It feel like Christmas today

So I came into the office this morning, and it felt like any other day. But then I took a look in my garbage can and realized that it must be Christmas today... you see, my garbage can has a brand new garbage bag in it!!

For probably the last 8 months, the same old dirty nasty garbage bag has been sitting in the bottom of my garbage can. I first noticed the nastiness of the garbage bag when I threw out some spaghetti lunch one day, and saw that there was still some sauce in the can the next day. Over the next few weeks and months, I noticed that sauce residue was still in the can, and was slowly starting to grow. I'm pretty sure there was a colony of some sort of life form living in the bottom of my garbage can up until yesterday. But now I have a new bag, and no longer have to worry about what sort of disease I might get from being to close to my garbage can.

Hurray for new garbage bags!

Money Making Tip

I've given you a few money saving tips, now it's time to give you a money making tip. This tip is pretty simple and doesn't require a whole lot of work other than what you might do during the course of the day. The way to make some easy money is to set up a web log (kind of like this one) put some Google ads on it, and then try and get a way to have visitors to your site CLICK ON THE ADVERTISEMENTS. You see, every time you get someone to CLICK ON AN AD, you get money from Google. People pay Google to put advertisements on other people's websites that match content similar to what they are selling. So for this particular website, there are ADS THAT YOU CAN CLICK that relate to Cubicles, or printers, or whatever keywords Google finds throughout my post. I would assume that there will be ADS TO CLICK that will advertise Tax Return software, since I talked about that the other day. Perhaps you could even CLICK ON AN AD that will tell you how to set up a weblog and put on some ADS THAT PEOPLE CAN CLICK so you can make money. The hard part about this while process is getting people to actually CLICK ON SOME ADS. See, most people will visit your site, but will be reluctant to CLICK ON AN ADVERTISEMENT TO MAKE you MONEY. However, the more people you can get to visit your site, the more likely it will be that someone will accidentally CLICK ON AN AD, or will CLICK ON AN AD ON PURPOSE. So, unless you can find a way to subliminally get people to CLICK ON ANY ADVERTISEMENT, it will be pretty difficult to make a lot of money. Because, lets face it, it would be pretty tacky for you to just post on the front of your website "PLEASE CLICK ON AN ADVERTISEMENT ON THIS PAGE SO I CAN MAKE SOME MONEY". But that's not to say that there can't be any money made from Google's adwords. I hope this tip becomes useful to you... if not, maybe you could CLICK ON ONE OF THE ADS ON THIS PAGE TO FIND SOME USEFUL INFORMATION.

Another money saving tip

Here is another good money saving tip. This one is actually a little bit better than yesterday's tip, in that it will save you more money. With the tax season coming up pretty soon, everyone is going to be looking for the cheapest and easiest way to do their taxes. My personal experience is that it's sometimes okay to pay for someone to do your taxes if you get a big return, but why pay someone if you don't have to?

A few years ago I went to H&R Block to get my taxes done. It was the first year I had been married and my wife and I went in together to file our returns. I had been at University the whole year, and spent the summer on an internship, so I had very little income that year. But because I had tuition credits, and investment income and other things, they wanted to charge me $80 to file my taxes for a $0 return! Now how stupid is that?!?

So needless to say, that year was the last year that I used H&R Block to do my taxes. The next year I decided I would do it myself. Now I'm not the greatest mathematician when it comes to tax preparation, so I decided that I would invest in some software to help make the process a little easier. I plopped down $40 for the QuickTax software and found it worked pretty well. The forms were easy to use and the program made it easy to maximize the return. After the first year of using QuickTax, I preordered the next year's version early so that I could get the extra $5 off. But in the time that I got last year's QuickTax software, and the time I actually filed my return, I found this new program that is 100% completely FREE!

That's right! A tax return software program that is free... no license to buy, no registration information to send, no hassles and no problems. The program looks very similar to QuickTax and has pretty much the same functionality. So this year, I will be using Studio Tax for my tax return. You should too. Check out www.studiotax.com/en/main.htm to find out more about this FREE software and save yourself at least $40 in the process. If you do your own taxes (or those of your friends and families) this is the best deal for you.

How to save money...

Did you know that you can save money while at work?

Here is a great tip on how to lower expenses at home and put some of that extra cash in your pocket. I know what you are thinking, "Free money must mean that I have to steal something from the office." No, this tip doesn't involve stealing computer paper to use at home, nor does it involve putting some extra highlighters, pens or pencils in your pocket to take home. It doesn't even involve using the company phone to make long distance calls. And it certainly doesn't involve taking someone else's lunch out of the fridge and eating it as your own. This tip is completely 100% legal, will not breach any ethical regulations or codes and is guaranteed to save you money. Want to know a sure fire way to save your money while at work?

Here is the tip:

Save money on toilet paper by pooping at work!

Stay tuned for more money saving tips to come.

I am the self proclaimed "Bullpen Printer Fixer-Upper Guru"

For the third time in about a month, I've had to fix the local printer that serves the bullpen area.

The first two times, the printer settings were messed up so that it took like 10 seconds to print one page. (the printer says it can print 46 pages per minute, but it was taking forever to print a single document) The fix was easy, as I just had to go into the printer settings and set the default paper type. Somehow the paper was set at cardstock, so the printer was taking longer to prepare to print, since cardstock acts differently than regular paper.

Yesterday I fixed the printer again. This time, I'm not too sure what the problem was, all I know is that the printer said it was online and ready to print, but when you tried to print, nothing would happen. Now I'm not too sure if I'm really all that qualified to call myself a Guru, or if it's just that everyone else in the bullpen (and the greater printer area) are just too lazy to attempt to fix the printer themselves.

See, let me tell a bit of the printer back story for context, at about 10:00 I can recall D saying that the printer wasn't working. A dialog between D and Shane resulted in the two of them concluding that the printer wasn't working. At about 10:45, I tried to print a document... and nothing came out of the printer. So during that 45 minute interval between the printer first malfunctioning and me trying to print something, nobody did anything to try and fix the printer. So I decided to do a little investigating to see if I could find out the problem... I thought about calling the IT people to tell them the printer wasn't working, but the IT guys are usually pretty slow at getting back about problems, and I figured it would be quicker for me to try and fix the problem myself. So I opened up my control panel and took a look at the printer settings. When I opened the printer queue I saw 17 documents that were waiting to be printed. 17 Documents!! Now that means that over the course of the 45 minutes from when the printer stopped working and the time that I had a look at it, there were 17 instances of someone trying to print something and noticing that the printer wasn't working. There were about 6 print jobs of the same document from the same person. I don't know about you, but if I tried to print something 6 times and noticed it wasn't working, I would call someone to try and fix the problem. But no, there were 17 instances and NOBODY did anything to try and fix the problem. If that isn't work laziness then I don't know what is.

So anyway, I noticed at the top of the print queue list was the document from D that had caused the initial error. I attempted to delete the print job, but was not authorized (since I didn't send it to the printer). So I got D to delete his print job and noticed that the next print job in line provided an error too. To find a possible solution to the problem, I ran the troubleshooter wizard on my computer and came up with a possible solution to turn off the printer, wait 10 seconds and then turn it back on. I tried this solution and amazingly it worked, the printer sprung to life and spit out all 17 of the documents that were waiting in the queue (including 6 copies of the same document.)

So I guess what this story all boils down to is that I'm the only one in the printer area that will do anything to try and fix the problems. I think that should qualify me for a promotion or something.