• How to push
• How to hit
  
• How to pull hair
• The song, "Row, row, row your boat..."
• The word, "MINE!"
• The cleanup song
  

One secret to happiness is to make unlikable tasks fun. I had to shovel lots of snow today. So I made a snow monster on our front yard. :)

My HP laptop came with a cheap remote control. It's cool because we can watch a movie on it and play/pause, mute, etc., without having to get up and touch the computer. The range isn't very good, the battery drains quickly, and now our battery cover is missing, so we can't use it.

Enter BluCTRL.

Your Blackberry has a bluetooth, as does your laptop. BluCTRL connects the two, so you can do anything on your computer (from quite far away) using the bluetooth connection.

It's currently in beta (not the finished "for sale" product), and it's currently free.

Check it out here.

(No, no one paid me to share this. I wish I'd get paid for this! :) )

Settlers of Catan, Carcassone, and Ticket to ride are great games. We get games as gifts because its a great way to spend time with family and friends.

These are our current 3 favorites, and they are all winners from different years of the German Best Game annual award.

Yes, Ticket To Ride, the game that is a map of the United States upon which you claim train routes was the German Game of the year. A map of the U.S.

I've had a lot of time with family over the last two weeks. Work picks up full time tomorrow. That makes me sad. Its been great to relax. Its been a while.

I just went out to buy a pair of jeans, but then spent a very long time looking at everything that was on sale. Here was my thought process for lots of items over the course of 1.5 hours:

1. This would be fun to have, we'd use it.
2. This is a really good deal.
3. I'd better inspect it to see if I really like it.
4. Yup, I like it. I'll get this instead.
5. But... I don't need it. Moving on...

I left with just the pair of jeans I went out for. I'm a lousy shopper.

Days blogged in a row: 3 (100%)

I signed up for mint.com a few months ago and love it with few reservations. I highly recommend it if you haven't found a good and simple way to track your expenses and investments.

Mint.com signs into your online bank, credit card, mortgage, and investment accounts, and downloads all of your transactions into one place - whether you wrote a check, paid with a credit card, or earned interest in your bank, you see it all at once, in one place.

The service currently monitors for me:

• 5 checking accounts
• 7 savings accounts
• 6 credit cards
• 3 investment accounts (1 IRA and 2 401Ks)
• mortgage loans
  

Mint.com alerts me when my credit card interest rates or credit limits changes, and even 5 days before a credit card payment is due.

I've also set up a basic budget with mint.com, and it emails me and sends me an sms text message the moment it finds out about transactions that put me over budget in a given category.

Here's other things you can do:

• Edit the names and categories of transactions
• Split a transaction into multiple parts to categorize it differently.
  
• Create new categories for transactions that aren't built-in
• Compare the history of your investment accounts against the stock market
• Compare your accounts to others to make better interest, or get better credit card rewards.

*No, I don't get paid to blog about this, or get referral bonuses, just writing about a service I like and I think you'll like.

Days I've Blogged in a Row: 2 (100%)

I don't know anyone who admits to making New Year's Resolutions.

Are we afraid we won't follow through with resolutions, or do we just not care to change? Are we just too comfortable settling for who we are, and so we just avoid making decisions to make ourselves better?


Days I've Blogged in a Row: 1 (100%)