10 Summer Money Saving Tips

Our favorite Mexican place has either acquired some new decor or they are already decorating for Halloween! Here are some quick, money-saving tips...

1. Stock up on stamps before the price increases on Sunday.
2. I just checked the Target ad for next week and they have some steep discounts on school supplies. Now would be a great time for parents to start stocking up on these items.
3. Ditto early school clothes shopping by hitting up thrift stores, garage sales, checking the sale racks at Walmart and Ross, etc. For new items like shoes, socks, etc, I like sierra.com
4. July is also the time to sign up for/plan to attend free school supply events (here is an example for my local area) for families in need.
5. If I was single (it's hard for a family to do this) and broke, I would get rid of my car and buy a $60 monthly bus pass. You can't even buy a tank of gas for $60 these days!
6. Now is a great time to forage for wild black berries, huckleberries, etc. We went to a casino yesterday that grows champagne grapes and their grapes were ready to pick! Here are other things to forage for in the summer.
7. If you are looking for free or inexpensive ways to keep your kids busy for the rest of the summer, here are a bunch of ideas.
8. One of the best places for kids in our area is the library! Our library system offers free meals, movies, activities, events, etc. for kids all summer long.
9. If you are looking for last-minute vacation ideas, Kayak Explore lets you search a map of the US and world by cheap airline prices.
10. If you can't afford a new computer for your kids (memory prices are sky high these days), consider rehabbing an old or used laptop by installing Linux. It's easy, free, and better than Windows IMHO. Plus it includes a bunch of free software like LibreOffice, VLC, etc.

Happy 4th of July!

I wish you all a happy and safe 4th of July! FYI, I used Gemini AI to create the above  picture. I said 'please make me a picture of a flag with 1776-2026 to celebrate the 4th of July'. It took about 30 seconds for it to generate the picture. I said 'thank you that's perfect', and it answered back 'you are welcome, please have a happy and safe 4th of July'.  It's a tad bit eerie that this is just the beginning of AI yet it can take a basic command and come up with this photo plus it wished me a happy holiday. eeekkk

Grocery Prices eeekkk

Food prices are out of control! Yesterday was the first time we went into a restaurant for lunch (our favorite Hawaiian place), saw the updated prices ($19.95 for one plate lunch) then turned around and left. For a basic lunch of rice, macaroni salad, three shrimp, a small fried fish, and a small portion of kalbi, I will make it myself for a quarter of the price. Then we did our usual weekly grocery shopping trip today and again, I was shocked at how expensive many things were (that single USA balloon was $18.99 and the bags of chips were half the usual size!)...

10 Happy Things

In no particular order...

1. Gracie the missing giraffe has been found!
2. This website will link you to programs that will pay you to move to a new location.
3. And this program will pay you to collect pythons!
4. Obligatory cute cat pictures.
5. Here are a bunch of 4th of July freebies and deals.
6. We just got our annual house insurance bill and it only went up $10 over last year (I was expecting a double digit increase!).
7. I avoided buying anything from the Amazon Prime Days sale (although I was certainly tempted to buy several things!).
8. The live bear cams are now up (although I have yet to see any bears...).
9. I'm loving all of the positive videos from the World Cup visitors.
10. Finally, here are some cool and useful charts.

10 Things I'm Worrying About Today

In no particular order...

1. Three big earthquakes within a few hours...eeekkk
2. Our ridiculously corrupt government (examples here, here, and here).
3. And even more surveillance on the horizon.
4. People sweltering in the European heatwave.
5. And people being so callous to others in need.
6. Inflation increasing (yet there is non-stop coverage of Amazon Prime Days sales).
7. Wildfires happening all over the west.
8. AI problems (data centers, taking jobs, taking over)
9. But wait...there's more!
10. And private equity buying up...everything.

Obviously I need a news fast...

AI AI Oh!

So AI is taking over...everything. On the one hand I am old and like using my brain, but on the other hand, using it saves me So. Much. Time. Aside from the obvious AI slop that is all over YouTube, there are so many ways to use this new technology...

• When Chat GPT was first released, I didn't really have a use for it but I told it to write me a song in the style of Kanye West (he may be a creeper but he is a talented songwriter). Within seconds it produced better lyrics than Kanye could and I was shocked!
• Then I had a PDF document that I couldn't un-PDF and faced the task of typing out an entire document so I could rearrange it. In desperation I uploaded it to Gemini AI and it printed out the document perfectly into a Word document and I was able to get my revisions done in record time.
• Next, I had some bylaws for an organization that I said I would review and update. Thinking that I could spend a couple hours revising and researching or I could ask Gemini AI to revise the bylaws according to current 501c3 rules, I uploaded the document and within a literal minute had an updated, accurate, and beautifully revised document. Awesome!
• I wanted to see what Gemini AI could do with photos so I uploaded a photo of hubby, told it to turn the photo into a cartoon, and it downloaded a cartoon-looking picture of hubby which I used for our Facebook page. Cute!
• My friend emailed me at zero-dark-thirty this morning and said "can you please write me a letter to our leasing company asking to be released from our current lease a couple months early because my new house just closed?". I simply cut and paste her exact words into Gemini AI and within a minute it printed out a letter for her to send. Her only comment was "you write so quickly and professionally!" I did tell her it was AI and not me doing the work. She was shocked.
• I was talking to a friend who is a district manager with a company that recently asked him to run a second district when that manager quit unexpectedly. I asked him if he ever uses AI and he said "yes, all day, everyday". I suggested that with AI, he could permanently run both districts, make a higher salary for doing the extra work, yet the company can also save money by not hiring a new full time district manager. He said he was already on it and is expecting a job offer, at much higher pay, any day now.
• Finally, I attended a meeting today and I asked who had their AI avatar on. The host said one lady in our group couldn't attend the meeting so she had her avatar attend the meeting in her place (basically it records the meeting and sends the recording to her inbox). Yikes this technology is evolving quickly!

So I guess whether we love AI or hate AI, it is here to stay. I didn't like the concept at first but remembered the movie 'Hidden Figures' that I watched several years ago. The computers (ladies who computed math equations) were being replaced by computers (the machines).  Instead of complaining about the change like most people were doing, one lady jumped into learning the new system thereby securing herself a new job as a trainer for how to use the new machines. In this vein, I try to watch a few "how to use AI" videos each evening so I can find new and effective ways to enhance my work with the new technology.

10 Quick Things

In no particular order...

1. Our sunrises and sunsets are beautiful (mostly due to the wildfire smoke coming over from Arizona).
2. It has been hot hot hot here...109 degrees, 107 degrees, 108 degrees...yikes!
3. We haven't seen the feral cats in ages (we hope someone is keeping them in their house where it is nice and cool).
4. Sunday is both Father's Day and the Summer Solstice.
5. My friend just moved back to Las Vegas and bought a new home. She is having an Indian housewarming ceremony and I did a double take when the invitation said the party starts at 6am!
6. School is out and there are kids everywhere! However in our area, summer vacation is short-lived as they go back to school in mid August.
7. One of our ceiling light bulbs has been burned out for months but since it is in the section of our house where the ceiling is about 25 feet high, neither hubby or I thought it would be safe for us to change it. Cue me noticing a couple of guys trimming palm trees in our neighborhood so I told them to come to my house with their ladder when they got finished working; they quickly set up their ladder and changed it for me!
8. This lady is so me these days.
9. Things that are stressing me out: funding for my job (will probably evaporate soon according to the governor), prices (high...on everything), news (negative and tragic...plane crashes, murdery people, a video of a lady bungie jumping off a 130-foot tall bridge where they forgot to attach the bungie cord to her....ugh).
10. Some happy news...international visitors are raving about the wonders of the US! There are hundreds of videos like this on YouTube.