their biggest problem isn’t in getting customers but in keeping them, but maybe AIMPromote could help them, anyway.

See, the way I figure it, if the sales team is happier and more efficient, then they’ll share some of that contentment with the customer service department. I have no hope for the Customer Service department on its own, so we have to start somewhere. Lead management is the focus of AimPromote and since the guys over at TW don’t seem to be so smart, they’d really appreciate the opportunity to spend more time on making sales and less time on learning software.

There’s even a 14 day free trial!

I’m not bitter about TW. Really, I’m not. Okay, maybe I’m a little bitter. I still giggle every time I see one of their repair vans in the neighborhood - which is quite often. And for the record, I’m very happy with my satellite. And my DSL. So take that, Time Warner.

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So i’m not really a Lost fan, but I thought that was a clever title for this post. I recently lost everything thas was on my external hard drive because I hadn’t been very diligent about backing up. Who hasn’t been there, right? It gives the reality show “Lost” a whole new meaning.

I’ve been thinking about using an Online Storage service and came across Ibackup. It gives you the option of mapping online data as a drive or as a webfolder you can easily drag and drop or edit files.

You can also use it as a backup service with a desktop scheduler ibackup for windows! Can you beat that? It makes me feel good knowing that PCWorld and PCMag lists ibackup.com as the editor’s choice.

I think I might check them out - especially since I work from home and have all of my work related files on my pc. It looks like a great option for small businesses!

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Is it possible to survive in this world without credit? Is it possible to go one day without receiving emails or other advertisements for “no hassle loans”?

Mortgages and home loans seem much to easy to obtain these days. Applicants get a secured loan and then somehow feel secure even though there is no way they will be able to make their payments. I don’t know what the answer is, but it just seems like society, and the financial industry, is making it too easy for people to get loans they can’t pay.

Everywhere you look is another advertisement on refinancing your mortgage - do people really change mortgage providers to take advantage of lower rates? Seems to me you’d have to be saving a LOT of money to justify the dollars you’d spend to remortgage.

I just don’t get it. Everyone wants something they don’t have and can’t afford. And companies are giving it to them. What’s wrong with this picture?

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I’ve tried several different websites that offer recipes and I’m pretty impressed with the variety offered at CookingSpot. As I perused the kids’ section I found many recipes I hadn’t seen before and most looked pretty easy to make. They have thousands of free recipes you can search through.

So who knows? Maybe I’ll become a chef afterall. Yeah, well, don’t get your hopes up or anything. I only go for the simple recipes, and when I find something incredibly delicious and impossible to screw up, you will be the first to know!

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I’m sure you’re wondering where I’m going with this one.

Blogging has evolved into such a huge “community” that there is now a blog conference being held in downtown Orlando, Florida. Seriously. What’s worse, is I think it would probably be a lot fun to go - maybe next year.

So what do you do at a blog conference? As they say in their ad, “Two words: Rock Star. Bloggers and Internet personalities are the Rock Stars of the information age. Bloggers reach millions of dedicated fans on a day to day basis, it’s easy to see why today’s humble blogger could potentially be tomorrow’s Rock Star. That’s why PostieCon ’07’s theme is “You’re A Rock Star”. We are here to educate bloggers on how to build traffic and readership, and use your notoriety and unique brand to create value and monetize your voice. It’s not all about money and fame, our conference is designed to help you become a better blogger. We have invited some of the world’s biggest bloggers to share their knowledge, perspective and experience with PostieCon Attendees. We provide the peeps and the knowledge, you use it to better yourself and build your blog.”

One of the session topics is called, “Why live life online?” I’d like to hear what that’s all about, what about you? I’ve never thought of this blogging stuff as “living life online” but it does make sense. I definitely have friends I only know through blogging. There are some days when the only “conversations” I have are through posts and comments. Uh oh, maybe I need to get out more.

Postiecon ‘07 is the name of the a href=”http://www.postiecon.com”>blog conference and you can read all about it a href=”http://www.postiecon.com”>here.

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