Some money saving deals, for now

Update:
Well I guess I know why I tortured myself those other years. Staples has Quicken Deluxe + Turbo Tax + Internet security. The Quicken Deluxe + Turbo Tax is only 59.99 (it does require a rebate). However, with your Staples rewards its even less. I believe they have Internet Security for $9.99 so get it all in one place. Of course if you hate having to fill in rebates and that is worth $7 then the deal below is still the way to go.

The first deal is Quicken+Turbo Tax for ~$67, no driving required no rebates.
The second is for iGo tips (~$0.99) at Radio Shack on clearance.

Tax Software and Quicken
Every year I torture myself trying to find the best deal on

1. Quicken
2. Turbo Tax
3. Internet Security

This year, thanks to pointers from others, I have a new favorite (though I have not completed phase 3 yet). Plus, I can now save hours not looking for deals.

I believe the total prices is ~78 dollars.

Amazon has 1+2 for $101.98 less a $35 instant rebate (put both in your cart and go to checkout) and free shipping. I did this a couple of days ago so it definitely works. This gives you Quicken and Turbo Tax for ~67 dollars (pretty good). I also think you can still combine this with the Staples deal for Internet security for $9. This puts your total at ~$78, which is pretty good.

Of course I am still annoyed that this does NOT get you efile. Sure, you get federal efile for free, but with state efile at almost $18, I will print out returns again this year.

iGo Tips

I don't have time to go into iGo in much detail, but you can check out their web site (http://www.igo.com/). Note I use my iGo lightly (only when I travel) there have been some complaints about durability. I got my first pair of adaptors when RadioShack was closing stores for $25 each (iGo anywhere 70 watt). I also got some tips on closeout, for about $3 each.

Tips are normally about $10, which is way to high if you ask me. However, I was just in a local RadioShack and there were a bunch (not all) on sale for under $1. There was also the dual power adaptor for $1, which can be used with the main brick or with the appropriate adaptor in a car. Even better the list is available online (http://www.radioshack.com/search/index.jsp?s=A-StorePrice-RSK&sr=1&kw=igo&origkw=igo&kwCatId=&pg=1&searchSort=TRUE&retainProdsInSession=1&x=8&y=12) so if you need tips now is the time.

Dual Boot Windows and Linux










This might seem like a dry topic, afterall everyone knows how to use grub to dual boot a system. However, how many people know that you can use the Windows bootloader for the same purpose. Moreover, I would argue that this is fundementally the right way to do it for most users for the following reasons

• Linux is multiboot friendly, it won't generally trash your MBR unless you ask it
• Linux programs are not MBR sensitive, the version of Partition Magic I had (as well as an old version of Norton System Works) both volunteered to "fix" my bad MBR. By which they meant kill my Linux login.
• When you update windows you won't kill your Linux install
• Everyone dual boots from grub, get yourself a little street credit

Of course if you are in a community where Windows is considered an evil, then even using the NT loader may be considered bad. However, everyone I show my system to says "hey how do I do that?" BTW if you are using grub and want to make Windows the default just move it up to the first slot.

Just to give you an idea what you are in for you will

Reinstall Grub not to the MBR (or whatever linux boot loader you want).

• For example run Grub with the right parameters

Get a copy of the boot loader

• Run dd

Fix your windows install so it owns the boot record

• (install, repair)

Create the entry for dual booting.

A detailed list can be found at http://port25.technet.com/archive/2006/10/13/Using-Vista_2700_s-Boot-Manager-to-Boot-Linux-and-Dual-Booting-with-BitLocker-Protection-with-TPM-Support.aspx.

However, there are a couple of short cuts. Note, most of this requires admin privlidges. Sudo is useful on Ubuntu and Debian linux distros.

For Step 1:

• We will follow this as is. Simply install Linxu but DON'T put the boot in the MBR

For Step 2:

• Copy the boot sector dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/tmp/linux.bin bs=512 count=1 (NOTE the drive is the drive you installed the linux boot to). This can be found by fdisk -l which should show a partition with system = Linux.
• Modern Linux distros can mount an NT volume read write, there is no need to use a USB or floppy for the copy.
• You can also follow the alternative instructions at http://www.highlandsun.com/hyc/linuxboot.html it sounds like a cool way to do it.

For Step 3:

• You can probably user the repair function, if you have an existing Windows install. That is what I did.

For Step 4:

• Follow http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289022 to edit boot.in
• Or do
• C:> cd \, C:> attrib -h -r -s boot.ini, C:> notepad boot.ini
• Add a line "timeout=30" to the top
• Add a line "c:\ubuntu.lnx="Ubuntu Linux" to the bottom

There you have it, a dual boot that starts with the Windows Boot Loader.

Three companies that can make your life a little better

As a happy liberal, I believe we should let the free market do what it does well (consumer stuff) and let government do what it does well (serious stuff). While the financial scandal on Wall Street, along with the housing bubble show the free market at it's lowest point there are some encouraging things about the free market as well. In the happy holiday spirit I would like to present some of these.

newegg, yep the online retailer. newegg is my favorite online retailer, I have used them since graduate school (and that was a long time ago). They have a fine BBB rating, but for me I respect them because

• The price is always reasonable. Sometimes they are not the lowest, although they often are. But unlike Amazon they are NEVER the highest. Sure Amazon has everything, but some times at twice to four time the price you would pay elsewhere.



• The shipping is crazy good, especially if you are on the East Coast (Midwest will be a little slower). For example I ordered a replacement fan for my computer on 12/17 and it came 12/18. As other people have commented (on the newegg site) the shipment sometimes arrives before the tracking confirmation.



• They are fair. One thing that had kept me from blogging about newegg is that I am a very careful shopper. Until this year I had not needed to return anything. While it is impressive to provide excellent sales service, excellent return service is even more impressive.



• They have a nice service where you can have them notify you if the price drops or shipping is free.



• They quite often have a product in each class with free shipping (cables seem to be an exception). For instance the $7.50 120mm case fan had free shipping!

So despite what a few people have said newegg is an excellent online retailer. In this day and age where there are scams and other problems it is important to have a company you trust. Plus, if you want to know if you are getting a good price compare it to the newegg price.

Speaking of good return and customer service, the pinnacle of this has to be Proporta. I had a crystal case I bought from them. It is available from several merchants, even US ones. However, Proporta had very few complaints and cheaper shipping (despite being in the UK). It protected my Palm well, but eventually broke. Despite the fact it broke from a fall they offered to replace it. Further, since it was discontinued they let me upgrade to a more expensive case. Now that is good old fashion customer service, those from Chicago may remember the retailer Marshall Fields as having similarly excellent service. Add to this Proporta seems to always produce good stuff, and they don't (like most US firms) charge an arm and leg for accessories. For example take the Ted Baker Six pack (which I deeply regret not getting) http://www.proporta.com/F02/PPF02P05.php?t_id=4126&t_mode=des. Compared to what Radio Shack (http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2767656) sells it is a little more expensive. However, the Proporta version has a 3400mah battery compared to 2100mah (in the same package size). The Proporta is beautiful, the Radio shack not so much. Finally, and what I love most about outside the US companies they charge ~$2 for the device heads. For the Radio Shack/ Lenmar you pay ~$6 per head (if you can find them, I can't any more). Also, despite the apparent similarity they don't have interchangeable heads.

Finally, we come to Limoliner (http://www.limoliner.com/). Unlike the rolly polly Fung Wah Bus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fung_Wah_Bus_Transportation_Inc.) Limoliner competes in price with Amtrak (not the Acela http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/am2Route/Vertical_Route_Page&c=am2Route&cid=1080772074490&ssid=134). However, Limoliner offers faster service (usually), much better food (which is included), and slow but usable Internet. Now sure if we subsidized trains better Amtrak could blow them away. But we don't and a bus still beats driving a single car for the environment. So for filling a niche in a good way we have to give props to the Limoliner.

Buying a portable shop vac

I have had a big Craftsman shop vac for some time. I bought it when it was on sale for ~$60. It's been great so far, bailed us (literally) out a couple of time from some minor floods. Also, the blower is pretty good for moving leaves around a small yard. However, it is chore to haul around our rather small house. Also, without a garage it is not ideal for car cleanup. So I began a search for a small vacuum that would be easy to port around. There are three contenders for me: Craftsman, Home Depot, and Lowes. My ideal vacuum would have standard hoses, a blower port, and have an available HEPA filter. However, as we can see in the table I could not find that feature set. For me the Craftsman makes the most sense, on sale for $50 it has interchangable hoses with my big shop vac. Since the big vac can be a blower I can use that with the small hoses to blow out our radiators (no I don't have a compressor and I wouldn't see myself hauling one upstairs anyway).

Feature	Craftsman	Home Depot	Lowes
Power	5	5	5.5
Capacity	4	4	5
Hose Size	2.5"	1 7/8"	1.5"
Blower	No	Yes	Yes
Price	49.99/69.99	59.00	69.99
HEPA available	Yes	?	No*
URL	URL	URL	URL

Palm T|X Flash Memory Speed

I use Mapopolis (no longer available for sale) and was wondering if a high speed flash card would help. When I had my previous E2 it had a memory limit of 1GB, but with the T|X I can now use 2GB. This card was on sale for $14 at Staples, so I figured it was worth a try. There are lots of posts about card speed, measured with various utilities (but the numbers appear unreliable). I am a big fan of benchmarks that represent real world situations. Copying from my PC to this card (with my USB2 reader is faster than my old 1GB card). Even more important a nvbackup of my Palm was cut from 14 minutes to 4. So clearly the Palm T|X can benefit from at least this level of speed. Kind, of wish I had gotten the even faster card to benchmark :) Mapopolis seems more responsive, but it is a lot harder to benchmark. I've got all the US maps, and all the applications I use commonly on the card as well as an nvbackup image. This way if I have to do a factory reset all I need to do is reinstall from the card.

Fun with the new T|X

Recently my son stepped on my Palm E2. He is only about five so the blame is mostly mine. Fortunately, it was not all bad. Ever since I bought the E2 for ~ 190 a couple of years ago I had wished I had something with a little more capabilites. Since the E2 met its demise with a broken screen the next order of business was a hard case from Proporta to protect the new device. I considered the aluminum cases, but they seemed somewhat less useful and awkward. I settled on a clear case which has been stepped on and is still ok. I like Proporta because they seem to charge very fair prices for products and shipping (despite being across the pond) the lifetime guarantee is nice as well.

Compared to the Palm E2 the extra processing power in the TX is really nice when running Mapopolis (too bad Mapopolis is no more and nobody else is making new GPS programs for the Palm). Fortunately, I live in the North East and there is not a lot of new construction so I don't need any updates yet. Strangely, Mapopolis only runs well (voice command work, does not crash) when run from a SD card.

The next step was to try and get the Palm TX to dial my brand new W385. The steps that worked for me are:

Easy Part

1. Update the phone link application (I don't think this is necessary)
2. Establish a bluetooth connection between the phone and TX

Hard Part (I found these on a couple of boards)

1. Go to Prefs->Connection- select my phone connection and Edit-
2. change the "Model:" to "Standard GSM" from the drop-down list-
3. click on "Details..." button that appears-
4. replace the Init String with "+MODE=2" (do not include the quotes)- click OK- click OK- click Done (sorry I have no idea why or how this works, any comments welcome)
5. pull the battery
6. reboot the palm
7. use the dialer and presto!
8. NOTE steps 6 and 7 ARE required and are often left out.

Now my Palm dials my phone.

Internet Security 2008 (A necessary file could not be loaded (1002,1) after installing a Norton 2008 program) (download symfix)

Since this is a fix/workaround I will cut right to the chase. I had the following symptoms:

• I have multiple accounts on my computer (mine, wife, kids)
• I installed NIS from my account and it worked fine
• NIS did not work in the other accounts (Virus protection was off)
• I recieved "A necessary file could not be loaded (1002,1) after installing a Norton 2008 program" when running in the other accounts
• I am running XP, but I suspect the same problem would happen in 2K and Vista (since it si a directory rights issue).
• Norton's automatic help unhelpfully suggested either
• Download symfix (did not help)
• Unintalling and reinstall (which did work for my wife's account but it was too time consuming)
  

My problem was an Norton Internet Security 2008 feature to "protect the files from hackers", it also seems to "protect" them from multiple accounts. You can find this feature under Norton Internet Security Tab, Internet Security Options, How to protect your product from hackers. If you turn this off you should be able to use NIS on all your accounts (it worked for me). This is a lot nicer than uninstalling and reinstalling NIS in each account.

If you want to root cause this yourself use windows explorer from one of the accounts NIS is not working in. See if you can see the C:\Program Files\Norton Internet Security directory. If Norton is installed somewhere else you can look at the properties on the menu item or shortcut to find out where. In any case if you can't see this directory from the account you want to run NIS in the solution above should help.

I suspect I may be able to give all my users read access to the directory and then turn the feature back on, more on that later.

As a conclusion I really like NIS 2008. The performance seems fine, and I like the new interface. It does not seem to have integrated with my SystemWorks, but that is ok. I think 2007 did. This plus SystemWorks and I have my computer nicely cleaned up and ready for the new year.

Financial: Save those United Miles

So you have mileage plus miles that are expiring. An easy fix, if you have not signed up so far is Mileage Plus Dining. They say they will credit 250 miles, I'll let you know how quickly that happens. As a fall back you can always purchase miles from United, that is only suppose to take 48 hours to be credited. Note purchases from many merchants can take 4-6 weeks, or so they say.

Travel: Products for Travlers

The Targus/iGO power adaptor is on sale at J&R for $40. If you don't need to use it in a car, or already have an inverter this has you pretty much covered. When the Radio Shack near us went out of business I picked up two reconditioned iGOs everywheres (see picture at right). These feature the car cord and thus handle everything. This, plus a tip for my cell phone, video camera, digital camera and I can charge anything anywhere. I need to check the power efficiency. If someone posts a comment telling me to do so, I will give it a check.

Another way cool travel product is this rechargable USB battery. Its available from a variety of sources Radio Shack, Lemar, Proporta. Of interest the Proporta version only comes in white (bummer) but has a much higher 3400mah rating than the other two which are closer to 2100mah. Add to this that Proporta shipping (from the UK) is cheaper than US shipping on either of the other products, they give you tea, and you get a good warantee I say go with Proporta. Oh, did I mention that they don't overcharge you on the adaptor tips! That said I bought the Radio Shack version before I realized that they didn't have the same capacity.

In either case these will recharge anything you have a USB charging cable for (cool). It has saved me a couple of times when my Palm E2 ran out of power.

Another cool product that is waiting for me in Chicago, so I have not tested it yet. Is the Energizer on the left. With 4000mah and the ability to work as an inverter or provide 110 for other devices and two usb charger ports this should be way cool.

Now one concern with all of these is the cost of keeping them charged. My experience with Lion has been pretty positive. I recharge these about once a month and they seem to stay well topped up. However, none of these products is likely to be particularly efficient.

Tech: Jabra BT620s

I've wanted a bluetooth headphone for some time. Before my son steped on my E2 it was continuously pulled off me by the headphone wires. However, despite this compelling need the price for headphones (except when the Motorola headphones were on sale last Thanksgiving for $50) has been too high for my taste.

When I saw that Tiger had Jabra headphones for $30 I had to jump on it (this price was still good when I wrote the post). Note Tiger is a real company and I only have nice things to say about working with them. They don't do electronic rebates (like Stables) but these headphones don't need one.

I did of course check the reviews for example CNET which gave it a mixed rating. I think comfort has a lot to do with head size, or more specifically diameter. My head is tall and narrow and I have found these comfortable to wear for 4-6 hours (limited by available time not comfort). Note these are not light, they might not be very comfortable for jogging or other active endeavors. As to the hiss, at moderate volumes it is not obvious (but I am listening to rock, which tends not to have too many silent passages). The headband does not seem the most robust, I'll keep you updated on that.

One thing you will find is that several people complain of sound quality. You must pair these as stereo headphones. When properly connected for music you should see "Jabra BT620s Stereo-headset" if you connect as "Jabra BT620s Hands-Free unit" then you will get lousy sound. Bluetooth is awesome, I can get pretty far from the computer ~30feet and still have reception. The stream is either there or not, it does not degrade smoothly. Note if you leave a computer playing and get out of range you computer may default to playing with the speaker (potentially embarrassing at work).

On a laptop with an IO gear adapter I get excellent performance (the headphones stay alive even under very heavy CPU utilization). On my home machine they don't work, with exactly the same bluetooth adapter. I'll update with what the problem is when I find it.


Just today I got them paired with my shiny new TX. To do so you need a program, audio gateway from Softick. This appears to be the ONLY A2DP bluetooth profile for Palm OS. The good news is that this worked flawlessly. It also made me a little happier that the E2 was squished because apparently it does not have the horsepower to drive the headphone profile at high quality. The negative is that blutooth sucks the battery down. I got about 4 hours of MP3 time.








An obvious question is how well do these headphones work with a bluetooth phone. Well the sad answer is I currently don't have one. So, until I get one that test will have to wait.


Jabra BT620s
Plusses

• Reasonable price
• Pairs with computer/tx/laptop/phone (sure it will work)
• Simple interface
• Good battery life
• Much cleaner sound than RF style headphones

Deltas

• A little heavy, but I have not tested the Motorolas

Overall, a purchase that was well worth the cost.

Energy Efficiency: Green Roofing

At some point in the near future we are probably going to need to replace our roof. I am a big believer that a little up front cost can make big differences in the long term, think 401ks, high efficiency cars, and possibly a metal roof.

Plusses:

• Life time
• Recyclable
• Light (less weight than asphalt)
• Much cooler in the summer (this is a big plus for us) and not appreciable cooler in the winter.
• Excellent for rain water collection (leaches fewer chemicals)
• Possible increase in resale value (lasts longer) see comment below
  

Deltas

• Initial purchase price
• Rain is suppose to be louder
• Aesthetics
• Possible decrease in resale value (because some people don't like them)

The first disadvantage is definite, but most calculations seem to show them cheaper over the long haul.

The rain question is up in the air, when we get a metal roof I will let you know (see comment below).

Aesthetics, seems to me that with the range of metal roof options this should be a non-issue. We don't have one yet, so I'll let you know. Metal roofs don't have to look like commercial structures see for example

• Interlock this is a 50 year transferable warranty
• Metal Roofing Alliance at http://www.metalroofing.com/

Did I mention that the first picture is not spanish tiles but a metal roof! By the way Spanish tile is also a pretty efficient roofing material but it is very heavy and expensive.

It would also be intersting to see, but I supsect properly installed their failure rate is much lower. Let's say each shingle has a 1/10000 rate of failure, does not take too many shingles to get to an appreciable rate of failure. Most metal roofs are made up of many fewer panels. Just a little quick math with 1000 shingles (about right for our smallish New England house, don't get me started on home prices). The odds of the roof failing are now 1-(9999/10000)^1000 or about 10%. A rough guess is that a metal version would have 20 times less pieces, and probably a lower failure rate. However, even assuming the same failure rate we have a .5% chance of failure. Now, the statistical method is fine but I have no idea if this is a reasonable failure calcualtion for a roof.

You can find a basic article that covers some of this athttp://home-exteriors.suite101.com/article.cfm/shingle_roofs_vs_metal_roofs

Life Hacks: LinkedIn MySpace for the over 40 set?

Am I old? Well I can recall building CP/M machines from Heath Zenith kits. I also recall paying $200 for the privilege of soldering 32k of memory onto my Radio Shack Color Computer. My dad as a professor of chemistry was on the Internet from pretty early on, and I recall the "miracle" of instant mail. I also recall the earliest days of the Internet when it was almost all academics (Al Gore and I invented it you know). Anyway, those days seem as anachronistic as the PC pictured on the right. Yesterday, I picked up a 512MB USB drive free after rebates (512MB is now too small to be considered useful and they are being discontinued).

Recently I started playing more seriously with online services for tracking people. What we are now calling social networking. My goal was part personal part professional. Having just relocated to the Boston area after 10 years in A^2 (Ann Arbor) I felt a little cutoff.

My first stop was LinkedIn. I have had a LinkedIn account for years, Charu made me get one when he went back to India. However, I hadn't touched it in a long while. When I opened it I found a stack of messages some a year old. Guess I hadn't been a very good online citizen.

At the same time I created a MySpace profile. On the surface myspace seemed a better bet. You could list bands/entertainment/hobbies you name it. Myspace was designed for social networking of the social type and LinkedIn was designed for social networking of the professional type. However, in any social network one of the most important things is who is in the network. Both services let you import your contact list. I keep my contacts in Outlook and I sync that to a Palm E2 and Yahoo. Anyway, one quick import later and 20 contacts out of the 200 I had in Outlook were matched to LinkedIn. Same process repeated for myspace yielded one person, one of the few under 30's I know.

So the first round goes to LinkedIn, it is much easier to just link to someone in the network than to badger people you know into networking, thought that didn't stop me from trying to get a select few to join LinkedIn.

Next leaving both accounts at their default settings a couple of people I knew from way back found me (through LinkedIn). Wow, networking with minimal work that is kind of nice. Despite, or possibly because of, listing myself as married with kids and happy the only people on myspace who seemed to find me were people with "pictures too hot for myspace." A quick discussion with my under 30 friend and I corrected my profile so you needed my email to contact me. That ended the annoying offers but nobody legitimate has tried to contact me either.

Putting my work experience into LinkedIn tied me back to even more past colleagues,
Nathaniel who is running his own businesses NGP and Lisa who is running international elections . For those of you who are wondering where the Engineers are yes I have a couple of contacts at Rowan, Virgina Tech, and two universities overseas. So at least for my purposes LinkedIn seems the way to go. I also learned that when my daughter and then son asks for an online profile we will have to be careful. I was also interested that making my LinkedIn profile public somehow got my LinkedIn profile onto the first page of "Justin Shriver" Google hits. Of course the all time leader (that is actually mine) is a trivial utility I wrote once that got incorporated into a very popular (for control systems) web tutorial.

Some other notes about LinkedIn usage. I find it handy to use a personal email as you main contact email for LinkedIn. Part of the value of these services is getting and establishing connections and these days professional addresses are often short lived. I have also found that checking the networks of my friends helped me get back in touch with some people I had fallen out of touch with. I have also found that at least looking at some of the questions asked in my network section is useful, I have met some interesting people that way as well.

Saving Money: Pondering Cable/Internet/Phone Services

Like many people we signed up for an inexpensive promotion for tv/phone/internet. With that promotion expired it was time to look at what was currently available. Fortunately we live in MA, Newton to be precise so we are fortunate to have a variety of providers

• Comcast (http://www.comcast.com/tripleplay/)
  
• RCN (http://www.rcn.com/specialoffers/display.php
• Verizon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_FiOS#Telephone

We may be atypical users in that our TV's are definitely low tech. Our biggest TV is a 19" Sony we have had for 20+ years. We have a total of 3 TVs that we need to hook up (4 if you count the PC based tuner (http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_usb2.html).
none are HD (obviously).

Our primary objectives are

• Price
• Reliability
  
• Reasonable internet speed
• Unlimited calling

For a while the RCN was quite cheap, one of those startup packages but over time it crept up in price and we are now around $140 (before taxes). Looks like you could get it now for $75 for a year which would be quite a bargain and would win hands down (but it is a new customer offer).

Pricing

• Comcast $99 (sufficient analog channels to not need additional boxes)
• RCN ~$110 (requires a call to a special department as an existing customer)
  
• Verizon $99 + $4.99*2

Internet

• Verizon 5mbps/2mbps
• RCN 10mbps/768kbps
• Comcast 4mbps/384kbps

TV

• Verizon ~240 channels
• RCN ~140 channels
• Comcast ~70

Phone

• Comcast 12 features some pretty neat
• RCN 4 features all basic
• Verizon (still can't figure it out)
  

If we figure out the phone I think I might go with Verizon. Reliability of FIOS appears to be slightly higher than cable. I know we have had strange outages (thought none impacted the critical phone). Also I can't help but like new technology and the two years of fixed pricing helps close the deal for FIOS.

As to service there seem to be honors and horrors with each service. I have not seen anything that would make me believe that one should be preferred over the other.

Update: Since my main concern was cost I was a little reluctant to get locked into FIOS and required cable boxes. RCN finally came through with the same deal they were offering new users and we have

• Cable (120ish channels most available on any TV!)
• Internet (10/2 claimed) (8/2 measured dslreports)
• Phone (unlimited US)

When RCN came out they were really kind, and even replaced some low quality splitters I had (-15db) with good splitters (-3db). Excellent!