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September 27, 2008

Honing my parenting skills

At the beginning of the year, I didn't know what I was going to do. I had a daughter who was about 30 lbs overweight and was getting depressed frustrated at the inability to take the pounds off no matter what advice I followed about nutrition for kids or exercise programs. I was beginning to think that I was doing something wrong, even though everyone on her father's side of the family is obese, this child wasn't being exposed to them, and still she was gaining weight like them. She doesn't realize the genetics involved since she has not seen her biological father since she was about 10 months old, but I do. People can say anything they want about genetics, but this child is overweight genetically and I really didn't know where to turn. Then I accessed a website on parenting skills and learned about some summer kids camps just for overweight teenagers. I hated the idea of sending her to a fat camp, but I didn't really know what else to do. I knew as a parent that I needed to do something to help her, and I didn't think that telling her that she was genetically predisposed to being fat was the answer, that would just give her an excuse to stop trying and that was definitely not what I wanted to accomplish. Anyway, I took a leap of faith and decided to give it a shot. It was an eight week program and I was a little bit hesitant to send her away for that long, but I did it anyway. She hemmed and hawed, she didn't want to go to fat camp, but I told her it would be best if she did this and tried to make some life changes. Well, it worked. She learned a lot about herself, lost 20lbs this summer and has been working to keep it off. She is more physically fit than I have ever seen her be in her whole life. She walks to school, races around with her brothers and walks on the tread mill while watching her favorite TV programs in the evenings. I am so proud of her and parents if you have any doubts about sending your kids to a weight loss summer camp, don't it is the best thing that you can do to help them change their lives.

Posted by juliusp at 03:30 PM | Comments (0)

Affordable Texas health insurance

So many people struggle with their health insurance and need to find more affordable health insurance to meet their family's needs. There are many ways of doing this, for instance did you realize that there are insurance sites available by state listing good insurance plans at reasonable rates. For instance if you were to go onto google and type in Pennsylvania health insurance or Texas health insurance you can find out more of what insurance packages are available through your state? So let's say that you live in Florida, just as an example you go online and type in Florida health insurance, and there are many companies that will come up that offer insurance just to the residents in your state, and some of the sites you will find are even the state run ones. It is helpful to know to look by state when shopping around for health insurance. Some of these companies offer really good deals, and it is a good thing to try instead of just trying the insurance companies that you already are aware of like State Farm and Allstate, they count on the name recognition, but do not always offer the best deals to regular people. Also, if you are shopping around for health insurance, keep in mind what your needs are for coverage, sometimes things like a higher deductible can save you some money and you may be one of those people who never really go to the doctor and just want insurance coverage for emergencies. In this case, a higher deductible may be just what you are looking for. Some insurance companies charge your insurance based on the number of people in your family, but some don't. So if you have a larger than normal family it may be more affordable to find a company that charges a flat family rate. Sometimes by doing this you can save a lot of money and only pay the same premium for a family of 6 that a family of 4 is paying, so this is another thought to keep in mind. Also, many states are offering some affordable insurance programs for people in the working class who are not offered insurance benefits from their employers. This is another thing to think about when you are looking into health insurance in your state.

If you shop around, you can get reasonable health insurance so it is definitely worth your while to look around until you find a policy that you can afford.

Posted by juliusp at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)

Using free teleconference services

I just came across the most incredible free conferencing service available on the web. The company is called Rondee and they provide you with a free conference call service that is by far the best thing I have ever experienced. I know that you are probably thinking to yourself, I can get three way calling or conference calling on my phone already. Well, this service is so much more amazing, this is like the mega free teleconference service and that is right let me state again that it is FREE. Not only that but you can have a conference call of up to 100 people and you can schedule a time and date for it, so you can plan it a week in advance with plenty of time to let everybody know before the call date.

Well, I will be honest with you, I was a little skeptical that it was going to be all it said that it was, so I decided that it would be a great way to get a group of students together about the volunteer club that we have been wanting to start on campus. I set up a time and date on Rondee, which was a very simple process and then I e-mailed and text messaged everyone with the info about the conference call meeting that we were going to have. At first I was a little bit concerned that having that many people on the phone at once was going to be difficult, but quite honestly we ran the it very similar to a meeting and we had 22 people join in on the conference call. It was a great way to get everyone together and brainstorm ideas. Just because we are all on the same campus, it is still difficult to coordinate schedules and find a convenient time and place for everyone to meet. This way we even had 2 people who were on their breaks from work, one girl who was home for her Mom's birthday, and at least 3 students who were admittedly at home in their pajamas. What a great way to get everyone to connect and without having to inconvenience anyone! Our conference call lasted about 25 minutes and I was really surprised at how much we were able to accomplish. The clarity of the call was amazing and I assure you that this conference call service is going to become the new wave of phone service in the very near future. I know we will be using them again.

Posted by juliusp at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2008

travel insurance

I am a junior this year and my friends and I are trying to decide where to study abroad next semester. It is almost a given that students will travel during their college experience and I am happy to say that I will be participating in a few months. I thought traveling abroad would be so easy. I would pick a place and then I would go and have the time of my life and be changed forever and then come back to school finish and graduate, like it's no big deal. But I found out recently that the planning process is way more complicated than that. First of all it isn't as easy to pick a place to want to go to as I thought, especially since some programs are only offered in certain semesters and not both. So After narrowing down where I wanted to go I had to make it work with my class work and find what classes transferred and what I still had left to take (like a million classes). While this was challenging, I had an advisor helping me and it didn't seem quite as bad as I thought it would be. The hard part came down to the other stuff, outside of school work. Like having to be on my own and know what to do in case of an emergency. I had to find health insurance just in case something happened to me while I was away and travel insurance as well. My friend is studying abroad in Ireland this semester and all of her luggage was lost and 3 weeks in, she still has nothing, which terrifies me. But you have to know what to do when something goes wrong, so you need to assume the worst and just think that anything that can go wrong, will and know what you'll do if it actually does. It is scary to think that you will be on your own in a different country where you may not speak that language and you could get hurt or sick or even mugged and you need to be prepared in all of these situations. So hopefully after all of my research and friends stories and experiences, I will be able to go away next semester and have the time of my life and nothing bad will happen during the whole trip, but just in case it does, I will be ready.

Posted by juliusp at 09:41 AM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2008

telephony trends

We truly live in the information technology age. With times changing so quickly it is difficult for the mind to keep up with all the new phone technology info available out there in the world. One of the latest telephony trends is by far what I believe to be one of the most brilliant, aside from the cell phone, which of course in itself is a wonderful thing. The latest thing that I am completely impressed with is the voip phone technology. Now if you haven't heard about voip, you probably have. Voip is the system by which your home telephone line uses your high speed computer internet connection by which to function. This new technology is allowing people to switch from a home phone carrier which can run for about $100 per month and switch to an all inclusive service that will provide you everything you need, call waiting, call forwarding, local service, and long distance for one low price of about $20 per month. This savings is incredible, and it is hard to believe that there are no hidden charges or extras. You get it all for only one low price and that includes unlimited long distance and local calling. It is about time. It always seems that when new technology hits the market, it winds up costing us more, but it is nice to know that someone has found a way to bring us home phone service for a super reasonable rate. All I can figure is that whoever did this was as tired as I am of paying through the nose for a service that you don't even use very much.

Since I switched to Voip, I have been very happy with the service. The reception is clear and you wouldn't even know that you weren't talking on a land line phone. Some people are concerned that the reception goes in and out on these phones like it can on a cell, but this doesn't happen. Also, the bills are really as low as they claim, and the savings of about $800 per year makes this by far the best deal we have seen in years. Plus it is really simple to install and doesn't tie up your computer at all. It plugs in like it were a second computer which is nice because you can talk on the phone and be on the computer at the same time. If you haven't made the switch yet, do it today. You have nothing to lose, but lots of money to gain.

Posted by juliusp at 08:39 AM | Comments (0)