Posts Tagged ‘Cleaning’

Moving things around…

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

Sean and I are in the process of moving things around. Not only are we cleaning the heck out of the office but I was also able to locate a new hosting company and I’m going to slowly transfer everything over within the next couple of weeks. I’m getting a great deal on excellent resources and there’s literally no turning back at this point.

I’ve filled out my FAFSA and I’m working on getting things together for admissions at the University of Phoenix Online. I’m going for my bachelors degree and I hope to be able to bring in enough money so I can afford to complete the degree. If I had no student-aid to back me up I’d have to shell out a little over $60,000 to complete the course. Since I don’t have that to just throw around I know that scholarships, grants, and the potential for student loans (down the road) will be the only way. I hope to have all of the technical stuff figured out in the future. I just know that I’m finally pushing for it and damn is it going to happen.

In any event, I reinstalled MarsEdit so I can start blogging again. My only dislike for the program is the lack of ability to add proper TAGS to the entry. I think there should be some kind of an add-on for it in the future. I’ll have to bring it up to support.

Budgets & Money

Friday, April 11th, 2008

For some reason I was really itching to get out of here last night. Sean and I had spent most of the afternoon in the local libraries in search for information on grant writing. Thankfully when I came home a letter from Dick put me in the right direction. The Rehoboth Library really had nothing that I needed. The Lewes one didn’t either. They told me that the books I was looking for were up in Dover and the rest were on the Deltech Georgetown campus. I really didn’t want to travel that far so I wound up heading over to Atlantic Books and picked up a book that’s a complete guide to grants. It not only gives me a simple breakdown of everything I’m going to need to do but it also gave me a few samples so I can understand what I’m going to need to have listed, and how to go about grouping it together properly. The problem for me isn’t FINDING the grant resources, I’ve found a program that gives me thousands of listings for places to apply to, the issue was the actual write-up. While the Internet is typically a great resource for things, every “How to write a grant” website that I came across told me that I needed to purchase their eBook or the sites linked me to other sites that just kept sending me in circles. Either way I have the book I need and a few emails from Dick explaining how to go about every aspect of it so I’m sure over the course of the next couple of weeks I’ll have my formal write-up and then have the ability to start submitting to different companies.

On our way home we stopped at the market and picked up some things for dinner. I was really insistant that we BBQ last night considering it was the first nice 70°F day that we’d had in a while. So burgers and dogs were really the only menu items last night but that’s OK because there’s plenty left over to do it again tonight if we really wanted to.

After dinner I had the urge to get out of the house and something was pulling me in the direction of Dollar Tree. I knew that we needed a few house-hold items but I was shocked to find out that everything I needed was on sale. Yes, the dollar store was having a sale. The thing I like about Dollar Tree is the fact that it’s a TRUE dollar store. No matter what you pick up it’s only going to be a buck. And thanks to no sales-tax in Delaware, if you get 13 items you pay $13 dollars.

I went in for the basics, carpet fresh, toilet cleaner, air freshner, tissues, and a few odds and ends to complete my need to redecorate the bedroom. I was shocked to find out that almost everything I wanted was 2 for $1. So the simple break down went like this:

2 carpet fresh – $1
2 tissues – $1
2 air freshners – $1
2 bowl cleaners – $1
2 mirrors – $2
1 lotion – $1
Total: $8

How awesome is that?

I then took a trip over to Walmart, unfortunately the dollar store was out of a few items that I needed. There were also some decent sales going on so I picked up the items I couldn’t get at the dollar store, all of which were on sale for a whopping $1! I also loaded up on a few odds and ends for Sean to get by, that gave me another $10 worth of items.

I came home with about 10 bags filled to the rim and only spent $18. If that’s not shopping on a budget, I don’t know what is.

Skimping & Saving

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

With a very small balance in my bank account I’ve been taking my limited resources and still managing to maintain a clean environment.  I’m to the point where I’m low on supplies such as bleach, toilet bowl cleaners, sponges, detergent, fabric softener and other basic supplies.  So what do you do?  Go to Walmart and hope to bring home the cheapest items on the shelf just to get the job done?  NO! – You go to the local Dollar Tree and pick up all of your supplies for $1 a piece.  The reason I love this store is everything is actually a dollar.  It’s not like the $0.99 cent stores that you walk into where the only thing that’s $0.99 is a piece of candy.  No, you can pick up everything from cleaning supplies to school supplies and purchase these items in bulk for the wonderful price of $1 OR 10 for $1.  That’s $0.10c a piece, how could you NOT love that?

So in order for me to completely clean the house all week long it’s costing me exactly $10 every two weeks.  Every other Monday I head down and pick up some bleach, sponges (10pk), laundry detergent, fabric softener sheets (50 pack), toilet drop-ins, air freshener spray, the air freshener gel and maybe a candle or two just to keep things smelling clean and fresh.  Let’s not forget the ever-so-important paper towels and tissues.  So yes, it’s shopping on a budget that’s keeping me up to speed on cleaning the house without breaking the bank.

My only issue is with the toilet drop-ins.  They aren’t the name brand, you lift the lid off the back of the bowl and drop in the little blue disk.  Unfortunately it doesn’t hold up as well as they’re supposed to and the one I recently purchased wound up exploding in the bowl.  Not to the point that it like blew pieces all over the place, it just happened to break down in huge chunks instead of slowly getting smaller and the turn out is bits and pieces of this blue solution shooting out whenever you flush the toilet.  There are sections of blue that are now so stuck that I can’t even get to them to remove them so we’ve been flushing the toilet a little bit more just to loosen things up.  I figure if I throw another one in there it’ll move things along and hopefully put things back in less – odd – order.  The one in there is still doing it’s job properly, I still clean the bowl every three days, it’s just a pain in the butt having to get myself in there to try to dig out the piece that’s still causing all of the trouble – you know?

Eventually it will completely dissolve and I’ll be able to finally get rid of the ugly blue section that it’s leaving but for now it’s no big deal.

Spring Clean Up!

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

I just spent the last half hour going through the server removing quite a few accounts.  Some haven’t made payments, other’s expired and a few changed DNS information to new hosting.  In total I think about 300 accounts were removed, which is now bringing me to the conclusion of downgrading the servers.  I’m going to completely get rid of one and of the smallest account-count left, I’ll filter them out to the other ones.  It’ll save me a few hundred dollars a month that I don’t currently have.  It’d be easier to just add a terebyte of bandwidth to another server and push the domains in that direction.  It’d also be a lot cheaper.

I’m also in the process of searching for a new data center, I really can’t stand the one I’m hosted with now and I believe I’ll be able to find a cheaper route with more resources, which will give me the ability to offer more resources to both new and existing clients.  I’ll even admit that 50MB of disk space and 1GB of bandwidth for $20/yr. is a little on the low side.  However, I also believe that spending $8 a month on 500GB of Disk Space and 10TB of bandwidth is a little absurd.  Who would seriously offer up a hard-drives amount of space for $8 if they know for sure that you’re not actually going to use those resources?  I’ve heard instances of people getting up to say 20GB of disk space and then mysteriously having their account suspended because they’ve done SOMETHING illegal.  It usually has nothing to do with you, but you’re at a loss either way.

So yea, if you’re looking for hosting that isn’t being over-sold then head on over to AGn Solutions.  If you want to spend more money on resources you’re never going to use, then please – by all means – take a gander at some of the other companies out there.  They may get rave-reviews but test them out by uploading 30GB of files and see what happens to your account.

What a day!

Thursday, March 20th, 2008

I was really productive today, so much so that I’m anticipating hopping into bed and drifting off to sleep.  There is still a lot to accomplish before that happens though and damn I’m really enjoying having so much to do.

For starters, I have two job interviews lined up for Friday.  One for a full-time IT position with a local company at 9am and another one is a part-time retail position at a local store on the boardwalk at 1pm.  Based on what I’ve heard of the company looking for the IT position, it’s safe to say I’ll be pulling in some pretty good money.  They’ve won numerous awards in their field and are the #1 company in the state when it comes to product sales, that really does seem like a great place to be to me.  The other position will be more of a weekend filler so that I can still get down to the beach and enjoy the sun and maybe my parking will even be validated.

The only thing I’m worried about is whether or not working 60 hours a week will be the right route to take.  At the same time, however, I have a loan, credit cards and numerous other bills that require monthly payments so I’m really not going to question my abilities right now.  Yes, I’m going to be very tired but it’ll be worth it in the end.

I accomplished a lot of cleaning today, all windows were washed, all rooms were vacuumed, kitchen was cleaned and the only thing left is to tidy up the bathroom and the rest is cake.  I’ll do that tomorrow though, I need to bleach everything and that’s not something to smell when you’re trying to sleep – you know?

I’m nervous about Friday, this is probably why I’m in a cleaning mode to keep my mind off the “What If’s?” that are floating around in my head right now.  At the same time, the house looks good so what’s the downside?

I’ve also been keeping myself busy in Photoshop CS3 and Dreamweaver.  I’m working on the final touches of the new template, I’ve also had a spark of genious with my April template on krissy.nu so that’s held my attention as well.  Eventually I’ll get around to completing a few project sites but for now, the few domains I update on, are good enough to keep me entertained.  They’re more work than their worth sometimes but that’s OK by me because it keeps me busy!

In any event, it’s knocking on 4am and I’m going to throw some final dishes in the dishwasher and head off to bed.  I’ll make it a point to say my lovely goodnights to everyone I’m chatting with on AIM, especially Jackie because I just adore her too much for words.  Then it’s time to shut down for the night.  With today being as busy as it was, I can only imagine what tomorrow will be like.  OY!

Productive Day

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

I’ve been pretty busy today.  I woke up and vacuumed in anticipation for house guests tonight, I found out that it’s been delayed an extra day so either way everything is nice and clean.  I floated around the house throwing out all of the garbage and straightening up.  I made dinner for Sean and I, I managed to get the yard straightened up a bit so I can head out there this weekend and get started on the Spring cleaning.  The shed we have was on the wrong side of the house so we moved it over to the other side, the same thing with the BBQ.  I don’t like standing on a grassy hill when I’m trying to cook.  I can’t tell you how many hot dogs I’ve lost thanks to the slope.  So now it’s closer to the drive way and I can roll things out when I need to.

I had the windows open all day today, it was such a gorgeous day I couldn’t stop myself from doing it.  Once the sun went down it got a little chilly so I went to close things down and realized the windows were filthy.  I pulled out the Windex and took care of that pretty quickly.  Now I’m relaxing and hoping to get some work done, this should be fun…. :sigh:

Almost done for the evening….

Monday, March 17th, 2008

I think I’ve done about 20 loads of laundry in the past few days. When I went to do my laundry a few days ago, I noticed that the laundry room was overloaded with stuff that just needed to go. So I got all of my stuff done and then I started the daunting task of completely getting the room cleared out. I did accomplish it, but I just threw in the final load of white wash a few moments ago. My reason behind doing it so late is the fact that I’d completely forgotten about it until I went into the room to lock the side door. I was going to barbecue today but the weather wasn’t cooperating so I wound up cooking something else instead. Supposedly it’s going to be like 65° tomorrow and for me that’s extra warm so naturally I’m going to fire up the grill!

So my last house-hold task of the evening will be to lock up all of the windows, bolt the front door, start the dishwasher (we’re completely out of cups and utensils, but house-guests do that to you), and then lay down and just crash. Boy that pillow is looking very, very nice right now. A nice big fluffy bed to fall into – goodness.

The joy of allergies

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

I just finished cleaning up the kitchen. We had company this past week and with all of the chaos going on around me, it was kind of hard to focus on keeping cleaning up to par. I also managed to get some much-needed dusting accomplished. The bedroom has gone for about a week and a half without being dusted, I very happily soaked a rag in some warm water, rang it out and proceeded to get rid of all the crap that’s making Sean sick. He has an allergy to it and I try to keep the bedroom as dust free as possible, mainly because you’re more susceptible to things while you’re asleep and breathing in airborne dust for 8 hours a night certainly isn’t going to make things any easier on you.

It’s my goal to do a little shifting around in the room. I really want wash the walls down. I made it a point to rub things down around the bed but there’s still a ceiling and carpet to think about. Thank God for the Dyson, that really cuts down on the dust in the room while I’m vacuuming. The beauty part of a Dyson is it doesn’t expel the dust back into the air. The problem is it’s a bag-less vacuum so when you do happen to dump the collection bin you wind up with dirt all over the place. This is why I have it down to a science, if you’re looking to empty the bin you bring it outside, to the back of the house, and dump it there. This way it goes on the grass that no one every steps foot on and there’s no chance that it will wind up back in the house either.