The View From Here

Ladies and Gents!  I am proud to present to you my budget spreadsheet page.  If you look at the tabs across the top you will see one that says “Excel Budget”  Click it to go to the page devoted to this great new tool.

I am excited that I get to offer people something that they can use to get better control over their finances.  It is much better for you to control your money than to let it control you.  Using this budget can get you another step closer to this.

So without further ado, click the tab above or click here to see what it is all about!

Brian

Yes, I have added a new feature to my site.  Again.  If you look at the tabs across the top you will notice one that says “Forums”.  I have tried using forums in the past without much success but this time I have a better reason.  I am about to be releasing an Excel spreadsheet for download that I use for budgeting.  This thing has come a long way from when I stated it three years ago.  I now have it set up so that all you do is put in your information on a set up sheet and it builds your budget from there.  All you do then is track your expenditures through your checking account and it does the rest.  It should be ready to release soon.

That is the main reason I am deploying these forums but I hope they will also be used the people who take the time to read what I write to discuss things you read here, things you think are important, or random other topics.  I also want to provide a centralized place for my readers to put prayer requests up that they know they will be prayed for by myself and those who participate with them.  It will also give people a place to let others know what is happening in a situation with updates.  The Lord wants us to communicate with Him and one of the best ways to do it is on behalf of others.

Anyway, whether you use them or not, they are there.

Brian

This past weekend I spent some time updating a few things around my site.  Here is a list of some of the updates you might want to check out.

• The first thing to notice is the theme of my site.  I have chosen to go with this one as it provides the most flexible and attractive option in my opinion.
• The next thing you will notice is a short about me blurb on the right side with a link to the full about me page.  My About Me page has also been updated with a list of things you might find on my blog.
• In order to fit more things on my sidebar for your perusal I added tabs.  You can click on each of these to see what is under it.  I really like this feature.
• One of the additional things I have added is a Facebook-esque wall that you can write on.  I really doubt this will be used much but you are more than welcome to it.
• Another new item is a Google News feed.  You can see some recent news items under it.
• I know I have mentioned Google Reader here before.  It is a feed reader that I use and can share stories I find and think are interesting.  I now have a list of my shared stories on my sidebar.
• I keep an on-going list of quotes that I find interesting.  Those can be found by clicking the Quotes tab in the sidebar.  They rotate randomly.
• Make sure to check out my list of Blogs and Links as I try to update this frequently.
• Question:  Should I put an actual picture of myself on my blog or is the cartoon fine?

Brian

I haven’t done one of these in a while so I thought this would be appropriate.  Did you know that:

If you Google “brian casey” blog that my website shows up first in the search (as of this post, anyway).

How did I find this out? Let me tell you.  I was trying to figure out how people might be able to search for my blog via Google.  I was trying several things and not coming up with much.  If you search for superbrian it is the first item on the list.  This is the only search I had found before that picked my site up quickly.  Today I tried the above search and my site came up first in the list.  I just think this is interesting.  That’s all. You may go back to your lives, citizens.

Brian

I think I have a pretty good selection of themes to choose from now so I thought I would run a little poll to see what you would like to see.  First I would like you to notice on the right (in most themes, sometimes it is on the left) a drop down menu that lets you select different themes to see.  Use this to view the different themes and then vote for one.

I really appreciate you all taking time to help me out with this.  Oh, and Happy Independence Day!!

Brian