Todd's Blog

Today is "link love day" here on Todd's tips If you're anything like me, you probably have literally hundreds of blog posts in your feed reader still waiting to be scanned through. When I find a blog I like, it's usually not a hard decision to subscribe via RSS. But just because I've subscribed, doesn't necessarily make me a "regular reader" . That being said, every morning when I get up, I check google reader before I go to work. There are a couple of blogs, that I definitely go read right away if I see they have new posts. Following is a small sample of from my list of Must Read Blogs Tellin It Like It Is - Lin Burress has been one of my better blogging friends for several months now. Hers is always one of the first blogs I read, and one of the few I try to comment on regularly. She writes about Relationships , Marriage and Parenting . And as you can probably guess from the title of her blog, she definitely "tells it like it is&q

Ever seen that book with the panda on the cover? Well, I had one of those moments the other day ... My step-son Johnathan brought one of his friends in the house, and for some reason their first stop is always over at the crib to look at his new little sister Jaiden. As they walked away from the crib, they asked " how come whenever we come in the house, she's never awake ?" Well, me wanting to be the knowledgeable and informative dad, proceed to tell them ... "She's only a couple of days old, pretty much all she does is eat poop and sleep ." Now, I'm pretty sure Jeff wasn't serious, but his timing sure was pretty good. He immediately scrunched up his face, looked straight at me, and in a dead serious tone of voice said ... "Ewwww ... she eats poop????" lol, ugh, kids. So that was my lesson in punctuation. From now on, I know that when describing a typical day for my 5 day old daughter, I will be sure to clearly states that she Eats (com

Did you know that it's virtually impossible to hold a negative thought while you're smiling ? Go ahead, try it ... Put a big ole smile on your face (even it's one of those fake ones); then try to think about something that really upsets or worries you. It wasn't easy, was it ? " Ok, Todd, that's interesting, but why is this something I should know ?", you may be asking yourself. Because, if in our little experiment, you had a hard time holding a negative thought while smiling; do you think it's possible that smiling might help to change your thoughts at times when that negativity is already there? ... letting you get back to using your brain for more productive activities . Give it a go next time you're upset, angry or worried. Force yourself to put a big grin on your face, and don't stop until you're thinking about something happy . (or at least not unhappy). Have fun with it :-D Todd p.s. what are some other good ways that you'

A few months back I wrote a new post called Do You Have a Dream Board ? It turned out to be one of the most popular articles on the entire blog. Quite a few people have used that post as inspiration for building their own online dream board . However, since I wrote that blog post, I've learned a bit more about wordpress, and about dream boards. My thinking on the best way to do this has evolved slightly . I also wanted to make it easier for people who are part of my candle business to have a dream board of their own . So, I bought the domain name OnlineDreamBoard.net (front page still under developement) and set up a new site from scratch. For anybody who is a member of my team, I will set up, and host a dream board for you on that domain. For everybody else, here are ... Step by step instructions for setting up your own online Dream Board First, I'm going to make a few basic assumptions: You have your own web hosting account. You have the ability to install WordPre

Manana Hiking Trail It’s Statehood day here in Hawaii, which meant there was no flying up at Wheeler. It wouldn’t have been right to totally take the day off, so instead we organized a group PT session hiking up the Manana trail . Eight weather people showed up bright and early at 0830 with water, bug spray, granola bars and cameras. Well, six of them showed up at 0830, two of us don’t read directions very well, and initially went to a different trail a couple of mile up the road. But after a quick phone call, we made it to the right place. Of course I brought my camera, so I have a few pictures to share, along with a bit of narration. Obligatory signs at the bottom of the trail: Obviously some people a bit younger than us come here from time to time. After a couple hundred yards of paved trail, we came around a corner, and started our climb. I’m an “old” guy with a bad knee at the moment. But even for me, this wasn’t a bad hike. Some parts of the climb were a little bit steep, and I