Rewards Cards are thieves

There is a nearly criminal racket that is very active and pervasive. Chances are, even you have taken part in it. The racket is called Rewards Cards. Have you ever wondered where the "rewards" that you get from your Rewards Card come from?  Straight from the vendor where you bought your stuff. To pay for your rewards, the credit card companies take an extra percentage right off the top of the transaction. So by using the rewards card, you steal from the store you bought from and by extension if you steal, you are a thief. Sure, you get part of your money back which is cool, but the major beneficiary of this vile scheme is the credit card industry. You see, they don't pass all of the "rewards" on to you, they keep a chunk of them for themselves.

In the last few months, the rewards cards have been skimming an extra 2.5% right off the top of the transactions that I submitted here at work and there is absolutely no way to recover the money or to keep it from happening again. It is illegal for us to refuse credit card payment, to refuse rewards cards or even put a cap on how much people can pay with cards. So, if you want to steal from us, we are open for business. The only way we can avoid the racket is to stop offering credit card payment options or by charging an extra processing fee.

Do your merchant a favor and stop using your rewards cards. I'm sure places like Wal-Mart and Target have it figured out so they don't have to pay it but for the small businesses, it just hurts.

Arbor Day Foundation

I just joined the National Arbor Day Foundation. The registration costs $10 for a year and with that I get 10 trees. I wanted a Weeping Willow tree too, so I bought one for $8 and got a free Red Maple with that. All said and done I got 12 trees for $23. You need to order soon to get your trees in time for spring planting. Go join up already, unless of course you are deprived of the blessing of land.

I think trees are awesome. What better way is there to dress up God's green earth?

Lectio Divina

Lectio Divina
The Four Moments from Wikipedia

Lectio Divina has been likened to "Feasting on the Word." The four parts are first taking a bite (Lectio), then chewing on it (Meditatio). Next is the opportunity to savor the essence of it (Oratio). Finally, the Word is digested and made a part of the body (Contemplatio).

Lectio

This first moment consists in reading the scriptural passage slowly, attentively several times. Many write down words in the scripture that stick out to them or grasp their attention during this moment.

Meditatio

The Christian, gravitating around the passage or one of its words, takes it and ruminates on it, thinking in God’s presence about the text. He or she benefits from the Holy Spirit’s ministry of illumination, i.e. the work of the Holy Spirit that imparts spiritual understanding of the sacred text. It is not a special revelation from God, but the inward working of the Holy Spirit, which enables the Christian to grasp the revelation contained in the Scripture.

Oratio

This is prayer: prayer understood both as dialogue with God, that is, as loving conversation with the One who has invited us into His embrace; and as consecration, prayer as the priestly offering to God of parts of ourselves that we have not previously believed God wants. In this consecration-prayer we allow the word that we have taken in and on which we are pondering to touch and change our deepest selves. ...God invites us in lectio divina to hold up our most difficult and pain-filled experiences to Him, and to gently recite over them the healing word or phrase He has given us in our lectio and meditatio. In this oratio, this consecration-prayer, we allow our real selves to be touched and changed by the word of God.

Contemplatio

This moment is characterized by a simple, loving focus on God. In other words, it is a beautiful, wordless contemplation of God, a joyful rest in His presence.

AT&T Towers

I just got off of the phone with AT&T customer service complaining about a lack of service. The lady gave me this address to send a request to get a tower placed on my property. Basically you need to send this information to them and (hopefully) they will contact you about putting a tower on your land.

AT&T Network Real Estate Administration
12555 Cingular Way, Suite 1300
Alpharetta, GA 30004

You will have to also include the following info as well.

I was informed that you may or may not get a response from them but it cannot hurt if you at least try.

Contact name
Phone number
address and/or email address
Property address
city
state
county
Property size (acres or square feet)
Latitude/longitude of site (if available)
Map and/or survey (if available)

Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window.

This morning I encountered this error when I tried to open Outlook. "Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window." Turns out, all you need to do is go to run and type or paste "outlook.exe /resetnavpane".

• In XP "run" is located at Start > Run...
• In Vista and Windows 7 it is combined with the search box that is at the bottom of the menu that pops up when you click on the round glow ball that took the place of the Start button.

Reset Photoshop preferences to default

How to reset Photoshop preferences (In Windows):

1. Hold down all three Ctrl+Alt+Shift buttons and open Photoshop from the start menu.
2. As Photoshop loads, you should get a prompt asking if you would like to "delete the Photoshop settings file", Click yes
3. All done. Everything will be set like it was right out of the box. It even resets your "Recently opened" menu.

I had to do this when I ran into trouble starting Photoshop in Windows 7. When I would open the program it would immediately close and give an error about not having permission to change a file. The only way to start it was to "Run as administrator" but this fixed it like a charm.

How to delete or force delete print jobs

• Written by Ellie under Geek Girl

We have all sent print jobs to the printer to only realize – “I shouldn’t have sent that!” But when you right-click on the job and press delete, the job says “Deleting” but never goes away!
The only way I knew of to fix this was to restart my computer. But, that’s a huge pain when I have four or five programs open and working online, too!
Follow the directions below to manually force delete print jobs. You won’t have to reboot your computer afterwards, either!

1. Browse to Start > Run… and type in “NET STOP SPOOLER” – this will stop the print spooler service. (In Vista, you can just type this in the Search box; and when testing, the next two steps were unnecessary; however, try them anyway!)
2. Browse to your windows\system32\spool\PRINTERS\ folder
3. You should see files there ending in .SPL and .SHD created around the time you tried to print – delete these files.
4. Browse to Start -> Run… and type in “NET START SPOOLER” (this will restart the print spooler service)
5. Double click the printer icon in the lower-right corner of your taskbar to examine your print job queue and browse to View > Refresh.