If the rain holds out, us O’s fans are in for a treat tonight. In a small sign that the team is making progress, Matt Wieters the best baseball prospect in the MLB is making his major league debut tonight. The hype machine across the nation is high, and with the O’s in the spotlight, I hope we can show our promise of the future. ESPN has a great article on Wieters (I cannot believe I just gave credit to the Yankee/Red Sox channel). So click the link below for more. The game starts at 7:00pm on MASN.
May 29, 2009
May 26, 2009
Grind My Gears – Anti Cat Scratching Tools
I have to start out with I love my cats. They are my children per se, and I am happy when they are, and sad when they are sad. That being said, one of our cats is out to make me lose my mind!
Our newest cat has this new thing she started last week…at 5:30am she will start hollering at our bedroom door (they aren’t allowed in our bedroom), and she tries to scratch through the carpet between our door and the hall. We’ve resigned to putting her in a room on the other side of the house at night so we can get our rest. Not the ideal situation. The ideal situation would be for her to shut up, but she doesn’t understand English, and I don’t understand cat, so it’s a lose lose.
Anyway, over the course of two weeks we’ve tried a few things to get her to stop. We thought she was hungry so we fed her before bed…no luck. I’ve gotten out there and yelled at her at 5:30…no good, she is back in 5 minutes. I’ve tried spraying her with the water bottle…she thinks its bath time…then this weekend I tried the no-scratch furniture tape…for which the duration of this post will now be called, useless 5 dollars worth of CRAP! I put this tape on the floor where she was scratching, and the area where she bangs on our door hoping she wouldn’t want to lay on a sticky substance…it took no more than 15 seconds after I put it down for her to rip it up with her teeth and run down the stairs with the big long piece. It was funny to watch her do that…especially the speed at which she ripped up the tape and mocked me for such a dumb idea. I cannot believe that a company should even be able to market a product who’s goal is to repel cats, when my cat plainly laughed in my general direction. So for any cat lovers out there that has a better idea to keep our cat my hollering at 5:30 and tearing up my carpet, I am all ears…and forget the tape!
Credit Card Reform Act To Become Law
Well look at that, Congress actually passed something that might help their constituents. The House agreed with the Senate version which has been sent on to the President to sign. In the law new credit card rules go into effect which will provide additional protection to the holders of the card. These new rules include:
- Prohibits increasing a card’s interest rate unless the holder is more than 60 days late
- If the rate is increased due to a late payment, if payments are made on time for the next 6 months, the old rate is restored
- You will have to ”opt in” to have the ability to go over your credit limit (the CC companies currently consider the ability to go over your limit a service which they charge heavily for, and don’t allow you to opt out of)
- Payments have to be applied to the debt which has the higher interest rate (if there are two rates on the card, such as a 0% teaser)
- The card issuer has to announce changes to rates at least 45 days in advanced
- A fee can only be applied to phone payments if you speak to a person and not an automated system
- People under 21 will need to show income independence, or have a parent co-sign (interesting idea)
- You must receive your bill at least 21 days before it is due (no 3 day lead time anymore)
- Statements must clearly show how much you’ve paid in fees and interest, and show how long it will take to pay off the card only paying the minimum.
What the bill does not do (thanks mostly to the lobbyists):
- Cap card interest rates
- Prevent the card issuer from raising fees, or coming up with totally new ones
- This law does nothing for the next 9 months – so watch out for rate and rule changes on your card while the issuing company still can.
I applaud their effort, and am glad that they finally came up with something. I was hoping for a few more rules like not being able to use other cards or bill history to jack your rate, but that didn’t make it into the final bill. Remember that these rules don’t go into effect until February, so the credit card companies might do everything they can to get more money out of you in the mean time. If you use credit, just keep an eye on your statements.
May 20, 2009
Palm Pre Coming June 6th For 200 Bucks
I didn’t think the company would make it long enough to get a new product out, but Palm is finally releasing their new phone called the Pre on June 6th. The Pre comes with a whole new operating system which so far has been lauded throughout the phone community. For those not familiar with Palm they were one of the first to bring us this new fangled device called the PDA, and one of the first to bring us the “smartphone”. The problem with Palm is that their O/S has remained pretty much the same since the late 90’s, early 2000’s which has caused their market share and their image to be almost destroyed beyond repair. Palm surprised almost everyone at CES 2009 with a new O/S and a new phone.
Palm, and the carrier that will have the phone exclusively at first, Sprint, it selling it as a true iPhone competitor. Is it? We’ll have to wait to find out, but it appears that it might be close. It will be supporting a touch screen, but will have a full slide out QWERTY keyboard. The phone has a 3 megapixle camera, 8GB of memory, and will support all of Sprint’s services such as navigation and TV, etc. They are also releasing a pretty innovative charger with the phone where all you have to do it lay the phone on a pad for it to charge (though it costs extra).
The phone is being released on June 6th…just so happens to be a few days before Apple’s WWDC conference where Apple has typically shown updates to their phone. It’s a gamble that might work, or might backfire. Verizon doesn’t appear to be laying low either, there was a rumor yesterday that they might be looking to release an update to the Blackberry Storm around the same time…the Storm was supposed to be the first true competitor to the iPhone, but failed for various reasons. My biggest worry about the Pre is the network it is on (Sprint). Sprint hasn’t exactly been known for the best network or customer service, but I guess you could say the same about AT&T, and that hasn’t seemed to stymie iPhone sales.
For more articles on the Palm Pre than you could shake a stick at, click the link below for CNET’s Pre HQ.
May 18, 2009
Like ColdPlay? Want Their Music For Free Legally? Yeah There Is A Site For That…
Coldplay is giving away their “Left Right” album for free. All you have to do is click the link below, and enter your email address and then you can download the album. It’s from ColdPlay themselves, so don’t worry about the legality of it…it’s legal!
May 14, 2009
Thanks Dish Network – Roanoke Locals Now In HD!
Dish Network finally turned on HD for the Roanoke area local channels. No more will I have to watch House, or Fringe, or American Idol with a cruddy SD signal. Watching AI in HD and 5.1 last night made the whole watching experience 1000 times better than before. Now I just need to clean up my DVR so there will be space to record all this HD goodness.
For anyone in the NRV that has Dish you can find the locals in HD starting at channel 5200. Not everything is broadcast in HD, so don’t be surprised if you still see some SD shows.
May 13, 2009
Mac OS X 10.5.7 Has Been Released
An update to Mac OS X was released yesterday. It contains mostly security/bug/sync fixes. I typically recommend that folks wait a few days to make sure nothing has been screwed up by the update. I’ve read on a few blogs that there has been an issue with the download itself being corrupted, but hopefully they have that fixed by now. Also it appears that anyone with a Mac Mini hooked to their TV might want to wait a day or two. Some of the standard resolutions appear to be missing after the update which might cause problems with your picture.
Also anyone that has been using the beta version of Safari 4, there was an update to that as well. It appears the problem I had with reading pdfs within the browser has been fixed, so I recommend going to get it. You can grab the updates over at Apple.com, or through the software update menu on your mac.
May 12, 2009
What I Came Home To…
I usually don’t post pictures of my cats since Sam does a good enough job of that, but I just had to post pictures of how my cat Zoe got our kitchen decorated for when we got home from work.
and…
I think she might be trying to tell us its time to recycle some of our extra grocery bags!!
May 7, 2009
Grind My Gears – Paying By Check
Look, I really believe that there are some places where using a check make sense. Paying bills that are sent through the mail, giving money to a group that doesn’t take credit cards, or passing money to a friend or family member…they all make sense. That being said, I saw the most absurd use of a check that I have ever seen on Tuesday…to pay for gas at a gas station.
We got in line for a pump, and this older lady first took her sweet time to pump the gas, then gets back in the car and just sits there…and sits there…and sits there…with my patience running ever thin at this point I was about to get out of the car and tell the woman to move her tail…when she gets out of the car with a check written out for the total of her gas payment. She has to then waddle over to the cashier, where they then have to process the check. Never in my life have I seen a worse use of a check to pay for something than did that day. The fact that Kroger gas even allowed the old lady to pay by check blows my mind.
I really hope that banks begin to realize it’s time to start disallowing the use of checks. JP Morgan estimated that it cost almost 1 billion dollars (with a B) to process the 21.6 billion checks that were used last year…1 BILLION dollars. The cost to process a transaction is reduced by almost 90 percent if someone were to use their debit or check card. Not only that by the amount of time that it takes to process a check compared to a check card purchase is in the minutes compared to seconds. When the cashier at Wal-Mart have 20 people in line those minutes make a big difference in their efficiency.
So my rant is STOP PAYING BY CHECK!
Breaking: Manny Ramirez Tests Positive For PEDs – Suspended For 50 Games
A head scratcher for sure, Manny Ramirez tested positive for an illegal substance and will be suspended by the MLB for 50 games. Manny’s story was that he was prescribed a medication for a “personal health issue” and that the doctor thought it would be OK. OK, I will actually believe that part of the story. I even give him credit for coming out and taking responsibility for it. But why on earth didn’t he talk with the MLB offices is beyond me…I mean if there is a personal health issue that he is dealing with and didn’t want people to find out, I can understand, but there had to be a way for him to check out the medication he was taking. I would imagine that his image will be tarnished forever, and I don’t imagine that he is too happy losing almost 8 million dollars while suspended from the game.
If no appeals are filed, and no changes happen Man-Ram is eligible to play again on July 3rd. What the response to this will be is still unknown. I would imagine as the facts come out, people will decide if he was guilty or not.
