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My blogs are going truly mobile

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I’ve been setting up my blogs with a new mobile plugin. Well the plugin isn’t new but it’s new to my blog because I was using a different mobile plugin prior to using this one. I’m using WpTouch now and so far it seem to be working fairly well.

I’ve been using my smart phone and my ipod touch 32g to look at my various blogs mobile webpages to see how they render using the new plugin and there are some differences depending whether I’m using my phone or the iPod. When I use the iPod I can see the Adsense ads on my pages and a few other features and when I use the Nokia I can’t see the ads at all. It’s very strange.

At least with this Mobile plugin I can set up Google analytics and track visitors to the mobile pages better. Hopefully I’ll have better stats on my sites now because I think I’ve been missing stats on my mobile visitors in the past.

If you have a website have you made sure that it looks good when people visit it with a smartphone or iPad? Since mobile usage is only going up and up it’s really important to make sure your site is viewable and user friendly to mobile users.

Stores selling winter coats in the middle of a heat wave?

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Why do stores sell things out of season? Oh and by out of Season I mean way out of season, like six months out of season?

I’ll give you and example if you’re trying to figure out what the heck I’m talking about, although I have a feeling some of you can probably guess. I was in both Walmart and Costco several times in the month of July and guess what I saw in both stores? I saw them selling things like winter coats and Christmas items!

Yes! It’s true! Now who but the most massive of bargain hunters or seriously confused tourist visiting Canada comes shopping for winter coats in July? In the middle of a massive heat wave no less? The day I first noticed winter coats in the stores the temperatures outside were something like 35 Celsius (95 F) but felt like 43 Celsius (109 F) with the humidity. Yeah .. I wanna buy a winter coat.

I was actually looking for shorts but of course I couldn’t find any .. I have to shop for those in January around here!






Time to replace some curtains

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I’ve been looking at the curtains in my upstairs bedrooms and I think it’s time to replace them. Actually I wouldn’t call them curtains, I suppose they’re roman blinds? Anyway, they’ve been up in the windows in the two spare rooms for several years and they’ve been exposed to the brights sunlight for a long time and as you can guess the sun has caused some fading in places. It’s definitely time to replace the blinds.

I’m thinking the rooms need a whole new look. New window treatments can give a room a totally different look, especially when combined with new bedding. I was just looking at some valance styles. The windows aren’t very large so a Valance might be enough, but they are bedrooms, so maybe full narrow curtains would be better. I’d better do a little more looking around.

Speaking of the upstairs rooms, the two spare bedrooms could use a repaint as well. The hallway too. I guess we’ll get to that soon. We’ve in the middle of finishing a renovation in the living room and dining room but I’ve been thinking of refreshing the paint in several areas.

The irony of buying software and upgrades

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Does this happen to you? You buy a new appliance, electronic device or software for your computer and within a short amount of time after your purchase the company comes out with a fantastic upgrade to the item you just bought. Uh huh … I thought so. The same thing just happened to me.

It figures doesn’t it. I just bought Dragon Naturally Speaking about a month ago because of my hand injury. I can barely type and it looks like I’ll need to use the dictation software for another month or two fairly regularly.

Guess what. Yesterday I start getting messages from the software that there’s a major upgrade … oh and it’s NOT free. Oh they’re offering a 50% discount, but it’s still at a price that’s much higher than what I just paid for the version I’m using.

Doesn’t that just figure?

I don’t see any need to upgrade at this time. I love the software. It’s certainly helping me, but I can’t afford to pay almost $100 to upgrade something I just bought a month ago! They should have either a free upgrade for people that purchased within such a short period of time or an even deeper discount. Right?

Making the basement usable again

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You may remember my many posts about trying to clean the basement. Well the basement is a little bit of a mess again right now but it’s better than it used to be. I’m hoping that someday it’ll be usable space. Maybe guests can sleep downstairs on the couch, or use it as a rec room or something.

Speaking of the sectional couch, it has a pullout double bed and if I remember correctly, that the bed is really really uncomfortable. I wonder if I can get a new foam mattress for it. That would be great. Maybe a memory foam one. I’m sure anybody sleeping on it after that would want to sleep on it all the time because it would be really comfortable.

It’s a shame that in the 11 years that I’ve lived in this house the basement has never really been much of a usable space. Hopefully that will change soon. It has has been usable for storage but not much else.

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