SteveWords

Monday, August 21, 2006

An interesting scam from way back!

This is not the latest scam, but it deserves mention anyway.

Quite a while back my daughter Amanda got caught stealing a pacifier from Fry’s food store in Prescott. The pacifier was worth a little over $2.00. They of course made a big stink over this trying to get me to sign documents that implicated me in her crime. I loudly refused to do this. They also made me pay for the pacifier, which they kept using “evidence” as an excuse. The most interesting part was they also tried to collect a “fine” of $100.00 which I refused to pay, because they had no legal right to collect fines. The only thing that saved me was my strength of will to thwart their intents. I think most people would cave under this type of pressure. I bet that Fry’s made thousands from this scam!

This was over 10 years ago. Are they still trying to pull this type of stunt? Leave me comments and your experiances on this!

Politiks-An answer to comments…

Thanks for your comments! It’s nice to see that someone is actually reading my drivel! As to the politics and stuff, I agree with you at there being probably way too many screamers out there. These days they (the government) would probably put you on some stupid terrorist list if you say too much. A couple of weeks ago an aquaintance of mine dropped out of the blue and tells me that I am on the Yavapai County domestic terrorists list because I faught CPS and won many years ago! Is there even such a list? He told me he would drop off a copy. He hasn’t yet....

You ever know. If it is that easy to get on “the list” maybe everyone is a terrorist anyway! What do you think?

I would love to hear from you!

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

I need feedback!

Should I make comments on political BS here? Please leave me comments as to what you think!

Thanks!

Get out of real estate now!

Several months ago my wife and I were on one of our walks and we happened on a duplex for sale. I grabbed one of the info sheets on the pole outside and began reading. Shock hit! This very average building was for sale for $350,000.00! It was built about 1 year before for something like $180,000.00. I decided to run the numbers on this property. The payments on a standard 30 year loan were about twice what it rented for! There was no way that you could double the rent and still find tenants willing to pay that much. There was no way to get a profit out of this property as an investment. I tried everything that I could think of to find a way to make out on this property. This is-to me-a sign that real estate has finally hit the wacko level in our area.

Now the news is saying that house sales are down. I wonder why?

Nerd Note! Lightnin’ and your computer…

This is the time of the year when thunderstorms hit our area. Lightning is your computer’s worst enemy. So you have a surge protector in the power line. Yee-haw! Think about how big a lightning bolt is. See how big your surge protector is. Nuff said, eh? A surge protector helps for little surges, like when your refrigerator starts. A lightning bolt is humongeous.

How do you protect yourself? Easy! Just unplug everything when lightning is near. You can tell the approximate distance away of a strike by counting the seconds between the flash and the thunder sound. Each second is one mile away. If the strike is a couple of miles away you are relatively safe. Any closer and it’s unplug time. This also includes the computer, the monitor and all accessories. You also need to disconnect the modem or ethernet connection as lightning also destroys bunches of modems every year.

Also think about the other things in your home that are electronic. Your TV, clock radio, stereo, VCR, etc all need to be unplugged too. They are in the same position as your computer when it comes to surges, and could even start a fire and burn your house down!

If you are going to be gone you also might want to be disconnecting everything just in case!

Monday, August 14, 2006

Always read the fine print!

Living today is always rather interesting. There seems to be a scam around every corner. Remember when marketing was an honest affair such as buy one get one free? No longer! Every time you see an offer you must really check it out to make sure the deal is really a deal. In this section I will write about “deals” that I find and tell you where the con is. Feel free to comment on any of these!

Nerd Note!

Nerd Notes will be about computer use or repair issues.

First of all I should warn you that I do not consider myself to be a nerd or geek. I am that way in some ways, but computers are not my life. At the end of each day I shut everything off. I see no reason to waste electricity keeping something on when I am not using it. It just costs money that I don’t want to spend. I even go around after my son and turn stuff off that he leaves on. I probably turn off 2 or 3 times the stuff that I turn on! A geek leaves his computer stuff on all the time and computers are the main focus of his life. I have many, many other things in my life!

Should you turn your computer off or leave it on? My feeling is to turn it off when you are not using it. Some people have told me that turning a computer off and restarting it every day makes it die earlier. How many computers die from hardware failure? Practically none. Windoze needs regular restarts to work right. A Mac doesn’t, usually. I have never in all my years in computer repair seen a regularily maintained machine that was harmed by turning it off. Give your computer a rest and it will last longer and work better!

Category note. What this is about!

Beginning notes for catagory-about me and the way I think.

I need to explain where I come from in this category. The computer that I use everyday is a Macintosh. Most of these entries will be typed on my MacBook. I do everything from video editing to web page design to audio program creation on my Macs. I own several of them that I use everyday.

I also own several Windows PC machines. I have tried all the things that I use my Macs for on them. I have one Windows 2000 machine that I built just for video production. I use it for converting film to DVD. It does a passable job at this but it is a rather badly thought out program. It makes a DVD that works and looks OK, but it is hard to use and slow. I have been in computers and networking for over 20 years but I still have yet to get a decent video signal out of this machine, even though it has the best video card available in it.

The Macs on the other hand, with a Sony video converter connected by FireWire, put out a pristine video signal. There has never been any problems in this area. It just works and works very well. This is the way things generally work with a Mac.

I have been involved in computers for a long time now and have used Macintosh, Windows, Linux, Amiga, BSD, and a bunch of other operating systems over these years. When I say something, I don’t just blow wind. My decisions and opinions have been formed through experiance on these platforms. When someone tells you that they hate one operating system or another, just ask them how much they have actually used the system that they speak of in the last 5 years. If they are truthful with you, you will have a better idea of where they are coming from. Then make your opinion from this information.