Author: kathleen

I love my job.  This is my third year anniversary of teaching online. In theory we can have school based students but that has not happened yet. Well, once, but the student didn't finish the class.

I teach students from third grade to senior in high school.  Since most take the classes as enrichment I have the opposite schedule from most teachers.  I am busiest in the summers, weekends and evenings.

The biggest benefit is the biggest drawback. I can teach anywhere, anytime. At the same time, I don't know when I am going to be busy. Today is a good example. I woke up with 9 hours on my time sheet – our week for pay purposes starts on Monday. One day had 0.75 hours. 

Today, I woke up with an hours work and by the time I finished, it was 1 and half. It's almost 2:00 and I have put in another 0.75 hours and I have at least an hour waiting on me. I left the house afraid I wouldn't get to the gym and have gotten two emails while typing this. 

Not complaining but the day is getting full. I have had at least 3 days I got seriously concerned that I wouldn't get to everything and this one is starting to feel like it. 

My priority order is answer student questions, then parent questions.  Handle anything that is time sensitive like needing final project passwords .  Grading mid course assignments come last.  First assignments and assignments that students are having trouble with are higher priority.

This doesn't pay as well as a full time job, but it doesn't have the headaches. I have two out of town dog shows coming up. Haven't done that with this size student load.  It will be interesting. 

So I'm down to the following types of Mystery Shopping:

• Grocery stores in the very local area – got to go there
• Gas stations (but absolutely no audits) in the immediate area
• Shops that are fun and near somewhere I have to go anyway.  I did a jewelry store shop o the way to Jenny Craig this week.  That way I can expense the mileage.
• Food that pays and is stuff I really like.
• Web shops — I have one that has been going on once a month that pays $80.  I've done some others that pay $10 – $15.
• Phone shops — those vary.  I'm going an annoying one that pays $15.  You have to call daily.
• At home shops 
• Fun stuff that pays a bonus.  Even if a bit of a drive.

May I did $500.  I'm up to $350 this month.  Note: the last week of the month is the most heavily bonused.  

I'm also trying another type of IC job.  It's called InSite Inspections and I've done one.  What I like about this, is there is nothing to memorize and as of the second one, today, I can do it on my tablet and have all the data entry done almost as soon as I finish.  The first one I did on paper and it sucked.  I also made a mistake.

They pay okay, but you have to make a call to the site within 4 hours of accepting the assignment and do it in 48 hours.  So no advanced planning.

As for the technology bootcamp.  There is a Udemy course on Web Design I really like.  It's "The Complete Web Developer Course 2.0" and you can often find a good deal on it.  I'm not a big fan of video courses, but this one is good.  It has exercises so you can practice.

I've made it through his HTML and CSS sections and am working on JavaScript now.  I don't think that the CSS is sufficient, but it's a good start.  

I blogged about it at http://blogs.kweaver.org/blog/2017/04/mystery-shopping-update.html and probably meant to do it here.

Last month I did over $800 in Mystery Shops, most of them paid me less than $10.00  Yeah, that’s a lot of mystery shopping.

I had a bad week this week.  Just got back from my husband and I yearly vacation together.  Before I left, I booked a typical week like April.  Total fail. 

I missed important parts of shops, took really bad images, using a phone I bought for a mystery shop on the 26th.  I took it back, because it was horrible.

So I’m going to limit myself to phone and internet shops and a few high dollar shops from now on.

And I’m trying to get back to CSS again. 

It's an interesting way to earn some extra money. So far I have earned $10 in iTunes gift cards that I can use right away. They also have Starbucks and cash gift cards. 

I've been using Mobee to earn gift cards and cash at the stores and restaurants near me! Download for iPhone or Android using my referral code 2DCK and we'll both earn an extra $3 worth of points when you complete your first mission.2DCK

Sent from my iPhone

The next section is all about color:

http://htmldog.com/guides/css/beginner/colors/

It mentions all the different ways to describe color, from key words, to hex code, rbg, and even HLS colors.

Either color or background color can be used:

p {

     color:  green;

     background-color: black;

}

Note that you need to surround CSS with { and } and delimit by : and ;

; end the css

: splits the selector and the property.

It’s always best to separate everything with white space, and not only makes it more readable, but easier to change.

Obviously it’s my CSS block that is slowing me down.

There are three ways to apply CSS.  I’m always like doing it backwards, because I think External Stylesheets are the most important.

http://htmldog.com/guides/css/beginner/applyingcss/

Every website should have one external style sheet.  It should apply to every page.  Occasionally you might want more than one, but only occasionally.

Internal stylesheets are for when you want one page to look different.  I’m serious about the one page thing.

Inline styles are for when you one to make a one-off change.  Think really hard before you do.  If you ever apply the same change more than once, it shouldn’t be in with the HTML.  Same goes for the inline.