Reality Upgrade

This is a great list of sites that offer free university level classes.

Texter is a great little utility program from Lifehacker that lets you define a set of replacement text strings. For example, rather than writing “Please contact me if you have any questions” every time you end an email, you could put a script in Texter where all you have to do is type “ques”, hit the tab key, and Texter writes it for you.

This is especially helpful if you write using html a lot, because you can use Texter to write html tags that you use over and over again.

Get Texter here.

For those of you who use Linux (and soon I will be one of you) Lifehacker has a great package of useful programs. They are customized for Ubuntu, but they probably work for other Linux distributions.

http://lifehacker.com/5590624/lifehacker-pack-for-linux-our-list-of-the-best-linux-downloads

Maybe we haven’t quite made it to the technology of “Beam me up Scotty,” but we do carry around little computers in our pockets. Little computers with GPS pinpointing, wireless internet connectivity, and a computing capacity that would have filled a small warehouse twenty years ago.

But somehow, the software does not quite seem to keep up. I want my phone to sing and dance, dammit!

Well, I should say that the software has not kept up, until now. This great program for Android phones lets you really and truly automate your phone. It lets you customize your phone the way a phone should be freakin’ customized.

Check out a great article on the program here, from Lifehacker, or download the program here:

Keep in mind this is a pay program, but there is a 14 day trial, and it is totally worth the $6.

No, I’m afraid I haven’t come up with a new vampire repellent spell.

Unless by “vampire” you mean “blood-sucking insect” and by “spell” you mean “bugspray”.

The point is, with summer here in full blast everyone is going outside a lot more, and that means a lot more exposure to biting and stinging insects. And that is no fun for anyone.

Luckily, Lifehacker has our collective back. This is a great article about how to keep away the nasty little biters this summer.

Enjoy!

I once had jury duty while running my own electrical contracting business, and I actually had to run to a restaurant and do an emergency repair on their electrical panel during my lunch break. Not fun.

If only I had known that I could have been excused from jury duty simply by explaining that I was the sole proprietor of my business.

If you find yourself in similar situation, here is a great list of ways to get your jury duty moved or rescheduled, from Lifehacker. They got the list from MyTwoDollars.com, but they filtered out the stuff that is somewhat morally questionable.

Enjoy!