Today is my last day being an intern for Xanga. I first was an editor for HardestLevel, and then for Dollarish.

I loved HardestLevel dearly. I was really saddened when Xanga decided to shut the site down. Writing for it was a lot of fun, and everyone on the staff was super friendly. I loved writing about video games and hunting for fun stuff to post every day. I like to think I was pretty good at the stuff: I had 45 posts over two months, with over 51,000 views (that averages to 1100 views per post, not too shabby).

Some people picked on HardestLevel for being too much aimed to the casual gamer, because there weren't enough reviews, whatever. We posted reviews if they were submitted. We didn't do too many reviews ourselves, however. Why? For starters, they were never too popular. I did a review of Torchlight, for example, and it didn't seem to generate a lot of interest.

Sites like Kotaku and such do a lot of reviews because they were given the opportunity without cost. Big blogs are given games for free to review. HardestLevel was manned by a team of college graduates without a lot of cash; we weren't sent any games because it was a relatively small site, and none of us have the money to go buy the newest stuff. Heck, I don't even have a current gen system; the newest thing I have is a second gen PSP. The money and resources just weren't available to us. The lack of reviews was due to our situations and the fact that we had very few submissions of them.

Dollarish was fun, but it was a much different animal. Dollarish doesn't get many submissions, so most of the content on the days where I was in charge (Sundays) was written solely by me. Dollarish is harder to run than HardestLevel, so I wish the ladies running that the best of luck. :)

As I have a consulting job right now, I'm leaving Xanga to concentrate on that and another potential position heading my way. I will probably not be using this very much, as I write on my own blog as well as my Livejournal.

It's been great getting to know some of you, and writing for HardestLevel and Dollarish have been a great experience for me. For those of you who sit there and complain about Ish sites and editors and how you could run them better, be my guest. Contact Xanga and tell them you'd be interested in an internship at an Ish site. You very likely may get it.

Don't sit and complain with a pitchfork mob unless you know what you're talking about - that's a good life lesson for us all in all facets of life.

Thanks for reading my stuff for the past few months, everyone.

Tiffany

Green Lifestyle Magazine recently published their 10 easy ways to save water in your home. They wrote from an eco perspective, but we can take this as how to lower your water bill as well.

The list:

• Take short showers instead of baths
• Shower together
• Don't wait for the water to heat up before getting in
  
• Repair faucets that drip and leaky toilets
• Selective flushing ("If it's yellow, let it mellow...")
• Pee in the shower
• Replace your showerhead with a water saving model
• Shut off the water when you don't need it
• Install a more efficient, instant water heater
• Don't use a garbage disposal

Some of these are great ideas, and some of these are absolutely squicky to others (myself included). Let's discuss some of these tips a little more.

Toilets: Besides just repairing an old toilet, there are certain models of toilets that use less water. If you have an older toilet that leaks or has other issues, consider getting a low flow model. We recently replaced our older toilet with a Toto High Efficiency one. They use less water, and while the bowl is a little smaller, I haven't noticed any problems with flushing power. More Here...

Have Tylenol, Rolaids, or Motrin sitting in your medicine cabinet? Many different types of over the counter medicine are currently being recalled after reports of medicine that smelled moldy or mildewy. (Yuck!) While the smelly medicine seems to be not a big deal for most, it was linked to gastric distress in some people.

If you have any of the following brands of medicine, you need to double check this list to see if there's an issue:

• Benadryl (tablets, not syrup)
• Motrin (including Children's Motrin, Motrin IB)
• Tylenol  (including Children's, Extra Strength, Regular Strength, 8 Hour, Arthritis, PM)
• Rolaids
• Simply Sleep
• St. Joseph Aspirin
  

Have you ever had food or medicine that was recalled? What was it and why?

Recall List
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