Opting Out From Twitter Using Your Offsite Activities To Select Ads

Twitter just announced that they will now allow advertisers to target ads to you based on information about you from places other than Twitter, such as what you do on other websites and with personal email addresses.

If you don’t like the sound of that, here’s how to opt out:

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Raw Vegetable and Fruit Juicing At Home – Part 2

In Part 1 I discussed pros and cons of different types of juicers. Now that I have mine, what am I doing with it?

Actually, the first thing I did was break it! My Omega arrived without a “pusher” (designed to safely push items through the somewhat narrow feed chute). The dealer immediately mailed me one, but I was impatient to start. I substituted using a plastic chopstick to push down the vegetables – but pushed too far. The result: pieces of the stick going through the auger before I could shut it off shattered the juice strainer (pictures here).

But now that I have all the necessary parts, here’s what I’m juicing:

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Raw Vegetable and Fruit Juicing At Home – Part 1

“Juicing” (raw vegetables and fruit, not athletes on steroids!) has been a health tactic-verging-into-diet-fad for some years, and lately has gotten a lot of press. Many supermarkets now carry commercial brands of juices and smoothies, plus juice bars and shops sell everything from just-pressed juice to entire regimens of delivered juices and fasting support.

Personally I’m not big on “fasting” or “cleansing” to extremes – but I’m not great about eating enough vegetables. I also wasn’t interested in paying up to $10 for 16 ounces of juice!

About 7 years ago I bought a cheap juicer, but it was such a pain to use and clean that I put it on a shelf and eventually gave it away. Recently a Facebook friend posted about using her old but reliable Omega juicer, which got me interested in researching what machines were available and easier to use regularly. I was willing to spend more to get a better performing juicer after calculating the the cost savings if I were to have two 16-oz servings of juice per day:

2/day = 14/week – at a local juice business’ prices the cost is $133-140 per week.

vs

A $250 juicer plus $30/week in organic vegetables/fruit from Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s brings me out ahead of store-bought in just 3 weeks!

Yes, I could buy much cheaper juice products at the local grocery, but when you read the labels of those you will find they lean heavily on fruit juices and can have total sugar content the same as or higher than a can of Coke!

In this post I’ll describe the various types of juicers – a future post will cover how I’m using mine.

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General Business Gig Booking Considerations – Weddings

Some time ago I posted a tip about how to determine the going rate to charge for a GB (general business) gig, such as a wedding, party, etc. But there is more to being a successful GB musician than setting a price. Here are some questions to ask and elements to consider when requested to perform for a wedding or other ceremony – this is based on my reply to a recent wedding inquiry, but much of it is applicable to other events:

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