Door Busters @ Macy's

Macy’s had a door buster sales today so I went early (right, around 10:00 am) which is late since the store opened at 7:00. Didn’t find what I went there for but I got a better deal. A stainless steel set of pots and pans value at $100.00 for $20.00 plus tax. Love it. I needed a new set and this is perfect. Good quality, awesome price. Love Macy’s!

I didn’t stick around for more because I would go broke. The home section was packed to the brim, people carrying more than they could handle. The grown ups candy store! It was hilarious to see people dragging boxes all over the place. And the lines to pay, incredible. The cashier that ran my purchase closed her register after finishing with me to get herself a box of the pots because they were flying off the shelves. It was nuts

Plaza looked so pretty decorated for Christmas. I snapped this pictures with my phone. Love the Holidays!

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Programs I Can't Do Without

There are a few things that I can go without when it comes to computers and there are some I can’t do without. I will share those today. In my opinion, when it comes to software, I like simplicity, user friendly interface and good results. These programs work for me, so here it goes. I don’t get compensated by doing this but what the heck, I’m not greedy
	Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8 – yes I’m still using version 8. Before Corel decided to change it and in the process ruining a perfectly good program. I won’t even go near the new versions. I have tried the demos and they suck, so I’m sticking with version 8 for now. Absolutely a must in my collection
	Animation Shop 3 – again, part of PSP and an excellent graphics animation program. Most (if not all) the graphics I design are animated so AS3 is easy to work with. The webpage says that AS3 is not compatible with Vista, but I have Vista and it works perfectly, go figures
	Real World Cursor Editor – a small free program that lets you make and edit a cursor with the .cur extension. Firefox don’t ‘see’ .ani, and this tiny program resolves the issue
	WinRAR – when it comes to compression and decompression, I’m not talking about sea diving. This program has everything there is when it comes to open files. Easy, powerful and necessary
	Where Is It? – this software is a must. It helps to maintain and organize a catalog of your computer media collection by providing access to the contents of cataloged disks. In lame terms, if you have 100 discs, once you cataloged all of them, you open this program and it tells you where is that favorite song or that picture you are looking for. No computer owner should go without it. Awesome! It took me a while to catalog all my cd’s, but now is a breeze when I need to find something
	A1 Sitemap Generator – the name says it all. It generates a sitemap for your blog or website in 4 different formats with ease and most importantly, SEO oriented. Web Expression has an add in tool that does the same but I like this one better
	Microsoft Expression Web 4 – it’s Microsoft Frontpage 2003 in steroids. The interface looks mostly the same with some new features, but it is fantastic when it comes to creating webpages. An WYSIWYG editor, it is compliant with HTML and XHTML as well as a SEO enriched platform. The best part is the super preview in which you can see how your website looks like in several browsers at the same time. And when it comes to find and replace, nothing compares. So cool! I’m no professional when it comes to coding, so this program is perfect for the code impaired like me
	Coffee Cup HTML Editor – another great editor but I use it as a replacement for Notepad. You can do and undo many times, check code with line number and more. Notepad is too limited for me so this editor will do the same and more
	Cute FTP 8 Professional – ok, when it comes to FTP clients, Cute is amazing. I can view thumbnails of the images in the remote server, drag and drop files, synchronize my sites for backup and I do love the internal editor which let me work on my code right off the interface and in real time on the remote server. The results are immediate without the need to open an external editor, fix the code and upload the file again. A must for the fast and the furious in me
	Color Impact 4 -a handy utility to create html color palettes. Using the color picker, you can select any color from anywhere in your screen to create as many palettes and color combinations as you wish. My favorite part is the picker which I use to get the html code for my css. Fast and very easy to use
	IrfanView – it’s free, it’s wonderful, it’s everything I need to view my images. And I have over 5,000. So many features to this little program. You can view, convert, optimized and a lot more. And not only images. It also plays music and video. And again, it is free!!!
	Detagger – if you need to convert html to text or remove html markups, go no further. I updated Gethsemane, one of my oldest websites with over 100 pages, in less than 5 minutes. Seriously! I wanted to remove all html tags, except the paragraph tag and this sucker did it for me in that short time! Later, I went page by page to check everything and I was so happy to see such clean code! That old website had deprecated code and I was dragging my hands for the longest time, knowing that I needed to bring it up to standard and now it is compliant thanks to detagger
	Bejeweled Twist – from their website: “Spin, match, explode… WOW! It’s a brilliant new way to play Bejeweled…” need I say more? It’s fun, fun, fun, especially when the fruits explode and I get the big bonus if I complete the challenge. What a mayor blast of eye candy! After a busy day, I relax with this fun game. Love it!!
— Well, that’s it for now. I will update this post as I go. Sometimes I spend hours looking for something specific and I appreciate when someone has taken the time to post it in their blogs for the taking. Thus the reason I’m sharing this list with my readers. If you get a chance, try one (or all) of this programs and let me know, k? Have fun!

Melt In Your Mouth

I have a new love. The new Coconut M&M’s. New arrivals @ Wally World this week, so when my daughter showed them to me I could not resist. They are delicious! I only bought one bag to try but I can’t wait to get more. It’s a tiny version of Almond Joy and I love those! Has no coconut though, just the flavor, but who cares! I’m sharing with the world the new member of my favorite things

Left Behind

I started to read the Left Behind Series again. When the first book came out in 1996 I was intrigued by the concept, and after reading a few chapters I was hooked. Now that the publisher has made them into 4 books instead of 12, I think it’s worth to revisit. The story is based on the book of Revelations (the Bible) and it takes you on a roller coaster of events, emotions and thrill. It is written like a novel, so the story is fast-paced and exciting

I remember back then that I had to wait for the next book to be published. It was an agony that lasted for ten years, for the last book, The Raptured was published in 2006. I waited, patiently, each time savoring the book in hours and then having to wait for the next one and so on. Now it will be easier and faster for me to enjoy the story once more

Although I don’t agree with a few things, the books are really close to what Revelations speaks about, so the little things that are far-fetched are bearable. Anyway, it’s an excellent series that I recommend to everybody

Quenepas

Quenepas are a very popular fruit here in the island. They grow in grape like clusters in trees as tall as 80 feet during hurricane season. Next to the mango they are my favorite. While visiting Ponce I bought a cluster since that is the way most street vendors sell it. Ponce is the best place to find the sweetest and biggest quenepas, and you see them in every corner thus the reason for traveling to the south a couple of hours is more than worth it

The best ones have a shiny and smooth skin. Usually, after a few hours the skin gets dull and rough, although they still taste ok. That is the way I know how long they have been plucked from the tree. They tend to ripe too much after a couple of days and some vendors try to trick you into buying rotten ones. So I always look for the shiny ones and fridge to keep them fresh

The tough outer shell of the quenepa bursts easily between your teeth with just the slightest pressure revealing a slick, fleshy pulp clinging to a pit. The texture of the pulp feels kind of weird in your mouth, but the fruit is tangy, sweet and slimy. You just suck the gelatinous pulp. You have to be careful, since the smooth ball can easily slip down your throat and choke you and the pit will stain your clothes with a nasty brown color. The good thing is: you can roast the seed (pit) and eat it like sunflower seed, so nothing goes to waste

Without exaggerating, I would say that I eat at least more than a thousand every season. I buy them every chance I get. When my nutritionist told me that I could only eat 5 a day, I just laughed out loud. That is something I won’t do!

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