House renovations

Renovations are still on-going in our house and will no doubt remain in that state for a good few years. We have completed a few rooms to quite a pleasing standard, but the house is probably less than half-finished (at least it feels that way...). If I have learned anything about renovating a house whilst trying to live in it, it has been the following:

1. Know when it is time to 'get someone in'
2. Only take on a task that you know you have the time to complete
3. Have friends that are a good source of advice when it comes to houses...

My final tip is to use good fixtures and fittings like Murray Feiss Lighting, IE. don't skimp on the quality of the finish. If you can't afford the fitting you want this month, wait a month and get what you truly want rather than compromise on price.

Laptop or Desktop

As the laptops of today are considerably more powerful than their predecessors, I have been contemplating replacing my 'spare' PC with a laptop. Compared with a few years ago, current laptops are miles ahead of the previous generations, yet still lag a little behind desktops in terms of speed and memory capacity.
There are so many good laptop deals, that a laptop as an alternative is becoming more and more attractive.
I have a dual PC set up at home, where the second PC is my 'back up' in case of failure of my main system (a 'redundant' system for those who like jargon..). The PC's are used for different jobs, but in the event of failure, I can do everything I need using either one. For the future I would seriously consider a reasonably priced laptop as my back-up, whilst it may not be as fast as an equivalent-priced desktop, it would certainly provide me with my core requirements which are email/internet and FTP access.

Bank foreclosure sales

Everyone is surely fully aware that the Credit Crunch started with bad mortgage selling and has resulted in a ton of foreclosures on properties that now have to be sold off. What I hadn't fully appreciated is that there are Realtors out there who actually specialize in Outer Banks foreclosures. This is a new phrase for me, but actually represents a potential considerable investment opportunity in times when it is difficult to get a good investment return. You may be concerned about benefiting from what could be perceived as someone else's misery, but if the property has already gone to foreclosure then the deed has already been done so to speak. The real culprits in the Credit Crunch were the agents that sold mortgages to those that were in no position to buy. This error was then compounded when the big banks started buying up the bad mortgages.
The reality is that if you have spare cash, then this could be a good time to buy property, the best property buys are cheap and not involved in a chain of buyers - and foreclosures certainly meet this criteria.

More PC dramas

After having built my new PC almost entirely from bits bought from eBay, I have encountered a couple of problems. Firstly my monitor (bought some time ago) started to play up, then the PC kept showing a 'Windows has recovered from a critical error' message (which is NOT encouraging..), so I did a Windows 'repair'. After my repair, I noticed my AGP graphics card was not working properly - that, and the monitor being on the blink makes for an odd combined experience. So I bought a new monitor (well a 'previously enjoyed' one anyway) from eBay (again!) and that was two problems fixed, but the graphics card refused to work as the high-end card that it should be. I tried borrowing another card and putting into my AGP slot, but that one worked no better indicating that maybe I have a problem with the Motherboard.
I ended up buying a new Mobo (from eBay - no surprise..) and am waiting for it to arrive now - I am hoping that I can seamlessly replace the old board, but am not silly enough to be confident that I won't have to start from scratch again with a new installation of the Operating System...
I really really need to try and get rid of my growing collection of Mobos, CPU's CD drives and power supplies - eBay calls again, this time to actually make some money and clear some attic-space..

Diet Pills

There are many diet pills on the market and Apidexin is one of the more popular. After a little research, it emerges that this product is made up of some decent quality ingredients including fat-burners and other ingredients that appear to be genuinely health promoting. This comes at a price though, this product is not the cheapest out there, but it could turn out to be good value compared to other similar products. As always, it would not be sensible to embark on a course of medication without proper advice and preferably input from a health professional with access to your personal medical history.

Appetite suppressant

'BonAppetite' is one of my favourite phrases, so I find it hard to imagine that there are people who are actually concerned with sourcing an appetite suppressant. It turns out that there are a huge range of appetite suppressants on the market each with their own list of pro's and con's making each one suitable for different types of people. As always, it is imperative to get excellent advice not only about the most suitable suppressant for you, but also to find out all about the possible side-effects of taking such medication in the long term.

Monthly earnings

Sometimes you sit waiting for a bus, sometimes they all come at once... today was one of those all coming at once days. I got paid by Sponsored reviews, and Blogsvertise today not only that, but I had a payment for fixed ads (non-blog) making a total Paypal haul of about $55 today! This will have considerable influence on my eBay activities... I may just take a punt on a better CPU and motherboard than I had previously intended to purchase (although it would be nice to pay something into the bank account too...).
On the credit card front, I have just one payment to make on my 0% card which will see an end to my 'large' CC debt - but unfortunately I have been forced to use my regular card for some purchases which sees me facing a small bill that I cannot pay off immediately, but I hope will be disappearing over the next few months. In fact after writing this, it does seem a bit silly for me to be considering spending on a new mobo, so I may have to review that particular desire and put it on the back-burner. After all, there will be more money to be made and I am half-way towards another Adsense payment having receieved a payment at the start of this month. I am getting a bit more business through my non-blog internet dealings too, so all-in-all despite the economic down-turn, earnings are certainly there to be had for those prepared to work for them.

Another slow month..

I am not the only one to comment on the slow-down of paid post and associated earnings recently, this on top of the drop off in paid post earnings over the last year or so in general. We seem to be hitting a real dry-patch lately and getting opps is seemingly becoming more difficult.
This could be a result of a number of factors, the first of which is the ongoing effects of Google's reaction to paid posts which has been to lower the PageRank of posters and advertisers alike. Another reason could be the general down-turn in the economy which has left many companies looking for ways to cut costs dramatically. For those with several 'strings to their bow' it just means a shift in emphasis to other sources of income. I have been lucky in that another of my online activities has been much busier this month, and I have been actvely pursuing other income avenues anyway. I have always been interested in passive earnings through adsense and will continue to pursue ways of building income with a combination of SEO and Adsense and affiliates.

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Fat Burners

Whilst products such as Stimerex ES make all sorts of claims that include both fat-burning and energy boosting abilities, it should be noted that if the claim of the strength of this product are true, then professional medical advice should be sought before embarking on a course.
This product contains both Ephedra and Synephrine this is because there are restrictions on how much Ephedra can be included in a dose. This information alone should serve as a warning that if indeed you decide that this product is worth trying, that it should be treated seriously and the best medical advice should be sought before-hand.

Making a mark

We all like to put our personal stamp on the things that we have whether they be our houses, our cars or our clothing.
We view a new home with an eye for all the changes we are going to introduce to make it our own, and even if we don't realise it, we usually buy the same sort of clothes from the same sort of shops establishing our own style.
I remember when I got my first car, I got busy painting all parts of the car and adding a set of fog lights, moving the number plate around and generally making it look unique. I think nowadays people are less inclined to paint their cars and will, instead fit a high-end music system, a DVD player or hid lights, those high-definition lights that appear blue rather than white.
There was a trend to have lights beneath the car which seems rather superfluous and hopefully this trend is now subsiding.
Whatever it is we choose, it is important that we are able to express our individuality, of course, bloggers are able to do this via the internet...

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Earnings June 2009

Not a bad month in June, steady earnings from a few different sources giving a total of around $90 from blogs. The last few days offered up a few dollars from Adsense, and this has continued today. I should actually be getting a payment from Adsense about now anyway... I have said this before, but it bears repeating, that the majority of my Adsense earnings do NOT come from blogs, but increasingly, my blogs are adding to the overall earnings. This month has seen a bit of an upturn in non-blog earnings too, plus someone has pointed me in the direction of a ludicrously good deal for web hosting which I may well be posting about soon. In essence this hosting deal allows you to host multiple domains for one payment which is equivalent to what I am paying for each of my hosted domains - This certainly bears investigation although it may mean having to go off-line for a day or two to get 'A records' pointing in the right place etc... With this deal I could even switch all my blogs over to Wordpress for no extra charge - a claim again which bears investigating!
OK, back to the earnings then... Good result from sponsored reviews once more, this is turning into one of my favourite sources of paid blogging opps. Some revival of earnings from Blogsvertise - some time since they had any opps for me... PayU2blog continue to provide decent revenue, and a good few dollars from contextual advertising adds nicely to the pot. Before you start to believe I have done a one-dollar post for PPP, this was a correction from an amount I had wrongly declared previously....