Amazing, I know, but MomGoth has been very busy this week, angels. I have some wonderful recommendations for you. You’re welcome.

First, I have that new cell phone I got from Zact, and I want to report on it. IT’S GREAT! I bought the cheapest one (Whaddya mean, “That figures”? Shut up!), and it does everything I want it to except serve as a mobile hot spot. Alas. But that might change. Anyway, I use the heck out of it, mostly as a camera, but also to share those pictures to Facebook. I can use it for text messages and phone calls, of course. I have the weather channel app. I have a calculator. I have a flashlight. I have a GPS/map app. I can send coupons to my grocery card. I can order prescriptions. I can surf the web. I can scan QR and bar codes! It is the total happy. And it’s cheap. I did have to buy the phone, but the plan is less than $15/month, and I get a credit for anything I don’t use and I can add more of change the plan any time. ANY. TIME.

Okay, speaking of QR codes, you know what those are, right? You don’t? Sure you do! They’re those little square squiggly things that say things under them like, “Scan this to learn more about our amazing product!” So let’s say you have an amazing product. You can go to Kaywa, sign up for free, type in the web site for your amazing product or maybe your email, and generate your very own QR code like this one.

What’s that? Do they have to be black and white? Why no, they don’t! Download that sucker to your computer and open it in this amazing FREE graphics program, The GIMP. It is, as the website says, like photoshop only FREE. Just remember: if you run The GIMP in Linux, you can click on multiple files and open them; if you run it in Windows, only click on ONE file to open the program or you’ll end up opening multiple iterations of the program, and that hogs memory. SO ANYWAY, open your QR code in The GIMP and color in some of the bits like this. As Charlie’s Aunt Ora Mae used to say, “Now ain’t that purtty?”

I also had occasion to need to send a fax this week, and I didn’t want to run out to the library to send it. Since I have a scanner, I just logged onto faxZero and sent that puppy for the low, low price of nothing.

Finally, I recommend a search engine new to me, DuckDuckGo. It’s the search engine that doesn’t track you. Now, me, I kind of enjoy being tracked. If I’m interested in something, I’ll go look at it through Google’s search engine so third parties will post ads about it all over the pages I visit. That way, I can see pictures of awesome ink pens or fat lady dresses wherever I go. But, when I get tired of messing with Google’s head, I use DuckDuckGo.

Enjoy this week’s rambles. I’ll be doing short posts for April A-to-Z and stories (if I don’t back out) for Story-A-Day May.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character suspects he or she is being followed.

MA