Hi, WHAT AN EXCELLENT ARTICLE! when I was first diagnosed with diabetes II in 1998 I weighed 175 but lost 45 pounds and then felt great and always had good low sugars 80-110. Now I'm struggling to keep good sugars, I've gained weight back (165) and had to go on oral meds. I am determined to lose this crappy weight so my diabetes situation improves!
First put the water in the pan, then place your eggs gently in, turn the stove to med-high to get the water boiling. Once the water is boiling set timer to 15 mins. After 15 minutes, take pan off stove and drain water into sink. Fill the pan with cold water and ice. Let sit for 10 minutes or so. Take out the eggs and peel under cold, running water. Easy!
And I'm dyin! The headache is unbelievable but manageable with Advil. Funny thing is, I'm really not jones'in for a cup right now. I know I need to stop as the heart problems (skipping beats) and anxiety need to go away. I also use whipping cream and half-n-half which has been adding the pounds. Used stevia for sweetener. I like sugar better but don't like eating that much sugar.
My brew of choice came from a Barista espresso maker from Bucks. We usually got bucks whole bean and ground ourselves. Found another bean out of Michigan by the name of biggby coffee. That was good stuff. Our filler bean (cheap bean to stretch the good bean) came from world market. Not a bad brew to begin with but can't stand up to bucks or biggby's.
I'm going to stick with it this time. Had quit before due to the way it was affecting my health. Drinking water now to the tune of 4-5 liters / day. I used to drink that much water before but the coffee slowly replaced it. Hey, I was getting my liquid needs through coffee right? So wrong. Nothing replaces good ol water.
The money we will save should be to the tune of around 50 per month. That's going through a 1 pound bag per week. I'm also off the diet pepsi as well. There's another 3-6 bucks a week. Funny how we add more and more caffeine the longer we use and really don't think much about it. Didn't get into the energy drinks thankfully. Adding those probably would have sent my heart over the edge!
Anyhow, looking forward to the days without this friggin headache. I did it before and I will do it again. Will make it for good this time. Best of luck to you :)
Thank you for being a reasonable person, unlke other -- MMA evangelists -- I do understand that some people like the tools that they can use. I'll mention that you don't have to do the calculations over and over, you can do it once or twice (see the impact of a $100 per month if you'd like for example) and then make the changes in budgeting, end of story. I would find calcs tedious to make if I didn't like spreadsheets but I find it fun to do.
I used to have a Vonage account which was great. I have no complaints about the service or price. The reason I dropped it was my wireless provider has a "Talkspot" service. When I am in a WiFi zone, such as my house, my work, most of my friends and relatives houses, all of my local and nation wide calls are free. It does not use any "airtime" minutes from my plan. It costs a little more for the feature added to my existing plan, but my phone bill has dropped in half for the last 3 months using it. As for the 911 service, my phone is a blackberry 8900 which has GPS, so emergency people can find me anywhere. I only had cordless phones in my house with both my original land line and vonage, power outages would have made either of option useless in an emergency anyways. My only concern is keeping enough battery power on my phone all the time. I am currently looking for a hand crank charger for emergencies, and a spare battery. It is really nice to have only one phone number.
Grocery store club cards/loyalty cards can definitely affect the price. Yesterday was stock-up shopping day for my family, here's some data from two stores:
Safeway: saved $22.38, 32% of total, final price $50.14
City Market saved $41.17, 21% of total, final price $154.38
Some would argue that the prices are marked up higher to begin with, but regardless, I buy at the store with the best deal (taking into account the club card discount).
Another modifier is markdowns - we bought a couple of pounds of ground beef. We got 30% off the price by using the club card, and another 30% after that because it was clearanced - it had been a few days since it was packaged and they wanted to get rid of it. We'll use some right away and freeze the rest, so it's not going to go bad - and we got it for less than half price!
Your call is answered not by the regular 911 dispatcher, but by the cell phone's call center -- which could be in another country! They are then *supposed* to connect you to the appropriate service in your location. Let's just hope this process works better than most cell phone customer service. Personally, I find this idea really unnerving. I would like to see a comparison of response times for cellular versus land 911, as well as an analysis of how often cellular 911 calls are "lost", before entrusting the life of my family to this very new system.
It's much easier to teach a young child to dial 911 on a landline phone than on a cell phone, if, for instance, the parent should fall or become ill. Also, the landline comes up on the 911 switchboard with the actual address, so if the child doesn't give a coherent address to the dispatcher, they'll still be able to send EMS. While the location of a cell phone can be tracked, I don't think this is done automatically by the 911 dispatcher. It could cost extra time in an emergency.
A cell phone can be a great safety device, but so can a landline. The landline is not yet obsolete!
I was going to make the same point about taxes. For a big-ticket item like a computer, the "safe harbor" provision is usually not available--in MA the threshold is any purchase over $1000. You do owe the sales tax.
Vermiculite all I can say is NO, NO, NO!! I am amazed you were able to find it at all. It is and cannot be sold here in MN. It has been proven as cancer causing. MN is in the process of trying to figure out what to do with the old vermiculite plants. All the soil needs to be removed and treated as hazerdous waste. Please research it before you think of using vermiculite.
Although this particular story isn't true, the idea of niche marketing is a great example of what ad execs Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval have termed "the power of small." By identifying a tiny but untapped market, you can build a lucrative business from a little idea. Just look at Zelda the Dog-- who ever would have known that there would be such a market for bulldog memorabilia?
Great site & great comments! I have made some ok meads, but now I have everything to make a "Crockpot Still". I heard good things about this still. Can anyone comment on this or give me some pointers (ex. How deep does the copper tubing go into the top of the crockpot, etc.. Thanks!
Just a little word of caution on that free lumber found in a dumpster. To use it in gardening, especially veggie gardens, make sure that the wood has not been treated. Any chemicals that were added to the wood can go into the ground and your plants. Most places that you buy lumber will let you know, but when getting it out of a dumpster, you have no idea.
I would like to propose a different perspective on this discussion. After reading this post for an hour, I can tell I may want to go back and read the rest in more detail. I am biased since I sell the Money Merge Account.
I think the product is wrong for most of the people on this thread. They apparently are happy to deal with budgets, spreadsheets, and calculation each and every month over and over again.
I propose that the Money Merge Account is for a different customer, like my wife and I. We have other things to do that get in the way of planning our next three months over and over again. My income fluctuates so I would have to adjust the calculations each month to reflect changes to income and timing differences. The spreadsheet method would just take too long and too much time for some people to stick with it. The Money Merge Account dynamically adjusts to changes whereas a spreadsheet will need more manual asjustments.
Lets use the iPhone as a perspective enhancment. When the iPhone came out people could have said "I already have a cell phone and a PDA, why would I need an iPhone?" or maybe they still make lists on post it notes and were like "Why do I need a smarter phone that takes notes, I just need to make phone calls?" When they came out people that bought them were excited to get multiple devices into one device that was easy to use. Having a phone, camera, PDA, and internet device all in one was valuable to people--if it worked well. Now with the iPhone application business booming people a learning all sorts of new things that the iPhone can do for them or that they can play with. I'm not talking about turning your phone into a lightsaber from Starwars but finding nearby restaurants or looking up star maps at night. Things that for the right person provide significant value.
All of this hinges on two questions of "does it work? and Is it easy to use?" you see the customer for MMA is more interested in will it work for me and will it be easy to use. Many people on this thread apparently think what they were doing was working and since they were doing it that is was easy. What is easier than continuing to do what you already do?
Now put yourself in my shoes, I did not understand all the algorythms that go into mortgage amoritization, interest cancellation, time value of money, statistical choice permutations, opportunity costs evaluation, and marginal analysis. But what United First Financial proved to me was that the MMA was easy to use and would work. I don't understand how the iPhone makes calls or how to program my own iPhone application nor do I claim to teach people how the MMA works so they can do it themselves. I just want to help people get the result- a faster mortage or debt pay off. I don't claim that it is the "best" choice when considering investments. I think it will continue to do exactly what they promise for people that want that result in a way that changes their life very little. So is it best for people? that depends on your situation and your goals. Is it a great tool for people? yes.
This is such an over-looked aspect of the recession, where people sudden find themselves without work to define their identities. Without proper support of a good community, this can be extremely hard on one's physical and mental health.
Thanks for bringing this up. We are certainly nowhere near the Japanese when it comes to work and life identity fusion, but a good reminder nevertheless for those of us dependent on work to define us.
I love to garden and have been gardening for years. I like to start my plants from seed since the variety of seeds available is always bigger then the variety of seedlings that you can buy locally. Even though I don't garden with friends, we always share seedlings and ideas.
I also wanted to remind folks not to forget your local foodbank. If it happens that your zucchini (or beans or tomatoes) produces too many to use at one time, your local foodbank always welcomes garden fresh produce. My local foodbank actually has a community garden where you can volunteer your time to help them plant, weed, harvest.
Another big modifier is interest. This can be from buying things on time from the seller or charging things to a credit card that you don't pay off at the end of the cycle. Or it can be from using a no-interest loan for something you already have the money for and earning interest on the money while you're holding it to make the payments.
You can get tax breaks for some purchases.
Another modifier is the investment potential. For example, buying a house and then getting a paying roommate (or buying anything I can rent out), buying a mower instead of paying someone to mow the grass, buying an appliance that uses less energy than the one it's replacing, and buying a tool that lets me increase my productivity.
And another sort of negative modifier can come from disorganization: the bounced check fee or the late credit card payment fee.
Another form of the cashback modifier is rewards credit cards.
And finally I'll mention the opportunity cost--what could you have been doing with the money if you weren't doing this with it.
I use Skype at home which is great. It's not always crystal clear but it's good about 90% of the time. It only costs me $30 a year for unlimited local and long distance domestic. Plus I signed up for a skypein number which gives people a number to call my skype phone just like a land line. My parents love it for calling long distance to the Philippines
Hope the garden produces well for you. We've only been at it for a few years and found "Square Foot Gardening" is very good, especially if your soil is iffy. ("How to Mix the Perfect Soil for the Perfect Garden"). The system lends itself well to multiple gardeners. A family I know made individual 4' x 4' plots for three of their children. The kids were tickled with the results.
This year, we got some 2" x 6" lumber free from a dad who salvaged it from a construction dumpster (and had leftovers after building his daughter a fort) and seeds from a very kind freecycler. The biggest investment was the peat moss etc. needed. Vermiculite is hard to come by but we found a decent deal online. Once the bed is established you just add to it year by year, so it's not as heavy costwise. We're almost ready to roll with our second 4' x 8' bed. Tell us how it goes for you as your summer progresses. Personally I'm looking forward to some REAL tomatoes.
You stated my heart exactly! I was also growing weary of the term "blogger" (which I do, but not alone.) My business cards were increasingly difficult to pen down, as I had other labels like "Freelancer" "Copywriter" and "Marketer" in there, as well.
It's no less confusing than trying to state what a Mom or Dad does. Too many tasks, but not one definite career label. Thanks for your comment!
I have never owned a cell phone. People may want to consider what this man, Michael C. Ruppert, has to say:
SURVIVAL TIP -- For everyone who thought it was a good thing to get rid of your land line telephone and just use your cell, think again. The real serious hits are coming PDQ. Major telecoms (all of which trade on Wall Street) have been and will inevitably cut back on repairs. Suppliers will stop shipping parts, labor cut back, etc... you know the rest. Satellites will go down. Cell towers will have intermittent failures. And all those gadgets will be heading the way of the dinosaurs over the next five years. Landlines are an excellent way to have redundancy and also avoid the eavesdropping technology that is all over the place and legal. It still takes a warrant to tap a land line. When the cell towers go down, or satellites fail, if you have a land line you will become a VIP in your neighborhood.
I went from calling myself a college student, to a law student, to a lawyer (sometimes an attorney if I wanted to throw in the extra syllable), then, when I quit law to blog, I was a bit at a loss. Was I a blogger? A writer? A self-help writer? A novelist? A screenwriter? Labels are useful but also confining. I wanted to be accurate, but I was also aware of the tremendous power of words.
When I called myself a blogger, most people had no clear idea of what that was -- including me. There are so many different types of bloggers, so that's not really descriptive enough. When I called myself a writer, most people wanted to know what kind of books did I write? And, anyway, like "blogger," "writer" can mean almost anything. That was a problem b/c I really wanted to write self-help books as much as novels. So, should I say "a writer of self-help books and novels?" Kinda wordy. Luckily -- and partly as a result of searching for the right words to describe who I am and what I do for a living -- I settled on "novelist and screenwriter." There's no confusion about that. But, best of all, it feels right in my heart. That's what I want to be known as, so why not call myself that? Indeed! : )
I got MagicJack about 3 months ago. So far, I have few complaints. Sometimes calls on MagicJack just get dropped. Last week, I lost internet all together, but later found out that I would have lost landline service anyway because the whole main switch went bad.
I am glad, overall, I got MagicJack. But, we use mostly cell phones anyway. I manage to keep my cell phone bill to just under $100 per month.
MagicJack is currently running a special, for existing customers only, for a price of $59.95 for 5 years! Normally, it is $79.95 for 5 years.
Also, MagicJack, when you set it up, goes through a whole thing to get the 911 service setup for you. I also bought the MagicJack unit at BestBuy and I understand it is also available at RadioShack.
I have "naked DSL" through AT&T. I was spending $25 a month for DSL. Once I went "naked", my DSL went up $10 to $35 a month. My landline was costing me $25 a month, including taxes, so that is a savings of $15 per month, permanently.
Well..I was working with a company and i left the job after a month without any notice.Two months after i left the job they credited my account with one month salary and now after 4 months they are asking me to repay that large amount..what should i do???
Hi, WHAT AN EXCELLENT ARTICLE! when I was first diagnosed with diabetes II in 1998 I weighed 175 but lost 45 pounds and then felt great and always had good low sugars 80-110. Now I'm struggling to keep good sugars, I've gained weight back (165) and had to go on oral meds. I am determined to lose this crappy weight so my diabetes situation improves!
First put the water in the pan, then place your eggs gently in, turn the stove to med-high to get the water boiling. Once the water is boiling set timer to 15 mins. After 15 minutes, take pan off stove and drain water into sink. Fill the pan with cold water and ice. Let sit for 10 minutes or so. Take out the eggs and peel under cold, running water. Easy!
And I'm dyin! The headache is unbelievable but manageable with Advil. Funny thing is, I'm really not jones'in for a cup right now. I know I need to stop as the heart problems (skipping beats) and anxiety need to go away. I also use whipping cream and half-n-half which has been adding the pounds. Used stevia for sweetener. I like sugar better but don't like eating that much sugar.
My brew of choice came from a Barista espresso maker from Bucks. We usually got bucks whole bean and ground ourselves. Found another bean out of Michigan by the name of biggby coffee. That was good stuff. Our filler bean (cheap bean to stretch the good bean) came from world market. Not a bad brew to begin with but can't stand up to bucks or biggby's.
I'm going to stick with it this time. Had quit before due to the way it was affecting my health. Drinking water now to the tune of 4-5 liters / day. I used to drink that much water before but the coffee slowly replaced it. Hey, I was getting my liquid needs through coffee right? So wrong. Nothing replaces good ol water.
The money we will save should be to the tune of around 50 per month. That's going through a 1 pound bag per week. I'm also off the diet pepsi as well. There's another 3-6 bucks a week. Funny how we add more and more caffeine the longer we use and really don't think much about it. Didn't get into the energy drinks thankfully. Adding those probably would have sent my heart over the edge!
Anyhow, looking forward to the days without this friggin headache. I did it before and I will do it again. Will make it for good this time. Best of luck to you :)
How could you tell someone to drink decaf if they can't have any caffeine. All Decafe has caffeine in it.
Thank you for being a reasonable person, unlke other -- MMA evangelists -- I do understand that some people like the tools that they can use. I'll mention that you don't have to do the calculations over and over, you can do it once or twice (see the impact of a $100 per month if you'd like for example) and then make the changes in budgeting, end of story. I would find calcs tedious to make if I didn't like spreadsheets but I find it fun to do.
I used to have a Vonage account which was great. I have no complaints about the service or price. The reason I dropped it was my wireless provider has a "Talkspot" service. When I am in a WiFi zone, such as my house, my work, most of my friends and relatives houses, all of my local and nation wide calls are free. It does not use any "airtime" minutes from my plan. It costs a little more for the feature added to my existing plan, but my phone bill has dropped in half for the last 3 months using it. As for the 911 service, my phone is a blackberry 8900 which has GPS, so emergency people can find me anywhere. I only had cordless phones in my house with both my original land line and vonage, power outages would have made either of option useless in an emergency anyways. My only concern is keeping enough battery power on my phone all the time. I am currently looking for a hand crank charger for emergencies, and a spare battery. It is really nice to have only one phone number.
Grocery store club cards/loyalty cards can definitely affect the price. Yesterday was stock-up shopping day for my family, here's some data from two stores:
Safeway: saved $22.38, 32% of total, final price $50.14
City Market saved $41.17, 21% of total, final price $154.38
Some would argue that the prices are marked up higher to begin with, but regardless, I buy at the store with the best deal (taking into account the club card discount).
Another modifier is markdowns - we bought a couple of pounds of ground beef. We got 30% off the price by using the club card, and another 30% after that because it was clearanced - it had been a few days since it was packaged and they wanted to get rid of it. We'll use some right away and freeze the rest, so it's not going to go bad - and we got it for less than half price!
Read this brief explanation of how cellular 911 works:
http://firstaid.about.com/od/callingforhelp/bb/cell911.htm
Your call is answered not by the regular 911 dispatcher, but by the cell phone's call center -- which could be in another country! They are then *supposed* to connect you to the appropriate service in your location. Let's just hope this process works better than most cell phone customer service. Personally, I find this idea really unnerving. I would like to see a comparison of response times for cellular versus land 911, as well as an analysis of how often cellular 911 calls are "lost", before entrusting the life of my family to this very new system.
Another safety issue:
It's much easier to teach a young child to dial 911 on a landline phone than on a cell phone, if, for instance, the parent should fall or become ill. Also, the landline comes up on the 911 switchboard with the actual address, so if the child doesn't give a coherent address to the dispatcher, they'll still be able to send EMS. While the location of a cell phone can be tracked, I don't think this is done automatically by the 911 dispatcher. It could cost extra time in an emergency.
A cell phone can be a great safety device, but so can a landline. The landline is not yet obsolete!
I was going to make the same point about taxes. For a big-ticket item like a computer, the "safe harbor" provision is usually not available--in MA the threshold is any purchase over $1000. You do owe the sales tax.
Vermiculite all I can say is NO, NO, NO!! I am amazed you were able to find it at all. It is and cannot be sold here in MN. It has been proven as cancer causing. MN is in the process of trying to figure out what to do with the old vermiculite plants. All the soil needs to be removed and treated as hazerdous waste. Please research it before you think of using vermiculite.
Although this particular story isn't true, the idea of niche marketing is a great example of what ad execs Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval have termed "the power of small." By identifying a tiny but untapped market, you can build a lucrative business from a little idea. Just look at Zelda the Dog-- who ever would have known that there would be such a market for bulldog memorabilia?
Great site & great comments! I have made some ok meads, but now I have everything to make a "Crockpot Still". I heard good things about this still. Can anyone comment on this or give me some pointers (ex. How deep does the copper tubing go into the top of the crockpot, etc.. Thanks!
Just a little word of caution on that free lumber found in a dumpster. To use it in gardening, especially veggie gardens, make sure that the wood has not been treated. Any chemicals that were added to the wood can go into the ground and your plants. Most places that you buy lumber will let you know, but when getting it out of a dumpster, you have no idea.
I would like to propose a different perspective on this discussion. After reading this post for an hour, I can tell I may want to go back and read the rest in more detail. I am biased since I sell the Money Merge Account.
I think the product is wrong for most of the people on this thread. They apparently are happy to deal with budgets, spreadsheets, and calculation each and every month over and over again.
I propose that the Money Merge Account is for a different customer, like my wife and I. We have other things to do that get in the way of planning our next three months over and over again. My income fluctuates so I would have to adjust the calculations each month to reflect changes to income and timing differences. The spreadsheet method would just take too long and too much time for some people to stick with it. The Money Merge Account dynamically adjusts to changes whereas a spreadsheet will need more manual asjustments.
Lets use the iPhone as a perspective enhancment. When the iPhone came out people could have said "I already have a cell phone and a PDA, why would I need an iPhone?" or maybe they still make lists on post it notes and were like "Why do I need a smarter phone that takes notes, I just need to make phone calls?" When they came out people that bought them were excited to get multiple devices into one device that was easy to use. Having a phone, camera, PDA, and internet device all in one was valuable to people--if it worked well. Now with the iPhone application business booming people a learning all sorts of new things that the iPhone can do for them or that they can play with. I'm not talking about turning your phone into a lightsaber from Starwars but finding nearby restaurants or looking up star maps at night. Things that for the right person provide significant value.
All of this hinges on two questions of "does it work? and Is it easy to use?" you see the customer for MMA is more interested in will it work for me and will it be easy to use. Many people on this thread apparently think what they were doing was working and since they were doing it that is was easy. What is easier than continuing to do what you already do?
Now put yourself in my shoes, I did not understand all the algorythms that go into mortgage amoritization, interest cancellation, time value of money, statistical choice permutations, opportunity costs evaluation, and marginal analysis. But what United First Financial proved to me was that the MMA was easy to use and would work. I don't understand how the iPhone makes calls or how to program my own iPhone application nor do I claim to teach people how the MMA works so they can do it themselves. I just want to help people get the result- a faster mortage or debt pay off. I don't claim that it is the "best" choice when considering investments. I think it will continue to do exactly what they promise for people that want that result in a way that changes their life very little. So is it best for people? that depends on your situation and your goals. Is it a great tool for people? yes.
This is such an over-looked aspect of the recession, where people sudden find themselves without work to define their identities. Without proper support of a good community, this can be extremely hard on one's physical and mental health.
Thanks for bringing this up. We are certainly nowhere near the Japanese when it comes to work and life identity fusion, but a good reminder nevertheless for those of us dependent on work to define us.
I love to garden and have been gardening for years. I like to start my plants from seed since the variety of seeds available is always bigger then the variety of seedlings that you can buy locally. Even though I don't garden with friends, we always share seedlings and ideas.
I also wanted to remind folks not to forget your local foodbank. If it happens that your zucchini (or beans or tomatoes) produces too many to use at one time, your local foodbank always welcomes garden fresh produce. My local foodbank actually has a community garden where you can volunteer your time to help them plant, weed, harvest.
Ooh! I like this analogy.
Another big modifier is interest. This can be from buying things on time from the seller or charging things to a credit card that you don't pay off at the end of the cycle. Or it can be from using a no-interest loan for something you already have the money for and earning interest on the money while you're holding it to make the payments.
You can get tax breaks for some purchases.
Another modifier is the investment potential. For example, buying a house and then getting a paying roommate (or buying anything I can rent out), buying a mower instead of paying someone to mow the grass, buying an appliance that uses less energy than the one it's replacing, and buying a tool that lets me increase my productivity.
And another sort of negative modifier can come from disorganization: the bounced check fee or the late credit card payment fee.
Another form of the cashback modifier is rewards credit cards.
And finally I'll mention the opportunity cost--what could you have been doing with the money if you weren't doing this with it.
I use Skype at home which is great. It's not always crystal clear but it's good about 90% of the time. It only costs me $30 a year for unlimited local and long distance domestic. Plus I signed up for a skypein number which gives people a number to call my skype phone just like a land line. My parents love it for calling long distance to the Philippines
Hope the garden produces well for you. We've only been at it for a few years and found "Square Foot Gardening" is very good, especially if your soil is iffy. ("How to Mix the Perfect Soil for the Perfect Garden"). The system lends itself well to multiple gardeners. A family I know made individual 4' x 4' plots for three of their children. The kids were tickled with the results.
This year, we got some 2" x 6" lumber free from a dad who salvaged it from a construction dumpster (and had leftovers after building his daughter a fort) and seeds from a very kind freecycler. The biggest investment was the peat moss etc. needed. Vermiculite is hard to come by but we found a decent deal online. Once the bed is established you just add to it year by year, so it's not as heavy costwise. We're almost ready to roll with our second 4' x 8' bed. Tell us how it goes for you as your summer progresses. Personally I'm looking forward to some REAL tomatoes.
You stated my heart exactly! I was also growing weary of the term "blogger" (which I do, but not alone.) My business cards were increasingly difficult to pen down, as I had other labels like "Freelancer" "Copywriter" and "Marketer" in there, as well.
It's no less confusing than trying to state what a Mom or Dad does. Too many tasks, but not one definite career label. Thanks for your comment!
Linsey Knerl
I have never owned a cell phone. People may want to consider what this man, Michael C. Ruppert, has to say:
SURVIVAL TIP -- For everyone who thought it was a good thing to get rid of your land line telephone and just use your cell, think again. The real serious hits are coming PDQ. Major telecoms (all of which trade on Wall Street) have been and will inevitably cut back on repairs. Suppliers will stop shipping parts, labor cut back, etc... you know the rest. Satellites will go down. Cell towers will have intermittent failures. And all those gadgets will be heading the way of the dinosaurs over the next five years. Landlines are an excellent way to have redundancy and also avoid the eavesdropping technology that is all over the place and legal. It still takes a warrant to tap a land line. When the cell towers go down, or satellites fail, if you have a land line you will become a VIP in your neighborhood.
I went from calling myself a college student, to a law student, to a lawyer (sometimes an attorney if I wanted to throw in the extra syllable), then, when I quit law to blog, I was a bit at a loss. Was I a blogger? A writer? A self-help writer? A novelist? A screenwriter? Labels are useful but also confining. I wanted to be accurate, but I was also aware of the tremendous power of words.
When I called myself a blogger, most people had no clear idea of what that was -- including me. There are so many different types of bloggers, so that's not really descriptive enough. When I called myself a writer, most people wanted to know what kind of books did I write? And, anyway, like "blogger," "writer" can mean almost anything. That was a problem b/c I really wanted to write self-help books as much as novels. So, should I say "a writer of self-help books and novels?" Kinda wordy. Luckily -- and partly as a result of searching for the right words to describe who I am and what I do for a living -- I settled on "novelist and screenwriter." There's no confusion about that. But, best of all, it feels right in my heart. That's what I want to be known as, so why not call myself that? Indeed! : )
I got MagicJack about 3 months ago. So far, I have few complaints. Sometimes calls on MagicJack just get dropped. Last week, I lost internet all together, but later found out that I would have lost landline service anyway because the whole main switch went bad.
I am glad, overall, I got MagicJack. But, we use mostly cell phones anyway. I manage to keep my cell phone bill to just under $100 per month.
MagicJack is currently running a special, for existing customers only, for a price of $59.95 for 5 years! Normally, it is $79.95 for 5 years.
Also, MagicJack, when you set it up, goes through a whole thing to get the 911 service setup for you. I also bought the MagicJack unit at BestBuy and I understand it is also available at RadioShack.
I have "naked DSL" through AT&T. I was spending $25 a month for DSL. Once I went "naked", my DSL went up $10 to $35 a month. My landline was costing me $25 a month, including taxes, so that is a savings of $15 per month, permanently.
Edie
Well..I was working with a company and i left the job after a month without any notice.Two months after i left the job they credited my account with one month salary and now after 4 months they are asking me to repay that large amount..what should i do???