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Hollywood was stunned when 32-year-old actress Brittany Murphy unexpectedly died last December. Now, over 5 months later they are surprised again when her 39-year-old husband unexpectedly dies in the same room and is found by the same person, Brittany’s mother. An autopsy is scheduled to take place after the results from the toxicology report come back. It is suspected that he suffered from a heartattack; however nothing will be confirmed until after the autopsy. To read the whole story click here.

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Facebook is by far the largest social networking site with millions of people connecting each day. However there have been some concerns recently that Facebook has been lax on their privacy controls and that they are allowing information to be shared without the users consent. In Monday’s edition of the Washington Post, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, published a letter outlining their plans to simple yet increase the privacy settings and denied that any information is being shared or sold without consent. It may to be too little too late for some users who no longer trust Facebook; however, as immensely popular as Facebook is I’m sure they will be fine. You can read the letter yourself by visiting WashingtonPost.com.

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It’s over a month and still there is oil flowing freely from the damaged well.  Although they have tried many different methods to stop the leakage, nothing has worked so far.  The newest method that they are trying is a siphon to hopefully remove a large portion of the oil from the water, drilling a second well to relieve pressure and then filling them in permanently with mud and concrete.  Many researchers are worried that more oil has spilled than even recent estimates determined.  If it spreads far enough it could get caught in a current and taken up the east coast.  We can only hope that this plan works.  Yahoo!News has the whole story at news.yahoo.com

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I don’t watch the news that often; frankly I find it rather depressing.  However, when I was skimming through some stuff online I found this article.  It tells the story of dad, Albert  Snyder, who is suing the Westboro Baptist Church for protesting his Marine son’s funeral.  The group has some extreme beliefs when it comes to war and the causes of death; this is not the first time they have done this.  Regardless of whether or not you believe in the Iraq War, it seems like there should be uncrossable line when it comes to protesting soldiers funerals.

The proceedings have brought into serious debate the extent of our 1^st Amendment rights and the results will end up effecting us all sooner or later.

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If you are one of the 14 million people currently looking for a job, you may be in luck.  The U.S. Labor Department just released their most recent Unemployment report and things are looking good.  There was a significant increase in jobs specifically in the retail, restaurants, hotels, and transportation industries.  While some numbers are down from last month, there is still significant improvement from last year and the start of the recession.  To read more of the report, click here.

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The Aintree John Smith Grand National is one of the most expected horse race in the world right now and the date has come upon us far quicker than many of us realized. For those who don’t know, it is a jumping race, which obviously means that obstacles are placed in the way which the horses must jump over. What makes the John Smith Grand National so special is the intricate history it has and feelings it leaves in the national memory.

Of all the races this one has come particularly far from it’s roots and now stands as one of the nation’s favorites. Starting back in 1829 organized by a syndicate, the first race was a flat race won by a horse named Mufti. For a while they had three meetings a year, each time accompanied by almost 40,000 people. It would start significantly changing in 1835 when they added the first stone walls and made their first jump fixtures on the track. Lottery was the first winner of these races, becoming a national favorite as well as sealing the horse race into national memory which allowed for the race track to continue to expand. With the growing popularity, they had to make an expansion and in 1953 another race track was added for jumping races. Feeling prosperous the owners built a motor racing track as well the next year, bringing in more people. They even hosted a number of Grand Prixs because of this expansion.

The good times could not last and the property had to be sold. This caused much turmoil for people nation wide as no one seemed quite sure if the new owner really had is heart in the races like themselves and this feeling never really went away after he tripled the admission price to the largest of the races, the Grand National. When Davies announced he was selling the whole thing, many fans were dismayed but ran to their pocket books when it was suggested that all the fans could put together enough money to save the race course. They did not make it in time, but were bailed out by someone else, who has made a point of restoring the old course back to it’s old recognition as one of the best. It has been successful securing great horses, jockeys and sponsors to keep the sport and the event alive and well in Liverpool.

It is now associated with Red Rum one of the most famous horses to race, being the race that really made him give it his all. With the new walls that have been built it once again stands as the true test of a horse.

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Hot tubs are popular with most people and for various reasons. They are excellent investment options not only because many of them improve the value of a home and property, but also because they contribute to healthy lifestyles and can serve a variety of purposes. They are great for parties and entertainment, and can often ensure a full guest list attendance at parties, while they are also perfect for relaxing and stress reduction. Choosehottubsdirect.com is an excellent resource for finding the perfect hot tub to accommodate all of your family’s needs.

One of the more recent trends with hot tub maintenance and operation is the use of solar heating panels to heat the water. This environmental oriented home power resource has become more affordable in recent years due to its increase in popularity and advancements in solar heating panel design and construction. Many packages are self-assembly and installation and can provide most of the electricity needed to run a household. Solar power first became popular with heating pools, and the natural progression was to apply this to the power requirements of hot tub. An investment in solar energy panels can eventually save enough in electricity costs to pay for the hot tub.

Solar water heating systems are usually composed of a fluid system that is used to move the heat that is collected from the solar panels to the necessary point of usage. This is known as a thermal solar collection system. It is important to realize that these systems are not entirely dependent on sunny days to function, but usually have a reserve tank that stores the heat for later use. They were developed to provide for a variety of household needs including laundry and shower heating as well as various business applications. Home pool and spa heating is an excellent application of these systems and can save enormously in power costs each year.

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We may not all be lucky enough to live in a LEED certified building, but there are things we can do within our own homes to reduce or energy costs and the impact our family is having on the environment.  Here are some ways you can give back to mother earth in your life and in your home.

Walk, bike, and take the bus: Doing this one day a weak instead of driving your car can do wonders for the environment and not to mention your health. If you decide to walk or bike to some of your every day errands you are making two positive choices.

Buy a car with good gas mileage: Yeah, perhaps that brand new Hummer looks really cool but costs an arm and a leg to fill up at the pump. Well when you are looking to trade it in think about getting a more economical care that gets better gas mileage.

Install low flow showerheads and toilets: Low flow showerheads and toilets can save tons of gallons of water with every shower or flush. They are relatively inexpensive, about 10 or 20 bucks each and can save about 300 pounds of Carbon Dioxide a year if electrically heated and 80 pounds of Carbon Dioxide a year for gas-heated water.

Install blinds: Window treatments can do wonders for your energy bills. Try out Next Day Blinds, they have tons of varieties.  Next Day Blinds is sure to satisfy both your design and green living needs.

Replace old, less energy efficient appliances with new ones: If you are in the market for a new refrigerator or dishwasher, pick more energy efficient models. Front loading washing machines are much better than traditional ones. And just replacing that old fridge could make a significant difference in your overall energy consumption yearly.

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First check out the following article from NECN:

Companies turn to Twitter for Customer service

Companies are now using Twitter as a means of speeding up their customer service.  Also using MySpace and Facebook as well. It remains to be seen if customers will take advantage of the new type of services.

The article notes that Bank of America and Wells Fargo are staffing Twitter accounts to offer help to customers, and others, like Citigroup and American Express have Facebook or MySpace presences. It’s not perfection – Bank of America and Wells Fargo have only one person monitoring their account.

Twitter as a customer service tool could be helpful, but it will not replace individuals who have customer service training and business training. Customers still enjoy meeting with people face to face it allows for questions to be answered that come up after initial information is given. Twitter is an interesting animal, who knows if it will just become another internet wasteland full of so many people the information is useless. Also, Twitter could use a better search function, because as of yet, it is very difficult to find an individual on Twitter.

How this could help the customer service industry is that it could get simple questions answered quickly. It would be interesting for these companies to add how long it takes these reps to answer a question. If every company did this there would be a need to train employees under a new type of customer service training model, or it could have the potential for job creation. All the good it would do only helps if people actually seek it out. So would you use Twitter for customer service?It could be used as a vaild way to multi-task perhaps while at work. But other than that there is nothing better than a little human contact. Leadership skills cannot be relayed via a computer screen.

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My daughter goes to school year-round.  This makes it more difficult for us to plan long family vacations, but means I have more time to myself since I telecommute most of the time.  The point of this post is that while other schools are just starting up, she is right in the middle of a geography unit in her social studies class.  She came home last week all excited about the stuff she is learning.  She even brought home a map that the teacher had them fill out showing all the counties and major cities in our state.

I’m really not sure when geography became synonymous with cartography, but apparently that is what they are teaching school kids these days. She doesn’t seem to be learning anything about climate, topography, crops, industry, or the major exports of China like I learned in my geography classes.  She just spends hours staring at her new map of the United States and a bunch of Mexico maps that her mother had left over from a previous job assignment.  I asked her what she was looking at and she said she just loves to see where roads intersect and how many different ways there are to go between the same two places.

I guess it’s a start.  Maybe her curiosity will grow to more than just following lines and identifying rivers. Maybe she’ll start asking questions about the people, animals, and crops in the various places she’s investigating.  Then she’ll really be learning geography.

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