Bohemian Revolution

National Action Financial Services scams

Jen — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:46:44 +0000

Oh, here we go again. Just as I’ve stopped getting calls from the fake company “Account Services“, I started getting robot calls from a collection agency called National Action Financial Services. They’re a real company, but they don’t ask for anyone by name on the messages they leave. It turned out they were after the person who had my phone number before I got it – I still get calls for him, and it’s been my number for years – but I certainly don’t owe anyone any money.

But then I did some research and found out it may be worse than I thought:

National Action Financial Services, Inc. is a New York based collection agency which joined Sitel, a global business process outsourcing company. It is reported to indulge in illegal collection practices and has been sued and fined by the New York State Attorney General in 2007 (“http://www.oag.state.ny.us/media_center/2007/dec/dec18a_07.html”). The company has come across a large number of complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau (BBB). It has received an “F” rating from the BBB (“http://search.buffalo.bbb.org/codbrep.html?ID=46002285″).

Some consumers feel this company is actually making up fake debts and trying to scare them into paying, and then the company keeps the money. One customer reports they told him he owed money to a Blockbuster in Ohio, but he’d never been to Ohio and never had a Blockbuster account. That didn’t stop the company from harrassing him by phone and letter. For some reason, there are a lot of Blockbuster debts mentioned in these stories. It could be this is who Blockbuster uses to collect, or it could be a scam rigged by someone who figures everyone has a Blockbuster account.

I’m lucky enough not to owe anyone any money, so I knew when I got a call from them that it was baloney, mistaken identity or another auto-dialer scam. But if you do owe anyone money, I would suggest do not deal directly with this collection agency. They have threatened to sue consumers for not paying debt that’s beyond the statute of limitations and have an all-round bad reputation. Find out who they claim you owe, and contact that company or person directly to work out your payment.

If you’re not the person they think you are, you can get your number pulled from their database, call 716-565-1020 or 1-866-529-1899. I tried this fairly recently, but it seems to have worked so far. I was getting daily calls, and now I haven’t had any in three days.

Internet copyright law made simple

Jen — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:27:58 +0000

Once upon a time, I found a blogger was reposting my entire articles, pictures and all, on her blog, as if they were her own. I couldn’t find a way to contact her, so – assuming she was one of the many “sploggers” who do this intentionally – I talked about it in a new article. It turned out she was just pushing a button in the Google Reader/Blogger interface that caused the article to post to her Blogger blog. Why Google would set people up to do such a thing unintentionally, I don’t know. But we discussed it in the comments thread, and I later removed the post (because it was rather harsh), and said one of these days maybe I’d write a post about internet copyright.

Whether you’re a serious blogger or just someone who surfs the net and wonders what that “share” button in your feedreader might do, here are a few things you should know about internet copyright law. I’m going to keep this as simple as possible, and link to articles that go more in-depth on the legal stuff, for those who want to read it.

Posting is copyrighting

The instant an article or comment is posted online, it’s copyrighted by its author (according to the Berne convention). It doesn’t need to have a copyright notice on it. No matter where you find something online, it is copyrighted and you may not republish it without permission. It doesn’t matter whether or not you charge money for it, either. Except…

Fair Use

From the tradition of academics needing to be able to cite sources in order to write papers comes a doctrine called “Fair Use.” On the internet, this means you may republish a quote from someone’s article, as long as you make it clear the words are not yours. Using blockquotes (or some distinguishing HTML markup) and providing a link to the original article is considered sufficient online. There’s no hard and fast measure of a “quote”, but it’s generally 2-3 sentences, or a small percentage of a very long article that doesn’t give everything away. The way to think of it is: so long as your quote could make people want to click the link and go read the original article, the original writer is benefiting from increased traffic, so no harm done. In fact, these links are how websites get better search engine rankings and higher traffic levels over time, so you’re actually benefiting them.

Please keep in mind, if the short citation you choose gives away the whole article so there is no need for your readers to click the link to the original, this could be considered not fair use. So don’t quote an entire recipe from a 60,000 word article, and don’t give away the ending of an online novel. The exception to this rule is opinion pieces. Sometimes the only bit it makes sense to cite is the bit that gives it all away. But in this case, I like to add a parenthetical, “Check out the rest of the article – it’s all really good” to encourage my readers to benefit the original site.

What about images?

Images are also automatically copyrighted, but let’s take a look at LifeHacker. They routinely republish photographs from other bloggers, write about the blogger’s article, then post a link to the article. No one complains because LifeHacker can send you insane amounts of traffic, and webmasters like that. I often grab images from someone’s tutorial when I feature it with a link and a quote, and no one has complained so far because they’re benefiting. But if they ask you to remove an image, you should. There are plenty of places to get free images online to replace them.

Oh, and never ever “hotlink.” That’s when you republish someone’s image by linking to it on their server, using up their bandwidth that they’ve paid for every time the image loads on your site. Always download the image and save it to your site (or your Flickr account, or whatever) and serve it from there.

Comments and forum posting

If you’re posting a comment on a blog or forum that’s owned by someone else, they have the right to determine whether or not they will publish the comment, edit the comment, etc. It’s kind of like you’re the author (and in that sense, you’re the copyright holder) and they are your publisher. Smart bloggers will spell this out in a Terms and Conditions or “commenting policy” page. But even if a website owner has not spelled this out, it’s generally understood to be how things are done.

Some people think “free speech” means a website owner must allow them to publish whatever hateful, offensive or irrelevant comments they want to make, but this is not true. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean you have a right to come into my home that I pay for anytime you like and insult my guests, right? Think of other people’s websites as a party you’ve been invited to, and behave like a well-mannered guest.

But… fan fiction!

Yes, fan fiction (in which people write original stories based on the characters and situations from a TV show, movie, book, etc.) is a strange one. Technically, it violates copyright law and you could be sued. But since it boosts the popularity of the works it’s based on, causing the creators to make more money, the US Supreme Court has ruled that so long as fan fiction authors do not profit on publishing their fan fiction, no harm, no foul. Fanzines must be sold at cost, and fan fiction websites may not profit the authors. So if you don’t profit from fan fiction, then under US law, the copyright holders couldn’t recover any damages from you, so suing really wouldn’t be worth their time or expense.

Can I email my friend a whole article?

Generally, yes. In fact, some sites have links inviting you to “email this article.” But this must be personal – you can’t make any money off this. You can’t republish someone else’s article as part of your newsletter (though a Fair Use citation and link would be just fine). And I would advise against sending a whole article to an email list because you never know what someone else on the list might do with it, and the list could get shut down.

Can someone post my personal emails?

Not really – emails are copyrighted, too (though if it’s your work email, they technically own it). If someone posts your email as if it’s their work, that’s not okay. If they post your email in a malicious way and identify you – say, post it to Facebook with your Facebook name to make fun of you – that could technically be a suit for defamation, though unless it cost you your job or something huge it probably wouldn’t be worth pursuing.

So what if I break copyright law?

Well, the first thing the site owner can do is send you a Cease and Desist order. No lawyer required – there are templates online. It’ll order you to remove the content immediately or suffer the consequences. Site owners can also report all your stolen articles to Google as spam, and that will get your Google traffic killed in no short order – trust me, I’ve done this to people who really were deliberately stealing my work. The owner can also file a notice of infringement of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act with Google. They can also inform your host what you’ve done, and any reputable host will suspend your site immediately. They can even notify your domain registrar and, in theory at least, cause you to lose your domain.

If none of this works, they can sue you, and you will lose. No matter how you doctor things on your end to make it look like you published it first, there are internet archives that track this stuff. You will lose your case, have to pay up, and probably have to pay their attorney’s fees, too.

And in the US, if a copyright violation involves more than ten copies and a value over $2500, it is considered a felony. You could be sued not just in civil court, but criminal as well.

Someone’s unfairly accused me

Once upon a time, I linked to a blogger using a Fair Use citation and a clear link (I even encouraged readers to click the link). She went ballistic, having no idea how Fair Use works and threatened me. I tried to explain how I was sending her traffic and boosting her rank in Google, but she was determined I was cheating her. I removed the article – no big deal. This is what I recommend you do: if someone wants you to remove one quote, one link, or one image, why not just comply?

Another situation: you merely link to someone’s Blogger blog or Facebook, and suddenly you’re sending them hordes of angry commenters who disagree with their position. Technically, under Fair Use, you can do this. But if this person asks you to please remove the link, why would you not just do that? Some of this is not so much a matter of law as just basic decency.

But if someone’s claiming you stole all your articles or is threatening to sue you, and you’ve broken no copyright laws, they can get themselves into serious trouble. If you read the above-linked DCMA Google page, you’ll see that a company who sued someone for using “fair use” citations ended up having to pay the defendant’s legal fees, and it came to six figures. But since lawyers only like to sue people with money, I don’t think this is something most of us need to worry about.

I hope this has been helpful!

Sued for divorce and can’t afford a lawyer?

Jen — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:10:11 +0000

Here’s a situation I wouldn’t wish on anybody. You’re a stay at home mom or dad with a spouse who makes a fantastic living. You don’t actually have any money of your own – it’s all in joint accounts, under your spouse’s control. One day, your spouse announces that he or she has had enough of you and the kids too, so here are the divorce papers. Your spouse can afford to hire the best legal team, and seems interested in seeing you in the poorhouse.

You literally can’t afford to hire any lawyer. You don’t even have a credit card that’s strictly in your name. You helped put your spouse through school. You managed his or her household, kept his or her children safe and well. You worked long hours, too. Maybe you even sacrificed your career, and now it’s unlikely you can earn enough to care for you and the kids at all, let alone keep the kids in the school they’re in now or pay for their college. You do not deserve to be set out on the curb with the kids for a pittance so your ex-spouse can go party. Your contribution to the household was labor rather than money, but if your spouse had paid for a nanny, a household manager and all the other roles you filled, he or she would be a lot less wealthy now.

I recently found out there is a legal solution to this problem. As far as I can tell, it’s done in most states, but if anyone knows more than me, please feel free to share. At some point last century, the law realized how unfair all this was, and set up something I didn’t know about: you can ask a lawyer to sue your ex-spouse up front for the expected legal fees, in order that she or he may represent you properly. If there’s a huge difference between your income and your soon-to-be-ex’s, the judge can make your spouse pay the legal fees so that it’s a fair trial. The lawyer will still require you to pay something – at least enough so you can cover the cost of this short hearing. But this will be a lot less than the overall fees. This also applies to modification suits (i.e., when your spouse sues to reduce the spousal or child support you were awarded in the divorce).

Some divorces are simple: you may only need a lawyer to demand what’s fair, show up in court one day, and everything’s settled. Or you may negotiate with your spouse for months. Or your spouse may try to hide his or her assets in order to pay less in spousal and/or child support, and your lawyer will need to do some digging to find how much your spouse is really able to pay. In most states, when a judge is looking at support, the top considerations are: what the paying spouse can afford and what the paying spouse needs. They try to be fair to everyone, but if your spouse does a good job hiding things, you will need a good lawyer.

Why can’t I represent myself?

You can, legally, but this is going to be one of the most emotional times of your life. Are you really up to doing tons of research very quickly, and hoping you know what you’re doing? What you read on the internet and what lawyers and judges actually do can be very different.

What about affordable legal aid?

Cheap legal aid generally means kids fresh out of school who lack experience. This is fine if you’re having a friendly divorce where no one’s bitterly trying to take the other person to the cleaners. But if your wealthy spouse has suddenly decided you don’t deserve enough to live above the poverty line, you need better representation. Why limit yourself, when there’s a legal remedy for your situation?

Maybe I should just agree to whatever so it’ll be over

The financially disadvantaged spouse really needs to be as aggressive as possible. I’m not talking about asking for the moon and making the divorce as difficult as possible because you’re angry. A good lawyer can advise you on the highest reasonable amount of support and property division to ask for, and tell you the least you should accept. Take support: you may think a certain sounds great right now, but you have no idea how much the cost of living may skyrocket in the next few years. If that happens, getting an upward modification of your support would involve yet another trial and more costly litigation. It’s better to get everything ironed out up front – then you can truly move on.

A good lawyer can also suggest things you’ve never thought of. Should you demand that your spouse buy you health insurance? Can you write into the divorce that she or he will pay for the kids’ college tuition? Some spouses have gotten these items. Others have gotten a lump sum to spend on career training so their ex won’t have to pay alimony forever. Particularly if you have kids, you don’t want to end up with too little money to give them the best start in life. And you deserve consideration, too. Don’t let feelings of depression or grief distract you from the reality of the situation.

If you’re lucky enough to have a spouse who’s reasonable and wants the divorce to be fair, you may be able to work out an arrangement with mediation or some other form of relatively cheap legal services. But if your spouse has a lawyer, you need one, too. Don’t let anyone tell you that lawyer will work out something fair for both of you – he or she can only work for one of you at a time, and lawyers have a legal obligation to be as aggressive in their client’s interests as they can.

How to break a lease

Jen — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:59:27 +0000

Leases are one of the few types of contracts that are pretty one-sided. If you violate their terms, you can be evicted. But if your landlord breaks the terms, you may need a lawyer to help you. Landlords are more likely than tenants to have the money to enforce the lease, so it’s really not a fair system.

That said, if you need to break your lease, you do have a few options.

Do you have a good reason to break your lease?

Your local government will have its own laws regarding what’s a good reason to break a lease. Generally, these are things you should not have to put up with in the United States:

“Uninhabitable” conditions like an infestation of bugs, broken windows, mold, or anything that could cause health problems.
Many states in the US promise tenants something called “quiet enjoyment.” Online, you’ll find a lot of debate about what that means, but I found out firsthand, in California, it does include your manager’s failure to evict neighbors who repeatedly violate noise rules (there are also city ordinances about noise rules, no matter what your manager may think is reasonable).
Your landlord or anyone else entering your apartment without giving you 24 hours’ notice. You can waive this and give him permission to enter, but he can’t waive it and enter on his own, except in cases of emergency (like flooding in your apartment).

Unfortunately, this leaves out a lot of legitimate issues, like discovering your neighbors run a meth lab, or suddenly needing a wheelchair in an apartment that’s not handicapped accessible, or losing your job and being unable to pay your rent. A reasonable landlord should want to work with you in circumstances like these. The police should always be brought in if there’s anything criminal going on.

But not all landlords are reasonable. Call some local tenant attorneys and/or tenant advocate groups to find out your options. In most states, if you absolutely have to break your lease, your landlord has an obligation to re-rent your unit as quickly as possible. If he gets it re-leased in three months, you would be obligated to pay for three months’ rent and possibly his advertising costs for getting it rented – and if he rents it for less than what you were paying, you could be obligated to make up the difference. It’s not a cheap option, but it beats owing eight months’ rent, for example. Always talk to the landlord before just splitting – you may be able to work out a payment plan.

Some landlords will propose that you find a qualified tenant to take over your lease, and they will let you go with little or no penalty. This is fine, but get everything in writing. Even if you’re sure your landlord won’t renege on a verbal deal, he might later forget which exact terms he agreed to. It’s in everyone’s best interest to sign a written agreement spelling out who is responsible for what.

Playing hardball

Let’s say your reason for breaking the lease is legitimate enough, but your landlord refuses to make things simple. Or your landlord is a slumlord who has broken the terms of your lease, but still holds you responsible for your part. The burden is on you to prove his wrongdoings.

DO NOT STOP PAYING RENT. This is very important. Withholding partial or full rent, no matter how good your reason, will get you evicted faster than you can bring trouble down on your landlord. Get a lawyer or tenant’s advocacy group to advise you how to go about this. In some states, you can put your rent into an escrow fund and advise the landlord he’ll get it just as soon as he holds up his side of the lease. But you really need to find out the process from someone who knows.

Once upon a time, I was living in an apartment that wasn’t even being kept up to code. The owner was a huge corporation called Lowe Enterprises, and they employed (or partnered with?) a management company that saw fit to do absolutely nothing about windows that wouldn’t close in the middle of December. This is a health and safety issue, but their saving a few bucks was apparently more important than my health. And of course, getting in touch with Lowe to tell them how their managers were doing was impossible. It took some investigation to even find out who owned the building.

Fortunately, the county of Los Angeles felt differently about broken windows – I got a building inspector to cite them for repairs. They made repairs that also weren’t up to code, and didn’t get permits for the work. Can you believe it? So, feeling a little insulted, the inspector cited them to replace every freakin’ window in the complex – that meant hundreds of windows, which must have cost them many thousands – and have their managers attend a school for owners who are a hair away from being officially declared slumlords and getting their rents sliced in half by the county.

Well, that got their attention. Costing them money is the only way to get the attention of big corporations who don’t fulfill their legal obligations.

Despite all this, Lowe had no intention of letting me break my lease. But there was also a very big problem with noise in the building – constant partying from neighbors who were tipping the manager cash for the privilege of breaking the community rules. I gave the manager many chances to stop the parties, but he was usually at them – go figure! I called the cops several times, and they enforced my rights wonderfully, but the $500+ fines didn’t phase my neighbors.

I read online about whether “quiet enjoyment” applied to “manager not preventing neighbors from keeping me up all but 5 nights a month for six months straight” (no, I’m not exaggerating – I kept a sleep journal). The answer is: in theory, yes, but there aren’t any cases to set precedent, so a judge could rule either way. After my doctor advised me I had to break the lease before the sleep deprivation made my health worse (I was already having heart palpitations), I looked for a lawyer.

I found a great one by calling the best tenant attorneys in town, who told me my case was not of interest to them, but they could recommend a young, competent lawyer who would relish a case that might not end in huge contingency fees. He wrote a very strong letter, demanding damages for pain and suffering, the breaking of the lease and a host of other things. I had written a similar letter and gotten no reply, but once they saw it on a lawyer’s letterhead, oh, then suddenly it mattered. That’s another thing I learned: if you write to your huge corporate landlord, it goes into the round file. But if the words “attorney at law” appear in the letterhead, it goes to the legal department.

They refused to budge on any kind of monetary settlement, but they did break the lease and pay my lawyer’s fees. (They were also not smart enough to put a gag clause on the agreement I signed, obviously.) My lawyer believed that if we had sued them instead of agreeing to that settlement, they would have come back with a settlement that did include some money for damages. But by that time, I was so desperate to get some sleep again that I took the deal I could live with rather than risk it on one I might not be able to live with.

Some additional tips

If you need a lawyer…

Call lots of lawyers. Sometimes when they don’t want your case because it doesn’t sound like big bucks, they will tell you you don’t have a case, which is misleading and should be illegal in my opinion. A good lawyer should at least make suggestions. Even if you don’t have a huge winnable lawsuit, that doesn’t mean you have no legal options to improve your situation. Many, many legal issues can be resolved without ever going near a court.
If you can’t afford to retain a lawyer at all, check your area for tenant advocacy groups that provide counsel free of charge to people who need it.
Some lawyers will advise you on how to do the work yourself, which can bring your cost down to one billable hour or a flat, affordable fee for drafting a document.

Good luck!

6 tips for reducing your caffeine intake

Jen — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:35:51 +0000

If you’ve ever tried to reduce your caffeine intake, you know it can be really difficult. Caffeine is physically addictive, so quitting it cold turkey can give you withdrawal effects like headaches for several days. You may also feel fatigued or like you can’t wake up, because your body is so used to relying on caffeine for stimulation.

But if you’ve decided (or been advised by a doctor) to reduce or cut out your caffeine habit, here are some simple tips to help make it as painless as possible:

Cut down gradually. If you drink 6 cups of coffee a day, cut back to 5 for a few days, then 4, then 3 and so on. Once you’re down to one cup a day, then try one cup every other day, then every three days, and so on until you feel like you can leave it behind. (Or, if you’re just reducing your intake, quit this process at whatever number of cups you’re comfortable drinking.)
If you choose to go cold-turkey, do it during a time when your life isn’t very demanding. Expect withdrawal headaches and take aspirin or other mild painkillers to cope. Drink lots and lots of water to flush the withdrawal toxins out of your system faster. To wake up and get to your usual level of energy, try some ginseng or Vitamin B-12 supplements. After you’re done with withdrawal, your normal energy levels should return and you won’t need the supplements anymore. (Withdrawal usually ends within a week, maybe 10 days for some individuals.)
Dilute your coffee more and more over the course of a few days with milk, water or decaf.
Switch from coffee to black tea, then to green tea, then to decaf herbal. This brings your caffeine intake down in stages.
Remember sodas. Sodas, with or without sugar, typically have caffeine, but much less than coffee. You can use them to replace coffee temporarily while you adjust to less caffeine. If you want to cut out all caffeine, switch to caffeine-free sodas – there are plenty to choose from, and I can’t tell any taste difference from the caffeinated versions.
Chocolate can be a crutch during withdrawal. If you have terrible cravings for coffee while you’re trying to cut down, have a piece of chocolate instead. It has some caffeine – enough to satisfy the craving without undoing as much of your hard work as a cup of coffee would.

If you love the flavor of coffee, then the thing to do is switch to decaf. Don’t listen to people who say it tastes bad – there are plenty of blends that taste really good. My favorite is Dunkin’ Donuts Decaf. It actually tastes better than a lot of caffeinated blends you can buy.

Brussels sprouts: bet you haven’t tried ‘em raw

Jen — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:21:21 +0000

For decades, I thought brussels sprouts were gross because they had this sulfur taste I couldn’t stand. And they were mushy.

It turned out I’d just never had them cooked properly. Or, more precisely, not cooked at all. I recently tried raw brussels sprouts for the first time, and it’s become my new favorite snack. I’m not joking. And they’re totally good for you.

Raw brussels sprout flavor

The flavor of raw brussels sprouts has no hint of sulfur. That gets released in the cooking. Raw, they taste like little peppery cabbages on the inside with a little more of that “green” chlorophyll flavor in the outer dark green leaves. Unless you have a very strong jaw, I recommend cutting them up into small pieces. I chop mine so fine you need a fork or spoon to get all the pieces up. You can put them in salads or just take them to work in a container and nibble along on them by themselves.

Lemon and coarse salt

But my favorite way of eating these little guys is chopped up fine, with just a little lemon juice squeezed over them, and some coarse salt sprinkled on them. The lemon and salt really make the flavor come alive and blend wonderfully.

Cooking option

I also found a way to cook them that I actually like: cut them into halves, brush them lightly with olive oil, then sprinkle some coarse salt and fresh ground pepper over them. Spread them on a sheet of foil or on a cookie sheet, and stick them in the oven and cook them on 350 degrees F for 10-15 minutes or until they turn golden brown on top. Once they’re tender enough to bite and chew comfortably, they’re ready to eat:

My favorite way to store cheese

Jen — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:19:33 +0000

I love cheese, but I can only eat so much at a time. I especially like some of the moderately pricey ones like smoked gouda (seen here). But I would rarely treat myself because whenever I buy even the smallest wedge or wheel available, it goes off before I can finish it.

Then I figured out why it was going bad: plastic. Cheese comes in plastic wrappers these days. What is a traditional wheel of cheese covered in? Not plastic, but wax. That’s where I got the idea: wax paper inside tin foil.

Not that you need pictures to do this, but I took some, so here they are, along with instructions:

How to wrap cheese

Take your wheel of cheese and lay it out on a nice big sheet of wax paper. Put the cheese at one end of the wax paper, and roll it over a couple of times so it’s securely wrapped:

Now fold down the ends the way you would if you were wrapping a present, and tuck them under one side.

Now, flip that over onto a sheet of tin foil the same size as your wax paper. I put the folded side of the wax paper against the middle of the tin foil so that if the tin foil comes open, the wax paper won’t come open under it and expose the cheese. Next, fold two ends of the tin foil over the cheese. Pinch the ends together and fold them under so it’ll keep securely closed:

Here’s what it looks like when you’re done with that step:

Then fold the ends under like you would a present.

Any cheese I’ve tried this with will keep for at least a week. Some cheeses keep even longer. And by “keep”, I mean they neither mold nor dry out. You can open them up, cut off a piece and put them back as often as you want.

Is the tin foil necessary? Maybe not – you could use a rubber band, for example, to keep the wax paper from coming open. I like the tin foil because wax paper can tear when you move other things against it in the refrigerator.

Homemade stuffed toys tip

Jen — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:10:12 +0000

Those of you who like to make stuffed toys for babies will appreciate this tip from our reader, Janie:

When making toys for babies and using stuffing of any sort, get cheapie knee hi hose that you can get in all sorts of colors and put the stuffing inside. It will help to contain the the stuffing as well as help prevent tiny fingers from pulling it out and possibly eating it(!). Also, the colored hosiery can be useful to help things blend in colorwise and not have the white, if using fiberfill show.

I’ll have to add this one to my list of things to do with old pantyhose, since in addition to buying new knee-hi hose for these projects, you could just use up old hose that you can’t wear anymore, but will still hold in the stuffing.

WikiHow has a basic guide to making your own stuffed animals – it’s actually not as difficult as you might think, nor does it require much in the way of artistic skills.

Martha Stewart has another easy guide to making felted stuffed animals, and another on how to felt wool. The latter is definitely the trickier part.

Very easy way to peel a potato

Jen — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:23:35 +0000

Peeling cooked potatoes is time consuming and annoying – one of those tasks most of us would prefer to avoid if possible. A friend recently forwarded me a link to a video in which Dawn Wells (yes, the actress who played Marianne on “Gilligan’s Island”) shows you a really simple way to peel a cooked potato.

In fact, with this method the potato practically peels itself:

For those who can’t see the video or don’t want to wait for it, here’s what you do:

While bringing your cooking water to a boil, take a sharp knife and score your potato all the way around the center.
Put the potatoes into the water and let them cook about fifteen minutes.
Prepare a bowl of ice water.
Move the potatoes from the boiling water to the ice water with a pair of tongs.
Move the potatoes around in the ice for about ten seconds.
Pull a potato out. Grip it with one hand on either end, your thumbs near the center where you scored it. With your thumbs, push the potato skin away from the center. It just slides off!

Problems with Taylor bathroom scales

Jen — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:23:35 +0000

I prefer reporting about products I’ve found that really do me some good or save some money or something nice. But when I find a product that just doesn’t seem to be worth buying, I feel I should share that too so you can benefit from my experience. Of course, as with products I’m comfortable recommending, the fact that something didn’t work for me doesn’t mean it won’t work for you. I’m just telling you my experience.

About two months ago, I went to a doctor for a routine appointment and her scales said I weighed less fully clothed than my scales at home said I’d weighed that morning without a stitch of clothing. I’d thought I’d been gaining weight despite my best efforts, but no – my bathroom scales were just dying. (Actually, it may have just been the lithium battery, but there was no way to replace them!)

I bought a Taylor scale to replace them. I liked the display, and the numbers it gave me seemed accurate (going by the doctor’s scale for comparison). But sometimes the display would come on, and other times it wouldn’t. Then I came in one morning and found the scales had come on all by themselves, and wouldn’t go off. (They finally went off when the clerk taking my return put them up on her counter.)

I took that scale back and bought another Taylor in its place – a different model. The exact same problems occurred: sometimes it wouldn’t come on at all, other times it came on of its own accord and stayed that way for hours.

Two different models from the same company having identical problems was enough to convince me that maybe Taylor scales just aren’t very well made. Has anyone else had any experience, good or bad, with this brand?

I’m now trying out an EatSmart that got good reviews on Amazon. So far, it gives me the same weight consistently no matter how many times I shift it a few inches on the floor – most scales I’ve had in the past do not.