I saw this adorable Recycled container piggy bank on Babble.  I think I'll use a Downy container since it already has a pink cap.  It should be easy to paint or spray paint the blue part.  And I'll add some googly eyes and use some small cardboard circles for the legs.

Teach your kids how to save money and the earth by transforming an old softener bottle into this adorable piggy bank! Just add embellishments for the ears and eyes, cut a slit in the back, and your kids will be saving in no time! Plus, the built-in handle makes it easy to tote your riches around.

There are some other cute piggy bank ideas on Babble: http://www.babble.com/crafts-activities/8-fun-diy-piggy-banks-get-saving/

HP Printer Update popup won't go away

I get an HP Update popup box that won't go away no matter what I do. The message in the box is: "An update is available. Would you like to download and install this update now?"

Clicking on the box doesn't do anything and it is somehow set to stay on top of all other open applications. I can turn off the computer and turn the computer back on and the box goes away, but then it pops up again and won't go away, again.  Everytime I have this problem, I fix it and forget it.

After this google session, I found the answer here:
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Home-PCs-Pavilion-Presario/Update-notice-box-won-t-go-away/td-p/977349#.VBBvM2MXNYU


The following worked for me. Drag the "HP UPdate" box up the screen. Then press the 'Enter' key. A dialogue box then pops up asking you to confirm the update.  There's a "Settings" button that I set to Never notify me when there's an update.    Everything should work from there.

Dell Latitude E6530 touchpad not working

Short short answer:  Press Fn + F5
Wow, it's been a looong time since I last posted.  I'm only posting now so I can search for this next time it happens.  So my touchpad stopped working all the sudden, I tried rebooting my laptop but still no dice.  Since I work from home, this was a huuuuge problem.  I went digging around for a wired mouse I used to have for my old PC.  Blasted thing had a serial port connector,  my laptop only has USB ports.  I dug around some more for a wireless mouse I bought a while ago that I know had a wireless USB dongle.  Found it.  Even though this was working, I decided to find out what the heck could have happened.  I was assuming I needed to reinstall  the driver.  I found the answer here:

http://www.helpowl.com/q/Dell/LatitudeE6530/Troubleshooting/touchpad-working-dell-latitude-e6530/334847

They have you try several things, but I'll summarize what worked for me.
I went to the Dell support link from the above post.  I found the link to Disable/enable the touchpad.
Honestly, I don't hardly use my Fn button and my keyboard doesn't look anything like the pictures on that support page.   But I did start hunting around my keyboard and found the icon under the F5 button:

 Somehow I must have hit the Fn button while I was refreshing my browser with the F5 button.  As a web application developer, I should have known this....but now I know.