Happy Birthday Marc Minardi and Tommy Liotas!

The guys that bring us Lucas on Degrassi and Rich on The Best Years were born today. Yay! Celebrate by not being a total jerk to your girlfriend. Or you could also be nice to your sister and learn something about global warming.
:]

Gifts that Give Back: Planet Dog

      Planet Dog is a company that makes toys and other useful items for dogs. Including the Glow for Good Ball 100% of the proceeds from the sale go to the Planet Dog Foundation - which supports services dogs (search and rescue dogs, therapy dogs, bomb sniffing dogs etc.) It's like an infinite chain of helping-ness. You give a dog a ball, buying that ball helps service dogs, and service dogs help other people. The Pay It Forward kid would be proud. Even if you don't need a dog toy, but maybe want to get a leash, or travel doggie bowls - a potion of what you spend will go to the Planet Dog Foundation. You also have the option to directly donate a dollar (or five, or however much you like) when you checkout from their online store.

     I can personally vouch for the toughness of these dog toys. One Christmas, all three of my step-siblings had recently adopted puppies - so I decided to give everyone dog related things for Christmas. Two of the dogs were apparently big dog toy chewers, they'd shred those doggy newspapers in an hour. I got them both the light bulb toy (which is only a 3 out of 5 on the chew-o-meter, mind you,)  Both step-siblings were convinced the toys would be torn up by New Years. It's been 2 years, and both light bulbs are still fully intact.

Planet Dog also has a great selection of items that are made in the USA and/or Eco-friendly.

Ideal for:
Your dog
Anyone with a new dog
Anyone who's crazy about their dog

Nostalgia Alert!

   Remember when The-N came out with a soundtrack? There's a physical copy of it up for grabs on ebay, starting price of $.99!

Gifts That Give Back: World Wildlife Fund

In the World Wildlife Fund's Gift Center you can "adopt" a huge variety of animals. Depending on how much you donate, you can receive a photo, gift bag, or stuffed plush version of the animal you're adopting. The money you donate goes to conservation efforts and can help preserve the animal you "adopted."

Ideal for:
Younger siblings, cousins, other little kids you know
Friends with a favorite animal environment

Happy Birthday Kate Todd!

Today is Kate Todd aka Lily Randall from Radio Free Roscoe's Birthday!


If you're lucky enough to have a Lily Secret Avatar  - use it today. If not, head over to the RFR Message Boards and reminisce about all of the good times you've had with Radio Free Roscoe and Lily.

Today is Internation Human Rights Day.

In support - here's my favorite Human Rights Cause:

Invisible Children

      You may have noticed me swooning over their awesomeness on twitter lately. The best way to introduce them is through their videos, but I can attempt to summarize the whole thing as well. It started out as the friends going to Africa to film some of the stuff going on in Darfur. By a bizarre twist of fate (seriously almost seems like some kind of destiny, if you remotely believe in destiny,) they ended up in Northern Uganda where they saw thousands of kids night commuting, walking miles from their homes to sleep in abandoned buildings and people living in displacement camps - all in an effort to stay safe from the L.R.A. or Lord's Resistance Army. The L.R.A. used to be a resistance movement against the current Ugandan government, but over the years their tactics fell out of favor with the public - and to keep the movement going, the leader Joseph Kony started kidnapping kids and forcing them to find child soldiers. This shocked the filmmakers. Here's an entire section of the world, where people are being forced into displacement camps, where there's no food, work, clean water or access to education. And children are forced to walk away from their homes at night, to sleep in the streets of a city, to avoid being kidnapped. And hardly anyone knows about it. No one is doing anything to stop it. That was 2003.

     When the filmmakers came home, the started telling this story - they released a rough cut of the film they made, and started a non-profit to help the kids they'd met in Northern Uganda. Today they've got several programs to help the people of Northern Uganda
Visible Child Scholarship Program - Puts driven kids in back in School, and will pay for their University - they also get mentors
Schools for Schools - Students at Schools in the U.S. and Canada raise money for partner schools in Uganda. You can literally see where the money is going in real time. It's also a competition,  a student from each of the schools that raise the most money in each cluster will win a trip to Uganda to see the change all their fundraising has brought.
The Bracelet Program - IC provides employs adults in the displacement camps to make bracelets, which are sold on IC's website, the profits then go to fund scholarships for kids. The bracelet makers also receive training on managing money and some even start their own businesses after leaving the program. (And when you buy a bracelet you get a DVD with a short film about a child in Uganda.)
Mend - The newest program, and one of the coolest in my opinion - former child soldier make reall kick ass bags in Northern Uganda and when you buy one, not only are you supporting the woman who made you bag, but her name is stiched into the bag, and you can go to IC's website and watch a video about her.
Citizens Arrest Warrant - There's been legislation introduced into Congress (our congress) called the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act - it would require the U.S. to lend intelligence resources to help capture Joseph Kony and to take interest in the recovery of Northern Uganda. The Citizens Arrest Warrant is a petition that will be delivered to Obama this December, urging him to sign on to the bill.

There's a ton more stuff, which you can discover on Invisible Children's website. (Be sure to watch some of the videos - they're the most powerful/inspiring/awesome part.)

Upcoming Stuff

     So December is upon us, and all of our TV shows are going to be taking a little break soon. What to do? Sure we may have relatives to visit with, food to help make, presents to wrap, and a house to "holiday-ifiy" but what do we do once our realtives are driving us crazy to no end, you've been helping with food so much you've lost your appetite, you've decided the whole 'wrapping things up all pretty so they can be torn apart' idea is stupid, and you just can't take anymore of the holidays!

     My answer to that - some good old fashioned TV. Sure Degrassi may be on hiatus, Glee may not be returning until next April - but there's plenty of awesome shows you can pick up at your local video store, library,  or add to your Netflix que, that can cure a case of the holidays. In addition to me reviewing and suggestion some of my favorite shows, I'll also be catching up on some of the shows I've gotten behind on this season, (90210, Vampire Diaries, Melrose Place etc.) AND I want you to sugest a few teen-oriented/teen-related shows to check out. I'll try to take a few suggestions - watch them and review them (good or bad).

     Along with some show suggestions, I'll hopefully be throwing in a few "gifts that give back" ideas - for those of us that still have a little holiday spirit. Gifts that give back are my favorite - they're gifts you give where a portion or all of what you spent went to help a cause or person in need. I'm trying to focus on ones where you still have an item to wrap and put under the tree, but that item also give back in some way. (You'll see more once I get the posts up.)

     There are also a few more The-N/TeenNick stars' birthdays coming up - so we can turn those in some Happy Birthday mini-Spirit Days as well.  :]

Black Out Day!

It's the last day in the Unofficial TeenNick.com Spirit week. Make your avatars as dark as possible today.

Mod Appreciation Day!

(Sorry, couldn't come up with a banner-type thingy for this one)
Appreciate your Mods on teennick.com today. Well, A mod, since @M-A is really the only one we know about.

Happy Birthday Charity Shea!

Today is Charity Shea's Birthday! If you're not participating in Degrassi Spirit day on TeenNick.com (or if you are) add the CU Hoodie to your avatar or a Samantha Best quote to your siggy. :]

Degrassi Day!

It's Degrassi Day! Go Degrassi crazy! Dress your avatar like a character! Use A Secret Avatar! Change your profile background to a Degrassi background (if you have one,) Put Degrassi quotes in your siggy!
Watch some episodes in The-Click! Watch this funny, yet kind of creepy Degrassi spoof! (If you haven't already.)

Unfortunate Avatar Day!

Today is Unfortunate Avatar Day! Make your avatar look as unfortunate as possible. If you need a little guidance, you can check out some pictures of the winners of the 2006 Unfortunate Avatar contest here & here. Or the April 2007 contest here. (Some made by the "The-"s here. Or the October 2007 contest here. Or the original N'Sider entry here.

How do I transfer things between accounts on TeenNick.com?

Transferring things between accounts - honestly I disagree with the practice for the most part. It seems like cheating. If you're transferring items to one account from the other - you're essentially getting the items without putting in the effort to earn creds (which in result earns TeenNick money.) 97%* of the users on TeenNick.com earn creds to buy things on their alternate accounts, or saved an outfit for months to have a Halloween skin - you can imagine that they can get ticked when other users forgo the effort (and support of the site though earning them money through looking for creds) and just transfer items to their account. However, I have had a few questions about how the process works so I'm going to explain it. But first let's get a few things straight:

1) NEVER, I repeat, NEVER give your password to someone else to get other items for your avatar. It'll get your account permanently disabled without any warning. This also is a big safety risk - they'll be able to see your personal info, and you don't want a random stranger seeing your personal info. They could also go around and spam the board with rule-breaking stuff on your account - no one wants that to happen.
2) Don't transfer things from your friend's/brother's/boyfriend's/anyone you know in real life's account. Doing so will result in both accounts being disabled. (The compromised account rule is zero tolerance, you may tell the mods that you let your sister on your account and not some random stranger - but they're not going to take the chance.)
3) Don't ask for anyone else's password to transfer things - even to give them your things - your account will be disabled.

The only way this works and doesn't result in people getting into trouble, is if you transfer things from one account that you own (totally yours, registered with your email, no one else uses it) to another account that is totally yours. The process goes like this:
1) Sign in with account that has the item/skin you want to transfer (we'll call it "Account A")
2) Go to your Avatar Closet
3) Open a new window or tab in the same browser - in this window/tab go to Teennick.com, log out of account A and into the account that doesn't have the item (we'll call it account B.) Go to the Avatar Closet on Account B.
4) On account A, customize the avatar to have the item/skin you want
5)Save the avatar - it'll show up on Account B

Things to know about transferring items - items won't show up in Account B's inventory/closet - you may be able to save the transferred avatar as an outfit, but customizing you avatar with items that were transferred and items you already have could be difficult.
Also, if the mods even suspect you shared a password/let someone who is not you on your account you're running the high risk of it being disabled. It might be a misunderstanding - but the mods have to be safe rather than sorry - make sure you're OK with this risk before you try transferring things.
Also Teen Nick may change it's policy at anytime and decide transferring things between your own accounts is against the rules and requires immediate account deletion - be ready to take that risk before transferring items.

As a whole - I think the process is pretty ridiculous - it's really pretty easy to get creds, not putting in the effort and just transferring the items is lazy. Maybe I'm a hypocrite for telling you exactly how to do something then telling you it's a bad idea, but I'm not against the information being out there (especially when it's accompanied with information about why it's a bad idea.) Just use your brain when deciding what to do. This is probably one of the riskiest yet not against the rules things to do on Teennick.com (which sounds really overly-dramatic, but it's kind of true.) I'm trusting you to make the decision.

*Made-up statistic - but probably pretty darn accurate if you ask me. Especially since the majority of users that started transferring things in the first place had their accounts disabled for sharing passwords.

Disclosure: Information is current as of when this entry was posted - please remember teennick.com may change/update at anytime and cause some or all the above information to become inaccurate. I can't control or be responsible for what Teen Nick does. If something changes, feel free to make me aware of it and I'll try to update this entry.

Happy Birthday Cassie Steele!

Cassie Steele aka Manny from "Degrassi" aka Lucy from "The Best Years" aka Blu from "Instant Star" turns 20 today!
If you're not already participating in Dress like a TeenNick Worker Day (as a part of the Unofficial TeenNick.com Spirit Week,) Use a Cassie Steele Secret Avatar, or some on the Manny themed items in the Avi Mall.

If you are participating in the Unofficial Spirit Week but still want to do something - try adding a Manny quote or lyrics from Cassie's songs to your siggy for the day. :]

Dress as a TeenNick.com Worker Day!

@Mary, @M-A, @Gina - take your pick, dress up like a Teennick.com employee today!

Who are you dressed up as?

Today is World AIDS Day

More than 25 million people have died from AIDS since 1981. Take some time today to learn about AIDS. Here's a video from ( RED ) to get you started.

Secret Avatar Day!

 

It's Secret Avatar Day! Day 2 in the Unofficial TeenNick Spirit Week! What Secret Avi are you wearing? What's your favorite Secret Avi that you don't have?

Wanna see a list of all the past Secret Avatars? Check on the one at the bottom of the How to get Secret Avatars entry.