This started in my home about a month ago. We have smoke alarms outside each bedroom door and in hall way ant the smoke alarm outside mine started chirping intermittently.
It made me insane and at 3 am I put in a new battery. Beeping started again about an hour later.
Since we have 5 smoke alamrs in our upstairs - maybe a bit of over kill , I felt okay about just removing the battery for the night.
Well, now the one in basement doing the same thing. Its like some kid of Chinese water torture.
Thinking it might not be the battery and a clogged sensor- so took the vacuum to tit and that seems to have stopped it.
A smoke alarm detects a change in the density of air so something that hinders its sensor wil trigger a problem.
I read also using a can of compressed air ( the type to clean computer) also works the same way.
So - if your smoke alarm beeping or chirping after changin the batteries- most likely it is clogged sensor - try getting rid of built up dust before you replace.
All who know me know that i am a serious bargain hunter and a shrewd shopper. In every circle there ia someone who knows where to get the best and the cheapest. I am that person. I can tell you what day and where to get a great deal on potato chips, what the best cell phone rate is or where to go for a new BBQ.
I am well loved by the neighborhood kids who thanks to me all have brand new Nintendo DS systems for next to nothing.
My hands down favourite haunt for any kind fo a shopping deal in Canada is Red Flag Deals an online deal sharing forum.
I have a killer home theater thanks to the reader and posters at Red Flag. I don’t go grocery shopping without checking where the best deals are that weeks. I pay next to nothing for blank DVD’s and I have even bought items from other readers ( at prices less than ebay). I have been a member for almost 5 years and probably saved hundred if not thousands of dollars.
I am a stay at home mom and take pride in being able to buy stuff for my family at a great price. I am not sexist but on some level I feel like by taking time to find a good deal it is a to show my husband how much I appreciate his slogging it out every day earning a living.
I have had countless deals but a couple stand out at the ones that gave me most satisfaction.
I bought a fantastic Ridgid brand shop-vac at Home Depot for 19.95 that was regularly priced at 69/00 It was a double whammy because it was a great sale and I was able to price match with a 10.00 coupon.
Not many women would be so thrilled at a shop-vac purchase but I was grinning from ear to ear all weekend over that one.
The deal that I most known for within are family is the week all our kids and the neighbourhood kids got dirt cheap brand new Nintendo DS’s from EB Games. They had a promo on where you traded in 5 games with a trade in value of 8.00 and got a brand new Nintendo DS.
t was also the same week RFD ( Redflag Dea;_ posters were posting that Blockbuster had Playstation2 games on for 7.99. I went in and not only did they have quite a few used PS2 games for sale at 7.99 ( and had at least an 8.00 trade in value at EB Games) but they had a slew of Nintendo DS games for 8.99. Games that normally had a very high ticket price- Drawn to Life, Sponge Bob, etc. I bought a few to supplement our collection and was able to trade-in and get new DS’ for all our kids- which we really needed. The only one we had had a cracked screen. So for about 50.00 and couple of used games we made out pretty well.
Further more- I explained the deal to some neighbourhood kids and went through their games with them and took them to Blockbuster to buy games they could trade in… They went in with their parents and go new DS”s as well. i was a HUGE hero on our street for quite while.
This was by far the most satisfying deal for many reasons. One of the kids down the street was having a really rough time at home and they didn’t have a lot of money . He was 13 and all his friend had a Nintendo DS and he was using an OLD OLD gameboy . I know not exactly a tragedy- but to him it was a big deal.
When I brought home my kids kids new DS’s he asked if he could have our old one with the broken screen- it just broke my heart . I went back to Blockbuster and bought 5 games for 7.99. The cost was under 40.00. I then went and got him a brand new Cobalt Blue DS that no one else had. It was by far the best 40.00 I have ever spent.
Seeing the look of that kids face will be with me for a long long time.
As a footnote, the boy ended up giving me his old game boy- which my girlfriend took to Cuba with her and was gave to her foster child she sponsors.
The whole experience was memorable very satisfying and was a case where money did buy a little bit of happiness.
it does not happen very often but every once in a while i will find a product that I LOVE. It does exactly what is says it will do and sometimes MORE.
This week i stumbled along something that I am in love with. You may recall my nightmare with the raccoon family . They are gone , thankfully. In our finished basement we have home theater set-up and there was a cold air return on one of the walls that led to under house extension and this is where the raccoons set up house. Even writing about it now gives me willies. I could hear there every movement when downstairs.
We had tried using moth balls and ammonia soaked rags to get rid of them They did not work but house sure smelled- and still did up until a few days ago.
Best Scent For Glade Oil Plugin
I have been using Glade Plugin Oils. I know not that earth shaking- but the scent we are using Lavender Vanilla is to die for. My basement smells fresh and clean from lavender but sort of cosy with the vanilla undertone. I will never get sick of this scent! I feel like I have my home back again. I know I may but nutty but it is true.
Making money from a simple web sit or blog is all the rage these days. I can;t exactly say I have gotten rich from my blog0 I may make enough to treat family to ice cream one a month But tons of people swear buy it.
One key to making money on a site is to get traffic. This is one of the hardest parts of marketing your web site: building traffic to your site.
One of the most popular and successful ways to increase traffic is to use pay per click like AdWords. I have had limited use working with pay per click and can tell you it can be very overwhelming to some one who is not web savvy or knows what a keyword is or why keywords are important.
Many companies will offer you services to help you or completely manage your campaign; making landing pages and designing ads that will work for your site.
Companies like Network Solutions offer starter package from 125.00 to help you manage your campaign. This would have cost a fortune even a coupe of years ago!
If you are serious about building your web based business than you really need to have some sort of online presence and using a PPC management service is a must have.
We are in some kind of deck paint hell. We bought our house last year. In the time of making the offer and getting the house the people who owned our house at the time decide to paint the deck It is very large, about 12×20 feet overlooking inground pool.
The previous owner were in a hurry to make the deck look nice and didn’t care how it got there- they use indoor wall paint.
We spent DAYS last summer- not to mention tons of money trying to get the paint off. We rented floor sanders, used every chemical imaginable. Spent a fortune on scrapers and special sand paper. We could not get that paint off. We also tried water pressure hose and that wrecked wood.
Over the winter some of the paint came quite loose and we able to get most of it off with the pressure hose. TONS of paint chips all over the lawn and even worse into the pool. I ended up changing sand in filter.
Thre are still way to many paint remnant to even think of putting a clear stain on the pressure treated wood.
I dont; know what to do. it looks AWFUL right now.
We may try an opaque stain but I am not hopeful- will still sinf ‘ring: marks around paint.
Woot.com has a good deal on Blu-Ray computer today, its a Gateway GM5664 Desktop and features:
9600 Quad Core
1TB HDD
3GB RAM
Blu-ray
Radeon HD 2400XT graphics card with 2 DVI ports.
downside- Vista Home Premium and no HDMI- although it is shipped with a DVI to HDMI dongle
IZEA’s SocialSpark came out of beta in May. The service s meant to compliment or maybe reason replace PayPerPost.
What is it? It is a social media site that hooks up advertisers who want a product, event or service promoted in the blogosphere. with bloggers. The bloggers are compensated the their time spent writing a post with sponsors link.
This falls within Google guidelines as any links have the “nofollow” attribute and will not be followed by search engines or what Google calls paying for page rank.
The idea is to create Buzz around the advertisers product and generate traffic.
To become a member of SocialSpark you just need to sign-up-membership is totally free. An advertiser can set up a “campaign” asking bloggers to write about a specific topic and post how much they will pay for blogger to write about it in their blog. Bloggers can browse the marketplace and choose from opportunities and then write about it. Most opportunities seem to be for about 5-10.00. They are ones for more money but they never seem to be available.
I did fins the site difficult to use and not sure I will go back. Was hard to figure out what opportunities were available to me and took a long time for my blog to be approved- almost 2 weeks.
This is a sponsored post.
I recently went to a “business” conference and the night before I realized I had no business cards, I works a consultant in It very part time. I have never had a need for business cards- everyone emails me and I turn away most new business because I just don’t; have the time. I gave business cards ZERO thought. I realized I would need them because I would be meeting so many new people and it was be easier to trade cards than to try and get their email and follow up next day and sen them my info… I was going to network and possible get some lucrative speaking engagements. I did something really dumb- I made up some card very quickly and printed them on my home printer. And it looked like it.
I was mortified when I handed these out. They were on PINK paper to top it all off.
I wish I had spent some time on decent looking cards. One of my favourite places to print business stuff is Vista Printing. On their site you can create your own business cards using their free online logo designer. Their catalogue of logo is much nicer that i expected and I found something right away- it was clean and slick looking.
They also carry a nice array of cheap address labels that suit most businesses and any budget- 140 labels for under 10 bucks - not bad!
You can actually get paid to blog. I signed up to try a few weeks ago on a whim. You sign up, submit your blog for review ( usually takes a few days) and after you are accepted you get to grab “opportunities” . You write a post or review about a product, site or service usually. The sponsor of the add will often have requirements- like mention this product or link to this page or insert this image. Usually the post need to be about 100 word long- sometimes less sometimes more.
I make about 150.00 a month but others make quite a bit. The least you will be paid is 5.00 a post. The most I was ever paid was 90.00. The post you are reading now, I am being paid 20.00 for.
The topics you can write about are wide and varied. There are opps for almost any kind of blog. Web hosting, hobby sites, parenting blog, personal blog, pets, shopping, etc. I wouldn’t worry if you have a really obscure topic on your blog- you would be shocked at some of the odd things you can write about.
You can’t just stuff you blog with paid post however- you need to have original content and a reasonable well written blog.
This is a fun post to make-revealing an embarrassing moment as part of a “coming out of your shell” campaign by Gulf oysters and Oyster aware campaign. The site itself is serious- they are promoting the nutritional benefits of oysters as well as how to enjoy eating ousters safely. Here is video my niece and I made today that reveals an embarrassing moment
Getting your site listed on a a link from another site help your site get found by search engines and will also help you get page rank. Having a better page rank will help yo get better rankings in search engine results pages. Hoe do you get other sites to put a link on your site? Does it matter what kind of site you get listed on? When looking for sites or blogs to get links from try looking for blog that follow or belong to the dofollow movement. When you comment you link will be allowed to be followed by search engines, Most blogs do not allow search engines to follow link in the comments section.
Another great way to find links for your site is to look for inexpensive or free directories. Look for directories that do not require you to link back- often this well worth pay a few dollars for. When you submit your site- use good anchor text in your sites “name” or title. Choose keywords you want to be for in the search engines. Repeat those keywords again in your site description to get the most bang for your buck on your directory listing.
One solid web directory is Dirmania . They have decent Google Page Rank and make it easy to submit your site for approval. The web directory has number of listings including some other free directories for you to check out for site or blog.
I have had constant dishwasher problems. In our old house I go so frustrated I went and out a new one- only to have it break down 1 month after warranty expired.
I have been able to solve three of them.
1) Dishwasher not draining and flooding kitchen floor
One this was caused by a clogged drain. The kitchen drain had about 6 broken wooden Popsicle sticks in it. I discovered this Christmas’s day and had my kitchen torn apart while making turkey dinner.
Dishwasher Not Draining Another Problem
After a bit of investigative work I discovered that we had run out of dishwasher detergent and my husband used regular liquid dish washing dish soap. When you do that air bubbles get trapped and water can’t get out. You may not see bubbles- they will be in drains.
This was more challenging. I tried running dishwasher with 1/2 cup of vegetable oil to break up soap.. but found using vinegar worked better. Add about 2 cups of vinegar and run. You will have to repeat a couple of times.
The sprayer/spray arm clogged. Took it apart and found all kinds of weird stuff. Alot of plastic triangles from cut corners of milk bags for some reason.
If you have a dishwasher problem- please post - if you found a solution- please post!
Did something fun today- The Mexican restaurant, El Pollo Loco has a contest for promoting their legendary flame-grilled Mexican chicken. It is a video contest- you basically create a short video ( under two minutes) and upload to You Tube. I am very challenged when it comes to this kind of things and found it quite easy. They want you to go “loco” and create a video explain why you like their flame grilled chicken the best. Video with highest rating win. You can get full details and rules on their site : contest details here. Basically you need to be US resident, 18 years or older and video must be “family” friendly.
My niece was over tonight and we tried making our own - feel free to vote for us!!!
I am posting here because I am so frustrated. I deal with Royal Bank and don’t usually have a problem. The bank let an email money transfer hang in limbo- it showed up in my account but was not officially “posted”. I wrote a cheque that LOOKED like was fine when I went into my online banking account. It wasn’t. I was charged and NSF fee of 35.00 and the cheque bounced. I called bank to ask why- as it clearly showed their was money in the account. The took a few minutes to figure out and admitted it was there error. The reversed the NSF charge, I also wanted a note for the company to whom the cheque was returned. IN an example of the WORST customer service I have ever heard of- they said they would- for a fee of 10.00!!!!!!!!! How insane is this??? Wow. I lost my mind. They would not budge. I am sure I could have taken to another level- and most likely will on Monday. I just didn’t have it in me. I was so neaten down by the experience. Even though it was not my fault I feel horrible and embarrassed about the bounced cheque. I don;t think I have bounced a cheque in 15 years.
Would love to hear other’s “Worst Customer Service Stories” Please Share!
My brother is off to school- quite proud - he will be attending Oxford University in Oxford. My kids are pretty impressed as this is home to “Hogwart’s Great Hall” from the Harry Potter movie series!
Sooo.. whole family in a tizzy looking for travel and flight deals. My cousin got married in South Africa two years ago ( yes, I know another destination wedding! ) and we used a UK travel agency to book our flights to Johannesburg and help plan our trip. We went for 3 weeks and it was beautiful.
I am of course proud of my brother but also thrilled that I have an excuse to go to Europe! I like London- though crazy expensive, but I would like to see a few others Countries at some pint- Poland and Holland come to mind. I am fascinated by the history of the Warsaw ghettos and my husband has never been to Holland or Amsterdam and I would say it is on of my favorite cities I the work the people are just wonderful- warm, friendly and funny!
It’s going to be an expensive year for us- travel wise- so not sure we will be able to go until at LEAST the fall.
I don’t normally post movies here but I saw an absolutely fantastic movie this week, called “Juno” by Jason Reitman ( Ivan’s son) and starring actress Ellen Page- who to me is the next Jodie Foster. The cast of the movie is surprising- Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner are both excellent. As are Jk Simmons and Alison Jenney. The plot is about a very quirky and precocious 16 year, Juno, who finds herself pregnant. The story is about what she plans to do with baby. It is both funny and sweet- without being sentimental. Really really good.
I was listening to one of my favorite radio shows this week - if not one of my favorite shows period- the Howard Stern Show. On Monday he had a guest who was a plastic surgeon. The doctor was a specialist- and did a kind of surgery I had never heard about- it is quite alternative and a new field- labia plastic surgery. This is a legitimate field. I didnt realize there was such a need- but apparently a lot of women suffer from embarrassment about they way their privates look.
I am not against plastic surgery in general if it is needed. I was a bit dubious about the actual need for this type of surgery- but in fact after looking at some before and after pictures- I can see why.
I am have a real problem with numbers. I work in IT and can look at code and figure out where a problem is quite easily- despite having something called dyscalculia- which is like a sort of dyslexia with numbers. I rely very heavily ion software to do math and calculations for me- and eve then I have trouble because problems inputting numbers. My software of choice has been Quickbooks- I have been using for about 5 years for basic invoicing. I really need to step it up a nothc and use for my banking- my banking is totally out of control and I have a hard time keeping track of balances and bills. I have looked for online tutorials and books for help but none seem to help. One company, Fast-tek, IT consulting offers not only all kinds of IT services like web hosting data recovery, etc but they also will do Quickbooks training- which i desperately need! I wonder if this is the route to take or can some one offer a better solution?
Got a Magic Bullet as a Christmas gift.. They used to be advertised all the time on infomercial, I think they were really overpriced. I was vaguely interested but not at 100+ dollars.
Sooo finally got one . It is not the “full” set with all the attachments and gizmos- which is fine with me. This kit, which I think is called the Magic Bullet Express kit just comes with two “glasses” and one additional mixing jar. I wish it had two more glasses. My kids have gone nuts with it and we are going through ridiculous amount of milk- they make smoothies with them constantly. They have come up some weird one! My daughter made one with cucumber in it.. which was awful.
I make protein shakes in them pretty much every morning. Much easier to use than hauling out blender and a great way to use up old bananas. I throw bananas that are over ripe into freezer and use to make smoothies later.
This was a good find. I think my sister paid 25.00 for it. I have seen “knock” off of Magic Bullet type blender at discount stores and see no reason why it would matter. They look to be pretty much same thing- unless motor burns out or something.
Can’t wait to get to Florida! I do not look forward to the 3 days of driving (we take it easy because we have small kids).
This year my mother may be joining us. We are just trying to find her her own hotel/condo. If you have ever been to Florida- especially Orlando area you know how it and miss it can be! You may find yourself in the middle of NO WHERE.
We go to Orlando for the kids but we also try and go somewhere new every year. One year we would really like to get to the Keys but it is such a brutal drive. There is only one hi-way going into the Florida keys and traffic is crazy- prices are also insane.
We are going to check out other part of the “panhandle” and are planning and looking for Destin vacation rentals. On the site, WeNeedaVacation.com they now feature video of possible rental spots. The prices aren’t too bad- you can get a place with private pool in the 1500/week range. Much better than an over priced hotel room.
Now days you can get super cheap flight to Orlando, so pretty good vacation spot all around.
But tons of people swear buy it.
One key to making money on a site is to get traffic. This is one of the hardest parts of marketing your web site: building traffic to your site.
One of the most popular and successful ways to increase traffic is to use 