My 500 Words: A Writing Challenge

Do you ever start questioning your life when you have something big coming up? Leading up to a surgery I foolishly scheduled the day before Thanksgiving, I kept asking myself, what if today was your last, would you have done everything you wanted to do in this lifetime? Did you express love? Did you show appreciation for your family and friends? While I’ve done a lot of things I wanted to do like travel, go to concerts or sporting events, I feel like I’ve been holding back in my daily life. Not fully expressing my feelings, showing appreciation or treating everyday as an adventure like before or not making time to pursue the some of my goals.

500 Words a Day to a Better Blog

I’ve wanted to build my blog but have been inconsistent with writing because I was afraid to be judged for sharing where I fell short. Even though I would never know you were judging unless you wrote a comment. You see all these perfect people who manage to juggle everything with their families, write blog posts, take beautiful pictures, make homemade everything while exercising regularly, ugh…exhausted just thinking about it. Then as I was waiting to be admitted into the hospital, I saw this 31 day challenge to write 500 words a day. No editing, just writing and publishing to get into the habit with the hope that the daily habit will improve your writing skills in 31 days. It was the perfect challenge to push myself to write and publish regularly.

Where I Write

Cheryl Marquez – Learning how to code, lessons learned about blogging, marketing and live streaming

Bombchel – Recipes, fitness and yogi journal

Medium – Life without a car and Pokemon Go

The Hero’s Journey

One of my clients has done a great job of documenting her journey from learning to code, attending a dev bootcamp to getting a role as a junior developer on CodingOver40. While she struggles with letting go of her old identity and settles into being a developer, she has been an inspiration to women of all ages through her blog. You have to develop a thick skin when you write, live stream or share your journey with the world. When she got started, I suggested she write everyday and post a different theme for the month. One of my favorite themes was 30 days to a Dream Job. You can identify with the struggles of a job search, she let’s you in on what it’s like to have the added challenge of changing careers while you are working on your technical skills.

In hindsight, I should have done the writing challenge at the same time, so we could go through our journey’s in parallel. As I sit here, I am tempted to put together an editorial calendar but that’s not the goal for the next 31 days. The goal is to write 500 words a day to get into the writing habit and choosing which blogs to post the content I’ve written. Does this mean I’ll publish daily? Not sure, all I know is I’ll be writing 500 words a day. The content will be published on my blogs, including cooking tutorials on Facebook Live. I would love your feedback on what you would like to learn about and I would be happy to write about it. Let me know in the comments. I’m going to use any suggestions as writing prompts.

Day 1 Wordcount: 567 words

Building a Super Productive Work from Home Routine | TechLatte Eps 00

Working from home can rock or you can totally suck at it, depending on how disciplined you are with the time you save from commuting. In the podcast, I describe how I get ready to work from home. Unfortunately, I cut off some of the tips towards the end, it’s all included below.

GET READY

You’re probably thinking, “Oh hell no, I’m NOT planning to get ready, I’m working from home, no one will even see me. It’s no pants day.” Relax, you can stay in pajamas or sweats if that’s your preference. Get up at your normal time, then workout it’s no excuses on work from home days, make it happen! Then shower and put on your favorite comfy outfit to get ready to work. Working from home gets you a pass to workout, so you don’t have to worry about it the rest of the day. Take care of you; workout, eat a great breakfast, make your to do list, all before checking email or social media. No social media, until you take care of you!

MAKE A LIST

I love lists, it keeps me organized, and it doesn’t take long to write. I use Reminders on the Mac or Evernote on the phone. You can add everything you need to do, from personal errands, work tasks, long-term projects, grocery items, anything that needs to get done. Get it out of your head so you have a visual of everything you need to do.

Make a list of everything that needs to get done
Categorize your sticky notes or tasks
- Personal
- Professional
- Side Projects
- Groceries
- Errands, etc.
Prioritize
- Prioritize the top 3 things that need to get done today and do those first
- Next figure out which errands can be grouped together then schedule those on your calendar. Type in the errands, place and what you need to do or buy directly into the calendar notice.
- Schedule the other items on your calendar
Take pictures of your sticky notes or sync the newly organized list with due dates to your phone.

WORK

I recently read about the pomodoro technique where you set a timer to stay focused on a task for 25 minute increments, then you take a 5 minute break to do non-work related things. If you suddenly realize you have something else you need to do, write the task in your To Do List. For the “work” intervals, you don’t go on Facebook, email, Twitter, Snapchat, Periscope or whatever your distraction of choice is until after the timer goes off.

After you complete a pomodoro (25 minute “work” interval), make a tick mark on a sticky note. After you complete 4 pomodoro’s, you can take a longer break of 20 minutes. For a procrastinator, this technique is a dream because working for 25 minutes doesn’t seem daunting, so you can get to work pretty quickly.

RELAX

Since you’re not sitting around watching reality TV or talk shows or cleaning to procrastinate from doing work, you’ll have time to relax. Personally, the Pomodoro Technique was a game changer. It helped my mind stop procrastinating because anyone can stay away from social media for 25 minutes, right?

P.S.

I’m challenging myself to creating 1 minute Periscope videos daily. Then repurposing these videos into blog posts, YouTube videos and podcasts. The brilliant idea I had this morning was to turn the Periscope into a podcast, which morphed into this blog post because I realized there were a few points I missed during the podcast. What do you think of my first podcast? What would you like to hear about in the future? Let me know in the comments.

RESOURCES:

Pomodoro Technique

Follow 1 a Day, 1 Minute Video Challenge

Periscope: LifeHacks, Social Media & Business for daily 1 minute videos on life hacks, social media and business. I’m sharing tips, tricks and epiphanies.

How to Lower Your Cellphone Bill to $30

With the holidays approaching, I was looking for ways to cut or eliminate bills so I could spend more money on gifts for my family. The biggest bill after rent and the car payment is the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on Verizon. It’s averaged around $175 or more per month for mine and my daughter’s phones. My iPad is on AT&T and I spend $30/month for 3 GB of data per month.

Then I thought, what if I use the SIM card from the iPad in the Verizon Samsung Note 4. I suspended Verizon service*, then I looked up the Access Point Name (APN) Settings and entered them into my phone. My phone isn’t jailbroken and since I use a Google Voice phone number, I could get text messages through Google Hangout and make phone calls using the Hangouts Dialer. If you expect to use your phone number, this solution may not work for you. A SIM card from a different carrier will have a different phone number.

Even if you’re not super tech-savvy, you should be able to test this out by following the instructions below. This setup works because I’ve been using Google Voice for years. The Google Voice integration with Google Hangouts and the addition of MMS/group messaging made this an attractive solution since I wouldn’t need to change the way I communicate. My phone battery died pretty quickly on Verizon, so I would take the SIM card out of the phone and put it in my tablet so I can stay connected while my phone charged.

How to Get a Verizon Phone Working with an AT&T Data SIM Card (no jailbreak required)

Before you get started, take the back cover off your phone and remove the Verizon SIM, then replace it with the AT&T SIM card. Make sure you don’t lose the Verizon SIM card, put this in a safe place, if you plan to use it again. I usually put the Verizon SIM in between the battery and the back cover so it’s always there if I need it.

Go to Settings → Mobile Networks → Network mode
Select GLOBAL
1. Once you click on GLOBAL, you will be brought back to the Mobile Networks screen
Go to Access Point Names (APN)
Click on + to add a new APN
- Name: ATT Broadband (use this setting if you are using a SIM card for a tablet)
- APN: broadband
- Proxy: not set
- Port: not set
- Username: not set
- Password: not set
- Server: not set
- MMSC: not set
- Multimedia message proxy: not set
- Multimedia message port: 80
- MCC: 310
- MNC: 410
- Authentication type: Not set
- APN Type: default, sup, mms, hip, fota
- APN protocol: IPv4
- APN roaming protocol: IPv4
- Bearer: Unspecified
- Mobile virtual network operator type: None
Click on the 3 dots in the upper right hand, Select Save
Turn off your phone, then turn it back on
To test your phone, turn off WiFi, then use the browser to go to a web page.
Launch Hangouts Dialer and make a phone call
Launch Google Hangouts to send a text message

This solution allows you use your data connection to make phone calls and text messages. If you use Skype, you can use Skype to dial phone numbers and you can go online to set your mobile number as the caller ID for when you make phone calls from Skype.

*Don’t suspend your cell phone service until you are sure you can make this work. My backup plan was to use my tablet to stay connected, that is why I suspended service until I could pay off the device charges.

Resources:

Manually Set APN Settings for US Network Providers
AT&T APN Settings

Twitter is My Book Club

Once upon a time, I had dreams of joining a book club. I wanted to meet at a locally owned coffee shop to drink fancy pants coffee, dissect the motivations of characters or uncover the themes hidden in the book. Then life happened and I couldn’t commit to reading the right chapter each week or prepare my thoughts for the book club questions because it felt like homework and seemed overwhelming and I quit before joining. As an introverted bookworm, I continued to read books and hoped to follow along online but that wasn’t a thing until I realized I could use social media.

Being obsessed with Twitter and every other social media platform, I decided to Buffer the quotes I was reading while using a hashtag for each book quote I posted. I started doing this while reading #Girlboss by Sophia Amoroso, founder of Nasty Gal, the new and vintage online boutique. Having a hashtag as the title of the book, made it a natural for me to tweet quotes which inspired my inner entrepreneur. What I didn’t foresee was the conversations it would ignite on Twitter or Linkedin about startups, being entrepreneurial or branding.

If you are reading a business book, it could help you connect with people to discuss ideas. If you are reading fiction it could help you connect to other fans. While it might be taboo to discuss the 50 Shades of Grey series on Twitter, you can search for private Facebook groups to discuss the book and your favorite redroom activities. Whatever your interests, searching for a book’s hashtag or keywords on your social networks will help you find conversations where you can participate on your on time, without the pressure of an in person book club.

Book/Idea Discussion
Be creative, post a meme with your favorite quote and a question for discussion as the caption on Instagram. You can record a video talking about the book on Snapchat, YouTube or Periscope. You post quotes with the hashtag from the book on Twitter. You can search Facebook for groups discussing the book you are reading.

Where do you have book 📚 discussions? Leave it in the comments along with book recommendations.

How to Stay Connected While Traveling Abroad

How to stay connected on the cheap while traveling internationally

As a recent Verizon wireless customer, I get sticker shock every time the bill arrives. My phone bill used to be between $45 – $50 per line on Virgin Mobile for unlimited talk, text and data (throttled after 3 GB). Now my phone bill is about $180 or more for 2 phone lines and 6 GB of shared data. When I found out that I would be traveling to Singapore for 2 weeks, I thought to myself, there is no way I could possibly use Verizon.

Previously, my solution was to use Google Voice then forward that number to whatever phone number I happen to have. Then I decided to port my number to Verizon to receive MMS messages and I’ve regretted that decision ever since. While Verizon provides their cross platform Messages+, none of their services are available when you are overseas. Something they do not mention and they will not make any exceptions. The only way around this is to use a virtual private network (VPN) to tunnel to a United States server to access their services.

After downloading and trying different apps to get text messages and phone calls, the simplest solution working on a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and on an iPad Mini with a data SIM in Singapore is below.

To Buy:

$6.99 for Skype Unlimited calling to the United States

$12.05 Skype Online Number, 3 month subscription

$15.00 SGD ($11.10 USD) Starhub prepaid SIM with 100GB data promotion for 5 days

$7.00 SGD ($5.18 USD) Starhub topup per 1 GB data

Free – Flash VPN (Android)

Freemium, $2.99 to $4.99/month – Tunnelbear (iOS/Android/Mac/PC)

Calling the United States

To call the United States, you’ll need to buy a Skype Unlimited calling subscription. To receive calls, you will need a Skype Online Number, you can buy this monthly or get a discounted 3 month subscription. The great thing about the Skype Online Number is you can change the caller ID to display your cell phone number. Secondly, you will need this number to forward your cell phone number so you can receive incoming calls to Skype. This solution will work well for countries with great 4G/LTE coverage or lots of WiFi.

Buying a Prepaid SIM

Next do some research and find the best prepaid carrier plan you can find with good service. For Singapore, I found that Starhub was a good deal and after using their data for a few days, after testing, it was fast enough to stream the Game of Thrones season 5 finale on my cell phone without lag despite using VPN to display a U.S. IP address to enable HBO. I know there are more pressing things going on in the world, however, “fear of missing out” (FOMO) on Game of Thrones had me looking for a solution while traveling. I was lucky enough to get 100 GB of data for 5 days to stream movies and TV shows to my phone and iPad during the jet lag adjustment period.

Watching Netflix, Hulu or HBO While Abroad

In order to watch any of my favorite Internet streaming services like Netflix, Hulu or HBO or even listening to Pandora, you will need an IP address from the United States. The best solution I’ve found without rooting your phone is to use a virtual private network (VPN) that allows you to tunnel to a server from the United States.

On the Android phone, I am using FlashVPN, it’s free, there are some ads and it will stay connected for a couple hours before disconnecting on its’ own. You can reconnect immediately if you get disconnected. I am on Verizon Wireless and they have a web app which allows you to get your text messages using a web app, however the IP addresses for Singapore are blocked so I can’t login to my account without connecting to VPN for a server in a United States first. However, for a small inconvenience, it’s worth it to use this workaround to save on your monthly bill.

On the iPad Mini, I used Tunnelbear which gives you 500 MB of data (enough for one episode of an hour long show), then you can pay $2.99/month for an iOS only subscription or $4.99/month for unlimited data for up to 3 devices (can be mobile, tablet, or computer).

Preferred Devices

After a couple days, I moved the Starhub prepaid SIM (changed it from a micro SIM to a nano SIM) to the iPad Mini. My colleagues communicate via iMessage, my boyfriend and I communicate via VZ Messages and it’s far easier to use the iPad for communications and entertainment since the Android battery drains really quickly. The Android phone has mostly been used as a camera.

What to Pack

If you are planning to be out and about sight seeing all day, you will need to take selfies and charge on the go. I love my new selfie stick and portable charger. While the subject of most of my pictures is food, there are times, I want to take photos in front of buildings or historical monuments to have memories of visiting.

Selfie Stick with Tripod and Bluetooth Remote

Water Resistant Portable Battery Charger (attaches to messenger bag or backpack)

Selfie Stick with tripod attachment and bluetooth shutter (iPhone and Android compatible)
Vor-Power Portable Charger (water resistant and attaches to the strap of a backpack or messenger bag) – has the capacity to recharge your phone 5 times. I was able to fully charge my iPad Mini, the phone and still have power left to recharge my devices.

Geek Girl without a Computer

After my love and I moved in together in 2012, our house was robbed. In the time we were out to dinner, the burglars broke into our home, stole my laptops, our tablets, the Wii, games, jewelry and cash. We opted not to replace these items and since I’m taking time off from work, I don’t have a work laptop at my disposal.

Instead, I chose to challenge myself to see if I really needed a computer or if I can use my iPad for everything including phone calls and texting. I’m writing this blog post in Evernote and will copy the text into the WordPress app to update my blog. What makes this process a challenge in WordPress is adding plugins or pages with introductions for each topic since it’s harder to make these changes on a small touchscreen. I’m currently typing this on a Sharkk keyboard case but will be selling the case to buy the Apple wireless keyboard.

In addition to writing for my blog, I also wanted to learn JavaScript and CSS. I am learning on Codecademy and Code School so it’s web based at the moment. Eventually, I’m going to need to get tools to upload the files onto my server to test personal projects. Comment any suggestions for iOS apps for this purpose.

Here’s what I’m currently using:

Evernote – to write blog posts, clip/organize articles

Food – this is an Evernote app I use to write step by step recipes with pictures
Wordpress – copy and publish Evernote blog posts

Skype – I pay $18 every 3 months for a subscription to call any phone

GV Connect – to receive phone calls and send text messages using my Google Voice number. I’ve used Google Voice to forward phone calls to any phone (home, work, iPad, smartphone) simultaneously or on a schedule for the last few years. Anyone who needs to reach me needs only one number although, my love will point out that I never answer the phone so if you need a response, it’s best to text.

Chrome – I use Chrome over Safari because it has an option to request desktop websites which I need to access advanced features for WordPress or Dreamhost.

I’ve recently reorganized my blog to include sections on my hustle (work or marketing-related posts), fitness, recipes and musings (random stuff). I’ve been inspired to post the journey to get to a healthier weight and we know how hard this is when you are surrounded by lots of yummy carbs. I will be posting what I make for the family and how I’m adapting these to make it healthier. I cook with full fats like butter, olive oil, coconut oil and avocado oil which is in line with the paleo diet even if not all the things I make are paleo.

Check back soon for the latest apps I’ve downloaded and to see my progress!