A Quick Make-over

For some reason, Blogger is turning some of my pictures sideways again. Instead of being frustrated with it and not posting like I have been doing, I'm going to post anyways... wonky pictures and all. Just turn your head sideways. Hehe.

My mother gave me this shadowbox. I wanted to hang it on a white wall and the white frame just didn't look good on the white wall.

A little bit of spray paint later and I am very happy with my frame makeover! The black frame pops on the white wall. Boy, do I love easy and quick little projects!

The Laundry Room Saga

A week and a half.

That's how long I've been without a dryer.

If I had to choose, I would pick the dryer going out rather than the washing machine. I'd hate to hand wash my clothes or haul them to and from a laundromat. But, even so, it's not fun. It's not warm enough outside to dry clothes in the breeze. So, my home has been overtaken by drying laundry. The railing for the stairs, every doorknob, the shower curtain, on top of doors, wall sconces...everything and anything that I can hang laundry on has had clothing on it. Ugh!

No longer.

Today, my hubby fixed the machine. Rather than paying an exorbitant amount for a repairman just to walk through the door and then paying for parts and labor on top of that, he figured it out himself.

I'm so proud of him. He had the whole machine taken apart. I've never seen the inside of a dryer. Of course I've seen inside the dryer but I mean the real inside of the dryer. Did you know that a tiny belt wrapped around the drum and connected to a motor is what keeps the drum turning? I didn't. I thought there would be a huge strap of sorts that made it go but no, it's just this thin little belt.

Anyways, the machine is now fixed and the broken part only cost $50. I say only in comparison to what it could have cost if my hubby wasn't a do-it-yourself-er. Only $50 is actually weird to day when the part that cost this much was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. I vacillated from thinking, "What, that little thing cost $50?!?!?!" to "Thank goodness that only cost $50!!!!!" I guess it's all a matter of perspective.

My perspective right now is thankful. Thankful for a resourceful, handy husband. Thankful for not having to dip into savings. Thankful that my home is no longer cluttered with drying laundry everywhere. I am most definitely thankful for a dryer that works!

Excel

I've got a really big project that I am in the midst of and today it just got much bigger. I learned that for this project to be successful, I need to sort through and disseminate a huge amount of data. That means that I have to manipulate the data on an Excel spreadsheet. I haven't used Excel since before kids and that's been over 4 years! When I did use it, it wasn't very in depth, just your basic spreadsheet. A friend and team member on this project has experience manipulating similar data. He took the time today to explain it to me and walk me through some of the steps.
So, pretty boring, but today I learned how to manipulate huge amounts of data through Excel.

Debate: Who to Believe?

Tonight, we watched the Presidential debate. I hate to admit this but it was actually great fun. We had four generations sitting in our living room sharing the experience together...my children, my hubby and I, my parents, and my great-Aunt visiting from out west. It was a lot of fun to share our different perspectives and opinions on what each of the candidates said. It probably would have been more fun if we weren't all so like-minded!

If you didn't have a chance to watch it here's a transcript of tonight's Presidential Debate if you're so inclined to do that much reading.

Afterward the debate and after saying goodbye to the extended family and after getting the kiddos in bed, I hopped online to see what others had to say about the debate. I wanted to hear the "spin" if you will. I ran across two very interesting links that are probably old news to many but they're new to me.

• CNN Fact Check
• Fact Checker

Both of these links take the statements made my the candidates and put them through the truth test. They compare what they say with how they've voted, previous statements they've made, and the proposals that they have made. After comparing all the info, the reader can decide, based on the facts given, if they are they telling us the truth. Isn't that what we really want to know anyways?!?!?

Terrabyte

This evening, my husband was looking at a hard drive online. When I asked him if he was thinking about getting a new hard drive, he said, "This one's half a terabite. That's more that we'd ever use!"

A terabite?!?!? What the heck is a terabite?!?!?

A terrabyte, he informs me, is 1000 Gigabytes. So, this hard drive that he was looking at had 500 Gigabytes. Apparently, that's a lot!

So, this made me a little curious about this lingo that I know nothing about. I looked it up and found my answer on WikiAnswers. There is a whole language out there that has to do with bytes. I really only thought there were Bytes, Megabytes and Gigabytes. That is where my knowledge stopped. It's like a whole place value system for computer bytes. It goes like this:

1000 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte
1000 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte
1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte
1000 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte
1000 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte
1000 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte
1000 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte
1000 Zettabyte = 1 Zottabyte
1000 Zottabyte = 1 Brontobyte

To make sure that I had all my info straight, I read this chart to my hubby. He pointed out that I forgot to include bits. The only bits I know about are Kibbles 'n' Bits. That's not the bits he's talking about. In his lingo, 8 bits equals one byte.

I don't think I'll ever use this info again. But typing the word "petabyte" made me hungry for my favorite restraunt...Pita Inn. I want a petabyte of hummus...yum!

Google Hits

This evening, my husband and I went to a fundraiser and found out about how organizations pay to have their websites brought to the top of the list of results for Google searches. We learned about how they use AdWords to try to direct more hits to their site. It's funny, I'm so naive. I never really thought about it but I guess I just thought that the most popular results come to the top of the list. I didn't realize that there are organizations literally paying for each click that comes to their site. Call me stupid, but I didn't know any of that.

Gas Mileage Calculator

Hubby and I are trying to plan a family vacation. There are so many things to consider when deciding where to go. Cost? Plane, train, or automobile? Cost? How long can the kids sit in the car? Cost? How many potty breaks will be need? Cost? Should we just stay close to home? Cost? How far away can we go and not lose our sanity? Did I mention...COST?!?!?

We had a little discussion about the cost of airline tickets and the cost of gas. With the current outrageous price of gas, we were curious if flying would actually be more cost effective than driving. This curiosity led my husband to find online sites that actually calculate how much you will spend on gas based on where you start and end, your car, current gas prices, and what type of gas you get. Drive Pricing has an easy one to use. If you don't know your MPG, it links you to fueleconomy.gov to figure it out. What a great tool!

On my search, I also found this handy tool. You click on your state. Then, you click on the city closest to where you live and it will give you the prices of gas a various gas stations in the area. Pretty cool.

So, what did we decide? Our final decision had nothing to do with gas and everything to do with having children. We are going on vacation close to home for the pure reason of saving our sanity. What use is a vacation if it stress the family out so much that you need a vacation to recover from the vacation? As long as we have fun as a family, the distance from home doesn't matter.

Uniting My Address Books

I know that this post is nothing to write home about but hey, it's what I learned today!

I was working on thank you notes for the love that the baby received in honor of his 1st birthday. I was looking up an address on the white pages online. I noticed a button on the page that allows you to save the address to Outlook. It takes the address of your contact and saves it in you Outlook address book. I was able to get my house addresses and email addresses together in one place. This is big for me. I have been living with the info in separate locations and it is a pain in the rear. I've just been too busy (or lazy) to get the two pieces of information together. Now they are and it feels good. Check that off my to-do list!

So, today I proved that learning something new everyday isn't interesting. But, it is useful!

Street View

Have you ever used Google Maps? I haven't used them much but today my husband showed me something pretty freaky. Go to maps.google.com and then type in your address. After your map comes up click on "Street View." At this point, if you live in one of the areas where it's available, you get to see an actual photo of your home. Seriously, a real photo! You can use one of the tools to drive up and down the street and an another tool to turn and look around in a full circle. It's a panoramic image taken from the middle of the street. I tried to find information on how they accomplish this and I found out that they are taken from a car that is fitted with an eleven lens camera capable of taking full, high-resolution video while driving along city streets. More information on how it works here. Pretty darn freaky!

The picture above is a view from our front yard this evening...not the street view but the lookin' up view!