fkb.me
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 28, 2012
I’m expecting this to be a very short post today, but I know how I am so we’ll see. Anyway, since I call this blog I’m Just Sharing I thought I’d share this one with you.
 |
Our buddy Tristan Higbee, who’s really not blogging all that much anymore but still maintains a casual relationship with people at his site called The Aloof, has a new venture that’s very interesting for those of us who love not only reading books but getting them for free.
It’s called fkb.me, hence becoming the first post I’ve ever written that’s all in small letters because that’s what the site is. It stands for “Free Kindle Books” and what it does is list many of the free books that Amazon sets up to be downloaded for free every day.
I’m not sure how he’s done the automation, and he states he’s making some money off it, but basically he’s got it set up so that you can check one of 6 different categories every day, look through the list to see what you might be interested in, click on those and let it take you to the Amazon page, and if you have a Kindle or a Kindle app on your computer you can download the books. If you don’t have either of those you can read it with some free program that Amazon allows you to use; I don’t know that much about it since I have the Kindle app on my smartphone. The categories are: nonfiction, fiction, language learning, poetry, food and children/young adults.
Now, these aren’t best sellers, so if you’re holding out for the latest Grisham novel you’re going to be out of luck. But there are some gems here and there, and maybe you’ll remember a few days ago when I helped promote Beverly Mahone’s book Don’t Lie, which was a free download for a couple of days. I’ve read some pretty good books and I’ve suffered through a couple of dogs. Some are very short; one “book” was about 30 pages. Still, they’re free, so you “pay” your money and you take your chances.
By the way, you need to pay attention because these exclusives don’t last too long, so if you click on the link at the wrong time of the day the books might not be free anymore. And some books stay free for more than a day, so if they’re on the list and you want to take a chance to look at them, do so. One last piece of advice; check the reviews at the bottom and if there are some with 3 stars or less, look at those before you look at the good reviews.
Wow, guess this wasn’t so short after all. lol
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell
Black Web Friday – 4/27/12
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 27, 2012
It’s another week of Black Web Friday, and during the week I was reminded once more why I started this process to begin with. One of my friends wrote to tell me about another list of top 50 whatever online. At least this list had 2 people of color on it, but my friend wrote anyway to ask why there were only 2, and the woman’s answer was that these were the only 3 she’d ever talked to online.
 |
Well we can’t have that now can we? After all, the internet is replete with people of color, supposedly one of the fastest growing demographics for creating websites and blogs in the nation… okay, that would be black people specifically, and I thought I’d best go back to that to be clear with my terminology. So let’s see who I can share with you this week.
The site Loop 21 is something a little bit different. It’s a site that has news and commentary like some other sites I’ve highlighted before, but it also has magazine-type articles that I find kind of interesting, and that’s what sets it apart from the others. It also partners with sites such as Huffington Post and the Daily Beast, both definitely not black sites, to show a bit of diversity in its coverage. Very entertaining site.
Okay, I’m not going to lie; I don’t do pilates. That doesn’t mean no one else does them, and even though it’s not my thing, I found the site Pilates For Fitness by Gina Jackson intriguing. She’s a certified Pilates trainer who looks like, well, she does Pilates, and her blog covers other health topics such as dieting, cleansing and yoga. It also has a very cool look and a standard commenting system; if you’re looking to get healthy and want more than learning about my new healthy eating ways, check it out because it deserves a lot more attention.
Are you looking to learn more about working a small business? If so you’ll want to check out Melinda Emerson’s blog and website Succeed As Your Own Boss. She has a lot of articles that pertain to running a small business and articles on how to make it easier to do business as well. She has a lot of bonafides including being a TV producer, and there’s a lot to learn here. And it’s a WordPress standard comment system; gotta love that.
Mavis Nong breaks the mold on Black Web Friday with her Attraction Marketing Online blog because she’s the first non-American, being from South Africa but living in England. I ended up deciding to include her here because she writes a lot of great stuff about, well, marketing online, and I felt that she deserved to be better known as well so she gets in. She adds talking about MLM to her list of ventures, though I’m not an MLM kind of guy, but I know some of you are so here’s a nice resource for you. One post in particular that I liked was when she talked about LinkedIn Marketing giving more of a tutorial for doing it right as opposed to when I talked about the reality of trying to market on LinkedIn. And for the second straight week, all the blogs I named here have the standard WordPress comment system; yay!
There you go, 4 sites to check out as we head into May; wow, it’s going to be May already! Enjoy the weekend and check these sites out.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell
How I’ve Lost 11 Pounds
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 26, 2012
For the last couple of months I’ve been part of a test being run locally on diabetics. Since I’ve been diabetic since 1997, I know a heck of a lot of it but have learned a few things here and there. It’s been an interesting process, and there’s still a ways to go.
 |
One of the things I’ve sort of been forced to do is look at foods I’ve been eating in a different light. I’ve had to track the meals I’ve been eating every day, along with the times. I was given a book to help me “diagnose” certain things in certain foods and come up with daily totals. One week I had to measure carbohydrates and try to stay under a certain number. Another week I had to measure fat, and another week I had to measure protein.
Some of the numbers were eye opening. I was told that I was supposed to be having less than 55 grams of fat a day. That meant that what I’d been eating for breakfast, a meal I normally skipped but was told that I needed to try to eat during this study, was putting me on the wrong road immediately. Turns out 2 English muffins with butter and peanut butter was 37 grams of fat; ouch. One day I went to a restaurant for lunch and had 6 grilled shrimp, 1/2 rack of ribs, a small baked potato with butter and broccoli; that meal came to 71 grams of fat. You don’t even want to know how many grams of fat one trip to one of my favorite restaurants was, where I had a burger, fries and ice cream.
I was also told that I’m supposed to eat around 4 – 5 carb groups a day. That’s between 60 and 75 grams of carbohydrates per meal, 4 meals a day; yes, I was supposed to eat 4 real meals a day. My English muffin breakfast was at 4 carb groups, so there it was a fine meal. But that second meal I mentioned above came in at 6 groups, and the third meal I mentioned came in at 9 groups; definitely not good.
Once you start thinking about how you eat, you’re ready to make some changes. That’s probably the goal of the program in the first place, getting us actually thinking about it instead of just knowing it. There was also an occasion to view a movie online that my wife sent me called Knives Over Forks that my wife sent me via email that I had no plans on fully watching, but I’m glad I did. There was a guy in the movie who described symptoms that I often feel, and except for the fact that he also had high blood pressure and a cholesterol level that blows mine away (as in way too high), his symptoms matched mine.
I decided to change up my eating habits for awhile, just to see what would happen. The movie talks about a “plant-based” diet, which of course means more of a vegetarian diet, and that was going to be an issue since I eat few vegetables. I had to think about what I would eat. I like spinach and I like beets, both of which stuns many people because I guess it’s not a favorite of anyone else.
I decided I had to change up how I ate spinach, because I would boil it to death then add lots of butter and salt. I decided I was going to saute it in olive oil along with a few other vegetables that I will eat, those being cabbage, onions and carrots.
I also knew I had to toss some kind of meat in there to help make me full because there was no way just eating vegetables would last me longer than maybe an hour. To that end I decided to go with chicken, shrimp and salmon. I have more of the vegetables than the meat, but it’s a nice mix. Along with some spices, I’ve been surprised by how much I like this meal, and my wife has even bought fresh baby spinach, which not only cooks really fast but brings a better taste than the frozen spinach I’ve always purchased.
Obviously I couldn’t only eat this though. So I bought salad stuffs and have that from time to time, and even though the fat content of the only dressing I eat might be a bit high, since it’s the only real fat I have it’s fine for an occasional meal. I also discovered lactose-free milk, being lactose intolerant, and the dietician recommended eating bran and corn flakes if I liked it, which I always have. Since I buy 2% milk it’s only around 5 – 10 fat grams per bowl. And when I eat out I’ve been eating Caesar salads with grilled chicken, grilled shrimp or both.
Oh yeah, y’all knew I just couldn’t totally leave my sweets. So I get to have one chocolate milk a day if I want and I get to break from Friday dinner time through Saturday midnight. However, I’ve found that when I break from the other meals that I can’t eat all that much, so I’ve brought foods home and thus not had to buy a second meal out unless my wife ate what I brought home.
The question is what changes have I noticed? I still don’t sleep all that well, but I’ve only had a couple of instances where, after eating, I’ve felt bad, and none of it was due to the new foods I’ve eaten, but due to eating something when I didn’t have a choice to eat healthy, such as at a couple of meetings, and in those cases my chest burned and one meal put me to sleep 30 minutes after I got home. Not feeling bad after many meals is a major step forward.
The big two, however, are that my glucose level overall has come down, and I lost 11 pounds in less than 3 weeks; whoa! I expected the first might happen, but never thought about the second at all. Frankly, the second one is having a bigger impact on my staying good than the first, because it’s been 6 years since I’ve been able to actually lose some weight, and right now I’m at my lowest weight since 2006; just amazing. I’m 10 pounds from the weight I was able to get down to back then, and if I can continue this I’ll get there.
Oh yeah, I have done some exercising as well, but I haven’t gone overboard. I’ve maybe exercised 2 or 3 times a week, mainly walking, and that has a big influence on my glucose, and the cardio probably doesn’t hurt with the weight loss either.
I don’t want to say my buddy Evelyn is right, but I guess I have to say she was on the right track. I’m not going to become a fanatic, and I know that at some point I’m going to have my ice cream and cake. But I think this is a meal plan I can stick with easy enough because it doesn’t cost as much as what I’d been doing, cooks fairly quickly, and I like it. Still, I might have to find something else I’ll eat besides spinach that I don’t feel I need to add a bunch of butter to.
So, what do you think? Is this something you could do for yourself?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell
Get “Don’t Lie” By Beverly Mahone For Free Today
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 25, 2012
There wasn’t a post planned for today, which ends up helping our friend Beverly Mahone a great deal, and you as well, and I guess me because I have another day to write another post and that never hurts.
 |
Some of you know that recently Beverly released her latest book, which I wrote about, titled How To Get On The News Without Committing Murder. Well, last January she’d released a different book titled Don’t Ask And I Won’t Have To Lie, which did pretty well and even spawned some kind of reality card game that turned out to be really popular.
For a short time, as in a day, Amazon is releasing her book at an ebook for free, part of their one-click program that I actually use to download books here and there. Often you don’t know what you’re really getting when you do something like that, but in this case since I wrote a review on this blog you can know exactly what you’re getting. And her book got no greater endorsement than the fact that my wife read it, and she doesn’t read almost any books. 
Here’s a little blurb Beverly wrote:
“I am giving away a FREE digital copy of my book ‘Don’t Ask and I Won’t Have to Lie‘. You don’t have to have a Kindle reader to download. Amazon will give you an Amazon Cloud Reader for FREE. Help me take this book to Number 1! (Even if you’ve purchased a printed copy, please download the free one) If you do and let me know, I’ll send you a bonus THANK YOU gift. Here’s the link“.
There you go; short post and a free book to boot. So, what are you waiting for?
How To Focus Better – A Review
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 24, 2012
I get free stuff all the time, both through regular mail and email. I received this manual titled “How To Focus Better” by Hulbert Lee and debated where the best place might be to post a review on it. I also debated how to review it. In the end, I’m going to play it straight forward, which usually is what I do anyway.
 |
It’s a very short manual, which is why I’m calling it that instead of a book. At 44 pages, which includes the cover page and table of contents, I wasn’t really sure what I was getting, but it looked good. And when I read the first part of it, which was talking about what focus was and talking about the brain, I started to believe I wasn’t going to like anything about it.
Then it started getting better. The overall truth about the manual is that if you’ve ever spent any time reading books on how to live a better life, then you’ll have seen a lot of this, with some variations on the theme. Within chapter titles like Energy, Clarity and Accuracy, Lee gives short and peppy advice on what you can do to move towards these things. Taking energy as an example, advice like get more sleep and exercise more is something you’ve heard before, and he gives you ideas on how to try to achieve these things.
The last part of the manual has more to do with changing your mind to try to achieve some of the things you want in life, things that might help you focus on your goals. Something that I found interesting is when he talked about identifying your values and the possibility of having to shift your values if you’re concentrating on the wrong thing. For instance, instead of dreaming about buying a new car change your value to something like wanting to achieve success, being more patient, or even focusing on what you need to do to move in a positive direction.
My overall impression is that some of you might have read this stuff before, but it’s a good manual to have because it’s short and punchy. Once you get past the very early part of the book everything else is kind of uplifting and will get you going if you need a boost. And it’s easy to refer back to if you ever need to do such a thing, which you probably will. I say this because I actually read this back in February after he sent it to me and I’m just getting around to writing the review, which might make it seem like my focus wasn’t that good. However, as I think about where I am right now, I can honestly say that I put a few of these things into practice and many things in my life have improved since then. So, maybe in its own way it got through to me without knowing it.
Check out the link above, which will take you to his site where you can get this manual. I think it’s worth your time to check it out.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell
I'm Just Sharing is where I share my thoughts on internet marketing, writing, blogging and many other things. You never know what I'll be posting on. So keep coming back, read, enjoy, and buy something! ;)
