Many people, early on in life, move due to additions to the family. It is a pretty exciting and volatile time for parents, and planning for the future in this stage in your lives is very important. You want to make sure that your little tykes are cared for and have their futures secured. Here are a few very good tips from a very reputable site called Smart Money. Hope this helps.
Boston Movers And Shakers.
To those that follow basketball, its no secret any more that Jeremy Lin has arrived. A true testament to his popularity is the fact that people that generally dont follow basketball know of him now. His story is a unique one, a true Cinderella story. He is an Asian kid in a land of large, fast men of African American descent. That is not a rcasim, that is a fact, jack. He had been overloked and snubbed at very level of play, probably since high school. However, he found a way to transcend reality and expectations, and has found a way to become a winner. He has even made the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine, which is quite an accomplishment in itself.
The big question to be asked here is, will it last? Will Jeremy Lin of the Knicks continue to surpass expectations and continue performing at this pace? Only time will tell. Only thing I know is that hes got the attention of more than just the basketball world, word on the street is that he is currently being courted by Kim Kardashian! Good for you Linsanity, good for you...
Jeremy Lin and Kim Kardashian dating
Jeremy Lin of the New York Knicks
Jeremly Lin devout Christian
In these uncertain economic times, we all do what we can to cut corners and spend wisely. People are spending more and more time nowadays doing research and shopping around before making an economic decision. This is especially true now more than ever since we have so much information available to us at our fingertips about the numerous moving companies that are out there – you should read mover reviews.
However, when it comes to moving, which is the right way to go? Hire a professional and reliable moving company, or do it yourself with the help of family and friends? We will attempt to break this argument down for you by answering a few major questions.
What is the real cost of moving yourself? A few things to think about…
How far are you moving and how much “stuff” is there to move?
If the move is within the same town or building, it becomes a lot simpler than an interstate move where items have to be secured and fastened for safety. Is it just a bunch of boxes, or are there any heavy/large/complicated items that need professional attention?
Do you have a lot of friends and family that can help you move?
Though some people might feel obligated to say yes to you when asked to help you move, it is always a difficult thing to ask somebody, especially considering the amount of manual labor involved. Professionals know how to pack/move fast, efficiently, and safely, allowing you to focus on more important things, and maybe more importantly, not lose any friends!
Do you have valuables that are delicate and difficult to handle?
Professional movers are trained and certified to handle fine china, jewelry, pianos, antiques, appliances, etc, and do so every day with ease. Hiring professionals that are bonded and insured will help alleviate a lot of stress and make your transition easy to handle.
Do you have the right equipment to do the move?
Some of the things that are needed during a move are things that the average person does not even think about, let alone own. These packing materials include but aren’t limited to: hand-trucks, wardrobe boxes, regular boxes, padding blankets, packing tape, bungee cords, shrink wrap, bubble wrap, etc.
The initial cost might seem high when considering a moving company, but when you take all these factors into consideration, it will seem well worth the investment. Best of luck!
Joe Paterno’s recent passing has led to some consternation about Joe Paterno’s legacy. On the one hand, he did great things in his life, not only on the field, but off it as well. He was an everyday man who rose to fame due to his achievements, his ethics, and his humility. His mythology was grounded in a utter lack of pretense. He was an average guy, doing above-average things.
However, facts and recounts that have surfaced show that he failed to act appropriately when he discovered some vile and disgusting things were being done by his own staff, right under his nose. He simply reported it to campus police, and then for all intents and purposes, left it well enough alone. The crimes being committed weren’t just casual mistakes, they were ghastly crimes against innocent and vulnerable children of a most despicable nature.
The mysticism and secrecy that surrounds Penn State, and the football team Nittany Lions specifically, has proved to be a very impenetrable and guarded society, to a fault. The timing of the surfacing of the crimes committed by Jerry Sandusky leaves to question just what the university, and the football program, holds sacred. The facts only emerged after Paterno had become the winning-est coach in NCAA history, even though the first time these crimes were reported was over a decade ago.
Historically, some other key figures whose legacy was tainted by a negative experience faced similar situations. Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick, Richard Nixon and Watergate, Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinski sex scandal, and Michael Jackson and the child molestation charges are just a few examples of other famous and accomplished men whose legacy had been tainted. History has been kinder to some of them, to others, not so much.
How exactly is legacy defined? How will history remember him? Should Joe Paterno be remembered fondly, or should he and his legacy be tainted by his action, or lack thereof, in the face of difficult decisions in response to these crimes against children?
Only time will tell.
Though we are a moving company, we have a keen interest in the internet, freedom of speech, and access to information. A lot of out business is dervied from the internet. So here is a synopsis of SOPA.
If you hadn't heard of SOPA before, you probably have by now: Some of the internet's most influential sites—Reddit and Wikipedia among them—are going dark to protest the much-maligned anti-piracy bill. But other than being a very bad thing, what is SOPA? And what will it mean for you if it passes?
SOPA is an anti-piracy bill working its way through Congress...
House Judiciary Committee Chair and Texas Republican Lamar Smith, along with 12 co-sponsors, introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act on October 26th of last year. Debate on H.R. 3261, as it's formally known, has consisted of one hearing on November 16th and a "mark-up period" on December 15th, which was designed to make the bill more agreeable to both parties. Its counterpart in the Senate is the Protect IP Act (S. 968). Also known by its cuter-but-still-deadly name: PIPA. There will likely be a vote on PIPA next Wednesday; SOPA discussions had been placed on hold but will resume in February of this year.
...that would grant content creators extraordinary power over the internet...
The beating heart of SOPA is the ability of intellectual property owners (read: movie studios and record labels) to effectively pull the plug on foreign sites against whom they have a copyright claim. If Warner Bros., for example, says that a site in Italy is torrenting a copy of The Dark Knight, the studio could demand that Google remove that site from its search results, that PayPal no longer accept payments to or from that site, that ad services pull all ads and finances from it, and—most dangerously—that the site's ISP prevent people from even going there.
...which would go almost comedically unchecked...
Perhaps the most galling thing about SOPA in its original construction is that it let IP owners take these actions without a single court appearance or judicial sign-off. All it required was a single letter claiming a "good faith belief" that the target site has infringed on its content. Once Google or PayPal or whoever received the quarantine notice, they would have five days to either abide or to challenge the claim in court. Rights holders still have the power to request that kind of blockade, but in the most recent version of the bill the five day window has softened, and companies now would need the court's permission.
The language in SOPA implies that it's aimed squarely at foreign offenders; that's why it focuses on cutting off sources of funding and traffic (generally US-based) rather than directly attacking a targeted site (which is outside of US legal jurisdiction) directly. But that's just part of it.
...to the point of potentially creating an "Internet Blacklist"...
Here's the other thing: Payment processors or content providers like Visa or YouTube don't even need a letter shut off a site's resources. The bill's "vigilante" provision gives broad immunity to any provider who proactively shutters sites it considers to be infringers. Which means the MPAA just needs to publicize one list of infringing sites to get those sites blacklisted from the internet.
Potential for abuse is rampant. As Public Knowledge points out, Google could easily take it upon itself to delist every viral video site on the internet with a "good faith belief" that they're hosting copyrighted material. Leaving YouTube as the only major video portal. Comcast (an ISP) owns NBC (a content provider). Think they might have an interest in shuttering some rival domains? Under SOPA, they can do it without even asking for permission.
...while exacting a huge cost from nearly every site you use daily...
SOPA also includes an "anti-circumvention" clause, which holds that telling people how to work around SOPA is nearly as bad as violating its main provisions. In other words: if your status update links to The Pirate Bay, Facebook would be legally obligated to remove it. Ditto tweets, YouTube videos, Tumblr or WordPress posts, or sites indexed by Google. And if Google, Twitter, Wordpress, Facebook, etc. let it stand? They face a government "enjoinment." They could and would be shut down.
The resources it would take to self-police are monumental for established companies, and unattainable for start-ups. SOPA would censor every online social outlet you have, and prevent new ones from emerging.
...and potentially disappearing your entire digital life...
The party line on SOPA is that it only affects seedy off-shore torrent sites. That's false. As the big legal brains at Bricoleur point out, the potential collateral damage is huge. And it's you. Because while Facebook and Twitter have the financial wherewithal to stave off anti-circumvention shut down notices, the smaller sites you use to store your photos, your videos, and your thoughts may not. If the government decides any part of that site infringes on copyright and proves it in court? Poof. Your digital life is gone, and you can't get it back.
...while still managing to be both unnecessary and ineffective...
What's saddest about SOPA is that it's pointless on two fronts. In the US, the MPAA, and RIAA already have the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to request that infringing material be taken down. We've all seen enough "video removed" messages to know that it works just fine.
As for the foreign operators, you might as well be throwing darts at a tse-tse fly. The poster child of overseas torrenting, Pirate Bay, has made it perfectly clear that they're not frightened in the least. And why should they be? Its proprietors have successfully evaded any technological attempt to shut them down so far. Its advertising partners aren't US-based, so they can't be choked out. But more important than Pirate Bay itself is the idea of Pirate Bay, and the hundreds or thousands of sites like it, as populous and resilient as mushrooms in a marsh. Forget the question of should SOPA succeed. It's incredibly unlikely that it could. At least at its stated goals.
...but stands a shockingly good chance of passing...
SOPA is, objectively, an unfeasible trainwreck of a bill, one that willfully misunderstands the nature of the internet and portends huge financial and cultural losses. The White House has come out strongly against it. As have hundreds of venture capitalists and dozens of the men and women who helped build the internet in the first place. In spite of all this, it remains popular in the House of Representatives.
That mark-up period on December 15th, the one that was supposed to transform the bill into something more manageable? Useless. Twenty sanity-fueled amendments were flat-out rejected. And while the bill's most controversial provision—mandatory DNS filtering—was thankfully taken off the table recently, in practice internet providers would almost certainly still use DNS as a tool to shut an accused site down.
...unless we do something about it.
The momentum behind the anti-SOPA movement has been slow to build, but we're finally at a saturation point. Wikipedia, BoingBoing, WordPress, TwitPic: they'll all be dark on January 18th. An anti-SOPA rally has been planned for tomorrow afternoon in New York. The list of companies supporting SOPA is long but shrinking, thanks in no small part to the emails and phone calls they've received in the last few months.
So keep calling. Keep emailing. Most of all, keep making it known that the internet was built on the same principles of freedom that this country was. It should be afforded to the same rights.
Article Credit: GIZMODO.COM
Lights:
The old lets-wrap-it-around-our-arm-like-a-garden-hose method is dumb. You might as well wad them up into a ball and throw them into a sack. Because come next year, that's what you're going to a have. A sack full of tangled lights. Let's fix that.
Ornaments:
Obviously it would be best to put ornaments back in their original packaging. You know, the packaging you threw away three weeks ago. But since the box your precious ornaments arrived in is currently being mulched, egg crates are your best bet. The styrofoam egg crates are best, but the gray cardboard ones will work as well. Just place your ornament in the egg crate and smash down the barriers needed to give it a firm fit. when you family asks why you're eating scrambled eggs for every dinner, tell them it's Santa's fault.
Garland:
Remember when I had you cut squares of cardboard up for storing your holiday lights? (It was like 20 seconds ago, dude...) Do that again, except you'll probably only need one square. Unless you're some sort of garland aficionado. In that case, you need more help than I can offer. Anywho, cut two-inch slits on either side of your cardboard about three inches apart. Each garland should be wrapped into the slits that line up. This will keep the garlands from getting tangled over the summer and makes a fancy board with strips of shiny string on it.
Popcorn string:
Throw it away. Unless you want ants.
Star/Menorah:
This is the centerpiece of your entire holiday. Wrap in bubble wrap and put in it's own box for safe keeping. I shouldn't have to tell you this. But just in case you're hopped up on egg nog and you don't know any better.
Trees:
Real tree: Find out from your local sanitation department what day tree pick up is. Have your tree ready. If they want it in a bag. Bag it where it stood. Don't drag it around the house dropping needles everywhere.
Fake Tree: The fold up trees are the best. Just push the branches up and put it in a box. If you have to remove each branch. Start from the top and work your way down. That way next year, you won;t have to decide which branches go where on the tree because they're already in order.
Storage:
Finally: where to put it all. Pick up one of those giant plastic/rubber containers they sell at the hardware store and Target. Place all your items in there. Close it up. Pack it away. Cardboard can get wet or smashed and that'll just end up destroying your holiday decorations.
That's it. Enjoy New Year's Eve knowing next year you won't spend five hours untangling wires. It's a holiday miracle.
Article credit: Gizmodo
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10 Great Stocking Stuffers for the girls/women in your life:
http://fromme-toyou.tumblr.com/post/13546397755/10-great-stocking-stuffers-for-your-favorite-girl
10 Great Stocking Stuffers for the men in your life:
http://fromme-toyou.tumblr.com/post/13590938293/10-great-gifts-for-the-man-in-your-life
Hope these helped! Stay tuned for more great shopping tips and great gift ideas.
The seasons are changing and the excitement of the holidays is in the air. Those with families and friends sometimes take for granted some of the wonderful things that we have in our lives – food on our tables, family that care about us, friends that look out for us and make us laugh.
However, there are many out there that are unfortunately not as fortunate and not as lucky. Though we should be thinking of them year-round, the holiday season is good time to take a little time out of our lives and give as much as we can to help others.
Each day, hunger is experienced in every community across this country. In fact, our network feeds over 37 million neighbors each year. Ending hunger in America depends on the volunteer work of literally millions of Americans who know that they can make a difference.
There are as many different ways to volunteer, as there are individuals and communities across this country.
On-going Volunteer Efforts
You can help out in your local community through activities such as:
It’s simple - get involved today - and get your family and friends involved. To find opportunities in your area, please contact your local food bank.
Disaster Response Volunteers
Volunteers are needed across the country to support our network's commitment to the survivors of disaster-affected communities.
You can help out in your local community through activities such as sorting, boxing and repackaging donated food to be directed where it's needed most. Addressing the needs of displaced survivors will be critical over the next several months.
Contact your Feeding America network member to see how your help is needed.
Topics: holidays, volunteering
