Black Friday computer shopping
Victory.
That explains my Black Friday early, early, early morning shopping experience in one word.
My goal seemed simple but yet common to many people: To purchase a new, good laptop for as little as possible.
After examining the advertisements in the newspaper yesterday after Thanksgiving dinner, I reached the decision of going for an HP Notebook 2.0GHz Dual-Core Processor with 3.0 GB RAM, a 160 GB hard drive, and of course, a dual-layer DVD burner. Conveniently, Office Depot had such a laptop computer advertised for only $349.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate.
That’s where the fun began.
Read more…
A colder winter?
Over the past couple of weeks the first snow of the season began to fall in certain places in the northern hemisphere. Winter is approaching and will be here soon.
The questions are, is winter arriving earlier than usual this year, and if so, it is part of a new overall cooling trend?
Take a look at a few examples.
- In early October of this year Boise, Idaho received its earliest snowfall in the city’s recorded history. (The original page is gone, so the link opens a cached page with highlighted terms.)
- At the end of October of this year, London, England received its earliest snowfalls in the past seventy years.
- A ski resort in western New York is opening a week earlier than normal because of early snowfall.
- Ski slopes are also opening earlier than normal in Michigan, West Virginia, British Columbia and Quebec, Canada.
Read more…
The new age of high-seas piracy
As it was widely reported in the news, pirates have seized control of an oil supertanker as it was traveling in the Gulf of Aden between the eastern coast of Africa and the Arabian peninsula. The crew is currently being held ransom for $10 million.
That wasn’t the only recent case of piracy in that area of the world. Recently, the Indian Navy sunk a pirate “mother ship” in that same stretch of water after the pirates threatened to attack the military ship. A cargo ship based in Hong Kong was also captured by pirates in that same area just the other day. There are reports that Somali pirates alone have already attacked 80 ships this year.
So is this just the start in a new wave of piracy where not even the largest supertankers are safe from attacks?
Read more…
Categories: Uncategorized Tags:
Universe of frozen energy
A came out recently that pinpointed a massive amount of frozen natural gas on Alaska’s Northern Slope.
And just how much is a “massive amount?”
About 85 trillion cubic feet. So far it’s the largest recoverable concentration of the gas particles in the U.S.
Both of the presidential candidates’ agendas have the U.S. becoming more energy independent, and both parties proposed using more eco-friendly energy sources such as sunlight, wind and natural gas.
Read more…
Categories: energy Tags: energy, natural gas, nuclear power
Video poker woes
This past weekend I had a nice outing to the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina. We spent the night in Pigeon Forge, TN and went south through the Smokies to Cherokee, NC for a stop at the Harrah’s Casino in Cherokee before heading back here to Atlanta, GA.
For the most part the weather was great in the day and cool at night, and the mountain drive was very scenic as the leaves had changed colors and most were on their way to the ground.
I’ll rank the Harrah’s Casino as being pretty good. It’s not a “real” casino as they don’t use physical playing cards, dice, or the roulette wheel (blackjack, roulette, and a few of the poker games were electronic and used video screens), and unfortunately the casino does not serve any alcohol. Besides that the casino is clean, the food is very good (excellent in their connecting hotel), and they have free, self-service drink machines. Cold soda and water is also served by the roaming waitresses.
Read more…
R.I.P. Michael Crichton
It was announced today that the incredibly popular scientific fiction author, Michael Crichton, has suddenly passed away at the age of 66.
Like many people, this news was a bit of a shock to me. He seemed to be in the prime of his writing life and just released the major novel, Next, not too long ago.
I loved Crichton’s scientific writing style. He clearly knew his material very well and you also had to wonder if some of those stories could be true. He even went so far as to publishing bibliographies to back up his theories in his recent novels such as Prey, State of Fear and Next.
Read more…
Categories: Uncategorized Tags:
It’s finished! Finally!
After months of debates, criticism, negative advertising, and all relentless TV commercials, the national election is finally finished.
Now we can take a breather and not have to listen to that crap for a while. I don’t know about you, but I found most of it quite annoying not being able to watch a football game or TV show without the commercials being filled with the same political advertisements over and over twisting the truth and making you hear only what they wanted you to hear.
Read more…
Categories: Uncategorized, websites Tags: