tips | Ain't Complicated

Dear Writer or Blogger

You have to convince your reader that your story is worth his time.

This is just for you:

You have to convince them
that your stories are worth their time.
—Tucker Carlson

It’s about your readers — you’d better listen up.

Pamela Wilson, in her blog post 8 Incredibly Simple Ways to Get More People to Read Your Content, notes: Read it all

Principles for Buying Your First Car

5 fundamentals to help weigh your options and make your decision

So you’re in the market for your first (or third) car. So sorry. 😥

OK, not really. I just didn’t want to say, “Congratulations!” 🙄

Whether you buy new or used, whether you buy something to last a long time or something to get you by for now, whether you buy with cash or with credit — use these five principles to help you weigh your options and make your decision:

Don’t buy more than you need
Try to avoid debt
Don’t presume on income in the long haul
Beware of pride
Dependable first, looks last

That’s kinda skeletal, so let’s beef them up just a bit… Read it all

ThinkVantage Configuration Update Stalls

God (I am persuaded) brought a thought to my mind: Maybe your anti-virus, anti-spam, firewall Zone Alarm is blocking ThinkVantage in that final stage.

I had set out to do an overdue update to the ThinkVantage software on my IBM ThinkPad R51e.

All went well until I tried to install the ThinkPad Configuration Update. Overall progress went to 99%, then backtracked to 98%, then eased back up to 99% again. Back and forth, back and forth.

I tried this installation repeatedly in the course of several days. I tried it as a directly downloaded-and-installed process. I tried it as a deferred update installation. Always the same results.

I searched Google. I searched Lenovo’s forums. I found no help. Read it all

Toys Oppressive And Destructive to Young Children

I say, stick with conventional LEGO sets and minifigures. Forget the fancy sets, although the ____ looks fun.

TOADY for short, get it?

And the TOADY Award is “bestowed upon the year’s most exploitative (and downright worst) toy as determined by public vote.”

The year’s top worst?

A LEGO set. Read it all

WordPress: Invalid Security Token

So I learned from a wanna-be commenter here that efforts to post comments here (am I being redundant by now?) were failing.

Instead of the comment posting, this error message resulted instead: Invalid security token. Bad. Deal.

I did some research in the course of two days. 🙁 Read it all

Migrating Hummingbirds and We Feeders

“If we refill our hummer feeder, will we discombobulate their migration schedule?”

Our morning concern yesterday weighed heavily enough on us that I did some quick research. After all, we didn’t want our zooming little “pets” to stick around too long and then experience . . . ah . . . “weather issues” here in northwest Oregon.

We replenished the feeder with our usual homemade hummingbird juice, because… Read it all