LITTLE CHRISTMAS CAROLLERS.

We are a band of carollers,
We march through frost and snow,
But care not for the weather
As on our way we go.

At every hall or cottage
That stands upon our way,
We stop to give the people
Best wishes for the day.
We pray a merry Christmas,
Made bright by Christmas cheer,
With peace, and hope, and gladness
And all they may hold dear.

And for all those that happen
To pass us on our way
We have a smile, and wish them
A merry Christmas-day.

L.A. FRANCE.

Photo Credit: wgreller

This is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

Happy Holidays!

1. Numerous brick and mortar banks are now offering their services via the Internet. This still leaves customers the alternative to visit the buildings to do their proceedings in person. Or, they can take advantage of the online banking services.
2. A virtual bank is the other type of online banking. They simply do not have a location that you can visit in person, so you just can’t go there to, for instance, make a deposit.
   These banks charge very little for internet banking simply because, without buildings to maintain and tons of employees to pay, their expenses are considerable lower.

Photo Credit: Anosmia

In Europe, the brick and mortar banks nowadays encourage you as much as possible to start banking online. It’s the cheapest solution – for them!
Which has not always been the case.
Just after World War II, when millions of people over here were recovering from devastation, banks started to grow a network of local branches. Customers were encouraged to visit their local offices and put their money into a savings account. The adage back then was -and still is today-: money in your account first before spending it.

After growing a fine mazed network of local branches, banks discovered that staff expenses were up too much. -Remember, European banks aim for maximum profit increase each and every year. And they often succeed in surpassing last years profit growth. The bonuses they pay to their top level management probably has something to do with that.-
So, to cut expenses they gave all their customers cheques and a small identification pass with a signature that you had to show every time you made a payment.

But after a while, even that became too expensive. To make a long story short, after issuing PIN passes with a Personal Identification Number inside enabling you to pay to whoever was able to read those passes, banks now encourage you to go online and do your banking right there. That leaves many of their long time -and most loyal- customers in the dark as they feel they’re to old to adapt to Internet banking. But… who cares? We’re talking money here!

Online banking allows you to make a variety of transactions.
You can pay bills directly from your checking account, saving you the cost of a stamp plus walking to the post office and it also leaves you more tolerance in how rapidly you want to pay the bill because of the shorter transaction time.
Funds can be transferred from checking to savings accounts, vice versa. You’ll be able to complete loan applications and you can even use online banking for investments.

Other advantages of online banking are that you can view your transactions whenever you want, do some online banking regardless from where you are, provided you have Internet access and download the data to your bookkeeping software.

It goes without saying that you have to be very careful and follow all security issues while banking online.

But by main point is: do YOU do online banking?
How does this work in the US, UK, Australia, Asia, just to mention a few spots?
Do you think online banking is a safe and convenient way to handle your money? Is it promoted by the banks in your region and supported by their customers?
Let me know about your experiences.
I’m curious to learn from you about this.

Post your comments below.

This is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

Do You Use Online Banking?

If not, or if you want to do something special yourself, check out Blogging Valentine’s Day 2008.

My 10 year old daughter woke me up this Valentine morning:

Hey Dad!

Roses are red

And Violets are blue.

God made me sexy, but ….

what happened to you?

What to do? Any advice?

This is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

Valentine Whishes

On Twitter, he just reported ” Sleepy. Fingers numb. Tired. And happy!”.

Well, it’s 1:50 AM here and I’m tired already. After only 4 hours.
Let’s see if we can keep him awake.

On Technorati I just found 107 blog posts about Heart Kids Blogathon

If you search for Blogathon, you’ll even find 8,758 blog posts.

chd awareness delivers 255 hits, Congenital Heart Defects 1,528 and Dr.Mani 1,281

At del.ico.us, you’ll find 285 references to Blogathon and 17 to Heart Kids Blogathon.

Mind you, apart from the latter, these are not all created in this Blogathon. But still, that’s some recognizable awareness and a great achievement.

At the time of writing this, Dr. Mani reports he raised a total of $17,318. Please, help him and the children.

Donate Here

This is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

The Last Few Blogathon Hours

Dr. Mani is blogging about that theme all day.
He has some great tips to share with you. Check it out at Remarkably Purple Spots.

Paul Duxbury has some great and very practical advise too! He shows you how to be happy with yourself by Stop Holding Onto Grudges and Be Happy!. Check it out!

There was a time that David Carter wasn’t happy. He suffered from a severe stroke. I guess David’s doing ok now, because he’s blogging about his thoughts and how he’s trying to recover.

And here’s the story of wellness lady Jane Avery, another happy person as she’s blogging about her experiences at Networking Secrets at Squidoo.

If you read all these stories, don’t you want to contribute to the Heart Kids Blogathon? To help out many poor children who lack the money to have surgery.

Because that’s exactly what these people are promoting right now! Isn’t that amazing?

Please donate to the Heart Kids Blogathon.

Thank you so much.

This is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

How To Be Happy

As I dial in, many times it happens, that the ISP doesn’t respond or doesn’t recognize me. I get all kind of errors like

Access was denied, because the username and/or password was invalid on the domain.

or

Error 678: The remote computer did ot respond. For further assistance, click More Info or search Help and
Support Center for this error number

I have absolutely NO idea what’s happening. I just keep calling and in the end they let me in, but not after trying several times.

Also, my laptop is attacked frequently.
My Kaspersky Anti Hacker software pops up and report another ‘Helkern attack’ on my machine.
NO idea what this means, but glad I use this software.

Yesterday, my laptop suddenly froze while surfing online. It was hot and late in the night, so I quit trying.
Today, the same happened.
First, a completely red screen, then, another white one. No movement was possible.

So I just did a system restore, afraid that I was attacked again without my software noticing.

Now I’m able to write this and post another time-stamped message, but I don’t know how long I can continue doing this.
I sincerely hope these troubles are over now as I have no idea what to do about them.

Just wanted to let you know.

Have a great Sunday.

This is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

Experiencing Internet connection problems

The province of Alicante has a micro climate.
It’s very dry, but almost always the same temperature of 30-32 degrees Centigrade and a gentle breeze coming from the sea.

My wife doesn’t feel her usual arthritis pains, my 12 year old daughter’s asthma problems disapear as snow for the sun and we’re enjoying the slower Spanish way of life.

I try to work a little bit here, but that doesn’t come without any troubles.
Every year, it seems as if faith knows I’m slowing down and this year it wasn’t different.

How about my credit card suddenly not working any more. Have you ever tried to call the credit card company back home when you were abroad? In the weekend?

And of course, there was someone who’s links didn’t work at 2hop4.com. So I had to take a look in my database. Since I only have a dial up connection here, it takes hours to get there and check what’s going wrong.

And of course I got a message that my delayed recorded webinar mp3 was ready to download. It only was somewhat bigger than expected: 54 Mb’s. Have you ever tried to download such a huge file on a dial up connection?

“Well” you may say, “get a faster connection then”.

Ahhh … no.

That wouldn’t fit in the life style here. I’m really slowing down and these problems are all solved within a few days. After that, I’ll continue at a much lower pace.

Like today, when we celebrated my oldest daughter’s birthday.

We had my good old Spanish friend Salvador Sapena, who I had not seen in three years, and his beautiful wife Conchita over as guests and we invited them to a great restaurant for a nice dinner.

We just arrived back home and it was so good that I just had to tell you about it.

They brought presents for the kids and we had some tapas with a sprinkling glass of champagne.

During dinner we brought up many memories of the past when we did business together, selling shoes to Russians, diet pills to Brazilians and developing some real estate.

Like the 18 story beach apartment building that was offered to us for only 1 Peseta (5 cents). Which we didn’t do because there were too many problems to be solved then. Nowadays, it would be a several million dollars deal.

That’s because Spain has evolved at a much faster pace than the rest of Western Europe. Only 35 years ago, they were under the regime of dictator Franco. Only 20 years ago, they joined the European Union.

But the money they’ve received from the EC has been very well spend.
Infrastructure is great, all major cities are completely re-constructed and prosperity is at the highest possible levels (as are the prices).

That’s a good thing. It’s called progress.

On the other hand, Salvador and I talked about the good ‘ol days, when Spain, not too long ago, was much more quiet, not poisoned with commercials, big cars, luxury and the latest gadgets.

Like when we walked to the old harbor building in Alicante to have a coffee, before sailing out to the island of Tabarca to have a great lunch. Salvador knew everyone back then, so he was stopped so many times for a little chat, that we arrived too late for lunch.

When in the evening, at eight, everyone dressed up nicely and walked down the Esplanada, where there were colored chairs to sit down and have a chat with your neighbours or friends.

When the dressed up couples went out at Sunday morning to take a stroll in El Parque Del Retiro, talking to everyone they met, having lots of fun with the whole family at lunch and where grandparents played with their grandchildren.

It’s still there, but not as prominent as back then. And that’s a pitty.

Nevertheless, life is still great here.
Because of the slower pace of life during summer and the excellent, healthy foods (Mediterranean diet). We’re re-charging batteries. To come back at full speed at the end of August.

In the mean time, I’ll keep posting interesting articles here, so stay tuned.

This is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

Life in Spain