Archive for November, 2007
Friday, November 16th, 2007
Oh, what a day. Have I ever told you that I hate wind? I never used to until we bought a house. I am sure you can guess why.
Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, I was going to go out and do some routine maintenance on my 1998 Honda Accord, which I did. I changed the oil, rotated the tires, fixed some minor things, inflated the tires to the proper pressure and cleaned the inside of the windows. Here are some photos…
This is the sweet V6 engine. As you can see, I am filling the engine with oil. The sweet V6 is where the car gets all is massive speed from.
This is what it looks like when I rotate the tires. I know it sounds crazy, but I still do it myself. I am not completely useless yet. Here’s how it goes…I jack up the passenger side of the car. I swap the back tire with the front. I go to the other side and do the same. Then, I jack up only the front and swap them…passenger’s side to the driver’s, and vice versa. That way it’s sort of like a “X” rotation. That’s how I read it should be done.
Yes, I got to use my new air tank again. That’s pretty exciting. The tires were about five pounds of pressure low. That’s because of the chilly weather. I need to go back down and fill the tank up again. Actually, I think I might head down to the auto place and get the tank filled up with the 125lbs. of pressure it’s capable of holding. That way, I won’t need to go back for a while.
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Posted in Automotive | No Comments »
Friday, November 16th, 2007
After I changed the oil in my car this afternoon, I had a nagging little chore to get finished up. It’s like one of those things you keep saying to yourself, “Oh man, I forgot to do that again.”
I had to pull out the motorcycle, add fuel stabilizer to the gas and take it for a ride. Since I only rode the thing once this year, I was looking forward to it. I added STABIL - Fuel Stabilizer to the almost full tank. I think it takes one ounce to every two and a half gallons of gasoline. I shook the bike around and started it up. The exhaust didn’t smell that good, but oh well. I had to take it for a ride to make sure the stable fuel worked its way into the carburetors. There are four of them. This is the most important thing. Here is a quote from their website -
“STA-BIL, America’s top selling fuel stabilizer, is a blend of scientific additives that prevents fuel from deteriorating. Stored fuel goes bad in as little as 60 days causing varnish deposits and corrosion to build up in engines. This build-up results in starting problems, poor performance, and reduced engine life. STA-BIL stops the formation of varnish and prevents corrosion.”
The ride was nice and short. I just cruised up the road and back. It was a little chilly and pretty windy, so it wasn’t really the day to go for a long ride. I am really going to try to ride more next summer.
The last thing I did was to take the battery out of the bike and hook it up to the battery tender. This is good to keep the battery lasting a nice long time. You should hook a battery up to a tender when it isn’t going to be used for a while.
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Posted in Automotive | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 16th, 2007
Hi there,
If you have ever linked to me at http://www.gaulard.com/blog/, please be ever so kind as to update your link to http://www.jaygaulard.com/blog/. It would be greatly appreciated.
It is getting a little depressing logging into the admin portion of this blog to see there are no links to it.
Thank you,
Jay G.
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Posted in Blogs, General, Websites | No Comments »
Friday, November 16th, 2007
I have had this on my to-do list for a few weeks.
The other day, I ran up to Staples and grabbed the latest version of Microsoft Outlook. I wanted to upgrade because my previous version, Outlook XP, was becoming a little buggy since I got Windows Vista. On the calendar, instead of showing one appointment, it would display one for every year that has passed. If I put one appointment in the calendar in January of 2000 to happen every year, there would be two of them in 2001 and so on.
I also upgraded to Outlook 2007 because I couldn’t find an alternative open source program that would easily sync with my Treo 700. That is all I use it for…contact, tasks and calendar.
It’s pretty good. Things seem kind of slow on it though. I am sure there are many more features in this version, most of which I will never see, because I don’t use it for email.
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Posted in Business, Computers | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 16th, 2007
Now that I have installed the Simple Tags plugin for Wordpress, I can begin deleting some categories. As you may have noticed, I have a lot. I don’t mind that, but it is becoming tiresome writing a post and having to scroll through all those categories to check off my choices. It’s actually quite redundant, now that I have the tags.
Over the next year or two, I will do this…one at a time.
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Friday, November 16th, 2007
It’s a little windy outside. I am not looking forward to changing the oil in my car all that much. I have to do the oil, rotate the tires and add windshield washer fluid. I should actually clean the car out as well. It’s quite the mess.
Also, today I have to follow up on the whole banking thing. I have been moving some stuff around. I have to follow up on the proposals for this year’s business insurance and apply some termite spray around the perimeter of the foundation.
I guess I should take a shower.
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Posted in Business, Home Improvement | No Comments »
Friday, November 16th, 2007
I heard there was going to be another Democratic debate last night in Las Vegas. I was pretty excited, because I like debates.
We sat down to start eating dinner when Laura got up to see if she could find which channel the debate was on. For some reason, we couldn’t seem to locate it. I hopped up and walked into the other room to do some research online. I discovered that the debate was going to be aired on CNN. I went back into the living room to find CNN on the TV. Again, I couldn’t find the debate, nor CNN for that matter. Hmmmm…
We finished up dinner and I visited CNN.com to get some more information. I discovered that I could watch the debate live online, right there at CNN.com. I was thinking to myself…”Yeah right, like it’s going to come in smoothly, without breaking up to buffer ever few seconds.” I clicked the player, downloaded the plugin for Firefox and off I went.
I couldn’t believe it. There I was, sitting at my computer two hours later watching them finish up the debate. About half way through, I noticed that I could enlarge the player window to fit the entire twenty two inches on my monitor. It was like watching a television. Everything was smooth and there were no commercials. During the times the commercials were airing on the television, they flipped over to live coverage of the debate on the CNN.com channel. It was so cool.
I guess things are changing quickly. By the way, Hillary did much better and was quite impressive.
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Posted in Current Events, Politics | No Comments »
Thursday, November 15th, 2007
I have been beating myself up over this. I flip flop more than…some politicians I know of.
Just the other day, I came to the realization that I am a boring human being. The reason I keep considering what type of car I want next is because I have never bought a brand new car before. Also, I am trying to bust out of that boring, computer guy persona. I know I shouldn’t care what people think, and I really don’t think I do. As all the ladies say, “I am doing it for myself.”
I dabbled a bit with the thought of getting a Toyota Camry Hybrid. Then, I started noticing way too many Camrys on the road. Then, I thought a BMW 5 series would be really cool. After a little research, that car seems to make the least sense possible. I want to break out of nerdhood, but I don’t want to be a fool. The car does have all-wheel drive, which is a huge plus, but dealers are few and far between. This becomes an issue when one of the big perks of getting that car is the fact that they offer four years of maintenance for free. I can’t even bring my current car down the road for an oil change, and I think I am going to drive a car 90 miles (round trip) a few times a year? Probably not. Also, I learned that the BMW requires premium unleaded gasoline. I am really cheap when it comes to gas, so I don’t think that’s going to work for me.
I am slowly arriving at the conclusion that I am going to get an upgrade of what I currently drive, but with GPS. I have to admit, I have been admiring the 2008 Honda Accord V6 from afar. Honda seems to have a lot of nice technology in their vehicles and they are pretty comfortable. I should know, my last three cars have been Hondas. The only thing wrong with this car is that it doesn’t come with all wheel drive. I guess we can get around this by getting Laura’s next car with all wheel drive. We’ll see.
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Posted in Automotive | 1 Comment »
Thursday, November 15th, 2007
High-quality YouTube videos coming soon
YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, speaking at the NewTeeVee Live conference today, confirmed that high-quality YouTube video streams are coming soon.
Does Internet kill or promote culture?
This article by Jeffrey Barlow of Pacific University discusses the impact of the internet on modern cultures. Using 2 differing texts, he discusses how the internet positively and negatively effects the way we act in society.
Yahoo! Says the Future Will be Modeled on Facebook
The future of both email and start pages is in social networking, according to Yahoo, but what’s really at issue here are two concepts that Yahoo execs didn’t name explicitly, but which will be familiar to most of the readers here. RSS and Attention Data.
Once thought dead, ‘Net neutrality roars back to center stage
Network neutrality has lost some steam, but the boilers have returned to full pressure after two senators ask Congress for an investigation. AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast have only themselves to blame.
Hulu Launches! Should YouTube Be Worried?
While it may not live up to its billing as a “YouTube killer,” Hulu is as different as a web video service could possibly be from the market leader.
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Posted in Current Events | No Comments »
Thursday, November 15th, 2007
Why English isn’t the only language you should know
Although English is spoken by almost 500 million people around the world, it is impossible to deny how countries such as China, Japan, Russia and India are becoming increasingly important, both in the world of politics and the world of business. Here are some reasons to expand your horizon and learn a new language.
Google: $500,000,000,000 company by 2010?
At the end of 2009, Microsoft would have a market value of about $405 billion and Google’s would be roughly $370 billion. So Google would surpass Microsoft sometime in 2010. If its stock kept appreciating at 34 percent clip annually compared to Microsoft’s 12.5 percent, Google would finish 2010 with a market value of nearly half a trillion dollars.
Top 50 Fastest Growing Women-Led Companies
With women starting businesses at a faster clip than men, here is a list of the top 50 fastest growing women-led companies. Meet the women behind these high-growth businesses.
The Top Entrepreneurs Under 25 Changing the Face of Business
The goal was to find businesses that demonstrate potential for growth and establish the talent of the savvy young people behind them, possibly identifying the next Mark Zuckerberg (of Facebook fame).
How to save money for 18-25 yr. olds
This recent article ran in the October 29, 2007 version of Newsweek. The article gives easy common sense advice from spending, to building credit, and how to make bank on Roth IRA’s.
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Posted in Business, Current Events | No Comments »
