Yeah, that’s duct tape around the tub spout!

DennisB - Not proud to say, this is in a rental of mine! A 1927 wood frame that has been severely neglected. Everyone knows, one of the biggest differences that can be made in any bathroom is to install nice clean ceramic tile. Come check out my first tile job with some pictures of before, during and after. Before deciding on ceramic tile, I also considered ready-made shower wall panels…

Tip: Use a 50/50 mix of  bleach & water to remove common black mold from bathroom ceilings.

I considered installing a shower wall enclosure that consists of three panels like the one in the image. However, I was concerned by the reviews of some of the low-end kits. The reviews stated that any imperfection on the walls would show as buckles in the plastic panels. Mind you, these kits range from $59 to over $500 so I’m sure the quality is a lot different according to the price paid. I also read that silicone in the corners is needed to make the walls water tight. Also, cutting the panels for the valves, spout, shower head and window was also a concern. The more I read and thought about this, the more I leaned toward doing ceramic tile. The least expensive ceramic tiles I found were plain white, 4″ squares. Lowes I thought had a great price at .33 each. After some checking around though, I found a flooring/tile super store that had white ceramic tiles for just .09 each! This project required 7 boxes (80 pieces in a box) which equals 560 pieces needed. At Lowes 560 x .33 would have been $184.80. But since I only paid .09 cents each times 560, it was only $50.40. There are other costs involved too, like adhesive, grout, edge tiles, tools etc but the initial savings on the tile was a great start.

So after checking out a dozen or so YouTube videos I was ready to start. First was the demolition. I had to remove all the old surface boards from around the tub. This was a great time to install new tub faucet valves. The old one was leaking and was missing the knob. This new replacement valve below, is a Price Pfister and was actually found in the home when cleaning it out. The old plumbing had a combination of galvanized pipe, PVC and copper. The PVC snapped when I first tried to work on removing the old valve. Needles to say, I didn’t use any PVC when going back with the new valve. After sweating the new copper and re-using some of the old galvanized pipe, it was just a matter of spacing, bracing and leak checking the new valves before installing cement backer board. Oh yeah, also had to replace some rotten boards on the back wall so I would have something to run the screws for the backer board into. Ended up getting five, 3×5 cement backer boards. 4×8 boards are available but they are heavier and harder to work with in a small bathroom. I took measurements and used a razor knife to score and snap the cement backer boards on the floor of a nearby empty bedroom.

I used plenty of screws in the backer board to prevent movement. Any flex when pushing on the boards indicates more screws are needed. Movement after the tiles are on would mean the tiles could pop loose. I also used mesh fiber tape and tile adhesive on all the seams and screw heads.

The tile squares I purchased had “built in” spacers. However, I did use paint stir sticks on the bottom edge to space the tiles up a little. Most instructions I found recommend attaching a straight piece of wood about half way up as a starting point; I saw no reason to do this on this job because the tub was level and I also have a window about half way up interfering. I did start in the center of the wall with the tile as recommended though. The cuts were made with an inexpensive tile cutter, which scores like a glass cutter and breaks the tile by pushing down with the lever. Very easy to use. There’s some good videos that show the tool in use. My son and I were having a yard sale with some of the remaining items in the house and ran across the tile cutter that I ended up using. I honestly didn’t know what it was used for when I first saw it. Luckily we didn’t sell it because it came in handy for this project. All you do is place the tile in position and push the handle forward. It’s like a glass cutter with a wheel that scores the tile. Once the score has been made, the foot part of the tool sits on the tile while you push the lever down, breaking the tile on the mark.

The small edge tiles (on the left) didn’t have spacers built in so I improvised by using nails as spacers. The holes for the valves and spout were were made with a special diamond blade hole-saw. The hole-saw goes into any regular 3/8″ electric drill.

I used marble at the bottom of the window. White was the choice for the look of “clean”. $10 at Lowes and they cut it for free!

Tip: Compare prices on the edge tiles also. The 9 cent tiles were a “loss leader” and the same border tiles were found at Lowes for about a dollar cheaper each. Just be careful if doing this to make sure the color matches.

I used green accent tile, that looked great with the lighting at the store. It was darker than I preferred when it was installed and had less light on it in the bathroom. I’m still happy with it though, it’s better to break up all that plain white tile a little bit.

Now on to the tub and ceiling!

Summary: Suggestions on how to use a simple DIY method to transfer old outdated VHS tapes to digital. VHS to DVD will allow easy digital storage of family videos for years to come.

Your old family footage on VHS tapes are NOT going to last forever! Transfer your priceless memories of Holidays, vacations, birthdays etc to digital before the last VCR (Video Cassette Recorder) in the house decides it’s time to start eating tapes. How do you transfer a VHS tape to a DVD? Simple, I’ve recently transferred many hours of footage of VHS tapes and mini cassettes to the computer and to DVD’s. I can finally get rid of the old outdated VCR, VHS tapes, mini cassettes and my ancient video camcorder (and VCR). Sure there are services that will transfer your old tapes to DVD’s for you, but that can be very expensive; especially if you only have 20 or 30 minutes on each of most of the old tapes. Several years ago, we purchased a DVD player that was a combo VHS player and DVD RECORDER. We planned on “someday” using this device to transfer our old VHS tapes to DVD. A great plan, however the “day” came recently and I downloaded the pdf manual for the recording instructions for the Panasonic VHS/DVD recorder combo. Guess what? The DVD recorder did NOT work! I went scrambling for a solution online, so I could wrap this job up and clear off the formal dining room table in time for Thanksgiving dinner. I went on a frantic GOOGLE search for a solution. With no time for sending tapes off, trusting some stranger with my tapes that I’ve kept up with for over 20 years, I finally found a simple solution.

A VHS to DVD transfer software with RCA cables, a black box and a USB that plugs into my computer! After a simple software download, there were just 3 steps - Just 1. Capture 2. Edit and 3. Record. The software I purchased allowed me to be more fancy if I wanted to by adding subtitles, transitions and edit out all the fuzzy and low battery screens. I not only created quality DVD’s that could not be distinguished from the VCR tapes, I also made wmv format files that were easy to add to YouTube for family to see right away. There are several competitive brands of VHS to DVD software kits available, but I purchased my VHS to DVD software cable kit at the local Radio Shack. No excuses, just do it before those old family videos are gone FOREVER.

Summary: Funny observations of my Mother in-law which has recently moved in to stay with us.

My Mother in-law (my son’s granny) recently came to stay with us after my Father in-law passed away. As you may guess some situations are very difficult to deal with; however we’ve chosen to find humor whenever possible. At our house, The Price is Right is an everyday ritual now. I noticed quickly her mumbling something when most of the “new cars” were shown on Drew Carey’s stage…. “square back”. It seems that any car regardless of the make, that has a cut off design in the rear is called a “square back”. Granny has very strong dislike (if not hatred) for these cars! Like with many things related to humor, repetition seems to just make her disdain even funnier over time. While listening from the next room, when the Price is Right is on and I hear the announcer say “A NEW CAR!” - next I usually hear the disappointment in her voice when she say’s “square-back…“.

Granny on the World’s Population

Granny, did you know that there are 7 billion people now in the world? There were 1 billion people back in 1925!

Granny - That’s because ALL those people are coming over here! Used to be, Japan was always known for having the most people.

We are talking about the world… and that was China. China still does have the most people.

Granny - It used to be Japan…. until they started only letting them have one kid.

Only Happy When it Rains

My Mother in-law is obsessed with the weather. Admittedly, she doesn’t have a lot going on these days… aside from The Price is Right. But why is it that she is so caught up in the weather? She’s not going anywhere! No matter how worried or depressed she may be about something, she always lights up when there’s a mention of rain, clouds or temperature etc. I’m sure we have the only household in the USA with a full-time 84 year old… weather-girl! And the weather men on TV had better get it right. Let them be off on their predictions by a couple of degrees and we ALL hear about it. God forbid they say it might rain and it doesn’t. If she expects it to rain… and she DOES, even if there’s only a slight chance, the weather men are all deemed LIARS! It’s funny too because we have a security camera system that she relies on heavily to catch the first glimpse of rain. One of the cameras is angled in such a way that rain pouring off the roof is easily seen. This is a great indicator of… if it’s began raining, if it’s raining at all, if it’s stopped raining, how much it’s raining, etc; you get the idea. However, the rain takes a little while at first to collect and start running off the roof, just a few seconds delay. It’s funny because she has grown so dependent on this camera for her outside glimpse of whats going on, even-though she sits close to an 8 ft sliding glass door! One day my son came walking through the living room when it had just started raining. Knowing how much she likes the rain, he said “hey granny it’s raining”. She looks at the camera and defiantly says “NO it’s NOT”. My son says granny look out the window! She looks and is happily surprised. Oh… it is raining.

Level 85 - World of Warcraft Subtlety PvP Rogue

Stat priority is important to look at when trying to perfect your class. For example, sub rogues benefit from more crit where as mut rogues benefit more from mastery. This is because subtlety rogue’s damage is crit bases due to the use

of backstab and ambush and assassination rogue’s damage comes from the use of envenom and poisons. Mastery isn’t as important for subtlety rogues because it only increases the damage of finishing moves, which are a fraction of their dps. With this information you can adjust your gear to provide maximum dps and burst.

Gear

One general rule here, resilience = win! Your best choice when gearing your toon for PvP will obviously be the PvP gear. Now, since there isn’t too much PvP gear to choose, you will have to take what is available. When gearing your toon, try to spend your conquest points to get the Vicious Gladiator main set pieces, the ones with set bonuses, and weapons first. You can do battle grounds to build up some honor points to get trinkets, rings, and a neck. This is a general rule of course. If you still have green gear you will want to replace them first.

Trinkets are preference; however, I prefer to get the trinkets that have resilience. If you don’t have the human racial, ever man for himself, then you will have to get the trinket that removes movement impairing effects. When it comes down to it, survivability + correctly times burst is key to winning as a rogue. This trinket gives 340 resilience and the removes movement impairing effects. It will not improve your dps, but greatly improves survivability. I have seen good rogues use a pure dps trinket with the trinket that gives critical strike + remove movement impair effect. It is just a matter of balancing your damage and your survivability.

Gems

For your meta, the Agile Shadowspirit Diamond is the best choice. This gem provides 54 agility and 3% increased critical damage. It also requires 3 red gems to be active, which is good news.

Agility will be your main gem. Agility provides critical strike rating as well as attack power and dodge. Some rogues will gem pure agility and ignore all socket bonuses. I prefer to go for the socket bonus if it gives me a decent amount of agility. Other than that I gem agility.

If you have to pick a yellow gem, go for the Deadly Ember Topaz, it provides 20 agility and 20 critical strike.

If you need to fill a blue socket, Shifting Demons eye is the best choice, it gives 20 agility and 20 stamina.

Make sure you have around 200 spell pen. What! Rogues need spell pen?!?! This is to ensure that your blind and similar abilities aren’t resisted.

Enchants

Head and shoulder enchants can be obtained from the PvP vender with honor. The Arcanum of Vicious Agility is a good choice for a head slot and Greater Inscription of Vicious Agility, 50 agility and 25, is ideal for shoulders.

Chest: 40 resilience is good or 20 to all stats - 15 to stats will be fine if you can’t afford the mats for the 20 to all stats.

Legs: Dragonscale leg armor, 190 attack power 55 crit

Boots: Assassin’s step, 25 agility and movement speed increase.

Bracers: agility 50

Gloves: 20 agility or 50 haste

Weapons: landslide, chance to get 1000 attack power for 12 sec, on the main hand and I prefer the pyrium weapon chain, which halves disarm times, or you can double up with another landslide.

Re-forge

Make sure you have at least 5% hit to reach PvP hit cap. If you are hit capped, just re-forge mastery and haste to crit. Learn more about Sub Rogues, click the links below!

Which Subtlety talents are best and why
Why choose the Subtlety tree?

The top rated rogues in Cataclysm have chosen the subtlety tree for arenas. Now, I’m not saying that the other rogue specs aren’t viable for PvP, but why try to reinvent the wheel. The subtlety tree has proven itself in the PvP world; its just up to you to choose the proper talents that will give you the biggest advantage against your opponent. Top rogues focus on talents that will give them the best possible burst dps while maintaining maximum survivability. These are the best talents for achieving those goals.

Click these links to jump to a specific talent tree.

Subtlety Talents
Combat Talents
Assassination Talents
Unused/Optional Talents

 Subtlety Tree

Night Stalker: Increases your speed while stealthed by 15% and reduces the cooldown of your stealth ability by 6 sec.

• This is crucial for positioning for an attack, as a rogue, starting the fight properly can mean the difference between a win or a loss.

• The 6 sec cooldown reduction puts your stealth on a 4 second cooldown, which makes resetting a fight easier. Just get out of combat, eat some food and go in for a second assault.

Improved Ambush: Increased the critical strike chance of your ambush ability by 60% and its damage by 15%.

• This combined with shadow dance can result very high burst damage.

Relentless Strikes: Your finishing moves have a 20% chance per combo point to restore 25 energy.

• Cant dps without energy, 25 energy return after using 5 combo points is great regeneration.

Elusiveness: Reduces the cooldown of your vanish and blind abilities by 60 sec and your cloak of shadows by 20 sec.

• This talent greatly increases your survivability. These three abilities alone make fighting a rogue frustrating and this talent lets you use them even more! Casters especially will hate you for this one. These are powerful abilities that can easily decide the outcome of a fight.

Opportunity: Increases the damage dealt with your backstab, mutilate, garrote and ambush abilities by 30%.

• This talent is a must. Backstab is a sub rogues primary attack and can do some incredible damage if speced properly.

Initiative: Gives you a 50% chance to add an additional combo point to your target when using your ambush, garrote, or cheap shot ability.

• This talent is optional, but the point must be placed within the subtlety tree to reach the 31 point minimum requirement. I chose it because it can increase dps slightly.

Energetic Recovery: Empowers your recuperate ability, causing its periodic effect to also restore 12 energy.

• Since you should have recuperate active 100% of the time during fights, this talent is a no brainer. Extra energy = more dps.

Find Weakness: Your ambush, garrote, and cheap shot abilities reveal a flaw in your target’s defenses, causing all your attacks to bypass 70% of that enemy’s armor for 10 sec.

• Allows extra burst damage when you use your strongest abilities

• Used when you open on a target as well as when you use shadow dance.

Hemorrhage: An instant strike that deals 110% weapon damage (more when using a dagger) and causes the target to take 30% additional damage from bleed effects for 1 min.

• Some people hesitate to take this one, but it is necessary. Although it does less damage, it can be used in place of back stab if backstab is unusable in a certain situation.

• Once you get Sanguinary Vein you will also be doing an extra 10% damage to your target

• Just use Hemorrhage once, for the bleed effect, then use your normal rotation.

Honor Among Thieves: Increases the critical strike chance of all party and raid members by 5%. When any player in your party or raid critically hits with a spell or ability, you have a 100% chance to gain a combo point on your current target. This effect cannot occur more than once every 2 seconds.

• 5% extra critical strike is huge for sub rogues because our damage is based off of critical strike.

• The extra combo points are great for gathering some extra combo points.

Premeditation: When used, adds 2 combo points to your target. You must add to or use those combo points within 20 sec or the combo points are lost

• Free combo points! Some strategies involve using the combo points from this ability to activate recuperate before opening on an opponent. This assures 100% up time on recuperate.

Preparation: When activated, this ability immediately finishes the cooldown on your sprint, vanish, and shadowstep abilities.

• Best used if you are about to die. Can be used to finish off an opponent at a distance if shadowstep in on cooldown or to vanish and cheap shot someone who needs some stunning.

Slaughter from the Shadows: Reduces the energy cost of your backstab and ambush abilities by 20, and the energy cost of your hemorrhage and fan of knives abilities by 6.

• Once again, ambush and backstab will be your main abilities and saved energy translates to more dps.

Shadow Dance: Enter the shadow dance for 6 sec, allowing the use of sap, garrote, ambush, cheapshot, premeditation, pickpocket and disarm trap regardless of being stealthed.

• Best used when at max energy

• Typically, you will use (ambush x2 then eviscerate) X2, meaning you will be able to use ambush + ambush + eviscerate then ambush + ambush + eviscerate. This will provide the best dps, but it may be necessary to use garrote for the silence effect.

 Combat Tree Improved Recuperate: Causes your recuperate ability to restore an additional 2% of your maximum health and reduces all damage taken by 6% while your recuperate ability is active.

• Provides great survivability by giving you some extra damage reduction with decent hp regeneration.

 Assassination Tree Coup de Grace: Increases the damage done by your eviscerate and envenom abilities by 14%.

• 2 points here because eviscerate isn’t your biggest damage dealer, but we need 5 total to get to the second part of the tree.

Lethality: Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your sinister strike, backstab, mutilate and hemorrhage abilities by 30%.

• This is crucial for sub rogue dps because sub damage is based off of critical strike.

Puncturing Wounds: Increases the critical strike chance of your backstab ability by 30%, and the critical strike chance of your mutilate ability by 15%.

• Another must have for a sub rogue. 30% extra crit is huge.

 Some optional talents that can be used

 Waylay: Your ambush and backstab hits have a 50% chance to unbalance a target, increasing the time between their melee and ranged attacks by 20%, and reducing movement speed by 50% for 8 sec.

• This is a good talent to pick up if you want throw one point into it. Initiative isn’t necessary or crucial to sub rogue dps, so the point can be taken from there.

• I would only put one point into this talent because adding a second point into this talent will only increase your chance to cause the waylay effect. Since you will be using backstab so much, a second point isn’t necessary.

• You can also leave this talent out entirely if you have crippling poison on your offhand.

• If you have this talent, putting mind numbing poison or wound poison may be the best option for your offhand poison.

Cheat Death: You have a 100% chance that an attack which would otherwise kill you will instead reduce you to 10% of your maximum health. In addition, all damage taken will be reduced by 90% for 3 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute.

• This talent effectively gives you a second life.

• If you have to have this one, 2 points can be taken from Honor Among Thieves - so you still get your 5% extra crit - and the point from Initiative/Waylay.

Precision: Increases your chance to hit with weapon and poison attacks by 6%.

• Necessary hit for pvp is 5%, so 2 points can be placed here.

• This talent isn’t the best place for your points in my opinion because you can easily get enough hit rating from your gear. This way you can use your talent points to increase the damage of your main abilities.

Quickening: All healing effects on you are increased by 20% and your movement speed is in increased by 15%. This does stack with other movement speed increasing effects.

• This is great for added survivability, but you will have to drop points from Puncturing Wounds. I’m just not willing to drop 20% crit chance from Backstab for a little bit more healing.

Back to top
Subtlety Rogue gems, gear, enchants, reforging
Why choose the subtlety tree?

caster spamming dispel on you or a team mate helping root, you will not be able to catch your target and beat on it for any effective period of time. The majority of rogues have opted to change specs to sub. The advantage of being sub is increased survivability, mobility and ability to cc targets. The trade off is lower sustained dps. Mut is the best spec for sustained dps, which can put some good pressure on healers… if you can keep up with them. With shaman’s ghost wolf, druid’s shape shift, pally’s hand of freedom + holy radiance; catching a healer can be pretty difficult.  Aside from the improved mobility given from shadowstep, sub rogues have the best burst dps out of the rogue specs. On the training dummies I have easily pulled over 20k dps in short bursts. This is great in arena matches when an enemy’s health is low. You can blind the other team’s healer/dps then switch targets and nuke the weakened player.

Basic sub rogue talents include improved ambush and opportunity in the sub tree with lethality and puncturing wounds from the assassination tree. With the exception of ambush, these talents increase the damage of backstab by quite a bit and increase it’s critical strike chance by 30%; this 30% + about 30% chance to crit provided from your gear will put you at around 60% crit when you use backstab. These talents are important because backstab will be your main filler and will provide the majority of your dps while your aren’t using shadow dance. The World of Warcraft has changed forever!

Check out the links below to learn more about your rogue’s talents, abilities and PvP strategies.

Best Sub Rogue PvP Talents
Subtlety Rogue PvP gems, enchants, reforging 

Summary: Are you feeling tired or fatigued when you shouldn’t be. Maybe your iron levels are low and you have iron deficiency anemia. This is a condition where your body doesn’t get enough oxygen due a lack of iron. Iron is a part of hemoglobin, which carries oxygen throughout your body.

A recent trip to the doctor made me realize just how low my iron level was. After my blood test came back I was told that my Blood iron level was 12. The doctor didn’t seem too concerned, but told me that it should be about 112 and suggested that I take an Iron supplement to bring my iron levels back up. After I got home I was curious to find out what normal iron levels were and what some of the symptoms of having low iron are.

I am 20 years old and I go to the gym at 7 a.m. every other day.  After I work out I run 1 mile and then go home… that was until I started feeling more tired than usual. A couple of months ago it hit me. When I went to the gym I felt tired and started working out less, I even stopped running. I felt so drained and I could not explain it. When I got home I would feel like going back to sleep and just overall exhausted. Some days it would hit me after lunch and for no reason I would feel like taking a nap. Now that I look back I remember feeling dizzy when playing sports. Now that I have had my blood tested I realize that I was experiencing symptoms of having low blood iron.

I looked online a bit I found that an adult male should have an blood iron level of about 75-175. After figuring that out I could understand why I was feeling so tired. If anyone needs to know, an adult females blood iron level should be around 65-165. The strange thing is that I gave blood a month or two before I had the blood test and the nurse said my iron was high. I also eat meat every day, so I guess I’m a walking enigma.

I took the doctor’s advice and started taking an iron supplement and since then I have started running at the gym again and feel much better. I am scheduled to have another blood test in a few months, we’ll see how that goes. My guess is that my blood iron will be either normal or way too high. If you found this article maybe you have low iron and are looking for answers, my advice would be to have a blood test done. You never know, you may have low iron.

Summary: Every gamer wants to improve their game play experience. The Razer Naga can do just that. With 12 buttons accessible on the side of the mouse, any gamer can make the most of customizable hot keys. I had to try the Razer Naga for myself. I got the mouse and the game addon and put them to the test.

The Razer Naga is no ordinary computer mouse. It was designed for gaming, but what makes this mouse different from an ordinary one? The mouse comes equipped with all of the standard buttons a mouse should have plus 12 additional buttons on the side which are accessible by your thumb! I was skeptical at first, but I couldn’t decide weather I liked it or not until I had the chance to give it a try.

Why does a computer mouse need so many buttons? Well, if you are an “average” computer user you wont need any extra buttons, but if you’re a gamer then you probably already know what they are for. Some computer games, such as World of Warcraft, have so many usable abilities that you simply cant hot key all of them to your keyboard. Of course you don’t have to bind them to your keyboard, but clicking each ability on the screen as you need it can take too long. If you are into pvp then you will need access to a variety of abilities quickly and you don’t want to be searching on your screen for the one you need and then the one you will need immediately after that.

Before I got the mouse I would bind certain keys on my keyboard to the attacks I need access to quickly. For example, I would bind Q, E, F, V, C, X, and caps lock. This would leave the buttons that move my character, W, S, A, D, next to all of my attacks and when I need to attack I could just reach over with my pointer finger or ring finger and attack quickly, I use my pinkie for caps lock. Unfortunately, 7 key bindings isn’t enough. This is where the Razer Naga comes in. With the Razer Naga I can bind many more keys. I still use most of my old key bindings, but now I can bind attacks that I couldn’t before. The Razer Naga can make you a much more efficient player.

If you are familiar with game addons then you will want to get the Razer Naga addon. It makes binding keys easier than ever. If you want to bind an attack all you have to do is click the bind keys button in the configure screen then mouse over the attack or ability on your screen that you want to bind and press the button you want to bind it to. You can even use  combinations of buttons to bind your attacks. For example, you can hold shift then hit the number 1 or alt and 1. Any combination will work so the possibilities are virtually endless. FYI, this addon isn’t compatible with any other bar managing addons such as Bartender… as far as I know, so I would remove bar addons to make sure the Razer Naga addon is working properly.

Overall, this mouse is great. I have gotten so used to playing with it that I wouldn’t be able to play without the Naga. My only complaint is that I won’t be able to game with a regular mouse again!! I think I’ll be ok though.

If possible, taking a bus to your campus can save you loads of money. Many people don’t think about it, but after buying a car you don’t only have to pay for gas and insurance. Owning a car has many hidden expenses that people usually don’t consider, such as vehicle maintenance. Things like oil changes and replacing worn out tires. Also, if anything on your car beaks you will have to pay for it to be repaired. Most common problems are dead batteries, broken windshields, and flat tires. So paying for a bus ticket may not be such a bad idea if you are in the position to do so. Another thing to consider is the possibility of having to pay for parking. At my college I have to pay around $150 a year to park on campus. After charging so much for tuition, making me pay to park just

doesn’t seem right! The parking I am given is not ideal… to put it lightly. The lot is a decent walk from my class and its all dirt, which is probably the only reason I am able to park there. People usually try and park in the paved lots closer to the buildings, but on busy days I still find myself driving in circles around the lot behind 3 or 4 other people hoping for someone to back out of their spot and let one of us take it. If you are really lucky you live close enough to ride a bicycle to your college campus. My experience in college has shown me that many students are doing this.

2. Books

Many scholarships that pay for tuition don’t pay for books. On average a student will spend around $400 per semester forbooks. My advice would be to buy books used. For textbooks I would recommend finding a Books and More store near you. All you have to do is hand them a copy of your class schedule and they will bring all of the books you will need for your classes. They sell new and used books, so I would make sure to get as many used books as possible. If you need to buy a few novels for your english or history class you will most likely find them on Amazon.com for much less than you can get them at a book store. Some people swear

that the kindle is the best thing since sliced bread, but I wouldn’t recommend it for students. If you are doing a research project it is much easier to flip through the pages of a book to find a specific quote or note you made than it is to skim through a kindle. Just my opinion though. The kindle is very thin which makes it easy to break. You won’t be able to toss it into your bag without worrying about cracking the screen. After you are done with your books for the semester you can sell them to the Books and More store to get some of the money back you spent on them. Of course you will be able to sell them for more on Amazon.com and will be able to recoup most if not all of your money.

3. Lunch

Bring your own food to your campus. You thought this was only for elementry kids? You would be surprised at how much money you can save simply by packing your own lunch. At my college there is a Subway near one of my “lunch time” classes. I would spend over $6 for a 6 inch sub, chips and a drink. I used to eat there until I realized that I could save money if I brought my own lunch. I got some sandwich meat, a loaf of bread, cheese and some lettus. When I added it all up each sandwich costs under $1.50!

There are several options to consider when deciding what kind of wood floor to buy. We recently had to make this decision when we bought our wood floor. We have heard that the “engineered” wood flooring is good, but it sounds like fancy particle board to me. We decided to get real wood for our floor and to go “green”,while saving some green at the same time.

We wanted an environment friendly flooring so bamboo was the perfect material for us. Bamboo grows fast, up to 24 inches a day, which makes it a great renewable resource. Bamboo can also be harvested without killing the whole bamboo tree. Where as oak trees can take up to 120 years to fully mature.

We purchased the bamboo from Lumber Liquidators who also offered to install our floor. Fortunately, we decided to ask other installers for prices and ended up going with someone we found on craigslist. This saved us around $2,000. The guy we hired did a great job and was able to finish the 4 rooms we wanted wood flooring in within a week.