tips | Ain't Complicated

Email Tip of the Day: Check Your Spam Box

Unless, of course, you do not care about ALL your legitimate email...

Gmail does you a great service by routing spam you receive into its own box. You will never see it or be bothered by it. And after 30 days, Gmail deletes it “forever” for you.

Gmail does you a great disservice by treating some of your legitimate email as spam. You know what that means — you will never see it and after 30 days, it’s gone “forever.”

Oh, you think you’re free of this problem since you don’t use Gmail? Think again. No matter what email system you use, you better find out what’s happening with your spam or junk email! Read it all

We Now Have Ten Children!

How a brand-new father-in-law walked out on thin ice to interrupt a wedding reception

four hours or so after Drew and Anne's wedding

Our son Drew gave us the opportunity to be among the invited speakers at their wedding reception. He acknowledged knowing that I’m not a fan of open mic, but wanted me to say something anyway. Well, what’s a Dad to say but, “OK”? 😀

I drew up a fine list of potential things to say weeks ago. And put the matter out of my mind pending further review on the way to the wedding in Pennsylvania. Due to a series of factors, the review never happened. But I knew I could take my computer with me to the reception and do my memory refreshing before the wedding (or whatever I thought).

The wedding day came and I, forgetting that important detail, decided not to take my computer to the wedding site. When that unfortunate detail dawned on me, I found myself 30-40 minutes distant from my computer! And I could remember nothing of my notes except the two things most important to me. Good enough.

And from there sprouted what I will call the keenest disappointment for me of the whole trip. Read it all

Create A Custom WordPress Page Template for HTML Content

A fast, easy, simple way to effectively bring old HTML pages into WordPress

Problem: You have an HTML-only web page, carefully designed, that you want to bring as-is into WordPress without investing hours on redesign.

Compounding problem: This page uses three includes as well as a responsive layout and stylesheets that are entirely different from anything offered by the WordPress you are using.

Solution: Create a special single-use custom WordPress page template.

Good news: I’m about to tell you how to do this.

Additional good news: The concept below can be modified into additional WordPress page templates for bringing in other HTML content into WordPress-powered sites. Read it all

How to Prepare to Present a Slideshow

A pre-show presenter's checklist for your public talk

That’s what I was working on early this morning, as I began the mad rush to finish writing the last lesson of a multi-year project I’ve been on for Christian Light Education.

I needed a figure to illustrate one item on my checklist. So, I set up a quick photo shoot next door. This is now Figure 2 in Lesson 14 of LightUnit 10 of CLE’s new course on LibreOffice: Read it all

How to Prepare to Share a Bible Lesson

Ideas, tips, and clues for teaching from the Bible

I am to speak on that subject at our congregation this coming Sunday evening. I intend my presentation to be practical help for Sunday School teachers and Vacation Bible School teachers, for school teachers, and for other public speakers at church events. I hope it has its inspirational moments for the other listeners as well. 🙂

I don’t know if I have 20 minutes or 40 — I think I’ll find out Sunday morning. That gives me the afternoon to adjust my notes accordingly.

Monday evening I started jotting down random notes, here’s what I have so far: Read it all

How to Earn $901.65 a Month. On the Side.

At least. Easily. Eventually. Maybe even effortlessly, kinda.

Short answer: “Persuade 500 people to pay you $2 a month for an essential service.”

Longer answer: “Be a good seller who can help people see the advantages of using an @godspost.com email address for a mere $25 a year. But before that, you would need to buy the service, site, and domain from me. And you would also need to pay out $84 a month for the service to power the service. ”

So…why am I not earning at least $561.09 a month via this great service? I am not a good seller nor a good persuader. So I haven’t been able to get even 10 people paying $25 a year for this service.

And I probably won’t persuade you to buy the service, site, and domain from me. (But I’ve been wrong before.)

Of course, you could forget the whole pursuit of filthy lucre and “unseemly capitalist profit” and offer the service for free. (But I really can’t offer it to you on that basis.)

LibreOffice Writer: Bookmarks vs References

Please help me understand the functional distinctions between them.

I’m hard put to grasp when to use which for cross-referencing. From all the experimenting I’ve done, it appears to me that it boils down to personal preferences and not anything technical. What am I missing?

I know that bookmarks are faster to create. But you have to open the dialog each time. On the other hand, creating a target/reference involves more steps, but you can leave the dialog open to create multiple targets/references. Read it all