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I still use Cinemania ’96 to look up movies and tell me the difference between Panavision and Panascope. Microsoft stopped issuing new versions eventually and no one else has come up with anything quite as good. I can eke out a little more info by getting the updates and installing those, which gets me current through the summer of 1996.

You can get downloads from Microsoft’s FTP site (updates for other versions of Cinemania as well as Encarta are available there too by going up to parent directories and then back down):

ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/deskapps/mmapps/public/cinemania/Cinemania96/Windows

Download the executables, double-click to run them which will give you a bunch of .cin files. Rename them to give them the extension .cin96upd

Put them in the Program Files/Microsoft Multimedia/Cinemania folder. Then when you run Cinemania from CD again, it should see the files and incorporate them.

This week the owner of a company that sells iPod battery replacements contacted me about my web pages. He wanted to take over the pages from me so that he could use them to promote his company or place banners on my site. I said I still wanted to control my site, but he could advertise there. Rather than place additional ads, I agreed to replace the current Google ads with ads for his company. I like AdSense ads because they are text and never too garish. His ads are more like regular banners but I said I didn’t want any animation, garish colors, or pop-ups. He also wanted to have me place the banners at the top of each page, which I didn’t want to do. And he asked that I change some of the content on the page. I didn’t do that, but I did make a few changes on my own that should help him out without hurting any other companies I link to.

Continue reading “Multi-Dollar Advertising Deal”

My passport expired in 2005 and I needed a new one before the Ireland trip in July. After hearing horror stories about long delays last summer that forced people to cancel their vacations, I didn’t want to wait any later than this week, so I went ahead and filed today. Since it had been less than 15 years since my old passport was issued, I was able to file through mail and save a $30 fee for a new application, but still had to pay $67 for the passport itself. I got pictures at Walgreen’s for $8 (not a good picture, but it’s for a passport) and mailed in the application, pictures, check, and my old passport in a padded envelope. They said it should take four to six weeks, so I think they have worked through their backlog.

The State Department’s passport site (doesn’t render correctly in my SeaMonkey browser, but looks okay in Internet Explorer)

I re-started my Amazon Associates revenue on November 1 since I wouldn’t be paid for November until 2008. As I wrote earlier, things started kind of slow, but ended up doing fine. In addition to the camping stuff, I sold a 160 GB iPod for which I earned $13.80 in commissions. That was my most expensive item, but two others included a digital camera and a USB hard drive. The things I sold the most of were 12 Maxell battery packs, 7 TuneJuice2 packs, and 6 EZGear Powersticks. From my Sony car stereo page I sold 7 PAC adapters at $30 each. Total earnings were $109.98 from Amazon in the two months I was selling stuff. That still puts me slightly ahead of my target of $50 per month to keep below the IRS limit of $600 per year.

Continue reading “4th Quarter Report”

After getting the new fridge I was hoping my electricity bills would go down noticeably. But I wasn’t sure how much. Fortunately winter is a good time to see because electricity use is fairly consistent (in the summer it just depends on how hot it is). In November my average energy consumption has been 395 kilowatt-hours. But this past November, with the new fridge only installed for a couple of weeks, energy use was 312. It was my lowest November total ever (though the billing period was only 28 days). I got my December bill this week and it was my lowest number ever: 281 kwh (in 31 days), well below the December average of 400. That comes out to a savings of about $13 per month. I don’t know that the refrigerator is entirely to blame: the weather has been fairly warm so the fans for the heating system haven’t been running much. Also there is a writer’s strike and I’m not doing Netflix, so my TV watching has been down. I’m always putting in more compact fluorescent lights (I’m up to at least 15), so maybe there is some savings there as well. But it’s looking like I will be able to save $10 a month with the new fridge.