Category: Electronics/Technology

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Interning For The Summer

My oldest nephew is heading overseas in seven weeks or so, for his summer intern job in Amsterdam. My sister has been working closely with him over the phone and by instant messengers to help him find cheap accommodation Amsterdam by using a web site called www.shortstay-apartment.com and searching their database for an apartment or even a room in Amsterdam for the month of June. They are on a shoestring budget and would much rather spend the money on activities to take advantage of being in Europe for a month rather than spending it all on some place to sleep.

Last year the same nephew spent the entire summer as an intern for a big law firm in Philadelphia. He agreed to take the position without knowing much about the actual job function. He just trusted his college liaison to place him in a company that would further his interest in helping the environment. Philadelphia is a great city for young people. It has a lot of history, culture, and professional sports to keep people active and stimulated. The cost of living is high because of its location on the East Coast and so near to New York City. But for a lot of people, Philadelphia is a lower cost alternative to living in NYC or the north Jersey area. This year he is traveling to Amsterdam and working with an engineering company. He is looking forward to learning about the European approach to generating, using and saving energy.

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Role Playing Games

My brother has discovered an awesome role playing game on the Internet called World of Warcraft, which I’ve heard about, but know nothing about. He was telling me about the game and wants me to join in the fun and play along with him. From what I understand, you download the software and sign up for the game online and then you buy a wow game card so that you have unlimited access to the game web site for a month.

The game card is like a subscription. There is a place online where you can buy a world of warcraft game card, and they have special deals where you can get a 60 day subscription. Instead of having to drive to the local game store, park your car, go inside the store to get waited on, pay for the game card, then drive home with it, you can just go online and get your wow game card code right away. They send it to you in an email and you have it in minutes instead of all the time you would waste buying it from a local store. That all makes sense to me, as I really would prefer buying things on the internet. I’m just not sure if I will have enough free time to spend playing this role playing game and that I’d be just throwing my money away. I’ll have to go over to his place and watch him play it and see if it is even something that I would want to do.

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Domain Names

My blog was not set up to be a big public blog, but it has gotten some interest from people in faraway places, for one reason or another. I find that very flattering and hope that any visitors to my site find something enjoyable or worthwhile. A few of my real life friends have asked me for help in setting up their own blogs.

So here is what I did, and I’m sure anyone else can do the same. I bought a domain name from a company that sells domain names. I wanted my own name, of course, and this site let me search to make sure it was available, just in case there are others in the world who might have claimed this domain name before I thought of doing it.

Then I found a web hosting company. I used the webhostingchoice.com web site to compare the rates and hosting plans among the top 10 web hosting companies. Once I decided which hosting company to use, I had to transfer the domain to that site so it would appear online. I liked the webhostingchoice.com site because it was quick and easy to find out what I wanted to know. They compared the rates and had a learning center with articles on everything I needed to know to get started.

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Box Office Failure

One of my favorite action movies by someone other than Mel Gibson has got to be the original “Speed.” The movie had a great cast: Keanu Reeves – gorgeous, intense, the clean cut, cop-type everyone loves to love Dennis Hopper – one of the best bad guys EVER – Sandra Bullock – America’s darling – Jeff Daniels – Imaginative casting – from slapstick to a cop – and it worked! Can you believe it has been 19 years since that movie came out? IT was released in 1994. Now that certainly makes me feel so OLD!

One of the worst sequels of all time, Speed 2 was made with a lot of the same people, with the noticeable absence of Keanu Reeves, and released in 1997. It was a box office failure – and rightfully so. The movie was a money grab and had so many technical inconsistencies that it was neither believable nor entertaining. The set for the huge crash ending was supposed to be the Caribbean town of St. Martin, but according to Wikipedia, there is no town by the name in the movie and there is not town that looks anything like the scene in the movie. So I stand by my original comment that the Isla Moin Marina in Costa Rica was used as the basis of the movie set in Speed 2. Unless this town did not exist in 1996, in which case I wonder if the architect was inspired by the movie?

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So Many Beds, So Little Time

As I’ve been talking about here lately that after spending some time now sleeping in the bed here at the farm that most be as old as the original farmhouse decor, I have decided that I really need to invest in a new bed that will be better for my aching back. After putting so much time and effort into the place, plenty of blood, sweat and tears have been placed into the daily work routine and I just can’t do it all anymore with a sore back each morning.

I have been doing some looking around online to see what types of beds are out there these days, I want to find one that is good quality, fits in with the rest of the furnishings in the old place and it definitely needs to be affordable at this point. Man have I been surprisingly overwhelmed with all of the selections that are now being produced and being offered these days, but I was happy to find one particular site at Time4sleep.co.uk that has a few that have caught my eye and I want to check out further that are in their Antique beds category.

A good quality bed is an investment and not something that I will take lightly, but I really need to make a decision soon, as these cold winter mornings are bad enough without starting them with an aching back!

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The Right Kind of Bed For A Good Night’s Sleep

Sleep is such an important human condition. Sometimes I hate the way that our bodies require sleep – it is such a disruption to the day or night to have to stop and lie down for 6 hours. But a good night’s sleep is important to your health and ability to function well the next day. On a good night, I might be able lie down for 8 hours. To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I’ve slept longer than 8 hours uninterrupted. Most night’s I’m good with between 6 and 8 hours of good sleep.

There are several considerations to a good night’s sleep and one of the most important is a comfortable, supportive bed. This becomes even more important as our bodies grow and mature, with our skeleton and muscles needing proper support and rest. The right bed can mean the difference between a completely relaxing and sound sleep, or a night of tossing and turning with fits of wakefulness. I have had my eye on certain pieces of new furniture that I would like to replace or add to this household. In my opinion, the most important room in the house is the master bedroom. Everything else in a house can be replaced or substituted outside of the home, but the one main reason a man comes home at night is so that he can climb into his own bed.

Shopping for a new bed is worth a little time and effort to find the right bed, considering how important the bed is to a good night’s sleep. I found a web site called www.time4sleep.co.uk with all kinds of bed types – a large variety of styles and different types of beds for every home or person. My favorite beds on this site are the storage beds. There are different types of storage options and they make the bed very practical. Since the bed takes up so much space in the room, it makes total sense to me to make good use of the space under the bed to store items not used often. These beds make storage either attractive or hidden, at a cost similar to beds without the storage features.

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The New Video Chat Lights

My sister has been talking up the video chats to me, that so many people are using and enjoying, saying that I should start looking into getting on to a few video chat rooms, just to be able to socialize a bit. I have been blowing her off with every excuse that I can think of, most of them were true though. I am super busy around here taking care of everything that needs to be done all on my own. At the end of the day I’m pretty beat and not in the mood to go anywhere except to the kitchen, the living room and then to bed.

Since I do spend so much alone time, it certainly does get lonely. The holidays are always the worst so I think I just might check into some of the sites that my big sis has been telling me about. But first I want to look into the video chat lights that are out that helps make your video image look more pleasing. I need all the help that I can get. I’m just a farmer, not at all fancy like and haven’t worn anything but jeans in well over 6 years! Just stating a fact.

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Always Feeding That Printer

Well the search is on for a good buy on my dell 3115cn toner that I am figuring on needing here pretty soon. It is something that I have kept thinking about doing but it kept getting put on the back shelve time and time again and now I can’t waste anymore time dilly dallying around until the last minute. It really bites when you want and or need to print something out only for the printer to spit out the most god awful copies of the documents that you need right away.

The are many highly competitive companies out there vying for our business for our printing equipment and all of the necessary accessories that keep us happy printing campers. And finding them online makes it such an easier task to tackle trying to find the best bang for your buck. I always look for sales, coupons, discounts and free shipping is a must on every order or it doesn’t get ordered. Hopefully I can find the sweetest deal possible this weekend and order at least two or three of them in an effort to keep me printing for some time and not have to go through this again for a good long while.

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Running Up That Hill, Without the TV Set

With everything that needs to be done around the farm and the house by me, myself and I, I don’t usually have a whole heck of a lot of down time, but when I do I really like to kick back with a cold beer and watch an hour or two of some good action or comedy shows and/or movies. You would think that with all the channels that I get with my current Direct TV package that there would be several things on tonight, but that just wasn’t the case.

I started to watch a movie on one of the Showtime channels called Bellflower but after staring at the screen for over 10 minutes and still not catching on to the plot or being entertained at all I couldn’t deal with this movie another minute. The good news is that at the beginning of the movie they played a song that I swear I haven’t heard or even thought about in well over 15 years “Running Up That Hill” but I they only played about 45 seconds of it, just enough to tease me into turning off the TV and turning on my computer to try and find this song on YouTube. I had no idea that there were several versions of it, but it didn’t take too long to find the one that I was used to hearing, the one by Kate Bush.

For some reason this song just moves me, not in a bad or depressing way, mind you. I really can’t explain the feeling, but it is a good one and those feelings are hard to come by lately so I’m going to take it and run up that hill!

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Basket Fillers

Stopped by Wal-Mart this afternoon to see if they had any early gardening supplies, but they are a little slow to stick their garden center and I came away empty handed. However, I decided to check out a few other items while I was there, and I found a few things to add to my basket. They have a new aisle of cheap crap that sells for $1 or $2 and they called “Basket Fillers.” That made me laugh – these poor Wal-Mart shoppers are so in need of direction that the Evil Wally Empire has started labeling things with suggestive names. Think you’re finished shopping? No – your basket is not full enough. You need some basket fillers – go over there and get you some.

I did pick up a pair of pajamas for my nephew. He is a Star Wars fan thanks to Uncle Adam, and there were some new PJs with Start Wars characters on them. My nephew is 6 years old, so I guess he’ll wear a six 6. I don’t know – how am I supposed to keep up with what size clothes everyone wears? At the checkout lane, the cashier looked a little frazzled, so I tried to cheer her up. Fridays and Saturdays have got to be the busiest days at Wally’s World of Wonder. I made a couple little jokes while she was ringing up my items and couldn’t get a smile out of her. Then she picked up the size 6T PJs to find the price tag and I asked her if she thought those PJs were the right size to fit me. That made her laugh – finally.