Infoalmanac

The Serenity Prayer for Geeks

In the past few weeks, I've been learning what to do to make this information blog useful to you. Cleaning up the extraneous clutter on the pages, adding the needful back in and providing opportunities for your feedback.

Like most website owners, I've continued to sweat the small stuff, often waking in the middle of the night with an answer or another item for the to-do list.

There are three possibilities in this (and any kind of work)

• Find the problem and accept that you cannot fix it. There may be a work-around, but computers live by rules. Some of those rules, when broken, cause it to crash. Don't break those rules.

Your Medical Power of Attorney

In the process of "getting your papers in order", you took care of a living will, that document which directs how you want to be cared for when you cannot say so for yourself. Now, you need a medical power of attorney. This confers the decision-making rights to someone else who stands in your place. That person, armed with your living will, which states your wishes, and a medical power of attorney can deal with any decisions when you are too sick to do it for yourself.

A medical power of attorney does not do some things. It does not give the right to have you committed to a mental institution. It use cannot force you

Glossary for Living Wills and End of Life Concerns

When it comes to severe medical situations and end of life decisions, there's a lot of jargon floating around. A big part of what you need to know is buried in the vocabulary. You may not be writing or communicating what you hope. Cruise through these explanations to help yourself along.

Any determination of what's legal is made by your state. Check with your lawyer to make sure you've got it right for where you live.

Advance Directive: Legal document in which you tell (direct) others in your health care preferences when you are too sick to say so yourself. This is about what you want and prevents others from making decisions, contrary to your wishes, for you. You can revoke it at any time being sure to notify all to whom you have given it--doctors, hospitals, and so on. Caring Connections has state-specific advance directive forms.

Your Living Will: The Right to Live, The Right to Die

A living will is a form of advance healthcare directive. These directives are your voice when you are too sick to speak for yourself. In them, you can specify what direction your medical care is to take when your health takes a turn for the very worst.

Although valid nationwide, each state may vary in the way it prefers the living will to be worded. And, while legal help is not absolutely necessary, it is a good idea to become informed and get some good advice.

Living wills, in particular, come into play during terminal illnesses. They can direct how much, if any, intervention is to be taken to prolong your life when death is imminent.

Some people prefer for all measures to be taken for as long as possible. This includes artificial ventilation, feeding tubes and other means to sustain life when you cannot do it for yourself. A living will can guide this.

Others abhor the idea of becoming a "vegetable." This means experiencing periods of wakefulness and sleep without response to the outside world. They could use a living will to allow few, if any measures, to be taken.

Keywords on Your Resume?

What is this about keywords and getting a job? I have been able to find out that there IS a list of keywords, and if your resume has them, then it goes to a human. If not, the computer kicks it back. Can you help me with this?

Keywords and resumes, both off and online, go hand in hand. Keywords are words or phrases people search databases with to find the information they want.

Yahoo, Google and the other search engines don't really go out looking for your phrase on the multitude of sites on the Web. What they do is look in their databases where their spiders have stored the information they've collected. When you type in the keywords to search on, they compare it to their databases and send the best matches back to you.

Other information is stored in databases. If you have an address book on your computer, it is likely to be a database file. Financial programs like Quicken also use databases. If you've ever used Excel to create a spreadsheet to organize information, you've created a simple (or even, complex) database.

Companies and job placement services also have their own databases.

Your Living Will for Peace of Mind Now, Quality Care Later

After reading the past two posts on wills, one reader contacted me. She and her sister have been caring for their father for several years. Following Hurricane Rita, which passed through their hometown, they could no longer do it all themselves.

Their father was placed in a nursing home. The older sister now visits several hours daily supervising his care. She also spends hours every week taking care of his affairs.

She spoke of their difficulties sorting out various legalities with nursing home and government officials. These next few articles will deal with those questions that they ran into.

You see, wills, provide direction for the distribution of your possessions. Further, they can detail how businesses are passed and the family is cared for. But, wills do not cover every eventuality.

Get Help with Your Will

While you can modify a will as needed, it is most important to get one done before it is too late. You have the right to distribute your property to any persons you choose without another's permission.

However, to be certain your assets are disbursed the way you want, you have to have a will. And, that will must meet legal requirements, leaving no loopholes.

It is a fact that all die. Thinking about that, as hard as it is, making plans and leaving definite instructions in the form of a properly prepared will frees you to live your life knowing those details are taken care of.

Write Your Will Now

Yesterday was the perfect day to write a will; today is the next best choice. Dealing as it does with sad thoughts and fears, it is no wonder that you may want to put it off. But, if you look at the reasons for writing your will now, you'll delay no longer.

If you want to make your own decisions about your final arrangements, the dispostion of your property, the care of your family, your will must be drawn up while you're in relatively decent health able to think clearly.

• With a will, you decide on who may care for your minor children.  Without one, the state decides who gets custody.  That choice will be made dispassionately sometime after your death with your children left in limbo in the meantime. Not making arrangements with someone you and they trust and love may leave your children feeling abandoned and uncared for. It is an abandonment that can last the rest of their lives.

Information Finding — Do It Yourself Research 1

Locating information without a clear system for finding it is something akin to driving sixty miles an hour down a foggy Texas coastal road. Either you get lost or wind up in the drink!

Folks who were brought up with encyclopedias and dictionaries and library cards seem to intuitively understand how to find out what they want to know. Flipping the dial on the TV as a pastime instead makes it harder for the rest of us.

Here's one way to cruise the foggy info-highway for obscure sites:

1.  Brainstorm some different versions of what you want to know. Lean toward two or three word searches. (Yahoo's information search options listed below the search box when you type in your search term will suggest some to you if you want to dive right in with one word.)

2.  Search on the first term.

3.  Open every site on the page that's not an ad. (I open these in new tabs so I can keep the original search page up. . .