I had some great experiences shopping this year before and after the holidays. Now, I am still not sure where there is a local TJ Maxx by me. However, I did some shopping at the one in Wisconsin by my family after Christmas. It is was just liked I remembered — great items for low prices. With the economy the way it is, we all need to start shopping at places like this. You get the same quality items — just at a way better price!
Now, the one of the best shopping experiences I had this holiday season was at Marshalls. We had a holiday party to go to on December 20th. Now, I personally hate shopping in the month of December, because well, it sucks. However, my wonderful little girl outgrew her Christmas dress! It fit at Thansgiving, and it looked like she grew 2 inches from then! Instead of panicking, Madison and I headed over to Marshalls. Now, this was high holiday shopping time, and I was impressed. They had a great selection of kids clothes that were marked, so it was super easy to find what we needed. The fitting rooms were clean and large enough for me to go in the room with Madison. On the way to the fitting room, I found shoes. I was able to try on about 20 different pairs that I liked. I loved that they had the little foot stockings at the end of each aisle for you to use when you forgot to bring socks. Being the weekend before Christmas, I was seriously concerned about checkout. However, they had a great system going and every register was open. (Nothing irritates me more when you go to a store that is really busy and they only have one or two registers open, and they don’t open any more). We had a great experience on Marshalls, and I will definitely be going there for more presents and items for my kids.
Remember that Prius we went on the waiting list for back in July? Well, we had one false start about 3 weeks ago when they told us our car was in. However, when we got there, it was the wrong car completely! Needless to say, we were not happy campers. However, there really wasn’t much we could do besides complain. Well, we got a phone call today (after we noticed the missing mailbox — see post below), and guess what they said? No, it wasn’t for discount furniture. Our new car was in! I was still a little nervous that it was going to be the wrong one again. However, it was the right one! Though things weren’t as smooth as it seemed. The car actually came in yesterday, but our sales guy doesn’t work on Fridays. When they logged the car into the system, they actually mixed up our car with another blue Prius that came in today. Now, our sales guy called and said it was here quite early this morning. I was out and had to come back home. We then fed the kids breakfast, and took them over to Grandma’s house. In the meantime, the dealership was looking for our missing car. From the sounds of things, they had found it shortly before we got there. I can only imagine how bad our salesguy was freaking out. All in all though – we got the car we wanted with the package we wanted. We are happy campers. It was too darn cold to take pictures today, so hopefully I will get a chance to get it up tomorrow.
Anyone who follows me on twitter knows I get a new cell phone last week. First, I twitter that I missed the UPS truck on Thursday. They wouldn’t come back and deliver, so I was disappointed. Then the phone came on Friday, and I couldn’t figure out how to get the back off to put the battery in. Then, due to some glitch in their system, I couldn’t activate my phone for 24 hours. After all that, I was so ready not to like my new phone.
Instead, I really love it. I have learned how to text message now (yes, I never knew how before). I can check my email, surf the web, and even listen to the radio with my phone. I can even watch Live TV! It also takes pictures and videos. Granted, I haven’t learned how to use all these features yet. However, I plan on learning! This is one cool phone. I haven’t need a cell signal booster yet either. My favorite was that when we went to Navy pier on Sunday, it gave us voice directions. It told us what streets to turn on, and I was even able to see the traffic report! I could see on each expressway how fast everyone was going. I thought that was pretty cool. I will probably end up writing a review for the Instinct over at Lisa Reviews after I’ve had it longer than a week, but I have to admit, this is one cool phone.
I have been writing a lot about Dragon NaturallySpeaking Software lately. I absolutely love how it saves me time writing posts. If you see the post before this one, it is almost 700 words. I used the software and with editing (mainly because I decided to reword things), it took less than 10 minutes. This software is a bloggers dream. Life is so much easier when I can write a 700 word post in the little bit of time I catch here and there during the day. The best thing is that I am not the only one who thinks so:
Drew of the BenSpark has put together a great little video demonstrating Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Drew has been blogging for quite some time and he might just be one of the best mobile bloggers that I know. He is probably more famous for his picture a day work as he is an excellent photographer. But I can’t help be amazed at how much content he creates and the high level of quality in that content.
He’s definitely a blogger that employs best practices when he finds them. And based on this video, it looks like he might see some potential in Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Now I am not trying to put an endorsement in Drew’s mouth. Time will tell, but I do think he is off to an excellent start.
You’ll notice in his video, that the sound quality of his video is excellent. That’s actually an important aspect for Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I don’t mean that you need good video quality or sound quality in a video to make Dragon NaturallySpeaking work. However you do need a good microphone, and it should be a noise canceling microphone at that. The better the sound quality, and the better able your microphone is to remove other background noises, the better your system will be able to recognize the words that you say as fast as you say them and transcribe them accurately.
Now Dragon NaturallySpeaking comes with a noise cancellation microphone that works very well when you buy it out of the box. Drew is working with a download version that does not come with a microphone, and so he had to supply his own.
As I write this article, I am using a wireless headset microphone from Logitech. I’ve been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking for almost two years now, but I’ve just recently untethered myself from Dragon NaturallySpeaking and started using a wireless headset microphone with noise cancellation capabilities. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 does have the capability of working with Bluetooth wireless microphones, but my particular microphone runs on 2.4 GHz wireless technology. Now if you live in a household or work in an office environment where there are a number of systems or phones or microwaves, you may experience some interference with this particular headset. In that case, you will probably be better served with either a Bluetooth headset or a headset that is capable of being plugged directly into your computer through the microphone plug or through USB. I don’t have that issue, and so I do get excellent quality with little to no interference at all.
So if you take an interest in Dragon NaturallySpeaking and want to try it for yourself, I highly recommend that you get a boxed version of the software which you can order from Nuance online. You can even get a good deal on a Bluetooth wireless headset and a bundled option from Nuance. If you’re looking for entry level pricing, you can start using the software and get a headset microphone for as little as $99.
To put that in context, I’ve taken three typing classes over the years to boost my typing speed and spent essentially three semesters practicing at typing. It wasn’t the only thing that I studied, but I spent a lot of time building up my typing skill. With Dragon NaturallySpeaking, you can invest $99, invest an hour installing the software (I’m being very conservative with that time estimate) and as little as 10 minutes training the software to recognize your voice before you can be off and running typing at 150 words per minute!
That is pretty amazing, and well worth the value of $99. Not to mention if you spend a little extra and get a wireless headset microphone, you can pace around your room or your office, you can exercise, or do a number of different things other than sit at a computer desk staring at your computer all day long. $99 basically gives you your freedom,and who wouldn’t want to type at 150 WPM for $99?
Best regards,
Brett Bumeter
www.softduit.com
My name is Brett Bumeter, and I wrote the article above and 4 1/2 minutes. The article is about 659 words long, and that translates into 144 words per minute. Add in two minutes for editing, and that’s still 100 words per minute!
For any of you who I normally drop Entrecards on, I missed you all yesterday with all my blogs. The first time I attempted to drop, the entire system was down. When I tried to do it last night, I messed up big time.
During the day yesterday, I had downloaded a Windows Update. All day long, it kept wanting me to reboot which I did not want to do. I went grocery shopping last night, and while I was gone, my laptop rebooted itself. When it did that, it installed the updates. I think it installed Service Pack 1 for Vista. No biggy, I thought. Boy was I wrong.
The updates took over an hour to install which was the time I needed to drop my cards. Trust me, a lot of swearing was going on here. The crazy thing is that I think my laptop is slower now. Aren’t updates suppose to make it faster? Needless to say, I apologize to anyone I missed dropping on yesterday.
$99 basically gives you your freedom,and who wouldn’t want to ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=4891b263-66b3-4ec1-9609-5ceadf3a7df7)
