Balanced Life Weekly #5

Hey everybody, sorry for the much delayed BLW. This week I want to talk about careers.

Career

I have come to the conclusion that I don’t enjoy my job much. Granted I am thankful for the job but this is not a career job. So with that in mind I have started to read 48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller. What is funny is we have had this book on our bookshelf for a long time and I originally got it for Kristen when she was thinking about going into private practice with Speech Therapy or not. Now I find myself reading the book I bought for her. From the introduction of the book, a light bulb went off. I have allowed myself to not try bolder things because of a fear of failure. Well the choices I did make i.e. taking jobs I’m not satisfied with well as Dr. Phil would say, “how’s that working out for you?” I’m ready to try some new bold things without fear of failure because the alternative quite frankly sucks!

PABL

I’ve also got quite a bit of motivation from Cliff Ravenscraft and his podcast “Pursuing A Balanced Life” which this post title is inspired from. I also realized that if Cliff can get out and walk the snowy streets of Kentucky, then I have no excuse for walking the clear roads of Mississippi so I am going to do a better job at that as well. So thank you Cliff for giving me a kick in the butt I need to get moving.

That is going to do it for this week. Try to get back on schedule and have another BLW out for next week. If you want to give me some feedback, drop me a comment below or click on the Call Me button to the right and you can leave me some audio feedback.

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Using Google Voice

This past weekend I decided to shake the dust off Google Voice. I had signed up for an account with them months ago and got an invite but outside of setting up a number, never really did anything with it. All that has changed now. After looking it over and seeing what it can do, I put it to use. I told Kristen about it and we used it to call her sister in the southern half of the state so basically a long distance call. What happens is you insert the number you wish to dial and then select the phone you wish to talk on that you setup on Google Voice. Like so.

At this point you will receive a phone call on that phone, you answer the phone and it will then dial the number you selected. At this point you don’t have to do anything more with the Google Voice webpage. At the end of the call just end the call as you normally would. So why go about this route? Because since your Google number calls you and connects, you are not charged by your phone company for the call. Guess what else, you can call Canada and not be charged for a call either. How about them apples? 
Google Voice is by invite only right now but when it goes public, look out AT&T, FIOS, Verizon, etc. Your long distance plans are toast!

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Tuesday Tech Talk #35

Hello folks and welcome to another edition of Triple T. Got a couple of software reviews for you this week among other things so lets get right into it.

Clipstart

I heard about Clipstart through MacBreak daily video-cast, basically it’s a video version of iPhoto. Makes it real easy to tag and title your videos just like in iPhoto with photos. It’s worth checking out. I also came across a bunch of duplicate videos when it scanned my MacBook for them so as a result I freed up some hard drive space.

Quicken Essentials for Mac

So as I mentioned last week I am using as of last Thursday, the new Quicken Essentials for Mac and although I was quite cynical about Intuit with regard to it’s Mac support (or lack there-of), I have to admit this is quite a step up for the program. Of course if you want to do online bill pay you won’t be able to do so with QEM but I do that through my bank anyway so I’m not missing anything there. If you are a user of Mint.com then the interface is going to feel very familiar to you. It has the ability to tag the items in your register with multiple items for example, if you go to a coffee shop you can tag “coffee” or “latte” and you can also tag “Macchiato” as well. I also noticed it has a lot more banks and credit card companies it offers for online connectivity compared to Quicken 2007. They have rebuilt this thing from the ground up and it runs faster. Now one thing to note here, if you used the Quicken widget on dashboard from the 2007 version, not going to work here but I don’t know how many folks still use the dashboard apps. That being said I think it is worth the $69. Also you can find a review from TUAW on it as well.

Google Chrome

Well I finally got tired of Firefox running dog slow so I switched over to Google Chrome and I must say I am impressed with how much faster it is. Just as fast as Safari and it supports extensions like Firefox does but without the hanging and spinning beach ball. Also it has some fancy extensions like Google Voice, Wikipedia, Facebook (update your status and check status updates right from the toolbar), and a Weather Channel showing the weather in your town with temperature. Below is a screenshot of the extensions on mine.

Screenshot2010-02-24at1.30.46PM.png

Tune Up for iTunes

Finally yet another program I found out through MacBreak video-cast is Tune Up for iTunes. This plug-in program will clean up your music library say for example you have a CD imported but it is only showing track 1, 2 ,3, etc it will check the song with a database and fill in the information for the song and even the album artwork. It’s pretty snazzy and worth checking out. Will also clean up missepellings of artists in your library for example “Mannheim Steamroller” vs ”Manheim Streamroller”, yes I did that but it corrected it.

Sorry no time for iPhone and iPod touch app reviews this week but hope to have some for next week. See you all next week!

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Why I reject a party label

Why I reject a party label

Over the course of the last 10 years or so, we have had Presidents from both major parties in office. The result has been disastrous spending. We are now asking ourselves, “Will our children be better off than we are?”. For a long time the answer was yes but now I can’t say with certainty if they will or not. We have real debt that is more than what the government projected. What kind of accounts are working in DC? If the government were a person or family, people would be coming after our stuff for not paying our bills. The difference between Bush and Obama is not so big, it was basically who wanted to go down the road of Socialism faster. I will grant you Obama is going about 20-25 MPH faster than Bush was but the result is were still heading in the same direction under both. Don’t believe me? Read the chart.

wapoobamabudget1.jpg

Scary right? For this reason I cast my lot with the Tea Party movement which is not a political party mind you but a voice for returning a government to it’s founding principles. In closing, I would like to share a quote with you all.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society. – Machiavelli

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Balanced Life Weekly #4

Hey all, skipped a week last week due to the iPad announcement. This week is a get back on track post. I’m going to depart from the Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise to focus on one thing, health!

Weight gain setback

I recently went to the doctor as a result of a cold. Really it was just to get a note for work. As part of the visit I get weighed in. I am disappointed to say I have slacked off in this area and have gained some weight back. So my focus is to get more exercise in. Course when it is cold outside you really don’t want to take the dogs out for a walk. So I’m going to look at joining my wife’s gym which is right next to my work and is a 24 hour place which will make it nice when I get off of work. So I’m looking to drop the pounds gained back and then lose more I hadn’t lost before. 200 lbs. is about ideal for me I think which means I have about 50 to lose. Course the hard part is once I get there, how to maintain it. So that is the goal going forward.

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iPad vs Kindle vs Nook

        Was reading the NY Times Technology section and read a point-counterpoint on why the iPad will be a Kindle Killer and why the Kindle will be just fine. I think they are both great products and will peacefully co-exist.
        If anything this is bad for the Nook, the Nook has an easy access book store with a color display of the store, but so does the new iBooks store and the iBooks store looks a lot more easier to browse. Point Apple. Now like the Kindle, the Nook uses E ink for page display making it easier on the eyes for long term reading. The iPad uses an LED-backlight which is more for short term reading and not as easy on the eyes. Point Nook & Kindle.
        But the Nook is priced at $259 same as the Kindle so question becomes who has the bigger store library? Point Kindle. For folks that like the color display and are more short term at a time readers (this would be me) but can then also use the Kindle app on the iPad to access the Amazon library and want a little more out of their e-reader Point iPad and Kindle per the Kindle app.
        So bottom line is Kindle can survive in the iPad ecosystem, but I don’t think the Nook can. Amazon will sell a ton of e-books to folks with an iPad with a far superior and well established library.

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