HP ePrint Can Save You Time and Money

Working from home can be hard enough with all the distractions that it brings.  You have kids, household chores, and the almighty Honey Do List.  Thankfully, there is a great tool available from Hewlett Packard called ePrint, and like Cozi it can be a huge help with time management.  ePrint goes beyond Cozi however in that it can also help with so many other things around the home.  First lets start with what ePrint is.  ePrint is a service offered by Hewlett Packard for many of its newer model printers.  If your new HP printer is equipped with ePrint you will be given the option of setting up the service:  do it!  It is completely free and opens up a massive resource for moms and dads, business professionals, small business owners, and homeschoolers alike.  Your printer will have its very own email address.  In short if a customer of mine wants to send me a work order on hard-copy I don't need a fax machine to receive it.  He or she would simply email my printer directly and the email and document will print out automatically.  The sending email can be sent from just about any device including cell and smart phones as well as computers. Create your account via the setup options for whichever printer it is that you have.  Then what you will want to do is go to this website.  Once you arrive you will see the following page.

On a side note you can also setup ePrint from this page if you prefer.  Personally I recommend doing it from your new printer, but to each his own.

Take some time and explore this page.  One of the things I've seen that impressed me is the way you can view your print history.  I printed out some Disney coloring activities for the kids, and you can clearly see when it was done in the history page.

Speaking of Disney there are a large number of apps you can download to your printer.  The easiest way to do it is to select the apps you want from the website.  You can select apps from your printer, but in this case bigger is better; you can see what you are getting as well as samples of the apps.  On a side note this page is compatible with computers and iPods/iPads.    Now lets talk about some of the types of applications you can download to your printer.  Here is a screenshot from my ePrint account and I'll go over some of the more useful and fun apps that I use.

Like I said earlier I use the Disney ap A LOT especially Jake and the Neverland Pirates for Thomas.  He's obsessed!  The next most used is coupons.  I've saved literally hundreds of dollars using manufacturer coupons for all kinds of products.

In the year and a half since I bought my HP D110 printer this one application has literally paid for the printer and ink numerous times.  That is not an exaggeration.  One of my favorite tactics is to take one of these lovely coupons to a retailer or grocery store like Smith's or Albertsons.  If you're enrolled in the customer program they have you get discounts on gas once you spend a certain amount.  As a result I'm saving double: up front with the cashier thanks to ePrint and again when I fill up my Jeep.  And lets face it, the economy sucks and saving some money is a must for any family, business owner or not.  You can also have specials shown in your area.  

Let me close with this little gem.  We've all needed custom forms printed out either for our kids to help with learning or keeping organized around the home and office (or in some of our cases the home and office is the same thing!)  HP Quick Forms fills the bill.  Simply select the application and you have dozens of custom forms to choose from.

In closing, if you're in the market for a new printer take a look at Hewlett Packard.  The innovation they have displayed is staggering and as a user of this technology I can honestly say it has saved me a ton of time and cold hard cash.  Not only do I get coupons and time saving tools on demand, but I no longer need that expensive fax line.  Do your homework.  I think you'll like what you see!

The Most Important Thing

We all have hectic days rather you're a mom or a dad.  Work, worrying about bills and juggling finances, and meeting deadlines.  One thing that I have to stress for both parents is not to neglect the single most important thing: our kids.  It is so easy to get wrapped up in routine that we end up neglecting the ones we work so hard for.  I'm no Doctor Phill, but trust me on this.  Listen to Toby Keith's hit song "The List".  It's words to live by.  Take some time out and play with the kids.  Here's a picture of me and the rugrats playing with waterguns yesterday (and we also soaked Kizzy and had a great time doing it!)  Your kids will thank you and trust me, your family life will improve.  Take the family out.  Unplug, hit a park and hose down the misses with a water gun.  Then run for your life!

How to Earn Savings From Your Computer

We've all heard the stories of how you can earn big bucks from your home computer.  We have incomeathome.com being promoted by celebrity spokesmen touting how folks have earned thousands of dollars from home "without selling soap."  We have ads (admittedly like the ones on this blog) that pay per click, and yes I do like it when folks click the ads on this blog =) .  What I'd like to talk to y'all about today is by far the easiest way to earn rewards.  While these rewards aren't cash money per se, it is close.  I'm talking gift cards to Amazon.com to Starbucks Coffee.  I'm talking about Microsoft's search engine Bing.  Here's how it works.  You can earn up to forty points a day simply by searching.  For example I was looking for photographs from the Civil War to make a movie for a customer of mine.  Every two searches earned me a point.  Then I decided to do a search on the population of my hometown of Kalispell, Montana and then the depth of Flathead Lake.  I earned two more points.  Get the idea?  I'll walk you through step by step how to create a Windows Live id and get you on your way to searching bliss!

First open up Internet Explorer.  Being a Microsoft product I found that I don't lose points through it ever.  I have missed points through searches via Google Chrome, and the idea is to maximize our efforts to earn the fastest rewards.  First, go to Bing.com

On the top right hand corner there is an option that says sign in.  Click it.  The login I strongly recommend you use is your Windows Like ID.

If you have a Windows Live id sign in like normal.  If you don't create one using your email address.  It quick and easy.  

Now that you are logged in to Bing start searching!  Your points are in the top right hand corner of the browser window.  Every two searches you will earn a point!  That's it, no fuss, no muss, and no selling soap as they say. After you do a few searches click the Reward points (they look like a medal) and whala!  You see what you can earn at your current level.  Just keep searching with Bing and take advantage of the daily rewards and you'll soon be having those gift cards and other goodies rolling in.  Enjoy searching and getting paid for it!

Thanks Matthew for passing this to me.

Number of work from home dads on the rise.

See fellas?  You are NOT alone.  Special thanks to Mathew Uriz for sharing this with us.  Don't keep this site a secret!  Let others know about us and please submit information like Mathew has done.

Happy Daddy's Day!

I want to take this time and wish everyone a happy Father's Day.  If I had it my way, this special day would be renamed.  Anyone can be a father.  It takes someone special to be a dad.  So in that light, Happy Daddy's Day!

Work, Kids, Appointments, Oh My!

One of the biggest challenges a stay at home dad will have (and it's second to actually getting our socks and underwear in the dirty clothes!) is staying organized.  If your wife or significant other is anything like mine they worry we'll drop the ball.  Or miss an appointment.  Or upset a schedule that would have profound effects all over the cosmos.  However there is a stellar tool I'd like to talk about that will make this task a LOT easier, and avoid pain in the wallet.

COZI

Cozi is a free application for the iPad, iPod, Iphone, and Android. A lot of folks use Microsoft Outlook for scheduling.  I've found personally that juggling both work and home appointments is easier and more useful than Outlook.  I'll explain why that is.  When you download Cozi you create an account and then you add people to the scheduler. You can add multiple people that the appointment is relevant for.  

Cozi has a lot of functionality and the company, like this blog, makes money via clicks.  So take a moment and click an ad to support this great application.  The functionality is stellar.   Creating an event is very easy.  Click on the section you want to use.  In this review I'll use Calendar, but I use all of the functions.  That it makes things easier is an understatement!  Go into Calendar and click the X in the top right-hand corner.  You will get a menu that looks like this:

Simply fill out the fields and select dates and times for your event.  You can also have the event be recurring or span several days.  You can also put detailed notes that can be seen by everyone in the account

Cozi is a fantastic tool that I can promise will take a lot of the worry out of the day to day grind.  Give it a try, I promise you will NOT be disappointed!

Hello and Welcome!

I'd like to thank everyone for taking a gander at this blog.  My name is Robby West and I live in beautiful Kalispell, Montana.  I'm the owner of a small business that specializes in computer repair called West Computer Services.  Feel free to visit my business site.  Due to some complications from a medical condition and the rising costs of daycare my wife Kizzy and i had to make some adjustments.  After doing some research I came to see that the choices we have had to make are by no means unique; husbands and wives like us have been forced to make some drastic changes to survive in this economy.  What changes am I talking about?  It's simple really.  Wives having to do traditional 9 - 5 jobs while husbands work from and keep up the home.  There is such little support for men on the web that I was able to find that I felt inspired to create this blog to chronicle my successes and yes, my failures.  I'll share every tip, trick, and shortcut I can to help make this unconventional situation easier for us guys to handle.  And I'll also try and toss in some humor as I can.  Also please, please, please!!! offer feedback and tips of your own!