To The Moon And Back

… considering buying clothes worth $240 and above? I can’t afford those even with unexpected extra cash in hand. Did I forget about my list of things-to-buy-when-i-have-extra-money? As of this moment, I’m staring at my busted laptop battery, hoping the HP people will replace it for free. That way, I’ll just buy a 1GB memory and 160GB portable hardisk. I don’t know how I’ll spend the remaining but it will definitely not go to our savings. I’ve had enough scrimping to last the whole year and we need to treat ourselves from time to time. Perhaps we can have one or two summer getaways after all.

I unexpectedly received some extra moolah from a past project that surfaced recently. And since all my outfits are so outdated, I’m going to treat myself crazy with new clothes. Now, all I have to do is check the Internet on the latest trends. Thanks to Shopwiki.com, my favorite shopping buddy, I can find what I’m looking for easily. This site not only offers links to online shops but also tons of information about the latest trend in women’s apparel, among other things. I really like this site the way you can navigate through various sections using links.

I immediately found this sexy but comfy looking wide sleeve blouse which is just right for weekend outings and can double as breastfeeding blouse because of the wide neck opening.

It’s too expensive for me at $230, though.

After a quick search for flirty tops, I found this hot number in black.

Still a bit on the expensive side but too hot to resist so I’m definitely adding it to my wish list.

The good thing about this site is you can compare different prices from different stores where the item is being sold. Aside from that, you can also read product reviews from customers who bought it. It’s like browsing through several sites from one website. This is the reason why I always make sure to drop by ShopWiki before I shop online. It’s the equivalent of me, personally hopping from one mall to another searching for the cheapest but cutest outfit.

*taken by thefogramp.blogspot.com

I was browsing my computer when I saw these two artworks that I copied online.

I’ve been meaning to design something cool for a t-shirt before and thought pop art would do just fine. I had trouble finding a printing company though, thanks to outdated shops here in Manila. But that was before. Now, it’s so much easy to print your designs on t-shirts or customize clothing with the help of the Internet.

CustomInk.com is a great site if you need to see your designs on shirts, mugs, baseball caps, pens and bags. I’ve just tried my design and it really looked good on a tight fitting women’s t-shirt. If you don’t have a design, you can select from over 10,000 images that are available from their built-in t-shirt design interface. Add text, modify fonts and colors to your liking and you’re all set. You can also use their service to design team uniforms which can either be used on sports or company activities. The selection of T-shirts is not limited. You can go for various kinds of customized apparels - short or long sleeves, casual polos, tank tops, jerseys or even printed fabrics. Aside from the usual shirts and caps, your designs or company logo can also be printed on mouse pads, stuffed toys, frisbees, umbrellas and many more. Whether you’re trying to show team spirit or want to market your product, CustomInk.com will help you get your message get across. If you find yourself stuck, just browse through the design ideas category and you will surely find one that you will like.

Have any of you had a bad experience with refurbished Apple products? A friend will be coming home this May so I want to take advantage of the free shipping.

Here is what I’m eyeing:

Refurbished MacBook Pro 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
15.4-inch widescreen display
2GB memory
120GB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 128MB of GDDR3 memory
Built-in iSight Camera

Imagine, you can have a Macbook Pro for only $1499? I wonder how good (or bad) refurbished products are?

I can also go for something cheaper.

Refurbished MacBook 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo - White
13.3-inch glossy widescreen display
1GB memory
80GB hard drive
Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)
Built-in iSight camera

This one is for only $799.

They are both certified Apple refurbished products and covered by Apple’s one year limited warranty.

Apple Certified Refurbished Products are pre-owned Apple products that undergo Apple’s stringent refurbishment process prior to being offered for sale. These products have been returned under Apple’s Return and Refund Policies. While only some units are returned due to technical issues, all units undergo Apple’s stringent quality refurbishment process

It’s not that I don’t trust Apple. In fact, I love them to bits. I just need to research on what other customers say about refurbished products because even if we’re talking about $800 here, it’s still a huge amount of money.

Our company needs virtual management software really bad. We are a virtual company so keeping track of what everyone does is highly important to succeed. You see, we don’t really have an HR/Accounting department. The other CEO is the one handling all of the billing issues and hiring is through forums and word of mouth. I could say that we’re not doing badly, to be fair. The thing is, after hiring 5 new people last year; I found out the hard way that telecommuting is not for everyone. Two of the new hires slept on the job, while the other two pretends to work by getting online but they are actually working in another company at the same time. The last one wasn’t technical enough which is already a different story. My point here is we really need to take this company to the next level by buying softwares that can help recruit and manage the employees, track project status, automate expense reimbursement processes and many more. We could also use an employee evaluation software so we can provide monthly or quarterly appraisals. Even companies with physical office find it hard to manage people so what more if you have to do it virtually. Aside from the fact that we hired the wrong people, we could definitely used an extra hand in management.

I’ve been sick for the past three days with colds and a bit of fever. Thank God for my husband who made it sure that I get enough rest by putting the little one to sleep himself. I know it’s just colds but I was having a hard time to move and keep my eyes open. That didn’t stop me from reading ebooks on my phone though. I was left alone in the room most of the time so I can rest without interruption. Being alone has its merits but what I didn’t like about it is that you need to do stuff on your own too, i.e. turning off the lights or getting up to find the remote for TV or air conditioner. There are plenty of times when I wonder how it would feel to automate our home. I’ve read from a home automation company website about this automated home or “smart home” wherein you can control everything in your home with a touch of a single button. Being OC that we are, we’d appreciate equipment such as this so we can make sure that all lights, electronics, windows, are turned off/closed.

Appetizer
Name something you would categorize as weird.
People who loves anything gross - bloated dead bodies, exploded brain, cannibalism movies (I’ve seen one, does that mean I’m weird)

Soup
What color was the last piece of food you ate?
Cream/green as in breadsticks with green spices. Brown for coffee with milk.

Salad
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how much do you enjoy being alone?
I’d say 3. I love it 30%. I hate it 70%.

When I’m in the mood, I just want to be alone whether sleeping or curled on a comfy sofa reading a book or watching my favorite movies.

But most of the time, I prefer spending my free time with little one and my dear husband. And when I’m feeling generous, dinner or out of town with friends is most welcome.

Main Course
Fill in the blank: I will _________ vote for ___________ in _______.
I will not vote for anyone in the 2010 elections unless there’s someone who can honestly save our country from poverty.

Dessert
Describe your sleeping habits.
Erratic. Think waking up every one to two hours as if you have a newborn babe.

My recent attempt to customize Boonex wasn’t exactly a success. Still, the experience was rewarding enough that I’m now more confident to try new applications.

Let me tell you a few things about Boonex.

It’s a free, open source software that lets you create dating sites, social networks, content sharing portals and more. It has the basic features every social networking site offers - forums, chats, profile pages, dating events, groups, classifieds, media galleries, blogs, articles. The first time I installed it, I was amazed by my ability to set up my very own social networking website. The wonders stopped there, though.

As a designer, I don’t think you’d encounter a lot of problems if your CSS coding skills range from good to excellent. The documentation is not yet available but there are several sites offering tutorials on how to install, customize, troubleshoot the Boonex app. For programmers though, the application is very problematic. The biggest problem that we had is that our client wanted to add several features that are not part of Boonex. Not only that, the said features needed to be delivered in two weeks time. Even if our programmer could handle these PHP customizations at a short amount of time, the Boonex issues started to make things slower than it already is. One minute the ‘Navigation Builder’ is working, the next minute it will stop loading the changes. The ‘Classifieds area’ won’t accept ads if you assign it to a Category without a Sub-category. The upload media worked on and off the first few days and stopped working completely on the last remaining weeks. There are so many bugs to mention and I will not list them all here. We tried to hire so-called Boonex experts but the guy that we contacted disappeared. We also talked to a few independent companies but it’s either they haven’t heard of Boonex or they just don’t want to touch it.

To cut the long story short, the project was discarded and we didn’t get paid. To think I’ve spent so many sleepless nights worrying about it. To give Boonex credit though, it was pretty easy to setup and use. Maybe if you use the standard features and try not to improve it, it will work just fine. But paying clients don’t waste money on standard features so if you want moolah, might as well go for Joomla. Now, that rhymes! I also heard about PHPizabi from this blog so feel free to explore that. I haven’t personally tried them but given my experience with Boonex, it’s always better to try and lose, than never try at all.

Still want to try? You might want to bookmark the following sites to help you get started
Boonex Website
Boonex Nerd
Expertzzz.com

Thanks to the power of Internet, we receive item discounts, product coupons and special offers daily in our emails. It’s so hard to resist them especially if the prices are just unbelievably low that we tend to buy things we don’t really need. And since we use credit cards to buy them, we are spending money that we don’t really have. This is where debts and bad credits enter the picture. Because of this kind of lifestyle, the number of bad credit consumers is growing each day.

Finding yourself in the same state of having less-than-perfect credit rating is not the end of the world. There are various services that can help consumers get back to their feet financially. However, just because a bad credit offer is good for someone doesn’t mean it will work with you too. The best way to find the right offer for you is to compare these services side by side. A site called BadCreditOffers.com does exactly that. This site constantly monitors the marketplace so they can bring only the best bad credit offers available whether you’re looking for credit cards, housing loans, auto loans or personal loans. Their ratings are based on the speed of approval, interest rate, reliability and credibility of the lending company. They also provide helpful articles and resources to help any consumers determine their credit history and what they can do to make it right.

I do believe that having a good credit standing is a must especially if you’re looking to buy a house or car. And even if you don’t, make sure that you manage your money wisely. My friends laugh at me the way I write expenses down to the last peso but I don’t care. At least I know where our money is going and that I wouldn’t have the shock of my life when I see our credit card bills at the end of the month.