Day In The Life of Baz

About two (2) years ago I stumbled onto Local.com. It was actually a typo that got me there; I was looking for local.google.com, which is just an additional link to Google Maps. I must say, Local.com and their local search has surprised me. I used it primarily for their excellent call back feature.

Local.com has since removed this feature. I always wondered how they could keep up the cost of all those phone calls. You could simply click on the phone number of a company that you searched for, enter you home phone number and Local.com would ring your phone and connect the call. An excellent feature for those of us without a long distance plan or those of us too lazy to dial a number, like self.

At least Local.com still has a send to mobile feature. Using this, you can send yourself a text message with all the relavant information about the place you’re searching for. Searches, directions, reviews, and more.  You can’t go wrong with Local.com.

Popularity: 22%

If you are like me then you LOVE to read. Why not get some Audio Books online? You can check out Books On Board to get a wide selection of over 190, 000 eBooks from a variety of publishing houses.

The books are available in Adobe, Palm and Mobisoft formats so you have a number of different ways to access your favorite titles.

I just went over to the site to check on the price of Four Blind Mice by James Patterson and it is a low $4.59. The other prices on the site do not look too bad so this might just be a site that I check out more in the future.

Popularity: 47%

I had never thought about using rope lighting for Christmas before until I realized the savings you could potentially have with them. Face it, most of us are going to have decked out houses for Christmas…but then we will have to face the electric bills in January.

I have previously written about saving money by using solar lights and CFLs so why not pass on that same money saving advice when using Christmas lights.

According to the sellers this lighting consumes only about .47 watts per foot so you can immediately start to calculate how much cheaper it would be to run the LED Christmas lights, as opposed to the traditional lighting.

Traditional lighting consumes about 6 watts per foot, which is about 12 times what the LED lights use. Convert that to the price you pay for electricity and you can figure out the cost for yourself.

These lights last a long time, about 50,000 hours and since they generate a small amount of heat they are generally thought to be safer than traditional lights. Deck your halls this Christmas and save some money on the electric bill in the spring.

Popularity: 37%

What Happens On The Internet Stays On The Internet

I have a few friends who gamble. Personally I don’t really get it, but they love it. Since the advent of the internet, everything is made easier, even gambling. You can now sit home in your underwear and shoot craps.

With so many options out there, how are you supposed to pick who to shell your money out to? Check out the top united states online casinos.

Design - They Had Me Fooled

As usual, I’ll start with the design of this site. I must say, they had me fooled at first. The design looks nice and simple. A basic centered layout, CSS tabbed navigation menu, and a nice gradient background. The page layout even started with a centered DIV. Nothing to shout about, but simple and clean right? Or so I thought.

Looking at the code, the main content section consisted of a big ugly table. Even though the data is tabular by design, they could have gotten away with some DIVS, floats, and clears. Oh well. Also the About Us page is a broken link, but that’s a minor issue.

One thing that I’ve found especially hard since I’ve move up here is keeping in touch with friends and family back home in Dominica. Yes, there’s always email and there’s alway instant messaging, but sometimes you just need to hear there person’s voice on the other line.

The best solution that I’ve found, so far, was Skype. When I went home on vacation for Christmas of 2005, I decided to hook my Mom up with Skype on her computer. I purchased some credits and even subscribed to a SkypeIN account for her so that I could call her whenever I needed to. This has worked great until yesterday.

I got a call from my mother saying that she’s lost her internet connection for an indefinite amount of time. As such, it’s time to resort back to the old faithful phone cards. The one thing you need to remember about phone cards is that there is always a connection fee when calling internationally. The cards that do say no connection fee simply mean that the card does not charge an additional connection fee. The number of minutes on these cards assume that you use the entire card in one shot. Making multiple calls in the easiest way to kill your card quicker than you intended.