Jude’s Eclectic Resources

It’s been a busy and hectic holiday, but it was very nice spending time with family and friends. I haven’t been able to work on the computer because Bill is off till Jan 2nd that is when I will return for work also. We were given good news, his daughter is going to have a second child due in Sept. and my son and his wife are due around my birthday in Aug. Just wanted to share my good news and hope that everyone has a great New Year, be safe and celebrate responsibly.

I have been having problems with my computer lately and actually thought it was going to blow up or was infected or something dire that was going to have me screaming in agony trying to reprogram, but then I noticed that Zone Alarm hasn’t been loading right and acting weird since I updated it.

I decided to uninstall and everything seems okay, but I’m not totally sure yet so I’m testing it now to see if it is going to act up. I like having a firewall because it makes me feel safe and I have really never had a problem with the free version of Zone Alarm until recently and I’ve used it for years.

It’s very important to prevent bots from attacking your computer. Having a firewall program is very important to me and should be for you also so I guess I will spend some time tomorrow to find a different one. Even though I don’t keep personal information on this pc I certainly don’t need to have my computer hacked or attacked.

I definitely have too many programs on this machine so it’s time for my Christmas cleaning. If your like me you download all kinds of crap and use it a couple of times and then just forget about it and all it does is take up space on your hard drive. When I first started online I would actually sign up at those giveaways because I didn’t know any better and then I would be on 100’s of list and get all that marketing spam.

What a waste of time unless it’s something really unique and usually none of it is. Everyone gives the same products and most are actually useless. If you’re downloading all those products in exchange for your name and email address at least open a free account somewhere and use that regardless if they ask for your primary address otherwise you will have to cancel too many subscriptions when you get tired of all the sales pitches and deleting.

Update: 12/21/07 I left my computer on from 3 am until now 9 pm and it pains me to say that I have had absolutely no problems with my machine whirring and acting like it was going to blow up since I deleted my trusted Zone Alarm.

Well, the week-end came and went without all the nasty weather that was forecasted for us except for freezing rain Saturday night which managed to knock out power for part of our area. We were fortunate this time and retained our power. I would really like to get a power generator encase of some unforeseen outage. That would be a very good investment.

I didn’t work on the computer much this past weekend and it was a nice break. I know when I get on it’s usually very hard to un-attach myself. I still have so much to do for the Holidays, but since I am a procrastinator I know it will all be finished at the last moment. I did cut way down on decorations this year.

I have tried many ways over the past years to un-clutter and take care of things in a timely manner, but it still gets the better of me at times. I will add that one again to my resolutions. I am usually good at organizing, but I have to be in the mood. Clutter is a hazard and simply too much fuel encase of a fire, so that is on my list of must dos.

We take so much for granted and we shouldn’t especially when tragedy strikes it makes us look closer at what we should be doing in our life and that brings me to a tragic fire in my area that killed a family due to faulty wiring and they did not have smoke alarms installed. It doesn’t just happen to other people, every home should be prepared and precautions taken.

Smoke alarms are very important and should be installed in your home and the batteries should be changed once a year. They should be tested frequently to ensure that they will warn you. Wiring in your home should be tested and brought up to code and circuit breakers should be installed. You should have home emergency plans prepared for your home so everyone, God forbid that it would happen, will be prepared.

During holidays people have more of a negligent attitude towards fire safety. We tend to relax too many rules just for fun and end up paying a huge price sometimes. Care should be taken even while selecting a Christmas tree and make sure that it’s not too big so it wont be difficult to manage encase of an emergency, trees and decorations can catch fire easily. Decorations which are non-flammable in nature should be used to decorate homes. Make sure you keep fire extinguishers handy.

Non marketing people could care less about page rank unless they are trying to make money with their website. When I first started I had a personal site that I shared with family and online friends so they would know who I was and it upset me that spiders were crawling my site and putting my personal information out there.

When I decided to try my hand at making money online, now that’s when I realized that I needed all those little bots running around and indexing my pages. I had so much to learn and I am still learning. Sure wish I had gone to school for marketing and computer knowledge instead of Cosmetology.

The easiest way to get started is with affiliate marketing, which I still do and selling informational products and the big problem there is, unless you have developed your own products then your stuck with products that people set at ridiculous prices and undercut you by selling them on e-bay.

It’s really hard to compete because something you invested in at the beginning isn’t worth anything now, so the idea is to add more value by bundling 50 thousands products together which actually unless you can come up with some great ideas are worthless unless you need that information and then you think you have a bargain.

Some people do make money with multi-marketing, but there again you have to be one of the first people otherwise you are out of luck, was gonna say something not so nice, but thought better of it. We all get involved with those programs when we first start out also and they will eat you up and spit you out.,you are just wasting your money with mlm (multilevel marketing) so don’t even try it.

I don’t want you to make the mistakes I did, but I’m sure if you have the talent for marketing you will succeed, I simply don’t have it even though I do try and I have tried many things. Only 10 percent will succeed in business and I am not in the upper percentile… Good Luck To You if you decide to proceed. I will type more at you later, at this point I am listening to the freezing rain and I’m worried about my stray cat….Gotta Go.

Remember when I told you about my niece getting her throat slashed back in July, while she was asleep on her couch? Well the police think they have the man, he is a truck driver from NC. if you want to read the story of the arrest just visit the link.

That whole episode was just too bizarre for me. You think of these things happening to other people that you don’t know. This man is considered a serial killer and they actually found a dvd in his truck called “Hunting Humans”, which is about a serial killer that randomly picks his victims…scary! All I can say is my niece is very lucky to be alive.

They are waiting for DNA results to come back to confirm the attack. Crime around the area that we live has really gotten bad for such a small town, with so many home invasions, I am grateful for my barking dogs. It’s a shame that people aren’t able to trust their fellow men. Even though people take more precautions these days, bad things still happen.

On a happier note, we are going to watch our Grandson in a Christmas Show tonight, so I will only think about pleasant things the rest of the day.

Related: Violent Crimes Against Our Loved Ones