Posted by seniorgeek | 0 Comments
Newsletter 03/29/2009
Finally we had a very nice Spring like day here on the Eastern Shore. We have been experience an unusually cold winter this year which brings up the notion of global warming. Hmm, we have been global warming every since the ice age and will continue until we burn up. Nothing we can do as humans can stop this. We can make a .0001 percent change but that is all. Check out the following.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/press/proved_no_climate_crisis.html
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton_papers/greenhouse_warming_what_greenhouse_warming_.html
Since science play such a huge role in everything we do and how we live, many sites on the Internet are dedicated to the subject of Science. To list even a small percentage would take many pages, so I will give you just a few I find interesting.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn
http://science.discovery.com/
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/index.htm
Most of you by now have heard of or visited Wikipedia.com the users supported encyclopedia. Now there is a how-to version called wikiHow. I spent some time looking up how to do something and found some very good instruction. This is a good site to bookmark when you can’t figure how to do what you need to do.
http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page
Now for some fun. If you grew up in the days before video games and before everyone had a computer you may remember board games. Great games like Scrabble, Monopoly, Sorry, Risk, and Checkers. Wouldn’t it be nice to kick back and enjoy a nice board game with you closest friends? What if you don’t know the rules, or misplaced the rules, have a piece missing, or just need more info on board games? There is this web site that specializes in nothing but board games, their history, etc. They have rules, pictures, etc. Just about everything you may need or want to know about a published board game.
http://boardgamegeek.com/
Lightning is both fascinating to watch and can be very spectacular. It can also cause great damage and destruction. If you enjoy pictures of lightning check out the following site. It has some great lightning photographs.
http://digital-photography-school.com/15-spectacular-lightning-images
Is leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t even have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it?
Posted by seniorgeek | 0 Comments
Newsletter 3/22/2009
Where do you get your news on the Internet? Do you search on Google, Yahoo or somewhere else? What about blogs? Do you get your best info there? Now please either email me back or post a reply on my blog with your great locations you have found to get news. Wait lets narrow it down to real useable news, not just the garbage from the networks and wire services. Remember it you post in on my blog others will benefit from you surfing experience. The following are few places where I read my news.
http://huffingtonpost.com
http://drudgereport.com
http://engadget.com
OK, so we are searching for many different items and news. Do we all use the same search engine? Most use Google. What about setting up a custom search page that will use multiple search engines for multiple specialized searches? You can do this at a site called hittery.com. Their page lets you select from many sources. You can then layout the search page with all the different search engines you want for a custom search page.
http://www.hitery.com
You have seen many top ten lists including the Dave Letterman top 10 lists. What about the top ten products in any category, or the top 10 cameras with a specific feature, or the top ten cars that are all wheel drive or the top ten motorcycles for least amount of maintenance? This site lets you search thousands of top ten lists and reports the best of each. Check out their category pages to see them for yourself. I found many interesting items at this site.
http://www.pickii.com
One more great search and layout page is from a site called Kosmix. Basically you enter a search term and the results are shown from Google, plus top news articles on your subject search, top videos related to your search, and top pictures related to your search . This is a good bookmark to add for searching the web.
http://www.kosmix.com
OK now that I have given away a number of sites I use to get stuff for this newsletter, I had better quite. I don’t want to tell you guys all my cool places in one newsletter. So enjoy these and don’t forget to post on my blog or email me links where you get your best news stuff.
Posted by seniorgeek | 0 Comments
Newsletter
Sometimes I get tired of all the talk about how bad our economy is and what we can do and what we are not doing to fix it.
But it still makes interesting study if you are interested in financials or economics.
PBS has an interesting web site on what happened and why it happened.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown
Now if you didn’t get your questions answered at this site, you might just enter your question on answers.com.
They seem to think they are the best source of information on everything. You will have to be the judge on that. Anyway just visit their site and enter a question to see what kind of results they offer. I gave answers.com, yahoo.com, and google.com the same question to compare the results. More that 70% of the results were the same with all 3 search engines. So I feel it is just another source in your search for answers. (pun intended)
http://www.answers.com
In case you might be interested…
“The Internal Revenue Service is barred from releasing any taxpayer information whatsoever, except to authorized agencies and individuals.
Like all other citizens, U.S. presidents enjoy this protection of their privacy. Since the early 1970s, however, most presidents have chosen to release their returns publicly. In the hope of making this information more widely available, the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts has compiled an archive of presidential tax returns.”
http://www.taxhistory.org/www/website.nsf/Web/PresidentialTaxReturns?OpenDocument
From the pages of the recovery.gov web site.
“The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is an unprecedented effort to jumpstart our economy, create or save millions of jobs, and put a down payment on addressing long-neglected challenges so our country can thrive in the 21st century. The Recovery and Reinvestment Act is an extraordinary response to a crisis unlike any since the Great Depression.” OK, as you all know this is the governments way to fix our economy. This web site follows the money trail and what is being done with it. It also has a timeline with important dates related the spending bill.
http://www.recovery.gov
Again, from their web site.
“Fedstats.gov provides access to the full range of official statistical information produced by the Federal Government without having to know in advance which Federal agency produces which particular statistic.” OK, what at this site might be of interest? A complete listing of what they provide in alphabetical order is here.
http://www.fedstats.gov/cgi-bin/A2Z.cgi
“One famous American, Dr. Edward Everett, also gives wise counsel. When a newspaper had published false and misleading accounts concerning a certain man, the man went to Everett for advice. After listening patiently to the man’s complaints, Everett said, “My dear sir, do nothing. Half the people who buy that paper never saw the article about you. Half the people who did see it failed to read it. Half of those who read it failed to understand it. Half of those who understood it knew you and refused to believe it. Half of those who believed it were people of no consequence anyway.” (from Zig Ziglar)
Posted by seniorgeek | 2 Comments
Newsletter 03/08/2009
I hope all of you remembered the following, if not read it again.
At 2:00 a.m. on March 8, 2009, most of the United States begins Daylight Saving Time (DST). DST ends at 2:00 a.m. on November 1, 2009. In August 2005, Congress passed an energy bill that extended DST by about a month. As of 2007, DST starts the second Sunday of March and ends on the first Sunday of November.
http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving
One of Yahoo’s many sites includes Real Estate. You may look up many items including:
How to maintain your home’s value; Info on home equity loans; strategies relating to home pricing; can you afford to buy? There is also a section on foreclosures. Be sure to check out the guides and advice section.
http://realestate.yahoo.com/Homevalues
Another new section on Yahoo is called “Y! buzz”. This is all about people and what they are looking at and talking about. The Web’s most remarkable stories. Stories are ranked based on votes, comments, emails, and searches. Some really great stories show up here and some very interesting conversations and comments too.
http://buzz.yahoo.com
As most of you know I have been sending this newsletter out for quite a while and my professions is in the world of Information Technology. One of my roles at work is the Deputy Computer Security Engineer. This takes up a lot of my time because so many people don’t know how to protect themselves from virus, spam, and poor emailing. Let me explain. Do you have only one email account? You should think about your email address like you do your keys; while it may be OK to use the same key for multiple locks, but having a single key open everything is both impractical and unsafe. Use one account for important stuff to and from your personal friends and business and one account for all those web sites that must have an email address or they won’t let you in. Deletes everything there and change that account often.
Don’t forward all those funny sayings to everyone one on your list without checking the source of the email and ALWAYS delete all the previous email forwards and email address. Do you really want to spam all your friends? Eventually all the email address you include in the forwards end up on the spammers email list. Do not click on links in email UNLESS you are sure who sent it and where it may take you. Never replay to a email with your physical address, social security number, credit card number, or bank account info. No legitimate company or business will ask for this via email. Do not click on ‘unsubscribe” links in email. This just confirms your email address and the spammer adds you to the list. The only exception is unsubscribing to an email list that you originally subscribed.
Q. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of what?
First correct answer posted in the comment section of my blog wins a USB stick. Answer next week.
Posted by seniorgeek | 0 Comments
Newsletter 03/01/2009
This note is for all reading this that believe the US Constitution is a great document and has served us well for all these years.
Congressmen and Senators are always trying to pass bills that restrict its effectiveness, reduce its impact, or simple nullify it completely.
The most current one is from Senator Bobby Rush of Illinois. It is called H.R. 45. You can read the summary or the full test of the bill here.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-45 Basically the bill wants to “prohibit a person from possessing a firearm unless that person has been issued a firearm license under this Act” and it also includes stiff a penalty such as jail time and fines. Please do what is necessary and let your congressmen and senators know how ludicrous this bill is.
Gold, the most precious of all metals. Very nice to have and own especially since the stock market has no value, home prices are down in most markets, and just about anything you now own is work less that it was last year except gold.
If you want to keep track on this precious metal, check out the following web site. Basically everything you wanted to know about gold pricing.
http://www.goldprice.org
I am doing my best to only purchase products that are a good value since I seem to have less purchasing power these days. Therefore I am doing more research on each item I buy. Since safety is an issue, I check out WedMD, consumer reports, etc. I just added another place to check on the safety of the product. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a site that lists all the recalls issued on products. Actually it has more to deal with the safety of the product than the quality, but I don’t want a product that will cause any physical pain, so it stays of list of sites to check.
http://www.fda.gov/opacom/7alerts.htm
The U.S. Census Bureau collects more data than any other branch of the U.S. government. So based on that fact it would make sense that they share this data is a usable manner. Now let’s see if they do. Their main site is call Fact Finder. In order to make use of this web site, go to the FAQ section and read ‘How do I use it’ section. It will save you a lot of time.
http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en
Since all banks are FDIC insured, it makes sense that the FDIC web site should have some serious data on banking. You know, things likes statistics, bank data, bank data guide, Institution directory, Call and Thrift Financials reports, and trust institutional information. Wait a minute, what does all this mean and who would want all this data? I don’t know, but if you need to know, check out this site.
http://www.fdic.gov/bank/statistical
If you didn’t find the scoop on the right data at the above site, try this site. (Quote from their web page)
“Infoplease is a comprehensive reference source that combines the contents of an encyclopedia, a dictionary, an atlas, and several almanacs loaded with statistics, facts, and historical records. A single search engine allows you to search all these sources at once.”
http://www.infoplease.com
Except for the first paragraph, this week has some pretty heavy stuff, so next week will be devoted to……
