4 ways to salvage a meal gone bad

I considered titling this post, “How I get my family to eat leftovers”. I enjoy trying new recipes. Even those rare *cough* times that the results aren’t especially tasty, we can usually manage to choke down the initial round. Getting someone to consume the leftovers, however, can be a challenge. I recently made several dud slow cooker meals that I managed to salvage into meals that were actually quite good. I’ll start with the easy ones. My first experiment was a recipe for Italian Beef. It was basically beef, seasonings, onion, and bell pepper. The problem was the onions and … Continue reading

Posted in Food | Tagged crock pot, food, improving texture, ingredients, leftovers, slow cooker | Leave a comment

How I keep our mountain of paperwork in check

I’ve been thinking a lot about clutter lately. The mad cleaning frenzy before relatives come to visit will do that to a person. Like many people, we struggle with clutter. We have some areas that stay in shape and others that don’t. I think one of the tricks for us is having a designated spot for things. It’s not that we’re too lazy to put things away, it’s that we’re too lazy to *think* about it before doing it. When something’s been left on the table, if it has a designated spot elsewhere, the only brain power I need to … Continue reading

Posted in Organization | Tagged bills, mail, paperwork, sorting | Leave a comment

How to adjust your Facebook profile picture thumbnail

Ever put up an awesome new profile picture on Facebook only to find that the thumbnail that gets attached to your posts is centered on a spot 5 inches above your head? You can shift what part of the picture Facebook uses for the thumbnail. The below image shows the thumbnail Facebook chose for my flower picture. I’d prefer it to be centered on the large purple flower. To move the thumbnail, you must go to the area where you can edit your profile. If you are on your page, click the link in the upper left corner as shown … Continue reading

Posted in Facebook | Tagged Facebook, profile picture, thumbnail | Leave a comment

Findgift.com, a great online registry that isn’t store specific

When I got married several years ago, I dreaded setting up a registry. I have multiple complaints about registries, but my two main problems were 1) I didn’t want to tie people to a specific store. I’m quite frugal and know that shopping around can really pay off and 2) I didn’t necessarily have specific brand/model preferences for things. For example, I knew we wanted a meat thermometer but didn’t really have the time to figure out which one to put on the registry. Enter http://www.findgift.com. FindGift allows you to create an online registry that isn’t tied to a specific … Continue reading

Posted in Great sites | Tagged FindGift, gift registries, great site, wishlists | 1 Comment

The importance of a strong e-mail password

By now you may have gotten e-mail from one or more companies saying that Epsilon, their e-mail service provider, was hacked. The e-mail warns you to watch for phishing attacks. I’d like to issue a semi-related warning about the importance of having a strong password on your e-mail account. Many people seem to have the attitude, “It’s just my e-mail account. A hacker wouldn’t be interested in reading my mail.” True, a hacker might not be excited about the message from your sister telling you what her kids did for spring break, but the hacker is definitely interested in accessing … Continue reading

Posted in E-mail | Tagged e-mail, passwords, phishing | Leave a comment

The new Google Motion

In a previous article, I wrote about 9 Gmail features to help keep your e-mail under control. Today, you can add one more to the list to make an even 10. Google just released Google Motion. This new system is great for anyone who spends a lot of time in front of the computer every day. Get moving and check it out today!

Posted in E-mail, Humor | Tagged April Fools, e-mail, Gmail, Google Motion | Leave a comment

Controlling who sees what on Facebook

Facebook gives you a somewhat overwhelming number of different settings to use to control what information is accessible to others and what information you see from friends/pages/apps. This article is about how to find those settings and also how to set up named lists of friends/pages to use to control those permissions and filters. Creating a list Some Facebook settings include a customize option that allows you to enter names of individual friends to either include or exclude from viewing your content. Rather than listing each friend for each setting, it’s easier to create a predefined, named list of individuals. … Continue reading

Posted in Facebook | Tagged blocking, Facebook, filters, lists, permissions, privacy, privileges | 1 Comment

User control of the Blogger comment form

This post is about a bookmarklet that I use when submitting multiple comments to a blog run on the Blogger platform. It standardizes the input window. This functionality isn’t of much value unless you’re submitting several comments in succession, for example, when entering a giveaway. There are three possible settings for Blogger blog comments. When you look at the end of the comments section at the bottom of a Blogger post, you’ll see either an embedded form (Figure A) or a link to Post a Comment (Figure B). In the latter case, if you click on the link, you’ll get … Continue reading

Posted in Entering giveaways, Web browsing | Tagged Blogger, bookmarklet, comment form, pop-up window | Leave a comment

Is that site down?

Have you ever sent out a message to your friends asking, “Is it just me, or is such and such a site down?” If you want a quicker answer, try http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/. It’s a simple, no-frills website that does just one thing. It checks if it can make a connection to the URL you give it. You type a URL in the box and hit enter. It comes back with one of two messages. Either “It’s just you. http://slightlysquirrelly.com is up.”  or “It’s not just you! http://www.slightlysquirrelly.com looks down from here.”

Posted in Great sites, Web browsing | Tagged great site, internet connectivity | 4 Comments

Why verifying every entry before a drawing is unnecessary

When I first started entering blog giveaways, I noticed some bloggers posting something to the effect of, “I verify all entries.” Initially, I thought those bloggers must mean that once the random number generator picked a number, the blogger would verify that entry (and the corresponding mandatory entry if applicable) and disqualify it if it weren’t valid. It turns out I was wrong. There are some bloggers out there that verify every, single entry before drawing a winner. This post is for them. If you’re verifying every entry before drawing a winner because you want to clean up spam and … Continue reading

Posted in Hosting giveaways | Tagged hosting giveaways, odds, statistics, verifying entries | 7 Comments