Tag: blog

California Lemon Lawyers

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily Blog3 Comments

Did you buy a car only to find out that it was a lemon?  That could happen if you buy a car from someone through Craigslist without checking carfax first.  Don’t worry because there is an attorney who is on your side.  California Lemon law lawyers are there to help you file a claim if you were misled into buying a car that was a lemon.

California Lemon Law attorneys have law offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Newport Beach.  You can either call them and tell them what happened, or you can fill out a form on their website describing your lemon case, and one of their representatives will get back to you within 24 hours.

I don’t have a car, nor do I even know how to drive, but if I did and I was misled into buying a lemon, I would be sure to contact the Lemon Law attorneys in California.  I like knowing that there are lawyers that have your back.

Their website has stories from other lemon victims, maybe you might be able to learn from other people’s mistakes and take advantage of that knowledge.  They also have a blog so you can get more information.  I hate to repeat the same thing over and over again but knowledge is power.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, or call a lemon lawyer today.

Publishing My Book

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBookLeave a comment

I spent this summer writing my life story into a 289 page e-book.  It took a lot of time to write and it has taken even longer to edit because I am not what most would consider to be a writer.  I barely manage writing a blog, I have a difficult enough time thinking of what to write in a greeting card.

I have already copyrighted (pending) my book (title and unedited contents) so that when I am ready to publish it, I won’t have to worry about waiting for the copyright to kick in.

I have already signed up with Amazon and Barnes & Noble as a self publisher, which was so easy that anyone can do it.  I also wanted to sign up on the Rainbow Ebook website as a self publisher because I want to support them as an e-book store.  It’s nice to give back to my community in any way that I can.

As soon as it is completely edited, I will publish it and start advertising and promoting via here, twitter, Facebook, my space and anywhere else that I can advertise it for free.  I may even pay gay and gay friendly bloggers to advertise it for me.

I am not looking to get rich on this book, in fact I mean to do the opposite.  I can only make so much money per year on top of my disability so I can’t get rich off of it.  I am only going to sell it for $6.99 so that I only profit a few dollars from the sale of each book and 10% of those profits will go to charity.  10% from Amazon, B&N and Rainbow Ebooks combined will be split up to go to the Human Rights Campaign, ChildHelp.org and Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors fund.

My book will hopefully raise awareness to so many issues in our society about the way children are being raised to be as abusive, racist and bigoted as the parents who are raising them.  I feel it’s important not just to tell my story about the trauma I went through, but hope that it will help parents to change their hateful ways and views and know what they are doing to their children when they raise them full of so much hatred.

I wanted to be able to publish it before Christmas but then I got to thinking that it’s not the kind of thing you want to read during a happy time of year.  Instead, I will probably publish it after Christmas or maybe after New Years.  Keep in mind that it is still being edited so it is possible that I won’t have it ready to publish until January.

So until then…

Update: I signed up for the free trial of Grammarly and was shocked to see that they raised the price from $20 to $70.  I thought that I would just go ahead and do the trial and get it done as quick as I could but it was catching too many errors that weren’t even errors.  So screw that, if my grammar checker in Open Office doesn’t show me those errors then they aren’t errors in my opinion.  I will read it one more time and fix any errors I think need to be fixed and then publish it when my copyright goes through or January like I said before.

I Haven’t Blogged in Ages

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I wrote a book and ever since I finished writing it, it seems like I have abandoned my blog.  Well, that just isn’t true.  I just haven’t had anything to blog about.

I would like to give an update on my progress though.  A long time friend of mine volunteered to edit my book but it was taking her way too long. She couldn’t really work on it due to the fact that she is running her own online business and doesn’t have time for my book.

Well, I can’t let my book collect dust while she is too busy with her own stuff so I told her that I would do it myself.  Of course I don’t know what the heck I’m doing so I can’t really do it myself.

I can’t afford to hire someone to do it so I thought I could just do an online course in English grammar but I have a learning disability and ADD.  I am not learning jack squat.

I found a software that I can use called Grammarly.  They charge $20 a month to use their software.  I signed up for their free 7 day trial but closed my account immediately because it wasn’t what I thought it would be.  I thought they were going to tell you what the issues were then you could click the correction.  Instead, they explain what the issue is and YOU have to figure it out.

The reason I closed my account so soon was because I knew I wouldn’t have any time to work own it this week so my free 7 day trial would have just gone to waste and I don’t have the money to pay them after the trial is up so I canceled.

I emailed them telling them what happened but they have a strict policy, you only get one 7-day free trial.  If you cancel then that’s on you.  Which I think is stupid, especially since they knew I canceled after 5 minutes.  They could manually delete my account information to give me the opportunity to try again but they chose not to do that.  I’m pretty sure I could try the trial again with a different email address though.  I won’t know for sure until I try, and you know that I will try lol.

So other than that I’ve been playing Lord of the Rings Online.  Not really much else to report…

Well, see ya when I have something else to blog about.

Writing Books

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books2 Comments

I started writing my autobiography again on my netbook using SoopBook.  I was using just a regular word processor before but it seems easier using SoopBook since it uses the WordPress blogging platform that I use to write my blog with.  It’s easier to do it when I’m using something that I am familiar with.

I have 3 1/2 chapters written down so far.  It has been a little taxing on my emotions having to go through each and every memory.  What is even more difficult is having to remember when each memory happened.  So many things happened and it was so many years ago that sometimes the memories just bleed into each other and I can’t remember which event happened first and second and even in which month or year.  I am doing my best to remember but these things take a lot of time to write.

I have sort of veered off to another book that I wanted to write.  I figured that if I’m going to have an autobiography, I should probably be known as a writer first.  So I am writing a short story about an Indigo Child named Henry who has a premonition about something that will greatly impact his life and he has to stop it from happening before he loses everyone he loves.  It’s not going to be a huge novel, think of it as a half hour episode of the Twilight Zone.

I wrote the first chapter today and I have many more ideas for the second chapter in my head but I will have to get to it tomorrow.  It’s really a heart breaking story and every time I think about what I’m going to write I start to cry because I know how it will end lol.

I don’t even know where this story came from, it just popped into my head out of nowhere.  I was trying to read a book and I just couldn’t focus on what I was reading because I had this big story churning in my brain and I was just thinking, how can I be reading this book when I need to be writing this amazing story about this amazing little Indigo Child?

It’s going to be a Halloween story so I hope to be finished with it before or on October 1st 2011.  It will be my first ever story that I have ever thought of so be easy on me when you criticize me because I’ve never written a story before.  Of course when I have it published I will link the ebook in my blog so all 5 of my readers can get first dibs lol.

I’m hoping that this little short story will get bigger and end up being a novel instead of a short story but we will have to see how many twists and turns my brain can think of.  I am giving it a title that will be open to a second book, maybe even more, who knows.  We will see.

Google Plus

On By Michel McDonaldIn Social Network1 Comment

Do we have enough social networking websites or are there not enough?  It all started with MySpace, not everyone was on board with it at first but people started flocking to it when they found out how cool it was.  Then Facebook came along and proved that it was better and it literally killed MySpace which people stopped using.

Google Plus is one of the newest social networking websites and it doesn’t seem like anyone really wants to give it a chance because they don’t really want to leave Facebook.  I think they think that they can only do one social network and that’s it but that’s simply not true.  You don’t have to limit yourself to one.  Heck, I should know because I’m using Twitter and Facebook every day and now I have added Google Plus.

What I like about Google Plus is the circles feature.  You can put certain people in your circles and when have friends and family who have such different interests as I do, you need to segregate them into those groups when you post the crap that I do.

Some of my friends and family love my sick sense of humor, while others think I’m disturbed and have even threatened to block me so they don’t see the things that I post.  I also don’t want everyone to see my posts from my blog which is why I have created a Facebook fan page and only invited those whom I want to read my blog to like the fan page so the others don’t see it.  With circles you can post whatever you want and you can choose which circles get to see it and which circles can’t.  That is what I’ve been looking for.

There is another feature which I absolutely love.  You can start a hangout, which is a cool new webcam tool, and invite people to join you.  It’s not just a video conference tool for 1 on 1, it’s a group video conference so you can invite as many people as you want.  I’m sure there is a limit, I don’t know what it is though.

When you are in a hangout, it adds a post on your wall saying that you are hanging out with 1 or 2 people or whatever the number is.  There is a button that says “join this hangout” so other people can join without inviting them.  I’m pretty sure that the only people in the circle you invited when you started the hangout can see that invitation though.

What’s great about the hangout is that when someone starts talking, the video focuses on them.  When someone else starts talking, it automatically switches to that person.  If you click someones video then you can’t get out of that auto switching for some reason and you have to leave the hangout and come back to allow the auto switching to continue.  Also, sometimes someones video will freeze and the only way for that to fix is for that person to exit and come back.  Other than those 2 issues it’s perfect.

I love the hangouts because I think that will be a great way to have a family reunion with family members you haven’t seen in a long time.  Or you can have your book club join via hangout.  Or maybe you just want to chat with a bunch of people.  Whatever the reason is, it’s a very cool tool.

I think that Google Plus will eventually catch on.  It doesn’t have games like Facebook does but given time I’m sure it will eventually.  I don’t care about games as much as I care about connecting with people.  At least that’s how I use social networking websites anyway.

I personally hope that it catches on because I really like the circles and hangout feature.  I’ve been telling people about it but so far I only have a few friends.  Hopefully they will come over and allow me to segregate them in my wall posts (LOL) and hang out with me in a group video chat.

Join me in Google+  If you can’t get in, ask me for an invitation via Twitter @xanapus.

Growing Old (un)Gracefully

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Do you mind if I vent for a few minutes about something that has been bothering me?  Of course you don’t mind, I mean, that’s why you’re here right?  To listen to me venting, I mean, that’s what a blog is right?

I don’t know what it is but the older I get, the more of a prick I become.  I don’t know why.  I mean, it could be me or it could be people constantly pushing me to becoming a prick day in and day out.

I’m constantly being pressured to do something I don’t feel comfortable doing and eating foods that I don’t want to eat for one reason or another.  No means no right?  When you say “oh no, that’s not what I want to eat” that means that’s not what the f I want to eat, does it not?  It doesn’t mean, keep pressuring me because I can’t make my own GD decisions.  It means I don’t fricken’ want it so stop GD asking me!

Oh sorry where was I?

Oh yeah, I’m going through some weird stuff with my body right now and I’m just constantly irritable because of the constant pain I’m always in.  I’m only 40, turning 41 and I feel like I’m in my 80’s.  I feel twice as old as I am.

My back is in constant pain because I have degenerative disc disease.  Do you know what that means?  Well, it’s really self-explanatory, my discs are degenerating.  It’s really simple.  Take a marshmallow and flatten it a bit.  Ok that is what the discs look like that are cushioning your spine bones.  Now, press on it and flatten it some more so it’s really thin.  That’s what my discs are doing.  So if my discs are thinning out because they are degenerating what do you think is happening to my bones?  It’s a constant pain from the minute I wake up until the minute I go to sleep at night.

I’m losing my eyesight.  I don’t know if this is normal but all of a sudden it’s like something clouds my eyes, both of them, not at the same time obviously.  I have to rub my eyes to get it out and it’s fine but it’s constantly coming back.  My eyes aren’t that great to begin with, I mean, I’m having to look through the bifocal part of my glasses to read as I type this which isn’t a good thing since I should be able to see with the top part.

Apparently I’m also losing my hearing because every time people talk around me they are talking so low that I can’t hear a word they are saying.  I feel like I’m being left out of nearly every conversation.  I feel like yelling “SPEAK UP” but then I’m afraid of how crazy I must sound so I just ignore people who are talking and think about something else and just nod as they talk.

I have really bad carpal tunnel syndrome too so either one or both of my hands are either numb or pins and needles at any given time, usually all the time.  I can’t open jars anymore on my own, oh no I need help with that.  I have these muscles on my arms and I can’t even open a jar or a can without help.  I have a one-touch can opener because I can’t even open a fricken’ can of tuna on my own anymore.

I have people asking me if there is something wrong and asking me why I’m so irritable, and this from people who are older than I am.  It’s like, you of all people should be more sympathetic knowing how the aging process goes.

I’m only 40!!!  This isn’t supposed to happen to me!!!  I mean gawd, I’m like 15 years old on the inside but 80 on the outside.  I really hate this.

Despite this I try to be in a good mood but I have people constantly irritating me and making me feel like I have no basis for being irritable, like I’m making up the problems or something for attention then they look at me like I’m being a drama queen.  I don’t want that kind of attention, I just want people to back the f up and realize that I’m just trying to live a normal life without all of the complications that life gives me, I don’t need them adding complications by treating me like I’m nuts.

Wow you know I feel so much better now.  Thank you so much for helping me get through this.  Now GET OFF MY LAWN you dirty sonsabitches!  LOL just kidding…

My DSL Usage

On By Michel McDonaldIn Games, LOTROLeave a comment

This May, AT&T DSL users are going to get a DSL cap (in their arse) of 150GB or 250GB for U-verse users. I thought I was going to be in trouble because I like to watch a lot of tv shows and movies on my computer and I’m also on the internet all day long so I never really had a gauge on how much internet I have been using until now.

I’ve been looking at my DSL usage every month to make sure I don’t go over 150GB because once you go over they start charging you $10 for every 50GB. The first thing that came to mind was EverQuest. When I was playing EverQuest, I was on that game for up to 16 hours a day. It was the first thing I did when I woke up and the last thing I did before I went to bed. I was a hardcore gamer. But I haven’t played it since 2008 so no problems right?

Well, I’ve been wanting to get back into it the last few months but not with EverQuest, this time with a free game but would I be screwed if all of a sudden I started playing a game that uses up a lot of internet?

Here’s my test. I started playing Lord of the Rings Online 1 month ago on 3/19/2011 and I’ve been playing practically every day since. Here in this graph you can see my data usage in mid February through mid March as 17.29GB download and 6.26 up. That was with just regular internet being on Twitter, blogging, looking at Hulu and YouTube videos, facebook, email etc.

Now look at this last month from March 17 through April 16. Not a lot of difference is there? It only went up by 3GB and the upload actually went down by 3GB which I wasn’t expecting.  I don’t really understand why my upload is so high, I mean, I never send files to anyone.  The only uploading I ever do is when I upload an image to my blog and even then it’s only a few KB here and a few KB there.  I don’t even upload videos to YouTube so that confuses me.

(I’m sure someone will explain it to me and I will feel stupid lol.)

Now keep in mind, I’m not on this game 16 hours a day. I can’t, my carpal tunnel doesn’t allow it. I mean, I’m having pain now just from typing this. I usually get on at around 10 or 11am and play until 3 to 4pm or when my hands start to hurt.

I get off the game not just because of my hands but because of my shows.  When I was playing EQ I would miss my shows every night because we were a raiding/family guild and they expected me to be on every night.  I would have to record my shows so that I could watch them later but I can’t do that anymore since the Digital Cable can block certain signals from recording.  The only way for me to do that now is if I had a DVR which I don’t so I play during the day and reserve my nighttime for my shows.  I don’t want a game to rule my life which is one of the many reasons I quit playing EQ.

So this was a good test to see how much DSL data I use every month with a game at the hours that I play.  I’m very satisfied that I won’t have to worry about going over my 150GB/mo.  I mean, I don’t care about $10 if I go over but I don’t want that hanging over my head and it won’t because I don’t use enough to ever have that problem.

As far as me playing Lord of the Rings Online, I absolutely love it.  I’m not as much of a hardcore gamer as I used to be and that’s a good thing.  Actually I start getting bored after awhile.  Yesterday I was falling asleep because I was bored with the area that I was in since I had been there for a couple of days.  I had to leave and go somewhere else to wake me up.

This game is really fun and relaxed and even though I’m already hooked on it, I don’t think it will rule me because of my hands.  So that’s a good thing.  My hands are like a timer for me.  When they start hurting, it’s time to sign off and go watch tv.

Break From Restoring Blog

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I have to take a few days off from restoring posts for September 2009 all the way through June of 2010.

First of all it’s hell on my hands.  With Carpal Tunnel syndrome both of my hands are getting numb a lot from this, resting my wrist on the laptop or even on the gel mouse pad is bad for my wrists because it puts way too much pressure on my wrists.  If it were softer then I might be ok but for some reason it’s a really hard surface.  After a few hours my wrists are in agony and my eyes too, I can’t see anything because I’m staring at the computer so much.

We have family visiting next week and I really need to put this blog on hold until the house is clean.  It’s not a mess but there are some places that need to be cleaned and it’s embarrassing when people can spot the dust I didn’t clean :D.

I would say give me a few days but I’m sure it won’t take that long, but you never know for sure.

I’m Almost Finished Restoring Posts from Blogger

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

When my blog crashed, I started restoring posts from YouSayToo from that date going back to July 2010 but then decided to go back from the beginning of my blogs time in 2007 which I had to get from my Blogger blog.  For the last couple of weeks I’ve been restoring 2007, 2008 and 2009.  I just finished restoring July 2009 and there are only a couple more months worth from 2009 on Blogger.

I think that when I am finished with all of this I will wipe Blogger clean because there are some posts that I purposely didn’t restore because they were terrible posts.  I’m shocked they got posted at all.  Since I didn’t delete them during the restoration I won’t remember what is what so I’ll just wipe it all.  I can export my blog from over here to there easily but I’ll wait until everything from YouSayToo is restored to do that.

This has been so hard on my wrists from copying and pasting and resting my wrists on the laptop and the hard gel mousepad from the desktop so I decided to start wearing my wrist splints which has helped today.  Unfortunately, I have no splint for my eyeballs which are so blurred from staring into the screen for 8 hours or more per day.

I don’t know how much longer it will take me to finish restoring everything but I’m working as hard as I can since I am one person.  To prevent this from happening again I’ve had my blog email me backups once a week which I will store on my desktop just in case it crashes again because I refuse to go through all of this one more time.

Indigo Adults – eBook

On By Michel McDonaldIn IndigoLeave a comment

Where to start… I found out about a month or two ago from talking with a childhood friend of mine that I am an Indigo Adult.  He was telling me about how he is overly aware of things, you know like his soul, his mortality and just everything.  You know when someone tells you to stop and smell the roses every once in awhile?  Well, he smells the roses every second, not just once in awhile, all the time.  Well, I’m overly aware too.  I always have been.  He’s telling me all of these other things and I’m just sitting there thinking oh my god, me too.

Everything he is telling me is just ringing true with me and the more we talk, the more information and I just start feeling a little overwhelmed and need to take a step back.  I understand it all but my brain can only process so much information at one time, especially at the beginning.

So I found this eBook in the B&N Nook store called Indigo Adults for $9.99 but I couldn’t afford it right away, I finally bought it on January 20th but I didn’t actually start reading it until the 4th because it just so happened that my blog bought the farm right around the same time I bought this book.  I tried reading it but I couldn’t focus on it because I was too busy thinking about my corrupt blog database.

I started reading it on February 4th and I finally finished reading it today and my mind is completely blown away.  There were so many things in there that just had me thinking OMG ME TOO!  It talked about children with ADD and I was diagnosed with that in my 20’s but I was also diagnosed with a learning disability when I was a child in elementary school so I’m thinking that because they didn’t have ADD back then, I should’ve been diagnosed with that instead.  Although I guess it’s both but still, it helped me to learn something about myself in that respect.

I wanted to discuss some things that I highlighted but when I went to look for an example, all of my highlights were completely gone.  They disappeared from my Nook for some reason, that bugs me because I spent so much of my time highlighting instead of reading.  So I have nothing to offer as an example besides the ADD thing.  I guess the only thing there is left for me to do is read the book again.  I’m going to read it again anyway because I think that my mind was so blown away that I didn’t learn a few things so I want to go over it again.

Do this test, if you can relate to most or all of those then there is a good chance you are an Indigo Adult too.  I relate to everything in that bullet list.  Knowing that there is a name for it helps me in regard to helping me understand myself a lot more than I did before.  I would suggest that if you relate to those things in that list then this book will blow your friggin mind.

I am interested in hearing from some Indigo adults to compare notes with.  If you are an Indigo Adult, please, leave a comment and I will definitely get back to you.