Romantic Tech Skills

One of my favorite things about the guy that I am dating is that he has excellent skills with technology. He can fix my computer every time that there's a problem with it. I know that doesn't sound particularly romantic but sometimes usefulness is better than romance!

Actually, he's pretty good at using his tech skills to send a little bit of romance my way as well. He's the kind of person who is always sending instant messages and text messages and emailing me photos to stay in touch with me throughout the day.

When we first started dating, he already had the plans to spend the summer in a foreign country. He wasn't able to talk to me much while he was gone. However, he always found a way to stay in touch. One time when I had a dentist appointment that I was nervous about, he used an SMS gateway to send me a text message from an Internet cafe that he was at. I wouldn't have known how to do that but he did and the thoughtfulness behind the gesture was sweet.

Of course, he does the more traditional romantic things as well. He brings flowers on my birthday and all of that. But honestly I prefer the way he uses technology to get into my heart!

Dreamweaver Extensions: for the coder with everything

For his latest birthday, I decided to buy my nephew something that would really do him so good. Since he had been demonstrating some real consistency in his professional life working as a web developer, I decided to inquire into what his digital tool set looked like.

I made inquiries of him under the pretense that I was interested in learning more about doing similar type of work for a non-profit charity that I'm involved with. Once he started talking, I could barely keep up with all the stuff he was sharing. It was good to see and feel his passions for the work he is doing.

When he got to the area of web application development, he indicated how much he would like to get a license for a program called Dreamweaver, made by Adobe. Further he indicated there were add on applications called dreamweaver extensions which would allow him to develop even faster with higher degrees of perfection.

While I'm not a rich man, I do make much more money than he does, so spending a couple of bucks to help him in his career was not a challenge for me at all. In fact, I personally believe this was the best gift I'd ever gotten him. When I saw the gratitude on his face after giving him the software, I knew he thought so as well.

Budget for the best rated web hosting

When it comes to web site hosting, much of the time you get what you pay for. There are always unsavory characters that will try and steer you towards higher priced service offerings that are inflated versions of perfectly affordable web hosting services. The best way you can ensure you'll not get caught in those traps is to proactively seek out the best rated web hosting companies.

When you do this you are going to find that most of the members of those top lists have several things in common. One, they all tend to have happy customers. Very happy customers. With hundreds of millions of web sites being hosted on the Internet today, it doesn't take very many dissatisfied consumer web hosting customers to drastically reduce a company's ratings in any of the consumer reporting sites.

Another aspect they all tend to do well is provide true quality for their service prices. With so many of the hosting companies in business today trying to snow their potential customers with inflated, yet useless metrics it can be challenging to know who to trust. If you're currently looking at a company that continually focuses on storage capacity and you are really more interested in transfer rates, move on. You'll be happier that you did when you get with the right company and your monthly bills are protected from sudden bursts of transfer due to your website's success.

No More Physical Paperwork

The company I work for recently changed the way we have to turn in reports and receipts. And so far it has kind of been a rough transition. Well at least it has been for me because I’m not all that techno savvy. I can use the fax machine just fine. I can use the copier fine too. But instead of actually turning in physical reports and copies of receipts it all has to be digital.

So the new drill now is that we have to scan everything that is on paper in. For all of the old paperwork they had a special company come in that was a document imaging service. And I will admit that I can see where in the long run this will save a lot of paper.

But now instead of just stapling my reports together and turning them in, I have to do everything electronically. Some of my reports can just be turned in by emailing them without even printing them out. And that’s easy enough. But the difficult part is when I have to turn in receipts. Instead of making copies now I have to scan them in. Then I have to remember to save it a special way. I suppose I’ll catch on, but right now it’s a pain.

What Is Happening To Those Of Us Who Own Guns?

I don’t think I’m being paranoid when I say this because I have seen first hand what is happening in the current administration as far as gun control. I myself am guilty of hoarding ammunition. I am also scared of the rumors that are going around about some sort of a national registry that gun owners will have to be a part of. There is even a rumor that us gun owners will have to declare what guns we own on our tax returns.

So I like many people from states where gun registration is not required am keeping things on the down low as they say. But at the same time I am trying to stock pile. I don’t hunt. I just target shoot. And the guns I have are all what you would call tactical weapons. I like to use the word tactical instead of assault. I’m not assaulting anyone, I’m just plinking targets.

And now instead of plinking targets, I’m forced to hoard ammo because of the writing I see on the wall. And in order to be as discreet as possible, I even removed the shooting videos that I had posted on YouTube. I’m a big fan of having the right to own all of this tactical gear. I sure hope our current administration does not infringe upon that right.

Doing my Taxes Late

I don’t know what happened this year, but somehow we are off track to have our taxes done on time.  It could be that the passing of my parents messed things up, but whatever the reasons, we need to get them done.

Our accountant was happy to hear from us and we made an appointment to meet with him to prepare our tax returns.  Since I am not the organized person in my marriage, it was up to my wife to get everything in order so that we would be ready when we went to the accountant.

She collected all of our medical receipts (including the one for my hearing aid), the charitable donation receipts and all those other forms that we needed.  She put them all in color coded envelopes and then we were all ready to go.

After just an hour at the accountant, he had everything that he needed to prepare our income tax returns, and we will just have to wait until he is done to know how much we will get back or how much we will owe.  I am hoping for a refund so that I can buy a new laptop, but I guess we will have to wait and see.