. . .the ads appear . . .

WOW -- I am on the new computer and I see what you all have been talking about -- the ads.
On the banner above "add a post" and all the linked words in the comment section.

Very ugly indeed. Even the link on the very top navigation bar "My Blog" is a clickable ad so how do you get to your blog, when you can't use that link? hmmm

Guess I shall try viewing on FireFox, once I install it.

The new monitor is 17 inches and gee, my blog looks so out of balance with so much white space on the sides.

Anyone else notice how you are getting the same product, paying the same price but if you look at the label, you are getting less of the product?

I realize that people need to be paid, overhead needs to be taken care of, and shipping costs all add into the product price. Also, if you use coupons, that is built in too as "advertising costs" for print ads and TV/Radio.

The dog food that I buy went from 16 oz cans to 12 oz cans and now costs 40 cents more.

The dry food went from $12. a bag to $17. -- They seem to be the same size.

Some granola bars (store brand) sells for $1.99 had 12 in a pack, went to 10 and now is only 8 for the same price.

Yogurt drinks -- were 12 oz, went to 10 oz, and now are 7 oz, basically still costs 10 cents an ounce.  I like to get one while shopping and drink it after I load the car up.

Sunny D -- at the discount store -- use to be $2.00 a gallon but now is $3.00 a gallon.  No discount there.  Other places around here, it sells for more.

Tuna fish, the cans seem the same size but they are only about 6 oz now for more money.

Even some pasta -- no longer in 16 oz boxes!

I had to laugh at the reasoning behind why baby food now is sold in smaller portions, the company said because "babies prefered less".  I laughed so hard, how did they figure that out?

Even the newspaper has less pages (and much less news) but still basically costs the same.

The big bargain -- tBlog is free!

And a side note: Yahoo Geocities shutting down at the end of the year.
Last year shut downs: Yahoo Photos, Yahoo Briefcase, AOL Journals and photos, MSN Groups, Thirdage websites, and Free Homepages (spamorama there).
What do they all have in common -- antiquated systems.
Prediction: Angelfire and Tripod will be on the chopping block sooner or later.

I just read a few articles on shopping at various dollar stores.
Here is a compiled list of the deals and duds and what to watch out for.

Deals
Cleaners
Shampoo, soap
Spices
Kitchen utensils and gadgets
Party goods, wrapping paper, gift bags, cards, ribbon

Duds
Vitamins (near expiration dates, or manufactured in outside the USA)
Toothpaste (may be tainted or has a label look alike to a major company, read label)
Batteries (drain fast, low life)
Electrical products, Christmas lights (shoddy manufacturing could cause overheating, may not be UL compliant, or made in other countries)
Jewelry and lunchboxes (may contain lead)

Comparing
Some of the snack food is priced accordingly, meaning, you will get less at the dollar store than if you bought the package at the grocery store.
For instance -- a store brand 16 oz jar of nuts would cost $1.60 at the local grocery store.  At the dollar store, for one dollar you would get 10 oz of the same type of product.  If you had a coupon, that $1.60 jar could cost less and you would get more.

BUT . . . in smaller packages, the price per oz or pound is usually higher so you may actually only get 8 oz for a dollar.

Read labels carefully and compare prices.

There have been many items recalled by the dollar type stores due to lead, small parts (especially in toys) or some other safety reason.

You can check on recalled items at:

The Consumer Product Safety Commission

Recalls.gov

For those who need some new spring cleaning ideas to make your house sparkle and dazzle:

1. Store chalk with silverware to slow tarnishing.

2. Add a packet of Lemonade Kool Aid to your dishwasher to help clean and eliminate water lime and iron stain buildup from time to time.

3. Use binder clips to hold cloth napkins of the same pattern/color together. (I would think you would have to iron the mark the binder will leave before you use them.)

4. Use broken egg shells with water and a little dishwashing detergen t to clean the bottom of vases by swirling the concoction around a bit.  The egg shells act as an abrasive.

5. WD-40 helps removing crayon off of most anything. Rub on and buff off.

6. Remove sticker adhesive with mayonaise.

7.  Use a laundry bag as a dishwasher save item -- put the small stuff in there (like lids, sponges, or baby items) so they don't get lost or lose in the dishwashing process.

Find all these new ideas with more explanation here in a slide show.
Other useful articles on cleaning there too, if you are in the mood.

WOW -- I have heard some people mention this but have not seen if on my tblog or anyone else's.  Maybe it is because I have an ad blocker or use Firefox?

Some members are mentioning "linked word ads" in the posts?

Do you see this on your blog or anyone else's?
What about my blog, do you see this?
When did this start since I have not seen it.

I will go check this out on the library computer. 
If this is the case, then I think my blog must be a mess but I just don't see it. Poor visitors.

Happy April Fool's Day!

   A Dickens classic -- will play over the next 5 weeks on PBS Masterpiece Classic.

Andrew Davies was one of the writers -- he blotched up the ending (changed it!) in A Room With A View. He also had all sorts of allusions in some of the other classics he updated recently -- none of these ever in print at their original time.
I do not think the original authors would agree with his updated presentation s.

Let us hope that in this series, he presents it as it was written but we shall see -- he seems to have many tricks in these productions that leave some of us horrified!

Here is a good article that gives an overview of Little Dorrit.

Little Dorrit at PBS.org - cast, characters, synopsis, educational resources.

   Since it is suppose to be around 50 degrees around here this weekend, I am going to spring clean and start to organize my yardsale (end of April or May).

This MSN article will help me get things clean and nearly germ free (got to have a few good germs around that eat the bad ones).

Every few days, I do go around the house with a few paper towels and the Lysol spray cleaner and wipe down door knobs and cabinet pulls, plus the refrigerator and freezer doors.  I think this has help reduce our colds in the house.

I am going to have my children read it too, maybe they will keep their spaces cleaner?  More likely, they will only "think" about what they read for now.

Happy New Year. 

OK so I am a little late.

We have been fighting off colds inbetween all the shovelling of snow and breaking up ice and the frigid cold temps.

Then our computer got a virus too -- a search engine hijack. No fun.  We could not do anything really without getting spam site links coming up although we could see the proper info. I first noticed this on my blog here when I did a search for one of my posts. So when you moused over the link or clicked on the link, you would be taken to the spam site, not the site you were looking for.  Don't click on the links!

This went on for pages and pages at Google, MSN, Yahoo searches and for days.
We were also getting pop ups for cleaning our system saying we have so many virus issues and trojans.  They look like they are part of your system but the blinking icons give them away along with a URL -- so watch out.
 
We could use Ask.com and Metacrawler or Dogpile searches with regular results, no spam links there. The computer also ran slow and we have high speed FiOs.

So after so much Norton scanning (which they did NOT find it) for days; a call to Norton, which they requested us pay $100 to clean up our puter, AdAware, SpyBlaster and SpyBot, a registry clean, and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware scans, and several studies of our HiJack This log (all free downloads), the virus still NOT gone, my daughter suggested AVAST, a FREE download for anti-virus scanning and low and behold, THEY found the culprit and quarentined it. 
She uses Avast regularly (the free version, there is a paid one also) on her laptop and has had great consistant results -- it updates daily.
We are all set for now.

It was suggested by others we talked to, to not only run one but a couple of anti-virus softwares because not every one scan product finds every thing.
Naturally, we also told Norton that they need to put this fix on their list to eliminate other people from the headaches of a search engine hijack. 

My daughter also told us that using FireFox would be a better choice to use on the internet since those sorts of things don't happen as much.  Yes, the exact same advice given to me in my computer courses that I eventually earned a degree in.  Not a good student I guess since I have not practiced the advice learned.

So maybe someone will learn something from this little frustrating cyber-ad venture.
Hope it helps someone.

Avast -- free virus cleaning download

Search Engine Hijacking Article -- explains the issue well but no helpful tips.

Hijacked Proxy Server URLs Remedy -- an advanced discussion on how you can prevent this by adding codes to your site.