Cyberphreak.com

Well, it looks like most of us will get non refund refund checks. The money they will be sending will just be an advance from next years taxes, unless you have little or no income. So, for most Americans, the incentive check with be total loss for next year (after the elections, of course.) The government is depending on Cletus to open up his mail and call out “Hay, Maw, the gum’ment just sent me a chee’eck! Lets go and spend it down at Walmart!”.
The way I see it, you have two choices, save all of it or don’t cash the check. That way, you won’t be penalized next year and you may make some interest on it. If you actually follow financial planners’ advice and have your withholdings set such that you get little or no refund, you will OWE ALL OF THAT MONEY BACK NEXT YEAR. So, you can’t even give the money away to a good cause. It is not real money. Thanks for nothing.

In other thanks for nothing news, Bush wants a plan to stop foreclosures for 30 days. Wow, talk about bailing out the Titanic with a slotted spoon. 30 days won’t do jack shit in the big scheme of things. ARMS are going to be resetting for many months next year. Most people buy in April through August, so all those ARMS will reset then as well. Stopping foreclosures for 30 days in March is really going to be pointless. In any event, yeah, it sucks hundreds of thousands of people or millions of people will loose their homes in the next 18 months. They are the ones who took on houses they couldn’t afford. The bigger crisis is correcting itself, the housing unaffordability crisis. It hurts, but bubbles have to burst and the economy needs to find a new level. When it is all over, the people who can afford their homes will still have them, the price of housing price increases will reflect general inflation ( 1 to 3% a year instead of 10 to 30% a year), and maybe, just maybe, we will all start saving money again.

I would usually post this on my watch blog, but I thought it would get more views here.
I was talking to a co-worker during a training session, and I noticed he was wearing a Seiko 5 (Automatic Watch) which was well worn.  He told me it was 10 years old now, and still works great with no servicing.  His previous watch was a Seiko 5 which he wore for 20 YEARS with no service.  He just got sick of the styling and gave it away.  Think about that.  Something that costs less than $100 lasting 20 years with no maintenance.  We are not talking about something sitting on a shelf here.  This is something strapped to your arm, with endless shocks, exposure to temperature extremes, and water.  Yet, this humble, little watch lasted 20 years with no complaint, and as far as we know, it is still ticking away somewhere.  I wish they could make everything that well.

Comcast was here over an hour today, but, it looks like something did the trick (knock on wood).
For now, it is running at about 20 mb/sec 🙂

In other news, hooked up our VCR to watch an older tape.  Man, I forgot how really really crappy VHS looks compared to DVD.  Heck, it looks really bad compared to cable TV.  I see why DVD’s were the fastest new technology EVER adopted by U.S. consumers.  It works, looks good, and is cheap.  It’s not perfect, by any means, just try to watch really dark scenes and you will see where the problems are, but it is eons better than VHS.  Laserdisk was cool, but the form factor was too large and inconvenient.  Most people don’t want to flip a disk or wait several seconds for the head to come over to the other side.  Human nature, I guess.

For the last two night between 6:00 P.M. and who knows when our Comcast connection has basically been a joke.  Gave up last night and called comquack and they did the usual reset modem, computer crap.  Always does nothing, I do it to humor them.  After that little dance I asked him to ping the modem, he said ‘man, you have 25% packet loss’, no shit sherlock, I tried that as well before I called. 
The worst thing is that it only happens at night, you know, when we actually want to use the internet.  I hope they can find something obvious wrong.  I really hope it is not some shmuck in the area doing a huge upload or playing some connection intensive game wrecking it for everyone else at 6:00.
We shall see.  It is very aggravating right now.  Works great at 5:30 in the morning. 

A few days ago I switched back to my trusty IBM SK-8805 keyboard.  I was using a “cool” looking Ortec laptop looking keyboard.  No matter how cool you think your keyboard looks, go with the one that feels the best.  The IBM is loud, a little ugly at times, but I can type twice as fast on it, with the half the errors.  I am sure this IBM will last darn near forever as well.

My advice is never ever skimp on your input devices.  A cheap mouse/keyboard will give you carpel tunnel.  You can have the most kick ass computer in the world, and if your keyboard sucks, you will hate the computer.  This also goes for monitors as well.  Get the best that you can afford.  Eye strain=headaches.  I have had the same monitor for years, it was expensive and huge (19″) when it was new, and still looks great now.  The computer you can skimp on, if you can upgrade it in the future, or it is so cheap you can throw it out. A keyboard/mouse/monitor should outlast 2 or 3 generations of computers, easily.