So many people think that you need to own a Kindle from Amazon in order to read all the books and magazines they have available in their vast library.

However the truth is you can start reading any of their books right this minute!

Since you are reading this post I assume you have a computer/tablet/smartphone of some sort. And as long as you have that you can start your reading right now!

Of course Amazon would love you to buy one of their Kindle models and consume all the media through that, but you can do it in many different ways.

First if you want to get a Kindle, just hope over to Amazon and peruse their available offerings.

If you have a smart phone or a tablet you can download the Amazon app for them.

iPhone/iPad/Android devices all have an app available for free, just find your device here and download the app.

If you don’t own a smartphone or tablet you can download the Amazon Reader right to your computer. It is a free program that makes it easy to read right on your computer, just download the appropriate program here.

Now if you don’t want to install anything on your machine, there is still one more option.

You can read any Amazon title right in your browser with their Amazon Cloud Reader that works right inside any of the major browsers.

All you need is an Amazon account to get started. You can get to the Amazon Cloud Reader by clicking here.

Now that you know how you are going to read, you need to find some titles to read.

There are always FREE books that you can start with and some are really good! You should check back often because Amazon is always updating their lists of books.

Then of course you can search for Fiction or Non-Fiction among many other genres in Amazon’s paid section.

Don’t forget they also have Magazines that you can read as well.

I hope that this has helped you understand you DON’T need a Kindle to download and read Amazon eBooks.

So what’s holding you back? Get to reading… :)

Click to enlarge

The gist is this:

If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM, you can notify the police by entering your PIN in reverse. For example if your PIN is 1234 then you would put in 4321. The ATM recognizes that your PIN is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine. The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to help you. This information was recently broadcast on TV and it states that it is seldom used because people don’t know it exists. Please pass this along to everyone possible.

While this sounds like a good idea it is NOT real.

Think about a pin that is not reversible, something like 6446.

Of course if this system was real banks would have to force everyone to re-establish their pin numbers so that a reversible pin could be established.

According to Wikipedia there is such technology available since 1986, however there has never been an implementation.

Of course Snopes has the disputing evidence too, but it seems that people just don’t take the time to research if something really is real before just passing it on.

Sorry if you were one to pass this hoax on.

Are there any other hoaxes that you see currently floating around the social web? Let me know in the comments below.

Some people love them others not so much.

Well love them or hate them back in October 2012 Facebook has added them to comments and replies. They used to only be in the chat window but now you can add them right to your comments.

You still cannot use them in a status update yet.

Here is a list of emoticons I have compiled that you can use on Facebook. Some of the emoticons have more than one way of displaying them.

To use them just type the shortcut or copy/paste it exactly as it is below. Remember some have more than one way to display them, I have separated multiple ways with 3 spaces…

Emoticon	Name	Shortcut – What you Type
	angel	O:) O:-)
	Chris Putnam	:putnam:
	confused	o.O O.o
	cry	:’(
	curly lips	:3
	devil	3:) 3:-)
	frown	:-(   :(   :[   =(
	gasp	:-O :O :-o :o
	glasses	8-) 8) B-) B)
	grin	:-D :D =D
	grumpy	>:( >:-(
	heart	<3
	kiki	^_^
	kiss	:-*   :*
	pacman	:v
	penguin	<(“)
	poop	:poop:
	robot	:|]
	shark	(^^^)
	smile	:-)   :)   :]   =)
	squint	-_-
	sunglasses	8-|   8|   B-|   B|
	Thumbs Up	(Y)
	tongue	:-P   :P   :-p   :p   =P
	unsure	:/   :-/   :\   :-\
	upset	>:O   >:-O   >:o   >:-o
	wink	;-)   ;)

Pretty decent size list of emoticons, but wait there’s more.

There seem to be many more that I don’t know the codes to yet as the image below is a compiled image Facebook has stored on it’s server for the emoticons.

Click to enlarge

Wait who is Chris Putnam?

Geeky story here -> http://gizmodo.com/5767239/how-hacking-facebook-got-this-man-hired-by-facebook

Please respect your friends…

Just remember, not everyone likes these emoticons. Some even think they are childish and go so far as to block them totally.

Please help me add to this list.

If you find more codes please leave the code and the icons description in the comment section below so I can add them to my list.

A Crockpot!

I have been making all kinds of food in it and today I decided to experiment with making a cake.

Who would have ever thought that you could make a cake in a Crockpot, but low and behold it works!

There are many recipes online and they all vary so I just tried what I thought would work.

I took the easy way out and bought a box of Betty Crockers Devils Food Cake mix so I didn’t have to start from scratch.

This made it way easier to get er’ done.

For the cake mix you need:

• 1 Cup of water
• 1/2 Cup of oil
• 3 Eggs
• Box of cake mix

Simply mix all the above ingredients together in a mixing bowl and beat with a mixer on medium for about 2 – 3 minutes until smooth.

Be sure to spray the inside of your Crockpot with Pam non-stick spray so that the cake will pop right out when finished.

Add your cake mix to the Crockpot and set it on low.

Click to enlarge

I was following a recipe from somewhere else and they said to cook for 3 hours. It didn’t seem done at that point so I added another hour which made it better but I would suggest even adding another hour to make the cake much more firm.

After you cook your cake for the 5 hours on low you should turn it off and let it site for 1/2 hour before trying to remove it.

I took a dinner plate and place it over the Crockpot and flipped the Crockpot upside down so the cake would plop right out onto the plate. Sure enough it did perfectly.

I took another dinner plate and place it on top of the cake which is now upside down so I could flip it right side up.

Here is what the final cake looked like.

Click to enlarge

It tasted great, but like I said could have been cooked a little more. 4 hours on low wasn’t enough for me, next time it will be set for 5 hours.

Have you done any slow cooker cakes or desserts? Let me know in the comments below.

(This post may contain affiliate links)

However, it is never too early to think about next Christmas and start saving early.

I saw an image posted on Facebook the other day and it made perfect sense to me to use something like it to save for next holiday season.

The premise is simple, you save a little bit each week and at the end of the year you will have over $1,000 ($1,378.00 to be exact) to spend frivolously on your loved ones!

No pain involved… 

Well maybe a little pain depending on how stretched your budget is.

It starts out simple, put $1.00 away the first week and then on the following weeks you would put away one extra dollar from the week before.

It goes basically like this:

I am sure you get the idea and if you look at it, it doesn’t seem so bad. Well not until you get to the end of the year and you are scraping $52.00 for the last week. :)

To save the money you can just make an envelope and put your money in it weekly if you a disciplined enough not to touch it. Or you could put it in a separate bank account or your savings account.

I have an ING Direct account and they allow you to setup multiple savings accounts, so I set one up just for this.

It is not super simple to get your money out so you will have less of a chance to dip into your holiday fund. You have to transfer the funds to your primary checking account and wait for the transfer, not as simple as an atm card or opening the envelope in your dresser drawer.

Whatever way you choose to save start now as we have already passed the first week and are rolling on the second.

You can download either a PDF version or an Excel Spreadsheet version of the full chart pictured above. The Excel version is fully customizable in case you want to change anything.

PDF Version

Excel Version

I have my $3.00 saved already, how about you?

(This post contains affiliate links)

What is a FavIcon?

A FavIcon (short for favorites icon), also known as a shortcut icon, website icon, URL icon, or bookmark icon is a 16×16 or 32×32…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon

If you don’t have your own website then you may not even care about it.

However if you do have a website you should make it match your brand that people recognize you by. Either your logo, or part of it, or maybe your photo.

It is pretty simple to create your own FavIcon if you have the image you want to use already.

There are plenty of websites that will do it for you but the simplest one by far is Dynamic Drive FavIcon Generator.

Basically it is 3 steps. First choose the graphic file you want to use (step 1) then click their ‘Create Icon’ button (step 2) then once it finishes you click their ‘Download FavIcon’ button (step 3).

Make sure you save this downloaded file (favicon.ico) to a place where you can find it, maybe your desktop?

Ok so now what?

Now that you have your file you need to replace the current one that your WordPress theme is using. Some themes have an administration panel in the backend that allows you to upload a new FavIcon but most don’t!

Don’t worry it is not that hard to accomplish.

First let’s find out where your current FavIcon is located. To do that, go to your main home page and right click in the browser and click view source from the menu that appears.

Look through your source to find something similar to mine:

<link rel=”Shortcut Icon” href=”http://philmcdonnell.com/wp-content/themes/catalyst/images/favicon.ico” type=”image/x-icon” />

Of course your links will be different but the file name favicon.ico should be the same and the link rel=”Shortcut Icon” should also be the same.

So once you find it you need a way to get the new file up onto your web server. You can use an FTP program or maybe your hosting control panel has a file manager built in? Whatever you choose be sure to put the FavIcon file in the same path as the current one is.

I use FileZilla it is a free open source ftp program and works great!

I am not going to get into how to use FileZilla here, perhaps another post I will give a tutorial on FTP’ing.

But here is what my FileZilla screen looks like after I login to my web server and drill down to the theme folder.

Click to enlarge

The next step is to just drag -n- drop the favicon.ico file from the desktop on the left to the correct folder on the right.

You will get a warning message about overwriting the file on the server, just click yes or ok to allow it to do so.

That’s it!

See I told you it wasn’t that hard and now you have a fancy new favicon for your website.

But wait, I still see the old one?

This happens because the files get cached in the browser. You can fix it by clearing all your browser cache or quitting the browser and relaunching or if that doesn’t work, if you visit the link that is directly to the favicon file it will reset your browsers cache!

Remember I showed you my link above, yours should be similar.

http://philmcdonnell.com/wp-content/themes/catalyst/images/favicon.ico

If you have the standard default WordPress install with the 2012 theme there is no default FavIcon (why I have no idea) but never fear because you can add one to the default theme pretty simply too.

All you need to do with the default theme is to add this code to the functions.php file and just point it to the location of your FavIcon file.

function my_favicon() { ?>
<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”yourimagepathgoeshere” >
<?php }
add_action(‘wp_head’, ‘my_favicon’);

Even if you don’t use WordPress you can set a FavIcon for your site just by installing a link into the header of the html that directs the browser to the correct file for your FavIcon.

If you read this far and your eyes didn’t glaze over congratulations! Here is a little something that will make your life much easier.

A plugin!

That’s right, there’s a plugin for that! :)

If you don’t want to mess with FTP and you really don’t want to edit any theme files then this is the answer for you. I personally don’t like installing needless plugins but this will work for the less technically inclined that want to just get er’ done. This plugin even has upload capabilities built right in.

All In One Favicon – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-favicon/

I hope this quick little tutorial helped you, if you have any questions please feel free to leave them in the comments below.

I can’t believe that in the last two days I have received this notice from two different clients. This has been going on for years and it seems that the scammers just change their name but mostly everything else stays the same.

If you look back in my archives you will find this post from 2008 explaining the scam that was going on then.

So now the scam is to send what appears to look like an invoice for your domain services.

They make it look like they are providing backup DNS services even though they are doing no such thing! Look at the first red circle in the image below, it clearly states inactive!

Click to enlarge

And if you dig a little further into the invoice it does state that it is a solicitation,  but they bury it in with all other text so you skip right over that part.

Click to enlarge

Then at the very bottom in very tiny print they state:

DNS Services Inc. is not affiliated with your current name server provider.

So if you receive one of these please please please do NOT pay them!

There is plenty of others speaking out around the web and the Better Business Bureau has 106 complaints against this business with no response from the business.

You can see the BBB file here: http://www.bbb.org/oregon/business-reviews/internet-services/d-n-s-services-in-vancouver-wa-22720940/complaints

There are others also crying foul like Webutation and ripoff report.

Lastly the service they are offering is more than likely an unnecessary service because your hosting provider more than likely already has redundant DNS servers for your domain. I know my company does!

If you have any questions about this or you are concerned about your domain and DNS servers please don’t hesitate to contact me.

I would like to thank my clients for bringing this to my attention so I can share it with you.

Have you received one of these notices? Let me know in the comments below.

For Christmas I received a crock pot slow cooker (thanks Mom & Dad) that I have been putting to good use. My kids are thrilled with it too as dinner is ready and waiting, plus the house smells so good.

So with this new found treasure I have been trying to find recipes that everyone will enjoy. I am amazed at how many recipes there are and how easy most of them are to make.

For dinner tonight my kids picked out a BBQ Chicken Bacon Melt. Sounded good and seems simple enough to make except that you need to cook bacon to add to the meal after the slow cooker is done. Bacon is not a problem as who doesn’t love bacon?!

The cooking of the bacon is always an issue with me. It is messy, could be dangerous, fat splattering could cause a grease fire.

So I went searching for an easy way to cook bacon and who would have thought the microwave is the answer.

Yup! Super simple, easy clean up too. What more could you ask for…

First thing you want to do is cut your bacon slices in half to make it easier to fit on a plate. Make sure you have a microwave safe plate and cover it with a paper towel or two and add your slices of bacon.

Click to enlarge

When you are done arranging your bacon slices be sure to add another paper towel to the top to cover the bacon otherwise you will have a BIG mess inside your microwave.

Click to enlarge

Place the plate in your microwave. Depending on the wattage of your microwave will determine how long to cook. My microwave is 1100 watts and I cooked my bacon for 3 minutes but then added another minute because I like my bacon more crispy.

Can you believe you can actually get crispy bacon from a microwave?

Click to enlarge

Mmmm, crispy bacon!

That’s all there is to it, can’t get much simpler than that!

Oh and clean up is super simple, throw the paper towels in the garbage and put the dish in the dishwasher :)

Have you ever microwaved bacon? How did yours come out? Leave me any comments below…

]]> http://philmcdonnell.com/2013/01/02/easy-microwave-bacon/feed/ 2 http://philmcdonnell.com/2013/01/02/easy-microwave-bacon/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/philmcdonnell/~3/epg6lTNipHk/ http://philmcdonnell.com/2013/01/01/what-is-the-proper-advertising-request-etiquette/#comments Wed, 02 Jan 2013 02:37:55 +0000 phil http://philmcdonnell.com/?p=894 I never thought about having advertisers on my blog as it is just my personal blog. However I have been approached on more than one occasion to advertise on my site.

So I guess that means I should put together an advertising policy page for anyone who wants to advertise here with me will have clear understanding of my advertising policy.

The thing that gets me is my most recent conversation with someone who wanted to advertise on my site.

It started off normally with a request to advertise on my site:

Hi there,

I am interested in text advertising on your website ( http://philmcdonnell.com ) I primarily am looking for 3 month homepage links for a network of technology blogs and shops, please let me know your prices for these.

Thanks

My first response:

Hello,

Please let me know what you want to link to as well as how you want me to link to it. Depending on this is what the cost would be and also if it is even a viable advertising I would want to do.

Thanks for your inquiry…

Regards,
Phil

And their response:

Hi,

I am interested in TEXT ADVERTISING to your HOMEPAGE of your site. Please let me know your price, my budget is large enough to entertain any fair offer.

Thanks

Then I sent this response:

Thank you for getting back to me but without knowing who you are advertising for or where you want to place said advertisements I don’t have a way to price it out nor do I have a way to say if I even would put said advertisement.

Regards,
Phil

I thought I was pretty clear that I need to know what they are looking to advertise, what sites the advertising would link to and also where the ads would need to be placed on my site.

But I guess not because this is the next response I received:

My sites are about technology, gadgets and shopping. Please let me know your price. Thanks

So with this I decided I was just not interested anymore in this particular advertisement engagement.

My final response:

I’m sorry but at this point I am not interested in accepting advertising.
Thanks for contacting me, Happy New Year to you…

Regards,
Phil

Was I too harsh?

Was I not clear enough in my asking for information?

Is this some type of scam that I am not aware of yet?

Do you have a blog and have you ever been approached for advertising on your site, leave me any comments below.

Happy New Years Eve everyone!

I want to wish you all a safe, healthy & happy new year and hope that it brings you nothing but joy!

Lately I have been seeing everyone doing recaps of 2012 and their plan for 2013 as blog posts so I figured I would join in so to speak.

I am not going to do a recap but do what to let you in on some changes that will be happening here.

I have neglected this blog terribly because it never had a focus. Originally it was my personal blog and I would just write whenever something came to me or when I wanted to share with family & friends.

Of course most of my personal sharing is now done on Facebook so that makes this blog irrelevant when it comes to that kind of stuff…

I was kind of using this as a tech blog too when the urge came to me or if a client or friend asked a question that I thought might benefit everyone.

So as you can see I was all over the place here…

Well it is all changing for the new year…

If you want to keep up with my more personal stuff friend me on Facebook, but only if I really know you :)

My tech stuff will be moving to my company’s website/blog which I will link to from here once everything is all set and in place.

My lifestyle stuff will be moving to a new blog that I haven’t announced yet but it will also be linked to from here once it is all setup. Look for all kinds of goodies that you would expect from a single Dad raising two kids. Kind of like a Mommy blog but in my case it is a Daddy blog… :)

There is much more in the works but for now I just wanted to get this out because I will be shutting down this blog as it will just be a holding page for all ways to find me. Kind of like an internet portal of all things Phil…

Once again I thank you for reading my drivel for so many years and hope that you will follow me on to bigger and better things…

Happy New Year to one and all…

/Phil