Before you type word one on a resume, make sure you've got the basics covered. And, for a myriad of jobs in nearly any field, Microsoft Office skills are absolutely essential.

Got the software but don't know where to start? This Ultimate Microsoft Office Certificate Mastery Bundle not only gets you up to speed on some of the most widely-used programs in the Office suite but gives proof that you know how to use them.

You'll get step-by-step tutorials on Excel, PowerPoint, Access and  (of course) Microsoft Word, starting with the fundamentals and moving on to shortcuts and macros. By the end of it, you'll be able to nail any presentation, lay out complex spreadsheets and even perform data analytics for any company.

What makes this Recent Editions bundle particularly comprehensive is the fact that it contains courses on both the 2016 and 2019 versions of the software, so you're prepared to work on more than one generation of software.

Right now, the full Ultimate Microsoft Office Certificate Mastery Bundle: Recent Editions is available for 96% off the price of the individual courses.

Prices subject to change.

You can't beat free! Get $70+ worth of premium Mac apps for free today! Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/4SI0Y6pAbM8/master-microsoft-offices-hot.html

The bird seed in our feeder began disappearing overnight, no matter how full it was. I set up an infrared camera to see what was devouring so much seed in such a short amount of time. Here are the culprits! Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/64zeF9IHwT0/mystery-of-the-vanishing-bird.html

Bare minimum: To make a career as a programmer, you need to know a little about a lot. There are so many languages suited to so many different tasks, it's hard to know where to start.

If you're truly just starting, it's hard to find a better curriculum than in the Ultimate Web Coding for Everyone Bundle, a course package that covers just about every major platform on the web from a beginner's perspective.

That perspective doesn't mean these classes scratch only the surface. Rather, they're geared to get you versed in the basics quickly and thoroughly so you can get hands-on with more advanced aspects.

The eight courses cover workhorse website builders like HTML, JavaScript and Bootstrap 4, back-end support languages like Node.js and MySQL, and versatile tools such as Ruby, PHP, and Python. And how's this for a bonus: The package even comes with a free download of Python 3.

Get on track to a full-stack coding career with the Ultimate Web Coding for Everyone Bundle, on sale for 98% off the cost of the individual courses. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/z684bDi7tVk/anyone-can-learn-how-to-code-w.html

Still recovering after all that holiday shopping? That doesn't mean you can't ring in the new year with a new computer. These Mac minis are all refurbished, which means they're available for sometimes hundreds off the retail price. Here are of our favorite deals still out there.

Apple Mac Mini Intel Core i5 2.3GHz 8GB RAM 500GB - White (Refurbished)

Hook this 7.7" unit up to a keyboard and monitor, and you can take advantage of 2.3GHz Intel Core i5 processing. The 8GB RAM of memory is everyday browsing, streaming, and multi-tasking as well.

MSRP: $399

Sale Price: $249.99

Apple Mac Mini Intel Core i5 2.5GHz 500GB HDD - White (Refurbished)

Here's another compact computer that's fully ready for household use. Its Intel HD Graphics 4000 will keep gamers happy while the 4 USB ports let you hook up an array of peripherals.

MSRP: $399

Sale Price: $259.99

Apple Mac Mini Intel Core 2 Duo 320GB - Silver (Certified Refurbished)

The 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor on this 2010 model is still great for work use, and the DVD writer makes it easy to burn movies for your home library. Watching them on the NVIDIA GeForce 320M 256GB video card is pretty satisfying, too.

MSRP: $479

Sale Price: $349

Apple Mac Mini 1.4GHz Intel Core i5 Dual-Core 500GB HDD - Silver (Certified Refurbished)

Need a bit more speed? This 2014 Mac Mini comes with Turbo Boost 2.0, not to mention Hyper-Threading capability for those who need to multitask. The 500 GB HDD storage is mighty generous as well. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/TGkZQMgUiEg/these-refurbished-mac-mini-com.html

Bad posture can have a cascading effect on your health. You might not even be aware of your habitual slouch, but it can contribute to backaches, fatigue, joint and ligament degradation and a host of other problems. (Not to mention that you just look better standing up straight.)

Like just about anything involving your health, it starts with building better habits. But forget about carrying books on your head: The UPRIGHT GO 2™ is a device specifically designed to correct your stance in weeks.

The device itself is tiny enough to fit unobtrusively onto your back where it adheres with hypoallergenic strips. Once you've got it calibrated, it warns you with a gentle buzz whenever you start to slouch.

Just that little nudge can help you improve your overall posture, and you can see that progress with an app that tracks the percentage of time you spent with your spine in the correct position, The rechargeable battery can hold power for more than a full day, letting you wear it in any situation.

Get the UPRIGHT GO 2™ for 10% off the MSRP today.

Prices subject to change.

You can't beat free! Get $70+ worth of premium Mac apps for free today! Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/yPUrvnWXQ2o/this-tiny-wearable-can-help-yo.html

What's the biggest headache about running a business? Ask anyone who's got employees, and the answer will probably be something related to accounting.

Managing payroll and accounts is a big responsibility and a monstrous time-sink. That's why many small businesses have an accountant or at least someone who's well versed in QuickBooks. This accounting software has been helping bosses take charge of their books for years now, and you can learn to make the most of it with the 2020 QuickBooks® Pro Mastery Bundle.

This comprehensive online course package is designed for users of QuickBooks Pro for desktop and covers all versions released over the past three years. You'll be able to shave hours (if not days) off the time you spend balancing the books, learning functionality that lets you quickly create invoices, submit purchase orders and create automated reminders for payments due. You can even craft compelling reports for end-of-year financial data to impress your shareholders or employees.

The entire bundle is now on sale for more than 90% off the MSRP. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/bf0gorw1AII/master-your-finances-in-2020-w.html

Vaporgoth composers take note for your next music video: the developers behind Microsoft Excel 95 left a marvelous easter egg hidden in the spreadsheet hell. Welcome to the "Hall of Tortured Souls." More background at the wonderful Easter Egg Archive.

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/3bj9eQmwAtY/microsofts-hall-of-torture.html

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A post shared by Sour Solution (@soursolution) on Feb 17, 2019 at 10:27am PST

Simon Isaksson of Sour Solution nails a 360 degree loop-de-loop. It looks effortless now but watch the video below.

Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/2TInT5yqTsM/street-skateboarder-lands-an-i.html

Palm reader Tracey Milanovich, 37, of Somerset, Massachusetts, was arrested for conning $71,000 out of a client in cash and property. According to police, Milanovich "convinced the victim that her daughter was possessed by a demon, and that cash and household items were needed in order to banish the spirit from her daughter."

From CNN:

(Milanovich) is charged with six counts of obtaining property over $250 by trick, attempt to commit a crime, criminal harassment, larceny over $1,200 and intimidating a witness, a spokesman for the Fall River District Court in Somerset, Massachusetts, told CNN...

Through a business called Tracy's Psychic Palm Reader, police said Milanovich convinced a client that she needed to provide cash and purchase household items, including towels and bedding...

image: Google Maps Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/esptmy5K3Ag/palm-reader-arrested-for-scamm.html

TT2020 is "an advanced, open source, hyperrealistic, multilingual typewriter font for a new decade!" As there already are so many, why another? Creator Fredrick Brennan (previously) points out that most fonts which attempt to create the look of a real analog typewriter lack alternative glyphs and other modern features, displaying tell-tale repetitions of aberrations and flaws. He spotted some recent howlers in expensive Hollywood productions that should know better, such as The Joker.

The absurd lack of realism displayed here let me know that I could put this project off no longer. In case you don't see anything wrong ... In the second image, there are three ‹N›’s. Yet, they all look exactly the same. A real typewriter can, quite rarely, have one of its letters damaged, or misaligned, such that that letter regularly makes an inferior strike to all the other letters. However, this degree of regularity is impossible; could Underwood or Remington have acheived it, they would have leapt for joy. It is therefore clearly a digital facsimile and not a real typewritten document.

The example he shows from The Irishman is similarly egregious. Doesn't anyone in Hollywood own a real typewriter?

TT2020 comes in a variety of weights and styles to emulate specific reproduction environments. It's open-source, too, with technical notes to enjoy.

TT2020 [ctrlcctrlv.github.io] Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/mUY9xC3M3DM/tt2020-an-old-timey-typewrite.html

In the annals of bad ideas, "stick your foot in lava" is as solid an entry as the medium is not. In this video, a brief tap of a stoutly-booted toe is enough to make me cringe in horror. The video is safe to watch and the kicker appears unharmed; the behavior of the magma is fascinating. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/ZTQ8_fp2nm0/what-happens-when-you-step-on.html

Charging your phone shouldn't be complicated. Wireless chargers are a definite improvement over those bulky and fragile cords, but compatibility can be an issue for some models.

There are some models out there that make the process hassle-free, though. Take the OMNIA Q2 True Wireless 2+1 Fast Charging Stand, which can not only charge Apple or Android phones equally well, but it can optimize the output to fit the phone as well.

True to its name, it can also support two devices at once. You can juice up an Apple Watch and most any compatible smartphone side by side, or even an Apple Watch and an AirPod case.

The MFi-certified charger supports 7.5W fast charging for Apple, and the max output is up to 10W. It can tweak that output depending on the phone that gets placed on it thanks to sensors that can also detect (and warn you) if a foreign object is resting on the unit. All devices benefit from overcharging and overheating protection. And at roughly 14 mm thick, you can take it just about anywhere.

The OMNIA Q2 is on sale now for a full 15% off the retail price.

Prices subject to change.

You can't beat free! Get $70+ worth of premium Mac apps for free today! Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/Zg6RsGz7f-s/save-15-on-this-truly-wireles.html

Fans of "popping"-type forums and accounts will doubtless be salivating at the prospect of seeing this 50-year-old Briton's hornlike growth removed from his body: it looks like a chunky column of hardened keratinous pus coiling out of a gigantic cyst. But video of the operation, which took place at Countess of Chester Hospital, was mercifully unreleased. From a paper published in the British Medical Journal:

"We report a rare case of an extremely large well-differentiated SCC [Squamous Cell Carcinoma] that was neglected by a patient living in a developed country with access to free healthcare.

"This highlights that despite current public skin cancer awareness and rigorous healthcare measures, cases like this can still arise and slip through the net

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/1N2mkV4Iedo/man-has-5-inch-horn-remove.html

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/TMD_VIeekUY/british-lawmaker-comes-out-as.html

Dr. Phil (previously) is selling a $5.75 million L.A.-area house apparently occupied by his son. The interior must be seen to be believed; Adam best beautifully described it as an "NRA Cheesecake Factory" and that barely does it justice.

I do like the snakes bannister, though. Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/AnwjQL6EcXI/dr-phil-is-selling-a-tacky-ni.html

I live in the rural Southwest, and the recent news that trucking company U-Haul has decided to stop hiring people who smoke cigarettes is a big deal around here. People with few financial options tend to be the ones who take jobs as truckers and the like; those tend to be the same populations who smoke.

On this first week of the new year, U-Haul announced that it will no longer hire people who smoke or vape nicotine (or use it some other way) in the 21 states where companies are allowed to consider tobacco use when deciding whether or not to hire someone.

U-Haul has 30,000 employees in the U.S. and Canada. The new policy does not apply to current employees, and the new rule won't even apply to job applicants in most states.

But it's kind of a big deal.

In the Atlantic today, Amanda Mull writes about about U-Haul's decision, and how "workplace wellness" programs, in her words, “seek to control the personal lives and choices of all workers, but especially those with few job options and financial resources.

“Refusing work to tobacco users is an extreme measure, but it’s not unheard of in the United States,” Mull writes in the Atlantic:

The issue with this approach is that it positions personal responsibility as a solution to problems that have little to do with individual choice. Codifying wellbeing into a competition with cash prizes—let alone using “wellness” as a criteria for hiring in the first place—posits that every worker can and should be striving for a particular set of (employer-determined) physical and mental goals that they could all reach if they just tried.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/E1ZMlThOtZc/u-haul-decides-to-stop-hiring.html

You've seen Mike "Beeple" Winkelmann's work before hereNice animation of Zuckerberg as giant cyborg spider enjoying Facebook's nipple-free techno-utopiaand now Avery White interviewed him for Vox. He "works in a room with side-by-side 65-inch TVs constantly tuned to CNN and Fox News and on computers that are suspended above a bathtub because their 12 combined graphics cards generate too much heat." Read the rest

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/vwa-kFe32YQ/interview-with-beeple-artist.html

In remarks to reporters about the U.S.-led assassination of top Iran general Qasem Soleimani, House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff [D-CA] said that the United States must now “expect retaliation” by Iran, which today vowed a “crushing response” against the United States and its allies.

Said SCHIFF:

“I have yet to be fully satisfied that the administration has a strategy, that this is part of some broader coherent plan.

“And this concerns me.

“When someone seeks a war, they end up in a war.

Right now we need to protect our personnel ... and expect Iranian retaliation.”

Just asked Schiff what the "imminent" threat was to the US. "The question is .. why this administration made the decision ... when other administrations in both parties decided that would escalate the risks not reduce them. I have yet to get an adequate answer to that question." pic.twitter.com/SZ5kS7bTXk

 Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 3, 2020

House Intel Chair @RepAdamSchiff after being briefed on air strike in Iraq says he has “serious concerns about the prospect of a serious escalation of this conflict with Iran”

 Alex Moe (@AlexNBCNews) January 3, 2020

Schiff, who just got briefed, added: “And to me the greatest deficiency here is the strategic vision or lack of vision by the administration about how any of these actions - how this maximum pressure campaign is supposed to work.”

 Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 3, 2020

House Intel Chair @RepAdamSchiff says he is concerned about path on with Iran. Asked about the risks here in US says that the paramount risks are elsewhere but there is an increased risk anywhere after air strike pic.twitter.com/fjaNRiKKAH

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/KRb02WGO0vg/house-intel-chair-adam-schiff.html

PHOTO - In this 2016 photo released by the office of Iran's supreme leader, Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, center, attends a meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran. Soleimani was killed yesterday in U.S. airstrike on the Baghdad airport in Iraq.

As the U.S. sends some 3,500 additional troops to the mideast, Washington Post reporter Mustafa Salim [@Mustafa_salimb on Twitter] describes the mood in Baghdad as grim.

In the Washington Post today, he writes, “Streets were quiet. Many restaurants were deserted. Along checkpoints down the streets, young soldiers and militiamen clutched their weapons tight."

A young protester tells him: “World War III is about to happen."

Hope that kid in the street is wrong. Iran has vowed to exact “severe revenge” on the United States after air strikes killed Qasem Soleimani.

Excerpt:

Iraqis know well what it means to be trapped in a bloody shadow war between allies Iran and the United States. Some referenced the feeling of calm before the storm that pervaded the days before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. “It’s just like 2003, but we have social media this time,” one woman wrote in a post.

In Tahrir Square, the epicenter of anti-government protests that have swept the country and decried Iranian influence over Iraq’s politics, early morning celebrations over Soleimani’s death gave way to a darker mood. Many said they feared a violent assault by Iran-backed militias, as they have already witnessed several times in recent months. Unlike previous Fridays among the protesters, there were no chants, activities or free food.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/6WcI7KBvYes/iran-war-as-u-s-sends-3500.html

“Gas taxes pay for the upkeep of our roads, but electric cars don't use gasoline,” Jonathan Gitlin writes at Ars Technica.

In the United States, the upkeep of our public roads has traditionally been paid for by the taxes we pay at the fuel pump on gasoline and diesel fuel. As more Americans buy and drive electric vehicles and hybrids that use less gasoline, gas tax revenue continues to drop in relation to the total number of vehicle miles traveled each year.

States like Utah are trying something new: shake down the electric vehicle owners for new money.

Here's more from today's Ars Technica piece, which notes that Oregon has been at it for a while with a similar program:

As a result, some states are starting to grapple with the problem of how to get drivers to pay for the roads they use in cars that use less or even no gas per mile. At the start of this year, Utah has begun a pilot Road Usage Charge program, coupled to an increase in registration fees for alternative fuel vehicles. Assuming a state gas tax of 30c/gallon and 15,542 miles/year driven, Utah says it collects $777 a year from a 6mpg heavy truck, $311 from a pickup getting 15mpg, $187 from a 25mpg sedan, $93 from a 50mpg hybrid, and nothing from anyone driving a battery EV.

So in 2020, Utah is increasing vehicle registration fees. In 2019, registering a BEV in Utah would cost $60; in 2020 that will be $90, increasing to $120 in 2021.

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/9QUvh9EojIM/as-gas-tax-revenue-declines.html