Guest post written by my buddy Royce Heath

My boss told me about HughesNet Packages in my area and I think it’s because he wants me to have Internet at home so I can answer all the crazy emails he sends me throughout the night. I know it sounds ridiculous but it’s like wanting to work 24 hours a day and I’m just not ready to make that kind of commitment. I feel like in today’s day and age there’s a really blurry line between what is your personal time and what his professional time and I don’t necessarily think that’s the healthiest way to live. It’s not that when I leave at five o’clock I’m not allowed to think about work until the next day but I definitely should have quality time with my husband and my dog that I don’t have to think about the office. I think it’s unreasonable for my boss expect me to be on call whenever he needs me… It’s not like I’m a doctor! I need to tell him that I’m setting some additional boundaries.

Don’t usually don’t have a lot of extra time to play games on or off line, but once in a while I get an urge to just kick back and play a game or two, now a days most of my game playing is done online. I found out about a website at gamehouse.com that has a really large variety of download games that I thought I would pass along to my readers here.

At gamehouse.com they offer budget-friendly memberships that allows you to play an unlimited amount of their games and they even have a “Daily Free Game” that I think is a pretty cool deal. So if you are into playing games on your computer you really should check this site out. I found out about it on Facebook the other evening. It never ceases to amaze me what I find out on Facebook, I’m so glad that I finally signed up with the fastest growing social network around!

One of the many features that I really enjoy about the Internet, which I use it quite often, are the sites that assist consumers in comparing services, products, and prices of so very many things. Currently I’m looking at various web site hosting companies and I have found a really helpful site at webhostingrating.com, which has been helpful to me with this task. They offer complete, up-to-date information about so many of the major web hosting providers all neatly wrapped up in a nice user friendly online directory.

I am so seriously looking into the green web hosting providers and was surprised at how many of them are changing their ways in order to become more “green” since being “green” is such great demand these days. I think that this is truly a good thing and I most definitely take my hat off to all of these companies that are trying to keep up with today’s very important “green” movement.

There is so much more to going green than to recycle and purchasing recycled products. People and businesses are going “green” for many reasons and they are all good valid reasons and I’m glad to see more and more of us jumping on the band wagon. It’s all good people!

In our business we print about 500 sheets a day, some days a bit less some days a bit more. In printing that many pages we use a lot of paper and ink. We had to find a better way to get in cartridges than buying them retail. What I found was InkJetDeals.info they have a wide variety of ink printer cartridges for sale and the prices are a lot lower than what I was paying retail. inkjet printer cartridges are not cheap I was paying around $60 each to buy new cartridges. The web site lists sites to buy your printer cartridges from saving up to 80% as a small businessman I can use the saved money to buy other supplies.

I use a HP printer ink cartridge in my business and I love the price on this web site it saves me around $20 per cartridge. I love my printer it is very dependable and the only down side is the expense of buying new ink about every 6 weeks.

InkJetDeals has information on all the major brands including HP, Dell, Brother and Lexmark and many more, check out their web site at inkjetdeals.info where you can get all the information about the kind of printer cartridge that your printer uses. With the high price of gas and other items rising right along side gasoline it is so very important to save money where we can and this site helps me save money every day.

People across the U.S. and throughout the U.K. will recognize the name Kaplan as a leading provider of education and career services throughout the world. Two things I didn’t know until recently are that Kaplan is a subsidiary of the Washington Post (newspapers) Company and that Kaplan offers online classes in affiliation with the University of Essex for degrees in Business Management, Sales and Marketing.

Taking classes online is a new and easy way to earn a degree with flexibility to study anywhere with no gea\geographic limitations. You can study from home, from your workplace during lunchbreaks, from a library or other public place, and while waiting for or using public transportation during your commutes.

Kaplan is offering Foundation Degrees which combine academic study with workplace learning, which incorporates real life, relevant knowledge and skills. Prior experience relevant to the degree program being pursued can be applied toward the Foundation Degree, which is equivalent to the first two years of an Honors Degree program.

Kaplan’s Foundations Degree Programs include Business Management, Entrepreneurship, Internet Marketing and Business Sales Management. If taking Online Management Courses is something you’ve been considering, perhaps now is the time to look into the Kaplan online classes. A visit to the Kaplan website can instantly provide you with a prospectus to download, a virtual tour you can view from your computer, an application and a request for a callback from an Academic Advisor.

It just really blows me away to find that so many more people are still using and depending on dial-up internet these days. I think that I would end up either pulling my hair out or tossing my computer out the window if I still used dial up. I’ve been using dsl for so long and have been accustomed to having the quick speed that is necessary for all the things that I do on computer on a daily basis.

I remember having dial up and just getting so impatient waiting for pages, documents, websites and attachments to download and you can just forget about playing any type of game using dial up, it’s just not worth the time and effort involved. I’ve always been an impatient son of a gun and I know that I’m not alone in that club.

I do understand that times are extremely rough right now and a lot of folks have had to cut back on numerous expenses so more people are forced to go back to dial up, which must really suck. I think that I would be looking at other options to cut back if I was faced with that task, but that is just me and it is easy to say when I’m not walking in their shoes.

Maybe I am totally way off base with this, maybe dial up internet service has come a long way since my dial up days and it could be running a lot faster than I’m giving it credit for, but I’m in not hurry to find out.

My oldest daughter has started hanging out in an Online Chat Room, and to find out more about this new thing, new at least to me. I have started going into several of the online chat rooms that she goes into to make sure that she is safe. I worry about my daughter going into online chat rooms but so far everything looks safe and above that sane in the Online Chat Rooms that she goes into. I know that she is there to meet people her own age and have some fun, we did the same thing but we hung out at the drive in and at the ice cream stand and we went there to have fun and to meet our friends and I do not see a whole lot different between the two. Online Chat City seems to be a very nice place for the kids to hang out at and I wish they had an old man chat room for people my age.

I’ve been thinking about hiring a pay-per-click service to assist me with promoting my web page. To be perfectly honest, I have some reservations about signing up with a company like that from the standpoint of a blogger because my blog probably doesn’t have as high of a reader following for anyone to click on a link and make me any money. But what the heck I’m curious and maybe I’ll gain something from the experience.

I asked my friend to give him my opinion of the company that I was considering using, so he agreed to look at their website. First he went to their Home page and scanned their readership. He found a few spelling and grammatical mistakes that kinda jumped out at him and smacked him in his perfectionist brain that he is known for having.

He then went to their Advertiser page, and saw some errors there too. He didn’t even bother going to the Publisher page because at that point he had located their “Contact us with Live Chat” link and promptly contacted them to let them know about the issues so that they could fix them. I mean really if they are going to appeal to their customers, they really should have a much better written website.

So I think that I will hold off just a bit and keep doing some research, not that I know a bit more about the whole process. It’s not like my blog is going anywhere anytime soon and Christmas is right around the corner sneaking up on us, actually 2 more weeks til D Day.

Really one doesn’t need to look any further than at Webhostingfan.com, for the latest comparisons on today’s top web hosting companies. They give you prices, plans and articles galore here, for everything that you need for making the best choice for your web or blog hosting needs.

With so many different webhosting companies offering this important service, it can take a good amount of time researching and shopping around, I really enjoy sites such as this that take the leg work out of the task at hand. The Internet just keeps making things easier and easier, can’t say that about much of anything else these days.

It takes only a bit of time to see what type of web host provider would best fit your needs and wants, there are a lot of good companies out there just itching to get your business, so sites such as this can be such a tremendous help, best to utilize it for all that you can.

In this day and time it is vital to make sure your computer is safe. I do a back up on mine once a week and I am not sure that is enough. I have started using IDrive to do more intense back ups on my systems. IDrive is the leading online back up service. They offer encrypted online backups for free up to 2 GB and unlimited for only $4.95 a month. This site is so very fast and so very easy to use. Above all it is the most secure online provider of back up service that I have found online. Not only do the provide back up service for PC’s they have just launched a back up service for Macs also. Check their web site for all the info at Idrive.com and I think you will be as impressed as I am with this top notch back up service.

The best rating and review sites that I have had the pleasure of reviewing is the new and improved Webhostinggeeks.com. They have taken the guess work out of the task of finding which website hosting company has the best options for your use, whether it’s for personal or business use. They have the top ten list of 2011 on their home page, an independent review of today’s web hosting providers.

Upon further clicking about, I’m glad to report that they also are providing the Top 10 Eco-friendly Web Hosts, green is the color of the century and I’m all about being as green as possible. These top ten green web hosts use alternative energy to to power their data centers in many ways, which are all good options that we all could be using. They plant trees, recycle, and purchase RECs for power needs. You just gotta love and respect their efforts for their eco friendly web hosting products.

They have an interesting blog page that is worth the time to read. They do address the important of website security, which is a hot topic these days, with all the new viruses and the ridiculous hacking that is taking place now more than ever and costing all us millions of precious dollars.

Funny how I am still trying to figure out all of the things that my new iPod can and will do for me. I’ve had the darn thing since September, I really thought that I would have had it mastered by now. They say that today’s kids are way more tech savy then we ever were and are, I have to say that I am finding out more and more how true that is.

I have had to rely on a couple of teenagers here and there for assistance with numerous, what I call “high tech” issues and my iPod is no different. I just spent over an hour with a neighbor who has been chatting up some of the cool things that iPods are capable of doing. He suggested that I get an iPod Movie Converter that will convert most files that are video formatted to my iPod, which will be cool. Guess I’ll start looking online and seeing what makes and models from what companies are best suited for my needs and wants. Something like this will have to wait until after Christmas, there are other things that I need to tend to first, but I’ll be doing some research in the mean time.

Late night cruising on the Internet lands me in some of the most off the wall sites that I never would have thought to visit any other time. You know how it is, you start clicking here and there and next thing you know you are totally somewhere else and can’t even figure out how it all happened.

Such is the case tonight when I somehow landed on a Toronto Escorts agency site, which I have to say it a pretty nice looking Escorts in Toronto site, all things considered. Don’t get me wrong I have no issue with escort services, it’s just that I’m not used to seeing them online, all though I really shouldn’t be surprised considering all that the Internet brings to us all these days.

I don’t think that I will ever get the chance to visit Canada in my life time, but I do enjoy seeing and checking out various websites from all over our northern friends just across the border. At least I can understand the language, unlike a lot of other countries that I haven’t a clue as to what is going on.

Every time you surf the Internet your Ip address is logged and stored some times for years. One way to check the list called proxies to see what has been logged about your Internet surfing is to check a proxy list to see if your there. One great site to do this is proxies.us, they have complete lists of proxy sites. Protect your privacy and keep off the proxy lists.

I have really enjoyed finally getting on and learning my way around FaceBook. There have so many benefits that I have found for having a FaceBook account that I can’t imagine not having this type of social media at my finger tips anymore. Not that I spend a whole lot of time on there but once a day I sign in and see what is going on with friends and family all over the country, and a few over seas. I still have a few things to learn that I am struggling with but with time I do believe I will have most of it under control.

Last night I spend some time online looking for folks that I used to work with at a large national insurance company back in the 90′s and I was surprised that I actually found a few that are on FaceBook as well. The one guy that I really wanted to find again has a very unique name, so only took a few minutes to locate him. When I worked with him he was going to college to study law, working full time as a claims rep and being a single dad to a pretty little 3 year old, who is now a drop dead gorgeous 20 year old, according to the pictures on his Wall. He is now a technology lawyer in Washington D.C. working for a large well known international e-commerce law firm and doing very well for himself. Still not married, but living the life of Riley I would imagine. Making good money, living in the big city, tall, dark and handsome, heck ya.

All of the other folks that I found have not responded to my friend request yet. But I’m hoping that over the weekend they will sign on and see that I’m waiting to hear from them. I hope that they recognize my name after all of these years. I wish FaceBook would let you send a comment along with their friend requests, that would save a lot of time, effort and possible trouble, if you know what I mean.