Three Wolf Moon Tee Shirt

There are more than 1,400 reviews for this shirt on Amazon along with video reviews, and over 200 customer images. They are hilarious. The reviews almost make me want to buy the shirt.

I thought there must be a way to learn another language without all the time and effort.

The Problem:
The problem with most languages is that they are too dissimilar from your native language. This makes learning a language more difficult.

• You spend time learning new grammatical rules and sentence structures. That’s time you could be having fun.
• You find that some letters are pronounced wrong. Who needs that kind of aggravation?
• Some languages even use completely different alphabets. What are THEY thinking?

No wonder so many Americans speak only one language. It’s just too much trouble to learn another one!

What can an English-Speaking American do who wants to learn a new language?

The Solution:
What if I told you that the secret is not some new language method? It’s true, there is no magic potion to learn a new language. The secret is to pick the right language. Yes, some languages are easier for an American to learn than others. If you pick the right language, you can easily learn it in 15 minutes a day with downloaded mp3 files on your own computer, iPod or other mp3 player. You can learn the right language while stuck in traffic, while exercising, while operating heavy machinery… almost anywhere. You can be proficient in no time.

So by now you’re probably asking, “What language should I start learning? Well, the language we recommend is the primary language spoken on an entire continent on the other side of the planet. How exotic is that?

Did you guess it? The answer is… Australian.

Yes, even though Australia is on the other side of the earth, the people of this proud nation speak a language that’s easy for any English-Speaking American to learn in only 15 minutes a day. But don’t take my word for it, read some of these fake testimonials…

“I used to speak only English, but now thanks to this program, I can now throw some shrimp on the barbie.” - Ted in Kentucky

“Three months ago, I said “hello” like everyone else in my neighborhood. Now I say “G’day” to everyone I meet” - Fred in Ohio

You’re probably thinking that a program like this would cost $800 or more.

But what would you say if I said that it’s not $800?

It’s not even $600 or $300.

If you order right now, this program will be yours for only 49.97 Australian Dollars.

What? Did I say Australian Dollars? Of course, this program comes from Australia, the world experts in the Australian language.

With current exchange rates, an American can get this exceptional program for less than $40 US. What a bargain!

Click here to learn more about how you can learn to speak like an Australian.

My computer is a Mac and I use Apple Mail for email, Things for my task manager and iCal for my calendar. All three apps are synced to my iPhone so I always have them available to me.

Unread Mail Smart Folder Settings

In Mail, I created a smart folder that shows only unread emails from all of my accounts. I generally use only this folder when going through mail. I go through the Unread Mail folder knowing that I have to make a decision about each email that I open because after it is read, it will no longer be in the Unread Mail folder that I will look in. There are things I will do with this mail.

1. Task that I need to do and will take less than two minutes, I will do it.
2. Tasks that I need to do and will take more than two minutes, I send it to Things (this is a topic for another post).
3. Appointment that I may need to remember, I send it to iCal
4. Junk or mail of no interest, I delete immediately.
5. Subscription in which I am no longer interested, I unsubscribe.
6. Interesting mail that’s not worthy of keeping for reference, I read and delete.
7. Interesting mail that is worth keeping for reference, I read and close. (It will remain in the folder that it was assigned to when it came in and will be easily found with a quick search any time.

I have a folder called Archive where emails that I want to keep are stored. I use rules to automatically file emails from clients, friends, financial institutions, etc. into this folder. These emails still show up in my Unread Mail smart folder.

I have one more smart folder that shows email over one year old that is not in my Archive folder. Quickly looking through this folder occasionally, I see all of the emails that I closed without doing anything to a year ago. I delete most of these emails but some are still of interest, so I add them to my Archive Folder.

I would like to hear other methods you may have to handle email. Put them in the comments.

NeatReceipts Mobile Scanner

I’ve been working on creating a paperless office and my NeatReceipts Mobile Scanner and Digital Filing System for Mac has been a great help.

The scanner is small and powered by USB so it doesn’t need a power cable. You put paper in it and press the scan button. It scans, does OCR and saves the file as a PDF. In the software, it decides if the paper is a receipt, a document or a business card. Then, it gathers the information off of the paper and adds it to a database.

It doesn’t do a perfect job putting the right information in the right fields but it’s close enough to get you pretty far along. You can go through the inbox of the program, quickly make any corrections to scans and file them away.  

Once the documents are in the computer, the information is searchable. The scanner software saves the documents as standard, universally readable PDFs.

The original paper can go into the shredder.

A virtual tropical street

We escaped the cold Chicago winter and used less than a gallon of gas.We spent the weekend at Key Lime Cove in Gurnee. Key Lime Cove is a tropical themed resort. We stayed in the Key West Wing. Our 6-year-old son had a great time in the water park and the kid’s activity area. My wife and I enjoyed just forgetting there was snow and freezing temperatures outside.

Most people probably spend most of the time in the water park. We spent about 2.5 hours there. Most of that was time was spent with my son on the lazy river and wave pool but I managed to go down most of the water slides once.

There are shops and a spa. There are also enough restaurants to keep you from having to go out into the cold.

Is that Ernest Hemmingway?

The Water Park

One of the Restaurants

If you enjoy TED talks, you can now get a free TED App and view the videos on your iPhone. You can also subscribe to the podcast.

I found the word “only” interesting because I was surprised to learn that there were ATMs in Antarctica at all.

It turns out that both ATMs are in a store in McMurdo Station Antarctica. The ATMs are from Wells Fargo.

McMurdo has a population of about 200 in the winter and around 2,000 in the summer.

See the current weather conditions for McMurdo.