RIP: Michael Clarke Duncan

Sad news today. A great man and actor has passed today. RIP Michael Clarke Duncan.

Courtesy MGM The Green Mile

All time FAV: Armaggedon

A link to an article on his death is here. He died two months after having a heart attack (myocardial infarct) and had become vegetarian three years prior.

How to Make MORE Money at Your CURRENT Job.

How to Make MORE Money at Your CURRENT Job.

August is a financially straining month for me. Birthdays include my wife, eldest daughter and mom not to mention Christmas is soon coming. So usually in July is when I start to panic about how much money I need to come up with to afford the presents.

So I sit down and attempt to figure out what I want to buy them. Tally it all up and try to figure out how I'm going to come up with the money (known as reverse engineering finance.) Since this occasion can translate into most "I need more money" situations, one way I increase income is by boosting my paycheck at work. I've written eleven ways in which I have milked extra money out of my "day job" without having to pickup a second job.

Milking Method #1: Stay a little late. Every fifteen minutes I stay late at work adds a little more to my paycheck. Sure, fifteen minutes isn't much but add it up over a two week pay period and it starts to show.

Milking Method #2: Show up a little early for a shift. Same philosophy as MM #1.

Milking Method #3: Skip a lunch here and there. It is pretty easy to eat WHILE working. Stash some food nearby and eat while being productive. Technically, you can't be deducted for a lunch if you didn't separate yourself from your work. Your results may vary.

Milking Method #4: Since I work at a hospital, I can choose to take "call." This means I am on a stand-by status when I am not at work just in case someone needs extra help. I get $3 per hour for being on call regardless of if I get called in or not. If I do get called in to work, I am paid 1 1/2 times my pay rate for a minimum of two hours, even if I only had to do thirty minutes worth of work.

Milking Method #5: Temporarily increase your tax deductions. You will have less taken from your check but make sure you reset your deductions as soon as possible or you will end up owing Uncle Sam.

Milking Method #6: Stop your 401k deductions. This is only in dire need. For every $165.65 I have deducted, my hospital matches me $82.83. So you may be putting money back into your pocket, but it will be taxed and you won't get the match.

Milking Method #7: Pick up an extra shift. I work four nights a week and the other three nights are covered by my friend Julie. Since she has worked at our hospital for about 15 years or more, she is more than happy to take a day or two off and let me cover her shift. This turns into overtime which is paid out at 1 1/2 times my hourly pay, as most overtime is paid.

Milking Method #8: I try to earn additional money while at work. Like blogging for example. If I am caught up on my work and can sit down and blog for a little bit, I'm hoping to eventually learn how to make money doing it. Another employee brings computers that he repairs for people and fixes them during down time. Other's pitch their merchandise from catalog sales like Mary Kay and Pampered Chef to other employees. I have also built websites from my laptop for additional income.

Milking Method #9: Offer to work on an additional project. Does the office need repainting? Is there a company project that is falling behind? Files which need to get thinned out and moved into storage? Make a list and approach the boss. Offer to do this stuff on your days off. It may make you look good to the boss and earn you some overtime.

Milking Method #10: Burn your PTO. Some companies will let you cash in your PTO but beware. Some don't allow full cash value. One hospital I worked at only allowed around 65% cash out. So for every $100 you cashed out, you only received $65 (and then got taxed.)

Milking Method #11: While burning your PTO (see MM #10), work at a different job. You can use two or three days PTO and use a Temporary Staffing Service to find a temp job at another facility. The trick is to notify the service that you are available. Once they notify you of an available gig, you book it and turn your PTO notice for those days.

Hope this helps someone make that little extra money they need.

Oringally written for Helium here.

---

💼 Career & Personal Finance Tools

• Personal Finance Books — Top-rated books for getting ahead financially. #1 Best Sellers in Personal Finance with tens of thousands of reviews.
• Time Management Planner — Stay organized and track your side hustle hours. Amazon's Choice options with 10,000+ reviews.
• Ergonomic Laptop Stand — If you're blogging or working a side job from home, a proper setup matters. Top-rated with 50,000+ reviews.
• Side Hustle & Passive Income Books — Take those "milking methods" further with proven strategies from bestselling authors.

---

Affiliate Disclosure: Links above are Amazon affiliate links. Purchases support The Orange Jeep Dad blog at no extra cost to you.

WiPeer vs LifeNet - Communication Post Disaster

A recent post on SurvivalBlog links to a new communication software called LifeNet which claims they have  software that allows computer users to communicate when internet and cell phones towers go down after a disaster scenario.

As any other prepper/survivalist/geek would do, I jumped to see what it was all about.  It didn't take long to see that this software was a very weak attempt at rebranding WiPeer.  WiPeer is also an "ad hoc" communications software which is able to connect computers locally via a simple wifi connection.

You can set your wireless adapter to operate in "ad hoc" mode, with your internet service turned off, and still send out a signal which your neighbor can receive.  With proper instruction on how to access you through your wifi signal, you and your neighbor can exchange information.

Just like you can take your laptop to Starbucks and hop on their wifi signal to surf the net or send emails, LifeNet and WiPeer simply allow neighbors to access each other via their wifi signals.  Permissions are required, of course, but once connections are established, two or more users within a close enough proximity can communicate via email messages, text or file sharing.  Don't get too excited though.  You have to be within 200 feet of the person you are trying to communicate with or it doesn't work. 

The only advantage I can see at this point with LifeNet is that LifeNet is claiming it can port onto smart phones and Linux machines.  This means you can use your Droid to communicate with your neighbor's laptop over wifi if all other forms of internet and cell communication go down. Alas, LifeNet pales in comparison to the features offered by WiPeer.

Here's the comparison:

WiPeer

The Good:

• free (no ads, spyware, nor malware)
• instant messaging (aka "chat") both private and public
• ad hoc social networking
• file sharing / searching (share files or complete folders, no restrictions on file type)
• friend locator (you get notified when an established "friend" is within wifi range)
• interactive multiplayer games
• Peersonalizer feature (notifies you when a Facebook "friend" is within wifi range)
• available in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Croatian, Macedonian & Turkish
• completely packaged with user friendly interface and simple to download and install

The Bad:

• not available for Macs or smart phones.
• not available on Linux.
• no obvious update since 2009

LifeNet

The Good:

• ad hoc social network
• last updated post May 2011

The Bad:

• throughout the entire LifeNet website, there is no mention of any other functionality (file sharing, user within range notification, gaming, etc) other than communication, including the abstract.
• LifeNet is difficult to download and install.  All files are listed on a hub page and have to be downloaded individually and read for install instructions.

Home Office & Tech Essentials

Posts like this always remind me to keep the essentials on hand. A few things worth having around: an adjustable laptop stand, a wireless keyboard and mouse, and a desk organizer.

As an Amazon Associate, Orange Jeep Dad earns from qualifying purchases. This post may contain affiliate links.

It's Back to School Time...for ME!

Yup. One more go at it. I've been accepted into a Radiology Assistant program in Utah and will be spending the next two years living like a student again.  No sleep, late nights, crappy diet. Classes are all online but I will have to visit the campus in Ogden twice per semester for the next five semesters. Aside from that, I will be spending 24 hours each week with a Radiologist learning his trade (as well as holding my full time job, of course).

But in the end, I'll be ten times better at my job and have a whole list of new skills. My new title will be Radiology Practitioner Assistant or Radiology Assistant.  They get used fairly interchangeably.

If you want to see why I'm up to, visit my student blog: http://weberrastudent.blogspot.com/

I gotta get going, I have to figure out how I'm going to pay for this education now.

~OJD

Family & Kids Essentials

Posts like this always remind me to keep the essentials on hand. A few things worth having around: a kids outdoor activity set, a family first aid kit, and a durable backpack.

As an Amazon Associate, Orange Jeep Dad earns from qualifying purchases. This post may contain affiliate links.

Videos: BugOut Retreat & Wifey's Uber Craftroom

As an Amazon Associate, Orange Jeep Dad earns from qualifying purchases. This post may contain affiliate links.

9:30am and I'm two hours past my bedtime but here are a couple of videos I wanted to share. The first is a video of the retreat we have begun to renovate/update in Northern Arizona. We've been there a total of three times so far and have MUCH work to do.

The second video is Wifey's craft room. I think it is safe to say we've used just about all of the usable space for her FOUR sewing machines, serger, yarn, etc etc. Aside from a few more minor adjustments in the craft room, I can now focus on THE GARAGE (cheers from the crowd!)

Craft Room and Retreat Organization Essentials

Setting up a dedicated retreat space and craft room works a lot better with the right organizers on hand. A wall mounted craft supply organizer keeps small parts sorted and visible, and heavy duty shelving units make the most of a retreat space without wasting floor room. A well organized space tends to actually get used, instead of turning into another cluttered corner.

SurvivalBlog.com Disruption (use the dotted quad address 95.143.19.148)

As an Amazon Associate, Orange Jeep Dad earns from qualifying purchases. This post may contain affiliate links.

SurvivalBlog.com Disruption (use the dotted quad address 95.143.19.148)

Using a raw IP address, sometimes called a dotted quad address, is a handy trick worth knowing any time a website becomes unreachable through its normal domain name. Every website actually lives at a numeric IP address, and the domain name you normally type in is just a friendly label that gets translated into that number behind the scenes by DNS servers. When DNS is having problems, whether from an attack, a misconfiguration, or a provider outage, the site itself might be running perfectly fine even though the familiar web address will not load.

Typing the IP address directly into your browser bypasses that DNS lookup step entirely and connects straight to the server, which is why it can work even when the regular domain name is down. The tradeoff is that IP addresses can change over time as a site moves hosting providers, so a saved IP address is really only a short-term workaround rather than a permanent bookmark. It also will not work for sites that rely on shared hosting, where many different websites live at the same IP address and the server needs the domain name to know which site to serve you.

For anyone who relies on a handful of critical websites for news, research, or preparedness information, it is worth knowing this trick exists even if you never need to use it. Keeping a note of the current IP address for a site you visit often, alongside a backup way to reach it like a cached version or an alternate mirror, is a small bit of extra resilience that costs nothing and can save real frustration during an outage.

As of 20:39 July 8th (MST)

Hack attack confirmed by JWR. Survivalblog has been under attack since July 4th and they are "being forced to change servers".  Please bookmark the dotted quad addresses (seen below).

US Server = http://64.92.111.122/
Swede Server = http://95.143.193.148/

As I stated LAST TIME THIS HAPPENED, remind yourself that this is a good reason to buy JWR's CD archive of his entire site. It is only $4.97 on Amazon right (link) now and includes 2005 through 2011. Hurry, it might not be there long.

As of 20:03 July 8th (MST)

It appears SurvivalBlog.com is having difficulty with their URL again. You can still access the website information by typing the dotted quad address:

http://95.143.19.148/

If you haven't bookmarked this address yet, now would be a good time.  If I find out more information, I'll edit this post.

~OJD

Prior DoS attack info here, trying to post current info here.

Post from The Retreat

Just got here and already feel my stress melting away. I don't know what it is about being in the Hinterboonies that raises the spirits so high but rainbows seem to be a factor.

I may have finally uploaded some video of the retreat successfully onto YouTube.  Looks like the only video that uploaded was a little 12 second shot I did. The longer version is waiting for a wifi connection to upload. I should have it up by tomorrow.

Gear for the Trip

Posts like this always remind me to keep the essentials on hand. A few things worth having around: a portable camp stove, a durable cooler, and a compact first aid kit.

As an Amazon Associate, Orange Jeep Dad earns from qualifying purchases. This post may contain affiliate links.