Leahs Cafe

All over the world, poor people who live in poverty-stricken areas are at the greatest risk for hunger and malnutrition. In poor countries, wars and natural disasters such as droughts and earthquakes may also contribute to hunger and malnutrition by disrupting normal food production and distribution.

But, in the land that has so many fat people, it’s hard to believe that malnutrition happens. :-) But someone can become malnourished for reasons that have nothing to do with hunger. Even people who have plenty to eat may be malnourished if they don’t eat food that provides the right nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. Parents who are raising picky eater for instance worry the child isn’t getting the nutrients necessary for proper growth and development, and will give supplement like pediasure to the child.

Malnutrition can affect people of every age, although infants, children, and adolescents may suffer the most because many nutrients are critical for growth and development. Older people may develop malnutrition because aging, illness, and other factors can lead to a poor appetite, so they may not eat enough.

We have decided earlier to get rid of credit cards, we do have a debit card that can be used in emergency situation, but we pay cash for everything else. What we find helpful is to have a  written household budget that assigned a name to every dollar of incoming fund. That ensure we first pay ourselves (saving for future) before we spend on anything else.

In December, we would put aside an amount of money for gifts and holiday shopping. Paying cash does help to keep you from getting carried away. If you plan to do most of your holiday shopping online and do not want to pay with credit cards, you may want to check out ebillme. Ebillme is a secure payment option that does not require a credit card, you pay for your purchase through your bank’s online bill pay portal!

Ebillme.com currently runs a contest in which you can tell your Shop and Confess story and win prizes of $500, $300 and $200.

Please mention the URL of this blog if you decide to enter the contest, so I could win and shop till I drop this Christmas!

All my previous teaching jobs required a lot of typing. I have never learned typing and do not know “touch typing” . Though I survived years with my two fingers typing skills, it took too much time to get all the notes and  exam questions typed out. Have you not secretly hoped that someone would invent a voice activated typing program, which you just have to speak and the words will be typed out for you? I have.

Guess what, looks like there is such a product in the market right now! It is the world’s first and foremost software product that recognizes and creates general text from normal speech.

Base on the assumption that most people can speak three times more words per minute than typing them out, that mean you can create documents and e-mails  three times faster with Dragon Naturally Speaking!

Supposedly with my result of Dragon’s typing speed test at 41 WPM, it could improve to be more than 120 words per minute, and that’s lightning speed when typing is concerned, isn’t that?

Does the software recognize voices of people who speak with different accents?  According to the following video, it does! As a non native speaker, I do wonder does it include people who speak with a foreign accent!