The Sheer Joy that is Dropbox

Dropbox should pay me for how much free advertising I give them. Or at least give me their great services for free. Which they do!

Dropbox is a web-based service that sets up a folder on your desktop (or wherever you choose to keep it) and automatically syncs whatever you put in it to the internet, and/or to folders on other computers that you set up. Essentially, it means that if you have two or more computers (say, home and work), you can have an identical folder on each computer.

Seriously?

No more carrying around a thumb drive? Exactly!

No more emailing files to myself and then editing them and forgeting which one is the latest version? Precisely!

Plus, they have a nifty online version of your folder (password protected, of course) so that if you can't download the program on your computer (like I can't at work), you can still see all your Dropbox files on the go.



And if you think that's it, oh no! There's more!

You can share files with other people on Dropbox. For example, my husband and I have shared folders for our budget stuff, insurance documents, and pet docs. My parents and I had a shared folder when we were planning our wedding, to keep track of our wedding budget, guest list, vendor contracts, and to-do lists. Our wedding DJ had a shared folder with us where he would drop in music for us to give him feedback on, which was much faster and more convenient than having him email us songs every day.

You get a bunch of space for free when you sign up, and if that's not enough, you can pay to get more space. Personally, I haven't run out of space yet, and use my account pretty liberally. As for safety goes, it is password protected and seems perfectly safe to me, but I don't have truly sensitive information uploaded, such as other account passwords or banking data.

There are lots of other uses for Dropbox, I'm sure, and I know there are plenty of features I don't use. Try it out and see if you don't squeal with glee at how much easier Dropbox makes your life!

Car Repair - Newlywed Style

The lesson learned this month had less to do with techy can-do's and more to do with using good new-fashioned googling to save some bucks. A few weeks ago, I went to roll down my car window and heard a not-so-delightful clacking sound. After talking over the options with my hubby, we decided that I should not roll down my window, given the possibility that it could fall into the door panel and break. Good plan, until I went to the drive-up window at the pharmacy, forgot all about the window, rolled it down, and it was rendered stuck. Open. Ugh.

I took it to the dealer to figure out the problem, to be told it would cost $600. Ugh again.

With my best can-do attitude, I did some googling to see if there were any other options. Happily, I found an incredibly thorough tutorial online for replacing window regulator clips (the fancy name for "my window won't go up the way it's supposed to"), found the parts on Amazon for under $100 and the husband and I decided we would do it ourselves!

Then we kind of got used to the window being down, and got busy with life, and forgot to replace it. Until I came out to my car one morning and it had been broken into. Technically, the window was down, so there wasn't much "breaking" required to get into the car, but the lousy guy who broke in had a nice time throwing my maps around and breaking off the handle to my locked glove box, in hopes of getting to my Steve Miller Band tapes, I guess.

Reminded by our friendly neighborhood thief that it was in fact time to get down to business changing the door parts, we set up in the garage last Saturday and got to work. The tutorial turned out to be fantastic - over 30 pages, with full color photos, showing how to remove every last piece, change the regulator clips, and put it back together.



We ran into a small snag when we discovered that my lovely VW car-builders had chosen to bolt in the speaker in a way that we had to make an emergency trip to the hardware store so my darling husband could have the pleasure of removing the bolts with a combination of a metal cutting drill bit thing, a metal wedge, and a big hammer.

All told, the project took about 5 hours and cost just $115. And turned out to be a great test of newlywed communication and teamwork skills. Luckily, we passed those tests with flying colors.