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Shopping Alert | Free HTC EVO 4G from Sprint

Kathleen — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:42:59 +0000

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This post brought to you by Sprint. All opinions are 100% mine.

Smart phones are one of the hottest gifts this season! I have wanted a tablet for a long time now and Sprint helped to make my dream come true. Sprint is offering such awesome deals hubby ordered me a new smartphone for Christmas… Woo Hoo! In fact, the EVO 4G deals are so affordable, we bought Red an HTC EVO Design as well. He loves the 4G speed, anywhere information accessibility, and some pretty darn amazing apps too. Oh and lets not forget the music, gotta have tunes right?

We have been Sprint customers since the early nineties. I have to say that of all the cable, cell phone, and internet providers we have experienced Sprint has the best customer service of them all. This testimony combined with the great holiday deals on Android™ powered EVO 4G or EVO™ Shift devices should be motivation enough however, for a limited time get waived activation for new lines of service and free shipping from Sprint as well!

What are you waiting for???? Go here http://bit.ly/rBqHmY for the activation waiver and here fo: Android™ powered EVO 4G devices such as the HTC EVO™ 4G or EVO™ Shift for FREE.

This Special is for a limited time so you better hurry on over to Sprint.com to take adavntage of this awesome deal, I sure did!

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukah !

Kathleen

Hey, there I'm Kathleen. My friends call me Kathy; to my kids I'm Momia. Life has afforded me many hats: Mom, wife, sister, friend, business owner... and most recently a midlife blogger. From college to marriage and babies, in the midst of business and wealthy boomers, midlife retrospection validates this extraordinary journey called life.

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Puppies or Babies | An Epic Battle of Cuteness

Kathleen — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:21:19 +0000

This post brought to you by Puppies vs. Babies. All opinions are 100% mine.

Animal Planet is ready to rumble… Puppies versus Babies! Oh my gosh this is too funny. Reminds me of the America’s Funniest Home Video TV show our family used to enjoy so much. That’s why I agreed to sponsor this post. Fond recollections of family time are priceless and need to be emphasized. The lead in for this TV show is brilliant, both species of offspring seem to instantly create a warm, fuzzy feeling. Aaawww look how cute, you have heard it said and probably said something similar as well. It is a natural reaction for baby lovers regardless of the species.

Puppies versus Babies airs Oct 29^th and continues through November. In this epic battle of cute, only one can emerge victorious… puppies or babies and kittens too! The promo video exclaims, “Get ready for the ultimate clash of cute!” Check out the Puppies vs. Babies online contest , upload your favorite image slideshow, or vote for your favorites. The top baby and puppy will win $5000 each and go head to head for the Cute Championship. All of the puppies and babies are incredibly cute and funny. Based on my viewing time there, this is one tough competition for cute.

My son Red rescued a puppy in Tampa Florida. He wasn’t denied food or water, just love, comfort, safety, and attention. An irresponsible mother allowed her young daughter to adopt the puppy. The young girl left him in a kennel in the noisy city back yard alone and frightened for an indefinite period… He may have been there for days, weeks, or more. Red could not walk away and took the puppy home. Hearing this story and later meeting Connor, I knew why my son just couldn’t resist. Connor is lovable, gentle, and darn cute too!

Now that Red is back in college, can you guess where the puppy lives? Yep, you guessed it, with Memaw and Grandpa, of course.

I have to admit, puppies are much easier to handle than babies are especially for a midlife woman like me. Perhaps the absence of grandchildren has caused a foregone conclusion… I’m voting puppies!

What’s your choice in the Puppies vs. Babies battle?

Kathleen

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Cloudflare Is More Than Blog Acceleration & Protection

Kathleen — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 12:00:22 +0000

Cloudflare is a free and simple solution to improve blog performance, help fight spam, and protect your blog from attacks. Even newbie and not so perceptive midlife bloggers can set up and effectively use Cloudflare. Moreover, their customer service is outstanding. Observing my resolution to share reliable blogging information, this is my Cloudflare journey.

How I found Cloudflare

Ms Sharon Hurley Hall wrote an awesome CloudFlare review on Basic Blog Tips. Oh my gosh this woman is a tremendously talented professional writer and blogger. Sharon gave an in depth and easy to understand overview of CloudFlare. She offered statistics to illustrate the benefits of using Cloudflare and tips for using the service. In addition, Sharon wrote a follow up article sharing more tips for using the service, which did prove helpful for my blog performance as well.

CloudFlare is actually a security tool, aimed at protecting your site from online threats such as spammers, bots, and exploit attackers. The page load speed boost is a welcome side effect, produced from the way CloudFlare works with your site. Sharon H Hurley

On top of being a free service to protect my blog from threats, CloudFlare appeared to be the solution to my continual frustration over slow loading pages. After reading the Basic Blog Tips review twice, I decided to try CloudFlare. Thanks Sharon.

Setting Up with CloudFlare

Signing up for an account was easy and straightforward. Exploring the overviews and illustrations provided by CloudFlare gave basic insight and information about web page delivery and domain DNS (domain name server) settings. Technical terms are explained in simple words that help you to understand the set up process. The explanations combined with systematic instructions for the majority of hosting companies made the set up process simple. A four-step process was provided for my hosting company. Following the instructions to the tee, the process took me about 15 minutes to set up.

I did have a problem the first time I tried to use Adobe Dreamweaver after setting up CloudFlare. I couldn’t log into my hosting account and I thought the problem was with them but, after investing, found it was CloudFlare. You see they protect these protocols by moving them and therefore my ftp address and password had to be changed. A quick search provided this answer and the problem was easily solved.

Overall Cloudflare Results

CloudFlare has been serving my pages for about two months now. Google Analytics shows improvements in bounce rates and page views as predicted. The blog loads much faster now too. Besides having to wait a few seconds to access my admin page on several occasions, the service has improved my blogs performance and solved my frustration issues.

Customer Service that Rocks!

CloudFlare offers amazing customer service. Last week this blog encountered big problems. In the process of previewing a post, I received an error from Chrome something like “connection was reset” and a blank page. After three or four of these errors, I opened Fire Fox thinking the problem was with Chrome. Fire Fox and IE returned the same issue. My blog would not load.

“It has to be CloudFlare,” I thought. After scouring the help and faqs with no solution, I sent a help request. It was after midnight, time to let it go until morning. Nervous and upset I said to the hubby, “Gosh I hope this company helps me. It’s a free service and that worries me.” To my pleasure, I awoke to find CloudFlare had responded with specific information to check, several links to visit, and a promise to resolve the issue. Woo Hoo!

Following the directions from the CloudFlare team, I contacted my hosting provider. Having been hacked in the past, I knew the hosting company would never admit to it being their problem. I was right. After going back and for with the hosting company for most of the afternoon my site miraculously came back online. Meanwhile the CloudFlare team continued corresponding to be certain my issues were resolved. I sent the information from the hosting company to them. When I didn’t understand the technical explanations from my hosting company, the CloudFlare tech explained them. At no time did they blame the hosting company. Not once did the tech support team make me feel inadequate. Additionally, the tech sent explicit instructions on what/how to gather the information needed to pin point the reset origin just in case the problem arose again.

More Than Blog Acceleration and Protection

For the newbie and non-technical blog owner, excellent customer service may be the most important and comforting feature of any tool. How so? Well, I find that terms and processes one doesn’t understand can be the most frustrating and discouraging aspect of blogging, especially when funding to fix a problem is not an option. CloudFlare definitely resolved my page speed frustrations as proposed. What they may not know is their excellent customer service encourages bloggers like me to continuing with their blog adventure. Thank you CloudFlare!

Does customer service make a difference in respect to your blogging future? Have you ever stopped using a blog service/tool due to bad customer service?

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Kathleen

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