Still up to our eyeballs in boxes and of course, all the utilities hookups are not going smoothly (I’m talking to you, Comcast, and you, Atlanta Gas Light.) No heat or hot water so we’re staying in a hotel until that is resolved (tomorrow). Technically no cable or Internet and Comcast gave us the wrong phone number.

But it’s still Tech Tuesday here at Random Neural Firings so I thought I’d take my real-life moving fiasco and tell you what technology tools we’re using to make this easier.

First, let’s start with the moving company. We found a great one through Kudzu. Have you ever used them? The company we selected had rave reviews and indeed, they have been great to work with.

Second, with the cable fiasco, I don’t even mess around with calling customer service. I send out a tweet about it and generally, Comcast responds very quickly on Twitter and escalates it to corporate.

How do I tweet without Internet service, you ask? I have a Palm Pre smartphone with a Twitter application called Tweed. So yesterday, while the installer was here telling us what he couldn’t/wouldn’t do, I launched Tweed and had at it with some of the Comcast folks on Twitter.

So how am I creating this post without an Internet connection? Well, I could have done it last night from the hotel but I was too tired, and I was still dealing with Comcast until very late. I have a MiFi card from Sprint. It’s basically a portable Internet connection that is about the size of a credit card. It’s around $50/month and it allows you to have a good Internet signal from just about anywhere. Does your local coffee shop charge you for Internet service, like my new neighborhood shop does? Screw ‘em. Take your MiFi card with you. Is your hotel Internet connection so slow it feels like the old dial-up days? Screw ‘em. Fire up your MiFi. Are you WAITING FOR COMCAST to come back out and do what they were supposed to do in the first place? SCREW ‘EM and find a warm spot between a tower of boxes, boot up your laptop, fire up your MiFi and surf your troubles away.

Interested in any of these tech tools but need help? Drop me a note and I’ll be happy to assist. (sherean at gmail dot com)

OK, on a lighter, non-technical note, my 11-month old seems to be surviving the move pretty well. He’s been a bit fussy at times and he would NOT go to sleep the first night in the hotel, but he slept well the last couple of nights. And last night, he scooted/crawled forward for the first time! In the hotel! He’s obviously a late crawler, and usually all he does is scoot himself backwards or in circles but last night, he inched himself forward about a foot.

Of course, I immediately Facebooked and tweeted about it.

Come back tomorrow for a CUTE moving picture!

This site won’t win any design awards, but if you’re looking for serious insider help getting the best hotel rates, you won’t care what the site looks like. My hubby and I were planning a trip to NYC for our anniversary and I was coming up short with my usual research; the room rates in NY were stupidly expensive. Googling away, I found this site called BetterBidding.com. If you like to use Hotwire (and I do), they have all kinds of cheat sheets to help you figure out which hotels match up with your Hotwire search results. You can then go check those hotels out on TripAdvisor or another review engine and see if it’s a decent place. And if you still can’t figure it out, post a request for help on the boards and you’ll get very useful tips, rates, and links. It’s like having a travel agent who really knows how to “game the system.” Be sure and use the links they provide you; this guy makes his money through the referrals.

Do you keep a wish list on Amazon? I do. It’s a great way for me to keep track of things I’m interested in but don’t want to buy now. And it provides a handy cheat sheet for my in-laws when my birthday rolls around. But as much as I love Amazon, they don’t sell everything I love. (I do buy just about everything from them, including diapers and umbrellas!) What if I really want a darling little necklace from an Etsy seller? Wouldn’t it be great if I could add that to my Amazon wish list? Well, you can! Just use their Universal Wish List button. Drag and drop it into your web browser tool bar and any time you see something you like, simply click on the button and add it to your Amazon wish list. When your friends or family go shopping for you, they’ll see all your favorite things, including the ones that can’t be bought on Amazon.

UPDATE. Since I first posted this in June, some of you have told me about another great way to use Amazon’s wish lists: create wish lists for your children! That way, when birthday time or the holidays roll around, your friends and family will know what to buy. I know I’m always bugging my friends and relatives to give me a list of what their kids want. I love the moms who just send me a link, ya’ know? But a link to an entire wish list? Even better!

You’re busy, right? Too busy to wait on hold while a computer voice tells you which number to push, only to have to sit through another message to get the next command, when all you really want to do is to is have some fun, AND speak with a real live person! Icall it the “Voice Mail Jail.” Have you noticed that you can’t just press “0″ any more to get to a real person? It’s like they’re onto us or something.

Well, we’re onto them, too. Worth bookmarking, GetHuman.com gives you the short cuts to get through to a humanoid. The guys behind this site are on a mission for consistent standards, among other things.

That’s it for today’s tech tip. Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see us tip-i-fy.

And don’t forget to register for this week’s giveaway to win an outfit from CandyStick Lane or The JumpOff. Entries must be received by midnight Wednesday, 9/09. And we’ll announce a NEW giveaway this Thursday, and every Thursday this month.

You’ve got a career, a family, friends . . . you know, a life. You can’t find time to read all your emails, much less keep up with the news you want to read.

One of the most helpful things I’ve done is set up an RSS reader. What’s an RSS reader? RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. Your favorite websites and blogs (like this one) have an RSS feed that you can subscribe to. This will let you know when there is a new post and give you a quick summary of it (you can then decide to click thru to the full post).

You need to subscribe to these feeds in some sort of a reader. It’s like the personalized My Yahoo or iGoogle pages, both of which use RSS feeds to populate your selected content. But the one I like and use is Google’s Reader. It has a list of my feeds down the left hand side. I click on one and get summaries of stories (or blog posts) in a reading pane — just like email. I scroll through and scan and click if I want to read more. To add a site to your reader, just look for the RSS or Atom XML button on a site. (Sometimes, I do a CTRL+F which is a “find” shortcut and type in “RSS” to find the feed button.) Once you click on that, it’ll ask you where you want to put the feed, and there is almost always an option to add it to your Google Reader.

It’s simple once you get the hang of it. If you try it and need help, just shoot me a note and I’ll help you out.

One more thing: I often read news on my phone when I’m in waiting rooms or standing in lines. You can pull up your Google reader on most mobile phones and it optimizes the content for mobile viewing. That’s another tool I use to keep up with what’s going on and maximize my time a bit.

Subscribe to RandomNeuralFirings in a reader here and never miss a contest or cute baby pic ever again!

Let’s say you’re craving Indian food at 2:30 and can’t remember if that restaurant you like closes at 2:00 for lunch. You’re in your car, you’re pre-menstrual, and don’t have the number. What do you do? It’s simple, Nancy Drew. Simply send a text message to Google (466453) with the restaurant name and city and they will text you back the phone number. (Which, if you’re on a smart phone, you can probably just click on to dial.) Or let’s say you’re out and about and in the mood to see a movie but don’t know what’s playing or even what theaters are nearby. Simply text Google with the word “movies” and your zip code or city and they’ll kindly text you back the theaters, movies, and times. Oh, and Google SMS (Short Messaging Service a/k/a “text”) is FREE.

OK, but let’s say you’re pre-menstraul, craving Indian, AND your thumbs hurt too much to text. That’s o.k., Princess. Just CALL Google: 1 (800) GOOG-411 and tell them what you need. It’s like the old directory service 411 call, only it’s free. They’ll tell you the number, or connect you directly, and they’ll even text you the number for future reference.

You literally have the world at your fingertips.

Looking for a mortgage loan? Or maybe you want to put your savings in a CD? You can quickly search for the best interest rates at BankRate.com. I first used it when my husband and I were engaged and planning our wedding. We opened our first joint checking account together and I wondered if there were any that paid interest. I went on BankRate.com, found a checking account that did pay interest (with no minimum balance) and so began our financial tethering. While we were setting up that account, I noticed that the bank offered an equity line that was one point MINUS prime; my husband had been paying the standard one point PLUS prime. So we switched that over, too, while we were at it.

Great, useful site. We’ll be using it again soon as we search for the best mortgage rate (if we’re able to sell our house). Fingers crossed!

Got a tech problem or an idea for a future Tech Tip? Email me (sherean at gmail dot com) and I’ll do my best to help you out.

If you’ve ever gone to a site with a really long scrolling page (ahem, like this one!) and tried to find that one post you were looking for, you know how maddening it can be to scroll and scroll and scroll. . . look away for a second and you’ve passed the spot you were looking for. Fortunately, for impatient folks (or redheads like me), there’s a super simple shortcut: use the Control key and hold down the F key at the same time (Ctrl+F). It’ll pop up a little “Find” dialog box in the bottom left hand of your screen. See here in the example I posted? I was looking for the funny brownie pans that Unclutterer blogged about so I typed in “brownie” and the computer wizard popped me down to the first instance of the word and helpfully highlighted it for me. I’ve used this a lot lately scrolling through real estate listings. My husband will ask, “what about that house on Park Lane?” and I’ll go to the results page on Realtor.com which is a mile long, Ctrl+F it, and pop to that listing. Super simple and it’s your Tech Tip Tuesday!

Anything that saves me a few minutes is O.K. in my book. Well, almost anything. I can’t be bothered with a hot dog machine, for instance, no matter how much time it saves me.

But OpenTable? I love it! It’s an online restaurant reservation system. Free, of course. Friends coming to town and you’re looking for the perfect place for a large group? Or maybe you have a client you’d like to meet for lunch. Rather than call around to see who has a table, simply click your way around OpenTable. It’s super simple. You can even put in special requests for the restaurant such as “it’s my friend’s birthday” or “table next to the window please” or in my case, “do NOT let my dad pay for the meal no matter what he says.”

Sign up for a free account and earn rewards each time you book through them. Redeem rewards points for dining gift certificates (I’ve just earned a $20 one for doing nothing but booking my reservations online!).

They have great mobile apps, too. I’ve used that many times when I’ve been out and looking for a place to go to lunch. Just pulled up OpenTable on my phone and found the perfect spot.

Do you keep a wish list on Amazon? I do. It’s a great way for me to keep track of things I’m interested in but don’t want to buy now. And it provides a handy cheat sheet for my in-laws when my birthday rolls around. But as much as I love Amazon, they don’t sell everything I love. (I do buy just about everything from them, including diapers and umbrellas!) What if I really want a darling little necklace from an Etsy seller? Wouldn’t it be great if I could add that to my Amazon wish list? Well, you can! Just use their Universal Wish List button. Drag and drop it into your web browser tool bar and any time you see something you like, simply click on the button and add it to your Amazon wish list. When your friends or family go shopping for you, they’ll see all your favorite things, including the ones that can’t be bought on Amazon.

Ever wonder how people create those nifty PDF files? They must have the full version of Acrobat (translation: expensive!), right? Or maybe they’re using one of these nifty free tools that Mashable has so kindly catalogued. I use PDF995 myself and it works like a charm.

So now you can be like all the cool kids (i.e. graphic designers) and make your own PDF files.

You’ve got a career, a family,  friends . . . you know, a life. You can’t find time to read all your emails, much less keep up with the news you want to read.

One of the most helpful things I’ve done is set up an RSS reader. What’s an RSS reader? RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. Your favorite websites and blogs (like this one) have an RSS feed that you can subscribe to. This will let you know when there is a new post and give you a quick summary of it (you can then decide to click thru to the full post).

You need to subscribe to these feeds in some sort of a reader. It’s like the personalized My Yahoo or iGoogle pages, both of which use RSS feeds to populate your selected content. But the one I like and use is Google’s Reader. It has a list of my feeds down the left hand side. I click on one and get summaries of stories (or blog posts) in a reading pane — just like email. I scroll through and scan and click if I want to read more. To add a site to your reader, just look for the RSS or Atom XML button on a site. (Sometimes, I do a CTRL+F which is a “find” shortcut and type in “RSS” to find the feed button.) Once you click on that, it’ll ask you where you want to put the feed, and there is almost always an option to add it to your Google Reader.

It’s simple once you get the hang of it. If you try it and need help, just shoot me a note and I’ll help you out.

One more thing: I often read news on my phone when I’m in waiting rooms or standing in lines. You can pull up your Google reader on most mobile phones and it optimizes the content for mobile viewing. That’s another tool I use to keep up with what’s going on and maximize my time a bit.

Subscribe to RandomNeuralFirings in a reader here.

You’re busy, right? Too busy to wait on hold while a computer voice tells you which number to push, only to have to sit through another message to get the next command, when all you really want to do is to is have some fun, AND speak with a real live person! We call it the “Voice Mail Jail.” Have you noticed that you can’t just press “0″ any more to get to a real person? It’s like they’re onto us.

Well, we’re onto them, too. Worth bookmarking, GetHuman.com gives you the short cuts to get through to a humanoid. The guys behind this site are on a mission for consistent standards, among other things.

That’s it for today’s tech tip. I’m going to try and post these once a week on Tuesdays so come back and let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see us tip-i-fy.

Let’s say you’re craving Indian food at 2:30 and can’t remember if that restaurant you like closes at 2:00 for lunch. You’re in your car, you’re pre-menstrual, and don’t have the number. What do you do? It’s simple, Nancy Drew. Simply send a text message to Google (466453) with the restaurant name and city and they will text you back the phone number.  (Which, if you’re on a smart phone, you can probably just click on to dial.)  Or let’s say you’re out and about and in the mood to see a movie but don’t know what’s playing or even what theaters are nearby.  Simply text Google with the word “movies” and your zip code or city and they’ll kindly text you back the theaters, movies, and times.  Oh, and Google SMS (Short Messaging Service a/k/a “text”) is FREE.

OK, but let’s say you’re pre-menstraul, craving Indian, AND your thumbs hurt too much to text.  That’s o.k., Princess.  Just CALL Google:  1 (800) GOOG-411 and tell them what you need.  It’s like the old directory service 411 call, only it’s free.  They’ll tell you the number, or connect you directly, and they’ll even text you the number for future reference.

You literally have the world at your fingertips.