Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

A Slightly Fictionalized Serial Saga Of the Horrifying Complexity of Purchasing A Plasma TV This is going to be posted over three posts as I don’t want to make anyone suffer through reading the grotesque length of this dismaying tale of how I love my buddy but hate his masochism. It all started on a sun drenched day with a promise of being one of those low humidity, slightly warm fall days you wait for all year. When suddenly the phone rang, a little voice said, “don’t answer, don’t answer,” but much to my eventual dismay, I did. George wanted my advice. An astute individual with a good heart and low technical skills, George always seeks my advice regarding any tech purchases. He even reads this blog! I’ll save you a lot of reading right now. If you are considering purchasing a big screen TV on the web, you may wish to reconsider unless you have severe masochistic tendencies. There is no need to read the tawdry tale that follows unless you too, are masochistic. My buddy Geo...

I know this a tech blog mostly, but I still have to shout out something about Banned Books Week September 25−October 2, 2010 First, I went out and bought 8 books for my grandchildren today. None of them are banned. They were innocuous children’s books but it was my own little support of the book industry. My stomach literally roils when I think of book banning. My first thoughts are of the Spanish Inquisition. Telling people don’t read that is akin to saying don’t look down when you are climbing. The first thing you do is look down. If the narrow minded idiots who seek to ban books really want to succeed, they should make whatever book they are trying to suppress required reading in the schools. This would curb the enthusiasm of the teens for whatever they are striving to ban. My own recollection of restricted, not banned but restricted, books was in the town library. Children under 16 were not allowed to read books in the adult section. Of course that meant they must be ...

This is a very nice set of phones for a good value. The setup was easy, right from the menu button on the phone. Since I always read manuals, I read the manual anyway. The call clarity is good, even my mother-in-law was impressed and we all know how hard that can be. The different ringer option is nice. Since we are using both the phones in the same room it is easy to identify which phone is ringing. I also liked the ability to program incoming calls using caller ID with specific rings. Come to think of it, that may be how my kids are screening out my calls when I call them. Hmm! All in all the phones are a good value for the dollar. The two phones combined footprint is smaller than one of the phones that were previously on our desks. Range from the base station was good as well. I don’t walk around the yard with my phone anyway but this got reception in the basement and in the garage which are all I am looking for in a cordless. I chose this product from CSN stores with no inpu...

I was recently offended on my drive to play golf last week. Two other drivers were courteous and I didn’t witness a single witless driver. I was offended because it is so annoying that courtesy is so rare that you notice it when it occurs. This morning on the way to breakfast someone was courteous. Two were flat out rude. One portly young man in his large, tricked out SUV made sure he blocked the exit drive from the strip mall I was leaving. Considering the fact that my left signal was on, I wasn’t going to get in front of him or slow him down and he looked at me as he approached and then turned his head when he stopped directly in front of me, I surmise it was just rudeness. The other idiot felt obliged to blow his horn at the courteous driver who stopped her car and waved me, the pedestrian, to cross in front of her. I smiled and waved at him, in spite of my inclination to flip him the single digit salute. In the interest of fairness I’ve tried to puzzle out what fuels the lac...

Oh, the joys of Windows 7. My American Greeting Card CreateACard Platinum 7 is not happy with Windows 7. It isn’t flat out incompatible, it just is erratic. Sometimes it works just fine and others, no so much. So I did a search and found a site that claimed to have evaluated greeting card software. They rated Printmaster Platinum as number one. Well, I have to wonder if they actually looked at the software. First I was lured by the 50% off price at Staples. I should have guessed that if they were selling it at 50% off it was not the best seller. Next it took forever to install, hug, chug, I think I can, I think I can. Luckily I have two computers on my desk so I wasn’t dead in the water during installation. Upon starting the software I discovered that their idea of greeting cards and that of my old reliable American Greeting Card Create are radically different. My MS Publisher 2003 has better greeting card options than this package. It also was slowwww! I mean really, really...

The recent Jet Blue flight attendant that went bananas seems to clearly illustrate why airlines are in financial difficulty. Their service stinks! In fact they provide no service. Their attitude is dismissive. Airlines nickel and dime you to distraction. I used to fly more often just for fun. I now avoid airlines as much as I can. I’m retired, I had anticipated flying more not less but why, oh why would I subject myself to being abused? I’ve started taking the AutoTrain to Florida. Say what you will about Amtrak but the service was terrific. It reminded me of how much fun it was to fly years and years ago. The Amtrak staff acted if they were really glad I took the train. They extended themselves. The food wasn’t outstanding but it far surpassed anything I’ve had on an airplane for many years. The next time I go cross country I plan on looking at a train instead of a plane. It would be nice if the AutoTrain went cross country. That would be a treat. Get off for a couple of day...

I went to the local arts and crafts show this past weekend. It was crowded and noisy and packed with talented people. After an hour or so of walking I realized I was parched. I just started to look for a vendor or store selling water when a woman handed me a bottle of water with a local real estate agents name on it. It was a free bottle of water advertising her real estate firm. I thanked her for being a “life saver” and drank my free bottle of water. I thought nothing of that free bottle of water. I wasn’t truly parched I just felt like I was. Reality check is that 4000 kids die each day due to illnesses from lack of clean drinking water. They aren’t just parched, they’re dying! It is frightening to consider a number like 4000 dead kids per day. Actually it is beyond frightening and into appalling! The following video describes Water Aid an international organization that works to provide both clean water and sanitation instruction. Contact Information...

Wow, that is a blanket and bald statement. However I have a good reason for feeling that way. The credit card companies are currently involved in trying to convince people they are the good guys out to help you. I wonder how much they have actually changed. The basis for my cynicism occurred about 10 years ago. The Internet was still fairly new and my business got a call from someone in NY who saw our web site. The caller spent a couple of hours on the phone with one of my sales reps, configuring several laptop proposals. After two days of emails back and forth the caller said that he wished to purchase 8 laptops. My rep came to me and asked how he could do a transaction that large over the phone. I told him to get all, note ALL, of the necessary credit card information and then call the credit card company. I instructed him to not only get the transaction authorized, I told him to go to the credit card company’s fraud department and verify the transaction with them as well. My s...

CSN Stores are making a push in the blogosphere. They are providing products to review such as console tables , back to school stuff, office supplies, the list is practically endless. What I like about this outfit is that there is no attempt to direct my writing or influence it. They provide products to review and they encourage me to go to any one of their more than 200 stores and choose the specific product I want to review. How cool is that! I recently reviewed an APC Backup UPS 350 that I got on their site. They made no attempt whatsoever to influence what I chose or how I wrote my review. To me that speaks quite well for their confidence level in their site, their policies and their products. I got an email today asking me if I would be interested in looking at another product. I replied affirmatively. Now the hard part will be trying to decide what to review. I love being retired and writing! This is so much fun. Stay tuned, who knows what I will pick to review, I su...

There have been countless pieces written on this topic but frankly I never read them until I got a new 24” monitor that had a HDMI input. I was not happy with the HDMI from my PC to my 40” so I hadn’t planned on bothering with the HDMI to DVI on my 24” monitor until I saw an Amazon HDMI to DVI cable at a reasonable price ($7.49). What the heck, I bought it and tried it out. I saw no difference between VGA and the DVI/HDMI. I found this curious so I googled VGA vs. DVI/HDMI and most of the posts I found were several years old. I did find one post that was more recent and made sense. The bottom line as I could see was that unless you have specific video needs there isn’t a whole hill of beans difference. VGA is analog and DVI/HDMI is digital so theoretically digital should be better. However the majority of users are not involved in situations that stress either choice. BTW there are several HDMI connectors so once again a picture is worth a thousand words. I own 5 HDMI cabl...

HVAC folks have a special language just like any other profession. Unless you are in the business you really are not going to be able to get a truly clear understanding of all of their terminology. That is not a bar to getting a decent price. Many AC vendors are proposing units that exceed the government standards for energy savings. By exceeding the standards they assure you that you can get the $1500.00 tax credit offered by Federal Tax Credit for Energy Efficiency. If you have used the tax credit for any other Energy Star improvement, you can NOT use it again. It is a once and done tax credit, no matter what the salesman tells you. Also remember it is up to 30% of the purchase or a maximum of $1500.00 for most Energy Star improvements. Solar panel installs fall under another category so look that up if you are interested. The tax credit is not a refundable tax credit. That is important. A refundable tax credit means that if you owe no taxes and you generate a refundable tax cre...

Go to Azure Dwarf to get the skinny on the new price drop by Borders.