ShowMeBlog

Merry Christmas from Fort Worth

  It is December 24th (2009) at 9:30 AM and it is snowing in Fort Worth.  Merry Christmas to one and all.

  Yesterday the sun was out and it was a nice warm day.
  Today no sun and it has been raining and now we are getting some snow.

Kroger and Plus Card

 

Jimmy and I walked over to the Kroger store at 9114 Camp Bowie (Fort Worth, TX) and I spent $31.76 at the store.  I do not have one of their "Kroger Plus Savings" cards but Jimmy had one and I saved $13.09 with his card.
  I am going to have to sign up and get one of those cards.
  I like the store.  I have always liked Kroger stores. 
 
 

Less energy consumption

  I got my first full month electric bill the other day.  It was $104.00 for the month.  I got online and paid it right away.  That is just what I was expecting it to be.  I was a bit worried since it was the first one.  I do have a heating pad on my bed now. I do not use it every night.  But I was wondering how much it might cost to run. 
  I have a couple of compact fluorescent bulbs here and I got a new one today.  When they first came out I used them in Belton (MO) in my trailer. I think they cost about $20.00 each at that time.  I could not afford to buy them all at one time so I would pick up about one a month until I had all I needed.
 
  I did not pay the electric bill in Miami (FL). Russell was paying it.  He paid $200.00 or $250.00 a month plus he paid for water.  I was expecting Russ to pay here but he has run out of money.  He worked at CompUSA in Miami and then he got un-employment money and now it has run out. 
   He has been looking for work but had not found a job yet. 
   He has been talking to his mother, in Sweden, and she wants him to come and visit.  He may go and stay in Sweden for three months.  His mother is talking about after the first of the year but I would think if you are going to visit Sweden the time to do that would be in the summer time.

   Back to the compact fluorescent bulbs.  The one I got today is 26 watts but they say it puts out the same as 100 watts of warm white light.  I put it in the lamp in my room.  So now the only two lights in here are both those type of bulbs.  I was not going to put one in my walk in closet but I came home and found I had left the light on in the closet.  So I will get a bulb for the closet next time I get out.
   It will be happy to keep the electric bill at $100.00 a month.  It would be great to get it down to even less.

Texas addes more people than any other state

"NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Americans, it seems, still have a love affair with the West. Texas and Wyoming were the big winners in the Census Bureau's annual population estimates, which were released on Wednesday.

In the year ended July 1, Texas added more people than any other state, and Wyoming had the highest growth rate in the nation.."   

  I am one of those people that have moved to Texas.
I sure would love it if the people moving here were all liberal votes but I am sure it is not to be and if there were they might turn to the right and to the dark side. 

 

 

 

I am being a bad boy

  I am being a bad boy.  Smile
  I paid for single copy use of the excellent Thesis theme and I use it on Howard's Notebook.  If you want to use the theme on more than one site you need to pay extra.  I am going to use the theme here on HNB: Fort Worth TX. 
  I am setting it up right now here but I have not paid the extra fee yet.  I will not have the money for 12 hours so I am cheating and jumping the gun and installing it.  I will be paying them in less than 12 hours.
  I love the Thesis theme and just could not wait another 12 hours.
  I been wanting to install it on my other sites.  I was just in the mood to start today since I am feeling pretty good today.

  Now.. since I am installing this new theme here some things are going to be sort of messed for a few hours until I can get things adjusted so if things look a bit messed up .. give me a bit of time to adjust all the settings.

  I hope the Thesis people do not come and beat me with a stack of HTML/CSS code or something.  Smile

Update:  I paid the $88.00 to upgrade.  After I paid it sent me to a form were I could pay $40.00 each time I set up a site for someone else.  But if I remember correct when I did the upgrade I can set up all the sites I want for myself and not pay again.  It is just, I guess, if I setup a site for someone else I need to pay $40.00 each.

Network cable

  This is our living room.  We have nothing in the room except for the cable modem and a wireless router.  I am not sure when we will have something in the room.  My wireless USB network card is working ok on my computer but I am wondering why in the heck I just do not buy a network cable and hook it up and run it across the floor to my room.  My guess it would have to be faster than wireless.

Am I in the wrong country?

  I have Charter Communications for cable Internet service and I am paying for 10 Mb/s down service.  I get like 3.8 Mb/s most of the time.  I am going to call them Monday and ask them to check and make sure everything is working correct.

  I use www.speedtest.net to check my Internet speed.  I was looking at their site and they have a list of download speeds;  Europe 7.23, North America 6.59, Australasia 5.10, Asia 4.87, South America 2.13 and Africa 1.28.  Well Thank God I am doing better than South America and Africa is all I can say.
  The top countries by download speed are Korea 23.59, Japan 16.81, Latvia 15.58 and on and on it goes and in case you are wondering the United States is number 29 on the list with 7.33 Mb/s.
  The top of up load speed countries are Lithuania 9.25, Japan 7.95, Latvia 6.16, Bulgaria 6.07 and at number 30 the United States with 1.69 Mb/s. 
  I just did the speedtest again and I got 3.11 down and 1.98 up.

  It seems like the United States should not be number 29 and 30 on the list of Internet speeds.
  OK OK.. sure I do not want to live in any of those other nations because they have faster Internet speed.  But I am sort of tired of waiting for high speed broadband Internet speed.  I do not think 3.11 Mb/s is it.  Keep in mind when I started people connected to my bulletin board system at 300 baud.  I paid hundreds of dollars so that people could connect at 1200 baud.  I have seen and been part of the start of all of this… I just think it is time to move ahead to high speed Internet for the United States.  We should not be at the bottom of the list.

This is Charter 10M down “ high speed Internet ”

A lot of very smart and skilled people read Howard’s Notebook.  Do you think the above “high speed Internet” is worth $55.00 a month?  (Truth is I get it for $45.00 a month for 24 months.  When you do see above a nice connection it is a connection to Fort Worth.  I am in Fort Worth and am getting my Internet from Charter in Fort Worth.

Sen. Joe Lieberman shut down

Washington (CNN) - Tensions stemming from the prolonged debate on health care flared Thursday afternoon when Democratic Sen. Al Franken, who was the presiding officer, refused to let Sen. Joe Lieberman finish his speech on the senate floor.

Lieberman, the bane of the Democratic Party's liberal base because of his opposition to creating a public option and expanding Medicare, was speaking about preserving the Medicare trust fund.

After his allotted ten minutes, Lieberman - an independent from Connecticut who sits with the Democratic caucus - asked for more time to finish his speech, a request customarily granted in the venerable chamber.

"In my capacity as the senator from Minnesota, I object," replied
Franken.

Charter down for HOURS

  About 0030 hours we lost our Internet connection.  We have Charter Communication.  I do not have their cable TV service so I could not check to see if we would have lost TV.  I also use Skype (VOIP) so I lost my ability to call them.
  I do have a cell phone but it is pay as you go and I try and not use it.
  Now about losing the cable service we did have some limited connection to Google and to the Charter web site.  That, I think , is very odd… That nothing else works but we could connect to Google.
    
  I woke up at 0530 and called Charter on my cell phone.  I got a recorded message saying that service was down for my area “for maintance” for my area and that service would be back at “after 7.”

  It is 0730 hours and still no Internet service.  We have been without Internet service for about 7 hours! 
  It is 0800 and I called the Charter telephone number – 888-438-2727
  The message has changed.  It now says they are aware of the problem with “high-speed  Internet connection problems” in my area and they are working on the problem.

  It is now 1030 hours and still no Internet except I can go to Google and Charter.

  I called again and burned a few of my cell phone minutes.  Their message has changed and it says they are working on the problem and it should be fixed in a “few hours.”  They have the option of calling you when the problem is fixed so I told the machine to do that…So I should get a call on my cell phone with the problem is corrected.
  I wonder if they have a vast area out how many phone numbers can their system dial at a time?

  The Internet came back online for us at 1110  hours.