chani's HardestLevel

I'm now at SlickDeals!

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 06:52:19 GMT

For anyone it may interest, I'm now a moderator at SlickDeals, an incredibly awesome deal website and forum that you should check before you buy anything online, because it'll probably save you some money.

I'm a moderator at the newly opened Vault, a new section of SD that has to do with personal finance and jobs and such. If you have some questions about how to get a job or you're trying to figure out how to knock out some credit card debt, try checking it out. It opened today (Monday) and we wanna make it thrive.

And of course, I'm still chani on there. :P

My Last Day at Xanga

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:05:13 GMT

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

Get Started On Your Dream Job Today

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:54:30 GMT

Everybody has a dream job in their head; you know what you'd love to do, but you just don't know how to get there. Maybe you do know how to get there, but you're convinced you need to wait until you're done with school to get started. While that might be true for some things, for many professions, you can get a start at any age as long as you know what you want. When you have the schooling to get your dream job, you'll have the experience to go with it.

Journalism/Author: Get a blog, today. Buy a domain, install WordPress, pick a topic, and write about it (and keep your personal stuff out of said blog unless it matches your topic). Submit editorials to your local newspaper. Interested in fiction? Write stories for contests. Pretend any month is NaNoWriMo.

Veterinarian/Animal Handler: Try to get a part time job at a local vet. Walk dogs and pet-sit for people. Volunteer at an animal shelter or an animal rescue organization.

Teacher: Become a tutor in a subject you're great at. Apply to become a substitute teacher or paraprofessional. Work a summer as a camp counselor.

Politics: Make a blog and share your views. Write editorials, call in to radio shows. Apply for internships for a lawmaker, or volunteer to campaign for one.

Business: Start your own, or get a part-time job at a small business. Working at a small business is a great way to learn how to run one (and how not to run one).

What is your dream job? How could you get started on it today?

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10 Ways to Conserve Water (and Lower Your Water Bill)

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:03:17 GMT

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...

Would You Pay For a Warm Bed?

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:38:44 GMT

Holiday Inn has officially declared war! ...on cold sheets, that is. For a fee, Holiday Inn will ensure that your bed is warm. How will they do this, though?

The story at Fox News explains a little more: If requested, a willing member of hotel staff will jump in your bed, dressed head to foot in an all-in-one sleeper suit, until your nightly chamber warms up. Holiday Inn spokeswoman Jane Bednall described the plan as something like having a "giant hot water bottle in your bed."

While warm sheets are nice, paying for someone to get in my bed is just... weird. That would be a pretty funky job to list on your resume: Professional Bed Warmer. However, this is not a service I would pay for, nor would I want to be the bed warmer.

Would you pay for someone to warm up your bed for you?

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Recall Alert: Over the Counter Medicine

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:13:30 GMT

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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How to Deal With Old Clothing

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:14:07 GMT

One evening when I was channel flipping for something to watch, I came across one of those house cleaning shows with a twist, as the point of it was to make people recycle more. The show was going over the family's normal bad habits, like leaving every light on all the time in their huge house, turning on all the TVs once someone got home, and other things like that. However, it was another that shocked me: this family threw out all their old clothes once they got tired of them.

I saw these people putting garbage bags of perfectly usable clothing into their trash and it was just shocking. People actually do that? I thought in horror. It then crossed my mind that perhaps many people do this. It was really amazing to me that people could throw out things that are so useful for others without a second thought.

There are a lot of great ways to dispose of old clothing and bedding to ensure that they won't go to waste just because you can't use them anymore. More Here...

Poll Results: Have You Ever Worked Retail?

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 18:02:56 GMT

Last weekend, we asked you if you had ever worked in retail before, 29 of you responded, and the results are in:

83% of you have worked in a store, with just 5 people saying they have not.

As someone who has never gotten the chance to have a retail job before, this seems kind of surprising, but then again, retail jobs are very popular places to work for teenagers and people in their early twenties. I'm also sure that there are more people who haven't worked in retail that just didn't speak up.

Here are some great stories from commenters from their retail experiences:

From katiwitz@xanga: Once, an entire 20 pound bag of bird seed was dumped over an entire checkout lane. We had shovels to clean it up. More Here...

Bad Customers: Woman Gets Bad Burger, Trashes McDonalds

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:39:52 GMT

Everyone has to deal with a tough customer or coworker once in a while. There's always that one person that doesn't mesh well with you and gives you a hard time about something, even if it's not your fault. When I worked for an IT help desk, there was one woman who we bent over backwards to try to make her happy, but nothing we did was quite good enough for her.

Late last month, a woman walked into a Kansas City McDonalds and ordered a hamburger. The burger wasn't to her liking, so she demanded a new one, twice, then demanded her money back. The cashiers either would not or could not fulfill her requests, so she overreacted a little, to say the least.

The woman caused between $1,500 and $1,700 in damage.

While getting bad service is annoying, this was ridiculous. If I had seen something like that on the job, I just would've been shocked. It makes for funny viewing later on, but having someone flip out on you at work is terrifying.

Have you ever had someone go off at you while you were working? What would you do if someone was threatening to trash your workplace?

Pet Insurance: A Good Investment?

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:29:58 GMT

Health insurance for people is kind of a no brainer. Some people skip it while they're in their twenties, some people who are rich don't bother, but the rest of us end up getting health insurance, whether it's through your job or you pay for it out of pocket. It might seem like a no-brainer to get health insurance for your pet, because you have insurance too. Is it really worth the cost, though?

One catch with pet insurance is that it doesn't cover as much as regular health insurance does. A standard plan will generally only cover half of your expenses for a several hundred dollar vet bill. Pet insurance for a medium sized dog costs anywhere from $25 for $50 (or more) a month. Ten years of coverage is $4800. My last dog, who lived for 12 years, never cost us $4800 in vet bills. Even my cat that had several urinary tract infections and we had to put down at 8 years old only came close, but not over, that amount. If we figure that the insurance would pay for half of the vet costs for my cat, we wouldn't have been paying any less money.

The second catch of pet insurance is that it doesn't cover much. If you have a German Shepard (or a German Shepard mix) and it develops hip displaysia, insurance won't cover it. If the animal is prone to UTIs and needs prescription food, it doesn't cover that either. Here are some other big things that aren't covered by a standard plan:

Heartworm and other internal and external parasites
Developmental defects
Hereditary and breed-specific disorders
Teeth cleaning and other teeth-related care
Routine vet visits

What should you do if you want to feel better protected against any sudden vet bills? A lot of people recommend making a savings account at your bank just for pet related costs, kind of like a pet emergency fund. If you take the cost of the insurance ($20-40 a month) and put it in an account, it will be there in case you need it. You get the peace of mind of knowing exactly how much you can spend if there is a problem, and not have to worry about what might not be covered. Like I said earlier, if your German Shepard comes down with hip displaysia, the $30 you've been sending to the pet insurance company every month won't help you at all. However, the $30 you've put every month into your pet emergency fund will.

Have you had any experience with pet insurance? Would you want to pay for insurance for your pet?

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