Goodbye Outright

I am no longer recommending Outright.com and have removed the link from my previous post. They've made several "improvements" over the past year, most of which I don't like, and are now going to charge a monthly fee. Here are excerpts from a recent email:

• New users are now charged $9.95 a month after a 30 day free trial.
• All existing Outright customers may continue to use Outright for free through Dec 31, 2011. That gives you about a year to continue to use Outright for free and determine for yourself if we provide enough functionality to make Outright worth the monthly cost. It also guarantees that you can track your entire 2011 calendar year finances for tax purposes. After Dec 31, we hope that the small (and tax-deductible) monthly fee will feel insignificant compared to the time savings and peace of mind that Outright provides. If not, and you wish to move to another solution, you will be free to download your transaction history - we don't believe in holding data hostage.

Well, apparently they do believe in holding my data hostage until the end of the year as I can find no way to export it now - and now is when I want to do so as I plan to create my own tracking system in Excel. Beings I'm currently immersed in 2010 taxes, now will be an easy time to create a custom set-up based on what I actually need to know at the end of each year. So I'll just manually enter data rather than export. Fortunately, much of the needed info is also on PayPal, which will let me export with no problem.

I understand that Outright needs to pay their bills and chose to transition to a paid service rather than subject their users to ads. So be it and I wish them well. It just isn't worth nearly $120/year to me.

How Old is Old?

I read today on WiseGeek that “Of all the people in history that have reached 65 years of age, half of them are living right now.” I can’t seem to find the source of this statistic but thought I’d share anyway. Think about this for just a minute. Do you remember when 50 was old? And I’m not just talking because you were a little kid and 20, 30 and 40 were also old. I’m talking about when people really did seem older at a much earlier age than they do now.

Have you ever heard of Grace Small? My mom shared The Hitchhiking Grandmother with me several years ago about this “elderly” woman who hitchhiked around the country. Looking at her pictures standing by the road, she does look like a little old granny. NOT. She was less than 50 when she hitched her first 1,000-miles trip. She did continue hitchhiking into her 80s, however, but the photos I saw were from a much earlier time.

So how old is old? Some say you’re only as old as you feel. Oops - some days that makes me pretty darn old! Some say that age is just a number. That may be true but it’s an easier position to espouse the further you are from the century mark. What I do know is that old is not nearly as old now for many people as it was during my grandparents' day.

Since my earliest memories, I’ve pretty much always planned to see 100. I don’t know where I got the idea. Maybe I didn’t realize how old 100 actually is, or maybe it was just a nice-sounding number. Now that I’m over halfway there, it still seems attainable and desirable. And it looks like I’ll be in good company with all the rest of you who are marching toward the triple digits with optimism and enthusiasm for life. Just keep remembering that the best years really are yet to come.


BTW - although I’ve included an Amazon affiliate link up there in the second paragraph, check your library before you rush out to buy the book.

Cruz Reader Firmware Update How-to

My new Cruz Reader - isn't she cute?

The first thing I did when I got my new Cruz Reader was the recommended firmware update as my sister had forewarned me to do the update before I did anything else. Why the Cruz Readers don’t arrive ready to go is a mystery to me. Why there is so little easily available and understandable information is another puzzle. While there’s nothing I can do about the former, I will (to the level of my limited ability) work on the latter. To that end, I just published How to Update Cruz Reader Firmware on eHow.


I hope this info is helpful to non-techies like me. My only frustration with the Cruz thus far is the difficulty in finding clear and simple info on how to use the thing. I’ve gotten lost in Cruz Support more than I care to admit. Maybe all the android-phone-using 20-somethings don’t have a problem but some of us 50+ folks do. Anyway, my sister also has more questions than answers, so I will be trying to find solutions for us both. I also have a somewhat humorous story about contacting tech support that I'll share in a later post.

P.S. For those of you unfamiliar with the eHow article editing process, there are some minor differences between what I wrote and what got published. This is just the nature of the beast and I’m choosing to be all Zen about it. I think one of the changes made the info ever so slightly less accurate but not to the point that it will be noticed by the reader when following the instructions.

Free Organizing Tips eBook!

Prerna over at The Mom Writes is an organizing genius and just published her first eBook, 100+ Simple Tips to Get Organized, Cut Clutter and Increase Productivity. I’ve gotten several good tips from Prerna’s blog posts already and can’t wait to read more! For instance, I had two mugs with pencils, pens and whatnot taking up prime real estate on my desk. I also had a little wire shelf in need of a home. Thanks to one of Prerna’s tips, I now have those mugs off the surface but close at hand on the wall. This is such a better space for them - I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner. Especially beings I’ve knocked each over more than once.

So head on over to The Mom Writes and download yourself a copy of Prerna's free eBook. With so many great tips to choose from, you can organize just about everything in your home and your life! I’m opening my copy right now - what are you waiting for?

The 100 Things Challenge Book

The 100 Things Challenge is now a book! How cool is that? I don’t have it yet because I just found out today. Also, I have to decide whether to add it to my things (yeah, I know - I probably will) or borrow it somewhere or just settle for reading the parts that are shown in the Amazon “Look Inside!” feature. (Seriously, I use it all the time – it’s a great way to avoid disappointment, although I’m sure that doesn’t apply in this case.)

I wrote about the Challenge back in Sept 09 in a post titled 100 Things Challenge Revived! Care to Join Me? Well, no one did that I know of, apparently not even me. I guess that’s not quite true - I have gotten rid of a lot of things. Rather than trying to pare down to just 100 things like Dave Bruno, I was simply trying to get rid of 100. And I KNOW that I have. But as usual, I got distracted and failed to update my list.

So let me get this straight. I actually started the 100 Things Challenge back in 2008 on a previous blog I’m not even sure I can still find. Then I “revived” the Challenge on this blog in Sept 09 but did nothing else? Be glad I’m not in charge ER life support. Hmm - this adult-onset ADD just gets funnier and funnier. How do little school kids cope? See - now I’m off in a couple of other directions again.

Now back to the topic of this post. Do I really need this book? After all, I’ve already read the blog (link below), right? Well . . . yeah, I’m pretty sure that I do. And you probably do, too. Dave is a witty guy with some good insight and a gift for story. So click on the picture (affiliate link, btw) to check it out on Amazon, or head on over to The 100 Things Challenge on Dave's blog.

The Vastness of the Universe

Lately I’ve been pondering the vastness of the universe. I knew it was big, but WOW! When you stop to think about distances measured in light years, it’s more than a little overwhelming. And did you realize that the starlight you see actually left the star centuries ago? That’s right - centuries.

So what spurred all this recent cosmic contemplation? Well, my hubby received A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson for Christmas, which starts out with the birth of the universe. Despite the complexity of the subject, it’s clearly written, very interesting and an extremely enjoyable read. Couple that with a few crisp clear nights visible through the sliding glass door at the head of our bed, and there I am gazing at the stars and thinking a few deep thoughts.

So do yourself a favor and get a copy. Even if you already know most everything there is to know about, well, everything, you will enjoy this book.

Please note: As usual, I’ve included an Amazon affiliate link. Check your local library if you want but this one is well worth owning.

Success and Failure in the New Year

Do you often set yourself up for failure by taking on too much? I know I do - especially around January every year. All those future plans and goals that sound so doable between Christmas and New Year’s Eve seem to become less so as January races toward February. And I’m not talking about the usual New Year resolutions - I actually have a pretty good handle on setting reasonable goals and keeping them. What I am talking about are all the other projects I take on with NO hope of success. Let me explain.

Failures for Jan 2011

First I signed up for a blog challenge - one post per day for 30 days. The posts could be any length and spread across multiple blogs. Not too hard, right? Well, even though I know frequent posting is one of the keys to blogging success, I didn’t even make it halfway through the month. I ran out of things to say. Yes, me - the girl who was paid as a child to shut up. I did start the challenge two days early and posted daily until about the 10th, but then reverted to my less-frequent-posting ways. So there’s a habit I failed to develop.

My second project is actually a 3-in-1. I took an online class through KSURF in Nov-Dec. A 20% discount good through Dec 30 inspired me to sign up for three more classes. Well, you work at your own pace with no set deadlines other than you have 60 days to complete each class. How close do you suppose I am one-third of the way through? I’ll give you a hint - it’s quite a bit lower than one-third. The good news is I can download all the lessons and complete them at my leisure (hmm, sounds exactly like what I’m already doing!). But when will that time be? Anyway, I still have until March 1 so it may happen yet!

Now you may be feeling sympathetic because you think I’m feeling bad. Please put your sympathy to better use elsewhere! I am now so used to my adult-onset ADD that I don’t beat myself up any more about the stuff I don’t get done. In fact, I wouldn’t even have used the word “failure” if I could have thought of one that meant “didn’t get it done but so what.”

And a Few Successes

First off, I am completely on track with my main actual New Year’s resolution. Of course, it’s kind of a cheat because I’ve already developed the habit and just keep recycling this resolution every year. Anyway, I have a morning stretch and afternoon walk routine that I do every day that I’m home. And I’ve been home every day so far this year. Now before you get too impressed with my consistency, I also did my stretches and walking almost every day I was home in 2010 - and it may have even been every day but I think I might have missed once or twice when I wasn’t feeling well. So, like I said, I’m already in the habit.

A second BIG success is that I am finally moving forward with my Custom Memorial Quilts site. This has been in the planning stages way too long - I registered the domain name clear back in Sept 09. Anyway, I signed up with HostGator (affiliate link but not for me) for 3 years. Am I committed, or what? Then I chose Suffusion as my WordPress theme and am tweaking it to my liking. For me, moving this project forward from just an idea to something tangible is HUGE.

A third area of success is my online writing earnings. I’ve actually met my goal and raised it twice. What? That’s right - I met my initial earnings goal in the first week so bumped it up. Then I met it again, so raised it again. What was I thinking? Truth be known, my actual original goal was to take time away from writing for up-front pay and focus on other writing projects, so maybe this success is actually a failure - oops. Oh well, I guess we’re right back to my adult-onset ADD.

Save BIG on College Costs

Have you seen the recent article on Yahoo News? Apparently nearly half of college students “show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.” WHAT?!?

Want to know another troubling finding? How about this one? “Half did not take a single course requiring 20 pages of writing during their prior semester, and one-third did not take a single course requiring even 40 pages of reading per week.” Are you kidding me?

Ok, we’ve all been told that a college education is the key to higher earnings and general success in life. Parents so firmly believe this that some seriously jeopardize their own financial well-being to pay for their kids to go to college. I have a money saving idea - DON’T! Unless your present and future (think retirement years) finances are in excellent shape (think no debt and plenty of savings) AND your kid is a super-serious, motivated student with a definite plan, let the kids pay their own way. How’s that for saving big on college costs? Are you being remiss in your duties as a parent? NO! They may defer higher education for several years but they will go when and if it actually becomes important to them.

Now before anyone gets too upset about my stance, let me give a little backstory here. I went to college in my 30s and maintained a 4.0 (with the exception of one class toward the very end) while earning a BA in Business Management. I was also a single parent and worked at least half time (usually more). What I noticed was that for many of my younger classmates, college was simply an acceptable way to extend the fun of the teen years (think supported by parents) and delay taking on adult responsibilities (think get a job and pay your own bills). This was not the case with every student, of course, but seemed a common theme.

So do yourself and your kids a huge favor. Take care of your finances so that you are comfortable during your later years and train them throughout their childhood and teen years to become self-sufficient adults. You see, it’s a win/win - if something should go wrong on either side, the other will most likely be in a position to step in and help.