Just yesterday afternoon Real Estate Rainmaker Lani Anglin wrote on this blog, and spoke of her grandmother who had sold her home and earthly possessions so she could go help the less fortunate in an African orphanage. This was in response to our underwear plea for children in a Kenya orphanage.

Not long after that blog response, April Groves at R.E. Revealed says Lani received word that her younger brother had been killed in a car crash on his way over to visit her. In the car were his wife and their two babies.

Lani’s younger brother, 24 year-old Aaron Anglin is survived by his wife Aleisha Anglin, 25 and their two babies, Eleanor, 1 and McKenzie, just 6 weeks who is still reported to be in ICU at this writing.

Lani relayed this message via R.E.Revealed earlier today:

“To me, the important thing to know is that the crazy kid in the funny video is my newly 24 year old little brother Aaron who died yesterday on impact. He was driving to my house (to make another silly video) and was driving with his wife (Aleisha Anglin, 25) and their two babies (Eleanor who turns 1 THIS week and McKenzie who is only 6 weeks old). Aleisha & Eleanor should be released today and McKenzie is in the ICU in improving condition. We have tons of family surrounding us and St. Thomas More parish is providing food this week for our entire family! Aaron was awesome and his marketing work can be found at http://benaaronanglin.carbonmade.com. He was confirmed in the Catholic faith last week, laughed his butt off at ICanHasCheezburger.com with me this week. We were born 18 months apart (Irish twins) and grew up as best friends with so many lame stories.”

Lani, writing to April, further explains:

My brother and his wife are not rich by any stretch of the imagination and Aleisha has a very hard time ahead- if you or anyone else can think of any way to aim finances at her, she really needs it. Assisting in an optometry office is a great profession but pays very little- certainly not enough to cover a funeral, medical bills for three people and a life ahead as a single mother.

The green icon is a link that will help guide you to assistance for this young mother who very unexpectedly became a widow yesterday afternoon,

The story was additionally reported by Greg Swann at The Bloodhound Blog, and was followed up by Brian Brady on Active Rain. Once again, donations are being sought to help tide over a young mother and her two fatherless babies.

Again, please follow your heart.

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by Roberta Murphy

Become a victim of identity theft, and you could be in for the nightmare of a lifetime.

We have known several identity theft victims. One family lost its home because of it and another even fears for his safety. It is a vicious crime that can take years to to resolve and the damages can last far longer than that.

Almost 10 million Americans are victimized by identity theft each year, and it is one of the fastest growing financial crimes.

The best solution is prevention and freezing your credit may be one of the simplest steps you can take to help stop this crime. A security freeze will prevent thieves from obtaining credit in your name by locking, freezing and blocking access to your credit report and credit score.

The cost to do this is fairly minimal ($10 in California), and is a solution available to residents of:

Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

What happens if you want to obtain new credit? The consumer is given a PIN to grant access to the credit file. Again, a nominal fee may be charged to do so.

How does the credit freeze work? Simple. If a business or lender cannot obtain credit information, new credit will not be issued to the thief.

For additional reading about this subject, click here.

Click for instructions on freezing credit in California
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by Roberta Murphy

Want to know what keeps me terrorized at night?

Database management. I am in an urgent race against time–and my nightmare is one that haunts major corporations throughout the world– from retailers to brokerage firms to telecoms to the U.S. Government itself.

In our San Diego real estate practice, I have until December 30 to migrate several hundred clients and their specific and detailed property requests over to another improved database program that will continue to email the same meaningful information they are now receiving. You see, most of us are hobbling along with databases that are not compatible (because they are on different platforms with different vendors) and refuse to speak or communicate with each other. It is also next to impossible to migrate the detailed information from one vendor to another because of proprietary programming. The unpleasant alternative is to do it by hand. In our situation, we have accumulated client information from one source (that was started eight years ago), that is quite separate from real estate client information that has accumulated for the past five years on another vendor’s platform. The problem has now grown to nine distinct databases with detailed information that cannot be migrated from one to another because each database collects different types of volunteered information from web and blogsite visitors–and stores that data on proprietary systems.

Our goal is to condense this information onto a meaningful program that is retrievable and migratable from one system to another.

If our real estate practice operated at the big-time enterprise level, I would be calling ANTs Software today. ANTs now offers the solution for database consolidation, with their ANTs Compatibility Server (ACS). It is a plug-in which would allow Oracle databases to migrate IBM’s DB2, or for Sybase to migrate to Microsoft, or for Oracle to migrate to Sybase–or whatever combinations are possible therein.

Compatiblity between databases has become an enormous issue in computing of all sorts because just like me and on a much larger scale, governments and corporations usually have old legacy database programs that cannot be migrated to other systems without enormous effort and expense. That is why the ANTs Compatibiity Server is such whiz-bang technology. It is hoped that solutions such as what ACS has to offer the big guys, may eventually filter down to smaller users such as myself.

It’s only a dream, but how great would it be if ANTs’ database miracle–or something like it–could be installed on my computer before December 30? The clock is painfully ticking….

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by Roberta Murphy

Unless an omelet chef is employed for the next luxury brunch gathering, one might go ditzy trying to create custom omelets for each guest. This also makes it impossible for all to sit down in front of a hot plate at the same time.

I love American ingenuity.

This clever trick was forwarded to me by that wonderful host, Hank Holman, from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Thanks to his timely tip, my next brunch for 16 will be a hit with just two big pots of boiling water, large platters of fruit and pastries, and a few bottles of champagne and fresh-squeezed orange juice.

The possibilities for this cooking technique could extend far beyond entertaining brunches.

Could anything be more simple?

1. Lay out attractive bowls, each filled with cheeses, ham, onion, bacon, green pepper, tomato, salsa, mushrooms, salsa, sausage pieces, seafood, hash browns–or whatever else captures your imagination.

2. Have guests write their name on a quart-size Ziploc freezer bag with permanent marker.

3. Crack two eggs (large or extra-large) into the bag (not more than two) and shake to combine them.

4. Each guest adds prepared ingredients of choice to their bag and shakes. Expel the air from the bag and zip it up.

5. Place the bags into rolling, boiling water for exactly 13 minutes. You can usually cook 6-8 omelets in a large pot. For
more, make another pot of boiling water.

6. Open the bags and the omelet will roll out easily.

Be prepared for amazed congratulations and lots of guest conversation.

(Consider the additional possibility of preparing these baggies the night before, refrigerating, and having individual omelet servings available on busy school or work mornings).

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