While at a cookout this past weekend, a friend of mine managed to get grease on her brand new shirt.  Although I have no idea how much said shirt would have cost, the look on her husband’s face when they noticed the new “beauty mark” tells me it was most likely not free.  And, as anyone who has ever gotten grease on anything knows, it’s nearly impossible to get rid of it. Luckily, we had a secret weapon again just such a stain:  my wife.  Without even thinking about it, she instructed our newly blemished friend to simply sprinkle some flour on the grease stain. To make a long story short:  the stain completely disappeared, my wife achieved rock-star status among our friends, and my fears of becoming the proud new owner of a shirt with grease and flour on it never came to fruition.

So, here is what you should do if you’re ever confronted with a grease stain on your clothes:

1. Find any everyday product that will absorb the grease.  The best products to use are baking soda, flour, or baby powder.
2. Sprinkle the powder directly on the stain and press onto the grease as hard as you can.  A good method of doing this is to go from the underside of the clothing and pinch the powdered area between your fingers.
3. After you’ve pressed the powder into the stain, you should be able to just brush it off.  If a considerable amount of powder remains stuck to the area, it means that all of the grease has not been absorbed and you need to repeat the above steps.
4. Prior to washing, sprinkle some powder on the area again and allow it to remain on their overnight.  This extra step will ensure that you don’t lock in a stain by washing the clothing with a little bit of grease left on it.
5. The next day, brush the powder off and wash the clothing as you normally would.

  I recently discovered TwitterJobSearch and am pretty impressed.  TwitterJobSearch searches Twitter posts for information about who is currently hiring.  The site currently boasts 42,524 new jobs located in the past seven days. That’s pretty impressive.  I could see this being useful to help generate leads and to get a general idea of what the job landscape of a particular industry looks like.

I can actually feel you shaking your head at the prospect of using Twitter to find a job and I understand where you’re coming from.  However, it’s important to take into consideration the current economic climate and to realize that innovation and thinking outside the box are what can make a big different in your job hunt.

I can’t help but share my favorite YouTube video.  I saw this video 3 years ago and still, to this day, laugh just as hard each time I watch it.  Enjoy:

Need a word processor but can afford Microsoft Word’s hefty pricetag?  Need to do some work with your photos but unwilling to fork over the small fortune it takes to purchase Photoshop? AlternativeTo has you covered.  This site provides alternatives to the most popular applications, both commercial and free.

The best part of AlternativeTo is the fact that you can vote on the suggested alternative and even make your own suggestions.

Lifehacker recently pointed out a new web application called Thrive that lets you plug in your financial data and then it analyzes it for you.  Some of the great features offered include:

• Help you identify precisely what you are spending your money on.
• Financial health score based on your current and projected financial stability.
• Budget creator.
• Suggestion service.

Mashable has a great post about how to track the swine flu outbreak online.  In order to track this outbreak, as well as future ones, they suggest:

1. Check the WHO Disease Outbreak News Center
2. Set Up Google News Alerts
3. Check the CDC Travel Notices for Outbreak Alerts
4. Find Where the Flue has Spread With HealthMap

To find out more about these methods, check over Mashable’s guide.

Here’s some interesting links I’ve come across the past few days that are worth a look:

• Bacon Sandwiches Speed Up Hangover Recovery  [via Lifehacker]
• Networking Without Power: Going Old School  [via Stepcase Lifehack]
• Easy Business Card Printing From Home  [via Lifehacker]
• Calculating the Optimal Workday Length  [via Stepcase Lifehack]

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been checking the mail every day expecting to find your refund check from the IRS.  And if you’re even more like me, you still have yet to receive your refund.  Lucky for us, I’ve found a link to the site where you can check the status of your refund check.  Click on the link below and you can check by entering your social security number, your filing status, and the exact amount your are being refunded.  

• Check Refund Status

Hope this makes the waiting less painful.

 I recently discovered a new web-based music player that has quickly become my favorite.  It’s      called MixTape.me and I can virtually guarantee that it’s going to become your favorite too.  This web application was designed to look and feel like a desktop music player.  Using it, you can easily create and share playlists, listen to music, learn about music, and watch videos.  There’s several reasons why MixTape.me stands out but below I’ll tell you about the two that were the deciding factors in making this my new favorite music player:  the playlists and the interface.

Playlists

My favorite part is the site’s playlists.  Here’s why they are such a big deal:

• Easily create playlists.  Once you search for the song you want, it’s as simple as drag-and-drop.  In fact, there’s a Quick Playlist drop box that makes it even easier than drag-and-drop.
• Easy to share playlists.  Each playlist has its own URL, which allows you to send a link to all of your friends, regardless of whether they have an account or not.
• Embed links.  Each playlist provides an embed link that allows you to post it on your website.
• Easily discover new music.  In addition to displaying the popular playlists and recent playlists, it also displays the username who created the playlist.  Found a playlist you like?  Since you and the creator obviously have similar tastes in music, you can click on its name and check out what other playlists have been created.  You can also follow that user to check out ones created in the future.

Interface

What more description do you need.  Look at it.  It’s a slick interface that manages to pack a significant amount of features in but still leaves enough empty space to prevent it from looking cluttered, all the while maintaining the simplicity that allows new users to immediately become addicted (guilty here).

For the first post, we’re going to do something a little unusual.  We’re going to provide you with some links to other sites that are excellent sites to find tips and lifehacks.  This is not the type of thing that a site usually does when it starts off but we just want to start off on the right foot by making it clear that our goal is to provide useful information.  Period.

So, here are some site that are work bookmarking (along with Confronting Intelligence) and returning to frequently:

• Lifehacker
• Stepcase Lifehack
• Real Simple
• Dumb Little Man
• MakeUseOf

These are general sites that provide good information consistently.  In the next week we plan on providing you with a list of good sites to check out for personal finance information and tips.