Tag: internet

Best Spring Cleaning Tips for the Slacker (that means You!)

~ K ~ 4 Comments

Spring is here!  Besides the insane amount of rain we have received in the last three weeks, spring is here and we are all happy!  Pretty flowers and the smell of cleaning products are in the air.  With the arrival of Spring, one should focus on the “cleaning” part of “Spring Cleaning”.

But what should you do to jump start your Spring Cleaning adventures? Oh, and you know it will be an adventure with all the worthless crap you have stuffed into your hall closet.  Like a trip down memory lane (and a STD), all the forgotten items will appear once again!  Your old caveman costume, your President Trump facemask, your skateboard from junior high, and your goals and dreams that you have forgotten; they can all be found in various storage bins under your stairs.

The best advice is to…wait, we never follow the best advice…we follow the worthless advice!

  1. Before you begin cleaning, it is a great idea to learn all about cleaning!  So surf the internet and watch as many cleaning videos you can find.  With a quick search of YouTube, I’m sure you’ll waste away hours (if not days) of time that you could have devoted to cleaning!

    female-865073_1920.jpg
    Learn all you can about cleaning on the internet becaus
  2. To Save Money, borrow cleaning items from your neighbor.  This saves you a trip to the store and saves you money.  You can use almost all of their Pine Sol cleaner.  Remember to leave a little in the bottle when you return it.  Don’t be selfish.
  3. Get the family involved with “Prison Cleaning Crew” game!  This game involves telling your kids they have been found guilty in a court of law and now must do community service.  Sure, your kids are “probably” innocent of their crimes, but this shows them that if they could have afforded a better lawyer, they could have gotten off scot-free.
  4. Declutter – Throw it all out…bills, love letters from Beth, and credit card offers are all going to the recycling bin.  She broke your heart once, you don’t need those love letters causing you to rethink your new relationship with your cat Mindi.  Mindi is prefect for you, she loves you.  Did Beth really love you?  No, she didn’t.  If she did, she would have stayed instead of running off with that rich Columbian drug lord.
  5. Skip the Broom…use your Leaf Blower instead.  Sweeping out the kitchen takes too long, just grab that leaf blower, open the patio door, and let the dust, cat hair, and winter depression get blown right outside.
  6. Nuke your sponges!  If you like to think your sponges are clean; they aren’t.  Nuke them in the microwave for two minutes.  If they still misbehave, throw them in the clothes dryer for 15  minutes.  I can’t promise the microwave won’t report back to the government what you are doing but I’m pretty sure the clothes dryer is part of the resistance.  You can talk to the dryer, trust the dryer, the dryer is your friend.
  7. Windows – just close your blinds or drapes.  See? You don’t see how dirty they are, do you?
  8. Lightbulbs – replace those bright lightbulbs with low-watt ones.  The darker the room, the less you notice the clutter and grime.
  9. Sell and/or give all your worthless crap on Craig’s List.  Remember, Craig’s List isn’t for meeting serial killers and your next “date”, it can also be use for free trash removal.  You slap a “FREE” sign on any Craig’s List post and it will be gone that day.  If the item is heavy, say you have a bad back and the new owners will carry it out themselves.

There is even a National Spring Cleaning week from March 12-17…oh wait, that already happened and technically spring doesn’t officially start until March 20…but you are still too late.  Just wait until next year to do your spring cleaning!  Just like you gave up on your hopes and desires years ago, you should give up on Spring Cleaning now.

broom-1837434.jpg

 

Quick! Too Much Information is Never Enough!

~ K ~ 4 Comments

TMI & TMS: Too Much Information & Too Much Sharing

Did you hear about the first time mother Ruth Iorio that used Twitter and Instagram to document the birth of her first child?

It does sound like a start of joke but of course it’s not.  Supposedly her photos and the Twitter feed went viral on the internet.  She might not have been the first one to do it but she is the first one I’ve heard about.  There has to be a couple hundred YouTube videos of births so what is the big deal?

Maybe it was a slow news day.  I discovered the story when I watched a short video news report on the ABC News website.  It was a simple slideshow of her photos and they never interviewed her.

I did watch her being interviewed on another news program and she just seemed to wanted to document the event with her photographer husband.  Not a big deal; I know other people who have recorded the birth of their children but they didn’t tweet about it as it happened.  I don’t mind learning about the birth of your child; I just don’t need all the details in (somewhat) real time.  I certainly don’t need to see the photos either.  A simple after the fact tweet of “It’s a boy, his name is Nye, and he was born at 2:41 pm today!” will work for me.  Heck, throw in a photo of your son while you are at it.

Perhaps she just wanted to share the birth with a few of her Twitter friends and family.  At first it was just them and then they just happen to share the link with another friend, then another, until it was all over the internet.

However, it has inspired me to share more.  I plan to tweet about the next time I clip my toenails so you better sign up for my Twitter feed now!  You don’t want to miss that!

A special “Thanks” to fellow blogger Honey Did You See That! Whom gave me the idea about TMS and TMI:  Too Much Sharing and Too Much Information blog post today.

Psst! I know what is wrong with kids these days….TV viewing is down!

~ K ~ Leave a comment

Why America Sucks: The Average Hours per week of TV viewing is down!

It is with great sorrow I must report that today’s children are not watching enough television.  According to this news report out of Minnesota, the Nielsen ratings reported that kids between the age of 2 and 11 watched an average of 24 hours per week.  Shockingly, that is down from 28 hours in the mid-1970s.

No wonder our country is going to hell in a hand basket!  Our kids are watching four hours of less television per week that my generation.  That is just plain awful.  This is trend that must be reverse for the sake of all America!

The good news that is that television can still screw up your kids!  They just need to focus on what kind of television they watch.

The more violent the better!  A recent study says that the type of television (the quality of television) also affects the child’s development.  To no one’s big surprise, the preschool age children who switched from violent television to more educational shows were less aggressive and more kind than the control group.  In the study, the control group didn’t change their television viewing habits.  The study also reported that the control group and the healthy TV group reported watching slightly more TV after the year-long monitoring project.

But don’t despair about TV viewing going down, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s (2010) report stated that kids spend an average of 75 hours of media viewing per week.

They broke it down into the following:

The average kid sponges in 2.5 hours of music each day, almost five hours of TV and movies, three hours of Internet and video games, and just 38 minutes of old-fashioned reading.  Sadly, that figure didn’t include the hour and a half spent text messaging each day, and the half hour kids talk on the cell phone.

So if your kid isn’t watching good old fashion TV, then they are on the computer or Smartphone racking up those media hours!  Good for them!   Don’t let us down!

Sorry, this blog post is so short….my daughter needed to rot her brain by playing an online game for 8 hours.  I don’t want her to be below average so she is allowed to play her online game for at least six hours. Then I kick her off to watch TV.  It is all about balance here in my house.

Remember: There are no below average kids in my house!

That’s my worthless advice for today!  As always, your comments on my great parenting tips are always welcome!

No One Takes My Advice….and For Good Reason!

~ K ~ Leave a comment

I noticed that a lot of people don’t heed advice when it is offered to them.  Clearly, my Blog of Worthless Advice would be much more successful if people would really look at themselves and see what terrible mental shape they are in.  It is quite sad that people don’t following their passion and becoming better people.

In my quest to offer the best worthless advice available, I am constantly reading advice columns, advice blogs, and interest resources like The Onion.

However, Cyndi (my imaginary stalker) and my Mom (my other reader) know that my Worthless Advice Blog is merely a creative outlet for my weird sense of humor.  Sadly, some of the articles and blogs I read actually think that their blogs offer helpful advice.  My 10 year old daughter offers better advice.

I saw one article entitled “Bad Parenting? Parents Should Avoid Bad Parenting Mistakes.”  Really?  You think parents should avoid bad parenting mistakes?  You don’t think I should embrace them and strive to be a bad parent?  I get most of my parenting advice from http://www.reallybadparentingadvice.com/.

In my heart, I know that others could be greatly helped by reading my blog.  The world is in sad shape, you losers really need to be saved from your stupid lives.  With unemployment at 8.2% in Washington State in October 2012, you think more people would be searching for Worthless Advice to better their lives (and find a job!).  On a brighter note, Washington State unemployment dropped from 8.5% in September 2012.

See how I’m improving your life already?  I offer my extremely correct opinion mixed in with a few useful facts to help increase your knowledge about unemployment in Washington State.

How I became a New York Times Bestseller author!

~ K ~ 2 Comments

If you really want to be depressed, do a little research into making that creative career switch.  As my imaginary stalker Cyndi and you both know, I have a dream of writing that next New York Times Bestselling novel that will make me rich!  Oh yeah! I’ll be jet setting around the country in first class (sweet!) and wearing a tweed jacket, reading passages from my latest work to adoring fans, sipping an Americano and chuckling at my good fortune.

I got into this research mode with a stop this afternoon at the local grocery store. I noticed they had some brand new books for sale on a display table near the checkout stand.  As I flipped through a few pages of the novels, I wondered how much money the author would receive from this hardcover book.  Since it wasn’t a genre I had any interest in, I made a mental note to look up the author when I got home (which I since have forgotten the author’s name and the book’s title).  Oh well.  I decided to see what an author might expect to sell their first novel for (in terms of advances) and how many copies the first book might actually sell.  Was it ten thousand books?  Twenty thousand copies?

Yikes!  What a wake up call.  It might be as low as 500 books!  I know that everyone wants to write a novel and become a published author.  I didn’t know the pay was so bad.  I looked around at a few blogs and some people commented that they wrote because they love to write.  Bravo for them!  That is fine as a hobby but not as a career.  Some comments even alluded to the fact they would make more money flipping burgers at the local fast food restaurant than as an author writing for a whole year.

I have nothing against writing as a hobby.  However, if it is something I’m really passionate about and I want to make a living at it, then I do want to get paid more than the average burger flipper.  Call me greedy for chasing the dollar but my family does like to live in a nice house and have food on their dinner plates.

Sure, I could say “Follow my heart and the money will follow”.  A better piece of advice would be to write that novel in my spare time, try to sell it, and don’t quit your day job.  We all know that no one has spare time; it would be an evening and weekend endeavor.  I don’t mind doing that as a hobby but it sure would be nice to get paid if I am doing a part time job on the side.

Writing isn’t easy.  Characters and plots take time.  You have to develop a story, write a rough draft, and edit it.

Am I whining too much?  Sure.  I’m entitled to do a little whining.  Like everyone else, I want it to be easy.  I know it won’t be easy but it might be enjoyable.

I just hoped that by investing that amount of time into a project, it would at least spin off some additional income I could invest with.  Maybe build up my retirement that much faster.  Being 40 and having a stock market crash and real estate crash knock me down a bit, it would like nice to have an extra income stream to rely on.  A business that I only had to work on a few hours a week yet would spin off some nice cash flow.  Maybe a blog about fairy tales?  Because this is what this blog entry seems to be about!

As always, your comments, concerns, and suggestions are always welcome!

Making Money on the Internet?

~ K ~ 1 Comment

Truth be told…I’d prefer to be not talk to anyone during the whole day of work.  I’d like to sit in my comfortable little office, surf the internet, do some work, and not see anyone.  You can safely say I am an introvert in an extrovert’s career.  All of my “jobs” have me taking control and interacting with people to create a livable income.

The deal is…every job I do is that way.  My school photography business is me interacting with a vast amount of people everyday.  Look at my real estate business, again, I must interact with people and sell myself.

Jeez, I much rather sit at home and not have to see anyone.  Email is such a good alterative to seeing people face to face and having to deal with them.

Yet, I enjoy people!  I enjoy my friends and family (to a point).  I like to create a nice family portrait or make a preschool student laugh.  I love to show my real estate clients new properties and tour houses with them.

 What a conflicted individual I am!

So what does this have to do with making money on the internet?

 Well, considering I’d like to be a home body and do projects around the house.  I was wondering if I could have an internet business that produces some income where I make money without having to leave my home.

At this moment, I’m open to suggestions (serious and humorous suggestions are welcome) about possible internet businesses.  I don’t know anyone that makes a decent living or part time living as an internet marketer or entrepreneur so this is a new challenge for me. 

Ideally, I’d like to have an internet business that I can be making money wherever I am located.  If I’m on vacation to Kauai, I want to make some money.  Perhaps I’m in Florida visiting some UW college friends; I want to be making some money off my internet business during my visit.  Let’s face it; I want an auto-pilot business where I don’t have to be there to make the money.

If you know of a real internet business that fits these business goals of mine, please let me know!

Living the Sarcastic Dream and Hello Kitty!

~ K ~ Leave a comment

You just gotta love Hello Kitty!  Not really, I thought the idea of Good Bye Kitty would be a great idea…until I did an internet search.  I discovered someone had already created Good Bye Kitty and had a very good job at it.  I almost ordered some of the T-shirts I enjoyed them so much.  Of course, it would be hard to wear the Good By Kitty T-shirt around my six year old daughter and have to answer her questions about why Hello Kitty is dead.  Not a really good Father-Daughter moment.

My ultimate goal:  I’ll develop Emo Kitty or Goth Kitty and create my own brand of Hello Kitty/Good Bye Kitty.  I can have my own  internet store….it will be awesome!

http://www.goodbyekitty.net/