ThisLooksInteresting.com

So I started to get frustrated with blogger (no trackback started it) and decided I could kill some time trying something else. Of course I went for my current golden hammer technology I'm currently concentrating on learning Drupal. I already have hosting, an existing Drupal installation so it was an easy choice.

I'm constantly pleasantly surprised how well thought out Drupal and it's associated modules are. Ease of use, modularity, logical, etc. The most surprising thing is it doesn't get in the way of developers while at the same time being user friendly for non-developers. I previously created a web site using Mambo and that was just a painful experience. I quickly came to dread touching it. Mambo seams to have 5+ modules to do any one thing with all of them in some state if disrepair. Drupal is far better organized.

Importing my posts from blogger to drupal was pretty straightforward once I'd found a good way to do it.

1. Import from blogger to WordPress http://codex.wordpress.org/Importing_Content#Blogger (if like me you don't have a WordPress install it only takes a few minutes to create one http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress)
2. Import from WordPress to Drupal using this handy module http://drupal.org/project/wordpress_import

Good resource for ideas. Personally I've tried some things that fall into the list but nothing has taken of yet. Some of them didn't make it beyond proof of concept.

The one I spent the most time on was a few years ago for airline flight searching. The main idea was to allow people to track the price of flights they were planning to take to help them pick the right time to buy. I think that falls in "20. Shopping guides". I spent a long time finding a flight search API that was available to a small timer like myself. I eventually came across the Kayak Search API that was perfect for my needs. I got as far as a working proof of concept when I saw this post. Although farecast is not quite what I had in mind that was quite a blow. The final nail in the coffin was when Kayak started showing flight price graphs. Now I see recently released yapta.com which is pretty much exactly what I had in mind. Maybe I should have kept going?

Still that experience made it easier for me to join the facebook app gold rush with another airline flight idea Fly to Friends & Places. It's still going with about 14,000 installs. Not bad but pretty small fry by facebook standards.

So... onto the next idea. Probably a good idea to try something non-flight related.

Looks like a very useful list of tips here. Granted the main problem I have is lack of posts but maybe following these tips will help motivate me to resurrect this blog?

This is me trying #35. I also set myself a daily reminder to post.

Saaan Francisco, San Francisco. Saw Eddie Izzard's new live tour Stripped this weekend. It's fantastic! At least as good as mine and many people's favorite Dressed to Kill. I would say better but this is the first time I've seen him live. Live is always better. My wife was in pain from laughing so much. Can't wait for the DVD but it will be a couple of years before he records that. He needs to take the tour around the rest of the USA, the UK ("otherwise they'll kill me"), Australia, France and Russia.

Just like a lot of his comedy you get a history lesson along with it. This time covering the birth of the planet up to the present day. Highly recommended! Get some tickets if you can!

www.eddieizzard.com

So I checked on my parcel information at the county web site to see if my exemption had been applied since I didn't get any response in the mail. I could see that a $5600 exemption had been applied but my property value had been increased. So the net result is a higher taxable value than last year. I wasn't expecting that.

I contacted the county office and the very nice lady explained that under Prop 13 they are allowed to raise property values by 2% each year which explained my increase. I guess no one has really cared for a few years since the property values were going up way more than that. She also explained that I could request (by asking on the phone) Prop 8 which means they will do a market valuation of the property. Whichever is less (Prop 13 or Prop 8) value is what will be used. However I'm too late as this years roll is already closed. So I'm down for 2008 and I should find out July'ish next year. Here's hoping there is a plummet in market value when they do the valuation and a sharp rise afterwards.

Proposition 8 Decline in Value Reassessment Program

Original post California Home Owners Property Tax Exemption

Everyone agrees solar is a good thing free electricity with no pollution. However of course the equipment is expensive (about $40,000 for a home) so even if the the tempting federal and state incentives half the cost of installation your still looking at 10 years to pay it off. Not many people can be sure they'll be in the same house for that long.

Citizenrē has a great solution with their REnU program. Instead of buying your own system Citizenrē will install one for a $500 deposit. Then you just buy the electricity the solar system generates, from Citizenrē, at the same rate you currently pay your electricity company. The rate you pay is fixed over your 1, 5 or 25 year contract. So that means in your first year you may not save anything but as the years go buy your rate stays the same as the electricity companies rate increases. Your saving is the difference between the two. Over that contract Citizenrē is responsible for all maintenance of the system. There is a lot more detail on their web site Citizenrē REnU.

However it is possible that all this is too good to be true. Jeff Wolfe certainly thinks so. I have to say that as soon as I see multi level marketing especially with large commissions I get worried. If people have to work that hard to sell something how good can it be?

I think procrastination is definitely an asset on this one. I'll be waiting to see how it pans out. I do hope it succeeds.

If I'm going to buy something the first thing I do is go to ConsumerSearch.com They aggregate and analyze reviews for many different products and provide detailed write ups of their findings. They also weight reviews so for example Consumer Reports reviews are given more credibility than Epinions. So at the very least you can find links to all the review sites for a given product at best you just go ahead and buy one of their aggregated recommendations. It cuts out a lot of the analysis paralysis.

ConsumerSearch.com

I used NetBank NetValue Checking as my primary checking account for over 5 years. I liked the fact it is free with easy online access and there is some interest. However there were a few things I did not like.
What I didn't like about NetBank Checking
Although I could link to other accounts and transfer money into the account I could not transfer it out. I guess they prefer money coming in to going out but that feels like cutting off your nose to spite your face. It was a number of years before NetBank managed to get it together to enable linking to PayPal. Finally I received SPAM email (cheap meds, penis enlargements, Viagra etc) from the email address I gave to them. This was a unique email address I setup specifically for NetBank and did not give out anywhere else. So I know the source of the leak and I was rather concerned about this problem. I hope no other information of me was leaked.

What I like about ING Direct Checking
ING Direct Electric Orange checking has everything I like about NetBank, it fixes what I didn't like and has some additional bonuses. I can transfer money out as well as into the account (instantly between ING accounts a few days to others). It was able to link to PayPal right away. I have never received SPAM email from the unique email account I setup for ING (I have had a savings account with them for longer than I had the NetBank account). As far as bonus features go the interest rate is high (currently 3.93%). Many other savings accounts don't even offer that.
Another bonus feature is that they belong to a free network of ATM's which happen to be 1 in 12 of all ATM's.

If you want $25 to get you started for singing up for an ING Checking or Savings account send me an email to ingreferral AT thislooksinteresting DOT com . I'll get $10 as well.

So Tivo finally released a HD version of Tivo that mere mortals can actually afford Tivo HD. It looks great. They don't seem to have to have missed out anything from the $800 Series 3 that really matters in this $300 version. Sure the hard drive is smaller but of course that can be upgraded if your tech savy or you can buy one already upgraded from Weaknees and still keep well below the Series 3 price. It's all good and very tempting.

However until the CableCARD 2.0 mess is sorted out it's still a broken solution. Without CableCARD 2.o I will still have to keep (and pay for) my existing cable box so that I can still access Pay-Per-View and OnDemand. So in addition to paying $300 for the box and $8 - $17 for the Tivo service I still have the $12 fee for my existing cable box. But really I just want everything to work with 1 box.

So I'm going to continue to wait impatiently for the Comcast Tivo thats been coming soon for at least 2 years now. Unless CableCARD 2.0 is available before then.

There's a battle going on out there. It's between the spa dealers, spa owners and Costco. You only have to go to a Spa forum like www.poolspaforum.com to see this battle being waged. Any posts that mention Costco Spas or in particular the Costco Platinum Elite I, II or II which are manufactured by Hydro Spa quickly turn into a holy war. The problem seams to be that Costco is undermining what appears to be an almost 100% markup by the spa dealers. The reaction to this from many spa dealers is attacking the Costco product.

A $4,000 Spa can't be anything close to a $8,000 one... right?
This would seam to be a logical because you don't get anything for free. However it seams like the Spa industry is very much like the PC industry. Most of the components are standard and produced by a very small selection of manufacturers. So Spa's are very modular and a Spa manufacturer just selects from a catalog of components and assembles those to make up their particular spa. Kind of sounds like a bike.

So what does this mean?
My Costco Spa which was around $4,000 has the same features and is made from the same components as many other spas costing double or more from a spa dealer. The jets and plumbing manifolds are from Waterway Plastics. The same for the audio speakers. The pumps are Aqua-Flo and so on. So how can my spa be that different from the others?

It can't all be good.
Of course there are benefits to buying from a dealer. You can go to their showroom and actually try out the Spa's. They will often include delivery and installation (sub-contracted out). You will get help with service and parts later on if you have problems (also sub-contracted out). But don't expect to be able to price compare. Your unlikely to find 2 dealers locally selling the same spa.

The question you have to ask yourself is what is this worth? Are these benefits worth the 100% markup?

I spent $200 for delivery (same guy used by most of the local dealers) and $800 for an electrician to install the electrical supply which is 125 ft from the main electrical panel (most likely more than the standard included by a dealer).

P.S.
I also learned the correct use of the various words people use for Spas.

• Jacuzzi/Whirlpool - Brand names but generally used to refer to indoor bathroom jetted tubs.
• Hot Tub - Essentially just a big tub of hot water with no jets.
• Spa - Outdoors above or below ground with jets etc (what I'm talking about here).