All About Technology

If you have been reading my blog regularly,  you should know that when it comes to shopping for anything, my preference is always doing it online.  This holds true to anything….like last week.  On of our friends had a baby in June and we wanted to get them a gift.  My wife was adamant we send them designer baby clothes as a gift.  So we did.  During the process of selecting what to get, we went thru a slue of of choices but narrowed it down to the following:  appaman, barefoot dreams and jellycat items.

That was just about as much as I could take.  So I left the final decision making to her.  I don’t know what she ultimately decided on getting them, but I do know that the items we were looking at were all really nice and of high quality.  I can’t believe how huge the designer baby industry has gotten.  But then again, I remember when we had our first child.  As a new parent, you want to always get the best for your children and we often associate designer name brands as the “best”. Right or wrong is irrelevant.  All we care about is the feeling we have that makes us comfortable in knowing we are trying to do the best for our children.

Up to now, my family and I have been staying at resorts whenever we went on vacation.  However, I think all that is about to change.  Whenever we are on vacation we are always out and about, visiting people and places or sightseeing.  So, if you think about it, we use our hotels to basically just sleep and shower.  So why are we paying a premium to simply sleep in a room? We could stay at a places like the Ramada, Days Inn or Best Western and save a good amount of our expenses, which we can use to do more fun activities and/or stay longer.

The Best Western locations are very convenient and clean.  They are always located near the attractions we are interested in and provide good service.  They are kid friendly which is very very important and some even have activities for kids.

The Days Inn locations have very reasonable rates and offer clean rooms as well. They too are very strategically located and offer great accommodations for families as well as business travelers.  I have never ever had any issues with reservations being mixed up or confusion with Days Inn during my business travel days.

My number one choice for alternatives to hotels and resorts is the Ramada.  These hotels are really great in terms of their rooms, meals and convenience.  Last year during our visit to Lake George, we stayed at the local Ramada and it was just like being at a resort, but at a fraction of the cost.

I love summer time, and am excited its here!!!!  The kids are out of school, the weather is getting hot and the days are nice and long.  Just perfect, except for one thing.  Sleeping at night.  I don’t like running the AC at night but when I don’t I get crazy night sweats.  I wake up sweaty, irritated and very uncomfortable. The only part i hate about summer is sweating at night.  But I think I have found a something that will help.

I just ordered a product called BEDFAN.  What a genius concept that has become a reality. Simply put, this is a directional fan that is placed at the foot of your bed and when turned on, will circulate and push fresh cool air onto your blanket while you sleep.  The fan is virtually silent, so there is no noise and all you feel is a cool stream of air on your blanket while you sleep.  No more sleeping hot and waking up sweaty!  Now I will be able to go to sleep and wake up completely refreshed and ready to take on anything the summer day has in store for me.  One of the best features of this fan, is that it is small enough for me to take it with me when I go on my summer vacations too.

My wife told me about Ann Brook, the Caring Psychic. and how she had read that her love tarot reading is something that is making people believers in this subject.  I for one, as mi the case with almost all men, am not a believer in this, so when she told me about this, I just tuned her out.  However, this was on of those times that she kept on and on and on about a love psychic reading had helped a woman in Ohio find her true love and complete her childhood dream of marrying and having a princess wedding.

Apparently, she was told by the love fortune teller that to find her man, she would have to go to the snow….and that was all she was told.  SO she went to Aspen on her winter vacation and found the man she would eventually marry.  The weird part about this, is the fact that the man she met, lived in the same town as her about a mile and a half north from her house in Ohio.  But, they had to both be in Aspen so that they could meet.  I guess destiny is a weird thing and we shouldn’t really question it.  Just go with it and see where it takes us.

As I have gotten older, I have truly become a big fan of sending flowers as gifts to people I know (except the guys of course). The best is what I call Birthday Flowers.  This is what I send to family members regardless of where they live.  A simple online search for Flower Delivery, and I am able to select an arrangement and have it delivered in just a matter of minutes from the comfort of my own home or anywhere I have a PC set up.  It literally that simple, and the flowers are always very well received.

I remember last year my mom was visiting some friends in Delaware, and was going to be with them during mother’s day.  As I always do, I searched for Wilmington Florists online and was able to find the perfect flower arrangement and have it sent to her.  As a matter of fact, I even sent an arrangement to the friend she was visiting.  Receiving flowers on her vacation was something my mom had never experienced before and she was really touched by it.  And, I must say, this made me feel very good as well.  I was able to let my mom know how much I care about her, no matter where she may be!!!

Most credit card companies are now trying to stick it to their customers before the new credit card laws go into effect.  This means your interest rates are increasing and your credit lines dropping….what an evil combination!!!  However, I am glad to say that I was able to switch my credit cards and get much better rates and terms with other more competitive lenders I found.

I came across a website that provided the ability to compare credit cards side by side so I was able to clearly see the low interest credit card offers and further look into the ones I thought I would be interested in.  It is amazing what you will learn about a lender when you compare credit cards and their associated offers, interest rates and terms.  This ability to compare credit card offers is invalueable as it can mean the difference between saving oe wasting  severl hundered dollars per month.  In any type of an economy, wasting money is dumb…..and in a bad eceonomy such as what we are experiencing today has even worse consequences.  Having a good credit card is the first step in being financially sound and I suggest everyone compares credit cards prior to signing up for them.

I really wish the internet was as prevalent when I was in college as it is now.  There is so much information on the net that college coursework research has become so easy to do.  I remember I had so much trouble with my econ classes in terms of finding good research papers and articles for my econ projects.  I remember spending countless hours in the library stacks to find one or two relevant articles to back up my theories and write papers about it.  Today however, there are countless websites that offer Econ Homework Solution and even Econ Exam Test papers and answers  that you can actualy spend your time studying as opposed to finding research information and papers.

Just think about all of the information this puts at your fingertips and the amount of time it will save you.  Research can be done from any PC from virtually anywhere and at anytime.  You no longer have to schedule your workload around the times the library is open and hope that the informoation you are looking for is still available for you and not checked out by someone else.

All this makes college life so much easier and mor enjoyable.  Less time on homework and more time on social activities.  What a way to spend your 4 years of college!!!

This economy is really changing the landscape on new businesses.  From what I have read, it seems as though the biggest industry that has evolved as a result of this bad economy is the loan modification and credit repair industries.   Banks are cutting back on the credit they are extending to consumers, which in turn is lowering consumer’s credit scores and just like that your credit score is lowered.  However, this practice is really hurting folks that have worked all their lives and made payments on time to improve credit only to have it taken away at the discretion of the banks.

Having clean credit is the most important thing to take care of in these bad times.  As credit becomes tighter, the higher your credit score is the better your chances are for getting approved for any kind of a loan, that is loans for cars to home loan mortgages. The difference in loan rates varries so greatly for people with differing levels of credit scores.  Having a good credit score as opposed to an excellent credit score can mean the difference in paying up to $300 more per month on a car loan.

My wife and I just came back from a weekend in the northern California wine region area.  This was a great little get away and we learned a lot about wines, how they are made, bottled and the best way to enjoy them.

The Wine Pairing information that was provided was very interesting to the both of us.  It was really great to find out what foods go best with which wines and which foods bring out the flavors of the wine.  In other words, this information has now enabled us to know what kind of wine to order or drink with which food.  Not only does this make the food & wine taste better, but it also makes us seem more knowledgeable and learned about the “finer things in life”.

In the past, we have always read and relied on Wine Reviews to get information about how to drink wine and what to order.  After this trip we now know for ourselves.  We are no longer reliant on what others think or like.  We can make our decisions based on the things we have learned and know about different wines, different Wine Grades, and their differing flavors.

I think my newest favorite word is FREE.  I am so tired of hearing about the bad economy and how awful the job market is and how the real estate market stinks, and on and on and on, that I am on a mission to take up offers on Freebies.

I want to see how much Free Stuff I can accumulate.  I know there are tons of websites out there that offer all kinds of Free Samples in return for an email address.  I will find these sites and start my “Free Trek”.  I am even willing to sign up for Student Freebies just to prove that spending money is over rated.  I am in the planning process for this experiment of mine.  And, I know that with a little bit of research and work, I will be able to amass a lot of items for free.  I have a feeling that the things I will be able to get for free will varry from items like pens to actually useful items like CD’s, DVD, sand Im even hoping for electronics like cameras, as well as vacations, shopping sprees and the likes.

From what Ive been able to gather thus far, filling out online surveys is the most popular format used to reeceive freebies.  Its easy and doesnt take much time, and its rewards are usually pretty good.

Stay tuned for my results……