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But something else was planned for me, for us. Our friend Charlie came by looking for a motorcycle chain, but Brian didn’t think he had one. I thought that was that, but then Charlie came back by with a stranger, a long haired man with the biggest smile I had seen in a long while and an accent you don’t hear in rural west Texas. An Englishman! At least I thought so, asking us to determine the origin of an European accent is as likely to be right as asking a Yankee to determine if what they are hearing is an East Texas twang or a West Texas drawl, or maybe was a North Texas chop.  Anyway, we soon learned that his name was Simon, and his wife, Lisa, was about 20 miles outside of town at the rest area with a broken chain on her BMW. Rural Texas hospitality was engaged: phone calls to everyone in a 20 mile radius were made, all in search of an appropriate chain, with the nearest bike shop over 100 miles away, and the nearest BMW dealer over 400, in the wrong direction from where they were heading. While waiting for the posse to return with (hopefully) the needed part, the trailer was cleared off and hooked up, on it’s way out to pick up the stranded Lisa. All afternoon was spent helping out Simon and Lisa, and culminated with one spare link that could repair her current chain, and a whole new chain, delivered by a a Sheriff’s deputy, complete in hat and gun (which tickled Lisa so much she had her picture taken with him). We celebrated with pizza, pool, and plenty of alcohol at a local bar. And more laughs and smiles than could be counted. With both bikes parked safely in Charlie and Carol’s barn and Simon and Lisa checked into a local motel, we went home and for the first time a long time I went to sleep without worrying about tomorrow or Monday or even one thought about the fragile state of our local economy and the security of my career.

This morning, an emergency at work required me onsite for about 3 hours, but I didn’t mind it, we did what we had to do, and I think I may have been smiling, even on Easter Sunday with a callout that started at 5:45 am. We went to see how the repair went for Simon and Lisa, and got there just in time to catch them packing up the last of their stuiff on the bike and going to breakfast at the truckstop. Where the 6 of us laughed and joked, and I was reminded why I wasn’t worried last night, and why I felt so good at work this morning. It was something Simon was telling Brian: our lives are not the sum of our possessions or accomplishments, but instead are the sum of our experiences.

I haven’t been experiencing - I have been existing. Day to day, working to keep the bills paid, the kids fed, and seldomly taking the time to experience my own life. When Simon and Lisa left they so graciously thanked us for all we had done for them, but I thanked them, and meant it sincerely, because their prescence and predicament took my mind off the “stuff” of life and put it on the people in my life: Brian and his huge giving heart; Charlie and Carol and the value of good, true friends; all the good people in our town who work together to help a total stranger. And on the importance of keeping your heart and mind open to the unexpected, and to welcome those moments, so you have experiences on which to to build a life.

And I also need to be thankful for one more thing - having been motivated to write again after so many many months of no creative ideas or drive. I am going t try to hang onto this good feeling, and hope that I can help make the lives of those around more of an experience instead of an existence.

Simon and Lisa’s web page: 2ridetheworld.com  Riding across the world on their BMW bikes

*renee
Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Renee’s posterous

Posted via email from Renee’s posterous

Inbox Zero: If you are like most, you’re email inbox is overflowing with things you need to do, reply to, file, or do SOMETHING with. Start by going through your inbox and, as quickly as possible, process your messages:

• Delete: Get rid if the spam, junk mail, and other obviously useless stuff.
• Defer: Put it in a”Pending” folder if you need to respond or generate an action from it
• Respond immediately if it literally will take less than 2 minutes or is so Earth-shattering that it just can’t wait
• archive it if it doesn’t require an action but you need to keep it
  (from 43Folders)

Once you are down to ZERO messages in your inbox, go back to your pending folder. Now start plowing through: Respond to them and get rid of them, or generate an action from them like adding a task to your to do list. Your goal is to have NO items waiting on your attention in your mailbox. If you have a huge amount of mail, this could take a while, but is well worth it. Just think about how much easier it’s going to be to stay on top of things when you are done!

Start Dashing!: This is my favorite GTD trick, and it’s one I’ve been using long before GTD became a web site, or a book. (I just never called it a “Dash”, more like a “Last resort”! But it works.) Procrastination will bury you. That big project is intimidating, or boring, or just plain sucks, so we find reasons NOT to get it done. But by using dashes - short bursts of focused attention, it will get done. You may even find yourself working beyond your dash because the feeling of actually getting it done is oh-so-good. So just what the heck IS a dash? Pick a set amount of time or amount and focus on that one project for that length of time or until that amount of work is done, and don’t stop until that bit is done. Just little dashes will get you towards your goal of completing the project: 10 minutes working on the presentation you have to give next month, however long it takes to fill one trash bag from that pile of junk in the shed. You get the picture. Set a smaller goal, and the bigger one won’t be so hard/boring/sucky.

Get it off your brain: Focus your to-do items into a to-do list, either on a notepad (which you should never be without!) or your PDA notes, or whatever you use to jot notes and keep your to-do lists on. When you think of something you need to do, buy, pick up, etc, WRITE IT DOWN. Use that list to work off of. Don’t let that stuff keep jumping up in your Brain:

• “DARN it, I was supposed to take that box of clothes to the church yesterday”
• “I wonder if  Bob is finished with that proposal yet”
• “I need to check on my 401k contributions, maybe I’m not putting in enough”
• “We need milk. I better pick some up on the way home.”
• “The oil change car is overdue”.

This stuff will distract you all day, and make you feel overwhelmed and overworked, when all you are is over-worried. Instead, you can keep on top of things with your to-do list and let your brain focus on the job hand. And crossing stuff off a written to-do list feels REALLY good. Marking it on your PDA note file feels good, too, but there’s nothing that compares to pulling out the pen and scratch through that sucker knowing you earned the write to scribble that line. Like Zorro :)

I think that’s enough for now. Maybe I’ll come back to the GTD topic more often, and share with you some of the other tricks to get through your day with less stress and more productivity.

My Back to School Shopping and to-do list
Here is an estimation of what our back-to-school shopping list will look like (and cost!)

• 6 pair of gym shoes: $150
• 6 pair of school shoes: $300
• 30 jeans / pants / skirts: $600
• 30 shirts / blouses: $600
• 6 backpacks : $90
• 42 assorted one, three, and five subject notebooks: $200
• Folders and looseleaf paper: $20
• Pens, markers, colored pencils, rulers, etc: $60
• 6 visits to the optometrist: $360
• 5 pair of eyeglasses: $500
• 6 haircuts: $120
• 2 immunization boosters: $50

Total: $3,050

Now, don’t you feel better?

And I just can’t help myself:
Total cost: $3,050. Having peace and quiet restored at home for 9 hours each day? PRICELESS

My family and friends threw a birthday party for me Friday, July 27, 2007. It was awkward being the reason all these people gathered together, but we all had a great time, especially with the Thumpin’ Puppies providing the music for the night. They have a whole slew of new songs not on any of their CDs that I absolutely love, and we tried recording them playing, but with all the kids there that night, and dancing in front of the camera, neither the audio nor the video does the band justice. I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who came, you won’t know how much you being there meant to me. I hope you all enjoyed the night as much as I did, and to the band: THANK YOU. You guys are unbelievable, and I can’t wait to start hearing your music played on the radio!

If you are reading this and have not heard of the Thumpin’ Puppies, check out their web site and sample some of their music. They are original, talented, and down-right awesome.

As for me and the party, I have never been so flattered. My better half, Brian, never ceases to surprise me with all the things he does to make his family happy. This party was all his idea to begin with, and he took care of every detail, from making sure we had a cook, to getting the band equipment down to the hall. While I sat in a lawn chair at 2 am wishing I had stopped with the third glass of wine, he cleaned up, packed up, and got his whole family home safe and sound. I wish I possessed the verbal skill to express to him, and to all of my friends, how much this event touched me. Thanks for the gifts, but you being there was all I asked for!

And even though we were outnumbered 3 to 1 by kids, I am REALLY glad all of you came, too. My girls made some new friends, and got to spent time with old friends.

H and J: Thanks for letting me step on your toes on the dance floor!

And to Brian: What can I say to Superman? “Gettin’ Riggy wit it!”

2007-07-06 Tinkerbears frst time outside, originally uploaded by westxrenee.

Coming outside to play for the first time was too tiring for this little 3.5 week old terrier-shepherd mix.

(Beta) Spotplex provides internet users with real-time ranking of blog articles based on actual impression count.
In other words, you can find what is the hot news today, this week, or this month in real time at Spotplex. This is not a list of articles people recommended or voted for, but a list of articles read most in a given timeframe.
Bloggers can track and analyze their blog traffic with a simple Spotplex code or widget. Not just how many people visit the blog, they can even find which articles people read most and how many people read them. Whenever an article of the blog is read, it will show up at Spotplex in real-time and get noticed by Spotplex users.

RevolutionHealth.com, a free, comprehensive health and medical information site, specifically designed with the Family’s Chief Medical Officer — women and other caregivers — in mind.RevolutionHealth.com offers best-of-breed health information as well as more than 125 online tools aimed at helping individuals take control of their well-being. Revolution Health has partnered with more than 50 companies and teamed with a number of leading health nonprofits and experts to make its innovative approach to health a reality.

Slacker is a new kind of music company. We deliver personal radio that is customized for every listener. Slacker is effortless to use and the music is accessible at home, in the car, or on the go. Slacker Personal Radio has millions of songs with the breadth and depth increasing continuously. The extensive Slacker music library is organized into numerous professionally programmed genre and sub-genre stations and over 10,000 stations that are built around specific artists. Personalization options include adjusting your stations to play more popular vs. more eclectic music, newer vs. older music, or even to play more tracks you tagged as your favorites. Other features include:

• Log in from any PC or Mac to hear personalized stations in CD quality
• Playback through web player, jukebox software and portable devices
• Create stations by combining favorite artists
• Select favorite tracks/artists to play more often and ban other tracks/artists
• Click through album cover art, band profiles, reviews and artist photos
• Easily share stations with friends

I Heart Movies - beta.
A place to organize your DVD collection and view it in several ways, share information and discuss films with movie lovers.

Flektor. Beta. For all the hype about user-generated content, it seems like most of what people post is a vast wasteland of copycat Mentos®-meets-Diet Coke videos, bad parodies, and shaky videos of themselves crashing their cars. Flektor was designed to change that, and bring quality to the user generated content world, even for people who don’t have great artistic skills. Flektor allows you to quickly and easily create, remix, and share your photos, videos, with others via email, on mySpace, or in your blog. “Flektor is completely FREE until the end of our beta period. You may upload and publish as much as you want. When the beta period ends, we may announce a pricing plan for heavy users. ”

Fixya. Beta. FixYa was founded by two entrepreneurs who decided to take advantage of the fact that consumer products manufacturers are not providing adequate support through their web sites. Although these products become more and more technologically advanced, their manufacturers are not allocating the necessary resources that are required in order to provide good technical support. Like any other consumer out there, FixYa’s founders had a hard time finding relevant and updated support information for their printer or digital camera, and therefore decided to create this site. The idea behind FixYa is to aggregate all support information that is scattered throughout the internet in a single user friendly location. In addition, FixYa is a huge knowledgebase that is constantly updated by a live community of users who share their experiences of technical problems and solutions. Through the site’s unique rating system, FixYa is allowing users to find the best solution for every problem and even offer a new solution. Our aim is that over time, FixYa will offer the best solutions for the most common problems of each and every product the site is covering. The best thing about our knowledgebase is that it’s based on true user experience rather than on projected FAQs by the manufacturer.

Their story inspired me to write about one of my first computers I got for Christmas. One that is nearly forgotten today: a Tomy Tutor. While it sounds like a toy, it had AMAZING graphic and animation capabilities, far ahead of it’s time. I locked myself in my room and honed my BASIC programming skills to a razor edge on this baby. The soft keys and purple space bar sure didn’t hurt it’s appeal, either.

A nation of sheep begets a government of wolves.

I couldn’t fine much to substantiate just where he said this, so I have to be a little wary of stating matter-of-fact that he did. It’s a great quote, and one Americans should think about.

Okay. Gee, that looks like the school right down the street… why do I get such a kick out of seeing a photoshopped alien ship hovering over it? Who knows, but seeing how there is so little ‘out there’ about my community, this was a fun find. Too bad it’s so, um, well, ‘out there’ !

Original images and sighting info can be found at HBCC UFO Research.

Instructions:

1.) Copy and paste the matrix of ViralTags below courtesy of Founders Cafe (to support Jimmy’s quest of launching his own Internet Startup with a shoestring budget, please consider subscribing to his Full RSS Feed to see his triumphs and struggles in real time).

2.) Substitute the Host Tag and one of the Viral Tags in the matrix with your anchor text of choice with your blog’s URL. Please keep anchor text to a max of 3 words to keep the matrix size manageable.

3.) When you get a ping back from someone that has your link in one of their Viral Tags, practice good karma by copying his/her Host Tags anchor text (automatically the associated link will also be copied) and paste it over one of your Viral Tag below.

4.) Encourage and invite your readers to do the same and soon this can grow virally.

Host Tag: Daily Life Technology

Revellian | Investing Women Online| A Great Pleasure | Tech at Hand | Overseas Filipino Worker | Internet Marketing Austria | Anything and Everything | Mariuca’s Perfume Gallery | Technology Music Life | Mariuca | Manila Mom | Good Jokes | JohannTheDog | Startup Entrepreneur Money | RescueMe | Webtools | Make Money Blogging | The Third Eye| Agloco Internet Marketing | TECH LOCK-RAHUL | Tech Gadgets Stocks | EMOI | Computer Seventy-Five | Learn about e-Learning | Sexy Celebrity | Jack Book | Butterfly Feelings | Yoeru | DIGITAL I.T BLOG | LifeIsRisky.Com | Disjointed Intelligence | ViralTags | Earn Money Online | ViralTags | Earn Income Online | Daily Mind Xpression | Entrepreneurship Internet Web | Huma B | Create a Blog | ViralTags | start a blog | ViralTags | ViralTags | Tech Startups Web2.0 | ViralTags | ViralTags | Plugins TV Blogging | Mrs Sparrow | Hot Buzz | Weight Loss | Really Funny Jokes | ViralTags | ViralTags | Internet Marketing German | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Business Blog Web | ViralTags | Anitokid Chronikos | ViralTags | esofthub’s web finds| ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | The Broken Bow | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Daily Life Technology | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Sarah Pauline Cada |

Important: Once I get a ping back from you (I promise to do the best I can), I will add your anchor text and the associated link you designate as Host Tag here, replacing one of the ViralTags from the matrix above. As more and more bloggers copy and paste this matrix, the more backlinks you will have with your anchor text. If everybody who copy and paste from your blog does the same, pretty soon this will spread and go viral. So, the sooner you participate, the more links with anchor text you will receive.

This one has the added benefit of tagging to make click-throughs MUCH more likely to happen, but it sure does take up a lot of space. Perhaps a smaller matrix would look better, even though it would result in fewer link-backs.

So, I only used Live Writer once. Haven’t looked into getting Andrew Grant’s Keyword tags working on my site in order for tagging from within Live Writer to work right, and now I see that all of my tagging is currently broken anyway. While the lack related posts links and Technorati keyword links really won’t affect my content, they sure are nice to have. So that’s what I’m going to work on right now. Perhaps when I have more time, and ambition, I’ll look into getting Live Writer working correctly with my blogs, but right now, there are more important things to do… like actually blogging.

So, here’s how it works:

Below is a matrix of 120 stars, I have already added a link to my blog onto one of the stars, all you need to do is copy and paste the grid into your blog and add your own link to one of the other spare stars, and tell others to do the same!

 

Viralink

********************
********************
********************
********************
********************
********************

When I receive a ping back once you have added the Viralink to your site I will add your link to this grid, and each person who copies the grid from here will also link to your site!

Rules
No Porn Sites
Only 1 link per person (i.e don’t hog the viralink!)
Please don’t tamper with other peoples url’s
Enjoy!

If you’re going to use the virlink matrix, just copy the grid and the instructions into your own.

Negative:

• Key words did not integrate into my current keywords
• Because no key words, related posts aren’t generated
• Technorati links aren’t generated, again because of the keywords don’t jive with what I use

Positive:

• Image uploaded with the post
• Link to full-size image maintained

I downloaded and installed Andrew Grant’s Keyword tags, which is supposed to resolve the tagging issue, but didn’t. It generates a whole different level of tags.

Let me know how Writer integrates with your blog, especially if you use a different platform. And if you have any tips, tricks, plugins, hacks to turn Live Writer into a working blog-from-windows-desktop app from a simple drafting editor, please pass them on!

Oh, and I’ve found that editing existing entries via Live Writer works great, without breaking any existing tagging, related posts, or linking.