Back Again!

Well, after a week's stint cleaning out my parent's house in preparation for a sale, I have returned to the mountain. If that isn't thrilling, I don't know what is! My only comment on cleaning - give some thought to your future heirs on what really has meaning or might have meaning in the future for others and toss the rest of the stuff. Does it make sense to save notecards for 50 years? I don't think so, unless there are good letters included inside of them. I've learned a lot from this little experience and it has renewed my resolve to dump all the useless stuff I have - Ebay, here I come! :)

News Aggegrators
I keep coming back to this topic, because I think for many readers they are still unaware of the merits of this type of news browsing for the Net. Here's a nice tutorial that explains it in simple fashion and allows you to register and have your own free web-based aggregator (seems like they could have come up with a more user-friendly word, other than "aggregator". That word would spook anyone). It also mentions pc-based aggregators so that you can take your news with you and read it offline like on a laptop or tablet pc. I use FeedDemon on my Desktop which I really like, but there are others as well. One other nice feature of news aggregators is that once you have your list of feeds, you can export them via an OPML file (who cares what it means?) to another user and then they have a nice set of ready made feeds. (OPML - Outline Processor Markup Language (XML-based format for exchange of outline-structured information - now aren't you sorry you asked?)

Change for a Million?
Did you hear about the woman in Covington, Georgia, who went into Walmart and purchased some $1600 worth of merchandise and then presented a forged million dollar bill to pay for it? Think someone should have told this poor soul that there is not such thing as a million dollar bill. Geez, I wonder if she contemplated how they were going to give her change for this large of a bill, anyway? Takes all kinds - but hey, if you want to make the news, not a bad way to do it. Will be interesting to see what her sentence is.

Family Genealogy
Have members of your family flung out across the country or globe? Trying to find a way for everyone to stay in touch? You might want to check out www.myfamily.com . I've been using this for about 3 years now and is an excellent site for sharing photos, news, family trees, files and much more. Of course, it may take some cajoling to get your family members to become active, especially if they are not Internet junkies, but if you can get them to become active, there's a lot of good that can come from it.

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Word of the Day
Lagniappe n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi.
A small gift presented by a storeowner to a customer with the customer's purchase.
An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called boot. Broadly, something given or obtained gratuitously It could be an additional doughnut (as in baker's dozen), a free one for the road drink, an unanticipated tip for someone who provides a special service or possible a complimentary dessert for a regular customer. REGIONAL NOTE Lagniappe derives from New World Spanish la ñapa, “the gift,” and ultimately from Quechua yapay, “to give more.” The word came into the rich Creole dialect mixture of New Orleans and there acquired a French spelling. It is still used in the Gulf states, especially southern Louisiana, to denote a little bonus that a friendly shopkeeper might add to a purchase. By extension, it may mean “an extra or unexpected gift or benefit.” Pronounced like "len-yep". Usage example - "Two lagniappe seminars also are offered this spring, free to anyone enrolled in at least one of the other classes"