Lauren Reagan

I heard on the radio that YouTube isn’t even 5 years old yet. It will be in November though. It seems like it has been around for much longer than that. It certainly has made a major impact on millions of people. You can access such a variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging along with short original videos. And all of this is free, you just gotta love that.

Once I discovered all that you can experience on YouTube.com and started composing my “Favorites” list, it didn’t take long to get up to triple digits which can be time consuming and a good amount of them are stating that they aren’t available any longer, that really bites. But all in all YouTube.com is awesome and I can’t imagine computer life without it there, along for the ride.

I have a good friend Donna who moved over to the U.K. years ago. We keep in constant contact with emails, Face Book, IMing and cell phones, I’m so grateful for all of today’s technology that is making it easier to keep in touch with so many people in so many ways, it is so enriching all the way around.

Anyway Donna on occasion will send me a picture or a joke along with her emails, but she has never sent me a video before and we decided that it was time to try and attempt it. So she went onto YouTube.com and found this video featuring Digby Jones and got it to me with the first try. It can be a bit overwhelming learning some things on the computer, especially when you are on your own and have no one close by to ask for help. She lost her husband over 5 years ago and is still on her own, but she is doing pretty well all things considered.

I know that we all have to abide by rules, laws and regulations, but my goodness these can make for some dry reading. With that being said let me back track to why I am stating this. I have been looking around online to see if it would be in my best interest to switch from cable to satellite. I hear good things about direct satellite tv from numerous people, I also understand that if I do sign up and tell them that one of their subscribers referred them to me that both of us can receive a nice chunk of change for the referral, and I like that offer.

At directsattv.com there is a good amount of information to read over and that is where I found the government rules for installing a dish, that I found so frustrating to read, but I understand the need to have this information available for review. I guess I just like more interesting and a lot more entertaining reading to take up my free time. Silly me.

But anyway I do believe that I’ll be signing up soon with direct tv and see how it goes for there. I’ve had cable so long and I’m due for a change and now seems to be a good time as any. My folks have had direct tv since forever and I’ve always enjoyed what they have to offer when I watch television over there. I’ll be using them as my referral and we can both walk away with some money for the effort.

This darn mess that our government has gotten ourselves into with the economy issue is mot improving one red cent for anyone that I know or am related to. If anything, things are getting rougher and tougher for most of us. So many of us will not even watch the evening news anymore since it is full of such depressing and horrible stories surrounding us. It is no wonder that so many newspapers are going under, what with the Internet bringing us all we need and want to know and nothing but negativity being talked about, who wants to spend any of their hard earned money just read that kind of nonsense?

Instead of spending money on newspapers, more folks are using that money on security systems. The crime rate is steadily climbing with more people becoming desperate to make ends meet and to keep a roof over their head and food on the table.  My folks just had a security video camera installed at their place and they are even considering purchasing a large dog in order to ward off the bad guys. They haven’t owned a cat or a dog in years. Once us kids moved out the welcomed not having any responsibilities to deal with!

Any ADT Home Security Systems has gotten their attention. They did their homework and went online to find the who, what and wheres of what is going on in today’s security industry and they like what they found with ADT. And since they live out in the boonies where they tend to lose power once in a while, they were adamant about finding a company that provided them with a backup battery and equipment guide features as well. I’m hoping that they will feel better protected now and that they can sleep better at night and feel good about leaving home for a few days.

My carpet is in bad shape and is in need of a good shampooing. I can’t really afford to hire a company to come in and do a professional job, so it looks like I’ll be renting a machine from the grocery store and spending Saturday doing the work myself. Not something that I’m looking forward to doing but I just can’t take looking at it in the shape that it is currently in.

They say that a lot more people are going to be on the road this year for the Memorial Day holiday weekend. It seems that people have cut back these past couple of years so much that they feel that they need and deserve this long weekend and are going for it like it’s now or never. Wish I had plans to do something fun and exciting, but it’s not in this year’s cards for this gal.