My entire family was just about climbing the walls because we had no Internet access for so long!  I think I’ll be checking out the wildblue satellite internet services to see what their rates are.  I don’t want to be without Internet again!  I can’t believe how dependent my family has become on it for so many functions – entertainment, communications, paying bills, shopping…..  We depend on it so much!

Now that the Internet has come back up on line, the entire family has parked themselves in front of their respective computers.  Watching shows, checking their emails, playing games.  I have to make sure that the bills I needed to pay got paid!  I hope I didn’t miss any deadlines!

Using that website I was able to get Susan an estimate on what it should cost to get her car fixed, and where the repair shops are located near her.  I think that’s a great website to use – especially if you are not someone who is extremely savvy when it comes to car repairs.  It is good to know in advance how much something should cost so if you end up going someplace that tells you it is going to cost a lot more than that you can know that they are trying to rip you off and just take your business elsewhere.

I just wish that there were more books available on line for free - there have been many times that I needed to do a research paper for college and had to physically find the book to check out from a library for the paper, and it would have been so much easier for me to access it online because I lived in a very remote location and had to drive long distances to get to the library!

When I moved back into the southern area where I live now, I found that I was exposed to a lot of people who spoke Spanish and some of the Spanish I had learned in school started to slowly come back.  Enough so that I could act as a translator on a small scale if I needed to communicate with an ESL student on my bus.  There have been times, though, that I couldn’t figure out a translation to fit the need, so I have been musing over the options to me at this time.  I really don’t want to take a class; I’m tired of studying!

I’ve been lucky and found a couple of places that offer online translation services, and even found some that offer free translation; some are so quick and easy that you can enter the phrase in one language and it will convert it to the other language.  But I’ve also found some interesting services where translations can be arranged for large documents.  I think it sounds like a fun job, being a professional translator!   It sure makes me wish that when I was in school that the schools had offered more than just French and Spanish!

She told me that she found a website for Ovation Credit and was thinking about using them to help her with it, but when she realized that they charge a monthly fee she decided to try to get my help for free instead.  I told her that the first step is to get copies of her credit reports, which she can get for free if she has been turned down for a loan.  She said she doesn’t know how to even do that!  So next weekend she is going to come over for a couple of hours and I’ll sit down with her and my computer and show her how to get free copies of her credit reports and we’ll start from there.

I think that Online Trading would be a better solution for us because we would be able to take the time to do the research and make decisions without feeling the pressure of an agent right there making us nervous.  I can remember when I first bought stocks I wanted to invest in Disney and my stock broker tried to talk me out of buying it, telling me it wasn’t a good investment.  Well, that stock has done very well and split several times since then and I have to say that my stock broker is no longer trying to talk me out of buying anything!

I think I was born way too early!  Students have so many advantages that I didn’t get!  I would have been thrilled to be able to go online and get the Statistics Homework Answer to a problem that I was struggling with, or to get a copy of someone else’s Statistics Lecture Notes for a class that I missed.  It would have made life a lot less stressful back in that work-filled summer!  I didn’t even have time to go outside and weed my flower garden once that summer!  The biggest lesson that I took away with me from that course was to never take on a summer session again!

Today my driver was telling me that she thought that her oldest son was going to need help with algebra, now that he is entering fifth grade.  She lives way out in the countryside, on a big horse farm.  I asked her if she had access to the Internet, because nowadays she could find   for her kids. an online algebra tutor would be a great idea for her because then they can do the tutoring at their own convenience.

So I did some price comparison between the brands. And I bought one. And she is absolutely right – I love it! It does fit into my purse and I take it with me almost everywhere I go So now I find myself able to get online and check my email and do my Internet shopping from just about everywhere I go. And it is amazing how many people come up to me and ask me what it is and where I got it and how much I like it. It’s a great conversation starter!