When I was a child, we didn’t have much money. Invention being the daughter of necessity, we learned early that one must “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without,” as the old folk saying goes. Although my finances got easier, many of my thrifty habits remained (though my natural generosity tends to take a bite out of my finances when I am doing well).

In these times, every little bit helps, and so I am going to share some of my tips on how to cut back your costs. I have a lot of them—65 on my list, and I’m not done listing everything. I’m not simply going to give you a list, however, but am instead going to have a separate  post for each item on the list so I can discuss it a little bit, say why it works or how it works, perhaps give instructions if it is something along the lines of reusing something for a new purpose (“repurposing,” as it is known in the corporate world), and even, if you don’t mind, sharing a bit of the philosophy behind the item.

Some of the ideas I will be sharing with you will simply involve changing habits—doing something differently than you have before. Some will involve buying things in different ways. Others will involve not buying something entirely. It is of course entirely up to you whether you choose to take one, some, or all of these ideas and make them your own. All I ask is that you read through them with a neutral eye. If you find one you like, consider making it a goal to incorporate that idea into your life.

Idea #1: Cancel Your Television Service

Television does not exist to entertain us; it exists to sell to us. (Commercialism by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen)

In some ways, there isn’t a priority to these ideas, but idea number one is so important in so many other ways than saving money that I am sharing it first. It is also going to be an idea that many people will resist, so I am throwing it out there first so that you have a chance to mull it over, maybe do a little research yourself, perhaps give it a try for a month and see how you do with it.

This first idea is to cancel your television service. There are many good reasons to stop watching television entirely, though you don’t have to. Most television shows are available on the Internet either through the network Web site or such sites as Hulu; if you are patient, many shows are eventually available on DVD (which you can rent or check out of your library instead of buying them). However, you will still be subjected to commercials while watching at sites such as Hulu, so the DVD option is still better.

Here are some good reasons to cancel your television service. You can

• Save money. Most people are paying $50 to $100 a month for cable service. That’s $600 to $1,200 a year. Think of what you could do with that money. You might even be able to afford a nice vacation.
• Save money and refuse to be programmed. Commercials are a waste of your precious time, and yet the number of minutes you spend watching them when watching television just keeps increasing. Commercials are designed to get you to do one thing: spend more money. They use a number of ways to manipulate you into thinking that a particular item or lifestyle must be yours; of course, that item or lifestyle is going to involve spending money. Do you really need brand-name shoes? In addition, even when you are watching television shows, the programming is there just as strongly in the shows themselves. You will see women working as waitresses living in apartments that someone with a much higher salary might not be able to afford. Subconsciously, you think that your lifestyle and circumstances should be at least as good as hers, and so you go buy more stuff. Stuff you can’t afford. Stuff you don’t need.
• Save your young child’s health. Watching television is actively damaging to the health of toddlers. Many people, pushed for time, use the television as a babysitter for their very young children, saying with exasperation that they just don’t have the time to watch a child every second. They unfortunately will have to pay a heavy bill later in terms of their child’s lost health and abilities. However, when you have no television, you will find you do, after all, have time to care for your child. And what better use of your time than to spend it than with your own child? For years before my daughter was born, I had been deliberately without television. When she was born, I had no partner, so I had to single-handedly take care of her until I married (when she was nearly four). Without television, I instead spent time with her (which was a joy and not a chore for me). Even after I married, we still did not purchase a television until she was seven, and then we carefully and closely supervised and limited what she watched. I still didn’t like it. Then, when she was ten, the television was gone again. What should you do instead? Take your children to story hour at the library. Read to them yourself. Take them to the park or a museum (if their age allows). Take them camping or to the beach or a lake.  Chances are, you’ll develop a much better relationship with your children than otherwise, which will pay you back many times over as they grow older.
• Improve your children’s reading abilities. You will be amazed at how much more literate your children will get when they don’t have TV as an option. When I went television free in 1996, my daughter’s reading speed, level, and comprehension shot up in just a few months. She’s now an adult and chooses not to have television herself.
• Spend more quality time with your family. As mentioned earlier, you will have more time to spend doing things with your family. Pick up a shared hobby, or pick up hobbies you can do together companionably. For example, one person might enjoy reading while another is doing needlework.
• Spend more quality time with yourself. If you don’t have a family, you can still benefit just as much from all the time you free up by not having a television. You may find yourself getting so busy you won’t know how you ever had time to watch TV in the first place.
• Get some fresh air and maybe some exercise. If the weather is good, you can go outside for a while and enjoy the fresh air. if your health allows, you can take a walk.
• Save your brain. Television itself, even with nothing on it, suppresses mental activity. (Though that might only apply to the old cathode-ray-tube style of television.)

If you find yourself getting angry at the idea of quitting television cold turkey, or find yourself giving all sorts of reasons why television is good (the Discovery channel is often mentioned to me, but hey, that’s on DVD too), consider this: “Millions of Americans are so hooked on television that they fit the criteria for substance abuse.” (source) Bottom line: don’t let television control your life. Save a substantial amount of money and cancel your television service. If you wish, keep the TV set and watch DVDs instead. You’ll still be miles ahead.

For writers, a style guide is an essential tool for ensuring consistency and clarity. When a company I am working for does not have an in-house style guide, I recommend the following style guides:

• The Chicago Manual of Style, 15^th Edition. The CMS, which is the standard of the publishing industry and has a long and venerable history, is a well-loved manual that I’ve used through several editions. The CMS is available in hardcover, on CD, and as an online, subscription-based version. When a new edition comes out, I geek out and read through it to see what might have changed.  If you have no other guide, this is the one to have.
• Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications, Third Edition. (Currently out of print.) As a supplement to the CMS, because of its emphasis on computer-related terminology, I’ve followed the Microsoft Manual of Style since its inception back in the early Windows days. Some of the approved terms have changed (even flip-flopped) since those early days, and I only recently switched to the third edition, so you may note older style choices in my writing samples. However, I am always consistent, whichever style I follow.
• As an alternative to the Microsoft Manual of Style, some people prefer to use Sun’s Read Me First! A Style Guide for the Computer Industry (there’s a new edition coming out in November 2009).
• For Apple-based software, there’s the Apple Publications Style, which is free to view on the Web. Note that Apple has it wrong when it comes to the correct capitalization of Web and the separation of the words Web and site (as in, “this is my Web site”), though some day it may become the lowercase web by sheer weight of usage. (Microsoft has it right on both counts in their style guide.)

There are other style guides for general or specific purposes, such as Skillin and Gay’s Words Into Type, Strunk & White’s Elements of Style, and so on. I’ve read most of them, but the CMS and the MS Manual of Style are my favorites—though I have a life-long fondness for Fowler’s acerbic wit in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (now just Modern English Usage).

Creating Style Guides

Style guides can become a hobby. I started writing my own first style guide in 1988 at Borland, where I asked a co-worker to present my idea of a Borland Technical Publications Style Guide (with my outline and some preliminary sections written) to the publications group. (I was brand-new to the group; I felt that having someone who was more established present the idea would prevent it from being vetoed just because of people didn’t know me.) The idea was seized upon eagerly and followed through with gusto, so it immediately became a group project that everyone was proud of.

I have since written a number of smaller style guides for various companies that did not have their own; my policy is to not repeat what is already in my favorite two style guides, but to instead supplement them with style choices that were specific to that company. (“Smaller” is relative; one of them was approaching 300 pages, was written, formatted, and indexed as a complete book, and covered everything from word usage to FrameMaker templates to policies and procedures for the publications group.)

It is pleasant to note that some styles I determined for myself and have been following for a very long time have crept into the software industry style guides. For example, I never liked wording such as “The software allows you to perform this action,” and have always instead used more respectful wording like, “Using this software, you can perform this action.” I’m not so arrogant as to think that others are following my lead; I just think I was ahead of the curve.

I read today about how San Francisco’s mayor wants an audit of all unused land in the city in order to grow food there. It’s a good article and I encourage you to read it. One phrase in particular caught my eye, and that was discussing a former junkyard-turned-farm in Oakland:

“…it used to be home to old cars and one angry dog, but now is run by the nonprofit City Slicker Farms.
With a handful of staff members and scores of volunteers from the neighborhood, the nonprofit operates six small farms in West Oakland and sells the produce, along with honey and eggs, on a sliding scale to local residents at a Saturday farm stand. The 2,000-square-foot former junkyard now produces 2,000 pounds of food every year, including lettuce, squash, tomatoes, parsley, sage, collard greens, grapes, cherries and plums.”

If every town and city used empty land to grow food, we’d all be better off, and so would Mother Nature.

As a psychic, channeler, and medium, I’ve spent a lot of time communicating with the other side, including with the loved ones of those who remain on earth.

In all my communications with the dearly departed, I have never once encountered any reference to hell. Instead,  I have only ever seen infinite justice and mercy.  This has held true no matter what a person had done or how badly they treated others while in a body.

I recently came across an article about the topic of hell that provides the results of a lot of research, with the conclusion being that Jesus (Yeshua) never taught that there was a hell.

While you’re at it, take a look at this article on mediums and the Bible.

A few years back, I took a sanitation and safety course at my local JC. I took it because it was required to take any of the more interesting culinary classes, and I do like to cook. I passed the course with flying colors, a new respect for germs, and greater wariness for restaurants., where I see sanitation violations everywhere. And I am completely not OCD. I am the mom who picked up her daughter’s fallen binky, rinsed it off–maybe–then gave it back to my daughter. Bur what restaurants do? shudder

One of the things I was convinced to get back then was a fingernail brush–a professional quality type–one for every sink in the house. And yes, I use them. While clearing up a stack of papers, I found the instructions for them, along with the Web site where you can get more, and since they are very cheap, and because I am recycling that piece of paper. I wanted to (A) share the information with you and (B) post the information here in case I ever want to find them again.

The brush is an FB001 Fingernail Brush, and it can be gotten at http://www.retailfoodalliance.com.

Everyone is entitled to their opinions, and in fact, I am not sure it would be possible to stop some people from having them. Lots of them. But there’s a difference between having an opinion and expressing it, and also a difference between having an opinion and believing that somehow your opinion is the only right one to have. Or, worse yet, believing that your opinion entitles you to trying to coerce others into agreeing with you.

For example, let’s say your friend has set her sights on a particular career and is working hard to achieve that goal. If you have concerns about that career (safety, legality, suitability), then you are entitled to express your concerns once or perhaps twice. But only as concerns, and only as your opinion. Beyond that, as long as the career is not self-destructive, it is none of your business what your friend is planning to be, and in fact friendship demands that you be supportive of her choices.

But what if you think it is self-destructive of your friend to pursue her chosen career?  First, ask yourself if you are truly seeing things from her perspective, or whether you are instead judging her choices by your own preferences. What you may think is self-destructive may not have any reflection in reality if you aren’t separating your own preferences from your friend’s.

For example, perhaps you have a friend who is really well suited for the corporate lifestyle, but you personally would find that lifestyle stultifying. Don’t tell your friend to abandon her plans if that is your only concern.

Let’s put this another way. You hate chocolate ice cream, and your friend loves it. But because you hate it, you tell your friend not to eat it either. You may even threaten her by saying such things as, “I will never talk with you again if you eat that flavor of  ice cream.” At that point, your friend would be perfectly entitled to reconsider her friendship with you, because friends don’t try to control their friend’s lives.

What if it turns out that the career just doesn’t suit your friend, or she loves it for a while, but decides eventually that she wants something different? Fine. It is her decision, not yours.

Ultimately, if you find that you are often telling your friends and family what they should and shouldn’t do with their lives, or, worse yet, find that you are threatening them if they don’t do what you think they should do, then that is your problem, one that you need to deal with. You don’t have the right to tell others what they can or can’t do with their lives. Sometimes it is neither prudent, politic, nor polite to state your opinion. This is called holding your tongue. It can also be called keeping the peace.

If you use FrameMaker, you are probably aware of how much trouble you can get into when you have a set of separate templates for a book. But most people struggle with it anyway, not knowing how to get around it. I hope you will enjoy learning about a procedure I came up with many years ago for creating a single master template for all your different templates for a given project; say, the title page, table of contents, chapters, appendices, and index templates for a book. Using this procedure, you will take a set of separate template files for a book and create a single master template out of them. I am providing the instructions as a high-level list of steps; I assume you know FrameMaker well enough to know how to access the various commands.

The benefit of this procedure is that when you are done, you will have a single master template for your book. When you make a change to this master template, you can freely import that master template into all files in your entire book, so that each file in your book will be up-to-date with the latest version of your template, without worrying about messing up anything.

Assumptions

You already know FrameMaker and you work with FrameMaker templates. You already have a set of FrameMaker templates that are separate files, but that you would love to have in one single master file.

Some Things to Note

The presumption in creating the master template using this procedure is that in most cases using the resulting master template, the desired file to create will be a chapter or appendix, so this procedure creates Right and Left master pages that are formatted for chapters. (That means the default pages will be for chapters and appendices; for other types of pages, you will need to manually assign the correct master page.)

Also, with the chapnum variable, you really shouldn’t need a different template for appendices; you can use the chapter master pages for them as well. And you should already be taking advantage of the ability to “stack” paragraph formats in cross-references, running H/Fs, and so on. (For example, here is a simple cross-ref format that can be used with both a chapter title and an appendix title (my HyperLink character format makes the text stand out onscreen and in PDF files and is useful in other ways as well):

<HyperLink><$paranum[Chapter,Appendix]>:\ <$paratext[Chapter,Appendix]><Default Para Font>

You can also use this kind of thing in page numbering to get the correct chapter number or appendix letter, as well as in many other nifty ways. (Also, instead of <Default Para Font>, I use </>, which means the same thing.)

The Procedure

1. Back up everything, just in case.
2. Go into all your existing templates except the Chapter template (i.e., the Title, TOC, LOF, LOT, Preface, Glossary, Appendix, and Index templates, if that is what you have) and create new master pages for each unique page (using the existing corresponding page in the template). For example, access the master Left page in the Preface template, and create a PrefaceLeft page based on it. Then access the Right page, and create a PrefaceRight page. If you don’t already have a unique master page for the Preface, access the first page and create a PrefaceFirst master page. Do the same for the other templates, so you have a set of unique master pages for each template.Important! Do not do this for the Chapter template. But do make sure you have a uniquely named “first” page for your chapter template—ChapFirst, for example, or just First. Instead, your Left and Right pages will be your chapter (and appendix) template pages. (You can’t rename or delete Right and Left master pages.) Also, you probably don’t really need a separate set of Appendix pages if you make judicious use of the chapnum variable and the ability to “stack” formats in definitions as mentioned above.
3. Now, carefully start an importation process. Take your Chapter template and save it as Master or whatever you want to call it. Open all the other template files (if you don’t already have them open), and import all formats (everything) from each one into the new master template, making sure that you import from the TOC template last. The Right and Left pages of each template will overwrite the master template’s Right and Left pages. Don’t worry about that—we’ll fix that in a minute. What is also happening is that the new uniquely named right, left, and first pages (such as PrefaceRight, PrefaceLeft, and PrefaceFirst) are being imported into your new master template, along with all your paragraph formats. So, for example, if you first started with the Preface template, after you import from that template, you’ll have the following master pages in your Master template: Right, Left, ChapFirst (assuming that’s what you called it), PrefaceRight, PrefaceLeft, and Preface First. The non-deletable Right and Left pages at this point will be as they were in your Preface. Continue this process for each template file, ending by importing the TOC file last so that your TOC reference pages and their definitions remain intact.
4. Now, open your original Chapter template and import only the Document Properties and Page Layout formats from it into your master file. Do not import reference pages. (If you import the reference pages from the Chapter template, you will overwrite your TOC reference pages. Not a good thing to do.) This process overwrites the Right and Left pages so that they are now formatted as they were in your Chapter template, and also sets the document properties to be those of the chapter by default.

That’s it—Marina’s Master Template Procedure. You now have a master template that can be used to create any possible file for a book.

Using the Template

To use this master template, import it into all files in your book. (Back up all files beforehand, though, just in case.) As a one-time procedure, go through each file and assign the correct pages (Format > Page Layout > Master Page Usage). (If someone creates a new file based on this template, they just assign the correct pages as they go.)

If you make changes to the master template, import the formats from that one template into all files in the book.

You can update the master template (for example, to edit anything, or to add a new master page) just as you would any template file.

Possible Issues

You may find that situations may introduce problems.

1. If you are using side heads in your chapter files, but you are using, say, a two-column layout for your index with no side heads, or if you are using no side heads in the TOC, your TOC and index files will look odd, even when you apply the correct master pages. This is easy to fix.  For such files, turn off side heads: Format > Page Layout > Column Layout; disable the Room for Sideheads checkbox. You may need to redefine the format properties of your xxxTOC entries so that they run across all columns and side heads (using the Pagination tab in the Paragraph Designer). This is a one-time-only modification that you need to make to the master template.
2. Numbering properties also need to be set for each file (at the book level), but that needs to be done anyway when creating a new book. For example, to set Roman numerals for your TOC, change the numbering to Roman numerals. (Right-click on the file name in the book; choose Numbering; choose the Page tab; choose the roman (xiv) option.)

When you later make changes to the master template and re-import formats from it, you might need to (A) be careful about which formats you import or (b) make the minor tweaks I just mentioned (to page numbering and side heads). I prefer to re-import everything and just make these minor tweaks–that way I don’t miss updating something.

Copyright Statement

I consider this procedure to be copyrighted in my name, but I freely grant you the use of it as long as you aren’t selling it in any way.

Long ago in the MS DOS days. I recall being told that there was a difference between the DEL and ERASE commands. One just deleted the directory entry for the file (and therefore the file could in theory be restored), the other actually erased all the data from all the sectors that file was stored on (better for security).  However, although it would seem that intuitively DEL would do the former and ERASE  the latter, I also recall being told that the commands were not intuitively named, though that source wasn’t reliable.

Doing a Google search has turned up a plethora of sites on these commands, but all the ones I checked claim that both commands do exactly the same thing. Can anyone help me out here with the correct information on these two commands? Thanks!

I’ve loved Nutella for as far back as I can remember. However, for a very long time, I have avoided it because it was made with partially hydrogenated fats (now more commonly referred to as trans fats), which I’ve known since the 1970s were Bad For You. (More.) I do not know why it has taken the rest of the world to catch up on that one—that information was freely available to any nerd anyone who read Science News.

Anyway. I have recently discovered that Nutella has been reformulated to that it no longer uses partially hydrogenated fats. I think I heard choirs of angels singing when I discovered that fact. They use modified palm oil now, which is perhaps only mariginally better, but I’ll take that margin. (My cholesterol levels have always been quite healthy, thankyouverymuch.) So, lately, I’ve been having Nutella as a dessert almost every day—Nutella on brownie bites, Nutella and crepes, or just Nutella on a spoon. I’m not picky.

My beloved has expressed a concern (tongue firmly in cheek, of course) that, with my new enthusiasm for Nutella, perhaps there is some kind of addictive chemical or other in it, and that it is all probably part of a plot for Alien Domination.

To which I say, if this is part of some alien plot, then beam me up.

This is just a quick question/rant, and I sincerely would like to have someone answer it. Why do people donate burnt cookies (or burned other baked goods) to bake sales? I am talking about cookies that are completely black on the bottom, not just a little darker than they should be. (And even those should be kept at home for the family, not donated to a bake sale.)

I mean, seriously. They have to know those cookies are burned beyond edibility, and they also have to know that people won’t eat burnt cookies. People especially don’t like paying for burnt cookies in all innocence and trust that they were paying for a good product. It is so disappointing to purchase a tasty-looking cookie or brownie or whatever, and then when you unwrap it and bit into it, you find that it has that chalky, charcoaly burnt taste and texture. So you just throw it away, which the original baker should have done in the first place. (Well, in our household, it would be composted, so at least it wouldn’t be a complete waste.)

Anyone have the answer? Yes, I know that they usually have committed to supplying five dozen cookies or whatever. But for heaven’s sake, if these people burn some of the cookies, why don’t they just bake some more? What makes them think it is okay to donate inedible food? Don’t they realize they did not, in fact, meet their obligation after all, even if it looks like they did?

And then I have to ask myself, why didn’t I ever just take the cookies back and ask for good ones? Because I was being polite, I guess. But it is so totally not polite to foist burned food off on someone, and it doesn’t serve anyone to let them get away with selling inedible food. They might as well have had lumps of charcoal out—that would have been more honest. The next time I get burned cookies at a bake sale, I am going to take it back to them and ask them nicely to give me unburned ones. There is no possible other right response to that but to apologize and make good on the error.