Windows Media Player 9 and 10

Once in awhile I have a problem with WMP11 libraries being corrupted.  I discovered if I revert to WMP9 or WMP10 all my problems disappear, and strangely WMP10 and even WMP9 seem to have practically all the functionality of WMP11 and in some areas in fact more.

Microsoft Security Essentials (Anti-virus software)

Good:  Scan runs quickly, no annual licensing hassles, free.

Bad:   Need to make sure your OS is completely updated before you can install it.

Lenovo Thinkpad T400

Good: Quiet, LED backlight conserves battery power and can get very bright if conditions warrant, very useable ‘IBM’ trackpoint (easily bests the crappy HP trackpoint or any trackpad), sensible keyboard layout, crazy battery life (9 hours) with extended battery

Bad: not thin, extended battery sticks out and looks strange, extended battery is heavy, undock requires software intervention.

QuickProxy Firefox add-on

Good: Actually my work provides an automatic tool which does this, but unnervingly often it screws up and doesn’t update the firefox proxy setting even with firefox closed, and it is still a pain to close firefox and reopen it just for updating the proxy setting.   It’s also annoying to navigate all the menus to turn on or off the proxy if you keep firefox open.  This add-on flips the switch with a single button on the status bar.

Bad: Actually, it’s nit-picking, but I’d like a navigation toolbar button.

Favorite Credit Cards

Capital One for no foreign currency conversion fee plus no hassle 1% rebate which can be applied to your account at any amount and any time.

Costco Amex Business for 5% back on Marriott family hotels and Hertz rentals and lesser percentages on Delta, Jet Blue, B&N and through Open Savings (this part is a cash rebate) as well as 5% 4% on gas, 3% at restaurants, and 2% on travel (on top of Open Savings) (this part is a paid as an annual gift amount to be used at Costco).  You would need an existing Costco membership or apply and pay for a new one.

Fidelity Retirement Rewards Amex for 2% back on everything, though you need a Fidelity account to obtain the rebate.  (Schwab has something similar.)

None of the above have annual fees.  Also, I don’t pay attention to interest rates on CCs because I don’t tend to carry a balance, so they may be outrageous.

A runner up is Citi Forward card, for 5% on restaurants, books, and movies.

Fastflip News Reader

http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/ Google lab’s experimental page with a kind of paper/page format for presenting news.   The three different ways to look at the news put in different rows: recent news, topics, and sources .   I think I still prefer my feed reader, but fastflip seems to have benefits for dynamic news browsing.  You can track recent events to an authoritative source (currently about 40) without having to ’subscribe’ as you do for feed readers.  Meanwhile, Google places ads in the right column next to the first ‘page’ of the article which you can peruse before clicking through to go to the full article.  Revenues from the ad ‘predominantly’ go to the content/news provider according to the NYT Article.  Will be interesting to see if it takes off or not.  Commentary from the NYT bits blog.

Asics Gel Oberon

One of the least expensive of the Asics line, they are still very comfortable running shoes. I just bought another pair of flashy silver and gold ones.  A long time ago, the legendary male runner of our high school who went on to the California State competition (don’t remember if he went to nationals) told us mere mortals that the Asics Gel type of shoe was the best shoe out there because Gel provided more cushion than sealed air.  I think he was right: one because personally I’ve bought several pairs and found Asics shoes are very comfortable for running (I’ve bought Nike and Reebok too, but neither is as good), two because nowadays, just about all shoe cushion inserts are all made out of some type of gel, and three a recent Consumer Reports reviewed running shoes and listed an Asics model of the top of the list, having scored the highest (it was Asics Gel 150TR).

Asics are not for everyone though.  They tend to be for people with high arches and normal width feet, I think.

An interesting thing I just noticed is that you cannot fly on commercial airlines with gel shoe inserts.  You must check them.  However, since Asics incorporate gel inside, the shoes are allowed to be worn onto airplanes.

Moved here from 360

I moved this blog here from Yahoo! 360.  Unfortunately, Yahoo!’s new profile blog service provides no feed.  I thought that was a basic service of a blog.

WordPress was kind enough to provide a way to import the 360 contents totally.  Seems to have worked well.

Actually, I sporadically post to this blog, but perhaps now with wordpress it will have a new excited audience (or maybe not).

No more secret 30 day price guarantee from Amazon

Not that I ever used it, but I found out recently that Amazon no longer will refund differences (drops) in prices on its own site within 30 days of your purchase. Apparently, this never advertised courtesy — you had to inquire about it — was stopped September 1, 2008.

Also, you can no longer use Amex gift cards (which are just like fixed value credit cards, I thought) to buy Amazon gift cards. Also Amazon doesn’t accept two ‘credit’ cards for purchases. This potentially makes buying something more than the value on your Amex gift card a complicated exercise of buying yourself an Amazon gift card with your normal credit card, just enough to cover whats left after using up your Amex gift card.

Related to Amazon: recently I’ve been trying their cheapest music tracks — the free ones! Some of these are actually quite good. You can try them on and then delete them without regrets.

Silhouette eyeglass frames

Good: Very light, ‘frameless’, titanium is sweat resistant — seriously this is a problem with other metal frames where the metal reacts to acid in sweat, oxidizes and the paint rubs off (stainless steel is good here too, but heavier), resilient
Bad: Very expensive
Neutral: I was just watching a 60 minutes piece on oil in Saudi Arabia, and it seems these glasses are super popular over there. If you buy these frames in the right style and grow a mustache, you can look just like the Saudi oil minister or other myopic folks, like from Saudi Aramco, in the kingdom. However, I originally bought these when they were under the Adidas label about 5 years ago. I’m just saying I didn’t buy these because of the 60 minutes piece, I mean, you know, I bought them well before that.

Hey, I just saw David Letterman with a pair like mine, except in silver.

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They are available much less expensively over the internet, but it is difficult to match the service of a brick and mortar optometrist.