Nate Shivar

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Products

Rain Barrel Review

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A few months ago, I got a free rain barrel & kit from the City of Atlanta Department of Watershed Management after attending a short workshop.

I attended mainly because we were having drainage issues & standing water on the side of our house. I really didn’t want to install a french drain system or do any digging at all. Generic Internet research led me to rain gardens though, like most Internet solutions, the steps seemed *way* too involved for what was basically planting plants & increasing soil depth.

Either way, I went to the workshop and figured that a rain barrel would just be a nice bonus.

*Not in Atlanta? Get a kit from Rain Barrel Depot or Amazon. Amazon also has a whole selection of full-size barrels plus the kit.

I had heard of rain barrels before. But I thought they took forever to fill up and were more of a potential nuisance than a truly useful tool.

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The Hot Sauce Test

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I’ve used hot sauces for years. In high school, Tabasco went on all my sandwiches. Hot sauce went on all my tacos and Tex-Mex food. During college, I went through a phase of hunting down (then) rare and hard to find Habanero pepper-based sauces.

But in recent years, I started phasing out hot sauces out of neglect more than anything. I put Texas Pete Original on roast beef but never went beyond into more adventuresome sauces (though my fellow millenials kept the trend up).

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Capital One 360 Savings / Money Market Account Review: My 4 Pros & Cons After 13 Years

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Not enough people talk about their finances. For whatever reason, we’ll talk and write about our favorite products – but never about things like banks, lawyers, or doctors. I do a lot of book reviews, but wanted to venture out with something a bit different – a Capital One 360 Savings Account / Money Market review.

See Capital One’s Current Account Options & Rates

Back on January 6, 2006, I ditched my local banks’ one-tenth of 1% interest rate on my personal savings (at the time), and signed up for ING Direct. At the time, online banking was still a new industry. It’s now very normal will a ton of companies to choose from.*

*I also signed up for their Venture Rewards credit card, which has a higher total payback than cashback cards.

In the 13 years since I signed up, ING Direct has become Capital One 360®, and is now one of the largest online banks in America. After 13 years of banking with them, here’s my pros and cons of Capital One 360 (and online banking in general).

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One Year of Running In Vibram Fivefingers Bikilas

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I started running distance when I was 10 years old, and continued throughout high school. I was never particularly fast, but it was enjoyable and something athletic I could do.

I had shin splints, hurt ankles, and all the rest of runner’s woes – to the point that I slowly tapered off in college.

In 2010 – I had some friends who encouraged me to get back into running and had me read Born To Run by Chris McDougall, followed by Four Hour Body (running chapter).

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Why Free Software Should Be Very Suspicious

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Shopping for invoicing software.

Now that I have your full and rabid attention, here’s why you should not trust free software by default.

The Quick Story

After 6 months of ignoring my invoicing system, and working with a duct-taped system of PayPal and Google Docs templates – I was tired of looking a bit unprofessional and feeling disorganized.

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