Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

Like everyone else these days, I am trying to come up with ways to save a few bucks on my everyday expenses. In my case this doesn’t save me so much money as it does aggravation. I have excessively hard water with lots of iron and impurities. I have a water softener and a neutralizer. Since I am a rural kind of guy, I have a well and septic system. In order not to overload the septic system I discharge my water treatment water on my side lawn. This leads to some really thick grass in some areas and in the low spots some mud. To me this was the aggravating factor but for you this may be the money saving incentive. If you have public water and sewer you may be able to save a few bucks by changing the cycle of your water treatment equipment. My water guy found that my neutralizer was backwashing 4 times a week at 80 gallons per backwash. It was not set to do this but over time the pins(whatever the heck that means) had moved and changed the cycle. He changed it to 2 times per week and now...

If you haven’t found Gas Buddy yet, stop and do it now their site is http://www.gasbuddy.com/ Gas Buddy is effective because motorists just like you and me take the time to report the price of gas in their travels. Gas Buddy has a site you can personalize to you r local area and find out what the different gas stations are charging. Then you go to the one that has the best price in your neighborhood. Keep in mind if you have to drive more that a few miles out of you way, it won’t be cost productive unless you are getting a whopping better price. How effective is this? There are two Lukoil stations about 1.5 miles apart near me. They normally are between $0.10 and $0.20 different in price. Hey if you can save $3.00 per fill up by an extra 1.5 miles, you’d be nuts not to do it. There are two stations on an intersection about 6 miles from me that are normally $0.20 to $0.30 more per gallon that the stations a couple of miles away from them. How do they get away with that? Apparently the f...

I talked to my home heating oil company this week. I am on the 9 month budget plan and my budget will increase $160.00 per month over last year. Yeah, that is $160.00 more per month, outrageous. My cap on the budget plan is $4.99 per gallon for heating oil. That is what m y budget is based on. If home heating oil goes higher than that I am capped at the $4.99. Assuming I use no more oil than I did last year I know exactly what I will pay. If oil goes down in price, I will pay the lower price but I won’t benefit until the end of the budget and then I will get a refund. The oil company gets my money and any interest they can generate if the price goes down. I get the safety of a cap if the crazy market gets crazier and I don’t get penalized if the price goes down. The other alternative that some of my friends are doing is the prepayment option. The lowest I have heard is $4.59 per gallon prepaid based on last years use. Based on my usage that would be about $3000.00 prepaid to lock that ...

Home networking can be a pain. Wireless is wonderful when it works. Hardwired networks always work faster but sometimes getting from point A to point B involves running wires through the shower or up the chimney. Face it, most of our homes were not built for ease of wiring post construction. I have had mixed results with wireless, my present Linksys wireless router works well with my Trendnet USB wireless NIC and my built in wirele ss in my PDA and my laptop. I get less than stellar results at my son’s home with the same equipment. Woe is me, what to do, what to do? Networking through the electrical outlets is finally coming of age. Not only does it work, it works well. It wasn’t that long ago that we first tested this technology, back when I still owned a computer business. It was so so. Now with the advances here and those coming soon we are looking at 200 Mbps throughput now and 400 Mbps throughput in the next year. Very respectable, quicker than wireless and theoretically with freq...

This blog is not particularly technical but it is definitely money saving. I have a Polaris Pool Sweep in my pool. (a) It does a pretty good job keeping the pool clean. It uses a mesh bag (b) to capture the debris as it moves as a water pressure activated vacuum cleaner. So far no complaints, where I get aggravated is the $24.00 price tag on the replacement bags. We aren’t talking stainless steel or anything with a chip in it, we are talking a nylon mesh bag with a plastic collar. As a former business owner I am all in favor of profit but when you have a captive market that you assume has big bucks because they have an in-ground pool (hah!), there is no reason to hose (no pun intended) them over on a consumable. Anyway, now retired and needing a replacement bag I put my creative juices to the task and came up with a workable alternative. You buy a lingerie wash bag at the dollar store for a buck. You use a stainless steel hose clamp ($3.00) or a cable tie $0.25 and you have just save...

If you are looking for a cheap home computer, this cheapo may be just what you need. It is sold at Walmart for $199.00. You need a monitor and a printer but if you are replacing an aging Dell, as a friend who called me today is, you should already have both. With the included Open Office you have one cheap system. Walmart, feel free to send me some money for this blog. (ha, like that would happen.) The system is preinstalled with the gOS and running on the power of an 1.5GHz VIA C7-D processor, this computer lets you create your own CDs, easily transfer digital files and surf the Internet with broadband-ready 10/100 Ethernet port. Note: Monitor not included. Here are the specs: 1.5GHz VIA C7-D processor 512MB DDR2 memory 80GB Hard Drive DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo Drive Burn CDs and watch your favorite DVDs on this versatile drive Additional Features: Operating System: gOS V2 Expansion Slots: N/A Communications: 10/100 Mbps Ethernet LAN (RJ-45 port) Graphics & Audio: VIA UniChrome Pro IGP...

WhooHoo subnotebooks are predicted to be big….AGAIN. Is there any recollection of the the Poqet PC, Psion palmtop computer, Newton or the Jornada. After 28 years in the computer business, I find many of the headlines Yogi Berraish. Now it is subnotebook vs. the smartphone. Which will be the winner? Reality check, it will be the first vendor to successfully morph the notebook and phone into a easily carried device that is SUPPORTED. Follow through in the computer industry is much like a bad golf swing…non existent. I have owned many incarnations of the subnotebook genre. I currently have a Smartphone, I can access the internet, get email and take iffy 3 megpixel photos. The screen is bright and way too small to be useful. Admittedly subteens and other species with acute vision may not find it so but for those of us approaching adulthood, the screen is too small. I opted not to get the Treo since my son has had limited success with his even after several warranty replacements. Instead I ...

Once again I am going to refer to Diamond Case Designs and once again I will reiterate I am not being paid one dime by DCD nor am I in any way financially connected to Diamond Case Designs. I do find their newsletters and their information center really interesting which may indicate that I need to get a life or maybe not. As you may know, infrared remotes depend on line of sight to function. While babysitting my grandchildren I noticed that I had to open the cabinet under the big screen to use the remote. I thought at the time how inconvenient and it definitely impacts the whole reason for having the components out of sight. How could I use an infrared remote through the wooden door? I happened on the infrared repeaters at the Diamond Case Information center and realized I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. To begin place a sensing receiver somewhere in line of sight. There is a table top receiving eye and a tear drop style receiving eye. From my perspective, the tear drop style is wa...

I know, the last three posts have not had a one word to say about money saving tips. Note the philosophic part in the Blog Banner. Prescription plans are a rip off. I know that is hardly news to any of the majority of us who have disgustingly expensive health plans. My plan gives me three months of prescriptions for the price of two if I submit my script to the mail order branch of the insurance company. Sounds good but appearances are deceiving. Take a recent example, a generic drug that I submitted to my insurance through the mail order pharmacy provides me with 90 days supply fo r $40.00, not too bad, right? Well my local pharmacist, (not the one in the previous blog) tell me if she submits the script to my my insurance company they will only provide a 30 day supply at the price of $14.99. So locally it is $5.00 more than the supposedly big saving I am getting from mail order. But wait there’s more, a set of free steak knives… not really. It gets better, under her pharmacies generic...

Small businesses and some larger ones, bitch constantly about how the big box store or the Internet is robbing them of business. They complain that it is unfair that big box stores buy in volume and get a better price than they get. They complain that the Internet reseller doesn’t have overhead, or taxes or employees or something that makes them more competitive. Bitch, bitch and more bitching and then they drive business to the Internet in droves. My 93 year old Mom is on a walker. It used to have two larger wheels in front and two smaller wheels in the back on springs, supposedly so her weight would depress the wheels and keep her from speeding off into the night. One of the rear, spring loaded wheels broke off. It really didn’t impact the performance of her rig but if you have a Mom around, you know that didn’t make any difference. It was broken and she was going to fall, again. Since the wheel broke off on our way into our favorite breakfast joint, we were already out and about. Ge...

A friend died recently at 39, he dropped dead mowing the lawn. I’ve known him since he was a kid. His parents are my peers. He’s dead. That strikes me as preposterous. How can you drop dead at 39? At my age, they drop like flies but at 39, preposterous. Death is inevitable but expectations dictate that it is age appropriate. This kid was only a bit older than my kids. I can’t contemplate the emotional impact. I’ve got friends who have lost kids overseas in action. They are devastated but since their kids were in harm’s way intentionally, I think they were somewhat prepared for the possibility that harm would come. Dropping dead while mowing the lawn is not one of those things you expect. My heart and my condolences go out to the family and the wife. To you young immortals please recognize that you are never too young to get a physical and discover whether you are truly healthy. There is no guarantee that medical awareness will prolong your life, but your chan...

At one time or another we have all lost data. Period, all of us have lost a file or something important we needed. Computers and humans are fallible. Try as we may, we don’t backup often enough or well enough. Tapes break, tape drive fail, backup to the server works great unless the server crashes. These disasters occur with such frequency that most business insurance policies will give a discount for a viable off site recovery plan. The first step in a viable off site recover plan is to protect the data. Having off site hardware is moot without the data. Even the happy home computer crashes. I haven’t had a lot of hard copy photos since 1997, they are all on the computer. I have CDs and DVDs holding the photos but what if it isn’t just a computer crash, what if I live along the Mississippi? Needless to say, their must be a better option. After a great deal of research I’ve decided that the best option is a combination of reliability and affordability from a company called Intronis Te...

When my sons bought me a Tivo I thought it was a less than stellar gift. I am not a couch potato (computer potato maybe) and I don’t watch much TV. Well, bad or good, I found the Tivo absolutely terrific. For those of you from the planet “what the hell is he talking about?” Tivo is a digital video recorder. It is similar to the VCR we all used to have. However it is way, way better. It allows you to search for shows and set up season passes for stuff you want to watch. A seson pass just means, it will record what ever show you want when it comes on without further intervention from you. Tivo lets you watch the shows you want when you want them. In addition if you are so inclined you can rent movies through your Tivo. There is a subscription fee involved but you can pay for a lifetime (of the unit, not you) subscription when you purchase it. There are other alternatives and Steve at Diamond Case Design can better explain those. Funny how you can fall in love with a gadget you never th...

This is my first venture into paid blogging so here we go. Best Buys.com is doing a series called “Fine Print Revealed” that shines the light of comparison shopping on different products, services and technology. A comprehensive list of those articles are found here: Best Buys Comparison Reviews One of the comparisons they feature compares DSL and Cable. Having had both experiences in a business setting, I feel I can write about it with some credibility. DSL was the first high speed internet connection we had at my office. It worked, not well but it worked. Verizon was having a hard time with fiber and copper connections and we had a very confusing and time consuming situation to get DSL. Once we had DSL and worked out the kinks it worked just fine. Since we had 12 users, DSL worked better than dial up but with that many users we didn’t see the speed we had hoped to see. We spent some time lobbying Comcast to put a cable modem into our office. The cost at the time wi...

Interesting question with an assumption you have ethics which often isn’t clearly demonstrated in many of today’s businesses. I guess it depends on what you write about and how honest you are in writing. As a retired, fixed income kind of guy, I look for things that can bring in gadget or book money without a great deal of sweat on my part. Since I am a technut and booknut, writing about that is a no brainer. Now to get paid for it would be exciting but am I hungry enough to ignore my conscience? I can answer that by the fact that I have been offered industry related jobs by former competitors since I sold my business. As enticing as some of the offers were, I declined as I had signed a non-compete agreement with the guy who bought my computer business. Several times I have been told that those agreements are impossible to enforce. That may be the case but since I agreed not to compete and I shook hands on that agreement, I “ethically” can’t ignore the agreement, regardless of it’s enf...