December 11, 2013

Good morning! Yesterday I cleared out my Yahoo e-mail, had a mozzarella stick for lunch, cleaned the house, took the dogs out, checked out an app on my iPhone 5, & then sat down to play Minecraft & finally load up Sims on my laptop! Minecraft is great as usual, but Sims ... not meant for a laptop! I've got a great laptop, but it can't handle Sims with all the settings cranked up like I have it on my desktop gaming PC. The lack of a huge graphics card just kills it. I knocked all the settings down a notch & restarted the game. No difference. Then I knocked all the settings down again ... finally I hit a point where the game played well & amazingly, I didn't notice any difference. It's not like my Sim turned all blocky or anything. It finally runs smooth, but there's still a problem. Loading a saved game from the main menu takes about 20 minutes! WTH?! On my desktop PC, it takes a couple minutes, but not 20! Same thing for saving. On my desktop ... 30 seconds. On my laptop ... 20 damn minutes! What gives?! Now before you ask, I have a mirror image of downloaded content. Everything I have on my desktop, I have on my laptop. Same stuff. Desktop is tri-core, laptop is quad core. The laptop is missing the graphics card from hell that my desktop has, but that shouldn't have anything to do with loading & saving ... only with playing. Everything I'm seeing in forums has to do with CC, but like I said, if one of my CC was the problem, wouldn't I have the SAME problem on my desktop PC since it's all the same stuff? My 1st Sims game on the laptop is the criminal career in Dragon Valley. I lost cornucopia. It turns out that they no longer have uploaded worlds in the exchange. Now I can only play worlds that are created by EA. There are 11 of them total, I own about 6 or 7 of those. My Sim's name is Olivia (1st gen). She's ambitious, athletic, evil, a genius, & a kleptomaniac. Her lifetime wish is to be the Emperor of Evil. She likes spaghetti, geek rock, & the color spice brown. She's a Capricorn. Her furry companion is a Toy Fox Terrier named Vicki (1st gen) who is non-destructive, playful, & aggressive. Olivia bought the cheapest house she could find in Dragon Valley, bought the essentials she needed for her dog, & after food, only had a few dollars left to her name. No car, no radio, an old-timey TV, a single bed, crappy fridge ... she's starting out the way everyone should. No cheats, no loans.  She will earn everything she ever has, which right now is next to nothing. The very 1st thing she did was get a job (also as everyone who just graduated high school should with the exception of those smart enough to find a way to go to college), but having no PC or money meant going to the business directly to get the job instead of applying on the PC. Then she wanted to learn gardening, so it was off to the library since she couldn't afford to go to the bookstore & buy the book. When she got home, she cleaned the house ... which is easy when you live alone, it means picking up the newspaper out of the front walkway. She wanted to learn the painting skill, so she had to fork over some money for an easel. Worth it since you can make money on your paintings. All skills my Sims learn are skills that you can earn money with. The skills that don't produce an income are generally skipped & viewed as time wasters. Life is short, if you're going to have a hobby/skill, make it a profitable one at least. :) After that it was the normal daily routine of things everyone has to do. Shower, dinner, bed, work, & paying bills. When she finally had some free time again it was off to the library to use their PC & check out the online dating site. She uploaded her profile & checked out the eligible guys in town. 2 of them caught her eye & she sent them messages. Then it was off to work & back to the daily routine. I love playing the big beautiful mansions in Sims because I love living vicariously through my Sims, but I also love the realistic games like this one. The one where they start out in the tiniest house in town, have nothing, & have to scrimp & save for everything they ever get. I don't use cheats to get money, I don't immediately marry to move up to something better. I make them earn it all by themselves. Marriage isn't until after they've succeeded in their career (reached the highest level). THEN & only then can they marry, move out to their new hubby's (better) house, & start a family. This happens when they're somewhere right between young adult & elderly. In the middle of mature adulthood. Young adulthood is for working, elderly/retirement is for relaxing ... mature adulthood is for working AND being a spouse & parent. The hardest part of life when you're trying to balance everything at once. By now you have a nicer house, a couple cars, a spouse, a couple pets, children ... it's rough. I wait until mature adulthood so they're at least secure in their jobs, good at cooking, & have a good routine in place before adding more people & pets to the picture. It's hard when you graduate from school, & are immediately married, pregnant, & trying to start a career ALL AT ONCE.

As the spirit of Christmas lowers the boom on your wallet, remember the true intention of gift giving 0 to get relatives, friends, & coworkers off your back for a few weeks. Be generous - jumper cables, an ashtray from a national monument, or cherry-flavored Tums are a good start.

Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.

Conscience is the endowment that senses our congruence or disparity w/ correct principles & lifts us toward them - when it's in shape.

Dead Sea isn't a sea. It's actually a lake. It's technically not dead either - there are minuscule amounts of bacteria & microbial fungi in the water.

Economy is in bad shape. Economy is bad. Wouldn't you know, due to this recession, Santa Claus this year had to drop 2 of his hos. -Johnny Carson 1974

Ixpenseit:

- "Best App Award" - About.com 2013 Readers' Choice
- "Best iPhone apps" - CNN Money Magazine
- 50 Most Useful iPhone Apps (Best Expenses App) - LAPTOP Magazine.
- "Best iPhone Apps: Office and Personal Productivity" - PC World
- "10 MustSee Finance Apps for the iPhone" - eWeek.com
- "100 BEST IPHONE APPS FOR PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT" - Job Profiles.org
- "Turn your iPhone into a productivity powerhouse" - Investment Executive, Canada's newspaper for financial advisors
- UK CNET's Home Screen Awards: Best Finance App "..this app isn't one of the sexier uses for iPhone. It's mightily useful, however, for anyone looking to track expenses or plan a monthly budget. The interface is clean and quick to use, with good visual representations of your spending by category. It feels secure too -- a concern for many corporate users -- with password protection and the ability to backup and restore data at will. And if you want a gimmick -- but a genuinely useful one -- you can take snaps of individual receipts to be stored in your records too. Just what the company accountant ordered."
***** Featured in Apple's TV commercials.
iXpenseIt simplifies daily expense tracking and monthly budgeting. With iXpenseIt, it's never been easier to stay current on your personal budget or for business users, to get faster reimbursements. Store photo receipts is a snap. Enter expense data anywhere, anytime within seconds. Powerful reporting provides insight to where your money went and find new ways to save.
Take control of your money today with iXpenseIt!
KEY FEATURES:
- Upcoming Bill Reminder
- Daily Reminder
- Quick data entry (auto populate based on historic transactions)
- PDF Reporting (In App Purchase) & AirPrint
- Account Balance & Account Transfer
- Multi-Currency and Format Supported
- Income & Cash Flow
- Budgeting
- Number pad with calculation
- Trend Bar charts for Expense and Cash Flow
- Password Protection - Protect your personal financial data and the ability to recover password if forgotten.
- Data safety - Backup and Restore your financial data without worries.
- Visual indicator of monthly budget vs expenses.
- Overview of Today's spending vs daily spending average.
- Expense Summary - Know your total monthly expense, average expense per day and top expense of the month instantly!
- Repeating events - One time setup for all recurring expenses such as Monthly rent, Mortgage, utility bills, etc.
- Simple/ Detail / Custom Budgets.
- Store digital photo receipts.
- Instantly generate graphical reports.
- Powerful Reporting.
- Basic Mileage / Kilometer Tracking with customizable reimbursement rate.
- Supports VAT/GST input.
- Personalize transactions with icons for categories and subcategories.
- Fully customizable keylists.
- Full Text Search: quickly search to locate transactions.
- .CSV and HTML data import/export via Email or Wi-Fi.
- Records export with photo receipt attachment for quick expense approval/reimbursement.
- Complete world currency list.
Visit http://www.fyimobileware.com for FAQ and user guide
Email us anytime with your feedback or questions.

Most important words & phrases in advertising top 10:

1. Limited time offer
2. Discount
3. Guarantee
4. New
5. Especially for you
6. Fast
7. Bonus
8. Free
9. Proven
10. Easy

Track My Coupons:

Start saving money with the coupons you have instead of throwing them away.
"Track My Coupons Will Have You Actually Using Coupons" - AppAdvice.com
Some key features of Track My Coupons:
- iOS 7 optimized
- Barcode scanner to quickly add coupons (autofocus camera required).
- Huge coupon database with more being added everyday.
- Bulk import of coupons from inserts such as RedPlum, SmartSource, etc.
- Universal app - Buy it once and use on all your iOS devices.
- Receive notification alerts before your coupons expire.
- See the total value of active and used coupons
- Icon badge numbers display the total number of coupons expiring within a certain number of days that can be configured by the user.
- Customizable categories to match how you sort your coupons.
- Search through your coupons by name, coupon details, category or all 3.
- Ability to "clone" an existing coupon. This is very useful if you have several similar coupons to add.
- Expired coupons will move to the history tab automatically after a certain number of days, which can be set by the user.
- Sort your coupons by name, category, or expiration date.
- Filter coupons on a particular category.
- Choose a color theme to customize the appearance.
Track My Coupons also has a built in sale price calculator so you can see exactly how much an item will cost after your discounts and taxes.