jump to navigation

Remember the “Double Nickel” September 25, 2007

Posted by Major in : Driving, Gasoline , add a comment

From 1974 to 1995 there was a national maximum speed limit of 55 miles per hour that all states had to abide by if they wanted to continue to get federal money. This law was passed to conserve gasoline during the oil crisis. Well a couple of weeks ago I decided to try it out again. Since I have to drive about 110 miles round trip to work every third day I put a lot of highway miles on my truck. I drive a 2005 Chevy Silverado Crew Cab 4×4 truck, and when I set my cruise control on 75 mph I get around 17.0 to 17.6 miles per gallon. When I set my cruise control on 55 mph and go over the same highway under the same conditions my truck gets 22 to 23 miles per gallon. That is a 5 miles per gallon increase. My tank hold 24 gallons, so on a tank of gas I can get about an extra hundred miles just by slowing down to 55 miles per hour. It lengthens my commute by about 15 minutes which is really nothing when your on the road for an hour, and it is more relaxing to drive at the slower pace. I never realized it but driving 75 miles per hour down the interstate for an hour causes a lot of tension and tightness in my shoulders and back. So with the price of gasoline as high as it is I believe I will be driving 55 from now on.

Microsoft is allowing OEMs to offer a “downgrade” option back to XP! September 22, 2007

Posted by Major in : Uncategorized , add a comment

I bought 2 laptops at Bestbuy in December so I could get them with XP installed and get the free upgrade to Vista. When I finally got the two upgrade CDs in the mail 7 months later I chose not to do the upgrade. I like XP and don’t have any problems with it. I did get the Office 2007 suite that is supposed to be for Vista, but it works great on XP.

After seeing this news on YouTube I am glad I have not upgraded yet. After searching the web I see that a lot of people are having problems with Vista.

Another reason the OEMs need to continue offering XP is for customers like hospitals and such that have hundreds of computers in use will not have to support two different operating systems through their help desk or IT department.

Amazon Unbox Video vs iTunes September 7, 2007

Posted by Major in : Entertainment , add a comment

This post is a response to Nalts, of YouTube fame, at http://willvideoforfood.com/.

Although I have in the past downloaded wildfeed captures of my favorite TV shows from different IRC channels, (channel0) and for the past couple of years I have been using Tivo. Then Tivo and Amazon.com partnered to bring us Amazon Unbox Video, which can be downloaded directly to my networked Tivo boxes (I have two of them.) Amazon.com gave me a code for ten or fifteen dollars worth of free downloads. Which I have used to download some videos to both my Tivo boxes and to my laptop computer. The quality is excellent. I had never downloaded anything but music from iTunes at this point. Then I was looking for an episode of Navy NCIS and could not find it on Amazon.com and when doing a google search I found that videos could also be downloaded from iTunes and I promptly found the episode I wanted and downloaded it from them. The quality was also excellent from iTunes. I feel that $1.99 is a very fair price for a per episode sale of my favorite TV shows. (Bones, NCIS, CSI and others) Since I have moved my Tivo boxes are still stacked in a corner, I need to hook them up before the new season starts but I feel good knowing that I can get any episodes that I miss on TV by simply going to Amazon.com or iTunes and buying them. It really prefer the Amazon.com service because they allow me to download both to my Tivo boxes to view on my big screen and to my laptop, both for just $1.99, so I can take my shows with me.

Links:

Tivo

iTunes

Paying for my kids’ school lunches is so easy with MealpayPlus. September 2, 2007

Posted by Major in : Kids, School , add a comment

I absolutely love being able to pay for my four children’s school meals online. They will even send me an email when their accounts drop below a set amount. MealpayPlus saves me from the hassle of writing four checks every week to send to the kids teachers for lunch money. You can check out the website to see if this service is available in your school district. They do charge a small amount, two dollars, for this service. Also, when I tried to pay for the whole month I got a message that the maximum amount I could pay in one transaction is $200.00.

I really like being able to log into my kids account and see what they have charged. I can tell who is eating breakfast at school and who is eating extra snacks at lunch time. For instance, Michael really likes to get some Grandma’s Cookies with his lunch and Garrett has gone for the cheese sticks.