Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

I am a member of AARP, a gang for old folks. As a gang, we have colors red, white and blue. We have our “do-rags”, AARP ball caps. We also have our club houses, the local senior centers. Somewhat like your street gangs that offer protection to their members, AARP also offers protection. Of course, AARP does not justify their existence with violence or guns. Instead, AARP offers benefits. There has to be some compensation for aging. It sure isn’t the bum knees, the tricky back or the balding head, in this case it is the AARP benefits. I recently re-upped with my AARP dues. It was $39.95 for 5 years. Shortly thereafter I needed to rent a car for several weeks. I did my due diligence and went to all the sites that claim to save you money on car rental. I even went to Bill Shatner’s site, Priceline. Not one of those sites had a price even close to what I got through the AARP site. Even Captain Kirk’s “name your own price” site failed dismally to compete with the AARP site. How much did I s...

Growing up in a small steel town we had a lot of labels for people. Propriety today prevents me from even putting them in print. We had the Lithuanian Club, The Eagles, The Moose, The SOI, The Elks, The Odd Fellows, The Saxon Club, The German Club, The Masons, The Knights of Columbus and I am sure some that I wasn’t even aware existed. Our parents often used the labels with disdain, such as non-union. As kids we didn’t take them as seriously but in the heat of action, such as a fight behind the 5&10, they often came out. I think a good education helped me to divest a great deal of my need for labeling. Getting to know the people behind the labels was a sure fire way to dissuade using a label in a derogatory manner. So now having retired I am struggling with labels again. Retired means old. I may be retired but in no way do I think of myself as old. Retired means unemployed to me, not old. Senior, to me, still means of high school. Somehow I have difficulty ascribing that term to my...

My ISP recently informed me that it was migrating servers. This was, of course, for my benefit, would provide me with a better interface, more security..yadda, yadda, yadda. I am liquidating some equipment for a client. I sent out 50 emails one Monday requesting bids on the equipment. On Thursday I began to wonder why I was getting no response when I got a call following up on an emailed offer. Since I get multiple email accounts in my Outlook I didn’t notice that I was getting NO email in from my business account. So all those emails were wasted as I was unable to get any responses. The ISP took 3 days to straighten out the receiving problem. I discovered Saturday morning I could get email in my business account but I could not send from it any more. I could do it before they “fixed” the email problem but after I could receive but not send. After another several hours we got it “all” fixed. The following Thursday I got an email stating my site was migrated and I s...

Why I am blogging. Getting the hang of blogging is somewhat problematic. For a guy who is seldom at a loss for words, I find myself staring at the keyboard wondering do I have anything remotely intelligent to offer today. In some ways it is like a commitment to exercise. You know it is good for you, you know it needs to be done regularly but you often have difficulty getting going. Oddly enough, I have always had a desire to “help”. Astrologically I am a Libra and if I bought into that stuff, it might explain that desire. I put nearly 30 years into the tech environment and it seems senseless to let that experience just whither away to nothing. I am cognizant that in my age group my skill set and technology interest is somewhat unusual. Those of you 20 years or more younger than me probably don’t need input on technology from a guy who text messages at about 1.5 words per minute. (I have big thumbs and these darn phone keyboards are really small.) Anyway, I am trying ...