Happy Saturday everyone! Today I’ve got a somewhat-but-not-completely wine-themed article for you. Let’s get straight to it.
First, for all the wine enthusiasts reading today, I’d like to tell you about Cork’d. Corkd.com is a relatively new site that’s super-functional, pretty, and easy to use (what a perfect combination, eh?). In a nutshell, it was built to offer people a service that makes it simple and easy to review and share wine.
Once you start an account for yourself, you’re free to make your own personal Wine Journal, where you can catalog, rate, and review wines you’ve tried. You can take a look at what your friends and colleagues are drinking, keep track of new wines you’d like to buy, and browse through the reviews given by other Cork’d members.
Heard a wine mentioned recently but know little about it? You can search for wines right from the homepage of corkd.com. Just want to get right to the good stuff? You can see the top-rated wines at the bottom of the homepage. Fun fun fun.
Head over to
www.corkd.com and, before signing up (which is easy and free), click on the “About Cork’d” link that appears on the left of the page. You’ll find a fantastic summary of reasons why you should play around on the site-in case I’ve not convinced you.
Perhaps wine just isn’t your thing. Perhaps you already keep a wine journal and know everything there is to know about wine. Perhaps you just have a big bottle of vodka sitting in your cupboard right now and you don’t know what to do with it. Not to fret; for you folks there’s a delightful website called Extra Tasty (www.extratasty.com).
Just like corkd.com, this site is simple, fun, pretty, and super-easy to use. In the mood to try something new? Go to the “My Bar” section, tell Extra Tasty what booze you currently have, and *poof*, you’re given a list of all the mixed drinks you can make with what you’ve got.
Submit your own recipes, view what your friends are drinking and saying, win prizes for having your submission voted “Drink of the Day”, or simply browse through the endless list of mixed drinks until you find something that tickles your fancy. Enjoy (um, responsibly, of course).
I was recently chatting with John Buchanan, the owner of Samplings Wine Bar here Frisco, about various computer issues he’d recently experienced. Microsoft Office programs (Word, Excel, etc.) and files had been throwing errors, his email program had stopped functioning correctly, files in his “My Documents” folder were not opening up. Nothing he tried made any difference at all. How frustrating!
It turns out that a recent Microsoft Windows update that had automatically downloaded onto his computer (and has probably automatically downloaded onto most of the computers owned by today’s readers!) is incompatible with the majority of Hewlitt-Packard (HP) products. Which products, you ask? All of the following: HP PhotoSmart software, any HP DeskJet printer that includes a card reader, HP Scanners, some HP CD-DVD RWs, and HP Cameras.
Has your computer experienced any of the problems that John’s did? Do you have any HP products on or that connect to your computer? If so, download this file to your Desktop: www.timeforcake.com/help/hp-fix.zip. Then follow these five steps:
- Right click hp-fix.zip file and select Extract All.
- Follow the wizard to extract the two files to the Desktop.
- Double click fix1 and click Yes to confirm.
- Double click fix2 and wait for the commands to finish.
- Restart your computer.
Upon following these steps, the problematic issues should no longer trouble you. Another small victory over your computer! Time to celebrate. Go ahead and pour yourself a nice glass of wine (or head out to dinner and have someone else pour you a nice glass of wine!). You deserve it.
