Ideas by Millan

Healthy Food

Get over the economic crisis and cook with your kids at home. For a family of three or more, eating at restaurants every week can be very expensive and will end up affecting your yearly budget. Get your kids involved in cooking with you, together you can learn new recipes and will share more time together. If your kids are at or near the age where they will be going to college then sharing time with you in the kitchen will teach them to be more aware of their health. If your kids know that there are healthier choices they can easily prepare, then they will not be limited to frozen TV-dinners once they get to college.

generic

Generic drugs usually cost much less than brand name drugs. The Food and Drug Administration, through a strict and rigorous process, analyze every generic drug to make sure it is as safe and effective as the brand name drug. A generic drug is made of the same chemicals as brand name and are just as effective.

Source: Food and Drug Administration

Today my 2003 Explorer “door ajar” light came on, I’ve had this light come on once before and had turned out to be the rear lift gate. Checking the lift gate was instinctively my first reaction, but nothing happened, then I opened and closed the hatch window… nothing, all doors… nothing, re-rechecked the lift gate, and aha!!! I found a ballpoint pen under the weatherstripping. Then I pressed the remote’s door lock button and instead of beeping once, meaning that it was locked, it beeped twice, meaning that a door was open; this really annoyed me because I knew that all the doors were shut. To make matters worst, the interior lights and the side-view mirror lights would not turn off.

The problem was the door latch, which door?  I really don’t know. So what I did was to spray WD-40 on all the door latches, the lift gate latch, and the hatch window latch. I sprayed every latch once and nothing! The” door ajar” light was still on, so I went back to every latch and with my key I pushed in the latch’s hinge to close it. I re-sprayed with WD-40 making sure I got everything really lubricated. This fixed the problem, no more “door ajar”! I guess the door sensors were dried out. I will just have to wait and see if the problem comes back or if this is a permanent solution.

OpenOffice

You can’t live without Word, Excel or Powerpoint, but don’t have the money to buy the most recent Window’s Office… Don’t worry you have alternatives. Open source is your solution. Open source is the term used for programs that are freely distributed and developed. This means is that there are no costs for licenses and there are fewer legal risks. What does this mean to you…that it is free! You are not required to pay in order to download the programs, nor to renew their license, nor to receive updates, and yes, it is completely legal to use this software.

Without you even knowing it, you may already have used open source programs when checking your email or visiting some Internet sites.

Your best alternative for Word, Excel or Powerpoint is OpenOffice.
Download it here:
www.openoffice.org

To save water:

1.  Use the dishwasher and the washer only when they are full.

2.  This may be too simple, but close the faucet when you are not using it.

3.  Wash food in a container and reuse the water to water your houseplants.4.  Place a bottle inside the toilet’s water tank. You can fill a bottle of water with sand or pebbles, or use something that doesn’t float. It’s not recommended to use a brick since it will crumble with time.5.  Make sure you are not wasting water when watering your lawn. Water appropriately

To save Electricity:

1.  Substitute light bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFL).

2.  Natural light does not cost money, so take advantage of natural light to the max, open blinds and bedroom doors to get light from all places.

3.  Select light colors when painting, since the light that enters through windows can bounce more off the light-colored walls.

Lawn

It may not make sense to water your lawn yet, but if you live in an area where there has not been much rain or snow this winter, watering a couple times a week can help your lawn. Dormant grass can get damaged if it gets to dry. By the time the hot summer days arrive your lawn will already have a head start and it will not require a lot of water to fight the dreaded heat.

Heres a way to to know if you are watering appropriately:

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  • Gather a few soda cans, one for each corner and at least one on the center.
  • Cut the tops with scissors and with a marker place a 1″ mark on the inside
  • Turn on the sprinklers and water as your normally would
  • If puddles form or runoff occur before the water reaches the one-inch mark, then adjust your watering rate, it may just be that you need to let the soil soak in before continuing to water.

Remember the best times to water are early morning and early evening when there is generally less wind and heat.