http://www.erinbilly.com Thoughts on the test prep business, websites, and a few other things. Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:49:13 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Today was the first day of our summer school at TestMagic. As is always the case, I've been pretty nervous for the past few weeks while enrolling students, coordinating schedules for our teachers, and deciding on the best materials to use with our new students. And as always, today once ... http://www.erinbilly.com/test-prep/first-day-of-sat-summer-school-at-testmagic-2007/ Problem: A lot of my CDs are scratched and therefore skip when I try to play them. Solution: Buy a machine to remove those CD scratches. I bought a Disc-Go-Pod PLUS for about $500. My review: First impressions Wow, this is small! It's bigger than a roll of toilet paper, but smaller than a ... http://www.erinbilly.com/reviews/review-of-the-disc-go-pod-plus/ Just got this via FedEx Ground today. I remember because the delivery guy was on his cell phone jabbering away in Brasilian Portuguese outside my door. (What's with San Francisco delivery drivers and Brasilians, anyway? I swear they've got half of the driving jobs in the City!) So the Google ... http://www.erinbilly.com/adsense/google-gift-2006/ I used to have this really wonderful and stylish black plastic Waterman fountain pen I bought in Paris. It had an orange clip and cost about US $5 (30 francs, I think.). It was cool because it looked good--the plastic was a kind of nylon-like softish plastic with a matte ... http://www.erinbilly.com/blog/a-black-plastic-waterman-fountain-pen-from-france/ San Francisco Chronicle Interviews Erin (Article has a photograph, too.) Last week I was interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle (by Ellen Lee) about the CD-swapping site lala.com (see my review of lala). I talked for a while, a bit more than 30 minutes, if I recally. A freelance photographer (Megan ... http://www.erinbilly.com/blog/interviewed-by-the-san-francisco-chronicle/ If you've never heard of lala.com, here's the quick run-down: a bunch of really smart people, with lots of seed money, have set up a system whereby you can trade CDs with other people for a dollar or so. It's basically an intermediary for CD trading. To simplify further, to trade ... http://www.erinbilly.com/reviews/review-lala-com/ Yeah, I know it was an obscure DC 'zine before zines were cool, but I loved this publication. And I talked to the publisher, Linda, a bunch of times at various clubs, including the short-lived Pub Club and Cagney's. To this day, I remember Love Monkey: Love monkey, love monkey, set me ... http://www.erinbilly.com/blog/the-duckberg-times/ I dabbled in photography in college and even took a few classes as electives. I enjoyed them, but my teacher (Dr. Mary Hammond) was very old-school, and never let us use any of the various technologies available to us. She said all you needed was a Pentax K1000, a good ... http://www.erinbilly.com/reviews/nikon-f100/ I have been using vBulletin and Invision Power Board on different sites for several years now. I know that many people will want to know only my final decision, and to cut to the chase, I will say now that I much prefer vBulletin. But please keep in mind that ... http://www.erinbilly.com/reviews/vbulletin-vs-invision/ My father always had the best handwriting of anybody I knew. He had a knack for giving even the shortest note look a touch that gave it a special impact. And at the time his writing instrument of choice was a brown flair ben, the one with the small white plastic ... http://www.erinbilly.com/blog/a-brown-flair/