I’ve gotten a couple of e-mails from Martti since he went back to Estonia. For my birthday he sent me the following birthday card:
That crazy Garfield!!!
U2’s iPod Song
Apple has a new iPod song featuring U2 doing the song “Vertigo” from their album to be released this week. They said there was no way they could do a $20 million ad campaign promoting their album, but Apple didn’t mind so much apparently.
Exchange Traded Funds
Today I bought my first Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). These are like mutual funds which invest in a bunch of different companies, but ETF’s are sold on the market like a stock with their prices changing throughout the day. For the most part ETF’s reflect some kind of index like the S&P 500 or, in the case of the one I bought, the Nasdaq 100. They are similar to closed-end mutual funds where an investment company would gather a bunch of money and buy a portfolio of stocks and then sell shares on a market. The problem with closed end funds is they usually sold at a discount to the value of the assets in the portfolio because the people running the fund would take out expenses each year and over a long enough period of time the fund would be worth nothing. The price and value could get out of sync by 10% or more.
Wireless Network in a Snap
Susan’s new office gave her a laptop as her primary computer. So she was wanting a way to hook it up to her high speed internet service when she “works from home”. I told her she would need a router and they would be $20-40. But I recommended she spend a little more and get a router that would support wireless for her laptop. Since a wireless router (802.11g) was $60 (after rebates) and the wired router was $40 and the wireless router still had 4 wired ports she agreed to get it and then possibly get a wireless card for the laptop later on. “But you could watch TV and be on the internet at the same time if you had wireless,” I said. She said “That may be a dream of yours, but not me.” But before we checked out she decided it would be nice to work while in bed, so she bought the card for $40 (after rebates; each item had two $10 rebates so the cash register printed out nearly a whole roll of receipts).
HDTV Reception
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.