Digi-Journal

Every time I go with my husband to get his books at the beginning of the new semester, I am reminded of how much I miss being in college.

To me college wasn’t just about the university diploma, the fancy college diploma frame to hang on my wall, or the career advancement.  While those things are all quite nice, the experience of college is what I miss the most.

I’m not talking the dorm experience or the party college experience, either.  I didn’t stay in the dorms or go to a party school, so I actually never even experienced those things.  No, what I miss most is being in a scholarly environment.

I love to learn, and even now that I’m not in college, I still read scholarly books and research things on the Internet just for the sake of learning.  I also love being on campus: studying in the student lounges, grabbing lunch between classes, etc.  I just love the concept of being a student.

I suppose it’s only a matter of time before I go back.  I’ve considered getting my master’s degree in either creative writing or professional writing, but I can’t decide which.  The only bad thing is, all of the programs I am considering are online programs, which means I will miss out on one of the things I liked best about being a student: being on campus!

Technorati Tags: college diploma frame, creative writing, university diploma

Text messaging is a common way to exchange information today. It is also a way that some people make money. How people do this varies.

Some of the ways that people make money off of SMS messages include:

• Answering text messages. There are services available where users can ask questions and receive immediate answers by SMS message. Working as a guide for one of these services allows you to make money off of text messages.
• Providing premium SMS content. Some people will pay for SMS messages like news alerts or daily SMS horoscopes. Providing this content is a way to make money off of text messages.
• Mobile advertising. A lot of people are getting into mobile advertising. This is a way of doing targeted marketing to people’s cell phones. This type of advertising may increase a business’s profits which means that you make money off of it.
• Providing SMS services. Companies that offer services (such as mobile aggregator services) which help to make text messages move smoothly between carriers are making a lot of money off of this industry.

Can you think of any more creative ways to make money off of text messaging? You should try because there’s a lot of money to be made in this business today!

Technorati Tags: mobile aggregator, premium sms

When my wife and I decided that we were going to take our kids on their first cruise, we were pretty excited.  We knew that this would be the biggest vacation that we were going to take while our kids were living at home and we wanted to make it memorable.  We knew that it was going to cost us more money than we had ever spent on a vacation, but we knew that it would be worth it.

We started saving our money over a year beforehand and we were pretty sure that we had our finances in check before we started the drive to the airport.  But tragedy struck and we ended up in an accident.  Our minivan was totaled, but no one was hurt, so we went on the vacation anyway, fully knowing that when we returned home that we would need a new vehicle.

On the plane, we spoke to the kids about the problem and asked them if they minded that we wouldn’t do some of the family activities that we had planned.  We also asked them what was most important to them so that we could make decisions based on what the family wanted.

As it turned out, our oldest daughter searched online for the best swim with dolphins promotions and we were able to do all the activities we had planned and still had money left over for when we returned home.  Sometimes you wonder what you would do without your kids.

Technorati Tags: family activities, swim with dolphins promotions

We recently had a new neighbor move into the house next door to us, a rental property that has caused us problems on and off since we bought our house three years ago.

Just a couple of days after he moved in, we found a strange Australian shepherd dog wandering around the alley.  We didn’t recognize the dog, but we knew the new neighbor had dogs, because we saw the movers take dog stuff (bowls, dog food, and a big dog bed) into the house.

Sure enough, when we walked past the new neighbor’s privacy fence, we saw an Aussie nose similar to the loose dog’s poke out between two boards, and the dog whined pitifully.  Obviously we had her buddy, and she wanted him back.

We helped get the lost dog back into his yard, and let the new neighbor know that the dogs could apparently get out.  The neighbor turned out to be kind of creepy — an older fellow who was confined to a wheelchair, and who constantly complained about his daughter abandoning him here.  (Apparently he didn’t want to move into this house…?)

Anyway, those darned dogs got loose several more times before he had his daughter figure out how to seal up all the spots in the fence where they were getting through.  They don’t get out anymore, though, which makes me glad — because I don’t have to take them back and deal with our creepy neighbor!

Technorati Tags: Australian Shepherd, rental property

Last night I went to a party here in San Francisco. There were two out-of-town guests at this party. They presented very different ideas of what it’s like to travel to San Francisco. That’s because they were both from wildly different places.

One of the guests was from New York. His reason for traveling to San Francisco was to enjoy a laidback “visit to the country”. Of course, San Francisco is a dense urban area. In fact, many San Francisco attractions are similar to popular New York attractions (museums, theatres, etc.) Nevertheless, it’s quiet compared to New York so this traveler was coming here to relax and recuperate from his busy life.

The other guest was from a small town in Idaho. She had never been to a city with a population larger than 100,000. You can imagine how busy she thought San Francisco was with its one million odd people crammed into a fifty square mile space! For her, San Francisco travel is all about adventure and excitement and seeing “the big city”.

So is San Francisco a laidback destination or a busy one? It just depends on where you’re coming from. For those of us who live here, it’s that place that’s perfectly in the middle!

Technorati Tags: New York attractions, San Francisco attractions

There is a very popular school of thought in the web development world that rewards programmers who use WYSIWYG tools. The biggest challenge with these tools comes from those users who do not truly understand the code that is being written for them. Like when your 7th grade math teacher told you it was okay to use your calculator as soon as you could do the problems without it. Seemed counter intuitive then, and the same applies here.

When you do understand what your output is, you can then up your code capabilities by the installation of a dreamweaver extension , or an external software package that, when installed with the Adobe Extension Manager, provides additional functionality to Dreamweaver.

Specialty application development can also be added to your Dreamweaver application by installing
PHP scripts. These are pre-made code solutions that provide complete functionality.

After these scripts are loaded in, all that is left for the developer is to customize and apply appropriate style functions that will seamlessly integrate the new functionality into the existing web pages.

For those coders that truly understand what the output is all about, these extensions can save hours and hours of repetitive work. For those a little less knowledgeable, it is a fine opportunity to learn.

Technorati Tags: dreamweaver extension, PHP scripts

If you have a lot of debt then you are probably always looking for ways to save money. You might want to consider getting help from credit card debt settlement services. They reduce your expenses in two major ways:

1. Reduce your monthly debt payment. When you settle your credit card debt, you negotiate a monthly payment that you can actually afford to make. This means that you will be able to save money each month compared to what you were spending before on your debt.
2. Reduce your total debt payment. You will also reduce the total amount of money that you owe on the debt. This clearly saves you money.

These two methods of saving you money are enhanced by the other financial benefits of settling your debt. For example, you may get a lower interest rate. This further reduces the total amount of debt that you pay which saves you money in the long run.

Additionally, you should know that taking control of your debt is the first step towards taking control of your finances. This step allows you to get on track with saving and budgeting. This could be part of a bigger picture in which you learn to save money in a lot of new ways.

Technorati Tags: credit card debt settlement services

I used to think it was silly to travel just to participate in a sport. That’s probably because I was never much of an athlete. After dating several guys who were really into different sports, I came to see that there are some places that are simply ideal for certain sports. Now it makes sense to me that people travel to enjoy their favorite sports there.

Skiing is the best example of this that I can think of. There are certain conditions that make it easy to ski. The altitude, the terrain and the weather of a location will all create different skiing conditions. When you find the perfect conditions, your ski experience becomes much better. That’s why people go on vacations to ski Canadian Rockies and other perfect mountains.

Most sports can probably be done in most locations. You can pick up a baseball bat and swing it just about anywhere. Unless you’re at a pro level where you get to play at amazing ball parks, the parks that you play at are all pretty much the same. But that’s not true for all sports. When it comes to sports where the external conditions matter, it may be worth it to travel to better locations to play your games.

Technorati Tags: ski canadian rockies

My first job out of college was truly horrible.  On the surface it was what I wanted to do — writing.  But though my title was “Technical Writer,” it should have been “Glorified Secretary” or perhaps “Trained Monkey,” because that’s what I really was.

Basically, I was doing technical “writing” (there was very little actual writing involved, mostly copy/pasting) for an out-of-state firm that had a contract in my city.  They had been flying their people in every week and having them stay three nights or so at the Sleep Inn in the Denver Tech Center, but of course that was more expensive.  By hiring local writers they saved a lot of money on travel expenses.

I never questioned why they were so quick to hire a liberal arts major straight out of college — I was too excited about the job.  Well, it turned out the owner of the small company was kind of a jerk, and hired only young women fresh out of college with liberal arts degrees — a demographic that really had no expectations for high-paying jobs, and therefore would be relatively easy to control because they genuinely didn’t think they could find anything better.

The job sucked, to say the least.  The boss was a complete control freak.  But it did give me the experience that I needed to launch a career as a freelance writer — on paper, anyway, even if I know all I did was type what our boss transcribed, and then copied and pasted that into a new document.  (And good heavens, his writing was atrocious!)

But it was here that I got my first taste of how nice it would be to work from home.  One day I forgot a jump drive that contained work I had done from home.  (This was before I was totally disillusioned with the job — when I was still motivated enough to work from home.)  I had to drive back and get it.  While I was gone, my boss called the office, and my co-workers lied for me and said I was in the bathroom and wasn’t feeling well.

When I finally got in, my boss called again and sent me home, thinking I was really sick.  I felt rather bad about that, and took my work home with me again.  (Like I said, this was when I was motivated…)

That day turned out to be a pretty good day.  I took my laptop over to the cafe at Barnes & Noble and worked there for a while.  It was my first experience in how nice it is to work from any location I please, rather than being stuck in the same boring office day after day.

I’ve been freelancing full-time for more than three years now, and I have to say I still love it now as much as I did then.  And I’m once again motivated to put in the extra hours needed to get something done, which is a great feeling!

Technorati Tags: freelance writer, Sleep Inn in the Denver Tech Center, technical writer

My best friend recently got a dog for the first time. You would think that the dog was his child since he spoils it so much. The puppy certainly has more toys than most babies that I know! He’s even having a party to celebrate the new addition to the family.

I’m trying to figure out what to get for the puppy to take to the party. I’ve discovered that there are actually a lot of cool gifts for pets. I’ve narrowed down my choices to these few:

• Puppy body spray. It sounds ridiculous, I know. However, it seems like a great way to keep the dog smelling fresh which will benefit everyone at the party!
• Puppy treats. There are so many fun gourmet treats that they sell at pet stores these days. There is even a puppy bakery in my town!
• Puppy toys. I know, the dog has so many toys already that this seems senseless. I’m sure it could always use one more though.
• Puppy gift basket. Pet gift baskets offer the perfect opportunity to put a bunch of smaller gifts together to make one big gift.

What do you think I should go with for this puppy? What would you choose as a great gift for a pet lover?

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