Maybe you don’t have a sleeping problem, maybe you have a creativity problem? Creative Insomnia.
Posted: May 3, 2012 Filed under: Experience Leave a comment »http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_and_creativity
German is like Windows and English is like Mac
Posted: March 6, 2012 Filed under: German Language Leave a comment »This is a response to a friend I wrote that asked me: “Is learning German annoying?
I’ll just be blunt and say German is very hard. I’ll use a technology analogy to explain this since I’m a tech guy. I don’t know if you’re a Mac user, but I like to think of the German language this way.
German is like Windows and English is like Mac.
Like Mac software, English is a very simple language when it comes to doing the basic things it’s very easy. However, even though it’s roots are simple, it’s a very powerful language when you know what you’re doing and when you’re really trying to show off, it can be quite complicated. Like using Final Cut Pro versus iMovie.
German on the other hand does not have simple roots, but very complex ones. When it comes to saying easy things correctly, it can be hard to do. Like Windows software, things that should be easy aren’t as easy as they should be. And things that are complicated, become even more complicated than they should be. But the language is extremely powerful when you know what you’re doing, but quite often no one knows what the heck their doing!! (Sometimes even native German speakers)
So for us native English speakers German is tough, because we’re making the roots of the language we’ve learned with English, much more complex with German. Some of the things that are hard about German compared to English:
- German has 4 cases (Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genetive). We don’t really have cases in English.
- German has 10 different ways to make a word plural, English we typically use 1 (add an “s” at the end).
- German has 5+ ways to say a definite article (the) or an indefinite article (a, an).
- When you say a two digit number in German you say it backwards. For example: In English we say “Twenty Four”. Germans say “Vierundzwanzig” which literally means “Four and Twenty”.
- Words you never would have imagined exist in German. They have verbs for very specific things. Like “Zeitgeist” meaning “the spirit of the time” we use this word in english because we don’t have a word for this in English.
- German words are also quite often very long. Examples here (how specific the words are and how long they can be seen on the list)
- There is a lot more as well…but there are things that are easier in German. I just can’t remember them :p
Theres a lot of logic behind the German language, the problem is there is just a lot more to memorize than in English.
Ok. Thanks. Now I really don’t want to learn German.
Ahh I don’t mean to scare you. I’ve been living in Germany for 6 months and my German improves every day. I haven’t been trying that hard until the past month and thats only because I’m in an intensive language course (20 hours week). You’ll find that nearly everyone in Germany who is younger can speak English quite well. So knowing German is really not a necessity, but much appreciated by native speakers and will change your whole experience when traveling Germany.
As far as learning about it, I really enjoy it. Quite often it’s like figuring out a puzzle and you just need to get the pieces lined up. Plus you start to learn and understand it before you know it. It just takes practice. Also, most people don’t expect you to know German if you’re a foreigner and if you do know some that’s great. Native speakers usually understand German is a hard language and most people are patient with you. German really is a beautifully complex language, it just takes some time and work to get used to it.
Tell me what you think. Feel free to comment 
When I pray…
Posted: January 13, 2012 Filed under: Inspiration Leave a comment »Today I went online and came across a site called ChiselSeason – A Place for Spiritual Shaping from a video I saw earlier today on youtube called “Why I hate religion, but love Jesus” . It’s a poem written by Jefferson Bethke discussing the underlying differences between “Religion” and “Jesus”. I personally found it very moving and he seemed to put to words what has been getting tossed around in my head for the past couple of years.
So as I was reading through the site, which Jefferson Bethke contributes to, I came across a couple short blog posts by another one of the contributors “Jonah Oh” writing about his struggles with prayer, Prayer – Part 1 and Prayer – Part 2. I wrote him a reply about the techniques I use when I pray that I thought anyone who struggles with prayer might appreciate. Here it is below:
“When I pray, I try to visualize myself sitting with Jesus, as if he were my best friend. I talk to Him like I’m having a conversation with my best friend. I don’t use any language I wouldn’t normally use. I then try to visualize and feel Him speaking back to me. Almost like I’m watching myself in a movie. Our conversations aren’t always serious as well, I often try to visualize Him laughing with me. Especially if we’re talking about something I shouldn’t have done. We’re laughing together thinking that was pretty stupid.
When I’m working I try to visualize Him by my side, as if I am working with someone. When I’m walking down the street he’s walking with me. I don’t visualize the Jesus in a white robe, beard and long hair. I visualize what he might look like today in our society. He wears clothes I’m familiar with, he looks like any normal guy. He looks like a best friend should.
Everyone thinks they don’t pray enough, but maybe we’re just looking at it all wrong. I don’t think you need to be still, have your head bowed and hands crossed to pray. All you need to do is have a conversation, eyes wide open, walking down the street, lying in bed, any time, any place. It shouldn’t feel like work, it should feel like you’re talking to your best friend.”
Just my thoughts on what prayer means to me and how I do it. I was inspired to use some of these techniques through a book I read called the “Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale. A book written about 50 years ago I picked up from a Goodwill. I found it fascinating, filled with really wonderful stories and very inspirational.
Learning German with Audio Tools (Pimsleur and German with Michel Thomas Review)
Posted: August 23, 2011 Filed under: German Language 1 Comment »It’s been roughly a week since my last blog on my pursuit towards fluency in German and I thought I’d share some thoughts on what I’ve learned so far…
First thing I want to start off with is what tools I’ve been using to help teach myself the language. Since I began a month ago I have been primarily focused on using audio training tools. The two particular audio tools I’ve been using are, Pimsleurs German I and German with Michel Thomas. So far I have enjoyed using both tools and have tried to use one or both of them at least 5 days a week. I have found that using audio lessons is much easier then I originally thought since they really only require you to listen, repeat and respond. As opposed to other methods that require your fully devoted attention, audio lessons do not. It’s quite easy to do mundane tasks while doing the lessons, such as, driving, laundry, dishes, relaxing on the couch, mowing the lawn, etc. Any task that does not require an immense amount of focus will not distract you from a foreign language audio lesson. Any how, regarding the audio training programs themselves I will give a short review on my thoughts of each.
Pimsleurs German I
Pimsleur German I
Pimsleurs training does an excellent job in my opinion. The methodology behind Pimsleurs is really repetition and focus on essential vocabulary and phrases. So instead of learning useless words like “horse” and “grass” you learn words that you’ll actually use when you talk to someone such as, tonight, today, over there, where, when, why, i would like to, would you like to, etc… The Pimsleur method is really focused on teaching you conversational language skills. Each lesson is about 30 mins long and continuously grabs your attention. The beginning of each lesson starts off with a conversation in German usually between two people. In the beginning you have no idea what they are talking about, but after a 30 min lesson you can understand the whole conversation. After the conversation they start breaking down all of the words used in the conversation and many of the phrases. They do an excellent job teaching you how to pronounce the words since they use a variety of German speakers. Difficult words they will break down and repeat slowly, so you learn how to pronounce them properly. Once they teach you a phrase or a word they ask you to use it in several different ways. The narrator also asks to speak phrases in German constantly throughout the entire lesson which engages you much more than a formal foreign language lesson from my experience. As you move to later lessons they continuously review old material and add new material. Sometimes the author will even explain some of the more simple rules like the difference between masculine and feminine and so forth. As time progresses you slowly but surely begin building a vocabulary and very easily remember key phrases and grammar. Eventually they even begin replacing English commands with German commands like “Listen” and “Repeat”. Each lesson also ends with reading practice where you can see how words you’ve been using are spelled and the sounds letter combinations produce.
German with Michel Thomas
German with Michel Thomas
This audio teaching tool is far different than Pimsleurs, but also seems to be a winner. Unlike Pimsleurs this training is very similar to one on one tutoring with a foreign language teacher. Each lesson is a few minutes long and is a recording of German teacher teaching German to two other American students that know little to no German. During each lesson the teacher discusses the German language and begins telling you how things are similar and different from english. He then goes on to tell you how say certain words in German and begins touching on some basic grammar skills like using weak and strong verbs in the same sentence. Within the first couple lessons you are learning to build fairly complex sentences like “Möchten Sie heute abend mit mir essen? (Would you like to go eat with me tonight?)”. Surprisingly you begin catching on quicker than you think. Constantly like Pimsleurs the teacher asks you over and over how do you say this and how would you say that, which really makes you think and begin using the vocabulary.
Summary
I’ve enjoyed both of my audio training tools and surprisingly by coupling the two together I felt it really enhanced my learning experience. Pimsleurs does a good job teaching words and phrases, but lacks in the explanation and rule area, which is where German with Michel Thomas helps out since the teacher explains many of the simple grammar rules and tricks of the language. Such as how to say “this evening” in German they don’t say “this evening” they say “today evening” which in German is “heute abend”. Another example of a simple rule Michel Thomas reviews is when you have two verbs in a sentence the first verb get conjugated and the second verb moves to the end of the sentence always and stays in its full form, such as “Would you like to buy something now?” -> “Möchten Sie jetzt etwas kaufen?”… All in all, I feel I am learning, progressing, and not getting bored with any of the trainings so far.
Tips off the top of my head:
- German V’s sound like English F’s – Verstehen (to understand) – Fur-stee-hen
- German S’s sound like English Z’s – Sieben (Seven) - Zee-ben
- Larger numbers in german are backwards for us english speakers, for instance we say “twenty two” they say “two and twenty” or “Zwei und zwanzig” oder “Fünf und vierzig (forty five)”
- All nouns are either neutral, feminine or mascualine, which changes several different articles you would associate with those nouns, such as “the” (das(n), die(f), der(m)), “a” (ein(n), eine(f), einen(m)) “no or none” (kein(n), keine(f), keinen(m)) and more… Ich habe das buch (i have the book), Ich habe ein bier (i have a beir), Ich habe keine wine (i have no wine).
- I realize that this may seem tough to have to remember a gender form for every noun, but you just kind of learn it as you go and if you use “das” instead of “der” the person is still going to understand what you said. So don’t get hung up on the nitty gritty details, focus on communication for now. You won’t every be able to speak another language perfectly, the sooner you accept that the more willing you’ll be to try to speak the language and really force yourself to learn. Can you speak english perfectly? I can’t. I’m sure you can find a variety of grammar, spelling, and punctuations errors throughout this entire blog. Does anyone really care (besides your english teacher) probably not, so don’t sweat it and enjoy making mistakes. It’s the only way you’re going to learn!
Feel free to comment with questions or thoughts if you have any…
Iche werde Deutsch lernen! (Translation: I will learn German!)
Posted: August 15, 2011 Filed under: German Language Leave a comment »
Crazy German Flag Guy!
In an attempt to expand my language abilities I have decided I am going to learn and pursue fluency in the German language. For all you that don’t know me I am 25 years old, native to the United States and have no formal German education. I currently live and work in the United States as a full time engineer.
Regarding my experiences with learning a foreign language, I took 5 years of formal Spanish training between middle school and high school and honestly did not learn much. I can understand a little bit when spoken, more when written, and my speaking skills are very limited, only knowing keywords and not really any useful phrases. All I’m trying to convey is that I do not consider myself gifted by any means when it comes to learning a foreign language.
I originally began pursuing fluency in the German language almost 2 years ago through a program most of you have heard of, Rosetta Stone. I kept with it for about 3 weeks (1 hour a day) and eventually abandoned it due to severe bordem and lack of feeling like I was making any valuable progress. I enjoyed Rosetta Stone for one aspect, vocabulary. Well more like non-useful vocabulary. I felt Rosetta Stone taught me very non-essential verbs and vocabulary. Such as, bike (Fahrrad), cup (Tasse), schwimmen (to swim), man (Manner), woman (Frau), etc. Most of the words would not be used during a common conversation. The initial stages of Rosetta I saw were filled with non-essential words. All other aspects such as normal phrases to use, understanding grammar, and USEFUL vocabulary, Rosetta Stone is dreadful. It’s also incredibly tiring and requires a lot of attention and time. I am not by any means saying Rosetta Stone is not useful, but at my current knowledge of the German language it is not the right tool for me.
I am now pursuing fluency again and started roughly 3-4 weeks ago and since then I have made much more progress than I did with Rosetta Stone and I am not nearly as bored. I have decided to begin blogging my progress of learning the German language. I will share my thoughts about the language, resources I am using, and any tips I gather along the way through this blog. I am also hoping that by writing about my progress it will push me to learn more and to learn faster, while also helping others at the same time. Feel free to comment and share your thoughts, all non-haters welcome!
Tip(s) off the top of my head:
- Nouns in German are always capitalized
- Example: Where is the restaurant? - Wo ist das Restaurant?
- W’s in German are pronounced like English V’s
- Wo? (voe) - where?
- Hello – Guten Tag! (gooten talk) (Lit def: Good day!) / Hallo (ha-lew – try to make the end sound more like an a quick “O”)
- Thank you – Danke (dawn-keh)
Idea: Create a website to help fund aspiring entrepreneurs essential needs
Posted: December 23, 2010 Filed under: Idea, Inspiration, Techy 2 Comments »
Problem:
- Aspiring entrepreneurs, non-profits, etc. want to build their idea(s), but don’t have enough funds to survive while developing the initial prototype and are forced to dedicate only partial time and focus to them. Typically this leads to lost and abandoned projects since they can never dedicate the time and focus needed to fully pursue an idea.
Current solution:
- Save, save, and save, until they have enough money to make the move and/or quit your job to work on your idea(s) fulltime.
- Start doing freelance work (applies only to adequate developers and designers).
- Get hooked up with an incubator or something like Ycombinator. (Unfortunately, orgs like Ycombinator only except about 3% of applicants)
- Scrounge up money through friends and family.
- Start a kickstarter and hope people believe in you, since you really have nothing to offer them.
- Find an investor and get him to believe you can do it.
There are more solutions to the problem, but a majority of them involve a lot of risk and/or ample time away from their own project(s).
Proposed Solution:
Build a kickstarter like website for funding aspiring entrepreneurs. However, instead of a one time goal they need to reach, they have a monthly goal they need to reach in order to survive wherever they are. The primary purpose of the site would be to help raise enough money each month for an aspiring entrepreneur to survive (essential needs food, shelter, transportation, etc.)
Users would build profiles and set a reasonable monthly goal (one account could apply to a company as well). The goal would then be broken down into what it is comprised of, i.e how much money they need for food, rent, transportation, etc. The user would then set a number of months they need saved up to be able to begin working fulltime on their project. The user would then make a short video about what he wants to build, where he is at with his project currently, why he needs peoples help, etc.
The site would then post the monthly goal and numbers of months worth funding they need before they can get started. Visitors of the site could then donate money to their cause. The donator could opt for a one time donation, monthly donation to the cause, or even a dedicated 2-12 month donation. Once the donate e reaches their initial goal and gets started, they could continue to ask for money from donators to help fund them each month till they get to a stage where they can have something to show to investors and get real funding. The donate e could provide updates to their donators each month through the site, to show the donators they are making progress. Providing them with enough money to allow them to focus solely on their idea which would effectively increase the speed of getting to a prototype and their chances of making it to the next stage of funding.
Possible Features:
- Offer a dedicated debit card account for the donate e, all funding received would go into this account. The site could then monitor the transactions on the card and all donators would see where their money is going each month. Having a dedicated card account would then allow the donate e to feel obligated to spend the donated money on their living expenses only, since all transactions would be transparent. The user could even upload their receipts to the site for more expensive transactions.
- Ability for visitors of the site to rate who is making the most progress. People making the most progress, but are under funded could appear on the front page of the site giving them more of an opportunity to receive the extra funding. This will provide additional motivations for entrepreneurs to make progress each month, since they will be competing against one another to make the most progress and receive votes to get on the front page.
- The site will keep track at how much the donators donated to their cause. Thus, one day if the entrepreneur makes it big he can look back at who and how much people contributed to their success, hopefully if the successful entrepreneur has half a heart they will pay these people back in someway for their contribution.
- Ability to add profit sharing for their company with donators.
- Ability for aspiring entrepreneurs to network and share living expenses.
- Bob lives in Wisconsin. Bill live is in New York. Ben lives in Texas. They all are on the site and want to move to silicon valley to begin collaborating with fellow entrepreneurs, but can’t afford the outrageous living expenses on their own. The site could connect funded entrepreneurs looking to move to the valley or other areas, so they could split rent, and other living expenses.
Benefits:
- Dedicated focus to new ideas. Less time worried about how you will pay rent next month.
- Reduced risk.
- I feel more entrepreneurs would come out of the woodworks if the initial risk was reduced. Especially with the economy now, the risk of an aspiring entrepreneur dedicating their focus full-time to an idea is much riskier than it used to be.
- Motivation to make progress.
- If the donate e is forced to provide progress updates one what they been working on each month to their donators, they will have extra motivation to actually make progress each month. If the donators begin feeling the donate e is just blowing their money they will more than likely stop donating.
- Allows an easy way for friends and family of aspiring entrepreneurs to donate to their cause.
- Allows fellow entrepreneurs to help one another.
- Monthly donations versus one time, will allow people to give more.
- People can afford to give a smaller amount of money each month versus giving a one time large sum.
- Gives the entrepreneur the ability to spend more of their own money on their project.
If anyone is interested in building this please do. Like I said before in a previous blog, any ideas I share on this blog are up for grabs. If anything is unclear please feel free to contact me at mjdecour [at] gmail
What if Wikileaks is a scam?
Posted: December 8, 2010 Filed under: Political 1 Comment »
So apparently Wikileaks is all over the news everywhere now, since its founder has been imprisoned for sex crimes in sweden after releasing 100,00′s of secret ‘titillating’ diplomatic cables. I find the whole situation quite strange for three reasons. First of all because Wikileaks has received a drastically higher amount of press and marketing than any activist group I’ve ever heard of. Second, because Obama is trying to control the internet in a “state of emergency”. Third and most importantly because the internet blacklist bill died 3 weeks ago. Think about this….
Our government wants to control our internet. Our people do not not want our government to control the internet. The internet is our last line of true unfiltered information. The people of the US sign a huge petition to urge our politicians to vote against the internet blacklist which could control Americans from seeing sites like hmmm, Wikileaks! That falls through as of last week, thanks to good old political procedure crap. The vote is now postponed till 2011. The people and the politicians of our nation are still are not convinced that the internet should be controlled by the government.
A week and a half later, Wikileaks releases 250,000 classified diplomatic cables (the largest leak in the history of the US), the site gets shutdown and the founder Julian Assange is all over the internet. Wikileaks releases a 256-bit AES encrypted document titled insurance.aes256 aka the “Doomsday files” which they claim to be insurance (blackmail) if the government attempts to take the site down. Who in the world wants Doomsday? The files have been downloaded thousands of times via torrents and if wikileaks releases the encryption key the information will be released around the globe, unleashing mass hysteria and possibly Doomsday, great! Sounds like something out of a movie right? US politicians begin freaking out and Julian Assange is convicted of sex crimes in Sweden, arrested and denied bail. Out of all the cables released the highest security clearance on any document is secret. Tons of basic jobs in the military require secret level clearance, which to me means those documents aren’t the dirt people think they are. Not one top secret document out of 250,000 seems strange to me. See the cable list for yourself here.
So, you maybe you’re thinking to yourself, well why the hell would the government release all these classified documents to the world? To create a panic and hysteria, to prove to politicians and Americans that the internet needs filters. If the internet makes our government look transparent it reduces our power and control as a world power and opens our doors to the world. Which in turn could lead to more “terrorism”. We as Americans have been trained to be paranoid people thanks to mass media and television.
Next thing you know every politician begins squawking about how we need to control the internet to prevent leaks of this kind from occurring. Think of the affect that Wikileaks will have on the future of the internet now that they have released 250,000 diplomatic cables, that honestly haven’t told us anything significant.
What if the great politicians of our nation became fearful of being transparent like these diplomats have been shown to be? What if Wikileaks is just a diversion? What if the internet doesn’t offer any real threat to public or our nation? Why not create a threat? What if every government in the world began being targeted by Wikileaks or sites like it? What if Obama saw the Obama Deception and didn’t like it?!
I won’t be surprised if the internet blacklist bill gets passed next year. Wikileaks could be completely unaware that they are being used and actually creating a disservice to the world. This guy would agree.
Love me or hate me. Just think.
Take My Ideas
Posted: November 19, 2010 Filed under: Idea, Inspiration Leave a comment »
I have come to the conclusion that it serves no benefit to my society to keep all of my ideas private and confidential.
Lately, I have been inspired by day to day life and the problems I see in the world. Everyday its a new idea, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes silly. None the less, innovation is something I thrive on. I am constantly searching for new ways to make any aspect of life easier and more fluid. I look at pain and struggle as inspiration, I feel it provides us with stimulation on how to advance our society. Without a problem you can’t find a solution. Many solutions lead to advances in technology and solutions for other problems. How are we to advance as a society if there is nothing motivating us to do so? How would we fuel our economy if there were no day to day problems? Maybe the struggles we continusouly deal with are actually a blessing in disguise, put there to push our intelligence and creativity to the next level.
Anyways, the past few months has been the most creative time in my life. At first I felt compelled to keep every idea secret and figure out a way to profit off them for myself. I realize now this is not an adequate means of furthering myself or my race. I am only one man. There are only so many hours in a day. One person can only implement so many new ideas in to this world. I say all the time the only reason I wish to prosper is so I can use the money to help people and make the world a better place. I realize now that my ideas are some of the most priceless possessions I have. So instead of keeping my ideas secret and waiting for one idea to take off, I will share almost all old and new ideas through this blog. These are the most valuable possessions I can give at this point in my life, I wish I could give more. I hope to inspire people, rather than letting them go to waste.
All ideas I will post will more then likely need to be refined and broadened upon, so do so! I will attempt to add as much detail for each idea as I can and if you would like to brainstorm, comment on them, take them, run with them. Transform them to your liking. If you have questions, feel free to ask me in a comment or send me an email at mjdecour[at]gmail.com.
I would urge others to share their ideas as well, many of us are not blessed with the means of building an idea from nothing, so don’t be selfish. Spread your ideas, maybe you will inspire someone and they will realize one day! What good is a great idea that stays locked up?
In the words of T. Ed “vision without execution is a hallucination”, so inspire and let someone else execute.
Mint.com, monitor all your financial accounts in a single location
Posted: October 7, 2010 Filed under: Money saver, Techy Leave a comment »
Do you suck at saving money? How about budgeting? Do you ever ask yourself the question, where the hell does all my money go? I used to think about all these things and ask myself the same questions, until I utilized one of my personal favorite web tools: MINT.com
My story
Upon graduation from college, I got my first job and thought wow I’m going to be able to save so much money now. Boy was I wrong, I made more money and spent more money. I kept thinking to my self where does all my money go? So I laid out a budget in excel and tried to keep up with it… yeah that lasted about a half a day. Then I went searching for tools like Quicken and came across the Mint.com website. It seem to do everything I wanted to, so I figured I would give it a shot and so I did. Now a year later I am writing this blog to tell you that I absolutely love this tool and it has helped me to really focus and control my finances with little to no effort.
What does Mint.com do for you?
Mint.com lets you access all your financial accounts at a single location plus it does all the math. I’m talking every financial account you can think of. I have all my bank accounts, credit cards, student loans, 401k, and brokerage accounts in a single location. No more logging in to 15+ websites a month to monitor all your financial accounts. It’ll calculate all your debt, assets and even give you a net worth. Which is quite sad for myself, but after you see the number once you get over it quite quickly. Screenshot of the main dashboard is shown below:
- Screenshot of mint.com dashboard
Mint will monitor every dollar you spend and categorize it appropriately. You can add your own categories as you see fit. Each monthly it tally’s up your spending and puts it in a pie graph chart format. It even allows you to easily add descriptions to every transaction, for your own reference.
Once you get a acquainted with mint you can start to establish a budget, where you set spending limit goals per category for each month. It monitors them with a bar graph during the month and lets you know where you are at. It will even send you emails when you get close to exceeding a budget. Budget monitor shown below:
Mint.com budget monitor screenshot
One of my next favorite features is the credit card monitoring feature. Mint will monitor all of your credit card account transactions and balances, but the best part is it also monitors the APR for each card and their due dates. As you already know, credit card bills are never due on the same day due to the “25 day” cycle. This little trick the credit card companies play can cause people to pay statements late due to lack of awareness of their due date. Mint will monitor the due data each period and send you an email with your amount due and the date your payment is due automatically.
Another great feature mint just recently incorporated is “goals”. Goals allows you to set goals which mint will monitor and help you succeed. You can set goals to save money for a vacation, pay of credit cards and even plan for your retirement. The retirement goal is even set to account for inflation by the time you retire.
Even better there’s a mint.com iPhone app….SWEETTTTT
Hello! Security risks? It seems dangerous putting all my financial accounts in a single location.
If someone were to gain access to your mint account they would only have a read-only version of your financial accounts, basically they could see each month how much you spend on coffee or whatever else. Mint can’t control any of your accounts through mint, it only downloads the transactional and statement data. No one can gain access to any of your passwords or usernames for your accounts as well. They also provide “bank level data security”
So give it a try and see what it can do for you…What do you have to lose?
So do you work for Mint.com or something?
Mint has honest to God changed my spending habits significantly in the past year. It helped me to realize where my money was going very easily so that I could correct my lifestyle to maximize my savings and not have to stress about saving money. I love products that work well, are easy to use and make my life easier, Mint.com meets all these requirements. I have never had a single issue with mint and have been a very satisfied user for a year. I honestly want people to know what a difference this tool can make in their lives.
Hello GrooveShark, goodbye Pandora…
Posted: October 4, 2010 Filed under: Money saver, Techy Leave a comment »
If you are like me and you sit at your desk and listen to Pandora all day to keep you company while you type an endless amounts of reports, then I have the perfect tool for you!
Recently I was introduced to a online music tool known as GrooveShark. GrooveShark is web application tool similar to Pandora, but it offers a lot of more options. It gives you instant access to millions of songs over the internet, just like they were your own. You can access them at anytime, play them as many times as you want, and so on. You can even create radio stations like you can with Pandora… Best part… no ads, no stupid 40 hour monthly limit and its FREE!
Click the picture below to check out GrooveShark!
Screenshot of GrooveShark Dashboard
