Todd Fugere's blog

I've been working very hard at upgrading Autism Blogger. You may notice a new look and feel, as well a much more simplified user interface. I got rid of quite a bit of clutter and made things as straight-forward as possible. Please let me know if you need help with this new version.

Autism Blogger has been getting a ton of spam lately. Working full time, going to school full time, chasing a two year old doesn't leave me much time to fight spam anymore, and I sincerely apologize for that. I do have anti-spam software in place, but it is not catching everything. Therefore, I am turning to you, my trusted Autism Bloggers to help fight the battle.

How much does it pay? Nothing...other than the fact that you will be keeping Autism Blogger free from the annoying spammers that are everywhere lately.

If you are interested, let me know, I'll give you permissions to remove spam posts. I'm only looking for a few people (must be a long time member and regular poster).

RN Central.com (http://rncentral.com) did a post entitled 50 Blogs You Should Bookmark for Autism Awareness month. Lots of great resources there. Just thought I'd share. (Note who is first on the list).

Danielle Richards posted a nice article titled 50 Great Blogs & Links for Autism Teachers. I would recommend taking a look as there seem to be quite a few great resources there. Autism Blogger is also mentioned as well as number 19. Thanks Danielle!

http://www.doctoraldegrees.org/50-great-blogs-links-for-autism-teachers

Future Horizons www.fhautism.com has sent me a bunch of stuff to offer to Autism Bloggers. For the month of July, I will be just giving stuff away. The only catch is you have to let us all know if you liked it, hated it, etc. No catches, just good ol fashioned free stuff.

I figure with all the spam around here lately, you dedicated people deserve something for the hassle.

The first thing I have on the bidding table is 1001 Great Ideas for Teaching and Raising Children with Autism or Asperger's by Ellen Notbohm and Veronica Zysk. Here's the link on Amazon. This book goes for $25.00.

First person to comment on this post, gets it...as long as you agree to post a follow up on Autism Blogger. 

CNN did an article titled 10 sites worth checking out if your child has autism. Unfortunately, Autism Blogger was not on the list. Here's what they came up with:

Autism Speaks

Autism Speaks, an awareness and advocacy organization, just updated its week-by-week 100-day kit to help families navigate the days following an autism diagnosis. The kit includes advice on how to build a team of therapists, keep accurate phone records and adapt your home to protect your child from his or her uncontrolled behaviors. Also, Autism Speaks' video glossary has more than 100 video clips comparing the behavior of children with autism spectrum disorders with the behavior of a typical child.

The Autism Society of America

I know this has nothing to do with Autism, but I know many of you on here have your own sites and blogs, so I thought I would share this with you.

I am a bit of a social networking geek. I'm always looking for ways to increase traffic to this site and some others that I run. I found a pretty cool thing today, it's called Social Spark. It's a thing created by Izea and what it does is allows people with blogs and social networking sites to interact with advertisers and help drive traffic and earn money from your blog posts. And with the times being as tough as they are, who couldn't use a little extra money. Basically Social Spark is a social network for advertisers and bloggers. You don't join to make friends, like Facebook, Twitter and even Autism Blogger, you join to meet advertisers that fit into your niche. Basically a matchmaking site for advertisers and people that have websites.

My wive DVR'd Oprah yesterday and we watched it last night. It was very interesting because she was interviewing four child molesters. Sounds horrible, but it was very informative. The thing I thought was the most interesting was that over 90% of victims know their molesters. Whether it be friends, family, neighbors, etc. It isn't the creepy guy hiding in the bushes. The other thing I thought was interesting was they all said that if parents have an "instinct" that something is wrong or weird, look into it. All 4 molesters said that if the parents had paid more attention they would've been caught sooner. I also think that it is important that if a child tells you something, you need to believe them. Children will not usually make something like molestation up. Adults will always lie about it to cover up, but the children will usually have a good reason for saying it.

My wife was watching the Doctors yesterday and she mentioned that they had a family on there that was treating their autistic child using Medical Marijuana. Apparently, they were getting some results with the drug, it was helping him focus and helped his appetite. They were making brownies out of it, so he wasn't actually smoking it. So far Medical Marijuana is legal in 14 states and is gaining steam in other states. I am just curious what everyone's view is on the subject?

 Please comment...

Working in IT I constantly come across people who have computer trouble. Most cases require wiping the computer clean and reinstalling Windows, this fixes 99% of the computer problems I deal with. However, most people NEVER have their information backed up. Big mistake!

Everyone has something on their computer that they would hate to lose. Whether it is your resume, household budget, pictures of your kids, recipes, music, movies, phone numbers, or even your entire business, you simply must backup your information. You know that old saying "You don't know what you've got until it's gone" most people don't realize this until their computer crashes, then it becomes all too clear.

Why should I backup?