Life on the Road

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It hasn’t gone into effect yet (that comes on Feb. 10th), but some of the Etsy vendors have posted some CPSIA-compliance pricing already, just to give you an idea what’s in store. 

See the CPSIA Etsy listings, then you can look in my earlier CPSIA post for ways to take action!

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Welcome to the Carnival of Homeschooling! 

I am honored to be hosting the carnival again, and I want to extend my hearfelt thanks to the dozens of bloggers who submitted these incredibly interesting, challenging, and diverse posts for your reading pleasure. 

If you follow the blog, you’ll know we’re an RPG (role-playing game), Renaissance Fair kind of family.  I recently posted about what a cute idea I thought the Chore Wars site was – earning “XP” (Experience Points) for the “adventures” in housework we do every day.

Homeschooling is no different, and deserves the same kind of heroic credit!

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Earn 10 XP for encouraging your child to “think outside the box,” challenge assumptions, and, fundamentally, THINK.   That’s one of the main reasons many of us are on this adventure in the first place, right?

Michael Gold of the MGTutoring Blog asks, The Great Industrialists: Heroes or Villains?

Alvaro Fernandez presents Brain Teaser to Exercise your Memory and Reasoning Skills posted at SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution.

Cristina presents Pill Bug Pioneers! posted at Home Spun Juggling.

Jena asks Do Schools Kill Creativity? on The Life Without School Community Blog.

Janine writes about actual brain development in Parents with Purpose over at Why Homeschool.  (Must be in the air!  See my post near the end).

Earn 25 XP for reminding your children that they are part of a larger “Party of Adventurers.” They need to learn to pitch in, help out, and just plain get along…

Carol Topp, CPA presents Resolve Conflict: take a PAUSE posted at HomeschoolCPA’s Blog.

Susan Gaissert presents The Idea of Service posted at The Expanding Life.

The Reluctant Homeschooler  contemplates a Mission to Mexico.

25 XP for attending to thine own training, growth and development.

Sue Richardson reminds us to keep an eye on our priorities… Oh, just go read it! My Dining Room Table posted at Homeschooling High School.

Timothy Power issues us a warning about the siren song of Debt for College in A Few Thoughts on College Debt posted at Sometimes I’m Actually Coherent.

Wendy Metzger of A Divine Calling…Musings on Motherhood has a great reminder for us all: Take Time to Enjoy Them.

Margaret reminds us that Homeschooling Moms need to be educated too, at Two Kid Schoolhouse. 

ChristineMM shares about a re-committment to studying world history after a too-long lapse in History Blitz posted at The Thinking Mother.

Becca presents us with 5 Things to Tell Yourself when Angry with the Kids at Inspiration for Mothers . Com.

Rack up an extra 10 XP every time you come up with a practical solution to a real-life challenge…  Another vital reason many of us are questing.

Rose describes her mealtime secrets in Iron Chef, Homeschool Edition, posted at Learning at Home.

Katherine writes about The Longest Week of the Year at No Fighting, No Biting!

Concerning Kids presents Healthy After School Snacks For Kids posted at Concerning Kids.

Living By Learning presents Customize A Web Browser For Home School Use posted at On Living By Learning.

Therese of the Aussie Coffee Shop discusses Our Curriculum for 2009.

And a challenge near and dear to my heart – homeschooling with a home business – is addressed by Pat Fenner in Creating a Vision for Your Homeschool – and Your Home Business on her NetworkFromHome blog.

Tom Zirpoli discusses supervising your children in his Thought for the day on Tom Zirpoli’s Blog.

Earn 1 XP per minute of reading aloud!

Hilary Kay discusses reading to your kids in Read, Read, Read! at Love, Life, and Everything Between.

Nothing to read? Miss Amanda offers On Moi’s 2009 Book List posted at The Daily Planet.

Go on an ADVENTURE within your adventure! Earn 50 XP for each excursion with educational value.

Shannon describes their introduction to the wild world of Geocaching: An Educational Adventure at Song of My Heart.

HappyCampers maps one out for us with Take Me On A Tour: Sixth Floor Museum, Dallas posted at Reese’s View Of The World.

Misty presents Part 1: Our Vacation is a School Trip – Science Classes posted at Homeschool Bytes.

Amy wants to help us all help each other go on adventures!  Check out How Many Homes Do You Have? from Neighborhood Clubhouse.

Pamela describes some great Winter play tactics in After the storm….. at Homeschool AND Stay Sane!.

Earn a bonus 50 XP each time you give them special training for the specific quests they will face, or share the best of your personal knowledge and skills with them…

Dianne M. Buxton presents Some Highly Effective Tips For Ballet Summer Intensives Auditions – And The Nerves posted at Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes.

Barbara Frank presents Woodworking with Dad posted at Barbara Frank Online.

Kim at Countdown to College offers us some hope and peace of mind about scholarships, with God Rewards the Work. 

Collect 10 XP each for discovering new resources to assist you on your campaign.

Sarah Scrafford presents 50+ Free Open Courseware Classes for Social Media Mavens posted at Online Best Colleges.com.

Margaret Garcia presents target=”_blank” Top 20 iPhone Apps for Overwhelmed Students posted at Phlebotomy Technician Schools.

The Eclectic Female presents Three Easy Ways To Learn Spanish posted at Lifestyle Blog For Women.

Dolfin presents Friday Finds – Fairytale Feasts posted at Lionden Landing.

Sarah presents SmallWorld’s WordSmithery: Good Words (Assignment 2) posted at SmallWorld.

Kevin presents Homeschool Ideas for Physical Education posted at More4kids Homeschooling.

Beverly Hernandez shares some great resources for Groundhog Day Fun (next Monday!) at Beverly’s Homeschooling Blog (About.com).

Agree or disagree with the goings-on, as a Homeschool Adventurer you need to know what’s going on in the political landscape.  Earn 10 XP every time you check the map.

Dana address the troubling question: Christian homeschoolers have “left the battlefield?” on Principled Discovery.

Summer presents Politics and Homeschooling In Oklahoma posted at Wired For Noise.

Sheri offers a tongue-in-cheek view, in Attention Citizens posted at The Joy of Home.

Catherine muses on Applying the Principle of the Declaration of Independence to Education over at Petticoat Government.

Helen Hegener presents One Perspective on Homeschooling posted at HEM Editor’s Blog.

Mary Nix comments on the news story out of hte UK, in Child Abuse does not = homeschooling posted at The Informed Parent.

And on a lighter note, I literally laughed out loud with Laura’s A Sign Of The Times… posted at Practical Homeschooling.

25 XP shall be awarded for each and every cool hands-on project undertaken – regardless of outcome.

Kris of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers presents Step-by-Step: Making a Paper Mache Earth Model.

Renae presents For the Birds posted at Life Nurturing Education.

Deanna aka Pop Tart presents Why Craft With Kids posted at Things Your Grandmother Knew.

And of course, a good Adventurer never passes up FREE TREASURE!

You can win a free book from Rachel Starr Thomson of Inklings.  Writers age 11 and up can find all the information about it here: Writing Contest – Write a Book Review!

Denise tells of fame and, well, FAME to be won! MathNotations Contest for Middle-High School posted at Let’s Play Math!.

Our entry this week (I can list a regular post even when I’m hosting, right?) is a Brain Rules – Book/DVD Review and Giveaway!

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Thank you for reading…  Please let me know if you find any errors or broken links!

Please take a moment to post a link to the carnival on your blog, as well as adding it to any social bookmarking sites you use (the “Share This” link, below, will make it easy for most of them!) — help spread the word about homeschooling, and the carnival, and send some traffic to all these terrific bloggers who took the time to share their lives with us.

Don’t forget to send in your post for next week’s carnival, as well, hosted at Dewey’s Treehouse!  Just click on over to the easy submision form at Blog Carnival anytime before Monday at 6pm Pacific.

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Okay, that probably sounds REALLY weird to a lot of you, right?

I usually do my taxes in January, though. 

• Self-employment leaves me totally in control of everything related to that documentation.
• Good record-keeping means I know how much (little!) interest I earned from my savings.
• Kids and credits means I always get money back.
• Before the big April 15 rush, my return gets processed in days.

Why wait?!

Well this year, I’m waiting on people to send us paperwork.

Wolf worked at Knaus Berry Farm, so I’m waiting for a W-2 from them.  Oh yeah, and another one from one of Wolf’s summer jobs doing stage production.

After all the illness and stress we went through this year, I’m not 100% sure about all my records, either. 

You know what I mean, right? 

The checking account is balanced, but if I missed one month’s $0.03 interest in the savings account, I really doubt I would have missed it…  And I’m pretty sure one of the credit card statements didn’t get reconciled over the summer, even though the bill got paid (since we don’t carry balances, it’s almost too easy to just pay it without reconciling if you’re stressing!). 

So I’m waiting on the banks, my Student Loan holder, and other such folks to send me statements, too.

Which they’re supposed to provide by February 1, right?  Riiii-iiight…

This is one of those things that is really stressful for me: 

There’s a big important job to be done, and I’m responsible for it.  It’s hanging over my head.

But I can’t do it, because of someone else.

Grrrrr!

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What next – the Yard Sale police?

Let me back up.  Have you heard about the CPSIA?  The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) goes into effect on Februry 10, 2009.  This recently-enacted piece of work was created with the noble purpose of protecting our children from lead and phthalates (for which the recent spate of recalls has underscored a need).

See some great info on the CPSIA and at The Smart Mama blog.

There are a few major problems with it.

One is the impact on cottage industry.

There is no exemption for 100% natural products.  So a mama sewing diapers from cotton fabric, or a grandpa carving wooden toys…  Everyone would have to pay for costly certification lab tests on each batch produced.

Another big one is on the issue of resale

This impacts resellers, thrifty buyers, and the environment.  (Thrifty buyers?  The environment?  This is all of us, not just manufacturers!)

Clearly, this will stop resale and consignment stores, church rummage sales, eBay sales, etc. 

And, although it could hardly be enforced, this would even prohibit you from selling your children’s old clothes at a Yard Sale. 

There’s a great post about this at Baby Cheapskate, which she is updating as new information becomes available.  Since people are up in arms and things ARE actually being discussed, this is often.

Even books are included in the CPSIA, and thus another big resale issue.  More on that from the Book Shop Blog.

You can’t even donate your old books to a library.  Charities can’t give blankets to cancer stricken babies…  Wow.

The CPSIA is a good idea.  It has a good purpose.  It just needs to be adjusted to account for things that weren’t properly thought out ahead of time.

What can we do?  And please, DO!

Write your Congresspeople!

Support the idea by voting for it on Change.org.

Pass it on!  Email your friends, post it to your blog or Facebook account, Tweet about it on Twitter, share it with your networking groups.

P.S.  I just told the owner of a local “ladies & children consignment” shop about it – she ha never even heard of it!

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I got away from using a “Day Timer” type planner when I got out of the workplace, and I had never really warmed up to gadgets like the Palm Pilot.

Over the last few years (okay, decade or so) I have used several online calendaring applications, Outlook’s calendar, and who know what else.

But I found I really prefer to have a paper book, with easy pages to keep notes of other things, too – like a hard copy address book, so that when my hard drive crashes I’m not stranded!

Anyhow, last year I bought this: Yearbook for the Home Keeper.

I really like a lot of things about it – weekly calendar pages, address book, website notes / passwords pages, even Bible verses and such!

But it does seem to have a lot of pages I don’t use.  Some are for things I would like to try, but others I just can’t see myself using – grocery lists which seem awkward to get to when I need them, etc.

So I wondered what else was out there.

I’m not sure I’m up for the cost of getting started anew with a Day Timer or one of those monsters. 

The Yearbook goes in a 3-ring notebook, which is nice – although maybe a bit big, if I ever wanted to take it anywhere…

I asked around, and got some suggestions, including MomAgenda,  Mom’s Plan-It Engagement Calendar, and even a Boynton planner!

As I compared, I was able to clarify some of the things that mattered most – and least – to me about the planners.

I was looking at the nifty Comparison Chart over at Families With Purpose (a site worthy of your attention in its own right!), and started thinking about her categories, plus the other issues I ran across:

• Day-at-a-Glance vs. Week-at-a-Glance – I am definately a weekly person.  Monthly calendars don’t have enough room to write, and with a daily I don’t get enough of an overview.
• Horizontal vs. Vertical format – who cares?
• 17 month?  Cute Graphics?  Yeah, whatever…
• Spiral Bound vs. Book Bound vs. Punched – This turnedout to be one of my biggest issues, when I noticed the handy “take your info with you to next year” booklet that one of the planners included.  I realized then that I was hooked on hole-punched – which allows me to take whatever I want into next year (address book, birthday list, pantry list, WHATEVER!)
• Secular vs. Christian – They’re almost all secular.  Boynton would at least be funny.  But my Yearbook has Scripture verses, neat inspirational messages…  I think I prefer that.  A lot.

So what did I choose?

The Amy Knapp Family Planner, Christian, 7-hole-punched version.  She also does them spiral bound, has a secular version, and even had a digital product!

I picked up a 7-ring binder on eBay for cheap, and now I’m just waiting for them to arrive…

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We interrupt this fun family blog to bring you a bit of business info.

This tutorial was put together by my good friend and successful online business owner, Alicia Staz (check out the links to her gorgeous jewelry in her credits at the end!).  It explains what everyone with an online store needs to understand about complying with the laws protecting consumers’ credit card information.

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PCI Compliance is required…this is not an option.  Anyone who accepts credit cards must comply with certain standards based on the number of transactions you complete each year.  It doesn’t matter if you use a payment gateway to process your cards or do them manually.  It doesn’t matter if you use a shopping cart or PayPal… you still must commit to keeping all data that is collected safe.  The PCI Security Standards Council has all the information you will need.  Personally I didn’t get into the technical aspect of it.  I knew I needed it and so I set out to get it done.

Who does PCI scanning?

I happen to have the Hacker Safe certification through Scan Alert - this includes PCI scanning at no extra charge.  Scan Alert also offers a PCI scan for $149 a la carte, so you don’t have to have buy the Hacker Safe certification to get it through them.  That said, there are many organizations that offer a PCI scan, just Google it.  

If you use PayPal, they have partnered with ScanAlert, a Visa and MasterCard-certified PCI vendor, to help their customers comply at no cost for the first year. Enroll online with ScanAlert at: https://www.scanalert.com/SignUp.sa?oc=9673.

So what does PCI scanning entail?  

When you have your domain scanned for PCI compliance it has nothing to do with PayPal, your shopping cart or anything else.  That is a huge misconception!  I left my host because she thought the PCI vulnerabilities had to do with my shopping cart, not her servers.  

When a company scans your domain, they are scanning the servers that your domain resides on.  They do all kinds of checks and challenges to try to “get into” the server – similar to what a hacker might do.  It will completely mess up your website statistics… they are hitting pages randomly, every day.  They are trying to find nonexistent pages so your “404 not founds” will be off the charts.  I know someone said there is a way to block them from your stats program (not register any visits by scanalert.com) but I haven’t figured that out yet.  If anyone else know how to do this, please let me know!

Which hosts are PCI compliant?

Not many that I know about.  The only two options I considered seriously were Hand-On Webhosting and A2 Hosting.  I Googled it and had to really search for hosts that were compliant.  I emailed my list of questions to the ones I found, and surprisingly only a handful got back to me with answers.  

Here is my personal checklist for a host:

1. Do they maintain their own servers?  If not, can they tell me where they are physically located?

2. Do they allow spammers or adult sites to reside on their servers?  If so, it could negatively affect my search engine ratings.

3. Are they Hacker Safe compliant?

4. Are they PCI Compliant?  If they are PCI Compliant they are Hacker Safe compliant because PCI compliance is a step more intense than Hacker Safe.

5. Are their prices reasonable?

6. Are there any negative reports about them online? I Googled the names…

7. Have they been in business for several years?  This is my business and I don’t want someone else’s hobby ruining my business because it goes under.  That is why I want to be with a host that owns the physical servers.  Chances are, if they have invested that kind of money in severs, they are in it for the long haul.

What are the next steps?

Once you choose a host that is compliant and get your site moved to their servers, you will still have vulnerabilities to address.  A PCI scan generates vulnerabilities that may or may not be valid for your particular host.  They are testing based on the worst case scenario and in many cases, there is a reason the host does things in a particular manner, and they have other measures in place to protect the data.  

Once I had a PCI Compliance report that listed the vulnerabilities, I emailed it to A2 Hosting’s Technical Support and they typed up answers to address the issues.  Once I had responded to the issues and completed the PCI Questionnaire, I was considered compliant.  Since I have less than 20,000 transactions a year, I am only required to have quarterly scans to be in compliance.  I printed my compliance report and don’t need to print another one for 3 months.

What is the PCI Questionnaire? 

It is just a list of questions you need to answer that ensures that you personally (and any other people your company employs) are doing everything necessary to protect the cc data.  Do you store it on a secure server, do you password protect the data, etc.

I think that about does it.  If you have any other questions, I can try to answer them, but I am by no means an expert.  I just did what I had to do to become compliant and I think I have detailed it all here.  If any of you want to forward this to others I don’t mind… I only ask that you maintain my signature line as part of the article. : )
Alicia E StazOwner, Designer, Beaded Royalty

http://www.beadedroyalty.com

Visit my blog at: 

http://www.handmade-sterling-jewelry.com

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This is the fourth in a series of “Photo Project” themes being posted as part of a contest over at Two Moms in a Blog (go check it out!). 

The assignmet for today was to dislay any photo project, past or present.

The first thing I thought of was the collage of auto advertising for our business that I made from cars in the parking lot at our national convention in Dallas back in July:

This was something we used in our sales team newsletter, to help show the options in advertising – as well as the dedication of those who are successful in the business.

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I hope you’ll enjoy this little story I read recently.  It’s cute, but the question it asks us is profound… 

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An American tourist was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked.

Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The tourist complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied, “Only a little while.”

The tourist then asked, “Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?”

The Mexican said, “With this I have more than enough to support my family’s needs.”

The tourist then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos.  I have a full and busy life.”

The tourist scoffed, “I can help you. You should spend more time fishing; and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You could leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York where you could run your ever-expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

The tourist replied, “15 to 20 years.”

“But what then?” asked the Mexican.

The tourist laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions? Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos“

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Just an advance warning that there may be some periodic downtime over the next couple of days as this domain is migrated over to a new hosting provider.  Unfortunately, time constraints do not permit me to do this in a more orderly fashion.  Read on… 

I’m not one to call people out in public, but I do think the public deserves to know when a company is behaving badly.

For the last couple of years, my websites have all been hosted at Angel Towns.  Although there is not a lot said about, they appear to be a Christian company – Bible verse on the homepage, restrictions about your site content, etc.  And best of all – Cheap! 

So, as I say, things have been going smoothly for a couple of years now.  I have a few minor complaints about the ease (or lack) of using certain features, but I always figured that was part of the price I paid, for the price I paid… if you know what I mean.

Then earlier this week I got an error when I tried to upload a photo to a post I ws writing about Jewel’s First Haircut (very cute!).  After tracking it down in the WordPress Support Forums, I concluded that it must be a PHP Memory limitation on my server.

I logged into my cPanel and checked, and sure enough there was an 8 MB limit there (just as the Forum users suggested), and it was not configurable on the user side.  Immediately I emailed Angel Towns Support, asking why this limit had suddenly appeared, and requesting that it be raised or removed.

The email I got back was probably a form letter, and it explained that the 8 MB limit had been placed on all hosting accounts “as a temporary measure,” and it would be removed “soon.”  Further inquiry yielded the clarification that it would probably be lifted in about two weeks.

Two weeks?!

I can’t post any photos larger than a thumbnail for two weeks?  Not only is that not acceptable for my personal posting, but I have a commitment to Guest Host a really great contest for a popular blog on Monday (make sure to check it out!).

So I emailed again, explained my predicament, and informed them that if they did not remove or raise the limit on my account (which I never agreed to when I signed up, BTW!) I would be forced to move my hosting business elsewhere – and fast.  Well, they never even responded…  Not good business practice, nor good Christian ethics.

I have begun the process of transferring the entire domain to a new provider.  1 & 1 has great features, great service (already used it!), and … Cheap! 

The move includes our business information page at http://www.tiffanyblitz.com, and two complete subdirectory installations of WordPress which house this blog (http://www.tiffanyblitz.com/blog) and our sales team training website.  Whew!

Keep your fingers crossed that the process goes smoothly, and I’ll be ready for Monday’s BIG CONTEST POST!

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I keep asking myself that, but I’m not entirely sure how we ended up here.

We’re in Middletown, which, aptly named, lies in the middle of Cincinnati and Dayton. 

There are a lot of gret opportunities for our business around this area, so we thought we should check it out.  It also looks like an affordable place to buy a fixer-uper house – something we’re considering for the next year or so due to Baby Blessing (due in March).

We were originally thinking of Dayton, but driving around there yesterday quickly nixed that.  At some 200,000 population, it is far more “city” than we want to deal with.  After living so long in Los Angeles (me) and San Diego (Wolf), we understand all the benefits – and don’t think it’s worth it.

Now looking for a bargain, obviously one doesn’t end up in the most upsacle parts of town…  but, really!  One neighborhood we were looking at, Wolf stopped to chat with a man standing outside his home.  The man proceeded to explain how there were lots of nice people in the neighborhood, but the house next door belonged to a peddler of illicit narcotic substances, and there was a man shot in the yard last week…

Ummmm…   No.

So we’ve moved out to the middle ground.

Trivia:  Did you know that Ohio is the only state whose flag is not a rectange?

Might be fun to live in Ohio, just for that! 

Unfortunately, with all the heat warnings and what-not, we aren’t able to fly by the seat of our pants quite as much as we often do.  Boondocking isn’t an option, since our generator won’t run the a/c in extreme conditions.

So we’re actually parked at a mobile home park, where they are willing to rent out their vacant lots to RVs on a daily basis.  What a friendly bunch of people – the man across the street even came over while we were getting parked and gave us each a cold water bottle!  Quite a change from the unwholesome image “trailer parks” often conjure.

Well, off to look at more neighborhoods – and of course put out more business flyers.  It’s nice to be able to get our work done without ever having to go out of our way…