Internet Shopping Addiction?

Remember that day awhile back when Lady GaGa broke Amazon.com? When they had her album "born this way" on sale for $0.99? I just remembered that I, like many others bought that album that day. I'm not sure why I did, I just remember thinking, "an entire album for 99 cents, Hells yeah!"

I'm not sure how long ago that was, a month or so I'm thinking, and I have yet to listen to even one of the songs off her album, and frankly feel no real desire to right now. It makes me begin to wonder if this could be sign of some sort of internet shopping addiction??

A little labor in the backyard...

Too tired to really blog about anything today, I spent the afternoon in my backyard repairing the top step of our deck(finished product as seen above). It probably took me about five hours total, surprisingly though that time went by soooo fast! I don't have a "before" picture, didn't think to take one before I started demolishing the old step. It was caving in and had become a danger to anyone stepping out the back door.

All in all, I think I did a pretty good job, considering that the person who'd originally built it apparently had run out of resources, and or patience by the time they got around to the top step, which would have had to have been done last. It was neither properly squared, nor was it level. What I did, is at least level, and about as square as possible considering the pre-existing deck below it. It only needs to last for a couple of years anyway, by then I hope to be in a position to have someone else come in and demolish the whole thing and build me a new, better deck anyway!

The Toastees 1-cup coffee maker....

Just thought I'd post a quick review of a purchase I made awhile back. This is the Toastees 1 cup coffee maker. Let me just point out that if you're looking for a 1 cup coffee maker, there aren't too many choices out there in what I consider, "the reasonable range." Seems like most of your 1 cup coffee makers are of the expensive variety, I'm talking $100.00 or more! On the other hand, the Toastees 1 cup coffee maker is available through Amazon.com for the very reasonable price of $14.99.

Product Features
Personal-size coffeemaker quickly brews one cup at a time
Handy water-level indicator; brews directly into a variety of mug sizes
Illuminated "on/off" switch; permanent nylon filter; hot water for tea
Extra base for large mugs and 10-ounce ceramic mug included
Measures 5-2/7 by 6 by 8-2/7 inches; 2-year limited warranty

This coffee maker is incredibly simple to use. Simply fill the mug that comes with it, or any other similar sized mug with water, pour that into the water resevoir, fill the permanent nylon filter with the appropriate amount of coffee grounds for 1 cup, make sure the water nozzle that swings out of the way of the filter area is positioned over the coffee grounds, close the lid and press the on/off switch on the side to on.

In less than 5 minutes you'll have a cup of freshly brewed coffee! There are a couple of things to note about this coffee maker though. If you're one of those people who enjoy your coffee extremely hot, or like to take your time sipping it, this may not be the coffee maker for you. While the finished product is certainly hot, brewed coffee, it is not "steaming hot" coffee. This is no doubt due to the fact that the base your cup sits on is not heated. I'm usually drinking my coffee on the go, or downing it quickly before leaving for work in the morning, so the fact that it's hot, but not so hot that you have to sip it or let it cool works out great for me. If you plan on waiting to drink your coffee, or want to sip it over a slow breakfast, you might find that your coffee is a little too cool before you'd like it to be.

My only other complaint about the coffee maker is the lack of an auto-shutoff. When your cup is done brewing, you have to remember to manually shut the coffee maker back off, or risk it over-heating and burning up! There have been a couple of times where I've started wondering if I remembered to shut it off once I got to work, and called my wife to have her check and make sure. Each time, I had indeed shut it off, but it's one of those things that can gnaw on your mind. An auto-shutoff function would have been a no-brainer addition as far as I'm concerned. If that's not a problem for you though, this coffee maker is simple and easy to use and great for a household where only 1 person drinks coffee. I highly recommend it!

Creepy...huh?!

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it creepy, and a little sad for Jane Krakowski of "30 Rock" fame, that Weird-Al Yankovic looks so much like her when he's dressed up as Lady Ga-Ga in his latest parody video?

An E-book for your Kindle...by my wife

If you enjoy fantasy books with an adult appeal, my wife has published her first story on Amazon for the kindle, titled "The Lost Ones (1)" It's available for $0.99 Follow the link and enjoy a little light reading and help out a budding new author at the same time. I've already finished chapter 1 myself!

A close shave...

How many blades does a razor really need? They advertise these razor blades with 4, 5, even 6 blades, and moistening bars and comfort grip handles, yet they're worse than the twin-blade razors that I used to use twenty years ago and more. I used to be able to buy bic twin-blade razors for a decent price and only occasionally did I end up with a cut on my face or neck.

It doesn't seem to matter how much money I spend on a razor these days, I can cut my face or neck with them on the FIRST use! It doesn't even have to be the second or third time, but the first time I use a brand new razor, I end up cutting myself. I'd be happier if they'd just go back to having just 1 or 2 blades on a razor, and make them good blades again. I think they must have had to cut back on the quality of the blades in return for doubling and tripling the number of blades per razor!

Is the "world" just stupid?

My wife just turned me on to the newest "stupid" thing to be enacted by politicians in this country, particularly the state of Indiana. Starting July 1st, it will be illegal to possess or sell "bath salts" in the state of Indiana. Yes, bath salts.

Here's the deal, there is apparently a new designer drug being sold "legally" in corner shops, truck stops and online that is being advertised as "bath salts". Now, this "drug" is not the same composition or chemical likeness of the bath salts that you would buy at Walmart, or Bed Bath & Beyond, which you actually use in the bathtub. But thanks to the knee jerk reactions of politicians, anything that is called "bath salts" are going to be illegal starting July 1st in the state of Indiana.

So does this mean that if I create a designer drug and start marketing it under the name "poop", that they'll pass a law outlawing all poop, and anyone caught manufacturing poop will be arrested?

There is no end to the insanity in this world....

ICANN opens domain name race...

ICANN, (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the board that oversees what names can be used for internet domain addresses (which at this time is limited to 22, such as .com, .gov, .tv and so on...)has now opened the floodgates to virtually any name desired, such as .apple, .computer or .car. Apparently it will cost $185,000.00 to apply for one of these domain names, to keep the average person from gobbling up lots of inventive domain names and sitting on them until someone ransoms them.

Will this be a good thing for the internet though? I don't know, seems to me like it could make the internet an even more chaotic and confusing place than it already tends to be. I imagine search engines will certainly be over-burdened trying to find a queue of good results until their engines are over-hauled to handle sorting through all the new possible domain names. I know that even with just 22 domain names it's been possible to make an embarrassing mistake, I'll never forget the time I wanted to show my son how he could learn about our government on the internet, and typed in whitehouse.(com) instead of whitehouse.(gov) That was certainly a memorable mistake!

A split house-hold...

About 3 months ago, our media-center PC became infected with the HORRIBLE Win7 trojan. If you're not familiar with it, count yourself lucky. It's one of those trojans that installs itself on your PC and tells you that you have fake viruses and that you need to purchase their product to clean your computer...the worst part being that they've emulated the look and feel of Microsoft Security Essentials which is what I use on my PC's. Basically if you've been infected with this trojan, YOU"LL NEVER GET RID OF IT! Everything I tried would not get rid of this thing off the computer, and my wife's laptop as well. We had to wipe both hard-drives and start from scratch. It worked fine on the laptop, but wouldn't you know, I ran into a few snags with the media-center pc. When I bought it originally it was a Vista computer. After Windows 7 came out, I'd upgraded it, but alas, I failed to make a clean boot disk. So when I tried to use the old, original boot disk I'd made for Vista, it wouldn't install, I just kept getting a corrupted data warning.

Well, I wasn't about to shell out money for a brand new install of Windows 7, so I decided to go the open source route and installed Ubuntu, a free version of Linux. All in all, I haven't been to upset about the change. It has a clean interface (the classic gui that is), and does pretty much everything my windows 7 pc does. The only 2 real complaints I have about it is, it doesn't support single-clicking (you have to double-click to open programs) and Netflix doesn't allow you to stream movies to it, because of Ubuntu being open-source I guess, and the software that Netflix uses for streaming is proprietary. You can watch Hulu though, and just about any other video site works as well. I've never tried, but I imagine I'd have trouble with my bank's website as well, and probably other sites where transactions are involved, not sure about that though. I've still got windows 7 on my laptop, but if they'd ever fix it where I could stream Netflix and do my online shopping through Ubuntu, I could see myself slipping the corporate leash for good and going freeware!

Project Zomboid...They're coming to get you Barbara!

I've recently become aware of a really cool indie game in development called, "Project Zomboid". All they have available at the moment is a pre-alpha tech demo that gives you a taste of what the finished game may actually be like. It's being developed by a small indie development team called Indie Stone. The game is definitely pre-alpha, which means it's buggy and unfinished, but it was exciting enough in what they've already got accomplished that I bought in for a lifetime license for just $8.l0.

The game is basically a zombie RPG. Survive for as long as you can, looting homes and businesses for your survival needs in an open-world concept game. The developers state right up front that "you will not survive." There is no end game scenario where you save the world, or escape to a safe haven. The whole point of the game is to see what kind of a person you are as you do what you have to, to stay alive as long as you can. I've only played the demo a couple of times so far and the best I've done is to survive for 3 days and 3 hours. If you think this kind of a game is up your alley, check it out HERE.

Best Father's Day Ever...

Even though I had to work today, it's been a great Father's Day! My son gave me a "creeper" shirt from Think Geek, (I'm a minecraft nut), and my wife gave me both the "The Rundown" and "Faster" each starring Dwayne "the rock" Johnson.

I just saw Faster about three weeks ago, through Netflix, but I just finished watching it again, and it's even better the second time around! If you haven't seen Faster, do yourself a favor and get it today, watch it tonight. It's one of the best damned action movies I've seen in years.