Congratulations to Rich for winning a copy of No Limits.

One Halloween long ago...

Articles with valuable advice…

• Are you a freelancer writer or journalist entre-preneur? Great words for thought. I consider myself a small business that provides writing services. Writing isn’t all I do — I still have to do marketing, networking and all that fun stuff.
• How to Work ON Your Business, Not IN it: Step back… breathe… think…
• It Takes All Kinds: How does a really bad book keep selling?
• The World’s Greatest Marketer: How a woman’s powerful plight turns her into a strong marketer and what we can learn from her.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• @tweetsofold: Follow @tweetsofold for fascinating and funny headlines from old timey newspapers.
• Is It Normal?: We all have questions (not me, of course — heh) that make us wonder whether we’re normal… but we don’t have the courage to ask. Now you have a place to find out.
• 25 Inspirational Pumpkin Carvings: Death Star is most impressive — can’t believe pumpkin didn’t cave.
• Top Ten Mouthwatering Museums: Chocolate… Do not view on empty stomach unless you don’t mind raiding the nearest pantry or convenience store.

• Novice Authors Must Promote Themselves: Fabulous and insightful article that every writer oughta read [Link: Rachelle Gardner].
• 8 Tips and Resources for Managing Your Business Finances: I rely on QuickBooks for my business and MS Money for balancing the accounts fast [Link: Freelance Switch].
• Tips for Writing a Long or Short Author Bio for Magazine Articles: I try to update my bio on a regular basis and create a short, medium and long version so it’s ready whenever I contribute an article.
• Beast Books: a sign of times to come: Shorter books created faster.
• 69 Free (or low cost) Tools to Improve Your Website: From @thegrok’s good buddy and mine.

And the fun stuff because we need to have fun!

• Etsy Loves Pet Costumes: Fave: Dog Marley.
• Showcase of Designs Optimized for iPhone: Wow. Looks like full-fledged sites. Not enough to get me to switch from BlackBerry though.
• 15 Designs Inspired by Tetris: Who knew a video game can inspire such designs? It looks like a natural.
• Artwiculate: Twitter-based Word of the Day competition. Learn a new word and have fun doing it!

• How to Pre-screen Prospects with Your Book
• Writing That Comes from the Source.
• The Four “P” Approach: Persuasive Writing That Works.
• Outsourcing: What’s Your Policy?
• Know the nursery rhyme, The Lion and the Unicorn? Here’s a parody: The Writer and the SME.
• Forvo: Pronunciation guide. Need to add Meryl, two-syllables-not-one and rhymes with Cheryl. Oh wait, it’s already in there as Meryl Streep, of course.
• Aggregated Twitter tools: Brian Solis and lldoolj2 [Links: kanter]

And for fun because we’re allowed especially today on Halloween!

• 50 strange buildings: They’re not wearing costumes either.
• Electopedia: Guide to everything McCain and Obama. Americans, please vote if you haven’t already. Every vote matters.
• Twitter on Election 2008.

Happy Halloween!

• Duarte Pumpkins 2008.
• Halloween carving templates.
• Punny costumes.

My hand is dressed up for Halloween as a mummy. It has a bandage on it because I jammed my thumb big time in an attempt to dive for a ball in a tennis match.

Daycare Nightmare: Mini-Monsters puts me in Halloween spirit in an instant — not the candy corn or my son’s carved pumpkin. This time management sequel to Daycare Nightmare surpasses its original, but doesn’t take the game to the next level.

Molly returns as the manager of the monstrous daycare where she cares for mini-monsters of every kind. Monster families know and trust her now after their experience with her in the original game. However, the monster families still don’t trust humans especially with the Bureau of Out of Ordinary Operation (B.O.O.O.) agents on their tails.

Monsters now have the ability to wear human disguises to help them blend better with the human occupied suburbs. Not only does Molly need to deal with the B.O.O.O., but also Tut and an informant known as Deep Change. These three enemies force her to move to several locales while Tut hampers Molly’s efforts to build the daycare center.

She takes care of four new monster babies including witches, werewolves, monkeys and mummies. She also takes on human agent babies whose parents obviously work B.O.O.O. agents.

Molly works as hard like any other daycare worker, but has to deal with a consequence few do. These monsters come with the ability to mess things up big time if she doesn’t keep them happy.

Agent babies drive down the happiness meter, witches move babies to new locations, werewolves scare babies that they change their current needs to confuse Molly, and monkeys turn her into a dizzy person as they shake the room. The mummies are the worst as they put a curse on her to make it impossible for her to pick up any babies.

This means players need to decide which monster to help first when the babies need something at the same time. Which is worse? The mummy’s curse or the witch’s transporting babies?

Molly can upgrade furniture from Melinda’s store, but it hardly feels worth it. It takes a lot of money to upgrade and I lost my upgrades a couple of times. Not sure why.

Daycare Nightmare: Mini-Monsters doesn’t add much as a sequel. In fact, it would’ve been better if this game came out as the original. It brings new babies and easier control of Molly, although it still has a few control quirks as I find myself holding the same baby or no baby at times when I think I switched them. At least, chaining works better than the original.

The difficulty level works great. It adapts to my play and slowly grows more difficult. By the last daycare center, I’m frenzied. Most time management games reach a frenzied pace too soon, but not Daycare Nightmare: Mini-Monsters — it’s its one perfect feature.

The game’s promotional materials indicate it comes with two modes, but I can’t find the endless mode known as One Hectic Day.

The game is too easy as I never lose a level, but it could make a great game for families with younger kids. If you didn’t play the original, try this one instead. If you have played the original, then don’t expect much — just more of the same. It may not be worth paying full price for another similar game with only new monsters. Daycare Nightmare: Mini-Monsters should’ve been a free upgrade for owners of the original.

Ah, I love Halloween. Such a fun day. Although it’s steered away from its original meaning, it gives us all (at least in the U.S.) an excuse to have fun at the office, school, and wherever. Received an email from a friend contains photos from a company that goes all out in decorating cubicles.

My little one gets to wear his costume to school today. He’s Leo from the The Little Einsteins. Not many people will recognize the character. He also has Rocket with all four of the characters, so you can see he looks like Leo complete with red-hair, glasses and orange stripe on the black shirt.

The other son is the scream ghost and the daughter is a pirate. Paul has a Big Bad Wolf costume that is a hit with the kids and I finally got myself one, Daisy Duck. It may be too warm for the wolfie costume as the high for today is supposed to be 80.

Steve Bass of PC World posted two entries with links to various Halloween fun. Poynter also has Halloween-related links.

Check out the monster pumpkin at Wall Street Journal.

Here’s a YouTube video of a pumpkin carving itself. Took a lot of time and patience! Showcase of pumpkins.

Parents enjoy Halloween. It’s the time after that becomes a problem… kids asking for candy every day until the loot is gone. Some trick ‘r treaters manage to get enough candy to last them till the next Halloween. What parent wants to deal with that or be tempted to steal a few for herself?

The solution? Trade candy for a prize. The more candy the child turns in, the bigger the prize. We did this with my oldest and started it last year with my middle child. It’s worked well. They only keep about five pieces, if that much … eat a couple of them after trick ‘r treating (hey, they walked a lot, so they gotta refuel!) and then save a couple for the next day. Then it’s over. Thank goodness.
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