As I am soon to be moving out of state, I decided that I would list a lot of my furniture and household items in the Long Island classifieds. I will be getting married in the spring, and as my husband has nearly everything we will need already, I decided that by getting rid of a lot of my things, it would give us some cash for our honeymoon.

I also looked up the Long Island business directory to see if there were any thrift stores that would be willing to take some of my clothing. I always knew that I had way way too much, but until you start packing up to move, you don’t realize exactly how much too much is.

The last thing that I will do is put my house up for sale in the Long Island real estate guide. Homes sell very quickly here and I do not want to have to move until the time for the wedding comes along. I am sure it will sell very quickly and that is the reason I am doing it last. It will also help the sale to have a lot of this clutter out of here.

I woke up this morning to find all the lights on my computer on, but nothing on the screen.  I checked all the connections to make sure that something wasn’t unplugged and everything seemed okay.  That is when I started getting worried, but I thought that maybe I just needed to reset it.

So, I pushed the reset button.

And the machine rebooted to a blank screen.  At this point I was really getting worried, but I thought that I could take it to a computer store and see what they thought.

I packed up the computer and put it in my car.  I drove down to the computer store and talked to the clerk.  When the tech came back he was spouting something about they needed to do an Ext2 recovery and he asked me if I brought my Linux disks. 

"Sorry man, I use Windows."

After we clarified that point, he told me that there were some errors with my hard drive but he could do a disk data recovery and fix the problems.  I asked if he could recover all my information and he said that the Windows data recovery software they used would take care of that for me.

Now, all I have to do is wait for a couple of days for them to fix it.  I am so happy that they will be able to recover everything - I didn’t make any backups.

It seems that no matter where you turn, we are always bombarded with learning products.  Whether it is through an infomercial, or through email, there seems to be a never ending stream of info products that someone wants to sell us.

Thankfully these paid products also have free counterparts.  Think of these relationships to be much like a library and a book store.  Though they both supply the same information, but one you have to pay, one you don’t.

I came across one of those free learning resources today online.  I found a free SEO education forum when I was searching on my favorite world wide website directory.  You see, I was looking for a site that had some good recommendations for where I could register domain names at a great price - and a thread at the forum came up as the first search result.

A couple of hours later, I realized that I had been reading post after post of good information and I was soaking it up as a sponge.  The best part was it was free - and I was even able to ask specific questions related to what I wanted to know.  In the future, I will be looking to forums for my answers first before I buy any informational product - chances are I will be able to find what I am looking for on a forum anyway.

I was looking for a job for the summer and thought it might be fun to paint houses. I logged into besthousepainter.com to see if there was anywhere in which I could apply for a job. I didn’t see anything about this, so I decided to just send an email through the contact information.

I learned that there was lots of need for a new Arizona house painter and I jumped at the chance. I thought this would give me a good opportunity to be outdoors a lot and still be getting paid. I was super excited on my first day at my first job.

I was very thankful that I had decided to log into that painting website because I really enjoyed my job and I made a lot of good friends. Summer is over now, and I have to go back to school. But, I have a really good tan and I have a lot of good friends, who I will still be hanging out with when it comes time to start painting again next June.

I find it really frustrating when your flight is canceled.  Sure, that doesn’t happen to me very often, but I just happened to get stuck while on vacation a few weeks ago.

What really bothers me is that when you do get stuck, usually you don’t have anything to do.  Most people get something to eat or drink, or read a magazine, but I found myself without much of anything to do.

Luckily for me, two weeks prior, I had read some iPhone news in a popular mobile magazine.  I skipped over the iPhone accessories to the games section.  I had not even realized that there were games that I could download to my iPhone.

I was so thankful that I had read the magazine and downloaded some iPhone games onto my phone.  Sure, staying over at the airport sucked, but at least I had some sort of distraction -at least for a little while.

This past week, my wife and I have been working on a budget.  The reason for working on the budget is that we both need to see where our money is going, and how we can spend it more wisely.

What we found from tracking our spending was interesting.  It seems that my wife has been ordering from a Canadian scrapbook supplies company and had been paying for it on our credit card.

When I confronted her about her erroneous spending on the scrapbook supplies Canada website, she admitted that she was a scrap-a-holic and had a problem.  Bushing her problems aside, I told her that we needed to find a better place for her to spend her money.

We ended up finding a good wholesaler when we searched for “scrapbooking supplies Canada”.  She will still be able to buy the same quantity as before, just now, she will be spending less.  Who knew that the budgeting process would be so effective.

I bet some of you fathers out there can relate to me on this – sometimes we just pick out clothes for our kids that our wives just shake their heads at.  Some of the favorite clothes that I have put on my young children have been weird looking, strange, mismatched and ugly (according to my wife).  But, in my opinion, that is part of the fun being a father.

With that thought in mind (and a new baby on the way), I thought that I should do something special to celebrate our new arrival.  Instead of buying a silly teddy bear, or something really practical, I thought I could make some custom T shirts and give the baby some of my daddy style.

I found a couple of places that let you make your own T shirt and I got to work.  I never realized that there were so many options for you to design your own T shirt, but I did manage to get things sorted out. 

After a few late nights of working on the shirts, I did finally get some designed and ordered.  The reason for working on them so late was that my wife didn’t need to know what I was doing.

When the big day came, I let my wife open the present to our new baby daughter… and she just rolled her eyes.  But I did get a good hug for making an effort as a father, and someday when my daughter looks back and sees what I made for her, I think she will realize how much I love her.  In the meantime, I will put the shirts on her whenever I get the chance and have a little chuckle.

A couple of months ago, I had the opportunity to go on a trip down to Florida.  I have always dreamed of going there and finally my dreams were coming true!

I found it easy to arrange the basic stuff such as hotels, restaurants and interesting places to visit.  I thought I was pretty smart having everything figured out – but boy was I wrong.

Just a week shy of my departure date, a buddy of mine mentioned something that I had completely overlooked – an Orlando car rental.

Oops!  Realizing that I needed to have some way to get around when I did get to my destination, I made a quick search online to find “car rental Orlando”.  That search did bring up some interesting results, but it wasn’t until I searched for “car rentals Orlando” that I found my solution.

Luckily the company I contacted had one car left – so I reserved it.  Ends up that the weekend that I was there was when three big conferences were scheduled and I wouldn’t have been able to get a car rental at all.  Thankfully, my planning ahead paid off (even though it was only one week in advance).

I was talking with my best friend’s father today when he stopped by my work.  Lloyd and I have always been good friends, and in some respects, he has been like a second father to me.  From him I have learned that putting money away is essential for getting ahead in life.

You see, years ago, he had a little scare where he almost lost everything.  He was sick for awhile and missed a few mortgage payments - and was at risk of foreclosure.  Thankfully, everything worked out okay, and he was able to stop foreclosure - but he never wanted to be at that point in his life again.

So, what he did was take advantage of the 1031 Exchange and he upgraded his home every couple of years.  In fact, in the time that I have known him, they have lived in about 15 houses - which may seem like a lot, but they have increased their wealth substantially since I have met them.

Now, with all the wealth they have accumulated in their home, they are paying for their retirement living through a reverse mortgage.  They are now living a life that is more comfortable than when they were working.

I am hoping to follow his footsteps to wealth creation in my life - though the process is not too flashy, the end result is amazing.  I would be able to have the retirement I have always dreamed of.

Ever since I remember, I have really loved playing games. My family was big into playing games and I can remember spending countless Sunday afternoons sitting around the kitchen table playing games with my family. It is one of my greatest memories of childhood.

We played board games and card games, and I developed quite a love for both. I remember playing Kaiser all throughout high school. It was pretty much what we did during our lunch break every day for three years. I remember thinking that I could never imagine a life where I was surrounded by people who did not like to play games.

For Christmas this year, I received my favorite board game. It is The Settlers of Catan by Klaus Tuber. I became fast addicted to it when a friend of my husband and mine introduced it to us last summer. It was a great addition to my collection of board games.