News and Views

Early on during the recent election it looked like Obama might win the Electoral vote while Romney might win the popular vote. It didn’t turn out that way, but it recently has (Bush-Gore, 2000). Every 4 years there are suggestions to change the way we select our president, either by abolishing the Electoral College or […]

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Consumer Reports just published the results of their car ownership survey, and for two years in a row the Chevy Volt has the highest rate of “Yes” answers to the question “Would you buy this car again?” 92% of Volt owners said “Yes!”, just nosing out the Corvette and Porsche 911 at 91%. I’m certainly […]

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Yesterday I produced more electricity than I consumed for the first time since spring. At the end of the day I was about 1.5 kWh in the black, having produced 35.5 and consumed 34. I would have broken even several times over the past couple of weeks (as the need for air conditioning has plummeted) […]

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With a $40 price I felt it was worth it to try Windows 8. Gisele’s computer was still running XP, and was working fine, but since the rest of the computers in the family already have Windows 7, it seemed like the logical candidate. So yesterday I downloaded a copy of Windows 8 and set […]

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Most of you have probably received phone calls from Rachel before, offering to lower your credit card bill. It’s the most famous and perhaps the most irritating of all the phone scams. “This is Rachel with Cardholder Services. There is nothing wrong with your credit card….” Well, the FTC has just announced that they have […]

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Our new VOIP (internet based phone service) by Ooma is now live, and we no longer have Century Link (né Qwest). Calls to our home phone number will arrive through Ooma. I have it connected to our in-house phone lines so all the phones work the same as before — it is basically transparent. Nothing […]

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