School Advisor 26

Featured

2022 Plans for My Blog

For the year 2022, here are my plans for the School Advisor 26 blog.

I still want to blog whenever I just need to get my mind off of things.
I still want to stop using tags and even consider stop using blog categories.
In an effort to stop over-sharing, I want to use note-taking apps to draft my blog posts and then email posts to myself instead of publishing them. I want to at least keep them in my inbox for a week or two and then decide if I want to publish them.
“New”: I want to stop drafting my blog posts in Simplenote. It’s been a great app that’s served me for going on six years, but the sync issues are bothering me. I’ve added a line or two to a note and it’s taken like an hour to sync. I may have to switch to Evernote.
“New”: I would like to finally read the Automattic Privacy policy that applies to WordPress.com.
I would like to post no more than once a day. That way I always know the order posts were published in. You see somewhere down the line if I see /2022/04/28/ in a URL for one of my posts, I know that post was published before one with /2022/04/30/ in its URL. If I post multiple posts in one day, it may be hard to determine which post was posted first when I’m just looking at the links.

I noticed my current theme, TwentyNineteen, doesn’t automatically show pages at the top on some screen, so I thought I might post links to some pages here:

About

Archive (needs updating)

Archive 2

Contact

Calendar

I may switch back to the Dara theme.

Will I make a new post about note-taking apps? Will it be Note-taking Apps 2? I don’t know. I want to.

If you see this post every time you go to my blog, it’s because it’s a featured or sticky post. Just look below for new posts.

Edited:
I added number 6 to the list.

Featured

Welcome to my blog. It’s been around for a while, but I never really did any welcome messages. My name is Debrezion. First of all, if I know you in person, please let me know how you would like to be treated on my blog. Would you have me talk about you freely, mention you only by first name or nick name or not mention you at all? Leave a comment below. You don’t need a WordPress account to leave a comment. Speaking of WordPress, you can also follow my blog without a WordPress account. You just have to provide your email address. Directions can be found here: Following Blogs – WordPress.com Support https://wordpress.com/support/following/. I started this blog in 2013. It was a disposable blog then. I write about myself, technology and sprinkle in stuff about my faith in Jesus Christ. In the future, I hope to write about school, writing (including the art of journal keeping), productivity, and life lessons. I have so much that I keep to myself. Enjoy reading my blog. I hope you learn something. My name is Debrezion.

Edited: 1-5-22 Minor edit and removed “Uncategorized” category.

Easy Productivity Tips (from an Unproductive Person)

Buy an affordable, little notebook that you can slip into a purse or backpack (pieces of paper can pile up if you write a lot) and create bullet-journal-like spreads. A 5 x 7 inch notebook can work. On the left make a schedule for the day. I like to use 30 minute blocks starting at 10 AM and outline every two hours in bold lines. That means I use a pen to make dark outlines around 10 to 12, 12 to 2 and so on. I like to use pen because with pencil my writing can get smudged when the pages rub together when the notebook is closed. On the right side of the spread (the right page), just create a ToDo with a line down the middle of the page. List “Fun” stuff on the left and “Not Fun” stuff on the right and have labels at the top. Work on getting both lists done. “Not Fun” stuff may be important and you may need to see it on paper to get motivated to do it. Seeing any Fun stuff you have to do in front of you reminds you your day will be fun and both lists serve as a reminder to get things done and a record of things you’ve done when you look back.

I say get an affordable notebook just in case you end up not using it. Buying a nice, but expensive notebook like a vegan Moleskin one can wait. I’ve heard you should wait until you know you’re going to keep up the habit of journal writing before you buy a fancy, expensive notebook.

A Soldier

My sixth grade teacher once told our class a story. Here it is as remembered by me.

Ms. Igler said her mom was a high school teacher. She said she taught Biology and that there was one kid from the class that she saw sitting on a curb crying after school. Ms. Igler’s mom asked him why he was crying and he said the other kids make fun of him every day. She got an idea. Some time later she announced that the class was going to do an activity. They were going to breakout into groups and write nice things about each other. Each student would have a piece of paper, write his or her name at the top and the other students would write nice things about the student whose name was on the paper. Surprisingly, the students in the group with the young man who always got teased wrote really kind things about him. From that day forward, no one in the class made fun of him.

This young man went off to the military after high school. He died in combat with that note in his pocket.

Writing Headings

# MLA Heading for Essays

My Name
Professor’s name
Class name
Date (date month year)

# My Similar Header for Notes in Note-taking Apps/Documents

My First Name/My First Name (with nickname in parenthesis)
Time period (like month/quarter YYYY-MM or YYYYQ#)
Time period in another format sometimes like Mo. YYYY
Title of note
Additional description if necessary (Home Life, Technology Hobby)
Date MM-DD-YY
Date completed: MM-DD-YY
Title of note (such as “One Line Notes (2021-12)”)

To Be Happy

7-18-22 To Be Happy – I’m sorry I threw away the perfectly good computer Steven gave me. I’m sure I won’t do something like that again. It was some time ago. I’m glad I have a calendar on my wall that shows the day of the year. Today is day 199. Knowing that makes it easier to read my daily devotional that has “days” instead of “dates.” For example, one page may say Day 197 instead of July 16 (Sat, Jul 16, 2022). Finally, it’s a good thing I have a few friends. I don’t need many. The ones I have are good.

What am I thankful for?

7-14-22 – What am I thankful for?- I’m thankful for my parents. I’m grateful for their support and advice. I’m thankful my family didn’t move around a lot. That was true at least when I was growing up. I’m glad our needs were met. I could drink any soft drink I wanted. I’m sorry it was often soda. I’m thankful even my casual friends in school were kind to me and honest with me. If I got one thing from college, it may have been computer literacy and I’m glad for that. Lastly, I’m thankful for the gift of hindsight. You can’t change the past. You can only remember it.

Five Tips for Data Backups

5 Tips for Data Backups (For those who have basic understanding of computers)
1-26-22

Do them.
… Regularly.
Perhaps set a schedule. Think about backing up your data once a week or once a month. You can choose Tuesday, because Microsoft had what’s called Patch Tuesdays in which they deliver lots of Windows system updates. That may be a good day, because you may be on your computer anyway.
Choose different storage options. You can use a large enough USB flash drive or preferably an external hard drive (external drives are bigger than USB thumb drives and harder to lose) and a cloud storage solution like Dropbox or Google Drive.
Be careful saving copies of videos and downloaded program installers (i.e. .exe files), because you can run out of space quickly. That’s what I mean by backing up. I mean saving copies. See my notes on backing up files to external media on Windows 10 below…

5-4-21
(edited)
Steps to backing up computer files on Windows to external media (How to do it offline. Note: these are basic instructions that worked for me.)

Close all programs
Insert a flash drive
Open File Explorer (Start > File Explorer)
Pin the File Explorer window to half the screen (by swiping the title bar and moving the entire window to the left or right)
Find the flash drive from the above step on the side of the window and right click on it and click “Open in a new window”
Pin that new window to the other side of the screen
Depending on your setup and where you want your backups, simply drag the “Desktop” folder from the window showing files on your computer to the other window
or
Create a “Desktop” folder on your flash drive, open the “desktop” folder on your computer and the new one on your flash drive and simply drag all files from one location (your computer) to the other (your flash drive)
In the future if a window that says:
Replace or Skip Files
Copying 48 items from Desktop to Desktop
The destination has 15 files with the same names

Replace the files in the destination
Skip these files
Let me decide for each file
pops up, the safest thing to do is choose “Let me decide for each each file” but that can be cumbersome if there are so many files. If the flash drive is only used as a file cabinet and you hardly create and save new files to it, you should click “Replace the files in the destination.” Be warned, with this option you may lose data if a file was updated more recently on the thumb drive than it was on your computer. You can always have a separate folder apart from these backups for new files (documents, pictures, videos) saved directly to the drive.
Tip: you can click “More details to see the name of each file copied, Time remaining for the process, and number of items remaining and their size in bytes.

Do the same for “Documents” as long as there’s room on the flash drive (you can right click a folder in File Explorer and click Properties to see how much space it takes up in bytes).

Do the same thing you did for “Desktop” for “Music” keeping space in mind.
Hint: you can see how much space you have left on your flash drive by right click on it in File Explorer and then clicking “Properties.” The window will show you how much space has been used and how much free space is left.

Repeat the steps for the “Pictures” folder, the “Videos” folder, and the “3D Objects” folder keeping free space in mind.

Back up the “Downloads” folder too. Just remember that downloaded installers (They’re usually .exe files) can take up a lot of space. Some people like to click “Run” when they download a program that way the installer doesn’t land in the “Downloads” folder. I don’t. My reasons are beyond the scope of this note. One rule of thumb I used to have that you may want to try is don’t let files sit in the “Downloads” folder. Periodically go in there and archive things. Put downloaded pictures where they belong and downloaded documents where they belong.

Dee

Making Backups

7-4-22 To Blog- Backup Best Practices- Do them regularly. I like to do them every Tuesday. Backup things when they’re appropriate for backing up not half finished lists or notes that aren’t finalized. Know that if you backup or copy files from a compromised device (computer, tablet, or phone with a virus or malware), you probably won’t be able to trust that backup. The backup may be on a thumb drive or even a blank disc and it possibly can’t be trusted. That is until antivirus scanners have the definitions to find and remove malware from it. I guess that’s the case. To return to doing backups regularly, I try to do them every Tuesday and that makes it so I know when I’m looking at the destination I can see when was the last time I did backups and what new files are missing. I compare the destination with the source. The source, I’ll call it, may be my computer and the destination may be a thumb drive or Google Drive. If the newest files in Google Drive in one folder are from 6-21-22 and I have three text documents and two pictures with dates more recent than that, I know those are the files I need to back up. Next I would compare files in all folders that need to be backed up. My last tip is just do them. You could say any backups are better than no backups especially if you’re just a every day person with a computer and not the NSA (National Security Agency).

Microblog on Messages

Ever since praying, reading spiritual resources, and attending a church of my own choosing has been a part of my life, I’ve seen that God is quiet. That’s one way I can describe him. I’ve heard that you can develop the skill of recognizing his voice and I believe that. The patriarch Abraham did that. He had conversations with God. For me though, I haven’t heard much from God.

Yes, I’ve heard a convicting voice compelling me to stop doing things I know are wrong like eating unclean foods. I’ve also occasionally sensed lessons from providence. How then can I explain God’s silence? I assume God reaches people like me and really nearly everyone carefully. It’s a huge job to get someone to turn his or her life around. It’s one thing to convince a woman she shouldn’t play cards or host game nights at her home if she just does it for fun and she’s not even passionate about it. It’s a different thing if she owns a casino, feeds her family from income from that casino, and is gaining wealth she plans on reserving for her grandchildren from it.

As far as I know, that’s how all humans are. We all have sins that are not easy to just forsake. We would have to make great sacrifices to take them out of our lives. If I can go back to Genesis again, I can say maybe the wife of Lot, who was Abraham’s nephew, wasn’t ready to leave Sodom and Gomorrah even though the city was so wicked and God clearly, apparently told Lot to get his family out of there. They were told to leave before the city was destroyed and not to look back as they left. Lot’s wife (her name isn’t given) did and she was destroyed on the spot.

All I’m saying is God has to sometimes be careful how he deals with us. We’re not easily convinced and we cling to our sins and everything about them so much God has difficulty, if you can call it that, reaching us. Anyway, I thought about all this because this morning I wondered how I can give someone advice about how to quit cursing. I just didn’t know how to do it. I thought to myself I should wait and that maybe God waits for the best time to do things.

Personal Health Reform

I would describe myself as a health reformer. I’m far from perfect with this though. Here are some basic tips. Eat off the kids menu at restaurants. The meals are smaller, they’re still tasty, and they may have simpler ingredients. Go for plain flavors of everything. If you’re going to grab a small “meal” from some vending machine, go for bottled water and plain potato chips over Mountain Dew and Cheetos. Mountain Dew has caffeine and who knows what else and original potato chips are probably a little healthier than Cheetos. I have some things to say about caffeine but for now I’ll say just avoid it. I see no health benefits to it and plenty of reasons not to consume it. Drinks like Mountain Dew are also carbonated which is a problem for teeth and digestion. Don’t have dinner too close to bedtime. You wouldn’t want it to disturb your sleep. Don’t drink too much water or anything for that matter after say 5 PM for the same reason. Someone I respect said people go out to eat when they could have a simple meal at home. He said eating at home is cheaper and you can make far healthier meals.

Guide to Blogging

6-16-22
Guide to Blogging
Over the years, I’ve picked up a few things from experience and observation. Here are some tips. Always draft blog posts somewhere else. I mean anything from Word to Evernote or Google Docs. I remember one blogger say she lost everything she wrote in one blog post. Afterwards she wrote “From now on, I’m writing everything in Word first.” That always stayed with me. Use numerous, relevant tags if you want to drive more “traffic” to your blog. Images spice things up. I would just say to use royalty-free images and keep them clean. Don’t worry about posting every day. Again, I came across some other blogs that only had a few posts a quarter and in about a week or so I was able to catch up on everything written up and until that point. Finally, read your entire post out loud before publishing. That way you can catch errors easy to miss if you never hear the words out loud.