Well, I did some exploring of the blogosphere and went some places I usually don’t go. Along my way, I did find a few interesting posts to share with you all.

If you are considering moving your blog or site from one domain name to another, you may want to read this post on how not to do a domain change. I wonder if there will be a follow-up post on what to do differently and avoid those problems?

I also found a somewhat amusing collection of print advertisements that were likely very effective in their mission of selling a product.

For those of us who like to keep at least one eye on the market, here is an article that examines REITS (real estate investment trusts) and questions whether now is the time to buy them.

Last but not least, BetshopBoy entered a contest that I will probably enter as well. I’m not a huge fan of iPod simply because I don’t like the idea of being forced to use proprietary software, but I did consider getting a touch before I got my iPAQ.

At first this may not seem like an idea that makes a lot of sense, however, upon further review I think that it is an idea that can be beneficial for everyone to implement.

This is not something that is necessarily universal to all bills. The ones that this would be most useful with are those that are paid on a monthly basis. If they are paid any less often than that (for example, my car insurance comes due every six months) it might not have the effects and benefits that it will with the monthly bills. For the monthly bills, the idea is not to overpay an extreme amount but in moderation to enjoy some of the benefits.

In order to realize how you can acquire the benefits, you first need to understand the concept of this system and how it works. The easiest way to explain the system is to think of it as “rounding up” to the next $25 or $50 depending on what your budget will allow and what seems reasonable for the given bill. For a brief example of the method, if you have a bill that is eighty-five dollars each month, start by sending them one-hundred. The next month your bill will be for only seventy dollars. That month, if you send one-hundred again, your bill the following month will be for fifty-five. Depending on your budget, the next month you might want to send either seventy-five or one-hundred. The idea would to then do this for all of your bills. The benefits of doing this might not be immediately obvious, but keep reading…

The first benefit that you will notice is that balancing and subtracting out of your checkbook will be much easier. This may or not be a benefit depending upon your lifestyle. If you write checks for the exact amount on a regular basis, some of this benefit will be minimized. If, however, you are like me and use the checkbook almost exclusively for paying bills, you will almost be able to balance your checkbook without using a calculator.

Secondly, using this method “builds-in” more room in your budget for unexpected expenses or shortfalls in income. This is because if you are overpaying your bills, your budget for an eighty-dollar bill will be one-hundred dollars yet the amount due in a particular month might be only fifty dollars. There is an extra $50 cushion that you can use to cover unexpected expenses without having to tap in to any emergency funds or worry about falling short on your bills. It will also make it easier to plan a budget because you will have a set amount budgeted (higher than the bill ever is) for a bill such as your electric bill which might vary quite a bit from one month to the next.

Along these same lines, if you do this on a regular basis, you will occasionally get your monthly statement from your cable, electric, or cell-phone provider and it will show a credit and say “do not pay” instead of having an amount due. This can be a nice treat because you don’t have to pay that given bill that month and can use that extra money to buy something unnecessary or add to your savings.

There are some bills, however, where the benefits discussed in these last two paragraphs don’t apply. With these bills, there are different benefits that can be achieved. The bills I am referring to are debts: loans and credit cards.

The way that these bills are calculated, your monthly amount due is generally the interest accumulated for the month plus a given percentage of your outstanding balance. Any extra amount paid is put towards the balance and a new amount due is calculated as usual for the next month.

However, three benefits of overpaying these bills include that you will have paid less total interest when the debt is paid off, you will get it paid off sooner, and (depending upon the way that your loan is set up) your monthly amount due may get smaller each month.

As you journey throughout the internet and the blogosphere, from time to time you may encounter a problem with a given website. Perhaps the page is not displaying properly, a link is pointing to a page that no longer exists, images are stacked on top of one another or not displaying at all, or a variety of other issues that you may encounter.

When this happens, it is a prime time to make use of the contact form that most websites have available. Here is a checklist for reporting these problems to the person in charge of a given website that will make their life easier, make you seem more informed, and make the problem more likely to get fixed.

First of all, try viewing the page in a different browser if you have one available, if you don’t have another browser available it’s ok. If you are on a Windows machine and using Firefox, try viewing the site in Internet Explorer just to see if you get the same results. By having this information available, you will make it easier for the person on the receiving end of your email to find the problem.

Next, locate the contact form or a contact email address for someone in charge of the site to report the problem to them and send a little message to them. However, don’t just say that the site wasn’t working properly.

Here is a checklist of things to mention and include:

  • Describe the problem as precisely as possible
  • When did this occur (Did it start happening a week ago or is this the first time)
  • What were you doing at the time it happened? Is there anything that seemed to trigger it
  • What operating system are you using
  • What browser are you using (include the version which can generally be found by going to help and clicking on about)
  • If you tried a different browser, what browser did you try and did the problem still exist or did it go away or was it any different
  • What screen resolution is your computer set to
  • If you don’t have all of these pieces of information, don’t be afraid to report the problem, but the idea is to be as specific as possible.

    One of the most important parts of any radio installation is the antenna. This is something of which almost all ham radio enthusiasts as well as many CB enthusiasts are well aware. In some cases, people spend more money on their antenna than the cost of the actual radio. While these expensive antenna systems often do work very well, there are often cheaper alternatives.

    In many cases, a low-cost homemade antenna may be a great choice and offer benefits not available with commercial antennas. In this post, you will learn how to make your own single-band vertical antenna.

    The only materials you will need to build this antenna are a piece of coax and a connector that will be used to attach the coax to the antenna jack on the back of your radio.
    To begin, I attached the connector to the end of the coax. The process for doing this may vary depending on the type of connector that you are using, but should be fairly easy to figure out. This is also possibly the step in which the most technical ability is needed.

    Now, go visit my antenna length calculator and determine how long the antenna would need to be for the frequency or band that you will be using your antenna on. The antenna I built is “tuned” for 146.000 and thus can be used on the entire 2 meter band with very low SWR.

    For my purposes, I entered 146.000 into the calculator and used the measure for a quarter-wave antenna. At this point, it would be wise to add a couple of inches to that measurement because it’s easier to cut off excess later than try to add more.

    Now, strip the outer shielding (the black part) off of the end of the coax opposite of where you installed the connector. Strip an amount equal to the number you arrived at after adding to the results of the antenna length calculator, being careful not to cut the outer conductor.

    This next step may take a little bit of time and may seem tedious, but does not take much thought so you can probably do it while watching TV. Start at the end and begin pushing the outer conductor back down the coax. Eventually, it will become loose enough that you can fold the outer conductor back over the part of the coax that still has the outer insulation. You will need to continue to work the outer conductor from the end and eventually it will be folded back over the remainder of the coax. I would suggest you keep working it until it is good and tight against the coax it is folded over. A piece of tape may be needed to hold it in place at the end and will not affect the performance of the antenna.

    Now we are ready for the (almost) final step. Refer back to the calculations from the antenna length calculator and cut both the outer part that was folded back and the remaining center conductor (with the inner insulation still covering it) to that length. Then you can simply hang it from the ceiling or tape it to a wall and you are good to go.

    Finally, connect it through your wattmeter and check your SWR to make sure all is good. Trim and adjust the length of the two parts to obtain an optimal SWR, and you have just made an easily storable, low cost, well-functioning antenna.

    So what’s been happening in the blogosphere this week? Let’s take a look…

    …in no particular order, here are some of the happenings from this previous week:

    Over at j2fi.net, Jason celebrated his 29th birthday, and the very next day his PDA gave him a not-so-nice late birthday present when it finally gave out and broke for good. I guess he knew this was coming, but the timing wasn’t very good.

    At Beyond the Rhetoric, Michael Kwan developed a pretty good April Fool’s gag by writing a post that announced he got a job writing for the New York Times. This was probably the most entertaining and believable April Fool’s joke I caught wind of this year.

    Angela from bostonbrat.net also had a couple good April Fool’s jokes that she was able to pull on her dad and anyone who is a NFL fan will probably find them funny and worth checking out.

    Another site that always has interesting and entertaining stuff to read is dereksemmler.com, and this week was no exception. While I’m not exactly sure what to suggest for him, if you have opinions about laptop computers, he is asking for suggestions. Derek is looking to get a laptop to bring with him to blogging conferences and other trips that he may take. Oh, and did I mention he is giving away some free advertising?

    To wrap up this post, an interesting point to ponder is whether or not technology can actually have a negative effect on the quality of education that students receive and how much they learn. While you’re thinking about that, visit bloggrrl.com where Michelle explains why she thinks technology is the reason that kids can’t read.

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