I am interested in getting a job as a paint contractor. I have spent the past few months painting house exteriors and I am now interested in setting up contracts. I would like the job to be a little bit more secure and permanent and I do not have to worry about where my next job is coming from.

A colleague of mine suggested that I register myself with BestHousePainter.com. He informed me that he found tons of work this way and that he was actually to the point where he had to start turning down jobs because he was too busy.

He told me I could go in and register myself as a Phoenix paint contractor and that if someone was searching for that than my name and contact information would come up. I figure that it can’t hurt to give it a try and I am currently in the process of registering to do this. Hopefully I will also get to the point where I have to turn down jobs.

A bunch of the ladies form my church get together once a month to have a social outing and to work on scrapbooking. It is a lot of fun and fellowship. The only problem is that we seem to do a lot more visiting and snacking than we do scrapbooking. That is until we started our Canadian scrapbook supplies club.

We found a few places to order scrapbook supplies Canada in bulk and wholesale prices, so now whenever we get together, we all pool together and place a large order for supplies. This saves us a lot of money and, even if we do a lot of visiting and snacking, we feel like we have accomplished something.

Since we started the scrapbooking supplies Canada club, we have found out about so many new techniques and I think our books are starting to look really amazing. I am glad to have such good and creative friends and I feel like I am a better scrapbooker now than I was even two months ago.

Some people laugh at me when I say that my trucks and motorcycles are my investments.  Sure, they don’t put any money in my pockets, but I have sunk a lot of money into them, so instead of just thinking of them as toys, I treat them like they are more than that.

With the special treatment I give them, I also give them special care.  Not only are the regular maintenance checks done, but I make sure to was them at least once every two weeks, and more frequently in the winter.

When I am not using them, I make sure that my investments are protected.  If you were to look in my garage, you would see a sea of truck covers and motorcycle covers.  This keeps the vehicles from both getting dirty and from fading since my garage has a lot of windows and a skylight.

My favorite type of protection that I have bought have been budge truck covers.  They have been both durable and reliable.  I made the mistake a few years ago to buy some covers that were on sale – it was easy to see why.  The quality was just not there.

So laugh all you will about how I take care of my vehicles, but if you ever saw any of them, you would understand why I do what I do – they are all in pristine condition even though I use them on a daily basis.

Sorry for the vulgarity of the post title, but that is just how I feel.  You see, two days ago, my hard drive crashed, and I just about lost everything.

Lucky for me, I have a friend that is a computer expert and he was able to give me some guidance.  He told me that I could get some data recovery software and that it would let me recover almost all of the information that I had on my hard drive.  I wouldn’t have to hire an expert and pay them big bucks, but I could just buy the software and do it myself.

After purchasing the software, I started to do a hard drive recovery.  Thankfully, the software held my hand through the process and guided me in the right direction to get things started.  I was just able to start the software up, pick what I wanted to do, and go do other things.

When I came back later, I found that the software worked and I was able to recover from crashed hard drive.  After a big sigh of relief, I was able to use my computer again.  Thank goodness.

Shopping as a guy is pretty simple in most cases.  Usually I like to think of my shopping trips as being a sniper shopper - I know what I want, and I just buy it.  In most cases, it works out perfectly, except today it sure didn’t.

You see, I have one of those whirlpool baths and it quit.  Being the handy person that I am (insert some sarcasm here) I tried to fix it, but I think I just made matters worse.  It wasn’t until today that I noticed too that the rest of the bathroom was looking old and dated - and maybe could use a replacement.

I had a bit of money set aside for a day like today, so I thought that I could go look at bathroom suites and pick one out.

Well it wasn’t that easy.

There were so many choices I was a bit overwhelmed.  Thankfully, the sales clerk was very helpful and I managed to pick out everything.  I went with one of those shower baths this time as I really don’t have a lot of time (or interest) in soaking in the tub - a quick shower will do.

I just hope I don’t have to do this again for a long time - it sure wasn’t easy…

Many people that own websites have different link building strategies: some people comment on blogs, comment on forums, write and submit articles, do directory submissions, or one of the many other ways to promote their sites.  Instead of focusing on delivering a quality product, they spend most of their time marketing their sites.

I wanted to be different.

You see, I love writing content and marketing, but the website marketing takes too much time.  So much time that I am unable to do it effectively most days.  Instead of quitting my link building, I have decided to outsource it.

I am going to outsource my site promotion to an SEO firm that comes highly recommended: SubmitEdge.com.  They offer a link building service that tackles many of the best link building strategies such as directory submissions, article marketing, and social bookmarking.  I especially love the fact that their article submission service also provides you with the articles that will be submitted - so that I don’t have to spend more time coming up with more content.

Consider outsourcing your website marketing as an effective way to free up some of your time and drive traffic to your websites.

I know that I used to think that the word cheap was associated with poor quality, shoddy products, or something with some catch involved.  Take a cheap DVD player for example.  If you have ever bought one of those, you probably know that they don’t last too long – and in fact, a large number of them out of the box, just don’t work.

It wasn’t until I went traveling that I discovered that cheap could mean a good bargain and good results.  You see, while in Europe, we found an advertisement for “cheap car hire Portugal” and made a phone call.  The gentleman that we talked to on the phone seemed reliable and we checked out the car rental company.  Their rates were excellent, and the vehicles that they had were of good quality. 

After our success with our first car rental, we continued our winning streak with car rentals.  We had a cheap car hire Austria that had perhaps the nicest air conditioner I have ever had the privilege of using in a vehicle.

I can’t forget the staff at the firm that had cheap car hire Greece – they were not mad at us when we locked the keys in the car in their parking lot.

All, in all, I think my views on the word cheap have changed.  Sure, sometimes you can get a poor product or service if it is too cheap, but in most cases, cheap just means it is a good deal – it is really just that simple.

I wanted to save a bit of money to surprise the wife for a romantic getaway in November.  But in order to do this, we would need to save some money to do that - and there just wasn’t much room in our budget. 

I decided that I could get a part time job to make money so that we could take the trip.  After a number of job applications, I was able to find a job working for a property management company.  The position that I am being trained for at the moment is to use the reference tenants provide us, call them, and ensure that the potential renter would be a good tenant.

The theory behind my position is that when I check tenant references I will be able to make an unbiased decision as to whether or not I think that they would be good renters.  The argument for this is I don’t meet the actual renter face to face, so I can make a decision solely on what I learn through the reference checks.  My opinions are compared to the landlord who showed the suite and from there a decision is made regarding their eligibility to rent from us.

For the few days that I have worked so far, all I can say is that the job is not boring at all.  There have been a lot of good calls and some weird ones, but each one is interesting.  I hope my wife appreciates the amount of work that I am doing so that we can go away for our trip - though it seems far away.

For those of you out there that are married, do you find that it gets harder each year to find something unique and special for your spouse on their birthday? 

I sure do.  We have been together for almost ten years now, and it gets harder each year to figure out what to get her.  This year, I decided that I would do something different and “make” her something - custom T shirts.

She is a big fan of scrapbooking and I thought that she would appreciate it if I went to one of those “make your own T shirt” sites and made her a shirt.  There were quite a few sites to choose from, but I picked one that was based in my own country and started working on it.

I thought it would be easy to design your own T shirt - but for me it was tough.  I am not too creative, and the fact that it had to be something that she would wear made it that much harder.  But after an hour or so, I did finally make one that I think she will like. 

It will be here before her birthday, and it will be interesting to see her reaction - I hope she loves it.

Now, it may seem like I am talking about having a date with my phone, but I just can’t stop talking about it.  I would have to say it is my favorite gadget I have ever owned, so I like to fool around with it a bit.

This afternoon I have been checking out the latest iPhone ringtones and uploading them to my phone.  There is just something about having a phone that rings differently than everyone else - it makes everyone look your way.

I just still haven’t figured out which of the MP3 ringtones that I am going to finally settle on, but in the meantime, I am downloading as many as I can.  That way I can have a good selection of tones to choose from, and I could change them depending on my mood.

I have only had one setback this afternoon: I was trying to upload some of my old, favorite Cingular ringtones, but they just don’t sound as good on the iPhone as the new ones do.  Anyway, I think I am going to go back to downloading ringtones - I am having too much fun!