This is the first time I have ever purchased a camera brand new off the store shelf, so I was fairly excited to be owning a brand new camera.  I was browsing along and spied the red markdown sticker for a Polaroid camera in the case, nearly invisible behind the bottom of the sliding door. $49 for a camera that had sold for $129. It was the display model, but Wal Mart tended to be good from my past experience in selling good working display models so I was not scared by that.

Getting my little camera home I was disappointed to discover that it would not power on. Assuming the batteries that had come with it might have something wrong with them I went and got my fully charged NiNH batteries that I use with my Wii remote. The batteries did not work. Camera did not power on. Major disappointment. I even called Wal Mart to find out what my options were since it had been the last camera like that, if it fails to work could I use it toward price of a different camera and how long I had to bring it back in.

As I was dejectedly looking at what had quickly come to be a very well loved little pink camera even before I had got to use it, I somehow got it to turn on. No idea what I did, just kept fiddling with the batteries and holding the power button down until *gasp!* it came on! I knew from my Canon A70 that the power button has to be held for a few seconds before the cameras will power on.

After a few hours of the camera seeming to work great, it stopped working great. Okay, I made it work once, I could make it work again. Once more to fiddling and once more it started working after a bit. This would come to be a reoccurring theme with the camera. Work for a while, then I would have to figure out how to make it power on again. Frustrating. Very frustrating.

I decided to do some research and discovered quite a few complaints identical to mine at the reviews page on Overstock.com, where it seems to be a very common issue with this camera, with all of the solutions seeming to be the same as my fumbled discovery – fiddle with the batteries and the camera will eventually power back on properly. There are enough positive reviews on the camera that I assume that aside from the apparent flaw in the battery connection the camera is at least a decent camera.

I am now on a search for if there is a way to fix the problem with the apparently faulty battery door connection.

Earnings: Were you self employed with earnings more than $400.00?

If so, then chances are that yes, you will need to file taxes as being self-employed.

The next obvious question is what the IRS considers “self employed” to mean, they have an easy answer to that here, which invariably lead me over to the self employment tax section.

For those of us that are self-employed, we must pay SE tax and file Schedule SE (Form 1040) if our net earnings from self-employment were $400 or more for 2009. Check this page for more information on the self-employment tax.

I already know that I will be filing taxes this year, even if I don’t yet know what my full earnings were, so I’ll leave you to sort out if you need to file and I will move on to the next step in this walk along on filing taxes when self-employed.

In the words of Dolly Parton, it’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it.

So, for those of us who just wish we could say we work 9-5 and know that running a business is more like a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week job, I am going to be sharing what I sort out here as I work on my own small business taxes.

All posts will be gathered under the “taxes” category.

Working at home and working as a full-time caregiver are not easy. The exhaustion seeps into my bones sometimes and I just can not focus. I get so exhausted, with my energy so low down there, and I know that I need to escape and recharge before I burn out. Unfortunately daydreaming about it is often the only option.

So, I daydream about things like a nice romantic cancun vacation for one. About a chance to get away from it all and pamper myself for a little while without worrying about anything else. I know I can’t, I can’t even find the time to relax in the tub at home for a long soak, but it is nice to daydream.

The destinations are usually much like the resorts of the Karisma Hotels, in particular the pamper of the all adult El Dorado Royale Resort on the Riviera Maya. A mile of unspoiled beach in over 400 acres of tropical rain forest, who could ask for more? Well, okay, maybe since it is a daydream it would be nice to include things such as their beachside spa treatments, milk baths and aromatic massages. Maybe daydream of sleeping in those four-poster beds draped with flowing white gauze. Stepping out of the room and into a winding artificial river that leads to a swim-up bar – toss in a cute single guy that would spend the rest of my trip flirting with me and I am so there! Even without a cute guy though… Relaxation and luxury. Just my kind of daydream destination.

What happened is I went to one of my blogs and just by accident noticed that the title of the post did not match the title of the URL. Somehow I had posted a new post over top of a post that had already been made on the blog. This might not seem like too serious of an issue, until you take into consideration that I use my sites to keep track of what happens in a daily journal (sometimes a bit cryptic, but they tell a big story to those that know what to look for), and I earn income through sponsors. People that pay me a set price for an advertising link from my blog to their website. It was a sponsored post that had got overwritten. Eeeek!

That is not a good SNAFU, so now I am working with Windows Live Writer with an uneasy feeling that the program too easily might replace important posts about my life as a caregiver or sponsored posts. Anyone know of a plugin that lets me turn off any overwriting of posts that are already on the blog?

Now, I am quite lousy at this while still being reasonably successful.

Sounds funny, huh? Let me explain. I have a very poor attention span. I will start to do something, then get distracted and move to something else before I can even fully finish starting the first project. Then I move on again… and again. I can keep going, project to project for a very long time. Trouble is. End of the day. All that multitasking starts back over, some of it on the same things I was working on the day before. Some things get lost, work piles up. Life responsibilities pile up. And in the middle of it all I am standing, my attention being drawn off by the next item.

Now, this is not always the case. I can get focused on just one thing. And when I truly focus, well… It can get just as bad. I’ll forget things and find myself not getting work done and it gets to be an ugly nasty mess all on its own because I look up and the day is gone and all I got done was one thing.

So, I decided that today I would start working on a scheduler to keep me more focused and on track so that I am not getting lost. I am also going to work on a reward system that lets me enjoy a reward for doing stuff that I am supposed to do rather than slacking off on things.

So, I am working out some kind of daily schedule that I hope to be able to stick to that will, with luck, help me keep stuff to a proper schedule and fit everything I have to do into a day, leaving time for the things that I want to do.

I am not sure just what method I will be using, so am looking for any suggestions anyone might have on how to keep track of work receipts.

I’m not so much interested in advice on the entry into a spreadsheet type of tracking, although I welcome that as well. What I need help with is what to do with the actual physical receipt – particularly in this day and age when the paper that they are printed on fades over time until you can’t make out what is on older receipts.

How do you store your old business receipts?

I decided that I need to get back into creating quilts I can sell both online and alongside the roads here in Alaska this summer. So I am working on a lap size quilt intended for use in a car or to be spread across the lap of someone sitting in a wheelchair.

This is a picture I took as I copied the pattern from enlarged printouts of the color reference page to freezer paper.

And the picture below is the beginning of the applique work. What you see here is the stem of one of the flowers growing from the ground to the right of the tree. The pattern is sitting sideways.

I’m using the invisible stitch for the project, but have not decided yet rather or not I will go back over the edges of the pieces with decorative embroidery to help hide any stitches that fail to be as invisible as they are intended to be.

If you want to be kept updated on the progress of this quilt as I work on it you can find it over at my www.ooak.biz site

I was not sure that I it would be possible to buy gold bullion in the same way that stock in a company could be purchased, but I have discovered it is not only possible, but there are several different kinds of metals, including the recently launched Securities Physical Platinum Shares (PPLT) and Physical Palladium Shares (PALL), in which investors can invest.

PPLT and PALL are physically backed exchange-traded funds that allow investors to invest in physically backed holdings that are equal to one share equals one tenth of an ounce of metal. For PPLT and PALL the metals are, respectfully, platinum and palladium.

This post was sponsored by USGoldBureau.com

This post is kind of a testing to see if I have things set up properly.