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Archives for December 2006

Never miss a meeting again use Snoozester

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Don’t you love that when you go to a hotel, and you have an early morning meeting or activity, how you can ask the service desk to give you a wake up call at a certain time of the morning so that you wake up on time? I know that I love that kind of service. I find that sometimes there aren’t alarm clocks in the hotel rooms, or that they are old and don’t work properly. I hate relying on the clocks in the rooms. It’s much safer to ask for a wake up call.

Well, if you are like me and enjoy getting a wake up call when you are traveling, what would you think if I told you that you can get a wake up call anytime you want, whether you are at home, visiting friends or relatives or staying at a hotel? You probably think that that isn’t possible right? Well it is.

A company called Snoozester, the sponsorer of this post, has it’s own service that will provide you with wake up calls, anywhere, any time. Honest, you should try the Snoozester Wake Up Call Service if you need to wake up at a particular time, or if you have trouble waking up.

All you need to do is sign up with Snoozester and begin scheduling wake up calls. You can schedule the wake up calls to go to any phone number or cell phone that you’d like. You just register and an account, add in your phone number and perhaps your cell number and start schedule wake up calls. It’s that easy.

You can even choose to have your wake up calls delivered to you by Snoosester Characters. The characters are fun voices that greet you when you answer the wake up call. You can select from a number of Character voices whenever you schedule a wake up call.

If you are the type of person that doesn’t wake easily they have a featured called “Secure Awake”. This feature tells Snoozester to repeatedly telephone you until you answer the phone. It will call you every three minutes for 20 minutes. When you answer you can select number 1 to confirm that you are awake, or push number 2 to tell snoozester to let you sleep for a while longer and call you back.

The site is very easy to use. Just follow the steps in the registration process, or once you are signed in follow the easy directions and begin scheduling wake up calls. When you sign up with snoozester you’ll get 10 free wake up calls. You can sign up for a variety of packages that provide you with a certain number of calls per month. The packages range from 3.99 to 14.99 per month. They even have gift certificates available in case you know someone who could really use this service.

If you want to learn more about this service feel free to visit their site or visit their interesting Sleep Blog. Oh and they also have a great customer support service. Just use the contact form to send them your questions and they’ll get back to you quickly.

They have a Corporate Snoozester service as well, so if you have a company and want your employees to get in on time you can use this service to provide multiple wake up calls to your employees.






Do you need to bullet proof your home or business?

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I don’t know if you have this problem in your City, State, or Province, but lately there’s been a rash of shootings on the streets of Toronto. I’d say it’s picked up dramatically over the last three years or so. Why this is happening, I don’t know, but as a consumer I know that I’d feel much safer if I knew the stores or restaurants that I frequent had bulletproof Glass on the windows facing the main street.

Now, I might be over reacting a bit – but if you lived here you’d be shocked at how often shootings take place, particularly in the downtown area. I know some areas of the US are also plagued by gang warfare, drive by shootings and random shootings- maybe just for the heck of it and I’m sure that many businesses in those areas would also benefit by having bullet proof glass installed in their store front windows. Heck I’m sure some of the people in those areas probably have a need for bullet proof glass on their cars.

Actually I just learned of a product I wasn’t aware of when I was reading the Pacific Bullet Proof site. There’s even a product called bulletproof Fiberglass. I thought that when I first heard the name of the product that it would be used on cars but it can be used on just about anything. It’s a bulletproof material that’s sold in sheets and it looks like it can be used in a number of different ways. Check out their site if you, or perhaps a business owner you know might be interested in learning more about bullet proof products.

I know this wasn’t a gardening topic but for some of you it might relate to home protection. I hope that this information can be of some use to some of my readers. At least you know a little bit more about what’s happening in Toronto lately!

Gift wrapping tips

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Have you finished wrapping all of the gifts that you are giving out this year? Or have you saved them all up and plan to sit down and wrap them all at the same time in the next day or two?

Gift If you still have some presents left to wrap here are some great tips and ideas that will help make your lovely gift look spectacular.

The first and most important piece of advice that I can give you is to conceal the sticky tape. Your wrapped gift will look so much nicer when the tape is concealed.

One method that I’ve practiced for years is to roll the tape into a loop so that I’ll have a sticky tape surface all around – inside none sticky, outside sticky. Then I simply slip the tape under or between the paper and press firmly to be sure it sticks. No tape is visible with this method.

Have you ever received a gift that was wrapped so beautifully that you almost didn’t want to open it? You can make your gift just as stunning by using bright coloured paper – red, green and gold are popular colours for Christmas gifts. Begin with the right choice of paper. I enjoy using either a nice foil paper, or a heavier weight glossy paper. Thin gift wrapping paper just tears to easily when you’re pulling it tightly around the present. Those sharp box corners end up damaging the paper and the only way to fix it is to add more of that dreaded tape!

Small gifts can either be the easiest to wrap or the most difficult. One rule of thumb is to only use the amount of paper that you need. I’ll place an item on the paper and measure with my eye, or I’ll gently roll the gift in the paper to get a general idea of how much paper I’ll need – then I cut the proper amount. Don’t be afraid to cut off excess paper. If you leave too much paper and fold it to fit it will just look bulky and the package under the wrap will lose it’s shape.

When I wrap a regular shaped gift I fold the outer edges of the paper inward before I seal it to make a nice sharp crease. I do this because the edges of rolled paper often have burred edges or if it’s been cut previously for another present it might not have been cut evenly. The little fold evens out the edges.

Oddly shaped or unboxed items can be a little more difficult to wrap but you can be creative with your wrapping techniques. For objects such as a plate fold the paper toward the center for a pleated circular fan effect.

To make a rossette, take a 2.5 cm wide (1 inch) piece of ribbon from a spool. Spread your four long fingers wide, then wrap the ribbon eight to 10 times around the fingers, to determine the length to be cut off.

Take the ribbon off your fingers, still folded, then fold the length in half again and cut the corners at the folded or closed end, so that the end is pointed.

Thread a 1.5-centimetre (3/4 inch) ribbon through the middle and knot the smaller ribbon tightly. Open the larger ribbon up and pull each section back from the centre in a twist towards yourself. Novice rosette makers may require a few attempts.

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