THE PROCEDURE
When I arrive at the doctor’s office, the nurse/aesthetician removes my makeup, and applies a numbing cream. I sit in the room reading fashion magazines for about an hour with this numbing cream on, so that the procedure is less painful. And thank goodness for that, because even with the numbing cream, and the 8 ibuprofins I’ve been taking at the same time, the procedure still hurts. Quite a lot, actually. The doctor does provide pain meds — vicodin or valium, if I want. The catch is that then I would have to have a driver. I’m still kind of embarrassed of this whole resurfacing thing, and would prefer that no one see me while I’m all puffy and ridiculous looking after the procedure. So, I just do some meditation and breathing techniques that I learned in yoga class, and hold onto the stress balls that the doctor gave me, and pretty soon the lasering is over. The whole time, there is also a device going that blasts cool air on my face, which also helps. I’m not sure exactly how long this part takes, but would estimate that it’s somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes. At the end, they put a cooling mask on my face (which is a welcome relief), and then I’m sent on my way.

RECOVERY
While the Fraxel website (and most information on the web) claims that many people can return to work and normal activities following treatment, or perhaps the next day. While this may be true for people using lower settings, I have not found “no downtime” to be true for me. The first night, my face is very puffy, and somewhat sensitive. Sometimes I have some pinpoint bleeding. My doctor gave me a tube of Cicaplast (La Roche-Posay), basically an ointment that I keep on my face to help speed healing. The second day, my face is much more puffy, and the upper layer is starting to turn a bronze color (preparing to flake off). I put ice on it, keep putting the Cicaplast on it, and work from home. I can’t honestly see any improvement on the swelling from the ice, but I guess you’re supposed to ice swelling, right? During my earlier treatments, my skin would generally peel on the third morning, leaving healthy, smooth skin — that also happened to be bright red. I would go to work with a heavy layer of makeup on, face still slightly swollen (it looked like I had put on a few pounds, all on my face). Lately, though, with the even more aggressive treatments, I’ve been taking 2-3 days away from the office. With a Monday afternoon appointment, and a few days at home, I’m generally looking “normal” enough by Friday night to go out with friends (with a lot of makeup to cover the bright red color of my face) without looking strange. People may notice that I’m wearing a lot more makeup, of course, but the redness is generally able to be hidden by that point. I wear a lot of makeup when I go out that weekend, and then by the following Monday, my skin has faded to more of a “pinkish” hue that can be covered by a normal amount of makeup. The recovery isn’t painful at all, though. At most, my skin itches a bit when the skin is ready to flake off.

RESULTS
The results are actually sort of hard to measure. I look at my face every day, so the small changes that happen over time due to collagen remodeling aren’t going to jump right out at you. I’ve just completed treatment #5, and had the first one approximately 4 months ago. The changes from the collagen are supposed to happen gradually, 2-3 months after each treatment. I can tell every time my face peels that it looks smoother. I feel when I look in the mirror that my scarring is less severe, so it must be helping. I’ve gotten compliments from people I haven’t seen in a long time that I look good…. that could also be taken to mean that I haven’t gotten fat either, though Has there been a night and day change? I’d say no. Has my skin improved? Yes. I’d like to have a look at those before and after photos when this is over, to be able to make a more objective observation. The doctor predicted a 60% - 75% improvement, which I don’t think I see yet, but perhaps I will 2-3 months after the treatments are over.

On the Mac, the key command to force-quit a program that isn’t responding is:

Command-Option-Escape

For those new to the Mac, the “command” key is the one with the little apple on it.

And voila, there’s your menu of programs to quit, just like you get on the PC (except prettier).

I have a friend who bartends and comps most of our drinks, but we generally tip him very generously — in cash.. In the end, we pay about what it would have been with nothing comped, and no tip. I don’t tip for take-out, or coffee, unless the person is unusually charming or I’m feeling exceptionally generous that day…

Really, though, wouldn’t it be much easier if everyone just included the tip in the actual cost of the service? Apparently waiters and waitresses are paid well in europe, and tipping isn’t standard there.

Luckily, though, for us Americans who want to do the right thing, there’s the internet. I decided to do some research on “standard” tipping amounts, and found a very thorough and informative article at Get Rich Slowly that spells it all out.

FOOD SERVICE

Barista
No tip required, though many suggest throwing coins into the tip jar.
Bartender
$1/drink (or 15% of total bill). Pre-tip for better service.
Delivery person (including pizza)
10%, $2 minimum
Maitre d’
$5-$25 for special efforts
Takeout
No tip required unless something special is done
Waiter
15% for adequate service, 20% for exceptional service. For poor service, leave 10% or less. It’s okay to leave nothing for exceptionally poor service, but only if you’re sure it’s the waiter’s fault.

HOTEL STAFF

Bellman/Porter
$1 to $2 per bag, $5 minimum. (Or, just as many places say $1 bag, $2 minimum.)
Concierge
$5-$20 depending on the service. $20 if he does something exceptional. Nothing for directions.
Housekeeper
$2 to $5 per night, paid daily or as a lump sum at checkout. (Most sites suggest you tip daily.)
Parking Valet
A wide range of opinions. Everyone agrees that you should pay when your car is retrieved. Some say to pay when it’s parked, too. Most sites say to tip $2, though some suggest $5.
Room service
$5 minimum (unless gratuity is included in check)

TRAVEL

Bus driver (not mass transit)
$1 to $2, if she handles luggage
Cab driver
10%, $2-$5 minimum
Chauffeur
10-15%
Gas station attendant
Nothing. Or $2-$4. There’s no agreement. (I’ve never seen anyone tip a gas station attendant ever.)
Porter/skycap
$1 per bag. $2 for heavy items, or if porter brings luggage to counter.

PERSONAL SERVICE

Barber/Hairstylist
Again, little agreement: 10-15%, 15-20%, etc. One person recommends $5 to each individual who shampoos or blow-dries your hair!
Manicurist
15%
Spa service
15-20%
Masseuse
10-15%
Shoe-shiner
$2 or $3

OTHER

Building superintendent
Varies
Coat checker
Most sites recommend $1 per coat, though one said $2 to $5 upon retrieval.
Furniture deliverer
It depends. Most of the time $5-$20. Some recommend simply offering cold drinks. (also)
Grocery store bagger
One site recommended $1-$3, though I’ve never seen one tipped in my life.
Mover
$10-$25 per person (also)

What about tipping at holidays? Tipping service people with whom you have regular contact can build goodwill. I found these recommendations:

HOLIDAY TIPS

     * Babysitter: one week’s pay
     * Doorman: bottle of wine or box of chocolates
     * Garbage collector: $15 to $25
     * Gardener: one week’s pay
     * Housekeeper: one week’s pay
     * Janitor: $15 to $25
     * Mail carrier: $15 to $20 (up to $20 non-cash)
     * Nanny: one week’s pay
     * Newspaper delivery person: $15 to $25
     * Parking attendant: $15 to $25
     * Personal trainer: $20 to $50 (tip discreetly)

Some points regarding tipping etiquette:

     * If you use a coupon or gift certificate, calculate your tip based on the total before discount.
     * Tip above the norm if:
          o Service is exceptional,
          o You’ve been a burden, or
          o You are a regular client.
     * Don’t tip if it’s not deserved. Poor service should not be rewarded.
     * In some circumstances, if you offer an initial tip — especially a large initial tip — you’ll get better service.
     * If you take up a restaurant table for a long time, tip extra.
     * Tip discreetly.
     * When in doubt, tip.

Brady Anderson, Manny Alexander, Rick Ankiel, Jeff Bagwell, Barry Bonds, Aaron Boone, Rafaeil Bettancourt, Bret Boone, Milton Bradley, David Bell, Dante Bichette, Albert Belle, Paul Byrd, Wil Cordero, Ken Caminiti, Mike Cameron, Ramon Castro, Jose and Ozzie Canseco, Roger Clemens, Paxton Crawford, Wilson Delgado, Lenny Dykstra, Johnny Damon, Carl Everett, Kyle Farnsoworth, Ryan Franklin, Troy Glaus, Rich Garces, Jason Grimsley, Troy Glaus, Juan Gonzalez, Eric Gagne, Nomar Garciaparra, Jason Giambi, Jeremy Giambi, Jose Guillen, Jay Gibbons, Juan Gonzalez, Clay Hensley, Jerry Hairston, Felix Heredia, Jr., Darren Holmes, Wally Joyner, Darryl Kile, Matt Lawton, Raul Mondesi, Mark McGwire, Guillermo Mota, Robert Machado, Damian Moss, Abraham Nunez, Trot Nixon, Jose Offerman, Andy Pettitte, Mark Pior, Neifi Perez, Rafael Palmiero, Albert Pujols, Brian Roberts, Juan Rincon, John Rocker, Pudge Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, Scott Schoenweiis, David Segui, Alex Sanchez, Gary Sheffield, Miguel Tejada, Julian Tavarez,Fernando Tatis, Maurice Vaughn, Jason Varitek, Ismael Valdez, Matt Williams and Kerry Wood.

Bankrate recently ran a column featuring responses from readers as to what cards were their favorite “freeloader” cards. Of course, if you’re a freeloader, you don’t care what the interest rates are, or the late fees; you’re just looking for cash back or other rewards programs. The top choices: Discover, the Chase PerfectCard, and the Citi Dividends Platinum Card.

Here are the responses from readers:

Discover was very popular for its cash-back feature. And Lloyd W. wrote about the special offers that Discover runs during the year, which I was unfamiliar with:

Our regular Discover card gives 1% back, but gives more on certain promotions during the year that last for about 90 days. One special they had last year was for dental work — 5% — just when I needed a root canal & other work. Never saw that offer again. (Hope I never need another root canal again either.)

The other big fave is the Chase PerfectCard, which a handful of readers told me about. In explaining why he likes this card, Frank F. wrote that the Chase PerfectCard:

* Gives a full 1%/3% rebate, no sliding scale (such as Discover, where you have to spend tens of thousands to get the full 2% back),
* Has no limit on how much you can earn in rebates (most cards cap the max in a year at $300),
* The rebates are automatically applied to your next month’s balance, which is super convenient (most cards send you a check and then only when you reach a certain amount (like $50) or you have to request it).

Cortni M. sang its praises, too:

My husband and I currently have every bill we can (in addition to groceries and gas) charged to a Chase PerfectCard. We earn 3% back on all our gas purchases and 1% on everything else. They just credit each month’s balance with last month’s credit amount. We usually get anywhere from $20-$40 back each month. And it’s great when we buy a large purchase. Even when we have the cash to pay for a large item, we’ll still charge it and pay it the next month as well as earn 1% back on the purchase!

Another popular card is the Citi Dividends Platinum Card, but a few readers told me that recent changes to the card have caused them to start looking for another favorite:

Erika H. writes that she has left her Citi Dividends card behind for this reason:

They offered me bonus cash back for signing up my Internet service to be paid automatically with my card, and I did it, and subsequently they did not give me the bonus, because of some technicality that I still don’t understand! So, now I use the Chase Freedom Visa and I get 3% cash back on whatever my top 3 spending categories are per month. Plus, I get 1% back on everything else.

Chris B. is also dumping Citi Dividend because of changes to the card:

My favorite card is the Citi Dividends Platinum card. Up until next month, I have been getting 5% back on grocery, gas, and drug store purchases, and 1% back on everything else.

However, I recently got a letter stating that they will be revising the offer to 2% on gas, grocery, and drug store purchases, are adding a 2% reward for utilities, and still 1% for all other purchases. And I don’t have a choice in the matter.

I’d add that I currently get 1% back on purchases from my American Express card - I don’t get cash back, rather, gift cards, but I can get them from a variety of major retailers, including Home Depot, Macys, Banana Republic and the Gap. Discover Card doesn’t really seem worth it to me — it starts out at only .25% on the first $1,500 in total annual purchases, then goes up to .50% on your second $1,500 in total annual purchases, until finally you get to 1% on purchases in excess of $3,000 in annual purchases. That’s all in annual purchases which means that the whole cycle resets itself every year, putting you back at .25%. They do have some promotions that offer 5% on certain featured types of purchases (currently gas and hotels, next month it’ll be restaurants and movies). However, not everyone accepts Discover card, which makes it harder to rack up the required amount of purchases to get the big cash back…

When you go to Walkscore.com, you simply type in your address, and it calculates the walkability score by locating nearby businesses. The Walk Score is a number between 0 and 100, a higher number being more walkable. (of course, it all depends on how far you’re willing to walk, which is different for everyone). Here’s a breakdown of the scores:

* 90 - 100 = Walkers’ Paradise: Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car.
* 70 - 90 = Very Walkable: It’s possible to get by without owning a car.
* 50 - 70 = Some Walkable Locations: Some stores and amenities are within walking distance, but many everyday trips still require a bike, public transportation, or car.
* 25 - 50 = Not Walkable: Only a few destinations are within easy walking range. For most errands, driving or public transportation is a must.
* 0 - 25 = Driving Only: Virtually no neighborhood destinations within walking range. You can walk from your house to your car!

Looks like a pretty cool little online app. My current location (residential city neighborhood, with nearby commercial zones, a grocery store down the street), gets a score of 66, while a neighbor who’s a bit closer to a major street of restaurants and bars gets a 77. They even offer a cute little widget that you can add to your website.

It’s not a perfect system, though, as they admit on their website:

We’ll be the first to admit that Walk Score is just an approximation of walkability. There are a number of factors that contribute to walkability that are not part of our algorithm:

• Street width and block length: Narrow streets slow down traffic. Short blocks make it easier to navigate the grid.
• Safety: How much crime is in the neighborhood? How many traffic accidents are there? Are crosswalks well marked and streets well lit?
• Pedestrian-friendly design: Are there walking paths? Are buildings close to the sidewalk with parking in back? Are sidewalks shaded by trees?
• Topography: Hills can make walking difficult, especially if you’re carrying groceries.
• Public transit: Good public transit is important for walkable neighborhoods.
• Freeways and bodies of water: Freeways can divide neighborhoods. Swimming is harder than walking.
• Weather: In some places it’s just too hot or cold to walk regularly.

As MarlonBain said, “You should use the Web 3.0 app called going outside and investigating the world for yourself” before deciding whether a neighborhood is walkable!

I tried using the <code></code> tags in the wordpress toolbar, but to no avail.

The solution? Use the HTML equivalents for “<” and “>”.

“<” is    & l t   
“>” is    & g t

(remove the spaces between the characters in the HTML code, of course)

Here’s the one I use:

<SCRIPT TYPE=”text/javascript”>
<!–
// protected email script by Joe Maller
// JavaScripts available at http://www.joemaller.com
// this script is free to use and distribute
// but please credit me and/or link to my site

emailE=(’name@’ + ‘domain.com’)
document.write(’<A href=”mailto:’ + emailE + ‘”>’ + emailE + ‘</a>’)

//–>
</script>

Instructions for use:

If you’ve already set up a mailto: link, you should have something that looks like this in your HTML code:

<a href=”mailto:name@domain.com”>name@domain.com</a>

Simply replace that entire tag with the script above, and then change the variables in “emailE.” It won’t show up in Dreamweaver, but when you test it out on the server, the email address will be there… for human eyes only…

And so a new strategy emerges: Sell the laptops to people in the US, with a matching program — you buy one for your kid here, and one for a child in another country. The program is called “Give 1 Get 1.” Originally, XO had no plans at all to sell or distribute the computers in the U.S. It’s banking on Americans buying them and sending matching laptops to countries such as Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, and Rwanda. The program will run for two weeks, starting November 12th. $399 will buy two laptops - one for themselves, and one shipped to a child in those four countries. In addition to getting a pretty cool little laptop for basically $400, half of your purchase is tax-deductible.

Also, customers can simply elect to “give” a laptop with a $200 donation. Participation info is at the website www.XOgiving.org. The machines are scheduled to ship to U.S. customers in January or February of 2008.

Laptops require electrical power, of course, which isn’t always easy to come by. These laptops, however, can be charged BY HAND! According to the manufacturer’s website, they will come with at least two of three options: a crank, a pedal, or a pull-cord. I saw a news report that also mentioned the possibility of solar panels.

Because the laptop components most likely to fail are the hard drive and internal connectors, XO has no hard drive to crash and only two internal cables.

Also cool: the laptop is also a camera, and can capture both video and still images.

Highlighted features from the OLPC website:

XO creates its own mesh network out of the box. Each machine is a full-time wireless router. Children in the most remote regions of the globe—as well as their teachers and families—will be connected both to one another and to the Internet.

It features a 7.5 inch, 1200×900 pixel, TFT screen and self-refreshing display with higher resolution (200 DPI) than 95 percent of the laptops on the market today. Two display modes are available: a transmissive, full-color mode, and a reflective, high-resolution mode that is sunlight readable. Both consume very little power: the transmissive mode consumes one watt—about one seventh of the average LCD power consumption in a laptop; the reflective mode consumes a miserly 0.2 watts.

The laptop selectively suspends operation of its CPU, which makes possible even more remarkable power savings. The laptop nominally consumes less than two watts—less than one tenth of what a standard laptop consumes—so little that XO can be recharged by human power. This is a critical advance for the half-billion children who have no access to electricity.

My big question, though — how are these kids going to get on the internet?? The answer, from the OLPC Wiki:

The XO has been designed to provide the most engaging wireless network available. The laptops are connected to each other, even when they are off. If one laptop is connected to the Internet, the others will follow to the web. The children in the neighborhood are thus permanently connected to chat, share information on the web, gather by videoconference, make music together, edit texts, read e-books and enjoy the use of collaborative games on line.

The battery of the laptop can work for many hours and it can be charged in special gang chargers in the school or by mechanical or solar power. The unique XO display allows the use of the laptop under a bright sun, enabling the user to work outside the classroom or home, in the wild as well as in any public open place.

The connectivity will be as ubiquitous as the formal or informal learning environment permits. We are proposing a new kind of school, an “expanded school” which grows well beyond the walls of the classroom. And last but not least this connectivity ensures a dialogue among generations, nations and cultures. Every language will be spoken in the OLPC network.

When we talk together we stay together.

• Secure login access to your online credit products and historical data
• Easy one-click ordering of updated credit management products
• Optional subscription to our free credit education newsletter
• Exclusive members-only discounts

Here’s a link for the free membership They have a nice refer-a-friend program, too, where you get a $100 Target giftcard if you refer 5 friends.