The Buff and Blue Reviews

If you haven’t finished decorating your home or yard for Halloween then it might feel like it’s too late. Don’t worry; it’s not. You can make some neat Halloween effects in your home without a lot of work at all. Starting with your light fixtures is an easy way to make the home feel spookier for the holidays.

The easiest change that you can make is to change out the light bulbs in your light fixtures. You can put orange and black bulbs in your various light fixtures to create a Halloween effect. The orange bulbs would be decorative but would still emit light. The black bulbs would be for creating black light effects on simple decorations like fake spider webs.

Another option is to go out and purchase inexpensive Halloween lighting. There are strings of Halloween lights available just like there are strings of Christmas lights available during the winter holidays. These can be hung indoors or outdoors.

Finally, if you want to do some more serious decorating then you can use landmark lighting to highlight the areas of the decorations that you want noticed. For example, if you set up a fake graveyard in your yard for Halloween then you’d want to add lights that show off the tombstones that you’ve planted. These little changes will create a spooky effect for your Halloween house and it’s not too late to do them yet!

Technorati Tags: landmark lighting, light fixtures

Are you one of the thousands of people who is looking into the selling your gold jewelry and coins to online pawn shops? Are you also one of the thousands of people who bought the First Spouse Coins that were issued a couple of years ago? If you answered yes to both of those questions then make sure that you’re careful when getting ready to sell scrap gold to pawn shops. You don’t want to accidentally lose those valuable First Spouse coins by throwing them in with your junk gold that you’re getting ready to sell.

For those of you who don’t know, the First Spouse coins are a series of gold coins that feature the wives of the first presidents of this country. They were sold primarily to coin collectors, history buffs and people with an interest in women’s rights. They sold quickly; the first two coins sold out within hours of going up for sale. This makes them a hot commodity with a lot of value. They have more value as collectors’ items than as scrap gold so if you’re going to sell them then you’ll want to sell to collectors. The rest of your gold junk can make you some money at the pawn shop but save these babies for later.

Technorati Tags: online pawn shops, sell scrap gold

An audiologist named Tomi Browne has helped to found a new non-profit organization called Heart of the Village. This organization raises funds to assist children in Kenya who have experienced hearing loss. These children are at risk of never hearing again but can have the problem easily repaired with medical assistance. That assistance is only available if funds exist to make it happen. Raising those funds to help the kids is the main goal of the organization.

Children in Kenya often experience hearing loss as a symptom of other diseases that are rampant in the area. Herpes, meningitis and HIV are all diseases that are common in Kenya. These diseases can have complications which result in hearing loss. The hearing loss can sometimes be repaired using a cochlear implant. Unfortunately, this is an expensive procedure which families in Kenya can not typically afford for their children. The children risk going deaf if they don’t get the care that they need.

Tomi Browne learned about this situation when she took a trip to Kenya and saw it first hand. She met a child who needed exactly this type of assistance. She was able to help raise the funds to bring him to America for the procedure. She also traveled back to Kenya to adjust his implant as needed. The procedure was successful and thus she was encouraged to start this great non-profit.

Technorati Tags: audiologist, hearing loss

Perhaps someone out there in the blogosphere can answer a question that has been on my mind all week. That question is whether shuffleboard is a game or a sport.

The question came up last weekend when I started talking with a good friend of mine about how to play shuffleboard. I had learned to play outdoor shuffleboard from my grandfather when I was young. My friend had learned how to play table shuffleboard at the bars when he was in college. The two versions of shuffleboard are similar but they’re different enough that we were able to debate for quite awhile about what the rules of play were.

Eventually, the debate ended and we settled down. I made an offhand comment about how it was interesting that they played this sport at a bar. That’s when the debate began to ramp up again. My friend insists that shuffleboard is not a sport. He believes that it’s just a game. I grew up thinking that it was a sport and I’m certain that’s true - at least for the outdoor version.

So, what do you think? Is shuffleboard a sport or a game? Or can it be both depending on which version of it you’re talking about?

Technorati Tags: how to play shuffleboard, shuffleboard

One of the things I have learned over the years is that if something is going to go wrong, it is going to go really wrong.  I guess that would make me a firm believer in Murphy’s Law – if anything will go wrong, it will.

This is exactly the situation that we found ourselves in this week.  You see, our organization has been planning for a long time to change our file storage to completely digital and get rid of the paper file folders altogether.  But this has meant that we need to make sure that we scan each and every one of them before they are destroyed.  They knew it was going to be a lot of work, but the payoff was going to be worth it.

So, after purchasing a large number of networked attached scanners, we started the digitization process on Monday.  Things were going really well and it was looking like it would only take about ten days to get everything done, which was going to be great.

But, there was a power surge in our building which wrecked most of the scanners and some of the computers.  Thankfully, we didn’t lose any of the data, but it put us in quite a predicament – we wouldn’t be able to get everything done on schedule.

It has been decided that we are going to take advantage of the services offered by one of the document imaging companies in town and they are going to finish the job for us.  It will be a long time before we get the equipment in the office replaced, and I think it will be a smart move for us – at least we will get the scanning done on time now.

Technorati Tags: document imaging companies, networked attached scanners