Although funds are lacking at the moment, I am slowly putting together what will eventually be a home office. Anyone who knows me- knows I am the most unorganized person ever. I have always wanted a comfortable place I could read, work, or study without distraction. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago, when I interviewed for a customer service representative position, with the ability to work from home, that I realized I was missing a very important item: phone service geared for business purposes, inexpensive, with easy to install equipment.
The job required the ability to make unlimited calls throughout the US as well as receive calls twenty-four hours a day, voicemail not connected to my home phone number and preferably, VoIP. I could sign up through my local phone company for the services, but after calculating the price, I would be spending well over $90 per month. I did a little research and found Packet8 Virtual Office, broadband telephone service for both business and residential customers. Pricing is very reasonable, and installation is fast-you can either do it yourself, or request a professional installation. If you can connect your router or modem to a computer, then you can install the system. Once it’s connected, activate online and within 10 minutes service is up and running. Since Packet8 uses your existing broadband connection there is nothing else to do. Considering everything else it takes to start a business, including a home business, installing a good phone system is probably the fastest thing you’ll do. Plus, having a business VoIP phone system will prove to customers you’re serious about your work.
As a side note- I wasn’t hired for the job because I didn’t have the correct equipment.
One Essential Item For Setting Up A Home Office.
Blog Rush Really Knows How To Pick “Quality” Blogs.
Yes, I was banned from Blog Rush, after only having the widget on this site for a week. Am I bitter? A tad. I’m not upset at the loss of 1000s of visitors, (please, insert sarcasm here), I could have received, it’s the fact I wasn’t given a specific reason, other than their now famous list:
Below is a complete list of our quality guidelines…
BlogRush Quality Guidelines:
- The blog contains unique, quality content that provides opinions, insights, and/or recommended resources that provide value to readers of the blog. Articles, videos, public domain works, press releases, and content written by others are okay to be used on the blog, but the ratio of unique content should far outweigh content from other sources. I have 3 years of posts- did anyone look at the archives? How much more unique can one get when discussing rednecks where she lives? Doing so has made many a reader chuckle. I’ve given advice, shown my geeky side and given my insight and opinion on many things.
- The blog should be updated on a regular basis (at least several times a month) and should not just go a few months between posts. I took a month and a half break. Considering I have been blogging almost every day for 3 years, it was a well deserved break.
- The blog should already contain at least 10-12 quality posts. New blogs with very little content will not be accepted. Can I stress 3 years enough?
- The blog’s primary contain must be in English. BlogRush is currently not available for non-English blogs. The last time I spoke, it came out as English, albeit with a Southern accent. Is this a slam?
- The blog should not contain an excessive amount of advertising and links and very little actual content. The focus of the blog should be quality content. Let’s see, considering a majority of the blogs I have seen with BlogRush widgets have more advertising than a cheap porn site, and my sidebar has a few, and I don’t write that many paid posts, I don’t see this as a problem.
- The primary content of the blog should not be “scraped” content from other sources and/or script-generated pages for the sole purpose of search engine rank manipulation. The focus of the blog should be quality content. If I was doing anything for search engine ranks or PR, I wouldn’t have signed up for BlogRush to begin with.
- The blog’s content (or advertising) should not contain any of the following types of content: hate, anti-racial, terrorism, drug-related, hacking, phishing, fraud, pornographic, nudity, warez, gambling, copyright infringement, obscene or disgusting material of any kind, or anything considered illegal. Other than Bea Arthur dressed in leather, I can assure you none of this exists on my blog.
Now, mind you, many good blogs were “banned” from BlogRush. Take John Cow, (not CHOW, COW), for example. He was banned as well and made it clear on how upset he was. Well, what do ya know, John Reese himself comments on his blog apologizing and said reviewers clearly made a mistake. This is where I become a wee bit furious and begin to understand the concept behind BlogRush. If I had posted the minute I received the email, that I had been banned for not having a “quality” blog, I can guarantee you no one from BlogRush, much less the person who started the service, would have stopped buy, much less giving a crap. But since a select few who are deemed “influential” by standards I have yet to comprehend, they go running to cover their butts. Call it good PR or ass kissing-it’s all the same. Of course, John Cow was accepted and guess what? He was accepted even though the title of his latest post, (as of this writing), uses one of the most degrading words one can say to a woman- it starts with a C and ends with T. Is this the quality that BlogRush so desperately seems to want? Way to go-good, quality blogs for the masses to read.
Great News: A Nice, Simple Yet Powerful RSS Reader.
In my one woman quest to get back at Google for lowering my page rank, as well as many others, due to our quest to make money as the bigwigs do in the blogosphere, I have stopped using Google Reader. I never liked it to begin with-numerous times I had to trim down the number of feeds I subscribed to due to the slow loading time. Not any longer people! After an hour or so of searching, downloading and uninstalling, I have found a wonderful feed reader called Great News. The great thing about it- the cost, which is free. Imagine that-something free. The best feature? The feed window reads as a newspaper-in columns instead of a long list of posts to scroll through. Great News also auto-discovers RSS links, because believe it or not some of my favorite blogs still do not feel the need to point me in the right direction. It was simple to import my feeds-all I had to do was export an OPML file from Google Reader and I was off and running. Below is a screenshot of Great News, (and yes I read Dosh Dosh, he gives great advice without acting like a smug idiot like some people around):
If you’re looking for a nice feed reader you can download Great News here: Great News RSS Reader.
Food For Thought
Never has it training been this popular. Now everyone in IT wants to go for a microsoft certification like mcsd, and it does not end there. Once done with that, that will want an a+ certification, and then eventually cisco training too. On the other hand ccna certification is comparatively new and not that well known in it circles to be that well loved.
Solutions For Hard Drive Data Recovery.
Some of us have been unfortunate enough to hear the clicking sounds of a hard drive on its last leg. We don’t want to admit it at first, we turn off every electronic device within our reach, hoping the sound stops. When it doesn’t, our first thoughts are, “Oh no, there goes all of my documents, my pictures, my reason for getting up in the morning!” Okay, maybe the last bit is a little dramatic, but in this age of everything technology, our computers, (in essence, our hard drives or any storage device), are a part of daily life.
What many people do not realize, though, even when a hard drive fails, this does not mean all information is lost. In fact, it is quite possible to recover most, if not all data. The recovery percentage relies on how the situation is handled. To understand this, remember: When a file is “deleted” from your Recycle Bin, it is only marked for deletion by the drive. The problems arise when the drive needs a place to store additional data. For instance, you have deleted a resume by accident, but you aren’t aware of doing so until after you have installed several programs and saved a few documents. The hard drive needed space to store the additional information you saved, therefore writing over the deleted resume file. The point to remember-data is always being written over on a hard drive. All is not lost. The first piece of advice if you are sure your hard drive is failing- do not panic. The most important bit- do not save any additional information if your hard drive is able to boot. Remember that hard drive data recovery is possible. Unless you’re a super computer guru, however, leave the technical aspects to an expert.
There are many companies offering hard drive data recovery and hard drive repair, but choosing the right company for your needs can be difficult. DTI Data is a company who offers free upfront quotes based on the information you provide. Several other companies I looked at charged as much as $199 just to quote the price it would cost to recover the data- imagine the price of the recovery itself. If DTI does not recover all of your data, (on single hard drive recoveries only, the exception is if the drive has been opened by another party), you are not charged, which is a part of their data guarantee. The process to receive a quote is simple. You can visit their website, (DTIData.com), and fill out the form, detailing your issue, or you can contact them by phone. Although this may not mean a lot to some, they also have a Class 100 Clean Room-which essentially means very little particles, such as dust, get through- think NASA clean, so the care of your hard drive data is taken seriously.
It always helps to inform yourself when it comes to the technology you use every day. DTI Data provides a data recovery resources blog as well. The blog isn’t just for geeks either. Learn why you should defrag a hard drive and how it works, plus many other useful tools. So remember, just because your hard drive has failed, doesn’t mean your life is over- you can recover your precious data.
