The Empty Cabinets of my Mind

Who is that Big Guy Behind Me?

I took this photo coming down the Ortega Highway, approaching Lake Elsinore:

The sky is a little hazy, but no rain! 

When I got home and looked at this picture I saw my shadow.  Yep, that is me on the left, holding the camera.  But who is that really big lopsided guy whose shadow is showing to the right?  Maybe I have a huge guardian angel. 

I am new to these parts and had never seen Lake Elsinore before, nor for that matter had I ever seen a lake the shape of a huge piece of toast.   

I thought it would be fun to go down there and look around a bit.  Well, surprise, the road home turns to the left and makes a 3/4 loup all the way around the lake.  So here it is from the other side:

Seeing is Believing: A New Pair of Eyeglasses?

I have been putting off getting a new pair of eyeglasses because of the theory "if it works, don't fix it."  On the other hand, if something happened to this pair I would be DOOMED!  So the thought that I should make an effort to procure a new pair has been nagging at me for quite some time. 

Problem is, I had forgotten the name of the online firm that sold the kind of rimless glasses I was planning to buy as a backup pair.   I have searched and searched and could not find them, so I gave up.  Maybe they went out of business.  But this morning's mail brought me something even better...the link to Zenni Optical.  They sell eyeglasses so inexpensively that you have to see it to believe it:

holiday eyeglasses

I immediately clicked on their "Rimless Frames" tab and selected #3778. I didn't have to read the description to know they were titanium. My heart told me in a leap. Purple, with lens #235.  (Frame #8049 is nice, too, and comes in Rainbow!)

The first time I bought titanium rimless frames I paid retail, but the second time I bought them on eBay for pennies on the dollar. These frames from Zenni Optical are half of what I paid on Ebay for my last pair of Silhouettes. And the reasonable price they charge for the lenses sent me racing to examine their guarantee. No problems there. Their warranty is 30 days and in addition they offer a no-questions-asked 50% refund for the first four weeks.

I wondered "how can they sell them so cheap?"  Easy, they cut out the middle men and instead of reselling expensive frames from other name brands, they make their own. 

Here is a review of Zenni by a fellow who has been using their products for eight years:

Another Review

It IS possible to get quality eyeglasses for a low price. 

Sunny Day at the Beach

The weather report said "Rain!" and "Rain!" and "More Rain!" so I bought a nice pair of gloves and a plastic poncho.  There were no inexpensive umbrellas in any of the local stores because it does not rain that often in the desert and when we have our monsoon season the temperature seldom drops below the high 90's anyway, so wet is not synonymous with cold. 

But now it is December so the first winter rain created a run on umbrellas.  When it is sunny we see many of them in the dollar stores, but now they are $10 or $20 if you can even find one, so thinking of the 7 or 8 umbrellas I left up north, buying yet another one down here seemed ridiculous.  But the poncho was cheap and came in a pretty pink mesh bag that could be used for something else.   Oh, you will use it, everyone said, as the way it looks now it will be raining all week.  Not!

At 7 the next morning, glorious sunshine woke me up and stayed with us all the way to the San Diego Airport and later up along the coast where I found a little bit of Heaven in San Clemente at a restaurant called China Well, which serves their home made Ginger Beer in a huge mug for 99 cents.  They are right off Highway 5 near the intersection of Camino Estrella and Camino de Los Mares.  

The next morning the sun came up again, just as it should, so I checked out the Harbor at Dana Point about three miles further up the coast:

More Good News from Triond

For those who don't know Triond, it is an online program that pays writers for articles they submit for publication.  Called PTW (Paid to Write), this phenomenon of the internet is a growing industry with many program participating, but of all of the ones I know, Triond has been my favorite.  

Today they provided me with something new.  It is a referral link which I am only to happy to share with you:

My Triond Referral Link

In the past there was only one way to earn money from writing for Triond.  Now there are three:

1. When you submit an article and it is accepted for publication, then Triond showcases it and shares half of the ad revenue it generates with you.  Minimum payout is just fifty cents so practically anyone can get at least some earnings deposited into a PayPal account each and every month.
2. If you have a Google Adsense account, then Triond manages the placement of these additional ads and half of the revenue from those is reported on your Triond dashboard, but deposited into your Adsense account where the minimum payout is $100.
3. Now although the program is still in a testing stage, it is possible also to have a down line (people who joined Triond on your recommendation) and to earn a percentage of what those people earn.  Triond does not take their money away to give to you.  It is on top of that. 

So if you have been thinking about signing up with Triond and writing some articles and getting some money, this is a good time to do it.  Of course, if you use my link, then I get extra money too.  How sweet is that?  Needless to say, if you are my referral, I try to help you get started over there. 

Now this is NOT a get-rich-quick scheme and especially at first you will be seeing pennies not dollars rolling into your PayPal account.  But once an article is published there and if it gets any exposure at all it will continue to earn month after month without any further effort on your part.   And if your can join their referral program, and you have friends who also join and write articles, then you will earn a little bit more month after month from their articles as well. 

Remember, this is in Beta, so if it does not work, please leave a comment and let me know.  Or better yet, please leave a comment anyway!

Get Residual Income from Triond

My next favorite PTW program is Associated Content, followed closely by Squidoo, but AC members can only refer through e-mail, not with referral links.  Here is Squidoo:

My Squidoo Referral Link 

I don't try to make a lot of residuals from Squidoo, but it is great for directing traffic to my blog.  It is also a great place to get started in PTW if you are new to the concept.

Clouds and Rain and Flowers

The strangest stuff ends up in my inbox from time to time and this morning there was a discussion on Cloud Computing.    Just this week I parted with a few bucks to buy services trend in that general direction.  I already use web-based databases and mail services and a blogging platform that supports mobile posting.

But now I have added the aforementioned GRD Agenda, more on which later, and finally,  Garmin.  I had been using Google Maps, which are great for some things, but I wanted to try the voice direction and presumably faster speed a fancy GPS has to offer.  When I put the trial version into bike mode and started riding around the neighborhood, said voice told me to pedal right through a gate that was secured with a big old padlock, but that sort of thing happens.  I should draw a cartoon of me getting ready to crash into that gate, only with a full-sized laptop resting on the handlbars and me with my head in the clouds.

My overzealous spam filter sure had its head in the clouds when it tossed my Google Wave invite in the trash!  Ah, but I was expecting it and went and pulled it out.  So I've been checking Wave out from the inside and did finally get a few extra  invites to share with my readers.    If you have a burning desire to check Wave out for yourself and want an invite leave me a comment and I see what I can do. 

By the way, it is time to start thinking about who you need to send flowers!

Playtime! Google has Waved Me In :-)

So here is my new avatar:

Yep, I have all these new toys and it isn't even Christmas.  Just installed Wave last night and haven't found all the buttons yet, but the first thing I went "Wow" over is you can get interactive with your fellow Wavies on a map. 

The first "Thud" was that so far I'm not getting it to format correctly in Firefox, or at all in IE.  Good thing for me, I already use Chrome.  Understandably, Wave and Chrome are best buds.

Well, back to WOIK!   Anybody wants to help me sort it  out over there my name is drann just like in the URL that landed you here.

Oh and get this.  When I tried to Google up my new self ("drann" + "wave" + "Google") here is the title that came up:  "Was ist dran an Google Wave?"   Less  one "n" my name is apparently a part of speech.   Babelfish informs me that in German it is the preposition "to."  I like that.  

This is a Paid Post

Not really!  I am just kidding.  But I am going to put my own referral link here for a service called GTD Agenda:

My Own GTD Referral Link

They have a free version of their service which is a great way to check it out, and then for expanded capabilities there are upgrades that cost what appears to me to be a reasonable monthly fee. 

I gave them a freebie mention in my last post and am leaving a reader's link in comments as well, but since they do have an affiliate program I might as well do a real ad of my own to accompany my review. 

Review coming...

Late at night on November 21, I am enthusiastic about learning how to use GTDagenda, clueless about what the acronym stands for, and NOT finding the process of getting set up very intuitive at all.  But I am highly motivated and determined to fool around with it enough to be able to decide about the upgrade before the night is over.  Ah, then I see that they have a 30-day money back guarantee, so I bite. 

Early in the morning on November 22, while still cozy in bed I grab my smart phone and start checking out GTDagenda.mobi which by the light of day suddenly starts making sense.  I send myself some reminders and will add the categories and contexts and everything later. 

Now I Know Why I Blog

Sometimes instead staying on track here telling my friends and readers about great products and services, I degenerate into random whining about things there ought to be.  See, I am a compulsive list-maker, goal setter, and planner.  You have heard of micro-managers?  Well, I am happy enough to delegate authority, but I confess to being a micro-planner. 

So I am always looking for new and better ways to integrate lists and facts and calendars.   How he ever managed to find my blog and why he put up with the whining, I'll never know, but a very nice reader clued me in about an online Agenda service with built-in goals and lists and, yes, even a calendar.  I have to wait until later to fully check it out, but on the surface it is looking fantastic, so I signed up here:

GTD Agenda

And no, this is not a paid link.

And yes, I'll do a review on it when I have educated myself sufficiently. 

And THANKS, Dan!

Saving on Electrical Products

I've fixed up a few fixer-uppers so I well remember running around from store to store trying to find electrical products and being ignored because I didn't look like a contractor. What I remember most though was how much some of that stuff cost! Sure, I saved a fortune by doing my own work, but it would have been SO nice if procuring the parts and equipment had not been so complicated and expensive.

electric generators

On thing I am actually looking for right now is a portable electrical generator because a couple of my properties have the power turned off and I would like to be able to pop in there impromptu and do a little work from time to time. I don't want to have to plan ahead and notify the power company X days in advance and pay for a reconnect and hope they actually do it. Of course, what they mean by portable and what I mean by portable might be two different things. Still the GP1800 looks like a good place to start looking. I have heard that that one is about the right size for camping, and basically when I go to work on my fixer-uppers that is what I will be doing--camping out.  I don't need whole house power--just enough to run a few electrical tools, and of course, heat up a little water for washing.

Hawkins Electric Supply sells wholesale but they advertise that they can help with residential solutions as well as filling commercial and industrial needs.

A Freebie

TypePad, my beloved blogging platform, has gone free.  Well, there goes the neighborhood.

If you are interested in starting a new blog, though, this is an opportunity.   It is called TypePad Micro and it is seriously cool.  I pay for the three blogs TypePad hosts for me, but I have been wanting to do something on the side so I am grabbing one of the free ones for myself too.  If you want to see a really cool peel-back ad, check it out!

HINT:  When you get there, hover over the Red "Special Offer" Tag at the top right corner.