Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

You know what is incredibly scary, truly frightening, sweaty palm, shortness of breath terrifying? The number of people who have bitched and moaned about what is going on in the world who won’t pick their butt up out of their Barcalounger and get out and vote. The voting age population for the last presidential election (United States Election Project for Nov. 2004) was 221,256,931. The estimated number of voters in the 2004 election who actually voted was 122,294,978. This is just shy of 100,000,000 people who were too damn lazy to cast a ballot. The homily that you get what you deserve seems to be appropriate for our nation. All our citizens have the franchise. Our women can vote. Our people of color can vote. Our religious preference has no impact on our right to vote. There are many places in the world where that just isn’t true. I was lucky enough to be the Director of Kids Voting for Southeast Pennsylvania in the 2006 election. I was astounded at the willingness to work of my 1,...

The October issue of Wired magazine had a letter to Mr. Know-it-all from a father wanting to know if he should let his 10 year old son dress for Halloween as the main sleazeball character in Grand Theft Auto IV. Mr. Know-it not so much thinks he may send mixed messages to the poor brain damaged kid if he disapproves of him dressing like his sleazy character but lets him play the game. Mixed messages? This guy isn’t sending mixed messages, he is shouting loud and clear that he can give a damn about the emotional well being of his kid. Scream all you want Grand Theft Auto fans, kids shouldn’t be playing it. Kids do not have the experience or resilience to be exposed to the unsavory themes of this distributing game. Parents, it is ok to say NO! No matter how much they whine, complain, claim ALL their friends play it (maybe new friends are needed) you still can say NO! Parents have a responsibility to provide a wholesome as possible environment for children. Let college corrupt their behav...

You ever want to hook your computer up to your TV? If you have a Tivo and a network it is a piece of cake. Download the Tivo server software onto your computer and you can then see all your graphics files and music files on the Tivo. This is particularly good for showing off your digital photos on a much bigger screen. Conversely, you can save Tivo shows on your computer hard drive and if you want, you can burn them to DVDs. However this does require a Tivo or similar DVR. If you have no Tivo and you want to: n View your digital photos on your large screen TVs n Listen to your music through your home stereo system n View videos stuck on your hard drive on your big screen n Do basic web surfing in your living room or TV room n Show off presentations to family, friends, or co-workers. Our friends at Diamond Case Designs have a very good article in their Home Theater Information Center that gives step by step instructions in “HOW TO” connect your PC and TV. Again, we have no financial...

With all due respect to the Rays and their fans, GO PHILLIES

In the immortal words of Pink Floyd , “Is there anybody out there?” As contests go, this is a bust so far. Not one comment this week, butkus, zip, zero. NO WINNER. It seemed simple enough, comment on one of my blogs and be entered, the more comments on more blogs the more entries. Alas I have stooped to add the sure fire key word, naked, to the title to see if anyone reads this particular post. It is possible that my prize of a Tripplite Circuit Tester is insufficiently attractive to get someone to read my driveling prose. On the other hand, since this is a geek focused blog, why wouldn’t you want a circuit tester unless, of course, you are sufficiently geeky that you already have one. I guess I should be thankful that I have the occasional reader who accidentally stumbles into the twilight zone of my half-witty rending. If my satisfying self expression is predicated on readership I am doomed to a pathetic page rank. However if satisfying self expression is just the act itself of self ...

Has this happened to you? Has your computer hard drive ever taken a nose dive into oblivion? Don’t despair there is hope. If you have had a computer for any length of time, you probably have had a hard drive failure. In and of itself a hard drive failure isn’t necessarily horrible if you have a good backup. However that is a seriously big IF! Most people intend to do backups, some think they do backups but very few actually do backups. So what if your hard drive crashes and you have no backup? The other night a friend approached me at my favorite watering hole and told me that her hard drive had died. She was practically distraught in that all of her family photos were on that drive and she had no backup. I pulled out my key chain and read a name and phone number off of my led flashlight. The company I recommended was Drive Savers. Why do you recommend things or services? I make recommendations based on my experiences, sometimes on reviews but most comfortably based on my experiences. ...

This is the best attention getting, non-partisan ad for encouraging the vote I have ever seen. Feel in your name and watch the video. AARP 08 Video Enter your name to see who can bring real change to Washington. First Name: Last Name:

Just For Making Comments I will give away one Tripplite Circuit Tester each week for the next four weeks to whoever posts the most comments on my blog. Please don’t comment successively, if there are two in a row by the same person, it will only count as one. I will keep track of the comments for each week and announce each week’s winner here. Cut off time for comments for each week will be noon on Sunday. I will be counting comments on Sunday October 26, Sunday November 2, 9 and 16. AC Circuit Tester, 3 prong, brand NEW Brand New Tripplite Brand AC Outlet Tester A must have for every toolbox and desk drawer. I gave one of these t o every one of my technicians when I was in the computer business. Many computer and consumer electronic issues are from "bad" power. This tester shows by means of three colored lights whether there is: an Open Ground--Open Neutral---Open Hot--- Hot/Grnd Reverse--- Hot/Neutral Reverse or a Correctly Wired Outlet. Avoid ELECTRICAL Outlet problems, TE...

Wired magazine has an article in the October edition that addresses that question. Security is big business. Look at Norton and McAfee, they get you with a fee each and every year. Every week you hear of some data base that has been compromised. Keep in mind that your home computer has little likelihood to be the target of the more talented hackers. Even those of us who have or had small businesses are not that attractive to the hackers. High volume shysters have been targeting gas stations with their parasitic card readers because that is where there is some serious money. Look at how many credit cards they can get in one day with minimal work so it stands to reason getting your credit card information off of your home computer is not going to be high on the agenda of the average cyber creep. This is not to suggest that you should do nothing to protect your computers. You should have a good antivirus software package installed and a spyware destroyer or two. Most importantly you shoul...

Looking at my blog, I decided that it has become cluttered with attempts to generate some miscellaneous income. My Amazon Store, my CafePress store, my Zazzle store all get some interest but seem like they detract from the blog itself. Thusly I have put all of those commercial ventures on my web site with links from my blogs to them. If someone wants to buy one of my "oh, so chic" t-shirts, a book or something from Amazon, it will now take two clicks to get there, one to get to my web site and one to get to the store. If someone really wants to buy something, I think two clicks are not a deterrent. If they don't then the presence of those commercial items on the web site may have deterred them from coming back. Life is nothing but change. Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock suggested that we (his readers) would have difficulty changing with the accelerated pace of today's world. Change has gone from arithmetic to geometric. I think all of us are capable of change. ...

You may have seen my semi-rant posts on my Samsung FlipShot. The main reason I got the phone was the camera which turned out to be iffy at best. The killing factor on the phone was it’s refusal to accept incoming calls about 80% of the time. It would send the calls to voice mail before I could get the darn thing open. Made me crazy.(crazier probably) After nearly a year of complaining to Verizon and one replacement of the phone for the same model, Verizon came through and said they would replace the phone for me with a different model. (In fairness to Verizon, their customer support people were always friendly, courteous and very pleasant to deal with under trying circumstances.) My replacement was the LG Dare. It has a better camera and it really does a nice job with the photos. The Touch Screen is terrific. It has tactile feedback which lets you know it really did feel your command. (I go all the way back to the original HP PC touch screens in the mid 80’s which were cool but you nev...

We live in the greatest nation in the world. I look at blogs in other countries where the blogger is in danger from his government for what he is writing. We have the freedom to express ourselves in so many ways. At the moment we have a sizable portion of our nation trying diligently to destroy it. It is difficult to say whether panic or greed is fueling the current Wall Street nose dive. Greed obviously fed the conditions that led to our current financial crisis. Even the “rescue” couldn’t avoid the Washington game as usual pork . It appears that a great many people can not see the benefit of our society and what it can be. Grabbing what they can, forcing down the market by selling to get theirs before it gets worse and fulfilling their own fears. It may be greed and it may be just sheer panic that the sky is falling and I better grab my chunk before it is gone. I don’t know the motivation; all I know is that the financial institutions that lead the panic and the poor suckers like me ...

First, the donut is the perfect diet food, it is well rounded and most importantly it has the zero calorie center. The symbolism of the donut is obvious, being one with the world and the evoked sadness due to the emptiness often found in many people's center. Man does not live by health alone, an occasional dip into dietary decadence is good for raising the spirit. If nothing else, donut lovers are emphatically expressing their support for law and order and the stereotypical donut devourer. Wired magazine had an article about how to increase views of your site. One of their tips was to write about stuff in which you have strong expertise. In other words, something you are an expert on! I humbly feel that I can claim a high level of expertise on Donuts. My earliest food memories feature donuts. I have fond memories of May’s Donuts Shop in New Castle, PA. They had wonderful filled donuts. Their lemon filled donut always had a tart flavor offset by the liberal use of powdered sugar. T...

Basically if I go to a site and find what I want at a price I feel is fair I tend to buy it unless they hide the shipping charges. Hidden shipping charges drive me and I suspect drive an enormous number of people away from a site. Show the shipping charges before your customer is expected to put in their information and you will retain more customers. How dumb does the vendor assume we are when they want all the information, including credit card, before they kindly let us know their shipping charges are outrageous. Why else would you hide your shipping charges? Buyer beware is even more important on the Web than ever before. If a site doesn’t give you the shipping charges prior to collecting your information, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE! If we all boycott the sites that think they can play bait and switch with shipping charges hidden, maybe they will wise up and give the consumer some credit. The $6.99 item including shipping is a much better deal than the $4.99 item with the hidden (until you ...

I got a comment from Joris of Shapeways after my blog on 3D printing. He apparently works at Shapeways . I checked out their site. This photo is off of their site. Pretty cool stuff can be done there. If you have interest in 3D printing but don’t have the budget to go out and buy your own equipment, this is the site to visit. You can upload your designs and have them created. It seems like the perfect opportunity to see if you do want to get involved in 3D printing. Mudge said in his comment on the article, science fiction at work, I have to agree, too cool to believe. Shapeways also has a blog. Lots of interesting stuff on their blog too. No, this is not a sponsored review, just darn interesting stuff.