SparkDad

Last year I procrastinated on getting my eyes checked. Our health insurance gives us a eye exam one time per year and $130 off of new frames. Usually I get it done early in the year, but this year I put it off. Finally while we were on vacation in New Mexico over Christmas break I went to another eye doctor and had the exam.

We purchased a nice pair of Oakley frames for me to wear everyday. I had the great idea that I would get prescription sunglasses as well. We spent the time to pick out the frames, paid and put in the order. Unfortunately my prescription would not work in any of the shade frames that I had picked out.

So off I am this week looking for prescription shades. Now you have to understand that I have a very round head. I am bald so round shades look terrible on me. I have to have a very rectangular frame for it to look right on me.

I searched online to see if I could find some to save myself driving around looking at frames.

One of the places that I ended up at had wholesale sunglasses. They had great prices and sold in bulk, but with my previous mistake on the prescription not working I had to go local.

My eye doctor in town has ordered some frames in for me to try on Monday so hopefully I will find something that will work!

I will post a new picture once the new shades are done and in!

This post was paid for by modasunglasses.com – wholesale sunglasses

I am happy to report that I have managed to lose another 1 1/2 pounds this week. This puts my total loss since December 18th at 11 pounds!

Now I had reported that my goal by April was 170 pounds, but today when I was calculating what I still needed to lose I realized that 30 pounds by April puts me at 180. So I need to correct that, which I have done.

This leaves me at 2.3 pounds per week from now until April 1. We are celebrating Valentines on February 6th, which is 2 weeks away, so I am setting my goal for February 6th at a little higher than the 2.3 pounds. I am shooting to take off 6 pounds by February 6th. Which would put me under 200 pounds!

What I did well:

I exercised 4 days. I did pure cardio with a spattering of weights.

What I did poorly:

I ate 3 candy bars and had about 4 diet cokes. (I know ouch!)

Changes for the next 2 weeks to facilitate the 6 pound goal:

1) Cut out cheese

2) Cut sodas to 1 per week

3) Add upper body / lower body weights to circuit

Good luck to anyone else who is trying to get healthy!

Follow my progress and Tweets at www.twitter.com/sparkdad and follow the hash #sparkdadchallenge

- Spark Dad

Although I have not often discussed it on my blog, I am attending school trying to finish up my degree. I was lazy and had better things to do in my youth and now I am working on it.

I am attending an online university right now. I considered a lot of different colleges including the University of Phoenix . I ended up going to Ashford University, which is a small for profit university in Iowa. They have a good general program and cater to military.

Since I have not received my degree, Mama often asks me “Have you decided what you want to do when you graduate?”  A simple question. A very difficult answer. The truth is that I am not sure what I want to do when I grow up.

This morning while doing my daily read I found this site EduInReview.com . I was looking for information on careers when I found it. It is a great resource for education news, education policies about colleges around the nation, in depth information about specific colleges, health information for students, financial aid and to satisfy my needs steps toward a strong career.

Although my search on EduInReview did not nail down my career choice I did find some good information and resources when I get closer to deciding.

- Spark Dad

This was a paid post by EduInReview.com

Valentines is a holiday that you love to hate. The stress of picking out that perfect gift for your sweetie can be overwhelming.

In my years of dating(1989-1994) and marriage(1994-NOW) for a total of 21 years,  I have had some hits and some flops! I have of course sent the standard dozen red roses and those are good. The problem with roses is that they wilt and die. What does that say about your loving relationship. Here today, gone tomorrow?

I have given lingerie, not so good.  Let your sweetie buy her own lingerie! If you give her some new skimpies then she will think that you are really gifting yourself! You are selfish and well only thinking about one thing!

So, I move on to jewelry. Jewelry is nearly always a winner. Now I am not saying that you need to take out a loan every Valentines day. You do not have to spend a huge amount on it. Just make it meaningful and a good value.

You can go expensive like Tiffany’s or you can go with a great value from one of my site sponsors, BlueDial.com . They have some great deals on Citizen Eco Drive Ladies Watches.

My personal favorite from there this year is the Citizen Purse Charm watch below.

If you are a female, guys are so easy to please. You can go the easy route and choose the lingerie option from above. That one is always a winner for guys, as long as you are the one wearing the lingerie and not him!

Or you can choose something from BlueDial.com . Take a look at my previous post “Watch Envy”.

Finally electronics are always good, but once again you can really break the bank here and most of the time he will have researched the device for many hours and you might not get the exact one that he wanted.

I hope that these gift giving ideas help you on this very important day!

- Spark Dad

This was a promotional post paid for by BlueDial.com

I don’t know about you, but many people I know spend a lot of time on Facebook. It is a great way to catch up with friends that you do not call everyday.

I wanted to inform everyone about some privacy precautions that you can take. I found this article in a Tweet from ReadWriteWeb.com You can see the original post here.

Want to change things back? Read on to find out how.

1. Who Can See The Things You Share (Status Updates, Photo, Videos, etc.)

Probably the most critical of the "privacy" changes (yes, we mean those quotes sarcastically) was the change made to status updates. Although there’s now a button beneath the status update field that lets you select who can view any particular update, the new Facebook default for this setting is "Everyone." And by everyone, they mean everyone.

If you accepted the new recommended settings then you voluntarily gave Facebook the right to share the information about the items you post with any user or application on the site. Depending on your search settings, you may have also given Facebook the right to share that information with search engines, too.

To change this setting back to something of a more private nature, do the following:

1. From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click "Privacy Settings" from the list that appears.
2. Click "Profile Information" from the list of choices on the next page.
3. Scroll down to the setting "Posts by Me." This encompasses anything you post, including status updates, links, notes, photos, and videos.
4. Change this setting using the drop-down box on the right. We recommend the "Only Friends" setting to ensure that only those people you’ve specifically added as a friend on the network can see the things you post.

2. Who Can See Your Personal Info

Facebook has a section of your profile called "personal info," but it only includes your interests, activities, and favorites. Other arguably more personal information is not encompassed by the "personal info" setting on Facebook’s Privacy Settings page. That other information includes things like your birthday, your religious and political views, and your relationship status.

After last month’s privacy changes, Facebook set the new defaults for this other information to viewable by either "Everyone" (for family and relationships, aka relationship status) or to "Friends of Friends" (birthday, religious and political views). Depending on your own preferences, you can update each of these fields as you see fit. However, we would bet that many will want to set these to "Only Friends" as well. To do so:

1. From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click "Privacy Settings" from the list that appears.
2. Click "Profile Information" from the list of choices on the next page.
3. The third, fourth, and fifth item listed on this page are as follows: "birthday," "religious and political views," and "family and relationship." Locking down birthday to "Only Friends" is wise here, especially considering information such as this is often used in identity theft.
4. Depending on your own personal preferences, you may or may not feel comfortable sharing your relationship status and religious and political views with complete strangers. And keep in mind, any setting besides "Only Friends" is just that – a stranger. While "Friends of Friends" sounds innocuous enough, it refers to everyone your friends have added as friends, a large group containing hundreds if not thousands of people you don’t know. All it takes is one less-than-selective friend in your network to give an unsavory person access to this information.

3. What Google Can See – Keep Your Data Off the Search Engines

When you visit Facebook’s Search Settings page, a warning message pops up. Apparently, Facebook wants to clear the air about what info is being indexed by Google. The message reads:

There have been misleading rumors recently about Facebook indexing all your information on Google. This is not true. Facebook created public search listings in 2007 to enable people to search for your name and see a link to your Facebook profile. They will still only see a basic set of information.

While that may be true to a point, the second setting listed on this Search Settings page refers to exactly what you’re allowing Google to index. If the box next to "Allow" is checked, you’re giving search engines the ability to access and index any information you’ve marked as visible by "Everyone." As you can see from the settings discussed above, if you had not made some changes to certain fields, you would be sharing quite a bit with the search engines…probably more information than you were comfortable with. To keep your data private and out of the search engines, do the following:

1. From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click "Privacy Settings" from the list that appears.
2. Click "Search" from the list of choices on the next page.
3. Click "Close" on the pop-up message that appears.
4. On this page, uncheck the box labeled "Allow" next to the second setting "Public Search Results." That keeps all your publicly shared information (items set to viewable by "Everyone") out of the search engines. If you want to see what the end result looks like, click the "see preview" link in blue underneath this setting.

– ReadWriteWeb.com, Sarah Perez, January 20, 2010 8:15 a.m.