Last year when I bought my Sony HDTV it was “HDTV ready” meaning it couldn’t actually show you HDTV signals it was receiving. When I first moved into the house I had terrible TV reception with an indoor antenna. Then I got a neat looking antenna that didn’t really work. Then I eventually bought a big multi-pronged aluminum one and put it in the attic. That didn’t work all that well either. But eventually local stations were offered on satellite (first DirecTV then I switched to Dish Network) for $6 so I just paid the extra for very clear local stations. When I got the Dish PVR with its built in digital recorder, having the local stations over satellite was a real plus.
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HP Calculator
I remember in high school somebody had an HP calculator and I thought it was the craziest thing that there was a calculator without an = button. As I was entering engineering school I was told that there was some calculator we would eventually need to buy that was $500. At Christmas Mom and Dad bought me my first HP, a model 10C (which was *not* $500). This series of calculators became such an icon that they still sell the financial version, the 12C.
Government Speed
With my birthday coming up next month, I mailed in my car registration on Thursday. Today (Saturday) I got my new Wildflower tag. That means the post office delivered the registration and plate in one day each and Dekalb County processed my tag order the same day they got it.
Buying this plate gives money to the DOT to plant decorative weeds in the median, looks better than the regular Georgia tag, and matches my black car.
AdSense Starts Making Cents
The battery on my cordless phone hasn’t been lasting very long lately, so it is time for new one. I knew Best Buy had them but for some reason I looked around on the internet and found batteries.com. They sell the battery I need for $5 less than Best Buy ($9 vs $14) and there is free shipping. As I was registering with them and placing the order they asked where I had heard about them. Then I remembered that I think they were one of the AdSense advertisers on my iPod battery pack page. So I thought I should click through from there and get the battery. I’m glad I did because the advertisement had a code that gave me 10% off my purchase!
Geeky stuff: I wound up upgrading to the NiMH battery instead of the standard NiCad battery after seeing that it offered 1500 milliamp-hours instead of 700 for the NiCad, has no memory effect, and is better for the environment. However it cost me $17 instead of $9. I found a website that said it wouldn’t be a problem substituting NiMH and in fact it was recommended.
BTW: Last month my AdSense account racked up $3.42. My all-time revenue is $15.89. Not bad for nothing. See first entry.
New Chainsaw
No man is complete without a chainsaw. Dad had to wait until his 60’s before he got one. Jeb was in his 40’s when he got his. But this weekend I made the move. Given that Dad’s Craftsman is horrible (I think maybe a new chain would do wonders for his, which mostly just polishes tree trunks) and Jeb has some problems with his Husqvarna, I opted for a Stihl MS 250. Stihl is always rated higly and I haven’t had much trouble with my Stihl trimmer, so it made sense for me to get a Stihl chainsaw which uses the same 50:1 fuel mix. A guy at work also swears by his Stihl chainsaw and when it broke he went out and bought another one, a little bit larger. The funny thing about that is he then also went out and got his old chainsaw repaired and continues to use it because it is lighter. He has had the newer one for a couple of years and has yet to use it.
Anyway, I took the chainsaw to Susan’s and went to town on one of several trees that blew down during Hurricane Ivan. I think maybe she had a microburst or tornado at her house because she had a cluster of pretty tall trees snapped off at their trunks and one large tree was knocked completely over and landed on her house (causing remarkably little damage, but crushing the eave completely in that spot).
The Stihl went through everything easily. What a perfect tool for that job! But just as hard was moving all the pieces out to the street. I’m pretty happy with the purchase and still have plenty of trees to work on at Susan’s (but not the one on the house which will require a crane and $3,000 to remove).