Home-Based Business Fact Sheet

Trying to get back to work myself, I am also pondering the idea of starting a second home based business to assist in meeting the bills that need to be paid each month.

As part of that research I found my way to the Home-Based Business Fact Sheet at the University of Maine.

I don't have time or focus at the moment to read through the whole thing, but I don't want to forget where it is, so the logical thing to do is to archive it here for me to come back to later when I can read through it.

Personal loss

For some reason, just when you think that you have everything under control, something will happen that will unravel everything.

That happened with me this month.

Just as things were starting to look like they were under control, like life might settle down and me and my parents could start getting the things we had been putting off done my mom suffered a massive heart attack. She died at Providence Hospital in Anchorage Alaska on September 14th of heart failure.

I'm still trying to not only come to terms with that loss, but to pick things back up and get the things she would have dealt with taken care of. My mom had taken care of all of the bills and everything for the house, which leaves me to take care of those now. She'd just started looking into getting herself life insurance, which means that she died without any kind of life insurance coverage. So now, money that had been going to go toward repairs for the house heating system going into winter have gone instead to paying funeral expenses.

Which means that I can not take time to grieve, I need to get myself to work and come up with whatever money I can manage to come up with so I can pay the bills and replace the broken heating system before the temperatures here drop into the -20 to -60 range that Alaskan winters are known for.

Potential drug interactions

This announcement was paid for by Epocrates. Epocrates Online is a free website aimed at clinicians where over 3,000 drugs can be checked for possible interactions, common side effects, accurate dosage information and even estimated prescription cost.

Now they have a new feature where members can view pictures of the pills, allowing for better identification of medications and giving better assurance that what you think you have is really what the bottle says it is.

One of the biggest dangers to anyone that is taking multiple prescription medications is the danger of dangerous drug interactions, and with the help of websites such as Epocrates Online, family caregivers can be better equipped to avoid such dangers.

In my current life right now, my parents are quitting smoking. My dad has managed to stop on his own, with difficulty, but my mom is considering if pills would be right for her. After looking at the possible side effects of stop smoking pills such as Chantix, I personally think she might be better off to continue smoking than take something that could cause emotional disturbances, abnormal dreams and suicidality.

That is one of the reasons I like Epocrates Online, working for myself keeps me busy, but Epocrates Online makes it easy for me to find out things like that about the medications that my parents might be taking - before they take them and have potentially serious side effects or interactions with other medications.

Hoping to finish office rebuild soon

Those who have been following the exploits of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as she settles into her new role of McCain's running mate will probably have heard by now that we Alaskan's get a dividend for living in the State of Alaska - the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend. I know there is at least one other State that gives it's residents a dividend, but I am not sure which one it is... seems like it's up toward Main somewhere in that area? -- anyway, that's off the subject. Today is the day that we got that money if it was being deposited into a bank account, and while I have a lot of bills I have to pay (including one for my emergency room visit regarding my bad teeth last summer), I am hopeful that there will be enough left over that I can buy the lumber I need to finish building my office shelves. I'm sitting here in a half finished office and going insane because things I want to reach for, that should be "right there" are not yet there. The shelf / cubby / hook they go on is not yet in place. So, I am waiting, patiently, for the chance to find out if I can buy building stuff for the office. Should be able to afford at least enough lumber to put in a few shelves for putting my printer and the paper and ink that goes with it on.

Computer restart issues

I have been having very serious computer issues this past week, my computer seemed to have some kind of glitch that caused it to restart again and again when I would try to boot it up in the mornings. I think I tracked the problem down to a program that Windows XP did not digest properly, but I'm not sure. I ended up rebooting the computer to the factory settings. Lost a bunch of things, but I don't think I have lost the computer. It'll be a couple of days before I know if that cured the SNAFU, or just gave me a brief respite from the issue for a few days.

I had tried all kinds of fixes before resorting to resetting the whole system, including setting back to older dates on the computer and defrag, virus check, Spybot, etc, etc, etc... none of them seemed to work, so deciding that I would prefer to send the weekend reconstructing the computer than spend next week trying to figure out how to buy a new one, I backed up whatever I could and reset the sucker. I'm slowly getting it put back together now and hope to have it sorta back up to speed by Monday morning.

AllegroMedical.com

Working at home I know that there are a lot of things that can slow a person down. Wrist pain from carpel tunnel syndrome, weakness in the knees and hips making walking painful, and poor posture at the desk when the chair is often borrowed from the dining room set and not designed for sitting in for eight plus hours a day while working.

Items such as back supports and wrist braces and other medical supplies offered by AllegroMedical.com can make working at home as ergonomically friendly an environment as any corporate office with regulations to protect their employees from poor ergonomics on the job.

You can easily shop by conditions or categories if you have a specific condition that you need to shop for, such as arthritis or you are in need of something specific such as mobility assistance items like lift chairs.

A division of the privately owned Allegro Enterprises of Tempe, AZ, AllegroMedical.com offers over 55,000 products.

Making an Editorial Calendar using Sunbird

I'm working on building myself an editorial calendar for my blogs, and as I work on that I have discovered the calendar program Sunbird by Mozilla. I wish that I had found Sunbird long ago, but more than that I wish that there were more plug-ins and add-ons for the thing. I want to be able to do a lot of things with the program, but so far the stuff I want to do I have not yet found anything to let me do it.

I want to have the links for tasks show up in the task list I have on the main sceen of the calendar. I also want to be able to print tasks that I have for individual days / weeks / months.

Perhaps the most annoying thing is that I have not yet found a way to show the tasks in the calendar unless it is on the month view - I want to be able to get the tasks that are due to show up on the day view.