Life

I own several of these, and want to get several more. These binders are a very classy way to store DVDs and CDs. On the shelf, they look like leather bound books, and they are a really handy way to store all your media of that sort.

I currently have about 500 DVDs, and probably as many CDs. About half my DVD collection is contained within 2 folders, although I'll be the first to admit that I really need more because the folders have become so unwieldy. I did this by getting a couple folders, plus some extra insert pages. The whole reason I wanted these is because it reduced the space needed to store the movies from 6 shelfs, stacked 4 deep, down to what would take about 1 shelf if my entire collection was in these. Very nice, and I definitely recommend it.

These are some cool looking glasses, and I think they'd make a really interesting addition to any bar. They'd make a really classy looking gift to give someone at the holidays.

This barware gift set is perfect because it not only contains everything you'll need for a great home bar, but it has it all neatly contained in a very stylish holder. It's a very cool set, and a great gift for that lush in your life. ;)

Beginning next week and running through Christmas Eve, I will be presenting a gift idea each day. These will give you some ideas on what to get various family members. I will try and make sure I've got something for everyone, and you'll have such a wide range of choices that it will be difficult to decide.

I found something cool over at CoolestGadgets, and on sale at IWantOneOfThose. This is a t-shirt that lights up your drawing on the front. Okay, fairly cool. But what I'm wondering is whether the message on the front can be washed off, and a new one drawn onto it.

I just read an article that CircuitCity is in bankruptcy protection, and DHL is cutting a lot of US jobs and services. By now, everyone is standing around, shaking their head, wondering who's next. Well, except people who actually do the shopping. For a lot of the US, the ones who have been paying attention, they're wondering why it hasn't happened sooner.

Have you shipped a package recently? There are several sites where you can check the cheapest way to send something. Here's what it would cost to send a 10lb package next day service from my house to my mother-in-law (a distance of about 435 miles): $52.70 USPS, $67.71 FedEx, $68.12 DHL. Furthermore, when I click on the link to go to DHL and schedule the package, it tells me that DHL can cost more for residential delivery, AND more to pick it up from the center! So, unless you're shipping B2B, it's going to be more. Now, think about that for a minute. Not only do they come in third place in price by a significant amount, but they are even more expensive if you're a normal person. Large businesses have their own trucking, and small businesses are going to go with the cheapest service. Besides, the UPS man is the nice guy that brings me all the stuff I order over the internet. FedEx is the nice guy who works for the crappy company that lost my passport (long story). USPS is my normal mailman, and he brings me all sorts of good stuff. I don't know what the DHL guy looks like.

Now to CircuitCity. They bemoan the fact that BestBuy has all the business. Yeah, want to know why? When I go to CircuitCity, they have horrible service, horrible selection, and horrible prices. Best Buy has horrible service, a middling selection, and decent enough prices. Hmmm, if I gotta go to a bigbox electronics store, which one will I choose?

Some companies, like Linen's 'n Things did themselves in. They keep a continuous 20% off coupon out there. Sorry, but as a shopper, that doesn't inspire confidence of getting a good deal. What it tells me is that you can actually afford to go a LOT lower, and it makes me wonder why you don't. Besides, with Bed, Bath, and Beyond, what does it matter?

There's another company I have my eye on, and unfortunately, it's one of my favorite companies. Michael's craft stores have been having non-stop 40% off coupons. Now, how much is their stuff marked up that they can afford to give me 40% off all the time? And when I voiced this opinion to my husband, he said he was sure it was a loss-leader. Possibly so, but I'm not so sure anymore. Last week, I had some 40% off coupons. I went in, used them, and that was the only thing I bought. I was handed a 50% off coupon to use on my next purchase. So, the specialty transfer paper that normally costs $10 was bought for $6, and I got a coupon. I bought the next one for $5, and got a coupon. And so on... Yesterday, I almost bought a $100 die cutting machine, but they don't carry the dies, which makes it practically useless.

Look, companies- give me a good deal all the time. Run sales, but not so frequently that people begin to question how much you mark your prices up. I don't want to shop while wondering how much you are making. Give me something that the other companies don't offer, and make it something worthwhile. I mean, CircuitCity has lower lines, but if it's lower prices vs. lower lines, I'll stand in line. Don't narrow down your services so much that it's practically worthless. If DHL delivered to homes for the same price as they deliver to businesses, and that price was lower than their competitors, then I'd be happy to see my DHL man too.

In short, the market is doing what it has always done best. Up until now, a great economy has shielded some of the dead weight. No more. If you can provide something better than your competitors, and at better prices, you will have all the business you can handle. Otherwise, you will probably wither away.

This is an important election year. No matter how you choose to vote, please do.

I've hinted before that I have a billion blogs. And they aren't all here on ToastTheTrends. Well, I think it's about time I share some of them.

WatchMyAerogrow.com is a site dedicated to discussing my Aerogarden. An Aerogarden is an indoor gardening appliance that does all the hard work for you. It feeds, waters, and gives light to the plants. You may have seen an infomercial, or seen them in the stores, and wondered how they work. My site talks about my successes and failures with it.

I've been thinking a lot about this blog. Well, more accurately, I've been dreading it. Why? I used to come here and enjoy it. It used to be fun for me. But lately, I just cringe whenever I think about updating it.

I do know why that is. I've got some people that follow good netiquette. They come on and leave and insightful comment, or have a discussion. I LOVE getting those comments! It's the others that are bumming me out. Everyone hates getting spam, and most people wouldn't even think of sending it. But for some reason, there's a group of people that it doesn't seem to bother. Well, guess what? It should. They are soulless assholes.

Now, what has me in such a foul mood? What sort of comments have made me dread my own blog? These are all fluid, and many problem comments fit in more than one problem behavior:

1) Linkers- You're here only for the link. This is obvious by what you put in the anchor text of the link. "IntricateGirl" is okay. "ToastTheTrends.com" is not. Nobody cares what so-and-so.com has to say about anything.
2) Spammers- I realize where I can get medicine to help my erection. If I ever have that problem, I know how to use Google. But being a girl, I don't suspect I'll ever need your services.
3) Repeating the same thing over and over. I have literally come here some days and found 20 pages worth of comments across five blogs. When I banned them, they changed their IP address, and the next day, there were 20 more pages. Same again with a third day. It ended when I blocked the entire country of China from even accessing my blog. And by the way- I don't mean 20 pages as in 20 posts. I mean that my email was filled with 20 pages worth of comments from the same person, and there are 15 messages per page. And you wonder why I dread it.
4) Being creepy. Guys, don't tell me the model has "gorgeous, haunting eyes"- usually misspelled. The way it reads on a computer screen is that you want to cut them out and save them in a jar on your shelf. Besides, in the fashion pics I post, the eyes literally take up about 1/64th of an inch of space. You can't even see her eyes well enough to know whether you like them! Don't tell me about her legs. I'm a girl. I'm not likely to drool with you. Discuss the fashion. It's a fashion blog, not a "I want to sleep with a model, but really don't have a chance in hell" blog.
5) Pandering, kissing up, and being annoyingly suckupish. I am not ready to join the staff of the New Yorker. I could probably handle Vogue though. ;) The problem is, I really don't need someone to tell me. Nor do I need to know what a great, excellent, amazing, stupendous, superlative blog I have. I can put words together and make a sentence. I can share my feelings on various things. That doesn't make me Hemmingway. And I've done websites for nearly 13 years. God, I hope I can put together a blog (especially since it's a freakin' template) by now. I know, it seems weird to complain about a compliment. A true, heartfelt compliment will never get a complaint from me. But most of the fawning also comes with problems 1 and 3. They go from post to post, telling me how amazing I am. And it doesn't brighten my day, because they've cut and pasted that phrase across ten of my posts, and a hundred throughout the web.
6) Belligerent people. Dude, don't come up on my blog and tell me I know nothing about fashion. There's this wonderful invention called the back button. And a big, wide internet to explore. I may very well know nothing about fashion. Evidence suggests otherwise, but that's beside the point. The point is, if we were face to face, you wouldn't walk into my living room uninvited, pull down your pants, and leave a big steaming pile on my carpet. So why are you doing it behind a computer screen? Trust me on this- I eviscerate people like this. You may think you've got balls from picking a fight, but when I finish, I will be handing them back to you in a paper bag. Oh, and I sell your email address to the spammers, just to mess with you.

So, I've been thinking long and hard about the problem. I've spent nearly a year being upset about it, and trying to find a way to change the problem. Here are my solutions:

1) Turn off comments. A few spoil it for many.
2) Let it continue and burn out completely.
3) Make it list your email address. Would you spam if you knew you'd get much more in return?
4) Spend four hours deleting nonsense comments, or ones filled with spam, everytime a spammer gets on here.
5) Announce that I've gone no-follow on the comments. If they aren't getting the link, most of the spammers will go away.
6) Allow comments, but they all begin with "A ToastTheTrends Reader Says:" That way, you can still have a link to your site. But the anchor text is mine. Net benefit to me.

I've chosen a combination of 4, 5, and 6. Beginning today, I am deleting every comment, no matter how insightful and lovely, that has a product or a a site link. WorldofWarcraftOnlineGamers is not an appropriate handle. The sole discretion is up to me, and if I cannot tell whether it was a link placed solely for the link juice- I delete. The no-follow on comments is already complete. You are not getting link juice, so if that's the only reason you're here, kindly leave. Finally, and the one that kills me- I'm changing the text so that all comments are more or less anonymous.

Blame the idiots for ruining everything.

At the end of the day, this is my blog. I have to feel comfortable coming here, not dreadful. If you don't like it, I'm sorry. That probably means you were in one of the above listed categories of people who are making this a place I hate. My blog, my rules. And if you want to participate, you'll follow them.

A miter saw is handy. First, they are used to cut diagonal cuts. But sometimes just as handy, set it at 90 degrees, and it can do a straight cut too. Also, make sure to get one that does a laser line. That way, you'll know exactly where it's going to cut, and it makes it much more accurate. This is probably the power tool I use the most often, for various reasons.

A paint sprayer that hooks up to your air compressor is going to be much more powerful than trying to roll on or brush on paint onto your house. It's like the difference between using a standard screwdriver and a battery powered one.

Be warned, you'll need to read the instructions. It goes so much faster, but there are a few more steps than with normal painting. You'll almost certainly need to thin the paint, and you'll want to be very careful to tape off areas. The reason why is because when you're brushing on paint, you can use a little finesse, but with a paint sprayer, it's non-discriminating. It's going to spray everything. And that includes your neighbor's car if you have the bad sense to attempt this on a windy day. ;)

It should go without saying- an air nailer needs an air compressor to function. After hooking it up, you press it against whatever you're nailing until the head goes slightly in, and pull the trigger. This is a safety feature. Without it having pressure against the end, it won't fire. Now, I strongly recommend you don't do this (because it's stupid and dangerous), but waving it around while pulling the trigger won't hurt anyone, since it doesn't have that pressure.

These things are REALLY handy, and they make it very easy to do a lot of nailing in a short amount of time. Definitely invest in one!

I'm not the kind of person that buys into the whole "girls should act girly and leave certain things to the boys". I once asked for a miter saw for my birthday, and you've never seen a girl get so excited to open a miter saw box on her birthday! But the reason why is because that miter saw means I'm going to have REALLY beautiful trim in my home, and I can get it much cheaper, and spend the rest of the money I saved on shoes or purses. :D

This week, I'll talk about various power tools. Most women I know don't really understand a lot of power tools, and this tends to be a more woman-oriented blog. So, as you read through here, you can kind of get an idea as to why you're husband spends so much time in the garage. :)

One especially easy thing you can do with chicken is to slice a chicken breast open and place a slice of pepperjack in there. Close it shut with a toothpick, and then sprinkle it with chipotle seasoning. Serve it with your favorite side dish.

Yeah, I have a lot of mexican style casserole recipes. :D They're easy, and feed the whole family.

With this one, take rice, chicken breasts, cheese, and your favorite mexican seasoning blend. Decide how much rice you want to serve, and put the rice in the bottom of the casserole dish. Add the proper amount of water, according to the rice instructions. Add a bit of the mexican seasoning blend, and stir it into the rice. Put the chicken breasts on top. It's okay if they are frozen- they will cook just fine. Sprinkle cheese over the top, and put in the oven at 400 degrees until the chicken is cooked all the way through.