PonderEthereal

I wake up in the morning, do my morning routine and leave for work. At the end of my block, my phone tells me that it’s turning on bluetooth and gps for me. And it does.

I get within a half mile of work in the morning and my phone tells me to have a great day and that it’s turning down the ringer and turning off gps. But if I go to the office off-hours, it doesn’t bother because there is no one else there that the ringer could bother. I like it that way.

If I go to court, my phone tells me it’s going into silent mode, and it does.

When I open maps or navigation, my gps turns on and when I close them, my gps turns off. GPS is a battery hog so that works out well.

When I come home, my phone tells me that it’s turning all…

Being a single parent means that all of the job stuff, all of the household stuff and all of the parenting stuff gets done by one person - me. And sure, kids are great for slave labor around the house but I can only beat him so much before he cries uncle - and the tub STILL isn’t really “clean”. And were I to delegate meal planning or cooking, we’d have Ramen every night with mac and cheese once in a while for good measure. And maybe some fruit loops.

I’m not a very good cook. I mean.. I AM when I try - but for me, it’s SO MUCH EFFORT and time. It’s not something I enjoy. When I am very organized, I use my gtd friendly meal planning system :
1) I have a list of all of the meals that my family likes. If we try something new…

Once upon a time, I kept a nice neat folder (or 5) with product documentation and warranty receipts in it. The booklet for each purchase we made that required documentation or had a warranty was stashed in the folder. Once every couple of years, I’d go through it and pull out anything we didn’t have or didn’t need anymore.

These days though, most manufacturers offer the product documentation online now. If you’re reading ‘getting things done’ tips on the internet, you are probably pretty computer based so it makes sense to go with the electronic version for sanity’s sake.

• Create a folder on your computer for user manuals or product documentation. Mine is : \My Documents\household\products
• When you make a purchase that would have required a user manual or documentation, go to the website (that day, before you forget) and download the manual.
• Rename the manual file to the name of the item…

Antivirus Soft is devil spawn. My computer is protected to the teeth and somehow it still managed to not only sneak onto my computer via just going to a website (not opening or clicking anything… and not even a porn site - because that might have been more worth it) and when I noticed it, my spyware and virus programs didn’t recognize it.

Antivirus Soft masquerades as anti virus software - but it’s malware. As part of it’s masquerade, it has a little green shield that appears in your system tray and it pops up ‘virus warnings’ every few seconds and blocks other applications from running - especially the anti spyware/malware/virus software that you immediately run in order to get rid of it - and even Task Manager.

There are other sites with removal instructions on them - but the recommended malware software didn’t find it, no one addressed the fact…

Online dating kinda has a reputation for being a little bit scary. You get to hear what they SAY they are like and maybe see a picture or two - and then you are face to face with them at possibly one of the most wonderful - or horrific meetings you’ve ever had. But, if you use face reading, there is a whole lot you can tell about a person before you ever decide to meet them.

I took a class by Barbara Roberts on face reading a couple of years ago and what I learned from that one class has been invaluable in online dating. That said, one picture is only one moment in time. Some of the more changable features might only be indicitive of that moment. I want to see more than one picture of a person and I really only read for the things that are most important…

This works under the following conditions :

• You have a working computer that you want to reload but it doesn’t have a (working) CD-ROM drive
• You have a working computer with a working CD-ROM
• These computers are on a network together and can share files

In my case, I have a REALLY old (9 years?) laptop that I let visitors use that needed to be reloaded. It’s dying piece by piece and the CD-ROM was one of the first to go.

You will need : Your Windows XP CD and key (this is not a hack for WinXP), MagicISO, Daemon Tools Lite

1. Put your WinXP cd into the working computer’s CD-ROM.
2. Download MagicISO onto the computer with the working CD-ROM. Using MagicISO, create an ISO file from the CD. An ISO file is an image of the CD… or a duplicate copy. In MagicISO, click ‘tools’ and ‘make ISO from CD’.
3. Copy the new ISO file from the…

The theme lately has been making stuff with what we have. If I’m going to buy the ice cream, I need to not buy the syrup. So I decided to make it! This is cobbled together from various sources and is absolutely delicious over ice cream. I’m not sure I will buy chocolate sauce again. :)

Ingredients
1 cup milk (I used reduced fat - I’m sure other kinds will work too)
6 T sugar
1 bag of semi sweet chocolate chips
1 tsp vanilla

Heat the milk at medium heat, ALMOST to a simmer. Pour the chocolate chips in a little bit at a time, constantly stirring. When all of the chocolate chips are in, stir until all lumps of chocolate are completely melted. Add sugar and vanilla to taste. Store refrigerated, in a sealed container.

This is a modified version of a much ritzier recipe that I was able to make with common ingredients that I had on hand. Everybody has pork chops now and again (I just happened to have a bottle of plum wine kickin’ it in the cabinet that I never used) and this is just a different way to make them.

It was absolutely kid-approved delicious with a much more extravagant taste than most of our meals. It is super cheap to make when you calculate the ingredients so it’s great on a budget AND it’s really, surprisingly quick.

Total prep time : 10 minutes
Total cook time : 15 minutes

Ingredients:
2 thick cut pork chops sliced into 1/4 inch thick slices
1/2 cup flour seasoned with salt and pepper
1 1/2 tblspn. Cooking oil
1 tsp. Butter
1/3 tsp. Garlic, minced
4 ozs. Plum Wine (you can get it at most liqueur stores)
1/2 cup Cream
1/2 tsp. Parsley, chopped
salt…

I have quickly become addicted to yoville. Yay for no strings attached home decorating and attention to tiny miniature little perfect pieces of minutia! However, there isn’t a whole lot you can do in yoville without yocash or yocoins.

Yoville is a game application available on at least myspace and facebook (maybe others?) in which the player can dress their character, buy houses and furnish them and otherwise socialize with other characters. In line with other social networking site applications, it’s not a really feature rich game but it’s fun if you’re into that sort of thing.

If you can get yocash, you can convert it into yocoins at the bank - which is what most items in the stores are priced in. But how do you get yocash? Here is how to build your daily store of yocash for free or little cost.

• Visit the factory every six hours to…

You’ve cycled your tank and so you’re ready to add a few more fish. How many fish can you add to your aquarium? How soon? In what order? The answer is, err on the side of caution. A mistake could be fatal to your fish.

How many Fish Can I have in my aquarium?

The number of fish you can have depends upon the size tank you have. It’s less about how many bodies you can cram into your tank and more about how much waste your tank can reasonably handle. Too many fish causes ammonia levels to remain too high and could kill your fish.

There are two rules that people often quote when stocking a tank - 1 inch of fish for every gallon of water or 1 inch of fish per every 12 square inches of surface space. These are great guidelines - but not great rules if left at face value.…