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  • sbostedor 12:08 pm on May 13, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: E85, Ethanol, gas, green, mpg, prices, unleaded   

    My Initial Breakdown of E85 Ethanol Compared to Unleaded Gasoline 

    I drive a flexfuel capable 2008 Sebring convertible.  All winter, I’ve been putting regular unleaded gasoline in the car and have been getting an average of 26 MPG.  I am recording here my progress with the cleaner burning E85 gasoline.

    I’ve hesitated putting in the E85 ethanol gasoline during the cold months because I’ve read that it makes your car harder to start and run rough in Wintery conditions.  Being a life long Michigander, I have learned not to test fate where weather is concerned.

    So, now it’s Spring and I’m very curious about the efficiency of E85 gasoline.  I’ve never had a car that would take it before so this was all new to me.  Our local Meijers grocery store sells it at their gas station so I thought I would finally give it a go.

    I’m still on my first tank but I’ve already seen a significant drop in the miles per gallon being reported by the dash readout.  I’ve checked the accuracy of this reading many times since I’ve had the car and it’s always been accurate to about 1 mile per gallon at each fill up.  I have no reason to doubt it now.

    Here are the final stats:

    Standard Unleaded Gasoline

    • $2.30 per gallon
    • 26 Miles per gallon
    • 9 cents per mile
    • $3.06 per day for work commute (34 miles)
    • $15.3 per week for work commute

    Ea5 Gasoline

    • $1.90 per gallon
    • 20 Miles per gallon
    • 10 cents per mile
    • $3.40 per day for work commute (34 miles)
    • $17 per week for work commute

    So, going “green” with E85 gasoline is only costing me an extra $1.70 per week for my typical work commute.  If this stays consistent or better for the next couple of tanks, I am going to just dedicate myself to this completely.  I already pay a bit more for organic locally grown food when I can so what’s a couple bucks a week to do my part with the emissions?

    I’m not a Green Peace nut and I’m not someone who is going to preach to you about “going green” but at such a little cost, why the heck not?  Put it this way; there are a lot of unknowns about our ability to make a global impact by doing things like this but why risk it with such a small price to pay?  You’ll probably never see me hugging trees in the forest but every week you will certainly find me filling up in the E85 line at Meijers.

    Oh, and one more observation … my car seems to run a LOT smoother and quieter with E85, too!

     

  • sbostedor 4:09 pm on February 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,   

    DirectTV Finally Set Up DYI Fashion 

    I came home early from work today because the installer for DirectTV didn’t sound like he had a firm grasp on what he was talking about.  I came to the sudden realization that it wasn’t DirecTV that was misleading me, but rather the installer who had very little knowledge of how this equipment works.

    When I came home, I found the house was pretty much set up to spec except for the kids bedrooms.  They were supposed to share a single receiver in Emily’s room.  The tech actually installed the receiver in Tyler’s room even though the incoming feed from the dish entered into Emily’s room!  This means that he went through the trouble of extending that cable through the house into Tyler’s room and hooking absolutely nothing up in Emily’s room.

    My first task was to unplug the receiver from Tyler’s room and plug it in next to Emily’s TV.  I took apart the two COAX cables that were joined with a male-to-male connector installed by the tech and plugged the feed from the dish into the receiver.  I connect the other end of the COAX that led into Tyler’s room into the TV-OUT portion of the receiver.

    I hooked Emily’s TV up to the receiver using the component outputs.  This allowed both TV’s to view the output of the receiver at the same time.  I really don’t understand why the tech was telling me that it was not possible and later that he could make it possible for an extra charge!  It would have actually been LESS work to do it the way that we had agreed upon.

    So, anyways, that drama is over and I can move on to more fun things.  The more that I play with these new receivers, the happier I am that I switched to Direct TV.  These are WAY better than Dish Network DVR’s!

    I really can’t wait to play with the iPhone app that is currently in beta.

    Here are the receivers that I have:

     

  • sbostedor 10:26 am on February 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Install   

    Direct TV Install Disaster 

    Why is it that every time I purchase something from a company, they try to screw me?  If you’ve been following my Twitter stream, you know that I’ve been switching from Dish Network to DirectTV.  I did this because of the awesome deal that was being sold to me on the phone.

    The sales lady explained to me that if I set up my house with one HDDVR, one standard DVR, and one standard receiver, i could provide television to all 5 of the TV’s in my house.  She explained that it was different than Dish Network’s setup and proceeded to slander them about some licensing deal with TiVo that they are violating by allowing two TV’s hooked up to a single receiver being able to view two different things simultaneously.

    I confirmed twice with the sales lady that all of these TV’s could be driven by the receivers that I listed above and she said “yes” each time.

    About 10 minutes ago, my wife called me and told me that the DirectTV installer is telling her that this isn’t true and that he can only hook up three TVs.  I am FURIOUS!  I am so tired of being sold one thing and delivered another!  Now, I have to suffer with only 3 of my TV’s working in my house.

    If this isn’t resolved soon, I’m going to consider switching BACK to Dish Network.  I know that a lot of people like DirecrtTV but I”m not happy with being scammed like this.

     

  • sbostedor 4:42 pm on January 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Clinton, , , Midas, ,   

    Midas in Jackson Michigan Tried to Scam My Mother 

    The windshield wipers on my Mom’s 2003 Azteck stopped working the other day.  She said that this happened a few other times but started working again if she let the car warm up.

    Today, she took it in to this Midas on Clinton rd. in Jackson Michigan for an estimate because it stopped working again.  This time, they wouldn’t budge no matter how long she left the car on for.

    They did an analysis of the car and told her the bad news.  It would cost her $400 to have them fix the problem.  They said that the motor was “fried” and that was the only fix.  My Mom doesn’t have much money and this threw her (and us) into a tailspin!

    After thinking about her symptoms for a few minutes, I started to get upset.  It occurred to me that the symptoms that she described didn’t fit well with the diagnosis at Midas.  On a hunch, I grabbed my wife’s hair drier and headed over to her house.

    Just as I suspected, here is what I discovered when poping her hood:

    The windshield wipers were frozen in place!  After 20 minutes pointing a hair drier at this frozen popsickle, the windshield wipers were freed and working perfecly!

    The employees at Midas should be ashamed of their unprofessional attempt at scamming my Mother!  I think that everyone should boycott their business after reading this story!

     

    • Marc Nischan 11:49 am on January 19, 2009 Permalink

      Ain’t it a shame? Every time my wife takes the car in they’re on her like rabid wolves. They just assume if you’re a woman you’re an idiot.

  • sbostedor 6:05 am on January 16, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    Toshiba Portègè 

    The Toshiba Portégé just came in from CDW. This thing is Super light! It weighed in at 2.4 LBS. See images for more info.  I’ll post more about this cool laptop later in.  CDW page here.

     

    • JMacD 6:30 am on January 16, 2009 Permalink

      That’s it? No review. How big is the screen? 17″

    • sbostedor 6:35 am on January 16, 2009 Permalink

      Haven’t had time to get to know it other than my initial reaction yet. I just posted that from my iPhone after the initial unboxing. I’ll have more to say about it later today probably.

  • sbostedor 8:09 pm on December 23, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , ,   

    InCase Power Slider Review (followup) 

    The battery life on the iPhone 3G is abysmal and I was getting tired of charging every six hours or so depending on how much I used the phone.  It was just careless and irresponsible for Apple to embed the battery for this phone into the case so that it can not be easily replaced or swapped out.

    Last week, I purchased an Incase Power Slider for my iPhone 3G.  Yesterday, I decided to do a full discharge test to see how long the iPhone would last using my typical usage load.  I use Qik a lot and am always snapping pictures and uploading them to Flickr.  This typically drained my battery within 6 hours of a full charge.

    I’m happy to discover that my battery life has not only doubled; it’s almost quadrupled!  It has been about 30 hours since the full charge and I decided to throw it back on the charger with 15% battery life remaining. I will gladly lose the pocket real estate due to the battery size to gain the usage time that I’ve seen with this case.

    I do have one small problem with the manufacturing of this case, however.  After removing the case from the phone for the third time, the plastic casing slid off the device revealing the sensitive electronics and connector.  I plan to head to the hardware store tomorrow to get some glue and fix it myself instead of returning it for such a minor issue.

     

  • sbostedor 10:05 am on October 18, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Blog   

    Intuit Is A Scam Site Now? 

    I’ve been a long time user of Intuit products but I think that I’m going to hang that up in favor of a competing product that hasn’t yet decided to scam people into becoming customers.  Below is a video that I just took of me signing up for their “free” account advertised boldly on their home page.

    Take a look:

    http://screencast.com/t/49iQ51ELN

     

  • sbostedor 8:24 am on July 24, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Home Depot   

    Home Depot Fence Install is not going smooth 

    So, we hired Home Depot to install a 6 foot vinyl fence around our back yard and to also install a dog run within the back yard to keep the dogs out of the main yard.  They sent a guy named Tom Jester out in the Spring to do the quote.

    We walked around the yard measuring things and I even held the tape for him as he measured the length of the dog run.  He neatly jotted it out on the quote and broke down the price of the two fences and they combined to cost just under $6,000.

    We told him that there were other contractors quoting on the project and he said that it was best to go through Home Depot so that we don’t have to deal with the nightmares that people go through with contractors.  He sold me on that idea and we closed the deal.

    Months went by with no communication from Tom or anyone else at Home Depot.  Finally, a week ago, I called the Jackson Home Depot to tell them that if we don’t get some communication about an install date within 48 hours, I am cancelling the whole thing and going through someone else.  The lady said that she’d have to call the contractors and that she’d call me right back.

    That Saturday, she left a message on my machine saying that we are scheduled for install on Monday.  She said in a tone that implied that I should have already known that.  Of course, nobody was available for me to call back to let them know that Monday was bad because my wife had a doctor appointment and they required that someone be home at all times during the install.  This just went from frustrating to fury.

    The guys showed up and did a great job on the vinyl fence.  It looks great!  Click here for some pics as I publish them.  They completed it today and my wife questioned when the chain link fence would be put in for the dog run.  They had no clue what she was talking about and told her that we’d need to ask Home Depot.

    I was starting to get a bit upset that nobody knew what was happening so I called them right away.  The lady that I spoke with a the Jackson, Michigan Home Depot fence installation department told me that there’s nothing on the quote that says anything about a chain link fence and was quick to blow me off.   I told her that I helped the guy measure it out and he broke it down for us on the quote.

    She said that Home Depot didn’t do the quote and that the contractor was responsible for that!  She passed me onto her manager who didn’t provide any further help.  His response was that it wasn’t in his system for a chain link fence so what we paid for was just the vinyl.

    On the quote, it is broken down as such:

    • Vinyl Fence: $5248
    • Chain link dog run: $592

    We already paid the combined price to Home Depot and now they’re denying knowing anything about the chain link fence.

    Moments ago, I just got a call back from them and now they are passing me on to someone named Emily at 734-462-8711 X-1232.  I recognized that extension right away.  That’s the lady who called and left a message on Saturday that they would be doing the install that Monday!

    I’ll post another entry to let you know how this ends but I am not happy and I will never do business with Home Depot again.

     

  • sbostedor 3:02 pm on July 19, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    The Jing Project 


    This is one of the coolest ideas that I’ve seen come out in the past few weeks. Techsmith, the company responsible for cool screen capture tools like Snagit and Camtasia, has released a free beta of their new screen sharing tool called Jing.

    Instead of capturing images and saving them onto your local computer, they are uploaded to the Jing server and the web address to view them is placed into your clip board. You can, then, paste that address into an email or web page and instantly make it available to others.

    You can save it locally as a PNG image file, also if you’d like. Not only does this tool capture and share screen captures, but also full video and audio annotations. This will be an excellent way for people to show how to get things done without describing it in words.

    I think that I’ll be using it quite a bit from now on.

    Download: http://www.jingproject.com/

     

  • sbostedor 5:24 pm on June 1, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    College Works Painters Initial Review 


    We enlisted the people at College Works Painters to paint our house this year. When we signed up with them, they sold me based upon their preparation techniques and claimed thoroughness. They told me that I will not have to pay for the job until I am so happy with them that I would be willing to give them a letter of recommendation.

    They have been at it for three days and they told my wife yesterday that they where finished with the job. when I arrived home from work, what I saw was a house that a 12 year old child could have painted better in less than half of the time that they spent on it. I also noticed the serious lack of preparation work all over the surface of the house.

    I talked to the supervisor yesterday and she claimed to share my concerns although she was there at many times through the day and had to have seen them painting over areas of the house that clearly needed prep work done still.

    She promised to have them come back in the morning to “patch things up” and that they would be finished by around noon. She must have sensed my wifes hesitation to lay into them like I did and they offered to have her sign the acceptance papers while I was at work. That made me even more upset with them and I demanded to hold off on any paper signing until I see the job and agree that it is good. Below are some pictures from the FINISHED job as of this morning.

    They didn’t even sand the house before painting over these huge crators of flaked paint!

    They didn’t pull the old vines down to paint as we had agreed upon

    The paint was still flaking and chipped in many locations such as this!


    Below was the letter that I left for them as I went to work this morning:

    • The house still has many areas where it is flaking old paint. This is unacceptable. I want every area where there are flakes to be sanded down, primed, and repainted.

    • The overhangs have not been painted. On one side of the house, you didn’t even bother to pull down the remnants of the old vines so that you could paint

    • Many areas looks like you didn’t sand at all but just painted over the old craters left by the old paint flakes. See the last picture in the list above. This looks like crap and any good painters would have sanded that down with a power sander before priming and painting to minimize the depth differences in the paint. This looks like a 12 year old painted the house. I want these areas sanded with a power sander, smoothed, primed, and repainted.

    • In areas of the house, it looks like you didn’t even paint. You can see the lines where you left off and decided not to finish.

    • The border around many of the windows is still flaking and have not been painted
    I am paying a lot of money to you under the promise that you have world class prep work and that I will have a great looking paint job that will last a long time. What I see instead is a horrible paint job that could have been done for a couple of six packs by a few friends. This is not professional painting.

    No papers will be signed and no money will be paid until the house at least meets these basic requirements.

    Was I being too hard on them? I hope that I can come back tomorrow and write a blog praising them for fixing this mess and making things right.


     

    • Melissa 2:01 am on June 2, 2007 Permalink

      You have legitimate complaints – this is awful – Katie was telling me about this today – OMG! Don’t let them get away with such a shoddy job. You’re absolutely right. Be sure you double document everything (in case computer crashes – which I know you can fix – - – but well, hard copy never hurts down the road!
      Melissa

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