Have you ever heard the saying, “penny wise, pound foolish”? I can recall hearing the phrase growing up and always knew it meant there are persons who cannot save money wisely. After doing some research, I discovered the phrase defines a person as someone who will carefully budget their finances when they have a small amount income however should they have a large amount of funds they carelessly spend. (GoEnglish.com, 2008)

During this difficult economic period, consumers must be penny wise but not pound foolish. Consumers can manage their finances to save income and maintain financial security. It is difficult situation when someone is accustomed to spending money. For example, when a family of four goes out to dinner every weekend then to see a movie that can get become expensive.

Considering expenses first the amount of dinner for a family of four would most likely amount to somewhere between $60 to $80 then tickets for four can amount to $40 to $60 depending upon the time of when it is viewed and the ages of the children as some are admitted for free. There are options which can decrease those expenses and the family will still have a good time.

Family night can still be just as important because everyone is together. A family can still keep family night but rather than going out for dinner, begin cooking at home. What will make this dinner special is when kids help prepare dinner. There are plenty of things kids love doing in the kitchen you just have to ask guide them with direction on how to do it. When children help making dinner that actually is something that helps build their minds plus it makes them feel like they are participating. Of course it is a fun process especially when it involves doing small things like putting together a salad.

Making popcorn these days can be quite simple as you don’t need to do it in a pan with oil. There are heated popcorn makers available which are so easy to use all you need are the popcorn kernels and a large bowl to catch them as they come out of the shuttle. If you don’t want to use that, you can purchase those items which are made in the shape of a pie plate with a handle and all you need to do there is shake it over the stove once it begins to heat up. Then there are bags which you can place in the microwave, enter the time, and the corn will pop inside the bag. Once done, you remove the bag from the microwave then pour into a large bowl or divide into smaller bowls. The choices are endless regarding how to make popcorn. The only thing to clean up afterward is usually the bowl as the bag can get thrown away.

When choosing your movie, everyone in the family can be a part of the choosing. The great thing about watching movies is instead of paying $35 or $40 for a movie a rental in most cases can be $20 and it is for three days if you do it during the weekend. Another benefit of watching movies at home is each family member has their own bowl of popcorn and can sit in their favorite chair. So the next time family night is considered, a good option may be for an “in home” family movie night  as it can help save money.

Resources: Go English.com (2008) “Penny Wise, Pound Foolish”
http://www.goenglish.com/PennyWisePoundFoolish.asp

Every new business owner experiences that period when they question  how to manage customer service with certain matters. The main factor a business owner must be aware of is how they will build a relationship between consumers when there is a request for assistance. When a customer purchases a product, there is always that slight chance the product could have a manufacture error. How will you as the company manage it?

Here are a few quick tips for a business to use:

1. It is important to retain customers
2. A company obtains 80% sales from their data base
3. If you can get a referral, there is better chance for making a sale

Customer service is not perfect however what a business does need to remember is they must build trust with their customers because without trust, it will be very difficult to resolve issues that do arise.

There are tons of interesting facts but does anyone really know the fun facts about our past presidents? To give a little bit of appreciation to our past Presidents and Forefathers, I did some research on the Internet and came up with some interesting trivia that was most appropriate as we have just past Election Day for the new Presidential Elect. Regardless of whether you voted for Democrat or Republican these interesting facts should be appreciated.

• President James Madison (1809-1817) was quite short as he stood 5 feet 4 inches
• President Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) was the tallest; 6 feet 4 inches
• President William Howard Taft (1901-1913) was the heaviest as his weight reached 300 lbs at one time. Due to his heavy stature, he literally got caught in the White House bathtub
• President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) was the oldest to be elected into office; he was 69 years of age
• President John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) was the youngest to be elected into office; he was 43 years of age
• President Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893) was the first president to see a baseball game of the Cincinnati Reds against the Washington Senators; the Reds won 7-4
• President John Quincy Adams (1825-1829) was known to take his morning swims in the Potomac River in the nude

United States Presidential trivia is courtesy of National Geographic News
National Geographic News, Roach. J, (August 27, 2004)

After hearing (and reading) all of the pros and cons on Windows Vista I decided to install it onto my own system and test it for myself. So after I partioned a 500 gig Seagate SATA (recently discussed) I actually decided to see exactly what all the fuss is about with this operating system. Let me tell you, it is absolutely NOTHING in comparison to what the prior operating systems I have worked with over the years. I didn’t know what to think when I was seeing some of the different icons on the interface.

The interface looked nice but what threw me off was the widgets on the right side of the screen. As soon as you boot up, it shows a round clock that reminds me of something I used to see when I was sitting in a cafeteria. Underneath it was a small box with changing photographs then underneath it was another widget. I suppose that was Windows way of helping the user so they don’t have to keep bring up the program itself. But my thought on that is, why bother having this clock that looks like a huge cafeteria clock when you already have a digital clock in the task bar.

I will admit after installing Windows Vista and exploring it for 48 hours, I started seeing things in a different light. The interface is surely different in comparison to prior versions of Windows. The largest improvement that I noticed with Vista is the system actually ran a lot faster of course it could have been because I was running a 3.1 gig dual-core with 4 gigs of RAM in comparison to my 1.3 gig CPU with 512 meg of RAM.

At any rate, I have been slowly installing programs which I used on my previous system and trying them out for a few days then if all works okay I will install another one or two. The one thing I had discovered on it which drove me totally batty was how a dialog box keeps appearing to confirm that I want to install a program. The second issue experienced with Vista was after I removed an application there were left over files that needed to be manually deleted. So when I manually deleted them I got a dialog box which told me I did not have the authority to. What I discovered shortly thereafter this is Vista has a setting that protects the user from deleting files so “just in case” something important is not eliminated. All in all Windows Vista is not a bad operating system.

After months I have located the cell phone that I want. My husband and I were shopping at of all places Wal-Mart. Well anyway, they have a display of cell phones in our store so I went and looked to see what was available. Sure enough the two I had been looking at were available so we stopped by and took a view. The ones that got my interest were the Sony Erickson and the Blackberry Curve 8310; the list was a lot longer but after research I worked it down to just the two and this did include the newest Iphone 3.

I decided after researching one of the above would fit my needs it was a matter of physically seeing which was going to be more beneficial and weighing the pros and cons. After reviewing them at the store, the Blackberry Curve had all of the advantages. It was more than just the looks it was what the Blackberry provided in the package. My husband and I both travel so the capability of having the GPS was important and I liked the option of having the ability to send text messages. A large issue was having the capability to pick up a signal when we needed it and we felt the only way to do that was to have a quad band.

Here is a link to the Blackberry Curve 8310.

Well I have reached a new plateau in my life. As of a few weeks ago, I graduated from my MBA program in Business Administration. Since then, little issues which I could not perform while attending college full time have suddenly made themselves more apparent. A perfect example was my desktop computer as I went to use it and things starting acting odd. I had intended to rebuild but was planning for the right time. Now that college is done, I thought it was a good idea to start investigating what I could do for upgrading my tower PC.

After a few days of research I located a good deal for rebuilding the entire tower plus it would give me the opportunity to grow. Here is what I came up with:

- 6000 AMD Athlon X2 Processor 3.1GHz
- Asrock A780GXE/128M AMD 780G+ SB700 Chipset Motherboard
- DDR RAM F2-6400 2048 MB x2 (F2-6400CL6D-4D4GBMQ)
- PC-A59B Lian Li Black Case
- Power Supply: 500 watt from old system, unsure of name
- Hard drive: 500 gig Seagate SATA

I removed my DVD-Rom and the current 80 gig Seagate hard drive which I had in my old system and put that in the new one. The new mid tower case has four ports available so there is ample space to support two hard drives including the DVD-Rom drive. Should I purchase a second SATA drive to ghost the first or a second DVD-Rom, there will be room due to that fourth port opening.

The largest question I have right now is what operating system I am going to run on the desktop. I have considered staying with Windows XP 64 bit. I have also considered Windows Vista however there are questions I have regarding that operating system because others have had issues with it. Another option I am reviewing is leaving Windows permanently and moving to Ubuntu or Debian as I can use VMWare should I need to run Windows.

Currently, Windows XP is on it with a bare minimum while I wait on my hard drive.

This weekend I needed to format my desktop and clean up the multiple files built over months of installation, moving, and deletion. For the past three months I have been reviewing options beyond using Windows because I just want out of the proprietary operating system. So, after doing some final checks I decided on trying out Ubuntu. The great thing about this operating system is the disc actually lets you try it out first before installing. In order to make everything work I had to follow a few short steps:

1) Burn the Ubuntu.iso file onto a CD-R

2) Enter into C-MOS and change boot settings so my CD-Rom was the first to boot up

3) Reboot the computer (be sure the Ubuntu CD disc is in your CD-Rom)

When I rebooted, I saw this really cool logo that Ubuntu uses with some options of how I wanted to proceed. I chose the test option for which the operating system then proceeded to place files on C: as if it was a real install but in essence it was temporary. I would say it only took about 10 minutes to run through this trial install between my CPU speed and RAM size. (3.0 gig CPU and 512 meg RAM)

Once it was completed, a peachy looking background appeared with a few small icons along the top and some along the left side. It was actually quite nice as the desktop was very open and not crowded with icons like Windows usually is on a desktop. To enter the Programs, Applications, and so forth you clicked on the name and there was a drop down of each section.

The user could actually set up how they wanted their desktop very easily by going through the drop down menus. There also was a help section available to guide them if they needed it. Another option available to use was called gadgets and they could be downloaded from the Internet by clicking on what is wanted and after installation they are either added to the list or automatically added to the desktop. I didn’t install everything to test it but I found the most intriguing game called Atomic that really tests your skill. It reminded me of the Windows Mastermind but this one was actually better. How it worked was giving you a chemical make up of something like HOH then it would show you two H’s and an O on this maze like board. The player’s job is to get the letters exactly like the photo. What makes the skill is really having to pay attention how you move the letters otherwise you cannot move onto the next level. Anyway, I only made it to level two as I am very addicted to those sort of things and didn’t have time to sit and fuss around with it. It is a lot of fun though for anyone who likes mind challenging games.

I tested out the Open Office programs that are pre-installed and I am impressed. I have used Microsoft Office for years so it was quite interesting to see how close in comparison these applications are. Ubuntu even comes with its own version of a Project application which I was quite impressed by.

I have not installed Ubuntu yet however it is something which I am keeping and I will be reviewing it again when I get a larger hard drive. Another review will be made either before or after then since I can review the operating system without installing it. Secondly, I want to install Windows Vista however I need a larger hard drive. I discovered after reading, Vista is requesting a 40 gig hard drive and unfortunately I have 40 gigs worth of data that needs saving so I need more space before an installation can take place.

Once I have had the ability to install and try out Windows Vista, I will be posting my opinions.

A lot of things have been going on the past few weeks. I won’t get into the heavy details and bore anyone. Good news is, I just finished my MBA of Business Administration degree (Sept 22, 2008) so now I will be able to focus on bringing this blog up to date with new posts.

Sorry for the delay everyone but finals were quite difficult and took up all of my time.

If Hanna and Ike were visitors it would be great because I love company but the problem is, I don’t consider hurricanes company. As I sit in front of my laptop working on two large graduate projects, all I can think about is the weather and the havoc it is causing to the East Coast.

I turned on our national weather in the wee hours this AM to see the latest report to hear one storm had left but another was on its way. The question that came to mind was, why is it that we are having such an odd weather pattern this year and if it is so odd now what is our winter going to be like? I live in the Mid West (Iowa) and we had a flood in June which destroyed millions of dollars of agriculture. I will keep everyone on the East Coast in my thoughts.

As a final thought for those with migraines, you may not but then again you might due to the barometric pressure change.

Welcome to Ravens Hollow Community. This is the blog is just beginning so stay tuned for more!