Well, today is Thanksgiving here in central New York and I’ve sure got a lot to be thankful for.  I’m looking forward to a wonderful day with my family and a whole lot of food.  In fact my wife and mother just spent the whole day yesterday baking and preparing the fixings for today’s meal and my mouth’s been watering just thinking about it.

Since today is a special day, I thought I’d write an article that is more about Thanksgiving than tech.  Since this is my blog I can do that.

First off, I want to let you know that I am going to attempt to take pictures and videos throughout the day today and upload them to my Posterous blog.  This means that you can follow my day almost in real time.  My Twitter and Facebook accounts will be updated whenever I post a new pic or video so keep your eyes open.

Secondly, I would like to post a few Thanksgiving questions for all y’all.  Feel free to answer all or just some of them.

1. What are you most thankful for this year?
2. What’s your favorite Thanksgiving dish?
3. What’s your favorite Thanksgiving memory?
4. What are you doing this Thanksgiving day?
5. Have you ever tried a turducken? (just wondering)

Have fun answering the questions and have fun this holiday!

Have a question?  Most people will tell you to go Google it.  Well, today there are many different places you can look to find answers.  Today I would like to list a couple of the places I go to find answers.  There isn’t any specific order and the list is not exhaustive or complete but hopefully it will be of some help to you.

1. Yahoo Answers – There are several answers communities out there but this is one of my favorites.  You can obviously ask a question and receive answers from other members of the community but the easiest way is to do a search to see if someone else has already asked the same (or similar) question.
2. Yahoo Search Engine – The same way someone “Googles” and answer, I “Google” using Yahoo (or call it “Yahooing” something).  I use different combinations of quotation marks and plus signs to help to narrow the results.
3. Yellowpages.com - I can’t remember the last time I actually used a physical phone book!  For residential numbers, try whitepages.com or anywho.com (on the Reverse Lookup page, you can search by phone numbers and find the owners).
4. DIY (do it yourself) websites - On pages like Instructables.com and ehow.com, you can learn how to do almost anything yourself.
5. Wikipedia.org – As the best known, probably most used online encyclopedia, most of you have heard of wikipedia.org.  Here we have a great source for information about almost any topic.  Wikipedia is run by an army of volunteers and seems to be quite exhaustive.
6. Dictionary.com - need a concise definition, try a dictionary site and what better site is there than Dictionary.com?
7. Lifehacker.com – As the site itself exclaims, “Tips and downloads to get things done.”  You can find all kinds of tips and tricks for computing and life in general and I am finding myself turning here more and more often in order to find answers.  It’s fun to browse through too!
8. Techie friends – OK, I know this isn’t a specific website BUT it is a source of answers for me.  Everyone needs some friends who are tech-savy to turn to when things get rough.  I have many good friends that are computer nerds, geeks, or just all around sharp that are great places to turn when I need help.  Find a tech-friend today (and show your appreciation!).

Well, here’s a few sources that I turn to when looking for answers.

While looking for answers online, always use good sense and investigative techniques.  Obviously not all information online is reliable.  Much of it is opinion and from specific viewpoints and sometimes is even outright dishonest or mistaken.  Use multiple sources and try to view the information from the standpoint of the source.

All that said, where do YOU find answers online?  I love to find great places for research and learning!

I was just browsing through the posts on lifeofjustin.com and became interested in his post entitled “5 Questions For My Readers.”  In an attempt to get to know a few of his readers better, he asked them several questions:

1. What Is Your Name and Age?

2. Where Do You Live?

3. What Is Your Blog About?

4. Why Did You Start Blogging?

5. What’s Your Goal In Life?

He gave his readers the option to answer these questions either in the comments section OR on their own blogs so I chose my blog!

1. My name is Tim and I am currently 29 years old.
2. I currently live in Rome, NY (not Italy but we do have a lot of good Italian food in this area!).
3. My blog is a personal blog where I share many different things that I enjoy, I suppose an online extention of me.  My wife, Sarah, and I have recently started a couple of other blogs (or own blog network, if you will) about more niche areas of interest (check out the sidebar for a list of links to them).
4. Well, I guess it started with some frustration with myspace.com and decided to try to keep in touch with friends and family in my OWN space (I disliked the type of ads and all the spam on myspace).  Now, I blog because I enjoy it and I’d love to be able to say that I’ve added something to somebody else’s life.  Eventual some income from blogging would be nice:)
5. My goal in life would be to be able to say that I have followed God and His will for my life, and to see others changed because of it.

My intention of this post was to answer Justin’s, but I’d love to learn more about some of my readers also.  I know some of you but not all of you.  I’m also sure there are some of you that I KNOW but I may not be familiar with some of these answers about you.  Feel free to chime in!  Give a shout in the comments section!

OK, so we went to fast food again tonight.  This time it was KFC.  I ordered a number 2 for my wife and a mash potato bowl for myself.  I then ordered a drink for each meal, one diet coke and one ice tea.  That’s when it happened, another one of “those” questions!

“Which meal does the diet coke go with?”  Mind you she is going to put both meals in the same bag and hand me the drinks separately so it really makes no difference which drink “goes” with which meal.

My temptation was to pull up to the window and ask to have my order “corrected” because I “changed my mind and wanted the diet coke with the other meal after all.”  My wife, once again keeping me from having fun, asked that I would please not do that!  I think I embarrass her sometimes, not sure why.

I got the photo from Morguefile and suprising enough, the caption read:  “KFC Fastfood outlet.”  Kinda makes me nervous!  Is that where they try to sell the bad chicken?

Check out this book on Amazon: Fast Food

What kind of weird questions do YOU get from YOUR friendly neighborhood fast food employees?  Leave a comment!

Yesterday it happened once again. Have you ever gone into a restaurant and ordered something and the cashier asks the ritual questions? “Original or crispy?” or “With or without pickles?” or “Is this for here or to go?” Well that’s what happened to me, except the answers turned out to be useless. I was asked “original or crispy?” and my reply was “Crispy” but what I got was original anyways! THEN, they ask “For here or to go?” and I requested that I get it “for here.” When the order came, do you think I got it on a tray? Nope. Everything bagged and ready to go!

This is quite petty, I know. Did we get upset and rant and rave and demand that the order be fixed? No, it was no big deal. My only point is, what was the point to asking? It would save us all the time and aggravation if they would just tell us what’s cooking for us and that it’ll be bagged and read to go in few minutes!

Questions are a great tool if you need to get some answers. However, they are rendered useless if you are not ready to do anything with the answers you get!

Well, we know that scripture contains all the answers for life’s questions. 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us all the ways that scripture is profitable to us. THEN, verse 17 tells us what all of that will do for us. Yeah, well, what’s the point if nothing is done about that? We go through all the bother to do all the “right” things like reading our Bible, going to church three times a week, and memorizing scripture verses BUT it’s all in vain if nothing is applied to our lives!

One last point. Jesus is the answer to your sin problem (and yes, you DO have one, see Romans 3:23)! What have you done with Him? (How do I get saved? – clearsight.org)