Low Carb Freedom

Where I have been...

Reader Jonathan asks:

What happened to this blog? I read that this was supposed to be the #2 blog about low carb.

Yikes! It has been too long!

I've been helping my daughter's band, feeding them, making them practice, and setting up their website at www.undecidedyouth.com.

I've been doing a website for my church at www.cliftonlutheran.org.

I've been planning the House Management for the Peter Pan production of Marblehead Little Theater and doing a blog at http://prouty.blogs.com/mlt/.

I've been working....

And I've been gathering great low carb info for more posts... I PROMISE I'll get to it! I have a ton of posts to catch up on... Look for one a day...

Best,

Katherine

If you get a new cell phone -- cell phone fraudulent billing

I normally only post about low carb, but if you or someone you know gets a new cell phone, beware.

Some of the previous services and agreements that pertained to the old owner "carry over" to you and you will get billed.

First, you think it might just be annoying text messaging spam, but then you get billed for it. Read about my ongoing debacle with sms.ac and know that it could happen to you. Click here for more.

Problem with Sending Low Carb Freedom Newsletter to AOL Accounts

Folks,

If you have an AOL account, you are not receiving my newsletters. They get returned to me. I have tried to contact them to get on their "whitelist" but so far no reply. I don't expect a reply for weeks since they are advertising that they are cutting back on unsolicited email. However, the procedure for AOL members to receive solicited email, especially from bloggers, isn't the best.

Bloggers don't count because we aren't massive organizations with static IPs, but we don't want to send each newsletter individually either, because we aren't that small. Maybe if I go to AOL headquarters with a freshly baked cake for the spam team they might do something?

So, I am appealing to you to contact AOL yourself to tell them that you would like to receive the newsletter that you have signed up for. Maybe if we work on this from both ways, receiver and sender, we might have a chance.

Just FYI, the only way to get on my mailing list is to request it, and within each email I send is a way to get off of the list, and I comply immediately. I don't sell the list and I don't abuse it. More details here:

• Weekly Email Newsletter Signup

Update: Hold the presses! This might not be AOL's fault. I had a long talk with Kerry from the Tuscon AOL call center (very nice lady!) who told me that the error message didn't sound as though it came from AOL: Permanent Failure: Other address status. It might have come from Comcast.

It may actually be Comcast that has the block for sending too many email messages to AOL because when AOL first implemented their spam blockers, they blocked the whole ISP and not just the individuals -- so Comcast may have put this up as a defense. More on this as I know more. Of course, since I use comcast to email out, I can't get on AOL's whitelist. It didn't take weeks and weeks to reject me, just 12 hours!

Why the empty page?

Folks, I apologize for the lack of posting! Even my brother-in-law commented on it. I have been busy taking care of sick children, sick parents, the holidays, helping with the Christmas pageant, and, oh yes, working at my real job! (grin) I fully expect to be back in the swing of things within the next few days. Plus, I hope to have a new site redesign to make it easier to find things.  In the meantime, I want to thank the faithful readers like Sarah who writes below who continue to look for the new content; it is coming!

Hello,
I just wanted to say thank you so much for working so hard to keep the website up to date. I'm a college student with severe hypoglycemia and low-carbing for me is an absolute MUST. It's hard sometimes when I try to go to a restaurant with friends and have to order things done specially or if I can't find something to eat (and having to carry food with me). But the information that you put on the website really helps me make things more simple and easy. I really appreciate it.
Sincerely,
Sarah

Sign Up for the LowCarbFreedom Blog Low Carb Newsletter!

I have a bunch of people who regularly get my newsletter every week. (I am getting much better at making sure I do send it every week!) I never share subscriber information, I promptly remove you when asked, and you get an email with new post headlines on a consistent basis. I have had very few people who have unsubscribed, and the two or three that did did so because they stopped doing low carb.

So try it out! There is no risk! And this gives me incentive to keep writing because I know that there are people who are interested! (And I do see a substantial spike in viewing when people receive the email. It makes it worthwhile.)

Just click on the link below, an email message should come up, and just hit send. (No need to input additional text, but if you have something to say, I would love to read it! I do read every subscription notice.) This helps me ensure that the email gets to you because my email address is then in your address book and shouldn't be automatically screened as spam.

Signup For the Low Carb Freedom Weekly Newsletter

And for those of you who like to know you can be removed from the list, just click on the link below to be removed. (The remove link is also embedded in every email I send out so you don't have to go hunting for an address to be removed.)

Remove My Email From the Low Carb Freedom Mailing List

I hope to see a lot more of you on a regular basis!

Katherine

Do You or Someone In Your Family Have a Wart?

I know that this has nothing to do with low carb, but I just made an update to my post about the innovative treatment of my son's wart. It worked!

My son has a wart on his foot... duct tape, anyone?

This has nothing to do with low carb, but it is interesting, and some of you may not know it yet. My son just found out that he has a wart on his foot. (He calls it his zit.) Our pediatrician recommended duct tape because the newest study says that duct tape is even more effective and less painful than the acid that doctors apply.

He has had the duct tape on for a day, and so far the biggest challenge is having him keep it on rather than trying to see what it has done to his zit after a few hours. (Nothing yet, of course.)

He is supposed to keep the duct tape on for six days, then take it off, soak the foot, file the wart down, and reapply the duct tape for another six days as needed.

I'll let you know if it works! (We are going to find out today if duct tape stays on in pool water. My bet is it does'n't, but we'll just put on other piece after he gets out of the pool.)

Update on 10/31: My son's wart is finally gone. Trying to get a kid to keep duct tape on his foot in the summer is just plain impossible! My son was always taking it off or it was falling off because of swimming, etc. I just kept putting the duct tape back on whenever I spotted it was off. Well, even with the shoddy application and the fact that my son wouldn't let me scrape off the dead skin (he said it hurt), the wart did finally disappear. So, don't give up! The method does work!

I sent out my newsletter...

I sent out my newsletter last night. I had a few bounces, etc., but I am very interested to know if I need to upgrade my newsletter distribution system. I know that some ISP's automatically assume that you are spamming if you send to a large list. (I would always delete someone when asked.)

So... if you didn't receive the newsletter and you had signed up for it, would you please let me know so I can investigate the cause?

If you would like to receive the newsletter, click on this link Weekly Email Newsletter Signup link or on the same link in the left hand navigation bar on this page.

Thanks!

I'm back!

Yikes!

I go away for a week and find that I can't do that! (Long story... didn't have access to email because the internet access terminal at the hotel didn't have the latest browser upgrade, and comcast kep telling me that I had to download the latest browser before I could see the email. Obviously, I couldn't install a new browser on this terminal!)

Since I had left all of my passwords in my email box, I couldn't get to them... so no updates on my Low Carb Freedom Blog! When there are no updates after a week, nothing appears! (A big lesson in how to set up a blog before you go away! Make sure the blog shows more than a week in case something happens and... make sure you carry paper copies of all passwords and... don't use Comcast as your number one email provider because it isn't friendly to old technology!)

Anyhow, I was in CA for a week, and was able to find lots of new products at a great Trader Joe's (four times the size of mine) and Albertson's and Pavillions. I'll be writing about them. (I saved all of my receipts and prices, but we got bumped in Atlanta, GA, stayed at a Sheraton and got to try their Low Carb Menu, which I will also tell you about. However, we stayed at the Sheraton with no bags since they had been sent through to Boston, but managed to leave our one bag (a cooler so we could carry our low carb food with us instead of buying high carb food on the plane) with all the receipts in the hotel room. So, I called the Sheraton and they should be sending me the bag (I have my fingers crossed!) so I can put in prices, etc.)

I need to do some errands, etc., now... but come back for some great updates!

P.S. I'll also go through my emails!

Comments on Low Carb Freedom

Folks, I have open comments on this blog. That means anyone is free to comment on my posts (and I like that!) However, in marketing circles they now talk about blogs and how blogs can be "influencers" to other people. Therefore, sometimes comments on this blog can be made from people who work for a company or industry or who work for a competitive company or industry. Sometimes they can even try to create a dialogue to show that there is a need and how their product can fulfill that need.

Now, if I had to guess, I would say that some of the comments in my Dreamfield's Low Carb Pasta post fit into this category. However, they are subtle, and, taken as a whole, the comments are informative. There is enough real back and forth that everybody wins. I use the same reasoning in this post about the Low Carb Certification Battle. I'm not going to spend my time tracking IPs, etc. (Although for those marketing people, if you send me an upfront letter, I'm happy to post it. I have several examples of this including John Foraker of Carbtastic Products who did a fantastic job in this post about low carb label testing. I would be happy to shake his hand any time and print any rebuttal because he comports himself with integrity.)

However, I received comments yesterday on my California Low Carb Store post that were so blatant that I feel that I have to post about them because if I don't then my credibility is diminished.

In the first post, everything was fine. The person let others know about a website resource to find additional stores. I'm always happy to add things that help my readers! (I'll even put it into the body of the post as an update.) But then the person went further in another post on low carb shopping:

There is fast growing chain of Low Carb stores right now; Castus Low Carb Superstores. The website is very cool and they are popping up all over the country! I didn't know so many low carb foods even existed! They get new stuff in all the time. The staff at our local store is very knowledgable, as all are in 1 of the 4 phases. www.castus.net lists all the locations and the ones opening soon.

In this post another email address was used that was not affiliated with the Cactus Low Carb stores, although it was posted by the same person with the same IP (who also used the same user name) a few minutes after the previous posts. Word to the wise, it is fine to post this, just don't try to sound as though you are just another user. (I do notice these things.) And I'd be happy to put up a whole post on Cactus Low Carb stores as well and just clean up the comments...