Home Improvement Tool and Toy Reviews

When you move to a new area it can be difficult find stores and services in that new area.

That happened recently when my wife and I had decided that we needed to purchase a mini van. I knew the local dealers that were right around our immediate area but I always like to shop around to get the best deal (just because dealer may sell the same cards doesn’t mean they sell them for the same price).

Anyway, I ended up having to drive around looking for different dealers on my own. I wish I had know about Autotopolis. At Autotopolis the have a Car Dealership Locator and Rater all built into one site. Not only does it list the dealer in you area it also gives a Google map so you can actually see where the dealers are at.

I did a search for Toyota Dealers around Round Rock, TX and found one dealer that I did not even know about. I also found that they had a really good rating. I wish I would have known about Autotopolis before as I would have checked this dealer out also.

This website is great for anybody who has just moved to a new area or even for people that have been in the same are for a while.

This post is sponsored by Autotopolis.

I know, I know. I have already gotten all of my Christmas presents and I should not be looking but I have been searching high and low to find a good deal on a new MacBook.

I just really want one.

I found another coupon site called CouponChief.com that has Apple Coupons. There I found 25% off of Microsoft Office for Macs which I will definitely need.

I know I shouldn’t be looking but I REALLY WANT ONE!

Technorati Tags: Apple Coupons, Mac, MacBook

We have a lot of stuff. Too much stuff one would say but nobody in my house is saying that. In fact they are saying the opposite - “Don’t get rid if my stuff!”.

What is a man to do?

Find a Self Storage place to store the stuff, that’s what. How you may ask?

Well I found a location near me that has great prices. The way that I found it was via moving.bz. With moving.bz I was able to find a location just by typing in my zip code and requesting a quote.

The coolest part about it is that I live in a pretty new area but they had locations that were near me.

If you are in the market for self storage then I suggest you check them out.

Technorati Tags: Self Storage, Storage, Moving, Moving.bz

So I am terrible at getting Christmas presents for my wife. It is so hard to extract info out of her without her knowing what I am trying to do.

That happened the other day with some dishes that she wanted. After 10 questions from me about the dishes I asked “do you want one of your Christmas presents early” to where she replied “you mean the dishes?”. I am not good at it.

Well I think that I am in luck now as I came across this site that has Unique Wall Decor such as wrought iron. When my wife and I where looking to buy a house she had seen a nice wrought iron wall hanging in one of the models and really liked it. This site has several different designs and the prices seem really reasonable.

They also have some really cool Votive Candle Holders. When we moved we packed my wifes set of these that she had and we have not been able to find them since. I think that I might pick her up one of these as a replacement.

The only thing about all of this is that I hope my wife does not read this because that means that I have just blown the surprise again!

Technorati Tags: Christmas Presents, Wrought Iron, Wall Decor, Votice Candle Holders

I read an article about being able to see full length videos of sitcoms and other shows at the new AOL video site so headed over to check it out. Sure enough they had several different videos from such places as The History Channel, TBS, and MTV.

I clicked on an episode of Modern Marvels and was presented with a popup screen that said that I needed a plugin for their videos to work with my Firefox browser. No problem I thought as I clicked on the link to install the plugin.

If only it were that simple…

No matter what I did I could not get to the page for the plugin that they said I need to view their video.

Bottom line - I left their site after 10 frustrating minutes of trying to get to the site to install the plugin in need to view their video.

Nice work AOL! Glad you didn’t steer from your usually way of making things 10 times more difficult then they need to be!

Technorati Tags: AOL, AOL Video, Firefox, plugin

As mentioned before I started a blog to chronicle my experiences in going back to school to get me degree at DeVry University. I originally set the blog up over at WordPress.com but I started to actually get traffic and I couldn’t really tell where it was coming from due to the way they have their stats setup.

Therefore I transfered everything over to a sub domain off of idano.net. The new web address for 30 Something Student is 30somethingstudent.idano.net.

If you have the time and are interested you should check it out. Also, if you are thinking about going back to school this is a good place to start to get a feel for what it takes.

Oh, finally I have added a feed to the sidebar of this blog so that you can be reminded that it’s over there.

Technorati Tags: 30 Something Student, DeVry, College, Going back to School

Recently a friend of ours put their house up for sale in California. After about 2 months the house had only be viewed 1 time by potential buyers. The Real Estate agents that she hired then told her that they thought that she should lower the price and that they now wanted more money to sell it. Can you believe that?

Well that seems to be the way that things are going now that the Real Estate market is taking a down. I think that people would be trying to rip people off on their home loans too. There are so many people that are being sold those interest only loans that when the interest only portion is up that they are not going to be able to afford the payment.

I found a website that has good information that will help you to avoid fraud. It is personalhomeloanmortgages.com. They have a long list of mortgage brokers that you can trust. Also, you do not need to be afraid of giving them your contact data since they protect customer data through SecureTrust which guarantees compliance with FTC, DoNotCall & Can Spam regulations.

You cannot be too careful these days with your biggest investment - your home.

Technorati Tags: Mortgage, Real Estate, Mortgage Fraud

Technorati Tags: Mortgage, Real Estate, Mortgage Fraud

I found a cool website for Properties to buy Abroad while looking for more vacation ideas for my wife and I.

The website is propertymartoverseas.com.

In my poking around I found an apartment near Paris that is only $125,000. That is a pretty good deal if you ask me. It seems to me that Property Market Overseas has really good prices for anything that you could be looking for outside of the US.

Technorati Tags: Overseas, Property, Real Estate, Europe

As mentioned before I got my MP3 player from Napster for free. Now I know why it was free - 512mb only holds about 5 albums - bummer. Since this was my first MP3 player I really did not know what I was looking for. I guess it is alright because I did get it for free after all. The thing is though that I want one with more memory.

Coupon Chief to the rescue.

As mentioned before Coupon Chief has a whole bunch of coupons for a lot of major online retails like Best Buy, Buy.com, and even Dell.

Since I want a new MP3 player I went here first to see what type of discounts I could dig up to get a good price. My search turned up a Best Buy coupon that is good for free shipping on all MP3 players including IPods - Sweet. Now it is off to the Best Buy Web Site to pick out my new one.

Technorati Tags: Coupon Chief, Online Coupons, Best Buy, MP3 Player, IPod

I have another tip to add to my post - The Ultimate Guide to Doing Nothing but Looking Busy at Work - it is from one of my favorite blogs - Lifehacker.

This is the tip. You take a screen shot of your desktop with the project that you are working on and then make it your desktop background. They when someone comes to your cubical minimize all of your windows and it will look like you where working.

Brilliant!

Here is the original Lifehacker article - Look busy with a fake desktop background.

Technorati Tags: Lifehacker, Looking Busy, Seinfeld, Work