Brads Blog

Tomorrow night is poker night at my house. My brothers will be playing, and hopefully I will be winning.

We normally play a variety of games, including 7 card stud, 5 card draw, as well as a lot of “custom games”. These would include:

Low Chicago with a twist
Buck Buck (Nickel Hayride)
Greed
Paper
Blind Man

Tomorrow’s game will focus on Texas Hold ‘em. I am not as experienced with Hold ‘em as I am with these other games, so it might be a challenge.

I am excited to break in my new poker table my wife bought for me for Christmas. I am also going to break in my new Poker Chips.

I’ll probably post on how much I won or lost, but if I really lost bad I might be too embarrassed to share my losses.(just kidding)

I had this emailed to me last year and thought I would share it. I got a chuckle out of it.

I want to thank all of you who have taken the time and trouble to send me
your chain letters over the past year. Thank you for making me feel safe,
secure, blessed, and wealthy.

Because of your concern… I no longer can drink Coca Cola because it can
remove toilet stains.

I no longer drink Pepsi or Dr. Pepper since the people who make these
products are atheists and refuse to put “Under God” on their cans.

I no longer use Saran wrap in the microwave because it causes cancer.

I no longer check the coin return on pay phones because I could be pricked
with a needle infected with AIDS.

I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a water
buffalo on a hot day.

I no longer go to shopping malls because someone will drug me with a
perfume sample and rob me.

I no longer receive packages from UPS or FedEx since they are actually Al
Qaeda in disguise.

I no longer shop at Target since they are French and don’t support our
troops.

I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a stupid
number for which I will get the phone bill from hell with calls to Jamaica,
Uganda, Singapore, and Uzbekistan.

I no longer eat prepackaged foods because the estrogens they contain will
turn me gay.

I no longer eat KFC because their chickens are actually horrible mutant
freaks with no eyes or feathers.

I no longer go to bars because someone will drug me and take my kidneys and
leave me taking a nap in a bathtub full of ice.

Thanks to you, I have learned that God only answers my prayers if I forward
an email to 7 of my friends and make a wish within 5 minutes.

I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl who has been
dying for the past seven years.

I no longer have any money at all, but that will change once I receive the
$15,000 that Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their
special e-mail program..

I will now return the favor.

If you don’t send this e-mail to at least 1200 people in the next 60
seconds, a large bird with diarrhea will fly over your head at 5:00 PM and
the fleas of a thousand camels will infest your armpits. I know this will
occur because it actually happened to a friend of a friend of a friend’s
neighbor’s cousin, and he’s a lawyer.

Today I did a review on a time management software called TimesheetsMTS. I downloaded the software and installed without problems.

I have to assume this program requires a good deal of memory, because when I started the review I had some problems getting it to run. Once I closed out some programs I had running in the background, I had no problems.

Once I signed in and explored around, I was impressed.

This program is designed to help with project management and time tracking.

The first thing you are hit with is a user message dialog box. You are able to send messages to other users/employees.

The Contact Maintenance area allows you to keep track of your customers and their contacts.

As an administrator, I was able to create tasks and assign these tasks to other users. I was able to specify many aspects of the jobs, including labor costs, allowable time and charge rates.

If that wasn’t enough, there is an invoicing program built in that makes it very easy to create, print and track customer invoices.

While checking out the Time Sheet, I learned that you are able to enable a task timer, to keep record of how much time is devoted to a specific project. You can also track travel time and mileage.

Overall, I was quite impressed with this program. I often do side jobs and print out invoices. I think this program would be quite useful for me, even though I am a “One man show” but realistically would be a bit overkill for my needs. If I had a small business, this would be perfect.

You can learn more about it here.

Bringing in the new year, I am considering broadening my blogging career by starting a few new blogs. My new blogs will not b updated as frequently as Bradsblog, but they will exist.

In addition to Bradsblog, I will also maintain the following:

Blog-Hints.com- This blog is already up and running, and has been since well before this newer version of Bradsblog. Bloghints was once a discussion board, set up for those who were beginner bloggers. It also consisted of a directory, for bloggers to post their blog links there.

This started to become a problem to maintain, so I decided to eliminate the directories and make the home page a blog instead.

I still maintain the forums there, but it is not as active as it once was. I am considering putting blog-hints up for sale, along with the pointer domain www.bloghints.com, because I’m not sure I have room for such a site in my plan.

In the coming months, I will rejuvenate my rubber stamping site www.stampingallery.com. This site has been rotting on the vine for several months now. I will pimp this site up with a WordPress blog and transform it into a photo blog, with stamping related ideas and images.

I went forward with my NFL Superbowl site(www.NFL-Superbowl.net). This will also become a blog. Right now I have a news feed on it until I get some time to fix it up.

I have recently registered my new Nascar related blog, and it’s located at www.raceforchase.com. I’m not sure how often I’ll really be able to update these, but it will be an interesting addition to my busy life!

As I mentioned in a previous post, my wife bought me a new iPod Shuffle as a Christmas gift this year. After the initial thrill had worn off, I spent several hours setting up my music library. This has been something that had always been next to impossible to do with Windows Media Player.

Finally, I got it finished. My genres are updated, and the duplicates are weeded out.

What I’m left with is about 650 songs in my music library.

The problem is, I have folders scattered throughout the “My Music” folder. There are tons of subfolders, and many only have one or two songs in them.

Maybe I’m missing something obvious, but it seems there should be an easy way to move them all over into the iTunes library folder.

I tried the consolidate library feature, but came up with an error about file names being too long, or that I didn’t have permission. It’s never simple, is it? If the file name is too long, tell me which one it is!

So I’ll continue to battle this issue. I will probably have to keep all the files scattered everywhere, taking up more space on my computer and making things a royal pain.

I worked 3rd shift last night, so this morning I came home, screwed around on the computer a little bit then went to bed.

After I woke up and had some coffee, I decided to venture out into the world and return some gifts for my wife. This blog will compare how each of the three stores were prepared for the after-holiday return crowd.

The first store I went to was Target. I had to return some slippers that didn’t fit. I waited in line for about ten minutes, and had no problem getting a cash refund. From reading the sign they had posted, if I hadn’t had a receipt I would have been screwed.

The second store was JC Penney. They had 3 registers open, and I waited in line for at least 20 minutes. The customer service representative that helped me was in no hurry, but was pleasant. She had no sense of urgency but I could appreciate her smile and good nature.

I had a gift receipt, and on it it said that with a gift receipt I could only get an exchange or an in store credit. The lady did a receipt lookup and credited my debit card the full amount.

The third and final store I went to was Walmart. Walmart was a mad house, but was well organized. I went right in and only had one person in front of me. My total wait in line was about two minutes. The cashier was friendly and didn’t seem to be stressed out.

Walmart, by far, was the most organized.

One of the gifts my wife gave me for Christmas this year was a new iPod shuffle. I must confess, I had always been weary about getting an iPod until we started discussing them this fall.

The debate for me was that I rarely listen to music on the radio. If my radio is on, I am normally tuned in to AM talk radio. What would I need an MP3 player for?

We were originally looking at the iPod Nanos, but they were a bit expensive. I saw the ones that were made by Creative, and included a digital voice recorder and an FM tuner. This would be great for when I exercise. We settled on the shuffle

I think my lovely wife may have opened up Pandora’s Box by getting me one.

You see, my wife is the anti-blogger. She doesn’t like me always being on the computer. I’m checking mail, replying to comments, researching new material, you name it. She hates it.

One thing I have discovered with my new iPod is the ability to download podcasts. I did a little surfing on the free ones downloadable by iTunes, but the podcasts I listened to were junk.

I then started thinking. Why don’t I publish a podcast and make it available to everyone?

This is something that will require a bit more research.

Do I have a program I can use to record? What file format do I use? Would anyone listen to it?

These are just a few of the questions I have.

I plan to continue to look into this, so if you might be interested in downloading a Bradsblog podcast, I value your input.

For the last three weeks, I have been eating like someone who doesn’t care about being fat.

I guess I’m not fat anymore, I’ve been lingering around the 175 pound mark for a while now. The last three days have been “the days” I was supposed to get back on the straight and narrow.

I guess yesterday being Christmas was not the day for it, even though I could have easily made it “that day”.

I worked 3rd shift Saturday night, and did not binge on any of the wrong foods. In fact, I didn’t eat at all while I was at work.

When I got home from work in the morning, I did some last minute gift wrapping and put on a pot of coffee. After a couple of cups of java, we tackled the mountain of gifts that were placed under and around the Christmas tree.

I got caught up in the moment, putting batteries in toys and playing with y new iPod. The time quickly came to visit my in-laws. They only live a coupe of miles up the street and we arrived promptly.

I was only able to spent about 30 minutes there, and found myself rushing out because I had to work a double shift. I was late getting out of there because I had to load up Christmas gifts in my wife’s vehicle.

When I left, I was hungry. I was determined not to eat the wrong things, especially after that cookie I ate that Michelle (wife’s friend) had to bring over yesterday.

I decided to run home and grab a bite to eat to go. I picked up a couple of pieces f white bread and made a turkey sandwich, but also grabbed a box a wheat crackers. I grabbed a diet sprite also and scarfed it down in the way in to work. After I got to work, aside from the nuts I snacked on throughout the day I didn’t do bad at all.

My plan is to get back on the treadmill today, and stick to chicken and green vegetables until I feel my body is finished with detox.

Read more about holiday eating here.

Well Christmas is upon us. I want to take a minute to thank those of you that take the time to read this blog. It is the reader that keeps me going!

Unfortunately for me, I will be working most of Christmas Day. That’s at my real job.

I do have plans to spend time with the kids in the morning opening up presents, etc.

Tonight, my three year old and I threw magic reigndeer food outside in the yard. He is very excited.

I may have a posting slowdown over the next few days, but plan to get back to full steam after the holidays are done.

From time to time, I get things wrong. Sometimes, I’ll get mad and rant about something then find myself with my foot in my mouth later.

Yesterday, I went on bashing Walmart.com for screwing my son out of his Harley Davidson motorcycle (Here’s the post). Today, I received the part I was missing. The original shipping time was 7-10 days, I got it in 3.

It turns out, I was not missing the part to begin with. The illustration in the assembly instructions had it drawn a little differently, and the error was mine.

So, I’d like to thank Mattel,Inc for getting everything done so quickly, as I didn’t even need it.