Pebbles

One of the things I am sure my sister-in-law is going to be talking to me about this weekend is her desire for a newer car.  She has been working part time at the local McDonald’s and saving her money as best she can.  When she got her license a while ago her parents gave her an old used car to use, and it works fine, but she really wants something newer and nicer.  We are going to be talking about the pros and cons of buying new cars v.s used cars, and leasing vs. buying. 

I will be encouraging her to read this great Auto Lease Article article I found that explain how shrewd car leasing works.  It compares the different parts of how leasing a car shrewdly is similar to making an apple pie.  It breaks the different components into easy to understand terms. It compares the different parts of how leasing a car shrewdly is similar to making an apple pie. The article is put out by a website called Shrewdlease.com.

I had the chance to check out the Shrewdlease website a while ago. What it does is helps you to determine if the lease you are thinking about taking out on a car is a good idea or not.

I think that both of the website pages are a good tool for anyone who is interested in leasing a car.

One of my sister-in-laws is a senior in high school.  She has been talking to me about the prom coming up, and who she is going with, what she is planning to wear, etc.  She wants to come over this weekend and have me help her figure out what to do with her hair.  She has always asked me to “do” her hair whenever she feels the need for a special “do.” 

So, we will see what I can come up with!  I told her to try to bring some magazines with pictures in them of what she thinks she might like to come up with.  I don’t consider “doing hair” my “specialty” and I certainly won’t ever try to make my living as a beautician, it is just something I seem to have a “knack” for.

It’s nice to be appreciated!

We’ve had computers for as long as I can really remember, since the personal computer was first available on the market!  Our first PC was a MacIntosh.  As soon as the Internet became available to our location, we signed up for that.  We love using our computers and the Internet to help to keep in touch with friends and family, organize our lives, shop, pay bills, and just have some fun!  It’s hard to imagine life without our computers and the Internet!  I recently realized that there is a lot more to computers and the Internet than I have learned so far, and I plan to learn more about both subjects.  I find this new technology all so fascinating!

There is a website dedicated to answering questions about IP.  The website is called whatismyipaddress.com.  I was checking out the webpage today to see what information it has that might be of future use, and I ended up saving it to my “favorites” list.  The whatismyipaddress website has several pages full of Internet tools related to IP addresses.  It explains what an IP address is, and how every computer location has its own IP address.  The site explains that the IP address can be used to help locate someone.  It has a tool that helps you to lookup ip addresses if you feel that you want to look them up.  If you DO lookup an ip address, it will give you a general location of where that IP is.

The website has a forum that you can join and ask questions and share thoughts.  This website tells you what your IP is.  It has a cool new tool that can help you locate where an email came from.  Another cool tool is the blacklist tool - you can use that tool to find out if your IP has been blacklisted.

Continuing to look over the website, I see a page dedicated to free tools that are provided to the website users - IP Traceroute, Visual Traceroute, Blacklist check, IP to Hostname lookup, Hostname to IP lookup, and Advanced Proxy check. 

I’ve heard of these services being used by law enforcement, but really never even thought about them being available to the general public!

Today my mother in law and I spent a few hours at Longfellow’s Nursery.  I love that place!  I could spend thousands of dollars there without even blinking!  They have such a nice place, and so many greenhouses to roam through!

I bought several flats of pansies, petunias, begonias, and some day lilies.  I also bought a peony.  My mother in law also bought a lot of plants, we filled up the car trunk!  I hope to plant my flowers this coming weekend if the weather is good.

Last week my hubby’s boss asked me my opinion on the best way to protect his company’s data.  I told him that I felt that Online Backup and online storage was probably the best solution for any small business.  In today’s world, most businesses are relying more heavily on their computers to run their daily operations.  I have found that if the computers are down in almost any office nowadays, work comes to a screeching halt!

I have also found that computers tend to be fickle and finicky and will crash and burn without notice.  When they DO crash and burn, often the data that is in them at the time becomes corrupted and irretrievable.  And with the IT support systems that most small businesses have, when computer crashes it often takes days for their IT support person to be able to even arrive in the office to take a look at the computer.

That is why I think it is important to store and backup information on the Internet.  If the computers crash and burn, the data is still available relatively quickly and pain free from the storage location on the Internet.

The Ibackup.com website offers online storage and backup to small companies at a very reasonable fee, starting at $9.95 per month for 10GB of storage.  They can accommodate MAC and are optimized for the Iphone.  I think that is a very small price to pay for the safe storage of valuable data!