Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

This was my favorite Christmas present. I made my first 3.5 dozen donuts the day after Christmas.  I used a cake mix and the cake donut recipe I found online. Take the dry mix, put in one egg, 1/4 cup of veggie or olive oil and one cup of water.  Whisk until smooth.  I sprayed the trays before and after each batch and did not get one stuck donut.  Getting the batter into the donut cups was a bit troublesome.  I finally cut the corner off a gallon baggie and put the batter in it and added it to the cups like I was icing a cake.  My first batch was spice donuts with a maple glaze.  The maple glaze was easy, 1/4 cup butter, 1/2 cup of maple syrup, 1 cup of powered sugar and (to me) the most important part to super charge the maple flavor I added a teaspoon of pure maple extract.  Let the donuts cool and swirl them in the glaze and set on wax paper.  The donuts were a hit with the entire family! This machine is a great gift for the food...

Buttons on "Wrong" side.  My first thought was what a beautiful watch.  Very masculine, like the black on black wheels on the limited edition Ford 150 Raptor.  My next thought was that it was a left hand person’s watch.  The buttons are on the “wrong” side.  I’m not sure what determines wrong but I went back to the selling page and there is no mention that this is a left hand person watch.  As good looking as it is, it is hard to read particularly in low light conditions.  I think a light button would have been a good idea.  A common complaint I have about watches may be, note I say may be, age related.  The tiny little dials are impossible to read.  Of course, the manual is equally hard to read.  It is sub pt 6 font and I had to use a magnifying glass to read it.  Note I have 20/20 vision with my glasses.  Overall I like the looks of the watch, in spite of the slight weirdness of the buttons on the wrong side. ...

Conceptually I like this.  This is a small, 1 5/8" x 3/8" approximately, device that is used to keep track of your stuff.  You install the application on your phone.  The setup and connection is quick and easy, it uses Bluetooth.   Hold the button on the device and it rings your phone.  Press the button on your phone and it sets off a tinny sound from the device.   It is a bi-directional divining rod for your gear.   If you constantly lose your keys, put the device on your key ring and when they are MIA you trigger it via your phone.  This assumes you don't consistently misplace your phone as well.   The vendor hope is you buy a bunch of these and attach them to your stuff.  A feature that appears to be a bonus is you can turn on the camera from the phone application and trigger the photo with the device.  I, frankly am one of those manually anti-dexterous folks who have trouble holding my phone and pre...

This is a great DIY kit for the young builder.  There are a lot of great parts for building the 22 machines that have plans that are included.  However with the number of parts that are included, the sky is the limit.  This kit will provide your young builder and perhaps his father many hours of fun.   K'NEX makes a very durable, high quality product and even better it is made in the good old USA .   from the vendor: 22 different simple machine models 3 individual instructions books Build up to 3 models at the same time Contains 590+ parts For ages 8+ If reviewing a product, it may have been received free of charge. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.

Recently I attempted to pay a book illustrator for her work by using PayPal.   I have used the PayPal service to send my illustrator money for several years.  The December payment went through just fine.  Imagine my surprise when the March payment would not process.  I spent hours, that’s hours, not minutes on the phone with PayPal who never did figure out the problem.  I was forced to find an alternate method of paying my illustrator. I turned to Western Union whose $34.00 fee was less than the $65.00 bank transfer fee my bank wanted.   Now the hidden fee part comes because if you use a credit card to fund a Western Union transfer, you get charged Cash Advance Fees by your credit card company.  That added an additional $11.99 in fees to the already $34.00 fee from Western Union .  Now my illustrator lives in Bosnia .  I don’t know why PayPal could not re-do a transaction they did multiple times over multiple years...

Update I did get a call back from tech support today, 18 hours after I left a message.  They left a trouble ticket so I called and after a short wait got a tech.   I was advised to reinstall the software as that might have a bearing on the lock ups.   The tech was not sure if the camera stores photos on your phone as well as the cloud or only on the cloud.   The user manual wasn't clear on that either but their application does save the snapshots to your phone storage.  I can not find any way to dictate that it save if to the flash card rather than the  phone memory itself.  The shots I took yesterday right before the software locked up are nowhere to be found.  I moved the camera away from my desk and my router.  It is now six feet away from a network extender that is showing a strong signal on my meter.  The camera however is showing a weak signal and black and white instead of color.  The tech said that the quality of the pic...