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Isn’t it awesome how you can earn points that will take $$$ off of your fuel prices by doing what you are already going to do? Since I commute back and forth, I tend to need tanks of gas over the month and can’t really take full advantage of the Kroger Plan, but it never fails that we will get a $1.00 off per gallon each month. How does one get these valuable points towards money off your gas? Let me list the ways…
First and foremost, if you have prescriptions, you’ll get 50 points for every script you have filled. Next, you’ll get 1 point for every $1 you spend in the store and 2 points for every gift card you purchase. If you watch the papers and digital coupons, you’ll also see specials that will give you bonuses to add to your allotment for the month. One example is fuel point weekends where you get 2 points for every dollar spent.
Some things to remember, you cannot join points from month to month. In other words, what you get for one month is good for next month but doesn’t combine with points being earned that month. They will also expire after next month, so make sure you use them! One last limitation that you need to be aware of is that it’s only good for 35 gallons of gas. This is important as it means that you are generally able to fill up two vehicles meaning you can save a maximum of $35.
My wife and I do our best to take advantage as much as possible, her on one side of the pumps, me on the other. I’d love to always have an empty tank, but can’t always end up that way. Today was one of those days, I had 2/3 of a tank of gas and could only tank limited advantage of this perk. As seen by the receipt, I still saved $23 today so I’m not complaining too much!
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Ancestry / Blog / DNA / Genealogy / Genetic Testing / Ramblins / ThoughtsJanuary 20, 2019
2 Min ReadIt’s funny that my whole life I knew part of where I came from and then the rest was pretty much made up lies, stories or just something to make everyone feel better. The great thing about DNA is that it does not lie. Your genetics will tell your story and if enough people care to find out, you’ll eventually connect the dots. Using Y-DNA testing, I found my paternal line above my father…. Turners. I wrote a bit about this earlier in the year, so if you want a few more details, you’ll need to take a look there. My maternal line is a bit more difficult to find, but slowly and surely I am making progress.
As seen by my featured image, I am roughly 75 percent caucasian to 25 percent african (some trace parts aren’t shown), with part of the caucasian coming
from my maternal line’s mother, McCoys. It’s the paternal side that I am looking at now, and it has definitely been difficult to find much out about it. Since being on Ancestry, I have spoken with some fourth cousins that don’t have enough of their own history to help and most recently have a second cousin match. This latter match I believe was adopted, perhaps not, but just my guess on the matter. It’s a younger match so I’ll wait for contact.It’s odd when you get to a certain point that you are basically profiling everyone that is on your matches for certain characteristics. Other services have made it a bit easier to find persons of a certain ethnicity. On Ancestry, you’re basically relying on photos of people and migration groups they may belong to. The latter is not very helpful at times as many people, not just people of color, followed some of the same migration routes. There are other tools, some I’ll explore further shortly, but hopefully this is the year that I get the answers I am seeking.
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What did I do before Kroger came up with the most wonderful idea ever? How did I ever get groceries before the ClickList Service, soon to be rebranded Kroger PickUp, was introduced? I remember the old days… aimlessly wandering around the store trying to figure out what I wanted. Looking at the coupons in the app, then looking for the grocery item in question. No more since this service was introduced!
What is it exactly? It’s a service that allows a person to use the Kroger app or simply go online and choose your groceries. Before any of this happens, you must first have an account, easily remedied by registering online. Once this is done, you are prompted to select a time period that you’d like to receive your groceries. If you plan ahead, actually wanting your groceries the next day, you’ll have a chance to make edits to your order before midnight. After midnight, your order is locked in and your card will be charged.
For me, the best thing feature I have found of the service is when you are going through coupons. I recommend visiting this section, look through the coupons, and click on the ones that interest you. From here, it will show you grocery items that the coupon applies to. I do this on every trip and in the end, the cart is full of items that I know will work with my coupons. If you have paper coupons, you can go to the cart and search items that way as well. In the end, it’s a good process to go through if you want coupons and to save money.
As with every service, there are some notable issues.
- For instance, if something is not in stock, they can substitute if you mark to allow substitutions — otherwise, you don’t get the item. When the sub the item, they also price match it to the item you would have had. It’s a good compromise and sometimes you’ll end up with more expensive items, other times you get the Kroger brand. When these items are subbed, it can also affect the coupons you have selected. I tend to mark on the notes of mine which ones use coupons so that I can tell in the end what has happened. If I mention this to the baggers, they’ve always went in and applied the coupons — it just takes time.
- There is a $4.95 fee involved to use this service, which in my eyes is more than worth it. You can get this fee waived by looking at special ClickList offers that allow you to get the fee waived by buying certain items, number of item or even dollars of some brand. My guess is these sponsors are paying your fee. If you need the items (or don’t), pretend like your putting your $4.95 into the grocery bill.
- The app and online website also has issues sometimes when you are looking through coupons as it will default to a set number, not letting you look through all of the available coupons. This is pretty annoying as you might have to exit and go back in. It doesn’t lose where you were, but it’s still more time.
- One other issue is that if you look through the ad, you can only add to the shopping list but not directly to the cart. How hard would this be to make a change that skips a step?
In the end, I can’t imagine my life without this service. It has saved me time nine times out of ten. The baggers have been courteous and thoughtful.
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So, if you’re like me and you have to support a wide variety of software, you inevitably will run into something you begin to hate. For me, this is Sage, i.e. Peachtree. In our most recent update to v2019, everything worked fine for awhile… then not so much. I typically try not to panic as you can usually find what you are looking for, the only issue is that it usually takes trying several things first. In this case, this is the error message popping up:
Finally, after looking around the Internet, I found a fix that worked. The steps go as follows:
- Ensure that Sage 50 is closed on any machines
- Copy the following command line to Notepad: sc create “Sage 50 Smart Posting 2019” start= auto binPath= “C:Program FilesSage50SmartPostingService2019.exe” DisplayName= “Sage 50 SmartPosting 2019”
- In Notepad, update the binPath= to match your program path exactly
YOU NEED TO LOOK FOR THIS, CHECK YOUR SHORTCUT FOR THE PATH IF NEEDED! - If using a different Release, then change the year 2019 in all three places to the correct Release Year
- Click Start, Run
- Type cmd in the Open field
- Click OK
- Paste the updated command line you created in step 3 into the DOS prompt window and hit enter
- IF all goes well, you’ll see SUCCESS appear on the screen…
IF NOT, CHECK YOUR PATH! - Next, Click Start, Run
- Type services.msc
- Click OK
- In the list, right-click on the newly installed Sage 50 SmartPosting 20XX and click Start
- Verify that SmartPosting service is now running by starting Sage
Hopefully it goes well for you…
If not, don’t expect support to help much.
Phone calls take hours, they don’t call back, and Live chat is minimal at best.
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One of the great things of being in the education field is that once you get your Master’s degree, the other industry certifications aren’t really necessary to continue moving forward in your career. It’s easier many times to either add another degree or certificate, take more classes or even just attend conferences to gain the skills you need or want. The problem with this many times is that we don’t have an idea what the exams look like exactly as we aren’t necessarily taking them.
Enter the CompTIA Academic Program. Once your school joins the academy (at no cost!), once your students take a certain number of exams, you will gain access to free exams for your professors. The goal is to have more professors have access to the exams so you not only know what you should be teaching for, but also how better to prepare your students. What’s even better, your students get a heavily discounted exam rate. You can get the current rates for students at your school here: Academic Store
So, in the name of helping my students, I have signed up to take my first certification is more than 15 years later this month…. here’s to seeing what to expect!
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I commute three and a half hours back and forth to work during the Fall and Spring semesters. People think I am crazy, sometimes I believe them. I had a student ask me during the first day of class why do I do that? Wouldn’t it be easier working from where you live or doing something different? My quick answer… and one that I truly believe, is that I truly love doing what I do. I enjoy teaching. I was once told that if you do what you enjoy doing, you’ll never work a day in your life. I hold this to be true. HOWEVER, this commute makes sure that I know I am working.
You see, the older I get, the more I feel this drive. Seven hours in a car for a day is a lot. The day after my drive, I feel it in my hips, my legs, my arms, my eyes and everywhere else for that matter. I call the next day a recovery day because it doesn’t’ truly feel like I get anything done until some time after noon at the very earliest, and even then it still hurts. Yet, I still can’t see myself doing anything different.
It’s true that I could do something different, go back “into industry” and work with computers in some other way. If I were to get a job closer to home, I’d still end up driving quite a bit, just instead of all in two days, it would take five days for the same 14-15 hours of drive time. Unfortunately, my heart just isn’t in it. I still do work on the side, I keep my skill set current; but going back to punching a 9-5 time clock…. I don’t think I could do it. I don’t get the satisfaction of seeing the next generation smile when they finally get it. I don’t have people telling me that they’re Team Professor Brown. These moments help remind me why I do what I do.
So, tomorrow, or actually in a few hours, I get to hit the long road with Audible playing “Storm World” by B. V. Larson. I’ll make some phone calls, make my stops and have office hours when I finally get to where I’m going.
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I always love the first day of classes! It’s a time where everyone is on a level playing field, everyone is prepared and ready to begin the semester, high hopes are everywhere and I get to see previous students! What more could someone ask for? Today, was everything I wanted it to be. I’m teaching ten classes this semester, of which, three are in person. The first two are security classes and the last was a Linux II course, each of them a favorite to teach.
With new students, it is always interesting as you don’t know them, and they don’t know you. I give a spiel of who I am and why I do what I do, they often question my motives of teaching… I love it is why I do it, but they can’t understand how a person could drive as far as I do or give up as much money as I did before. For me, it simply comes down to doing something I love.
Interesting fact I learned today… a certain student was stating how hard a class was and that he was not allowed to finish a project last semester, I wasn’t fair, blah, blah, blah… (For the record, the class new of the final project for four weeks, they were reminded that when the deadline passed the link would
disappear, the student didn’t believe I would do it…. I did.) The group of students in class telling me of this event, all said, “Yeah, he didn’t know that we were Team Professor Brown! We love him and know you are lying because we got the same messages you did!”It made my heart happy to hear I have a Team!
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Blog / Business / Lifestyle / Ramblins / Reviews / Technology / Thoughts2 Min ReadDuring the Christmas season, Hulu ran a special where a person could get Hulu with commercials for $1.00/month. Even though I had used Hulu before, in its infancy, I figured it was time to give it another go. Afterall, my cable bill is now approaching $200/month including Internet. Personally, if I had 10 channels, I would be more than happy as everything my wife and I watch can be found on those 10 channels — especially if I can watch them whenever I want to.
My thoughts so far? The picture is already much better than what I get from Spectrum. The audio is comparable at the very least and in some instances, even better! It’s a bit getting used to the My Stuff area, but so far it has done a good job of collecting what I want to find.
I’m used to using a DVR and having everything in a folder but ordered by Most Recent. Truthfully, I’ve not spent a lot of time to see if there is a way to set this or not. In any case, I don’t see any benefit of cable over Hulu or even some of the others I have seen mentioned, except for Sports.
As long as I can see the Kentucky Wildcats play, I should be okay. I don’t watch them Live now, so it shouldn’t really matter. I’ll spend some time trying to find the options for this, and then I’ll make a choice. Another key will be if Jacque can find what she wants to watch as well.
Want to give it a try? Here’s a referral link that you can use: Hulu Referral Link
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Today was another adventure using the Ninja Air Fryer. Instead of making homemade fries, it was time to take some Ore Ida frozen tots and fries and give it a try. Initial thoughts? Success! The fries and tots were both crispy and done without the use of any oil at all. I was actually impressed with the flavor and taste of what appeared to be restaurant-quality.
As a quick note, these were cooked at 390 for 20 minutes with the tots on the extension and the fries on the crisper plate. Once done, they were switched for 10 more minutes to get the extra crispiness wanted. Salt was added when the fries were done. -
Whether you are making a Po’ Boy or just looking for a nice dippin’ sauce, you’ll find just the right amount of heat in this creamy sauce. I found a recipe over on Simple Recipes that had the makings of a good sauce, but needed to change it up a bit for my own taste. It goes as follows:
- 1/4 cup mustard
- 1 1/4 cups mayo with olive oil
- 1/4 cup horseradish
- 1/4 cup pickle juice
- Tabasco hot sauce to taste, for me 7-8 shakes
- 1 large garlic clove, minced and smashed
- 2 tablespoons paprika, I use smoked
- 3 tablespoons Cajun seasoning
For this sauce, make sure to mix it well and let it rest awhile. Make it the day before and you’ll truly have something you’ll love tomorrow!
