Using FaceBook to Manage my Team's Parents

"I have been coaching youth soccer for eight years (which exactly coincides with how long my kids have been playing). It's a great experience in a really fun youth league that promotes fun, fair, and positive soccer. There are several challenges that go along with coaching a youth sports team but none are more significant than keeping the team on schedule. A couple of years ago I switched from just calling the team and their parents to using FaceBook and Twitter updates and not surprisingly, it was very effective. Now it's pretty common for the kids and the parents to have FaceBook accounts and there are ever-increasing ways for us to communicate.

The big shift happened as our homeowner association's exclusive agreement with the cable company (which shall remain nameless) expired giving us the opportunity to research Internet service providers in my area in order to select one that would actually work more often than not (I constantly had to reset my old cable modem). As soon as I was able, I setup my home network to use AT&T as well as took advantage of their mobile package to allow me to virtually always be connected. This made it even easier for me to send updates to the team to make sure they always show up on time for practices and games. It's really convenient and I highly recommend this to other coaches that are struggling with reaching parents via their home or mobile phones."

I Thought Triple Plays Were Only for Baseball

"I'm a huge baseball fan and always have been since I was a young kid admiring the achievements of players like Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Tom Seaver, George Foster, and the rest of the Big Red Machine (Cincinnati Reds). So my vocabulary is full of baseball slang that leaves most people stranded on third when they try to have a conversation with me. So one of the most awesome defensive plays to witness is a triple play and it doesn't really matter how it is pulled off, it's just so rare and exciting for everyone (except the team on offense at the time).

Well I bring this up because I got a call the other day from my friendly Comcast representative and they asked me if I was interested in hearing about their triple play for cable TV, digital phone, and high speed Internet service. Well, they were talking my language finally so of course I said yes. Turns out this has nothing at all to do with baseball but is still pretty much a homerun on my scorecard. Bascially you get all of the services for one low price and on a combined bill, this basically is going to save me around $50/month or $600/year. That's enough to see several baseball games and possibly another spectacular triple play."

Turnkey Corporate Moves Made Simpler

"I work for an oil and gas company and if you are from this industry you know that it is quite common for the company to require you to move in order to keep your job. They have a lot of operations throughout the U.S. and really the whole World. Well, I found out that I was going to be moving in less than a month (my whole family). I have to tell you it was a bit un-nerving. The last time we went through this was about 3 years ago and it was literally a nightmare. We got to the new city and we didn't have power in our company provided home, no TV, no Internet, and basically none of the services that turn a dwelling into a home.

This time around I made sure to quickly get the facts from my company and they were more than happy to provide me with the information I was going to need to get the job done quicker. You see they outsourced the work to a complete turnkey mover and those guys had systems they use to make the move easier. They told me that for electricity they used Power to Choose and for Phone, TV, and Internet providers in my area they use another site. I thought that all sounded pretty legit, but remained cautiously optimistic.

Well, we arrived at our new home in Houston on time and much to my surprise everything was working perfectly. We had AT&T U-Verse for phone, TV, and Internet and then all of the usual stuff was working great from power to water to even our home security system. It was great! Now that is truly a turnkey corporate move!"

High Speed Internet for the Avid Gamer

"I have to say that I love online games, yep I am most definitely a closet ""gamer."" My game of choice is, don't laugh now… Webkinz. Yes, those lovable little stuffed animals that replaced the Beanie Babies as the must-have toy for kids simply have me hooked. You can go on their and play the most ridiculous games that are fun and simple enough that I just don't have to think too much. I get to play, have fun, and then take the webkinz cash (kinz cash) I accumulate and use them to buy furniture and more for my webkinz. I have to say, I have a most impressive collection in my little virtual World.

Now in order to make the most of my Webkinz experience, I had to choose from several good high speed Internet providers in my area, and it wasn't long before I settled in on Comcast. Why? Because with Comcast Xtreme I can get a 100Mbps connection so my gaming experience is lightning quick and never impacted by a slow internet connection. I was sick and tired of my slow AT&T dsl Internet and really needed to make a change and/or find another hobby (which was not going to happen).

Anyway, I am not too proud to admit that my kids got me hooked on Webkinz. I mean, there's no harm to good clean fun and besides it gave me an excuse to get a faster Internet connection which the whole family can benefit from."

The Last Kid on Earth Without FaceBook

"I am fortunate enough to have a junior high age child (she is 12 to be exact) that goes to school in a relatively affluent suburb in Houston, TX. Her life is radically different than I remember my childhood being like, but one thing remains constant and that is some form of peer pressure. Back in the day, kids used to pressure each other into passing notes in class and other ways of communicating including picking up the good ol' landline phone and calling each other up (or worse, yet physically walking to the other kid's house and knocking on the door). Well, I got my daughter a mobile phone because ""every other kid"" in school apparently has one and she was just going to be mortified if she didn't have one as well. So now she sends ridiculous texts back and forth with friends all day long wasting time and never really saying much. It doesn't really bother me because she was happy, that was until a couple of weeks later when she start getting pressured to get on FaceBook.

I tried explaining to her that we didn't have an Internet service that supported FaceBook, but she pretty much could have cared less about that (and/or maybe she figured out I wasn't being 100% honest). We actually do have a great high-speed Internet service that is always on and ready for me to work or for the kids to get their homework done. Anyway, it became clear that she was on to me and that this issue was not going to go away. The reality is that I wasn't sure she was ready for the responsbility of having a FaceBook account. In the end I opted to create a FaceBook account for her that I have the password to, I set the privacy settings, and I made her be my FaceBook friend so I could monitor her activities. Guess what? Just like with the mobile phone she uses FaceBook to send useless and silly messages to her friends but at least she is not the last kid on Earth without a FaceBook account."

I'm No History Buff But Google Is

"So I have three kids at home and each of them go to a different school. One is in high school, one is in junior high, and the other is in elementary school. This makes life interesting in many ways but none are more challenging than helping each of them with their homework. When my oldest was in junior high, one thing became abundantly clear to me as I was helping her with her history homework. I was going to need the ability to cheat at will very soon because short of the date of the Civil War, the Great Depression, and other simple things… I just couldn't remember any more.

In order to head this off, I made sure to setup a wireless network at the house which would easily allow me to connect my notebook and my mobile to the Internet. This way as the questions came up from my daughter I seemingly had all the answers (or so she thought). I became quite good at frequently ""checking my email"" and using my mobile to snag facts off of Google thanks to the help of the local ISP in my area.

If you have kids in school and either want to make it easier for them to get the answers and/or you want to try and pull a fast one on them (believe me it doesn't last too long and they figure it out). You can go to this site: wireless networking setup to get more information on how to WiFi enable your home. In the end, no matter who is looking it up you almost certainly can find the answer nowadays on Google."

Online Classes Require me to Be Online

"One thing that should be pretty self explanatory is that if you are looking to go to school online, you are going to need to make sure you have an excellent Internet connection. What does that exactly mean? Well you need to select a broadband partner that can provide at least a 1.5Mbps upload and download to your school computer. This will give you the ability to participate easily in lectures, watch streaming instructional videos, video chat, and other applications that are very common for online degree programs.

So if you are asking your self ""Which Internet providers in my area offer a 1.5Mbps connection""? You just need to use one of the various online comparison sites that help you put all ISP's into perspective so you understand the costs thoroughly and can make sure you don't overpay to get services you just don't need. It's really not hard to find a provider in most areas of the country that will meet the minimum standards.

If you aren't sure whether or not your provider is already adequate then you can use the following Internet speed test to see whether or not you need to make any changes at all to your ISP. After you have secured the right Internet access you are ready to apply and begin your online degree program. Just remember to take care of it in advance because there is no point of going forward if you don't have high-speed since online classes do actually require you to be online."

To Work From Home or Not?

"When I started working about 15 years ago, it was pretty much impossible for me to be able to work from home at anywhere near the level of productivity that I could have in the office. Mainly because I needed access to files and things that were simply cumbersome at best to carry back and forth with me every day. I actually just got tired of trying and flat out just gave up. Then most of my work shifted from manual paper shuffling to all being on my computer. All of sudden some of my coworkers started disappearing by getting the authorization to work from home over VPN (the company virtual private network). Well, naturally I wanted to find out what was involved.

The first thing that I needed to do was get off of my old dial up Internet provider and find some high-speed internet providers in my area. I found them using a review site that made it easy to compare the various providers side-by-side to make sure they would all work and that I could easily compare the cost of each service. I settled down on AT&T since it was a name I knew and trusted and I simply had to make sure that I could rely on my Internet at home to always be functional in order to be able to work from home consistently.

Next I followed tips from various sites about how to setup VPN at home. Of course I also had to work with the tech department at work to get a security key and to get my work notebook authorized and setup to use our work VPN. All-in-all there were quite a few steps involved but now that I am setup I can tell you that the question of whether to work from home or not, is super easy to answer… YES, WORK FROM HOME!"

How this Mom Reduced Her Utility Bills

"I was reading somewhere about the concept of a utility audit and I really didn't think too much of it at first before I quickly realized that I am spending around $500/month for all of my utilities or about $6,000/year. This is actually a meaningful amount of money to me. So I decided that it did make sense for me to dig in and see if I can figure out if there was a reasonable way for me to cut those costs without giving up any significant services that are important either to myself or my family.

I decided to first review my electricity choices (I live in Austin, TX where power is deregulated). There is a website called power to choose that allowed me to see the price per kilowatt hour of my provider and compare it to a few others. I found that I could save over $50/month just by switching to a cheaper electricity provider so I did. Next, I decided to take a look at the various Internet Service Providers to see whether cable Internet, dsl Internet, or satellite Internet service was right for me. What I found was that by bundling my phone, TV, and Internet I could save another $50/month with no strings attached (no long-term contracts)

So in the matter of hours I managed to save my family $1200/year which is not too shabby at all! The best part is, my family won't even notice the difference as they are getting the exact same services, they just simply costs less."

PANIC Strikes: I Moved and Totally Forgot my Cable and Internet Services!

"I have to say that I absolutely hate moving into a new home. There is just so much that needs to be taken care of that inevitably I just always forget something. So you must know by how I started this article that indeed I recently moved... I finally graduated from my small apartment into my first (almost equally small) home. When I got there, I had managed to get a couple of things right. My power was on and I had running water, but I went to plug in my TV and quickly realized that I forgot to call the cable company. So I thought I would just jump online and check out what is happening until I remembered that I used to use the WiFi at my old apartment and well, I also didn't setup ANY Internet service.

Fortunately, there was a Starbucks by the new house so I decided to go there grab a latte, watch some TV, and then of course order the utilities I forgot online. I tackled TV first as I was dreading having to come to Starbucks to watch my favorite shows and I quickly found that Comcast, DIRECTV, and DISH Network were all available at my house. So I compared the TV Providers using this tool. Next I needed to find the Internet service providers in my area which I came across a great site that told me Comcast, AT&T, and WildBlue were available at my house.

Well, before I had finished my first latte, I had ordered my Internet and TV serivce and already knew how long I was going to be a regular at Starbucks for (until they could complete the install). Next time, I'll go online BEFORE I move and at least remember my TV and Internet although no doubt I'll forget something else. I also thought I'd write this article in hopes of helping anyone else that is moving to remember ALL of their utilities.
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