Todd's Tips

Keep Copperas Cove Beautiful 2013

Todd — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 17:56:02 +0000

I’m tempted to say I had fun this morning, but I don’t know if I’d really call picking up trash along the side of the road “fun”. But I did help clean up Copperas Cove .. our new home town.

I was browsing Facebook last night, and I saw that the Copperas Cove Chamber of Commerce page had posted a flyer inviting people out to the cleanup:

I figured there was a reasonable chance that I might be up by 9am, and we didn’t have anything else planned until after lunch, so I told Ana I was going … and about 8:30 this morning, I actually got up and got ready.

We all met up over at the GC Service parking lot, were they had coffee and doughnuts to eat, passed out t-shirts and safety vests, and explained how things were going to work.

I was selected to be part of the crew that would be cleaning up Ave D .. which is the road I drive down every day to and from work. We all drove over to the Sherman Williams parking lot for a second meet up. There I was given my trash bag and “grabber”. That grabber turned out to be something my back greatly appreciated.

We we navigated our way across the road, it was time to start picking up. We went both directions, the length of the road. It was a pretty good turn-out, with a couple of different groups, some retired people, and even some high school kids. I was actually surprised there weren’t more military people out there.

For the most part even the trash wasn’t too bad. However, this experience did renew my scorn for smokers. There were a few sections of the road where I swear it almost looked like people had pulled over and just dumped out their ash trays.

I’m not sure if this is just a yearly thing, or as I suspect, several times a year. I suppose I’ll find out, since I gave them my phone number and email address.

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Never Forget to Send a Birthday, Anniversary or Valentines Card Again

Todd — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 21:17:10 +0000

Are you one of those guys rushing up and down the greeting card aisle at Wally World the night before you wife’s birthday? Come on admit it, I won’t laugh (too hard) .. because I’ve done it too.

Good news, this might help …

Just a couple of simple steps:

Create an account at Pixingo (retail or wholesale, ask me if you need a breakdown of the difference).
Fill up the address book with all the people you think will notice if you don’t sent them a card … plus those who will smile when you do.
Create a couple of cards … you can even personalize them
Schedule the date you’d like them printed and put in the mail

Now obviously you’ll need to load a few bucks into your account to pay for them. But the really good news is, even at the retail prices you’ll still only be paying about 1/2 as much as you would for that card you’re running around looking for at the last minute.

This is really a no brainer if you’re a procrastination prone guy (like me).

lol, I’d imagine women are going to really like this new feature too, but for most of them it will be more of a “want” than a “need”

Keep havin FuN!

p.s.

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Taking Pictures of Lightning is Not That Hard

Todd — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:05:37 +0000

So you’d really like to take cool pictures of lightning, but think it’s probably beyond your capabilities …

Well guess what?

It’s really not that hard.

See that picture up above? I took it last night, and most of my Facebook friends really seem to like it. They are seriously impressed with my mad photography skills.

Funny thing …

That picture was not planned. I’d hoped to get some thunderstorm pictures earlier in the evening, but after the sun went down I pretty much gave up and put the camera away … until I heard the thunder.

I quickly grabbed my camera, and turned the dial to manual. I set it at F11 and a 15 second exposure. Changed the focus to manual, and attempted (in the dark) to focus on the distant horizon. I then looked around the yard for a place to put the camera down. I settled on the edge of the trampoline, with a hula hoop under the front of my lens to prop up the angle a bit.

I then sat down behind the camera and pressed the shutter release every 15 seconds for about 5 minutes or so.

Out of the 18 pictures I took, this bolt just happened to show up in one of the frames.

I downloaded it to my computer, and spent literally about 8 minutes in Aperture “cleaning it up” (changed the white balance, sharpened, added some contrast and viginette, and cloned out some of the dust spots that inevitably show up when I shoot the sky at F11 with my 8 year old camera).

As is wont to happen with many photographers, I’m not nearly as impressed with this particular image as some of my friends are.

If I wanted to capture a really “good” lightning pictures, I would have planned a little better:

Dragged out my tripod and remote shutter release
Scouted out a location with something more interesting in the foreground than my neighbor’s houses
Focused the lens to infinity before it got dark
Done some test shots to try to figure out exactly which aperture/shutter speed settings would really work best
Stayed outside a lot longer than 5 minutes … even if I already had some “good” captures
Spent a LOT more time doing post processing.

But you know what? None of that was really my point. I’m of the opinion that provided you have a camera with manual setting, and you’ve read enough of the instruction book to be able to change the aperture and shutter speed, there’s no reason YOU shouldn’t be able to capture a picture at least as good as the one in this post the next time a thunderstorm rolls through your neck of the woods.

Keep havin FuN!

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Do You Have a Commissary Rewards Card?

Todd — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 17:41:10 +0000

Coupons loaded digitally onto a card. Sounds like they did this for us guys. I’ll be honest, when I go shopping, while I’m not opposed to using coupons, I’m normally not willing to go to any extra effort to collect them.

lol, I’m the dude who is proud about the $.75 I just saved on my $257 worth of groceries.

Yesterday I stopped by the Fort Hood Army Wives expo, where my wife was volunteering. One of the tables was set up by DECA (Defense Commissary Agency). We were drawn by the offer of free candy for the kids, but while I was there they also gave me one of these Rewards cards.

It just so happens that I need to go food shopping today, so this morning I sat down and registered my card. It was pretty easy, I just entered my information and the number from the back of the card. After my account was set up, it brought me to a page full of e-coupons. I “clipped” the ones I was interested in, and apparently they’ve been loaded onto my card. I guess we’ll find out in an hour or two how well it worked.

I will warn you, there wasn’t a really big selection of coupons. I only found two that I wanted to use. Buy hey, it’s $1.60 that I’m going to save, while only expending a couple of minutes of my time … worthwhile enough that I’ll plan to log onto the Commissaries.com from now on before I head to the store.

If you have a military ID card, and don’t have one of these Rewards cards yet, Todd’s Tip would be to get on before your next commissary trip.

Keep havin FuN!

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Free (and useful) Apple Aperture 3 Tutorials

Todd — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 03:07:03 +0000

When I bought my copy of Apple Aperture 3 a little over a month ago, the first thing I did was look for some tutorials. I was pretty disappointed by the results of my Google search. Don’t get me wrong, I found a few; but for the most part they were just short teasers for tutorial series that cost money.

I know, I know, I should have just sucked it up and paid. The whole reason I was looking for tutorials in the first place is because I’ve been using Photoshop for about 9 years now, and I still don’t know what half those buttons do. So when I finally bit the bullet and traded in my MacBook Pro for a new Mac Mini I decided it was also time to switch to Aperture.

… and actually learn how to use it right from the start.

Unfortunately, after my disappointing tutorial search, I (thought) I was left with just the manual. And although the manual is actually pretty good, it is a manual. So I’ve pretty much been going with the same trial and error method of learning that served me so well (not) with Photoshop.

Then this morning for some reason I decided to search for “how to sharpen and image in Aperture”, and found this YouTube video:

But hmmmm, that looks a little “polished” for a YouTube tutorial. So I went back the Apple site, and sure enough, there’s a whole suite of useful video tutorials: http://support.apple.com/videos/#Aperture

Now in my defense, Aperture isn’t actually linked from the main videos page, you have to type it into the search box. (and it was nowhere to be found when I Googled) So this is very nearly another “dumb Todd” story. But at least now I know where they are, and I can quickly correct some of the things I’ve already been doing the “hard way” .. and learn to do everything else “right”.

… and you can too.

Keep havin FuN!

p.s. in browsing through YouTube, I did find some other Aperture tutorials not made by Apple. I liked some of the ones on this guy’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/petethornephotoPeople who read this post might also enjoy:

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Dealing with Pushy Marketers

Todd — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 01:23:04 +0000

It’s funny I don’t think anybody is more annoyed by a pushy clueless networker than us fellow networkers. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that Tom “Big Al” Schreiter was going to be in Austin (only an hour from my house), so I registered and drove down there on Wednesday night. It had been a little over 10 years since I went to see him in Hawaii, so I was up a for a refresher.

Apparently a few of the attendees were under the delusion that this would be a good place to recruit … as opposed to a great place to learn something.

Before the meeting even started people were “pitching” and trading business cards. I left cards out my truck, and made it clear that I wasn’t there to recruit, or be recruited. I did take a few other people’s cards when they offered though. One lady in particular (who was otherwise pretty nice) was quite confident that she was going to recruit the whole room. She gave me her card, asked for mine, and was a little disappointed that I didn’t have one, so she wanted my phone number instead. Because I figured it couldn’t hurt to keep in touch, I gave it to her. She reminded me to watch a video on her website, and she’d call me on Friday.

When I got home on Wednesday night, I took the business cards that people had given me, looked them up on Facebook, and sent friend requests.

Ironically, this “pushy” lady’s business card didn’t even have a website on it.

So this afternoon my phone rings. I don’t recognize the number, but answer anyway. “Hi Todd, we met the other night at Big Al, did you watch the video on my website yet? What did you think?”

Me: “No actually I didn’t watch it. To be honest, I’m not looking for a new business.”
Her: “Oh ok, well I know that most people are under a lot of stress, so I’m sure you’d like our products.” (funny, I don’t recall telling her anything during our brief conversations indicating at all that I might be under stress).
Me: “No sorry, I’m not a really a vitamin guy” (lol, especially at $50 a bottle).

At this point, she proceeds to tell me the URL of a website that really does have the video she wanted me to watch (lol, I forgot what it is already). Says I need to go watch the video, and call her back.

Me: “Sorry, I’m really not interested, but it was nice meeting you”.

Her: “OK, call me back after you’ve watched the video”.

LOL, she obviously didn’t learn a single thing during Big Al’s 3-hour presentation.

… oh yea, and I just looked, she never even accepted my Facebook friend request.

Keep havin FuN!

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How to Justify Backyard Weeds

Todd — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 17:54:28 +0000

So our back yard is not as nice as it probably could/should be. But hey, this is Texas, I seriously doubt we were ever going to have a lush green lawn, living in a place that seems to be in a state of perpetual drought. That said, I’d think I’d prefer that the weeds not take over either.

Except …

The girls LOVE Flowers. Doesn’t matter if they come from “acceptable” flowering plants, or just your average weed.

… and if they find em in the backyard, you better believe they’re gonna pick em.

One of these days I’ll get out there to kill all the “bad” flowers, and maybe even plant a real garden for them to admire (and let’s be honest, probably destroy). But in the mean time, the girls are happy with the flowers we do have, and daddy gets to feel slightly justified in his laziness. lol, seriously, they Like the weeds … as long as they have flowers.

Keep havin FuN!

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How to Send a Totally Unique Birthday Card .. for Less than the Price of a Store Bought one

Todd — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 21:27:47 +0000

It’s my daughter Haley’s 18th birthday in less than a week. According to her mom, she’s really into Zebras lately. So I made her a card …

Now I could have run down to the store, searched to find a birthday card with some sort of a zebra theme .. paid $3-$5 (if I actually found one) .. then hope I remember to get to the post office before her actual birthday. (I’m getting old, I forget to run those sort of errands sometimes).

But I didn’t do that.

Instead, I simply sat down at the computer, opened up my Pixingo studio, uploaded the zebra picture (which I took during one of my trips to the zoo), and created a totally custom card .. including the inside (which I won’t show you, ’cause it’s private ).

It cost me 75 cents ($1.50 for retail customers) + .46 postage for an 8.5 in x 5.5 in glossy flat card. It was printed in Arizona the same day I hit submit on the design, and is already in the mail on it’s way to Virginia, where Haley lives.

Quicker, easier, more convenient, and less expensive than doing it the “old fashioned way”.

I can’t imagine ever buying a card at the store again.

… lol, unless of course I pull a “dumb Todd” trick, and just forget to make one until it’s too late to mail.

Keep havin Fun!

p.s. I also made a card for my friend Cille (who’s birthday is the same day as Haley’s), but she reads this blog, so I won’t post a picture of that one.

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“Army” Training Sir

Todd — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 01:47:31 +0000

My day today started at 0300. It was dark. It was cold. We had to get out to the land nav course before the sun came up. Once we completed the course in the dark, there were more points to find in the sunlight. Then some HMVVV driving and Cammo net practice.

We were actually finished by noon.

But then I had to go to the dentist for a really fun thing called root scale and planing.

I’m beat.

Time for bed.

Hopefully I’ll have something more exciting to write about tomorrow.

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My Pixingo Business Kit Arrived!

Todd — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 23:52:28 +0000

Although I’ve been a Pixingo customer, sending custom cards for a while now. My Pixingo Business is really just starting, so I figured it was time to order the starter kit, and get with the program.

It arrived in the mail yesterday afternoon. Here’s what came in the box …

First off, I’ve got this handy little planner that should be easy to carry around with me (or at least keep in my truck). I’ll never be able to use the excuse that I don’t have anything with me to show people.

So what’s in this Pixingo business kit?

Well, I got a snazzy Pixingo pen (in case someone wants to fill out an application or something). There’s also a spot to keep a few business cards, some pamphlets, the Lovin Life brochure, and some sample cards.

There were 6 or 7 cards in the sample kit, so I put them in these plastic sleeves. But I’ve still got enough room to add in some of the cards that I’ve designed myself.

And finally the inside of the Lovin Life brochure.

One of the mistakes many direct sales business owners make is trying to explain how things work “in their own words”. With this kit, I (and the people I partner with) can just shut our mouths and turn the page. If someone has a question, they’ll ask.

So who wants me to send them a card?

Seriously, if you head over to my contact form and shoot me your snail mail address (U.S. only, sorry), I can add you to my Pixingo address book. I’ll send you a card right now, plus if you tell me when your birthday is, I’ll also send you a real card in the mail for that day too.

Keep havin FuN!

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