I posted a previous entry which included a short review of a product called Auto Cool. I just wanted to elaborate a little bit.

When I first saw the commercial for it, I figured “Oh look, another over-dramatic – never happened to anyone in real life – commercial for a product that won’t work.” Unfortunately, my father doesn’t think that way – so he went out and bought the Auto Cool (big mistake!). With the warm weekend, I told my father to give it a shot and just park in the sun for a little while. The item itself is a piece of crap. My father had the car parked in direct sunlight (as the directions state) and the fan just barely moved at all. I would not recommend this product to ANYONE. Previously I mentioned the Jeep – a product like this is not meant for anything with a soft top, I don’t care who you are or what you think, or what the direction state – it’s NOT.

We did this on my sisters car. It’s dead so it’s not like we could move it very far. We moved it enough to get it into the sunlight. The car was still so hot that cracking windows didn’t even help. I give the Auto Cool two thumbs down.

There are clich?ɬ© statements like “When we kissed…I saw fireworks” or “My knees went weak”, but how many people can truly say they’ve felt this first hand? For the past few weeks I’ve had an ‘inside-clue’ in regards to how the universe works. There are always going to be two very important people in your life; your soul mate, and the person you’re supposed to spend the rest of your life with. In some cases you may find these two entities in one person. The rest of the time…you’ll have these two people. You may not realize it now, but if you sit back and look around – you may pick up on it.

There will always be that one person who you can have every feeling in the book for but know that it’s never going to work between you two on a relationship level. This person is your ‘soul mate’. This person will be there for you when you’re at your worst…and your best. They will make you feel as though you’re the most important person in the room and they’ll never let you down. If they ever do…they’ll make it up to you faster than you knew what hit you.

But say your soul mate meets his or her final step in life and passes away. Sure, you may have friends who care about you but you’ll never have that same connection ever again. You’ll spend months, years, and even decades comparing every person you meet to this soul mate. This soul mate is the person you felt was the true meaning of ‘perfection’ minus the relationship aspect. Even in death, this person will still be there for you. You will see them in your dreams, they will give you signs as to when they were around…a gust of wind, a shooting star, a butterfly, a cat, whatever you two had in common in life, he/she will make it known in death that your connection is still there. It’s almost guaranteed that when you die, this person will be waiting for you to help you get through that stage of ‘life’ until you can plant your feet.

Say that during your grieving for losing this soul mate, another person steps in. The person who from the get go you feel that you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. It goes to another clich?ɬ© statement of “trust your gut”. If, from the get-go, looking into this persons eyes makes you weak, kissing them you see fireworks, and you get along on levels you never dreamed of, then in some way shape or form…you’re meant to be with this person for the rest of your life.

This is the person who will fulfill all of your dreams, and visa versa. This is the person you will make a home with. This is the person you will depend on for support in the most difficult, or most ridiculous, of situations. They will always make you feel like the most important person in the room, they will go out of their way to make sure you’re taken care of, no matter what the cost. If you’re sick, they’ll be at your bed-side with soup and a magazine. If you’ve had a bad day and just want to sleep, they’ll lay down with you and rub your back until you’re comfortable enough to drift off and forget the world. This person will also be there when you wake up to make sure that the first thing you see is someone who loves you and will make all of your pain go away.

I’ve been through, and am still going through my grieving period. I have found the person I will be spending the rest of my life with. I consider myself blessed, as well as honored, to have these two people in my life, and in my after-life. I honestly don’t think I’d trade this for anything in the world.

I fall in love a little bit more every day. I see dreams being fulfilled before anything is physically set forth for these dreams to come true. I see the fireworks when we kiss and my knees are so weak that I’m surprised I can even walk. It’s unfortunate that I had to lose a soul mate in order to find a ‘true love’, because I do truly miss my soul mate more now than I ever have in the past, but I know he’s around; I see the shooting stars, I see the butterflies, I feel the breeze. The thing is, as much as I miss him – I know how much pain he was in when he was alive, and now he’s finally at peace; I would never take that away from him.

For once in my life, I’m with a good man. Not a little boy, not a wife beater, not a drug addict, not a ‘hardcore l33t gamer’…a man. A man who is working to not only improve his life, but is working to help improve mine. If you can find someone that is willing to make huge sacrifices (and visa versa) for your happiness, even if it only has 10% to do with you, that is the one true gift that you may never receive if you pass it by.

I see myself being happy for the rest of my life. I see myself having every dream fulfilled, no matter how large or small they are. I see myself being able to have the relationship that I’ve only ever heard of or an “As Seen on TV” situation. If all of this meant losing my soul-mate in the process…I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

Before going to sleep at night, I usually find myself flipping through infomercials about random As Seen On TV products. The popular ones are for The Magic Bullet, Table Mate, Shed Ender and Auto Cool.

I live in a family of impulse buyers, so some sort of an As Seen On TV product that looks as though it would be worth something, usually means that it’ll be purchased. The only one that I own is The Magic Bullet because I’m addicted to frozen drinks, especially in the summer when it comes to block parties and other events where booze is flying all over the place. My father recently bought Auto Cool and I have to say that it doesn’t work for Jeeps with soft tops, so if you own one – don’t even bother buying it.

There are a few ways to go about ordering an As Seen On TV product. You could go directly to the website listed, the official asseenontv.com website, or you can head on over to tvproducts4less.com where you can find the same items, for cheaper pricing.

Eventually, I know I’m going to be purchasing a Table Mate because it’s a really cool product and having used one before, I know that I will be able to enjoy the product as well. On tvproducts4less.com it’s $3 less. There are other products that are about 50% off as well, so no matter what you’re looking for, you can really find a great deal. I think you should check out this company, you may be very happy with the results.

While working, I randomly take breaks to clear my head. I can only look at code for so long before I begin to go crazy. My main big thing to do when taking these breaks is research for future purchases.

My future purchases include:
- New Cell Phone
- New Desktop
- School Enrollment (5 courses)

Cellphone – In December, my cell phone expires. My father, my sister and I are on the family plan and it’s been two years so the plan is going to be reset. My father won’t be adding my number, and my sisters, back to the plan. I do pay him the monthly fee’s, don’t sit there and think that I’m not worthy of having it under his plan. The problem is with my sister. She runs her phone bills up 300+ each month, just for HER PHONE. Meanwhile, her plan is only supposed to be somewhere in the $20 range, like mine. Because she has abused this, my father is canceling everything all together. I’m not complaining because I’m sick of the telemarketers. So instead of having a monthly plan, I’ve decided to go back to a prepaid phone. Considering I rarely ever, if at all, use the phone. I figure it would be easy to spend $70-$80 on a phone that comes with 60 minutes, and then just put maybe $10 a month on the phone to keep it active. This is the financially sound thing to do, and the exact route that I’m going to take. I’ve been looking at phones everywhere, and oddly enough the one I’m going to go for can be found right through Wal-Mart – isn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t that some shit? It’s $75 for the phone, comes with 60 pre-paid minutes and then within a month – I have to put maybe $10 on the phone. I’m content with this purchase.

Desktop – I know that for the past few months I have felt completely content (and extremely happy) with my laptop. The mobility factor is amazing. I have not, however, realized how many programs I use on a daily basis for designing and what not and now my laptop is beginning to fill up a lot quicker than anticipated. I’m using around 40 gigs of my 80gig hard drive, and I know that doesn’t seem like much but I was using 40 on a 120gb hard drive on my desktop – so you do the math there. I’ve been looking for desktops in places like Tiger Direct, Microcenter, CompUSA and of course HP. No matter which one of these companies I go through, I’ll be sticking with an HP desktop. I do not need anything over the top with bright lights and pretty colors like my last desktop. I just need something with a 120 gig hard drive and enough room to load my old hard drive into it so I can regain access to those files.

Now that I have mastered the art of linking computers on the network, I’ll be using the computer as a file server – mainly – this is why I do not need to be too concerned about the statistics right out of the box. I do know that anything less than a gig of ram is unacceptable because I will begin using the computer for heavy graphics. Over time I fully intend to be up to my ass in learning flash so that I can bring in some more money for business. So if spending $400 on a desktop is the route that I have to take, then so be it.

The reason for this – I’m going back to school. I’ve decided that sometime over the next few months I will be enrolling in new courses through Penn Foster and Stratford. Penn Foster will cover the technical aspects of things. I’ll enroll with them for Web Programming, Web Design and Graphics Design. I’ll then go to Stratford for Business Management and Accounting. My reason behind the Stratford courses is not only for me, but for Joe. He was going to school for Accounting and he was only a few months away from his degree before he passed away so I think this is my way of finishing what he started. Whether he’d appreciate it or not, I don’t know…I’ll never know. But there are cases when someone sets their mind to do something just because it feels right…this is one of those times. It’s my way of honoring him and, in my head, that’s all that matters.

In any event…I need to get back to work. I’m finishing up on a non-profit/Wordpress set of templates and my creative streak has been shot to hell because I’ve been ass-deep in work for a long time now. I can’t wait to finally be able to complete a project in its entirety and not feel bad that it’s taking me so long. I apologize to any client who comes here and reads up on things. I really am trying my best – I’m just balancing 13 clients right now and it hasn’t been easy on me at all. The power issues because of last weeks heat wave didn’t help me much either :grr:

How many of you are aware of the fact that there are coupon code(s) -or- online coupon(s) for everything that you can possibly think of? When I ordered my laptop, one of the first things I looked for were coupon codes because I knew that I’d get some kind of a deal that would help me out in affording my $1400 laptop. I found a few for HP that gave me $50 off. I know it doesn’t seem like much but that $50 went towards my mouse and flash-drive, so although I didn’t ‘save’ money in that reguard, I still got a pretty nice discount.

The next time you’re going to consider making a purchase online, you should really check couponchief.com before you run through the check out. It could save you some money!