The more I talk to dads in my area the more I find a common trend - dad drives the old clunker to work (sans kids) and mom has the new (kid) car, whether it be the wagon, the SUV or the minivan. I bought mine as a pre-certified used car from a dealership with a warranty on it and even though the warranty has lapsed with little to no use from it I still feel I did a good thing by having it.

The issue now is should I go out and get some type of extended auto warranty or not? This is a question I would love to get feedback on. As a dad, I am all about having warranties and insurance policies, but do most people cover their clunkers or do they bite the bullet and just deal with the consequences?

Depending on what you are paying per year for maintenance and repairs, an extended warranty may be the way to go, especially if there is no room for an upgrading dad’s car in the near future. So as long the policy comes from an A+ rated insurance company and aren’t backed by a Risk Retention Group and it doesn’t eclipse your current maintenance cost (figuring in the offset of the policy itself), it may ease the burden of hanging onto to that dear old clunker of yours another year or so.

   

Recently, I have been included in a Beta-testing group of SocialSpark (SS) which is the new child of IZEA who seem to be in the process of letting go of PayPerPost (PPP), which is their first child. SocialSpark is a different format then PPP system. Sure you can get paid for posting articles about different products or services, but SocialSpark promotes healthy blogger networking and an intriguing cross-pollination between advertisers and bloggers. There are many “carrots” to be won on both sides of the fence.

Carrots meaning, props, positive or constructive comments and of course the ability to build endless “friends” (think MySpace or MyBlogLog). Like eBay and Amazon, it promotes a positive feedback system from the rest of the SocialSpark community to maintain a sense of equilibrium and integrity amongst its members. Sure there will some “bad seeds” but they will probably rise to the top of the pile and get plucked (banned/benched), but I sense this system will work. It’s clear this is their focus, based on their Code of Ethics;

• 100% Audit-able In-Post Disclosure
• 100% Transparency
• 100% Real Opinions
• 100% Search Engine Friendly

And like all massive social networking sites everybody is in it for different reasons. If I can do that and earn a few pennies at the end of the day, I will put them in a piggy bank to help my boys when it’s time for them to go to college. Case in point, this post is earning me five and half bucks, just enough for my son to buy himself a Coke when he’s in college (which will be around 2021). And, if I’m still around to see him drink it, I will consider myself blessed. And if I make a few friends along the way, two thumbs up.

   

If you have a little boy (or girl, actually), here’s an awesome little gift to consider. I mean really what kid wouldn’t love one of these AntWorks Ant Farm filled with mysterious iridescent blue goo that the ants eat and turn into a maze of tunnels. The container has a LED light on the bottom so when you turn it on their whole blue goo world glows with light. It’s pretty clever. An ant farm night light.

Evidently the mysterious goo has everything the ants need to live. The AntWorks gel arrives as a solid. Once you add ants to the gel, then the true fun begins. Watch them dig an endless maze of tunnels. Using the included magnifying glass and extreme zoom lens, you can observe their behavior.

(Via Vat19.Com)

   

My family lives in a neighborhood that was built in the early 1950’s and evidently there were no laws forcing developers to include streetlights in these areas. So over the years, no doubt after much kvetching, the utilities company has retro-fitted a lot of these neighborhoods (not ours, mind you) with streetlights but with minimal coverage. When we initially moved into the neighborhood, I looked into what it would take to get additional streetlights installed by the city (and without giving you the long and sorted story) it is very expensive (something like $3,400 dollars per light and an annual upkeep fee of $100) and there’s a long wait (average three year waiting list).

So I have opted for the other route — lighting up my house and landscape with low cost and energy efficient lights. What I have found is the solar lights can be a hit-or-miss venture depending on the attached panel and battery technology. But what I have found is the LED landscape lights itself is much more efficient compared to halogen.

Halogen technology creates light as a bi-product of heat. This lighting process causes damage to the components of the lights which causes them to “burn-out” very quickly. Additionally, because halogen lights must create heat to produce light they require a lot of energy. A LED lamp uses approximately 90% less energy than a halogen lamp so utility costs will be lower and they last 50 times as long as halogen bulbs. So even if you get a non-solar LED system they will be rated closer to a night light rather than a refrigerator when it comes to how much wattage it is drawing annually.

   

As mentioned recently, we have a third baby on the way and quite honestly, I am just trying to figure out where to put them all. Yes, that’s right - I’m gonna have to start stacking them soon. We live in a recently updated three bedroom + two bath and we are quite happy with it, until family comes to visit.

So I have rekindled my desire to turn our two-car detached garage into a sort of Guest House for visiting family. My plans are to turn it into a multi-functional space with either a half bath or three quarter bath. This should be pretty easy since we had rough plumbing done when we re-did the concrete flooring in the garage. The half-bath is the obvious answer (we can comfortably achieve this even doing a permitted renovation to the garage) or throw one of those nice shower cubicles in the corner of the bathroom and achieve a three quarter bath (by definition a 3/4 bath has a shower stall, a half bath has only a toilet and a full bath has a tub). The one illustrated above comes to us from TrueShopping.Com, they have a beautiful selection of nice doors and shower stalls.

They say it takes a village to raise a child - well we creating our village right now, it seems. This seems altogether worth it since my in-laws help us so much with the babies. And when the conversion is complete they will have their very own backyard retreat.

   

My Father-In-Law has recently retired and I imagine he is going through the expected phases most men go when they retire. Let it be known, the man is and has always been a hard working guy and he deserves a damn enjoyable retirement. He retired after almost thirty years in the Army. For the first month or so the man enjoyed sleeping later, real late. I’m with you there.

Now that he has graduated from that, he has decided to take up golf again and is up early and out on the golf course. And to that I say - of course, head to the course. He’ll get plenty of exercise, make a new set of friends, etc. But like a lot of us who took lessons for something (doesn’t have to be golf - it could be anything) years ago and doesn’t want to waste the money on another primer course, I told him about some online golf lessons that might help him like Two Minute Golf Pro. It’s not like he’s trying to hit a eighty on eighteen, he just wants to get out there, hit the ball, be confident and have a good time.

   

Whether you have teens or if you (as a adult) have ever had a question about where acne comes from or what may or may not cause it the folks at Acne.Com seem to have it covered. Needless to say, as a medical condition, acne seems pretty benign but as psychological factor (as I found in high school) it is devastating especially for teens. Whether your kids has it or you or your wife have questions about it - check out the myths and basics listed on their site to see if they answer your questions and then book that appointment with the dermatologist (which is a good thing to do on an annual basis, anyway).

At the onset of puberty, the body begins to produce hormones called androgens. These “male” hormones are a natural part of development for both boys and girls, but boys tend to produce more of them — and therefore tend to have more severe breakouts. Why? Our faces and bodies are covered with tiny hairs, each one fitting snugly into a hair follicle, sometimes called a pore. Deep within each follicle, oil glands are hard at work producing sebum, which travels up the hair and out onto the surface of your skin. Sebum’s job is to form a protective layer between your skin and the world, keeping it soft and smooth.

But when androgens enter the picture, your oil glands go into overdrive. They produce extra oil, which can clump together with the dead skin cells on the top layer of your skin. When this sticky mixture finds its way into your pores, it acts just like a cork in a bottle — trapping oil and bacteria inside. Unfortunately, your oil glands just don’t know when to stop; they keep producing oil, and the follicle becomes swollen. Your body’s natural defense system, white blood cells, rush to the area to clean up the mess. The result? Red, painful bumps. Yucky black spots. Zits. Blackheads. Pimples. Acne. It has nothing to do with what you eat, or how often you wash your face.” ~ Acne.Com

As for adult acne, it is something that affects more than half of us (25% of adult men have it). There are a number of reasons why - whether it’s genetics (yes, it can run in the family), hormones or bacteria - there is a lot to know about acne and acne treatment. There are also a number of perceived acne imposters to be aware, so find out the facts.

   

Here in West LA a lot of schools do various types of fund raising. There are bake sales, holiday sales and even silent auctions. These events are by no means the exception - the contrary, they are the norm. The funny thing is (it’s actually quite sad), I’m not taking about ivy laced private schools, nor chain-linked lined public schools, I’m talking about your average preschool. The general feeling amongst the parents is - if it offsets our kid’s tuition at the end of the month, great.

One of the more popular fundraisers for high schools is Schoolpop. SchoolPop provides a non-traditional school fund raiser opportunity for institutions of all sizes. By shopping at your favorite stores (Eddie Bauer, Amazon, Walmart , etc.) , you can dedicate a portion of the funds to your school fund raiser programs. It’s basically a cash-back program with dividends going to a school or non-profit organization (NPO) of your choice. It’s a pretty smart idea. They have already contributed more than $200 million to over 30,000 schools and other nonprofits nationwide.

Another fund raising product they have is their SchoolPop Visa card where 1% of each purchase goes to the school or NPO of your choice. Assuming the APR is not too bad, it is a decent way to raise money for your kid’s local school.