News and Views

I just discovered a very neat application that allows you to easily share files between your computers, phone and friends. Dropbox can be installed on Windows, Mac, Android and even iPhone (Wow!). You can take a picture with your phone, drop the picture in the Dropbox (or just select “Share” and choose Dropbox), and it […]

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I got a new phone this week, the HTC Thunderbolt. I’m trading up from the original Droid, which I’ve had for almost 2 years. The phone works on Verizon’s new 4G (“LTE”) network, and it is FAST. Speed tests show that I’m getting between 10 and 20 Mbps down, and between 3 and 4 Mbps […]

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Geek alert. May not be interesting to the casual reader. Technical, gadget-type stuff. We have had our current water heater for over 15 years (it came with the house). It’s inefficient and I’m concerned that it is ready to cause another flood. So I updated to the latest technology. I got a GE Geospring water […]

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If you’re not a geek or nerd, you should probably stop reading right now. I upgraded my computer to an Intel Core i5 processor last year, and it’s been good. For Christmas I decided to help Derek upgrade his computer, and since he plays games and needs a fast CPU I planned to get him […]

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6 years ago I had cataract surgery, with a replacement lens inserted. The improvement in vision was striking, as everything become suddenly much clearer and brighter. Over the years, the natural capsule in which the lens is inserted has slowly opacified, to the extent that my vision had gradually returned to about where it was […]

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After driving my Honda Odyssey for 10 years and 145,000 miles, I decided it was time for a new car. When you live many years with a car, you’re not aware of the gradual change as it ages — it still seems about like it did when it was new. But it’s not the car […]

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My wonderful new Windows 7 computer crashed today. I’m not sure what happened, but I think one drive of my Software RAID setup started to fail, and instead of using the good drive to keep things correct, it used the failed drive and started trying to match the good drive to the failed one. All […]

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We have had a Netflix account for several years, and generally like it a lot. I quit Blockbuster because I got so frustrated with late fees — I would be charged a whole new rental period for being one day late on a return. With Netflix, you can keep a movie as long as you […]

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I have had Earthlink DSL for 10(?) years now. It was about the best I could get when I started, and over the years they have slowly increased the speed, from around 768 kbps (down) initially to about 2.5Mbps (320 kbps up) the last couple of years. However the price has stayed high ($50/month) and […]

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I was fixing a computer a few days ago that was driving me crazy. When I began, it was full of malware; trojans, fake virus scanners and browser hijackers. I ran the usual scanner/cleaners and it seemed to be clean, but as soon as I started browsing it hijacked me to some malicious Russian website. […]

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