Free Tax Prep & E-File -

Tax time is here. In reality, it's been upon us for a while, but the dreaded tax deadline is near. In fact, today you could start counting down the days till you absolutely have to file or face some penalty. Ten days to go.

More and more people are opting to prepare their own taxes these days with the easy to use, do it yourself software. Some will get their friend of a friend or some so-called tax guru buddy of a relative or neighbor etc!

This post aims to brighten your day and give you a better all around option. If you individually or you and your family combined earned $62,000 or less, you can get your taxes prepared and filed electronically for FREE! No strings attached and you can do this every year!

The United Way's Free Tax Preparation Service is available to EVERYONE! All you need to do is go to their website and find a local branch and look up or call to find nearby local tax clinics.

Call and schedule your appointment today to take advantage of the United Way’s Free Tax Preparation program. Their Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program has professionals, and trained volunteers who will file your taxes. These volunteers are educated and skilled. Their knowledge will help you take advantage of any and all possible credits available to you. Your taxes can be filed using direct deposit, and you could have your tax refund in or around 7-10 days, or you can opt to get your refund the old fashioned way, in the snail mail.

Be good to yourself and be good to others I always say...now be a good friend, and pass along this OutRiderr (good) news to any and everyone you think might appreciate saving a few hundred bucks getting their taxes prepared. Ch-Ching!

Share this link below

http://www.unitedway.org/myfreetaxes/

Questions: 1-855-698-9435

Rachel Platten - Wildfire Review - 3 Stars

The new year starts off great here with Rachel Platten's "Wildfire." This album is pure pop-rock, and will get your year off to a good ol' Rockin' start. All of the songs are strong, and well crafted. Several could be singles.

The only fault with this album is the re-issuing of "Fight Song." This track is already a year old and is now just a distraction that interrupts an otherwise very good album. Obviously it's included here to boost sales, but in the end this inclusion could hurt sales. Anthemic songs such as "Fight Song" are always better left off of an album and instead let to be singles. Those songs, no matter how good become annoying and the fact that this song in particular is already a year old, may put some off. If you can get past the"Fight Song" the rest of the album is really enjoyable and should establish Rachel as an emerging artist that you'll want to watch grow.

Most of this  album is wrapped around ideas that range from hope to uplifting, and the self empowering. The positive centric messages will remind you of Katy Perry.

I'll rate this effort at 3 Stars and would have rated it higher except for the year old "Fight Song" on a new release really put me off here.

The best tracks here are "Stand by You"  "Beating Me Up" and "Lone Ranger." 

With Wildfire you get 12 tracks that clock over 40 minutes and 4 of those could be memorable singles. So my advice to you is get your copy today without delay.

Rock On!

#WILDFIRE

David Bowie – Blackstar – Reviewed 4½ BlackStars

David Bowie – Blackstar – Reviewed 4½ Blackstars

The Starman delivers! I'll Rate this effort 4½ Stars. The production and instrumentation make this album. Lyrically Bowie is cryptic and leaves us wondering. His vocals are aged, but not bad. It is so close to perfection but...

Blackstar is light years away from today's pop landscape. It is atmospheric and very dark. An intriguing work of art, and that lends to the thought that this album is just that, a work of art. It has interesting percussion that fits these songs perfectly, but none that are new. It's the arrangements and fills that are unique. The album features 7 songs, 5 are new and 2 others have been re-recorded. The songs are all great and they are arranged well on this album. Though there are fewer songs than typical albums, these are all excellent, well produced tracks and the album still clocks over forty minutes.

It would be unfair to describe this as an experimental album. It is more to the point of Bowie doing what he wanted to do on his own terms rather than someone else's.

It belongs in a genre of its own, one called Bowie.

Ground control to Maj. Bowie your mission is complete, you are free to go now.

Get this masterpiece through Amazon here Blackstar Album 

Check out the accompanying videos for these songs from the album below.

 Blackstar

 Lazarus

Top 5 Websites 2 watch College Football Online 4 FREE

College Football season is winding down, and now we are into the Bowl Games. Don't miss a game, open and view multiple games in different tabs or on multiple laptops/notebooks etc.

Better quality comes with subscription services, but for the best websites to view College Football games for FREE. The 5 sites that I share below are the top choices to use.

1. http://liveball.tv/

2. http://ifirstrowus.eu/

3. http://www.stream2watch.co/

4. http://www.streamhub.hk/

5. http://cricfree.tv/

The sites listed above are all good and tested.

FYI - Alert: Depending on the user and their system configuration, and or choice of browser, users might see a pop-up saying your system needs to install a file in order to function. That's not true, just wait till these messages time out and click the word 'close' and the small x to discard these messages. Just remember this, you will never need to install anything to view games from these sites.

Microsoft The Evil Empire Gets Grinchy

The Monstrous Microsoft with a dead tomato heart that's squashed with moldy purple spots while looking down upon the masses of a discontented lazy rabble proclaims from their Grinch Cave in Redmond that there will be NO MORE of that FREE Unlimited OneDrive Storage to Office 365 Home subscribers and that they are also slashing the amount of Free OneDrive storage it provides to non-subscribers from 15GB to 5GB.

Apparently, the reason for taking-back the unlimited storage, according to the Microsoft Grinchy Potter Scrooge, is that “a few users” were backing up multiple PCs, entire movie collections, and DVR recordings to OneDrive. Microsoft says these users’ excessive storage usage amounted to 14,000 times the average. Bah-Humbug they say!

So, instead of changing their end-user license agreement and targeting those few abusers, they are going all-out and punishing everyone! Crappy Holidays...ho-ho-humbug! Ha-Ha-Ha!

The MSFT Monster is also cutting all OneDrive storage limits to 1TB for Office 365 Home, Personal, and University subscribers, ho-ho-ho to all you garlic eaters! The new limit goes into effect in 2016, a mere 2 weeks away. Current users are going to get another 12 months to get their data in excess of 1TB out of OneDrive, aren't they sweet.

The Evil Empire (MSFT) is also taking away their 100GB and 200GB OneDrive Paid Plans that were priced at $1.99 and $3.99 per month, and will now offer you a smaller 50GB Storage Plan for $1.99 per month. For anyone else who needs to have more storage, they will also offer 1TB and Office 365 Personal for $6.99 per month. Whoops, wait a minute...did you hear that...Ch-Ching!

These guys sure do have the Holiday Spirit in them...taking the old 'bait and switch' tactic to a new level that now means “Bait and Beat 'Em With Billy Clubs.”

The real reason Microsoft is making these changes, is that they are Scrooging for ways to cut costs and help their sad bottom line. True to Scrooge form they have also sacked many a Bob Cratchits' all in the later part of the year, somewhere in the area of around 8000-9000 jobs. As their revenue dips month to month year on end, these moves are just a pathetic way to manipulate numbers to help a sagging bottom line.

All I can say to this is, stick with Google as your primary online cloud space provider, and don't trust any of the others. Just as MSFT gets their Grinch on, so might a few others.

And finally, Mr. Microsoft (Scrooge-Potter-Grinch) your brain is full of spiders, and you have garlic in your appalling dump heap of a soul.

*As bad as all of this may seem, it's strangely a sure way to appease investors...screwing the masses always goes over well in board rooms. Maybe this is just a way to stimulate the stock prices???

Ain't Got No Tebow

NFL fans everywhere are singing the blues, and the tune they're singing these days is a re-working of Neil Young's “T-Bone.” It's a Rockin' Blues Classic with a simple repeating lyric … “Got mashed up players – Ain't got no Tebow,” over and over with high hopes of some team signing their Jesus-Freak hero.

“Got mashed up players”

“Ain't got no Tebow” - Repeat

Football fans everywhere know that Tim Tebow had a really good summer camp with the Eagles. He was in shape, attentive, very focused, and did everything coaches asked. He performed well in pre-season and made it to the final cut down. It was widely believed that at some point he would get called back.

After 11 weeks of play and the number of injured quarterbacks, there's still no sign of Tebow. 13 teams have called on back-ups for playing time and as many other teams have made enough roster moves, signing – releasing 2^nd and 3^rd team players, adding to their practice squads etc. The number of overall roster moves is astonishing. Dallas even traded a future draft pick to get a bum back-up instead of calling in Tebow. With all the injuries/carnage you'd think that some team would have called on Tebow.

The fact that there have been no calls to bring in and sign Tebow indicates that the NFL teams in this league really don't want him.

Most teams will tell you that they want to develop other players that are younger and more versatile, i.e. players willing to play other positions. Tim has all along been very adamant about only playing quarterback, and this has really hurt his chances of landing a roster spot with any team.

Teams want team players more than stand out personality players. What teams will not tell you is the truth. Sure Tebow played great this past summer, but with him comes too much distraction, an all out media circus, and he is sure to upstage any other team players and coaches alike when it comes to speaking with the media.

Tim certainly is a media darling, but not in the way that even he thinks. The media that covers his every move is only looking to make fun of and exploit the things that Tebow and his fans believe in. Can you just hear it when he finds himself in a third down and sixteen? What if he made it, or what if he didn't make it...are we going to start talking the saintly good Tebow one day, and the next, the sinner bad boy Tebow? What to do if ever his offense had twelve men on the field at the same time? Would the 12^th guy be a Judas? Can you see the headlines if at the end of a game he throws a Hail Mary.

Throughout this wild season where we've seen many quarterbacks injured, Tebow has kept quiet about his chances returning to the NFL. As for now, he continues to work as an analyst for the SEC Network.

For all Tebow fans out there, the plain and simple truth of the matter is no one wants him!