Lots of things on my mind….
I have always enjoyed the monthly edition of the Reader’s Digest that arrives in the mail box like clock work. I don’t have much time for reading. The Reader’s Digest is perfect for people like me that don’t have a lot of time, they have good short stories and jokes that keep my brain active and alert.
Brent, who is the author of a valuable website I just found online that gives so much good information about everything you ever wanted or needed to know about PA Systems. And if he can’t provide you with what you want you can find even more information by clicking on any of the numerous provided links that he has taken his time and researched to find more. After all more is better, right?
I remember going and picking up one of my sister’s kids from school to take him to an important dentist appointment that she couldn’t take time off of work to take him herself. I had to sign in on a small sized computer at the front desk. It wanted to know my name, the relationship to the student and it took my picture. It was pretty impressive technology for a back country elementary school that has been forced to work even harder on really pinching pennies just like all our schools around the country with the economy still in such bad shape.
I understand the need for tight security around any and all schools these days. It doesn’t seem like a week goes by that there isn’t a reporting of some type of violence, usually a shooting and people being hurt and killed. It’s just madness and schools are struggling keeping their security as tight as possible to keep all students and employees safe from all the crazies roaming the streets that are determined to cause death and destruction in our schools.
What was really weird though was when I had finished with the sign-in procedure on the school’s computer and had my picture taken and took the printed name tag that it spit out for me to have on my body, the receptionist had to use the school’s very out-dated PA system to contact my nephews teacher to announce my arrival and to send him on up to the office for me to sign both of us out and leave the school hours before the last bell would ring. Their PA system sounded just like the PA system did in that same school (the same school that I attended back in the day). Her voice sounded rough and broken up, with a lot of popping and crackling along with other irritating noises they used to bug me back then and come to find out, still does.
I remember I asked my nephew about the PA system, of course he is oblivious to the whole entire subject. When I asked him what the normal morning announcements were all about in his school each morning, he couldn’t provide me with anything at all. Guess his ADHD makes it hard for him to concentrate and listen so early in the morning. I remember getting a lot of good information each day from the morning announcements, but that was me and my nephew doesn’t seem to be interested. To each his own I reckon.
The number of people that are taking classes to further their education and knowledge in fields that are sure to be going strong well after this economy crisis is over and done with. The medical field and the computer industry are two sure bets for people to turn to. More and more classes are be offered and they are filling up quickly all over the country, such as the Virginia Cisco Course.
There is even a Virginia MCITP Server Administrator course available. I found this information by looking up some sites that are about CCNA training and saw that there is also a Chicago CCNA and a San Diego CCNA class that is coming up real soon but Virginia is a lot closer. I’ve sent the link with this info to my cousin who is seriously looking into this type of course. So there are a lot of options available out there.
He has always been good with computers and the family certainly could use having a close family member who is a computer whiz. It used to be that a family needed a doctor, a mechanic and/or a plumber, now a days its all about needing a lawyer and a computer geek! Don’t get me wrong, it would be nice to have a doctor, a mechanic and a plumber in the family but things don’t always work out that way now do they?
It is surprising to find that there are so many businesses that aren’t utilizing all that the Internet and other modern technologies that are so important to check out and use. I kn ow that the computer can be intimidating, especially with so many senior citizens that didn’t grow up with anything like what we use almost on a daily basis for work and personal use.
It really took a lot of effort for me to get my Aunt Dottie to understand Mobile Advertising and Mobile Marketing for her small business that she and my uncle are trying so hard to hold onto since the economy went all crazy on us over 6 years ago. It is a mail and packaging store that they have put all their time and energy into since finding themselves retired and nothing to do to keep them busy and hopefully help with their finances that is most of the time a concern when someone retires and doesn’t have close friends or family to help along the way.
Once she took a course at their local community center that offers senior citizens classes on how to understand and to use their computers, she was like a kid in a candy store! Right now they are working on utilizing Mobile Coupons that they hope will help generate some business to tide them over until the Christmas holidays start. That is their busiest time of the year with so many people mailing gifts all over the world. They even have to hire someone part-time for the month of December it gets so busy. It’s just too bad that they only have one good month out of the year while the rest of the months they find themselves desperate for business.
It’s so good to get a hand written thank you card in the mail these days, it just makes me think that they are cool enough to take the time and effort to write the card, address the card, put a stamp on it and then get it to a mailbox. When these days in just a matter of minutes you can shoot someone a thank you and or a card with all of today’s technology communication options.
The reason I bring this up is that in today’s mail there was a thank you card from my 19 year old nephew for the bass eq that we, the aunts and uncles, all pitched in a bought for him as his High School Graduation gift. He is a good kid and he deserves a decent Bass Equalizer Pedal, and so much more, but that’s another story.
My God, where was the Internet and all that it has to offer when I was in school? A co worker of mine was telling me that her son was receiving tutoring via the Internet and I thought that that was pretty cool. I could have used some Math homework help back in my schooling years, especially middle and high school. Numbers and I have never gotten along, lord knows what I would do with out my handy dandy calculator.
I spent a good amount of time with the little old lady down the street that tutored the neighborhood kids for a small fee. It helped and I got through the school, but it was a real drag, I can tell you that. She smelled bad, like old moth balls and her teeth were always, well, just nasty. Just what a teen aged boy wants to spend time with after school.
From what I understand you can go to tutorvista.com where they offer folks Free math help and Free homework help for a large variety of subjects, K -12 and even up into the college years. Pretty cool huh? Pass the word it’s all good!
From what I have recently researched and found, mainly online, is that RapidSwitch is a leading server hosting company over in the U.K., with well over 4000 servers that they host for a wide and ever growing range of clients and have been in this business since 1999 and still growing by leaps and bounds. It was only three and a half years ago that they were very happy to announce their launching of virtual servers, and that they are still offering promotions in honor of that launching that folks could be taking advantage of.
Virtual servers are an interesting method of partitioning a physical server computer into multiple servers in a way that each has the appearance and capabilities of running on its own dedicated machine. Each virtual server can run its own full-fledged operating system, and then each server then can be independently rebooted. A good thing to have and to know about. RapidSwitch has an interesting website that is easy to understand, which can be a challenge for me sometimes. Always being busy with the farm, always in a hurry, no time to really focus and get good quality time to try and learn things and then find the time to process the information.
Farming sure has changed a lot in the past couple of decades.
My oldest sister’s, oldest daughter has finally decided to do something with her life and pursue a career as a beauty therapist, the family couldn’t be happier to see her settle on this career choice, which we all think will fit her to a tee. She has been lolly gagging long enough, with two young kids that need a mother that is bringing in a consistent paycheck to support them with she has been job hopping for several years now and really needs to settle into something such as this recent career choice.
My niece is looking forward to furthering her education and has hopes of owning her own spa at some point. She’s been spending what down time she has browsing the Internet looking at spa related products and accessories, getting a feel for what is out there by way of spa uniforms and spa accessories. that she might be interested in utilizing in the near future in her own dream spa!
She has been sharing some of the links to sites that she is finding of interest with me, we have always had a good relationship and keep in touch via email on a pretty consistent basis. I have to say that I had no idea what the market was like for the spa’s of today. There are many decisions that need to be made and I don’t mind giving her my input on some of the things, but I have to tell you that I pretty much feel a bit out of my element on a good amount of it all.
I’ve never been in any type of spa in my life, so I’m not much help with some of her choices like what type of beauty therapist uniforms would be the best for her needs and wants, although I wouldn’t mind going to one at some point. With spring in full swing, and all the things that need to be done here on the farm, I can tell you that it won’t be any time soon.
This morning I am taking advantage of a nice quiet house, not that it is ever loud, to get online and learn more about the stock market. It seems to me that the huge decline in stocks these past several years or so has brought the price of many stocks down to a price point where there are good opportunities for smart investors. Four years ago if you told me to invest a couple thousand dollars into a handful of stocks, I would not have gotten much for money. The price per share would have been so high that I would not have many shares. Now that the price has dropped to what I call an adjusted level of reasonable price points, the challenge is to find the businesses that offer good value for the investment and that have a good to excellent chance of coming through this recession as a healthier, stronger company.
If you find the right companies for this investment strategy, you will be rewarded in a few years with rebounding share prices. A good friend told me about a web site that is an online stock broker and also a great learning tool. They have a great feature called a “paper trade account” so that you can play the market without risking real cash. Once you are comfortable with the results of your paper trading efforts, you can easily open a real account and manage your real shares. What a wonderful idea that I believe I am going to check out here real soon and would urge others to try out as well, just to get a good idea of how it all works before jumping in.
In my opinion, design is the most critical aspect of a web site. You can have the most vital, important information to share with your readers, but if the design is crap, most people will move on without reading what you are trying to say. Design is combining art and style with form and function. It takes a talent for composition, a sense of style, an eye for detail and a deliberate learning process that develops skill to be a good designer.
The biggest mistake most beginners make when designing anything, whether is is a flyer that hangs in the convenience store window, a personal scrapbook of family photos and memorabilia, or a web page is to clutter the page with too much “stuff.” Beginners use several different type styles and fonts, making the page look like a ransom note. They use too many “cute” embellishments like clip art, busy borders and doo-dads. And they often lose track of the main thing they are trying to communicate – the original content. Any decent web design company should be well aware of
You can’t teach someone everything they need to know about design in just a few minutes. And some people never “get it” no matter how hard to you try to teach them. But if you have an interest in design and any talent for art or composition, there are a lot of books in the library, if you can find a book store I’m sure that they have a good amount of books about the subject. There are some great website design tutorials along with a ton of free web resources to learn the basic principles and then move on to advanced skills.
One of my favorite resources on the web is a blog by a designer who really knows the Internet. His posts are short and to the point, and they cover a wide range of talking points. This is not for the beginning designer, but anyone who has successfully completed a dozen or so projects will most certainly appreciate his comments and suggestions. If you are interested in learning some of the intermediate and advanced techniques, you should check in with the web design blogger site once in a while. He talks about more than just design. Recent posts include topics like search engine optimization, determining your Google page rank, web design tutorials and web site templates. So you can see that there is a variety of useful information presented and worth the time to click over there.
web design tutorials