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Christmas Cookies!
2007-11-30 04:17:00
My wife and her mother plan on getting together to have a day of baking Christmas Cookie s for friends and family. So I had a task of finding a recipe or two that I wanted to see made. In my infinite wisdom I did a search and low and behold there is a website called Christmas-Cookies.com. Not that I wouldn't believe that someone would have the domain name, but just never thought about it. So if your stumped on what to bake, give the site a look and maybe it will inspire. There are a lot of recipes to choose from.

Time to Open Pandora's Box
2007-11-27 02:29:00
Are you tired of radio stations that don't play what you like and just what you like? Pandora.com may be your answer. Touted as radio from the Music Genome Project, Pandora is an online radio station where you create the lineup. You start by searching for an artist or band you like and then the site will play something from them. After, they start to play songs from groups that are similar to what you selected. You can then hover your mouse over the album cover and give a thumbs up or down as to whether you want them added to your play list or removed forever. You can sign up to get a profile so that your choices are remembered every time you come back to the site. To listen is free but only allowed in the U.S.A due to licensing. I know a few people that use the site at work to help the day go by a little faster. They make their money by the advertising that is on the page while the music plays. A small price to pay to get here your faves during the day.
More About: Time , Open

Keeping Up With News 23-6
2007-11-25 23:49:00
The tag line goes "Some of the News /Some of the Time". The people over at 23/6 have come up with a "news" page that gives you some of the top news articles that only a site it can. If you want to laugh, give this news site a read. Keep in mind that I am using the word news in the loosest way possible.

All I Want For Christmas!
2007-11-22 02:39:00
I was just over at The Thinking Blog and ran across a contest that is going on in which the winner gets a free laptop! Not just any laptop but a new, rugged, water resistant laptop by Ruff PC. The contest runs though December 20th, so finding out will make for one awesome holiday for someone (fingers crossed). I have been a fan of The Thinking Blog for a long time and when I started Boredom Relief back in August it was one of the first blogs that I recommended. Here it is 3 months later and I am still a fan and still recommend the site. As for Ruff PC, I have never owned one, but with the way that I abuse my computers, the more rugged the better. Good luck to all that enter. If I am not fortunate enough to win, hopefully someone who read about it here first will.
More About: Christmas

Newest FireFox Released
2007-11-22 02:01:00
Firefox has been becoming a huge competitor for Internet Explorer for a while now and what makes people gravitate to it is the fact that its constantly being tweaked and made better. Well not Beta 3 has been released with many new features and fixes that will please a lot of people. Above all that if you are like me you will love all the different plug in features you can get for firefox such as the one that allows you to download just about any video you find on the internet. Keep in mind that version 3 is a beta version and may have bugs that are not worked out as of yet.
More About: Firefox , Released

Thanksgiving on the Net
2007-11-20 03:34:00
I found a site called holidays.net that has a lot of information pertaining to Thanksgiving appropriately called Thanksgiving on the Net. There is everything there from the history of Thanksgiving to recipes and even a blog (say what? a blog?). Needless to say its a pretty cool site to visit this week to get you ready for the big day of over eating.
More About: Hank

Yuwie October Update
2007-11-19 02:38:00
Time for my monthly update on the relatively new Yuwie social network. If you haven't read my previous posts on this I will give a little back info. Yuwie is a new social network (as stated in my first sentence) that is competing with the big guys like Myspace. The difference is that Yuwie shares the revenue that it makes with the users of the site. They have a system that tracks the number of views of your page that you set up and to keep track of referrals under you so you can benefit from their popularity as well. As for me, I am lazy and not good at the social or the networking part of these things and yet I have made 47 friends since I signed up. I signed up in the last 10 days of September and in October was credited with 2 cents from the profit share for my September visits (no referrals). Not bad for doing absolutely nothing (keep in mind you have to hit $25 before you see any money). Being the lazy person I am, I did nothing in the month of October as well. I got ...
More About: Update

Would You Sell Your Right to Vote?
2007-11-17 05:35:00
There has been a couple of recent studies that are making the news lately where college students at certain Universities were asked if they would sell their vote, or more appropriately, sell their right to vote in the upcoming presidential election. And if yes, what would the amount be to get them to do so. At NYU, students said they would sell their vote for one year of free tuition. Other students at other schools would sell their vote for an ipod. So, would you sell your vote? I was listening to Ankarlo, a local radio talk show host here in the Phoenix area and he posed the question, would you give up your right to vote forever for 1 million Dollars? Many would jump on that in a heart beat and Ankarlo would think they are nuts. But, given the number of people that do not even exercise the right given them, giving up something they do not even use would be no big deal. I grew up in a household where my father was apathetic when it came to politics (still like the definiti...
More About: Vote , Sell

A Little Gift Card Did Ya Know
2007-11-16 02:50:00
I was reading an interesting article recently and the facts were just mind boggling. According to Consumer Reports about $8 billion in gift cards given out last holiday season were never redeemed. That's a lot of money but its only 10% of the $80 billion industry of gift cards. Man, to just have a tiny percentage of what wasn't spent in my pockets! Wow. We give gift cards but we pick and chose who and from where very carefully because we know our friends and family well and don't want to give a card that says "that's right, we put absolutely no thought into what to give you". Are you laughing? The article states that 35% of people that did not use their gift cards said it was because they could not find anything they wanted at the store the card was for. That has to suck. Now for the 58% that said they just did not have time to use the cards is another story. No time because its a store that they normally don't shop at or they just don't leave the house? I have rece...
More About: Card , Gift

Black Friday and Cyber Monday
2007-11-14 04:09:00
They are coming. Black Friday which is the day after Thanksgiving for those who may not know is closing in. For those who like to get up at 4 am or camp out in line the night before at their favorite stores you may want to check out the official unofficial Black Friday ads page has been posting the ads that will be in your Thursday papers online. Check them out now and and prepare early. As in past years, the best items are usually gone not long after the doors open.Now if you are like me, and have no want to spend your day in the chaos that comes with black Friday there is always Cyber Monday . Cyber Monday, which is the Monday after Black Friday is the day that the cyber merchants start their sales. This is where you will find me doing some of my shopping. I have found some great deals in the past and hopefully can equal or better the savings this year.

Countdown to Christmas
2007-11-12 02:39:00
Ok, Halloween is now in the past and I personally can start thinking about the upcoming holidays. If you are like me you have been going nuts when going into the stores the last few months and seeing the Christmas decorations just one isle over from the Halloween costumes and candy. So now with Thanksgiving only a few short weeks from this posting I feel that it is ok to post holiday related things on the blog. Right now I am going to start with this little gem below. A little reminder of how the time is starting to tick away between now and Christmas. We have actually started our shopping and about about 1/3 done if you can believe that but I don't want time to get away from me because I don't like being one of the people out on Christmas Eve trying to finish up. So that being said. Here is my little reminder to me and anyone else that cares to know the days left.
More About: Countdown

Using Google on Your Cell Phone
2007-11-10 16:01:00
Did you know that you can use Google on your phone and not need Internet access to do so? All you need is a cell phone that is capable of sending and receiving text messages which is just about all cell phones today. To use it is simple. You send a text message to 46645 (GOOGL) with what you are looking for. You will receive a message or two back from Google with your answers. Currently this feature only works with U.S.A. destinations.Things you can request info by texting to Google:Local: Just text the name of the place you are looking for and the city and state or zip code. If you don't know the name but do know the type you can type something like pizza 85003 and you will get a list of places nearby.Sports updates: Just text the name of the team (i.e. Detroit Red Wings) and you will get the previous games score and the date, time and opponent of the upcoming game.Movie listings: Just text the word movies and your zip codeDirections: Just text the word directions and the...
More About: Phone , Cell Phone , Cell , Cell-phone

Lunchclub, It's Whats for Lunch.
2007-11-07 03:41:00
I am not sure where all this works. I know it works in Phoenix Arizona, and has for a few years now. Lunch club.net is a site that works with local restaurants to give discounts to customers. As a customer, all you do is sign up for the free account, set your zip code or cross streets and let them do the rest. After that you begin to receive emails that you can print out for discounts at the restaurants near your location, assuming that the nearby restaurants are taking part in the program. One of my recent emails was good for 25% off the entire lunch bill at a place less than a mile from where I work! If its not available outside the metro Phoenix area, send them an email demanding they branch out. I have been a member for over 7 years now.

Celeb Look Alikes in Phoenix?
2007-11-06 02:50:00
Arizona Central, the online version of one of Phoenix Arizona's local newspapers has a section dedicated to celebrity look-alikes. People submit their pictures and who they think they look like. You get to vote one of 3 options, from dead ringer to dream on. Some times (very rarely) the resemblance is uncanny, but most of the time, you kind of wonder what someone was drinking when they told the person they looked like a celeb. Great fun for all, well maybe everyone except those who uploaded their picture to find out no one agrees with them. So go ahead and be the judge.
More About: Celeb

On This Day in History
2007-11-03 02:41:00
On the site On-this-day.com you can see just what has happened on today's date in the past. There is a sports section, music section, quite a few sections devoted to specific historic categories such as presidential history and general US history. You can also click on the link to select any other day of the year other than the day you are visiting the site to find out what happened, like on the day you were born. Very interesting facts on the site that can really take some time to go through (being there are 365 days worth of pages).
More About: History , S Day

How Old Are You?
2007-10-30 03:43:00
My wife's new favorite show is "Pushing Daisies". If you haven't seen the show, in the beginning of every episode they have some event involving one or both of the main characters where the narrator tells how old they are at that exact moment in time. Without really getting into the show (its kinda like a Dr. Seuss sitcom for adults I think) we found this to be a funny way to start the episodes and wanted to see just how old we were. Off to the Internet I went. Over at Mathcats.com, there is an age calculator that will tell you what day you were born on, and if you know the time you were born (take a guess if you don't) it will tell you how old you are in years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and even seconds. It can really make you feel old when you see your age in seconds and its over 1 billion. It will tell you how long until your next birthday.

Date Night Fun
2007-10-27 04:22:00
This is for the couples. My wife and I like to go out to eat once a week for what we affectionately call date night and there are rules to date night that must be followed. Rule one, its an us only night. No tag alongs (this would mean friends, family or the kids for those parents out there). Rule two, it can't be fast food. That can be had anytime and well, it just ruins the whole meaning behind the concept. Rule three is a new rule we instituted recently that has added more fun and a little mystery to the date night concept. Each week we swap who chooses where we are to go. The location should be somewhere we have not gone before (or in a while). And the mystery part is the one choosing can decide whether or not to divulge the location or not. What got us started on this is here in Phoenix they put out a magazine and in it they publish the "best of" the city. We have had a great time visiting little places we never knew existed while spending the time together. I stro...
More About: Night

When You Have Nothing Better To Do
2007-10-25 04:22:00
I started this blog when I had nothing better to do and it has been fun but its starting to slow down for me. I am back working full time now and don't have the time to put up a post every day now. For the faithful people that visit regularly, don't worry, I have no plans to stop posting, just giving a little warning that the posts may not be as frequent. I hope to post at least three times a week, and hopefully more if I get some good stuff worth mentioning.Now I did not plan on putting up just a sappy post about me, I actually do have a site to share. Of all things, its called bored.com and well the name says it all. This is the type of place I am talking about most of the time when I am looking for to just kill a little time. Humor, music, games, and just fun stuff to bring relief to any boredom bug.
More About: To Do

Halloween Costumes
2007-10-23 15:00:00
With just over a week to go, if you haven't started to think about yours or your kids costumes, its time to get a move on. Costumepage.org has a nice collection of links for inexpensive ways to get all decked out. Personally, Halloween is probably the second favorite holiday in our household even though it seems that every other year we end up having something come up which is sad. I have been on a plane on Halloween night more often than I care to think about in the last 10 years. Anyway, back to costumes! You don't have to spend a lot to get something great. Ever been to a costume party and the person that wins best costume is usually the one that came up with some unique idea at home? Everyone does the vampire, pirate, and zombie. Be creative and unique and you will be the one that gets noticed. About 6 years ago I went to a party as a hockey fan that was injured at a game. Had a hockey puck coming out my eye. Took me about $5 and a little thought to pull it off but it worked a...
More About: Costumes , Allo

Even More Online Games for Free
2007-10-22 15:11:00
My Internet travels this weekend took me to a site called Zango.com where on the top of the site there is a few tabs. The play tab took me to all the games that are available to play on the site. Be sure to check out the other pages of games, and not just focus on the first page. Zango also has videos to watch as well, broken down by category. For website owners and bloggers the publish tab may be worth checking out. They are looking for people to put some of the Zango content on on their own sites. Boredom Relief is not participating in this program, but if you are, let us know how it has worked for you.
More About: Games , Online Games , Free , Online

Friday Fun Day
2007-10-20 03:09:00
Whats a Friday without a little Friday Fun? Its a little site of videos, pictures, emails and other stuff that all "had to pass their funny test" before they would be allowed on the site.

Want a Well Trained Dog?
2007-10-18 14:55:00
My wife who is a huge animal lover sent this one to me. Its called I do Dog Tricks. Its reminiscent of the Burger King chicken which is still up an running, but we are talking about a cute dog here. You can type in commands and the dog will act them out. Now I know you are going to type in things that it cant/wont do but the puppy will let you know that its not valid. Sponsored by Heart Guard, this site is a fun little place to visit to cheer up your day. If your at work, you can turn the sound off under the Tell a Friend button. Just a word of caution, if you tell the dog to dance, it does not matter that you turned the sound off, it will still play.
More About: Well , TRAI , Trained

Movie and TV Show Mistakes
2007-10-17 14:45:00
We were watching the show Life the other night and I noticed that one of the characters bandage on his head moved from one side to the other in different shots. When I brought this to my wife's attention, we had to rewind and watch it over and over again. Its amazing one how such a simple mistake can grab our attention and two that mistakes like this are so common. I found a website called moviemistakes.com which was fun to run through. Its a great site for people like me that notice the simplest thing. They have bloopers that got left in movies and television shows going back years. Some of them are mundane like my bandage story while others are pretty cool to watch for. I suggest the site to anyone who wants (or has) to watch a movie they have seen a few times before to give a new aspect to watch for.
More About: Movie , Show , Stakes , Mista

Yuwie Update
2007-10-16 14:26:00
I mentioned in a post last month that I joined Yuwie, a new social networking site. The difference between Yuwie and the other social networking sites is the revenue sharing that can be had. As I posted originally, I took a passive approach to the site. Set up my page, which I use mainly as a blog for my interest in hockey, and mainly the Detroit Red Wings. My page for the month of September was viewed 340 times and I referred nobody to the site. This netted me 2 cents. I looked on the net and found someone who got an account back in July. He was very aggressive in getting referrals and his referrals were aggressive as well down the line. By September his earnings were over $50. With the minimum required to receive payment at $25 he will get paid in November after the net 60 day waiting period. Not bad for a free program, but how much work did he put into this and was the time worth it? If someone was going to join the site anyway, then yes, if the goal was only to make money then i...
More About: Update

Who Was in What?
2007-10-15 18:55:00
Hands down the best place to end those disputes on who was in what movie has to be IMDB.com. The International Movie Data Base is no secret for movie fans everywhere. It has a vast search engine that allows for search not just by movie and actor, but by character name and even quotes. I don't know how many times the site has come in handy in my household when it comes to arguments. The good part is we get resolution quickly, the sad part is I learn quickly how wrong I am most of the time. Another cool feature is the site usually has trailers and links to the home pages for up and coming movies as well.Here is a simple game that anyone can play using the site for fun.Basically its 6 degrees of separation:Think of 2 actors or actresses that have never been in a movie together (that you know of)Search and get the bio of the first.Try to link to the second in the fewest number of movies/shows.Person that can do it in the fewest links wins.

Boredom Relief goes to the Fair
2007-10-15 02:25:00
The Arizona State Fair actually. My wife and I had the opportunity to go to opening day on Friday. Nothing says boredom relief than a trip to the fair. Whether its state, county or just a small local fair, they are loads of fun. Many fairs have their own web pages, which should be scoured through before going. Its the best way to find discounts and what kind of special events will be happening on what days. We were lucky to find out that opening day was dollar day and we were able to save $22 ($11 each over the $12 tickets) to get in. That promptly went into the fairfood fund. Who can go to a fair and not experience the food?! In Arizona (and probably many of the southwest states) the big thing is Indian Fry bread. Growing up in Michigan we had a similar thing but it was called elephant ears. No matter what name is given to this evilly good fried dough it just screams FAIR. We have tried to make it at home and no matter how good it is, its just not the same as if it was bought at th...
More About: Relief , Boredom , Goes

Way To Many Recalls
2007-10-13 15:43:00
Have you noticed the number of recalls there have been lately, especially in the toy department. One recall of a toy should be to many, but that's another story. Anyway, if you go to the U.S. CPSC (Consumer Protective Safety Commission) you will find over a dozen new listings on the front page alone on recent recalls. Click on the Recalls and Product Safety News link and you will get a page that breaks down the recalls by month, going back to 1973. You can even break down recalls by company, product type, and description on this page. I decided to look at the month of October and counted the number of recalls, which hasn't even hit the half way point, and there is more than 3 dozen recalls already. For those with small children, I recommend subscribing to the RSS feeds for the toys and child products at the bottom of the page to keep up on the latest recalls.

Time for a Lego Makeover
2007-10-12 18:56:00
Over at Reasonably Clever they have a little program that you can use to create your own Lego character. There are a ton of options to swap around and a few backgrounds, including a couple that work great for those photo shop wizards out there that want to mask out the background so they can put their creation in another pic. The little Lego people make for great avatars as well. So have fun, and maybe I will be seeing a Lego you somewhere on the net in the future.
More About: Time , Makeover

There is Always Time for Family Fun
2007-10-11 16:22:00
Growing up, we had a lot of family activities such as game night, movie night, or going out to eat night which was a rare occasion then but is the opposite for families now. It seems like more and more family life has become so fast pace that a meal at home has become the exception rather than the rule, and forget about "family time". This is where I recommend visiting familyfun.com. Its a great site with tons of arts and crafts, recipes, and other ideas that families can do together. With Halloween around the corner, you will find a lot of ideas for costumes and decorations. The site is part of the Go network which is owned by Disney Corporation.
More About: Family , Time , Always

Rotten Tomatoes Not Just for Throwing
2007-10-10 15:02:00
If you never heard of the Rotten Tomatoes website, then you are probably not a movie fan. The site and blog is well known for the way it takes on its critiques of movies. But the reason I am talking about it today is because of the section known as News and Editorials. Its a great place to find the latest scoop on whats may be on the big screen in the future, such as a fourth installment from the Terminator movies and yet another Star Trek movie in the works. If you have heard rumors of a remake, cartoon going big screen, or just the next best movie ever, you will probably find all about it here.
More About: Rotten Tomatoes